Insomnia Series: Reiki Music Peaceful Meditation And Cosmos

Reiki Music Peaceful Meditation And Cosmos – YouTube.

Quantum decision affects results of measurements taken earlier in time

Quantum decision affects results of measurements taken earlier in time.

Nature Physics, 2012.

By Matthew Francis |

Quantum entanglement is a state where two particles have correlated properties: when you make a measurement on one, it constrains the outcome of the measurement on the second, even if the two particles are widely separated. It’s also possible to entangle more than two particles, and even to spread out the entanglements over time, so that a system that was only partly entangled at the start is made fully entangled later on.

This sequential process goes under the clunky name of “delayed-choice entanglement swapping.” And, as described in a Nature Physics article by Xiao-song Ma et al., it has a rather counterintuitive consequence. You can take a measurement before the final entanglement takes place, but the measurement’s results depend on whether or not you subsequently perform the entanglement. 

Delayed-choice entanglement swapping consists of the following steps. (I use the same names for the fictional experimenters as in the paper for convenience, but note that they represent acts of measurement, not literal people.)

1. Two independent sources (labeled I and II) produce pairs photons such that their polarization states are entangled. One photon from I goes to Alice, while one photon from II is sent to Bob. The second photon from each source goes to Victor. (I’m not sure why the third party is named “Victor”.)
2. Alice and Bob independently perform polarization measurements; no communication passes between them during the experiment—they set the orientation of their polarization filters without knowing what the other is doing.
3. At some time after Alice and Bob perform their measurements, Victor makes a choice (the “delayed choice” in the name). He either allows his two photons from I and II to travel on without doing anything, or he combines them so that their polarization states are entangled. A final measurement determines the polarization state of those two photons.

The results of all four measurements are then compared. If Victor did not entangle his two photons, the photons received by Alice and Bob are uncorrelated with each other: the outcome of their measurements are consistent with random chance. (This is the “entanglement swapping” portion of the name.) If Victor entangled the photons, then Alice and Bob’s photons have correlated polarizations—even though they were not part of the same system and never interacted.

The practicalities of delayed-choice entanglement swapping bears many similarities to other entanglement experiments. Ma et al. sent pulsed light from an ultraviolet laser through two separate beta-barium borate (BBO) crystals, which respond by emitting two photons with entangled polarizations, but equal wavelength. The BBO crystals acted as the sources labeled I and II above; the oppositely polarized photons they produced were sent down separate paths. One path for each BBO crystal led to a polarization detector (“Alice” and “Bob”), while the other passed through a fiber-optic cable 104 meters long before arriving at the “Victor” apparatus. 

That little bit of cabling was enough to ensure that anything that happened at Victor occurred after Alice and Bob had done their measurements.

The choice about entangling the photons at the Victor apparatus was made by a random-number generator, and passed through a tunable bipartite state analyzer (BiSA). The BiSA contained two beam-splitters that select photons’ paths depending on their polarization, along with a device that rotated the polarization of the photons. Depending on the “choice” to entangle or not, the polarization of the photons from I and II were made to correlate or left alone. Finally, the polarization of both photons at Victor were measured, and compared with the results from Alice and Bob.

Due to the 104-meter fiber-optic cable, Victor’s measurements occurred at least 14 billionths of a second after those of Alice and Bob, precluding the idea that the setting of the BiSA caused the polarization results to change. While comparatively few photons made it all the way through every step of the experiment, this is due to the difficulty of measurements with so few photons, rather than a problem with the results. 

Ma et al. found to a high degree of confidence that when Victor selected entanglement, Alice and Bob found correlated photon polarizations. This didn’t happen when Victor left the photons alone.

Suffice it to say that facile explanations about information passing between Alice’s and Bob’s photons lead to violations of causality, since Alice and Bob perform their polarization measurement before Victor makes his choice about whether to entangle his photons or not. (Similarly, if you think that all the photons come from a single laser source, they must be correlated from the start, and you must answer how they “know” what Victor is going to do before he does it.) 

The picture certainly looks like future events influence the past, a view any right-minded physicist would reject. The authors conclude with some strong statements about the nature of physical reality that I’m not willing to delve into (the nature of physical reality is a bit above my pay grade).

As always with entanglement, it’s important to note that no information is passing between Alice, Bob, and Victor: the settings on the detectors and the BiSA are set independently, and there’s no way to communicate faster than the speed of light. Nevertheless, this experiment provides a realization of one of the fundamental paradoxes of quantum mechanics: that measurements taken at different points in space and time appear to affect each other, even though there is no mechanism that allows information to travel between them.

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Tribute to Christopher Hitchens – 2012 Global Atheist Convention

Tribute to Christopher Hitchens – 2012 Global Atheist Convention – YouTube.

Christopher Hitchens
Hitchens speaking in 2007
Born	Christopher Eric Hitchens 13 April 1949 Portsmouth, England
Died	15 December 2011 (aged 62) Houston, Texas, U.S.
Occupation	Writer, journalist, public speaker
Nationality	English American
Citizenship	British and American
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Subjects	Politics, religion, history, biography, literature
Spouse(s)	Eleni Meleagrou (m. 1981–1989) (divorced)Carol Blue (m. 1989–2011) (his death)
Relative(s)	Peter Hitchens (brother)
Signature

Christopher Eric Hitchens, nicknamed “Hitch”,^[6] (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American^[7][8] author, essayist and journalist,^[9] whose career spanned more than four decades. He was a columnist and literary critic for The New Statesman, The Atlantic, The Nation, Slate and Vanity Fair. As a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits he was a prominent public intellectual. His confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure.

Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson and for his excoriating critiques of various public figures including Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Diana, Princess of Wales. Although he supported the Falklands War it is widely regarded that his key split from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the “tepid reaction” of the Western left to the Rushdie Affair. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called “fascism with an Islamic face.” His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not “a conservative of any kind”, and his friend Ian McEwan describes him as representing the anti-totalitarian left.^[10][11]

Identified as a key member of the “New Atheism” movement, Hitchens described himself as an antitheist and a believer in the philosophical values of the Enlightenment. Hitchens said that a person “could be an atheist and wish that belief in god were correct”, but that “an antitheist, a term I’m trying to get into circulation, is someone who is relieved that there’s no evidence for such an assertion.”^[12] According to Hitchens, the concept of a god or a supreme being is a totalitarian belief that destroys individual freedom, and that free expression and scientific discovery should replace religion as a means of teaching ethics and defining human civilization. He wrote at length on atheism and the nature of religion in his 2007 book God Is Not Great.

On 15 December 2011, Hitchens died from pneumonia, a complication of his cancer, in the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. A popular figure, his death prompted tributes and eulogies from a formidable range of public figures, including Tony Blair, Richard Dawkins, Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, James Fenton, Nick Clegg, Stephen Fry, A C Grayling, Simon Schama, Tom Stoppard, Julian Barnes, James Wood, Sean Penn, Olivia Wilde, Anna Wintour, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Craig Raine.

Use raw honey for health, skin, hair, and more

Use raw honey for health, skin, hair, and more.

 

NaturalNews

 

Elizabeth Walling

 

April 30, 2012

 

 

 Raw honey is more than just a natural sweetener. Honey has a variety of uses in your beauty regimen and for medicinal purposes. Raw honey, which is not pasteurized or refined, can be especially useful because of its nutritional properties. Although you may have heard about the benefits of raw honey, you might be surprised at some of the creative ways it can be used:

 

1. Stock up for emergency food stores. – Raw honey has a long shelf life because of its high sugar content and naturally occurring enzymes. In fact, some say raw honey can last indefinitely. This makes honey an ideal (and delicious) food to add to your emergency stockpile.

 

2. Sooth a sore throat and ease your cough. – Raw honey is well known for being the perfect cold remedy. A blend of raw honey and fresh lemon juice can be taken as needed to treat a sore throat or cough.

 

3. Boost your athletic performance. – Don’t waste your money on commercial energy gels that contain food additives and artificial coloring. Research has shown honey is effective for improving athletic performance. A spoonful of raw honey before aerobic activity can provide an energy boost plus a variety of important nutrients.

 

4. Treat minor cuts, scrapes and burns. – Raw honey is an ancient remedy for cuts, scrapes and burns due to its natural antibacterial properties. Simply clean the area, dab on a small amount of raw honey, and wrap as normal. Change wrapping at least once daily until the area is healed. The honey may also help to reduce scar formation.

 

5. Make a simple sugar scrub. – Soften your skin by exfoliating with a mixture of raw honey, sugar and sweet almond oil. Store the mixture in a glass jar and use as needed. You’ll save a fortune if you exfoliate with this instead of using those expensive department store scrubs.

 

6. Use as a glossing treatment for hair. – Coat your hair with raw honey and let it sit for ten minutes before washing as usual. Honey works as a clarifying and conditioning treatment, making your locks shiny and smooth.

 

7. Improve your sleep. – A spoonful of honey before bed (by itself or in a cup of warm herbal tea) is a natural sleep remedy that can help you relax and fall asleep faster.

 

8. Enjoy a honey facial. – Massage a teaspoon of raw honey into your face and let it sit for 10-30 minutes before rinsing with cool water. This simple honey mask can smooth your skin, fight wrinkles, improve skin tone, reduce redness, and help with blemishes.

 

Sources for this article include:

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

 

http://www.homestead.org/karynsweet/honeyhealth.htm

 

http://voices.yahoo.com

 

About the author:
Elizabeth Walling is a freelance writer specializing in health and family nutrition. She is a strong believer in natural living as a way to improve health and prevent modern disease. She enjoys thinking outside of the box and challenging common myths about health and wellness. You can visit her blog to learn more:
www.livingthenourishedlife.com/2009/10/welcome.html

 

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/035721_raw_honey_hair_first_aid.html#ixzz1tWlOzFVo

 

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The I Ching, The Most Modern Ancient Wisdom Classic

The I Ching, The Most Modern Ancient Wisdom Classic – Waking Times : Waking Times.

April 29, 2012 | 

Reg Little
New Dawn

In a changing and unpredictable world, no classical text is more rewarding, or more challenging, than the ancient Chinese I Ching or Book of Changes. This classic presents itself as a book of divination and invites dismissal on such grounds amongst educated Western circles, including even the great British sinologist and advocate of Chinese science and technology Joseph Needham. It is, however, the most modern of practical handbooks, being a remarkably wise and profound guide to that nagging imperative of contemporary personal and political life – self-organisation.

This truth only grows as political authority shifts from West to East, as economic productivity travels from America to China, as industrial technology grows robustly throughout Asia and shrivels in the developed economies and as health and well-being wisdom is found more surely in Asian therapeutic traditions than in contemporary share market driven medical innovations.

Indeed, the I Ching is not only the source of a profound personal, social and political wisdom but also of a scientific genius that is holistic and organic and that led the world for several millennia until the rise of Anglo-American power over the past two hundred years. Moreover, this scientific culture promises much for the future of a troubled global community. It contrasts with the culture that has turned contemporary life into one large uncontrolled and poorly understood scientific experiment, where the casino of the marketplace has ceased to respect the ecologies of life.

Central elements of the text of the I Ching are attributed to men (King Wen and his sons King Wu and the Duke of Zhou) who were responsible for overthrowing the powerful tyrant who ruled a declining and corrupt Shang Dynasty, as the prelude to founding the Zhou Dynasty around 1045 BCE. As such, much of its wisdom can be read as a political text, informed by profound and holistic wisdom. This wisdom is shaped by a keen sense of the social morality needed to win widespread popular support, the human understanding needed to avoid the perils of carelessness and hubris and the acute insight into the dynamics of life and nature essential to prosper in this world.

There is no more seminal influence in Chinese culture than the I Ching, with its history of over three thousand years and its roots in the wisdom that guided the founding of China’s longest and most culturally productive dynasty. Contrary to modern fashion, the authority of the I Ching tends to increase with the age and experience of the reader or interpreter. Japanese who lived during the Tokugawa Shogunate counseled against serious study before the age of fifty. At the same time, one of the most renown Chinese commentaries on the I Ching was completed by a scholar who died at the age of twenty three in 249.

Despite the fact that the 17th and 18th century German philosopher Gottfried Leibnitz had been shocked to discover that his binary arithmetic was matched by an arrangement of the I Ching’s hexagrams, the West’s greatest authority on Chinese science and technology – the 20th century Joseph Needham – dismissed it as of little worth. Now, it has been shown by later scholars to have a mathematical structure similar to that of DNA, discovered in the West more than three thousand years later. In this, it is the world’s first, and possibly still only, serious guide to self-organisation at personal, social and political levels.

Moreover, another scholar suggests that it may reveal an understanding of still poorly understood fundamentals that inform a wide variety of physical change, in both living and non-living structures. This all reflects the almost unbelievable Chinese genius for observing the minutiae of nature, a quality that long informed the world’s most innovative and productive scientific and technological civilisation.

In many ways, the I Ching is an enigma. Apart from qualities noted above, it offers a unified understanding of what are often seen as China’s two main contending spiritual traditions – Confucianism and Daoism – and some even see in it the source of both these traditions of thought. Moreover, while the I Ching has always served as a book of divination, this article will treat it essentially as a book of moral, political and scientific wisdom.

(It should be noted that I Ching is more accurately written as Yi Jing, as laid down in the transliteration system prescribed by the Chinese Government, but is presented here as I Ching in order to avoid confusion in referring to several book titles, which use a dated system of transliteration that is often preferred in the United States.)

Continue with story–>>>

The I Ching, The Most Modern Ancient Wisdom Classic – Waking Times : Waking Times.

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Cannabis production booming in Britain, say police

Cannabis production booming in Britain, say police | Society | The Guardian.

Stupid cops and politicians and liars are everywhere. Lou

More than twice as many secret cannabis factories were found in past year as four years ago, chief constables’ report reveals

Alan Travis,

The Guardian,

Monday 30 April 2012

Police uncovered 7,800 cannabis factories in the past year. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

Clandestine cannabis factories are booming in Britain, with the police detecting more than 7,800 in the past year – more than double the number found four years ago.

Chief constables say the rise in illicit cannabis production is being fuelled by the increasing involvement of organised crime groups, who see it as a “low-risk and highly profitable criminal business”.

But the police also acknowledge that the recession and pressure on household budgets has led to a rise in a “grow your own” trade, with intelligence reports showing an increase in sales of seeds and equipment from local “head shops” to customers wanting to grow a few plants at home for their own use.

The third “problem profile” of UK commercial cultivation of cannabis, published on Monday by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), says police have seized more than 1.1m plants with an estimated street value of £207m in the past two years.

The survey, published every two years, confirms a majority of the cannabis used in Britain is now home-grown rather than imported, with some claiming more than 80% is intensively cultivated domestic herbal cannabis.

But police chiefs say there is a shift away from large-scale cannabis factories in disused industrial and commercial buildings such as empty cinemas, shops and banks back to smaller houses and flats, often on suburban streets. The organised crime gangs behind the trade in home-grown cannabis are reacting to police crackdowns by moving away from large-scale premises to employing a large number of “gardeners” to operate small-scale “grow sites” or factories across several residential areas. “This spreads the risk and minimises the potential for detection and financial loss,” says the report.

It acknowledges there has been a proliferation of users claiming to be involved in growing plants at home for personal use. It says the economic downturn and a fall in the weight of the average street cannabis deal have been accompanied by a rise in the amount of home-grown cultivation for personal use.

This has also led to a rise in the amount of home-grown cannabis being supplied to friends and acquaintances through “social dealing”.

But the report says in many cases the number of plants seized in raids is well above 25, which is regarded as the legal minimum to be prosecuted for commercial cultivation and for which the indicative minimum sentence is two to five years.

The police say they assume anyone who grows more than 10 plants is likely to have a surplus and therefore to be supplying others.

Police say 7,865 cannabis farms or factories were detected in Britain in 2011-12, compared with 6,866 in 2009-10 – a 15% rise since the last time the UK problem profile was published. Just over 3,000 were detected in 2007-08.

Police chiefs estimate the crime figures for the year to March 2012 will show 16,464 offences recorded for commercial cannabis production compared with 14,982 for 2010-2011.

The report plays down previous claims that so much cannabis is being grown in Britain that it has become a net exporter. “Intelligence indicates that UK organised crime gangs may supply drugs to the continent to fill a gap in the market but there is no evidence of widespread export,” it says.

The Acpo report admits that tackling cannabis factories is not considered a priority for most British police forces, with operations to tackle the supply of class A drugs such as heroin and cocaine a higher priority. The police also see the dismantling of cannabis factories as a short-term solution which misses opportunities for further investigation into other potentially linked factories.

Allan Gibson, of Acpo, said: “Commercial cannabis cultivation continues to pose a significant risk to the UK. Increasing numbers of organised crime groups are diverting into this area of criminality but we are determined to continue to disrupt such networks and reduce the harm caused by drugs.

“This profile provides a detailed analysis of the current threat from commercial cultivation of cannabis and the work undertaken by law enforcement agencies to combat the threat. It provides a framework to facilitate future planning and decision-making for preventative, legislative and enforcement activity to make the UK a hostile environment for cannabis cultivators.”

• This article was amended on 30 April 2012. The original said 1.9m cannabis plants had been seized in the past two years. Acpo has since corrected its figures to 1.1m.

Marc Emery claims victory in drug war

Marc Emery claims victory in drug war.

Marc Emery is serving a 5 year sentence for…wait for this: Selling pot seeds on the Internet. The prosecutor who put him in jail has changed his views and now is against the war on drugs

By Jon Ferry,

Postmedia News

April 29, 2012

Marc Emery and wife Jodie Emery

 
YAZOO CITY PRISON, Mississippi — Vancouver cannabis crusader Marc Emery may be facing two more frustrating years behind bars in the Deep South of the United States. But he’s more confident than ever he’s winning the war on drug prohibition.

The Prince of Pot believes the drug legalization campaign he’s waged for more than 30 years is already over at the “intellectual” level. And it’s only a matter of time before marijuana and other recreational drugs are sold in stores in Canada and the U.S. – and taxed and regulated just like liquor and cigarettes.

“The end of prohibition is close, five years for marijuana or less,” he told me from inside the U.S. federal correctional complex where he’s serving a five-year term for selling marijuana seeds. “And I can take a lot of credit for it.”

Crisply dressed in khaki prison fatigues and black boots, Emery said he was heartened that John McKay, the former U.S. attorney who helped put Emery in jail, has had a Saul-on the-road-to-Damascus conversion and is now championing a Washington State initiative to legalize pot.

He’s also encouraged that a raft of Canadian VIPs, including four former B.C. attorneys-general, have jumped on the decriminalization bandwagon.

“I’m running out of people who disagree with me anymore,” the pot entrepreneur quipped, as we sipped pop together inside the visitors’ area of the massive, razor-wire-clad jail northwest of the Mississippi state capital of Jackson.

The 54-year-old activist, who once raised the ire of Canadian and U.S. cops by publicly flaunting his marijuana-smoking habits, even admits he doesn’t miss the weed that he first smoked in 1980, when he was 22.

“It’s the most common question I’m asked in letters and even among inmates here, but I have never once thought of marijuana in the actual in two years,” he said in a prison email. “Not missed smoking it. In fact, I’ve never thought about it once.”

Emery explained that this might stem from the realization that he misses nothing except his devoted wife, Jodie, who runs what remains of his once-thriving pot empire – which, he says, grossed $15 million between 1995 and 2005.

The 27-year-old Jodie, now owner and operator of Cannabis Culture on West Hastings, flies down from Vancouver to visit him every two to four weeks.

“I think of her every hour of every day,” Emery said, adding he spends much of his time practising bass guitar and honing his skills as leader of Yazoo, an interracial rock band named after the prison’s rural hometown, known for its blues musicians.

“I never believed I would emerge from prison an accomplished musician, a band leader, playing music I have loved my whole life, with other far more accomplished and talented musicians,” he said in another email. “This is a miracle that I’m very grateful for.”

My prison visit, which Emery says is the first by any journalist in the two years since he’s been locked up in the U.S., wasn’t easy to arrange. And I wasn’t allowed to bring in a pen, notepad, tape recorder or other reporting tools. Taking pictures on the property was also a no-no, and my rental car was searched. But what really surprised me was how tanned and fit Emery looked compared to how he appeared when I last saw him on TV in Vancouver.

I asked him whether this wasn’t due to the fact that prison had forced him to give up marijuana (and that being caught with pot could lead to a whole range of punishments, including up to three months in solitary).

Emery insisted this was not so. It was simply that he was much less stressed and had far fewer legal/ money worries than when, at the helm of the world’s largest marijuana seed-selling business, he was facing the sobering prospect of extradition to the United States.

Judging by what he says and how he appears, he’s fitting well into prison life as the only Canadian among 1,700 mostly black inmates, many of them serving what appear to be cruelly long sentences for crack cocaine and other drug offences.

Coming from outside with no “cultural baggage” obviously helps, as it does for former newspaper publisher Conrad Black, another Canadian celebrity who’s been doing hard time in the U.S. south.

But Emery says prison life is probably harder on Black because he’s older and used to luxury in his life. “I come from a more working class/ middle class background so it’s not so difficult for me,” he said.

The Mississippi climate is also in his favour.

Indeed, Emery says he far prefers the fresh air and sunny climate in the Magnolia State to the “morose” Vancouver weather.

“And I have never had an unkind word spoken to me by any inmate in two years,” he said.

“And I am frequently asked, probably every day, for some help or information, as they think of me as a useful, knowledgeable person.”

What perhaps misses most are fresh vegetables. However, little niceties are generally only a postage stamp away.

Yes, in the absence of cash, the $1 postage stamp is the universal prison currency.

And he says you can buy services like getting your hair cut, your cell cleaned, your running shoes washed or your headphones fixed for one to five stamps.

Smoking is officially prohibited, but contraband cigs tend to get broken up into four or five small cigarettes and sold for, say, stamps apiece. That means a single street cigarette can fetch $25 . . . with a couple of batteries and a piece of toilet paper serving as a makeshift lighter.

So life is not overly harsh. Indeed, Emery, who shares a cell, thinks he has fewer grey hairs now than when he did when he was in Vancouver.

“I didn’t know your hair could reverse its direction like that regarding colour,” he told me. “I was losing my hair from 2002 to 2004. When I look at my hair, its thicker than it was some 10 years ago.”

But is the natural-born showman, known in Vancouver for his take-no-prisoners outbursts, really a changed individual? Can a leopard change his spots?

Well, he says he’s matured and learned to tone things down: “Confrontation will get you nowhere good in prison.”

Violence in a medium-security prison, though, is always just around the corner. And Emery tells me that only a couple of weeks ago a Hispanic inmate suspected of being an informant was bludgeoned half to death by two others. He was apparently beaten over the head by a metal door-locker lock inside a sock.

Emery’s official release date is July 9, 2014. But he could be free as early as next year, if Ottawa allows him to be transferred back to Canada.

On his return to B.C., he plans to have a big welcome-back bash outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, followed by a world tour with Jodie, including stops in Jamaica and Italy.

As for his career future, he says he’ll finish the autobiography he’s writing and try to become a radio talk show host, a job he used to do back in his hometown of London, Ont.

“One of the problems of the so-called entertainment right-wing radio shows I hear on many AM and FM channels here is they don’t respect facts or balance.

“The discussion is all one-sided, and often just derision, insult and talking in a circular manner,” he said.

“I believe I can provoke but still welcome all sides in a discussion.”

Like it or not, in other words, you’ll be hearing a lot more from Emery whatever band — or bandwagon — he’s heading.

jferry@theprovince.com

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Banks cooperate to track Occupy protesters

San Francisco Chronicle

Max Abelson

April 27, 2012

…” international financial firms to “identify, map and track” protesters across social media and at their assemblies, he said. The companies gather data “carefully and methodically” to prevent business disruptions.”  Brian McNary, director of global risk at Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations.

 

The world’s biggest banks are working with one another and police to gather intelligence as protesters try to rejuvenate the Occupy Wall Street movement with May demonstrations, industry security consultants said.

Among 99 protest targets in midtown Manhattan on Tuesday are JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America offices, said Marisa Holmes, a member of Occupy’s May Day planning committee.

Events are scheduled in more than 115 cities, including an effort to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, where Wells Fargo investors relied on police to get past protests at their annual meeting this week.

“Our goal is to kick off the spring offensive and go directly to where the financial elite play and plan,” she said.

After evictions and arrests from Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park to London that began last year, the movement against income inequality and corporate abuse will regain strength, said Brian McNary, director of global risk at Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations.

He works with international financial firms to “identify, map and track” protesters across social media and at their assemblies, he said. The companies gather data “carefully and methodically” to prevent business disruptions.

Banks are preparing for Occupy demonstrations at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Chicago summit on May 20 and 21 by sharing information from video surveillance, robots and officers in buildings, giving “a real-time, 360-degree” view, said McNary, who works on the project.

Banks cooperating on surveillance are like elk fending off wolves in Yellowstone National Park, he said. While other animals try in vain to sprint away alone, elk survive attacks by forming a ring together, he said.

Continue with story===>>>

via Banks cooperate to track Occupy protesters.

 

Pills for war thrills: 110k US troops on prescribed meds

Pills for war thrills: 110k US troops on prescribed meds – YouTube.

You’d be drugging yourself silly if you had to fight these evil wars, no ?

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Private Prison Corporations Are Modern Day Slave Traders

Private Prison Corporations Are Modern Day Slave Traders | | AlterNet.

Black Agenda Report /

AlterNet

By Glen Ford

The Corrections Corporation of America believes the economic crisis has created an opportunity to become landlord, as well as manager, of a chunk of the American prison gulag.

April 29, 2012 |

The nation’s largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America, is on a buying spree. With a war chest of $250 million, the corporation, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, earlier this year sent letters to 48 states, offering to buy their prisons outright. To ensure their profitability, the corporation insists that it be guaranteed that the prisons be kept at least 90 percent full. Plus, the corporate jailers demand a 20-year management contract, on top of the profits they expect to extract by spending less money per prisoner.

For the last two years, the number of inmates held in state prisons has declined slightly, largely because the states are short on money. Crime, of course, has declined dramatically in the last 20 years, but that has never dampened the states’ appetites for warehousing ever more Black and brown bodies, and the federal prison system is still growing. However, the Corrections Corporation of America believes the economic crisis has created an historic opportunity to become the landlord, as well as the manager, of a big chunk of the American prison gulag.

The attempted prison grab is also defensive in nature. If private companies can gain both ownership and management of enough prisons, they can set the prices without open-bid competition for prison services, creating a guaranteed cost-plus monopoly like that which exists between the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex.

But, for a better analogy, we must go back to the American slave system, a thoroughly capitalist enterprise that reduced human beings to units of labor and sale. The Corrections Corporation of America’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission read very much like the documents of a slave-trader. Investors are warned that profits would go down if the demand for prisoners declines. That is, if the world’s largest police state shrinks, so does the corporate bottom line. Dangers to profitability include “relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws.” The corporation spells it out: “any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.” At the Corrections Corporation of America, human freedom is a dirty word.

But, there is something even more horrifying than the moral turpitude of the prison capitalists. If private companies are allowed to own the deeds to prisons, they are a big step closer to owning the people inside them. Many of the same politicians that created the system of mass Black incarceration over the past 40 years, would gladly hand over to private parties all responsibility for the human rights of inmates. The question of inmates’ rights is hardly raised in the debate over prison privatization. This is a dialogue steeped in slavery and racial oppression. Just as the old slave markets were abolished, so must the Black American Gulag be dismantled – with no compensation to those who traffic in human beings.

Read more of Glen Ford’s work at Black Agenda Report.

via Private Prison Corporations Are Modern Day Slave Traders | | AlterNet.