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Comfortably Numb – Drugged, Dazed and Dumbed Down - Part 2 of 2
Comfortably Numb – Drugged, Dazed and Dumbed Down
Chapter Two of Two
By
Cognitive Dissonance
One of the really nice things about the new Zero Hedge User Interface is that each contributing editor received a ‘blog’ of sorts where the reader can locate the contributor’s older articles and essays. Considering the frantic pace of Zero Hedge if you’re away for a day or two you miss a lot, including many great articles by Zero Hedge’s cast of characters. Here is my blog. Please take a look. You might be surprised what you missed along the way. And thank you very much for your continued support.
In Chapter One (here) I discussed how the outspoken and non conformist generation of the 60’s and 70’s has morphed into something so completely foreign to its basic beliefs that it does not recognize itself as the embodiment of all that was wrong with that period in history. I then talked about natural human cycles as part of the explanation for our present day insanity and how we willingly participate in our own enslavement. Now it’s time to pick up on the thought I dropped earlier about how our emotional animal responses are influenced as much by biochemical reactions as by our social and physical environment. While I’ve written several articles and comments regarding the process and methodology of propaganda, mythology and social control systems, something I’ve not discussed much to this point is a subject that is so abhorrent to American mythology that it’s immediately rejected by the control system and its tools and puppets as impossible and even treasonous to discuss. Conditioned minds tend to projectile vomit back up information that is deemed unpalatable and inconsistent with its implanted meme, a sure sign the truth is hitting pretty close to home. What I’m talking about is the legal and illegal drugging of Americans by the government, with plenty of help from private and corporate enablers and profiteers. This type of abuse has a long and storied past not only here in America, but throughout the world. Even after decades of public and not so public disclosures of government, military and intelligence service(s) involvement in the importation and distribution of illegal drugs into America (as well as Canada and parts of South America and Europe) there is still massive public and governmental denial that this has and is still going on. The ranks of the three citizen armies of the brain dead, hopelessly naive or ideologically blinded are skillfully leveraged by governmental and private parties to figuratively and literally pull the wool over our eyes when it comes to the vilest and most abhorrent acts perpetrated against American citizens by American citizens. A careful and in-depth reading of (alternative) world history over thousands of years illustrates a long and ugly account of governments, kings, pharaohs, religious orders etc. poisoning and drugging its own citizens, guest and migrant workers, domestic and governmental slaves (including but not limited to wage, sex and debt slaves) with drugs and alcohol, and recently materialism and consumerism, in order to maintain control and suppress rebellion and dissent. Even our sanitized history books talk about importing and supplying opium to Chinese Coolies, although the textbooks are careful to point to private business and/or individuals as the perpetrators of these ugly deeds, never specifically mentioning that government agents were often involved from the start. The pertinent question to ask is this; what is different between then and now other than our arrogant belief that somehow we are different from those lesser human beings from the past.
Which, by the way, is another mind control device skillfully used to obscure and placate. We are constantly told that nearly everything in the past is backwards and unusable, but everything present or coming in the future is much better and more desirable. “Oh…we don’t do that anymore so there is no sense studying history for clues to what’s going on today. There’s nothing to see back there, so move along now. Let’s hurry to the future folks, for out there lay our salvation and prosperity.”
Of course you’ll find little to no mention in the widely disseminated ‘history’ books of the 50 plus year record of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), its successor the CIA, or military involvement in the experimental drugging (think Frank Olson for example) and later mass drugging of America through illegal drug importation and distribution. This was and is still carried out through direct and indirect participation by these and other governmental agencies, including the relatively recent addition of the DEA.
There have been numerous MSM stories over the years, many of which have since been corroborated by several independent sources, of governmental, military and intelligence service planes crashing with tons of drugs on board. Unofficially, official America leadership is up to its nose (pun most definitely intended) in high value high volume drug running, importation and distribution. Period. Full stop. End of sentence and paragraph.
In addition there are endless reports, some even briefly appearing in the MSM, of high level official and ‘unofficial’ government involvement with so called drug kingpins and organized crime heads. While no doubt some of this is the result of official corruption (the ever popular lone corrupt official is a popular explanatory meme for the occasionally embarrassing public disclosure) there is also evidence that some of these activities are orchestrated and blessed from above as unofficial but still promoted government (and corporate) policy.
The illegal drugging of America by ‘official’ America is being carried out with implied covert and overt assistance to private parties, corporations and individuals both foreign and domestic. The outsourcing and privatization of America doesn’t end at street sweeping, prison keeping and war mongering. Stated as simply as possible, our government is the illegal drug pusher extraordinaire if for no other reason than the massive and consistent cash infusions it provides for the global Ponzi machine, all money that governmental and private parties are not publically accountable for and thus made to order for black box operations, kick backs, slush funds and campaign contributions.
And it’s easy to understand why any government would prefer its citizens to be comfortably numb. Please understand that I’m not saying all illegal drugs are handled by these entities. Not by a long shot. They don’t need to control it all in order to accomplish their goal of the destruction of the social fabric to just enough of a degree as to thoroughly distract and demoralize average Jane and Joe. Plus it all makes a wonderful public works project to boot. Consider all the clerks, guards, judges, prison staff, police, coast guard and supporting cast that are needed to keep the war on drugs going. For a supposedly free nation, it is remarkable that we have the highest prison population in the developed world.
What’s really amazing to me is that much of the primary evidence I’ve found of government involvement in drug running and distribution can be found in the printed mainstream media………though it’s often placed on page 37 or buried somewhere as filler in the sports or entertainment section. And rarely is it picked up by other news organizations and widely distributed, almost as if the MSM has its own policy of Omerta or code of silence. It’s published once or twice so it can be claimed the “public” was informed, then quickly ignored and forgotten.
There are exceptions to this stealth disclosure, with the occasional front page story or series exposing one drug scandal or another. Gary Webb’s 1996 “Dark Alliance” series published in the San Jose Mercury News in which Webb exposed the Iran-Contra affair’s ugly underbelly of CIA and Reagan Administration enabling of the Contra importation and sale of (crack) cocaine into the LA area for the express purpose of using the profits to purchase weapons to support their revolution.
But even in this case the rest of the MSM quickly organized a campaign to refute and discredit both Webb and the Mercury News. This eventually resulted in a partial retraction and disavowal by the Mercury News and of Gary Webb being sacked/let go/voluntary quit. The code of MSM silence lives and those who break it are quickly beaten to professional death…….or worse. Webb eventually published a blockbuster book on the subject that was also pretty much ignored by the MSM when it wasn’t being harshly criticized.
When one pushes past the fact that the Reagan administration was enabling the direct circumvention of a Congressional ban on weapons sales and financial assistance to the Nicaraguan Contras, one suddenly realizes that our government was directly involved in the illegal drugging of America. And this is just one example of what can only be described as deliberate foreign and domestic policy that transcends administrations and Congressional critters. Don’t take my word for it, do your own homework and recognize reality for what it is.
Of course up to this point my discussion has only covered the illegal drug side of the comfortably numb equation, which from a big picture point of view is peanuts (measured by quantity and/or dollars) compared to the officially sanctioned legal corporate drug pushing designed to drug America into obedient oblivion. We all understand that the business of America is business. And second only to the military/industrial/financial complex, business in America is healthcare which consumes 18 to 21% of annual GDP. More importantly each year pharmaceuticals consume a greater portion of the total healthcare bill, rising from 25% in 1995 to well over 46% in 2009, the last year in which I’ve seen figures.
Similar to just about every other US government ‘regulatory’ agency these days, there exists a huge conflict of interest within the Food and Drug Administration, with one side of the beast tasked with promoting the very industry the other side is supposed to be regulating. Judging by the fact that on a per capita basis health care in America is more expensive than just about anywhere else in the world, I would say the industry side of the equation is winning and Big Pharma leads the corporate profit parade.
But more to the point of this article, one third of Americans (including our children) are living their daily lives under the influence of a variety of antidepressants, anti anxiety and/or narcotic pain killers. Think about that for a moment. One third of the US population is sedated or has their mental and emotional disposition artificially altered or elevated in order to make it through the work or indoctrination (aka school) week, with particular emphasis on work.
Around 15% of us are taking prescribed pain medications and the pharmaceutical industry estimates up to half of us are abusing our pain meds. In addition, 10% of the population is considered alcoholic and another 20% are abusing alcohol. Then there are all those other so called ‘safe’ drugs, with the majority of the population drinking coffee, soda etc. or doing shots of “5 Hour Energy” and other freely available stimulants. And this doesn’t even take into consideration the one hundred and fifty six pounds of processed sugar each of us consumes per year.
While it wouldn’t be fair to add these percentages together to arrive at a total because of overlap, recognizing that many of us are either ‘professionally’ prescribed or self medicating with several ‘drugs’ at once just makes the problem that much bigger. The end result is that, seen as a whole, we are a self medicating zombie population that can barely get out of bed in the morning without drug assistance, let alone retain the capacity to think independently and critically about what is in our own best interest. Alas, this is just what the powers that be want. Not zonked out so much that you can’t work, but zonked out just enough that you really don’t (want to) care.
Do I even dare mention the most widely distributed drug of them all, our beloved comfort food, which has slowly fed nearly a third of the US population into the meat grinder of obsessive compulsive obesity? As we are collectively force feed a steady diet of government sponsored fear mongering, who is really surprised when we take refuge in a double quarter pounder with cheese, super large fries and enough soda to sponge bathe a family of four? When the point comes where major television networks run prime time TV programs about weight loss as entertainment, how can our personal obesity problem be seen as anything other than a national obsession? Freud would have a field day if he were alive today.
BTW the implied double entendre found in NBC’s popular TV program “The Biggest Loser” teases the mind. Which one is the bigger loser, the contestant struggling to lose 100 lbs of congealed Big Macs or the viewers, 50% of whom are obese or moderately/severely overweight and most likely munching on empty calories as they cheer on their favorite contestant? The conditioning meme is obvious. When we view others who are (relatively) worse than us we have a tendency to normalize our own dysfunction, thus removing the urgency to recognize our own self destructive behavior. Hey, I’m not as bad as that guy.
Instead of Waldo, let’s see how many overweight people we can find in this Woodstock photo from 1969. Then pull up some random crowd shot of the average college campus or mall food court for a comparison.
Americans love to forgive and forget, particular when we’re forgetting our own transgressions. So what’s next on the menu, late night liposuction with Leno? Why struggle through all those deep knee bends, stomach crunches and treadmill miles when you can carve up your loved one like a Thanksgiving turkey using your favorite electric knife and a spinal tap? Like a bloody car crash at a busy intersection, we just can’t help but watch in morbid fascination as we act out our own insanity.
Of course, self medicating ourselves in our quest to be comfortably numb isn’t restricted to food, drugs or alcohol. There’s a world class selection of navel gazing diversions and obsessions available at the click of an alternative reality mouse and a onetime swipe of our (national) credit card. No more need for trips to the local arcade, movie theater or DVD rental store. The world lay at our feet and is manipulated at our command. Entertain me now for I am master of my domain…..when I can actually find it under the rolls of fat.
We play Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) aka World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy or enter crack berry nirvana via Blackberry, Droid, Vortex or iPhone. Don’t forget to sign up for maximum obsession mobility via Wi-Fi, WiMAX and Max-iPads. Let’s see, I’ll take one from column A and two from column B. And just in case you didn’t notice it, the subliminal programming is becoming glaringly obvious. It’s no accident that the top two MMORPG games use the words Warfare and Fantasy.
And let’s not forget the grand daddy of them all, the brainwashing and predictive programming opiate of the masses available to everyone as early as birth and without a RX prescription. All hail the all American God called television via High Definition 3D LCD surround sound immersive technology. It’s better than being there in person, thus reducing the live crowd to nothing more than paying extras, there for our entertainment as sound effects and a colorful background.
There have been numerous books written about the drugging of America so I won’t waste any more of the readers’ time discussing the specifics. And I do understand that Americans have long had a love affair with booze (and drugs for that matter) with many of the founding fathers bemoaning the evils of rampant public drunkenness and the social ills that come with it. But only the seriously self deluded would try to convince themselves that things are no worse than they were 200 years ago, if for no other reason than the drug, financial and war making toys are infinitely more destructive.
So while the self medicating phenomenon isn’t exactly new to America, the selection, potency and wide scale availability of the mind altering methods, chemical or otherwise, is new. Combine this onslaught with the psychological and propaganda operations conducted by the government and the mesmerizing and distracting of America via the mass media, then sprinkle in the distorted views of body, family and nation promoted by corporate America, and I feel safe in saying we live in a comfortably numb Insane Asylum. Where’s Jack Nicholson to break us out when we need him? Pass the Thorazine please.
Two of the most fascinating words in the English language are manipulation and seduction. While the term seduction is most often used when discussing sexual escapades and dalliances, there is an implied usage when people talk about being financially, politically or socially manipulated aka being victimized. For the most part we Americans have become expert professional non-responsible victims. We use the excuse of being a victim, or of having been victimized, to avoid any responsibility for our own lives and actions. Even corporations claim the victim high ground. Somehow we are all above the scrum and just in charge of our portion of the zero sum game.
A constant theme of mine here on Zero Hedge is personal responsibility for one’s actions and/or in-actions. I endlessly beat this drum because even among the Hedge regulars I hear many of the same excuses used by the general population to explain away prior inaction and decisions that have led us to this point. A particular favorite seems to be that we have no control or that we were/are manipulated or that people are acting against our wishes….so what can we do.
Over and over I read comments about how we (the collective ‘we’ is used to share the non responsibility) are not responsible for cleaning up this mess but rather they are, meaning someone else who is presumably in charge and with the authority to do so. I hear how someone, anyone, should do something about this mess or that I’m only responsible for my own interests…..which are usually very narrowly drawn to avoid responsibility except for those things the speaker wants or needs.
All these thoughts inevitably lead back to my theme of being comfortably numb. Because there is something that goes so far beyond that fuzzy not-quite-with-it feeling one gets from mood altering drugs, alcohol and pain killers and firmly into the one super drug that is shared by all. I am, of course, talking about that wonderfully powerful drug called denial, of which we all have an endless supply produced on site. Bottoms up boys and girls!
Cognitive Dissonance
08-02-2011
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Hey cog, I came up with some pro populist propaganda that we could try and seed into the world. Let me know if you have some edits/additions. We must use their tactics against them. I wrote this as a reply to you in the dow(n) 532 thread:
The authorities have labeled the riots with prop gandalicious, machine gun style repetitiveness. It's unfortunate that on an island such as Britain, not a single person who spoke to the MSM on behalf of the people (not the state) could articulate these three talking points, but instead just muddled words about social something or insurrection, the other side saying villains, criminals, thugs, etc...
Sorry, back to the three talking points the people, that's 80% of them of their population, should be chanting on tv, print and net.
1. Corporations need to build training acadamies, rec centers, and factories, and train the plebs to make things in the factories, be productive and self sufficient.
2. Corporations must pay their wage slaves 50% more money and ask that the wage slaves do more than press the 'start' and 'stop' button all day.
3. Corporations must stop keeping 90% of all the wealth (that's the board of directors and top executive thieves) for safe keeping in their banks, and instead share it with the ones who do all of the work and are responsible for collecting money on behalf of the company.
4. (bonus) Corporations must have their attack dog lawyers stand down from writing laws in all world governments and markets that favor profit above all other considerations.
I'm pretty sure those last two points are made by unions, but those are evil according to MSM.
If these demands of the people are not met, these events will get worse and bring down their whole empire, and likely their heads.
420!!
Hi, on topic of poisoning ourselves with food - take a look at this:
http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_bittman_on_what_s_wrong_with_what_we_eat.html
Or read/watch Michael Pollan.
So simple. Everybody can do it. Food is probably the simplest thing to keep under our own control, isn't it?
Oh look.
<cite>U.S. federal agents allegedly allowed the Sinaloa drug cartel to traffic several tons of cocaine to the United States in exchange for information about rival cartels, according to court documents filed in a U.S. federal court.</cite>
http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_18608410
CD- I just adore your alliteration- Part 1 with C's Part 2 with D's :)
I read 1&2...So much great stuff in there CD. I wrote a longer post but it got zapped somehow. Free your mind, etc.
Much food for thought in your post, CD, but I want to compliment your use of the Woodstock poster as an illustration of how far we've fallen. I find it more dramatic and convincing than any number of charts and figures showing the evolution of, say, average BMI over the decades since 1969.
I find that confronting people with an artifact of the past and comparing it to the present is often a wake-up for people. Things I have used are a McGuffey's reader (my personal favorite), a pair of scissors from my mom's era (heavy, sharp, designed to last forever), or an old gold or silver coin. We are taught that progress is unidirectional, but a casual perusal of a flea market or used-book store leaves this lie in the dust. Think "they don't make them like that any more".
I noticed the many ads on tv for various drugs, which invariably say "Ask your doctor about ....", as the drugs are only offered thru prescriptions. My subjective guess is that about half these drugs advertised then turn out to have serious reports later released about their lack of safety and bad side effects. Do you think the drug companies are just trying to max their revenues before this news becomes public, knowing the bad potential? Or that they generally are innocent of knowing these side effects ahead of time?
'Ask your doctor about...' the same doctor who gets sales performance bonuses for selling one drug over the other. OR we have 'problems' and see the wonder drug advertised on TV and scurry of to the professional to get are 'help.
CD this is entirely selfish, but I want to see more work. At the very least a blog website for posts that are too short, or just plain don't belong on ZH. I love your work!
excellent stuff.
Strangely enough I just finished reading 'The Age of Abserdity' and the author touches on several similar themes.
Saw this last night http://www.filmsforaction.org/Watch/Subconscious_War_2011/
thought the part about the use of war sims (Call of Duty etc) was very insightful. I remember watching the wiki leaks vid and the classic AC-130 video on Youtube, and then being shocked to see it almost exactly recreated in the game- except here your killing Russian Ultra nationalists. Interestingly enough the USMC use these sim in training to decenctize young soliders to killing. Good times.
Had a thougt, Anyone else think this all is very similar to the scean from Downfall (movie about Hitler) where Eva Brown is trying to get everyone to be happy (while the Russian are only several miles away) and have a dance 'like we used to in the good old days'. It’s all going to be ok if we just think happy thoughts! ‘There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, Toto, why are you running away?’ :P
Excellent articles Cognitive Dissonance. I think dropping commodity based money in 1971 harmed individual's marginal utility. Too much expansion in credit and money supply from that era corrupted the indirect exchange process. Fiat currency became a drug and an energy of its own, rather than money acting simply as a medium of exchange encouraging us to focus on goods that we need.
Its a bit like if you live on 1 litre of water a day, you will use it all for drinking; 1 gallon you will use it to drink and wash; 2 gallons drink, wash and so on; say 12 gallons you sprinkle the garden, wash the car etc and become very wasteful. Commodity based currency, has it is scarce, will keep us focused on the real purchasing power it has, conditions us to be more sensible in allocating scarce resources. It also encourages co-operation with other people in voluntary exchange. Fiat currency, because it becomes inevitably expansionary ad infinitum, because it is based on human emotion and not inanimate scarce objects skews our marginal utility so much, humans become reckless and conversely selfish.
Lots of charts show a dramatic inflection point from 1971, such as inflation, money supply, credit, and unemployment (which dumped the Phillips curve theory), which indicate how damaging it was for the US to drop the gold standard.
Keep up the good work!
Blame - how convenient. Solves the problem, doesn't it? The monetary family power structure dynasty has outlasted each generation that came along, post war, boomer, yuppie, gen x, gen y, gen whatever. Keep barking at the other dogs in the pound - that will make the neutering easier to ignore. Wake up, you sorry illiterate unconscious "hip aware" hedgers! FOLLOW THE MONEY. There, you will find the architects of disfunction, dissonance, and the anthesis of conscious, aware, evolved human beings. The true Antichrists of our world. Bred to rule, unless you wake the fuck up, and get tired of being batteries in their Matrix!
Oh yes
Love the artwork
Enjoyed your article.Careful and in depth reading of ancient history,space,science,religions is what I like to read.In school I was never interested in anything but band and auto shop.
For many years now reading all this material has been a joy mainly because it showed me ,we were lied to our whole lives .You are absolutely right and the drug scheme was going on long before the opium wars.seems all civilizations have done this.besides the profits for covert reasons and keeping the community dumbed down it also shows the fraud drug war.As any schoolboy/girl knows if you have a problem on the border >you close it< war on drugs war on illegal immigration,don`t think so,if there was, it would have been closed forty years ago or more.
Im 54 years old today and have seen a lot,Not the smartest rock in the box but have reasonable intelligence.As stated I really enjoyed your article,it is nice to find websites that are intelligent, that will present things as they are,invite discussion.When trying to tell others even family,friends,coworkers its basically a blank stare or changing of the subject.
It seems we also are getting a language evolement for lack of better words.Speech and language is changing in many ways including being mastered to make this country at least a 'keyword' society.
As in, We used to be citizens then consumers now useless eaters we are not even people to them. No polls matter obviously,why would they even take a poll on what the people think if they do what they are going to do anyway?
Back to my rambling point No longer am I a person.Either a consumer or a keyword like... Truther,Birther,terrorist,conspiracy luny.lol
It is strange how things change but a lot stays the same. No TV has been on in this home for four years and it gives one the most peace of mind you can imagine. The powers that be have had centuries to hone their skills so, along with the drugs you mention we now have the vaccines(with poison) food (with poison, radioactive whatever) Chemtrails(with poison and their is even a leaked pentagon training video of how to stop religious extremism with a little tweak here and there.Thats another day......
So CD I, appreciate your work and thoughts and the other commentors on this site that, share some of their thoughts and comments also.
Thanks ZeroHedge
Cheers to all
I've mentioned it before, but it bears mentioning again in light of the topic of this article. I believe the food supply is poisoned, and not with just sugar and fat. I think all the non-foods in the food (preservatives, colorings, artificial flavors) are bad for us too, and they add a lot of glutamate in the food (MSG & many other additives increase glutamate in the food.)
I started making all our food from scratch a bit over a year ago because my daughter was diagnosed with many food allergies. Our feeling better and my weight loss all came quickly with the change. I was still making foods with plenty of fat and sugar, so fat and sugar were not the problem causers. My husband's gout got better, my neuropathy got better, my oldest daughters autism got better, and my middle daughter's allergies and ADHD went away. I lost 18 pounds, and my energy levels went way up.
I researched a great deal into glutamate because of this. Our bodies have receptors for glutamate in many places. It is a neurotransmitter in the nervous system, but most of our organs also have glutamate receptors and many cancers also have glutamate receptors. So, adding a large amount of glutamate to the diet has the capacity to signal your body in many ways.
It is said that glutamate doesn't cross the blood brain barrier, and in most cases it probably doesn't, but in some diseased states and in embryos and fetuses it may. Also, the chronic ingestion of large amounts of glutamate could well deplete you of the other substances necessary to convert glutamate into other substances. Too large an amount of glutamate in the nervous system can cause excitotoxicity and cell death. Since my daughters' autism and ADHD got better with the change in diet, it could have had an effect on them neurologically. That is not proven though as it also could have been some of the many other additives in food that was causing their problems. I also definitely notice that my husband has less anxiety since the change in eating, so I think this is not just a childhood problem.
There are studies that show the increased MSG consumption causes increases in BMI, amount eaten and speed of eating. I think adding glutamate to the food supply is the biggest cause for the obesity epidemic. Now, whenever I do eat added glutamate I notice a huge increase in my appetite.
I think the glutamate added to the diet is the direct cause of the increase in childhood allergies. I found studies that showed that histamine release in rats was much larger when they were fed glutamate, and much lower when fed Taurine. Taurine works on GABA recepters, so it is effectively the opposite of Glutamate in the nervous system.
Additionally, although most of the brain is somewhat protected from glutamate poisoning, the hypothalmus is not protected. The hypothalmus must sample the blood to change endocrine hormones constantly. Remember glutamate is used for signaling in the body, so it has the capacity to mis-signal the hypothalmus. I believe that I personally get quite messed up from this mis-signaling. I suffered infertility for many years, and found though that every time I went on a diet that got me off the processed foods, I quickly got pregnant.
The hypothalmus also controls blood pressure, so this poisoning could be part of the cause of so much hypertension in our society, although again it could be other additives in the food that cause it.
Finally, I also believe that increased glutamate levels in the food also contribute to heart disease because of the way it can deplete your body of the substances used to convert glutamate to other substances. Our bodies use vitamin B6 in the conversion from Glutamate to GABA, which effectively keeps excitotoxicity from killing cells, but your body also uses b6 to convert homocysteine to cystathionin, but if a body is depleted of B6 because of having to constantly be converting an excess of glutamate to GABA, your body cannot convert the homocysteine to cystathionin. Homocysteine is identified as a chief culprit in initiating the vascular lesions leading to arteriolosclerosis, meaning heart disease.
Other additives can lead to heart disease as well. Meat eating has now been shown to not be associated with heart disease, but processed meat eating is still associated with heart disease. It is theorized it is the nitrites added as preservatives are the problem ingredient in processed meat.
It is my opinion that they are indeed poisoning us, and I'm very glad my daughter got the allergies that helped us discover that the food supply was the cause of our problems.
As a fellow concerned Mom, I am impressed with your post. I know there is a proven connection between food additives and many illnesses. Our bodies are in a state of dis-ease because of all the tinkering that has been done to food to make us "consumers" consume till we sicken ourselves.
Keep on shining light on these truths you have found- don't get discouraged. As my Momma always says- "You could be the only light in someone else's darkness."
**You probably already have, but if not- don't forget to research GMO (genetically modified organisms), hi-fructose corn sweetener, and the dangers of teflon cookware. You will be shocked and angered. My kids now beg me not to read the labels of products at the grocery b/c they can't get sugar bomb treats or even packaged ranch type dressing anymore. I make my salad dressing from scratch. No wonder the kids on the commercials eat their veggies, most dips are LOADED with several types/mutations of MSG.
that was an amazingly insightful post. Thansk so much. I got diagnosed with IBC and started cooking things from scratch. Massive difference as well.
take care folks.
Biggest drug dealer out there - municipal government with fluoride in your water supply - do a little Googlie Mooglie - ing on that subject to fiind out how toxic cancer causing industrial waste found a new home without the disposal costs for a proven carcinogenic poison. Big Government, helping Big Business - again, and again. Fuck all you peasants, the quarterly dividend share holders statement comes first!!!!
Biggest drug dealer out there - municipal government with fluoride in your water supply - do a little Googlie Mooglie - ing on that subject to fiind out how toxic cancer causing industrial waste found a new home without the disposal costs for a proven carcinogenic poison. Big Government, helping Big Business - again, and again. Fuck all you peasants, the quarterly dividend share holders statement comes first!!!!
life as it presents itself to us is a co-creation. we are the experiencer and life is the experienced. together we create experience. we make decisions based upon awareness and the possibilities afforded us by our bodies and the environment. attitudes/postures are a major factor. it behooves us to examine our own attitudes/postures, which are the working assumptions and templates of personal and collective psychologies. choose attitudes/postures that engender good life experiences, rather than those which flatter/protect the ego by making it 'right' or 'justified' or 'safe.' just as trading is about making money, not being right or cool. the strategy is to create good experiences that leave conditions conducive for other good experiences (e.g. billiards, you need to make the shot but also 'leave' the cue ball in the right place for the next shot). this is the difference between hedonism and sustainable joy.
abandoning hope, faith, belief, in favor of radical responsibility. because it gives me the greatest possibility for beneficial response. it pushes me to strive for greater awareness so that i will make better decisions. it puts me in the position of accepting my limitations and reducing my exposure to risks inherent in those limitations. it eliminates complaint which is wasted energy. without hope, faith, or belief, my field of possibilities is more open to the unknown. i can learn more. without absolute expectations i do not suffer disappointment which leads to more wasted energy. instead i adopt probabilistic expectations, such that when the unlikely happens, i have already psyhcologically discounted its possibility and thus can remain present instead of being shocked or bemoaning 'bad luck.' presence is the way to greater feeling, greater awareness, greater experience.
radical responsibility is presence which is being truth, the virtue that is its own reward. it is dangerous, uncomfortable, uncertain. it wants nothing, it excuses nothing, it has no need for persuasion. it is conviction itself, an open invitation to life, the gateless gate. it is precisely this that the phrase 'zero hedge' signifies.
the hippies didnt change...they wanted to do whatever they wanted. free from responsibilty and when they had the chance they 'made it law'...(the hippies) wanted everyone to provide for them....it is the me me me generation.......man, they really were changing the world smoking dope at a rock concert...lot of cures for cancer (/snark).
Blame - how convenient. Solves the problem, doesn't it? The monetary family power structure dynasty has outlasted each generation that came along, post war, boomer, yuppie, gen x, gen y, gen whatever. Keep barking at the other dogs in the pound - that will make the neutering easier to ignore. Wake up, you sorry illiterate unconscious "hip aware" hedgers! FOLLOW THE MONEY. There, you will find the architects of disfunction, dissonance, and the anthesis of conscious, aware, evolved human beings. The true Antichrists of our world. Bred to rule, unless you wake the fuck up, and get tired of being batteries in their Matrix!
Just ask that [ Lt; Govenor/ of CALI?
Hate/ Ashberry
Cog, seven of your last eight posts coincided with gold going up dramatically. At this point, we're going to have to insist you continue to write and publish at a brisk pace, lol.
Now that is hilarious. Considering I'm never sure when I'm going to post my articles 'they' must be getting messages from my brain implants in order to activate the Gold buying bots.
I am willing to take offerings and donations for my efforts in specie only please. Please send to PO Box 666, Death Valley................:>)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard
Just in case..........that address was a joke folks.
I think you got it backwards. They send. They don't receive. Check your hat, it might have a pinhole leak.
Oh shit what great response I now that my on tin foil has been leaking for days.
Thanks again DG
CD great insight. Let me tell you all a story. Before 2008 I was fat and happy playing them there MMORPG's, mow my yard, take care of the wife and dog. My children are grown and I am a grand father. When the market crashed and I lost 17% of my savings I woke up. I mean I really woke up. I started having Diabetes type 2. I was over weight.
I headed down the road of enlightenment. I have lost 85 lbs. I started reading this site and joined a couple of months ago as I finally had the balls to post. You all are brutal. I moved my money around and made all of it back and more. I am a history buff and as I look back now we are repeating our past and we are going to pay dearly in the near future. I no longer have diabetes type 2. I am sure there will be people coming here calling you a nut! Why? I am called a nut. I told my co-workers to get their dam money out of the market or they were fixing to take a bath as QE2 was coming to an end and they called me nuts. They just got their statements and I was accused of insider trading by my boss. I told her you took a bath last time it just made sense to get the moeny out was all.
I do not eat at fast food much anymore and yes I do have to do lunch from time to time with customers and workers but always watch what I eat now. What is sad alot of this drug dealing comes in the form of diplomatic immunity bags. Nothing is ever said and nothing ever will be. Hell we spread influenza over San Francisco back in the 50's. Military people are test subjects and think they are protecting them. I remember back in 1989 they decided to give nerve agent prevention shot and some lost the use of parts of their faces. I know I was there. The overactive child is just that he or she does not have ADD. ADD is just another money making machine for the drug companies.
Hmm enough rambling from an old man. CD great story. I am appalled at what is going on and worse when you try to even talk about it with someone they go off on a tangent and call you a nut, your greedy, or tell you to get fucked. Those that no longer think are the ones who will get screwed the most and oh the huge metropolitan areas with only 3 days supply of food. I am glad I am awake now.
Great article, I would suggest that you add the vaccinations in your list of official drugging, with all respect. They might not make people numb, but they are weakening the whole complex and its reaction and self-healing abilities.
Lots of reference on the web, but I'll just put one here with more hints and pointers:
http://www.homeoint.org/morrell/otherarticles/vaccination.htm
Read the last but one paragraph. Says it all.
Sorry for the plain text, writing from my phone.
I considered doing so and decided that I wanted to stick to the theme of drugging to be comfortably numb. I have been thinking about writing about those many things we take/injest/inject that are destroying us.
Thanks for the feedback and comment.
Cog D,
Have you eaver read into Timothy Leary's 8 circuit model of Consciousness?? I would ask you is the problem the drugs, or the correct usage of those drugs?
Food for thought.
You are the " Poster Child" For PORK SPENDING!!!
Yes I have.
I am trying to take baby steps here with the readership. This is the first time I have spent any time talking about drugs and I wanted to introduce basic concepts before venturing further. Sometimes we forget that everyone here on ZH is on different learning curves. And that the comment section does not represent the majority of readers, many of whom are not as advanced as the people who comment.
My private email conversations with the silent ZH majority tell me that my audience is more interested in basic discussions first, then progressing to more advanced concepts. The average ZH reader does not comment and most are not even registered. They are here to learn and not so much about money. And many are quite timid. It is these people to whom I write, but it is the people who post comments to whom I respond. Two worlds separated. :)
Don't worry too much about us newbies. Even though I come here and feel like I am drinking from a firehose, I Google everything I don't know and feel like I am at least learning the REAL rules of the game. The bigger the gap, the bigger the effort on my part and I have no problem with that. Keep up the good work ZH-ers! And...thanks for the education!
Huristics and Epistemology, two things everyone needs to learn, before all other learning. Enlightenment for the masses? Perhaps not, but empathy is universal, and is the target of your "wetiko". Perhaps we can discuss further. Find me through http://spatialfusion.blogspot.com/
The wetiko meme must be spread far and wide, I recently learned about it about 6 months ago, I've been meaning to read ...
Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism
Also of note, a new Derrick Jensen book came out in April called Dreams.
Please don't forget Paul Levy's new "Wetiko: The Greatest Epidemic Sickness Know to Humanity".
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/wetiko/
I recently wrote an article about Paul's book here on ZH.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/wetiko-%E2%80%93-cognitive-infiltration-third-kind
My copy just showed up the other day.
Yep me to
Sam Harris had 2 very excellent posts on the topic recently
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/whats-the-point-of-transcendence/
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/drugs-and-the-meaning-of-life/
Also I would heartily recommend the book "The Ego Tunnel" by Thomas Metzinger, a self-proclaimed psychonaut
Here is a review that gets many of his points across
http://www.naturalism.org/metzinger.htm
Absolute freedom requires absolute responsibility, and based on observation, we are clearly not ready for that requirement.
CogDis, you happened to overlook, or failed to mention, one of the most pernicious drugs of all, and one that is constantly promoted by the political-financial Establishment at all costs: shallow and blinkered greed, and the endless persuit of money, Money, MONEY, along with the corresponding marginalization and active belittlement of all non-strictly-income-related activities that feed that mindless and monomaniacal lust for lucre above all else.
I fully agree with you.
I avoided it for several reasons, primarily because I wanted to stick with the 'drugs' we use money to buy. Plus I also devoted several other essay's to money. For example the four part series "Perception, Inception and the Trojan Horse Money Meme".
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/perception-inception-and-trojan-horse-money-meme
That's an excellent summary of the countless diversions to truth. Most people do not want the truth, so any excuse to not find it is welcomed. Even within the few that do seek truth, many of those are more than willing to accept someone else's version of it (organized religion, etc.). With human psychology the way it is, it really is amazing that society has made it to this level of complexity. Oh, the over sexualization of our children is also a huge area related to this topic, and sex in general is yet another way for the masses to embrace apathy. The government welcomes sexuality as long as it does not result in successful pregnancies of course.
Individual responsibility, courage, and hard work once founded a republic meant to defend unalienable liberties. Liberty is worth any price to me too, and I do not mean for the sake of my liberty. It is for the liberty of my children that I fight. That is what motivates me to act upon my knowledge, and I hope there are enough friends of mine out there who are also willing to sacrifice all in its defense. As I have said before to many others, I never want to have to ask forgiveness from my children for something that I did NOT do.
Thanks CD and keep up the good fight my friend. It is with great comfort that I realize I'm not alone in it.
I can picture the conversation now - brain storming session of TV professionals at NBC;
Producer: so glad you all could make it today, now what do we call the show?
Researcher; what about “Weight loss is extremely difficult”
Producer; (stroking his cat) Nah, it doesn’t fit the criteria of the overarching government meme designed to subliminally convince people to eat more through a comparative sequence of images of fat cunts, thus it wont engender in the sheeple the tendency to normalize their own dysfunction.
Researcher; ummm, ok, were you out last night or something, its just that I have never heard you talking like that before?
Producer; get with the fucking programme man, I’ve been in touch with my local brainwashing representative down at the mind control agency and he gave me my new directives.
Researcher ; Ok, ummm, but my moms overweight and I don’t want her watching the show under the subliminal premise that its ok to be overweight as long as there are people fatter than her
Producer; FUCK YOUR MOTHER! I NEED TO FOLLOW MY MEME DIRECTIVES OR WE’RE ALL FUCKED, GOT IT?? WE’LL NEVER WORK IN THIS TOWN AGAIN!!
Researcher; ok ok ok, what about
“The Biggest Loser”? jesus.Producer; exceeeeeeelent smithers, let me just see if it ticks all the boxes of the population subordination meme...
Researcher; umm, whatever, we're going to lunch, you comming?...
CD,
On the one hand you point the finger of blame at our Lords and Masters, the system that controls us, but then point out that responsibility for fixing things lies with us, inferring that WE are the problem, not the people upstairs. I don't find those two things to be compatible, so there must be a "brain state transmission error" somewhere (I'm misunderstanding you which is possible because you write too much and I skim read as a consequence ;-) ).
Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" presents a still relevant opinion that I generally agree with. If you haven't read the book, you should find it enjoyable and largely compatible. We are "Brave New World", not "1984", we're in this shit because we begged for it. Audio version here -> http://www.archive.org/details/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
The folks in charge are simply opportunistic parasites. If the organism were healthy, the parasites would be kept in check, but the organism is sick, reducing immunity and allowing parasites to prosper. Although parasites may make the organism's health decline further (perhaps to the point of death), they aren't the primary cause of the problem and getting rid of them won't cure the primary disease.
Huxley nailed it all those years ago. Our illness is our addiction to our mental reward system. That reward system evolved to serve us admirably when we fought as animals to survive against hostile nature tens of thousands of years ago. It helped us remember food sources, maintain social state and find mates, but in today's world, our advanced brains have enabled us to dominate our predators and allowed us to find ways to stimulate our reward system at will, turing us all into junkies. In our relentless drive to satiate an addiction to pleasure (impossible), we will sacrifice the health of our society, just as any junkie sacrifices *everything* for a hit. Sex, drugs and rock'n'roll baby, that's what it's all about. Those hippies weren't enlightened, not even close, they were fine examples of the problem. When we look at what happened next, it all makes perfect sense. The very same biochemistry that drove the flower children to be idealistic hippies also drove them to become consumers. It looks like a contradiction at face value, but it's not.
While recreation is an option and "feelings" matter more than anything else, there is no solution (just count all the shows involving a crying fat woman vs the shows involving real scientific investigation to see how doomed we are). America will continue to decay until such time as people must work the land with their own hands in order to survive and there simply isn't time in the day to wallow in self pity like a spoiled child. This is an enduring pattern of civilization, a cycle (as you've recognized), that seems to be readily explainable via genetics and brain biochemistry. When life is hard, science prospers, inventiveness raises us out of the dirt, education spreads. Then we get comfortable and we elevate entertainers to gods, embracing the sweet haze of pleasure, preventing us from noticing that parasites have taken control, leading to an inevitable fall back into the dirt before the cycle begins afresh.
There's no "cure" here unless we re-engineer out genomes. The only question that matters to me is: "will I get shot in the head by one of the "unprepared dispossessed" on the way down?"
"If the organism were healthy, the parasites would be kept in check, but the organism is sick, reducing immunity and allowing parasites to prosper. Although parasites may make the organism's health decline further (perhaps to the point of death), they aren't the primary cause of the problem and getting rid of them won't cure the primary disease."
i learned this truth the hard way through gardening. it's one of the basic tenets of life yes? thing is is that when you run those dead diseased plants up through a well-made compost pile, by next spring, the parasites are gone. i've got some healthy tomato plants growing in the remains of last year's aphid infested brassicas to prove it.
perhaps it's time to give up on this 'life' and begin to dig into the next one? like huxley wrote, "after many a Summer, dies the Swan..."
man, your comments lately have been brilliant.
I don't see this as an either/or issue here. Yes, we are the problem and yes, the PTB is the problem.
powers-that-who?
Your post was too wordy, so I skim-read it, and didn't see your point either.