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Semantic Propaganda Feeds Stupidity: Lies are being fed to the Public by America's Two-party Plutocracy

Joel S. Hirschhorn
Global Research
Sat, 23 Jul 2011 14:16 UTC
dollar
© Unknown
We would already have had a much needed American revolution in response to the tyranny of the money-fed two-party plutocracy that is destroying the middle class except for one big problem: so much of the American population is just plain stupid. Too stupid to behave like angry Greeks and rise up in the streets to rebel against the dysfunctional government.

In the never ending fight of Republicans and their cancerous (make that stupid) Tea Party members to gain even more control of the US political system, economy and culture they have fixed on another semantic weapon. The latest attack on intelligence is the constant use of the term job creators in place of words like the rich or wealthy. Not just plain Republicans in Congress are doing this, but especially the large crop of Republican presidential candidates.

This bit of cleverness surely was deemed necessary because much of the nation was beginning to appreciate the class warfare going on. Rising economic inequality, unemployment set in concrete, and merging of the middle class into the poverty stricken lower class were all becoming clearer.
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Briefcase

US: Feds' oil spill probe delayed - again


chron.com
Sun, 24 Jul 2011 08:56 UTC
doc hastings
© AP photo
Rep. Doc Hastings (AP photo)

The government's chief investigation into last year's Deepwater Horizon disaster will not be complete by a July 27 deadline, officials confirmed Friday.

The probe by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement has already received two extensions, partly because of delays in testing emergency equipment that failed to stop the Gulf oil spill. In February, the government said it was aiming to issue the report by July 27.

Joint investigation team members now are putting the final touches on a report summarizing their conclusions about what led to the lethal explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig in April 2010.
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Pistol

Iranian professor assassinated in Tehran


Press TV
Sun, 24 Jul 2011 03:16 UTC
A prominent Iranian University professor has been assassinated by unknown terrorists, informed sources with the Iranian police say.

Daryoush Rezaienejad and his wife were on their way to their child's kindergarten when they were approached by two men on motorbikes. The gunmen called him by name and shot Rezaeinejad, 35, in the neck when he turned around.

The gunmen chased Rezaeinejad's wife who attempted to find help for her husband. She is currently in hospital, a Press TV correspondent reported.

No group or individual has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Initially, local Iranian media had reported that Daryoush Rezaienejad was a nuclear physicist..
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Arrow Down

Barack Obama accuses the US Congress of risking a global banking catastrophe as debt talks collapse

Paul Harris
The Observer
Sun, 24 Jul 2011 02:55 UTC
Image
© YURI GRIPAS / POOL/EPA
Obama said he had been 'left at the altar' by the Republican party after debt ceiling talks broke down again at the weekend.
Angry president lashes out after Republicans walk away from talks on borrowing limit, raising the spectre of US default

Talks to stave off a potentially catastrophic US default on debt payments were in crisis as Republicans and Democrats struggled to avert a disaster that could trigger a global economic crisis.

Both sides agree that the US needs to pass legislation to raise its debt limit above its current level of $14.3 trillion (£8.7tn). But negotiations collapsed in acrimony late on Friday over details of a package of spending cuts and tax rises that would help to pay for such a move.

A visibly angry President Barack Obama attacked the Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, for refusing to return his phone calls and then abandoning the negotiations. "I've been left at the altar now a couple of times and I think that one of the questions that the Republican party is going to have to ask itself is: can they say yes to anything?"

If agreement is not reached, it could trigger what had once been unthinkable: a US default on its debt payments. If that happened, most experts predict, it would see a plunge in stock and bond markets worldwide that would threaten a new great recession. The deadline for agreement is just over a week away, on 2 August.
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Crusader

Norway attacks: Utøya gunman boasted of links to UK far right

Mark Townsend, Peter Beaumont & Tracy McVeigh
The Guardian
Sat, 23 Jul 2011 02:46 UTC
Image
© Getty
Anders Brehing Breivik, the man accused of the murders on Utøya and the bomb in Oslo, claimed to have links to far right groups across Europe.
Anders Brehing Breivik took part in online discussions with members of the EDL and other anti-Islamic groups

Anders Behring Breivik, the man accused of the murder of at least 92 Norwegians in a bomb and gun massacre, boasted online about his discussions with the far-right English Defence League and other anti-Islamic European organisations.

The Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, said Norwegian officials were working with foreign intelligence agencies to see if there was any international involvement in the slaughter. "We have running contact with other countries' intelligence services," he said.

Breivik was arrested on Utøya island where he shot and killed at least 85 people, mostly teenagers, at a youth summer camp for supporters of Norway's Labour party after bombing Oslo's government district just hours before. Dressed as a police officer, he ordered the teenagers to gather round him before opening fire. Survivors described how dozens of people were mown down. The massacre led to the largest death toll ever recorded by a single gunman on the rampage.

Ida Knudsen, 16, said she had been in a group of 100 who had initially run from the killer, but that was reduced to about 60 as the gunman pursued them. Eventually she was one of 12 who climbed into a boat and escaped.
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Bomb

Oslo Police Conducted Bombing Exercise Days Before Terrorist Blast


BlackListedNews.com
Sun, 24 Jul 2011 02:34 UTC
In yet another example of how almost every major terror event is accompanied by a security drill focused around the same scenario, Oslo police were conducting a bombing exercise at a location near the Oslo Opera House just 48 hours before a terrorist blast hit a government building in the Norwegian capital.

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Briefcase

US: A Boom in Corporate Profits, a Bust in Jobs, Wages

Paul Wiseman
Associated Press
Sat, 23 Jul 2011 18:19 UTC
Image
© Agence France-Presse
Washington - Strong second-quarter earnings from McDonald's, General Electric and Caterpillar on Friday are just the latest proof that booming profits have allowed Corporate America to leave the Great Recession far behind.

But millions of ordinary Americans are stranded in a labor market that looks like it's still in recession. Unemployment is stuck at 9.2 percent, two years into what economists call a recovery. Job growth has been slow and wages stagnant.

"I've never seen labor markets this weak in 35 years of research," says Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.

Wages and salaries accounted for just 1 percent of economic growth in the first 18 months after economists declared that the recession had ended in June 2009, according to Sum and other Northeastern researchers.
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Magnify

Norway: Gunman's Background Puzzles Police

Karl Ritter
The Associated Press
Sat, 23 Jul 2011 06:13 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Jon Bredo Overaas
Smoke rises from the central area of Oslo Friday, July 22, 2011 after an explosion.
The 32-year-old suspected of massacring at least 80 young people at a summer camp and setting off a bomb in downtown Oslo that killed at least seven is a mystery to investigators: a right-winger with anti-Muslim views but no known links to hardcore extremists.

"He just came out of nowhere," a police official told The Associated Press.

Public broadcaster NRK and several other Norwegian media identified the suspected attacker as Anders Behring Breivik, a blond and blue-eyed Norwegian who expressed right-wing and anti-Muslim views on the Internet. Police have the suspect in custody.

Norwegian news agency NTB said Breivik legally owned several firearms and belonged to a gun club. He ran an agricultural firm growing vegetables, an enterprise that could have helped him secure large amounts of fertilizer, a potential ingredient in bombs.

But he didn't belong to any known factions in Norway's small and splintered extreme right movement, and had no criminal record except for some minor offenses, the police official told AP.

"He hasn't been on our radar, which he would have been if was active in the neo-Nazi groups in Norway," he said. "But he still could be inspired by their ideology."
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Bizarro Earth

Norway Attacks Leave More than 80 Dead, Dozens of Casualties, Mystery in Wake

Olivia Ward
The Star
Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© unknown
If there were a peace capital of the world, it would be Norway.

But the tranquil homeland of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Oslo accords and numerous peacekeeping missions was shattered Friday by two deadly daylight attacks aimed at its political heart.

They left behind more than 80 dead, dozens wounded - and a shell shocked public unable to come to grips with what happened in a country more accustomed to dealing with others' conflicts than their own.

Why Norway? And why now?

At the start, the trail seemed to veer in different directions that puzzled both citizens and veteran terrorism experts.

But late Friday, a Norwegian police official told reporters that the Oslo bombing and the shooting spree aimed at the youth camp of the ruling Labour Party were "not linked to any international terrorist organizations" and had more in common with the Oklahoma City bombing in the United States. He said the investigation was ongoing.
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Better Earth

Palestine's Freedom Plea to World


New Zealand Herald
Sat, 23 Jul 2011 04:18 UTC
Palestinian child, buldozer, Israel
© The Associated Press
A Palestinian boy and an Israeli tractor ... contrasting symbols of the bitter divisions over Israel's continued construction of Jewish settlements on land claimed by the Palestinians.
September's United Nations Assembly meeting is crunch time for the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, now embroiled in a diplomatic frenzy to convince the nations of the world to recognise it as an independent state and UN member.

Leading Palestinian politicians, intellectuals and commentators - and many Israeli ones too - predict that if the occupation under which the Palestinians live is not brought to an end, it will result in catastrophe for the region.

The PLO is making intensive diplomatic efforts which Palestine National Council president Saleem Za'noon describes as "knocking on every door in the absence of any peace negotiations because appealing to a sense of duty from the international community is the only option left".

The PLO is asking the world, including Israel, to recognise Palestine's right to exist as an independent sovereign state, albeit consisting of only 22 per cent of the Palestinians' former homeland.

The UN appeal faces a near-certain Security Council veto from the United States, which will deny the PLO the vital recommendation for membership.

If the US - Israel's closest ally - sends the Palestinians packing, they will still have the moral force of support from a majority of Security Council members and more than two- thirds of the General Assembly
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