SOTT
SIGNS
OF THE
TIMES
OF THE
TIMES
Welcome to Sott.net
The World for People who Think
Society's ChildS
The US has suspended food aid to North Korea after the country refused to cancel a scheduled rocket launch.
Washington says this breaks the deal in which North Korea agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment program and nuclear missile tests in exchange for humanitarian support.
Pyongyang says the launch is merely intended to send a satellite into space.
Rumors were confirmed recently of cannibalism in North Korea because of the serious nature of the starvation going on there, James Corbett, editor of The Corbett Report told RT.
The people there are very much dependent on food aid provided by US, he believes.
© WikipediaSanford, Florida
The city of Sanford also has a past that speaks to the racism many believe to be at the heart of why Trayvon was killed and why the man who pulled the trigger was not arrested. I'm not arguing that Sanford, Florida, is somehow more or less twisted than anywhere else. Last month, unarmed, 18-year-old Ramarley Graham was killed in his bathroom by police in New York City. Last week Dane Scott Jr. in Del City, Oklahoma, was killed by police after a "scuffle." The state medical examiner's office, however, declared Scott's death a homicide. The murder of Trayvon Martin is a "local issue" only if we understand "local" to mean local communities across the country.
© Unknown
As of Feb. 1, the Craven Pamlico Animal Services Center in New Bern eliminated euthanasia by carbon monoxide for dogs and cats. Over the past several years, dogs and cats without proof of ownership stayed at Animal Services for a period of time until they are adopted or put to sleep in a gas chamber at the facility.
Now, euthanasia by injection will be used there, a process the Animal Shelter has been moving toward for quite some time, not only to save money but also change to a procedure that many people see as more humane.
© Unknown
The tactic is being used more and more often, said the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) in its annual report.
Outwardly the sites look legitimate, but abusers can reach the images via a route that takes them to a specific section of the site, said the IWF.
Overall in 2011, the IWF said, the number of sites selling child abuse images seemed to have declined.
Hidden source
IWF chief executive Susie Hargreaves said the tactic of concealing images on otherwise legitimate looking sites posed "challenges" for those who police such material.
© unknownMelissa Jenkins
The body of Melissa Jenkins, a 33-year-old science teacher at St. Johnsbury Academy, was found Monday in the Connecticut River. Authorities say Allen and Patricia Prue lured her from her home with a ruse about a broken-down car and killed her. Jenkins' 2-year-old son had been found Sunday in her idling SUV.
The couple had been riding around Sunday when Allen Prue got the idea "to get a girl," a police affidavit said. They have not elaborated, and the trickle of information has the close-knit residents of northeastern Vermont talking and wondering about the motive.
Neighbor Jessica Fontecha said Allen Prue, 30, used to shovel snow and mow the lawn for her elderly parents without being asked. She called him when her lawn mower broke and he fixed it. Last winter, he drove her to her home in a snowstorm when she couldn't get up the slippery road.
"It's easy to say 'these horrible people,' but they weren't horrible people," Fontecha said.
But once Allen married Patricia last year, Fontecha said, "we didn't see much of him."
Patricia Prue's ex-husband said that Prue, whom he met online, had requested a restraining order on him but that they hadn't talked in a couple of years.
© Michael Kappeler , AFP/Getty ImagesFrench President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni- Sarkozy wait at Baden-Baden City hall on April 3, 2009 for heads of delegations to arrive during a NATO summit. French voters choosing Sarkozy in the current election have less sex than their left-wing rivals, says a poll published on March 30, 2012.
The survey, conducted by the respected polling institute Ifop on behalf of the pornographic magazine Hot Video, measured the intensity and variety of the sex lives of various voting blocs using several criteria.
According to the results, voters for Sarkozy's UMP make love on average 6.7 times a month, slightly less often than supporters of his main challenger, the Socialist Party's Francois Hollande, on 7.6.
Followers of Marine Le Pen's far-right anti-immigrant National Front top the frequency league, having sex eight times a month, while those of centrist Francois Bayrou manage only 5.9 trysts in the same period.
French police commandos arrested 19 people and seized weapons in Friday morning swoops on people suspected of radical Islamist activity, in several cities including Toulouse, scene of the killings of four Jews and three soldiers this month.
President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is waging an uphill battle for re-election in an April-May vote, said more such raids would follow.
Sarkozy said in an interview with journalists that the trauma of the Toulouse shooting was "very deep in our country," NBC News reported.
He said it was "a bit -- I don't want to compare the horrors -- a bit like the trauma that followed in the U.S. and New York after 9โ11."
"We cannot leave it without making any conclusions. The Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Foreign Affairs have taken the decision to forbid a certain number of predators on French soil .... We don't want people who have values contrary to those of the Republic being invited on French territory," Sarkozy added.
President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is waging an uphill battle for re-election in an April-May vote, said more such raids would follow.
Sarkozy said in an interview with journalists that the trauma of the Toulouse shooting was "very deep in our country," NBC News reported.
He said it was "a bit -- I don't want to compare the horrors -- a bit like the trauma that followed in the U.S. and New York after 9โ11."
"We cannot leave it without making any conclusions. The Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Foreign Affairs have taken the decision to forbid a certain number of predators on French soil .... We don't want people who have values contrary to those of the Republic being invited on French territory," Sarkozy added.
© UnknownLeonid Shebarshin (seen here in 1991) recently celebrated his 77th birthday
Shebarshin was found dead with a gunshot wound at his flat in central Moscow, a ceremonial pistol by his side, police told news agencies.
A suicide note was reportedly also found at the scene.
A veteran of Soviet intelligence in South Asia and Iran, he led the KGB's First Chief Directorate from 1989-91.
In 1991, he replaced coup plotter Vladimir Kryuchkov for two days as overall head of the KGB before he resigned himself, as the new post-Communist authorities set about dismantling the organisation.
As head of KGB operations in post-revolutionary Iran, he was expelled along with fellow officers in 1983.
A woman who was suspect of abusing drugs and arrested for refusing to leave a hospital died of a blood clot shortly after being put in jail, according to St. Louis Today.
Anna Brown, a 29-year-old homeless African American woman, had gone to St. Mary's Health Center in Richmond Heights, Missouri complaining of leg pain after spraining her ankle. Doctors performed an x-ray of her knees and an ultrasound, but detected no blood clots. She was given pain medication and discharged.
About eight hours later she returned to the hospital by ambulance complaining of abdominal pain. The hospital told her she had already been treated and discharged her again, but Brown refused to leave. When police officers arrived on another call, the hospital told them that Brown was claiming she "did not receive adequate medical attention and did not have to leave."
© The Economic Collapse Blog
What do you do when an entire nation begins to lose the capacity to think rationally? Many Americans spend a great deal of time criticizing the government, and there is certainly a lot to complain about, but it is not just the government that is the problem. All over America, people appear to be going insane. It is almost as if we have been cursed with stupidity. Sadly, this applies from the very top of our society all the way down to the very bottom. A lot of us find ourselves asking the following question much more frequently these days: "How could they be so stupid?"
Unfortunately, we are witnessing a complete collapse of common sense all over America. Many people seem to believe that if we could just get Obama out of office or if we could just reform our economic system that our problems as a nation would be solved, but that is simply not true. Our problems run much deeper than that. The societal decay that is plaguing our country is very deep and it is everywhere. We are a nation that is full of people that do not care about others and that just want to do what is right in their own eyes.
We hold ourselves out to the rest of the world as "the greatest nation on earth" and an example that everyone else should follow, and yet our own house is rotting all around us. The words "crazy", "insane" and "deluded" are not nearly strong enough to describe our frame of mind as a country. America has become a sad, delusional old man that can't even think straight anymore. The evidence of our mental illness is everywhere.
The following are 20 signs that we are witnessing the complete collapse of common sense in America....
