Stalin and Snopes: Two peas in a pod
There is a widely circulated quote from Stalin that Snopes claims is “probably false” although they have no way of proving this. They can cast doubt but they cannot disprove. Here is the quote: “America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these there areas, America will collapse from within.” One very credible source of this quote is the Canada Free Press in an article from January 2010 titled “Joseph Stalin: Memoirs of a Leftist Madman” by Kelly O’Connell. There are many other credible sources for this quote for anyone who seeks them.
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CCRKBA calls for Oregon judge to resign after anti-gun remarks
Friday, September 30th, 2016 BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today called on Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Kenneth Walker to step down from the bench after launching an anti-gun-rights tirade in court earlier this week in which he stated that firearms “are a scourge of this country and no one should have one as far as I’m concerned.” “Judge Walker is entitled to his opinion,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “but he should not use the bench as a bully pulpit to attack a constitutionally-protected civil right. Just because he had to sentence a criminal to prison for brutally murdering another man in 2014 is no excuse for this kind of rhetoric.” Judge Walker’s comments came as he sentenced Marcell Lee Daniel Jr. to 17 ½ years in prison for the June 30, 2014 slaying of 24-year-old Andrew Coggins, Jr. on a North Portland sidewalk. Gottlieb said Walker’s remarks seemed to blame the gun, not the man who committed the crime. The judge declared that if he could, he would “take all the guns in America, put them on big barges and go dump them in the ocean.” And he did not stop there, according to the Portland Oregonian and a YouTube video. He also said, “There’s no defense to guns. There’s just absolutely no reason to have them. But it is a right of people in this country to own and possess them, and I will not say anything to affect that right.” “But that’s exactly what he did do,” Gottlieb countered. “Judge Walker used his courtroom to campaign against a civil right he is sworn to uphold and defend as an officer of the court. His comments could easily be used by Oregon anti-gunners who are promising to push for a ban on so-called ‘assault weapons’ next year. “Judge Walker is absolutely wrong about firearms,” he stated. “There are many good reasons for honest citizens to have guns, including self-defense against criminals like the man he just sent to prison. Indeed, law-abiding citizens don’t need any reason at all to exercise a civil right. Whether Judge Walker likes it or not, keeping and bearing arms is a right protected by the constitutions of both the State of Oregon and the United States. “At the very least,” Gottlieb concluded, “Judge Walker should apologize for his remarks. If he cannot do that, he should step down. Such an extremist viewpoint is offensive and has no place on the bench.” www.ccrkba.org/ccrkba-calls-on-oregon-judge-to-resign-after-anti-gun-remarks/ The disappearing web: Information decay is eating away our history One of the characteristics of the modern media age — at least for anyone who uses the web and social media a lot — is that we are surrounded by vast clouds of rapidly changing information, whether it’s blog posts or news stories or Twitter and Facebook (s fb) updates. That’s great if you like real-time content, but there is a not-so-hidden flaw — namely, that you can’t step into the same stream twice, as Heraclitus put it. In other words, much of that information may (and probably will) disappear as new information replaces it, and small pieces of history wind up getting lost. According to a recent study, which looked at links shared through Twitter about news events like the Arab Spring revolutions in the Middle East, this could be turning into a substantial problem. The study, which MIT’s Technology Review highlighted in a recent post by the Physics arXiv blog, was done by a pair of researchers in Virginia, Hany SalahEldeen and Michael Nelson. They took a number of recent major news events over the past three years — including the Egyptian revolution, Michael Jackson’s death, the elections and related protests in Iran and the outbreak of the H1N1 virus — and tracked the links that were shared on Twitter about each. Following the links to their ultimate source showed that an alarming number of them had simply vanished. Comply and still die: civil servants verses the rest of humanity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUcadFpOAoc Where is the Christian fashion week? To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEkV1yyUHWU Are Australians dumb enough to fall for this? (VIDEO) Australia Becomes First Country To Begin Microchipping Its Public Australia is to become the first country in the world to microchip its public. NBC new predicted that all Americans would be microchipped by 2017, but it seems Australia may have beaten them to the post. news.com.au reports: It may sound like sci-fi, but hundreds of Australians are turning themselves into super-humans who can unlock doors, turn on lights and log into computers with a wave of the hand. Shanti Korporaal, from Sydney, is at the centre of the phenomenon after having two implants inserted under her skin. SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO Now she can get into work and her car without carrying a card or keys, and says her ultimate goal is to completely do away with her wallet and cards. “You could set up your life so you never have to worry about any password or PINs” she told news.com.au. “It’s the same technology as Paypass, so I’m hoping you’ll be able to pay for things with it. “With Opal you get a unique identification number that could be programmed into the chip. Any door with a swipe card … it could open your computer, photocopier. Loyalty cards for shops are just another thing for your wallet.” The microchips, which are the size of a grain of rice, can act like a business card and transfer contact details to smartphones, and hold complex medical data. Shanti has had some messages from ultra-conservative Christians on Facebook telling her she’s going to hell, but the reaction has mainly been one of intrigue. “My nana wants one,” laughs Shanti. “I’ve had more opposition to my tattoos than I’ve ever had to the chip. My friends are jealous.” When the 27-year-old realised just how coveted the implants were, she set up an Australian distribution service called Chip My Life with her husband, Skeeve Stevens. It costs between $80 and $140 depending on the sophistication of the technology, and (while you can do it at home) they work with doctors who charge $150 to insert the implant. “They do minor surgery, Botox and so on,” says Shanti. “They give you a local, an injection and a quick ultrasound to make sure it’s in place.” The biohacking couple both have RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips in their left hands and NFC (near-field communication) chips in the right. The implant is almost impossible to spot, leaving a mark as small as a freckle. THE PIONEER Shanti is appearing at today’s Sydney launch of cyborg-themed video game Deus Ex Mankind Divided alongside US implantable technology pioneer Amal Graafstra. Amal considers himself a guinea-pig for human augmentation, making headlines in the US last week with a prototype of the world’s first implant-activated smart gun. He became one of the world’s first RFID implantees in 2005, and has since founded an online store to sell the “at home” kits to people who want to “upgrade their body”. He’s written a book, spoken at TEDx and appeared in documentaries. “On a psychological level, this is completely different to a smartphone or a Fitbit, because it goes in you,” he told news.com.au. “Your kidneys are working hard but you’re not thinking about them, it’s not something you have to manage. “It’s given me the ability to communicate with machines. It’s literally integrated into who I am.” He is aware of the ethical and security concerns, but points out that the data is encrypted, and most of your access cards are not secure anyway. This is simply a case of “computing in the body.” Rather than worry about people being forced to be microchipped, he’s now busy advocating for the rights of citizens who use them. He believes the destruction of the chip could in some cases classify as assault (as with a pacemaker) and other dangers might be governments forcibly extracting implants or data from them. “I want to make sure it’s treated as part of the body, like an organ,” he says. One firm in Sweden has allowed employees to choose chips over a work pass, with 400 taking up the offer, but Amal says he more often hears from interested individuals who want to try it out. “At the moment, it’s mainly access — house, computer motorcycle. But in the future there’s the potential to use it for transit, payment. You could get rid of your keys and maybe your wallet.” Other uses might include children tapping to let parents know they are at school safely, refugees checking in at camps or women at shelters. It can share diet, exercise and sleep information with you and your doctor, and the next generation could even release medicine as and when you need it. For Shanti, adding an extra dimension to life is a childhood fantasy come true. “Ever since watching movies like the Terminator, Matrix and Minority Report I wondered if we could actually live like that. I always wondered why we all weren’t living as ‘super-humans’.” |
Mister Camel
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