Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Wednesday, 24 December 2014


 Daily Headlines
I'm fully aware of all the costly misconceptions, incorrect assumptions, mistakes, and errors that people make when going on Medicare. Unfortunately, much of this bad information is passed on from retiree to retiree and, therefore, thousands of dollars are thrown away due to poor choices made when going on Medicare. My role has been to break this chain of bad information and get people pointed in the right direction.

Tortre doesn't for intelligence gathering either from people who have no intelligence to share (like many of the unfortunates confined to Guantanamo for 10 years or more, or from those trained to resist it. Torture has plenty of other uses, which we shall get to in Part 2 of this series. But in the meantime "it doesn't work" doesn't work as a prohibition for US torturers. "Its use is unconstitutional does."
Global warming is a sham, but how?

Just because fracking is now banned in New York doesn't mean the state is frack-free.
Since the release of Senate findings earlier this month, the assumption that the CIA's torture program's sole motive was post-9/11 self-defense has gone virtually unchallenged. There has been almost no recognition that the George W. Bush administration also tortured prisoners for a very different goal: to extract information that could tie al-Qaeda to Saddam Hussein and justify the invasion of Iraq.
Lew is a pauper compared to Weiss. The Treasury nominee reported more than $15 million in compensation in the last two years at Lazard. Like Lew before him, Weiss would receive a massive payout from his firm if he gets a job in government.
For the culture that supports and defends criminality among police to change, the elements that maintain the culture must change. That means that the head of the "snake"-- Pat Lynch has to go. Unions with mentalities that back up criminal police officers have to go.
Torture is not the only secret program that has failed to produce intelligence with integrity -- this failure is true of every part of the secret world from the CIA...
In the months since Michael Brown was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson on August 9, demonstrators have marched, set up street blockades, shut down highways, and faced off against the very police officers they want brought to justice. Grand jury decisions not to indict Wilson, or the NYPD officer who choked Eric Garner to death on film, have sparked what may be a tipping point for people exhausted with the number of deaths at the hands of law enforcement.
US wealth gap largest on record
In 1983, the median net worth of lower-income families was $11,400 (in 2013 dollars). This had fallen to $9,300 in 2013--down nearly 20 percent. Between 2007 (just before the economic crash) and 2013, median net worth for this layer of the population fell nearly 50 percent, down from $18,000.
By Ethan Indigo Smith
Santa Clause Syndrome
New syndrome ignored throughout postmodern history now defined: Santa Clause Syndrome

A strange thing happened to North Korea's already tenuous link to the Internet on Monday: It failed. While perhaps a coincidence, the failure of the country's computer connections began only hours after President Obama declared Friday that the United States would launch a "proportional response" to what he termed an act of "cybervandalism" against Sony Pictures.
With Hanukkah coming to an end, Christmas days away, and people taking time off work, we are in a season of quickened faith. When you watch people exercise that faith, whether lighting candles or attending Midnight Mass, the first thing you see is how surprising it is. You'd think faith would be a simple holding of belief, or a confidence in things unseen, but, in real life, faith is unpredictable and ever-changing. Insecure believers sometimes cling to a rigid and simplistic faith. But confident believers are willing to face their dry spells, doubts, and evolution. Faith as practiced by such people is change. It is restless, growing. It's not right and wrong that changes, but their spiritual state and their daily practice. As the longings grow richer, life does, too. As Wiman notes, "To be truly alive is to feel one's ultimate existence within one's daily existence."
The modus operandi of imperialist propaganda
Zero facts and evidence have been made public to support the claims of North Korean hacking. The isolated Stalinist regime was certainly hostile to the film, a comedy based on the premise that the CIA contracts two American journalists (played by James Franco and Seth Rogen), to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, after he agrees to be interviewed by them.
By Franklin Lamb
Looting has become the greatest threat to our cultural heritage in Syria
Can the worst patrimonial disaster since World War II be stopped?
Congress plans to ring in the new year with a bang. One thing they plan to do is try to fast-track the Keystone XL Pipeline. President Obama can preempt them, give the environmental movement a huge Christmas present, and reject the pipeline today.

Israel's large Palestinian Arab minority is facing the most crucial, and possibly most dangerous, general election in its history, according to analysts. Both the survival of Arab political parties in the Israeli parliament and the status of Palestinian citizens -- who make up one in five of the population -- inside a Jewish state are at stake.
Grimm's unfavorable reputation was drawn back into the news Monday when it was reported he would plead guilty to charges of tax evasion. Pelosi responded Tuesday by calling on House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to urge the embattled representative to remove himself from Congress. "Clearly, Speaker Boehner must insist that Congressman Grimm resign immediately," Pelosi said in a Tuesday statement.
By Michael Roberts
Racism's Deadly Whirlwind
When Belligerent Rhetoric And Murder Collide;And Its Not Done Blowing Its Vitriol Yet
Voters agree with Democrats on most issues. When you word the questions fairly, people want government to fight for them, raise wages, provide a good retirement, protect the environment, make workplaces safe and other items on the progressive policy agenda. They want Social Security expanded. They want help for the less fortunate.

By David Swanson
Resolved: To Stop Imagining that Anything's Been Resolved
The year 2014 will be remembered as yet another year in which we inched closer toward environmental and militarized catastrophe, but also perhaps as a year in which crisis and enlightenment combined to open a few more eyes to the full range of possibilities available.
By Sherwood Ross
Obama Upgrades Nuclear Arsenal For "Direct Confrontation With Russia"
Barack Obama once called for a world "without nuclear weapons" yet today he is modernizing the entire American nuclear arsenal, a policy that will bring cheers predominantly to the "defense" industry.
By Tom Engelhardt
Rebecca Solnit: Challenging the Divine Right of Big Energy
No one would call TomDispatch a traditional website. Still, we do have our traditions. Among them, none is more "traditional" -- a full decade old at a website that just turned 13 this November -- than having Rebecca Solnit end our year.

 Latest Articles
Political Rumbas Start in Cuba
It is not likely that Cubans can hold true to their principles in the face of an unimpeded flood of U.S. junk food, credit gouging, deceptive TV advertising, one-sided fine-print contracts, over promotion of drugs, commercialization of childhood with incessant and often violent programming and other forms of harmful corporate marketing.
Does anyone remember Thorazine? It was an antipsychotic given to mentally ill people, often in institutions, that was so sedating, it gave rise to the term "Thorazine shuffle."

Request for compensation, filed today with Bet Tzedek, the Los Angeles "House of Justice", one of the highest visibility institutions of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, provided evidence that the charity, priding itself as "one of the nation's premier poverty law centers" was a hub of racketeering by Countrywide's Chief Legal Officer Sandor Samuels for almost a decade.

Bashing Critics Of Brutality Betrays Efforts To Help Police
The tragic murders of two NYC policeman by an unbalanced career criminal is being exploited by conservative defenders of law enforcement to beat back mounting demands for more law enforcement against lawless law enforcers.
As we watch the Fed fiddle with interest rate trigger, deciding when to start slowing the economy, it is important to keep this lesson in mind. When the Fed starts raising rates and keeping people from getting jobs, it will be acting to prevent the middle class from getting its share of growth.

All is not what it has seemed in last week's hostage-taking in Sydney.
Infrastructure advances in the rest-of-the-world will blow your mind.
Just as Washington places itself above laws prohibiting torture and naked aggression in order to conduct its self-declared "war on terror" and above the Constitution in order to construct a domestic police state, Washington places itself above the laws prohibiting market manipulation.
Americans like to think of themselves as the ultimate "good guys" and anyone who gets in their way as a "bad guy." Under this theory of U.S. "exceptionalism," whatever "we" do must be moral or at least morally defensible, from sponsoring coups around the world to torture, as William Blum describes.
We can learn a lot from the public-relations drubbing that Republicans are inflicting on Jonathan Gruber. He is the recently humbled MIT economist who has been a much-cited expert on the Obama administration's health care plan.
American pundits are often more interested in scoring points against their partisan rivals than in the pain that U.S. policies inflict on people in faraway lands, as columnists Paul Krugman and Thomas L. Friedman are showing regarding Russia and Ukraine, writes Robert Parry.
Worshiping the 'tools' we as humans have been able to manufacture within a framework of 'predatory capitalism' will have far-reaching results that the world cannot really even imagine, although Einstein tried: "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
The Erdogan government is not the only player in the Middle East that would like to see the Syrian civil war continue. Israel has been aiding rebel forces in Southern Syria and has bombed suspected government weapons depots on several occasions.
Who Wants to be a Working Man?
Why the Democrates don't want to be part of the working class, and why the working class does not want to be part of the working class.
Singer Joe Cocker is dead at age 70

The End
Contrary to misinformed popular belief, we do not use government-issued fiat money. We use commercial bank-issued credit/debt money. The difference in arithmetically inevitable outcomes is the difference between economic democracy and neofeudal serfdom. Let's explore the consequences, and see what a "solution" to The Money Problem would look like.
"I've been in Ferguson since November 22, and I don't think a day has gone by where there hasn't been a protest, most often multiple protests. There may be one at the Ferguson police station, and another in the St. Louis Shaw neighborhood, just south of the city center, or perhaps on one of the campuses: Washington University, St. Louis University, the University of Missouri St. Louis, and/or out in Clayton or West County..."

 Best News Links from the Web
Former President George H.W. Bush was taken by ambulance to a Houston hospital tonight after experiencing shortness of breath, according to a spokesman. Bush has had heart problems since 1991 when he was president. At that time, he entered the hospital with an irregular heartbeat and was diagnosed with Graves Disease, a thyroid condition. But Bush celebrated his 90th birthday in June with a tandem parachute jump near his summer home in Maine.

The former Navy SEAL who ignited a controversy when he publicly claimed credit for killing Osama bin Laden is under investigation for possibly leaking official secrets. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has received an allegation that Robert O'Neill, who recounted his role in the 2011 raid on bin Laden's compound to several journalists, may have revealed classified information to people who weren't authorized to receive it, according to individuals familiar with the matter. The NCIS has begun an investigation into the allegation to determine whether it has any merit.
Sony Pictures Entertainment said Tuesday it will release "The Interview" in select theaters on Christmas Day, an abrupt reversal after the movie company said last week it would shelve the controversial satire indefinitely. "We have never given up on releasing 'The Interview' and we're excited our movie will be in a number of theaters on Christmas Day," Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Entertainment, said in a statement. "At the same time, we are continuing our efforts to secure more platforms and more theaters so that this movie reaches the largest possible audience."
Virgin births are no longer rare. They happen everywhere. Scientists are discovering that virgin births occur in many different species; amphibians, reptiles, cartilaginous and bony fish and birds. And it happens for reasons we don't quite understand. Females may also decide to reproduce alone because the act of sexual reproduction can be costly, according to Gordon Schuett of Georgia State University. "Females have to put up with males competing and fighting over them, and it can be hard to find the ideal male partner." (Well shiver me timbers, ain't dat the truth!)
100 journalists have been let go as publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr's cousin Michael Golden enjoys a $2 million sinecure. Unfortunately, newspaper reporters heading for the exits is not news these days. What's different this time, however, is the degree to which Times stakeholders, including current employees, exiting employees, and former employees have had it with business side decisions, including one in particular that's costing enough to keep more than a dozen journalists gainfully employed.
North Korea experienced a widespread Internet outage on Monday, less than a week after the FBI accused the country of being behind the hack that forced Sony Pictures to cancel the release of 'The Interview.' The Internet blackout began sometime Monday morning Eastern Time, a U.S. official confirmed to NBC News. Two U.S. officials denied any U.S. involvement in the outage. It was not immediately clear what had caused the outage, which came after President Barack Obama promised that the United States would "respond proportionally" to what he said on Sunday was an "act of cybervandalism."
Singer-songwriter Joe Cocker, known for his distinct, bluesy voice and his heartfelt renditions of Beatles classics, died in his Colorado home on Monday following a battle with lung cancer. One of Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Singers, Cocker was 70. The British singer's agent, Barrie Marshall, confirmed the death to the BBC, adding that Cocker was "simply unique" and "it will be impossible to fill the space he leaves in our hearts."
Late Friday, a federal judge dismissed a civil claim filed against George W. Bush and other high-ranking officials regarding their conduct in planning and waging the Iraq War, and immunized them from further proceedings. The case alleged that George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz committed aggression in planning and waging the Iraq War. Specifically, the lawsuit claimed that high-ranking Bush officials used the fear of 9/11 to mislead the American public into supporting a war against Iraq, and that they issued knowingly false statements that Iraq was in league with Al-Qaeda and had weapons of mass destruction, when none of those things were true.
Quantum world without queues could lead to better solar cells -- ScienceDaily
"This would mean a radical improvement to solar cells," said Professor Pullerits. The explanation for this effect lies in the laws of quantum mechanics that control particles on the quantum scale. The phenomenon is called quantum coherence and can lead to a type of energy transfer that produces an almost perfect flow of energy without any obstacles.
Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 16:51