The Oil Drum

I went to that site...www.serendipity.il

This was one click away from the home page and via a radio button at the top. Also lots apparently on TWA 800 and many other topics. This is sorta on the weird side of things. Not to say they are not interesting but kinda hard to take a whole website devoted to conspiracies. I don't see DC as the head of a enslaving corporation. People in DC are far more scatter brained that the rest of us. My son worked for a long time in DC and I spent some time there, quite a bit and was not too impressed. I noticed most preferred to live in the south(below the MasonDixon line in Virginia so they wouldn't have to put up with the situations in DC. At least they were that smart. I was looking for housing at the time in N. Va and eventually reason prevailed when I observed that this was the most insane place on the face of the earth. Conspiracy to enslave?

Hey they can't even stop spam and they have a big ass law about it. CAN-SPAM.

""Bramley was not interested in UFOs when he started researching the origins of human warfare. However, his research eventually led him to what he shares in this book: evidence that alien visitors have conspired to dominate humankind through violence and chaos since the beginning of time." — Greenleaf Books""

After that I sorta discounted the whole site.

Airdale...their conspiracy to enslave us wont' mean shit once that shit hits the impeller blades.

Like any good and successful crime, the way in which corporations first attained legal recognition as "persons" under our Constitution is a rather astounding story.

It has it roots in the rise of wealthy and powerful railroad interests, and the political corruption that arose in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War. In the same year, 1868, that the 14th Amendment was passed, legally enshrining "equal protection" for all American "persons," corporate lawyer were arguing before the Supreme Court, in Paul v. Virginia, that under the privileges and immunities clause, that corporations should be recognized as *persons/citizens* too. The SC rightly ruled that corporations are not citizens under Article IV, Section 2.

However, this failure didn't stop the corporations (primarily railroad ones) and their lawyers from trying over and over again in courts of law to get their way. Several more SC cases attest to this fact. In order to prevail they just needed the right case and the right set of railroad/corporate friendly judges to rule in their favor.

Well, in 1886, in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad, they finally succeeded... sort of. The Chief SC justice presiding over this case, announced:

"The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to corporations. We are of the opinion that it does."

The funny thing is, of which there is a bit of confusion, the statement suggests the Chief Justice made this announcement before oral arguments were taken. Yet, the proceedings of the arguments tell a different story, in that both sides of the case gave vigorous testimony for and against this very same point. What apparently happened is that just prior to handing down their decision in this Santa Clara case is when the above statement was given.

Furthermore, this announcement, despite it's vast implications, had no bearing on how the case was settled. In fact, such an announcement outside of the actual decision in the case did not give it legitimate legal standing. But it opened the floodgates to further court cases which finally did.

The case which did finally establish corporate "person" status via its decision is known as Minneapolis & St. Louis Railroad v. Beckwith, in 1889. And the details of this case are worth reviewing. (The actual case decision is a fascinating read but I will briefly outline it only.)

It revolved around a dispute involving the loss of three hogs which were run over by a Minn. & St. Louis Railroad train in Iowa. The farmer tried to get compensated for the value of his loss, to which he was legally entitled, amounting to $12. The railroad was served papers attesting to this claim, but since they didn't pay, further legal proceedings were undertaken, and a judgement was made in favor of the farmer for which the railroad was now required to pay $24.

On its surface its hard to believe this case wended its way through and up the various courts system to where it demanded the attention of the Supreme Court, but it did. (Imagining how many thousands of dollars it cost the railroad in legal fees to fight paying $24 is staggering!) And all along its way it was argued by the railroad lawyers that the fine doubling was an infringement upon their "property without due process of law," and "it denies to the company the equal protection of the laws..." as written in the 14th Amendment.

An amendment passed after the bloodiest conflict in history (over 650,000 humans) to secure the equal protection of the newly freed men, women, and children of slavery, and yet here it is being used to defend a corporation against paying an extra $12!

As if this wasn't enough of an affront, in their decision the SC ruled in favor of the railroad, and they did so by citing Santa Clara, which - apart from the non-binding published 'Head Note' of the Chief Justice's announcement proceeding the actual Santa Clara decision - otherwise offered no such binding legal distinction.

In short, citing Santa Clara as they did in upholding the railroad's status as a "person" was illegitimate. Yet, it worked.

Tragically, since then many other SC decisions have been rendered that only build off this fraud and illegitimacy. The lengths the SC sometimes goes to deal with this fact is often absurdly funny.

One particular reference I am fond of involves the First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti decision from 1978, in which Chief Justice Rehnquist, dissenting wrote:

"This Court decided at an early date, with neither argument nor discussion, that a business corporation is a 'person' entitled to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific R. Co."

Without coming right out and saying so, he nonetheless seems to acknowledge that something happened way back then, something that probably shouldn't have as it did. It's as if he realizes: Oh brother, look where this has got us now -- tied up in fits and performing unbelievable feats of legal gymnastics!

For he goes on to explain how, while we fudged this, we didn't really change that -- whatever that was. But, ultimately, as it doesn't really change anything here, nevermind.

Don't believe me?

Here's the rest of Rehnquist's dissent continued exactly where I left off above:

"Likewise, it soon became accepted that the property of a corporation was protected under the Due Process Clause of that same Amendment. See, e.g., Smyth v. Ames (1898). Nevertheless, we concluded soon thereafter that the liberty protected by the Amendment 'is the liberty of natural, not artificial persons.' Northwestern Nat. Life Ins. Co. v. Riggs (1906). Before today, our only considered and explicit departures from that holding have been that a corporation engaged in the business of publishing or broadcasting enjoys the same liberty of press as is enjoyed by natural persons, Grosjean v. American Press Co. (1936), and that a nonprofit membership corporation organized for the purpose of 'achieving ... equality of treatment by all government, federal, state and local, for the members of the Negro community' enjoys certain liberties of political expression. NAACP v. Button (1963).
"The question presented today, whether business corporations have a constitutionally protected liberty to engage in political activities, has never been squarely addressed by any previous decision of this Court..."

Basically, he's saying, Damn, this all just stinks to high heaven; and the safest thing is to register my dissent.

So, there you have it. A brief history of how corporations achieved Constitutional status as a "person." Along with proving truth is stranger than fiction, no matter how one slices this hog tale, it is one amazing feat of cold legal calculus.

They might not even know how to ...gather eggs from under sitting hens

Excuse my city boy ignorance. But what is wrong with the "reach under chicken and grab egg" technique?

I'm a big fan of indirect light, so most everything goes off the wall or ceiling before I see it.  I've noticed some bleaching effects on shade material held within a couple inches of a circle tube, but nothing else so far.  Sunlight would do the same.

Do you need light to sleep?

Unlikely. Standard glass has a resonance in near UV, and another one in near IR, which is why it reflects IR and absorbs UV. Glass is only transparent in a very narrow range right around the visible spectrum. Only UV significantly harms your eyes, unless it to so intense as to cause heat based damage, which would be very rare. This is also why you can't get a sunburn indoors, even if you do lie in the sun.

Richard Feinmann was able to look at a nuclear explosion through a truck's windshield with no ill effects. He is commonly thought to be the first person to see a nuclear explosion with the naked eye.

It is unlikely that enough UV escapes from a fluorescent bulb to cause eye damage. I would think that the more pressing danger would be the filament of a transparent incancdescent, which