If passenger safety was the primary consideration throughout this fiasco, why then has the airline industry and the relevant regulatory authorities repeatedly suppressed the findings of independent studies that sound the alarm over a very real danger facing passengers and crew alike during air travel?
He will receive a designer bound copy of his novel (once it is published) at a gala dinner in London and can expect not only overnight literary fame but also a sharp rise in much needed popularity he has lost in the run-up to House of Representatives and Senate elections.
The Lost Man Booker Prize is a one-off prize to honour the books which missed out on the opportunity to win the Booker Prize in 1970.
To pre-empt any potential controversy, Booker organizers have announced that they have a written certificate dated 1970 that clearly shows Obama had an intention to write a book about peace one day. The organizers have stated however, that this certificate will never be released to the public and they should just take their word for it.
April witnessed deluge after deluge of torrential rains bringing flooding, landslides and misery to many in the Americas and China where large cities are underwater. Arctic-cold weather in the least expected places, more frequent earthquakes and hailstorms of unusual ferocity have extended winter in the northern hemisphere into May, raised seabeds and pelted homes with ice.
Dramatic and significant though it was, did the volcanic eruption in Iceland really merit the unprecedented shutdown of European airspace for a week, with knock-on effects across the world? Who made the call, and on what basis? These are important questions to ask because Eyjafjallajokull's wandering ash cloud now apparently holds the near-term fate of international air travel in its plume, so to speak. With cosmic bombardment underway and magma erupting from the oceans' floor, wrangling over the immediate fiscal losses detract from necessary preparations for the approaching ice age.
As always, the stresses and strains in our environment are mirrored back at us in the political and social events of which we play a more immediate role. We will analyse the mysterious circumstances surrounding the Polish government air crash, the political and corporate back-room manipulation of "Tea Party" activism and the psychopaths on Wall Street's engorgement upon humanity through economic terrorism. We'll observe how The Big Brother Surveillance State and naked scanner racketeering expand unchecked, and consider the geopolitical chess moves behind the Kyrgyz and Thai "Red Shirt" revolutions.
And, of course, we couldn't connect the dots in April without acknowledging the high strangeness of the global UFO wave...
An article that caught my eye was (All bold print in this article will be my added emphasis):
Minnesota man charged with stabbing 29 pigs (5-5-2010)It turns out the man was drunk, but something struck me as odd. I decided to search via Google News to see what other stabbing events, if any, had occurred recently.A drunk man stabbed 29 pigs in Minnesota, hurting them so badly they had to be slaughtered, according to charges filed against the man by police.
Curtis Adams, 23, said he did not remember stabbing the pigs, but did not deny having done it, Detective Matt Owens said in court papers. (continues)
The psychopath is a unique and quite dangerous subgroup within our species. He, or she, is capable of deadly manipulations executed with unbelievably cold, calculated intellectual and emotional maneuvers. Charming, lacking in empathy, guilt, responsibility and the normal range of human emotion, they move among us with an often impeccable mask that makes them virtually undetectable. There are several evolutionary hypotheses which attempt to explain their behavior, however the best fit is that they represent a cheating reproductive strategy, one geared towards the production of many offspring for which they afford no long term care.
Support for this thesis comes in a various forms. We know that psychopaths are callous, deceptive, promiscuous, and egocentric (Cleckley, 1941: 337-364). They are also mostly male: almost four times as many more psychopathic men then women (Sigvardsson, et al, 1982). This makes them ideal for mating with many women and then leaving them subsequently, once the deed is done, so to speak. It also confers a psychological advantage in that they have the ability to manipulate women by mimicking emotional attachment, or deceiving them about resources they can offer. The same is also true for female psychopaths, who can often create the impression of being in distress which elicits more financial and physical support from the men they mate with. There is a genetic basis to the trait, demonstrated in many twin adoption studies (Viding et al, 2005 & Larsson et al, 2006: 221-30).
Babiak, as an industrial and organizational psychologist, encountered his first corporate psychopath in 1992. By studying operators like "Dave" in the corporate environment, Babiak not only brought into focus the methods by which psychopaths infiltrate and ascend the corporate ladder of success, he shattered previous illusions about what was and wasn't possible for psychopaths to accomplish. Many in the industry thought psychopaths wouldn't be able to succeed in business. They thought that psychopaths' bullying and narcissistic behaviors would be off-putting to potential hirers, and that their abuse and manipulations would inevitably lead to failure within the company. In fact, the so-called "experts" couldn't have been more wrong. They seemed to have neglected the uncanny ability of psychopaths to present an image of extreme normality, and even excellence, to their victims. And that is what we are to them: victims, potential "marks", suckers.
Laura shares a personal account of her search for the true nature of existence and her inquiry into the paranormal, past lives and the unknown, that has served as an inspiration for so many.
...Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.So began Alice's adventures in Wonderland and, in a similar way, my own adventures down a very deep rabbit-hole of sorts. It's the strange event that doesn't make sense that can get you wondering; the thing that you might just let slip by as curious. But then you look a little closer and, next thing you know...
"The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well..."
Comment: Addendum:
Sometimes following the thread of an event leads to unexpected, interesting connections. In this case, the event was the only successful hijacking of an airplane in the U.S. By successful, we mean that the person who hijacked the plane managed to not only collect ransom money, but also managed to get off the plane, with the money, within U.S. borders without being caught or identified.
This particular thread lead us back to Jim Humble via the Wandering Bishops.
The hijacker identified himself by the alias Dan Cooper--later misreported in the press as D. B. Cooper--boarded a 727 in Portland on November 24, 1971. He slipped a note to a flight attendant that read, "I have a bomb in my briefcase. I will use it if necessary. I want you to sit next to me. You are being hijacked." He demanded $200,000 and two parachutes, both of which were delivered to him when the plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Once the demands were met to Cooper's satisfaction, the plane took off with orders to fly to Mexico City at the low speed of 170 knots.
Shortly after takeoff, Cooper opened one of the exit doors of the plane and parachuted to freedom. The FBI, unable to solve the case, declared that they did not believe Cooper had survived the jump.
One very likely suspect was named in the case, however--a man by the name of William Gossett. He was a decorated veteran of the wars in Korea and Vietnam, a survivalist and an experienced parachutist. He spoke often of D. B. Cooper, once telling his wife that he could "write the epitaph for D.B. Cooper," and had told all three of his children definitively that he was the hijacker. He even walked into the office of a Salt Lake City judge and confessed to the crime, who told him to shut up and never talk about it again.
Gossett was a man continually strapped for cash, due at least in part to a gambling addiction. He eventually became a private detective, specializing in money fraud, cults and missing persons. He even assisted the FBI in rescuing a woman from an alleged cult.
And then, in 1988, Gossett changed his name from William to Wolfgang and became a priest of Christ Catholic Church, a church claiming the same "apostolic lineage" that Jim Humble claims. Interestingly, given the fact that this man was a confessed hijacker with a gambling problem, his title was The Very Rev. William Wolfgang Gossett. Also interesting is that while his address in the church directory was listed as DePoe Bay, Oregon, his phone number has a 415 area code: San Francisco.
I believe that Laura understands, better than probably anyone you will ever know, just how dire is the plight of our civilization - the plight of our species. She also understands that to change one's life, one must be willing to fight.Initially when asked to attend, Laura suggested to the Nexus conference organizers that Richard Dolan (a friend and colleague of Laura's) would be a great addition to the line-up and was indeed willing to attend. The response from the organizers was that, unfortunately, they only had space for 6 speakers in one day.
We were therefore somewhat surprised when we checked the conference web site on Saturday 24th April and saw the announcement:
"Breaking News! Jim Humble is coming to Amsterdam!"Not only that, but Jim Humble is now headlining the conference.
Apparently the Nexus conference organizers had managed to find extra space for another speaker. So, we, and Laura in particular, were rather disturbed by this development for a number of reasons. Richard Dolan is recognized as the pre-eminent UFO researcher in the world today. He is a very entertaining speaker and his talks are always fascinating. So could Jim Humble really have been so important a figure that he deserved being 'squeezed' in? Who is Jim Humble anyway?
But his recent review has caused the editors at SOTT.net to ponder some interesting questions.
Chamish begins his piece, "The Two Faces of Political Ponerology", with a poorly researched statement:
Ponerology is a term invented by the author and it means the study of the nature of political evil.While Lobaczewki did invent the term pathocracy to describe a system of government saturated with psychological deviants, he didn't invent the term ponerology. Actually, as Lobaczewski makes clear in his book, ponerology is a theological term that means the study of evil. Lobaczewski adopted it for his own purposes in studying the nature of political evil, thus the title of his book: Political Ponerology. Chamish then writes:
Comment: The problem with this situation is that it is exactly what the pathologicals in power love to see - people that are mostly on the same side of the fence (compared to the elites) at each other's throats. It is unfortunate that the "good guys" (even the ones with blind spots) can't be smarter about how they are being manipulated and allow themselves to be manipulated (and confused). In this case, Barry is not being very smart.
Comment: There has been yet another fatal multiple stabbing incident reported in China today (May 10): Update There has been yet another multiple stabbing at a kindergarten in China today (May 12):