The Noble Lie

I was with a whore in Copenhagen
Drinking eight hundred dollars worth of
Champagne in kroner
She came from Rio
We were trying to save the world
We did not get what we wanted
She wanted money
She did not get what she wanted
I missed my wife
I did not get what I wanted
Death sat on my lap
Death sits on all our laps

- Violent Femmes, "Jesus of Rio"

A word about the United Nations global summit in Copenhagen. Global warming is a very controversial topic, and I don't really know how much of a real problem it is vs. a political control mechanism, but I know it is primed to be a very big political control mechanism. This climate summit is being held in the shadow of ClimateGate, the leaked emails from the UK Climate Research Unit indicating that they are doctoring their numbers to make the case for man-made climate change.

Toxic waste and pollution are issues that go hand in hand with carbon dioxide, and seem far more important to rein in and control than the carbon dioxide itself. But hey, what do I know.

I can tell you this much: sitting 14,000 diplomats in a big room for two weeks accomplishes nothing. Whatever is announced as a result of this summit, bang or whimper, was hashed out by diplomats and reviewed by innumerable lawyers long before this summit took place. This is just a little pomp and spectacle for the occasion.

Here are some stories related to the Copenhagen summit.

• Hindustan Times - 'Climate talks a dead end if Danish proposal put forward'
• BBC - Leaked draft text divides climate summit
• Copenhagen summit carbon footprint weighs in at 40,000 tons (Should have set an example and WebEx'd this one)
• Copenhagen whores benefit from global warming tax dollars (The 'whores' in question are not the politicians this time)
• Oil still fuels the green state of Denmark
• ClimateGate? What ClimateGate?
• Gordon Brown attacks 'flat-earth' climate change skeptics
• From the vaults: Creators of carbon credit scheme cashing in on it (Al Gore, Maurice Strong)
• From the vaults: Al Gore - The Other Oil Candidate (Gore's relationship to Occidental Petroleum and Vladimir Lenin's right-hand man, Armand Hammer)
• From the vaults: George Hunt - UNCED Earth Summit 1992 (Elites such as Edmond de Rothschild and Maurice Strong describe public as 'cannon fodder' on camera while discussing using environmental issues for political control)

I know, these don't count as real posts, but at the moment it's this or nothing. The beginning of the end of most good blogs is when they turn into glorified link lists.

That being said:

• Semioticology - You can bet the Inner Party will be able to switch their telescreens off... (20,000 problem families in the UK get mandatory 24/7 CCTV cameras installed in their homes)
• Shock as figures reveal Britian has more CCTV cameras than China (Britain has one and a half as many cameras as ALL of China, one camera per 14 citizens)
• Blacklisted News - UK think tank calls for limiting amount of children to save planet (two-child policy)
• Blacklisted News - Sterilise parents receiving government benefits, says Tory
• Australia needs one-child policy: ex-MP
• Real USSR (fascinating blog about life in the USSR, lots of vintage photos)
• New York Times - Obama's Embrace of  a Bush Tactic Riles Congress (use of signing statements, including one to cut strings attached to money given to the World Bank/IMF)
• Clunkers program could drive used car prices up
• Rabbis fight flu pandemic on a wing and a prayer
• FED faces its Zimbabwe Moment (these Forbes bastards sure know how to make me cringe)
• 8% of North Carolinians Don't Consider Hawaii Part of the United States (a new avenue of attack for the birther movement, I knew we should've stayed out of WWII)
• Brad Blog - FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds subponead (should be velly interistink if she gets to testify)
• Democracy Now! - Obama Reverses Campaign Pledge to Renegotiate NAFTA (wherever they need us, our destinies lead us, Amigos we're always together! wherever we go, we're three brave Amigos and we'll be Amigos forever!)

• New York Times - Having children brings high carbon impact (Socializing us against children and those who have them. If you think that's far-fetched, go to your nearest university campus, ask the environmentalist and feminist groups what they think of children, and mothers. "Humanity is a cancer" is the catch-phrase.)
• Chavez says Colombian 'provocation' saw troops cross border (Colombia will be increasingly a target of international tension, because it's been cursed with the black gold)
• Aftermath - Knights Templar, Knights of Malta, and Blackwater's Erik Prince (What about the Red Cross? That's a Templar logo we've been flashing around the middle-east for a long time)
• Injustice Everywhere - In search of police misconduct grants (Existing grants only interested in police misconduct against minorities)
• Google Blocks Siebel Edmonds from her own blog (Found via Cryptogon)
• Salon's handy-dandy guide to refuting the birthers
• Daily Reckoning - The FDIC is in trouble
• Seeking Alpha - Why another stock market collapse could be imminent
• Obama, Calderón and Harper vow cooperation (the Three Amigos are back in full swing, look at the last two posts I made)

Blogfeed

• Copycat Effect - Moon, Masons, and Golf (well done, great photos! GOLF - Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden?)
• The Agitator - The First Amendment and insulting cops (contrary to popular? opinion, insulting police is not a crime)
• Timenauts - Bioreactors will churn out fuel for "algae planet" (It doesn't have EVERYTHING a body needs...)
• HighBoldtage - Desperately seeking dentist
• Ultraviolet Garden - Canadian citizens apologize to Benamar Benatta

News

• How Cambridge police stared down a president (the blue wall is a frightening thing to behold)
• McCain campaign investigated, dismissed Obama citizenship rumors
• Racist web posts traced to Homeland Security
• Bernanke's Charm Offensive
• Americans rate FED worst among nine key agencies

Miscellany

• Has Evony become the most despised game on the web? (Turns out the people behind Evony are the people behind the infamous Chinese World of Warcraft gold-buying site WoWMine)
• Terence McKenna's theory, in his own words (intelligence spores from space and orgiastic stoned apes)

UPDATE - One more link. Glenn Greenwald calls out Bill Kristol for accusing Obama of dishonesty in the GatesGate incident. Kristol is a high-profile neoconservative, a group who draws their inspiration from the second most famous person to promote the benefit of "Noble Lies," Leo Strauss. I can't tell you how stoked I was to see the words "Noble Lie" in a Glenn Greenwald article.

Random stuff

• HighBoldtage - California needs a new political party that is representative of the people and not a prisoner to global capitalism (the Republican Party) or the public employees unions (the Democratic Party.)
• Drug groups to reap swine flu billions (Most of the swine flu news I've found has been in the Market section)
• They recorded over the freakin tape! (I don't follow the Apollo hoax story much but this will set it on fire.. sometimes I think the Powers that Be(e) push these buttons on purpose)
• Freemasonry: “When man reaches new worlds, Masonry will be there.”
• Tranquility Lodge 2000 (Freemasonry on the moon, courtesy of brother and busy bee Buzz Aldrin)
• Drone war in Pakistan: over 350 dead from drones (drones are bees too, you know)
• Cryptogon - Obama: Take the Blue Pill
• Tupac Shakur reading list (Kaballah, mucho Alice Bailey, Alan Watts, Teilhard Chardin, Tim Leary.. this dude really was Killuminati)

I've links to a couple of new sites.

Seimoticology studies signs, symbols and words. Great photos, insightful essays, definitely worth a look. Written by Justin in the UK.

TransAlchemy explores the esoteric side of human-machine symbiosis, with mind-bending audio and video. By ParticleIon and ADDTV.

Earth 2 Obama is a great video site in the same vein as C-SPAN Junkie. In fact, they were so similar (fonts and everything) that I did some footwork and discovered that Earth 2 Obama IS the C-SPAN Junkie. Apparently C-SPAN broke out the copyright stick.. doh.

Gingatao is one of the less dismal reads, home of Paul Squires, Australian poet and author. I actually meant to link to this site a while back.

I'll mention Injustice Everywhere, which chronicles crimes committed by police officers, even though unfortunately it looks like they are winding down again.

I may have forgotten some folks. My links are always changing as sites go up, down, become dormant, etc.

Happy faux-Mexican holiday, celebrated mainly by alcohol-loving Americans.

News from the BBC

• US resident dies from swine flu
• Male 'contraceptive jab' closer

And one from the AP (looked for a BBC link but couldn't find one surprisingly)

• Michael Savage, Fred Phelps, banned from UK for hate speech (at least the US still pays lip service to the idea of free speech -- though on second thought I'm sure it would be easy to find people barred from the US for Wrongthink)

Here's some more flu news. The first three are all from Reuters. I'm not a news guy and these updates might stop at any time. This is more about just what's on my (and a lot of other people's) mind.

• WHO uncertain about declaring flu pandemic
• Will pandemic be mild, or kill millions?
• WHO head indicates a full (level 6) flu pandemic to be declared
• [BBC] Swine flu hotel guests frustrated (life under quarantine, 274 "guests" isolated even from one another)
• [WSJ] Accepting Confinement for 'Greater Good'
• [WSJ] Reporter tries to get tested for swine flu (not so easy or routine to become a "confirmed" case after all)

The media response runs the gamut from right-wingers who want to use this issue to close the border, to left-wing folks like Huffington, Olbermann and Maddow (the latter two being the only mainstream media I can stomach) who characterize just about any independent response to this outbreak as panic.

The most interesting story I found today is about how "newcomer" flu pandemics such as this one often overtake, out-compete, and end up becoming the new "regular" flu in subsequent years. This NPR piece talks about the history of the H1N1 flu strain, from the 1918 flu to its dominance during the 20s, 30s, and 40s, only to be wiped out in the 50s and 60s. The article goes on to explain that H1N1 was not see again until the late 70s... and how its re-emergence almost undoubtedly came out of a laboratory in Russia or China.

My bookmarks file is swelling because so much is going on. This isn't a news blog, but I want to share a few of the headlines you may have missed. Apologies to any blogs I might have gotten these from, but I have long since lost the source.

More comments on HR 875, and today's horrible and bizarre flu outbreak, later tonight. Until then, get ready for a news speed run.

• First, a piece from February of this year about a police raid and code enforcement charges for a tiny local "hippie-rigged" community called YeeHaw.
• 4/08 [Autoimmunity Research Foundation] Vitamin D may exacerbate autoimmune disease
• 4/14 [tampabay.com] Debtor's Prison - Again
• 4/18 [LOLFed] Don't Accept Friend Requests From Debt Collectors
• 4/23 [Miami Herald] Woman joins sex-offender group living under Julia Tuttle Causeways (sex offender laws gone absolutely insane)
• 4/23 [ZDNet] Pirate Bay judge is member of Swedish Copyright Association, on board of directors for Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property
• 4/24 [ACLU] DHS Secretary Napolitano says "Repeal Real ID"
• 4/24 [WSJ] Waiting for Bank Stress Test Results is 'Water Torture' (well, at least it's not waterboarding)
• 4/24 [AP] UN says money available for anti-malaria bed nets (hopefully the insecticide doesn't kill anybody)

And a new potential law to check out, HR 45: Blair Holt's Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009.