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The world is not evil. Turn off CNN, Fox, MSNBC, WaPo, NYT, the comedy news, just turn them all off. They are not news. They are propaganda.

Start looking for sites like Consortium News, Truthdig, WSWS, Counterpunch, etc.

Anyone who thinks these giveaways to big corporations for supposed reward (jobs, media exposure, etc.) needs to listen to the Citations Needed Podcast, particularly Episode 20, "How Sports Are Used to Fleece Public Trusts".

There's a good reason Amazon's HQ search was often called Bezos' "quest to find America's Dumbest Mayor". Looks like he found more than one.

My heart goes out to the people. Maybe it's not too late to replace your representatives and undo this.. :(

When their black children don't have black fathers nearly 90% of the time, tell them it's because of something white men do to them.

Actually, that is one factor. See this, for example.

Another factor is the differential incarceration rates for black men. For more background on that issue, see The New Jim Crow , by Michelle Alexander.

On the other hand, I'm not at all sure what "black children don't have black fathers" is supposed to mean. I can think of at least three definitions. None of them hits 90%.

Yeah, Apple would never do that.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2...

https://www.counterpunch.org/2...
"David Noble: ... And again, going back to your first question, the purpose of peer review is prior censorship and I believe very strongly that if people want to criticize something that you write or I write, they have every right to do that AFTER itâ(TM)s published not before itâ(TM)s published. To me thatâ(TM)s the critical issue."

Search on "peer review is censorship" for similar opinion pieces.

This is not to defend any journals being misleading though...

President Trump really isn't establishment. He is an outsider to both national and Washington politics. He doesn't represent the interests of the traditional political establishment and when his two terms are up will go back to civilian life, likely never venturing into politics again. He isn't a life long, career politician or bureaucrat.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/14/the-ruling-classs-hatred-of-trump-is-different-than-yours/

More than fifty Republican "national security" "elites" ha-ve joined several top Republican office-holders, a good number of typically Republican newspaper editorial boards, and the "liberal" New York Times' editors in proclaiming Trump too stupid, sexist, juvenile, racist, volatile, ignorant, and vicious to be trusted with the keys to the White House.

Not a single solitary Fortune 100 chief executive endorsed Trump or donated to his campaign.

"The election of Donald Trump was an assault on the federal bureaucracy"

Anyone else find it ironic that the article that says to leave Facebook says "Join the debate on Facebook" at the bottom? https://www.counterpunch.org/2...

The way this works is that Google buys 120% of the power it needs from these renewable producers. It pays the grid operator to deliver 120% of its power requirement to its various data centers. It pays the grid to deliver the whole 120%. If Google only uses 100% of the power it is paying to have delivered, there is an additional 20% of power being fed into the grid. More likely, the renewable plants are delivering 200% or more of Google's instantaneous usage during the sunlight hours and that excess power get delivered to other consumers.

None of this makes sense. I don't see how it was moderated high

How do you "pay the grid operator to deliver 120% of its power requirement to its various data centers"? The grid doesn't just push power, something has to be consuming it. How could they deliver 20% more power than is actually used?

"If Google only uses 100% of the power it is paying to have delivered, there is an additional 20% of power being fed into the grid"
Huh? They used 100% of the power they payed for, what "additional 20%" is there?

"More likely, the renewable plants are delivering 200% or more of Google's instantaneous usage during the sunlight hours and that excess power get delivered to other consumers"
What a mess.

This is a much simpler story.
Google is buying Renewable Energy Credits as it clearly says on their blog post
https://www.blog.google/topics...

From another article"
https://www.counterpunch.org/2...

Despite their claims, none of the companies in the RE100 list is actually going to receive all of its energy from renewable sources. The “100% renewable” label is a façade, a marketing gimmick used by corporations to pretend they are the good guys while their unfettered thirst for profits continues unopposed. This corporate lie is enabled by the abuse of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) which allow companies to buy their way into “green” without having to change any of their practices. Here is Google’s actual claim:

“Google will buy, on an annual basis, the same amount of MWh of renewable energy as the MWh of electricity that we consume for our operations around the world” [3].

Behold the magic of the RECs. When a renewable energy facility creates one MWh of energy, it not only creates electricity, it also gets a certificate, a REC, which states that one MWh of clean energy was created. The REC can then be sold, either together with the electricity or separate from it. The purchaser of the REC can then claim to have bought “green energy” without having ever done so. This means that you can buy 100 MWhs from your local utility provider, most likely produced in coal or natural gas power plants, and as long as you also buy 100MWhs worth of RECs, you can claim to be “powered by 100% renewables” even if that clearly is not the case. In that sense, RECs are the ultimate virtue signalers. They allow corporations to proudly wear the green badge without having to change in any way their energy consumption.

Identity politics is a tool (one of many) to keep the proles divided and distracted and bickering amongst themselves. When the entire world is partitioned into a giant Venn diagram of competing "identities" - each obsessed over which group among them is the most oppressed - there's zero chance of mustering up the will or numbers to tackle any problems that actually matter, and the 'elites' are free to plunder the world at their pleasure.

Just imagine a left wing group trying to get something like OWS going in 2018. Even their one day Vagina Cosplay March nearly collapsed under the weight of unchecked white privilege and cultural appropriation.

The world is heating up, we will survive.
Maybe, maybe not ...
https://arctic-news.blogspot.ch/2017/02/warning-of-mass-extinction-of-species-including-humans-within-one-decade.html
We've got methane releases in mid-winter this year ...
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/01/12/global-warming-stirs-the-methane-monster/

By the way, how does an errant anonymous coward get tagged as "Insightful".
Of course climate changes - but it's changing so FUCKING fast that we're going to destroy our biosphere.

Oh, well, it was nice here for a while, while it lasted ... it was the worst of times, it was the best of times ...

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/01/12/global-warming-stirs-the-methane-monster/

In the arctic, "On average, it was 12.96C or 23.35F warmer during the period from October 1 to December 30, 2017 (red line), compared to the same days in 1981-2011."
The spikes first started up in late 2010.
The worst-case IPCC scenario projects a mean temperature rise that would take average global temperature beyond 20 degrees Celsius this century, an obviously catastrophic scenario. Yet, the IPCC scenarios fail to include the many feedbacks that accelerate temperature rises, such as large abrupt releases from methane hydrates. In fact, the IPCC miserably failed to warn about the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice.

https://geo-engineering.blogspot.ch/2012/02/how-much-time-is-there-left-to-act.html

It is perfectly clear from the graphs that the methane build up in the Arctic is mainly a result of increasing earthquake activity along the Gakkel Ridge caused by global warming induced worldwide expansion of the Earth’s crust due to the carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere which is enhanced by the heating up of the Arctic ocean due to the high global warming potential of the methane (Light 2011). This close relationship between the Gakkel Ridge earthquake activity, the destabilisation of the Arctic methane hydrates and the NASA GISS surface temperature anomalies has already been clearly demonstrated (Carana, 2011b; Light 2011).

If I was a medical doctor I would say that the patient has a terminal illness and is expected to die of an extreme fever between 2038 and 2050.

As this corresponds with my personal life expectancy, I'm only going to see the start of it.
All the current youth ... well, sorry, guys ...

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/13/the-u-s-is-not-a-democracy-it-never-was/

You don't even know what a democracy looks like.

Calm down, we've got much worse methane problems to deal with now ...
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/01/12/global-warming-stirs-the-methane-monster/
After a few decades, there's nothing left alive on Earth anyway if we don't work out how to sequester that shit ... ... and right fucking fast too.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/13/the-u-s-is-not-a-democracy-it-never-was/

"The problem, however, is that there is no contradiction or supposed loss of democracy because the United States simply never was one. This is a difficult reality for many people to confront, and they are likely more inclined to immediately dismiss such a claim as preposterous rather than take the time to scrutinize the material historical record in order to see for themselves. Such a dismissive reaction is due in large part to what is perhaps the most successful public relations campaign in modern history. What will be seen, however, if this record is soberly and methodically inspected, is that a country founded on elite, colonial rule based on the power of wealth—a plutocratic colonial oligarchy, in short—has succeeded not only in buying the label of “democracy” to market itself to the masses, but in having its citizenry, and many others, so socially and psychologically invested in its nationalist origin myth that they refuse to hear lucid and well-documented arguments to the contrary."

I dare you to read it through ... ... and think.

Furthermore you demand evidence of Russian involvement in Ukraine but provide none for the Western over throw of the Ukraine government.

That's like asking for evidence that the Bush Administration was full of crap about Iraq's WMD's and role in 911. Remedial current events here.

Before the coup, the assistant Secretary of State was on video bragging about spending $5 billion to 'give Ukraine the future it deserves' - and then Americans whine about imaginary interference in our elections. The same assistant secretary of state was also recorded picking post-coup leaders.

The United States immediately recognized the junta as illegitimate after the blatantly unconstitutional vote to remove Yanukovych from power, which itself was based on a known false flag operation:

• "So the chief of the government's security forces, the head of the opposition's security forces, and the snipers themselves all admit the snipers were killing both protesters and police."

And if that wasn't enough, the Vice President's son woke up one morning and just happened to find himself a top executive at a Ukraine energy company.

• "Isn't that a bit fishy? Why do you say that?

  Because he's the vice-president's son! That's a coincidence. "This is totally based on merit," said Burisma's chairman, Alan Apter.

  He doesn't sound very Ukrainian. He's American, as is the other new board member, Devon Archer.

  Who? Devon Archer, who works with Hunter Biden at Rosemont Seneca partners, which is half owned by Rosemont Capital, a private equity firm founded by Archer and Christopher Heinz.

  Who? Christopher Heinz...John Kerry's stepson."

The IMF also picked up their entire book of rules and threw it in a paper shredder to give the illegitimate government a legitimate loan:

• The IMF broke four of its rules by lending to Ukraine:
  (1) Not to lend to a country that has no visible means to pay back the loan (the "No More Argentinas" rule, adopted after the IMF's disastrous 2001 loan to that country).
  (2) Not to lend to a country that repudiates its debt to official creditors (the rule originally intended to enforce payment to U.S.-based institutions).
  (3) Not to lend to a country at war - and indeed, destroying its export capacity and hence its balance-of-payments ability to pay back the loan. Finally
  (4), not to lend to a country unlikely to impose the IMF's austerity "conditionalities." Ukraine did agree to override democratic opposition and cut back pensions, but its junta proved too unstable to impose the austerity terms on which the IMF insisted.

So the United States only spent billions to subvert Ukraine's democracy, recognized a blatant coup as a legitimate impeachment, immediately gave billions in aid to the junta, and then sends the highest number of troops to Eastern Europe under the premise that Russia is a threat.

And American Exceptionalists like yourself just eat that shit up. With a spoon. You didn't learn a damned thing from the lies about Iraq and Afghanistan, did you?

Of course you only hear this from the usual suspects on the alt-right: Breitbart, Alternet, Counterpunch, World Socialist Website, etc...

They're all alt-right now, along with feminists who support women and gays who oppose getting thrown off rooftops and Jews who oppose being exterminated from their own homeland. If you didn't get the memo, expect to lose your job and be blacklisted across Silicon Valley while they import foreigners to replace you.

Ha, so that 'miracle' played itself out quite a bit when the Pilgrims tried building their Communism and then almost died from hunger because that's what Communism (any collectivism actually) does, it removes personal responsibility together with personal ownership and then everybody suffers.

You seem to be confusing inexperience with the mechanisms of survival in an unfamiliar place with the methodology of organization.

Most likely, a deliberate choice, meant to advance your ideological cause under a cloak of altered reality.

It wasn't until the people become selfish that USA succeeded.

What are you talking about? Plenty of selfish people existed in the USA, they didn't miraculously find success. Many of them tried and failed, without the benefit of anyone like say, Squanto.

You can read lots of articles about the subject.

Of course, you won't, but that's hardly surprising.

From https://www.counterpunch.org/2... :

"... there was a recent high-profile alleged rape case in Germany which was not a fake story and revealed much about the way some news is presented in the western media in bias against the admirable Ms Merkel."

See the word "admirable" there? That's absolutely unnecessary and unacceptable for a news story. Just tell me the facts, and let me decide whether Angela Merkel is "admirable" or not, and your "unbiased" source is not doing that. That single word tells me that the author of the piece is not politically unbiased, but has an agenda, and I need to be aware of that if I'm going to use his writing as a basis for my forming an opinion.

I am glad you raised that point. The main thing you have missed is that the article in question has no pretence at all to be a "news story". Indeed, it is obviously and unmistakeably opinion. Brian Cloughley has had a long and distinguished military career; the very first time I came across his name was in 2003 when Tony Blair had asserted that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons that could be ready to attack us within 45 minutes. Mr Cloughley wrote an article stating that he had been an officer in charge of NATO tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, and it took his highly-trained men several hours to do such a job. Thus Blair's claims were shown to be ridiculous. However, no mainstream newspaper or magazine or Web site would publish Mr Cloughley's article.

One other thing: when I read the article you cite, I boggled at the description of Frau Merkel as "admirable". My opinion of her is entirely different. But Mr Cloughley's praise gave me pause; I thought that if he thought her admirable, my judgment might be premature and ill-informed.

That is the thing about a world in which speech is free. Many different people express their various opinions, and we may agree strongly with some while disagreeing with others. That provides a system of checks and balances that helps us to moderate our views and get gradually closer to the truth.

"In case you think my suggested sources are politically biased, I disagree."

Here's an example of the problem that I have with one of your "unbiased" sources:

From https://www.counterpunch.org/2... :

"... there was a recent high-profile alleged rape case in Germany which was not a fake story and revealed much about the way some news is presented in the western media in bias against the admirable Ms Merkel."

See the word "admirable" there? That's absolutely unnecessary and unacceptable for a news story. Just tell me the facts, and let me decide whether Angela Merkel is "admirable" or not, and your "unbiased" source is not doing that. That single word tells me that the author of the piece is not politically unbiased, but has an agenda, and I need to be aware of that if I'm going to use his writing as a basis for my forming an opinion.

The gentleman has a history of pushing nuclear power beyond reason. Somewhat angry article about him:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/09/lost-in-bonkers-the-latest-episode-in-pro-nuclear-quackery/

The Most Important Question About ISIS That Nobody Is Asking:
Who is buying ISIS oil?

U.S. General: West Created ISIS

General Wesley Kanne Clark, Sr., former Supreme Allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) during the war against Yugoslavia and presidential candidate, revealed recently on CNN that the Islamic State (ISIS) was âoefunded by our friends and allies in order to fight Hezbollah.â

Top 10 Indications or Proofs ISIS is a US-Israeli Creation

How the US Helped Create Al Qaeda and ISIS

I wasn't talking about the Pan Am Flight 103 incident, that happened decades before the attack on Lybia. I was talking about the propaganda that was fed to the public opinion in 2011.

I don't see why we should give into your definition of what's on par with Trump's claim of bugged phones, nor is it controversial that Trump was tapped before he was POTUS. This whole reaction is more about manufactured outrage and distraction from real issues.

But Obama certainly did lie (plenty of variations of "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan." despite millions of Americans seeing their plans terminated which were lies of commission), and commit extrajudicial murder (the so-called 'Terror Tuesday' meetings, as the New York Times tells us, had former President Obama personally selecting targets for assassination. Some of the people killed in these drone attacks include Americans Anwar Awlaki and his 16-year-old son. Others killed in drone attacks are overwhelmingly completely unsuspected innocents who happen to be in the vicinity of the kill zone where the bomb goes). Obama lied by omission about these drone war consequences, but he made time to crack wise about death-by-drone at one of his Correspondent's dinners wherein he quipped about threatening a boy band his daughters enjoyed with death-by-drone ("You'll never see it coming..."). Pres. Obama called the Iraq war a "dumb war" and then kept it going for his entire term (this choice helped make his the first US President to be at war his entire term in office). Oh, don't worry: Pres. Trump is down with all of these policies. Trump apparently plans to keep HMOs intact and in charge of American healthcare with his own spin away from universalizing Medicare (we're learning about the details of this now but the broad strokes are clear) despite what he told "60 Minutes" about universal healthcare. Universalizing Medicare ala HR676 would be useful, is widely approved by Americans, is something real progressives should champion (particularly now) instead of knuckling under to more HMO rule, and would (by design) make it illegal for HMOs to cover the same care covered by Medicare (America's extant single-payer system). But passing HR676 into law would also ensure these HMOs wouldn't fund Democratic and Republican Party campaigns. And on war, Pres. Trump recently had Awlaki's 8-year-old daughter killed in a drone-led campaign in which the Navy SEAL Team 6 shot her in the throat and let her bleed to death. And there's no sign the US is ever leaving Iraq. Not only are these issue far more important than someone's manufactured outrage over Trump's tweet about spying on his calls, they point out how the similarities across administrations on significant issues far outnumber and outweigh the differences between administrations. And this is no accident.

Getting back to pointing out how much manufactured outrage works to obscure more important issues: The NSA's slogan "Sniff It All, Collect It All, Know It All, Process It All, Exploit It All" covers the situation quite well. That slogan is not "Collect some of it, Process most of it, Exploit things here or there but certainly not Trump Tower-related data". So it's perfectly reasonable Trump's communications were tapped. As RT's "The Resident" pointed out (using slightly different words than the next quote) and Ted Rall astutely point out "Of course Obama tapped Trump. Snowden told us. Obama tapped everyone!". German Chancellor Angela Merkel didn't like it when it was revealed her conversations were also being spied upon. The controversy is that the US taps so much regardless of whether they're abiding by US law. That's a far more important point.

Any outrage over Trump's reaction is a pointer to how much that person wasn't paying attention during the Snowden revelations and its consequences (which are ongoing to this day).

Every passing day with every passing bit of left-wing craziness over Trump's win makes me that much more glad that Hillary lost.

Leftists? Leftists knew the Democrats was no lesser evil, not this time. Hillary was a corrupt right wing trainwreck of hubris and incompetence - surprised you aren't in love with her, given your screen name.

Trump is going to be president in a few more weeks because he went to Hillary's left on trade and won the Rust Belt.

I can't think of any other possibilities.

I can. Distrusting mainstream opinion and then reading some 'doubter' book should be enough. There are plenty enough questions one can ask to make people doubt. The idea that it's all very simple is false.
I mentioned Hilberg in another post but here's an article by Finkelstein on Hilberg arguing the same: that it's easy to raise doubts that can trip the nonexperts. He also mentions what garbage people have gotten away if as long as they acknowledged the Holocaust.
In the middle east it's more of 'Like I'm going to give the Jews the satisfaction of acknowledging the Holocaust! No way!' So that depends a lot on whether Israel has been bombing anyone recently.

Some of their criticisms are fair. However:

The group has a web-browser plug-in that is supposed to highlight sources of Russian propaganda online, but a number of observers on Twitter noted that this blacklist of sites includes several legitimate left-wing sites such as CounterPunch and Truth Out.

I ended up blacklisting both of those sites on my Google News feed when they basically became indistinguishable from RT and Sputnik. These days they extensively source from Russian propaganda outlets, as well as using a lot of writers who also write for Russian propaganda outlets. The group's site explicitly states that they're not just listing sources, but also websites with a history of repeating Russian propaganda outlets and talking points.

Just looking at the front page of CounterPunch right now, to pick an example, I see this writing stuff like "In Ukraine, where the neoconservatives around Clinton and Nuland funded and brought about the overthrow of the elected government right on Russia’s borders, provoking a fast and unequivocal response by President Vladimir Putin (part of whose navy was always stationed in an important base in the Crimea), it is common (fictional) knowledge in the Euro-Media that the entire war there is about “Russian aggression”..."

Of course, that's mild compared to a lot of what I've seen. Some of which contains quotes almost verbatim from Sputnik and RT articles. This particular case here is just talking points.

We're not "on the verge" of going to war in Syria, we're already there and financing, training and arming the "moderate rebels" for a decade.
In other circumstances, these moderate rebels would be known by the more common-day "terrorist", since what they want is to terrorise the population into no longer supporting their secular government.
And yes, it is all ONLY abut the pipeline. Two days after Assad refused the west's offer in favor of his traditional ally, Russia, the USA launched their offensive.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/09/15/assads-death-warrant/

"...make sure that those reserves continue to be denominated in US Dollars that are recycled into US Treasuries and US financial assets. This is the basic recipe for maintaining US dominance in the Middle East and for extending America’s imperial grip on global power into the future."

Just like Gaddafi and Hussein, it does not impress the empire when you attempt to undermine our currency. We will resort to anything to maintain our undeserved privileges, that's what the armed forces are primarily used for these days. We are all complicit.
It's all about someone else's money, and we pretend it's about "defending freedom" and "defeating them over there so we don't have to fight them over here."
It's bullshit, and always has been.

Alright, maybe I'm too harsh, but the opposition supported the coup against the elected government of Morsi. One can rightly say they were being manipulated but I think that's a thin excuse. I think there is not enough trust in democracy in Egypt to make it work. The west is particularly fickle on the matter , in part because we're anti islam, and often antireligious, but if you look at Venezuela , that is also a democracy with a very poor majority, and we can't even perceive of it as a democracy.

I think this journalist gives a good picture of what happened http://www.counterpunch.org/20...

Here is a story AP published that turned out to be fiction. It originated with Jon Ralston and was quickly picked up by AP and then other major media outlets. No corroboration ever materialized for the story, despite there being 3000 cameras in the room, and those that streamed live told a different story. The only media outlet to retract the story was NPR, and PBS fired Ralston.

Note also that this is the story that the DNC leadership instructed its members to pass around "without attribution", i.e. covertly smear Sanders with it. It's also the email that Assange has singled out as the most damming.

And also remember that much of the brouhaha over the leaked DNC emails was over collusion with the media.

In short, if you aren't yet skeptical of mainstream media this year, you need to start paying closer attention.

Ah, but you see, the report that was used to justify the bans (the universal ban has NOT been applied) turns out to be a political hot potato.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/03/the-biased-report-that-led-to-banning-russian-athletes/
"The Mclaren report and WADA decisions have been excessively influenced by sensational and exaggerated media reports."
"There is significant evidence that the assertion that doping in Russia is “state sponsored” is substantially false, no matter how many times it’s repeated."

Let me do that for you again, one time, to make sure you understand:

"There is significant evidence that the assertion that doping in Russia is “state sponsored” is substantially false, no matter how many times it’s repeated."

Don't believe the hype - it's just a sequel to the previous "Olympic scandal".

ALL countries have athletes that engage in doping, it is easy to cheat the tests, and its not going to stop because of a falsified last-minute BLAME-THE-RUSSIANS scaremongering tactic. Doesn't anyone remember FloJo? Did the whole American team get kicked out?
No? Well, color me surprised ...

More likely he did listen to Brzezinski.

Destabilization does have a purpose.

Yes it does have military implications. If anyone doubts that they just need to look at the X37b

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

Must military products be made in the U.S. ? Sure doesn't seem that way

Just ask Magnaquench

http://www.counterpunch.org/20...

Should this be illegal, Yeah.

Could be in response to this 2013 statement by scientists warning of GMO risks?
"Global Scientists Issue Stunning GMO Safety Warning"
http://sustainablepulse.com/20...

A response coordinated by the agtech industry?
"107 Nobel Laureate Attack on Greenpeace Traced Back to Biotech PR Operators"
http://www.counterpunch.org/20...

1. The Zika virus has been Africa and Southeast Asia since forever.

2. They don't seem to have microcephalic cases like Brazil has.

3. The virus was introduced into Brazil sometime around 2015.

4. 2015 Brazil sees a 10x increase in microcephalic cases.

So far that seems compelling that Zika is causing the cases. But why aren't we seeing the same thing in Africa or Asia? It's not like the Zika virus in Brazil has had thousands of years to mutate into a version that causes microcephaly, but not the original strain in Africa and Southeast Asia. It's the same virus.

It's not like the people in Brazil don't have the same "immunity" that people in Africa and Southeast Asian people have -- a large percentage of the Brazilian people *have* West African ancestors where the Zika virus has been found.

Here's an alternate hypothesis: some kind of chemical has been introduced into Brazil in 2015 that's causing the birth defects. Maybe a pesticide that hasn't been properly tested, or a morning sickness drug that wasn't tested.

Citations:

For pesticides and birth defects: http://www.counterpunch.org/20... http://americanpregnancy.org/p... and http://www.beyondpesticides.or...

Pesticides and microcephaly: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... and http://www.gmls.eu/beitraege/1...

For morning sickness drugs: http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/...

Oops, looks like the link is missing in one of those fine submissions. http://www.counterpunch.org/20...

Absolutely true...

See, as one example among thousands, this story (by an American writer):

http://www.counterpunch.org/20...

You will not see any of the awkward facts highlighted in that article anywhere in the Western MSM - ever. Journalists know better than to write such stories, and if they did editors would spike them. Should such a story ever get published, the proprietor would snuff out the careers of journalist and editor alike.

If you read RT and other such sources, however, you will already be aware of the discrepancies, inconsistencies, and facts that simply cannot be explained away. How come an American spy satellite can tell us exactly what happened to the Russian airliner, down to the split second, and can absolutely rule out a missile attack - whereas no such information has ever been revealed about MH17, a year and a half ago? How come the autopsies of the victims of MH17 have been kept secret, and the remains were in sealed coffins so that even their spouses and families could not see them? Why do all discussions of MH17 always contain the compulsory reference to the BUK missile as "Russian-made", although it is standard equipment in Ukraine? Why was MH17 rerouted directly over the battlefield at a time of intense fighting, when several Ukrainian military aircraft had been shot down in the past few days? Where are the air traffic control records, removed hastily by Ukrainian security personnel minutes after MH17 was shot down? Why did American officials, and those of allied nations, unanimously accuse Russia of responsibility within hours, long before any evidence could possibly have been available? And on, and on, and on.

I am still wondering, if a criminal investigation into MH17's destruction is necessary - when will there be a criminal investigation into the deliberate shooting down of Iran Air 655 by the USS Vincennes in 1988? There is not the slightest shadow of doubt who the perpetrators were on that occasion: a US Navy ship that had penetrated Iranian territorial waters illegally (and in defiance of orders), and then proceeded to shoot down a slow, lumbering civilian airliner proceeding on its scheduled route at its scheduled time. The Vice-President of the USA, George H W Bush, publicly declared that, "I will never apologize for the United States — I don't care what the facts are... I'm not an apologize-for-America kind of guy." And the officers and crew of the Vincennes were decorated.

Any cognitive dissonance yet? No, I didn't think so.

Please allow me to repost this thing I wrote on the red site:

AC said:

And there's a whole one candidate who doesn't support [TPP], and he probably won't even win the primaries. No, the TPP is pretty much a done deal at this point because the neo-nobility will never allow Sanders to get elected.

The only serious candidates iirc that oppose it are Sanders and Trump.

Trump is, well, Trump. Crazy. Unelectable. That being said, if Sanders isn't in the running either as a D or I, I don't hear word of a massive write-in campaign, and Trump has the R nomination, why the fsck not. He'll have my vote. It's not like we're electing a dictator. The other two branches of government will keep his crazy at bay.

Sanders might have a good run of it, but there are two things working against him. Firstly, there's the Coronation of Clinton. If she doesn't get the D nomination, I'll be flabbergasted. So then the second thing comes into play. If Sanders stays in the running as an I, that means he no longer gets the votes from the large number of people who just mark “straight ticket D” at the polls.

I think if Sanders got D, he'd win in a landslide. If Trump gets R and Sanders is running as I, Sanders might be the first president since Fillmore (Whig) not to be a D or R, first I since Washington. If Jeb has R and Sanders stays in as I, then Jeb is the next president. Other scenarios are more of a toss-up.

You are probably correct in the end, though. There will be some reason Sanders drops out entirely. If Trump gets R, the Coronation of Clinton will be complete. If Jeb gets R, it may be an actual contest, but an entirely meaningless one since in all probability our next president is from one of the two dynasties without Sanders running as I.

I haven't keep up with the Libertarians as much as I used to, but the only other scenario that can prevent a dynasty presidency next is if Gary Johnson runs as L. Even then, that's a million in one shot. I don't think I even know his position on TPP, but I have been throwing money at the L+G(reen) initiative (Johnson is the main L for that at least and I believe Jill Stein is the main G) to open up the debates to more than just Rs and Ds.

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gewg_ replied:

Jill Stein (a physician), when she debated Mitt Romney during the Massachusetts gubernatorial race, was called "the only adult in the room" by the Boston Globe. So, how "serious" do you want?

Her previous stances against SOPA and PIPA (orig) give an indication that she opposes the likes of TPP.

This guy uses the past tense to acknowledge that the Big 2 parties and Lamestream Media are doing everything they can to make sure no one is aware of her.

She rejected the bootstrap philosophy of extremist free market capitalism. She believed that all people are endowed with certain unalienable rights. That these rights include life, liberty, food, shelter, education, medical care, and the pursuit of happiness.

She supported all public programs which accommodate basic human needs. Food stamps, subsidized housin

...which are pretty much exclusively Muslim...

You mean, when high-ranking Christians in the US come up with things like 'Muhammad was a "demon-possessed pedophile"' (Jerry Vines) and "This man was an absolute wild-eyed fanatic. He was a robber and a brigand." (Pat Robertson, about Muhammed) - then they are not extremists? (from http://www.counterpunch.org/20...).

Here, take some statistics: "Fifty-six percent of domestic terrorist attacks and plots in the U.S. since 1995 have been perpetrated by right-wing extremists, as compared to 30 percent by ecoterrorists and 12 percent by Islamic extremists. Right-wing extremism has been responsible for the greatest number of terrorist incidents in the U.S. in 13 of the 17 years since the Oklahoma City bombing." (http://www.soundvision.com/article/some-statistics-and-facts-on-right-wing-extremism-in-the-united-states)

What "understanding" do you think people lack...

Speaking of understanding, I think it is clear that you haven't got a lot of it. If you want to solve a problem - any problem - then you have to let the real facts guide you, not just the facts that suit your own bigotry. Whatever you may think a religious text has to say about anything, what really matters in the end is the person and the actions, good or bad, performed by that person. Take Buddhism, widely recognised as one of the most pacifistic religions in the world, yet in Myanmar and Thailand there are Buddhists that carry out violent attacks against those from other religions - mostly Muslims, in fact. Or look to the history Christianity for a list of the vilest atrocities you can imagine; all carried out in the name of Christ by men and sometimes women who were deeply sincere in their faith.

This is clearly not a problem of Islam or any other, single religion; it is about people and what kind of background they come from. When you grow up to learn from day one that you are a nothing, a born loser who will never, ever make it, no matter how hard you work or how honest you are, because you are somehow the 'wrong sort' and never get a real opportunity, is it any wonder that you become bitter and hate the society so full of freedoms and opportunities that you can see, but which you can never reach? And when somebody - anybody - comes along pretending to give you the respect and the hope you crave, is it strange that you are willing to follow them, even if, in the end, it implies strapping a bomb-vest on and blowing up yourself and a load of innocent people belonging to the society that never allowed you in?

We clearly can't just roll over and take it from the likes of IS, but if we want to really solve the problem, we have to realise that we, ourselves, play a major role in feeding the fire, because we are unwilling to accept the responsibility we obviously have when we let too many people at the bottom of society down.

Let us see if one of these others suit your tastes, lazy idiot.

http://www.voltairenet.org/art...
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/coldw...
http://www.counterpunch.org/19...
http://web.stanford.edu/class/...

Having a national program that jump starts American science and technology is a great idea, but you can get the same results at less cost using other types of projects.

After all, endless research has proven that we can't do more than one thing at a time. How many people you figure died waiting for replacement organs because of NASA?

And the terraforming of California has already been tried - and it's an utter failure. Already the Colorado river no longer reaches the sea, http://www.counterpunch.org/20... ground level is falling - in some places at a foot per year! - http://www.bakersfieldnow.com/... and now they want Oregon's water as well. They're framing it a sending "surplus water from the Columbia River to California." California doesn't want surplus water - they want all of it, Certainly in every case so far -I suspect they'll want to plant rice paddies if they get Oregon's water. A really bad example you chose.

when did academia get taken over by idiots? now that the gatekeepers are dumb we're fucked and all the smart people just go make money.

Well, actually, academia wasn't taken over by idiots. It was taken over - infiltrated - by smart people who were much more interested in money, prestige and power than in scientific truth.

That's the unfortunate fact about American culture. The USA was founded on the belief that all people (well, all white males of a certain age with property, but that's a small detail) should be treated alike. No titles of royalty, nobility or gentry. No class system. No special distinctions or honours.

The result, which became obvious very early on, was a society in which the only value was money. And money, it turns out, corrodes everything that is honest, decent and worthwhile. Now that culture is flooding the rest of the world - although some nations have done their valiant best to build dykes to keep it out.

"As the sociologist Georg Simmel wrote over a century ago, if you make money the center of your value system, then finally you have no value system, because money is not a value".
– Morris Berman, “The Moral Order”, Counterpunch 8-10 February 2013. http://www.counterpunch.org/20...

This article disagrees with you that the Scandinavian countries practice austerity. http://www.counterpunch.org/20...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/15/whats-really-going-on-at-fukushima/

Currently around 25,000 dead from the Chernobyl fallout.

Fukushima is even more deadly today than when the tsunami first hit. You're just aren't hearing about it any more.
Make your own conclusions about why not ...

What you call "the slow way" is called journalism. Journalism, like scientific work or any other work worth doing, takes time to do. There are plenty of examples of independent journalism being done well, some have already been shared in this thread by others. Here are some more that come to mind: Democracy Now!, NOW with Bill Moyers and Bill Moyers Journal were both quite well done and worth watching reruns/archives (moreso the Journal), CounterPunch, Harry Shearer's weekly Le Show, and The Real News. All of these focus on issues of importance, get more deeply into those issues via interviews with those who have studied the topic in-depth via investigative journalism and those who work in the field, and leave you with pointers to more information you can study yourself. I'm sure there are so many more examples of this work being done well I didn't list but don't let that stop you from trying various sources and reading books (paper books, not DRM'd proprietary-driven computer-based readers that track you, threaten to cut off your reading, or deny you the other freedoms paper grants). You won't agree with everything you see, hear, and read but the point isn't to manufacture your consent, it's to get you thinking critically about the world outside the allowable limits of debate so often featured in mainstream coverage.

"the farcical rape charges have once again been leveled against the Pentagon’s Public Enemy Number One. Julian Assange now stands accused of: (1) not calling a young woman the day after he had enjoyed a night with her, (2) asking her to pay for his bus ticket, (3) having unsafe sex, and (4) participating in two brief affairs in the course of one week" ref.

I think this article may provide some depth and detail to the ideas I was trying to get across:

http://www.counterpunch.org/20...

Anyone who is sincerely interested in understanding the current Ukraine situation, PLEASE READ THIS (published back in March):
http://www.counterpunch.org/20...

Also, please understand that the disputed Eastern part of Ukraine was part of Russia for most of its history. Indeed, in the 10th century, Kiev (the present-day capital of Ukraine) was the first capital of Rus, the forerunner of Russia.

in contrast, note that only a few centuries ago present-day Ukraine was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. (See the top map at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...). The Poles have historically been just as aggressive and territory-hungry as the Russians; possibly more so, as the Russians had many other directions in which to expand (notably the East). It's a serious mistake to think of Poles and Lithuanians as victims and underdogs just because that was their fate in the 20th century. The movie "Taras Bulba" (starring Tony Curtis and Yul Brynner) gives a somewhat Hollywoodized but substantially accurate impression of a time when the Polish nobility ruled and swaggered across the region, imposing their rule on Slavs and Cossacks. The movie was based on a largely factual story of the same name by Gogol.

I am amazed by the extent to which grossly deceptive and misleading accounts of the events in Ukraine have been accepted throughout the West. No one in this story has behaved in a saintly way, but the Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine who wish their areas to be taken back into Russia are surely within their rights. ("When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another...") For decades, Americans supported the right of Northern Irish republicans to become part of the Republic of Ireland; and in a couple of months, citizens of Scotland will be voting on the question of independence. Under Russian law, anyone born in the USSR who speaks Russian has the right to Russian citizenship. And surely if a region is predominantly inhabited by Russian citizens, they have the right to become part of Russia (again)? Why should Russians be condemned to citizenship of a failed state run by violent neo-Nazis just because of an administrative decision taken in Moscow (without their consent) back in the days of the USSR?

You obviously neither understand FPGA programming, HFT, dark pools and the Internalization Business, nor the many, many other ways they do what they do. You follow that bank lobbyist, Paul Krugman, right?

Clue in, sonny. . .

http://www.counterpunch.org/20...

. . . no human would! No wonder she did such a piss poor job on Enron (she lead the DOJ's legal team), when all those offshore debt vehicles they used to hide the debt (similar to how Fastow did it at Continental of Illinois, which was the largest bank failure prior to Enron) should have been easily and legally damning enough, for chrissakes!

Although HFT is front running, even worse to the retail investor is the business of internalization, whereby the major brokerages sell 100% of their retail stock trades, on an almost daily basis, to the top banks and hedge funds (and the largest hedge funds are normally owned by the largest banks) --- where the banks and hedge fund match up those trades internally on their computer systems (know as dark pools) which gives them almost complete command and control in insider information on a swarm basis, and manipulating things to their own profit by how and when they do those matches (matching buyer stocks to seller stocks, etc.).

Of course, with the existing potential to purchase an unlimited number of commodity futures per category or item, gives the traders and houses extraordinary ability to manipulate things.

Then there's that LIBOR rate rigging: (Madam Brown explains it far better than moi!):

http://www.counterpunch.org/20...

Of course, being able to purchase an unlimited amount of naked swaps (or uncovered credit default swaps) is what precipitated the global economic meltdown (and NO, the subprime market was but a drop in the bucket where securitizations of debt were concerned, and even then 5/6ths of the subprimes were corporate or wealthy individuals).

Of course, then there's the FOREX market rigging, precious metals markets rigging, virtual naked stock short selling thanks to the DTCC's Stock Borrow Program, and . . . .