Freedom Port: Firefly (the other one)

"Ever hear of a guy named Jerry Durbin? No? OK, let me use his proper name. Did you ever hear of a guy named Jerry M. Durbin, Jr.? Not that either? OK, let me try it with his title. Did you ever hear of Staff Sgt. Jerry M. Durbin, Jr.? From Spring, Texas? Still doesn’t ring a bell? Staff Sgt. Jerry M. Durbin, B Company, 2^nd Battalion, 502^nd Infantry Regiment, 2^nd Brigade Combat Team? No luck with that either? Well, just so you know, Staff Sgt. Durbin died last Wednesday in Iraq after an improvised explosive device detonated while he was on patrol. The honorable, 26 year-old Staff Sgt. Durbin leaves behind a wife, two children, a stepdaughter and his parents to pay him his final respects.

"Let’s try another one. Ever hear of Bob Woodruff? "Of course!" you just yelled. I would also bet you know that in the last 24 hours Mr. Woodruff, reporting from Iraq for ABC News, suffered serious injuries when an explosion hit the Iraqi vehicle in which he was riding during a shootout near Baghdad. Luckily, Mr. Woodruff was wearing full body armor but he and his cameraman, Bob Vogt, suffered severe shrapnel wounds to their heads and upper bodies. Since they were standing up in the vehicle’s turret they were more exposed and therefore more prone to injury. I wish both Messrs. Woodruff and Vogt a speedy recovery and pray that none of their injuries are life-threatening."

More here...

Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows.

And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that's contrary to their point of view.

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"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts."

Bias on both sides
The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say.

Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained.

The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making.

The US is worried about "safety issues" while Japan buys half of the world's supply of LNG and China is ramping up, both without concern. Meanwhile the UK seems to be stuck in the same sorry boat with the US. By the time the US is ready to be signing deals with Australia I have an inkling the rates will not be as good as the 25 year deals negotiated by China.

If Australia was smart they would hold out for free trade deals on sheep and cattle and everything else they want too. After all, if the US does not take that natural gas, China or Japan or someone else surely will. Higher prices are the consequences of letting the world pass you by with trade deals while being preoccupied with silliness in Iraq.

It's high time the US stops trying to be the world's policeman (a role we clearly can not afford) and starts thinking more like pragmatic India: "We live in a very complex neighborhood, surrounded by governments and rulers of different orientation - communists, military dictatorships, monarchies ... we hope the US understands the difficult choices we have to make for the well-being of our people," India's ambassador to the US, Ronen Sen, has said while referring to Washington's dislike for Iran.

The sooner the US (and the UK) learn that lesson the better off the US and the world will be. If we fail to learn that lesson, we risk a major world war over energy. Perhaps we are sowing the seeds of that war right now, attempting to police the world instead of securing energy deals for our future like everyone else. Now we are eyeing Iran. Will India and China and Russia stand idly by if we strike Iran? Do we want to find out?

Is it mere coincidence that the Fed will begin hiding M-3 the same month that Iran will launch its Iran Oil Bourse, or is there a direct threat to the stability of the U.S. dollar, the U.S. economy, and the U.S. standard of living? Are Americans being set up for a collapse in our economy that will make the Great Depression of the 1930’s look like a bounced check? If you cannot or will not make the value and stability of the U.S. currency of personal importance, if you are unwilling to demand from your elected officials, an immediate abolishment of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and the fiat money scheme that the banking cartel has used for nearly a century now to keep our government and our people in a state of perpetual debt, than you are faced with but two alternatives, abject poverty, or invading Iran.

The plans to invade Iran are unspoken, but unfolding before our very eyes. The media has been reporting on Iran more often, and increasingly harshly. For the U.S. government to justify invading Iran, it must first begin to phase out the War in Iraq, which it is already doing. Next, it must portray the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as a threat to the region and the world. Finally, once naive American people are convinced the “weapons of mass destruction” that were to be found in Iraq are actually in Iran, coupled with the almost daily media coverage of Iran’s nuclear power / weapons program aspirations, and what we will soon have on our hands is another fabricated war that will result in tens of thousands of civilian lives being lost, all because the political elected pawns in Washington DC lack the discipline to return our currency to a gold or silver standard, end the relationship with the foreign banking cartel called the Federal Reserve, and limit the activities of the U.S. government to those articulated in Article I Section 8 of the Constitution for the United States of America.

When a wayward and corrupt fiscal policy and fiat currency, coupled with runaway government spending, forces a nation to only be able to sustain the value of its currency with bullets, the citizenry of the country involved in wars primarily to sustain its currency have historically first became slaves to their government, and then to the nations that finally conquer them. If you question the validity of such a premise, or whether it could happen to the United States of America, study the fall of the Roman Empire. If you read the right books on the subject, you’ll quickly discover that towards the end of the Roman reign, the Roman Empire was doing exactly what America is doing today; attempting to sustain a failed fiat money system with bullets.

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If the United States invades Iran, or if Israel starts military actions by launches missiles at Iran’s nuclear power facilities, which then opens the door for the United States to intervene, most Americans will believe that our military actions in Iran will be to defend freedom and liberty while spreading democracy, when the truth is that we’ll be fighting a war in Iran because of our nation’s relationship with the Federal Reserve, a so-called bank that is not owned by the federal government, maintains no reserve, and isn’t a bank at all, but a cartel. Just like our war in Iraq, Americans and foreigners will die in battle so that the historical power bankers and brokers; cartel members such as Rothschild, Morgan, Lehman, Lizard, Schrader, Lobe, Kuhn, and Rockefeller to name a few, can continue collecting interest on every single U.S. coin and dollar bill in circulation, while controlling the U.S. Congress to the extent that the U.S. taxpayer becomes the collateral and lender of last resort to cover bad loans and unpaid debts that these institutions create by loaning money to third world countries, some of which are devout enemies of the United States. Remember the $400 billion savings & loan bailout approved by the U.S. Congress during the Reagan Administration? America is still paying for it – you and me, and so will our children and grandchildren.