Best of the Web:


Crusader

Best of the Web: How Are US Religious Fundamentalists Any Different Than Middle Eastern Ones?

Shirin Sadeghi
Truthout
Sat, 25 Aug 2012 20:57 UTC
Congressman Todd Akin
© Dan Gill / The New York TimesCongressman Todd Akin.

In the American media, the news from Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Afghanistan and elsewhere generally runs along the same themes: scary, violent and religious nutsos. But isn't it time the US media and the American public agreed that America isn't much different? America has just as many religious fundamentalists and nut jobs, and they are making public statements just as often - if not more often - than the religious fundies elsewhere.

Are we to believe that a fundamentalist in a suit is less scary than a fundamentalist in a beard, even if both are spouting hatred against women?

Missouri Republican Congressman Todd Akin's recent comments about how women can't become pregnant from what he called "legitimate rape" was just the latest in a long line of pronouncements from American leaders with strong religious backgrounds who believe they are an authority on women's needs and health. Akin is no different than the numerous Iranian clerics who've said such ridiculous things as women who have extramarital sex "cause earthquakes," or the Egyptian cleric who first said that a husband and wife cannot be completely naked while having sex. (This was then modified by scholars, and it was agreed that the most important thing is that no one look at the vagina at the scene of the sex act.) Or the fatwa after fatwa about men and women working together, schooling together and all the rest (sounds a lot like segregation, doesn't it America?).
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Stormtrooper

Best of the Web: Hysterical Police Wounded New York Shooting Victims

David Ariosto
koat.com
Sat, 25 Aug 2012 11:56 UTC
CNN Shooting
© RobFrehse /CNN
Gunman who fatally shot former co-worker killed in gun battle with police

All nine people injured in Friday's shooting in front of the Empire State Building were wounded by police gunfire, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters Saturday.

The officers unloaded a total of 16 rounds at a disgruntled former apparel designer, killing him after he shot and killed a co-worker and engaged in a gunbattle with police, authorities have said.

Authorities said an investigation is under way after one officer shot nine rounds and another shot seven. Three victims suffered gunshot wounds, while the remaining six were hit by fragments.

Police identified the gunman as Jeffrey Johnson, 58, who was apparently laid off from his job as a designer of women's accessories at Hazan Import Co. last year.
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Alarm Clock

Best of the Web: Signs of impending global cataclysm in August 2012

fidockave213
YouTube
Thu, 16 Aug 2012 16:11 UTC
Note: this video does not imply the world is going to end in 2012... but it sure is a striking collection of signs of the times.

Extreme weather, Earth Changes, earthquakes, sinkholes, floods, drought, snow, mass animal deaths... and perhaps most symbolically of all, the US flag falling at an Olympics medal ceremony.

This is just a snapshot of events from around the world during the first two weeks of August. Has the Universe got your attention yet?


Comment: The latter half of August is proving no less portentous:

Fireballs impacting the ground

Honduras Investigates Alleged Meteorite Crash

Large meteorites found after fireball lands in Manitoba, Canada

Meteorite starts fire in Itatiba, Brazil following separate Fireball incident in neighbouring Campinas days earlier

Meteorite hits moving car in Sioux City

More strange sky sounds

More strange sky sounds, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Strange Sounds Over Suffern, New York

Strange Sounds in Germany

Multiple tornadoes/waterspouts

Nine waterspouts spotted on Lake Michigan

Multiple waterspouts touch down in Black Sea, near Foros, Ukraine

Multiple waterspouts touch down off Polish coast

Unusual lightning strikes

Lightning kills two brothers in Russia's Kursk region

3 Lightning strike survivors on Mt Whitney, CA: 'We thought we were on fire'

Lightning injures 10 New Jersey soldiers at New York's Ft. Drum

Lightning-sparked huge fire burns to edge of 3 small California towns

Authorities ID Wisconsin boy killed in lightning strike

Increase in Lightning Observed Across Japan... What the Hell Is That?!

Five seriously injured in French lightning strike

Lightning Strike Kills Wisconsin Boy, 9, and Injures Seven Others on Sailboat

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Red Flag

Best of the Web: Intelligence bulletin prepared by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warn of possible anarchist activity at conventions?


CNN
Wed, 22 Aug 2012 21:59 UTC
Image
Law enforcement is concerned about potential violence by anarchists at upcoming political conventions

Law enforcement officials are concerned about possible violence by anarchist extremists at the upcoming Republican and Democratic national conventions, according to an intelligence bulletin prepared by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. The bulletin, which was obtained by CNN, says that anarchists could try to use improvised explosive devices.

It also says that, as of March, the FBI had intelligence indicating individuals from New York "planned to travel to Tampa and attempt to close" all of the Tampa Bay-area bridges during the Republican National Convention next week.

According to the document, the FBI's information as of March showed that anarchist extremists proposed "engaging in potentially destructive criminal activities against critical infrastructure outside the security perimeter throughout the Tampa Bay region because they expected access to the main RNC venue to be tightly controlled."
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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: Are People Being Thrown Into Psychiatric Wards For Their Political Views?


Washington's Blog
Tue, 21 Aug 2012 19:55 UTC
padded cell
Mental Health Diagnoses Are Sometimes Politically-Motivated

Many psychologists and psychiatrists are good people, who are only trying to help their patients.

But the Nazi government substantially supported psychologists ... many of whom, in turn, espoused extermination of the people they considered to be "racially and cognitively compromised".

Soviet psychiatrists famously aided Stalin in applying fake insanity diagnoses to political dissenters. The official explanation was that no sane person would declaim the Soviet government and Communism.

American psychologists created the American program of torture which was specially-crafted to produce false confessions to justify U.S. military policy. And see this.

And authoritarian American psychologists are eager to label anyone "taking a cynical stance toward politics, mistrusting authority, endorsing democratic practices, ... and displaying an inquisitive, imaginative outlook" as worthy of a trip to the insane asylum. (Those traits may also get one labeled as a potential terrorist.)
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USA

Best of the Web: Why the US is Out to Get Julian Assange

Seumas Milne
The Guardian
Tue, 21 Aug 2012 16:56 UTC
flag gag
© Oli Scarff/Getty

Considering he made his name with the biggest leak of secret government documents in history, you might imagine there would be at least some residual concern for Julian Assange among those trading in the freedom of information business. But the virulence of British media hostility towards the WikiLeaks founder is now unrelenting.

This is a man, after all, who has yet to be charged, let alone convicted, of anything. But as far as the bulk of the press is concerned, Assange is nothing but a "monstrous narcissist", a bail-jumping "sex pest" and an exhibitionist maniac. After Ecuador granted him political asylum and Assange delivered a "tirade" from its London embassy's balcony, fire was turned on the country's progressive president, Rafael Correa, ludicrously branded a corrupt "dictator" with an "iron grip" on a benighted land.

The ostensible reason for this venom is of course Assange's attempt to resist extradition to Sweden (and onward extradition to the US) over sexual assault allegations - including from newspapers whose record on covering rape and violence against women is shaky, to put it politely. But as the row over his embassy refuge has escalated into a major diplomatic stand-off, with the whole of South America piling in behind Ecuador, such posturing looks increasingly specious.

Can anyone seriously believe the dispute would have gone global, or that the British government would have made its asinine threat to suspend the Ecuadorean embassy's diplomatic status and enter it by force, or that scores of police would have surrounded the building, swarming up and down the fire escape and guarding every window, if it was all about one man wanted for questioning over sex crime allegations in Stockholm?
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Eye 1

Best of the Web: War in the Shadows: The Psychopath's Dream

Chris Hedges
Truth Dig
Mon, 20 Aug 2012 17:31 UTC
Skull and Bones
© Mr Fish
A Swedish documentary filmmaker released a film last year called Last Chapter - Goodbye Nicaragua. In it he admitted that he unknowingly facilitated a bombing, almost certainly orchestrated by the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, which took the lives of three reporters I worked with in Central America. One of them, Linda Frazier, was the mother of a 10-year-old son. Her legs were torn apart by the blast, at La Penca, Nicaragua, along the border with Costa Rica, in May of 1984. She bled to death as she was being taken to the nearest hospital, in Ciudad Quesada, Costa Rica.

The admission by Peter Torbiornsson that he unwittingly took the bomber with him to the press conference was a window into the sordid world of espionage, terrorism and assassination that was an intimate part of every conflict I covered. It exposed the cynicism of undercover operatives on all sides, men and women who lie and deceive for a living, who betray relationships, including between each other, who steal and who carry out murder. One knows them immediately. Their ideological allegiances do not matter. They have the faraway eyes of the disconnected, along with nebulous histories and suspicious and vague associations. They tell incongruous personal stories and practice small deceits that are part of a pathological inability to tell the truth. They can be personable, even charming, but they are also invariably vain, dishonest and sinister. They cannot be trusted. It does not matter what side they are on. They were all the same. Gangsters.


Comment: Such individuals could more accurately be described as Psychopaths, a pathology far deeper than an inability to tell the truth. The picture should also to be expanded beyond the low level thugs on the ground to include the equally pathological individuals that are pulling the strings. For a better understanding of the scale and depth of the problem read Political Ponerology.

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MIB

Best of the Web: It's official: British and US intelligence is directing al-Qaeda operations in Syria

Leon Watson
Daily Mail, UK
Sun, 19 Aug 2012 06:42 UTC
Image
MI6 and CIA al Qaeda operatives in Syria proudly display the weapons supplied to them by their paymasters.
British intelligence on Syrian troop movements is helping rebels in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad's regime, it was revealed today.

The disclosure by a Syrian opposition official is the first indication of British intelligence playing a covert role in the civil war.

The official told The Sunday Times the British authorities 'know about and approve 100 per cent' signals intelligence from their Cyprus bases being passed through Turkey to the rebel troops of the Free Syrian Army.

'British intelligence is observing things closely from Cyprus. It's very useful because they find out a great deal,' the official said.

'The British are giving the information to the Turks and the Americans and we are getting it from the Turks.'

According to the official, the most valuable intelligence so far has been about the movements of troops loyal to President Assad towards the stricken second city of Aleppo, which is partly controlled by rebels.

Comment: Notice the lip-service to international law at the end of this article, despite having already made it clear that this is exactly what they are doing.

State-Sponsored Terrorism - Western Journalists Embedded With 'al-Qaeda' in Syria

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Heart - Black

Best of the Web: 'Legitimate Rape' Rarely Leads to Pregnancy, Claims US Senate Candidate

Matt Williams
The Guardian
Sun, 19 Aug 2012 17:29 UTC
Todd Akin
© The Associated Press/Jeff RobersonTodd Akin
Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Missouri, causes furore with explanation of his no-exceptions policy on abortion

A Republican Senate hopeful sparked outrage on Sunday by suggesting that "legitimate rape" rarely results in pregnancy due to a woman's biological defences.

Todd Akin, a member of the House of Representatives and recently appointed Senate nominee for Missouri, made the claim during an interview in which he attempted to explain his no-exceptions policy in regards to abortion.

In reference to pregnancy resulting from rape, Akin told KTVI-TV: "First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that is really rare."


He continued: "If it is a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down."

But if that "didn't work", then the punishment should be "on the rapist and not attacking the child", Akin added.
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Heart - Black

Best of the Web: Nurse Who "Saw Everything" At Hospital After Suspicious Batman Shooting Found Dead at 46


The End Run
Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:00 UTC
Jenny-Gallagher
Jenny Gallagher, a nurse who treated victims of the highly suspicious "Batman" shooting in Aurora, Colorado last month, is dead at age 46. The reported cause of death: drowning.

"She worked the morning after the Batman massacre in a very busy unit of the hospital - so she saw everything really, some really bad injuries," her husband Greg reportedly told Ireland's Herald earlier today.

The mass-shooting, which left 12 dead and 58 more injured at a midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises at Century theater, is widely suspected to have been a black operation (akin to Columbine or the Sikh Temple shooting) based on the available evidence, numerous inconsistencies and implausibilities in the "official story", the timing, and the way the event has been framed (some would say exploited) by certain powerful interests in the media and political arena. See for example...

Obama Seeks US Congressional Ratification of UN Global Gun Control Treaty, Susanne Posel (July 16)
Colorado Batman shooting shows obvious signs of being staged, Natural News (July 20)
James Holmes Batman shooting to justify UN small arms treaty gun grab?, Mike Adams (July 21)
Eyewitness: Second Shooter in Batman Massacre, YouTube, (July 21)
Witness: Someone let gunman inside Colorado movie theater, CNN/PrisonPlanet.com (July 22)
Colorado University Had Identical Drill On Same Day As 'Batman' Massacre, Paul Joseph Watson (July 23)
Shooter James Holmes and DARPA Weird Science, Kurt Nimmo/Wayne Madsen (July 24)
Fox News Channel Questions Narrative Of 'Batman' Massacre, Infowars/WXIX-Fox19 (July 25)
Gun Owners of America President Larry Pratt: Batman Shooting Could be Staged (July 27)
James Holmes Is Behaving Like Sirhan Sirhan, Paul Joseph Watson, (July 27)
Why Are Republicans Calling To Disarm The American People?, Paul Joseph Watson, (July 30)
The Batman op expands: you shot those people, Jon Rappoport (Aug 3)
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