The Homeland Security Business

Note: Just as it happens with military conflict, the continuous imaginary scare of terrorism also bolsters the homeland security business with companies earning government contracts to provide security technology for monitoring infrastructure and citizens, even within their own houses.

By Constance Gustke
CNBC.com
May 30, 2011
A decade after the 9/11 terror attacks, homeland security is still a growth business.The niche—that includes James Bond-like tools such as infrared cameras, explosive detectors and body scanners—is expected to grow 12 percent annually through 2013, according to Morgan Keegan.“Homeland security is reactive,” says Tim Quillen, a senior equity analyst at investment banking firm Stephens Inc. “The stocks are hedges against bad things happening.”

One example: the underwear bomber, who was thwarted in late 2009. After that a bell weather homeland security stock OSI Systems [OSIS  39.11    0.04  (+0.1%)   ] rocketed 30 percent within a month. “The stock went on a tear,” says Brian Ruttenbur, a research analyst at Morgan Keegan. Why? OSI makes X-ray and metal detectors used to scan people, baggage and cargo that it sells worldwide. During the past 12 months ending yesterday, the stock has popped from $25 to $40, driven by border and port growth.

Much has changed, since the government spent over $20 billion beefing up airport baggage screening nationwide with X-ray devices.

Airline security is a small business: about $1 billion. There’s 2,100 airport security lanes in the U.S., and 90 percent use X-ray scanners.

“The scanners are ten plus years old now,” says Ruttenbur and “going through an upgrade cycle.” Recently, the government has ordered another 500 scanners though.

Screening cargo going on aircraft and boats at ports is also spiking. Now, only a small percentage of all cargo is scanned. Security screening will grow ten percent to 15 percent annually in coming years, says Ruttenbur in a recent report. This driver will help OSI Systems pump out strong security earnings.

Tiny Niche, Big Clout

There aren’t any pure plays within homeland security though—neither stocks or ETFs. Some players like OSI Systems sell their screening devices to healthcare companies too, so their homeland security earnings are diluted.

“You have to spread the net wide and separate reality from hype,” says Quillen

Both OSI Systems and Flir Systems [FLIR  35.52    0.28  (+0.79%)   ] are undervalued right now, says Quillen.

Flir Systems is a well-managed market leader in infrared cameras used to protect critical buildings, he says. This fast-growing market is slated to expand 20 percent annually, though only half of Flir Systems’ revenue come from government business. The  stock rose from $29 to $36 in the past year. And Quillen has a 12-month price target of $43 on it.

OSI Systems is another favorite. In the first quarter of the year, OSI’s security group revenues grew 27 percent over last year’s.

“The stock is a long-term play,” says Jonathan Richton, an analyst at Imperial Capital, citing OSI’s developing cargo scanning business. Analysts peg five-year earnings growth at 20 percent. Another plus driving earnings: OSI Systems is aggressively tightening operating margins.

A third player, American Science and Engineering [ASEI  86.07    -0.11  (-0.13%)   ] makes cargo and parcel search systems. But the stock is expensive right now, say analysts, since the company missed first-quarter revenue targets.

In the past year, the stock has risen from $77 to $88. Ruttenbur expects only 4-percent earnings growth this year but 10 percent to 15 percent in the next few years, as orders pick up. His 12-month price target: $94.

For investors casting a wide net, L-3 Communications [LLL  81.60    0.30  (+0.37%)   ] is a homeland security monolith. It’s also the sixth largest U.S. defense contractor.

The company makes surveillance equipment for airports and checkpoint scanners. “They’re playing a meaningful role,” says Quillen, “but security revenue is only about 5 percent.”

Its stock price has been flat over the last year.

These days, homeland security niche players are a safe bet though — even after the recent death of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

U.S. Feds: Airport Scanners DO Store Naked Body Images

TSA requires all airport body scanners it purchases to be able to store and transmit images for “testing, training, and evaluation purposes.”

CNET

For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all images will be discarded as soon as they’re viewed. The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that “scanned images cannot be stored or recorded.”

Photo: www.drudgereport.com

Now it turns out that some police agencies are storing the controversial images after all. The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse.

This follows an earlier disclosure (PDF) by the TSA that it requires all airport body scanners it purchases to be able to store and transmit images for “testing, training, and evaluation purposes.” The agency says, however, that those capabilities are not normally activated when the devices are installed at airports.

Body scanners penetrate clothing to provide a highly detailed image so accurate that critics have likened it to a virtual strip search. Technologies vary, with millimeter wave systems capturing fuzzier images, and backscatter X-ray machines able to show precise anatomical detail. The U.S. government likes the idea because body scanners can detect concealed weapons better than traditional magnetometers.

This privacy debate, which has been simmering since the days of the Bush administration, came to a boil two weeks ago when Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that scanners would soon appear at virtually every major airport. The updated list includes airports in New York City, Dallas, Washington, Miami, San Francisco, Seattle, and Philadelphia.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, has filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to grant an immediate injunction pulling the plug on TSA’s body scanning program. In a separate lawsuit, EPIC obtained a letter (PDF) from the Marshals Service, part of the Justice Department, and released it on Tuesday afternoon.

These “devices are designed and deployed in a way that allows the images to be routinely stored and recorded, which is exactly what the Marshals Service is doing,” EPIC executive director Marc Rotenberg told CNET. “We think it’s significant.”

William Bordley, an associate general counsel with the Marshals Service, acknowledged in the letter that “approximately 35,314 images…have been stored on the Brijot Gen2 machine” used in the Orlando, Fla. federal courthouse. In addition, Bordley wrote, a Millivision machine was tested in the Washington, D.C. federal courthouse but it was sent back to the manufacturer, which now apparently possesses the image database.

The Gen 2 machine, manufactured by Brijot of Lake Mary, Fla., uses a millimeter wave radiometer and accompanying video camera to store up to 40,000 images and records. Brijot boasts that it can even be operated remotely: “The Gen 2 detection engine capability eliminates the need for constant user observation and local operation for effective monitoring. Using our APIs, instantly connect to your units from a remote location via the Brijot Client interface.”

This trickle of disclosures about the true capabilities of body scanners–and how they’re being used in practice–is probably what alarms privacy advocates more than anything else.

A 70-page document (PDF) showing the TSA’s procurement specifications, classified as “sensitive security information,” says that in some modes the scanner must “allow exporting of image data in real time” and provide a mechanism for “high-speed transfer of image data” over the network. (It also says that image filters will “protect the identity, modesty, and privacy of the passenger.”)

“TSA is not being straightforward with the public about the capabilities of these devices,” Rotenberg said. “This is the Department of Homeland Security subjecting every U.S. traveler to an intrusive search that can be recorded without any suspicion–I think it’s outrageous.” EPIC’s lawsuit says that the TSA should have announced formal regulations, and argues that the body scanners violate the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits “unreasonable” searches.

TSA spokeswoman Sari Koshetz told CNET on Wednesday that the agency’s scanners are delivered to airports with the image recording functions turned off. “We’re not recording them,” she said. “I’m reiterating that to the public. We are not ever activating those capabilities at the airport.”

The TSA maintains that body scanning is perfectly constitutional: “The program is designed to respect individual sensibilities regarding privacy, modesty and personal autonomy to the maximum extent possible, while still performing its crucial function of protecting all members of the public from potentially catastrophic events.”

Where’s Jimmy? Just Google His Bar Code

Fox News

Scientists currently tag animals to study their behavior and protect the endangered, but some futurists wonder whether all humans

tracking chip

VeriChip Tracking Chip

should be tagged too.

Scientists tag animals to monitor their behavior and keep track of endangered species. Now some futurists are asking whether all of mankind should be tagged too. Looking for a loved one? Just Google his microchip.

The chips, called radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, emit a simple radio signal akin to a bar code, anywhere, anytime. Futurists say they can be easily implanted under the skin on a person’s arm.

Already, the government of Mexico has surgically implanted the chips, the size of a grain of rice, in the upper arms of staff at the attorney general’s office in Mexico City. The chips contain codes that, when read by scanners, allow access to a secure building, and prevent trespassing by drug lords.

In research published in the International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development, Taiwanese researchers postulate that the tags could help save lives in the aftermath of a major earthquake. “Office workers would have their identity badges embedded in their RFID tags, while visitors would be given temporary RFID tags when they enter the lobby,” they suggest. Similarly, identity tags for hospital staff and patients could embed RFID technology.

“Our world is becoming instrumented,” IBM’s chairman and CEO, Samuel J. Palmisano said at an industry conference last week. “Today, there are nearly a billion transistors per human, each one costing one ten-millionth of a cent. There are 30 billion radio RFID tags produced globally.”

Having one in every person could relieve anxiety for parents and help save lives, or work on a more mundane level by unlocking doors with the wave of a hand or starting a parked car — that’s how tech enthusiast Amal Graafstra (his hands are pictured above) uses his. But this secure, “instrumented” future is frightening for many civil liberties advocates. Even adding an RFID chip to a driver’s license or state ID card raises objections from concerned voices.

Tracking boxes and containers on a ship en route from Hong Kong is OK, civil libertarians say. So is monitoring cats and dogs with a chip surgically inserted under their skin. But they say tracking people is over-the-top — even though the FDA has approved the devices as safe in humans and animals.

“We are concerned about the implantation of identity chips,” said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the speech, privacy and technology program at the American Civil Liberties Union. He puts the problem plainly: “Many people find the idea creepy.”

“RFID tags make the perfect tracking device,” Stanley said. “The prospect of RFID chips carried by all in identity papers means that any individual’s presence at a given location can be detected or recorded simply through the installation of an invisible RFID reader.”

There are a number of entrepreneurial companies marketing radio tracking technologies, including Positive ID, Datakey and MicroChips. Companies started marketing the idea behind these innovative technologies a few years ago, as excellent devices for tracking everyone, all the time.

Following its first use in an emergency room in 2006, VeriChip touted the success of the subdermal chip. “We are very proud of how the VeriMed Patient Identification performed during this emergency situation. This event illustrates the important role that the VeriChip can play in medical care,” Kevin McLaughlin, President and CEO of VeriChip, said at the time.

“Because of their increasing sophistication and low cost, these sensors and devices give us, for the first time ever, real-time instrumentation of a wide range of the world’s systems — natural and man-made,” said IBM’s Palmisano.

But are human’s “systems” to be measured?

Grassroots groups are fretting loudly over civil liberties implications of the devices, threatening to thwart their  development for mass-market, human tracking applications.

“If such readers proliferate, and there would be many incentives to install them, we would find ourselves in a surveillance society of 24/7 mass tracking,” said the ACLU’s Stanley.

The controversy extends overseas, too. David Cameron, Britain’s new prime minister, has promised to scrap a proposed national ID card system and biometrics for passports and the socialized health service, options that were touted by the Labour Party.

“We share a common commitment to civil liberties, and to getting rid — immediately — of Labour’s ID card scheme,” said Cameron according to ZDNet UK.

These controversies are impacting developers. One firm, Positive ID, has dropped the idea of tracking regular folks with its chip technology. On Wednesday, the company announced that it had filed a patent for a new medical device to monitor blood glucose levels in diabetics. The technology it initially developed to track the masses is now just a “legacy” system for the Del Ray Beach, Fla., firm.

“We are developing an in-vivo, glucose sensing microchip,” Allison Tomek, senior vice president of investor relations and corporate communications, told FoxNews.com. “In theory it will be able to detect glucose levels. We are testing the glucose sensor portion of the product. It will contain a sensor with an implantable RFID chip. Today’s patent filing was really about our technology to create a transformational electronic interface to measure chemical change in blood.”

Gone are the company’s previous ambitions. “Our board of directors wants a new direction,” says Tomek. “Rather than focus on identification only, we think there is much more value in taking this to a diagnostic platform. That’s the future of the technology — not the simple ID.”

The company even sold off some of its individual-style tracking technology to Stanley Black and Decker for $48 million, she said.

These medical applications are not quite as controversial as the tracking technologies. The FDA in 2004 approved another chip developed by Positive ID’s predecessor company, VeriChip, which stores a code — similar to the identifying UPC code on products sold in retail stores — that releases patient-specific information when a scanner passes over the chip. Those codes, placed on chips and scanned at the physician’s office or the hospital, would disclose a patient’s medical history.

But like smart cards, these medical chips can still be read from a distance by predators. A receiving device can “speak” to the chip remotely, without any need for physical contact, and get whatever information is on it. And that’s causing concern too.

The bottom line is simple, according to the ACLU: “Security questions have not been addressed,” said Stanley. And until those questions are resolved, this technology may remain in the labs.

Brasil Viola Liberdades Civis

Por Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
Maio 11, 2010

O Brasil é conhecido pelo samba, praias maravilhosas e pessoas amigas. O país é muitas vezes comparado com nações mais desenvolvidas por causa de seu tamanho, população e recursos. Mas há mais uma coisa pela qual o Brasil é similar ao mundo dos chamados desenvolvidos: O Brasil também viola as liberdades civis dos seus cidadãos. Diferente, por exemplo, dos Estados Unidos ou Inglaterra, a polícia aqui não importuna muito os cidadãos. No entanto, a violação das suas liberdades e direitos ainda é feito em silêncio. O Brasil é um país com um acesso muito limitado à informação e as pessoas aqui sabem muito pouco sobre seus direitos e deveres. Este panorama é um terreno fértil para o abuso do governo e a corrupção.

O gigante da América do Sul é conhecido pela sua impunidade ao longo dos anos. A corrupção corre solta de norte a sul e de leste a oeste. Em uma pesquisa recente, foi determinado que o Brasil está entre os primeiros países em corrupção e impunidade. Embora muita desta corrupção eleva-se a funcionários públicos que prestam e recebem grandes somas de dinheiro por favores políticos, há muito mais do que a corrupção da burocracia. A ex-colônia Portuguesa rapidamente adopta medidas globalistas de controle populacional, bem como os Estados Unidos, Inglaterra, Austrália e Nova Zelândia.

Ao longo dos últimos 12 meses, alguns jornais revelaram nas entrelinhas de suas páginas o caráter quase obrigatório da campanha de vacinação contra a gripe H1N1, que embora tenha sido provada uma farsa, continua a ser implementada em todo o país. Felizmente, algumas pessoas foram informadas sobre os perigos da vacina e a campanha não tem tido os resultados esperados pelas autoridades de saúde do governo. De acordo com o jornal Zero Hora, apenas 670.000 idosos foram vacinados ao invés de 1,4 milhões no estado de Rio Grande do Sul. Menos de 50 por cento tomaram a vacina contra a gripe regular. No entanto, isto não significa que o Brasil pode escapar do controle da Organização Mundial de Saúde.  As campanhas continuarão a ser realizadas em todo o país.

O Brasil também utiliza uma forma sintética de fluoreto de sódio na água potável, uma prática historicamente adotada pelas suas supostas vantagens no cuidado dos dentes, embora foi determinado que esta crença nao é mais que pseudociência. Recentemente, esta publicação entrevistou uma química do SEMAE, uma organização governamental que cuida da qualidade da água na cidade de São Leopoldo, Brasil. Com um mestrado em química, Juliana da Silva Chaves não só admitiu que nunca viu um estudo confirmando o benefício do uso do ingrediente que ela identificou como flúor, como também confessou que o flúor é colocado na água com base na crença de que ajuda a promover saúde bucal. Novamente, a química confirmou que esta afirmação foi passada para ela mas nenhum estudo foi mostrado para conferir a veracidade da mesma. Quando perguntamos sobre os perigos do fluoreto de sódio e outras substâncias na água potável, ela disse que nunca aprendeu nada sobre a toxicidade em cursos universitários ou de formação. De fato, o flúor provoca cárie dentária, câncer bucal e diversos distúrbios neurológicos, além de diminuição da inteligência.

O país está em estágio final na adoção de Cartões de Identificação que possuem um chip de rádio frequência, assim como Scanners de Corpo Inteiro nos aeroportos. Estas duas últimas tecnologias já estão sendo utilizadas ou entrarão em vigor nos próximos 10 anos. No caso dos scanners que emitem radiação, há vários deles em aeroportos nacionais e internacionais. Segundo o jornal Zero Hora do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul, passageiros que embarquem nas cidades de Guarulhos, Rio de Janeiro, Recife e Manaus podem ser selecionados como candidatos para provar um destes scanners Esta medida é rejeitada pelos grupos de vigilância da privacidade até mesmo nos países mais desenvolvidos não só pela radiação que emitem, mas também devido ao fato de que os corpos das pessoas são vistos completamente nus nas imagens que a máquina gera.

De acordo com muitos grupos de direitos civis, o uso de scanners é uma grave violação das leis de privacidade. As imagens geradas a partir dos scanners são salvas no disco rígido e mantidas para posterior utilização na vigilância. Embora as autoridades do Brasil neguem a capacidade dos scanners para fornecer essas imagens, Angelo Gioia, da Polícia Federal no Rio de Janeiro, admitiu que é um método mais invasivo de vigilância. Atualmente, a legislação brasileira permite buscas de pessoas quando há suspeitas fundadas de atividades ilícitas, mas não regulamenta a utilização deste tipo de scanner. Goia acredita que não deve haver limites quando se trata de segurança. O custo de cada scanner corporal é de U$170.000. A tecnologia de digitalização opera com base na utilização de ondas e radiação sobre um corpo para medir a energia refletida, e assim processar uma imagem 3D das ondas milimétricas. Os usuários dos scanners são expostos a ondas eletromagnéticas entre 3 e 30 gigahertz, algo próximo ao que emite um telefone celular. Os promotores dos scanners nos aeroportos sempre citam os enormes benefícios que estes proporcionam na prevenção de riscos de segurança, tais como armas, explosivos, etc. Mas a verdade é que uma revisão normal ou cães farejadores de bombas são tão úteis ou mais precisas. Assim como tem sido feito em outros países, no Brasil, o uso destas tecnologias é apresentada como uma conveniência, para que mais pessoas as recebam e aprovem. Pouco se falou sobre a violação ao direito à privacidade das pessoas e suas propriedades. Além da comodidade, há um outro fator injetado na aprovação dos scanners: Medo. A ameaça do terrorismo é a carta extra sob a manga sempre pronta para ser mostrada no caso das pessoas queixarem-se ou acharem os scanners um inconveniente.

Como é a situação do terrorismo aqui no Brasil? Comparado com outros países como a Irlanda, Israel, Palestina, Paquistão e Grã-Bretanha, a existência de terrorismo é nula. O país nunca sofreu um grande ataque terrorista na história moderna. O mais próximo ao terrorismo são os tiroteios ocasionais entre traficantes e policiais militares em pequenos bairros do Rio ou de São Paulo. Então, por que o Brasil precisa de scanners? A resposta é que não precisa. Como em muitos outros países, a adoção desta tecnologia é sinónimo da perda das liberdades civis, onde os cidadãos são culpados antes de serem provados inocentes. Na verdade, a história mostra que os ataques terroristas mais incríveis foram do tipo bandeira falsa, ou false-flag. Para Gerald Celente, conhecido estudioso das tendências mundiais e fundador do Instituto de Pesquisa e Tendências, 2010 será o ano dos ataques patrocinados pelos governos. ”É o crash de 2010 como o previmos”, diz Celente. ”O colapso da economia global em março de 2009, quando os mercados foram inflados com dinheiro falso.” Celente previu a atual crise, queda das bolsas, agitação civil na Grécia e o colapso da Islândia, Argentina, Portugal, Espanha, bem como a crise nos Estados Unidos e no Reino Unido. ”Quem acredita que esse tipo de coisas como scanners e identificação con chip são benéficos, merece o que recebe.” Gerald Celente alerta as pessoas sobre o que vai acontecer uma vez que estes tipos de políticas estiveren totalmente implementadas. Assista a este clip no minuto 5 com 30 segundos.

Quando se trata do Cartão Nacional de Identificação no Brasil, informações sobre o assunto são muito escassas. A maioria das pessoas aqui visitam escritórios da Polícia Federal em todo o país para renovar suas licenças de motorista ou de identificação e não sabem ou não querem saber sobre a nova tecnologia utilizada nos referidos documentos. Em outros países onde foi implementado, o Cartão de Identidade Nacional é rejeitado pelos cidadãos informados, bem como grupos que apoiam a privacidade, porque contém todas as informações relacionadas ao portador do cartão, número da identidade, endereço físico e número de identificação único que inclui uma grande variedade de informações privadas, tais como contas bancárias, de poupança, local de trabalho, histórico de votação e outras.

No Brasil, o novo Cartão de Identificação Nacional prevê um número de identificação único de acordo com o estado onde a pessoa vive. No sul, as pessoas terão identificação com um número de 10 dígitos exclusivo, em Brasília, sete dígitos, São Paulo, 9 dígitos. A emissão do novo cartão terá início em Outubro de 2010 e estima-se que todos os cidadãos, imigrantes naturalizados e legais farão parte do banco de dados até 2020. De acordo com o especialista em tecnologia RFID Chris Paget, Radio Frequency Technology, do tipo usado em cartões de identidade nacional, tem sido usada há anos em cartões de crédito e verificação. “Houve centenas de milhões de cartões emitidos com RFID. O problema é que as pessoas não sabem que a tecnologia está contida nos cartões e, portanto, eles não fazem nada para protegê-los.” Parece estranho que a tecnologia que é criada para manter-nos seguros, precisa ser protegida. Agora, qualquer pessoa com um leitor de RFID pode encontrar cartões de crédito e cartões de ponto de verificação e obter informações suficientes para cloná-lo e usá-lo em uma transação. Então, por que os países, literalmente, querem contar e ter um controle tão exato dos seus cidadãos? Dra. Katherine Albrecht, fundadora e diretora da organização CASPIAN de Privacidade do Consumidor, considera que há uma pressão enorme para que os governos numerem e identifiquem a todos os seus cidadãos e, no processo, usem a tecnologia criada por mega corporações que estariam, então, no controle de informações pessoais tais como número de identificação, contas bancárias, segurança social, contas de fundos de pensão, números de cartões de crédito e assim por diante. ”Estamos vendo isso na China, onde 1 bilhão de pessoas foram identificadas com cartões de identidade nacionais com dispositivos de rádio freqüência. Eles estão fazendo o mesmo no México, e na India, onde 1,2 bilhões de pessoas também foram submetidas a este processo.”

De acordo com o historiador Daniel Estulin, o uso de cartões de identidade nacional, juntamente com outras tecnologias, é um impulso para a criação de uma sociedade sem dinheiro. ”Não será necessário usar dinheiro, porque você tem o crédito atribuído ao seu número de identificação. O problema é que você não será quem vai determinar se terá ou não créditos a serem colocados no cartão. O governo vai ter esse poder; as empresas donas da tecnología o terão, não os cidadãos “. Estulin, bem como Albrecht reconhecem a existência de bases de dados dos governos para quem procura emprego, crédito e para aqueles no sistema criminal, e alertam que o uso de cartões de identidade nacional vai permitir a criação de um banco de dados mundial, onde todos serão incluídos.

No Brasil, a emissão do Cartão de Identificação Nacional começará como um projeto piloto em cada região. A placa será semelhante a um cartão de crédito, com um chip contendo informações como o CPF ou Cadastro de Pessoa Física, número de registo de eleitores, impressão digital, íris ou uma imagem digitalizada que será aceita pelo sistema denominado AFIS ou de Identificação Automática de Impressões Digitais. Este sistema é reconhecido em todo o mundo e é utilizado pelos governos em todos os cinco continentes. O número resultante será padronizado RG ou Registro Geral. Com esse banco de dados local, regional e nacional, o Brasil será um dos últimos gigantes do planeta a sucumbir ao plano de se submeter a um programa de registro global onde as empresas conhecem cada ser humano, não importando onde eles vivam.

Learned Helplessness: This is why People are so Easily Bamboozled

Along with Cognitive Dissidence, Learned Helplessness is Responsible for People’s Hopeless Behavior

By Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
May 1, 2010

People are broken people. They have been intentionally transformed into manageable human resources that consciously and learned helplessnessotherwise have stopped fighting for what is theirs; they have stopped fighting oppression and injustice. There is a system that has been established to inflict brokenness and desperation, fear if you will, which seems so paramount, that makes people lower their arms and give up. Daily, we can see clear examples of this behavior. The most recent one is the installation of body scanners in airports and courthouses around the globe under the pretext of terrorism. What is people’s answer to this invasion of privacy? Compliance. (1)

Before the scanners -which capture a digital picture of a person’s naked body- (2) we had other examples of how the system continuously corrals us and we do not seem to know what to do. For example, the financial meltdown that began several years ago turned into a bailout of powerful banking interests. (3) The same banks and same financial system that created and perpetuated the collapse, gave themselves a pat on the back and carried out the most gigantic transfer of wealth in history, leaving the ordinary citizen in shambles, jobless, in debt and homeless. (4) What was the reaction given this illegal wealth transfer? Compliance.

Previous to the financial collapse, citizens were indoctrinated into believing that humans were responsible for the warming of the planet, and that only a global carbon tax would be the solution to save ourselves from doom. (5) Fortunately, a series of leaked e-mails and documents from the University of East Anglia, revealed not only that Anthropogenic Global Warming was a hoax,(6) but that it was part of a greater plan to further consolidate power and the resources of the planet into the a few hands. Although the climate alarmists’ agenda was debunked beyond doubt, (7) there are people out there who still have not looked at the science and continue to claim that the warming is occurring and that it is due to human activity. More compliance.

Going back even further in history, we find another very clear example of how people became hopeless and easily manipulated. Common wisdom dictates that it is correct to count on synthetic pharmaceuticals in order to prevent, treat or cure disease. People could not and cannot figure out that health freedom and a healthy state of being could not be further away from such industrially manufactured products. Due to lack of information or a way to check false statements from manufacturers and doctors, the citizenry simply trusted the “experts” and their magic pills in their blind pursue of health and fall into learned helplessness.

A state of learned helplessness is a psychological condition in which people have learned to believe they are helpless in a particular situation. They believe they have no control over their situation and that whatever they do is futile. As a result, they will stay passive in the face of an unpleasant, harmful or damaging situation, even when they actually do have the power to change their circumstances.”For example, in politics, when there is a two party dictatorship in a country and people can only vote for one or the other -a false sense of choice- and things do not change or continue to get worse because the same corporate interests continue to maintain control. The automatic psychological response is a sense of hopelessness. Another valid example is when a person is in a relationship where he or she is physically, mentally or sexually abused. The victim knows the truth, but is unable to liberate himself or herself due to fear, guilt or any other feeling of despair. The same happens in a society, where the citizen is no longer called a citizen or a human being, but a consumer or a human resource. In a society filled with broken people, the truth no longer sets them free. Different from say, colonial times, when most members of a society still adopted the fighting spirit, today most citizens are conformists, laid-back or apathetic.(8)

What all these people who have learned to be helpless have in common is that pain, in any shape or form, simply makes them weaker, more prone to abuse, and more easily swindled. This takes us to another form of learned helplessness. When people feel depressed, lonely and mentally drained the immediate answer by common wisdom is to look for a psychiatrist or a psychologist to deal with their problems. “What they do not know,” says Dr. Bruce E. Levine, “is that most of the psychologist and psychiatrists out there are only looking to make money out of helpless people.” They are also instruments of the plan the establishment has to maintain control of society.

In today’s society there are three main pillars that support the learned helplessness and cognitive dissidence filled environment: School, Television and the Mental Health Profession. According to doctor Levine, television makes people more passive and docile due to the effect it has in brain waves. It is one of the most effective tools for pacifying the population,” he adds. (9) “Schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant for the important enterprises of the planet,” says professor John Taylor Gatto, author of books such as the Underground History of American Education and Weapons of Mass Instruction. Professor Gatto was named New York’s teacher of the year. “School is not the place where most people get any kind of education. In fact it is a place used to subdue the population, ” agrees Levine. (10) Are scientists trained in science classes, or politicians trained in politics classes? The only thing schools are good for is to teach people to obey orders. This is a conclusion that people who have any critical thinking skills learn very easily and very fast. Of course, school has also been used to completely eliminate critical thinking and creativity in the population. (11) From very young we are taught to worship and depend on the government for every single aspect of our lives. A clear example of this is the fact that a majority of the most relevant citizens in any country were and are people who did not attend school. They can even become presidents! A couple of things people who attend the traditional educational system have in common are that they end jobless in many cases and with a pile of outstanding debt. The traditional educational system has turned into a tool for the creation of an assured state of servitude.

Mental health professionals and psychologists are along with teachers, two of the most compliant groups in society. Health professionals are also one of the groups with the highest suicidal rates. (12) What happens when psychiatrists find resistance to compliance? They become anxious and tend to pathologize. So, almost every person who disagrees with the establishment or with authority is automatically diagnosed as mentally ill. Ernest Hemingway was himself a victim of this system. He was drugged and punished with electric shocks after being diagnosed as mentally imbalanced because he thought he was being followed and watched. It later turned out he was indeed being harassed by intelligence agencies. So, does it make sense to obtain advice from professionals who cannot even control their own personalities? Can we trust people who are indoctrinated to maintain the status quo?

Imagine society as a victim of kidnapping who then suffers from Stockholm Syndrome during and after a kidnapping. The incapacity to react to a kidnapping is such that they begin to make excuses as to why it was normal not to run away when given the opportunity or the chance. Society as a whole, just as kidnapping victims do, even get to a point where they defend their kidnappers. Most people shield themselves from reality by being apathetic, or ignoring what is staring at them as a mechanism of defense against their impossibility to react to such reality due to a feeling of fear and helplessness. In other cases, people choose to spend their lives worrying about football games, reality shows, fashion, gossip and so on.

Another very common problem in today’s society is cognitive dissidence. This happens when people are incapable of being in a state of tension, so they choose to make up a series of excuses in order to escape such situations. The most common reaction is to tell themselves they are not in such tense situation, which serves them to ignore the humiliating state of affairs they are in. So, even though society seems to be turning into an abusive place, where all of our rights are disrespected or taken away, citizens still conform by saying things like “it is not good, but we still live in the best country in the world”. This kind of statements reflect people’s lack of power to face the truth that they live in a repressive tyrannical city or country.

An example of a society where all hope and reason has been lost is the United States. In 2000, one president was elected but the losing candidate was who took power. Short of the circus created by the main stream media, no one else manifested the slightest interest in resolving the election through democratic means. In a clear example of how weak democracies, or pseudo-democracies work, the Supreme Court of the country was the one that decided who would govern the nation. In other countries often called Banana Republics, such as Iran or Mexico, the decision reached by the Court would have resulted in numerous manifestations on the streets and perhaps a real recount of the votes or a second round. How is it that 50 or 60 million people simply let their votes be stolen away without any interest to make it count? In Iran, 3 million people would have turned to the streets to protest a few tens of thousands would have certainly manifested in Mexico. (13)

Madison avenue found out a long time ago that it was possible to make people feel inadequate, that it was possible to tell people what kind of person they should be and that everything that was not so would be socially unacceptable. (14) With that it also realized that it would be easier for the industry to commercialize its crap among insecure people. That is how most women use Botox or surgery to manipulated their bodies in order to look like the model from the magazine cover. That is why men inject themselves with human growth hormone in order to look as strong as the baseball player who also takes drugs to improve his performance. This insecurity spurred the sale of make up and slave-made goods such as sports shoes, apparel and handbags. So the image makers tell the people that not fitting a specific pattern or mold will render them worthless; and people believe it. This of course makes people who are financially incapable of providing themselves with Madison Avenue products victims of their own ignorance, and those who can afford it become petty victims of their power trips. People were taught to hate their humanity and that of others.

Equally insidious is the abuse perpetrated by “professionals” who mostly take advantage of weak-minded people. “There is a lot of money to make out in my profession,” says Dr. Levine. The amount of money people spend in pharmaceuticals and visits to their psychologist or psychiatrist -that in turn supports the very same system that benefits from people’s weakness- is uncountable. “Is it not easier to control a population whose self-esteem is low or non existent? It is in the total interest of the corporate authoritarian society we live in,” adds Levine. That is why it is common to hear professional psychiatric associations call for the identification of new mental disorders. The recognition of such disorders will not only ensure that more people can be subjected to their management model, but also that society will continue to operate business as usual. Recently, the American Psychiatric Association revised its “bible” with the purpose of creating and including new mental diseases. (15)

The “bible” now contains things like “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” (ODD), which includes anyone who disagrees with authority. People who are antisocial are suddenly considered as victims of “Antisocial Personality Disorder” and require pharmacological treatment. Children are no longer unhappy or throwing a temper tantrum, they are suffering from “Temper Dysregulation Disorder with Dysphoria.” The so called “bible” even adopts other made-up disorders such as Repetitive Dysmorphic Nose Picking Disorder With Itching (RDNPDWI), Oppositional Disorganized Speaking Disorder With Indigestion (ODSDWI) and so on. (16)

Is there a solution for Learned Hopelessness and Cognitive Dissidence? Sure. Does it work for everyone? Unfortunately not. So many people are so deep into depression or a state of helplessness that it may be impossible to let them out. The level of indoctrination is such, that losing their homes, families, jobs, liberties and self-respect may not be enough to wake them up. For the lucky ones, it seems that the start of a solution is called Individual Self-respect and/or Collective Self-confidence. In other words, what can I do on a daily basis to restore confidence, faith and respect in myself and people around me? All democratic movements or nations had these two ingredients. What can I do to help myself and others? People who follow these paths are those who identify what is bothering them, but instead of handing those issues to the government -which in turn will make them captives- they give themselves the opportunity to use their problems and solutions to connect with other people. They themselves form their own support groups where everyone shares their solutions to their own problems and those of others. It is what not too long ago used to be called communities.

Another way to pick oneself up is to take on intelligent safe risks. There are projects or goals that everyone has which would exponentially raise his or her confidence and self-esteem. It is precisely pursuing those goals and projects -especially those that include a certain degree of healthy risk- and conquering them, what exalts people out of their sorry empty lives. This risk-taking sometimes includes a decision to get away from people who always drag you down or who simply do not help. A decision needs to be made as to whether this person needs to be left behind in order to achieve that which will help you become what you want. So, the advice is to let the backbiters and backstabbers behind and get on with your life by surrounding yourself with those who support you and wish you well.

Sources:

(1) New scanners break child porn laws

(2) Exposed: Naked Body Scanner Images Of Film Star Printed, Circulated By Airport Staff

(3) Central Banks were complicit in Robbing the Middle Class

(4) 2009 US Economy: The largest transfer of wealth in history

(5) The Carbon Tax Deception

(6) The E-mails from the East Anglia University

(7) The Great Global Warming Swindle

(8) Learned Helplessness

(9) The Awful Truth about Television

(10) The New Dumbness

(11) How School Kills Creativity

(12) Professionals with the highest rate of suicide

(13) Iran Election Protests

(14) Madison Avenue and your Brain

(15) Revision of ADM could introduce new mental disorders

(16) New Psychiatric disorders flag normal human behavior as diseases

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