From Kindergarten to University: Homeland Security Culture in America

Global Research
Sancho Jones

In early March of 2009, The Department of Homeland Security, held it’s annual National Fusion Center Conference [1]. The conference highlighted the necessity for Fusion Centers to achieve Baseline Capabilities in the sharing of information and intelligence with the federal government and each other.

At the end of the same month the DHS gave a press release [2] to announce their selection of Purdue, and Rutgers Universities to co-lead the newest Center of Excellence (COE).

Centers of Excellence were created through the Homeland Security Act of 2002; the first centers began operation in 2004. With the addition of the newest one above, there are a total of 12 Centers across the country. The total number of these centers is skewed; as each center is in collaboration with multiple universities; as well as being partners with local, state, federal, and international entities. These COE’s also work with national laboratories, and corporate partners such as the RAND corporation to offer viable real world applications. In the end, there aren’t 12 centers, but a web of several hundred, and possibly thousands of centers.

The official list[3] of 12 centers are overseen by the Orwellian “Office of University Programs” [4]. The “Strategic Objectives” of this office are quoted as follows:

•  Foster a homeland security culture within the academic community through research and educational programs.
•  Strengthen U.S. scientific leadership in homeland security research.
•  Generate and disseminate knowledge and technical advances to advance the homeland security mission.
•  Integrate homeland security activities across agencies engaged in relevant academic research.
•  Create and leverage intellectual capital and nurture a homeland security science and engineering workforce.

Notice, their admitted overall goal is not only to ‘disseminate knowledge’ and technical advances for the homeland security ‘mission’, but also to create a Homeland Security Culture within the educational system; [5], 6].

Each COE website[3] has an education link; not all sites have their educational portion up for viewing. The ones who do have the educational curricula visible, show programs offered for K-12 and college curricula, into graduate school education. From Purdue University’s COE website [7],

“This program is designed to support undergraduate and graduate students in developing the skills to become preeminent scientists in the homeland security specific and technical community.”

The Orwellian Office of University Programs, is not only creating “Obama’s Youth”, but also creating  “scientists” who are studied in Department of Homeland Security disciplines!

Two Centers of Excellence stood out from the rest. The first, is Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism [8], or START which is based at the University of Maryland.

Amongst other activities, they do as the name suggests; they create studies. Hidden amongst the Islamic Jihad studies[9] were the reports of the real terrorists; you, and I!

Two reports stuck out more than the rest. The first was a study conducted from 2007 to 2008, and finished with the creation of the U.S. Extremist Criminal Terror database[10]. The study, and now database focus on far-right extremists; the data base of U.S. Extremist Crime, comprises 1990 to 2005.

The other study of interest was,“Homegrown Radicalization and the Role of Social Networks and Social Inclusiveness in the United States”[11]. There is no finished report of this study. The last update was, July 31, 2008. It seems this study is the one requested through The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (H.R. 1955/S. 1959)[12] “The act would establish a national commission and a university-based “Center for Excellence” to study and propose legislation to prevent the threat of “radicalization” of Americans.” Interestingly enough, just a few months after the final START study update on July 31, 2008, the DHS released, The “Domestic Extremism Lexicon”[13]. This Lexicon was a “newly unclassified Department of Homeland Security report warns against the possibility of violence by unnamed “right-wing extremists” concerned about illegal immigration, increasing federal power, restrictions on firearms, abortion and the loss of U.S. sovereignty and singles out returning war veterans as particular threats.”[14] All this came from the START Center of Excellence!

Moulding Young Minds: American Schools Preaching the Virtues of a War On Iran

Global Research
Patrick Henningsen

I remember my history lessons in school. Among many things, I can recall Patton’s march through France and the Battle of the Bulge, and how we learned about the millions of deaths on, as well as off, the fields of battle throughout history.

All in all, it was a tale of battles won and lost, and as was rightly put by my junior high school teacher - a tale of caution for future generations. But as young students, we were never taught to idiosyncrasies of ‘war-gaming’ a conflict in the future.

Nor can I recall getting lessons in school about using various aspects of asymmetrical warfare to encircle an enemy, or how admirable and clever it is to deploy terrorist units to bomb a country in order to ‘soften it up’ from within.

Unbeknownst to many people, there are school teachers who are delivering pro-war propaganda, indoctrinating young children with violent globalist military stratagem selling the concept of an inevitable war on the people of Iran as well as anyone else deemed as ‘Axis’ powers in relation to western central planning.

Interestingly, and quite horrific in fact, when challenged by his young (and extremely bright) female student over the idea of western pre-emptive intervention against Iran, the teacher addressing these students laid down a nonnegotiable maxim stating:
“… one of the rules (in this discussion) – you can’t do nothing”.

The female student followed his NLP intellectual diversion by rightly pointing out to him:
“But we (the US) are the only country in the world that’s ever used nuclear weapons”.
To which the teacher replies sharply:

“That’s irrelevant.”

It appears also towards the end of the video, that the class was being monitored by the principal’s office, who then summoned the student in question to the office. Orwellian – in the extreme.

This is the generation of children who may be asked – or drafted in to fight a coming war with Iran and others – so is this part of the indoctrination of future soldiers? Maybe.
Certainly here, it’s safe to say that teachers are grooming the next generation of compliant consumer spectators.

Watch the classroom exchange recorded by the student:

Imperialism In The X-Factor Age

Global Research
Colin Todhunter

In Vietnam, Agent Orange was dropped by the US to poison a foreign population. In Iraq and the former Yugoslavia, depleted uranium was used. In Western countries, things are a bit more complicated because various states have tended to avoid using direct forms of physical violence to quell their own populations (unless you belong to some marginalized group or hit a raw nerve, as did the Occupy Movement last year). The pretence of democracy and individual rights has to be maintained.

One option has been to use South American crack cocaine or Afghan heroin to dope up potential troublesome sections of the population. It’s worked wonders: highly lucrative for the drug running intelligence agencies and banks awash with drug money (1), while at the same time serving to dampen political dissent in the most economically and socially deprived areas. Another tactic has of course been the massive ever-increasing growth of the surveillance industry to monitor ordinary citizens.

But drugs, surveillance and direct violence are kind of a last resort to keep a population in check. Notwithstanding baton charges, tear gas and the use of rubber bullets on the European mainland and that the US Government is not ruling out the use of violence on its own people (2), ideology via the media has and continues to be the choice of method for population control in Western countries.

Whether it’s through the paranoia induced by the fear of terrorism or more general propaganda spewed out by the mainstream ‘news’ channels, political agendas and modes of thought are encouraged which seek to guarantee subservience and ‘integration’, rather than forms of critical thought or action that may lead to a direct questioning of or a challenge to prevailing forms of institutionalised power.

From trade unions to political parties, oppositional groups are infiltrated, deradicalised and incorporated into the system (3) and critical stances are stifled, ridiculed or marginalized. Consensus is manufactured both in cultural and political terms. The result is that presidential candidate TV debates, political discourse and much of the popular mass media is void of proper analytical discussion: public theatre scripted by speech writers and PR people, presented in manipulative, emotive, ‘human-interest’ terms.

From the TV news and commercials to the game-shows and latest instant fame programme, misinformation, narcissism and distraction pervade all aspects of life. Why be aware of the world’s ills and challenge anything when you can live in the dark, watch X-Factor, wear Reebok and shop till you drop? It is an infotainment paradise where lies are truth and unfettered desire a virtue.

It’s a world of crass consumerism and gleaming shopping malls bathed in designer lifestyle propaganda where people drown in their Friday night alcohol vomit, shop till they drop for things they don’t really need or indeed want and bask in their emptiness by watching TV with eyes wide shut.

But this is ‘free market’ democracy. And the concept behind it is that the mass of the population are a problem, and any genuine debate or the electorate’s ability to see what is actually happening must be prevented. People must be distracted – they should be watching millionaire footballers kick a ball around, mind numbing soap operas or some mindless sitcom. Every once in a while, at voting time, they are called on to parrot or back some meaningless slogans.

Politics is no longer about great ideas. The acquisition of power has become the core value in itself, not socialism or any other radical philosophy. What is required from mainstream political leaders is technocrat not, radical; middle manager, not firebrand. In an era of advanced capitalism, the role of mainstream glove puppet political leaders is to demonstrate competence when it comes to managing the machinery of state in order to fine tune the status quo, not overhaul it.

From Persuasion to Coercion: PsychoPharma’s “Priesthood of the Mind”

Global Research
James F. Tracy

The “psychopharmaceutical complex”[1]— modern psychiatry, the pharmaceutical industry, and an accommodative regulatory apparatus–sustains itself through a public belief in its medical scientific expertise and legitimacy realized through marketing and public relations. Now a combination of more direct government involvement in medicine via the Affordable Care Act, the 2013 release of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) new and expanded Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Volume V (DSM), alongside more comprehensive systems of federal health surveillance and biometric identification technologies suggest how psychiatry’s behavioral norms and protocols will be more and more integrated into everyday life. Overall, the psychopharmaceutical complex appears poised to abandon a paradigm based on persuasion and belief and move toward a model encompassing coercion and decree to enforce its normalcy ideal.

“Reason is man’s faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man’s ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man’s instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man’s instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.”—Erich Fromm[2]

Since the 1950s psychotropic drugs comprise the psychiatric-pharmaceutical complex’s lucrative masterstroke of public relations and marketing. Heretofore the prevalence and use of such substances have been constructed in the public mind through a conditioned cultural obeisance toward professional expertise and its amplification in advertising and related promotional discourse. Twenty percent of Americans now take at least one drug to treat one or more psychiatric disorders. Usage among women and children under ten doubled between 2001 and 2010.[3] According to the Centers for Disease Control the “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors” (SSRIs) class of antidepressants marketed under the now common brand names Zoloft, Celexa, Effexor, and Paxil, are among the most heavily prescribed drug types, with 11% of Americans over the age of 12 now on such treatment.

Pharmaceuticals are widely prescribed by psychiatrists and general practitioners alike as treatment of conditions delineated in the DSM, through which the psychiatric profession exerts worldwide authority in defining what mental illness is in a sweeping array of behavioral designations applicable to thousands of subjectively interpreted behavioral abnormalities. The APA recommends antidepressant medication for a large proportion of alleged maladies, such as what it terms “moderate to severe depressive symptomatology.”[4] Yet as historian David Healy notes, the current DSM IV has “conveniently made it impossible to define dependence on SSRI’s antipsychotics, or benzodiazepines as a disorder.”[5]

Between 1988-1994 and 2005-2008 antidepressant use in the US increased by close to 400%.[6] If usage were to expand further along this trajectory by the early 2020s two in five people will be taking antidepressants alone. Antidepressant sales peaked at $15 billion in 2003, yet expiration of drug patents, the pharmaceutical industry’s inability to produce new “blockbusters” to take their place, and increasing reports that such drugs are useless and often dangerous may reduce sales to as little as $6 billion by 2016.[7]

The four-fold expansion of antidepressant consumption demonstrates how “depression” and the introduction of SSRIs have no doubt been a tremendous boon for pharmaceutical companies. Yet how depression and antidepressants have become such a taken-for-granted element of the public mind is a far less interrogated social phenomenon. Pharmaceutical companies wield tremendous power over discourse and belief through a carefully crafted advertising and public relations agenda that exceeds the often useless and dangerous products they sell.[8] Such effects have capitalized on the cultural inclination toward deference to expert opinion—in this case toward psychiatry.

Constructing the Profession and Its Object

In 2006 investigative journalist Jon Rappoport conducted a series of interviews with Ellis Medavoy, an alias provided to a high-level public relations expert who played a major role in orchestrating and manipulating public perceptions of major health crises, including HIV/AIDS. Among the PR man’s revealing observations is how psychiatric expertise is largely the result of propaganda technique. “Problem equals mental disorder equals diagnosis equals drugs,” Medavoy explains.

The PR job is to dress that up and give it scientific sounding context and you throw in all sorts of stuff about “the research”—and you have an industry. But in the larger frame, you have a priesthood of the mind. An official priesthood. Licensed. And you sell that, too, using other words. You REALLY sell that. “No one else knows anything about the mind. Only the psychiatrists have the knowledge.” You sell “needs professional help” and “is going in for treatment” and “new breakthroughs” and all that crap. You sell it six ways from Sunday.[9]

The intricacies of building a public creed around the twofold deity of pharmaceuticals and psychiatry involves several processes specific to advertising and public relations. For example, linguistic specialists fashion brand names to “tap different synapses in their customers’ brains: those linking the raw sounds of vowels and consonants known as phonemes to specific meanings and even emotions.”[10] In this way the name for the archetypal SSRI Prozac was designed to have a specific resonance in consumers’ minds. “Prozac: Pro is a rather pedestrian beginning, but the sounds p, z, and k all score high for the qualities active/daring.” The name of Prozac’s close relation Zoloft involves the same method of linguistic engineering. “Zoloft: Zo means life in Greek and loft elevates the concept.” Like Prozac, the SSRI Paxil includes the sounds z and k, along with “crackling, buzzing sounds [that] may subliminally suggest activity to back up the sequence ac, which suggests the word action.”[11]

Japan is the world’s third largest market for pharmaceuticals and provides an illustrative example of the pharmaceutical industry’s capacity to manipulate and seduce a society into the wide-scale use of specific psychoactive substances. Beginning in 1998 the country loosened its regulatory requirements for drug sales and advertising. By 2001 US-style direct-to-consumer drug advertising proliferated and US-based companies controlled close to 50% of Japan’s $364.2 billion of pharmaceutical sales. The increased popularity and availability of branded drug products within a non-Western cultural milieu set the stage for marketing strategies involving the brisk construction of public perception to overcome cultural barriers and generate demand.

In the 1980s when Japanese pharmaceutical corporation Meiji Seika was in the process of having a drug to treat “obsessive-compulsive disorder” approved by Japanese regulators, company officials realized that Japan had no standard diagnostic test for OSD. The company therefore proceeded to write its own definition, using US descriptors as a template. In the late 1990s Meiji Seika took this practice to an entirely new level when it obtained the go-ahead from regulators to market its own SSRI, Luvox.[12] After receiving approval the company faced an uphill battle of having the drug accepted in a country where, according to a survey conducted by the World Health Organization in the early 1990s, the most common prescription for a “mood disorder” was a mild tranquilizer.[13] In light of this, Meiji and several other interested corporate partners proceeded in “effecting nothing less than a sweeping cultural change,” as one observer explained.

One crucial step: altering the language people use to discuss depression. The Japanese word for clinical depression, utsu-byo, had unpleasant associations with severe psychiatric illness. So Meiji and its partners began using the phrase kokoro no kaze, which loosely translated means “the soul catching a cold.” The message was clear: If you take pills to alleviate a stuffy nose in the wintertime, why not do the same for depression? The marketing director for Meiji and its affiliates says he would regularly make use of the kokoro no kaze line when explaining to Japanese reporters why the taboo surrounding the disease should be lifted.[14]

America was far ahead of Japan in its recognition of pharmaceuticals to address mental illness. The notion that depression was a potential epidemic requiring “treatment” was placed in the public mind several years before the immensely popular SSRI Prozac was introduced in 1988. The idea nevertheless requires continual reinforcement. So too does the questionable concept of “screenings” to assess potentially injurious “moods” or behaviors, a practice currently underway at some US healthcare facilities using DSM V classifications.

The Architecture of Psychiatric and Police State Surveillance

“Science does not possess the technology to measure biochemical imbalances in the living brain” physician and author Peter R. Breggin observes. “The biochemical imbalances speculation is actually a drug company marketing campaign to sell drugs.”[15] In this way, mental health “screenings” lack the objective scientific gauging and assessment of physical indications to determine the existence of a disorder. Rather, the opinion is based on the subject’s response to a series of questions.

Over the past several years marketing methods have been implemented in earnest on American college campuses to condition a generation toward accepting the routine nature of mental health screenings. In the early 2000s Wyeth, maker of the antidepressant Effexor, sponsored “mental-health educational campaigns” on 10 college campuses. The 90-minute program, titled “Depression in College, Real World, Real Life, Real Issues,” took place in campus theaters and was hosted by MTV star and Effexor user Cara Kahn. The program’s associated depression “screenings,” now a commonplace feature of the public health regimen, were given upbeat sounding pitches, such as, “Stressed? Come find out how much,” and “Come test your mood.” Industry representatives observed how such solicitations meet with higher interest among potential participants than would a more prosaic-sounding, “depression screening.”[16]

If the allure of psychotropic nostrums is wearing thin, as some industry and market trends suggest creating a need, by whatever means, for psychopharma’s corresponding therapies and products is essential. The anticipated dearth in antidepressant sales alongside Western governments’ broad acceptance of psychiatry’s superficial articulation of aberrant human behavior and its remediation may go a long way in explaining recent widely publicized studies alleging a growing epidemic of mental illness and government programs decreeing obligatory mental health screenings of youth and attendant pharmaceutical treatment.

What exactly constitutes a mental disorder requiring treatment? Again, the DSM V’s forthcoming expanded assortment of peculiarities provides some indication of what future screenings may look for. An individual divulging her enjoyment of an occasional cigarette will be classified as suffering from “tobacco use disorder.” A social drinker may be designated with “alcohol use disorder.” Someone regularly imbibing too many cups of coffee or iced teas may undergo “caffeine intoxication,” or, worse, “caffeine-induced anxiety disorder.”  Spending too much time browsing the web, visiting online gambling sites, porn sites, or shopping too frequently may be respectively judged as “internet addiction,” “gambling disorder,” “hypersexual disorder,” and “compulsive shopping disorder,” and accordingly prescribed treatment regimens.[17]

Further, the expansion of psychiatry under federal auspices increases the potential for its Soviet-style abuse to silence political dissidents, as the recent case of former US Marine Brandon Raub illustrates.[18] Taking an insistent stance that weather modification exists or discussing World Trade Center Building 7’s inexplicable September 11 collapse may be grounds for a diagnosis of “paranoid delusional disorder.” Activist overtures calling attention to the precarious rationales of the “war on terror,” the Federal Reserve, or an overreaching police state could be easily classified as having unresolved “oppositional defiant disorder.”

With such a broad array of maladies which are themselves subject to the psychiatric practitioner’s interpretation, nearly everyone is susceptible to the psychopharmaceutical combine’s scrutiny, especially as it expands its purview to younger age groups. “The [ACA] is designed to help increase incentives to physicians and other health and mental health professionals to look after people across the entire continuum of care,” psychologist John M. Grohol points out, editor of the popular website PsychCentral. “Research suggests that this sort of integrated, coordinated care is ultimately beneficial to the patient. It can help catch health issues before they become more serious concerns.”[19]

The growing mental illness epidemic—or the psychiatric profession’s contention of such—has severe consequences not only in terms of personal anguish, but also for entire economic regions. Mental health experts assert that close to forty percent of Europeans are mentally ill, a problem estimated to cost the European economy alone several hundred billion euros annually. A 2011 study concludes 165 million EU residents are afflicted with some form of mental illness. “The immense treatment gap ... for mental disorders has to be closed,” the paper’s lead author asserts. “Because mental disorders frequently start early in life, they have a strong malignant impact on later life ... Only early targeted treatment in the young will effectively prevent the risk of increasingly largely proportions of severely ill ... patients in the future.”[20]

In the US, where the ACA stresses “the importance of integrating and coordinating the delivery of physical and mental health services and provides incentives to providers to integrate care”[21] an individual who may even have private insurance and visits the hospital for a physical sickness or injury will be increasingly subject to surveillance and evaluation in accordance with standards established by the DSM.

The Centers for Disease Control’s 2011 Mental Illness Surveillance Report stresses that 25% of Americans are mentally ill and one in two will develop a mental illness sometime in their lifetimes. Thus a program of “public health surveillance” comprised of “public health officials, academicians, health-care providers, and advocacy groups” will constitute “multiple surveillance systems” to “reduc[e] the incidence, prevalence, severity, and economic impact of mental illnesses ... assess associations between mental illness and other chronic medical conditions (e.g., obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and alcohol and substance abuse); identify populations at high risk for mental illness and target interventions, treatment, and prevention measures; and provide outcome measures for evaluating mental illness interventions.”[22] The project uses the DSM to identify and diagnose such illnesses.

“The public health importance of increasing treatment rates for depression is reflected in Healthy People 2020,” the CDC notes elsewhere, a ten year plan of the Department of Health and Human Services “which includes national objectives to increase treatment for depression in adults and treatment for mental health problems in children.” To aid the program the US government has established a Preventative Services Task Force that now recommends “mental health screenings” for children ages 12 thru 18. Like the Mental Illness Surveillance program, the Task Force uses the DSM as a template for its diagnoses.[23]

Conclusion

Given that the US federal government and insurance industry now have a combined investment in mitigating risk attached to the DSM’s classificatory scheme over myriad personal behaviors, individuals and the broader society must collectively ask, “Where does such surveillance end?” At present the individual may still exert some degree of control over what medical information s/he wishes to disclose to the medical surveillance apparatus. However, the increasing deployment of biometric technology and the rapid move toward an electronic “cashless” base of financial transactions all but ensures the end of this modest sphere of privacy and the complete realization of a far-reaching panoptic grid by which to locate and identify private idiosyncracies and thereby produce candidates for “interventions” and treatment.

An imperative for calling out and resisting the psychopharmaceutical complex’s ever-expanding grip on society is to understand and recognize its intertwined history with advertising and public relations of largely constructing public perceptions and what now constitutes a widely accepted set of beliefs toward mental wellness and disease. The fact that this enterprise will now be more closely allied with a national healthcare armature and a central component of the government-controlled medical stratagem suggests the coming fulfillment of a full-fledged pharmacological technocracy where through continued mass persuasion and government edict phony medicine and drugs will fill the vacuum of misspent and unfulfilled existence.

Is the Internet Really Making Us Dumber?

Der Spiegel
Hilmur Schmundt

Many scholars and critics warn that TV and the Internet are dumbing us down. But, if that's true, why are children around the world performing better on IQ tests? Are we actually getting smarter, or are we merely thinking in different ways?


Vincent is sitting on the couch and watching a vacation video when he suddenly poses two questions to his parents: "Why is space endless? And what was there before the Big Bang?"

Without waiting for an answer, Vincent jumps up to turn his attention to a different topic: his new red rubber boots with pictures from the animated film series "Cars." "I want a puddle!" Vincent shrieks, dancing around the room in excitement. "Then I can jump in it and splash you!"

Vincent T. is 4 years old. Two years ago, he was having problems at his day care center, where he was throwing sand and hitting other children. Was he disturbed? Did he suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or perhaps even Asperger's syndrome? Concerned, his parents had two-and-a-half-year-old Vincent examined by a psychologist. The finding: Vincent had an IQ of 133.

That means Vincent is gifted. At just two years old, he taught himself the alphabet. Being bored in his toddler playgroup led him to break out in tears every morning. Since he started at a preschool with a reading corner, though, things have been fine. His parents have registered Vincent to start school next year, a year earlier than the usual starting age in Germany.

Children like Vincent -- little superbrains who devour stories of Winnie-the-Pooh and reports on the Mars rover Curiosity with equal enthusiasm -- are increasingly common. Just this April, the British branch of high-IQ society Mensa admitted 4-year-old Heidi Hankins to its ranks. By definition, the average IQ is 100; above 130 is considered gifted. Heidi's is 159.

And Heidi is not even Mensa's youngest member. In 2009, the society inducted little Elise Tan Roberts of London with an IQ of 156. Elise could spell her name, list 35 world capitals and discuss various types of triangles. At the time, she was 2 years old.

This obsession with numbers is not without its controversies. "IQ tests are not yet reliable at such a young age," says Tanja Baudson, a psychologist at the University of Trier, in southwestern Germany, who specializes in research on the intellectually gifted. Up until puberty, she says, those IQ levels may develop very differently for Vincent, Heidi and Elise.

A Mind-Boggling Trend

Still, the three children provide an example of a global trend widely acknowledged by specialists in this field: From one generation to the next, children are performing better on IQ tests. In Germany, scores increase by about 3 IQ points each decade. In fact, the tests have to be adjusted every few years to keep up. The test currently used for children is called the WISC-IV. A person claiming to have an IQ of 130 needs to specify which test generated that result: WISC-III? WISC-IV?

The astonishing upward trend in IQ levels is known as the "Flynn effect," named after American political scientist James Flynn, who is now in his late seventies and lives in New Zealand. The emeritus professor with a full white beard published a new book this month, "Are We Getting Smarter? Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century," in which he seeks to elucidate this phenomenon.

In the book, Flynn offers a level-headed analysis of the limits and possibilities of intelligence tests. Germany falls in the middle of the Flynn effect phenomenon, with an annual increase of 0.35 IQ points, while countries such as Brazil and Turkey are catching up nearly twice as fast. China has long been playing in the top league, with an average IQ of 105.

Developing countries such as Kenya are also making gains. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is making less progress -- Flynn surmises this is because being subsidized by petrodollars provides little motivation for learning.

Such findings refute the claims of those who warn that humanity is getting dumber. We're "amusing ourselves to death," American media theorist and critic Neil Postman argued in a 1985 book of the same name. Postman blamed television for a decline in cognitive skills. Since then, however, the average IQ in the US has risen by nearly 10 points.

Fluoride opponents vow to launch citizen referendum 'within the hour'

The Oregonian
Beth Slavic

Demonstrator China Starshine held up signs outside of City Hall
where the Portland City Council opened public testimony on
Commissioner Randy Leonard's plan to fluoridate the
area's drinking water in Portland last week. The
Portland City Council voted 5-0 on Wednesday to approve the measure.

A group calling itself Clean Water Portland announced immediately after the Portland City Council voted 5-0to add fluoride to the region's drinking water that it would challenge the decision with a citizen referendum. 

Unlike an initiative, which opponents earlier called for, a referendum has the potential to suspend the city's ordinance, which technically takes effect in 30 days even though Portland officials don't plan to add fluoride to the region's water until 2014.

"If the petition qualifies for the ballot, the effective date of the ordinance is suspended until a public vote," said Andrew Bryans of the city auditor's office. The group needs to collect nearly 20,000 valid signatures to push the measure.

Kim Kaminski, a spokeswoman for Clean Water Portland, said around 11 a.m. that she expected to file paperwork with Portland's auditor "within the hour." However, city clerks still needed to file their own paperwork before that could happen, meaning the referendum won't get off the ground until this afternoon at the earliest.

Clean Water Portland says it has 125 volunteers to gather signatures and expects to have more than 25 paid signature gathers by the end of the week.

Opponents in August originally announced they would push an initiative to ask voters to ban fluoride in drinking water in 2014.

A referendum also would put the question to voters in 2014. But fluoride opponents wouldn't have to collect as many signatures. They'd have to do it in 30 days, however. If they're successful, they'd stop the city's ordinance from going into effect, blocking city officials' efforts to plan for fluoridation.

There's another reason opponents switched from an initiative to a referendum.

Commissioner Randy Leonard, fluoride's chief proponent on the City Council, announced after opponents said they would launch an initiative that he would take action to put fluoride in the region's water before opponents could get the ban on the ballot.

Portland voters have rejected fluoride at the ballot box three times, most recently in 1980.

-- Beth Slovic

American First Graders Are Starting NSA-Inspired Pentagon-Funded Language Classes

Business Insider
Geoffrey Ingersoll

What a cute and cuddly bunch of spies we're growing right here in America.

The National Security Education Program (NSEP), within the Pentagon budget projection for Fiscal Year 2012, says its mission is to "provide a cadre of highly qualified candidates for employment in the national security community."

Politicians argue that language training should begin at a younger age in order to yield more proficient speakers, and school districts lacking money welcome the infusion of cash, but the specter of government indoctrination looms over curriculum's controlled and devised from within the convoluted American National Security apparatus.

Joe Wolverton III of The New American reports that one of the languages focused on in the program is Portuguese, a disclosure which, at the very least, telegraphs the NSA's intent in South America and Africa. 

Other languages include Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Urdu and Farsi. The goal, as stated in official documents, is to provide curriculum in "less commonly taught languages" in order to grow a pool of "qualified language proficient candidates to the federal sector."

But when does "grooming" children cross over into "coercing" them to serve the state?

Wolverton smartly quotes James Madison in his lengthy piece: "If tyranny and oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."

THOSE AIPAC TRIPS: LEGAL INDOCTRINATION & BRIBES

MJayRosenburg

As Phil Weiss writes here, the media coverage of the Congressional skinny-dipping incident in the Sea of Galilee is being treated as a big joke, no different than Prince Harry’s naked romp in Las Vegas.

Unfortunately, the AIPAC free trips to Israel are no joke. They are serious business which is why AIPAC devised the exemption from the free travel ban Congress imposed on itself. See this Roll Call story on how AIPAC did it. And also today’s story in the Forward on the implications of these AIPAC junkets.

A few years ago, a Republican Congressman described one of these trips to me. He was newly-elected and happy to get the free trip (although he had been to Israel many times). He told me that the brainwashing was intense, so much so that any Congressman who disagreed with either the AIPAC “minder” or whichever Israeli official was doing the briefing was quickly shushed up. He especially resented that his dissent on the question of the ease of bombing Iran’s reactors was ridiculed, despite his extensive experience in the military.

The creepiest thing he told me was that the Congress people only felt safe expressing their differences with the Israeli/AIPAC position when they were on the bus and whispering among themselves, away from the minder. Publicly, every member of the delegation cheered and applauded the AIPAC line, just as they did back in Washington. He specifically noted that no one wanted AIPAC or Eric Cantor getting on their case.

These trips should be banned. On the contrary, they are proliferating because the AIPAC-drafted exemption had to be broad enough so that it would not appear to apply only to AIPAC. Now the AIPAC-manufactured umbrella is covering other organizations as well. Nice. Corrupting Congress is what AIPAC does best, although, to be fair, doing so is not exactly heavy lifting.

For the record, the Democrats are more effective in getting AIPAC’s dirty work done than the GOP, including most of your favorite “progressives.” The Republicans bloviate but the Democrats get the job done!

The Army Has Issued Anti-Suicide Nasal Spray To Keep Troops From Taking The 'Easy Out'

Business Insider
Geoffrey Ingersoll

The military suicide rate doubled in July. That's one of our troops, almost every day.

To come up with an answer, the Army recently gave 3 million dollars to a university of Indiana research center, and those researchers came back with this: Anti-Suicide Nasal Spray.

Katie Drummond of The Daily reports researchers found a naturally occuring neurochemical called thyrotropin-releasing hormone, or TRH, that has euphoric, calming, anti-depressant effects. News of the nasal spray comes as a relief to some, who had to endure spinal taps for injections of the medicine.

The Pentagon, which tracks military suicides, reported that troops have committed the act at an 18 percent increase over the same period last year. Now, more troops die by their own hands that by the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The spray is only possible because of advances in "nanotechnology delivery systems." Researchers plan to run a full battery of trials over the next few years, and hopefully put the spray not only in the hands of soldiers, but civilians as well.

The scientists say that applications go beyond anti-depression medications.

Homeland Security Teams Up With YouTube To Take Down Controversial Videos

Govt Slaves

(Mike Masnick)  We recently wrote about the fight over copyright/fair use in political videos. In the comments, someone anonymous pointed us to a YouTube page including a typical takedown notice.. Here’s a screenshot.

This is actually the first time I can recall that I’ve seen a takedown that had “multiple” takedown notices. So it’s interesting that YouTube even has such an error message. But what really caught my attention was the second claimant listed. United States Department of Homeland Security. Homeland Security? Issuing copyright takedowns? For what it’s worth, the commenter who submitted this pointed us to another video, which they claim is the same as what was taken down. I have no idea if it’s the same video or not, but it is some idiotic conspiracy mongering, taking one comment from a reporter completely out of context, and pretending President Obama said it, when he did not. I never understand conspiracy theories like that, but that’s really neither here nor there.

The real question is why is Homeland Security issuing takedowns? Works produced by the federal government, of course, can’t have copyright. However, it is possible for the government to hold copyrights — mainly if someone else gets it and assigns it to the government. So it’s possible that happened here, though it still seems like a strange move. If the video is the same as the other one pointed to, it’s just conspiracy theory claptrap, and I don’t see why DHS would even bother issuing a takedown.

But, even if we assume that the copyright itself and the takedown were legit, does this seem reasonable at all? Having a government agency directly using a copyright claim to take down a video? Especially when that group is DHS — in which national internet censor ICE exists. Giving it the power to censor videos too just seems like it’s going way too far. It’s not as if Homeland Security is going to bring the work “to market” to make money, so it’s not like there’s an “impact on the market” for the work. The only reason to issue the takedown — no matter how accurate the claim is — is to silence speech. A government organization using a government-granted monopoly to stifle speech may be all too common, but that doesn’t mean it should pass by unremarked upon.

I reached out to people at YouTube to see if they could explain why DHS appears to be issuing DMCA takedowns, and got back the equivalent of a “no comment.” I also reached out to Homeland Security, who at first seemed interested in looking into the details and then completely stopped responding to emails. Having not received further communication from them in over a week at this point, I’m just going with the post as is, in the hopes that maybe someoneout there can explain why the federal government is using copyright to censor speech?

Batman joins the police to take on Occupy Wall Street

Toronto Star

Film critics have rightly picked up on a disturbing message in the latest instalment of Christopher Nolan’s hugely popular Dark Knight series of Batman movies. Fascism, the film suggests, is just great.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Nolan insisted the film is apolitical. “What we’re really trying to do is show the cracks of society,” he said. “We’re going to get wildly different interpretations of what the film is supporting and not supporting, but it’s not doing any of those things.”

But, as many critics have pointed out, the parallels between the movie’s plot and recent political events are hard to ignore — as is the film’s apparently conservative, if somewhat incoherent, stance.

As The Dark Knight Rises begins, the good guys are still in charge of Gotham, the ersatz New York City watched over by Batman. Gotham is in the midst of a precarious peace, preserved by the white lies the state tells to placate its citizens. It’s a utopia taken from the pages of neo-conservative guru Leo Strauss.

Bruce Wayne, Batman’s billionaire alter ego, spends his time managing his declining health and the anxieties of retirement, until he is coaxed back into his batsuit by a violent group of anti-capitalist crusaders. The activists, led by an enormous, incomprehensible masked mercenary named Bane, expose the state’s lies and foment a successful popular uprising with rhetoric ripped directly from the Occupy Wall Street movement. (At one point, the villains literally occupy the stock exchange.)

Left to its citizens and their vicious, hypocritical leaders, Gotham succumbs to chaos and brutality — an updated version of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, with Bane a muscle-bound Robespierre. Kangaroo courts, political murders and looting — this is what we get, the film tells us, when the people win power.

The city’s only chance for salvation: a crackdown by police and Batman, a charter member of the 1 per cent. In Nolan’s world, rows of armed, marching police are a symbol of hope, a Warren Buffett with martial arts training is Gotham’s only possible saviour, and a populist movement, which in many ways resembles the one still playing out in the real world, is shown to be fraudulent and evil.

If this isn’t topical political commentary, it sure seems like it. And whether the film’s authoritarian vision is political propaganda or artistic oversight, the troubling message communicated to millions of viewers is the same.

Citizens Without Civics?

Somewhat Reasonable

Katie Brunk

In the United States, every citizen is called to be a scientist of sorts, testing out the hypothesis that a constitutional democracy can survive as a viable government. As the longest-existing constitutional democracy, our country is a continual experiment. It is entrusted to each generation to observe and make adjustments as necessary in order to preserve our liberty.

Yet, each day, we are faced with the challenge of growing disinterest in our nation. According to the 2011 CIRP Freshman Survey, only 32.8 percent of college freshmen believe it is important to “keep up to date with political affairs.” Although interest has increased from 1998 results (26.7 percent), without this number being considerably higher, we are bound to lose our country to continued apathy. Jefferson, Madison, and company would argue that with our rights come great responsibilities: the responsibility to live a life of high morals as well as the responsibility to be informed and passionate citizens.

Becoming an active citizen requires that the importance of citizenship is ingrained in each person’s mind from childhood. A September 1998 article entitled The Role of Civic Education by Margaret Stimmann Branson discusses the importance of teaching civics and breaks down our responsibility into two categories: civic and personal. Although Branson expressed the urgency with which civic education reform was needed fourteen years ago, we could use a refresher today.

According to Branson, “A sense of personal responsibility and civic obligation are the social foundations on which individual rights and freedoms ultimately rest.” If this is the case, studies show that our nation is in a period of crisis today. The 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows a decrease in civics education in 12^th grade and no improvement in 8^thgrade since 1998. A small glimmer of hope is found in 4^th graders who showed a slight upward trend since 1998. Unfortunately, it is the 12^th graders who can vote and determine the future of our still-infant country.

Branson continues on to say that in order to “maintain a society where human rights are respected, the rule of law is observed, and the common good is the concern for all,” each generation must learn and develop into knowledgeable citizens. Democracy is not a utopia, and therefore it requires much maintenance and development to keep it alive. Citizens must be persistent in engaging in every aspect of society and bettering themselves.

According to the National Assessment Governing Board, the three components of a civic education include civic knowledge, intellectual and participatory skills, and civic dispositions. Education in these three areas allows a person to be an informed, effective, and responsible citizen; to understand the functions of our government and identify a malfunction; and contribute to the common good.

Without these developments, our nation and our liberty will continue to crumble. I think it is safe to say that if more people took interest and chose an active role in our society today, we would not be in such a mess. It is time for our country to reprioritize our education and begin to put first things first.

Harvard Study – Published in National Institute of Health Journal – Finds Fluoride Lowers Children’s IQ

Washington's Blog

Yet Another Government Report Finds that Fluoride Lowers IQ in Kids

The Harvard School for Public Health reports:

For years health experts have been unable to agree on whether fluoride in the drinking water may be toxic to the developing human brain. Extremely high levels of fluoride are known to cause neurotoxicity in adults, and negative impacts on memory and learning have been reported in rodent studies, but little is known about the substance’s impact on children’s neurodevelopment. In a meta-analysis, researchers from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and China Medical University in Shenyang for the first time combined 27 studies and found strong indications that fluoride may adversely affect cognitive development in children. Based on the findings, the authors say that this risk should not be ignored, and that more research on fluoride’s impact on the developing brain is warranted.

The study [click for abstract] was published online in Environmental Health Perspectiveson July 20, 2012.

Environmental Health Perspectives is a publication of the United States National Institutes of Health’sNational Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Harvard’s announcement continues:

The researchers conducted a systematic review of studies, almost all of which are from China where risks from fluoride are well-established. Fluoride is a naturally occurring substance in groundwater, and exposures to the chemical are increased in some parts of China. Virtually no human studies in this field have been conducted in the U.S., said lead author Anna Choi, research scientist in the Department of Environmental Health at HSPH.

***

Choi and senior author Philippe Grandjean, adjunct professor of environmental health at HSPH, and their colleagues collated the epidemiological studies of children exposed to fluoride from drinking water. The China National Knowledge Infrastructure database also was included to locate studies published in Chinese journals. They then analyzed possible associations with IQ measures in more than 8,000 children of school age; all but one study suggested that high fluoride content in water may negatively affect cognitive development.

The average loss was only half of one IQ point, but some studies suggested that even slightly increased fluoride exposure could be toxic to the brain. Thus, children in high-fluoride areas had significantly lower IQ scores than those who lived in low-fluoride areas. The children studied were up to 14 years of age, but the investigators speculate that any toxic effect on brain development may have happened earlier, and that the brain may not be fully capable of compensating for the toxicity.

“Fluoride seems to fit in with lead, mercury, and other poisons that cause chemical brain drain,” Grandjean says. “The effect of each toxicant may seem small, but the combined damage on a population scale can be serious, especially because the brain power of the next generation is crucial to all of us.”

Numerous other government reports have shown fluoride’s adverse impacts on intelligence:

[A] 2006 National Academy of Science [report ] reviews the scientific studies which have been performed on fluoride, and concludes:

It is apparent that fluorides have the ability to interfere with the functions of the brain and the body by direct and indirect means. (bottom of page 222).

The NAS report also notes that fluoride may actually impair intelligence, and that more testing should be done in this regard.

Indeed, studies from around the world continue to find that exposure to sodium fluoride – especially in the very young – lowers IQ. See this and this. The same is true for rats exposed to fluoride. See this and this. And see the studies listed here.

Dr. Vyvyan Howard – a PhD fetal pathologist, who is a professor of developmental toxico-pathology at the University of Liverpool and University of Ulster, president of the International Society of Doctors for the Environment and former president of the Royal Microscopical Society and the International Society for Stereology, and general editor of the Journal of Microscopy – said in a 2008 Canadian television interview (short, worthwhile video at the link) that studies done in several countries show that children’s IQ are likely to be lower in high natural water fluoride areas.

He said that these studies are plausible because fluoride is known to affect the thyroid hormone which affects intelligence and fluoride is also a known neurotoxicant. Such studies have not been conducted in countries that artificially fluoridate the water such as the US, UK and Canada, but should be, he said.

And as the International Business Times noted last month on the newest Chinese study on fluoride:

Exposure to fluoride may lower children’s intelligence, says a study published in Environmental Health Perspectives, a publication of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Fluoride is added to 70 percent of U.S. public drinking water supplies.

***

About 28 percent of the children in the low-fluoride area scored as bright, normal or higher intelligence compared to only 8 percent in the “high” fluoride area of Wamaio.

In the high-fluoride city, 15 percent had scores indicating mental retardation and only 6 percent in the low-fluoride city. The authors of the study eliminated both lead exposure and iodine deficiency as possible causes for the lowered IQs.

One scientist – Jennifer Luke – alleged in a 2001 scientific article that fluoride accumulates in the brain (specifically, in the structure of the pineal gland) more than it accumulates in our bones. In other words, she implies that fluoride may accumulate more in the brain than in the teeth, doing more harm than good (here’s Luke’s 1997 PhD dissertation on the topic.)

The 2006 National Academy of Sciences report corroborates some of Luke’s allegations:

As with other calcifying tissues, the pineal gland can accumulate fluoride (Luke 1997, 2001). Fluoride has been shown to be present in the pineal glands of older people (14-875 mg of fluoride per kg of gland in persons aged 72-100 years), with the fluoride concentrations being positively related to the calcium concentrations in the pineal gland, but not to the bone fluoride, suggesting that pineal fluoride is not necessarily a function of cumulative fluoride exposure of the individual (Luke 1997, 2001). Fluoride has not been measured in the pineal glands of children or young adults, nor has there been any investigation of the relationship between pineal fluoride concentrations and either recent or cumulative fluoride intakes.

Donald Miller – cardiac surgeon and Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington – alleges:

Fluoride … inhibits the enzyme acetylcholinesterase in the brain, which is involved in transmitting signals along nerve cells.

***

Fluoride also damages the brain, both directly and indirectly. Rats given fluoridated water at a dose of 4 ppm develop symptoms resembling attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. High concentrations of fluoride accumulate in the pineal gland, which produces serotonin and melatonin.

***

People with Alzheimer’s disease have high levels of aluminum in their brains. Fluoride combines with aluminum in drinking water and takes it through the blood-brain barrier into the brain. Dr. Russell Blaylock, MD, a neurosurgeon, spells out in chilling detail the danger fluoride poses to one’s brain and health in general in his book Health and Nutrition Secrets that can Save Your Life (2002).

Hat tip:  Paul Beeber.