Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Puppet Masters

More reasons to manipulate the oil market - Western leverage over Iran during nuclear talks Jay Solomon Wall Street Journal 2014-12-04 17:05:00 A wild card in the seven months of extended negotiations between the U.S. and Iran over its nuclear program is the continuing plunge in global oil prices and its impact on Tehran's finances. U.S. and European officials said they had a growing sense earlier this year that Tehran and its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei believed they were weathering the West's international sanctions - despite the halving of Iranian oil exports since 2012, largely driven by a European embargo. Under an interim agreement reached with the West a year ago, Iran has been receiving $700 million in monthly payments from oil revenues frozen in overseas accounts.

Comment: For a better perspective of these talks, check out P5 + 1 meetings in Vienna over Iran's nukes: Much ado about nothing: Naturally, Iran wants to reach a deal by the deadline, not wishing to prolong negotiations. After all, it has been on the receiving end of the U.S. and Israel's stupidity-cudgel for over 10 years. Just where do the accusations come from that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, anyway? The original evidence, passed on to the IAEA by the U.S., was ignored on account of its obviously dubious nature and provenance. It was only after two documents 'came to light' that the anti-Iran campaign went into high gear, despite the fact that a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran had stopped weapons research in 2003 and by 2008, had resolved all concerns brought up by the IAEA as regards its nuclear program. Those two documents were subsequently exposed as having been forged by the Israelis. The cold, hard reality here is that there has never been ANY conclusive evidence that Iran has sought to develop a nuclear weapon, as investigative journalist Gareth Porter makes clear in his book Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.

SOTT EXCLUSIVE: U.S. jumping for joy over South Stream pipeline closure William Barbe Sott.net 2014-12-03 23:41:00 Anyone who takes the time to fully understand the reasons why Russia cancelled the South Stream pipeline project and then listens to the US response to the news can only conclude that the US government has lost all touch with reality. US National Security Adviser Susan Rice said on Tuesday: "The news that Russia has pulled back from its South Stream pipeline to southern Europe... is indicative of the mounting cost that Russia is paying for its behavior," Rice said. "As a result, a major project, which had been championed by Putin and the Russian government, is now not likely to materialize." "When you look at where the Russian economy is, it has suffered over the last year substantially as a result of sanctions and also as a result of declining oil prices and the combination is pretty powerful." President Obama also crowed on Wednesday: [Obama] doubted Russian President Vladimir Putin will change course until politics catch up with the rough economic situation in Russia. Obama said Putin has promoted a nationalist, backward-looking approach to Russian policy that scares neighbors and hurts Moscow's economy. Have mercy! The only way Obama and Rice could have come up with that conclusion is if they were somehow mistaking themselves for Putin and US foreign policy for Russian foreign policy. We can almost hear these two earnestly tell the EU: "Don't worry this is going to hurt Russia more than it will hurt you. So man up!" Meanwhile, EU bureaucrats must be 'sweating bricks' at the projected loss of billions for EU economies as a result of the death of South Stream. But what can they do? It is almost certain that they are being blackmailed by the USA, courtesy of the NSA and its pathological voyeurism. This isn't going to end well.

Comment: EU losers! Russia scraps South Stream pipeline project, announces major alternative gas deal - Did Putin just poach Turkey?

Putin's counterpunch to EU: Exit South Stream, enter Turk Stream Pepe Escobar RT 2014-12-03 00:00:00 So the EU "defeated" Putin by forcing him to cancel the South Stream pipeline. Thus ruled Western corporate media. Nonsense. Facts on the ground spell otherwise. This "Pipelineistan" gambit will continue to send massive geopolitical shockwaves all across Eurasia for quite some time. In a nutshell, a few years ago Russia devised Nord Stream - fully operational - and South Stream - still a project - to bypass unreliable Ukraine as a gas transit nation. Now Russia devised a new deal with Turkey to bypass the "non-constructive" (Putin's words) approach of the European Commission (EC). Background is essential to understand the current game. Five years ago I was following in detail Pipelineistan's ultimate opera - the war between rival pipelines South Stream and Nabucco. Nabucco eventually became road kill. South Stream may eventually resurrect, but only if the EC comes to its senses (don't bet on it.)

Comment: No matter how many times these psychopathic EU leaders shoot themselves in the foot (e.g., with their sanctions on Russia), they fail to realize their mistake. It's the citizens of these nations who pay for it. All because they bought the lies told by their leaders. Or perhaps they do realize, and their leaders just don't care what they think.

Society's Child

Who benefits from the American food stamp program? Aaron Dykes & Melissa Melton Activist Post 2014-12-04 12:06:00 More than one in seven people. That's how many people are on food stamps in America these days. More than one in seven people. In fact, the number of recipients of federal food assistance rose a whopping 171% between 2000 and 2011 alone, to an all-time record of more than 47 million Americans across the country now on the food stamp dole. That means more U.S. citizens are receiving food stamp benefits now than in the entire history of the food stamp program ever. One-sixth of the country is now receiving food stamps and the number just continues to climb.

Comment: Furthermore, being dependent on the government makes you less likely to step out of line and keeps you in a perpetual state of fear of when the rug will be snatched from underneath you.

Silicon Valley: One of the largest U.S. homeless encampments dismantled by city Rong-Gong Lin, II and Gale Holland The Los Angeles Times 2014-12-03 21:55:00 Veiled by the yellow willows and brush along a forgotten creek bed in San Jose, hundreds of people jerry-built a treehouse and constructed underground bunkers and ramshackle lean-tos to form one of the nation's largest homeless encampments. The 68-acre shantytown is just minutes away from downtown and the high-tech giants that made Silicon Valley one of the world's most opulent locations. For years, the city turned a blind eye to "the Jungle." But the camp along the muddy bank of Coyote Creek has become more crowded in recent years and is awash in rotting trash, rats and human waste - so bad that the endangered steelhead trout have essentially disappeared. After years of halfhearted cleanups, city officials on Thursday plan to begin shutting down the Jungle for good. The sprawling camp has become a major embarrassment, and a potent emblem of Silicon Valley's homeless crisis. In 2013, San Jose and the surrounding Santa Clara County estimated almost 7,600 homeless people, more than in San Francisco. And 75% of them were sleeping outside, on sidewalks, in parks and under freeway embankments - a percentage greater than in any other major U.S. metropolitan area. Officials have blamed soaring housing costs for the displacement. As Silicon Valley rocketed out of the recession, workers streamed in, driving the average apartment rent within 10 miles of San Jose up to $2,633 in September, from $1,761 two years earlier, according to the rental website RentJungle.com. The median home price is nearly $700,000. "It's a perfect storm of extreme wealth, a booming tech community and people priced out of the market," said Jennifer Loving, executive director of Destination Home, a public-private partnership to end homelessness in the county.

Comment: Is this what it means to live in America now: The homeless are presented as something other than human who need to disappear from view? Who don't need food, water, shelter or fellowship? You can easily judge a society by how they treat their weakest members.The reason people are poor and homeless is the psychopathic capitalist system is an epic failure. It was created to serve those at the top. The rest of humanity are there to serve them - serfs to be discarded when they are no longer profitable.

'On the Side of the Road': New film exposes Israel's dirty, little secret David Swanson War is a Crime 2014-12-03 16:12:00 Here in Virginia, U.S.A., I'm aware that the native people were murdered, driven out, and moved westward. But my personal connection to that crime is weak, and frankly I'm too busy trying to rein in my government's current abuses to focus on the distant past. Pocahontas is a cartoon, the Redskins a football team, and remaining Native Americans almost invisible. Protests of the European occupation of Virginia are virtually unheard of. But what if it had just happened a moment ago, historically speaking? What if my parents had been children or teenagers? What if my grandparents and their generation had conceived and executed the genocide? What if a large population of survivors and refugees were still here and just outside? What if they were protesting, nonviolently and violently - including with suicide bombings and homemade rockets launched out of West Virginia? What if they marked the Fourth of July as the Great Catastrophe and made it a day of mourning? What if they were organizing nations and institutions all over the world to boycott, divest, and sanction the United States and seek its prosecution in court? What if, before being driven out, the Native Americans had built hundreds of towns with buildings of masonry, hard to make simply disappear?

Comment: See also: The Photos Israel Forbids You to See By Law

Facilitating serfdom: Corporations decimate the middle-class via unpaid overtime Nick Hanauer pbs.org 2014-12-01 18:16:00 Editor's Note: When's the last time you worked overtime? How about the last time you worked overtime and got paid for it? If you're in the middle class, probably not recently. Only Americans who make less than $23,660 a year are automatically eligible for time-and-a-half pay after working 40 hours a week. Today, that's only 11 percent of salaried workers. It didn't used to be this way, and it doesn't have to stay this way, argues venture capitalist Nick Hanauer. Just like President Obama has taken executive action on immigration, Hanauer believes the president can and should take executive action to raise the salary threshold for overtime eligibility. Hanauer's a billionaire who made his fortune as one of the original investors in Amazon. The current rules are written to benefit wealthy capitalists like him, he admits. So, you might ask, why does Hanauer care about overtime pay for people who make less, much less, than he does? "Ironically," he writes, when "you earn less, and unemployment is high, it even hurts capitalists like me." That won't surprise Making Sen$e readers who've heard his brand of "middle-out economics."Closing the income gap wouldn't just benefit the middle class; a stronger middle class is the source of economic prosperity for everyone, he thinks. Watch him make that argument to Paul Solman below.

Comment: You may contact the White House and your congressional representatives as much as you like...good luck with that! Politicians are simply puppets who are well-versed in obeying their elite masters and change is unlikely to occur until the economic house of cards completely collapsesand/or Mother Nature finally rescinds the mandate of heaven from our corrupt elites.

Another miscarriage of justice as Texas grand jury declines to indict cops caught on video beating black woman in police station Jared Keever Opposing Views 2014-12-04 00:00:00 A Texas grand jury declined to indict two former Jasper police officers who were caught on video assaulting a woman inside the police station last year. The Beaumont Enterprise reports white officers Ricky Grissom and Ryan Cunningham will not face criminal charges for the May 5, 2013, incident in which they were recorded slamming a black woman's head into a desk and dragging her across the floor.  Overhead surveillance cameras recorded the violent assault of Keyarika Diggles. The case became a centerpiece of the ongoing racial tension in the Texas town, according to The Texas Observer Among the troubling aspects of the case was that the officers arrested Diggles for little more than unpaid parking tickets the day of the assault. Diggles had reportedly been paying down her debt to the city and owed only about $100 the day the officers showed up at her door to arrest her.

Comment: This just proves once again that America is a serial brutalizer of people of color. The system is not broken, this is just what the US does - the entire country is suffering from a societal disease of pathocracy, where those pathological deviants who have risen to the top have finally caused the entire society to succumb to the grip of an epidemic psychosis. And this does not bode well for humanity: Lament for Babylon

America is a serial brutalizer of black, brown people - this is what America does Alberto Burneko The Concourse 2014-12-03 22:07:00 In July, New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo choked unarmed black man Eric Garner to death, in broad daylight, while a bystander caught it on video. That is what American police do. Yesterday, despite the video, despite an NYPD prohibition of exactly the sort of chokehold Pantaleo used, and despite the New York City medical examiner ruling the death a homicide, a Staten Island grand jury declined even to indict Pantaleo. That is what American grand juries do. In August, Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson shot unarmed black teenager Michael Brown to death in broad daylight. That is what American police do. Ten days ago, despite multiple eyewitness accounts and his own face contradicting Wilson's narrative of events, a grand jury declined to indict Wilson. That is what American grand juries do. In November 2006, a group of five New York police officers shot unarmed black man Sean Bell to death in the early morning hours of his wedding day. That is what American police do. In April 2008, despite multiple eyewitness accounts contradicting the officers' accounts of the incident, Justice Arthur J. Cooperman acquitted the officers of all charges, including reckless endangerment. That is what American judges do. In February of 1999, four plainclothes New York police officers shot unarmed black man Amadou Diallo to death outside of his home. That is what American police do. A year later, an Albany jury acquitted the officers of all charges, including reckless endangerment. That is what American juries do. In November of 1951, Willis McCall, the sheriff of Lake County, Fla., shot and killed Sam Shepherd, an unarmed and handcuffed black man in his custody. That is what American police do. Despite both a living witness and forensic evidence which contradicted his version of events, a coroner's inquest ruled that McCall had acted within the line of duty, and Judge Thomas Futch declined to convene a grand jury at all.

Comment: Exactly. It's what America does. The entire psychopathic system is designed that way. SC: Are the absence of conscience and insensitivity to suffering what distinguishes psychopaths from normal people?  That is probably the key point that people need to understand. For years artists, writers, philosophers, and others have attempted to understand how it is that our world is an endless stream of suffering. They have attempted to find moralistic explanations. Łobaczewski spends the first part of his book discussing the futility of this approach, suggesting instead a scientific approach based upon anunderstanding of evil as a societal disease, as the actions of pathological deviants within a society. Without the ability to empathize with others, these people cannot feel that suffering, any more than a cat feels the suffering of a mouse when it toys with it prior to killing it. Bush can order thousands of American troops into Iraq or Afghanistan where they will be killed or permanently maimed, and where they will kill thousands and destroy an entire country, can sanction the torturing of prisoners, can support the actions of Israel in the Occupied territories or Lebanon, and none of the suffering he is causing is real to him. There is no hardware in these people that can process these emotions. They are incapable at the physiological levels of doing so. The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others See also: The Greatest Epidemic Sickness Known to Humanity

Man dies of asthma attack after cop stops him from going to ER Michael Allen Opposing Views 2014-12-04 06:32:00 Casey Kressin was having a life-threatening asthma attack early Sunday morning when the car he was riding in was stopped by a police officer for running a red light in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Kressin's girlfriend was rushing him to the hospital to get medical care when the unidentified police officer pulled them over (video below). After the officer realized Kressin was having an asthma attack, the cop called for an ambulance, which got to the scene too late. "It was about six minutes later that EMS arrived on scene, and they took him and transported him to the hospital, and he was later pronounced deceased," Chippewa Falls Police Chief Wendy Stelter told WEAU 13. "What the officer was thinking was that this man was sitting there and I am going to keep him calm until the ambulance arrives," added Chief Stelter. "The officer feels that he did what he should have done, and I support him in that. Yet the family has lost a family member, and that's sad." However, keeping someone "calm" during an asthma attack is not the type of care they need.

A grand jury did indict one person involved in Eric Garner's killing -- The man who filmed it Nick Wing The Huffington Post 2014-12-03 17:51:00 On Wednesday, a Staten Island grand jury decided not to return an indictment for the police officer who put Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, in a chokehold shortly before his death. A different Staten Island grand jury was less sympathetic to Ramsey Orta, however, the man who filmed the entire incident. In August, less than a month after filming the fatal July 17 encounter in which Daniel Pantaleo and other NYPD police officers confronted Garner for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes, a grand jury indicted Orta on weapons charges stemming from an arrest by undercover officers earlier that month. Police alleged that Orta had slipped a .25 caliber handgun into a teenage accomplice's waistband outside a New York hotel. Orta testified that the charges were falsely mounted by police in retaliation for his role in documenting Garner's death, but the grand jury rejected his contention, charging him with single felony counts of third-degree criminal weapon possession and criminal firearm possession. In Garner's case, on the other hand, jurors determined there was not probable cause that Pantaleo had committed any crime. A medical examiner ruled Garner's death homicide in part resulting from the chokehold, a restraining move banned by the NYPD in 1993. The use of grand juries in high-profile police killings has attracted increasing scrutiny after such juries declined to indict both Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot and killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri this summer, and now Pantaleo. While the famous saying goes that a grand jury could "indict a ham sandwich," it's become clear that they also give much more leeway to police officers. St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch's objectivity was regularly called into questionthroughout the Brown case. Critics argue that the close cooperation between law enforcement and prosecutors may make them more hesitant to bring charges against police officers.

Canada family keeps father's corpse for 6 months, praying for resurrection RT 2014-12-03 10:53:00 A small community of Christians in Canada left the body of a deceased member for six months trusting God to resurrect him from the dead. The Crown found no criminal intent and the grieving widow was ordered to seek public health counseling. The unusual case was resolved on Monday as Kaling Wald, 50, pledged guilty to failing to notify the authorities of her husband Peter's death. The 52-year-old, who suffered from diabetes, got a leg infection sometime in March. But he refused to go to hospital, trusting God to cure him. Eventually the disease took over and he slipped into coma and died sometime around March 20, according to the agreed statement of facts read out in court. Mrs. Wald covered the body with two blankets, the head with a toque (beanie), padlocked the bedroom door and sealed vents to keep the decomposition stench from the house. She believed her husband would be eventually resurrected from and return to his family. "We were trusting God. We thought, 'OK, Lord, you know better,'" Wald told the Hamilton Spectatorafter the court hearings. The corpse had been lying upstairs for six months before the sheriff had arrived to evict Wald, her six children aged between 11 and 22 and seven adult friends from their home in Hamilton, Ontario, due to failure to pay the mortgage. The sheriff discovered the body, which by that time had been partially eaten by rodents and decomposed badly enough that it could not be identified by a photo. Due to the mummified state of the body, a toxicology test could not be conducted, but the pathologist stated that the death was "likely due to natural causes."

Florida judge lifts ban on feeding homeless in public RT 2014-12-04 00:29:00 After a wave of protests and massive backlash, a Fort Lauderdale judge has temporarily suspended the city's recent ban on feeding the homeless in public places. Broward Circuit Judge Thomas Lynch on Tuesday suspended the enforcement of the ordinancethat forbids people from feeding the homeless in parks and other public places in the city. Specifically, the local law limits the location of outdoor feeding sites and requires groups providing food to supply portable toilets. The decision is valid for 30 days pending mediation, reports AP. Judge Lynch's ruling comes in response to 90-year-old homeless advocate Arnold Abbott's lawsuit challenging the ordinance. The World War II vet and retired jewelry salesman has been feeding the homeless at the city's beaches with his group, Love Thy Neighbor, for the last 23 years. "We're elated the judge has entered the stay," Abbott's attorney, John David, was quoted as saying in the Sun-Sentinel, Ft. Lauderdale's main daily, on Tuesday.

Comment: How did 'feeding the homeless' becomes a crime in the first place? This is what happens when conscienceless psychopaths are given the power to make legislation.

Student arrested in rape case that led to mass protest in Oklahoma RT 2014-12-04 00:15:00 Police arrested on Tuesday a former Norman High School student charged with raping a fellow classmate. The sexual assault, and other rape accusations, spurred a mass walk-out at the Oklahoma school in November in support of the alleged victim. Tristen Kole Killman-Hardin, 18, has been charged in Cleveland County District Court with two counts of first-degree rape of a 16-year-old victim who was unconscious at the time of the attack, police said, according to Reuters. Two other girls have accused Killman-Hardin of rape, according to YES All Daughters, an activist group that organized the school demonstration. More charges could be filed against Killman-Hardin, a prosecutor told local media.

Comment: Ironically, the students who are supposed to be the ones educated by the school administration are teaching the administration about its basic duty.

University students detained for protesting Ferguson grand jury decision with sidewalk chalk Amanda Warren Activist Post 2014-12-03 15:35:00 Construed as vandalism... Three Coastal Carolina University students were handcuffed on Monday when university officers discovered they were writing messages in chalk pertaining to the recent events in Ferguson, Mo. The officers who did not identify themselves asked the students what they were doing and were told, "drawing." Senior student, Taylor Wright, was finishing the word "justice" when he was told by officers to stand up, and place hands behind the back. They were told not to resist and received no answers to their questions for the arrest. According to the police report, the students were told that they are not allowed to chalk the sidewalks without "proper approval." Wright, who had never heard of having to get a stamp of approval first, felt it was a thinly veiled form of censorship.

Militarizing schools: San Diego school district now has mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle Melissa Melton Activist Post 2014-12-02 00:00:00 Many of our nation's sheriffs have been brainwashed that America is a "war zone" so all of our police departments (even for towns of less than 4,000 people) apparently need mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles - which basically look like tanks - straight off the battlefields of Afghanistan. Though the vehicles cost nearly $750,000, many police departments across the nation have acquired their very own MRAP tanks for pennies on the dollar (and sometimes free) from the Pentagon's controversial surplus program that seeks to dump military equipment into America's neighborhoods. Now the indoctrination inside our classrooms can compete with the indoctrination on the school's front lawn that America is such a police state war zone, it's totally normal for a school district to also require a tank. School districts. Are getting. Tanks.

Comment: Now that the police forces in many cities are fully armed with military style equipment, thePentagon has moved to the schools. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the PTB view US citizens as the enemy and are arming themselves to the teeth, probably preparing for mass unrest as people are becoming fed-up with the police state. The elites are also preparing for looming chaos due to economic collapse and disruptions due to severe earth changes.

Protestors carry unconscious woman to cops for help, cops open fire with tear gas & rubber bullets Jay Syrmopoulos The Free Thought Project 2014-12-01 01:04:00 "She's having a heart attack! She's having a heart attack! She needs help!" Ferguson, Mo. - After the grand jury decision, the police, in an extremely callous and brutal move, opened fire with rubber bullet and tear gas on a group carrying an unconscious woman to the police line looking for help during a protest. The stunning video, by Tim Pool, shows a group as they approach the police line shouting, "She's having a heart attack! She's having a heart attack! She needs help!" But rather than lending needed assistance, officers begin firing rubber bullets at them from a shotgun, followed up by volleys of tear gas. Is this the type of behavior we should expect from those sworn to uphold the law? This looks to be simply another lesson that over militarized cops are nothing but agents of repression that are trained to be aggressive and dole out punishment, not assist citizens in need of help.

Trauma dog "Hawk" helps 7yo child abuse victim testify in Calgary court CBC News (Calgary) 2014-12-02 23:27:00 A trauma dog helped an alleged sexual assault victim as the young girl testified in a criminal trial - a Canadian first seen in a Calgary courtroom Tuesday. The seven-year-old's father is charged with sexual assault with a weapon and forcible confinement involving the child and his wife. "I do have a secret," said the girl who cannot be identified. "It's the whole reason I'm in foster care. It's about what my dad did." Visible on a screen in the courtroom, the girl sat in a remote witness room beside Hawk - the three-year-old Labrador retriever specially trained to work with the victim assistance unit of the Calgary Police Service. Hawk helps support witnesses and victims of crime, especially children.

Comment: What a genius idea! For a child who has learned no reason to trust -- betrayed by the person who should protect her and make her feel safe -- a strange human would do nothing to create a safe environment. Doggies to the rescue! What would we do without them? Pet therapy is all smiles at pediatric facility The mysterious effect of pets on sick kids Dogs Helped Kids Improve Reading Fluency

Secret History

Athens 1944: When the British collaborated with Nazis and turned their guns against their allies Ed Vulliamy and Helena Smith The Guardian 2014-11-30 10:43:00 When 28 civilians were killed in Athens, it wasn't the Nazis who were to blame, it was the British. Ed Vulliamy and Helena Smith reveal how Churchill's shameful decision to turn on the partisans who had fought on our side in the war sowed the seeds for the rise of the far right in Greece today "I can still see it very clearly, I have not forgotten," says Títos Patríkios. "The Athens police firing on the crowd from the roof of the parliament in Syntagma Square. The young men and women lying in pools of blood, everyone rushing down the stairs in total shock, total panic." And then came the defining moment: the recklessness of youth, the passion of belief in a justice burning bright: "I jumped up on the fountain in the middle of the square, the one that is still there, and I began to shout: "Comrades, don't disperse! Victory will be ours! Don't leave. The time has come. We will win!" "I was," he says now, "profoundly sure, that we would win." But there was no winning that day; just as there was no pretending that what had happened would not change the history of a country that, liberated from Adolf Hitler's Reich barely six weeks earlier, was now surging headlong towards bloody civil war. Even now, at 86, when Patríkios "laughs at and with myself that I have reached such an age", the poet can remember, scene-for-scene, shot for shot, what happened in the central square of Greek political life on the morning of 3 December 1944. This was the day, those 70 years ago this week, when the British army, still at war with Germany, opened fire upon - and gave locals who had collaborated with the Nazis the guns to fire upon - a civilian crowd demonstrating in support of the partisans with whom Britain had been allied for three years.

Comment: History repeats itself, and the Dekemvriana of Athens in 1944 becomes Kiev's Maidan in 2014. And the same state terrorism that the British empire spread around the world in its days of "imperial glory", we see now repeating globally and domestically by the American empire. Read also: The British Empire - A Lesson In State Terrorism

Science & Technology

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Earth Changes

Thousands of mollusks wash ashore in South Africa - event believed to be tied to 'heavy seas'? David Strege Grind TV 2014-12-04 20:55:00 A stretch of Rodderg Beach in South Africa turned into "mussel beach" recently when hundreds of thousands of black mussels washed ashore in a mystery that has local officials searching for the reason why. The beach in Plettenberg Bay was covered with the black mussels over a 325-yard section. Some believed it was caused by a red tide, a harmful algal bloom, but marine experts dismissed that possibility. Dr. Mark Brown of Nature's Valley Trust told The Herald of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, that the massive beaching is not linked "to red tide or anything sinister at this stage." Instead, Brown believes the black mussels were dislodged by heavy seas. "A similar event happened in November last year in the same spot," Brown told The Herald. "Essentially large swells and currents break beds of mussels off the reef and they wash up."

Comment: Residents evacuated as Pico do Fogo volcano in Cape Verde erupts after a 20 year silence

Man likely to have died from a dog pack attack in Madison, North Carolina Danielle Battaglia News and Record 2014-12-04 19:31:00 It was 1 p.m. and there was a chill in the air when Jose Robles left family he was visiting and went for a stroll down Bethany Road. For Robles, 62, it would be the last steps of his life. For his family, it was the last time they would see him alive. That was Nov. 23. About 10 a.m. the next day, deputies found Robles at the bottom of a steep embankment about a mile from where he was staying. He was dead.

Courtesy of Shell Oil: One of the worst oil spills in years causes environmental disaster in Niger Delta RT 2014-12-04 06:20:00 Fishermen and the environment of Niger Delta continue to suffer the consequences of a massive Shell oil spill in the Niger Delta - one of the worst in years. The oil giant says 1,200 barrels had been recovered as of Tuesday. Traveling to the affected areas of the Niger Delta in Nigeria, Reuters witnessed the devastation in the delta which covers 20,000 km² within wetlands of 70,000 km². Crude is everywhere, enough in some cases to fill Jerry can with the black gold. "We saw dead fish, dead crabs ... This spill occurred 7-8 nautical miles from the shore ... so the volume runs into thousands of barrels," Alagoa Morris, head of the Niger Delta Resource Center for Environmental Rights Action, told Reuters. Morris was referring to the Shell oil spill at the site on the Okolo Launch on Bonny Island in late November where an estimated 3,800 barrels of oil have leaked into the data, according to an investigation by Shell and government officials. According to the oil giant, the spill was caused by a failed crude theft.

Comment: Once again a fragile ecosystem in Nigeria is destroyed by Shell Oil, who continues to blame saboteurs when the truth is that they refuse to properly maintain pipelines. The company has still not decontaminated the area or compensated the Bodo residents where a 2008 oil spill caused an environmental catastrophe. It seems that everywhere oil is drilled, from Louisiana to Nigeria, human rights violations abound and the oil industry's negligence continues to inflict damage on the environment with near impunity.

Oil spill in Israeli nature preserve causes one of country's worst environmental disasters Zafrir Rinat, Shirly Seidler Haaretz 2014-12-04 08:50:00 Millions of liters of crude oil gushed out of a breached pipeline in southern Israel early Thursday, causing what one Environmental Protection Ministry official called "one of the gravest pollution events in the country's history." The official, Guy Samet, said there is a seven-kilometer (4.3 mile) long river of oil flowing through the Evrona Nature Reserve in southern Israel, some 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) north of Eilat. Firefighters, police, Environmental Protection Ministry officials and oil pipeline maintenance teams were dispatched to the site of the spill, and managed to curtail the flow after about two hours. The breach occurred during maintenance work that was part of preparations for the international airport under construction in Timna, in southern Israel. Once the leak was discovered, pipeline company officials shut the pipeline's valves - but not in time to prevent the spillage of millions of liters of oil. The pipeline, which links Eilat to the port city of Ashkelon, opened in the 1960s to facilitate the movement of Iranian oil from the Persian Gulf to European markets. Since the rupture in Israeli-Iranian relations in 1979, it has mostly been used to move oil and oil products from Eilat to different parts of Israel.

Comment: This is the second massive oil spill in the past few weeks. In late November Shell Oilcaused one of the worst oil spills in years in the Niger Delta.

Woman left bloodied after attack by koala in Williamstown, Australia au.news.yahoo.com 2014-12-03 13:55:00 A woman has been left bloodied and required a four-day stay in hospital after being attacked by a koala north of Adelaide. But despite her injuries, she says she doesn't blame the animal for the brutal attack. Williamstown woman Mary Anne Forster said she was walking her two dogs a fortnight ago when they pulled her towards a koala at the base of a tree. "Obviously the koala felt very threatened because it attached itself with its mouth, jaws, to my leg and bit very hard, bit very deeply," she said. After a struggle, she managed to break free.

Ice storm with deep snow in Serbia: People experiencing mental breakdown after 48 hours without electricity, water and heating Robert Felix iceagenow.info 2014-12-03 11:15:00 3 Dec 14 - "48 hours of agony in Majdanpek, people mentally break!" says headline. Put on your coat and hat and get under a blanket and wait to pass this evil, say angry residents of Majdanpeka. At night it is very cold. The city is bound by snow and ice, without electricity, water and heating, and the torture is far from over. The fourth attempt to connect pokidna transmission network, this afternoon failed. It's agony. Business is great, joked a shop owner: he has sold burners for gas. These gadgets over the past two days in Majdanpeku have become worth gold, because it is only on them that food can be prepared.

Comment: A map of locations for many of the early and extreme cold weather events for the past month, is shown below -

Mad blizzard swallows cars, streets, buildings in Far East Russia RT 2014-12-03 18:16:00 Winter has come with a vengeance: Russia's snow-and-ice-bound Far East regions have declared states of emergency. Traffic chaos is rife, with cars stuck or sliding uncontrollably. Residents are trying to push cars, and also stop them with their bodies. The cold and snowy season began in Russia's Far East - including the cities of Vladivostok and Khabarovsk - on Dec. 1, the first day of winter proper according to the calendar. Yet municipal services were not ready to deal with weather conditions, people on social networks complained. Snowfall in Khabarovsk - reportedly the heaviest in decades - forced the city authorities to announce the state of emergency and call in military to aid with the storm's aftermath. Harsh weather conditions caused traffic to come to a standstill, with people being unable to use either public transport or their own cars. Challenged to not only find and then dig their cars out from under the snow, drivers also had to push their vehicles when they were stuck on snow and ice-covered roads, as well as stopping them from moving uncontrollably.

Comment: Ice Age Cometh: Russian Academy of Sciences experts warn of imminent cold period: "Global warming is a marketing trick" Russian Scientist: New Ice Age to Begin in 2014

Fire in the Sky

Bright, exploding fireball streaks across the sky over Northeast U.S. Angela Fritz The Washington Post 2014-12-04 09:37:00 A bright fireball lit up the Northeast sky on Wednesday night as it streaked over southern Canada and upstate New York. The fireball occurred at around 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday. The American Meteor Society estimates that the fireball began over Ontario County in northwest New York and traveled west-northwest over Canada before terminating southwest of Toronto. "Many witnesses described an increasing intensity before it terminated," writes Mike Hankey of the American Meteor Society, "a common trait of bolide meteors." A bolide is a particularly bright meteor that explodes in a flash near the end of it's path.

Comment:

Health & Wellness

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Science of the Spirit

Curiosity prepares the brain for better learning and long-term memory Daisy Yuhas Scientific American 2014-10-02 13:31:00 Do we live in a holographic universe? How green is your coffee? And could drinking too much water actually kill you? Before you click those links you might consider how your knowledge-hungry brain is preparing for the answers. A new study from the University of California, Davis, suggests that when our curiosity is piqued, changes in the brain ready us to learn not only about the subject at hand, but incidental information, too. Neuroscientist Charan Ranganath and his fellow researchers asked 19 participants to review more than 100 questions, rating each in terms of how curious they were about the answer. Next, each subject revisited 112 of the questions - half of which strongly intrigued them whereas the rest they found uninteresting - while the researchers scanned their brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). During the scanning session participants would view a question then wait 14 seconds and view a photograph of a face totally unrelated to the trivia before seeing the answer. Afterward the researchers tested participants to see how well they could recall and retain both the trivia answers and the faces they had seen. Ranganath and his colleagues discovered that greater interest in a question would predict not only better memory for the answer but also for the unrelated face that had preceded it. A follow-up test one day later found the same results - people could better remember a face if it had been preceded by an intriguing question. Somehow curiosity could prepare the brain for learning and long-term memory more broadly. The findings are somewhat reminiscent of the work of U.C. Irvine neuroscientist James McGaugh, who has found that emotional arousal can bolster certain memories. But, as the researchers reveal in the October 2 Neuron, curiosity involves very different pathways.

Comment: Curiosity's Evil Twin Can Drive You Insane