Children given lifelong ban on talking about fracking

Two young children in Pennsylvania were banned from talking about fracking for the rest of their lives under a gag order imposed under a settlement reached by their parents with a leading oil and gas company.
The sweeping gag order was imposed under a $750,000 settlement between the Hallowich family and Range Resources Corp, a leading oil and gas driller. It provoked outrage on Monday among environmental campaigners and free speech advocates.
The settlement, reached in 2011 but unsealed only last week, barred the Hallowichs' son and daughter, who were then aged 10 and seven, from ever discussing fracking or the Marcellus Shale, a leading producer in America's shale gas boom.
The Hallowich family had earlier accused oil and gas companies of destroying their 10-acre farm in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania and putting their children's health in danger. Their property was adjacent to major industrial operations: four gas wells, gas compressor stations, and a waste water pond, which the Hallowich family said contaminated their water supply and caused burning eyes, sore throats and headaches.
Gag orders – on adults – are typical in settlements reached between oil and gas operators and residents in the heart of shale gas boom in Pennsylvania. But the company lawyer's insistence on extending the lifetime gag order to the Hallowichs' children gave even the judge pause, according to the court documents.

@темы: link, US, corporations, nature, fracking

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Loss of Manufacturing Jobs Isn’t ‘Tectonic’–It’s a Policy Choice

So this is a story whereby trade has been a serious factor depressing the wages of large segments of the US workforce.

@темы: link, society, US, economy

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7 Million People Haven’t Made A Single Student Loan Payment In At Least A Year

Perhaps it’s all the talk about across-the-board debt forgiveness or maybe the total amount of outstanding student debt has simply grown so large ($1.3 trillion) that even those with no conception of how much money that actually is realize that it’s simply never going to paid back so there’s no point worrying about, but whatever the case, the general level of concern regarding America’s student debt bubble doesn’t seem to be at all commensurate with the size of the problem.
And it’s not just the sheer size of the debt pile that’s worrisome. There’s also the knock-on effects, such as delayed household formation and the attendant downward pressure on the homeownership rate, and of course hyperinflation in the rental market.

@темы: link, society, US, Govtslaves, economy

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9/11 Survivor Barry Jennings speaks out...

...about the explosions in Building 7 and his escape from it after tying to enter the office of emergency management area on the 23rd floor. (RIP)

@темы: 9/11, video, US

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Eurodollar COT Says Ugly Drop Is Still Ahead of Us

The ugly decline I have been forecasting for almost a year now seems to have gotten an early start, thanks to word of that forecast getting out to a larger audience. I have never been accused of moving the market before, so this is a new experience, and it leads us to the question of what to do now in response to that movement.

@темы: link, Investment watch blog, economy

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US military to send 3000 troops to Peru

Peruvians marched in the capital city Lima to protest the planned arrival of more than 3,000 US military personnel and the continued US military intervention in the South American country, local media reported on Thursday.
The march began from the Plaza San Martin in central Lima and moved to the US embassy.
Demonstrators protested the government’s decision to allow the US to send 3,200 soldiers armed with weapons, ships, and planes to Peru, whose arrival is expected September 1, Prensa Latina news agency reported. Despite the parliament’s approval of the American military presence in the country, the protesters condemned it as an assault on Peruvian national sovereignty and security.
Russia’s REGNUM news agency earlier quoted Gustavo Espinoza, the chief editor of Nuestra Bandera magazine and the head of the Center for Marxist Studies at the Jose Marti University in Lima, as saying that the US was “shifting the focus of its military operations from the Middle East to Latin America to defend the interests of big imperialist monopolies and oligarchic companies.”
In an interview with La Radio del Sur, Espinoza warned that the US military presence in Peru could spread elsewhere in the region.
The 3,200 military personnel will be in Peru only temporarily, while three more US military groups of at least seven contingents that have arrived in Peru this year will stay for 12 months.

@темы: link, US, dictatorship, corporations

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Why Are We Ignoring the War on Yemen?

Yemen has been the target of a brutal U.S.-backed war led by Saudi Arabia. While ordinary civilians are suffering horrific violence and starvation, there is deafening silence from the U.S. and others who claim to be defenders of human rights.
The situation is so bad now that nearly every major global human rights organization has issued dire warnings of the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in the Persian Gulf’s poorest nation.
Since the Saudi regime began a bombing campaign in March, the situation has deteriorated rapidly as access to food and other aid has been stymied. In response, the United Nations in early July declared a Level 3 humanitarian emergency—the highest level possible. U.N. Envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed described Yemen as “one step away from famine.”
But the bombing has had direct consequences, too. In late July, Human Rights Watch accused Saudi Arabia of war crimes after an airstrike on two residential buildings killed 65 civilians. Ten of the victims were children. “With no evident military target, this attack appears to be a war crime,” said an HRW researcher.

@темы: link, US, WW III, Wake up from your slumber!, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, genocide

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What Is Real Money?

@темы: video, gold/silver, economy

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Meet the New Israeli UN Ambassador:

Yet Another Farcical Face of Modern Apartheid

Israel sees the UN as hostile territory. Its ambassadors behave on a war footing. Ron Prosor, the former ambassador, routinely attacked senior UN officials when he didn’t agree with them, calling many “anti-Semites”.

Israel has now sent a new ambassador to the UN. Danny Danon follows Prosor – both are brash and farcical. Danon is the envoy of the settlers, a fierce advocate of “Greater Israel”.

@темы: link, Wake up from your slumber!, Israel, politics

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Federal Reserve unable to deal with next economic crisis

Earlier this week, a Federal Reserve official made the stunning admission that its credit expansion and debt creation policy is no longer having any significant effect on the economy.
Now, even those in the mainstream are joining those of us who have been saying it for some time, and they’re raising serious questions as to whether the Fed has the ability to get us out of any potential future crisis, like the one we faced in 2008, a mere seven years ago.

@темы: link, US, economy

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London Stock Market Dives As Investors Go Into Panic Mode

London share prices plummeted today as global stock markets were routed again amid fears of a financial crunch in China.
Analysts talked of ‘panic mode’ as the FTSE 100 index of leading shares plunged 180.2 points to close at 6,187.65, a fall of 2.8 per cent. The day’s deficit was widened by a negative start on Wall Street, where the Dow Jones industrial average followed up yesterday’s 2 per cent fall with a drop of 289.6 points or 1.7 per cent to 16,701.1.
The Footsie ends this week nearly 6 per cent lower than it finished last Friday, making it the worst week since last December, wiping around £80billion off the value of London’s top 100 listed companies.

@темы: link, UK, Govtslaves, economy

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Baltimore Moving Towards Becoming The Murder Capital Of The US

The nation has a new murder capital contender as Baltimore shockingly surpasses New York City- an alarming feat as it is much much smaller and less densely populated.
As of Wednesday, there have been 208 known homicides within NYC limits, but Baltimore logged its 213th that same evening.
Perhaps the most unnerving aspect of this is the fact that NYC is populated by a massive 8.4 million people, while Baltimore is the home to a mere 620,000. This means that the murder rate for NYC is at 2.5 per 100,000 while Baltimore has hit 34 per 100,000 people.
Chicago is still the deadliest city by the numbers, with 284 logged homicides since the first of the year. However, the city is home to approximately 2.7 million people, which means the murder rate is about 10.4 per 100,000 people- less than a third of rate we are seeing in Baltimore.

@темы: link, society, US, Govtslaves

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General Dempsey:

US will use aggressive reaction we provoked from N. Korea to sell more war toys to S. Korea

The top American general says we will tell the public that the United States will defend its close ally South Korea amid heightening tensions between the South and North Korea. They fall for it every year. First we enrage North Korea by staging a mock invasion of their country. This would agitate any country. of course on TV we never refer to North Korea as a country or having a government. They will always be call a regime, it just sounds more sinister. This year after an 80 thousand man invasion drill with all the latest expensive war toys was not enough, we had the South Korea set up giant speakers to broadcast propaganda. This is literally how nations talk shit. We’re very proud of our maturity. Once North Korea took the bait and destroyed a speaker, the South shot artillery into the North. Nothing was damaged but a good chunk of change was spent and a lot of ego masturbation commenced. I personally think we shold paint the artillery like long cocks. This way when we spend lot of money firing them, it’s like we nutted all over North Korea and then they nut on us back and then we nut on them some more soldier! And then and thenn eennn nnn ahhhh I feel better.
Anyway this is a golden opportunity for chicken hawks like me to pontificate on our mightiness. And it was a great day, I said a great day, for the pentagon to unload a lot of these useless aircraft that we’ve built jointly with our penis envy ally, Israel, such as the F35. The F35 doesn’t actually work in combat. It just cost a lot of money and doesn’t really do anything but act big. It’s pretty much a perfect mechanized symbol of government employees. South Korea will want to buy lot of big war toys from America. Their public doesn’t no how badly they preform because they are not actually going to use them.
After the purchased we can hype up the Sankaku Island disputes for a couple weeks and then turn to Japan and say are you going to let Korea the nation you conquered surpass you in military hardware? Of course then we can sell just as many military planes to Japan. Okinawa will protest about how dangerous they are since they do crash form time to time. But The Japanese government is in Tokyo not Okinawa, and Tokyo is a lot more populated than Okinawa. So they can and will simply continue to ignore their protests. Naturally for agreeing to this the US will give favors to the LDP.
What if North Korea attacks?
They wont. Kim is our boy. If he wanted to make a speech and put it on the internet he could. If he wanted a debate or wanted to talk trade allowances he could call for one online and turn around and say we ignored him and the whole world could see it. But he doesn’t do this. He likes his power. To stay in power he has to periodically give the US the finger but not actually fight, and definitely not ask for dialog. There is no reason to invade as they are no threat to Israel.
We don’t like their system of government, so we refuse to trade with them even if their people suffer and starve because of it. If we traded with them and the state didn’t fail, then others might get ideas and start calling to change our own government. Even worse, if people were not dependent on their government for food, they might rise up on their own and end the dictatorship. We need enemies. That’s how the MIC makes it money.

@темы: link, US, the state, dictatorship, corporations, WW III, Korea

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Gov’t Insanity:

So we let a mega corporation come in and exploit the hell out of a natural resource at little to no cost, and then turn around and sell it back to us at an enormous markup?

Nestle is to water what Exxon is to oil, Monsanto is to OGM, JPM/GS are to financials, Merck/Pfizer are to pharma, Google is to algoland, Apple to sexytech, Facebook to media orgy, Boeing/Lockheed to MIC, Philip Morris to Tobacco etc.etc.
They have the world and Congress by the nuts; not Deez Nuts as its lampoonist; but the real nuts of billions.
It’ll require a revolution of popular mindset to change this world order of “our way of life non-negotiable”.

@темы: link, US, the state, corporations, Investment watch blog, fascism

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China On Track For a Record Year For...

Gold Bullion Withdrawals From the Shanghai Exchange

In the latest week 65.3 metric tonnes of gold bullion were withdrawn from the Shanghai Gold Exchange.
Comparing the yearly demand at week 32 for China with prior years shows that it appears to be a record year in the making with 1,585 tonnes so far.
So much for the ‘weak demand’ in China.

@темы: link, China, Investment watch blog, gold/silver, economy

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Scientist Claims Earth Has More Than One Moon

Dr Robert Jedicke, of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, believes a number of mini-moons not visible from Earth with the naked eye are in temporary orbit of our planet.
And he claims to have already conclusively identified one tiny moon that orbited us, adding: “only one is known, it’s not fictional.”
The three-metre wide baby moon called 2006 RH120 was observed in 2006 and orbited Earth for about a year before it shot back to the asteroid belt.
Dr Jedicke then used specialist computerprogrammes to calculate the likelihood that other asteroids and space rocks had been lured in by Earth’s gravity.
The paths of more than 10 million asteroids were examined before he concluded that at any time there would always be at least one tiny moon orbiting Earth.
He added: “Mini-moons are scientifically extremely interesting.
“A mini-moon could someday be brought back to Earth, giving us a low-cost way to examine a sample of material that has not changed much since the beginning of our solar system over 4.6 billion years ago.”

@темы: link, science, nature, Investment watch blog

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This 2 Day Stock Market Crash Was Larger...

Than Any 1 Day Stock Market Crash In U.S. History

We witnessed something truly historic happen on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 530 points, and that followed a 358 point crash on Thursday. When you add those two days together, the total two day stock market crash that we just witnessed comes to a grand total of 888 points, which is larger than any one day stock market crash in U.S. history. It is also interesting to note that this 888 point crash comes in the 8th month of our calendar. Perhaps that is just a coincidence, and perhaps it is not. It just struck me as being noteworthy. This is the first time that the Dow has dropped by more than 300 points on two consecutive days since November 2008, and we all remember what was happening back then. Overall, this was the worst week for the Dow in four years, and there have only been five other months throughout history when the Dow has fallen by more than a thousand points (the most recent being October 2008). Of course we still have six more trading days left in August, so there is plenty of time remaining for even more carnage.

By itself, the 530 point plunge on Friday was the ninth worst stock market crash in all of U.S. history.

@темы: link, US, Investment watch blog, economy

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The 5 Stupidest Government Ideas of All Time

Cat guided missiles? You better believe it. You can't argue with the project designer's logic, though. Cats don't like water, thus they would attempt to guide the missile toward any ships in the area. What could go wrong?

Those who have followed my work over the years will know that I believe parody and satire to be two of the most important tools for snapping people out of their mainstream conditioning whereby the most ridiculous ideas are normalized and internalized. Making fun of government stupidity and ridiculous "official stories" is also quite effective for knocking politicians, military leaders and other people in positions of power down a peg or two.
These are not Serious People (capital letters and all) whose ideas need to be carefully considered; they are buffoons who cling to power by virtue of their brutality and the fear and ignorance of the public. In other words, they deserve to be relentlessly mocked and exposed for the clueless bumbling idiots that they so often are.

@темы: link, satire, humor, nuclear, video, US, the state

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Israel's Military Intelligence Monitoring Dozens of BDS Groups Around the World

While the IDF is responsible for foreign groups, local groups supporting BDS are monitored by the Shin Bet.
The Israel Defense Forces routinely gathers information on foreign, left-wing organizations that it believes are working to delegitimize the State of Israel, Haaretz has learned.

@темы: link, Haaretz, Israel

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OPERATION CHOKE POINT: THE GOVERNMENT’S COVERT WAR ON SMALL BUSINESS

Banks are sending notices of account closure out to small businesses across the country, to clients they’ve done business with for years, even decades. The reason? They often don’t provide one.
But a growing number of business owners believe they know why they’re being cut off from the financial system. It’s Operation Choke Point, ostensibly an attempt to crack down on fraudulent businesses, but in reality a dragnet that has ensnared innocent entrepreneurs unfairly classified as “high-risk” players.

@темы: link, US, Blacklisted news, economy