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Stormtrooper

Best of the Web: It's Happened: Paramilitary Police vs Civilians in Anaheim

First look at the pictures of what look like soldiers patrolling Iraq lined up to stop the small, 300 person march against police violence in Anaheim.

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Attention

Best of the Web: Time is Running Out: World in Serious Trouble on Food Front

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© Jim Lo Scalzo/EPAA corn farmer holds drought-stricken ears of corn plucked from fields outside Eldorado, Illinois.
In the early spring of 2012, U.S. farmers were on their way to planting some 96 million acres in corn, the most in 75 years. A warm early spring got the crop off to a great start. Analysts were predicting the largest corn harvest on record.

The U.S. is the leading producer and exporter of corn, the world's feedgrain. At home, corn accounts for four-fifths of the U.S. grain harvest. Internationally, the U.S. corn crop exceeds China's rice and wheat harvests combined. Among the big three grains - corn, wheat and rice - corn is now the leader, with production well above that of wheat and nearly double that of rice.

The corn plant is as sensitive as it is productive. Thirsty and fast-growing, it is vulnerable to both extreme heat and drought. At elevated temperatures, the corn plant, which is normally so productive, goes into thermal shock.

As spring turned into summer, the thermometer began to rise across the Corn Belt. In St. Louis, Missouri, in the southern Corn Belt, the temperature in late June and early July climbed to 100 degrees Fahrenheit or higher 10 days in a row. For the past several weeks, the Corn Belt has been blanketed with dehydrating heat.

V

Best of the Web: How Will the 99% Deal with the Psychopaths in the 1%?

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Did you know that roughly one person in a hundred is clinically a psychopath? These individuals are either born with an emotional deficiency that keeps them from feeling bad about hurting others, or they are traumatized early in life in a manner that causes them to become this way. With more than 7 billion people on the planet that means there are as many as 70,000,000 psychopaths alive today. These people are more likely to be risk takers, opportunists motivated by self-interest and greed, and inclined to dominate or subjugate those around them through manipulative means.


Comment: Actually, their numbers are probably far higher than that. Furthermore, there are other types of humans whose behaviour indicates they are so damaged as to be practically indistinguishable from psychopaths. Please read Political Ponerology to get an idea of the sheer scale of the problem.


Last year, the Occupy Movement drew a distinction between the top 1% and the remaining 99% - as distinguished by measures of wealth and income. Of course, this breakdown is misleading, since there are many top income earners who sympathize with the plights of others and are not part of the problem. But the real defining metric reveals itself: 1% of the global population is comprised of people who exhibit psychopathic tendencies.

Comment: As Lobaczewski warned in Political Ponerology, Ignota nulla curatio morbid - "Do not attempt to cure that which you do not understand". Before we can get creative about a grand future without psychopaths (or with getting psychopathology under control), we need to realise - en masse - that psychopaths are steering humanity as a whole off a very steep cliff. Indeed, humanity's inability to acknowledge and deal with this problem before it became too late is the reason why the Living System is cleaning house on our planet at this time.

Having said that, it is refreshing to see others thinking and communicating about the root problem of injustice in the world.

psycho 6%
© SOTT.net



Pistol

Best of the Web: Surprise! Gun sales surge in US following Colorado shooting

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© Gilles Mingasson/Getty ImagesGun shop in Texas: sales of firearms have soared across the US following the Colorado massacre.
Firearms sales are surging in the US in the wake of the Colorado massacre as buyers express fears that politicians may use the shootings to seek new restrictions on owning weapons.

In Colorado - the scene of Friday's shooting during the screening of a Batman film that killed 12 and injured dozens of others - gun sales jumped in the three days that followed. The state approved background checks for 2,887 people who wanted to purchase a firearm - 25% more than the average Friday to Sunday period in 2012 and 43% more than the same period the week before.

Dick Rutan, owner of Gunners Den in suburban Arvada, said requests for concealed-weapon training certification were "off the hook". His four-hour course in gun safety, required for certification for a concealed-weapons permit in Colorado, had drawn double the interest since Friday.

Comment: They have been deliberately flooding the US with affordable military-grade firearms for decades. Perhaps the deeper intention of apparently senseless acts like this horrific mass shooting is to rile gun owners into a defensive posture and thereby increase gun sales, not decrease them. As is outlined in The Controversy of Zion, the Powers That Be want global revolution, so that when it's over they can pick up the pieces and start with some new form of control. People don't realise that the 'security forces' are as expendable as civilians to the Powers That Be.

What those who constantly appeal to the US constitution's 2nd amendment don't seem to grasp is that if the government really wanted to "take away your guns" they would have done it long ago. They have deliberately allowed the mass arming of American civilians. Are we to suppose that this state of affairs happened by accident?


Attention

Best of the Web: VIDEO: Extreme Weather Events in July 2012

Note: this video does not imply the world is going to end in 2012... Earth changes are just that: changes.

Extreme storms, flooding, lightning strikes and meteors are coinciding in increasing numbers across the world. What follows is a glimpse at just some signs of Earth Changes that have taken place in the past month...


Comment: Reign of Fire: Meteorites, Wildfires, Planetary Chaos and the Sixth Extinction


Attention

Best of the Web: 2012: Something Is Going On!

The following video is a collection of weird events that have happened on the planet... in just the first three months of 2012.


Comment:

See also: How is the World Going to End in 2012?

Reign of Fire: Meteorites, Wildfires, Planetary Chaos and the Sixth Extinction


Attention

Best of the Web: PTSD Epidemic: One in Eight Soldiers Has Attacked Someone After Returning from War

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One in eight soldiers has attacked someone after coming home, a new study has found
  • Study found direct link between combat and violence at home
  • A third of victims were someone in the family
  • Former soldier Aaron Wilkinson was jailed last month for killing his landlady
  • He was found to have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after returning from active combat in Afghanistan
One in eight soldiers has attacked someone after coming home from fighting.

The Kings Centre for Military Health Research spoke to 13,000 veterans from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and said they discovered a link between combat and trauma, and violence at home, often directed at their partners.

A third of the victims were someone in the family - often a wife or girlfriend, the study found.

Comment: PTSD is a huge epidemic, but far from being committed to helping support returning vets, the governments have been accused of making mental health care virtually unavailable to thousands of discharged soldiers through perfunctory exams, delays in referrals and treatment, and a prolonged and complex system of awarding medical benefits. Because the truth is that the psychopaths in power really don't care what happens to the vets or any of the rest of us:

This is how the U.S. supports its troops: Judge rules court won't step in to aid vets
Underestimation: A Third Of Gulf War Veterans Have Mental Health Difficulties


Coffee

Best of the Web: Induced Mass Hypocrisy: The Nauseating Selective Grief of Diseased America

Civilian Casualities In Afghanistan
Many Americans hurl themselves with fundamentally false, deeply disturbed enthusiasm into public demonstrations of grief over the needless deaths of some human beings -- those human beings they see as being much like themselves, when the deaths happen in what could be their own neighborhood. As for all the murders committed by their government with a systematic dedication as insane as that of any serial killer: silence.

Pirates

Best of the Web: Eurozone danger mounts as Spain spins out of control

Spain is battling to avert a fully-fledged sovereign rescue after borrowing costs spiralled out of control, with dangerous knock-on effects in Italy and Eastern Europe.
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© ReutersA worker sweeps outside Madrid's bourse on Monday.

The yields on closely-watched two-year debt surged by 78 basis points to a modern-era high of 6.42pc, leaving it unclear how long the country can continue funding itself. Italy's two-year yields vaulted to 4.6pc.

"We can't keep going like this for another 15 days," said Prof Miguel Angel Bernal from Madrid's Institute of Market Studies. "The European Central Bank has to bring out its heavy artillery."

Andrew Roberts, credit chief at Royal Bank of Scotland, said the dramatic spike in short-term borrowing costs marked a key inflexion point in the crisis, replicating the pattern seen in Greece, Ireland and Portugal as they lost access to market finance. "We are fast approaching the endgame," he said.

Exchange clearer LCH Clearnet raised margin requirements on both Spanish and Italian bonds, a move that will automatically cause further selling by some funds.

Comment: There's the story of a country who got out from under the IMF, ECB and World Bank Rule:
Iceland forgives mortgage debt of its population
Iceland, who was: "Bullied" Over Bank Debt
Iceland where there was a: Peaceful Revolution Ignored by Mainstream Media


Family

Best of the Web: Police State: Humarock Residents Angry over Excessive Policing During 4th of July Celebrations

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© unknown
Scituate, Massachusetts - The anger hasn't subsided in Humarock after 4th of July celebrations were cut short due to safety concerns.

The neighborhood met Sunday morning to plan their next move in a quarrel with the Town of Scituate.

Nearly 100 people attended a meeting at the South Humarock Civic Association Clubhouse. At the meeting, some residents went so far as to call Scituate town officials "Fascists," and say Humarock needs to break away.

The latest aggravation began earlier this month, when residents claim the town was heavy-handed in enforcing a ban on bonfires.

"That was a full military operation... I mean hummers up and down the beach, state police helicopters, horseback, bomb squad, [and] a command post up the center," said Fred Hayden, who owns a summer home in Humarock.