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Ted Turner apologizes after saying soldier suicides are 'good'


RT
Fri, 26 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC
Ted Turner
© Agence France-Presse/Nicholas Kamm
After saying on national TV that its "good" US troops have been committing suicide in record numbers, media mogul and billionaire Ted Turner has penned an apology to clarify his words.

Speaking to CNN's Piers Morgan this week, Turner said, "I think it's good" that American soldiers are turning their guns on themselves, insisting that it shows humans aren't meant to be put on the battlefield to bring death to others.

"It's so clear that we're programmed and we're born to love and help each other, not to kill each other, to destroy each other.That's an aberration. That's left over from hundreds of years ago. It's time for to us start acting enlightened," Turner told the talk show host after the topic of suicide was brought up during the broadcast.

Earlier in the interview, Turner said, "It's time to put war and conflict behind us and move on, and start acting like civilized, educated human beings." According to Morgan, his guest brought up suicide during a commercial break, prompting the host to ask on camera what he thought about more soldiers dying from suicide than in combat.

"That's shocking, isn't it?" asked Morgan.

"Well, what - no, I think it's - I think it's good," Turner told him before offering his explanation about the human condition.

After a backlash of negative press, Turner issued a statement to say he's sorry for anyone offended by his comment.
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Handcuffs

Suspected Basque terrorist leaders arrested in France

Bill Bond
The Telegraph, UK
Mon, 29 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC
The woman alleged to be the leader of the ETA Basque terrorist movement's killer squads was arrested along with her number two in France yesterday.
Image
© Laurent Cipriani/The Associated Press
Izaskun Lesaka, center, surrounded by French Police officers, screams as she leaves the hotel where she was arrested
The couple were detained at a hotel in Mâcon, north of Lyon, in a joint operation by French counter-terrorist intelligence officers and Spain's paramilitary civil guard. Both Izaskun Lesaka and her boyfriend Joseba Iturbe were armed but put up no resistance when a police swat squad burst into their room.

The pair are considered to be at the top of the hierarchy of ETA, which has killed more than 800 people over the past four decades in its fight for independence for the northern Spanish region.

Five years ago, Lesaka escaped before a house in the Loire valley was raided. The premises were described by police as being "a chemical experimental laboratory for the intensive production of pentrita", the principle ingredient of explosives used in 11 bombings by ETA in 2007 and 2008.

Last January a Paris court sentenced her in her absence to seven years in prison for her part in the bomb factory. She was named as the head of ETA's "military" section by Spanish intelligence in 2010.
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Windsock

Hurricane Sandy blows U.S. election off course

Andy Sullivan
Yahoo! News
Sun, 28 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC
Romney, Obama
© OC Family
Washington - Hurricane Sandy blew the U.S. presidential race off course on Sunday even before it came ashore, forcing Republican Mitt Romney to shift his campaign inland and fueling fears that the massive storm bearing down on the East Coast could disrupt an election that is already under way.

As he juggled his governing duties with his re-election effort, President Barack Obama said the heavily populated East Coast could face power failures and other disruptions for several days.

"Don't anticipate that just because the immediate storm has passed that we're not going to have some potential problems in a lot of these communities going forward through the week," Obama said after a visit to the federal government's storm-response center.

Romney rerouted his campaign from Virginia to join his vice presidential running mate Paul Ryan in Ohio, one of the handful of battleground states that will decide the outcome of the November 6 election.

"You are the battleground of battlegrounds. You get to decide," Ryan told a crowd of 1,000 people who were not able to join 2,000 others in a high school gymnasium in Celina, Ohio.

Obama later flew to Florida for a campaign stop. Like Romney, he canceled events in Virginia, a battleground state that could bear the brunt of the storm's impact. Obama canceled plans to campaign in Ohio after Monday's event in Florida, opting to return to the White House instead.

Comment: 11th Hour Reprieve: Hurricane Sandy, Obama's October Surprise and Political Deja-vu

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Heart - Black

Cruelty, contempt and mockery: The new standard of global repression

Andrés Perezalonso
Sott.net
Sun, 28 Oct 2012 07:08 UTC
Image
A couple of days ago I learned that Andrea Fornella Abbott, 41, was found guilty on Tuesday of disorderly conduct after being arrested in July 2011 at Nashville International Airport. She had faced up to 30 days in jail and a $50 fine, but the judge placed her on probation for a year because she has no criminal record. 'So what?', you may ask. The thing that bothered me was her alleged 'disorderly conduct'. Her 'crime' was to argue with TSA agents, insisting they don't touch her 14 year-old daughter's private parts during a 'routine pat-down', before refusing to go through with the invasive procedure herself. You see, the disorderly conduct did not come from a mother justifiably concerned about the privacy and intimacy of her daughter and herself, but from the agents and the TSA who have institutionalized 'disorderly' - let's be frank here - pathological conduct, all based on the Big Lie of the War on Terror.

Here is footage of the event. Although it has no audio, it is clear that Andrea Fornella was only arguing her point. So much for the illusion of free speech.


This case illustrates in micro-cosmos the situation in which we the people find ourselves at this point in time in relation to the holders of power and their agents. Things have gone far beyond basic management of the population you would expect from government. Similar to some of the darker moments in history, we are facing pathological extremes. Think of the systematic imprisonment and extermination of entire groups of people as "lice", to use Hitler's expression for Jews. Or the excesses of Roman Emperors. Or the Stazi in East Berlin suspicious of households which had their TV antennas facing west. Although the manifestations are not always the same, the nature and essence of the pathological conduct are. It is about treating people as objects. Nowadays, however, I think we are going through a particularly bad phase of the historical cycle of abuse. Some of the things being done to innocent people you would not even do to objects you value.
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Stock Down

Spain's unemployed rate above 25% for the first time - and more than half of young people are out of work

Anthony Bond
This is Money
Fri, 26 Oct 2012 16:27 UTC
  • 85,000 more people joined the ranks of the unemployed between July and September raising the total to 5.78 million
  • The figures brought the country's unemployment rate up by around 0.4 per cent to 25.02 per cent
The unemployment rate in Spain is above 25 per cent for the first time - with more than half of young people out of work, new figures have revealed.

Between July and September, 85,000 more people joined the ranks of the unemployed raising the total to 5.78 million, the National Statistics Institute said today.

The figures brought the country's unemployment rate up by around 0.4 per cent to 25.02 per cent.

jobseekers Spain
© Alamy
Tough times: The unemployment rate in Spain is above 25 per cent for the first time - with more than half of young people out of work. People are pictured queuing at a job centre in Madrid.

Comment: "Important progress"?? Is the IMF having a laugh?

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USA

Secret presidential kill-list "totally right, totally constitutional", says Homeland Security chairman


Global Research / We are Change
Sat, 27 Oct 2012 16:11 UTC
... and if you question it, you are "a horrible moron," concludes Peter T. King, Chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security.

This 2-minute video from We Are Change Luke Rudkowski powerfully captures what US "leadership" has become. The good news is their arrogance and evasion is only tragic-comic sideshows to the "emperor has no clothes" obvious facts of their massive crimes centering in war and money.

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Top Secret

Inside the Monsanto information war

Mike Ludwig
truthout.org
Wed, 24 Oct 2012 15:30 UTC
Image
© JR / TO; Adapted: SMercury98, NedraI
In the United States and abroad, independent and industry science battle it out on a playing field where testing protocols are still in flux despite a history of efforts to push for standardization.

French food safety officials have decided not to ban a Monsanto variety of genetically engineered corn after dismissing the findings of a recent study that linked the corn to massive tumors in lab rats and set off a firestorm of global controversy, but the announcement was not a straight victory for Monsanto and the biotech industry. The French authorities agreed with one of the study's conclusions - and Monsanto's deepest critics - that more long-term testing of genetically engineered food must be done (Genetically engineered products are also known as genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.)
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Handcuffs

You're either with us, or with the 'terrorists': U.S. detention of Imran Khan part of trend to harass anti-drone advocates

Glenn Greenwald
The Guardian
Sun, 28 Oct 2012 12:15 UTC
Imran Khan
© A Majeed/AFP/Getty Images
Imran Khan, centre, chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, with party's supporters. He has led a high-profile campaign against US drone strikes.
The vindictive humiliation of Pakistan's most popular politician shows the US government's intolerance for dissent

Imran Khan is, according to numerous polls, the most popular politician in Pakistan and may very well be that country's next Prime Minister. He is also a vehement critic of US drone attacks on his country, vowing to order them shot down if he is Prime Minister and leading an anti-drone protest march last month.

On Saturday, Khan boarded a flight from Canada to New York in order to appear at a fundraising lunch and other events. But before the flight could take off, US immigration officials removed him from the plane and detained him for two hours, causing him to miss the flight. On Twitter, Khan reported that he was "interrogated on [his] views on drones" and then added: "My stance is known. Drone attacks must stop." He then defiantly noted: "Missed flight and sad to miss the Fundraising lunch in NY but nothing will change my stance."
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Propaganda

Arresting Truth: Warrant out for Greek journalist over leak of politicians' alleged tax evasion


RT
Sun, 28 Oct 2012 12:08 UTC
Vassiliki Thanou-Christophilou
© AFP Photo / Aris Messinis

The president of Greece's Association of Judges and Public Prosecutors Vassiliki Thanou-Christophilou (R) attends a meeting of Greek judges at the supreme courthouse in Athens
Greek prosecutors have issued a warrant for the arrest of one of the country's top journalists, after his publication Hot Doc released the so-called 'Lagarde list' containing the names of some 2,000 Greeks with funds hidden in Swiss bank accounts.

­Greek police aim to detain Kostas Vaxevanis, the owner and editor of Hot Doc, for alleged privacy violations from publishing the list of names dated to 2007. "Instead of arresting the tax evaders and the ministers who had the list in their hands, they are trying to arrest the truth and free journalism," Vaxevanis said in an interview published online.

The speaker of the Greek Parliament, several Finance Ministry employees and a number of business leaders all reportedly had Swiss HSBC bank accounts.
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People

UN: 67 Dead and more than 20,000 displaced in Myanmar sectarian violence


RT News
Sun, 28 Oct 2012 11:55 UTC
Thaechaung refugee camp
© Reuters / Soe Zeya Tun
People displaced by the recent violence in the Kyukphyu township sit together after arriving to Thaechaung refugee camp, outside of Sittwe October 28, 2012
The UN has reported that over 22,000 people were displaced in a week of renewed sectarian fighting between Buddhists and Muslims living on Myanmar's west coast. The total number of displaced since violence erupted in June is now around 100,000.

­Around 22,500 people, most of them Muslims, were forced to flee the recent outbreak of ethnic violence in western Myanmar's Rakhine state. Satellite images from Human Rights Watch showed the coastal town of Kyaukpyu razed to the ground. Over 800 building were destroyed, adding to the roughly 4,500 houses demolished throughout this period of internal violence.
      Read More...
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