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Vader

Best of the Web: Chris Hedges: The S&M Election

Obama
© Mr. Fish
I learned at the age of 10, when I was shipped off to a New England boarding school where the hazing of younger boys was the principal form of recreation, that those who hunger for power are psychopathic bastards. The bullies in the forms above me, the sadistic masters on our dormitory floors, the deans and the headmaster would morph in later life into bishops, newspaper editors, college presidents, politicians, heads of state, business titans and generals. Those who revel in the ability to manipulate and destroy are demented and deformed individuals. These severely diminished and stunted human beings - think Bill and Hillary Clinton - shower themselves, courtesy of elaborate public relations campaigns and an obsequious press, with encomiums of piety, patriotism, devoted public service, honor, courage and vision, not to mention a lot of money. They are at best mediocrities and usually venal. I have met enough of them to know.

So it is with some morbid fascination that I watch Barack Obama, who has become the prime "dominatrix" of the liberal class, force us in this election to plead for more humiliation and abuse. Obama has carried out a far more egregious assault on our civil liberties, including signing into law Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), than George W. Bush. Section 1021(b)(2), which I challenged in federal court, permits the U.S. military to detain American citizens, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military facilities. U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest struck down the law in September. The Obama administration immediately appealed the decision. The NDAA has been accompanied by use of the Espionage Act, which Obama has turned to six times in silencing whistle-blowers. Obama supported the FISA Amendment Act so government could spy on tens of millions of us without warrants. He has drawn up kill lists to exterminate those, even U.S. citizens, deemed by the ruling elite to be terrorists.

Star of David

Best of the Web: It's time for sanctions on Israel

Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman
© Abir Sultan/EPA The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, shake hands after they announced their parties will unite for the 2013 election.
The merger of the rightwing parties will increase extremism and racism against Palestinians. Sanctions are the only answer

Ahead of the Israeli elections next January, a merger between the parties of the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has been announced. They are to contest the elections on a joint list, intending to become the largest bloc in the Knesset.

The move is seen as an achievement for both men. Netanyahu was shaken by the recent decline in the popularity of his Likud party at the rate of one seat per week. More specifically, his apprehension revolved around the possible return of Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, as leader of an opposition alliance consisting of Tzipi Livni, the former foreign minister; Shaul Mofaz, leader of Kadima; and Yair Labed, a rising political star.

Netanyahu's avowed objective is to assemble a major political force that would guarantee his re-election and ensure his dominance of the Israeli right. Lieberman is the main beneficiary of this alliance: it guarantees power for his party, Yisrael Beiteinu, and under the agreement, Lieberman can choose to run whatever ministry he desires, including the important ministry of defence. He will gain political legitimacy and be transformed from a mere participant in a coalition government to a key player. If in recent years the government has been a construct of Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the defence minister, the next government will be a Netanyahu-Lieberman one. Lieberman can also contest Likud's leadership after Netanyahu.

The alliance reflects a lunge to the right, at a time of greater extremism in Israeli politics. Previously, Lieberman was very much on the margins. When he became minister of transport, a minister in the Labour party resigned, refusing to sit at the same table with him.

MIB

Best of the Web: Wall Street Journal: US mission in Banghazi was actually a CIA operation

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The US mission in Benghazi that came under attack by militants on September 11 was mainly a secret CIA operation, the Wall Street Journal reports, shedding new light on the deadly assault.

President Barack Obama's administration has faced a storm of pre-election questions about why there was not more security at the US consulate where four Americans, including ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed on September 11.

The Wall Street Journal said on Friday the mission was mainly a CIA operation, adding that of the 30 American officials evacuated from Benghazi following the assault, just seven worked for the State Department.

It also identified the two security contractors killed in the attack - former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty - as working for the Central Intelligence Agency and not the State Department.

In a break from tradition, it said CIA director David Petraeus did not attend the ceremony when the coffins arrived back on American soil in order to conceal the CIA operation in eastern Libya.

Comment: That this was a CIA command post goes some way towards explaining why they were more concerned with preventing documents from getting in the wrong hands than with protecting the civilian embassy staff. The anti-NATO resistance forces were obviously fully aware that the CIA was using the compound to direct its proxy war against the Libyan people, so they legitimately attacked it.

Incidentally, Sott.net called this last week:
Benghazi Attacks, Political Theatre and Wild Speculations

[...]

Let's take a look one-by-one at five theories circulating the net on who was behind the attacks:

1. Mossad-instigated at the request of Netanyahu in a bid to interfere with the U.S. election
2. Collaboration between the Neocons, Mitt Romney presidential campaigners and the CIA Mormon Mafia
3. Team Obama plotting a heroic voter-rousing rescue of a kidnapped Ambassador that went badly wrong
4. Libya's Green Resistance with NATO cover-up
5. Resistance fighters after documents containing names of Libyans who are working with Americans


[...]

Using [Occam's Razor] to select the simplest explanation, it would appear that a combination of 4 and 5 are most probable. The resistance force in Libya against the US-led NATO occupation is much stronger than Western powers would care to admit. Documents containing names of which Libyans are working with American occupiers and oil contracts would be highly valuable to those wishing to destabilise the occupying force. The Western mainstream media, a dubious video and political debates play their role in spreading confusion and disinformation to cover-up continued anger over the mass-murder of innocent civilians with 'humanitarian' bombing campaigns.
And Joe Quinn was more or less the first to call it 6 weeks ago.


USA

Best of the Web: News from the Empire: Al Qaeda in Syria, Obama's Kill List, Chavez's defiance

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"Hi, we're the ones bringing democracy and freedom to Syria. Special thanks go to the CIA for these weapons, MI6 for the communications equipment and Mossad for the training (those weekends with you guys in Herzliya were awesome!)..."
The Southeast Asian country of Laos in the late 1950s and early 60s was a complex and confusing patchwork of civil conflicts, changes of government and switching loyalties. The CIA and the State Department alone could take credit for engineering coups at least once in each of the years 1958, 1959 and 1960. No study of Laos of this period appears to have had notable success in untangling the muddle of who exactly replaced whom, and when, and how, and why. After returning from Laos in 1961, American writer Norman Cousins stated that "if you want to get a sense of the universe unraveling, come to Laos. Complexity such as this has to be respected."1

Syria 2012 has produced its own tangled complexity. In the past 18 months it appears that at one time or another virtually every nation in the Middle East and North Africa as well as members of NATO and the European Union has been reported as aiding those seeking to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad, while Russia, China, and several other countries are reported as aiding Assad. The Syrian leader, for his part, has consistently referred to those in combat against him as "terrorists", citing the repeated use of car bombs and suicide bombers. The West has treated this accusation with scorn, or has simply ignored it. But the evidence that Assad has had good reason for his stance has been accumulating for some time now, particularly of late. Here is a small sample from recent months:
  • "It is the sort of image that has become a staple of the Syrian revolution, a video of masked men calling themselves the Free Syrian Army and brandishing AK-47s - with one unsettling difference. In the background hang two flags of Al Qaeda, white Arabic writing on a black field ... The video, posted on YouTube, is one more bit of evidence that Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists are doing their best to hijack the Syrian revolution." (New York Times, July 24, 2012)
  • A leading German newspaper reported that the German intelligence service, BND, had concluded that 95% of the Syrian rebels come from abroad and are likely to be members of al Qaeda. (Die Welt, September 30, 2012)
  • "A network of French Islamists behind a grenade attack on a kosher market outside Paris last month also planned to join jihadists fighting in Syria ... Two suspects were responsible for recruiting and dispatching people 'to carry out jihad in some countries - notably Syria'," a state prosecutor said. (Associated Press, October 11, 2012)
  • "Fighters from a shadowy militant group [Jabhat al-Nusra] with suspected links to al-Qaida joined Syrian rebels in seizing a government missile defense base in northern Syria on Friday, according to activists and amateur video. ...The videos show dozens of fighters inside the base near a radar tower, along with rows of large missiles, some on the backs of trucks." (Associated Press, October 12, 2012)
  • "In a videotape posted this week on militant forums, the Egyptian-born jihadist Ayman al-Zawahiri ... urged support for Syria's uprisings." (Associated Press, October 28, 2012)

Cupcake Choco

Best of the Web: GMO Foods: Science, PR, and Public Backlash


Star of David

Best of the Web: Israel Lobby Calls for an 'Iranian Pearl Harbor'

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When the Bush-Cheney administration was in power, Dick Cheney tried hard to find an excuse for military attacks on Iran. After all, according to Gen. Wesley Clark, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO from 1997 to 2000, Cheney and other hawks had plans for attacking and destroying seven countries in the Middle East and North Africa over five years in order to transform them into U.S. client states, and he wanted to "accomplish" as much as possible before leaving office. Various options were considered. As reported by Seymour Hersh, in late 2007 the Bush-Cheney administration received congressional approval for its request for $400 million to launch major covert operations against Iran, and a presidential finding signed by Bush authorized a secret program for destabilizing Iran by supporting puppet groups purporting to represent the Iranian Arabs living in the oil province of Khuzestan, the Baluchi people, and other separatist "organizations." Aside from terrorist operations that killed many innocent Iranians, the program failed. Other venues were also tried, ranging from fabrications about Iran's alleged interference in Iraq to huge shows of force in the Persian Gulf and a campaign of lies and exaggerations.

Another option that was considered was provoking the Iranians to attack the U.S. forces, hence justifying counterattacks by the U.S. Given the long history of the attacks by the U.S. Navy on Iranian ships and offshore oil installations in the Persian Gulf, and the destruction by the U.S. Navy of the Iranian passenger jet in July 1988 that killed 290 people, creating an "incident" in the Persian Gulf to justify the attacks seemed only "natural." Then, in January 2008 five Iranian patrol boats supposedly made aggressive moves toward three U.S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz. Bush called the incident "provocative" and "dangerous," and it appeared momentarily that Cheney's wish had been realized. But less than a week later the Pentagon acknowledged that it could not positively identify the Iranian boats as the source of the threatening radio transmission that the press had initially reported coming from the boats. In fact, it had come from a prankster.

Fireball

Best of the Web: Video diary of extreme global weather events and other weird phenomena in October 2012

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Snow in Springtime in Australia; deluge in the UK, Nigeria, southern Spain and the US; fireballs seen everywhere; tornadoes and strong winds in southern France; another zombie cannibal attack, this time in China; a hurricane in northeastern US; UFOs diving into volcanoes; large earthquakes; sudden sinkholes swallowing and killing people in China ...it's been another bizarre month here on the Big Blue Marble.


Hearts

Best of the Web: Horrifying brain scans that show the real impact of love

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  • According to neurologists the sizeable difference between these two brains has one primary cause - the way were treated by their mothers
  • These images are brain scans of a two three-year-old children
  • Brain on the left is considerably larger, has fewer spots and less dark areas, compared to the one on the right
  • You comfort them over a skinned knee in the playground, and coax them to sleep with a soothing lullaby.

    But being a nurturing mother is not just about emotional care - it pays dividends by determining the size of your child's brain, scientists say.

    Both of these images are brain scans of a two three-year-old children, but the brain on the left is considerably larger, has fewer spots and less dark areas, compared to the one on the right.

    According to neurologists this sizeable difference has one primary cause - the way each child was treated by their mothers.

    The child with the larger and more fully developed brain was looked after by its mother - she was constantly responsive to her baby, reported The Sunday Telegraph.

    Comment: And so we see a very direct result of the psychopathologisation of society. Through the spread of psychopathic ideology, people become "ponerized", i.e., they develop psychopathic traits without being clinical psychopaths themselves. This pathology is then spread to the next generation, and on it goes, unto the eventual collapse and destruction of human society.

    Stop supporting psychopaths in power and stop accepting and adopting psychopathic ideals.


    Heart - Black

    Best of the Web: Psychopathy's Double Edge

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    The traumatic and terrifying effects of psychopaths are visible on our streets and on the faces of people all around us, yet most of us are blithely unaware of their existence.
    Over a 28-year-old single-malt scotch at the Scientific Study of Psychopathy's biennial bash in Montreal in 2011, I asked Bob Hare, "When you look around you at modern-day society, do you think, in general, that we're becoming more psychopathic?"

    The eminent criminal psychologist and creator of the widely used Psychopathy Checklist paused before answering. "I think, in general, yes, society is becoming more psychopathic," he said. "I mean, there's stuff going on nowadays that we wouldn't have seen 20, even 10 years ago. Kids are becoming anesthetized to normal sexual behavior by early exposure to pornography on the Internet. Rent-a-friend sites are getting more popular on the Web, because folks are either too busy or too techy to make real ones. ... The recent hike in female criminality is particularly revealing. And don't even get me started on Wall Street."

    He's got a point.

    In Japan in 2011, a 17-year-old boy parted with one of his own kidneys so he could go out and buy an iPad. In China, following an incident in which a 2-year-old baby was left stranded in the middle of a marketplace and run over, not once but twice, as passersby went casually about their business, an appalled electorate has petitioned the government to pass a good-Samaritan law to prevent such a thing from happening again.

    And the new millennium has seemingly ushered in a wave of corporate criminality like no other. Investment scams, conflicts of interest, lapses of judgment, and those evergreen entrepreneurial party tricks of good old fraud and embezzlement are now utterly unprecedented in magnitude. Who's to blame? In an issue of the Journal of Business Ethics, Clive R. Boddy, a former professor at the Nottingham Business School, contends that it's psychopaths, pure and simple, who are at the root of all the trouble.

    Comment: While the above article is very interesting and informative and provides fascinating scientific proof of the fact that psychopaths are very much a different type of human than the vast majority of humans, the following paragraph is a rather uniformed and callous attempt to rationalise away the disastrous effects that psychopaths have had, and continue to have, on human society.
    "But if society really is becoming more psychopathic, it's not all doom and gloom. In the right context, certain psychopathic characteristics can actually be very constructive. A neurosurgeon I spoke with (who rated high on the psychopathic spectrum) described the mind-set he enters before taking on a difficult operation as "an intoxication that sharpens rather than dulls the senses." In fact, in any kind of crisis, the most effective individuals are often those who stay calm - who are able to respond to the exigencies of the moment while at the same time maintaining the requisite degree of detachment."
    Dr. Robert Hare has stated that psychopaths, who may constitute up to 6% of the population, may be responsible for 50% of crimes. This is hardly something positive. The author also misses the fact that when the ability to be "cool and calm" in a crisis is NOT a choice but rather a state of being, any possible positives far outweigh the negatives when you consider that the apathy of the 'calm and focused' neurosurgeon above would just as likely result in serious malpractice. In short, psychopathy has not "double edge", psychopathic traits are in no way positive to human society. The current dire state of our global society is a testament to that fact.


    Eye 1

    Best of the Web: The Holocaust shuffle

    TSA screens family
    © You Tube

    In the '70s, there was The Hustle. We've got a new dance here in the Homeland. It's called The Holocaust Shuffle. The steps are easy to learn. Just stand here, legs apart - and arms up. Say nothing - and do exactly as you are told. Now, freeze in place. There! You are almost ready... .

    What are they normalizing? We all know, deep down - it's just that most of us don't want to face up to it. We can't bear to. It is inconceivable. Unimaginable. Impossible. It would upend the conditioning of a lifetime - our entire view of the world. Of our country and culture - of the people all around us.

    Such things can't happen again. And certainly not here.

    Ah, but they can. Right here, too.

    They already are. And the process began long before the events of nineleven - the new High Holy Day here in the land of the formerly somewhat free. It has been a work in progress since at least the 1980s - when the notion of randomly stopping people - the first frontal assault upon the Fourth Amendment - was introduced and accepted by the courts and then the public. Got to get those dangerous drunks off the road, you see.

    Fast forward 20 years and now people are randomly groped as a matter of routine. Got to get those dangerous terrorists now, you see. Personal space itself is no longer inviolate. They can literally spread your cheeks and jam a thumb up your anus now. Just to be "safe." Over a traffic stop. No, seriously. Don't believe it? Believe it. They can throw you over the hood of a squad car and draw your blood. They can kick in the door of your home. They can shoot your dog if they feel it threatens "officer safety." And they can shoot you, too. That's today.