A grand delusion has been planted in the minds of Americans, that privately run systems are more efficient and less costly than those in the public sector. Most of the evidence points the other way. Private initiatives generally produce mediocre or substandard results while experiencing the usual travails of unregulated capitalism -- higher prices, limited services, and lower wages for all but a few 'entrepreneurs.'

With perverse irony, the corruption and incompetence of private industry has actually furthered the cause of privatization, as the collapse of the financial markets has deprived state and local governments of necessary public funding, leading to an even greater call for private development.

As aptly expressed by a finance company chairman in 2008, "Desperate government is our best customer."

The following are a few consequences of this pro-privatization desperation:

Sen. Claire McCaskill's (D-MO) Republican opponent says that the federal government should stop helping to feed needy children with the school lunch program.

Speaking to reporters about the farm bill on Thursday, Senate candidate Todd Akin called to cut off the federal funds used to feed about 650,000 children in Missouri each school day.

"Is it something the federal government should do?" Akin said. "I answer it no. ... I think the federal government should be out of the education business."

"The problem with the Senate farm bill is the fact that you've got 80 percent of it that isn't a farm bill at all," the Republican noted.

The United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.

Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation's violation of human rights has extended. This development began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public. As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.

While the country has made mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past. With leadership from the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 as "the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world." This was a bold and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and it established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile.

The diplomatic standoff over WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange escalated on Wednesday after Britain threatened to raid Ecuador's embassy in London if Quito did not hand over Assange, who has been taking refuge there for two months.

The Ecuadorean government said such an action would be considered a "hostile and intolerable act" as well as a violation of its sovereignty.

"Under British law we can give them a week's notice before entering the premises and the embassy will no longer have diplomatic protection," a Foreign Office spokesman said.

"But that decision has not yet been taken. We are not going to do this overnight. We want to stress that we want a diplomatically agreeable solution."

Quito bristled at the threat and said it would announce its decision on Assange's asylum request on Thursday at 7 a.m.

"We want to be very clear, we're not a British colony. The colonial times are over," Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said in an angry statement after a meeting with President Rafael Correa.

The term "psychopath" is often a misunderstood one; although people frequently refer to alleged mass killers like Colorado shooter James Holmes or the Tucson, Ariz., shooter Jared Loughner as psychopaths, that doesn't mean these men fit the description of this mental health disorder.

In the last week, a psychiatric evaluation report was released stating that after months of receiving treatment for schizophrenia, 23-year-old Loughner seemed to understand that he was agreeing to a guilty plea for the 2011 shooting rampage that killed six people and wounded 13 others, including then-Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Meanwhile, lawyers for Holmes announced they believe the 24-year-old suffers from mental illness, though they haven't yet determined the exact nature of his illness. Weeks before the shooting, Holmes' psychiatrist, Dr. Lynne Fenton, University of Colorado professor who specializes in schizophrenia, had alerted university police about Holmes' behavior.

Translated by SOTT.net reader

After reports of an alleged fall of a fireball associated with a meteor shower over the weekend in Campinas, now it's Itatiba's turn to be subject to searches for evidence of meteorite fragments. The suspicion is that this object may have crashed into someone's property in the city last Monday. Astronomer Julio Lobo was on location throughout the day yesterday and believes this hypothesis, especially given the characteristics of the fall witnessed by the caretaker of a property. After Correio published a story about the fireball, the editorial staff has received six e-mails from readers reporting that they saw this very bright event. The astronomer explained that the phenomena in Campinas and Itatiba have no relation with each other, but the two incidents indicate that the sky is "busy."

According to the caretaker Jose Oliveira dos Santos, 52, on Monday afternoon, around 2.30 pm, he heard a noise like a jet and then a strong thump on the ground a few meters from his house, on the hill. "There's a flight corridor here, but this buzz was different. It was a sort of whistling at a rapid speed and then it diminished, with a very strong noise. I saw nothing, only listened. After the crash, I saw the fire and immediately phoned the owners of the grange," he said. For the astronomer, this account is considered "classic" of cases in which meteorite falls have been recorded, such as in the city of Varre-Sai, Rio de Janeiro, two years ago. Besides the information of the witness, Lobo listed other evidence.

Ben Swann of Fox News' 'Reality Check' does a very good job of explaining the reality of the US relationship with 'al-Qaeda'.

Your eyes are not deceiving you, this really is Fox News, or at least a segment of the Fox 'Entertainment Group' corporation, exposing one of the greatest lies ever to be told to the world.

In back-to-back interviews on the Gary Null Show and the Tommy Schnurmacher Show, Gerald Celente sees another mega geopolitical quake to match the shock-and-awe of 9-11 in America's not-too-distant future.

"I'm worried about the drumbeats of war getting louder and louder," Celente told CJAD talk show host Tommy Schumacher, Monday. "It's coinciding, as well, with the economic collapse that's happening throughout Europe."

Celente went on to say that, when sociopath and psychopath politicians get into trouble with their constituents due to a poor economy, those pols, who can divert the public's attention away from the nation's financial problems and redirect the collective anger toward the threat of an outside enemy, will use their power to take that nation to war at a politically advantageous time.

"It's reaching a critical mass right now, and I haven't felt this way since December 14, 2000," said Celente, and noted that he senses desperation in the voice and actions of Israel's, Benjamin Netanyahu, the present and very unpopular prime mister in that Mideast country. "I have that feeling now" with Netanyahu, said Celente.

"This guy, Netanyahu, he has 60 percent disapproval rating right now, and I've seen it before," Celente continued. "I remember Bill Clinton, you know, wag the dog. Every time he'd get into trouble with Monica Lewinsky, it was bomb over Baghdad. They continually do this."

After wavering earlier this summer whether to remain in the U.S. or flee from a "fascist" dictatorship shaping up in America, the 65-year-old Celente told InfoWars' talk show super-star personality, Alex Jones, that he will not allow a "bunch of freaks" in Washington chase him out. Celente said he will stay and fight.

But the personal struggle on this question continues to weigh heavily on his mind.

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages."
-- Admiral William D Leahy, Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman

"The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."- Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe

This week 67 years ago, a new era of global terror was born when the US dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Never before had the world witnessed such man-made power to destroy. And ever since the world has had to live with the threat of repeated devastation.

But the bombings were not merely terrible acts of war. They signaled a US policy of holding the world hostage to its global terrorism.

On this fateful day in August 1945, an American B-29 Flying Fortress unleashed a hell on earth over the Japanese city of Nagasaki with a single atomic bomb, nicknamed Fat Man.

The day before, Radio Tokyo and the American media were already reporting the devastation inflicted on the city of Hiroshima where, on the morning of 6 August, another American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, had dropped the first atomic bomb - codenamed Little Boy.

I decided to do myself something that so far NOAA has refused to do: give a CONUS average temperature for the United States from the new 'state of the art' United States Climate Reference Network (USCRN). After spending millions of dollars to put in this new network from 2002 to 2008, they are still giving us data from the old one when they report a U.S. national average temperature. As readers may recall, I have demonstrated that old COOP/USHCN network used to monitor U.S. climate is a mishmash of urban, semi-urban, rural, airport and non-airport stations, some of which are sited precariously in observers backyards, parking lots, near air conditioner vents, airport tarmac, and in urban heat islands. This is backed up by the 2011 GAO report spurred by my work.