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Dollar

Best of the Web: The Billionaires Funding Romney and Obama

Tyler Durden
Zerohedge
Sun, 21 Oct 2012 13:22 UTC
money changing hands
© unknown

The last time we checked on the (funding) status of America's real presidential race - the one where America's uber-wealthy try to outspend each other in hopes of purchasing the best president money can buy - the totals were substantially lower. With November 6 rapidly approaching, however, the scramble to lock in those record political lobbying IRRs is in its final lap. And thanks to the unlimited nature of PAC spending, look for the spending to really go into overdrive in the next 2 weeks as the spending frenzy on the world's greatest tragicomedy hits previously unseen heights.
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Bulb

Best of the Web: How Psychologists Subvert Democratic Movements

Bruce E. Levine
ZMagazine
Sat, 20 Oct 2012 10:10 UTC
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By the 1980s, as a clinical psychology graduate student, it had become apparent to me that the psychology profession was increasingly about meeting the needs of the "power structure" to maintain the status quo so as to gain social position, prestige, and other rewards for psychologists.

Academic psychology in the 1970s was by no means perfect. There was a dominating force of manipulative, control-freak behaviorists who appeared to get their rocks off conditioning people as if they were rats in a maze. However, there was also a significant force of people such as Erich Fromm who believed that an authoritarian and undemocratic society results in alienation and that this was a source of emotional problems. Fromm was concerned about mental health professionals helping people to adjust to a society with no thought to how dehumanizing that society had become. Back then, Fromm was not a marginalized figure; his ideas were taken seriously. He had bestsellers and had appeared on national television.

However, by the time I received my PhD in 1985 - from an American Psychological Association-approved clinical psychology program - people with ideas such as Fromm's were at the far margins. By then, the focus was on the competition as to what treatment could get patients back on the assembly line quickest. The competition winners that emerged - owing much more to public relations than science - were cognitive-behavioral therapy in psychology and biochemical psychiatry. By the mid-1980s, psychiatry was beginning to become annexed by pharmaceutical companies and forming what we now have - a "psychiatric-pharmaceutical industrial complex." Increasingly marginalized was the idea that treatment that consisted of manipulating and medicating alienated people to adjust to this crazy rat race and thus maintain the status quo was a political act - a problematic one for people who cared about democracy.
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Dominoes

Best of the Web: UN warns of looming worldwide food crisis in 2013: Collapse of global food supply inevitable

John Vidal
The Guardian
Sat, 13 Oct 2012 05:38 UTC
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World grain reserves are so dangerously low that severe weather in the United States or other food-exporting countries could trigger a major hunger crisis next year, the United Nations has warned.

Failing harvests in the US, Ukraine and other countries this year have eroded reserves to their lowest level since 1974. The US, which has experienced record heatwaves and droughts in 2012, now holds in reserve a historically low 6.5% of the maize that it expects to consume in the next year, says the UN.

"We've not been producing as much as we are consuming. That is why stocks are being run down. Supplies are now very tight across the world and reserves are at a very low level, leaving no room for unexpected events next year," said Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). With food consumption exceeding the amount grown for six of the past 11 years, countries have run down reserves from an average of 107 days of consumption 10 years ago to under 74 days recently.
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Fireball 4

Best of the Web: Fragmentation and Sonics! Northern California Fireball Meteor +19'42 PDT 17OCT2012 - Unrelated to the Orionids


LunarMeteoriteHunters.blogspot.com
Thu, 18 Oct 2012 08:46 UTC
MBIQ indicates that a meteor was seen minutes ago over California on 17OCT2012 at 07'42 pm. The meteor appears to be slow-moving sporatic fireball meteor and NOT related to the Orionids meteor shower. The meteor fragmented with sonics and is a very good candidate for a meteorite producing event.


CHP and local San Mateo County police radio traffic about a meteor in the San Francisco Bay Area meteor on October 17, 2012:

Comment: See our SOTT Focus: Meteorite Impacts Earth in Minden, Louisiana - Media and Government Cover It Up

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MIB

Best of the Web: FBI shows up at teenager's home to ask about his Ron Paul school report


RT
Fri, 14 Sep 2012 00:00 UTC
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© Agence France-Presse/ Robyn Beck
A 16-year-old high school student's video report for his American Government class earned him an A+ from his teacher. It also yielded a visit from the FBI.

Justin Hallman says that a project he put together for school that included information on the National Defense Authorization Act, Rep. Ron Paul, Anonymous and the Occupy Wall Street movement was well received in the classroom, but wasn't exactly praised by others. After agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation saw a copy of Hallman's finished work on YouTube, they paid a visit to his own home.

The boy's mother says the FBI showed up at their home one month after the class project was first turned in and told her, "We need to talk to your son." Once inside, Justin Hallman says he was drilled about his thoughts on an array of issues included in his project.

"They also asked me why I had talked to my teacher about the Illuminati," he writes in an email obtained by Infowars. "I told them it was just harmless talk about the 1776 Illuminati that formed from the enlightenment era. I said my teacher said they are/were terrorists and not to talk about them (this caused the FBI agents to look puzzled and they changed the subject very fast to Anonymous). In the end they finally left for an 'important meeting.'"
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Light Saber

Best of the Web: Young woman who was arrested for owning 'anarchist literature' says: I am ready to go to prison

Will Potter
Information Clearing House
Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:53 UTC
Note: Leah Lynn Plante was sentenced to prison yesterday afternoon after refusing to answer questions to a grand jury in Seattle. The following article was posted yesterday before Leah went to court. This witch-hunt style grand jury is unacceptable. Leah and her comrades are tremendously brave for standing up to state repression of anarchists by refusing to cooperate.
leah jailed
Leah Plante will again appear before a federal grand jury in Seattle, Washington, for the third time, and refuse to testify about her political beliefs and political associations. It is likely that she will be imprisoned for her principled stance against what she calls a witch hunt against local anarchists.

The grand jury is investigating anarchists in the Northwest, following FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force raids in search of "anarchist literature." Two other anarchists, Matthew Kyle Duran and Katherine Olejnik,have already been imprisoned for refusing to cooperate.

Plante wrote a powerful statement to her friends and supporters in preparation for today's hearing. Here is an excerpt:

Comment: Read also: Young Persons Called to Private Grand Jury for Owning Books

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Fireball 4

Best of the Web: Update! Meteor impacts Louisiana, explosion causes damage to nearby buildings, cover-up swings into operation


ShreveportTimes.com
Tue, 16 Oct 2012 08:33 UTC
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© Kristi Johnston/The TimesWebster Parish sheriff's deputies set up on scene on Elmo Burton Loop this morning in search of what caused the ground to shake across northwest Louisiana late Monday night.
Northwest Louisiana authorities are investigating the source of whatever shook people's residences and businesses about 11:40 p.m. Monday. The Webster sheriff's office now is entertaining the possibility that it may have been a meteorite, possibly in the Dixie Inn area. There have been a large number of reports stating that they saw something come down instead of something blow up, a spokesman said.

And a woman reported hearing what sounded like debris hit a shop on Bellevue Road in the Dixie Inn area. If it was a meteorite, that would fall to NASA and the Air Force to investigate. A spokeswoman for Barksdale Air Force Base public affairs said that the installation is investigating and that whatever the source, it didn't originate at the base.

Webster authorities still don't know what it was or where it hit, Sheriff Gary Sexton just said. Thermal-imaging cameras showed nothing off Elmo Burton Loop near Dixie Inn, but helicopters are expected to be in the air this morning to survey the area along U.S. 80 and Interstate 20 for the cause of what caused the ground to shake.

Comment: Damage control has swung into operation:

Webster S.O. confirms bunker explosion at Camp Minden
Webster Parish, Louisiana (KSLA) - Webster Parish Sheriff Gary Sexton says hazmat experts tell him the underground bunker containing explosives that blew up late Monday night at Camp Minden worked exactly as it was designed to do.

Sexton describes the bunker, in the "L-1 area," as an "igloo," constructed of concrete. He says they were built in the 50s. The underground bunkers are designed to send any blast up instead of out to lessen the shock wave impact. No one was injured.

The force of the explosion was felt across a wide area just before 11:40 p.m. Monday, with reports of people feeling the blast from Minden to Shreveport and well beyond. The explosion site was discovered right at sun-up.

The National Weather Service later issued a statement describing radar imagery showing a debris/smoke plume right around 11:30 p.m. approximately one and one half miles southwest of Dixie Inn, which is where the Camp Minden Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant is located. The NWS says the debris plume drifted northwest at about 10 miles per hour and dissipated after about 30 minutes.

Webster Chief Deputy Bobby Igo says the bunker belongs to a company called Explo Systems, Inc. A news conference was scheduled for 9 a.m. to be held by officials from Explo was pushed to 11 a.m., but that was canceled at the last minute with no explanation given.

When reached by phone, Explo Chief Operations Officer Terri Wright would only say he had no comment. Neither Explo nor authorities have said yet what kind of explosives were stored in the bunker.

State Police, the Webster Parish Sheriff's Office and the military will investigate exactly what caused the explosion.

Webster Sheriff Gary Sexton says there are numerous reports of collateral damage, mostly consisting of broken windows. But he says there has been some structural damage.

Earlier in the morning, Sexton said there was a "possibility that a meteor did hit the ground" in the area, but that theory was put to rest with the confirmation of the blast at the Camp Minden bunker.

The event resulted in a flood of phone calls to the Webster Parish Sheriff's Office, as well as to the KSLA News 12 newsroom.

KSLA News 12 viewer Shana Levick tells us she was driving on I-20 by Dixie Inn when she saw the sky light up a bright orange color. She said she could see what appeared to be small fire sparks above the tree lines.

Callers are also reporting seeing a bright light flash in the sky when they heard the boom.
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Well now, this is interesting. Initially reported as being a possible meteor strike, we're now hearing that this explosion in Louisiana was the result of a planned explosion at an old underground bunker at 11.30pm on a Monday night. If that was really so, why did buildings in nearby downtown Minden sustain blast damage? Once again, U.S. authorities are spinning as fast as they can to cover up for the cosmic threat.

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© Minden Press Herald
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The U.S. government isn't alone, however. Just last week a massive explosion caused a mushroom cloud in southern Russia. It was blamed on an accident, "probably caused by a lit cigarette" (yeah right!), as some 4,000 tonnes of soon-to-be decommissioned munitions were supposedly being unloaded from a train at a remote military base. Injuries were initially reported but then this was retracted, leaving no on-site injuries where surely there should have been at least a few, especially given that windows were shattered on buildings in towns located up to 40 km away.

We had been wondering whether or not this Russian "munitions accident" was covering up for an overhead airburst caused by an incoming meteor or cometary fragment ... and now something rather similar has happened in southern U.S. one week later!

Update 2:

Local news station is now reporting that a debris cloud was picked up on radar images. One eyewitness also reported 'meteor ash' falling to the ground ...


Camp Minden 'Debris Plume' photo:

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© NOAA


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USA

Best of the Web: The 2012 U.S. Presidential "Non-election": Which brand of "fascism" this time?

Larry Chin
Global Research
Sun, 14 Oct 2012 15:53 UTC
US Empire
© Duncan Long
No matter who "wins", humanity loses.

Every four years, the deck chairs of the political Titanic that is the American empire get rearranged in the choreographed spectacle of another presidential "election". The 2012 charade is particularly disgusting; the lies more blatant and shrill, as the world continues to burn.

It is critical to focus on the cold, ugly reality facing the world with either prospective White House occupant.

On one side, the Obama administration, and the traditional brand of neoliberal imperialism and international consensus, and false domestic populism. On the other side with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, militant right-wing extremism, an apocalyptic war agenda and the politics of sadism at home.

The interests of the elite (Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderberger, etc.) is dutifully served with either Obama or Romney in the White House. The question for the elite is purely over style and execution.

Obama has been a servile facilitator and protector of the political establishment; an insidious capitulator and "consensus man". For Wall Street's billionaires, the Pentagon's warmongers, and Washington's most shamelessly corrupt, there has been no greater gift than Obama and his presidency. But with Romney and Ryan, the agenda simply speeds up and destroys faster, more violently, with true theocratic maniacal fervor.

The final choice will not be made by voters (who will be disenfranchised again, via electronic vote fraud and other manipulations), but by the criminal elements who seize final control of the apparatus over the final month of the "contest".

The "children" are being allowed to fight it out amongst themselves. The side with ultimate command of the corporate media propaganda, the most effective back door deals, and the most effective dirty tricks and election night shenanigans, will prevail, the pre-determined result promptly encrypted into the software of controlled Diebold voting machines.
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Eye 1

Best of the Web: Police State: U.S. Supreme Court dismisses eavesdropping lawsuit

Bob Egelko
SF Gate
Thu, 11 Oct 2012 10:01 UTC
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed lawsuits in San Francisco against the nation's telecommunications companies for cooperating with the Bush administration's secret surveillance program, leaving intact an immunity law supported by President Obama.

The 2008 law shielded the companies from liability for their alleged roles in helping the government intercept phone calls and e-mails between Americans and suspected foreign terrorists without a search warrant. Obama voted for the law as a senator and has defended it in court as president.

The high court, without comment, denied a hearing on an appeal by AT&T customers after lower federal courts upheld the law.

The order does not affect a separate wiretapping suit by the customers against the government, currently pending before a federal judge in San Francisco. The plaintiffs allege that federal agents conducted warrantless "dragnet" surveillance that intercepted millions of messages from U.S. residents. The suit is partly based on testimony in 2003 by a former AT&T technician about equipment in the company's Folsom Street office that allowed Internet traffic to be routed to the government.
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Hourglass

Best of the Web: 28 good questions that the mainstream media should be asking


Economic Collapse Blog
Thu, 11 Oct 2012 09:51 UTC
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Anybody home?
Why is there so little trust in the mainstream media these days? CNN ratings have been hovering close to record lows over the past few months. A recent Gallup survey found that 60 percent of all Americans "have little or no trust" in the mainstream media. That was a record high according to Gallup. So why is this happening? Sadly, the truth is that the mainstream media quit telling the truth a long time ago. The mainstream media has an agenda, and more Americans than ever are beginning to recognize this. Once upon a time, control of the news in the United States was at least somewhat decentralized. But now there are just six giant media corporations that control almost everything that we see, hear and watch. The version of "the news" that they give us is designed to serve the interests of those corporate giants and the other corporate giants that spend billions of dollars to advertise their products through those outlets. Watching the news on television can be an extremely frustrating experience these days. Yes, there are little bits and pieces of the truth in there, but you have to wade through an awful lot of "infotainment" to get to those bits and pieces. That is one of the reasons why the "alternative media" has absolutely exploded in recent years. The American people are hungry for the truth, and they are increasingly turning to alternative sources of news on the Internet in an attempt to find it.
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