Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Quote of the Day
The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality. - Dante Aleghieri
Jobs Market Barely Budges in June as Hiring Stays Weak
'Recovery Summer' will really be Catastrophe Summer. You are standing on the precipice of total collapse. You are short on time. Whatever you need to do to shelter yourself from the fallout, do it. Do it now.
- CNBC -
U.S. private employers added just 13,000 jobs in June, according to a report published Wednesday that suggested expectations of a big drop in the government's upcoming nonfarm payrolls report were on target.
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The ADP Employer Services report also said May's gain was revised marginally higher to 57,000 from the original estimate of 55,000.
That revision was basically the only good news, however, in a report that under-shot expectations of a rise of 60,000 private-sector jobs in June.
It also supported fears that the short and tepid recovery from the worst recession since the 1930s was fizzling.
"There is really no way to characterize this number other than disappointing," said Macroeconomic Advisers LLC chairman Joel Prakken, whose firm jointly developed the ADP report. "The overall number tells you that the recovery in the jobs market is very, very sluggish at this point."
The US Government can kill anyone, including you, without trial, covertly
All they do is call you a 'terrorist' and you become a non-person.
At trial, Noriega claims Panama drug money a US-run ‘imaginary banking scheme’
Of course, he's right. But the Ministry of Information has done such a thorough job of castigating 'Pineapple Face' over the years that boobus will automatically disbelieve him. Our government doesn't engage in such activity. Next.
- Raw Story -
Panama's ex-dictator Manuel Noriega on Tuesday dismissed charges of laundering drug money as an "imaginary banking scheme" concocted by the United States as he took the stand in a French court.
The 76-year-old general denied taking payments from Colombian drug lords in the 1980s and told a Paris courtroom that cash deposits transferred to French banks came from his legitimate businesses and the CIA.
"I say with much humility and respect that this is an imaginary banking scheme," Noriega told the court in Spanish through his interpreter on the second day of his trial.
"I will have the opportunity to produce documents that show that I was a victim of a conspiracy mounted by the United States against me," he said.
Why Schools Don't Educate
John Taylor Gatto
LewRockwell.com -
LewRockwell.com -
I accept this award on behalf of all the fine teachers I've known over the years who've struggled to make their transactions with children honorable ones, men and women who are never complacent, always questioning, always wrestling to define and redefine endlessly what the word "education" should mean. A Teacher of the Year is not the best teacher around, those people are too quiet to be easily uncovered, but he is a standard-bearer, symbolic of these private people who spend their lives gladly in the service of children. This is their award as well as mine.
We live in a time of great school crisis. Our children rank at the bottom of nineteen industrial nations in reading, writing and arithmetic. At the very bottom. The world's narcotic economy is based upon our own consumption of the commodity, if we didn't buy so many powdered dreams the business would collapse – and schools are an important sales outlet. Our teenage suicide rate is the highest in the world and suicidal kids are rich kids for the most part, not the poor. In Manhattan fifty per cent of all new marriages last less than five years. So something is wrong for sure.
Our school crisis is a reflection of this greater social crisis. We seem to have lost our identity. Children and old people are penned up and locked away from the business of the world to a degree without precedent – nobody talks to them anymore and without children and old people mixing in daily life a community has no future and no past, only a continuous present. In fact, the name "community" hardly applies to the way we interact with each other. We live in networks, not communities, and everyone I know is lonely because of that. In some strange way school is a major actor in this tragedy just as it is a major actor in the widening guilt among social classes. Using school as a sorting mechanism we appear to be on the way to creating a caste system, complete with untouchables who wander through subway trains begging and sleep on the streets.
Afghan Police: NATO Troops Killed Eight Civilians in Pre-Dawn Raid
NATO Insists All Slain Were 'Insurgents'
Jason Ditz
AntiWar.com -
NATO forces issued another of their usual “successful raid” reports last night, saying that a pre-dawn raid on Monday left eight insurgents, including “a Taliban commander” killed in an attack on two compounds in Kandahar City.
The deputy provincial police chief, Mohammad Shah Farooqi, tells a far different story, however, saying that NATO forces raided a pair of homes in the major southern city and that there was no evidence at all that any of the eight slain were involved in any “anti-government activities.”
Unconfirmed reports are that there have been some small protests in Kabul and Kandahar related to the killings, though as with so many other stories the two very different versions will likely leave it unclear exactly what happened.
The death toll across Afghanistan has been soaring over the past several months, and a record number of NATO soldiers have been killed in June. The civilian toll is less readily available, but it appears that it too is on the rise.
Sea Ice News #11
I find all this global warming debunking to be redundant. Because it never was about global warming, and thus "evidence" is meaningless. Most of the people are too dumbed down and indifferent to bother looking at the evidence, so they can say anything they want. And if the only people looking at the evidence are the relatively small amount of people on either side of the debate, with the great mass of humanity in the middle not giving a shit, and with almost all of the power and influence wielded by those of the alarmist, eugenics persuasion, who cares what I or Steven Goddard thinks?
If they were trying to save the planet they'd be capping the damn oil leak. Instead they allow it to get worse. And they spray toxic dispersants all over the place that poisons our water supply and kills our crops; nobody bats an eyelash. If they cared about the environment, they'd stop the mass pollution of our drinking water with sodium fluoride. They'd stop factory farming. They do something about the Texas-sized trash islands in the Pacific ocean. I could go on. The point is, it's not about global warming, it's about global government. It's about putting a price on life. It's about taxing you for breathing. And, ultimately, killing you.
- Steven Goddard
WattsUpWithThat -
“Steepest slope ever.”
We have been hearing a lot about how the decline in Arctic ice is following the “steepest slope ever.” The point is largely meaningless, but we can have some fun with it. The Bremen Arctic/Antarctic maps are superimposed above, showing that ice in the Antarctic is at a record high and growing at the “steepest slope ever.” You will also note that most of the world’s sea ice is located in the Antarctic. But those are inconvenient truths when trying to frighten people into believing that “the polar ice caps are melting.”
There are several favorite lines of defense when trying to rationalize away the record Antarctic ice.
1. It is the Ozone Hole – which is also the fault of evil, American SUV drivers. That is a nice guilt trip, but sadly the Ozone Hole doesn’t form until August and is gone by December. Strike one.
Pre-Crime? Try Pre-Diagnose and Pre-Drug
Rats in a cage.
- Psychiatrists target infants as mental patients
CCHRINT -
A new study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry and headed by psychiatrist John H. Gilmore, professor of psychiatry and Director of the UNC Schizophrenia Research, claims to be able to detect “brain abnormalities associated with schizophrenia risk” in infants just a few weeks old. We would like to point out the obvious flaw in this bogus study; there is no medical/scientific test in existence that schizophrenia is a physical disease or brain abnormality to start with. There is not one chemical imbalance test, X-ray, MRI or any other test for schizophrenia, not one. So with no evidence of medical abnormality to start with, the “associated with schizophrenia risk” amounts to what George Orwell called Doublespeak (language that deliberately disguises, distorts, misleads)—it means nothing.
For decades, psychiatrists and Pharma have spouted lines to the press and public amounting to, “researchers now believe” they have medical evidence of schizophrenia as a physical/biological abnormality, or “new evidence suggests” evidence of schizophrenia as a real disease. But despite millions of dollars in research funds and countless tales of “belief” —no evidence to support the theory. One of the most common tricks employed by the Psycho/Pharmaceutical industry to mislead the public, legislators and the press, is to take X-rays or brain images of people who have been long-term users of antipsychotic drugs (known to cause brain atrophy/shrinkage) and then claim people with schizophrenia have smaller brains. They’ve spouted similar studies on kids with ADHD having smaller brains, but the bottom line to that study was that the kids with smaller brains, were…smaller kids. These are just a few of the many PR spins employed by Psycho/Pharma to try and maintain the “belief” in psychiatry, in their credibility as a science. As evidenced by the recent statement of psychiatrist Allen Frances, former DSM- IV Task Force Chairman, this belief is falling apart even within their own ranks, “There are no objective tests in psychiatry-no X-ray, laboratory, or exam finding that says definitively that someone does or does not have a mental disorder.” —Allen Frances (And Frances isn’t the only psychiatrist exposing the fraud of the biological brain disease model; click here for more.)
The logical question the press should be asking is what are the American Journal of Psychiatry and “the Director of UNC Schizophrenic Research” really after? What is their goal?
Read it all.
Airport body scanners 'could give you cancer', warns expert
Don't you ever get tired of being treated like a human lab rat?
UK Daily Mail -
Full body scanners at airports could increase your risk of skin cancer, experts warn.
The X-ray machines have been brought in at Manchester, Gatwick and Heathrow.
But scientists say radiation from the scanners has been underestimated and could be particularly risky for children.
They say that the low level beam does deliver a small dose of radiation to the body but because the beam concentrates on the skin - one of the most radiation-sensitive organs of the human body - that dose may be up to 20 times higher than first estimated.
An airport staff member demonstrates a full body scan at Manchester
Airport. Now a U.S expert has said the X-Ray may deliver a higher
radiation dose to the skin than first thought
Dr David Brenner, head of Columbia University's centre for radiological research, said although the danger posed to the individual passenger is 'very low', he is urging researchers to carry out more tests on the device to look at the way it affects specific groups who could be more sensitive to radiation.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Quote of the Day
We're supposed to keep evolving. Evolution did not end with us growing opposable thumbs. You do know that, right? There's another 90 percent of our brains that we have to illuminate. ~ Bill Hicks
The Obama Tax Hike Exemption Card
Politico -
Here's something that could make for some awkward exchanges at the cash register this summer.
Americans for Tax Reform, which rarely met a tax it likes, has put out an "Obama Tax Hike Exemption Card," which (in theory) exempts "Americans making less than $250,000 from any form of tax increase signed into law by President Barack Obama."
"This card a tangible reminder that Obama has deliberately broken his central campaign promise not to raise any form of taxes on Americans earning less than $250,000," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, in a release. "The last President to break his tax pledge - Bush 41 - served only one term."
If you'd like to give one of these cards a test run, here's how it works: If you make under $250,000 and find yourself facing any of the new taxes highlighted by ATR ("Tax on Indoor Tanning Services," "Medicine Cabinet Tax," "Special Needs Kids Tax," etc.), you present the card and, if challenged "politely ask, 'Excuse me, but are you calling President Obama a liar?'"
No guarantees, of course.
Kagan: It's Fine If Law Bans Books Because Government Won't Really Enforce It
Who's switchboard you gonna melt? Who are you gonna vote out of office? Kagan? She'll never be up for election.
'Recovery Summer' continues...
Stocks and interest rates tumble on fears that recovery will fade; Consumer confidence slumps
Associated Press -
Stocks and interest rates tumbled Tuesday after signs of slowing economies around the world spooked traders.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell about 235 points in afternoon trading to drop below 10,000 for the first time since June 10. The Dow and other major indexes each lost more than 2 percent.
Stocks began the day by following Asian and European markets lower. Asian markets fell after an index that forecasts economic activity for China was revised lower. And then European indexes fell sharply after Greek workers walked off the job to protest steep budget cuts.
Then, shortly after U.S. trading began, the market was hit with news that consumer confidence fell sharply this month because of worries about jobs and the overall economy. The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index fell to 52.9 from a revised 62.7 in May. It was the steepest drop since February and economists polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast only a modest dip.
The CIA's Entertainment Industry Liason
Operation Mockingbird in effect.
- CIA.gov -
As an organization that plays a key role in America’s defense, the CIA is a frequent subject of books, motion pictures, documentaries, and other creative ventures. For years, artists from across the entertainment industry — actors, authors, directors, producers, screenwriters, and others — have been in touch with the CIA to gain a better understanding of our intelligence mission. Our goal is an accurate portrayal of the men and women of the CIA, and the skill, innovation, daring, and commitment to public service that defines them.
If you are part of the entertainment industry, and are working on a project that deals with the CIA, the Agency may be able to help you. We are in a position to give greater authenticity to scripts, stories, and other products in development. That can mean answering questions, debunking myths, or arranging visits to the CIA to meet the people who know intelligence — its past, present, and future. In some cases, we permit filming on our headquarters compound. (Please visit our Headquarters Virtual Tour.) We can also provide stock footage of locations within and around our main building.
Intelligence is challenging, exciting, and essential. To better convey that reality, the CIA is ready for a constructive dialogue with a broad range of creative talents.
For further information, please contact our Entertainment Industry Liaison.
Panetta: Afghan insurgents show no real interest in reconciliation talks
As if they're under any obligation. You know, because it's THEIR COUNTRY.
- Washington Post -
CIA Director Leon Panetta said Sunday that U.S. officials have not seen "any firm intelligence" that insurgent groups in Afghanistan are interested in reconciliation, and he dismissed reports that a top militant leader is open to a Pakistan-brokered agreement.
"We have seen no evidence that they are truly interested in reconciliation where they would surrender their arms, where they would denounce al-Qaeda, where they would really try to become part of that society," Panetta said on ABC's "This Week." "My view is that . . . unless they're convinced the United States is going to win and that they are going to be defeated, I think it is very difficult to proceed with a reconciliation that is going to be meaningful."
Gulf oil spill: Could 'toxic storm' make beach towns uninhabitable?
Residents fear mass relocations should a hurricane kick the Gulf oil spill onto resort towns. ‘Hazmat cards’ are a hot commodity among residents, since they could be the key to return.
CS Monitor -
Ron Greve expects the worst is yet to come in the oil spill drama that is haranguing beach towns all along the US Gulf Coast. So, like a growing number of residents, the Pensacola Beach solar-cell salesman took a hazardous materials class and received a “hazmat card” upon graduation.
Those cards, says Mr. Greve, could become critical in coming weeks and months. In the case of a hurricane hitting the 250-mile wide slick and pushing it over sand dunes and into beach towns, residents fear they’ll face not only mass evacuations, but potential permanent relocation.
Storm-wizened locals know that it can take days, even weeks, for roads to open and authorities to allow residents to return to inspect the damage and start to rebuild after a hurricane moves through.
OPEC Warns War With Iran Would Cause 'Unlimited' Oil Price Hike
What better way to spur the economic collapse and shove boobus into total destitution?
- Fox "News" -
World energy needs will spike by more than 50 percent by 2030 but adequate oil reserves, conservation and new methods of recovery mean supply will keep pace with demand, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said Thursday.
Still, OPEC's secretary general acknowledged that dangers to steady supply exist. Addressing one — the threat of a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran because of its nuclear defiance — he warned that his organization was unprepared — and unable — to make up for resulting oil shortfalls.
"It is impossible to replace the production of Iran," OPEC's No. 2 producer, Abdalla Salem El-Badri told reporters at the presentation of the organization's long term oil market outlook. “The prices would go unlimited ... I can’t give you a number.”
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