Sandy Hook JFK Bali Madrid 77 Same? - Morris

Are we being collectively herded into a way of life by a particular group of people, are they continually repeating the same methods for massaging public opinion? Whether it is to remove Iraq war opposition (Bali) or to civilize the Afghanis (911) or to remove the weapons from Americans (Sandy Hook)? Source

Naked On The Grass - An Imaginary Tale by Deek Jackson

Inflation Propaganda Exposed

SchiffReport: The CPI is no longer a tool to accurately measure inflation, but an instrument of propaganda the government uses to hide accelerating inflation from the public and financial markets. Modest CPI increases over the past several years do not reflect an absence of inflation, but a design flaw in the index that fails to fully capture the magnitude of price increases. Central bankers drawing economic conclusions regarding inflation and monetary policy based on this highly flawed data point are making a major policy error.

Invasion of the body-politic snatchers

The Slog: During the last Government, there were many cries of foul about the number of unelected advisers popping up all over the place. The most infamously dense and dangerous of these was Lord Birt, a man who once proposed to Tony Blair a reform whereby the whole “system of government could be speeded up” if some Cabinet votes were allowed to replace a majority in Parliament. He was a man ahead of his time, Birt.
The trend was, many of us protested, oligarchy and kitchen Cabinet rule by the back door. But in 2013, the present Government airily invites them through the front door, and simply ignores the criticism.
The latest example of the syndrome in the DfE is perhaps the most brazen so far. Michael Gove’s appointment of Conservative donor and private education enthusiast John Nash as an education minister had this tweet getting record RT numbers on Twitter two days ago: ‘Venture capitalist donates £300k to Tories. Takes on academy. Gets life peerage. Becomes education minister’. Just when you thought there was no point to Twitter, you realise there is.
Thus the privatisation of politics continues apace, and lobbying rules the roost: give £3.5m to the Conservatives, get planning laws relaxed; make Bottomley your discreet private health sector cypher in the Lords, make sure her acolyte Hunt gets the Health secretaryship, get lots of cooperation from rich private health insurers; support Murdoch’s bid for BSkyB, get Newscorp support for the Tory election bid. ‘Open for business’ is the new graft.

Tawergha: Libya's Dirty Secret in Focus

NATO's 'humanitarian intervention' in Libya was supposed to bring peace while, every day, stories come out highlighting the tribal divide engulfing the country. A recent report by Amnesty International shows that human rights abuses are rampant in Libya and that the country is in chaos. Since the beginning of the revolution, there has been racist hatred and violent acts against black people in the country.

Noam Chomsky: "The Emerging World Order: its roots, our legacy"

SISSAschool: On September 17, 2012, Noam Chomsky held a public lecture with the title "The Emerging World Order: its roots, our legacy" at Politeama Rossetti in Trieste. Source

French Mali Intervention a Disaster - Yahya

Morris: Yahya addresses the destabalising factors and the wrongness of foreign military intervention. Amazingly this was recorded in October in 2012 - It is so prophetic it could have been recorded today! At the time it was only uploaded for a few hours as I (perhaps mistakenly) thought it was not compelling enough. Source

'Marriagephile, not homophobe': Hundreds of thousands protest against gay marriage law in Paris

RT: Several hundred thousand demonstrators filled the streets of Paris during a protest against President Francois Hollande’s plans to legalize gay marriage later this year. The proposed law would allow same-sex couples to adopt children.
The protesters, many of whom travelled from outside the capital, formed three columns that converged at the Eiffel Tower.
"We love homosexuals but a child must be born from a man and a woman, and the law must respect that,” said Frigide Barjot, the alter ego of comedian Virginie Tellene, the intentionally apolitical face of the protest.

Assad enjoys support of millions across Syria: Mimi al-Laham (aka Syrian Girl)

The Syrian people support President Bashar al-Assad's administration, while rejecting the foreign-armed opposition, a prominent activist tells Press TV. In the background to this, Syria has experienced 21 months of deadly unrest, with the Syrian government saying the chaos is being orchestrated from outside. There are also reports that a very large number of the armed militants are foreign nationals.  Press TV has conducted an interview with Mimi al-Laham, a Syrian activist, from Dubai, to further discuss the issue. Source

Remembering Aaron Swartz - Commons man

By G.F.: TO CALL Aaron Swartz gifted would be to miss the point. As far as the internet was concerned, he was the gift. In 2001, aged just 14, he helped develop a new version of RSS feeds, which enable blog posts, articles and videos to be distributed easily across the web. A year later he was working with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the world wide web, and others on enhancing the internet through the Semantic Web, in which web-page contents would be structured so that the underlying data could be shared and reused across different online applications and endeavours. At the same time he was part of a team, composed of programmers like himself (albeit none quite as youthful), lawyers and policy wonks, that launched Creative Commons, a project that simplified information-sharing through free, easy-to-use copyright licences.
Most of this he did for little or no compensation. One exception was Reddit, though he later sounded almost contrite about the riches showered on him and his colleagues by Condé Nast, the publisher of Vogue and over a dozen other prominent lifestyle magazines, which bought the popular social news site in 2006. In any case, he wasn't a good fit for corporate life, he said, and left a few months later—or, depending on whom you talk to, was asked to leave. But the cash did let him focus on his relentless struggle to liberate data for online masses to enjoy for free.

CEO of German Multinational: Costs Of Monetary Union Too High

By Wolf Richter: Bernd Scheifele, CEO of HeidelbergCement—one of the world’s largest producers of construction materials with nearly 55,000 employees at 2,500 locations in over 40 countries—lashed out against European politicians and their inability to bring budgets under control. But he reserved the most devastating judgment for the euro itself.
HeidelbergCement’s long history—it was founded in 1873—almost ended during the financial crisis. For more than 100 years, the company had expanded in Germany. But in 1977, it began to branch out internationally by acquiring Vicat in France and Lehigh Cement in the US. At the end of the 1980s, it invested heavily in Central and Eastern Europe, then moved via acquisitions into Northern Europe, Africa, and Asia—piling on debt as it went. The acquisition spree culminated in 2007, when it paid GBP 9.5 billion for Hansen plc., a British company with 26,000 employees. HeidelbergCement had become one of the world’s largest producers of cements and aggregates, the two key raw materials for concrete.
Then the financial crisis unfolded. Worldwide revenues dropped from €14.2 billion in 2008 to €11.1 billion in 2009, and net profits from €1.92 billion to €168 million. Staggering under nearly €12 billion in net debt, the company laid off 15,000 people. Shares plunged from €120 in May 2007 to €20 in early 2009. Credit became scarce. On the verge of bankruptcy, the company underwent some financial re-engineering that included a capital increase and the issuance of 62.5 million new shares.
It survived. By December 2011, revenues had recovered to €12.9 billion. Net profit approached €1 billion. Net debt had been reduced to €7.8 billion. And shares have more than doubled since their 2009 lows.
“The result of hard work, hard efforts to save money,” Scheifele told the FAZ. The crisis, “an absolutely exceptional situation,” had surprised him. Until then, he said, it was “hard to imagine” that sales would plunge “in almost all countries simultaneously.” But they did.

What Happens When China Goes “Gray”?

By Mark W. Frazier: Developed economies are beginning to struggle with aging populations and more retirees. China may soon join them.

As China's major trading partners try to control rising public pension and health care costs, they may not realize they also have an important stake in China's ongoing struggle to fashion a safety net for its own rapidly aging population. Many observers assume China has no pensions or healthcare insurance for the 185 million people over the age of 60 (13.7% of population), the highest official retirement age for most workers. They may well believe this explains why Chinese families save so much–more than 30% of household income–and therefore spend less on consumer goods, including imports from trading partners.
But this line of reasoning is faulty because China already has large and rapidly growing public pension and health insurance programs in the cities, and is in the process of extending them to rural areas. It's time that China's trading partners, especially the United States, understand what this means for China's economic future and, by extension, their own.

Scientists warn Obama administration about climate change in new draft report

By Marco Volpe: The National Climate Assessment has sounded the alarm to the US government with a new draft report over 1,000 pages long about the dangers of the intensification of global warming in the upcoming years and decades.
Editor’s note: for a dissenting opinion, see this opinion article. If you agree or disagree you’re free to submit your own article on this or any other subject.
On the scent of the dramatic report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which flagged 2012 as the hottest year on record by far, Obama is facing still more pressure on the climate issue.
An over 1,000-page report by the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee, called “the National Climate Assessment,” has urged the White House to take immediate action to curb the intensification of global warming.
The report made clear that the steps taken by Obama so far to slow down emissions have not been “close to sufficient”.
The body’s findings aren’t original, stressing the effects of the anthropogenic impact on the environment, such as the rise of weather extremes and the rise of the sea level.
The assessment said that temperatures will keep rising and offered different scenarios for the future — including temperatures rising between 2.8 to 5.6 degrees Celsius (or an increase between around 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit) after 2050 if emissions climb further.

So grateful I am warm thinking of homeless elderly and others

The artist taxi driver