You are still free to discover the truth. Perhaps one day that will not be.

Cheers on your pleb robotic weeknd activities…..

[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_lYGyIaK80 450 300]

Director Robert Kane Pappas’ “Orwell Rolls Over In His Grave” is the consummate critical examination of the Fourth Estate, once the bastion of American democracy. Asking whether America has entered an Orwellian world of doublespeak where outright lies can pass for the truth, Pappas explores what the media doesn’t like to talk about: itself.

Meticulously tracing the process by which media has distorted and often dismissed actual news events, Pappas presents a riveting and eloquent mix of media professionals and leading intellectual voices on the media.

Among the cast of characters in “Orwell Rolls Over In His Grave” are Charles Lewis, director of the Center for Public Integrity, Vincent Bugliosi, former L.A. prosecutor and legal scholar, film director and author Michael Moore, Rep. Bernie Sanders, Danny Schecter, author and former producer for ABC and CNN, and Tony Benn, former member of the British Parliament.

“Orwell Rolls Over In His Grave” expresses ideas that will never be heard in mainstream media. From Globalvision’s Danny Schecter: “We falsely think of our country as a democracy when it has evolved into a `mediacracy’, where a media that is supposed to check political abuse is part of the political abuse.” New York University media professor Mark Crispin Miller says, “These commercial entities now vie with the government for control over our lives. They are not a healthy counterweight to government.”

Joseph Goebbels, former head of Nazi propaganda, said that what you want in a media system- he meant the Nazi media system – is to present the ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity. From the very size of the media monopolies and how they got that way to who decides what gets on the air and what doesn’t, “Orwell Rolls Over In His Grave” moves through a troubling list of questions and news stories that go unanswered and unreported in the mainstream media.

Are Americans being given the information a democracy needs to survive or have they been electronically lobotomized? Has the frenzy for media consolidation led to a dangerous irony where, in an era of more news sources, the majority of the population has actually become less informed? Orwell Rolls Over In His Grave reminds us that 1984 is no longer a date in the future.

[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmNV8_VBGX0&feature=related 450 300]

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RIP

[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drHCosJWH0Q 450 300]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_3do_LYSwI&feature=player_embedded#!

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By Ted Thornhill

PUBLISHED: 07:21 EST, 26 March 2012 | UPDATED: 07:55 EST, 26 March 2012

Current theories of the causes and impact of global warming have been thrown into question by a new study which shows that during medieval times the whole of the planet heated up.

It then cooled down naturally and there was even a ‘mini ice age’.

A team of scientists led by geochemist Zunli Lu from Syracuse University in New York state, has found that contrary to the ‘consensus’, the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ approximately 500 to 1,000 years ago wasn’t just confined to Europe.

In fact, it extended all the way down to Antarctica – which means that the Earth has already experience global warming without the aid of human CO2 emissions.

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In Play

On the Wires

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Full article

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SYDNEY (MarketWatch) — Asian shares rallied Tuesday, with investors welcoming comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that signaled U.S. monetary policy will remain accommodative.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index HK:HSI +1.33%  rose 1.3%, Shanghai Composite CN:000001 +0.32%  advanced 0.3%, and Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average JP:100000018 +1.75%  jumped 1.7%, hitting a fresh 2012 high in the session.

South Korea’s Kospi KR:0100 +0.56%  and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 index AU:XJO +0.66%  each rose 0.8%.

 

Bernanke remarks, German data boost U.S. stocks

Stocks rise after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke signals more easy monetary policy and positive German business confidence data cheers Europe. (Photo: AP/Seth Wenig)

The gains in Asia followed a strong performance for U.S. stocks Monday, after Bernanke said that it’s not yet certain the recent pace of improvement in the nation’s labor market will be sustained but improvements may be supported by “continued accommodative policies.” Read more on U.S. stockmarket action.

“Chairman Bernanke’s palpable disappointment in terms of jobs growth played out like music to the ears of market sentiment,” said Stewart Hall at RBC Capital Markets.

Read More…

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Full report

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“Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the government and the central bank to prepare proposals on lowering the state’s share in lenders to less than 50 percent, the Kremlin said.

Medvedev instructed Prime Minister and President-elect Vladimir Putin and Bank Rossii Chairman Sergey Ignatiev to submit the proposals by Sept. 1, according to a statementpublished on the Kremlin’s website today. OAO Sberbank (SBER) and VTB Group, the two biggest lenders, are run by the government.

The outgoing Russian leader promised to relinquish control of some of the biggest state companies at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum last June, saying it was time to reverse the policy of strengthening the government’s presence. The authorities plan to raise more than 1 trillion rubles ($34 billion) from state asset sales from 2012 to 2014, the Economy Ministry said in September. Lenders run or part-owned by the state control more than half of the financial industry’s assets, the Deposit Insurance Agency estimated last year.

“This is just posturing and part of the jockeying for position in the new government,” Bruce Bower, a partner at Moscow-based hedge fund Verno Capital, which owns shares in Sberbank and VTB, said by phone. “It doesn’t necessarily mean it will happen, and the proposal may just be dropped.”

Sberbank, Russia’s largest lender, plans on April 16 to start marketing a 7.6 percent stake held by the central bank, people with knowledge of the matter said last week. VTB, which raised $3.3 billion from a secondary public offering in February last year, may sell additional shares, Interfax reported on Jan. 26, citing Chief Executive Officer Andrey Kostin….”

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“New Zealand’s economic growth slowed to half the pace economists predicted in the fourth quarter as manufacturing fell, adding to the case for no change in interest rates until next year.

Gross domestic product rose 0.3 percent in the three months ended Dec. 31 from the previous quarter, when it increased a revised 0.7 percent, Statistics New Zealand said in a report released today in Wellington. The result compares with the 0.6 percent median projection in a Bloomberg News survey of 16 economists….”

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“U.K. retail sales fell more than economists forecast in February as households curtailed spending after a weaker-than-estimated increase the previous month.

Sales including fuel fell 0.8 percent from January, the most in nine months, the Office for National Statistics said today in London. Economists forecast a 0.5 percent decline, according to the median of 23 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. The increase in January was revised to 0.3 percent from 0.9 percent….”

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LOS ANGELES (CBS) — City Council members took a step closer on Wednesday to becoming the first in the nation to adopt a resolution condemning certain types of speech on public airwaves.

Councilmember Jan Perry introduced legislation that would call upon media companies to ensure “on-air hosts do not use and promote racist and sexist slurs” on radio and other broadcasts.

Members of Black Media Alliance, National Hispanic Media Coalition, Korean-American Bar Association, American Indians in Film and Television were on hand to voice their support for the proposal.

The resolution — which was also supported by Councilmember Bernard Parks and Council President Herb Wesson — called attention to the recent uproar over comments by KFI 640 AM talk show hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou.

Kobylt and Chiampou were suspended after they called the late pop singer Whitney Houston a “crack ho” three days after her death in February.

The proposal cites a “long history of racially offensive comments as well as deplorable sexist remarks, particularly towards women and Black, Latino, and Asian communities” at KFI 640 and calls for parent company Clear Channel Communications to hire a more diverse workforce to offset the trend.

“It is easy to become desensitized to what other groups find intolerable which ultimately fosters an environment where negative comments can go unchecked and corporate guidelines and policies are no longer being enforced,” the resolution reads.

Remarks from syndicated talk show host Rush Limbaugh referring Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke as a “slut” and a “prostitute” for testifying on Capitol Hill about women’s access to contraception were also cited in the proposal.

Source

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Read here:

For the last few years, it has been housing’s lot to bring the stock market back to Earth.

It certainly has the potential to splash reality in investors’ faces in the week ahead when reports on existing- and new-home sales come along with the monthly reports on housing starts and building permits.

But if the numbers break right — with all the indicators showing clear signs that a bottom for housing has set in — one could reasonably see a continuation of the big rally that pushed the Dow Jones industrials ($INDU -0.15%) above 13,000 this past week.

The week ahead, in fact, is a busy one for investors. In addition to the housing reports, a batch of important earnings are due that include results from Adobe Systems (ADBE -1.02%), Oracle (ORCL -1.06%), Tiffany (TIF -0.92%), General Mills (GIS +0.36%), Nike (NKE +0.44%) and FedEx (FDX -0.29%).

And there will be many eyes on two more factors in the coming week: oil prices (and gasoline prices) and interest rates. Crude oil closed Friday at $107.06 a barrel, with retail gasoline at $3.831 a gallon. Crude is up 8.63%, while gasoline is up nearly 17%. Can gasoline prices hurt the economy? They did a year ago and helped set off the Great Recession.

Interest rates started to move up as well, with the 10-year Treasury hitting 2.298%, up from 1.871% at the end of 2011. The question is whether the increase will bother anyone — yet.

It was a very good week for stocks. The Dow and Standard & Poor’s 500 Index ($INX +0.11%) were up 2.4% for the week, with the Nasdaq Composite Index ($COMPX -0.04%) up 2.2%. The Dow and S&P 500 are enjoying their best start for a year since 1998; the Nasdaq’s start is its best since 1991.

Will housing stop being a drag on the economy?

Housing has been one of the biggest drags on the economy since the bubble started to burst in 2006. Housing markets have been struggling with foreclosures, bloated inventories of new and existing homes and condominiums for sale and weak household formation rates.

And there have been suggestions from a number of homebuilding companies that buyers are out looking for homes this year in greater numbers than in the past few years. Apartment construction has been stronger as many would-be buyers have opted not to own because they want the flexibility.

Inventories have been shrinking in places like Phoenix and Sarasota as investors large and small have swooped in to pick up foreclosed properties that they can rent or fix up and try to resell.

And that’s as it should be. Apartment construction gains usually precede gains in new-home building by nine months to two years before single-family construction starts to gain. And prices often continue to fall even as the bottom forms.

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Graphs derived from a LinkedIn and Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) project paint a picture of American industry some may see as very troubling. When one views the industries that are expanding, versus those contracting, the sense is that we are seeing shrinkage in areas traditionally aligned with wealth creation in America, while expansion in industries one might characterize as spending, particularly on the part of government.

How has our economy evolved in the past five years? Which industries are shrinking or growing through these challenging economic times? These are some of the questions that the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) delves into each February in the “Economic Report of the President” (ERP). This year, the CEA worked with us to glean further insights into industry trends both during the recent recession and after its end in June 2009 [1].

With the data and methodology [2] in hand, we calculated the growth rates in industry size between 2007 and 2011. Here’s what we found:

One wonders how much the huge growth in “renew-ables” is inefficient from a pure business perspective, as efforts in that sector are often subsidized by government spending. And it only seems to get worse from there.

The fastest-growing industries include renewables (+49.2%), internet (+24.6%), online publishing (+24.3%), and e-learning (+15.9%). Fastest-shrinking industries were newspapers (-28.4%), retail (-15.5%), building materials (-14.2%), and automotive (-12.8%).

While the chart at top of the previously linked page raises question, the one below it may prove to be even more startling. The growth in health care can’t be all that comforting, part of it likely due to an aging Baby Boomer population. Meanwhile, pharmaceuticals, automotive, construction, real estate, retail and others have tanked, while public policy, the Internet, consulting and even think tanks are growing. The chart below certainly may give you something to think about.

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Enjoy your green beer weekend!

[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MWpxH-RlFQ 450 300]

“It is a well-known fact that our society is structured like a pyramid. The very few people at the top create conditions for the majority below. Who are these people? Can we blame them for the problems our society faces today? Guided by the saying “A fish rots from the head”we set out to follow that fishy odor. What we found out is that people at the top are more likely to be psychopaths than the rest of us.

Who, or what, is a psychopath? Unlike Hollywood’s stereotypical image, they are not always blood-thirsty monsters from slasher movies. Actually, that nice lady who chatted you up on the subway this morning could be one. So could your elementary school teacher, your grinning boss, or even your loving boyfriend.

The medical definition is simple: A psychopath is a person who lacks empathy and conscience, the quality which guides us when we choose between good and evil, moral or not. Most of us are conditioned to do good things. Psychopaths are not. Their impact on society is staggering, yet altogether psychopaths barely make up one percent of the population.

Through interviews with renowned psychologist Professor Philip Zimbardo, leading expert on psychopathy Professor Robert Hare, former President of Czech Republic and playwright Vaclav Havel, authors Gary Greenberg and Christopher Lane, professor Nicholas Christakis, among numerous other thinkers, we have delved into the world of psychopaths and heroes and revealed shocking implications for us and our society.”

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[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtZxm-RCkzs 450 300]

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Source 

“When it comes to human rights, critics often charge the United Nations with being selective at best. Especially with regards to Israel. And a recent bit of news coming out of the U.N. Human Rights Council will do nothing to assuage that sentiment, given its choice of human rights role models. In this instance, the late despot Moammar Gadhafi.

Fox News brings the story:

A United Nations panel has adopted a report praising Qaddafi-era Libya for its human rights record, a year after the report was sidelined amid international objection.

The report initially came before the U.N. Human Rights Council in the middle of the uprising against the Muammar Qaddafi regime. At the time, the U.N. had just voted to suspend Libya from the rights council — under pressure to maintain a consistent message toward Libya, the council later postponed consideration of the report.

But the Human Rights Council on Wednesday returned to the document — and approved it.

So, Gadhafi is a human rights star, according to the U.N. Cynics might think that means the U.N. has low standards. Consider the following from a report in The Guardian from 2009:

The United Nations’ most senior human rights official said last night that the Israeli military may have committed war crimes in Gaza. The warning came as Israeli troops pressed on with the deadly offensive in defiance of a UN security council resolution calling for a ceasefire.

Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, has called for “credible, independent and transparent” investigations into possible violations of humanitarian law, and singled out an incident this week in Zeitoun, south-east of Gaza City, where up to 30 Palestinians in one house were killed by Israeli shelling.

Pillay, a former international criminal court judge from South Africa, told the BBC the incident “appears to have all the elements of war crimes”.

So what’s behind giving star treatment to a country whose dictator was recently overthrown because of human rights abuses, but a democratic government backed by the U.S. is being condemned? The fact that Israel isn’t on the Human Rights Commission, whereas Saudi Arabia and the People’s Republic of China are, may have something to do with it.”

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Just temporary as per the clam….

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Full size: click here

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