Toronto Hearings to examine 'state crime' of 9/11

TORONTO — As people across Canada and the United States publicly remember the tragedy of 9/11 in the lead-up to its tenth anniversary this weekend, a small group in Toronto began a series of hearings Thursday to examine another angle altogether: the "myth" of 9/11 ......

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Auto industry loans worked, Cantor angry about that

Rep. Eric Cantor wishes the Ford Focus was still being built in Mexico.

Cantor's plan........

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Is Rick Perry's Budget Feeding Texas Wildfires? Local Fire Departments Suffer $23 Million in Cuts

In a summer of record drought and heat, did climate-change-denier Rick Perry's budget imperil public safety with millions in cuts to volunteer fire department coffers?
READ MORE...

The Bin Laden Cover-up / Pentagon Scrubs Documents to Hide Truth

Whistleblower says he was told to stop tracking Bin Laden and suspected al-Qaeda terrorists in the months prior to 9/11.

READ MORE...

Would God Be A Republican Or Democrat?

Would God Be A Republican Or Democrat?

The Power of Authentic Smiles / Guy Winch, PhD

Published on December 2, 2010 by Guy Winch, Ph.D. in The Squeaky Wheel

Because we view complaints as acts of self-assertion rather than the requests for help they indeed are, we often fail to utilize the most effective tool we have for eliciting help in complaint situations-conveying an implicit optimism about getting the outcome we want by using authentic smiles.
How smiles affect helping behaviorAuthentic smiles convey optimism and strong confidence that the complaint reciient will respond favorably to the issue we're presenting, thus making them more likely to do so. It all boils down to how authentic smiles effect our mood and the mood of those who are exposed to them. Authentic smiles have the power to elicit a reflexive response in the recipient-they smile back. Consequently, we can induce a better mood in others simply by flashing them authentic smiles. Smiles can be a powerful tool in complaint situations because people tend to be far more helpful when they are in a good mood.
The impact of mood on helping behavior has been demonstrated using mood enhancing devices such as sunshine and even cookies. Smiles are equally effective in inducing good mood and they have the added advantage of being readily available, glycemic friendly and weatherproof. The problem is that flashing an authentic smile is not necessarily easy after we've waited fifteen minutes to speak to the service representative we view as responsible for the fact that our new auto-drip coffee maker refuses to drip.

But let's think about that for a moment; is it fair to be angry with the service representative?

The person who can solve our problem is rarely the one who created itAlthough customer service employees do represent the company, their job is merely to resolve our complaints to the best of their ability using predetermined guidelines. Certainly, they did not manufacture the defective toaster oven that lobs our toast seven feet into the air, nor were they responsible for our St. Patrick's Day sweater arriving in pink instead of green. Similarly, the manager of the restaurant was not the one who spilled the beet soup on our wife's white dress and the municipality clerk was not the one who composed the 600 page permit application for repaving driveways.
Reminding ourselves of these facts will help us manage our frustration so we can flash an authentic smile at the manager or service representative and increase their motivation to help us. Authentic smiles are also called Duchenne smiles, for the French physician Guillaume Duchenne, who studied the physiology of facial expressions in the nineteenth century. The question is how does one tell the difference between an authentic smile and a forced one?
Why crow's feet are good for happiness despite what the Botox industry thinksTake a trip down memory lane and look at your class yearbook pictures from middle school (if your pictures are from the 70s or the 80s, try not to get too distracted by the hair...). It shouldn't take long for us to realize that we can indeed distinguish between authentic smiles and smiles that appear forced even if we cannot put our finger on exactly what it is that makes a smile seem un-authentic (and no, it's not the acne).
So, what does make a smile authentic? One basic thing-crow's feet. When the muscles around our mouth and lips try to go it alone by saying "Cheese!" our smile looks forced. But when we involve the muscles around our eyes and cheeks and create crow's feet, our smiles appear natural and authentic and they truly light up our faces.
Duchenne smiles are highly associated with happiness and not just because they affect our mood for the better. Studies found that people who displayed deeper crow's feet in their childhood pictures were less likely to divorce as adults than those whose childhood pictures had less intense crow's feet. And a study of smiles in pictures of baseball players found that players with deeper crow's feet lived five years longer on average than those with non-Duchenne smiles.
The steps for using authentic smiles in complaint situationsTo elicit good will in a complaint recipient our smiles must be authentic because only authentic smiles elicit authentic smiles in return. However, Duchenne smiles are not easy to fake and they can require some rehearsal to deliver convincingly. Following these steps will make you more likely to get the result you want and they will also make the entire complaint process far more pleasant for all concerned.
1. Start by practicing in the mirror. If making faces in the mirror makes you self-conscious, use a cell-phone camera to assess your progress. Try to involve your cheek muscles by thinking happy optimisitc thoughts such as I'm going to get a refund! or I hated that white dress anyway!2. The true test of any Duchenne smile is whether it elicits one in return. Take your Duchenne out for a spin. Practice on neighbors, colleagues or sale associates in stores (avoid sample sales-way too cutthroat and Darwinian). If your smile has deep crow's feet, theirs will too.
3. Once you've perfected your Duchenne smile and a complaint situation presents itself, make eye contact, say hello and flash the service representative or manager your best Duchenne smile. Then present your complaint in a calm and civil manner.
Smiles, like many effective complaining techniques, are simple tools we can all use. Indeed, once we acquire the right skill set, becoming an effective squeaky wheel, getting results and reaping emotional rewards by doing so, is often easier and more worthwhile than we realized.

Read my website blog to find out about my adventure practicing authentic smiles with the scariest worker at my local Post Office branch.
Follow me on Twitter @GuyWinch
Copyright 2010 Guy Winch
Abel, E. L., & Kruger, M. L. (2010). Smile intensity in photographs predicts longevity. Psychological Science 21 (4) 542-544
Hertenstein M.. J., et al (2009), Smile Intensity in Photographs predicts Divorce later in Life: Motivation and Emotion 33 (2) 99-105,

Rick Perry: Selling Sixth-Grade Girls' Health to the Highest Bidder? | | AlterNet

Perry's mandate of an HPV vaccine for young girls is part of a larger pattern of doing favors for campaign contributors--risks and conservative principles be damned.




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This Week, Another Racist Execution Is Set to Take Place in TX Under Rick Perry | AlterNet

This Week, Another Racist Execution Is Set to Take Place in TX Under Rick Perry | AlterNet

An awareness-raising email!

ONE AT A TIME   This probably sounds crazy, but just yesterday I was in  Wal Mart looking for a wastebasket. I found some made in  China for $6.99. I didn't want to pay that much so I asked the  lady if they had any others. She took me to another department  and they had some at $2.50 made in USA. They are just as good.  Same as a kitchen rug I needed. I had to look, but I found some  made in the USA and they were $3.00 cheaper.   We are being brain washed that everything that comes from China and Mexico  is cheaper. Not so. That is also why I don't buy cards at Hallmark  anymore. They are made in China and are expensive. I buy  them at Dollar Tree....50 cents each and made in USA.  One Light Bulb at a Time  A physics teacher in high school, once told the students that while one  grasshopper on the railroad tracks wouldn't slow a train very much, a  billion of them would.   With that thought in mind, read the following,  obviously written by a good American . . .   Good idea . . .. one light bulb at a time . .. ..    Check this out.  I can verify this because I was in Lowe’s the other day  for some reason and just for the heck of it I was looking at the hose  attachments... They were all made in China .  The next day I was in Ace Hardware and just for the heck of it I checked  the hose attachments there. They were made in USA. Start looking . . ...    In our current economic situation, every little thing we buy or do  affects someone else - even their job. So, after reading this email, I  think this lady is on the right track..  Let's get behind her!    My grandson likes Hershey's candy.  I noticed, though, that it is marked  made in Mexico now. I do not buy it any more.    My favorite toothpaste Colgate is made in Mexico... now I have switched  to Crest.  You have to read the labels on everything....    This past weekend I was at Kroger . . . I needed 60W light bulbs and  Bounce dryer sheets.  I was in the light bulb aisle, and right next to the GE brand I normally  buy was an off-brand labeled, "Everyday Value." I picked up both types  of bulbs and compared the stats  they were the same except for the  price . . ..  The GE bulbs were more money than the Everyday Value brand but the thing  that surprised me the most was the fact that GE was made in MEXICO and  the Everyday Value brand was made in - get ready for this - the USA in a  company in Cleveland , Ohio.    So throw out the myth that you cannot find products you use every day  that are made right here...    So on to another aisle - Bounce Dryer Sheets... yep, you guessed it,  Bounce cost more money and is made in Canada... The Everyday Value brand  was less money and MADE IN THE USA! I did laundry yesterday and the  dryer sheets performed just like the Bounce Free I have been using for  years and at almost half the price!    My challenge to you is to start reading the labels when you shop for  everyday things and see what you can find that is made in the USA - the  job you save may be your own or your neighbors!

How to Live, Work, or Cope With a Control Freak — Self Help Daily

http://www.selfhelpdaily.com/self-help-articles/how-to-deal-with-control-freaks/

September 14, 2011

The following is a guest article by Mark Tyrrell from Hypnosis Downloads.com:

Five Steps for Dealing With a Manipulative Control Freak
by Mark Tyrrell

Control freaks don’t tend to make people around them happy. Okay, this is an understatement. Being in the constant orbit of a control freak can make you downright miserable.

Colleagues, friends, and partners can feel their every thought, action, and opinion is only valid if it concurs totally with the control freak’s take on things. We all need to feel we control some things to help us feel secure and safe; but the constant judging, micromanaging, interfering, bossiness, and manipulation of a dictatorial control freak goes way beyond this.
Feeling constantly judged, micromanaged, and manipulated eventually builds resentment, bitterness, and anxiety. The lack of tolerance or credit given for any initiative of our own makes us feel subjugated, like dejected subjects of some despotic ruler whose one role is to hear and obey. Remember that control freaks are “status junkies”. Anything they feel you say or do to undermine their own sense of inflated self won’t be tolerated, regardless of your thoughts and feelings.
And whether they intended to bully or not, the fallout is that people feel steamrollered and bullied.
So how can you best deal with a control freak?
Understand that yes, you are dealing with a control freak
No matter how intelligent, ingenious, and prone to being right your control freak is, despite all that or whether they are wonderfully helpful sometimes, you still have to deal with that controlling behavior, that tyrannical bit of them. Separate all the wonderful good they might be doing through their tremendous drive to get things done from the fact that you feel totally controlled by them.
We can make excuses for other people at the same time as they make us feel acutely bad. So right here and right now, whatever their “saving graces”, understand what you have to deal with by separating in your own mind the good stuff about them from this overbearing control.
Respect your own autonomy
We all need to feel a sense of independence and self-direction. Even if the control freak is your boss, don’t feel you have to automatically say yes to every little whim and demand.
A client of mine was amazed by the idea she could sometimes turn down her boss’s demand she do unpaid overtime after work. “Treat your boss’s unreasonable orders as if they were requests,” I suggested to her. Whenever he “ordered” her to work unpaid, she would tell him she’d get back to him about it after seeing whether it was possible. This started to alter “the game”. He began to appreciate she wasn’t a doormat.
Sometimes you have to force people into the situation of behaving decently rather than waiting until they “see the light”. If you don’t behave as if your own sense of autonomy is important, than neither will the dictator in your life.
Don’t always be “nice”
Control freaks don’t play by the rules of “niceness”. Helpfulness, a willingness to pull together and “not make waves”, is part of human nature. Many of us like to help if we can because we are “hard-wired” to. Human beings are social creatures and after all, we don’t want to hurt the control freak’s feelings.
But control freaks sometimes like to meet their match. They’ll respect people who have a will and mind of their own or even those who don’t overly care whether they are liked or respected by the CF. Control freaks are so hard to please that you might waste many lifetimes trying to please, placate, and pacify them only to inevitably fail. If someone is pathologically mean with their praise or consideration of your feelings and needs, then don’t treat them as if they are not like this.
Don’t argue; it won’t work
Don’t be too nice because control freaks don’t really work in the realms of “niceness” (as opposed to charm), but don’t get into long-winded arguments trying to justify your position, either. Control freaks are great at arguing why you and everyone else in the world should feel, think, do, and say just as they see fit. Just make your point once and keep coming back to it. If you don’t want to paint your bedroom wall the color they demand is best, then tell them so but don’t feel you have to justify your position. This “broken record technique” is hugely effective. Just state your position (“I want to paint my walls lime green!”) and repeat whatever they say. They’ll soon get bored.
Life’s too short
If you don’t have to have this person in your life, consider cutting them loose to go on their way dictating and steamrollering others. We risk becoming control freaks ourselves when we feel it’s our divine role to change them. We may help others to change by adjusting our own responses, but ultimately they are responsible for themselves.
Part of their journey to maturity needs to be a realization that other people are not just puppets to be bent to their will. This is how very small children may see the world, but a mature human being knows what they can and cannot influence and control.
Some control freaks really do want to change and they might need help. I am reminded of the cartoon in which a man tells his wife: “You know, my New Year’s resolution is to stop telling you what to do all the time and I’ve also written down what your New Year’s resolutions are going to be!”
Mark Tyrrell is a trainer, therapist and author and co-founder of Hypnosis Downloads.com where he has created downloads on How to deal with the control freak and other difficult people.

"The Control Freak and Their Vulnerability"

"Control freaks" or "perfectionists"^[4] can be seen as defending themselves against inner vulnerabilities, as with the man who was "a dominating control freak because of his mistaken belief that if he wasn't in control, he would re-experience his childhood angst".^[5] Such a figure will "cajole, wheedle, pressurise, get 'difficult' all the time, to get his own way. He's always behaving like a puppet-master, tying strings on other people … because he can't bear to be changed himself".^[6] Similarly, a woman who 'is not grounded either in her own imagery or her own musculature … finds her identity in power over (sometimes called love of) her body, her family, her friends, her garden … Without that control, she is nobody'.^[7]When such a control freak pattern is broken, 'the Controller is left with a terrible feeling of powerlessness … But feeling their pain and fear brings them back to themselves.^[8]

Control freaks have been linked to codependents, in the sense that "codependency stems from a deep-rooted fear of abandonment, which leads to an excessive need to control and dominate … to control others because they fear they cannot control themselves".^[9] Recovery entails recognising that being "a control freak … kept me in codependency, and pushed people away from me. To grow out of controlling, we learn to be, instead of do".^[10]

In terms of personality-type theory, "the Control Freak … is very much a Type A … driven [by a] need to be in control".^[11

~Wikipedia~

Three Things I Learned WHile My PLane Crashed: Ric Elias/compliments of TED

http://www.ted.com Ric Elias had a front-row seat on Flight 1549, the plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River in New York in January 2009. What went through his mind as the doomed plane went down? At TED, he tells his story publicly for the first time.

Witness to a Cover-Up

by Steve Beckow

Col. Kwiatkowski saw no aircraft debris at the Pentagon

I watched a CBC program called “102 Minutes that Changed the World” Sunday night, chronicling events from the first crash into the WTC on 9/11 until the fall of the second tower. I was stunned, unable to move, unable to think.

That was it for me. The only thing I could do was go to bed. And so I changed the channel, surfing to find a show to help me forget what I’d seen and fall asleep. I landed on the Turner Classic Movie channel.

There a “9/11 first responder” by the name of “Vernon Webb” was about to give his 9/11 selection of a movie. First Responder chooses 9/11 fare.

I couldn’t believe what I heard............

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9/11: Explosive Evidence: The Experts Speak Out

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FACTS.......FOR 9/11 TRUTH

The Whistleblowers’ How-To Guide

Frederic Whitehurst and other famous U.S. whistleblowers are donating a book their lawyer wrote on how to do it right to libraries across the country. By John Solomon

Frederic Whitehurst had no idea what being a whistleblower entailed. He simply became outraged when he witnessed a colleague in the FBI laboratory giving misleading testimony in a criminal case two decades ago. So the supervisory agent decided to speak up, telling the defense experts about the inaccuracies.

It cost him nearly a decade of his career, almost all his life savings, severally emotionally draining internal investigations, the humiliation of a psychiatric exam, and an epic legal fight with the bureau. But the proudly stubborn Vietnam veteran persevered and ultimately prevailed in forcing sweeping ethical and scientific reforms at the vaunted FBI crime lab that began in the 1990s and still reverberate today.....

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The criminalization of speech since 9/11

Last week, a 24-year-old Virginia man named Jubair Ahmad was arrested and charged with providing "material support" to an officially designated terrorist organization, the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

But Ahmad is not accused of sending money or weapons to LeT, or scouting out targets for the group. What had Ahmad allegedly done? Uploaded a "propaganda video to YouTube on behalf of LeT" that showed "so-called jihadi martyrs and armored trucks exploding after having been hit by improvised explosive devices," according to the Justice Department. Ahmad allegedly had spoken to the son of an LeT figure about making the video.

The case is an example of prosecutors' aggressive use, in the decade after Sept. 11, of the preexisting law that bars providing "material support" to officially designated terrorist groups. In a landmark case last year, the Supreme Court endorsed the...... 

....to continue reading, click here......

Schizoid personality disorder

They said he had weeks to live

My son Joshua was born too soon. But in the years that followed, he struggled to hold on. So did we.

BY DEBBI HARRIS

I suppose I seemed a bit too self-assured, strolling into the Family Surgery Waiting room as though I owned the place. I knew to wear warm clothes and comfortable shoes; it was always so frigid in there, and my boy's surgeries seemed to take longer than most. I'd often venture into the gray-white hallways of the hospital, loitering like a familiar vagabond.......


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Why we can never escape our siblings

New science sheds light on how birth order and brother-sister relationships shape our lives. An expert explains

BY MANDY VAN DEVEN

Zurijeta via Shutterstock

Sometimes a family tragedy can expose bonds you didn't know existed. That's what happened with my younger sister and me...........

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Lisa Renee: Letting Go of All You Know

Lisa Renee: Letting Go of All You Know