Charming, materialistic, aggressive, self-centred, Machiavellian, thrill-seeking alpha males with little respect for rules who eat stress for breakfast - sound like a banker you know? If so, think again: it is a summary of the traits of psychopaths. Financial Times
There is a class of individuals who have been around forever and who are found in every race, culture, society and walk of life. Everybody has met these people, been deceived and manipulated by them, and forced to live with or repair the damage they have wrought. These often charming - but always deadly - individuals have a clinical name: psychopaths. Their hallmark is a stunning lack of conscience; their game is self-gratification at the other person's expense. Many spend time in prison, but many do not. All take far more than they give. Robert Hare (the acknowledged authority on psychopathy)
There is a quite plausible theory that the world is run by psychopaths: empathy-deficient, glib, manipulative, reckless swine... with apologies to our brother pig, who gives so much and gets so little in return.
Puppet Masters
Republicans ignore incompetence, bloat and corruption at the Pentagon
In all the talk about the federal deficit, why is the single largest culprit left out of the conversation? Why is the one part of government that best epitomizes everything conservatives say they hate about government - - waste, incompetence, and corruption - all but exempt from conservative criticism?
Of course, I'm talking about the Pentagon. Any serious battle plan to reduce the deficit must take on the Pentagon. In 2011 military spending accounted for more than 58 percent of all federal discretionary spending and even more if the interest on the federal debt that is related to military spending were added. In the last ten years we have spent more than $7.6 trillion on military and homeland security according to the National Priorities Project.
In all the talk about the federal deficit, why is the single largest culprit left out of the conversation? Why is the one part of government that best epitomizes everything conservatives say they hate about government - - waste, incompetence, and corruption - all but exempt from conservative criticism?
Of course, I'm talking about the Pentagon. Any serious battle plan to reduce the deficit must take on the Pentagon. In 2011 military spending accounted for more than 58 percent of all federal discretionary spending and even more if the interest on the federal debt that is related to military spending were added. In the last ten years we have spent more than $7.6 trillion on military and homeland security according to the National Priorities Project.
© Unknown
Masked militants blew up a terminal on the Egyptian pipeline supplying natural gas to Israel, forcing a halt in exports after the fourth such attack this year, officials and state media reported.
The terminal near the city of El-Arish in the northern Sinai peninsula was in flames after the pre-dawn blast, the state-run Middle East News Agency reported today, citing witnesses. An official at East Mediterranean Gas Co., the pipeline's operator, said gas supply to Israel was halted at around 2 a.m. local time. He declined to be identified due to company policy. Israel Electric Corp. confirmed the stoppage in a statement to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
"The most important economic aspect of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt is slowly collapsing," Israeli Minister of National Infrastructures Uzi Landau said of repeated attacks on the pipeline, in an interview on Army Radio.
The terminal near the city of El-Arish in the northern Sinai peninsula was in flames after the pre-dawn blast, the state-run Middle East News Agency reported today, citing witnesses. An official at East Mediterranean Gas Co., the pipeline's operator, said gas supply to Israel was halted at around 2 a.m. local time. He declined to be identified due to company policy. Israel Electric Corp. confirmed the stoppage in a statement to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
"The most important economic aspect of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt is slowly collapsing," Israeli Minister of National Infrastructures Uzi Landau said of repeated attacks on the pipeline, in an interview on Army Radio.
And it's your job to warn all your mates
Yahoo! is being criticised for the new Ts & Cs for its webmail service, which give it the right to scan your emails as well as making you responsible for telling anyone who might be emailing you, but the ICO has no problem with the changes.
Such scanning has been common for some time; Google was the first to scan all messages. But this led some to choose Yahoo! on the basis that it did not carry out such snooping.
Yahoo! is being criticised for the new Ts & Cs for its webmail service, which give it the right to scan your emails as well as making you responsible for telling anyone who might be emailing you, but the ICO has no problem with the changes.
Such scanning has been common for some time; Google was the first to scan all messages. But this led some to choose Yahoo! on the basis that it did not carry out such snooping.
Comment: Yahoo has been rejecting Sott.net's E-mail Edition for months now.
The error message on returned mails sent to Yahoo e-mail addresses is "Content not allowed". After contacting them and pointing out that the E-mail Edition typically gets a SpamAssassin score of 0.1 (6 or above is usually considered spam), we never heard back from them.
Perhaps everyone should vote with their clicks and ditch Yahoo completely.
© Md Nadeem/EPA
CIA organised fake vaccination programme in Abbottabad to try and find Osama bin Laden.
CIA organised fake vaccination programme in Abbottabad to try and find Osama bin Laden.
The CIA organised a fake vaccination programme in the town where it believed Osama bin Laden was hiding in an elaborate attempt to obtain DNA from the fugitive al-Qaida leader's family, a Guardian investigation has found.
As part of extensive preparations for the raid that killed Bin Laden in May, CIA agents recruited a senior Pakistani doctor to organise the vaccine drive in Abbottabad, even starting the "project" in a poorer part of town to make it look more authentic, according to Pakistani and US officials and local residents.
The doctor, Shakil Afridi, has since been arrested by the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) for co-operating with American intelligence agents.
Relations between Washington and Islamabad, already severely strained by the Bin Laden operation, have deteriorated considerably since then. The doctor's arrest has exacerbated these tensions. The US is understood to be concerned for the doctor's safety, and is thought to have intervened on his behalf.
The Israeli parliament tonight passed a law in effect banning citizens from calling for academic, consumer or cultural boycotts of Israel in a move denounced by its opponents as anti-democratic.
The "'Law for Prevention of Damage to the State of Israel through Boycott" won a majority of 47 to 38, despite strong opposition and an attempt to filibuster the six-hour debate. Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu did not take part in the vote although the bill had the backing of the cabinet.
Under the terms of the new law, an individual or organisation proposing a boycott may be sued for compensation by any individual or institution claiming that it could be damaged by such a call. Evidence of actual damage will not be required.
The law aims to protect individuals and institutions in Israel and the Palestinian territory it has occupied, illegally under international law, since 1967.
© Getty Images
The Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, who has just unveiled a new carbon tax.
The Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, who has just unveiled a new carbon tax.
I WANT to talk to you tonight about why the Government is putting a price on carbon and what this means for you.
The decisions I announced today mean:
AROUND five hundred big polluters will pay for every tonne of carbon pollution they put into our atmosphere.
BY 2020 this will cut carbon pollution by 160 million tonnes a year.
AND because some businesses will put prices up, there will be tax cuts, increased pensions and increased family payments.
We have had a long debate about climate change in this country.
Most Australians now agree our climate is changing, this is caused by carbon pollution, this has harmful effects on our environment and on the economy - and the Government should act.
Economists and experts agree that the best way is to make polluters pay by putting a price on carbon.
The first Australian Government to announce a plan for a carbon price was John Howard's back in 2007.
A lot has happened since then; the debate has been difficult and divisive.
And no government - no political party or leader - can claim to have got everything right during this time.
But we have now had the debate, 2011 is the year we decide that as a nation we want a clean energy future.
Now is the time to move from words to deeds.
That's why I announced today how Australia's carbon price will work.
From 1 July next year, big polluters will pay $23 for every tonne of carbon they put into our atmosphere.
They now know how much they will pay unless they cut their pollution.
And they can start planning to cut pollution now.
By 2020 our carbon price will take 160 million tonnes of pollution out of the atmosphere every year.
That's the equivalent of taking forty five million cars off the road.
Some of the cost paid by big polluters will be passed through to the prices of the goods you buy.
The price impact will be modest but I know family budgets are always tight.
So I have decided most of the money raised from the carbon price will be used to fund tax cuts, pension increases and higher family payments.
These will be permanent, matching the carbon price over time.
Comment: While the climate is changing, carbon pollution is not the culprit. For a better understanding of the real causes of climate change and the agenda to extort more money from already financially stressed populations, see:
Climate Change Swindlers and the Political Agenda
What You Never Hear About Global Warming
© MotherJones
A Kentucky bluegrass trial in Fayetteville, Arkansas
A Kentucky bluegrass trial in Fayetteville, Arkansas
It's a hoary bureaucratic trick, making a controversial announcement on the Friday afternoon before a long weekend, when most people are daydreaming about what beer to buy on the way home from work, or are checking movie times online. But that's precisely what the US Department of Agriculture pulled last Friday.
In an innocuous-sounding press release titled "USDA Responds to Regulation Requests Regarding Kentucky Bluegrass," agency officials announced their decision not to regulate a "Roundup Ready" strain of Kentucky bluegrass - that is, a strain genetically engineered to withstand glyphosate, Monsanto's widely used herbicide, which we know as Roundup. The maker of the novel grass seed, Scotts Miracle Gro, is now free to sell it far and wide. So you'll no doubt be seeing Roundup Ready bluegrass blanketing lawns and golf courses near you - and watching anal neighbors and groundskeepers literally dousing the grass in weed killer without fear of harming a single precious blade.
Shkval (Squall) torpedo
"During the (Iranian calendar) month of Bahman (Jan. 21-Feb. 19), we fired two missiles with a range of 1900 kilometers from the Semnan desert to the entrance of the Indian Ocean, and U.S. warships observed them hitting the mock targets," Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said at a press conference in Tehran.
Since the region is in international airspace, Iran allowed U.S. spy planes to be present, but the U.S. did not release the information they gathered to the public, Hajizadeh noted.
"We have an appropriate space of about 1000 square kilometers in (our) deserts for test-firing missiles... our missile range is at most 2000 kilometers and we do not need (missiles with) a longer range since our targets are within a shorter radius," he added.
Comment: Nila Sagadevan writes:
One thing is for certain: a US-Israeli invasion of Iran will be far from a cakewalk. For Israel it would prove utterly disastrous; there is no ABM system on earth that's proven to be consistently anywhere near even 50% reliable. All major Israeli population centers will take direct hits. Where the US is concerned, over 70% of American bases in the region will take hits from a concerted Iranian missile strike, taking out thousands of our soldiers. Our aircraft carriers and other vessels will also be very vulnerable to Iran's ultra-high-speed torpedoes that travel at speeds of up to 100 meters a second -- four times as fast as conventional torpedoes, and is thus nearly "unavoidable" by its intended target.
This new Iranian weapon is based on Russia's VA-111 Shkval (Squall) torpedo. The Shkval is a high-speed supercavitating rocket-propelled torpedo originally designed to be a rapid-reaction defense against US submarines. Basically an underwater missile, the solid-rocket propelled torpedo achieves its speed by producing an envelope of supercavitating bubbles from its nose and skin, which coat the entire weapon surface in a thin layer of gas. This drastically reduces metal-to-water friction. The torpedo leaves the tube at nearly a hundred kilometers an hour, then lights its rocket motor. In tests in the 1990s the Shkval reportedly had an 80 percent kill probability at a range about seven kilometers. US aircraft carriers would be toast. This is the weapon the West fears most.
And now Iran has successfully tested a new supersonic anti-ship missile (much faster than conventional Cruise-types). While we're at it, let's not totally dismiss rumors about North Korean-supplied nuke warheads already mounted in Iran's ICBMs safely ensconced in deep silos spread out across the country. Finally --- and very importantly -- let's not forget their recently deployed Russian S-300-cloned long-range phased-array radar systems, each of which can simultaneously target up to 30 inbound enemy aircraft at a range of 200 miles... Yup, whichever way one slices it, this is one confrontation that's bound to get very ugly very quickly --- nothing at all like traipsing into Iraq and Afghanistan. This is one scenario where Moshe Dayan's "mad dogs" will certainly meet their doom should they initiate hostilities --- which would hardly bring a tear to my eye but for the fact they'd also be (willfully) sucking America into their maniacal lunacy...
Six Israeli warplanes flew over the border village of Kfar Kila, located 96 kilometers (59 miles) south of the capital Beirut, at 9:50 a.m. (0650 GMT) on Sunday and conducted several unwarranted flights above areas in southern Lebanon, a statement released by the Lebanese military read.
The Israeli warplanes left the Lebanese airspace at 11:00 a.m. local time (0800 GMT) while flying over the southern border town of Alma al-Shaab.
Meanwhile, two Israeli fighters violated Lebanese airspace at 10:05 a.m. local time (0705 GMT), and flew over southern part of the country. The jets left at 11:45 a.m. local time (0845 GMT).
Two remote-controlled Israeli drones also entered the Lebanese airspace and carried out covert surveillance fights over the village of al-Naqoura, located 91 kilometers (57 miles) south of Beirut, and the southern village of Rmeish.
The aircraft flew over the southern areas of Lebanon at 2:10 p.m. local time (1110 GMT) and 4:00 p.m. local time (1300 GMT) on Sunday and left.
Comment: This really isn't about partisan politics. The Republicans (and likely most of those involved in politics) are acting exactly as any authoritarian personality would.
Hypocrisy of the Authoritarians
As for the military spending it is certainly obscene in a world where so many are poor and starving and living desperate lives. How much of that money is going towards ensuring the survival of the elite from the impending Earth Changes, we wonder?