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Russia threatens to quit nuclear treaty with US


Press TV
Mon, 03 Feb 2014 02:37 UTC
Missile destroyer
© ru.wikipedia.org

Russia has warned that Moscow may consider quitting the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) as the United States has deployed a ballistic missile destroyer to Spain.

Mikhail Ulyanov, the Russian Foreign Ministry's top disarmament official, said Sunday that if the US continues to enhance its anti-missile capabilities through NATO's missile defense shield in Europe, then Moscow may be forced to quit the START nuclear treaty.

"We are concerned that the US is continuing to build up missile defense capability without considering the interests and concerns of Russia," said Ulyanov.

"Such a policy can undermine strategic stability and lead to a situation where Russia will be forced to exercise [its] right of withdrawal from the [START] treaty," he added.

The warning came after US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced on February 1 the deployment of Navy destroyer USS Donald Cook, equipped with the Aegis shipboard integrated combat weapons system, to Spain.
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Hearts

911 Truther invades post-Superbowl press conference


Deadspin
Sun, 02 Feb 2014 22:32 UTC

Malcolm Smith's postgame Super Bowl conference was briefly interrupted by a random 9/11 truther, who grabbed the microphone and told everyone to investigate the attacks on September 11th, saying they were "perpetrated by people within our own government."
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Wall Street

Counter-revolution: Wall Street to advise new Egyptian junta leader Al Sisi


Middle East Monitor
Thu, 30 Jan 2014 20:54 UTC
Image
Mohamed El-Erian, the former chief executive of US-based global investment management firm Pacific Investment Management Company, known as Pimco, is rumoured to become a key economic advisor to Egyptian Defence Minister General Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi as he makes his presidential bid, according to Egyptian newspaper Youm7.

El-Erian is a well-known figure on Wall Street and regularly appears as an economic commentator for mainstream Western media outlets. The New York Times once described him as "the crown prince of the multitrillion-dollar global bond market."

In 2012, US President Barack Obama appointed El-Erian to head the US Global Development Council, an advisory council administered by the US Agency for International Development that provides "advice to the president and other senior US officials on US global development policies and practices," according to the official White House web site.
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USA

Freedom of Speech Violated: New Jersey bans 'atheist' vanity plate, calls it 'offensive'


RT
Wed, 28 Aug 2013 20:45 UTC
Image
© Reuters / Lucas Jackson
The New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission has rejected an application for a personalized license plate that says "ATHE1ST" - even though the word is not on the state's list of offensive and prohibited terms.

New Jersey resident David Silverman, president of the group American Atheists, was willing to pay for a personalized license plate that reflects his views on religion. In the state of New Jersey, it costs $50 to acquire a customized license plate. But the MVC rejected his application, claiming that the word "atheist" is offensive, Silverman tweeted after the incident.
My vanity "ATHEIST" license plate was just refused by the state. Reason: It's offensive. #wronganswer

- David Silverman (@MrAtheistPants) August 26, 2013
Earlier this year, the New Jersey Star-Ledger published the list of words that the MVC refuses to print on license plates. But the list, which has a total of 1,085 words and is dated Nov. 26, 2012, does not include the word atheist.

MVC spokesman Mike Horan told the paper that personalized license plate applications are evaluated on a case-by-case basis, especially since new slang words are continuously arising.
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Brick Wall

Monsanto: Mafia protection racket - Corporate organized crime

William Engdahl
RT
Tue, 14 Jan 2014 14:43 UTC
Image
© AFP/Mark Hirsch
Monsanto "lied" in the U.S. Supreme Court that they'll never sue farmers for inadvertent contamination of their fields, William Engdahl, author of "Seeds of destruction: GMO's hidden agenda," told RT.

RT: How serious is this ruling for farmers who are caught out growing GM crops through no fault of their own?

William Engdahl: It's quite serious and it's really outrageous that the Supreme Court has once again taken the side of Monsanto on the GMO cartel and ruled against natural farming. The implications of this are huge because, first of all, Monsanto lied in its statement to the Supreme Court. They lied brazenly by saying they never had and never will sue farmers for inadvertent contamination of their fields. But they have sued countless farmers - Percy Schmeiser, a farmer in Canada, is a vivid example of that. Monsanto has a team of lawyers that go out and terrorize farmers in the US and Canada. When the wind blows the seeds from a Monsanto field across to a non-Monsanto field it says, "OK, now you have to pay." This is like a mafia selling protection.

RT: Surely Monsanto has to protect its copyright and keep the threat of suing farmers, it spent huge amounts of money developing the genetically modified seeds after all.

WE: This is a part of the monopoly pushed by Monsanto. They are buying up seed companies all around the world to take ownership of the proprietary seeds. This is a concentration of power over the human food chain. The first ruling in the Supreme Court in the 1990s that you can patent life, that you can take a patent on life by injecting a foreign gene - that was a false decision to begin with. There has been a whole sequence since it, and it's the influence buying of the agribusiness that made it possible. That's a horrendous development for the future of food security in the world.
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Megaphone

Hawaii lawmakers move to block local bans on GMOs & pesticides

John Upton
Grist.org
Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:29 UTC
Image
© Shutterstock
Late last year, the Kauai and Hawaii County councils passed laws restricting the use of pesticides and experimental GMOs on their slices of Hawaiian paradise. But those laws could soon be sunk by state lawmakers.

Hawaii County's rules ban biotech giants from the island and prohibit the new planting of GMO crops (farmers who already grow GMO crops may continue doing so). Kauai's rules require disclosures from anyone growing GMOs or spraying agricultural pesticides and the creation of pesticide-free buffer zones near schools, parks, hospitals, and homes.

Enter House Bill 2506. Hawaii has long been a haven for scientists conducting trials for Monsanto, Syngenta, and other agricultural giants - and the bill aims to keep it that way. If passed and signed, it would block local governments from enacting their own agricultural rules.

Comment: Hawaiian citizens wouldn't say 'Aloha' to GMO's period! Aloha has many translations, one of those translations is LOVE, another is the joyful (oha) sharing (alo) of life energy (ha) in presence. Alo also means light and ha means breath, when Hawaiians say Alo-ha in the islands it means sharing the breath of light and life with others.

Hawaiians would say A'ole to GMO's which means NO to GMO's! There is an ongoing battle in Hawaii to protect the land and natural resources for future generations, a battle that is taken very seriously.

Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ʻĀina i ka Pono a well-known Hawaiian phrase was adopted as the motto of the state of Hawaiʻi. As such, it is commonly translated as "The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness". The biotechnology industry is desperate to keep and maintain their open air experimentation projects, hoping the residents stay ignorant and uninformed, wishful thinking, on the part of biotechnology interests will not change the course that anti GMO activists are taking. Activists are sharing the breath of light and life with others, they are speaking out and sharing their knowledge with the world:

Opposition crops up to GMO foods in Hawaii
Hawaii is home to one of the world's greatest concentrations of GMO research fields by five of the largest biotechnology and chemical companies: Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences, Syngenta, DuPont Pioneer and BASF.

These transnational corporations prefer Hawaii for growing and testing GE crops because of its abundant sunshine, rainfall and year-round growing climate.GMO opponents say the companies also enjoy Hawaii's isolation, largely removed from the public eye.
Yet these companies, which have been in Hawaii for decades, are now facing increasing opposition from residents concerned about GMOs, the health and environmental impacts of pesticides and what they see as a lack of oversight and transparency.
Exposed: Monsanto's chemical war against indigenous Hawaiians
In the past 20 years, these chemical companies have performed over 5,000 open-field-test experiments of pesticide-resistant crops on an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 acres of Hawaiian land without any disclosure, making the place and its people a guinea pig for biotech engineering.
The presence of these corporations has propelled one of the largest movement mobilizations in Hawaii in decades. Similar to the environmental and land sovereignty protests in Canada and the continental United States, the movement is influenced by indigenous culture.


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Gear

Social engineering business style: the secret 1971 memo exposed by progressive Rep. Keith Ellison

Benjamin Weingarten
The Blaze
Fri, 31 Jan 2014 21:41 UTC
Keith Ellison book
Recently we read through progressive Representative Keith Ellison's (DFL-MN) new autobiography, My Country 'Tis of Thee.

One section that struck us was Ellison's discussion of the evolution of conservatism from Barry Goldwater to today.

Ellison notes that conservatives were propelled by "property-rights fundamentalists," back in the '60s, and that "racial resentment and free-market fundamentalism remain pillars of the Republican identity." In fact, this is the only section of the book in which the the words "property rights" and "free-market" appear.

In any event, Rep. Ellison concludes his discussion of conservatism by bringing to light a 1971 memo that he claims was heavily influential in "radicalizing" conservatives, and a blueprint for villainous "corporate interests" to flex their political muscle and thus destabilize American democracy.

The confidential memorandum was penned by Lewis Powell, a then-corporate attorney who was writing to a friend at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Two months after mailing the document, Powell would be nominated to the Supreme Court by President Richard Nixon.
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Lemon

Satire: Obama and the State of the Onion Address

John Rappoport
John Rappoport's Blog
Tue, 28 Jan 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
Apparently, the President had ingested some kind of weird drug, because when he stepped to the podium he didn't look at the teleprompter. He just started talking:

"...like every other recent President, when I take to this platform I'm expected to tell a certain number of lies dressed up as the truth. And believe me, folks, I had a few whoppers ready to go.

"But now I feel like doing something else. I'm not going to delve into the many scandals of my administration, because examining them and taking them apart and exposing the lies would keep us here all night and into tomorrow.

"Instead, I just want to explain my overarching agenda. It's the same agenda every modern President has fronted for. I'm not really doing anything new. That's a myth.

"You see, in order to become President in the first place, I had to sign on to the scheme to debase, throttle, and weaken this country. I have my methods. Every President has his own.

"Weakening America is part and parcel of Globalism. Ultimately, America will not the lead the way into what has been called the New World Order. International heavy hitters, bankers, and corporations will carry that ball. America will go along, with its population of sleeping masses.
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Dollar

Feds to set rules for banks and pot money

Josh Gerstein
Politico
Thu, 23 Jan 2014 17:33 UTC
Image
© Judiciaryreport.com
The Obama administration will soon announce regulations to make it easier for banks to do business with legal marijuana sellers, Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday.

"You don't want just huge amounts of cash in these places. They want to be able to use the banking system," Holder said during an appearance at the University of Virginia's Miller Center. "There's a public safety component to this. Huge amounts of cash - substantial amounts of cash just kind of lying around with no place for it to be appropriately deposited is something that would worry me, just from a law enforcement perspective."

While Holder spoke twice of new "regulations" that were being prepared, a Justice Department spokesman said later that the attorney general was referring to legal "guidance" for prosecutors and federal law enforcement. Such a legal memo wouldn't be enforceable in court and would amount to less than the kind of clear safe harbor many banks say they would want before accepting money from pot businesses.

The federal banking accommodation, being worked out jointly by the Justice and the Treasury departments, comes in the wake of decisions by voters in Colorado and Washington state to legalize the sale and possession of pot. The moves have created legal tensions, since marijuana remains illegal under federal law. One particular problem has been the refusal of banks to deal with pot-related businesses out of fears they will be accused of violating money laundering laws.
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USA

The dangerous charade of billionaire victims

Robert Freeman
Common Dreams
Sun, 02 Feb 2014 12:16 UTC
Protesters
© Reuters
Protesters calling for higher wages for fast-food workers stand outside a McDonald's restaurant in Oakland, California December 5, 2013.
The Tom Perkins "billionaires-as-victims" charade couldn't be more surreal. It goes without saying that his comparing the 1% to victims of Hitler's genocide is tasteless. That it is oblivious is obvious. And that Perkins himself suffers from paranoid delusions must be suspected.

But there are deeper reasons for plumbing the pathology of Perkins' rant. As background, let's recall some basic facts.

Over the past 30-odd years, since Reagan, a vast share of the nation's income and wealth has been transferred from the poor, working, and middle classes to the very wealthy. Twenty five years ago, the top 1% of income earners pulled in 12% of the nation's income, today they get twice that, 25%. And the rate of transfer is accelerating.

In the ten years between 1996 and 2006 67% of all the growth in the entire U.S. economy went to the top 1% of income earners. Between 2009 and 2012, 95% of all the new income produced in the economy went to the top 1%. What about everybody else?
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