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Links 7/28/12

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Some catchup items today. I was on an ungodly early AM flight on Friday. That is also the reason for the large proportion of cross posts yesterday. In addition, Lambert is taking tonight off from his campaign coverage, since he is about to return from Thailand.

Termites explode to defend their colonies Nature. Richard Smith: “Unwelcome similarities to the ecology of financial bloggers.”

Greenland May Become Green Again Global Economic Intersection

From American Drought to “Global Catastrophe” The Daily Impact (martha r)

War of words over Irish GM trial BBC

Vandana Shiva on the Problem with Genetically Modified Seeds Bill Moyers (Aquifer)

Two more men with HIV now virus-free. Is this a cure? MSNBC

Censored Slashdot Post Cryptome (bob). Note NC did feature the underlying post in Links.

The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance Marco Arment

The Mysterious Deaths of Nine Gulf Oil Spill Whistleblowers Wake-up Call (Chuck L). From earlier in the year. Some look not troubling but there are a few “hhm” ones in there.

China, Afghanistan to strengthen military ties Xinhua

Macau gambling indicator falls again MacroBusiness

Spain Jobless Reaches Post-Franco Record Amid Austerity: Economy Bloomberg

‘Germans Should Be Afraid’ of Economic Collapse Der Spiegel

Dr. Aghi is in Da Room Macro Man (Scott)

Draghi Said To Hold Talks With Weidmann On Bond Purchases Bloomberg

Barclays faces fresh watchdog investigation

Independent

Most likely to attack Iran Glenn Greenwald

Romney tries to pick up the pieces Guardian

A Richard Smith find: #RomneyShambles

Unions Contract Out to PR Firms That Work for Anti-Worker In These Times

Caterpillar strike: in the US, it’s open season on unions Guardian

Online Payday Lenders Seek More Respect and Less Oversight: Call Them What You Like, They are Still 1,000% Long-term Loans Nathalie Martin, Credi

Dimon lines up JPMorgan succession Financial Times

Bill Moyers and Chris Hedges: How Whole Regions of America Have Been Destroyed in the Name of Quarterly Profits Alternet (furzy mouse)

Antidote du jour (Steve L):

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82 comments

    2. neo-realist

      Liked that film. Try to get a film like this and others similar–Executive Action, the Spook who sat by the Door–made today that examines the ruthlessness of the TPTB. Forget about it.

    2. YesMaybe

      “Many termites fight off enemies by simply defecating onto them, sometimes with remarkable accuracy from a distance.”

      Maybe I’m too scatologically-minded…

      1. KnotRP

        Sounds like a MSM job desciption.

        OT, maybe glass-stegall needs to be
        a constitional amendment…..

      1. Jim Haygood

        ‘Only App Store apps can use iCloud, but many Mac developers can’t or won’t use it because of the App Store’s political instability.’

        I hear McDonald’s may compete with Apple. Their e-product will be called, of course, ‘McCloud.’

  4. Jon

    So a nutcase thinks he’s been censored by COINTELPRO (COINTELPRO? Perhaps this is someone who took way too much LSD in the 70s?) moles at Slashdot, and this is worthy news? Have you considered that perhaps his post got rejected each time he tried putting it up *because he was a nutcase*? Do you guys even *read* some of this stuff before posting it?

      1. MacCruiskeen

        Not really. The article provides no indication of how he knows this, who these people are, or any evidence whatsoever that this is not entirely pulled out of his paranoid ass. (“The spies who are out to punish me”) Sure, it’s vaguely “plausible” in that we expect that the Interwebs are monitored by security-types, and it mimics the kind of activity we see on any forum (even in completely non-political contexts), but how many agents do you think are really dedicated to these kinds of tasks? There are a lot of internet forums out there, with a lot of participants. Even allowing for the fact that most forum posting comes from a relatively small percentage, the coverage needed would large. That is one problem with many conspiracy theories: the required effort just isn’t worth the payoff.

        1. Kyrie Eleison

          HBGary/Federal was such an outfit, and apparently was quite lucrative, that is, until they were discovered.

          http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/02/28/hbgary-federals-aaron-barr-resigns-after-anonymous-hack-scandal/

          Forbes seems credible and legit, to stave off the knee-jerk ad hominems to “kill/discredit the messenger”, and this article is relatively tame compared to the actual backchannel convos that went on between the erstwhile CEO and his exposers over IRC. Those make for a far more interesting read.

          But go ahead and believe what you will, even John Wayne Gacy was upheld as a pillar of the community until those bodies were discovered in the basement.

    2. PhilK

      Hey Jon, why don’t you completely make up some shit, and throw in accusations of drug use and insanity? That would, like, completely disprove what that guy was saying, right?

    4. JGordon

      I tend to believe him, especially since after I read that initial post of his linked here I was able to spot quite a few forum spies myself by using the info contained therein “Jon”.

      I even bookmarked it for linkage whenever I inadvertently stumble on yet another spy. Have a look!

      http://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

      1. Kyrie Eleison

        This is great.

        What’s funny is, these guys tend to be very unoriginal and seem to work off of a script of canned and easily adaptable answers. It’s almost like getting hit with a spambot, it can be that predictable.

        And, as always, they will never return to actually discuss the issue once the train has derailed.

      2. SidFinster

        I find it hard to believe that the feds, le, wall street, whatever care what a few posters on a forum or blog think.

        To believe otherwise is to vastly overestimate our influence.

        1. Up the Ante

          “To believe otherwise is to vastly [under]estimate [their] [idleness]. ”

          fixed it for ‘ya

          You don’t seem to understand that they are Completely dependent upon others commenting on the outrage of Their employment .. as idle spies spying on You.
          Spying w/literally no other purpose than convincing Their immediate superior that their continued employment is ‘needed’.

          And, of course, Sid must know by now that I suspect he/she/it to be a spy, itself.

          Spambot silence to ensue ..

    5. Goin' South

      Beautiful illustration of what the post was about.

      So what are your usernames on DailyKos?

    6. knowbuddhau

      Sounds plausible to me. Much obliged for this anti-PSYOP primer.

      Three years on, the implications of this brief blog post, by Scott Horton at Harpers.org back in 2009, still blow my mind.

      Pentagon Targeted and Mistreated Journalists, AP Head Charges

      “In an important speech delivered at the University of Kansas, Associated Press head Tom Curley charged that the Bush Pentagon had systematically targeted and mistreated journalists as a part of a propaganda program developed by Donald Rumsfeld. He called on President Obama to end this approach.”

      Curley, speaking to journalists at the University of Kansas, said the news industry must immediately negotiate a new set of rules for covering war because “we are the only force out there to keep the government in check and to hold it accountable.” Much like in Vietnam, “civilian policymakers and soldiers alike have cracked down on independent reporting from the battlefield” when the news has been unflattering, Curley said. “Top commanders have told me that if I stood and the AP stood by its journalistic principles, the AP and I would be ruined.”

      Answering questions from his audience of about 160 people, Curley said AP remains concerned about journalists’ detentions. He said most appear to occur when someone else, often a competitor, “trashes” the journalist. “There is a procedure that takes place which sounds an awful lot like torture to us,” Curley said. “If people agree to trash other people, they are freed. If they don’t immediately agree to trash other people, they are kept for some period of time–two or three weeks–and they are put through additional questioning.” His remarks came a day after an AP investigation disclosed that the Pentagon is spending at least $4.7 billion this year on “influence operations” and has more than 27,000 employees devoted to such activities. At the same time, Curley said, the military has grown more aggressive in withholding information and hindering reporters.

      The Associated Press’s special report on Pentagon “influence operations” can be read here. The Pentagon’s Public Affairs Office has been one of the last redoubts of the Neoconservatives. Burrowed Bush era figures remain in key positions in the office, which had responsibility for implementation of some of the Rumsfeld Pentagon’s most controversial strategies in which the American public was targeted with practices previously associated with battlefield psy-ops. [Emphasis added. Note that the link to the report is broken. I was unable to find it anywhere.]

      Get that? For years now, we’ve been under weapons-grade PSYOP attack from our own government.

      The Pentagon spent $4.7 BILLION, in 2009 alone, on “influence operations”. Just imagine how many state-of-the-art movies one could produce with that kind of budget. According to Wikipedia, “Avatar was officially budgeted at $237 million.[3] Other estimates put the cost between $280 million and $310 million for production and at $150 million for promotion.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_%282009_film%29)

      But they don’t need to go to that expense. It’s well known that the Pentagon makes its propaganda money go further by partnering with Hollywood. What’s so hard to believe about the much easier payment of “influence operators” and “disinformationalists” for monitoring fora?

      [PEPE] ESCOBAR: So you would say that American life is totally Pentagonized.

      [NICK] TURSE: Yeah. There’s been a real militarization of the entire society and the economy, but not one that people realize. You know, there aren’t, you know, parades with tanks rolling down the street and guys in uniform, but this is going on covertly. It’s in the pop culture, in the hottest movies–last year, Transformers,/i>, the movie, a huge blockbuster hit, major Pentagon influence; this year, Ironman. They find ways to infiltrate the American mainstream culture. [The Pentagonization of US Life, The Real News, July 20, 2008. http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=767&Itemid=74&jumival=1912%5D

      The dismissal (by most people) of the seriousness of PSYOP bugs me to no end. The Pentagon has spent a lot of money developing these PSYOP weapons; they think of them as weapons; and they deploy them as weapons; but we, the targets, don’t see them as weapons, perhaps under some misguided notion of “no blood, no foul.” WTFIUWT?

      2. neo-realist

        Obama getting rid of a program established by a republican president????? If anything, Mr. change you can’t count on would only put it on steroids.

      3. Walter Wit Man

        Great comment.

        And video games have been a huge influence.

        And we have seen a synergy between the intelligence and military folks and the media in places like Libya and Syria. The media (and NGOs and politicians) are actually creating and spreading fake news in order to attack these countries.

        The propaganda may be getting so intense though that it’s actually having an unintended consequence of waking people up.

      4. Kyrie Eleison

        I, too, am frustrated by this.

        A while back, while reading someone’s blog, I noticed that the first comment on the topic being discussed was clearly a “hit piece” full of disinformation.

        I tried to explain to the blog author what exactly this was, and not to expect anything further from the commenter, to no avail.

        So, I pointed out my reasoning on why I felt the way I do by drawing attention to the commenter’s “About Me” page on his own blog. Scroll down a short way and let me know if you find anything peculiar that stands out:

        http://lindseygrahamnomore.wordpress.com/about-me/

        The link embedded on his page:

        http://www.examiner.com/article/psychological-warfare-psyops-its-role-during-war-and-its-current-use-america

        Even when slapped in the face with evidence, some of us still choose to disbelieve. (Yes, I’m talking to you ED.)

      5. Ned Ludd

        Although the link to the Associated Press’s special report on Pentagon “influence operations” is broken, it can be retrieved using the Internet Archive.

        What appears to be the same AP special report is also still live on the Fox News website.

      6. Up the Ante

        “[NICK] TURSE: There’s been a real militarization of the entire society and the economy, but not one that people realize. ”

        Guerrilla Capitalism was the name of the book. The media reports of Pentagon excesses were legendary in extent. Having paid the necessary price to silence the reporters [buy them with proxies], the country is now treated to guerrilla capitalism Looting. There was no lack of foresight that would happen.

        “The Pentagon’s Public Affairs Office has been one of the last redoubts of the Neoconservatives. Burrowed Bush era figures remain in key positions in the office, [ensuring that guerrilla capitalism Looting will know no bounds]. ”

        fixed it for ‘ya

    1. evodevo

      Unfortunately, looks a lot like me at the salad bar after loading up on pickled beets!

  7. leftover

    I’m saving that Antidote du jour to my economics file in the unregulated_banking folder.
    I think we should have a naming contest for the Pig in the Foreground.
    I’m going with “Diamond Jamie.”

  8. LeeAnne

    Bill Moyers and Chris Hedges: How Whole Regions of America Have Been Destroyed in the Name of Quarterly Profits -Alternet (furzy mouse)

    All credit to Chris Hedges, Bill Black and others who’ve been tireless on BANKSTER criminal rape and pillage of the country while, not incidentally, banksters finance through their illegal drug and arms laundering, the creation of a US Nazi security police state. Those FEMA reeducation camps we’ve been hearing about are beginning to look like a tasty solution for dealing with the BANKSTERS and their law making municipal minions sometimes referred to as leaders.

    And here comes bankster self-reform. Suddenly retail banking rules: new spacious JPMorgan CHASE branches and other less conspicuous banks with no discernible increase in street traffic continue to mushroom on the streets of Manhattan; Sandy trying to dust off his lousy reputation (assured no doubt by his PR that the public can be endlessly conned) in a race to get ahead of the retail bus; GE announces its going into retail banking for the money depositors offer; ole whatshername Connie-the-Bush-infatuated school marm writes for FT on ‘Why Americans Must Lead.’ -how about, why Americans must reform.

    Could it be a coincidence that Japan’s Nomura investment bank, among the ‘top tier of global investment banks’ is getting rid of its Western oriented upper management . Top management will be replaced by ‘more domestically focused executives’ and ‘senior UK staff were planning to leave.’

    It couldn’t hurt that ‘regulators called upon Nomura’s institutional clients to ‘cease trading with the bank after an insider trading scandal;’ unlike anything our whoring regulators would do.

    The pressure for reform in the US is going to come from outside. Our well oiled MSM propaganda machine takes care of that. Things have been rigged so tightly here that nothing can be done from within.

    I can just see the new retail banking for the obomba JOBS program -penny stock gambling. Watch out all you small stores thriving on lottery traffic. Here comes the competition -and they play rough

    …and specialize in ripping off the poor. See Citi on excessive 4,000% overdraft charges and subprime little lines of credit to ‘Protect’ overdrafts that research has shown were very unlikely to be repaid -so clever -annuities into infinity for the retail banks.

  9. Samuel Alexander

    Am I wrong, or is “Global Catastrophe” article by Brace for Impact failing to take into account that the Arab Spring, if it was in fact driven by a commodity price spike, was related to wheat and not corn?

    The article asks us to “consider, for example, what would happen if the American Fall should do what the Arab Spring failed to do — ignite the population of Saudi Arabia.”

    Too what extent is corn consumed for subsistence in Saudi Arabia? My guess would be not very much. Am I missing something?

  11. Ned Ludd

    At reddit, they’ve refined censorship by making it a series of obstacles you have to traverse.

    1. First, links critical of Obama get marked as spam.

    2. If the submitter makes enough noise by complaining to a moderator, it might get unmarked.

    3. Then it gets hit by a barrage of downvotes. Only the most popular reddit links gets a widespread visibility by making the front page, so as long as it stays out of the #1 and #2 spot on a subreddit such as as politics, it typically won’t make the front page.

    4. If the link gets enough votes quickly enough to rise to the top, the link will suddenly disappear. The reddit discussion will still be there, but there will no way to find it anymore from the subreddit, and there will be no way for it to reach the front page.

    For example, Obama Lies About Federal Marijuana Law to Rolling Stone was near the top of the politics subreddit, then it vanished off of the list. People who bookmarked the reddit discussion could still read the comments. However, when the link rose to #2 or #3 in politics, it simply vanished. No matter how far down the list of links you looked, it was gone.

    1. Walter Wit Man

      Yeah.

      Reddit is a top 10 website and probably the most ‘open-minded’ of those (and with a very young readership) so it attracts a lot of attention from our master manipulators.

      I only look at /r/politics to research what the Daily Kos type progressives are talking about (although /r/politics has more of a mix of people than Daily Kos–more conservatives and libertarians, for e.g.). But I never expected to get good information from that subreddit. It’s too mainstream to be useful.

      Which is why I used /r/conspiracy to get information.

      Only that is now also getting infiltrated by perps. Conspiracy used to be an oasis of independent thinking . . . now you get the same thought-crime enforcers there that one sees at /r/politics. Plus there is more disinformation there now–the silly or intentionally wrong posts that attempt to discredit others or steer them in the wrong direction.

      So now I sort the /r/conspiracy page by “controversial” or “new” to get the real good stuff.

      That’s how cynical I am now! I read the stuff that even /r/conspiracy is spiking.

      And maybe I shouldn’t even reveal my search methods for finding stuff they don’t want us to find.

      1. YesMaybe

        Well, I don’t go to reddit so I don’t quite appreciate the specifics you talk about, but I completely share the sentiment when you say “That’s how cynical I am now! I read the stuff that even /r/conspiracy is spiking.” At first I may have found absurd the notion that paid agents would be going through forums to obfuscate discussion (and do other things probably). But at some point I found out that they have people pretending to be minors to engage in sex chat with people. As I see it, if the government pays people to do that, the sky (or the underworld) is the limit.

      2. Walter Wit Man

        I was thinking of top ten “news” websites:

        http://www.alexa.com/topsites/category/Top/News

        The Weather Channel?

        Huffington Post sure rocketed up there.

        Reddit is #8.

        Doesn’t surprise me about Yahoo New. They are masters at daring me to click on shit and I’m a sucker for whatever jedi mindtricks they use.

    2. Walter Wit Man

      Notice the other sites that have obscure rules and methods for promoting material.

      Daily Kos had “algorithms” that promoted content, right?

      And often times we are asked to trust the site. I’ve suspected that Youtube distorts the number of views a video will get.

      Same thing with Reddit upvotes, or Digg I guess.

      Oh, and I walked by a work share/coffee shop type place that you had to be a member to join. The windows were mostly covered up but since I was waiting for someone I was peeking through and I saw a big board where they listed jobs and workers seeking jobs. Many of these jobs were things like “I will give you 100 likes on Facebook for $5”, or something like that.

      2. ggm

        The PTB love Reddit because it is very easy for them to manipulate which content gets promoted through the voting system.

    3. citalopram

      I’ve been challenging the Obama bots on Reddit, and they’re really easy to defeat. Most of what they comment on is slogan based. Throw a little Greenwald or Yves at them and they don’t know what to do.

      Unfortuately, comments are a terrible way of being heard if you don’t get massively upvoted.

  12. Susan the other

    Xinhua News. China and Afghanistan form a strategic partnership for mutual cooperation against terrorism and for the peaceful development of South Asia. How did Karzai become such a statesman? Last time I checked, he and his brother were cleaning out the Bank of Kabul. Did we just make Afghanistan a military ally to counter Chinese dilplomacy? And are we running around the Pacific trying to do the same because China is promoting the South Asian Association for Regional Development? We are starting to look really flat-footed.

    1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      Chinese Afgan strategic partnership went back a long way, at least 2,000 years when Wudi of Han China took a fancy to the Heavenly Horse of Ferghana – the weapon needed to be a superpower of that age.

      They got the horses and not long after, Chinese emperors allowed Buddhist monks from Gandhara or Kandahar to visit to brainwash, sorry, to convert her people.

  13. JTFaraday

    Re: Antidote du jour

    My, what a mess. Did anyone do anything so déclassé last night as watch the Olympics opening ceremony? (I did).

    What those pigs need is an English nanny!:

    “If there is a through-line to be untangled from its $42-million, cast-of-thousands, higgledy-piggledy progress through modern Britain…it might be something like, “Sorry for the unintended consequences, but we did give you steam engines, great pop music and comedy and the roots of social networking. It was ugly there for a while, but we’re all right — and everybody dance now”…

    … Certainly I would not have expected to see the rural idyll of the initial set — with real soil and real grass, maypole dancers and cricket players — destroyed, to a clamor of drums (led by the deaf Scots percussionist Evelyn Glennie), by the appurtenances of Blake’s “dark satanic mills,” as towering factory chimneys rose from the stadium floor, belching real smoke.

    But these, too, were swept away in turn. There was J.K. Rowling reading from “Peter Pan”; Mike Oldfield playing “Tubular Bells”; the staff of the Great Ormond Hospital (and some of its patients) in a tribute to the beleaguered National Health Service; villains and monsters from children’s books vanquished by a fleet of Mary Poppinses, descending from the sky like D-Day paratroopers, but with umbrellas.”

    http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-review-olympics-opening-ceremony-20120727,0,6540367.story

    I wonder what the right wing warriors (fresh off their special Anglo-Saxon relationship) will have to say about this.

    1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      Was busy with my own cat’s training for her Cat Olympics.

      She wants to be in the ’20-foot mad dash across the living room’ event.

      I personally want her to win a medal in ‘how may stars can you count in 60 seconds’ contest. But she is not interested in that.

    2. Hugh

      Can’t say I saw all of the opening ceremonies. There were a few good moments but a lot of it was strange and even kind of creepy. There seemed too to be a lot of revisionist economic history going on. A lot of glossing over, like farmers being driven off the land to provide a cheap controllable labor force for the Industrial Revolution being one. Lots of Dickensian type captains of capitalism strutting about in beaver skin hats looking very satisfied at the great things “they” were accomplishing. The whole sordid history of the British Empire was completely written out of the script. Then that whole bit about the internet love story. WTF?

      It all came across as extremely insular. The NHS? Really? And worse it was portrayed as the best medicine the 19th century could provide. Is that really supposed to be an advertisement for it?

      As I said, some good moments but overall, a dreadful and often not very interesting mishmash.

  14. Walter Wit Man

    Well, Cass Sunstein, Obama’s little bitch stool pigeon, suggested this:

    “Sunstein co-authored a 2008 paper with Adrian Vermeule, titled “Conspiracy Theories,” dealing with the risks and possible government responses to false conspiracy theories resulting from “cascades” of faulty information within groups that may ultimately lead to violence. In this article they wrote, “The existence of both domestic and foreign conspiracy theories, we suggest, is no trivial matter, posing real risks to the government’s antiterrorism policies, whatever the latter may be.” They go on to propose that, “the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups”,[25] where they suggest, among other tactics, “Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_Sunstein#.22Conspiracy_Theories.22_and_government_infiltration

    Obviously, Sunstein hates America and its freedoms. But he’s simply the paid mouthpiece sent out to justify what his masters are already doing. He’s just the corporate bitch.

    Our masters have many layers between us and them. They hire Obama who hires Sunstein who hires the goons.

    1. patricia

      “…posing real risks to the government’s antiterrorism policies, whatever the latter may be.”

      Yeah, cuz whatever the gov’t policies, I’m sure they’re absolutely correct. Or if not correct, at least much better than any conspiracy theory out there (whatever those latter may be). Because I am the Cass Sunstein, neo-authoritarian for whomever delivers me the most fame&fortune no matter how much it stinks: past, present, future, and forever and ever, amen.

      roflmao Thanks WWM

    2. JTFaraday

      Arguably, the former independent contractor known as Barack Obama is hired, but I’m still not sure why you think everyone needs to be hired, as opposed to being perfectly capable of coming up with this stuff on their own.

      For example, you know Sunstein is married to “humanitarian” warrior princess Samantha Power– who purportedly helped talk Obama into going into Libya– right?

      Did he go out and marry it because he needed the job?

      2. Ned Ludd

        JTFaraday,

        Sunstein was literally hired by Obama to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Servants of powerful corporations (including servants working in the government and the media) are hired precisely because of their views. The are genuine authoritarians; the type of person who might question authority never gets the job.

        There’s no contradiction between saying someone has been hired and recognizing that their views are genuine. Apple, for example, isn’t going to hire a bunch of salespeople who hate iPhones and Macs.

    3. Ned Ludd

      Sunstein defined conspiracy theories to be: “an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.” According to this definition, a few years ago, surmising that Libor was manipulated would be a conspiracy theory that the government should disrupt and undermine (as opposed to investigating). Greenwald links to this excerpt from Sunstein’s paper:

      What can government do about conspiracy theories? Among the things it can do, what should it do? We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. (3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories. (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech. (5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help. Each instrument has a distinctive set of potential effects, or costs and benefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions. However, our main policy idea is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories, which involves a mix of (3), (4), and (5).

      Sunstein is clearly an extremist, as Greenwald points out. And Sunstein’s current position would be a logical point to enact “exactly such policies”.

      1. Up the Ante

        And your link even gives evidence of the ‘finding out’ of Krugman as a shapeshifter,

        http://www.salon.com/2010/01/15/sunstein_2/

        I tracked down the Daniel Tencer story on Sunstein, which was different than the broken link the salon story gave.
        Tencer: “Sunstein’s article, published in the Journal of Political Philosphy in 2008 and recently uncovered by blogger Marc Estrin, states that “our primary claim is that conspiracy theories typically stem not from irrationality or mental illness of any kind but from a ‘crippled epistemology,’ in the form of a sharply limited number of (relevant) informational sources.”
        Raw Story http://s.tt/1dpDJ

        A “limited number of (relevant) informational sources” sounds a lot like those who’ve criticized ex-SKF, enews.com, and fukushimadiary for their coverage of the Fukushima meltdowns.

        Tencer: “Sunstein, whose article focuses largely on the 9/11 conspiracy theories, suggests that the government “enlist nongovernmental officials [CORPORATIONS] in the effort to rebut the theories. ”
        Raw Story http://s.tt/1dpDJ

        fixed it for ‘ya, Mr. Tencer

        “enlisting”, perks, and bologna
        http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/07/doing-some-math-on-fracking-propaganda.html#comment-766732

  15. They didn't leave me a choice

    Aww, those banksters feasting on the body of a freshly killed poor person in the antidote are so cute.

    Sorry.

  16. F. Beard

    re Termites explode to defend their colonies :

    Reminds me of this:

    For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. Matthew 16:25

    The more we learn about Life, the more astounding it is.

  17. LeonovaBalletRusse

    My dear compatriots, it is time for me to put away my dancing slippers. Thank you for being so gracious as to let me share the stage with you, as one of a spirited ensemble filled with hope and courage. Yves and Lambert, thank you for your forbearance. Your mirror images blaze in the firmament.

    LeonovaBalletRusse aux Souliers Rouges

    1. ginnie nyc

      Lenova, I hope this is voluntary, and not because of a health matter. Thank you for your original thoughts, and interesting book references. Good luck!

    3. Ms G

      Leonova, echoing Ginnie NYC. I hope this is a temporary absence. Your sparkling presence, and wide-ranging references and insights, as well as brilliant new phrases, are all part of why I visit. Please be well.

  18. citalopram

    Hedges is truley a modern-day prophet, a voice crying out in the wilderness. I find him fascinating (and depressing) to listen to due to his passion.

Comments are closed.