Interesting facts about bridges...

The Romans built ones that have stood the test of time. And they can even entertain us, in a sense.

20 Things You Didn't Know About ... Bridges
By Gemma Tarlach
Discover Magazine, October 6, 2016

1. The most important bridges on Earth have nothing to do with engineers and masons: Through the ages, land bridges have allowed species to reach new territories. Some are better known than others. Ever heard of the Thulean Route?

2. Also known as the North American Land Bridge (NALB), the volcanic Thulean plateau arose around 56 million years ago. It stretched from Greenland to the British Isles, connecting North America with Eurasia.

3. While we often think of land bridges as animal migration highways, they also help plants disperse. A 2013 study found the NALB allowed hickory, native to northeastern North America, to spread to Europe and Asia.

4. Recent genetic studies have confirmed the first humans to arrive in the Americas traveled via Beringia. The land bridge connected Siberia and North America beginning 38,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Maximum.

5. Beringia was probably at its greatest size 20,000 years ago, when sea levels were as much as 400 feet lower than they are today. Within 9,000 years of its peak, however, the last dry bits of Beringia slipped beneath the waves.

6. Beringia will rise again! Well, maybe. The land bridge has appeared periodically for the past 70 million years during times of extensive glaciation.

7. Before it was sliced open by a shipping canal in 1914, the Isthmus of Panama united a land mass stretching from the Arctic Circle to sub-antarctic southern Patagonia. Not united: researchers debating how long the land bridge was around. A 2015 study in Science claims at least 13 million years, but a paper published in August says no more than 3 million.

8. When it comes to bridges we’ve built, even the most elaborate can be reduced to two components: supports and a deck. Among the basic bridge types (beam, arch, truss and suspension), the simplest is the beam. It’s a single deck across two supports, like a plank across a stream.

9. In addition to load — the weight of the deck and whatever is crossing the bridge — engineers worry about the forces of compression and tension.

10. Think about standing at the center of that plank crossing the stream. The plank bows downward from your weight; the top of the plank shortens (compression) while the underside stretches (tension). Too much of either creates a weak area that could leave you all wet.

 11. Want to stabilize your beam bridge? Try adding trusses. The triangular supports, a common feature of shorter-span railway bridges, give the deck greater rigidity, which dissipates, or distributes, both compression and tension forces.

12. For longer spans, engineers may turn to suspension bridges. The deck is suspended by cables (stretched with tension), which hang from towers (compressed into the ground).

13. Arch bridges, popular since antiquity, are more stable than the beam variety. The entire bridge is under compression, which is dissipated out and down from the center — right into the supports.

14. Bridges need to be stable, but bridges themselves can also provide stability. Disulfide bridges, for example, hold together the different protein chains that make up an anti-body. You can think of them as the glue in immunoglobulin molecules, the warriors of the immune system.

15. A different bridge keeps people glued to their seats: the card game. Today’s Bridge evolved from earlier games such as Whist. Some of its predecessors date to the 16th century.

16. The game’s name is an Anglicization of the word biritch, which some historians believe has Russian origins. Its roots may be in Turkey, however, where it was a popular diversion among expats, including Russians, nearly two centuries ago.

17. Some bridges still in use today have even older roots. The sturdily built Pons Fabricius arch bridge has connected Tiber Island to the heart of Rome since 62 B.C.

18. You can thank those industrious Romans for building the world’s oldest reliably dated bridge, too: They erected a stone arch span over the Meles River in Izmir, Turkey, in the 9th century B.C.

19. The Meles bridge is used even now, as is the Kazarma, or Arkadiko, bridge in southern Greece. Built from unworked limestone boulders and rocks, the basic arch, though never conclusively dated, may be from the 14th century B.C.

20. Can’t credit the Romans with this one, though. The 22-meter-long Kazarma is an example of Mycenaean Bronze Age masonry. In your face, Romans!

Some Selected Comments:

# Sorry, but the references to "land bridges" at best echo out-dated thinking based on fixed earth models. Stating that the NALB spanned from Greenland to Britain, and showing a modern bathymetric model, ignores the fact that 56 million years ago sea floor spreading along the North Atlantic had just begun, and the areas in question were essentially one continuous "land"--no bridge required.

# "You can thank those industrious Romans for building the world’s oldest reliably dated bridge, too: They erected a stone arch span over the Meles River in Izmir, Turkey, in the ninth century B.C." Neat trick, as the city of Rome hadn't even been founded at that point. But even if you dispute the mythical date of the founding, there was certainly no Roman presence in Turkey at that point.

micro-chipping people?!

Swedish company is playing big brother as envisioned by George Orwell in his book, 1984...

Epicenter implants microchips into employees
Mimmi Nilsson
April 4, 2017

SOME workers have been implanted with microchips that allow the companies that employ them to track their every move.

Swedish company Epicenter will embed a chip into about 150 workers, so bosses can monitor toilet breaks and how long they work.

The workers volunteered to have the microchip, which is about as big as a grain of rice, implanted for free.

Patrick Mesterton, co-founder and chief executive of Epicenter, an innovation and technology company, told the ABC the microchips inserted into employees’ hands would simplify life.

With the radiofrequency identification chip, they’ll be able to open doors and use office technology like photocopiers and it can even pay for lunch at the office cafe.

“You can do airline fares with it, you can also go to your local gym ... so it basically replaces a lot of things you have other communication devices for, whether it be credit cards, or keys, or things like that.”

Two years ago, Mr Mesterton told news.com.au many of Epicentre’s employees had already been chipped and used the technology in their everyday life.

“It’s an implant in the hand that enables them to digitise professional information and communicate with devices both personal and within Epicenter. Once ‘chipped’ with this technology, members can interact with the building with a simple swipe of the hand. Chips can also be programmed to hold contact information and talk to smartphone apps,” he said.

These types of microchips have been used in humans and animals before and means people don’t need to keep track of multiple passwords and PINs because it will all be installed on the inserted chip.

Emilott Lantz had a microchip implanted under her skin about three years ago and told Swedish newspaper The Local it wasn’t the future.

“This is the present. To me, it’s weird that we haven’t seen this sooner.”

Mr Mesterton told the ABC the idea wasn’t that far-fetched, as people had been implanting devices under their skin for decades, including things like pacemakers.

“That’s a way, way more serious thing than having a small chip that can actually communicate with devices,” he said.

Microbiologist Ben Libberton, from Swedish university Karolinska Institute, told the ABC the chip could compromise security and hold a lot of private information.

“Conceptually you could get data about your health, and you could [get] data about your whereabouts, how often you’re working, how long you’re working, if you’re taking toilet breaks and things like that,” he said.

“All of that data could conceivably be collected.

“So then the question is: What happens to it afterwards? What is it used for? Who is going to be using it? Who is going to be seeing it?”

http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/human-body/swedish-company-epicenter-implants-microchips-into-employees/news-story/5c48700ebb54262ae389db085593ab12
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'I'm among the first Swedes with a microchip'

Sweden has a global reputation as a leader in developing innovative technologies. But will a trend for inserting microchips in the human body catch on? The Local spoke to one of the first Swedes to choose an implant to unlock her office door.

Emilott Lantz, 25, from Umeå in northern Sweden, got a microchip inserted into her hand last week.

She became a guinea pig during Sime 2014 in Stockholm – a conference about digitalism, the internet, and the future. In line with the goals of the event, participants were offered to get a microchip fitted for free – an opportunity Lantz jumped at.

“I don’t feel as though this is the future – this is the present. To me, it’s weird that we haven’t seen this sooner,” she tells The Local.

There is evidence that the number of chip-wearers in Sweden is growing rapidly.

"This has very much been an underground phenomenon up until now, but there are perhaps a 100 people with the chip in Sweden," says Hannes Sjöblad from the Swedish biohackers group BioNyfiken.

In the last month alone 50 people from the group underwent the procedure.

The technology has previously been used for key tags or chips in our pets’ necks to let them through cat flaps. What is relatively new is inserting the chip in human hands.

The idea is that instead of carrying keys or remembering pins or passwords for our phones or doors, people fitted with microchips can use them to unlock rooms or lockers, by placing their hand against a machine that reads the information stored in the chip.

It was the appeal of minimizing the number of keys she needed to carry around that was the deciding factor for Lantz.

But her decision to go through with the procedure has brought mixed reactions from her friends and family, some saying she’s been foolish while others argue it’s a cool idea.

“The technology isn’t new but the subject becomes sensitive just because it’s in the human body,” she says.

The chip, which is the size of a grain of rice, has been designed to stay in Lantz’s hand for the rest of her life.

“I’m not surprised that people think it’s a big deal – it’s not that common yet, but I think it will be. We’re already modifying our bodies, why should this be different?”

Lantz first came in contact with the idea while attending the conference Geek Girl Meetups last year, where she heard speaker Carin Ism talk about transhumanism.

Transhumanism is a movement that explores science and technology innovations and their relationship to humanity. Its goal is to challenge humanity by using emerging technologies that enable humans to go beyond their current limitations.

“I’m super stoked to have had this done – I can’t wait for the property agent to get back to me about letting me into the system so that I can use my chip instead of my keys to get into the office,” says Lantz.

BioNyfiken's Hannes Sjöblad says it makes sense that Sweden is starting to embrace the technology.

"There's a reason that this is happening in Sweden first and not anywhere else. Swedes have a proven track record of being very early adapters of new technologies and the current mood is very conductive to this type of experimenting," he says.

Lantz adds: “besides having a chip in my hand, I’m a pretty normal person."

West eyes recolonization of Africa

Death, destruction and despair await unless the people of Africa realise this writing on the wall...

West eyes recolonization of Africa by endless war; removing Gaddafi was just first step
Dan Glazebrook
RT : 20 Oct, 2017

Exactly six years ago, on October 20th, 2011, Muammar Gaddafi was murdered, joining a long list of African revolutionaries martyred by the West for daring to dream of continental independence.

Earlier that day, Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte had been occupied by Western-backed militias, following a month-long battle during which NATO and its ‘rebel’ allies pounded the city’s hospitals and homes with artillery, cut off its water and electricity, and publicly proclaimed their desire to ‘starve [the city] into submission’. The last defenders of the city, including Gaddafi, fled Sirte that morning, but their convoy was tracked and strafed by NATO jets, killing 95 people. Gaddafi escaped the wreckage but was captured shortly afterward. I will spare you the gruesome details, which the Western media gloatingly broadcast across the world as a triumphant snuff movie, suffice to say that he was tortured and eventually shot dead.

We now know, if testimony from NATO’s key Libyan ally Mahmoud Jibril is to be believed, it was a foreign agent, likely French, who delivered the fatal bullet. His death was the culmination of not only seven months of NATO aggression, but of a campaign against Gaddafi and his movement, the West had been waging for over three decades.

Yet it was also the opening salvo in a new war - a war for the militarily recolonization of Africa.

The year 2009, two years before Gaddafi’s murder, was a pivotal one for US-African relations. First, because China overtook the US as the continent’s largest trading partner; and second because Gaddafi was elected president of the African Union.

The significance of both for the decline of US influence on the continent could not be clearer. While Gaddafi was spearheading attempts to unite Africa politically, committing serious amounts of Libyan oil wealth to make this dream a reality, China was quietly smashing the West’s monopoly over export markets and investment finance. Africa no longer had to go cap-in-hand to the IMF for loans, agreeing to whatever self-defeating terms were on offer, but could turn to China - or indeed Libya - for investment. And if the US threatened to cut them off from their markets, China would happily buy up whatever was on offer. Western economic domination of Africa was under threat as never before.

The response from the West, of course, was a military one. Economic dependence on the West - rapidly being shattered by Libya and China - would be replaced by a new military dependence. If African countries would no longer come begging for Western loans, export markets, and investment finance, they would have to be put in a position where they would come begging for Western military aid.

To this end, AFRICOM - the US army’s new ‘African command’ - had been launched the previous year, but humiliatingly for George W. Bush, not a single African country would agree to host its HQ; instead, it was forced to open shop in Stuttgart, Germany. Gaddafi had led African opposition to AFRICOM, as exasperated US diplomatic memos later revealed by WikiLeaks made clear. And US pleas to African leaders to embrace AFRICOM in the ‘fight against terrorism’ fell on deaf ears.

After all, as Mutassim Gaddafi, head of Libyan security, had explained to Hillary Clinton in 2009, North Africa already had an effective security system in place, through the African Union’s ‘standby forces,' on the one hand, and CEN-SAD on the other. CEN-SAD was a regional security organization of Sahel and Saharan states, with a well-functioning security system, with Libya as the lynchpin. The sophisticated Libyan-led counter-terror structure meant there was simply no need for a US military presence. The job of Western planners, then, was to create such a need.

NATO’s destruction of Libya simultaneously achieved three strategic goals for the West’s plans for military expansion in Africa. Most obviously, it removed the biggest obstacle and opponent of such expansion, Gaddafi himself. With Gaddafi gone, and with a quiescent pro-NATO puppet government in charge of Libya, there was no longer any chance that Libya would act as a powerful force against Western militarism. Quite the contrary - Libya’s new government was utterly dependent on such militarism and knew it.
Secondly, NATO’s aggression served to bring about a total collapse of the delicate but effective North African security system, which had been underpinned by Libya. And finally, NATO’s annihilation of the Libyan state effectively turned the country over to the region’s death squads and terror groups. These groups were then able to loot Libya’s military arsenals and set up training camps at their leisure, using these to expand operations right across the region.

It is no coincidence that almost all of the recent terror attacks in North Africa - not to mention Manchester - have been either prepared in Libya or perpetrated by fighters trained in Libya. Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, ISIS, Mali’s Ansar Dine, and literally dozens of others, have all greatly benefited from the destruction of Libya.

By ensuring the spread of terror groups across the region, the Western powers had magically created a demand for their military assistance which hitherto did not exist. They had literally created a protection racket for Africa.

In an excellent piece of research published last year, Nick Turse wrote how the increase in AFRICOM operations across the continent has correlated precisely with the rise in terror threats. Its growth, he said, has been accompanied by “increasing numbers of lethal terror attacks across the continent including those in Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Tunisia.

In fact, data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland shows that attacks have spiked over the last decade, roughly coinciding with AFRICOM’s establishment. In 2007, just before it became an independent command, there were fewer than 400 such incidents annually in sub-Saharan Africa. Last year, the number reached nearly 2,000. By AFRICOM’s own official standards, of course, this is a demonstration of a massive failure. Viewed from the perspective of the protection racket, however, it is a resounding success, with US military power smoothly reproducing the conditions for its own expansion.

This is the Africa policy Trump has now inherited. But because this policy has rarely been understood as the protection racket it really is, many commentators have, as with so many of Trump’s policies, mistakenly believed he is somehow ‘ignoring’ or ‘reversing’ the approach of his predecessors. In fact, far from abandoning this approach, Trump is escalating it with relish.

What the Trump administration is doing, as it is doing in pretty much every policy area, is stripping the previous policy of its ‘soft power’ niceties to reveal and extend the iron fist which has in fact been in the driving seat all along. Trump, with his open disdain for Africa, has effectively ended US development aid for Africa - slashing overall African aid levels by one third, and transferring responsibility for much of the rest from the Agency for International Development to the Pentagon - while openly tying aid to the advancement of “US national security objectives.”

In other words, the US has made a strategic decision to drop the carrot in favor of the stick. Given the overwhelming superiority of Chinese development assistance, this is unsurprising. The US has decided to stop trying to compete in this area, and instead to ruthlessly and unambiguously pursue the military approach which the Bush and Obama administrations had already mapped out.

To this end, Trump has stepped up drone attacks, removing the (limited) restrictions that had been in place during the Obama era. The result has been a ramping up of civilian casualties, and consequently of the resentment and hatred which fuels militant recruitment. It is unlikely to be a coincidence, for example, that the al Shabaab truck bombing that killed over 300 people in Mogadishu last weekend was carried out by a man from a town in which had suffered a major drone attack on civilians, including women and children, in August.

Indeed, a detailed study by the United Nations recently concluded that in “a majority of cases, state action appears to be the primary factor finally pushing individuals into violent extremism in Africa.” Of more than 500 former members of militant organizations interviewed for the report, 71 percent pointed to “government action,” including “killing of a family member or friend” or “arrest of a family member or friend” as the incident that prompted them to join a group. And so the cycle continues: drone attacks breed recruitment, which produces further terror attacks, which leaves the states involved more dependent on US military support. Thus does the West create the demand for its own ‘products.'

It does so in another way as well. Alexander Cockburn, in his book ‘Kill Chain,' explains how the policy of ‘targeted killings’ - another Obama policy ramped up under Trump - also increases the militancy of insurgent groups. Cockburn, reporting on a discussion with US soldiers about the efficacy of targeted killings, wrote that: “When the topic of conversation came round to ways of defeating the [roadside] bombs, everyone was in agreement. They would have charts up on the wall showing the insurgent cells they were facing, often with the names and pictures of the guys running them," Rivolo remembers. "When we asked about going after the high-value individuals and what effect it was having, they’d say, ‘Oh yeah, we killed that guy last month, and we’re getting more IEDs than ever.’ They all said the same thing, point blank: ‘[O]nce you knock them off, a day later you have a new guy who’s smarter, younger, more aggressive and is out for revenge.”’

Alex de Waal has written how this is certainly true in Somalia, where, he says, “each dead leader is followed by a more radical deputy. After a failed attempt in January 2007, the US killed Al Shabaab’s commander, Aden Hashi Farah Ayro, in a May 2008 air strike. Ayro’s successor, Ahmed Abdi Godane (alias Mukhtar Abu Zubair), was worse, affiliating the organization with Al-Qaeda. The US succeeded in assassinating Godane in September 2014. In turn, Godane was succeeded by an even more determined extremist, Ahmad Omar (Abu Ubaidah). It was presumably Omar who ordered the recent attack in Mogadishu, the worst in the country’s recent history. If targeted killing remains a central strategy of the War on Terror”, De Waal wrote, “it is set to be an endless war.”

But endless war is the whole point. For not only does it force African countries, finally freeing themselves from dependence on the IMF, into dependence on AFRICOM; it also undermines China’s blossoming relationship with Africa.

Chinese trade and investment in Africa continues to grow apace. According to the China-Africa Research Initiative at John Hopkins University, Chinese FDI stocks in Africa had risen from just two percent of the value of US stocks in 2003 to 55 percent in 2015, when they totaled $35 billion. This proportion is likely to rapidly increase, given that “Between 2009 and 2012, China’s direct investment in Africa grew at an annual rate of 20.5 percent, while levels of US FDI flows to Africa declined by $8 billion in the wake of the global financial crisis”. Chinese-African trade, meanwhile, topped $200 billion in 2015.

China’s signature ‘One Belt One Road’ policy - to which President Xi Jinping has pledged $124 billion to create global trade routes designed to facilitate $2 trillion worth of annual trade - will also help to improve African links with China. Trump’s policy toward the project was summarised by Steve Bannon, his ideological mentor, and former chief strategist in just eight words: “Let’s go screw up One Belt One Road.” The West’s deeply destabilizing Africa policy - of simultaneously creating the conditions for armed groups to thrive while offering protection against them - goes some way toward realizing this ambitious goal. Removing Gaddafi was just the first step.

Origin of some of the country names...

According to Quartz, the name of nearly every country falls into one of these four categories:

    A tribe name
    A feature of the land
    The direction the country is situated
    An important person

CATEGORY 1: TRIBE NAME

The majority of country names are derived from tribes, kingdoms or ethnic groups, particularly ones in Europe.

Italy is named after the Vitali tribe, France after the Franks, Switzerland refers to the Schwyz people and Vietnam is after the Viet people of the south.

Deahan Minguk refers to South Korea, which translated mean “Great Han” or “Big Han” after the Han tribes.

Some names are derived from a description of its inhabitants, such as Papua New Guinea, with papua meaning “frizzy-haired” and guinea after the African Guineans.

CATEGORY 2: LAND FEATURE

The second highest group that a country’s name might come from is an aspect of the land.

Algeria is named after the capital city of Algiers, which means “the islands” and refers to the islands that used to sit off the city’s coast before they became a part of the mainland.

Iceland seems pretty self explanatory but the name is contradicted by the country’s luscious green landscape.

The most common story suggests it was named that way to trick potential settlers into thinking it was cold and uninhabitable so they would be deterred.

Much like how Greenland was supposedly named to entice new settlers when in reality much of it is covered in ice.

But the lesser known story, which appears to be more accurate, is that it was named by a Norwegian Viking called Hrafna-Flóki Vilgerðarson after he climbed a mountain and saw a bay full of icebergs.

It is suggested that Christopher Columbus named Costa Rica, meaning “the rich coast”, after he saw indigenous people wearing gold.

Barbados, “bearded ones”, was reportedly named after the banyan tree that grows there, which is commonly known as the giant bearded fig.

Honduras means “depth” or “deep water” and Singapore means “lion city”, even though there aren’t any known lions there.

CATEGORY 3: DIRECTIONAL PLACEMENT

There are roughly 25 countries with names that refer to their location and Australia is one of them.

Australia’s name comes from a hypothetical continent called Terra Australis Incognita meaning “Unknown Southern Land”, which was thought up by the Ancient Greeks.

Nippon, the name for Japan often used by locals, means “land of the rising sun” and refers to Japan being east of China.

Timor-Leste essentially means “east east” and is situated east of Java and Sumatra.

CATEGORY 4: IMPORTANT FIGURE

The rest of the countries are mostly named after prominent historical figures.

The United States of America was named after Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci and the Philippines are named after King Philip II

Colombia was named after Christopher Columbus not by the famous explorer himself, though he is thought to have had a say in naming eight other countries.

Venezuelan military and political leader Simon Bolivar has two countries named after him, Bolivia being the obvious one but also Venezuela, which carries the official name of Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Religious figures are common inspiration for names like Israel for example, which was the given name to Jacob, who was a patriarch of the Jewish people.

Source: https://qz.com/1070266/the-name-of-a-country-can-only-really-mean-one-of-four-things/

Mona Lisa's smile mystery turns mysterious than ever!

Another twist to an already twisterly twisted mystery...

The real-life scandal and shame behind Mona Lisa’s smile
Larry Getlen
New York Post, August 28, 2017

MONA LISA was famously unable to conjure up a fully joyous smile for Leonardo da Vinci. Perhaps that’s because she was married off to a slave trader at the age of 15.

In Mona Lisa: The People and The Painting, authors Martin Kemp and Giuseppe Pallanti reveal the lives of Lisa Gherardini — the painting’s real-life Mona Lisa — and others involved in the work. Her husband, they write, was a prominent Florentine businessman named Francesco del Giocondo, who was likely involved in the trading of female slaves.

Gherardini was born in Florence in June 1479. At the time, girls were often married off young to older men, and del Giocondo was a wealthy 30-year-old merchant and widower in 1495 when he married the teenage Gherardini.

Throughout his life and for generations before, del Giocondo and his family kept slave girls to serve as maids.

“Since his childhood,” the authors write, “Francesco had lived side-by-side with some female slaves who had converted to Christianity, bought by his father, and after [his father’s] death it was his responsibility to find new ones. Sometimes he bought more slaves than he needed.”

The authors note that del Giocondo “bought them regularly.” Combined with the sheer number of “converted girls” he associated with, it seems likely, they write, that “he took part in the slave trade.”

Lisa Gherardini was famously unable to conjure up a fully joyous smile for Leonardo da Vinci. Picture: Chris Radburn/PA Wire.Source:AAP

The authors reel off a list of young girls del Giocondo had baptised, noting that there were simply too many of them for all to have served in his household. At one point, he baptised three “Moorish women” from North Africa and gave them new names.

“They could not have all remained in his household,” the authors write. “Three were too many and one or all of them would have been sold on.”

That said, Lisa Gherardini went on to live the life of an upper-class woman, albeit one filled with the normal hardships of the time, as well as some scandal.

Gherardini became pregnant for the first time soon after her wedding, eventually giving birth to six children, three sons and three daughters, by 1505. Her second child, a daughter named Piera, died at the age of 2, while another died in infancy.

It is unclear how da Vinci came into contact with Gherardini, but it is known that the artist’s father was a lawyer and Lisa’s husband was one of his clients. In 1503, the master painter started on a portrait of the woman who would be his most famous subject.

Her husband’s riches kept her in “an impressive wardrobe and plenty of jewellery,” although you wouldn’t know it from her portrait, which has her adorned in a bizarre array of conflicting outfits for the time, suggesting that da Vinci took liberties with her clothing in order to enhance the painting’s visual power.

Over the next decade, da Vinci spent time perfecting his portrait while Gherardini went on to lead a colourful life.

While less endowed families at the time often sentenced their daughters to live as nuns in order to avoid paying vast dowries, the wealthy del Giocondos sent their two surviving daughters to the convent, even though they could afford to pay off future husbands.

Camilla, the couple’s third child, took the vows at age 12, going by Sister Beatrice in the same nunnery as Gherardini’s two sisters, Sister Camilla and Sister Alessandra.

As it happened, Sister Camilla would prove a poor role model for her niece, as a year later, she became involved in scandal. A public accusation alleged that “On 20 April 1512, four men, armed and carrying a ladder, went to the convent of San Domenico, and having climbed the wall, reached certain small windows, where two nuns were waiting for them ... they touched the breasts of said nuns and fondled other parts of their bodies, not to mention other indecencies.”

The accusation against Sister Camilla and another nun — in addition to two others who were supposedly “watching with rapt attention, their eyes filled with similar desire” — went to trial. The men involved were found guilty, and the women were absolved.

Lisa was almost involved in a sex scandal of her own, when two men from the powerful Medici family — of whom del Giocondo was a prominent supporter — supposedly made efforts to “tempt the honour of Gherardini,” who rejected them.

As the story made the rounds, instead of being angered that two associates made a play for his wife, del Giocondo was concerned about what her rejection of the men would mean for his relationship with the Medicis. He appealed to them, confirming his support, and they assured him the relationship was sound. Between themselves, however, they mocked del Giocondo’s weakness.

Da Vinci died in 1519, and the painting remained unfinished and was never exhibited during his life.

After falling ill in her sixties, Gherardini spent her later years in the convent (which often housed the sick), and died on July 14, 1542. She died in obscurity. The unfinished masterpiece, “Mona Lisa” — or “Madame Lisa” — wouldn’t make her an icon until centuries after her passing.

By 1550, the portrait somehow wound up in the collection of King Francis I of France, and was at some point displayed early on in the Louvre, although Napoleon loved the painting so much he took it from the museum in 1800 to hang in his bedroom. He returned it in 1804.

As the years passed, word about the beauty of the painting spread. In 1857, the legendary novelist, poet and critic Théophile Gautier sang its praises in an essay, stating that: “You discover that your melancholy arises from the fact that [Mona Lisa], three hundred years ago, greeted your avowal of love with the same mocking smile which she retains even today on her lips.”

Nowadays, perched high in a room at the Louvre behind bulletproof glass, “Mona Lisa” is the most valued painting in the world, her secretive smile luring millions of visitors to the museum each year. “Eighty per cent of the people only want to see the Mona Lisa,” former Louvre director Henri Loyrette told The New York Times. But Lisa Gherardini isn’t giving anything away.

China contemplating to ditch dollar for yuan!

USA is in trouble...the writing has been on the wall for awhile. People adopt this currency and the USA is doomed. They won't be able to monetize their debt with quantum easing, mass printing of money. Inflation will go insane.

US ‘Empire of Debt’ will go to war to stop emergence of petro-yuan
Max Keiser
RT : 25 Oct, 2017

The imminent introduction of oil trading in yuan is a very bold move by the Chinese, because the US will not give up the basis of its hegemony – the dollar as the world’s reserve currency – without a fight, Max Keiser, host of RT’s financial program ‘Keiser Report' has said.

The Chinese plan to roll out a yuan-denominated oil contract before the end of this year is a very brave move, since countries who “tried to exit the oil-dollar matrix have met terrible ends,” Keiser pointed out.

“Saddam Hussein wanted to trade oil in Euros and he was killed, Muammar Gaddafi wanted to trade his energy in something other than the US dollar – he was killed,” Keiser said.

China, however, has the resolve and the resources to pull-off the de-dollarization, and besides, it’s backed by several major countries which are “resistant to America’s financial cartel,” namely Russia and Iran, Keiser said.

“Kudos to China for taking this project on and of course they are rumored to be a big buyer in the Aramco offering of their state oil facilities coming down the pike,” Keiser said, referring to the anticipated sales of shares in the Saudi Aramco state oil company.

“This makes sense, geopolitical sense, in terms you’ve got China and Russia and the Saudis looking to escape the US dollar, US dollar hegemony.”

Saudi Arabia was pushed to the de-dollarization crowd only recently by the US itself, which, last year, allowed survivors and relatives of the victims of the 9/11 attack to sue the kingdom over its alleged role in the terrorist acts, Keiser stated.

“There’s decently motivation for the Saudis. They want to float Aramco, they are deeply in debt and they are running out of cash. And they wanted to do an APO [alternative public offering] of Aramco either on London or American exchange, but they prevented from doing so from the legal actions of the 9/11 survivors, who rightly pointed at Saudis as the cause of 9/11,” Keiser noted.

Countries worldwide are tired of funding the America’s “military adventurism by being a party to the ‘Empire of Debt,’ as it’s known around the world – the US dollar,” and therefore, will likely join the de-dollarization movement, Keiser said.

The US financial sector and its military-industrial complex are unlikely to give up the dollar hegemony without a fight, though, as the dollar is both the basis and the main product of America. And the US will use its other favorite tool for it – war, Keiser believes.

“Maybe they will start a war between Japan and China, and maybe they will start a war with North Korea. America will do anything to keep the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency,” Keiser said.

“They will invade the countries, like Afghanistan, they will stop at nothing. Because this is the basis of the US empire. It’s not land-based, it’s not based on material goods, it’s based on rent-seeking. It’s based on landing dollars, getting out income and when countries can’t pay they dismantle the assets and take them over. We saw it in Latin America, South America, this is how America built its empire.”

Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited!

Neil Clark analysed that breathtaking event from today's perspective, and also presented some unknown background information...

A hedgehog down the pants: The lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Neil Clark
RT : 28 Oct, 2017

Fifty-five years ago this weekend the world appeared to be on the brink of nuclear war as the Cuban missile crisis unfolded. What are the lessons that can be learned today about the events of October 1962?

It was the great filmmaker Charles Chaplin who commented that life is a tragedy when seen in close-up but a comedy in long-shot. Perspective is everything. If we take a ‘close-up’ view of the Cuban missile crisis, we fail to see the wider issues involved. We’re also likely to fall for the dominant narrative, which has the Soviet Union as the aggressor and the US as the side acting in self-defense. In fact, it was the other way round.

We call it the ‘Cuban missile crisis, ’ but in truth, it was only partly about Cuba. It was just as much about Turkey, and in particular, the fifteen offensive nuclear-tipped intermediate-range Jupiter missiles that had been provocatively deployed there by the US in 1961.

The Soviet Union felt threatened by them and rightly so. They could if launched in a pre-emptive ‘first-strike,' obliterate entire cities in the western USSR, such as Minsk, Kiev, and Moscow, within minutes.

Moreover, the so-called ‘missile gap’ which Kennedy had campaigned on in 1960 against Richard Nixon, actually existed in the US’ favor. The US had around nine times as many nuclear warheads as the Soviet Union. “By 1962, a million US soldiers were stationed in two hundred foreign bases, all threatening the Soviet Union, from Greenland to Turkey, from Portugal to the Philippines,” write Jeremy Isaacs and Taylor Downing, in their book 'Cold War.' “Three and a half million troops belonging to America’s allies were garrisoned around the Soviet Union’s borders. There were American nuclear warheads in Italy, the United Kingdom, and Turkey.”

Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader in 1962, had to do something to quickly change the situation, or else his country was in danger of nuclear annihilation. Remember President Kennedy had already seriously considered the ‘first-strike’ option. Fred Kaplan, the author of The Wizards of Armageddon, records how on July 13, 1961, Kennedy held a National Security Council meeting. Among the items on the agenda: "steps to prepare war plans which would permit the discriminating use of nuclear weapons in Central Europe and... against the USSR."

America’s aggressive policies toward Cuba gave Khrushchev an opportunity to improve his country‘s security. When the cigar-smoking Fidel Castro first come to power in 1959, sweeping away the US-backed leader Batista in a popular uprising, he had not declared his revolution to be a Marxist one. But his program which involved nationalization and clamping down on the business activities of mobsters like Meyer Lansky, inevitably put him on a collision course with Washington.

In December 1960, the Eisenhower administration had already endorsed a scheme to invade Cuba to topple Fidel. John Kennedy, who became President in January 1961, inherited this ’cunning plan’ and went along with it. The result was the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Blackadder's Baldrick really couldn't have come up with anything more disastrous.

Understandably, Castro now declared a socialist revolution and turned to Moscow for assistance. Khrushchev saw a golden opportunity to “throw a hedgehog at Uncle Sam’s pants.”

An agreement was made with the Castro brothers, whereby Cuba would be a site for Soviet missiles. They would not only defend the island from a US-led invasion- but also in Khrushchev’s own words help to “equalize” the balance of power with the US.

Of course, when the US learned what was going on, there was indignant outrage of the sort US leaders do best. The second best quote from the whole of the Cuban missile crisis (after Khrushchev’s hedgehog one), came from Kennedy when he was told about the missile sites under construction. “It’s just as if we suddenly began to put a major number of MRBMs (missiles) in Turkey! Now that’d be goddamned dangerous, I would think.”'

To which his National Security Adviser, George Bundy replied: “Well, we did, Mr. President.”

Kennedy mulled over his options and decided that a blockade, to stop Soviet ships delivering their missiles, was the best call. Never mind that the Soviet action to ship missiles to an ally was legal and that a blockade most certainly wasn’t. But what to do about the missiles that had already arrived?

The President was presented with plans from his generals for air strikes and a full-scale invasion of Cuba. “But it was estimated that the ten days of fighting tied to an invasion, the US would suffer 18,500 casualties. Kennedy would have to do a deal,” note Isaacs and Downing.

A deal was done, but it was not one which the US administration could publicly acknowledge. In return for Soviet missiles being withdrawn from Cuba, the US agreed not to invade the island and to remove its Jupiters from Turkey which it did about six months later.

The US media hailed a great victory, but in fact, Washington had been forced to make concessions. It's likely that if Khrushchev hadn’t played such a high line in 1961, the Soviet Union would have faced a pre-emptive strike sometime in the 1960s, very probably from the missiles situated in Turkey. The citizens of Moscow, Minsk, and Kiev have much to thank him for.

After 1962, the US knew that they had to tread warily. For the next seventeen years, détente was pursued by both Democratic and Republican administrations. Yes, the CIA continued to plot to overthrow the Cuban government, and of course subvert democratic processes around the world if the wrong candidates got elected, or look like they were going to get elected, but after the events of October 1962, the US was more frightened of directly provoking the Kremlin.

It was only in the late 1970s that the position began to change once again. A pivotal battle as I noted in an earlier OpEdge was between Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, a man of peace who genuinely wanted to maintain good relations with Moscow, and the uber-hawkish Russophobe Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had been appointed President Carter’s National Security Adviser. ‘Zbig’ won, and the results for mankind were catastrophic.

Neocons who had loathed détente began to crawl out of the woodwork. Again there were calls for a ‘pre-emptive’ strike on the Soviet Union.

Mikhail Gorbachev, a genuinely nice man who sadly had learned nothing from history, became Soviet leader in 1985 and surrendered his country’s bargaining chips in return for promises which weren’t worth the paper they weren’t written on.

The subsequent fall of the USSR was toasted by ‘muscular’ liberals and Trotskyites alike, but older and wiser heads knew that with no real counterbalance to US power we were heading for perilous waters. I always remember reading an article by the conservative commentator and staunch anti-communist Peregrine Worsthorne, in the Sunday Telegraph from around this time in which he said that in time people might well look back at the Cold War with some nostalgia as a period of relative peace and stability. He was absolutely right.

With no Soviet Union around to keep them in check The Project for a New American Century crowd got going. The result was two decades of wars and ‘liberal interventions’ which killed millions, hugely boosting the cause of terrorism and leading to a refugee crisis of Biblical proportions. It’s obvious none of this would have occurred if the USSR had still existed, but of course, in the name of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy,' we weren't supposed to say it.

Things have only changed in recent years, as Russia, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, has re-emerged as a global player and a counterweight to US imperialism. Syria is the first place since the end of the old Cold War where the ambitions of US neocons have been thwarted. Aleppo will hopefully prove to be their Stalingrad.

When we look back at the events of October 1962, is that it’s clear the US only cedes ground when it fears what the other side can threaten it with. To get Uncle Sam to stop being such an obnoxious bully, you have to throw or threaten to throw a hedgehog at his pants, to use Khrushchev’s memorable phrase. Being nice, like Gorbachev was, only gets you trampled on.

Gaddafi, like Saddam, surrendered his weapons program and was rewarded with a bayonet up his anus and the cackling laughter of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Milosevic generously hosted ’The Balkans Bull’ Dick Holbrooke offering him his best slivovitz, and ended up being denied the proper medical treatment during his US-instigated show trial at The Hague.

Kim Jong-un, by contrast, tests missiles for fun and shows Washington the finger and his country hasn’t been bombarded. He's clearly studied closely what happened fifty-five years ago and also since 1990.

Khrushchev’s decision to send missiles to Cuba, a country under genuine threat of invasion, was not only legal but also wise. Far from endangering the peace, it actually made war less likely. The nuclear Armageddon that was feared in Cold War 1.0 didn’t occur because the US feared the Soviet response. In fact looking back at 1962 the only regret was that more missiles hadn’t arrived. Then Moscow would have been able to gain even more concessions.

Which brings us back to today. Could a new Russian deployment of missiles to Cuba as the Communist Party of Russia called for last year in response to the Pentagon’s plan to deploy HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) in Turkey be a means of obtaining the removal of NATO from Russia’s borders, and getting US hawks to pipe down?

Put another way, if there were already Russian missiles situated just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, do we think the US would be quite so belligerent in its foreign policy? Merely to ask the question is to answer it.

Follow Neil Clark @NeilClark66

Neocons Have Been Destroying Sovereign Nations for 20 Years

An excellent article from a favorite Russia author pointing out similar patterns in the destruction of Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria.

Neocons Have Been Destroying Sovereign Nations for 20 Years
Neil Clark
Mon, Jul 17, 2017

The author is a well-known UK pundit who writes frequently on Russia.  He is currently running a crowdfunding to sue the Times, one of its writers, Oliver Kamm, and its publisher, Rupert Murdoch, for libel and stalking. If you like this article, please consider supporting this writer.  He is one of the best out there on Russia.

A resource-rich, socialist-led, multi-ethnic secular state, with an economic system characterized by a high level of public/social ownership and generous provision of welfare, education and social services.

An independent foreign policy with friendship and good commercial ties with Russia, support for Palestine and African and Arab unity - and historical backing for anti-imperialist movements.

Social progress in a number of areas, including women’s emancipation.

The above accurately describes the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and the Syrian Arab Republic. Three countries in three different continents, which had so much in common.

All three had governments which described themselves as socialist. All three pursued a foreign policy independent of Washington and NATO. And all three were targeted for regime change/destruction by the US and its allies using remarkably similar methods.

The first step of the imperial predators was the imposition of draconian economic sanctions used to cripple their economies, weaken their governments (always referred to as ‘a/the regime’) and create political unrest. From 1992-95, and again in 1998, Yugoslavia was hit by the harshest sanctions ever imposed on a European state. The sanctions even involved an EU ban on the state-owned passenger airliner JAT

Libya was under US sanctions from the 1980s until 2004, and then again in 2011, the year the country with the highest Human Development Index in Africa was bombed back to the Stone Age.

Syria has been sanctioned by the US since 2004 with a significant increase in the severity of the measures in 2011 when the regime change op moved into top gear.

The second step was the backing of armed militias/terrorist proxies to destabilise the countries and help overthrow these "regimes". The strategy was relatively simple. Terrorist attacks and the killing of state officials and soldiers would provoke a military response from ‘the regime, whose leader would then be condemned for ‘killing his own people’ (or in the case of Milosevic, other ethnic groups),  and used to ramp up the case for a ‘humanitarian intervention' by the US and its allies.

In Yugoslavia, the US-proxy force was the Kosovan Liberation Army, who were given training and logistical support by the West.

In Libya, groups linked to al-Qaeda, like the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, were provided assistance, with NATO effectively acting as al-Qaeda’s air force

In Syria, there was massive support for anti-government Islamist fighters, euphemistically labelled 'moderate rebels.' It didn’t matter to the ‘regime changers’ that weapons supplied to ‘moderate rebels’ ended up in the hands of groups like ISIS. On the contrary, a declassified secret US intelligence report from 2012 showed that the Western powers welcomed the possible establishment of a Salafist principality in eastern Syria, seeing it as a means of isolating ‘the Syrian regime’.

The third step carried out at the same time as one and two involved the relentless demonisation of the leadership of the target states. This involved the leaders being regularly compared to Hitler, and accused of carrying out or planning genocide and multiple war crimes.

Milosevic - President of Yugoslavia - was labelled a ‘dictator’ even though he was the democratically-elected leader of a country in which over 20 political parties freely operated.

Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi was portrayed as an unstable foaming at the mouth lunatic, about to launch a massacre in Benghazi, even though he had governed his country since the end of the Swinging Sixties.

Syria’s Assad did take over in an authoritarian one-party system, but was given zero credit for introducing a new constitution which ended the Ba’ath Party’s monopoly of political power. Instead all the deaths in the Syrian conflict were blamed on him, even those of the thousands of Syrian soldiers killed by Western/GCC-armed and funded ‘rebels’. 

The fourth step in the imperial strategy was the deployment of gatekeepers - or ‘Imperial Truth Enforcers’ - to smear or defame anyone who dared to come  to the defence of the target states, or who said that they should be left alone.

The pro-war, finance-capital-friendly, faux-left was at the forefront of the media campaigns against the countries concerned. This was to give the regime change/destruction project a 'progressive’ veneer, and to persuade or intimidate genuine ’old school’ leftists not to challenge the dominant narrative.

To place them beyond the pale, Yugoslavia, Libya and Syria were all labelled ’fascist,’ even though their leadership was socialist and their economies were run on socialistic lines. Meanwhile, genuine fascists, like anti-government factions in Ukraine (2013-14), received enthusiastic support from NATO.

The fifth step was direct US/NATO-led military intervention against 'the regime' triggered by alleged atrocities/planned atrocities of the target state. At this stage, the US works particularly hard to sabotage any peaceful solution to the conflicts they and their regional allies have ignited. At the Rambouillet conference in March 1999, for example, the Yugoslav authorities, who had agreed to an international peace-keeping force in Kosovo, were presented with an ultimatum that they could not possibly accept. Lord Gilbert, a UK defence minister at the time, later admitted "the terms put to Milosevic (which included NATO forces having freedom of movement throughout his country) were absolutely intolerable … it was quite deliberate."

In 2011, the casus belli was that ‘the mad dog’ Gaddafi was about to massacre civilians in Benghazi. We needed a ‘humanitarian intervention’ to stop this, we were repeatedly told. Five years later, a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee report held that "the proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence."

In 2013, the reason given for direct military intervention in Syria was an alleged chemical weapons attack by 'Assad's forces' in Ghouta. But this time, the UK Parliament voted against military action and the planned ‘intervention’ was thwarted, much to the great frustration of the war-hungry neocons. They still keep trying though.

The recent claims of The White House, that they had evidence that the Syrian government was planning a chemical weapons attack, and that if such an attack took place it would be blamed on Assad, shows that the Empire hasn’t given up on Stage Five for Syria just yet.

Stage Six of the project involves the US continuing to sabotage moves towards a negotiated peace once the bombing started. This happened during the bombing of Yugoslavia and the NATO assault on Libya. A favoured tactic used to prevent a peaceful resolution is to get the leader of the target state indicted for war crimes. Milosevic was indicted at the height of the bombing in 1999, Gaddafi in 2011.

Stage Seven is ‘Mission Accomplished’. It’s when the target country has been ‘regime-changed’ and either broken up or transformed into a failed state with strategically important areas/resources under US/Western control. Yugoslavia was dismantled and its socially-owned economy privatised. Montenegro, the great prize on the Adriatic, recently joined NATO.

Libya, hailed in the Daily Telegraph as a top cruise ship destination in 2010, is now a lawless playground for jihadists and a place where cruise ships dare not dock. This country, which provided free education and health care for all its citizens under Gaddafi, has recently seen the return of slave markets.

Syria, though thankfully not at Stage Seven, has still been knocked back almost forty years. The UNDP reported: "Despite having achieved or being well under way to achieving major Millennium Development Goals targets (poverty reduction, primary education, and gender parity in secondary education, decrease in infant mortality rates and increasing access to improved sanitation) as of 2011, it is estimated that after the first four years of crisis Syria has dropped from 113th to 174th out of 187 countries ranked in the Human Development Index."

Of course, it’s not just three countries which have been wrecked by the Empire of Chaos. There are similarities too with what’s happened to Afghanistan and Iraq. In the late 1970s, the US started to back Islamist rebels to destabilise and topple the left-wing, pro-Moscow government in Kabul.

Afghanistan has been in turmoil ever since, with the US and its allies launching an invasion of the country in 2001 to topple a Taliban 'regime' which grew out of the ’rebel’ movement which the US had backed.

Iraq was hit with devastating, genocidal sanctions, which were maintained under US/UK pressure even after it had disarmed. Then it was invaded on the deceitful pretext that its leader, Saddam Hussein, still possessed WMDs.

The truth of what has been happening is too shocking and too terrible ever to be admitted in the Western mainstream media. Namely, that since the demise of the Soviet Union, the US and its allies have been picking off independent, resource-rich, strategically important countries one by one.

The point is not that these countries were perfect and that there wasn’t political repression taking place in some of them at various times, but that they were earmarked for destruction solely for standing in the way of the imperialists. The propagandists for the US-led wars of recent years want us to regard the conflicts as ‘stand alones’ and to regard the ‘problem' as being the ‘mad dog’ leadership of the countries which were attacked.

But in fact, the aggressions against Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the threatening of Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela are all parts of the same war. Anyone who hasn’t been locked in a wardrobe these past twenty years, or whose salary is not paid directly, or indirectly, by the Empire of Chaos, can surely see now where the ‘problem’ really lies.

The ‘New Hitlers’ - Milosevic, Hussein and Gaddafi - who we were told were the ‘biggest threats’ to world peace, are dead and buried. But guess what? The killing goes on.

= = =
Selected Comments:

# All those countries who, like Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen & Iran, rejected Anglo-US imperialism in the 1950/60s, have now been vengefully targetted for "regime change".
Since 1946, well over 25m people, (the overwhelming majority of them innocent civilians) have lost their lives to Anglo-US militarism. The 'dirty little undeclared wars' of WHINSEC & the CIA, alone, cost the lives of 6m people.
The US now has some form of military occupation in around 150 of the world's apx 198 countries. That's a level of total world domination that neither Genghis Khan, nor Adolf Hitler, could have imagined in their wildest dreams.

# Psychopaths never change their modus operandi. They can't, it's linked to their brain pattern. They combine a high degree of narcissism and high egocentricity with their psychopathy. They cannot believe that mere mortals - those of us with the ability to feel compassion for others and be directed by it - can actually out think them. The FBI bases it's successful profiling on this fact - that once you have determined the psychopaths pattern, you can use it to find her/him.
The Regime of Generals in America are all, every one, psychopaths, and killers [not all psychopaths are killers. not all have blood lust]. Thus they always follow the same pattern. Look at their "colour revolutions". All the same, down to being absolutely identical. They can thus be predicted and fought, which is what Russia is doing now.
And - looking at the profiles Mr. Clark has provided - which other country are we seeing being subject to this practice right now? The demonisation of the leader, the false accusations, the attempts to foment unrest?? Exactly - Russia.
It seems unbelievable and incredible, but sometimes I swear to God they actually are planning some sort of all out assault on Russia !!

# The only reason Russia has still not been attacked by a "first strike" is due to Russia´s superior advanced military.
That's why US raise funding drastically, makes bigger and bigger drills near hot spots, militarize neighbour countries to Russia, developing the hybrid war.

# Talk about evil rats? two faced fucks? the hated USA places missiles in the shit hole called Romania, a former Nazi siding state, unreal what those vile Americans get up to, they prop-up the vile anti-democracy, anti-human rights Saudi- swine and sell them their best exports, weapons-of-death, junk food, pornography. How long can such degenerate sickos, fat slobs keep up their crimes? their wars, their evils. Divide-and-rule I reckon, the same the Brits used to control their vast empire, the US pay off the big crooks, buy-up nations, war and destroy any who oppose them......THE Great Satan... they are.

# Spot on! The mindset of neocons and Zionists is exactly that of the Nazis: malign narcissism, psychopathy, sociopathy. The problem is, they can NEVER admit defeat nor mistakes, that's why the only option of action or reaction they have is doubling down or more of the same. In the end any psychopath will destroy and kill himself and everybody/everything around him. The Nazis didn't surrender and instead watched their own country to be completely destroyed before they cowardly offed themselves in their bunker. The Anglo-Zionists are probably willing to sacrifice the whole world in a nuclear blitz, fully knowing that it will kill themselves, too.
If they can't have it, nobody should. Just look at the history of British retreat. Where ever the Brits had to leave their colonies behind, they created artificial conflicts: Pakistan vs. India, Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, and numerous tribal conflicts in Africa. It's called "British demarcation". The Yankees are doing just the same. If we can't have it, nobody should. The Anglo-American mindset is the cultural epitome of psychopathy.

# They become nervous if any state:
- Don't have interest on loans
- no central bank or many central banks
- Don't have income tax
- Are healthy
- Don't tax liquor
- Legalize hemp / coca leaves ++
- Allow people to smoke
- Don't vaccinate people (what happens to people in US when they are not vaccinated? We will not know when all are vaccinated -> no one must be allowed to be unvaccinated)

# Democracy alone is hogwash - democracy is a tool, not an end in itself.

What you achieve with democracy that's what matters!

# does a leopard change its spots ??

# The neocons need to be exposed as to who they are and what is their agenda. If they are mainly Jews then we must know what they are up to. They are a mere 2% of the American population and they must not be allowed to dictate American foreign and military policies. Their minds are not America's.

# Donald Trump, the floppiest flip who ever flipped a flop!

# Neocons, Ziocons, cons from every direction and now principally we can trace them and their works. Works always against humanity while wailing
in Wall Street and the City of (OFF) London. 109 countries knew this!
=  = =
AMERICA’S "REGIME CHANGE" OPERATIONS AROUND THE WORLD.
-THESE ASSAULTS were all against governments that did not “cooperate” with the corporations that control the Corporate States of America. Most were against properly elected governments - NOT “evil” dictators.
-Each of the “regime change” operations was 100% motivated by the interests of the PREDATORY CAPITALIST 0.1%.
-Each involved violence, murdering from a few to OVER TWO MILLION INNOCENTS per operation..
-Not one of these countries posed ANY security threat to the Corporate States of Amerika..
-Each regime change/destabilization operation was ENTIRELY FUNDED BY AMERICAN TAX DOLLARS and BENEFITED ONLY PREDATORY CAPITALISTS..
- Each regime change/destabilization operation was IN VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW to which the Corporate States of Amerika is signatory..
-Almost all involved PROVEN WAR CRIMES BY THE UNITED STATES, under existing definitions in international law to which the Corporate States of Amerika is signatory.

IRAN 1946
YUGOSLAVIA 1946
URUGUAY 1947
GREECE 1947-49
GERMANY 1948
CHINA 1948-49
PHILIPPINES 1948-54
PUERTO RICO 1950
KOREA 1951-53
IRAN 1953
VIETNAM 1954
GUATEMALA 1954
EGYPT 1956
LEBANON l958
IRAQ 1958
CHINA l958
PANAMA 1958
VIETNAM l960-75 (TWO MILLION+ DEAD)
CUBA l961
GERMANY l961
LAOS 1962
CUBA l962
IRAQ 1963
PANAMA l964
INDONESIA l965
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 1965-66
GUATEMALA l966-67
CAMBODIA l969-75 (TWO MILLION + DEAD)
OMAN l970
LAOS l971-73
MIDEAST 1973
CHILE 1973 (thousands dead)
CAMBODIA l975
ANGOLA l976-92
IRAN l980
LIBYA l981
EL SALVADOR l981-92
NICARAGUA l981-90 (tens of thousands dead)
LEBANON l982-84
GRENADA l983-84
HONDURAS l983-89 (tens of thousands dead)
IRAN l984 (hundreds of thousands dead)
LIBYA l986
BOLIVIA 1986
IRAN l987-88
LIBYA 1989
VIRGIN ISLANDS 1989
PHILIPPINES 1989
PANAMA 1989
LIBERIA 1990
SAUDI ARABIA 1990-91
IRAQ 1990-91
KUWAIT 1991
IRAQ 1991-2003 (almost two million dead)
SOMALIA 1992-94
YUGOSLAVIA 1992-94
BOSNIA 1993
HAITI 1994
ZAIRE (CONGO) 1996-97
LIBERIA 1997
ALBANIA 1997
SUDAN 1998
AFGHANISTAN 1998
IRAQ 1998
YUGOSLAVIA 1999
YEMEN 2000
MACEDONIA 2001
AFGHANISTAN 2001
YEMEN 2002
PHILIPPINES 2002
COLOMBIA 2003
IRAQ 2003-11 (1.5+ million dead)
LIBERIA 2003
HAITI 2004-05
PAKISTAN 2005
SOMALIA 2006
SYRIA 2008
YEMEN 2009
LIBYA 2011
IRAQ 2014
VENEZUELA 2015 - present
SYRIA 2014-2017 (hundreds of thousands dead)

Google plays big brother role...

Google+social media=CIA/NSA tools

Censorship has increasingly become one of the biggest problems of our time. And we know (((who))) is behind it.

The reason why google is blocked in china is because it serves imperialism.

Google feeds Left population of the America's and Left Style of Europe. Not far left wack.

Welcome to 1984: Big Brother Google now watching your every political move
Robert Bridge
RT : 9 Sep, 2017

Google has taken the unprecedented step of burying material, mostly from websites on the political right, that it has deemed to be inappropriate. The problem, however, is that the world's largest search engine is a left-leaning company with an ax to grind.

Let's face it, deep down in our heart of hearts we knew the honeymoon wouldn't last forever. Our willingness to place eternal faith in an earth-straddling company that oversees the largest collection of information ever assembled was doomed to end in a bitter divorce from the start. After all, each corporation, just like humans, has their own political proclivities, and Google is certainly no exception. But we aren't talking about your average car company here.

The first sign Google would eventually become more of a political liability than a public utility was revealed in 2005 when CEO Eric Schmidt (who is now executive chairman of Alphabet, Inc, Google's parent company) sat down with interviewer Charlie Rose, who asked Schmidt to explain "where the future of search is going."

Schmidt's response should have triggered alarm bells across the free world.

"Well, when you use Google, do you get more than one answer," Schmidt asked rhetorically, before answering deceptively. "Of course you do. Well, that's a bug. We have more bugs per second in the world. We should be able to give you the right answer just once... and we should never be wrong."

Really?

Think about that for a moment. Schmidt believes, counter-intuitively, that getting multiple possible choices for any one Google query is not the desirable prospect it should be (aren't consumers always in search of more variety?), but rather a "bug" that should be duly squashed underfoot. Silly mortal, you should not expect more than one answer for every question because the almighty Google, our modern-day Oz, "should never be wrong!" This is the epitome of corporate hubris. And it doesn't require much imagination to see that such a master plan will only lead to a colossal whitewashing of the historic record.

For example, if a Google user performs a search request for - oh, I don't know - 'what caused the Iraq War 2003,' he or she would be given, according to Schmidt's algorithmic wet dream, exactly one canned answer. Any guesses on what that answer would be? I think it's safe to say the only acceptable answer would be the state-sanctioned conspiracy theory that Saddam Hussein was harboring weapons of mass destruction, an oft-repeated claim we now know to be patently false. The list of other such complicated events that also demand more than one answer - from the Kennedy assassination to the Gulf of Tonkin incident - could be continued for many pages.

Schmidt's grandiose vision, where there is just "one answer to every question," sounds like a chapter borrowed from Orwell's dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, where omnipresent Big Brother had an ironclad grip on history, news, information, everything. In such a intensely controlled, nightmarish world, individuals - as well as entire historical events - can be 'disappeared' down the memory hole without a trace. Though we've not quite reached that bad land yet, we're plodding along in that direction.

That much became disturbingly clear ever since Donald Trump routed Hillary Clinton for the presidency. This surprise event became the bugle call for Google to wage war on 'fake news' outlets, predominantly on the political right.

'Like being gay in the 1950s'

Just before Americans headed to the polls in last year's presidential election, WikiLeaks delivered a well-timed steaming dump, revealing that Eric Schmidt had been working with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) as early as April 2014. This news came courtesy of a leaked email from John Podesta, former chairman of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, who wrote: "I met with Eric Schmidt tonight. As David reported, he's ready to fund, advise recruit talent, etc. He was more deferential on structure than I expected. Wasn't pushing to run through one of his existing firms. Clearly wants to be head outside advisor, but didn't seem like he wanted to push others out. Clearly wants to get going..."

The implications of the CEO of the world's most powerful company playing favorites in a presidential race are obvious, and make the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s resemble a rigged game of bingo at the local senior citizens center by comparison. Yet the dumbed-down world of American politics, which only seems to get excited when Republicans goof up, continued to turn on its wobbly axis as if nothing untold had occurred.

Before continuing our trip down memory lane, let's fast forward a moment for a reality check. Google's romance with the US political left is not a matter of conjecture. In fact, it has just become the subject of a released internal memo penned by one James Damore, a former Google engineer. In the 10-point memo, Damore discussed at length the extreme liberal atmosphere that pervades Google, saying that being a conservative in the Silicon Valley sweat shop was like "being gay in the 1950s."

"We have... this monolithic culture where anyone with a dissenting view can’t even express themselves. Really, it’s like being gay in the 1950s. These conservatives have to stay in the closet and have to mask who they really are. And that’s a huge problem because there’s open discrimination against anyone who comes out of the closet as a conservative."

Beyond the quirky, laid back image of a Google campus, where 'Googlers' enjoy free food and foot massages, lies a "monolithic culture where anyone with a dissenting view can’t even express themselves,"says Damore, who was very cynically fired from Google for daring to express a personal opinion. That is strange.

Although Google loudly trumpets its multicultural diversity in terms of its hiring policy, it clearly has a problem dealing with a diversity of opinion. That attitude does not seem to bode well for a search engine company that must remain impartial on all matters - political or otherwise.

Back to the 2016 campaign. Even CNN at the time was admitting that Google was Donald Trump's "biggest enemy."

Indeed, not only was Schmidt apparently moonlighting for the DNC, his leftist company was actively shutting down information on the Republican front runner. At one point when Google users typed in a query for 'presidential candidates,' they got thousands of results for Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Missing in action from the search results, however, was, yes, Donald Trump.

When NBC4 reached out to Google about the issue, a spokesperson said a "technical bug" was what caused Trump to disappear into the internet ether. Now, where have we heard the word "bug" before? It is worth wondering if this is what Eric Schmidt had in mind when he expressed his vision of a "one answer" Google search future?

In any case, this brings to the surface another disturbing question that is directly linked to the 'fake news' accusations, which in turn is fueling Google's crackdown on the free flow of news from the political right today.

In the run up to the 2016 presidential election, poll after poll predicted a Clinton landslide victory. Of course, nothing of the sort materialized, as even traditional Democratic strongholds, like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan pulled the lever for Trump. As the Economist reported: "On the eve of America’s presidential election, national surveys gave Hillary Clinton a lead of around four percentage points, which betting markets and statistical models translated into a probability of victory ranging from 70 percent to 99 percent."

The fact that Trump - in direct contradiction to what the polls had been long predicting - ended up winning by such a huge margin, there is a temptation to say the polls themselves were 'fake news,' designed to convince the US voter that a Clinton landslide victory was forthcoming. This could have been a ploy by the pollsters, many of whom are affiliated with left-leaning news corporations, by the way, for keeping opposition voters at home in the belief their vote wouldn't matter. In fact, statisticians were warning of a "systemic mainstream misinformation" in poll data favoring Clinton in the days and weeks before Election day. Yet the Leftist brigade, in cahoots with the Googlers, were busy nurturing their own fervent conspiracy theory that 'fake news' - with some help from the Russians, of course - was the reason for Hillary Clinton's devastating defeat.

Who will guard us against the Google guardians?

Just one month after Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States, purportedly on the back of 'fake news,' Google quietly launched Project Owl, the goal of which was to devise a method to "demote misleading, false and offensive articles online," according to a Bloomberg report. The majority of the crackdown will be carried out by machines. Now here is where we enter the rat's nest. After all, what one news organization, or alternative news site, might consider legitimate news and information, another news group, possibly from the mainstream media, would dismiss as a conspiracy theory. And vice versa.

In other words, what we have here is a battle for the misty mountain top of information, and Google appears to be paving the way for its preferred candidate, which is naturally the mainstream media. In other words, Google has a dog in this fight, but it shouldn't. Here is how they have succeeded in pushing for their crackdown on news and information.

The mainstream media almost immediately began peddling the fake news story as to why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump. In fact, it even started before Clinton lost the election after Trump jokingly told a rally: “I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing... I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” The Democrats, of course, found no humor in the remark. Indeed, they began pushing the fake news story, with help from the likes of Amazon-owned Washington Post, that it was Russians who hacked the DNC email system and passed along the information to WikiLeaks, who then dumped it at the most inopportune time for the Democrats.

With this masterly sleight of hand, did you notice what happened? We are no longer talking about the whereabouts of Clinton's estimated 33,000 deleted emails, nor are we discussing how the DNC worked behind the scenes to derail Bernie Sanders' chances at being a presidential candidate. Far worse, we are not considering the tragic fate of a young man named Seth Rich, the now-deceased DNC staffer who was gunned down in Washington, DC on July 10, 2016. Some news sites say Rich was preparing to testify against the DNC for "voter fraud," while others say that was contrived nonsense.

According to the mainstream media, in this case, Newsweek, only batshit crazy far-right conspiracy sites could ever believe Seth Rich leaked the Clinton emails.

"In the months since his murder, Rich has become an obsession of the far right, an unwilling martyr to a discredited cause," Newsweek commented. "On social media sites like Reddit and news outlets like World Net Daily, it is all but an article of faith that Rich, who worked for the Democratic National Committee, was the source who gave DNC emails to WikiLeaks, for which he was slain, presumably, by Clinton operatives. If that were to be true—and it very clearly isn’t—the faithful believe it would invalidate any accusations that Donald J. Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia in tilting the election toward him."

Blame Russia

The reality is, we'll probably never know what happened to Mr. Rich, but what we do know is that Russia has become the convenient fall guy for Clinton's emails getting hacked and dumped in the public arena. We also know Google is taking advantage of this conspiracy theory (to this day not a thread of proof has been offered to prove Russia had anything to do with the release of the emails) to severely hinder the work of news sites - most of which sit on the right of the political spectrum.

Last November, just two weeks after Trump's victory, Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google, addressed the question of 'fake news' in a BBC interview, and whether it could have swayed the vote in Trump's favor.

"You know, I think fake news as a whole could be an issue [in elections]. From our perspective, there should just be no situation where fake news gets distributed, so we are all for doing better here. So, I don't think we should debate it as much as work hard to make sure we drive news to its more trusted sources, have more fact checking and make our algorithms work better, absolutely," he said.

Did you catch that? Following the tiresome rigmarole, the Google CEO said he doesn't think "we should debate it as much as we work hard to make sure we drive news to its more trusted sources..."

That is a truly incredible comment, buried at the sea floor of the BBC article. How can the head of the largest search engine believe a democracy needn't debate how Google determines what information, and by whom, is allowed into the public realm, thus literally shaping our entire worldview? To ask the question is to answer it...

"Just in the last two days we announced we will remove advertising from anything we identify as fake news," Pichai said.

And how will Google decide who the Internet baddies are? It will rely on "more than 15 additional expert NGOs and institutions through our Trusted Flagger program, including the Anti-Defamation League, the No Hate Speech Movement, and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue," to determine what should be flagged and what should not.

Feeling better yet? This brings to mind the quaint Latin phrase, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guards themselves? especially since these groups also have their own heavy political axes to grind.

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Pichai and his increasingly Orwellian company already stand accused of censorship, following the outrageous decision to bar former Congressman Ron Paul and his online news program, Liberty Report, from receiving advertising revenue for a number of videos which Paul recently posted.

Dr. Ron Paul would never be confused as a dangerous, far-right loony. Paul is a 12-term ex-congressman and three-time presidential candidate. However, he is popular among his supporters for views that often contradict those of Washington’s political establishment, especially on issues of war and peace. Now if squeaky clean Ron Paul can't get a fair hearing before the Google/YouTube tribunal, what are chances for average commentators?

“We have no violence, no foul language, no political extremism, no hate or intolerance,” Daniel McAdams, co-producer of the Ron Paul Liberty Report, told RT America. “Our program is simply a news analysis discussion from a libertarian and antiwar perspective.”

McAdams added that the YouTube demonetization “creates enormous financial burdens for the program.”

Many other commentators have also been affected by the advert ban, including left-wing online blogger Tim Black and right-wing commentator Paul Joseph Watson. Their videos have registered millions of views.

“Demonetization is a deliberate effort to stamp out independent political commentary – from the left or the right,” Black told the Boston Globe’s Hiawatha Bray. “It’s not about specific videos... It’s about pushing out the diversity of thought and uplifting major news networks such as CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC.”

In light of this inquisition against free speech and free thought, it is no surprise that more voices are calling for Google, and other massive online media, like Facebook and Amazon, to become nationalized for the public good.

"If we don’t take over today’s platform monopolies, we risk letting them own and control the basic infrastructure of 21st-century society,"  wrote Nick Srnicek, a lecturer in the digital economy at King’s College London.

It's time for Google to take a stroll beyond its isolated Silicon Valley campus and realize there is a whole world of varying political opinion out there that demands a voice. Otherwise, it may find itself on the wrong side of history and time, a notoriously uninviting place known as 1984.



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Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is author of the book, 'Midnight in the American Empire,' released in 2013. robertvbridge@yahoo.com

Innovation: waterless cleaning technology!

The Sydney start-up making a serious splash with its waterless cleaning technology.

THIS Sydney start-up is cashing in with its genius waterless washing technology — and in doing so is changing the way we clean our cars.
Nick Whigham
news.com.au
September 20, 2017

 

Farid Mirmohseni and Reza Keshavarzi

A PAIR of Sydney friends and PhD dropouts are cashing in with their burgeoning start-up idea, and in the process are helping to revolutionise the way we wash our cars.

Chemical engineer Farid Mirmohseni, 24, and mechanical engineer Reza Keshavarzi, 29, co-founded the car-washing platform WipeHero which allows users to request an on-the-spot car wash — all without using any water or power.

They like to think of it as an environmentally-friendly “Uber for car cleaning”.

Long gone are the days of indiscriminately hosing down the car in the driveway but washing your car can still use anywhere between 100 to 200 litres of water, equating to billions of litres of water which would be needed to wash Australia’s 17 million registered cars.

On top of that, the process of washing your car at home can lead to harmful chemicals making their way into our storm drains, and damage groundwater and lawns.

Understanding the need to find a better and more sustainable way for proud car owners to keep their vehicle clean, Mr Mirmohseni, with a little help from his dad who is also a chemical professor, spent two years in the research and development phase to create the company’s cleaning technology.

The result it their very own waterless, scratch-free polymer technology that eliminates grime and dirt and leaves a shine.

“If you search waterless products, there’s thousands on the market. But we differentiate ourselves by our product being biodegradable and it’s actually safe for our washers to use it,” Mr Mirmohseni told news.com.au.

“It’s good for the car, it’s good for the environment and also good for the person applying it,” he said, making their product rather unique.

The spray-on solution which the business is built on works by effectively creating a bubble around the dirt and grime on the car’s surface, Mr Mirmohseni said, allowing it to be easily lifted off.

“Once you spray onto any surface ... it emulsifies the dirt and the grime. What that means is it basically forms a bubble around all the dirt and the grime and detaches it from the car’s surface,” he said. “And that’s when we pick it up using a special technique with a micro fibre cloth.

“And because of this detachment, there’s actually no chance of the car getting scratched,” he said.

The video below shows just how effective the WipeHero spray-on solution is.

Starting in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs at the beginning of 2016, the pair launched the business services component of their start-up and have since won contracts with a range of businesses including popular car-sharing platform GoGet as well as a few Sydney Ferrari and Maserati dealerships.

The company has grown to employ about 30 people and earlier in the year received a $100,000 grant from the NSW government as part of a program which aims to support potential high-growth, job-creating businesses.

“This is a great example of how two young Sydney engineers combined their skills and entrepreneurial talent to create jobs and stimulate the NSW economy,” NSW Deputy Premier and Minister for Small Business, John Barilaro said when awarding the grant money.

“It’s this type of fast-growing, innovative company that the NSW Government wants to invest in, to help start-ups like WipeHero grow and create more new jobs.”

Since then they’ve gone from strength to strength and are currently partnering with a major car company in confidential trial to hopefully be contracted to wash their huge fleet of cars.

Currently, the start-up generates over a million dollars in revenue per year from its business partnerships, according to its twenty-year-old founders.

In the last few months, the company has launched its individual consumer platform allowing users to download an app and request a wash with the click of a button. Just like Uber, you simply plug in the location of your car and a trained washer will be dispatched to come and clean it at your home, the office or just on the side of the road.

“At the beginning it was a logistical problem for us, we were getting bookings from Manly to Parramatta,” Mr Mirmohseni said. “That’s why we focused on businesses which have a fleet of a few hundred cars in a location.”

But as the business grew, it started offering individual washes to customers in areas nearby its major business partners.

WipeHero now offers its consumer platform to more than 60 suburbs in inner Sydney and Melbourne and hires a small army of washers in those cities.

An individual wash starts at $29 for the outside only and goes up to $69 for the most comprehensive inside and outside clean.

With the introduction of the app, the company had over 2900 new customers last month, Mr Mirmohseni said.

As the popularity of service continues to grow, the team behind WipeHero seem equally excited about the fact they’re able to spread the message about what they view as the massive amount of water and electricity waste that goes into washing cars. But not if they can help it.