• In exclusive interview Simone Steenkamp says: Pistorius is a 'disgusting liar'
• 'Smirking' Pistorius 'seems to be enjoying his celebrity status,' she says
• Says family had offered forgiveness but feelings have changed since trial
• Reeva was 'very assertive', Simone believes she 'would have screamed'
• Reeva's father Barry, who has stroke since tragedy watches trial from home
• He said: 'When I feel strong enough I'll go there to ask him one thing - "Why? Why did you kill my lovely Reeva?"
• Simone describes Pistorius as an 'insecure, unpredictable man'

As Oscar Pistorius gave his account of the night he shot and killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, claiming it was a tragic accident, he repeatedly retched and broke down in histrionic, heaving sobs.

A few feet away in the Pretoria courtroom last week, June, the grieving mother of the beautiful 29-year-old model, sat in dignified silence, her eyes fixed on Pistorius's face.

Her remarkable composure faltered only rarely, when she wiped away tears.

But back at their home in Port Elizabeth, 710 miles away, her family are far from composed. They are deeply, devastatingly angry.

The Bureau of Land Management is clearly having an image problem. As the outrage over its intimidating show of force during last week's showdown at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada proved, the federal agency is now caught up in a controversy originating in Wyoming.

According to recent reports, agents herded a large group of wild horses in the state before ceding control of the majestic animals to state authorities. At that point, Wyoming officials sold them off to a slaughterhouse in Canada.

Obviously, this development outraged countless advocates already incensed by accusations that BLM officers gunned down multiple cows at the Bundy Ranch.

Paula Todd King, a wild horse advocate with Colorado's Cloud Foundation, said it would have taken "very little to do this in a more effective way so that horses are not just sent off to slaughter indiscriminately."

Though wild horses, which have roamed throughout the American West for hundreds of years, are protected by federal law, the BLM contends these animals do not qualify for such protection. Instead, agency spokesperson Sarah Beckwith contends they are strays descended from rodeo horses from four decades ago.

Half of the commission that conducts oversight of the Albuquerque, New Mexico Police Department has resigned in protest follow a scathing report from the United States Department of Justice.

Oversight commission members Jennifer Barela, Jonathan Siegel and Richard Shine sent letters of resignation to Albuquerque, NM Mayor Richard Berry on Tuesday, leaving just three members of the nine-person panel to assess the police department's actions. Prior to Tuesday, only six people held seats on the Police Oversight Commission, or POC.

Tuesday's resignations were announced less than a week after the Justice Dept. accused the APD of what it determined to be excessive abuse force and a culture of abuse and aggression. According to the DOJ's findings, Albuquerque police have shot 37 men since 2010, killing 23.

"We have determined that structural and systemic deficiencies - including insufficient oversight, inadequate training and ineffective policies - contributed to the use of unreasonable force," the Justice Dept. said. "Albuquerque's external oversight structure could do much more to address unreasonable uses of deadly force, and it is apparent from our review of documents and interviews that the failure to do so in the past has contributed to the pattern of unreasonable force that we have found."


Anger directed at the APD has rekindled in recent weeks after a video of a local police officer shooting and killing a homeless man caught illegally camping in a rural area went viral. Demonstrators responded with a series of rallies in Albuquerque, which the APD countered by using tear gas against activists and issuing arrests.

The dumbing down of America is accelerating. A massive federal takeover of education known as "Common Core" is attempting to impose nationwide academic standards on public schools throughout the entire country. Thanks to the backing of billionaire Bill Gates, endless promotion by the U.S. Department of Education, and financial bribes to state governments by the Obama administration, 45 states and Washington, D.C. have already agreed to implement the full Common Core standards in their schools.

Unfortunately, these "standards" are doing to public education what Obamacare is doing to our health care system - absolutely ruining it. Just look at how basic math instruction has changed. Posted below is a comparison between the "old method" of subtraction and the "new method" of subtraction being taught in many of our schools. When I first came across this on Facebook, I thought that it was a joke...

The Kremlin is preparing a new culture policy for Russia focusing on its distinctive civilisation and traditional values, which observers say has political ends amid Moscow's standoff with the West.

At the end of four hours of questions Thursday in his annual call-in, President Vladimir Putin waxed philosophical on what it means to be Russian.

Russians not only have their own "cultural code," he said, they also have a unique moral outlook -- unlike Westerners, Russians are selfless and prone to self-sacrifice.

"These are the deep roots of our patriotism," Putin said.

Tapping into perceived "traditional cultural values" of Russian civilisation, the culture ministry is drawing up a government strategy that observers say has all the trappings of a new state ideology, echoing Soviet legacy.

The authors preparing the document, who are kept secret, believe that such a policy must be based on the thesis that "Russia is not Europe" and generously quote from Putin's speeches.

Russian President Vladimir Putin jokingly commented on a suggestion of unifying Alaska with Russia the same way as with Crimea.

Alaska was part of Russia until 1867 and was sold to the United States for $7.2 million in gold.

"We are a northern country, 70% or our territory belongs in the Northern and Extreme Northern regions. Is Alaska really in the Southern Hemisphere? It's cold there, too. Let's not get hot-headed," Putin said during a live Q&A session with the public on Thursday.

He said he knows of the popular Russian nickname of Alaska after the Crimean reunification, which sounds like "ice-cream" (Crimea in Russian is pronounced like Cream).

The U.S. Federal Government under both the Bush and Obama administration has made it perfectly clear that in the event of almost any major disaster scenario, including economic and environmental, they see the institution of Martial Law as not only viable, but inexorable. From legislative actions like the Patriot Act and the Enemy Belligerents Act (currently in committee) to continuity of government programs such as Rex 84 (formerly classified) and Presidential Directive PDD 51 (currently classified, even from Congress), all the "legal" precedents have been put into place to allow the Executive Branch to implement military oversight of civilian affairs, dissolution of Constitutional liberties, even the end of Miranda Rights and the right to a speedy impartial trial as protected under the Sixth Amendment. In some cases, government legislation allows for the rendition and torture of American citizens as combatants, all for the "greater good", of course...

Some in this country dismiss such bills and directives as abstract novelties that don't constitute any real threat to our freedoms or our daily life. People have a tendency to assume that the atmosphere we live in today will remain the same tomorrow and always. Many of us never consider that dramatic, even violent change in American domestic policy is possible on a moments notice. On the contrary, the continuity legislation now in place shows that our government under the direction of corporate globalists is not only prepared to implement a military lockdown of this country, they fully anticipate that such an event will occur in the near future.

The problem with wars is that you need people to believe in them so they can happen, and somebody needs to do the shooting and dying. As they say, imagine if they gave a war and nobody came. What would happen then? It's not as if our 'leaders', a gaggle of amoral assholes and clinical psychopaths, could be expected to offer themselves and their progeny for the war effort. No indeed, without the 'little people' and 'useless eaters' to fight and die for no good reason other than the personal profits of the political, industrial and financial elites, there would be no possibility of war, ever, and any attempt to manipulate the masses into a jingoistic frenzy would be exposed as the murderous conspiracy that it always has been.

Well, in the case of Ukraine, that's exactly what we are seeing unfold before our eyes.

The newly coup-imposed, non-elected, fascist, right-wing puppet Ukrainian government recently promised an "anti-terrorist operation" against the separatists of the Eastern province of Donetsk in order to avoid another Crimea situation. But things didn't quite turn out as expected.

As Guardian readers humorously put it:

'Report on progress of the war Captain ... Gave away another tank and having a picnic with the Terrorists sir'

John Kerry: "The situation is critical, Mr President, peace has broken out".

So what's a warmonger to do? Why, cook up some media manipulation and lies and get out the bag of dirty tricks, of course! It may sound familiar, but it's worked pretty well to date!

The zombie apocalypse is a prevalent theme throughout the preparedness community. Many believe zombies will be those unprepared to live through a disaster. Although this could very well be true, zombies are already in our communities and the long lasting effects are already being felt.

Recently, a study has come forth indicating that a rising number of children are unable to perform simple tasks due to the heightened use of iPads and computer devices. Children are losing simple motor development skills such as building blocks because of their exposures to these computer devices. Children as young as 3 years old know how to swipe the surface of an ipad, but have little to no dexterity in their hands.

Experts warn that the growth in the digital era is having a serious effect on children's social and physical development. One expert notes that "brilliant computer skills" [are] shown by many pupils was "outweighed by their deteriorating skills in pen and paper exams because they rely on instant support of the computer and are often unable to apply what they should have learned from their textbooks". (Source)

In May 1998, 15 year old Kip Kinkel murdered his parents and two classmates, as well as injuring 25 others, after engaging in a shooting spree that ended up in his school's cafeteria. In the investigation it emerged that he had been taking popular antidepressant medication Prozac since the summer of the previous year.

In December 2000, Michael McDermott went on a shooting rampage at his workplace, Edgewater Technologies, killing seven of his co-workers. During his trial, the court heard testimony that in the weeks before the shooting, McDermott had tripled the dosage of his antidepressant medication, Prozac, from 70 milligrams per day to 210 milligrams.

In March 2005, 16 year old Jeff Weise shot and killed nine people, including five students at Red Lake Senior High School in Minnesota, before turning the gun on himself. It was later revealed he had been undergoing treatment for depression and had been on Prozac at the time.

In September 2008, Finnish post-secondary student Matti Saari shot and killed ten other students on campus before killing himself. The official Finnish government report on the incident revealed that he had been taking an SSRI medication at the time of the shooting.

SSRI stands for Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitor, and it is a class of drugs that is often used to treat depression and anxiety. It includes Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa, Paxil and a host of other commonly prescribed antidepressants. And the perpetrators of a raft of school shootings, mass murders and other violent incidents in recent years have been taking them.