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USA

Best of the Web: Outrage at CIA's deadly 'double tap' drone attacks


UK Independent
Thu, 27 Sep 2012 10:19 UTC
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American freedom fighters at work on an unmanned, child-killing drone
Report claims just one in fifty victims of 'surgical' US strikes in Pakistan are known militants. Jerome Taylor reports on a deadly new strategy

Late in the evening on 6 June this year an unmanned drone was flying high above the Pakistani village of Datta Khel in north Waziristan.

The buzz emitted by America's fleet of Predators and Reapers are a familiar sound for the inhabitants of the dusty hamlet, which lies next to a riverbed close to Pakistan's border with Afghanistan and is a stronghold for the Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur.

As the drone circled it let off the first of its Hellfire missiles, slamming into a small house and reducing it to rubble. When residents rushed to the scene of the attack to see if they could help they were struck again.

According to reports at the time, three local rescuers were killed by a second missile whilst a further strike killed another three people five minutes later. In all, somewhere between 17 and 24 people are thought to have been killed in the attack.

The Datta Khel assault was just one of the more than 345 strikes that have hit Pakistan's tribal areas in the past eight years but it reveals an increasingly common tactic now being used in America's covert drone wars - the "double-tap" strike.

More and more, while the overall frequency of strikes has fallen since a Nato attack in 2011 killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and strained US-Pakistan relations, initial strikes are now followed up by further missiles in a tactic which lawyers and campaigners say is killing an even greater number of civilians.
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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: Mitt Romney Helped Monsanto's Toxic Takeover of the World

Tom Philpott
Mother Jones
Fri, 14 Sep 2012 05:00 UTC
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© Romney: Chris Devers/WikiMedia Commons; Corn: Africa Studio/Shutterstock
Today, Monsanto looms over the global ag landscape like a colossus. It is the globe's largest seed purveyor - and its dominant vendor of genetically modified traits. How dominant? Here's NPR on the company's mastery over the US GMO market: "More than 9 out of 10 soybean seeds carry [Monsanto's] Roundup Ready trait. It's about the same for cotton and just a little lower for corn." It also sells nearly $1 billion worth of herbicides every three months.

But for all its clout, Monsanto is a relatively new player in the Big Ag game. While fellow ag giants like ADM, Cargill, Bunge, and BASF have been in the game for a century or more, as recently as the late 1970s Monsanto was known mostly as a chemical company; herbicides were a relatively small sideline, and genetically modified seeds were just the gleam in the eye of a few scientists in the R&D department. And its flagship chemical business had plunged into crisis. In 1976, Congress banned the highly toxic industrial coolant PCB - the US production of which Monsanto had enjoyed what the Washington Post called a "lucrative four-decade monopoly." According to the Post, Monsanto had been actively covering up the dangers of PCB exposure for years before the ban, opening the company to a thicket of lawsuits. To make matters worse, the company had also been heavily invested in the toxic pesticide DDT (banned in 1972) and the infamous Vietnam War defoliant Agent Orange - both of which carried their own legal and public-relations liabilities.

How did Monsanto pivot from teetering, scandal-ridden chemical giant to mighty high-tech (though still quite controversial) agribiz firm? As the veteran investigative reporter (and Mother Jones contributor) Wayne Barrett shows in a new Nation article, a young consultant called Mitt Romney helped push the firm on its highly lucrative new path.
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Magnify

Best of the Web: Meet Monsanto's Number One Lobbyist: Barack Obama

Jon Rappoport
Natural News
Tue, 25 Sep 2012 15:42 UTC
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During his 2008 campaign for president, Barack Obama transmitted signals that he understood the GMO issue. Several key anti-GMO activists were impressed. They thought Obama, once in the White House, would listen to their concerns and act on them.

These activists weren't just reading tea leaves. On the campaign trail, Obama said:
"Let folks know when their food is genetically modified, because Americans have a right to know what they're buying."
Making the distinction between GMO and non-GMO was certainly an indication that Obama, unlike the FDA and USDA, saw there was an important line to draw in the sand.

Beyond that, Obama was promising a new era of transparency in government. He was adamant in promising that, if elected, his administration wouldn't do business in "the old way." He would be "responsive to people's needs."

Then came the reality.
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Stormtrooper

Best of the Web: Coming to a city near you soon: Madrid police fire rubber bullets as thousands surround Spain's parliament


RT
Wed, 26 Sep 2012 11:56 UTC

Madrid riot police have cleared Plaza de Neptune of protesters, with about 200 officers securing the surrounding blocks. At least 60 people have been injured and 26 arrested as police used batons and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd.

­Local emergency services have confirmed that at least 60 people, including eight policemen, were injured in clashes between police and protesters, El Pais reports. One of the wounded is believed to be in critical condition, while one of the injured policemen suffered a severe concussion.
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Dollar

Best of the Web: Is America The Most Materialistic Society In The History Of The World?


The Economic Collapse
Wed, 19 Sep 2012 22:12 UTC
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When it comes to materialism, has any nation ever surpassed what we are seeing in the United States right now? We define our lives by how much stuff we have, to a large degree our personal and business relationships are defined by how much money we make, and even most of the important dates on our calendar are all about materialism. Just think about it. We throw outrageous birthday parties for our kids and we shower them with gifts. Most of our "holidays" have become highly materialistic, and the biggest holiday of all in our society, Christmas, is an absolute orgy of materialism. We make lists of the "wealthiest Americans" and we glorify their achievements. We spend most of our time either making money or spending it. Even the phrase "the American Dream" reveals how materialistic we are. When most people are asked what "the American Dream" is, they start talking about a house, a car, vacations, retirement, sending your kids to college, etc. The American Dream has become all about money and stuff. Sadly, no matter how big our homes are and no matter how many shiny new toys we accumulate, we never seem to be happy. We always want more, and we always seem to be willing to go into more debt to get it. We are the most materialistic society in the history of the world, and our endless greed is going to end up swallowing us alive.

When it comes to materialism in America, there are outrageous examples all around us, but one of my favorite examples is the "Rich Kids of Instagram". It is a Tumblr blog of photos from Instagram of young Americans showing off how they are enjoying the vast wealth of their parents. The following is how the Washington Post describes the blog....
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Ambulance

Best of the Web: Americans Are Literally Being Worked To Death


The Economic Collapse
Sun, 23 Sep 2012 21:27 UTC
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Are you constantly tired and do you feel incredibly stressed almost all the time? Well, that means that there is a really good chance that you are a typical American worker. Even though our incomes are going down, Americans are spending more time at work than ever before. In fact, U.S. workers spend more time at work than anyone else in the world. But it was not always this way. Back in 1970, the average work week for an American worker was about 35 hours. Today, it is up to 46 hours. But there are other major economies around the globe that are doing just fine without burning their workers out. For example, the average American worker spends 378 more hours working per year than the average German worker does. Sadly, for many Americans work is not even finished once they leave the office. According to one recent survey, the average American worker spends an extra seven hours per week on work tasks such as checking emails and answering phone calls after normal work hours have finished. Other Americans are juggling two or three jobs in a desperate attempt to make ends meet. Americans are busier than ever and work is often pushing the other areas of our lives on to the back burner. What this also means is that "family vacations" are becoming increasingly rare in the United States. In fact, Americans spend less days on vacation than anyone else in the industrialized world. While some would applaud our "work ethic", the truth is that the fact that we are being overworked is having some very serious consequences. In fact, as you will see below, Americans are literally being worked to death.

The following is an excerpt from a comment that one reader posted on one of my recent articles. Can you identify with what this family is going through?....

Comment: Having problems with stress? Check out the Éiriú Eolas amazing stress control, healing & rejuvenation program here.

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Info

Best of the Web: Conspiracy Theorists Are Popular Because People are Fed-Up with Government and Media Lies

Saman Mohammadi
The Excavator
Tue, 18 Sep 2012 02:30 UTC
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1. Public opinion polls show that the majority of Americans and Westerners agree with the views of "conspiracy theorists" more than those of government officials and media personalities.

Public opinion polls show that public trust in government and the media is at an all time low. Their record of lying to the Western public is difficult to conceal, even with the biggest propaganda machine in history at their disposal. The growth and influence of the global alternative media has broken the magic spell over the public. The "mainstream media" is no longer mainstream. The old fringe is the new mainstream.

Conspiracy theorists have been proven right about so many issues and historical events, with 9/11 being the most important among them. The views of conspiracy theorists are more popular than ever because they are telling the truth.

Comment: While we applaud the hard work done by the alternative media in trying to sift through the lies of the government and main stream press, some people are more likely disinfo agents. They may by unwitting puppets of the PTB, discrediting the work of the real alternative press, and very often it is difficult work determining who is trustworthy.
The Royal Family are bloodsucking alien lizards
Alex Jones: The Pied Piper of Extremism Who Brands "Truth-Seeking" as Mental Illness
How to Spot COINTELPRO Agents
Case Study on COINTELPRO and Ponerization: Report from an 'Alternative Convention'

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Arrow Up

Best of the Web: Secret Nazi Tapes Shocking Germany


The Mirror, UK
Fri, 21 Sep 2012 18:13 UTC
Nazi's_1
© GettyGame: A Luftwaffe boss reveals shooting children was a sport.
It wasn't their fault, has been the lame excuse. Ordinary German soldiers had nothing to do with the atrocities committed by Hitler and his hardcore Nazi henchmen.

But now a disturbing - and at times ­horrifyingly graphic - new book has laid to rest the myth that only the likes of the SS and Gestapo were responsible for war crimes and acts of rape, murder and genocide.

And the German people have been forced into ­reassessing their past.

Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing and Dying: The Secret Second World War Tapes of German POWs, which is published in English for the first time next week, contains shocking transcripts of ordinary soldiers, sailors and airmen condemning themselves from their own mouths.

We are printing some of them here to highlight how widespread the bloodlust was among German troops.

British intelligence hid microphones among POWs at Trent Park detention centre in North London, captured every boast, offhand remark and sick joke about the killing of children and new mothers, women being raped and the mass extermination of Jews.

The transcripts from tape recordings of 13,000 inmates over four years, form the most unique and bleak look inside the mind of war-time German forces ever published. Before the book by historians Soenke Neitzel and Harald Welzer came out in Germany, people there assumed that their fathers and grandfathers did not have blood on their hands.
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Blackbox

Best of the Web: Is the food shortage before us? Will we be buying bacon and pork sausages next year?

Michelle Warwicker
BBC News
Fri, 21 Sep 2012 17:18 UTC
There could soon be a global pork shortage, and a sharp rise in prices, the National Pig Association warns. But will British consumers be willing to pay more to save their bacon and sausages? Served as bacon rashers in an English breakfast, roasted with crackling, stir-fried in a noodle dish or used as the key meat in a regional sausage recipe, pork is the most eaten meat in the world.

"Pork has always played an important part in British cuisine," says Phil Brady, spokesperson for the British Sausage Appreciation Society. So much so, there are more than 470 recipes and flavours of British sausages in use today. "We are a nation of pork producers and eaters," says food writer Karen Burns-Booth. "And the low cost makes it accessible for families for good meals."

But the cheapest of red meats that provides the flavour base for the nation's beloved bangers is under threat. An escalating crisis in the global pork industry could put an end to "cheap" cuts and bargain pork prices.

Comment: Sounds like now is a good time to be buying up pork, salting and smoking it. And canning it.

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Light Saber

Best of the Web: Manufacturing Dissent: The truth about Syria

Lizzie Phelan and Mostafa Afzalzadeh
The Liberated Zone
Fri, 31 Aug 2012 17:03 UTC

Manufacturing Dissent is a documentary about the psychological-warfare by the media and political establishment of the west and their allies aimed at facilitating the US, European and Israeli agenda of getting rid of the current Syrian government. It demonstrates how the media has directly contributed to the bloodshed in Syria.

The documentary de-constructs the main allegations those actors have presented, namely that the Syrian government was systematically repressing peaceful protests and that it has lost legitimacy. It shows how such claims are supported by scant evidence and are therefore little more than propaganda to serve the foreign policy interests of their countries.

Manufacturing Dissent includes evidence of fake reports broadcasted/published by the likes of CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera and others and interviews with a cross section of the Syrian population including an actor, a craftsman, a journalist, a resident from Homs and an activist who have all been affected by the crisis.
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