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Truth: The Rarest of Commodities
Accountability is something you only hear about in fairy tales.
Telling the truth is something you do only after you’ve been subpoenaed (…and maybe only after records are revealed by opposing counsel).
Nobody is perfect. I would never ask for perfection —it’s too boring and unrealistic anyhow. Where is a well-known successful leader with a good example? Mistakes, of course, are made. It’s what those people do with their mistakes that should be taken notice of. There should be no sympathy for liars, especially ones with power.
Here is a collection of reports, within the last 48 hours, of scandals and lies within the system that so many people believe in. How people can believe in something and have a secret lifestyle that contradicts everything they “believe in” is beyond me.
Another (on top of another) Catholic scandal announced:
Rupert Murdoch’s highest ranking exec. Rebekah Brooks is still under investigation for phone-hacking and police bribing scandal:
Italian leader of Northern League under investigation on personal use of party funds (along with his sons):
Men in the Secret Service use prostitution outlets in Colombia -a party before work was scheduled:
Nebraska town, Gretna, Mayor is involved with a scandal due to City Administrator’s loose pockets and poor oversight of city funds:
http://www.omaha.com/article/20120515/NEWS01/705169860/-1
India’s former minister in current Congress Party-led government, A. Raja, has been released on bail for relaxing licensing rules during a sale, costing the government around $39 billion.
Yahoo’s CEO lies on his resumé. He thought two degrees would definitely land him the job, but not one:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/15/v-fullstory/2801282/lying-on-resume-a-really-bad-idea.html
Another high roller not living luxuriously enough, apparently. A former New York State Senator has been charged with stealing money from his non-profit Soundview Clinic. This is not the first of his long list of allegations with stealing money:
http://www.wpix.com/news/wpix-espadas-trial-verdict,0,7690856.story
Lies from Fox News and Vandersloot team up to make Romney more money…based on lies and deceit:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#47438929
EDIT:
Another prime example of people, experts in their field, I should say, breaking laws and cheating the system to have “the best.” Tennessee Walking Horses being tortured to train them for “the best” prance (also referred to as a lick):http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/tennessee-walking-horses-abused/story?id=16360835#.T7Wixr9ENe4
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Connectedness Continues For The Cause
Fox News just reported on 5 kids “linked to Occupy Cleveland” trying to blow up an Ohio bridge. What seems interesting is that the FBI was involved. The Fox report only mentions their involvement in the caption of the picture and at the very end of the article. Why does it matter that the FBI was involved? After all, they are basically here to protect and serve US. What is the FBI’s job? Their motto is, “Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity.” F.B.I. —you clever investigators, you. How I wish they cared for their motto as much as I do. Are they loyal to Americans or loyal to their assignment? Brave goes without saying; they are trained to be bold courageous warriors —or savage barbarians, depending on which definition of brave you’re going for. Integrity…this is the noun, so proudly they hail, that I call to question. Their selective integrity is nice, which really is much appreciated, but selective is not whole therefore their credibility should be scrutinized. Do we hear the whole truth and nothing but the truth from our Federal Bureau of Investigation —one of the leaders of protecting and preventing harm in this country? No. Why? Private investigations wouldn’t be called ‘private’ if they went to the press blabbing about their missions. I see the importance of a ‘secret shopper.’ What seems equally important is feedback. Otherwise how do we change —the good guys or the bad?
The connectedness of Occupy Cleveland and 5 guys trying to blow up the Brecksville-Northfield High Level Bridge in Ohio is definitely there. Occupy stands for all to have an opportunity and a fair chance. They stand as the “99” majority declaring to the “1” authority its laws and money are capable of changing things…so change things! These 5 guys were looking for an opportunity to have some sort of impact (punny, right?). This is my speculation, but do you think those 5 guys started asking people at Occupy Cleveland, “Where can I get some dynamite? I really have an urge to blow up a bridge”? It doesn’t make sense. I’ve been to a few Occupy protests and if anyone said anything regarding violence or destruction, they were immediately shunned by people with megaphones. After which, other people with megaphones start listing 1. why that’s a bad idea and 2. what people could do in order to be more productive at influencing authority figures to recognize that a fair change is needed. There is more integrity in the loose infrastructure of Occupy than the selective half-truths and full-cover-ups of the FBI.
Am I really bashing the FBI? No. I’m talking about their integrity and the validity of 1/3 their motto claiming integrity. I don’t hear Fox questioning their integrity, but their ability to associate 5 unfortunate hoodlums to the Occupy movement is definitely noteworthy. Speaking of unfortunate hoodlums, this article reminded me of another one in which the FBI hired a guy, a felon on probation, to infiltrate Muslim communities in Orange County for terrorists. The FBI gave him an all access pass in trying to trap people into saying something “terroristic.” He was given the clear to sleep with Muslim women while recording their pillow talks and paid upwards of 11,000 dollars a month. It all came back to bite him in the face when, ultimately, it was he who was reported to the FBI by the Muslim community he was harassing for the FBI.
Then there’s Cuba. The FBI has spies. We usually call them “undercover” now because it sounds less pedophile or Russian and more like invisible fear. Juan Pablo Roque was the Cuban spy who came to Florida back in 1992. He married a divorced woman with two kids, after courting her for at least two years. He also volunteered with the Brothers to The Rescue organization which he later denounced. Though, while in Miami, the FBI had contact with and paid him for something. Who knows what that something was, because he left Florida two days before two Brothers to The Rescue planes were shot down by Cuban Air Force. If the FBI was paying him for something, why weren’t they watching him better? Regardless, he was a Cuban equivalent of an FBI agent “undercover” abroad.
These are the kind of things the FBI is involved with. A felon being paid far more than my government employed father, or military enrolled sister, to sleep with Muslim women and entrap good Muslim people. And a Cuban to do, Zeus knows what, least of all lead a woman and her two children on in to thinking he would be there “‘til death do [they] part.”
How do you compare the taxpayers money supporting the FBI’s mind-fuck tactics —and that being, not only, completely okay, but not even questioned by Fox News— to the Occupy movement being “linked” but clearly not supporting 5 troubled boys looking for attention the FBI was so willing to give? Let us also note the similarity of threat between terrorism, US and Cuban relations, and Occupy.
Next: The Connectedness between Brothers to The Rescue and Pirates.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/05/04/ohio-bridge-bomb-plot-hatched-by-occupiers/?test=latestnews
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/quick-facts
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/20/fbi-informant
http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y02/dec02/31e4.htm
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1000221-1,00.html -
April Showers Bring May Flowers
April Showers Bring May Flowers
Circles and cycles and revolutions.
Earth. On a rotating course around the sun.
Life. Filled with endings at beginnings and vice versa.
Change. How is this not a part of the circle of life.
The more you know, the more you don’t know.
My citing of circles and how we are attached; and we equals everything.
“Belksy’s research suggests that the effect of any one gene depends on the others.”
(http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328491.900-orchid-children-how-badnews-genes-came-good.html) -This is just a preview. If anyone is interested I will scan the entire article and send it to you.
“Foster believes that if sleep is disturbed this is more likely to push susceptible individuals towards mental illness.”
(http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21371-disrupted-body-clock-may-prime-you-for-schizophrenia.html)
“…two traits are most likely to make us successful. The first is intelligence, with smart people doing better at all jobs…[t]he other trait is self-control, the ability to change thoughts, emotions, actions and levels of performance on duties and tasks…the more you can change yourself, the more successful you tend to be.”
(http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328490.200-weak-will-comes-from-tired-mental-muscles.html) -Again, this is just a preview of the whole printed article I have.
“…the most skilled players showed less activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is typically associated with higher cognitive processes such as working memory and verbalization.”
(http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328501.600-zap-your-brain-into-the-zone-fast-track-to-pure-focus.html)
“This seasonal pattern suggests that a winter infection of the upper airway, such as flu, can trigger narcolepsy. By chance, the swine flu pandemic of 2009 provided a strong support for this hypothesis. In the spring following the initial spread of the virus, there was a threefold increase in new narcolepsy cases in Beijing (Annals of Neurology, vol 70, p 410).”
(http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328572.200-wakeup-call-the-battle-to-control-sleep.html) -Preview only.
“Zwarts’s study…warns that the dam and irrigation schemes would make a disaster like the 1984 drought likely on average every four years.”
(http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328574.500-niger-river-dams-could-displace-15-million.html) -
Being Chicken
To keep the (feels like one-way) conversation going, regarding sustainability, Earth, ecology, relationships, chickens, and “chickens of the sea,” I have found another animal to refer to as chicken: us. You know how chickens’ pens are just dirt? When there are a lot of chickens with only a confined amount of space, anything green under their feet dies, quickly, like this:
Well, now I am beginning to see the similarities between people and chickens. Our coop borders end on this one earth. For millions and millions of years we posed no threat on the land under our feet. Now there are more of us than ever and our coop has not opened out like the one you see above.
As amazing as we humans are, I find it interesting that our land is being depleted right from under us, and yet we continue to cluck about x. I know because I am apart of the chicken games too. This is being typed up on a laptop assembled in China. My cereal is distributed out of Minnesota, my green beans in the fridge are from Mexico, and my butter is from Ireland. Nobody is perfect, but can we not strive to adjust within our means? And by “our means” I am referring to our Earth’s means.
This is just a two minute excerpt from the environmentalist Jonathan Foley’s TED talk on the effects of agriculture [the whole talk is great, but you get it all in one lump at the 14:17 marker]:
If you are still reading, I ask that you suspend your beliefs —whatever they are— for this one paragraph. Imagine that the Earth itself is ‘the’ God. What if the heavens or great afterlife isn’t up, but down? Our ancestors thought the world was flat and the afterlife or soul went upward. Science has proven one mistake, and there is still great debate about the latter. If one bases their life on faith, then stretching it a tiny bit by saying “what if…” mustn’t feel too off-putting, right? When we combine what we know with what we don’t know, it doesn’t seem so far fetched to think that the Earth is ours and we are hers —ball-n-chain, if you catch my drift. This Earth doesn’t have to be a prison. It probably doesn’t feel like a prison for a lot of American’s now… maybe our children will get to slide by without feeling the effects of their recent ancestors scratching and pecking. But will our grandchildren be so lucky? If we are already questioning the future two generations down, can you imagine what the rest of humanity gets to look forward to?
Let us not be chickens. Let us be aware. Let us, as individuals, do our part in keeping our one Earth intact for the future “us” —our little ones, and their little ones, and their little ones, and their little ones, and their little ones’ friends… and their family’s family…
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