Note the "Weekly Mind Food" category in the left side-bar now, which will have all our issues. They're Free Access, as are all the linked articles, so feel free to read them at your leisure - and to mail the article's URL to your friends!

With respect to last week's massacre in Colorado, I'm going to give TTPers some credit. I'm assuming you understand that someone who had wired up incendiary bombs to blow up his house, might have done more damage if he had used those instead of a gun.

That the theater's "no guns" policy simply ensured an unopposed massacre. That psychotic mental illness needs to be something you explain to people if you've seen it up close and personal, because so many people just don't grasp what it really means.

And that we can't all be safe, all the time - but we can choose to let our citizens be "a pack, not a herd," with the human right to defend themselves. Beyond that, you won't see that much about it here.

To simplify your scans, I've divided the links into sections: Polis (domestic politics), Techne Logos (tech), Economos (global economy), Stratiootika (geopolitics & military), plus 1 Good News item to brighten your day and/or make you better. Enjoy!

Polis

• devry: Norway prepares for killings anniversary (BBC, July 20/12). A fitting article after the events of this last week in Colorado. Unlike in the US, where increased police powers and violations of rights are the normal response to events of over a decade ago, Norway has opted to not invest in the police state and vows more freedom and more transparency.


• jkatzman: Zimbabwe Changed My Mind: Guns Are a Human Right (Winds of Change, July 20/05). I wrote this a long time ago. Still believe it.

• jkatzman: Body Armor (Allen West campaign, July 25/12). Why one of his soldiers made it home to see his kid. And why so many people love this guy. There were some people like that in Colorado, too.

Techne Logos

• jwroblewski: Beam Me Out Of This Death Trap, Scotty. 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... Goodbye, Columbia (Washington Monthly, April 1980). A very prophetic bit of journalism from 1980 that predicted all the woes of the Space Shuttle. It also raises issues about the problems of manned space flight generally.



• jkatzman: Who will get PTSD? (Boston Globe, June 3/12) What if we could predict vulnerability to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in advance... and what would we do then?

Economos

• hardcharger: David Stockman - Conversations with Casey (July 18/12). The telling point to me is that financial conservatives who have been close to the seat of power are now beginning to speak openly regarding the danger. 30 minutes long, but IMHO well worth the time.



• prosenberg: Bungled Bank Bailout Leaves Behind Righteous Anger (Bloomberg, July 22/12). The Special Inspector General of TARP (which only cost us about $431 Billion) says that the Dept. of Treasury and the big banks lied and cheated the whole time. He concludes: The American people should be revolted by a financial system that rewards failure and protects those who drove it to the point of collapse and will undoubtedly do so again.



• calgarydave: LIBOR: Is Biggest Manipulation Yet to Come? (Economic Policy Journal, July 25/12). See also the video interview, with Russia Today's Lauren Lyster. Next, watch for some sort of media light on HSBC, which WND have been trying to bring attention to for months.



• jkatzman: Truthland (movie site). Turns out that you can set your tap water on fire in New York State, too, where fracking is banned. Interesting documentary, and a good comeback to a lie, even if it's funded by natural gas companies.



• jkatzman: Two Sides of the Same Flag: How Israel's Natural Gas Will Change the World (Casey Daily Dispatch, July 17/12)

Stratiootika

• jkatzman: Will Syria Remain a Unified State? (Gatestone Institute, July 10/12). The answer will probably depend on Turkey's plans for their 1st big neo-Ottomanist project in the region.



• jkatzman: The Three-State Solution (Gatestone Institute, July 17/12). Israel, Gaza, and Palestine.



• jkatzman: Italy & Israel: A Billion-Dollar Offer They Didn't Refuse (Defense Industry Daily, July 20/12). Forget baseball's trade deadline, how about a billion-dollar weapons trade? Israel had a tough political-economic decision to make here.

Over The Hump: Good News This Week

• jkatzman: Who is the Route 29 Batman? This Guy. (Washington Post, March 28/12). Batman is REAL - car, suit and all. He's a successful Baltimore County businessman (yes, he built that), and I dare you not to smile after reading his story.

TTP's Team B is still welcoming volunteers with strong expertise in an area (joe at windsofchange dot net, subject "Team B application"), or submissions that you think really meet the test of thought-provoking content and/or "stuff my fewllow TTPers need to know more about" (joe at windsofchange dot net, subject "Team B item").

A parting thought. Imagine that it's the late 1970s. I show up and tell you that in order to get good economic coverage from a strongly capitalist perspective in 2012, you'll have to watch the hot American blonde starring on Russia Today, while sitting in your home and using a network that the Pentagon has been developing so it can exercise command and control during nuclear wars.

The truth isn't merely stranger than we imagine. It's often stranger than we can imagine.

For The Constitution!

Joe Katzman