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Propaganda

Best of the Web: US: The Fascinating Story of How Shameless Right-Wing Lies Came to Rule Our Politics

R Reagan
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From Nixon's plumbers to James O'Keefe's video smears: How political lying became normal.

It takes two things to make a political lie work: a powerful person or institution willing to utter it, and another set of powerful institutions to amplify it. The former has always been with us: Kings, corporate executives, politicians, and ideologues from both sides of the aisle have been entirely willing to bend the truth when they felt it necessary or convenient. So why does it seem as if we're living in a time of overwhelmingly brazen deception? What's changed?

Today's marquee fibs almost always evolve the same way: A tree falls in the forest -- say, the claim that Saddam Hussein has "weapons of mass destruction," or that Barack Obama has an infernal scheme to parade our nation's senior citizens before death panels. But then a network of media enablers helps it to make a sound -- until enough people believe the untruth to make the lie an operative part of our political discourse.

For the past 15 years, I've spent much of my time deeply researching three historic periods -- the birth of the modern conservative movement around the Barry Goldwater campaign, the Nixon era, and the Reagan years -- that together have shaped the modern political lie. Here's how we got to where we are.

Nuke

Best of the Web: Japan Finally Admits TOTAL Meltdown at 3 Nuclear Reactors Within Hours of Earthquake

smoke billows from the No. 3 reactor
© APThick smoke billows from the No. 3 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
... And More Than DOUBLES Estimate of Radiation Released After Accident

For months, Tepco and Japanese officials refused to admit that there had been any meltdowns at Fukushima.

Then they said there were meltdowns at reactors 1, 2 and 3 ... but they might have only been partial meltdowns.

Finally, today, they admitted the obvious: there were total meltdowns at all 3 reactors. As CNN reports:

Alarm Clock

Best of the Web: The Rise of the Second-String Psychopaths

shoe stepping on peeps graphic
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The great writer Kurt Vonnegut titled his final book A Man without a Country. He was the man; the country was the United States of America. Vonnegut felt that his country had disappeared right under his - and the Constitution's - feet, through what he called "the sleaziest, low-comedy Keystone Cops-style coup d'état imaginable." He was talking about the Bush administration. Were Vonnegut still alive in the post-Bush era, he would not have felt that his country had returned.

How had our country disappeared? Vonnegut proposed that among the contributing factors was that it had been invaded - as if by the Martians - by people with a particularly frightening mental illness. People with this illness were termed psychopaths. (The term nowadays is anti-social personality disorder.) These are terms for people who are smart, personable, and engaging, but who have no consciences. They are not guided by a sense of right or wrong. They seem to be unaffected by the feelings of others, including feelings of distress caused by their actions. Straying from a decent way of treating people, or violating ethical codes causes no anxiety, the anxiety which is what causes the rest of us to moderate our more greedy impulses. If most children feel anxiety when they are pilfering the forbidden cookie jar, psychopaths feel just fine. They can devour the cookies, shatter the jar as evidence and stuff it in the trash can. When accused, they can argue with apparent sincerity that the cookie jar has been missing for at least a week. They suffer no remorse, no guilt, no shame. They are free to do anything, no matter how harmful.

Alarm Clock

Best of the Web: Decline and Fall of the American Empire

Great Depression
© Bettmann/CorbisDust-bowl refugees walk towards Los Angeles during the Great Depression. House prices have now fallen further than in the 1930s.
The economic powerhouse of the 20th century emerged stronger from the Depression. But faced with cultural decay, structural weaknesses and reliance on finance, can the US do it again?

America clocked up a record last week. The latest drop in house prices meant that the cost of real estate has fallen by 33% since the peak - even bigger than the 31% slide seen when John Steinbeck was writing The Grapes of Wrath.

Phoenix

Best of the Web: US: Arizona Burns!

High winds are propelling a devastating Arizona forest fire that has already grown into the third-largest in the state's history.

Smoke from the 225-square-mile covered a mountain vacation town in a blinding yellow fog yesterday and residents are now preparing to evacuate as the fire edges closer.

Strong winds have also blown smoke from the burning pine forest well into the nearby states of New Mexico and Colorado.

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© Eastern Arizona IMTBurning: The Wallow Fire rages through dry pines in Arizona, while firefighters battle to save homes
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© AP Photo - Aizona republic - Jack KurtzTerrifying: A farm in Luna, New Mexico, sits below the massive smoke column from the 144,000-acre Wallow Fire on Friday. Two of the biggest fires in Arizona history rage on

Health

Best of the Web: E.coli Survivor Describes Pain, Chaos at Hospital

Image
© APNicoletta Pabst smiles during an interview with the Associated Press in Hamburg, Germany, Saturday,
Berlin - Nicoletta Pabst could not believe what she saw twelve days ago when she rushed to a Hamburg hospital with stomach cramps, diarrhea and blood in her stool.

The emergency room at the University Medical Center in Hamburg-Eppendorf was engulfed by chaos, she said, overwhelmed as it tried to treat hordes of E. coli victims."

All patients suspected of E. coli were led to a separate location for examination," Pabst told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday. "When I arrived, there were at least 20 other people and more and more kept coming in, many of them by ambulance."

She said the emergency room's sanitary conditions were horrendous.

"All of us had diarrhea and there was only one bathroom each for men and women - it was a complete mess," she said. "If I hadn't been sick with E. coli by then, I probably would have picked it up over there."

Hamburg is at the epicenter of the deadliest E. coli outbreak in modern history.

Germany's national disease control center raised the death toll Sunday to 22 people - 21 in Germany and one in Sweden - and said another 2,153 people in Germany have been sickened since May 2. That figure included 627 people who have developed a rare, serious complication of the disease that can cause kidney failure. Ten other European nations and the U.S. have reported a total of 90 other victims.

"We'd all been reading the scary news about the E. coli outbreak in our region for days," said Pabst, a 41-year-old homemaker. "(My husband) took me to the university hospital right away."

Bizarro Earth

Best of the Web: Something Strange With Volcano Eruption in Chile

Puyehue volcano erupts
© n/aPuyehue volcano erupts in southern Chile, June, 2011
What appears to be an enormous ash cloud rising from the eruption of a long dormant volcano named Puyehuein southern Chile on June 4, 2011, isn't quite matching up with the location of the recorded earthquakes today in the immediate area.

"The Cordon Caulle (volcanic range) has entered an eruptive process, with an explosion resulting in a 10-kilometer-high gas column," Chilean state emergency office said.

The thing is, for some unknown reason, as of this writing, eight earthquakes near magnitude 5 have shook the earth near the Puyehue volcano. The problem is, the earthquakes are located 20 to 40 miles away from the eruption! Very Strange Indeed.

There's something brewing quite a distance from the eruption, but is quite obviously directly related. We're talking about enormous energies here.

Yoda

Best of the Web: People Power! Bank of America Gets Pad-Locked After Homeowner Forecloses On It

Collier County, Florida -- Have you heard the one about a homeowner foreclosing on a bank?

Well, it has happened in Florida and involves a North Carolina based bank.

Instead of Bank of America foreclosing on some Florida homeowner, the homeowners had sheriff's deputies foreclose on the bank.


It started five months ago when Bank of America filed foreclosure papers on the home of a couple, who didn't owe a dime on their home.

The couple said they paid cash for the house.

The case went to court and the homeowners were able to prove they didn't owe Bank of America anything on the house. In fact, it was proven that the couple never even had a mortgage bill to pay.

Evil Rays

Best of the Web: A Critique Of Leuren Moret's Work On HAARP

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© playasonly.com
Do you know anyone who is a HAM? If so, go talk to them. They can explain in simple terms what HAARP is all about. The University of Alaska website for this international research facility is at haarp.alaska.edu - the original site may have been a bit of a boondoggle - perhaps a bit of a waste of tax dollars, but it has done a lot of good science despite being continually attacked by various conspiracists and opportunists like Moret who changes her spots based on the current topic of the moment. Her pal Alfred Webre Lambremonte is very similar. I first encountered him years ago before he hooked up with Moret. He was mister space alien encounter back then when he posted to the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) List that I joined in 1996 as a Federal whistleblower looking for a bulldog investigative reporter. I have been on that list ever since since I like to associate with investigative reporters who dig out the facts. I have helped some of them with their stories and was interviewed by satellite link from KGO TV's news room in San Francisco for a Kansas TV station story in 2003. My primary expertise is fraud - I seem to have a sixth sense for fraudsters that stems from my experiences as a government contracting professional and whistleblower about contract fraud. Thus far, most of the fraudsters have gotten away with it - but I did manage to get the one who ripped off my City to the tune of $65K to plead no contest to one felony count of theft of government funds ending his once promising political career.

Moret falsely claims that HAARP causes earthquakes following the lead of Rosalie Bertell who seems to be unwilling to shed the limelight despite her no longer being an active researcher and just basically making things up. If you talk with Geology professors, you will quickly learn that it is impossible to use radio waves to cause earthquakes. It is possible to stimulate quakes by deep water injection on a fault line. Most of those quakes were not even perceptible and the largest were in the range of 4 on the Richter scale, which is barely perceptible when you are within a few miles of the epicenter. None of these quakes were in the great quake range of 7 or larger or even close to that. You can also do internet research and find this information out - I found that quakes were stimulated in Colorado and Germany using similar methodology of water injection from a deep well on a fault line.

Comment: HAARP is for mind control:

HAARP and The Canary in the Mine

Mind Control and HAARP

...nevertheless, we have reason to believe that earthquakes CAN be induced using space-based weapons:
Cassiopaean Experiment in Superluminal Communication, Session 30 January 2010

(L) I have a question. I've been waiting for somebody to ask it, but since nobody is going to ask it, I want to ask it: Was the Haiti earthquake an induced earthquake, or was it totally natural?

A: (Planchette swirls on board) INDUCED! Bet you didn't expect that, did you?!

Q: (L) Frankly, I didn't. Because I've already gone on record saying it wasn't. I just poo-pooed the whole idea as too far out there. (laughter) So now I've gotta...

(Perceval) Well, it was the Russians who said that, wasn't it?

A: No!

Q: (Perceval) Didn't you tell us the Russians reported that?

(L) The question I want to ask is, how do they induce earthquakes? (To Ark) How do you think they induce earthquakes? (Perceval) Space-based satellite

(Ark) Well, just search the internet! (laughter) Yeah, it's on the internet. You create special waves that go into the earth and propagate in the right direction...

(L) I don't believe it. They don't have enough power to do that.

(Perceval) I want to know who induced it?

A: U.S.

Q: (Perceval) At the government level, or super-secret nonsense?

A: Secret gov.

Q: (L) And how did they do this? Was this from some kind of waves that Ark is talking about?

A: Close. And notice that no one is arguing with them right now!

Q: (L) In other words, you've got something that can do that, nobody's gonna mess with you.

(Ark) But the main question is, did they really want to induce it in the neighborhood of Haiti, or it was a mistake?

A: Yes, the prep was done.

Q: (Andromeda) So they intentionally did it to Haiti.

(Ark) What I would do, I would use a submarine and go near the fault, and do the job using these submarines as a so to say amplifiers for something. There are these faults under the ocean. It's enough to move this fault in the right direction with the right frequency, and you get it.

A: Too dangerous that way because the pulses would also destroy the sub. Better to use triangulated space-based weapons.

Q: (Belibaste) Why did they target Haiti specifically?

A: Close to South America. Convenient, oil, other factors of imperialistic nature.

Q: (Andromeda) Was it like a test?

A: No.

Q: (Burma Jones) Not a test, so they've used this thing a lot before?

(Perceval) They used it on the Columbia.

A: Once or twice.

Q: (Perceval) Used on the space shuttle.

(Psyche) That's why Chavez was so sure.

(Ark) It's probably much easier for the island than on the mainland...

(L) Yeah, because you've got separation with the ocean bed and different strata. It would be too uncontrollable if you started zapping a fault on a large land body.

(Andromeda) Like California?

(Perceval) When they said, "notice how no one is arguing with them now", does that mean that most major nations in the world are aware that this was a...

A: Yes

Q: (Perceval) Good way to shut people up.



Gear

Best of the Web: US: FBI Targeting Political Activists as Terrorists

Anti-terrorism resources are being used to target environmentalists, peace, animal and political activists who hold different views than the government.

It was recently revealed that a counter-terrorism firm spied on individuals who attended film screenings of the documentary Gasland. The film focuses on the practice of natural gas fracking and what impact it has on the environment and in the communities where it is used.

The FBI and other government agencies are cracking down on those who are not willing to say in line with the status quo.