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Bizarro Earth

Beyond missionary work: The porn that's watched in Vatican City

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© @tiffanystarrxxx @DirtySheenShaw via TwitterTranssexual porn star Tiffany Starr, left, and female star Sheena Shaw, right, starred in an XXX-rated video downloaded by someone in Vatican City.
Thou shalt not steal porn off the Internet seems to be a commandment some residents of Vatican City choose to ignore.

The tiny city-state within Rome that houses around 800 people doesn't exactly have the highest downloading levels in the world, but that hasn't stopped some of its residents from swiping files starring the likes of female porn stars Sheena Shaw, Lea Lexis and Krissy Lynn, according to TorrentFreak.com.

Additionally, someone within the Catholic Church's headquarters also likes the work transsexual superstar Tiffany Starr.

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A list of torrent files downloaded from Vatican City.

Gold Coins

Trust in gold not Bernanke as U.S. states promote bullion

google gold coins
Distrust of the Federal Reserve and concern that U.S. dollars may become worthless are fueling a push in more than a dozen states to recognize gold and silver coins as legal tender.

Arizona is poised to follow Utah, which authorized bullion for currency in 2011. Similar bills are advancing in Kansas, South Carolina and other states.

The measures backed by the limited-government Tea Party movement are mostly symbolic -- you still can't pay for groceries with gold in Utah. They reflect lingering dollar concerns, amplified by the Fed's unconventional moves in recent years to stabilize the economy, said Loren Gatch, who teaches politics at the University of Central Oklahoma.

"The legislation is about signaling discontent with monetary policy and about what Ben Bernanke is doing," said Gatch, who studies alternative currencies at the Edmond, Oklahoma-based school. "There is a fear that the government, or Bernanke in particular and the Federal Reserve, is pursuing a policy that will lead to the collapse of the dollar. That's what is behind it."

Bernanke has pushed interest rates to near zero since the 18-month recession that began in December 2007. The Fed said in March it would continue buying $85 billion in securities each month in a program known as quantitative easing that has ballooned its assets beyond $3 trillion and is aimed at keeping long-term borrowing costs low to support economic growth.

Penis Pump

Bemused Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel confronted by topless Femen protester in Hanover

Vladimir Putin appears to have at last found a form of anti-government protest that he can support.
Putin, Femen, Angela Merkel
© EPA/Jochen LuebkeRussian President Vladimir Putin (left) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are confronted by a topless demonstrator during a tour of the Hanover Fair, Hanover
The Russian president was confronted by a topless protester with an obscene slogan insulting Mr Putin painted on her back - and, he admitted, he "liked" it.

Mr Putin was with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at at a trade fair in Hanover when the woman tried to push her way through to an amused-looking Mr Putin, but was blocked by aides. Her back was painted with an obscene slogan in Cyrillic script directed against the Russian president.

The activist was with two other women who also stripped to the waist and shouted slogans calling the Russian leader a "dictator".

The women appeared to be members of the feminist group Femen, which has staged topless protests against the sex industry and religious institutions.

Speaking at a press conference afterwards, Mr Putin said: "As for the protest, I liked it. In principle, we knew that such a protest was being prepared."

Eye 2

Margaret Thatcher 'had psychopathic tendencies', actress Andrea Riseborough claims

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Tendencies only? More likely is that she IS a psychopath
An actress who played Lady Thatcher has claimed the former Prime Minister had "psychopathic tendencies".

Andrea Riseborough played the young Margaret Thatcher in The Long Walk To Finchley, based on the former prime minister's early years in politics.

The 31-year-old Never Let Me Go and Made In Dagenham actress told the Radio Times: "Mrs Thatcher had oversights when it came to thousands of people. No, millions. She is still untouchable for many because she didn't operate in the way others did.

"Her connection with humanity was a very loose thread. Emotionally, she was not in touch with herself or anybody else. As well as being such an intelligent woman, I would say she had psychopathic tendencies."

She added: "As I understand it, the term implies a tendency not to feel as much guilt about one's actions as perhaps one ought to."

Riseborough, who starred in Madonna's WE, is up for an EE Bafta Rising Star award, which recognises new talent in the film industry.

Source: Press Association

Comment:
"As I understand it, the term implies a tendency not to feel as much guilt about one's actions as perhaps one ought to."
Not quite, but close enough for horseshoes. Ms. Riseborough's formulation implies that there is a moral dimension to the problem. At root, the problem with psychopaths in power is not that they are doing things they ought not to be doing; it's that, as psychopaths, they cannot do differently because they have no conscience.


Bullseye

From Saccharin to GE Seed: Report profiles Monsanto's history peddling chemicals for food, agriculture & war

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© cuesa.org
From its beginnings as a small chemical company in 1901, Monsanto has grown into the largest biotechnology seed company in the world with net sales of $11.8 billion, 404 facilities in 66 countries across six continents and products grown on over 282 million acres worldwide. Today, the consumer advocacy nonprofit Food & Water Watch released its report, Monsanto: A Corporate Profile.

"There is a growing movement of people around the country who want to take on Monsanto's undue influence over lawmakers, regulators and the food supply," said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch and author of the book Foodopoly.
"People need to know about Monsanto's history as a heavy industrial chemical manufacturer; a reality at odds with the environmentally friendly, feed-the-world image that the company spends millions trying to convey."
"At the end of March, the American public saw first hand the unjustifiable power that Monsanto holds over our elected officials when an unprecedented rider, dubbed the 'Monsanto Protection Act,' was tacked onto the spending bill to fund the federal government," said Dave Murphy, founder and executive director of Food Democracy Now!
"This is an outrageous interference with our courts and separation of powers and we cannot sit back and allow our elected officials to continue to take orders from Monsanto at the expense of family farmers and consumers."
The report offers a timeline of milestones in the company's history including chemical disasters, mergers and acquisitions, and the first genetically modified plant cell.

Snakes in Suits

Farmers and consumers vs. Monsanto: David meets Goliath

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© Tequila Minsky © 2013"Down with Monsanto" read a banner as thousands marched for food sovereignty in Haiti, March 22, 2013.
Bordering an interstate highway in Arkansas, a giant billboard with a photo of a stoic-looking farmer watches over the speeding traffic. He's staring into the distance against the backdrop of a glowing wheat field, with the caption "America's Farmers Grow America." It's an image to melt all our pastoral hearts.

Until we read the small print in the corner: "Monsanto."

The maker of Agent Orange, Monsanto's former motto used to be, "Without chemicals, life itself would be impossible." Today its tag line is "Committed to Sustainable Agriculture, Committed to Farmers." Its website claims the company helps farmers "be successful [and] produce healthier foods... while also reducing agriculture's impact on our environment." It even boasts of the corporation's dedication to human rights.

Behind the PR gloss is a very different picture. Via Campesina, the world's largest confederation of farmers with member organizations in 70 countries, has called Monsanto one of the "principal enemies of peasant sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty for all peoples." Via Campesina members also target Monsanto as a driving influence behind land grabs, forcing small farmers off their land and out of work. The agribusiness giants also contribute to climate change and other environmental disasters, outgrowths of industrial agriculture.

Wolf

Best of the Web: The Wicked Witch is Dead: Margaret Thatcher's toxic legacy - public division and unfettered corporate greed

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Her legacy is public division, private selfishness and a cult of greed that together shackle the human spirit

Whether you were for her or against her, Margaret Thatcher set the agenda for the past three and a half decades of British politics. All the debates that matter today in the public arena, whether in economics, social policy, politics, the law, the national culture or this country's relations with the rest of the world, still bear something of the imprint she left on them in her years in office between 1979 and 1990. More than 20 years after her party disposed of her when she had become an electoral liability, British public life is still defined to an extraordinary degree by the argument between those who wish to continue or refine what she started and those who want to mitigate or turn it back. Just as in life she shaped the past 30 years, so in death she may well continue to shape the next 30. These are claims that can be made about no other modern British prime minister. She was in many ways the most formidable peacetime leader this country has had since Gladstone.

The fact that Mrs Thatcher was Britain's first and so far only woman major party leader, chosen entirely on merit, and then Britain's first woman prime minister, were of course huge landmarks. But her gender, though fundamental to her story, was in the end secondary. It was at least as significant, in the evolution of the late 20th-century Tory party, that she came from a petit-bourgeois background, a shopkeeper's daughter, though the man she overthrew in 1975, Ted Heath, had similarly middling origins and John Major an even humbler start. There was something of the rebel and outsider about her, as well as much that was stultifyingly conventional.

Comment: In short, she was a psychopath whose pernicious influence spread through society, embodying the destructive principle from the top down. As for the 'kinder, more cohesive face' that succeeded her, Tony Blair was worse than Thatcher... Britain, like the U.S. and elsewhere, is truly in the death grip of a bunch of toxic psychopaths.


War Whore

Mass slaughter: Twelve civilians, including 11 children killed in Afghan NATO strike

NATO dead children Kunar
© ReutersAfghan villagers sit near the bodies of children who they said were killed during an air strike in Kunar province April 7, 2013.
A NATO airstrike has killed 11 children and one woman in the East of Afghanistan, report local officials. A house collapsed during the attack, causing the casualties and leaving six women injured.

The civilians were killed during a joint Afghan-NATO operation late on Saturday night in the Shigal district of Kunar province, which borders Pakistan.

"Eleven children and a woman were killed when an air strike hit their houses," provincial spokesman Wasifullah Wasifi said on Sunday.

A Reuters journalist saw the bodies of 11 children being carried by their families and other villagers. They were on their way to the office of Mohammad Zahir Safai, the Shigal district chief, to register their protest.

The body of the female victim was not seen, as women's bodies are not displayed in accordance of custom. However, local residents told the journalist of her death.

Bad Guys

'The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer': 'Kissinger Cables' among latest and biggest WikiLeaks documents release to date

WikiLeaks
© Reuters/Toru Hanai
WikiLeaks has published the 'Kissinger Cables': its largest public release of documents in nearly a year, totaling some 1.7 million classified files, including information on the US's secret diplomatic history.

A variety of files have been collected and collated, including from congressional correspondence, intelligence reports, and cables.

Julian Assange, who heads the organization, told the Press Association that the documents were illustrative of the "vast range and scope" of global US influence. He is to present and mark the release of the documents on Monday in a mass-press conference.

Assange is currently residing at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, under the threat of arrest if he leaves.

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is quoted as saying, "Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, 'The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer'," during a 1975 conversation which included a Turkish and Cypriot official.

Bad Guys

'He who controls the past controls the future': Assange on massive Project K leak

Julian Assange
© RT
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange formally unveiled on Monday the latest release from the whistleblower site, Project K, calling it "the single most significant geopolitical publication that has ever existed."

Speaking via Skype from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, Assange introduced Project K on Monday morning to a group of journalists at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Nearly three years earlier to the day, Assange spoke at the Press Club in person to debut "Collateral Murder," a video of US soldiers firing at Iraqi civilians that has since become one of WikiLeaks' most well-recognized contributions to journalism. Since that release, WikiLeaks and the organization's associates have become the target of a number of government investigations, with Assange himself having been confined to the embassy in London for nearly one year while awaiting safe passage to Ecuador where he was granted political asylum. Ongoing attempts to prosecute the journalists for sharing state secrets aside, however, Assange and company have now unloaded the organization's biggest leak yet.