Stultorum infinitus est numerus

       "...So, as it turns out, Facebook is just another liberal leaning organization with a news platform that is manipulated to show what it deems important to convey to its users..."

We produced 41.8 million tons of ‘e-waste’ last year. That is the same weight as a line of 40-ton trucks stretching from New York to Tokyo.
                                                                      How Long Does It Take for an iPhone to Biodegrade?

                          Google is Collecting Information on Public School Students – Here’s How

                                                               *********************************************

Spiati e mazziati

"Behold homo sapiens lashed on the wheel of the digital social network: held frozen over a computer which is tied by a cord to a wall wherein the fiberglass cable carries the message; staring into the lit screen, the face pale in the unnatural light; or, with head bent in the street, the appearance sullen, running fingers across the blinking object of desire. The creature is secretly harried: Constant updates are necessary, the user must tend the machine whenever and wherever possible – which is all the time and everywhere – and god forbid there is too long a lapse in the slipstream..." Facebook and the Degradation of Personhood

Michael Krieger : I don’t know what it’s going to take to get people to stop using Facebook. I really  don’t.                                                                                                                   

      Gadgets Turning Me Into an Idiot!

<Facebook has always been slightly worse than all the other tech companies with dodgy privacy records, but now, it's in it's own league. Getting off isn't just necessary to protect yourself, it's necessary to protect your friends and family too. With this latest privacy change on January 30th, I'm scared...>

  Get your loved ones off Facebook                                          

Charles Hugh Smith: Why I Don't Want an Apple Watch

 They call this durability? Are you serious crapple?

  The Cost of Paying Attention                      Computers are learning to read emotion, and the business world can’t wait. We Know How You Feel

(The force-feeding of cheap food to the docile and lethargic public...The censorship of free-thought and the consequences which follow voicing our opinion...Religion’s ‘helping’ hand in poverty...How female sexuality is used to divert the attention of a hormone-driven population of men...‘Generation Notification'; the social media crazed population...The innocent casualties of unnecessary war...The cut-throat power money holds over the people...How professional athletes are used as products...How pharmaceuticals are both turning a population into zombies and killing us at a not-so-slow pace...)

***  Disturbing (But Amazing) Pictures Expose The Absurdities Of Modern Culture *Warning: Graphic Images*

Plus The I-Phonekkake (We should seriously ask ourselves if we are controlling technology or technology is controlling us. Sometimes we looks like a piece of flesh engaged to a phone...)

In Praise of Silence
"I have long been a lover of silence and quiet about it. It is this same love that is bound up with my passion for books. The writer Stefan Zweig once defined a book as a “handful of silence that assuages torment and unrest.”
While the world teems about me, drowning out the sounds of stillness with incessant noise, there is a notion of displacement, as though I wasn’t meant for these times of television sets, ipods, car alarms, cell phones, all day-every day music in stores, restaurants, office buildings, malls, and elevators. Why is it, I wondered, that silence is a diminishing natural resource, so alien to our way of life that its very existence seems to threaten the fabric of our culture? Why is it that we love noise, fear silence and evade a stillness that puts us in closer connection with things that give us happiness if we let them?
It is this concept, one I welcome with hushed gratitude, that forms the book  of Noise by George Prochnik In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise
“Something seems to have made us fall in love with noise as a society.
It’s a torrid, choppy affair that we are often in denial about, or tend to laugh off as a bass-heavy, summer night’s fling.”
It is a strange and intoxicating premise: to investigate the obscure root causes of our inability to be quiet. Like a form of narcissism, are we becoming consumed with a self-saturation of our own largely uninteresting cacophony? The author believes that we are, and that as we become noisier, we also lose touch with the many dimensions of silence itself, a silence that research suggests is as therapeutic–as essential–to the human animal as antibiotics or uncontaminated food.
Prochnik details with disturbing elegance the idea that Americans suffer enormously from noise pollution; insomnia, aggression, heart disease, even decreased longevity…the side-effects of enduring other people’s noise. It’s almost as if noise itself is a disease, a pathogen. And because of it, silence has become the most precious—and dwindling—commodity of our modern world, more than money, power, even happiness.
When the author was doing research for the book, he traveled with a police officer who was frequently called upon to intervene in domestic disputes. When the officer arrived, he usually found that the unhappy home was a raging cacophony of radios, TV’s, music all playing simultaneously–layer upon layer of mad noise used to prevent silence from arbitrating between the combatants. The officer tells the writer that in order to restore calm, he would ask the feuding combatants to turn off the appliances. He discovered that the near-homicidal atmosphere dissolved almost at once. They had, the officer explained, been arguing with noise itself rather than with each other.
It doesn’t take a sage to understand that those who have grasped solitude are the special emissaries to the tranquility of silence. Henry David Thoreau for one: “Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment.” -The Errant Æsthete

Stupidity Chapter III

Darren Krett: "The more liquidity the central banks add, the more they disrupt the natural order of the market.
For the last few years it has mostly proved possible to accommodate this; however the way out may not prove so easy; indeed, I ‘am not sure there is any way out at all."

Meanwhile...EntendanceInvestors are increasing their gold and silver bullion purchases.

Apr 24, 2015 15:38:11 GMT -5 Entendance said:

Apr 24, 2015 22:38:11 GMT 2 Entendance said:

Philip Mirowski author of Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown, explains the intellectual history of Neo-liberalism, what Neo-liberals believe, making capitalists think differently, the role of think tanks in Neo-liberalism, the mythology of market supremacy.

                                                                                                         

                                                                        

 

<The Neo-Liberal general action pattern:
1. Create a fog of confusion about a social policy issue, its sources, and its nature.
2. Propose 'new markets' to fix the problems created by gaps or flaws in existing markets which are the language by which to define the public policy issue.
3. Build the solution as a platform to encourage phony 'entrepreneurs' to come in and expand and embed the market solution, perspective and terminology into the social structure. Provide little to no regulatory oversight so that monopolies and predatory pricing policies protected by monopoly enrich a powerfully dominant few.
The Obama healthcare 'market' is one such example, and it is no accident that it was created by the neoliberal Heritage Foundation, before Obama made it his own. President Obama merely being expedient in choosing such a solution? I do not think so. I believe he is and always has been a creature of, by, and for the system and the status quo of the elite. He aspires to be rich and powerful, and to serve he recreates himself as a brand.
A similar approach to the problem of stagnant economic growth and wages is to create even more new markets like the trade deals such as TPP.

People, plants, animals, land, happiness, work, the environment are all merely commodities to be supremely dispensed with by the gods of the markets, without interference. Their gods price everything, but inherently value nothing, including life, love, liberty, and peace.
Everything is but a transaction for the moment, without serious regard for longer term consequences or damage. Their god is power, and their religion is greed.
But all the time, and this is most important, the markets are rigged by insiders of the inner temple, and are very much a part of the 'grift.' For these are no true markets of purely rational equals, but mechanisms for transferring and accumulating wealth and power to a few.

One of the greatest propaganda triumphs of our age is to have identified neoliberalism with 'freedom' by portraying any generally beneficial public function as a source of all evil, all difficulties because they impede the policy making action of the omniscient market, which to the people is as a god. Instead, it is a monstrous creation, an affront to all that is human, all that is just, all that is good, that brings with it only the utmost desolation. The madness serves only itself.
Like most old wickedness and folly brought forth as something new, there is nothing 'new' about Neoliberalism. It is as old as Babylon, and evil as hell.

We think that these things take place in other times, in histories and fables, and in far off lands. We do not see them unfolding here, playing out amongst us, in our own time and day. But like all who have gone before and will come after, we too have been called to decide, not only in our words, but in our actions.
Do you not know, that to whom you yield yourselves as servants to obey, his servants you become, whether of a corruption unto death, or of a righteousness unto life?> 

 h/t Jesse Le Café Américain

                                                         

                                           March 12, 2012  According to Dunning-Kruger, no matter how much information is provided, the unsophisticated would 1) be incapable of recognizing the wisdom of such a plan; 2) assume they know better; and 3) have no idea of the extent of their inadequacy...

                                       ***   STUPID PEOPLE ARE TOO STUPID TO KNOW HOW STUPID THEY ARE

   

  “...Debt is better than money is becoming the current belief in the world. In fact, with negative interest rates it can be said the world now values debt greater than money. This cannot be so because of the simple fact that actual paper notes can be held out of the system and not “discounted”. How can owning debt today which promises less currency in the future be worth more than more currency today? The fear of loss is so great that currency itself is being discounted versus debt. If you think this through, it says “everything is worth nothing” because the currency itself is bad and losing confidence. Maybe this is why we are seeing a push from all around the world to go “cashless” and fully digitize?..." Debt is BETTER than cash?

Stupidity Chapter IV

May 29, 2015 12:26:49 GMT -5 Entendance said:

"Do you think Satan is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the Truth? He scoffs at morals, and at every institution which reveres them. He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He shows you how to rise and become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his." -John Henry Newman

                                                                                                         

                                                                  ***Why do people defend unjust, inept, and corrupt systems?

Ignorance

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
― Aldous Huxley, Complete Essays 2, 1926-29

“Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.”
― Walter Cronkite
“Confidence is ignorance. If you’re feeling cocky, it’s because there’s something you don’t know.”
― Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl

“He who stands for nothing will fall for anything.”
― Alexander Hamilton

“There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”
― Harlan Ellison

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
― Stephen Hawking

“If ignorance is bliss, why aren’t more people happy?”
― Thomas Jefferson

“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Fear always springs from ignorance.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

                                                             Fred & EntendanceInvestors Beach Bijoutier, Outer Islands Seychelles

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To my American Friends:

Happy Independence Day!
Can you declare your independence from single-use plastic today?  This week? This month? The US generated 32 million tons of plastic waste in 2011 according to the EPA (only 8% was recycled). This waste has devastating effects on wildlife. Eliminating plastic use is a challenge, and nobody is perfect, but any reduction in waste makes a difference. Here are some ideas to survive the 4th of July (and beyond) without single- use plastic for the well-being of Wildlife 

*** "...At one point, I am overwhelmed by an unbridled desire to test whether Greek humor is still there, still alive.
We enter a psychiatric clinic, and I request to speak to a doctor on duty.
When he arrives, I introduce myself as an internationalist philosopher and investigative journalist. Doctor shakes my hand, enthusiastically.
“Sir”, I begin. “I have unconfirmed but very reliable information that at least 5 cabinet ministers of the Greek government had been admitted to your clinic after what the government dared to do, recently…”
The doctor is staring at me for several seconds, in total bewilderment.
Then his face brightens. He produces a roaring laughter. He hugs me.
“Not yet… But we hope they will bring them here, soon”, he chuckles.
“Greece will be fine”, I say to myself."

 ANDRE VLTCHEK                                                                                                                                                               

                                                                                                                                                                                     I want to talk about where you live...
                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
                       Germany made €100bn profit on Greek crisis – study

"...Il Nazismo si è riciclato, ha capito che le camere a gas sono strumenti medievali, e ha imbracciato la finanza. Continuo a sostenere che la Germania va commissariata dall’Onu, il suo governo va smembrato, e i tedeschi vanno condannati da tribunali internazionali a lavorare per un secolo per riparare i danni fatti in 3 guerre: la I Guerra Mondiale, la II Guerra, e questa finale finanziaria." -Paolo Barnard

Aug 4, 2015 6:02:18 GMT -5 Entendance said:

                         

Quidquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi -Quintus Horatius Flaccus
(For any madness of their kings, it is the Greeks who take the beating.-Horace)
Exposing hypocrisy

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 ***1776 – 2014 The Evolution of America’s Energy Supply                   Saudi Arabia ‘could cut billions’ from budget amid plunging oil prices – report

May 24, 2015 5:14:35 GMT -5 Entendance said:

                                                     

Are you living the dream? Or walking zombie-like through the nightmare of modern consumerism? Laura Sevier explored the sanity of downshifting

"What does quality of life mean to you? Is it the stuff you buy, keeping up with the Joneses? Or is fresh, clean air, the company you keep, and a less stressful living environment more important?
For Jo Hampson, a former Thames Valley Police Chief Superintendent, it meant dropping 85 per cent of her salary, giving up her job and buying a small business smoking food and making chocolates in Cumbria. After a few years’ service in the police force she had been catapulted to the top of her profession: ‘It was a fab job and very well paid – I had a huge budget and 500 staff from five police stations.’ The problem was, it was taking over her life.
She’d leave the house at 7am and get back after 9pm. There was no time for friends or family or to spend the money she was earning. Before taking a holiday she would have to work until midnight for days ahead, in order to prepare, and when she got back it took three weeks to clear her in-tray. ‘I swore I’d never have another holiday again,’ says Jo. ‘Life is for living and I was not really living it.’
Now her quality of life in Cumbria is, she says, ‘Fantastic. I’m less stressed; I live in the most amazing converted barn, high on the Fells. Every day I walk across the fields, whatever the weather, and think how lucky I am.’ After three years running the Smokehouse and increasing its turnover by 300 per cent, she and her partner sold the business and set up Stepping Off, a consultancy that helps other people to downshift.

Portrait of a downshifter

Downshifting in its most extreme form is often associated with people who reject the rat race entirely and head for the country, perhaps to tend pigs and chickens and aim for greater self sufficiency. But the term covers a far wider spectrum. Put simply, it’s about living more simply, slowing down; about making life less frantic and fraught. It values time over money and possessions – which usually means freely trading part of your income for more time and reducing the amount of stuff you buy. It’s about taking control of your life and seeking more of a work/life balance. Which means different things to different people.
Most people who go on Jo’s Stepping Off course – everyone from high-flying salesmen and people facing redundancy to local women wanting to start up their own businesses – want to do something for themselves, to stop commuting and working for other people. Often she meets people who are worn down by cut-throat, competitive, corporate culture, who are fed up with having to compromise their values. But the biggest motivating factor is time. ‘Time is the Holy Grail,’ says Jo. ‘It’s what everybody wants. Time for leisure, for themselves, to enjoy life more. Few people I come across take all their holiday time. And they want to be more free with their time. When I was running the Smokehouse I was working seven days a week, but as it was my business I could take the afternoon off to go fishing and then work later one evening.’
Far from finding an easy way out, downshifters often have to become more entrepreneurial than ever before. According to Tracey Smith, who founded National Downshifting Week in 2005, ‘The success stories I hear about are people who have researched how to earn a living beforehand. I know of many people who have moved to France and then, when they’ve got there, had a crisis because their funds became depleted – so they have to move back.’
Which is why she positively discourages people from moving unless they have really thought it out. ‘Anyone can downshift, but my line is: dip your toes into simple living; try it gently within your own four walls first.’
Buying less stuff is central to the ethos – but, rather than feeling deprived, ‘You’ve got to embrace living with less. Instead of thinking “I can’t afford it” and being miserable, you just think “I don’t need it”,’ says Tracey. ‘There are different ways of gaining – you can exchange, borrow or swap. I use things to the end. All our stuff is so old, but it all works. It’s not the latest colours but I’ve got more money in my pocket.’

Slow down and green up

It’s this ‘living with less’, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle ethos that makes downshifting a kindred spirit of the green movement – a central demand of environmentalism being that we should consume less. Likewise its ‘slow down a gear’ element allies it with the Slow Movement. Tracey Smith’s motto for National Downshifting Week is ‘Slow Down and Green Up’. She believes that the two are inextricably linked.
‘Slowing down – people don’t realise how green it is. By slowing down a gear you’re racing around less, you live with less and are more resourceful.’ The Downshifting Week Manifesto includes easy, simple actions, such as ‘Reclaim an hour of time this week’, and ‘Buy local’. So downshifting can be gradual, action by action, gear by gear, rather than a dramatic change from fifth (fast lane treadmill) to first gear (smallholding with chickens) all at once. ‘You just have to find your comfort level – which may be just one or two gears slower,’ she says.
One person who was greatly inspired by Tracey’s ideas and can testify to this gradual shift is Natalie Yeates, who calls herself a ‘bog-standard, Jo Bloggs downshifter’.
Fifteen years ago, Natalie was living in the middle of Guildford. ‘I would open the door in the morning and all I could smell was car fumes,’ she recalls. She had a ‘mad office job plus a mortgage’, but when she and her husband split up, she and her children moved to Wiltshire, where she now lives in a small social housing estate in the countryside.
‘It’s very lovely and agricultural. We are living our dream. Here the only thing you might wake up to is the sound of birds or tractors.’ She met Tracey a few years ago and has been making one small change at a time ever since, writing a blog to chart her downshifting progress and give advice (see www.greeningup.blogspot.com ).

Natalie now works from home making eco wedding stationary – which means she has more time for her children (as I speak to her she’s cooking them a hearty organic meal). ‘We eat less meat now, but better meat, and we buy from the village shop where I volunteer one day a week.’ To get there she only has to walk through a field and down a little lane. ‘There’s more community spirit here. The neighbours are happy to help – and everybody says hello!’
So downshifting can make you happier, improve your quality of life, get you more involved in your community and help the environment. And this happiness – gasp! – has nothing to do with spending lots of money.

To hell with this

As a result, in a mass consumerist society the downshifting value system is highly subversive. It rejects the idea that to be happy you need to acquire, accumulate and desire products, be they anti-ageing creams, ‘must have’ handbags or a second home abroad. So much in our society seems geared towards getting us to do more, cram more into our already cramped and busy lives, and to buy more – in spite of credit card debt trebling between 1996 and 2003. And often, this means buying things we don’t really need.
For example, research by Churchill Home Insurance showed that 86 per cent of women have gone out and bought clothes that have remained on the hanger ever since. At an average of 14 items each, this amounts to £305 worth of clothes per year and a whopping £12,810 worth of unworn clothes over the average working life.
So downshifting, with its ‘consume less’ ethos, is a rebellion against the ‘norm’ that we should always want more – and thus have to earn more, work longer hours, keep climbing the ladder (or remain stuck on the treadmill), regardless of the impact it may have on our relationships and health. It’s an attitude that says: ‘To hell with this! I don’t need it any more.’
In this way, downshifting is an antidote to the ‘affluenza’ that afflicts our society, a concept described as ‘a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more’. It’s a concept explored in detail in the 2001 anti-consumerist book Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, written by John de Graaf, environmental scientist David Wann and economist Thomas H Naylor (Berrett-Koehler, £10.99).
Victor Lebow, a prominent American retailing analyst of the postwar era, summed up the credo of mass consumption thus: ‘We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, discarded at an ever-increasing rate.’ In a world of dwindling resources, climate change and increasing population, this is madness. Cultural historian Thomas Berry even considers the dynamism of our consumer society (i.e. of unlimited economic growth) ‘the supreme pathology of all history.’

A rational response

But downshifting is even more than a rebellion against the frantic consumerist lifestyle. It is a rational and constructive way to regain control of your life, in a positive way.
Downshifters are aware that there’s more to life than being trapped in the frenzy of consumer culture. And by going against this, people who voluntarily live simpler lives – as opposed to those living in poverty who have no choice – are modern heroes. Because they consume less, are less wasteful and tend to be more sensitive to the wider environment, their way of living could be a signpost to the future. After all, if everyone in the world lived in the way most people do in the UK, we would need three planets to sustain us.
One reason why downshifting is not widely seen as a form of modern heroism is the way in which it’s depicted in the popular media, which exists to sell us stuff, and lives or dies by the amount of advertising it carries. For this reason, downshifting is usually presented as just another lifestyle choice, with plenty of things you can purchase to make it happen. Either it’s ‘10 things you can buy to downshift your life’ – when buying is clearly not the answer – or a romanticised ‘Buy your dream rural property in France’; or it’s portrayed as a rather off-putting ‘It’s not easy being green’.
Yet, with increasing numbers of people downshifting, it’s a movement to be taken seriously. Far from being a minority interest, downshifting is happening all around us. In 2002, according to market research analysts Datamonitor, there were an estimated 12 million downshifters across Europe.
Research published in 2003 by the Australia Institute suggests that in the UK, 20 to 35 per cent of adults between the ages of 30 and 59 have downshifted, the average income having fallen by 40 per cent. And they’re not all wealthy or middle-aged, but spread right across all age groups and social strata.

Happening all around

In the USA, where it’s also known as ‘voluntary simplicity’ or ‘simple living’, downshifting was already well established by the time it filtered into Europe in the mid-1990s. Now between one in 20 and one in four Americans are believed to have opted for simpler, more balanced lifestyles, though the exact scale remains unclear.
More recently, it’s caught on in Australia. The survey by the Australia Institute found that nearly a quarter of 30- to 59-year-olds there were downshifting too and, again, that the trend cut across income groups, and was not confined to highly-paid professionals and business people.
Whether driven by work overload, redundancy, illness or by a conscious decision to adopt a more eco-friendly lifestyle, the seeds of a new movement are spreading on a mass scale – witness the growth of farmers’ markets, local brands, slow food and real ale.
‘Green consciousness’ has never been higher. A recent Mintel report shows that one in four people are ‘keen to be green’ and very conscious of and conscientious about green issues. Almost six in 10 adults are willing to make changes if they can be sure it will make a real difference, that companies are doing their bit, that local authorities are dealing with issues effectively and that other countries are taking the issues seriously.
On a community level, witness the evolving Transition Towns network – a community-led initiative aimed at reducing energy and resource use. Approximately 14 towns and cities are now signed up to the initiative.

Our evolution

Downshifting still has a long way to go before it’s truly part of the mainstream, but there are those who believe that if we are to survive and thrive as a species, it could even be part of our evolution — that it is part of our shift from Homo sapiens to ‘Homo sustainabilitus’. An article in the AXIS Performance Advisors newsletter in 2006 points out: ‘We know from Charles Darwin and the scientists who followed him that environmental pressures can precipitate an evolutionary shift. Right now we have a doozie of an environmental pressure: climate change… If we are to survive, we must evolve culturally.’
So downshifting can be seen as evidence that human culture is evolving in a sustainable direction. Downshifters are people who are quietly redefining ‘sucess’ on their own terms, and who, realising that ‘enough is enough’, have rethought things from scratch. They are now carving out a simpler way of living that treads more lightly on an increasingly fragile earth." -Laura Sevier, March 2008

May 9, 2015 16:15:06 GMT -5 Fred said:

Here is another interesting video to view and think about: 21st Century Enlightenment

Another one is: Re-iImagining Work

Stupidity Chapter VII

                                        "Avoiding stupidity is often easier than seeking brilliance..."A Wonderfully Simple Heuristic to Recognize Charlatans

                      What is it about this tiny, sun-drenched island off the coast of Naples that has made it so irresistible for so long?*** The Lure of Capri

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                                              NEW: REAL-TIME TRADER'S FEED AT Investing & Trading *Inquiring minds only!

INTO THE MIND OF A PSYCHOPATH

Into the Mind of a Psychopath Chapter I

                                                                                                   πάθει μάθος

Angela Merkel Diagnosed by Psychoanalyst as ‘Narcissistic’, Verging on ‘Mental Breakdown’

Joachim Hagopian: “Masters of Manipulation” Psychopaths Rule The World

Psychopaths dominate the halls of power in both the United States and throughout the world. The current economic, political, military and legal system breeds psychopaths, rewarding psychopathic behavior and punishing those with conscience and integrity. Psychopaths will naturally be drawn to and converge at the apex of the power pyramid as much from their own drive for ambitious power as the hierarchical system that both requires and reinforces those who can comfortably operate without conscience, guilt or any genuine level of empathy toward others.
Psychopaths are in love with power and risk taking, masters of manipulation, self-serving opportunism and self-aggrandizement, and hold doctorates in deceit and deception. Psychopaths are super intelligent charmers who are highly skilled at playing others in order to get what they want. They are keenly perceptive at reading people, understanding their motives and values, brilliant at learning their weaknesses and blind spots, and highly effective at inducing both sympathy and guilt in others.

Instinctively knowing what others want to hear, psychopaths are gifted at winning over others, making them feel special and wanted. They are adept at making positive and lasting first impressions and initially demonstrating that they appear to be caring and considerate, but only on the most superficial, disingenuous level. Their innately keen intelligence, social charisma and charm, extroverted energies, over-the-top confidence are all weapons they utilize in their powerful arsenal to win over, defeat and control others, especially to win over those imbued with power and position that they yearn for themselves.
Psychopaths have an uncanny ability to pick brains, soliciting information, knowledge, creative ideas and even secrets from others, yet opportunistically utilize them to their own advantage as living proof that information is power, parading them as their own ideas and knowledge, and craftily taking and receiving undeserving credit and accolades from bosses and those in power. They are gifted actors, able to take on chameleon-like colors according to their particular social setting and company. Though they lack a capacity to feel emotions with any depth or intensity, as actors and manipulators they are able to manufacture crocodile tears for effect whenever it suits and benefits them.
The part of the brain that regulates emotions, the amygdala, is less active in psychopaths. Thus, they do not feel fear, sadness, regret or disgust that the rest of us experience. Only when it is self-serving will psychopaths act scared, sorry, indignant or surprised, and the key operable word here is act because that is all they can do when it comes to showing real emotion. They have no trouble putting on the act of emotions when they are determined to manipulate others most often into feeling guilty or sympathetic toward them. The only genuine emotion psychopaths express is anger whenever their manipulations are thwarted or rebuffed. They frequently use intimidation tactics and can behave impulsively and even violently when angered, especially in response to a perceived personal insult or perceived betrayal of trust or perceived lack of respect for their authority. But most often their emotional tirades are to manipulate, gain power and control over others.

Psychopaths are extremely confident, bold, outgoing and superficially friendly. Along with their air of assured confidence comes a bombastic arrogance, maverick eccentricity and Machiavellian grandiosity. Their gamey nature lusts for the competition of battle, an insatiable desire to win at all costs, and a gloating, short lived gratification that brings victor’s spoils. They also make formidable enemies, poker-faced while tactically holding their cards close to their chest, yet instinctively aware of when to strategically assert themselves to initiate decisive action, launch aggressive attacks and predatorily move in for their strategic kill. They are perennial predators bloodthirstily lusting for more power.
Psychopaths are masters of impression management and the art of ingratiation, crucial skills fully utilized in impressing those in positions of power while ruthlessly navigating up the treacherous and slippery if not slimy ladder to success. In addition to their characteristic lack of conscience and empathy, perhaps their signature trademark is their penchant for spewing out never ending pathological lies. Not surprisingly, psychopaths flourish in cultures that value competition and winning, boldness and risk taking, success and materialism, ambition and power, social namedropping and social climbing, status and prestige, style and appearance over substance and depth, and suave, witty charm and game-playing artificiality over sincerity, honesty and moral integrity. In short, they especially thrive in Western cultures based on competition and exploitation of fellow man and nature.
Psychopaths see others in terms of how they can be conveniently and cunningly used and manipulated to assist them in achieving their selfish goals and ambitions. Superficial friendships, transitory alliances and even partnerships (including marital) manifest as psychopaths perceive others in terms of their utilitarian value as tools, steppingstones or springboards toward achieving their success. As soon as psychopaths believe others have served their purpose, they are deemed no longer of any real value and quickly disposed of, discarded and/or betrayed. Loyalty is a foreign and abstract construct to psychopaths.
Psychopaths instinctively know how to lie their way out of trouble. It comes natural to them and over time they become experts at it. Skilled in logic and debate, they can readily rattle off an explanatory excuse using double talk for virtually anything. Many end up utilizing their innate skills as lawyers who in turn end up as politicians. In fact most of the politicians in the US Senate are attorneys. Just as effective as they are at absolving themselves of any and all responsibility and culpability of being completely blameless, they are equally skilled at pointing the finger at others and throwing them under the bus. In order to get elected and stay elected, psychopathic politicians must be extremely convincing in their powers of persuasion. And of course using their cunning charm and capacity to fabricate seamlessly at will, their power to manipulate and persuade is among their chief assets. They are experts in bullshitting and playing the fake pretense game.
Another strength is their capacity to keep their cool under fire. While the rest of us are reacting to normally stressful and dangerous situations with fear and anxiety, they manage to not sweat it and operate with relative calm. This skill of course places them at a distinct advantage in professions where constraint and self-control are required under pressure. Thus typically they fare well in the fast paced world of politics, the military and finances.

As anyone can readily see from the preceding prototype description of the psychopath, the high powered arena of politics, the dog-eat-dog corporate world and the strong arm tactics of the military domain are all ideal and ripe fields of endeavor for those imbued with psychopathic traits.

A study out of Great Britain last year using a psychopathic survey to assess the presence of psychopathic traits within the national workforce showed that CEO’s, politicians, media honchos, lawyers, surgeons, military generals, police officers and the clergy all scored highest. Generally any line of work characterized by a hierarchical infrastructure that places those in positions of power ruling over others with relative impunity proves to be the most fertile ground attracting those with a psychopathic personality.
By design the morally bankrupt oligarchic system is structured in such a way as to identify, groom and regularly promote up the power pole ladder slick psychopaths who play their cards right. They inherently know how to say the right words to the right persons at the strategic moment to calculatingly scheme and coldheartedly plot their rise to the highest echelons of power. As mere policymaking stewards for their puppet master oligarchs who are not just the shadowy, full fledged members of an elitist club of psychopaths, but like everything else, they are in fact bona fide role models and outright owners of this exclusive club of psychopaths. Without any conscience, remorse, guilt or even second thought, they wield increasingly absolute power and control over the earth’s dominions, causing unconscionable amounts of suffering and pain to billions of fellow human beings in this world. For all the theft, death and destruction they perpetrate, if oligarchs are not psychopaths, than they are simply not human.

EU? € THERE WILL BE BLOOD.

A politician spends more time, energy and money trying to get elected/reelected to public office than any other single pursuit or pastime. In this pragmatic way, the psychopathic description that they are mere public cons and hustlers selling themselves on the highest, competitively demanding stage is neither too simplistic nor an exaggeration. Robert Hare, the leading expert on psychopathy as a mental disorder who devised a psychopathic checklist, observed that psychopaths representing just one percent of the general population possess an especially heightened need for both power and prestige, seemingly prerequisite essentials for every aspiring politician. Moreover, psychopaths score low on measures of stress reactivity, anxiety and depression while scoring high on measures of competitive achievement, positive impressions with first encounters and fearlessness. Substitute the word politician for the word psychopath and you will find the two interchangeable and synonymous because they pretty much actually are one and the same.
To test and confirm this hypothesis, simply go back to every previous reference to the word psychopath and substitute either politician, general or CEO and you will realize that in every sense of the word, the present system as it currently exists produces leadership in every sector and realm that is well endowed with an abundance of psychopathic traits. While these particular professions may attract psychopaths, as a disclaimer it is important to mention that psychopathic traits and tendencies are on a continuum, and a specific politician or general may possess certain traits and tendencies but may not exhibit severe or enough symptoms to qualify with an official diagnosis of psychopathic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder or psychopathy.

When renowned Harvard clinical psychologist and author of The Sociopath Next Door Dr. Martha Stout (who uses sociopath and psychopath interchangeably) was asked if politicians are more likely to be psychopaths, she answered:
“Yes, politicians are more likely than people in the general population to be sociopaths. I think you would find no expert in the field of sociopathy/ psychopathy/antisocial personality disorder who would dispute this… That a small minority of human beings literally have no conscience was and is a bitter pill for our society to swallow – but it does explain a great many things, shamelessly deceitful political behavior being one.”

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The Other One Percent: Corporate Psychopaths and the Global Financial Crisis
Anyone who has ever worked in a large corporation has seen the empty suits that seem to inexplicably rise to positions of power. They talk a great game, possessing extraordinary verbal acuity, and often with an amazing ability to rise quickly without significant accomplishments to positions of great personal power, and often using it ruthlessly once it is achieved.
Their ruthless obsession with power and its visible rewards rises above the general level of narcissism and sycophancy that often plagues large organizations, espeically those with an established franchise where performance is not as much of an issue as collecting their rents.
And anyone who has been on the inside of the national political process knows this is certainly nothing exclusive to the corporate world…
… This is nothing new, but a lesson from history that has been unlearned. The entire system of checks and balances, of rule of law, of transparency in government, of accountability and personal honor, is based on the premise that one cannot always count on people to be naturally good and self-effacing. And further, that at times it seems that a relatively small group of corrupt people can rise to power, and harm the very fabric of a society.
‘When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." -Edmund Burke
"And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that." -Lord Acton

***************

Central banks are printing money all over the world. New names have been given to what is really an age old phenomenon. Desperate governments have traditionally debased their currencies when they have no other way of financing their deficits. Quantitative easing, LTRO, Fed/ECB swaps, whatever. A new technocratic lexicon has been invented to cover what is really a time honored expedient of debasement and paper money printing...(“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” - Upton Sinclair) Power attracts certain personality types, and organizations that value power, or ruthless determination to achieve results at any cost, often end up being run by people with the mentality of predators. And the predatory environment can become self-reinforcing and self-sustaining given time.

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“Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.” ― Tacitus, Annals

“They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger… they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor… They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace.” – Tacitus, The Agricola and the Germania

The Hare Psychopathy Checklist 
 1. Look for glib and superficial charm. A psychopath will also put on what professionals refer to as a 'mask of sanity' that is likable and pleasant. It is a thin veneer.
2. Look for a grandiose self perception. Psychopaths will often believe they are smarter or more powerful than they actually are.
3. Watch for a constant need for stimulation. Stillness, quiet and reflection are not things embraced by psychopaths. They need constant entertainment and activity.
4. Determine if there is pathological lying. A psychopath will tell all sorts of lies; little white lies as well as huge stories intended to mislead. Psychopaths are gifted or dull, high functioning or low performing like other people. An untalented psychopath may harm a few; a highly talented psychopath may lay waste to nations. The difference between the psychopath and others lies in their organic lack of conscience and empathy for others. The sociopath is trained to lack empathy and conscience. The psychopath is a natural.
5. Evaluate the level of manipulation. All psychopaths are identified as cunning and able to get people to do things they might not normally do. They can use guilt, force and other methods to manipulate.
6. Look for any feelings of guilt. An absence of any guilt or remorse is a sign of psychopathy. They will often blame the victim.
7. Consider the level of emotional response a person has. Psychopaths demonstrate shallow emotional reactions to deaths, injuries, trauma or other events that would otherwise cause a deeper response. Other people are satisfaction suppliers, nothing more.
8. Look for a lack of empathy. Psychopaths are callous and have no way of relating to others in non-exploitative ways. They may find a temporary kinship with other psychopaths and sociopaths that is strictly utilitarian and goal-oriented.
9. Psychopaths are often parasitic. They live off other people, emotionally, physically, and financially. Their modus operandi is domination and control. They will claim to be maligned or misunderstood to gain your sympathy.
10. Look for obsessive risk taking and lack of self-control. The Hare Checklist includes three behavior indicators; poor behavior control, sexual promiscuity, and behavioral problems.
11. Psychopaths have unrealistic goals or none at all for the long term. Either there are no goals at all, or they are unattainable and based on the exaggerated sense of one's own accomplishments and abilities.
12. Psychopaths will often be shockingly impulsive or irresponsible. Their shamelessness knows no bounds. You will ask, what were they thinking? And the answer was, they weren't because they did not care.
13. A psychopath will not genuinely accept personal responsibility. A psychopath will never admit to being wrong or owning up to mistakes and errors in judgment, except as part of a manipulative ploy. They will despise and denigrate their victims once they are done with them. If they have any regret it is that their source of satisfaction supply has ended and they must seek another.
14. Psychopaths lack long term personal relationships. If there have been many short term marriages, broken friendships, purely transactional relationships, the chances the person is a psychopath increase. Watch especially how they treat other people in weaker positions and even animals.
15. Psychopaths are often versatile in their criminality. Psychopaths are able to get away with a lot, and while they might sometimes get caught, the ability to be flexible and adaptable when committing crimes is indicative.

If you should find yourself in a business or personal relationship with a psychopath, the best advice is seek counseling if you need, obtain assistance if you must, and run if you can. You are a diffused and multi-faceted person with many interests. A psychopath is powerfully focused on obtaining what he wishes from others, without many prohibitions or distractions. Avoidance is the best policy. Long term confinement is their best treatment.
I do not think the repetitive sociopathic behaviours and psychopathic tendencies of the Roman imperial leadership to be accidental. The mad emperors kept recurring because they were the creatures of what that culture had become, and they stood as emblems at its apex.
Men are social animals, and can go mad in groups, as well as alone. Psychopathy can be the black hole at the center of a whole galaxy of madness and sociopathy under the right conditions, and the results can be flamboyantly destructive, as we most recently saw in several places during the 20th century. The psychopaths can thrive anywhere that deception is an advantage, but their prime hunting ground is a system in crisis, a controllable chaos lacking a well defined rule of law.

If you like this beach, then you can help your friends locate it by letting them know about Fred & EntendanceInvestors Beach.
Let's all make this place a thriving sheltered Club for excellence, education and information!

Sollte dir dieser Strand gefallen, dann kannst du deinen Freunden behilflich sein, indem du sie über Fred & EntendanceInvestors Beach informierst.
Lasst uns gemeinsam diesen Ort zu einen blühenden Club für Vortrefflichkeit, Bildung und Information machen!

May 3, 2015 16:44:21 GMT -5 Fred said:

Here's another interesting video: The Secret Power of Time

***Into the Mind of a Psychopath Chapter II
***Into the Mind of a Psychopath Chapter III
***Into the Mind of a Psychopath Chapter IV
***Into the Mind of a Psychopath Chapter V
***Into the Mind of a Psychopath Chapter VI
***Into the Mind of a Psychopath Chapter VII
***Into the Mind of a Psychopath Chapter VIII
***Into the Mind of a Psychopath Chapter IX

***Into the Mind of a Psychopath Chapter X

***Into the Mind of a Psychopath Chapter XI
***Into the Mind of a Psychopath Chapter XII

***Into the Mind of a Psychopath Chapter XIII

***Into the Mind of a Psychopath Chapter XIV

***Into the Mind of a Psychopath Chapter XV

***Into the Mind of a Psychopath Chapter XVI

***The banksters

***The Fred & E. Beach Zero Credibility Corner

Yep,        

1) Mind Your Own Business  2) Make Due With What You’ve Got  3) Do It Yourself  4) Get Healthy And Stay That Way  5) Own It 

 Hardscrabble Farmer: ***** Five Ways You Can Fix the World

The One Percent Are Enemies Of Life

Poisoned Agriculture: Depopulation and Human Extinction

"The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced today that the US economy created 271,000 jobs in October, a number substantially in excess of the expected 175,000 to 190,000 jobs. The unexpected job gain has dropped the unemployment rate to 5 percent. These two numbers will be the focus of the financial media presstitutes.
What is wrong with these numbers? Just about everything. First of all, 145,000 of the jobs, or 54%, are jobs arbitrarily added to the number by the birth-death model. The birth-death model provides an estimate of the net amount of unreported jobs lost to business closings and the unreported jobs created by new business openings. The model is based on a normally functioning economy unlike the one of the past seven years and thus overestimates the number of jobs from new business and underestimates the losses from closures. If we eliminate the birth-death model’s contribution, new jobs were 126,000.
Next, consider who got the 271,000 reported jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, all of the new jobs plus some—378,000—went to those 55 years of age and older. However, males in the prime working age, 25 to 54 years of age, lost 119,000 jobs. What seems to have happened is that full time jobs were replaced with part time jobs for retirees. Multiple job holders increased by 109,000 in October, an indication that people who lost full time jobs had to take two or more part time jobs in order to make ends meet.
Now assume the 271,000 reported jobs in October is the real number, and not 126,000 or less, where are those jobs? According to the BLS not a single one is in manufacturing. The jobs are in personal services, mainly lowly paid jobs such as retail clerks, ambulatory health care service jobs, temporary help, and waitresses and bartenders.
For example, the BLS reports 44,000 new retail trade jobs, a questionable number in light of sluggish real retail sales. Possibly what is happening is that stores are turning a smaller number of full time jobs into a larger number of part time jobs in order to avoid benefit costs associated with full time workers.
The new reported jobs are essentially Third World type of jobs that do not produce sufficient income to form a household and do not produce exportable goods and services to help to bring down the large US trade deficit resulting from jobs offshoring.
The problem with the 5% unemployment rate is that it does not include any discouraged workers. When discouraged workers—those who have ceased looking for a job because there are no jobs to be found—are included the unemployment rate is about 23%.
Another problem with the 5% number is that it suggests full employment. Yet the labor force participation rate remains at a low point. Normally during a real economic recovery, people enter the labor force and the participation rate rises.
The bullion banks acting as agents of the Federal Reserve used the phony jobs number to launch another attack on gold and silver bullion, dumping uncovered shorts into the futures market. The strong jobs number provides cover for the naked shorts, because it implies an interest rate hike and movement out of bullion into interest bearing assets.
If the US economy were actually in economic recovery, would half of the 25-year-old population be living with parents? The real job situation is so poor that young people are unable to form households." Paul Craig Roberts

Stupidity Chapter X

                                                                             (The first basic law of human stupidity here)

20 Terrible Ways to Trade

Good trading is very basic; it’s trading with an edge to capture a trend in your own time frame, while managing your risk exposure carefully with the right position sizing and stop loss.
There are endless ways to trade badly. You can change these if you make an effort and become self-aware. Be on the lookout for these pitfalls.
********************Here are the top 20

***The illusion of control and having a winner after a winner – things traders don’t know

***The Truth About Trading For A Living    More here

“A bull market is when you check your stocks every day to see how much money you’ve made. A bear market is when you don’t bother to look anymore.” – Bruce Kamich
In her excellent book “Bull”, journalist Maggie Mahar interviews Richard Russell on the three psychological stages of a bear market:
“The earliest stage is characterized by denial, increased anxiety, and fear. The second stage is panic. People suddenly say, ‘I’ve got to sell.’ The third phase is despair.” In the third phase, investors are so tired of the stock market that they don’t want to hear about stocks anymore, at any price”

Most corrections will remain just that – corrections. They won’t turn into bear markets. They will last a few weeks or few months. In the end, indexes will recover to new highs.
And yet, some corrections turn into bear markets. They are rare, but over 30-40 years of investing or trading, you will probably experience at least two or three of them – if market patterns continue to repeat. As long as there are humans involved, you can count on it. Markets always overshoot to the upside and the downside, because people’s psychology is cyclical and people tend to underreact to new information, then panic and overreact. Overreactions create the foundations for mean-reversions. Booms eventually lead to busts and busts to booms.

My definition of a bear market – spending a long time (more than a year) under a declining 200-day moving average, leading to 50% or bigger decline in a major, wide-encompassing index, like the S & P 500 for example.
You can imagine if an index is down 50%, what can happen to many individual stocks. No stock is insured against a bear market. Apple and Google lost 60% during the bear market in 2008. Amazon lost 95% during the bear market of 2000-2002. Priceline lost 99% in the same period. All of them managed to recover and hit new all-time highs afterward, but do you really think that you could have stomached the drawdowns that you had to go through? Do you really think that you could have put $1 million into PCLN and watch it turn into 10,000 and ride it all the way back without spooking at some stage and selling everything? Think again.

Are you familiar with the 50/30/20 concept? It states that 50% of a stock’s move is defined by the general market direction; 30% – by its industry; and only 20% is impacted by the individual merits of the underlying company. In a bear market, the 50/30/20 rule of thumb become something like the 90/10 rule, where 90% of a stock’s move is defined by the general direction of the market and only 10% – by the individual characteristics of that stock.
Traders should trade. Investors should invest. Whether you are a trader or an investor, if you deal with individual stocks, you always have to have an exit strategy. Some stocks never come back from their big drawdowns during market corrections. -Ivanhoff

***13 More Thoughts about Bear Markets

"At its peak, the Roman Empire held up to 130 million people over a span of 1.5 million square miles.
Rome had conquered much of the known world. The Empire built 50,000 miles of roads, as well as many aqueducts, amphitheatres, and other works that are still in use today.
Our alphabet, calendar, languages, literature, and architecture borrow much from the Romans. Even concepts of Roman justice still stand tall, such as being “innocent until proven guilty”.
How could such a powerful empire collapse?"

More here

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Stupidity Chapter XIII: Never underestimate the propensity for central bank stupidity
Q: Who has negative rates?
Q: Negative rates on what?
Q: How much are we talking about?
Q: How do excess reserves come into play?
Q: Who collects the money?
Q: Who benefits from low and negative rates?
Q: Is there a limit to negative rates and resultant bubbles?
Q: Why doesn’t the Fed resort to negative rates?
Q: If negative rates hurt bank profits, why has Europe and Japan embraced them?
More here

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...the banking system is where the losses are, and it’s where the risks are. Which are then both transferred to Joe and Jane Blow, who subsequently have less to spend, which defeats the alleged central bank purpose of ‘stimulating’ the economy.
Draghi’s argument for the new (water-)bazooka measures is that without them, Europe would face ‘awful’ deflation. But it’s his very measures that create and encourage deflation. So who still knows how to count beyond 101? Good question.
But anyway, I just wanted to say that Draghi’s gone in all but physical presence. And if they keep him on for a while longer, that means that what happened today will happen again, just faster. Big risk.
No Super Mario no more.

What happened with Draghi yesterday is eerily reminiscent of the ‘glorious’ Bernanke days, when ‘poor’ Ben would make one of his weighty announcements and the effects he was looking for would fizzle out within hours. In full accordance with the law of diminishing returns, Draghi’s new and far more desperate measures lost their very meaning even within the space of barely more than half an hour.

That is ugly. That has meaning. Much more than Mario -the former Goldman Sachs executive- himself and his paymasters will be willing to acknowledge. It means the financial world is now ready to bet against Draghi. Like they bet against China...

Draghi’s done. This hole is too deep for him to climb out of.

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The Clintons’ $93 Million Romance with Wall Street: a Catastrophe for Working Families, African-Americans, and Latinos