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Political discourse is now more lowbrow and anti-intellectual than ever before

David Niose
Psychology Today
Tue, 30 Dec 2014 21:33 UTC
trump, authoritarian
Having attended a Donald Trump rally in New Hampshire earlier this week, Scot Lehigh of the Boston Globe was not terribly impressed with the candidate, the message, or the supporters. "After listening to Trump for more than an hour," Lehigh reported, "I came away struck by one thing: how little of substance he'd actually uttered." Instead, the Globe columnist observed, Trump's message was "a populist stew of braggadocio, bluster, and bombast, seasoned with resentments he and his backers share."

And those resentments run deep. Lehigh noted that the key issue repeatedly mentioned by Trump's supporters—and the issue that drew some of the loudest applause—was the GOP frontrunner's plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. This proposal strikes many as strange, especially with Trump promising he'll make Mexico pay for it, but what's truly bizarre is that it would resonate so much with voters in New Hampshire—a state that borders Canada, not Mexico, and a state where Hispanics comprise only two percent of the population.
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Alarm Clock

Outraged over Shiite cleric execution, Iranian protesters storm Saudi Arabian embassy in Tehran, set it ablaze


RT
Sat, 02 Jan 2016 22:25 UTC
Saudi embassy ablaze
© Via twitter@hassanvand
"It's 23:50 here in Tehran, seems protest agnst Nimr execution continues outside Saudi embassy in Tehran right now "
Iranian protesters broke into the Saudi embassy in Tehran after launching several Molotov cocktails into the building. The rally in front of the embassy was triggered by Riyadh's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

Footage uploaded on Twitter showed angry Iranian protesters pillaging the ground floor of the Saudi embassy, tearing apart furniture, flags, and documents. It was then engulfed in one big blaze, seemingly after the angry mob, outraged over the Saudi execution of prominent Shiite cleric Sheikh al-Nimr, threw Molotov cocktails at the building.

Police eventually resorted to tear gas to scatter the protesters. Police officers managed to force the crowd out of the building and cordon it off again.There were no immediate reports of casualties or injuries in the violence. Photos from inside of the ravaged ground floor appeared to show it had been deserted.



Comment: Comment:


See also:

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Vader

Pryor teen shot while 'Ding Dong Ditching' In neighborhood

Allison Harris
News 6
Fri, 01 Jan 2016 20:51 UTC
Shooting victim Cole Peyton

Shooting victim Cole Peyton
A 14-year-old Pryor boy is out of surgery after being shot several times by his neighbor who has not been arrested.

Police said the teen and two of his friends were ringing doorbells and running off early New Year's Day when the homeowner came out to his front yard and started firing.

Comment: Clearly the home owner acted out in a rage of violence against kids who presented zero threat to anyone. If the district attorney has even half a bit of wit he'll charge the home owner with assault with a deadly weapon.

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Evil Rays

Despite health and privacy risks, NYC will turn 7,500 phone booths into Wi-Fi hot spots

Kevin Samson
Activist Post
Sat, 02 Jan 2016 20:22 UTC
city
© LinkNYC
Awareness continues to increase surrounding the health dangers of Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs) emanating from our daily gadgets, as well as from the rise of the Smart Grid. For example, a prominent neuroscientist went on record in a lecture to the medical community itself where he exposed the many health risks as well as an industry-wide attempt by telecom to cover up the negative consequences. A world-renown biochemist is seeking to abolish WiFi in schools. And a British ER physician has made it her mission to educate people about what steps they can take to minimize exposure and damage to WiFi. A slew of peer-review scientific studies support the warnings of these experts.

So what happens when your entire city becomes one giant WiFi signal? Major cities have been planning to do just that, and their plans are now ready to become reality.

Telecom giant Virgin Media announced a pilot program in October to implement "discreet street furniture" and the "UK's first Smart Pavement" in Chesham, a city of 21,000 people. They stated that their plans were ultimately far more ambitious, seeking "to build more networks like this across the UK."

Comment: Does anyone really think that their city cares if they have free and easy access to the internet? Business and government gives out nothing for free unless it is for their own benefit.

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Cloud Grey

Catastrophe in California: Months-long methane gas leak pollutes the atmosphere north of L.A.

Deirdre Fulton
Common Dreams
Wed, 30 Dec 2015 16:14 UTC
porter ranch methane leak

The giant methane plumes were made visible by a specialized infrared camera operated by an Earthworks ITC-certified thermographer.
The toxic methane cloud that has been "billowing" for months over an underground natural gas reservoir near the affluent community of Porter Ranch just north of Los Angeles illustrates "gaping vulnerabilities" in oversight and enforcement of greenhouse gas pollution rules, a California newspaper editorial board declared this week.

A pipe leak has been releasing an estimated tens of thousands of kilograms of methane into the air every hour since mid-October, leading environmentalists like Erin Brockovich to declare it "a catastrophe the scale of which has not been seen since the 2010 BP oil spill."

"The enormity of the Aliso Canyon gas leak cannot be overstated," Brockovich wrote earlier this month after visiting Porter Ranch. "Gas is escaping through a ruptured pipe more than 8,000 feet underground, and it shows no sign of stopping. As the pressure from weight on top of the pipe causes the gas to diffuse, it only continues to dissipate across a wider and wider area. According to tests conducted in November by the California Air Resources Board, the leak is spewing 50,000 kilograms of gas per hour—the equivalent to the strength of a volcanic eruption."

Comment: For related articles on this issue, see: Methane outgassing is becoming disturbingly frequent, both under the oceans and on land. Although the above leak is occurring at a man-made gas well, the leak may be natural. See also: THIS phenomenon of methane and carbon dioxide being released in enormous quantities from below ground and water, and not 'man-made CO2', is the primary source of observed 'greenhouse gas' increases in both the atmosphere and oceans.

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Dollar Gold

Market manipulation: Oil prices to remain low in Q1 2016, stabilize by end of year


Sputnik News
Sat, 02 Jan 2016 19:16 UTC
oil wells
© AP Photo/ Charles Rex Arbogast, File
Oil prices could stabilize toward the end of 2016, but would remain relatively low, according to the chief executive of BP oil company, Bob Dudley.

Global oil prices will reach a "low point" in the first quarter of 2016 before stabilizing by the end of the year, the chief executive of BP oil company, Bob Dudley, said Saturday.

"A low point could be in the first quarter," Dudley told BBC radio.

Comment: A more evidence-based explanation for the decline of oil prices than OPEC over-producing oil and fracking adding a significant amount to the oil supply, is market manipulation:

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Newspaper

Michigan Government 'sorry' as Flint's 'man-made' water catastrophe continues

Andrea Germanos
Common Dreams
Wed, 30 Dec 2015 18:58 UTC
Flint michigan

Michigan's top environment official resigns in latest development of lead contaminated water crisis.

In the latest fallout from Flint, Michigan's public health crisis of lead poisoning its drinking water, Gov. Rick Snyder on Tuesday said he was "very sorry" and the state's top environmental official resigned. One advocacy group, however, says that full accountability and transparency for this "man-made catastrophe" are still absent.

That catastrophe began in April 2014, as the Rust Belt city was under control of an emergency manager, and it moved its water supply from the Detroit system to the Flint River without the proper corrosive controls. Lead leached from pipes, putting thousands of the city's children at risk of brain damage from the contamination and prompting local outcry. A local pediatrician has called it an "emergency" situation that is "alarming and absolutely gut-wrenching." The latest developments are in response to initial findings released by a Snyder-appointed task force charged with looking into how and why the crisis came to be. The body put most of the blame on Michigan's environmental regulatory agency.

Comment: More information about the ongoing crisis in Michigan:

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Rose

New York man saves woman from faulty lift, says 'Happy New Year', dies


Hindustan Times
Sat, 02 Jan 2016 00:00 UTC
Stephen Hewett-Brown
© Google Plus
Stephen Hewett-Brown managed to save Erudi Sanchez by pushing her out of the lift onto one of the building’s floors before getting pinned between the elevator car and the shaft as he tried to escape himself
A New York man fell to his death in a faulty elevator after pushing out a woman to safety and wishing her 'Happy New Year', news agencies reported.

25-year-old Stephen Hewett-Brown, an aspiring musician, was riding an elevator in lower Manhattan, New York around midnight when it malfunctioned.

He managed to save Erudi Sanchez, 43, who lives in the building, by pushing her out of the lift onto one of the building's floors before getting pinned between the elevator car and the shaft as he tried to escape himself, witnesses told the Daily News of New York.

"When I got into the elevator, I felt it dropping and I thought my feet would get caught in the gap but the man pushed me out and said, 'Happy New Year,'" Sanchez told the Daily News on Friday.
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Chart Bar

American middle class decline, in part, self-inflicted

Charles Hugh Smith
OfTwoMinds
Tue, 29 Dec 2015 00:00 UTC
middle class over consumption
Conventional explorations of why the middle class is shrinking focus on economic issues such as the decline of unions and manufacturing, the increasing premiums paid to the highest-paid workers and the rising costs of higher education and healthcare.

All of these factors have a role, but few comment on the non-economic factors, specifically the values that underpin the accumulation of capital that is the one essential project of middle class households.

Daniel Bell's landmark 1976 book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism held that
"capitalism--and the culture it creates--harbors the seeds of its own downfall by creating a need among successful people for personal gratification--a need that corrodes the work ethic that led to their success in the first place."
I would phrase this in the language of values and capital: The primary cultural contradiction of the Great American Middle Class is the disconnect between the values needed to build capital and those of gratification via debt-based consumption.
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Family

More than 400,000 Ukrainians ready to integrate into Russian society


Sputnik
Sat, 02 Jan 2016 17:54 UTC
Ukrainian refugees in Russia
© Sputnik/ Aleksandr Pogotov
More than 1.3 million displaced Ukrainians have contacted FMS since the start of the armed conflict in southeastern Ukraine in April 2014. Over 419,000 have filed asylum claims, according to the agency.

"Russia has done everything in its power to take in Ukrainian citizens who have been forced to flee Ukraine. Over 400,000 people are potentially ready to integrate into the Russian society," the migration agency said.

FMS estimates that a total of 2.6 million Ukrainians are currently living in Russia, 1.1 million of them from the war-hit southeastern regions.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, Russia is the world's second biggest recipient of asylum claims after Germany.
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