Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The Genius Of The Crowd: Charles Bukowski



From the poem 'It's Ours'

that space
there
before they get to us
ensures
that
when they do
they won't
get it all

ever


~ ~ ~

and another version...



The woodcut is from "Madman's Drum" by Lynd Ward, about 1930

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own

not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world

not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect
like a shining diamond

like a knife

like a mountain

like a tiger

like hemlock

their finest art

Global Revolution Baby! ‘Egypt imports 21 tons of tear gas from the US, port staff refuses to sign for it’

The arrival of 7 and half tons of tear gas to Egypt’s Suez port created conflict after the responsible officials at the port refused to sign and accept it for fear it would be used to crack down on Egyptian protesters.

Local news sites published documents regarding the shipment that shows that the cargo, which arrived in 479 barrels from the United States and was scheduled to be delivered to the ministry of interior.

The reports also mentioned in the documents that a second shipment of 14 tons of tear gas was expected, making the total 21 tons, in one week.

[ ... ]

The al-Shorouk newspaper reported that upon the arrival of the shipment, massive disapproval broke out between employees, where five employees refused to sign for the shipment, one after the other.

The five, being dubbed by activists as the “brave five”, will be refereed to a investigative committee as to why they refused to perform their duties.

more...>>

Beatnik-era Peyton Place may be given national historic status

Druid Heights, a little-known enclave where Zen philosopher Alan Watts, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder and prostitutes union founder Margot St. James once lived with other counterculture characters in ''shared bohemian poverty," has long been one of Marin County's best-kept historical secrets.

Although most people have never heard of the place, this once flourishing alternative community, whose members were dedicated to radical artistic, philosophical, spiritual, political and sexual experimentation, is beginning to slowly emerge from its cocoon of obscurity.

An isolated cluster of architecturally eccentric dwellings near Muir Woods, Druid Heights is not only a fascinating chapter in Bay Area history, it may even be of national significance and therefore worthy of preservation.

A recent study by the Golden Gate National Recreation Area concludes that the five-acre property meets all the criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places and "would make an ideal artists' retreat."

"This small community succeeded in its goal to create a secluded, supportive space in which imaginative people could work, live and celebrate, unburdened by the demands of mainstream society," the study says. ''Their efforts later had a significant impact on the emerging counterculture in the San Francisco Bay Area, and would eventually influence broader events in the history of the United States."

more...>>Link

First Amendment hijacked by moneyed interests

A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum: It was hijacked.

According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech, and corporations are now people.

Yet when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they're treated as public nuisances - clubbed, pepper-sprayed, thrown out of public parks and evicted from public spaces.

The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision last year ended all limits on political spending. Now millions of dollars are being funneled to politicians without a trace.

[ ... ]

Millionaires and billionaires on Wall Street and in executive suites aren't contributing all this money out of sheer love of country. Their political spending is analogous to their other investments. Mostly they want low tax rates and friendly regulations.

Yet all this money is drowning out the voices of average Americans. Most of us don't have the dough to break through. Giving First Amendment rights to money and corporations has hobbled the First Amendment rights of the rest of us.

This is where the Occupiers come in. If there's a core message to the Occupy movement, it's that the increasing concentration of income and wealth at the top endangers our democracy. With money comes political power.

Yet as Occupiers seek to make their voices heard about all this, they're told the First Amendment doesn't apply. When they peacefully assemble - erecting tents in public spaces - they're attacked and evicted.

Generals in real-estate business—WikiLeaks missing stories released

The revelations of WikiLeaks have taken the world by storm and embarrassed the Obama Administration in the United States. But when I look at the content of the leaked American diplomatic cables regarding Pakistan and Afghanistan, I feel nothing new in them.

The Army Chief calls the shots in Pakistan and it’s a universal truth. How the generals play double games, that’s also known by everyone. So whatever the former American Ambassador has reported from Islamabad (in the leaked cables), is actually an open secret in our country. For journalists, researchers and historians, these cables have value just because responsible diplomats of the Super Power have documented them in a bureaucratic way—thus they’re citation material for everyone.

I feel, many things, being discussed in a journalistic circle, are missing in the WikiLeaks. I want to count a few of them in this blog in the hope that The Terrorland Team (TTT) will not edit them. Discussing such things will bring the hidden truth out. Only truth can make national organizations credible and stronger; hiding them will bring more embarrassments to Pakistan in the future!

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Euro Zone on the Brink A Continent Stares into the Abyss

Fear is spreading through the financial markets as investors pull their money out of the crisis-stricken euro-zone countries. With Chancellor Angela Merkel opposed to using the ECB's firepower to solve the crisis, the monetary union appears increasingly in danger of breaking apart. Some economists are even arguing for Germany to reintroduce the deutsche mark.

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Gould-Werritty: A Real Conspiracy, Not a Theory

There is a huge government cover-up in progress over the Werritty connection to Mossad and the role of British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould, and their neo-con plan to start a war with Iran.

Yesterday at 22.15pm I submitted by email a Freedom of Information request for:

All communications in either direction ever made between Matthew Gould and Adam Werritty, specifically including communications made outside government systems.

At 23.31pm I was astonished to get a reply from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The request was refused as it was

“likely to exceed the cost limit”.

Now it is plainly nonsense that to gather correspondence between two named individuals would be too expensive. They could just ask Gould.

And a reply at nearly midnight? The Freedom of Information team in the FCO is not a 24 hour unit. Plainly not only are they hiding the Gould/Werritty correspondence, they are primed and on alert for this cover-up operation.

Even more blatant was the obstruction of MP Paul Flynn, when he attempted to question Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell on the Gould-Werritty connection at the House of Commons Public Administration Committee. These are the minutes: anybody who believes in democracy should feel their blood boil as you read them:

Publc Admininstration Committee 24/11/2011

Q<369> Paul Flynn: Okay. Matthew Gould has been the subject of a very serious complaint from two of my constituents, Pippa Bartolotti and Joyce Giblin. When they were briefly imprisoned in Israel, they met the ambassador, and they strongly believe—it is nothing to do with this case at all—that he was serving the interest of the Israeli Government, and not the interests of two British citizens. This has been the subject of correspondence.

In your report, you suggest that there were two meetings between the ambassador and Werritty and Liam Fox. Questions and letters have proved that, in fact, six such meetings took place. There are a number of issues around this. I do not normally fall for conspiracy theories, but the ambassador has proclaimed himself to be a Zionist and he has previously served in Iran, in the service. Werritty is a self-proclaimed—

Robert Halfon: Point of order, Chairman. What is the point of this?

Paul Flynn:> Let me get to it. Werritty is a self-proclaimed expert on Iran.

Chair:> I have to take a point of order.

Robert Halfon:> Mr Flynn is implying that the British ambassador to Israel is working for a foreign power, which is out of order.

Paul Flynn:> I quote the Daily Mail: “Mr Werritty is a self-proclaimed expert on Iran and has made several visits. He has also met senior Israeli officials, leading to accusations”—not from me, from the Daily Mail—“that he was close to the country’s secret service, Mossad.” There may be nothing in that, but that appeared in a national newspaper.

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Portugal police brutality caught on film


An amateur video has emerged of Portugal's police officers brutally beating a peaceful protester during a strike against the government's austerity measures, Press TV reports.

The footage shows group of Public Security Police (PSP) dressed as civilians beating an unarmed young man during the one day strike that paralyzed Portugal on last Thursday, Press TV correspondent reported on Monday.

The video has quickly made its way to mainstream websites and TV channels, sparking controversy. Some opposition members and social platforms demanded an investigation.

"We can't rely too much of investigation of this scenarios because it's going to be investigated by the police themselves." member of the October 15 social platform, Joao Camargo said.

"We know and it's public now that the police are lying and are using illegal tactics to try and criminalize the strikes, unions and the social movement" Camargo added.

Portugal is the third country to succumb to financial troubles in the euro zone debt crisis and seek funding assistance after Greece and Ireland.

The country must meet EU conditions for a 78-billion-euro bailout to rescue it from its worst economic crisis in decades.

In the drive to cut debt, the unpopular economic reforms include spending cuts from health services to salaries to public television, and changes to labor laws. The suggestion of these measures has sparked nationwide strikes in Portugal.

Weeding out corporate psychopaths

Given the state of the global economy, it might not surprise you to learn that psychopaths may be controlling the world. Not violent criminals, but corporate psychopaths who nonetheless have a genetically inherited biochemical condition that prevents them from feeling normal human empathy.

Scientific research is revealing that 21st century financial institutions with a high rate of turnover and expanding global power have become highly attractive to psychopathic individuals to enrich themselves at the expense of others, and the companies they work for.

A peer-reviewed theoretical paper titled “The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis” details how highly placed psychopaths in the banking sector may have nearly brought down the world economy through their own inherent inability to care about the consequences of their actions.

The author of this paper, Clive Boddy, previously of Nottingham Trent University, believes this theory would go a long way to explain how senior managers acted in ways that were disastrous for the institutions they worked for, the investors they represented and the global economy at large.

If true, this also means the astronomically expensive public bailouts will not solve the problem since many of the morally impaired individuals who caused this mess likely remain in positions of power. Worse, they may be the same people advising governments on how to resolve this crisis.

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UK wants pension cash to help ailing economy

Britain unveiled plans on Monday to tap pension funds for the lion's share of an investment of up to 30 billion pounds ($46.5 billion) in big building projects to help to revitalise a stagnant economy forecast to slip back into recession next year.

The measures are the latest in a drip feed of government announcements ahead of Finance Minister George Osborne's autumn statement on Tuesday when growth forecasts will be cut as the euro zone crisis bites.

The OECD forecast on Monday that Britain would suffer a modest recession next year, urging the Bank of England to expand its asset purchase programme designed at shoring up a faltering economy.

Adding to the gloom, British retail sales fell at their fastest pace in 2-1/2 years in November, a survey by business lobby the CBI showed.

Britain's Conservative-led coalition has made it its priority to erase a budget deficit that peaked at 11 percent of national output.

It is cutting spending by around a fifth across most government departments, but the domestic squeeze has coincided with plunging demand from continental European markets hit by the eurozone crisis.

The unemployment level has hit a 15-year high and the government is likely to fail to hit a target of wiping out the structural deficit by 2015, when the next election must be held.

Responding to industry calls to help companies to access cash, Osborne announced measures on Sunday to underwrite 20 billion pounds of loans to smaller companies which are struggling to get credit.

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Top 10 Reasons Why the Mafia Is Better Than the State


The next time that somebody argues that anarchy results in an increase in organized crime, smile sweetly and tell that person that it would be a real improvement over the state.

Here are the top 10 reasons why the mafia is better than the state from Emily Sandblade, delivered at the Soapbox Idol competition from Porcfest 2011

More: http://www.TheDailySheeple.com/

Your Fascist Superhero


thedailyattack.com - attackthesystem.com

Georgia Woman Claims 13-Year Affair with Herman Cain

An Atlanta businesswoman is breaking her silence, claiming she has been involved in a 13-year-long affair with Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, FOX 5 senior I-Team reporter Dale Russell sat down with Ginger White, who had a story to tell.

“I'm not proud,” White told Russell. “I didn't want to come out with this. I did not.”

White was worried a political tsunami was headed her way. So, she decided to head it off, by confessing she was involved in a 13-year-long affair with presidential hopeful Herman Cain.

“It was pretty simple,” White said. “It wasn't complicated. I was aware that he was married. And I was also aware I was involved in a very inappropriate situation, relationship.”

Ginger White says she met Herman Cain in the late 90s in Louisville, Kentucky, when as president of the National Restaurant Association, he made a presentation. She was impressed. She says they shared drinks afterwards and he invited her back to his hotel room.

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URGENT - Eurozone to collapse in ten days??


Today President Obama met with members of the European Union to try to save the ailing Euro. The fear of economic collapse seems to be spreading, and Greece, Portugal and Ireland have been bailed out as of now. Now Italy and Spain are feeling the pinch. Is the end of the Eurozone near? Joe Weisenthal, deputy editor for Business Insider, tells us what could potentially happen to the Euro and the Eurozone.

Occupy This: Crazy Tom the FBI Provocateur

As weird as the 1960s became, Crazy Tom stood out. He set fires and started fights on the Stanford campus, supplied guns and explosives to fellow militants, and staged hold-ups "to support the Revolution." He also created a secret mountain-top training camp and bomb factory to groom would-be urban guerrillas, from young, mostly white Maoists to the secret Black Panther army trying to free Soledad Brother George Jackson from San Quentin Penitentiary. Then, in February and March 1971, Crazy Tom Mosher put on a suit and tie, brushed down his wispy blond hair, and testified in secret before the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security. According to his sworn testimony, the revolutionary terrorist had worked all along for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and its state counterpart, the California Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Identification (CII).

In his testimony, Mosher warned of a growing campaign of revolutionary sabotage, terror, and guerrilla war, which had already left a trail of violence and murder across Northern California. The Senate published his tale at taxpayers' expense, while Reader's Digest ran a first-hand account of his experiences, "Inside the Revolutionary Left." As Mosher and the senators told it, he had been an informant, passively watching the illegal violence of the Left and reporting to the authorities to help them enforce the law. As those of us who knew him had seen for ourselves, he had created much of the terrorist violence he now condemned.

At the time, I was an anti-war activist at Stanford, increasingly burned-out, cynical, and without too many lingering liberal illusions. Yet I would never have suggested that the FBI or other police agencies had paid Crazy Tom to shoot guns on campus, set fires, or run a guerrilla training camp. More likely, I figured, he had created his own chaos, while selling his handlers whatever bullshit he could get them to buy.

I was wrong. On March 8, 1971, just as Mosher was about to testify, a group calling itself the Citizen's Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into the Bureau's office in Media, Pennsylvania, and "liberated" over 1000 classified documents, which they began releasing to the press. The purloined files included the hitherto secret caption "COINTELPRO," shorthand for Counterintelligence Program. NBC's Carl Stern then filed suit under the Freedom of Information Act, and in December 1973, a federal court ordered the FBI to make public its clandestine COINTELPRO memos.

One of the memos caught my eye. In May 1968, Director J. Edgar Hoover had secretly authorized the FBI "to expose, disrupt, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the New Left's opposition to the Vietnam War and support for black liberation. "Expose, disrupt, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" are terms of art, and none of Hoover's underlings could have doubted what he was telling them to do. Far from enforcing the law or protecting our First Amendment right to protest, the FBI would use against us the classic techniques that the Czarist secret police and its European counterparts had used for centuries, that the FBI had perfected since the post-World War I Palmer Raids, and that the CIA and military had for years directed against foreign foes. Our Crazy Tom, it appeared, was looking like far more than a self-propelled provocateur.

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Caught in the act - why citizens MUST retain the right to film police & government officials


Radley Balko, a civil libertarian best known for his work at Reason, Cato, and the Huffington Post, talks with John Stossel about the need for citizens to be able to film the police. In one clip, they show how an officer intentionally throws himself into a bicyclist while proclaiming the cyclist intentionally rammed him. In another clip, a policeman denies drawing his gun at a snowball fight when the video clearly shows that he did. Should the police feel afraid to act if they are filmed? If they are doing their job correctly, why should they? At the end of the show, Stossel dicusses the corruption of Nixon's vice president Spiro Agnew and the corruption he and many other politicians were found guilty of. Isn't it good that we have a record of their corruption so that justice could be served? Shouldn't the same standard be applied to the police? Stossel's final point: individuals deserve privacy, individuals who get public money (such as ACORN administrators) deserve less privacy, and people who receive government money and who have the ability to forcibly control you - and the authority to hold a gun to your head - deserve to be held fully accountable and absolutely should be video recorded.

Jan 25th - Take what's yours!


Violent clashes between police and demonstrators as over ten thousand gather on the streets of Cairo. The Egyptian population has endured a tyrants rule for far too long, millions struggle each day to find where their next meal is coming from. January 25th, 2011 marks the day when the people rise and take back what's rightfully there's. This isn't the end, but hopefully the beginning to a long awaited regime change! Send to everyone and let them know.

Song: "Into the Fire" - Thirteen Senses

Engineered Avian Flu Could Kill Half the World’s Humans

This isn't a movie. It's not a classic Science Fiction book. This is the real story of a scientist who created a virus with the power to litter the Earth with billions of dead bodies.

OK, now breathe. Or maybe don't—the virus is airborne.

In his Netherlands laboratory, virologist Ron Fouchier was experimenting with the avian flu virus to see how it could become even more virulent. (Red flag.) His research involved spreading it throughout a population of ferrets, and he noticed that as the virus reproduced, it adapted to spread even faster. (RED FLAG.) Not worried about ferret flu? Previous research has shown that any strains of influenza that can pass between ferrets can also pass between humans. (RED FLAAAAAAAAAG.) Ten generations later, his efforts had created an airborne strain with the power could kill half the human population. (RED FUCKING FLAG, DUDE!)

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General George S. Patton was assassinated to silence his criticism of allied war leaders claims new book

The newly unearthed diaries of a colourful assassin for the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, reveal that American spy chiefs wanted Patton dead because he was threatening to expose allied collusion with the Russians that cost American lives.

The death of General Patton in December 1945, is one of the enduring mysteries of the war era. Although he had suffered serious injuries in a car crash in Manheim, he was thought to be recovering and was on the verge of flying home.

But after a decade-long investigation, military historian Robert Wilcox claims that OSS head General "Wild Bill" Donovan ordered a highly decorated marksman called Douglas Bazata to silence Patton, who gloried in the nickname "Old Blood and Guts".

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And, We Have Gotten Used to It

By Dan Rather, Reader Supported News

On November 22, Dan Rather received the Committee to Protect Journalists' Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for 2011 at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. What follows is the speech he gave upon accepting the prestigious award. -- JPS/RSN

...

Of course freedom of the press and of speech both come with pitfalls. People can peddle opinions as if they were facts. Those armed with the big, expensive megaphones drown out those blowing whistles.

But now, we see our fellow citizens taking to the streets. And, that my friends, is our cue to get back to work. As the People of our nation begin rising up, they expect the business of news to be about inquiry and accountability.

And, luckily for us, we can still do that ... but it may not be within the confines of big corporate media. As you know, we are living in an age when big money owns everything ... including the news.

That cash bought a lot of silence for a long time. Enough time for unchecked power to get this country tangled into messes all around the world. We all know that money talks. But, so do the people. They tire of conflicts at home and abroad ... conflicts that avert our eyes from the corruption and callowness that does little more than spill our blood and misspend our treasure.

"We had fed the heart on fantasies," wrote William Butler Yeats, "the heart's grown brutal from the fare."

In other words, we have gotten used to it.

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Goldman Sachs Joins Occupy Wall Street


Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein is so disgusted with his own company's immoral and irresponsible behavior that he decided to join the Occupy Wall Street movement himself.

George Michael hospitalized: Christians For a Moral America praying for his death

Word came out last week that George Michael, 48, was admitted to a Viennese hospital for severe pneumonia. (Though he has cancelled the remainder of the tour he was on, Mr. Michael is reportedly responding to treatment and slowly recovering.)

Ever heard of a group called Christians for a Moral America? Neither had I. Neither had anyone else—until this weekend, when the group Tweeted these lovely messages:

And now Christians for a Moral America will be known throughout the Internet.

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SAIC Banks Billions from Top Secret America, Millions to Put DHS in an Asylum

Short of storming the Beltway, the American people may never learn just how much of their money has been pillaged, plundered and simply wasted in the name of “national security” since 9/11, but our research suggests it could easily be an amount that exceeds not only the billions in bailout bucks given to the Banksters since 2008 but the trillions paid to the War Profiteers since 2001. In fact, just as the money being squandered on militarily useless F-22 and F-35 fighter jets will probably exceed our $1.3 trillion federal deficit (see our previous reports), the often untraceable trillions poured into the post-9/11 “too big to fail”, “war on terrorism”, “homeland security” and “black ops” troughs by our corporate-owned politicians and well-lobbied bureaucrats might easily approximate our $15 trillion national debt.

http://www.usdebtclock.org

One of the hundreds of “security contractors” feeding at those troughs is SAIC – formerly Science Applications International Corporation. Headquartered in McLean VA, SAIC is “a Fortune 500 scientific, engineering, and technology applications company working in national security, energy and the environment, critical infrastructure, and health”. The company’s 46,000+ employees serve the Department of Defense (DoD), the intelligence community, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other federal government agencies. SAIC had revenue of $11.1 billion for its fiscal year 2010.

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NWO, London Olympics and the 2013 Venus Round

Some interesting mathematics according to LaRouche supporters:

Under the energy of Venus and the Sun, the occult NWO foundation master plan must be realized by 2013. (that is, by Gregorian calendar date December 22, 2013 following another ritual circle around the Sun (starting in Solar Maximum year =2012) counting from December 22, 2012. (= end date of Mayan Long Count Calendar 13.00.00 Baktun).

It takes 243 years for Venus to return to the exact point where it started. It's called a Venus Round. And they (Illuminati), determined the creation of the NWO in 1770, with Rothschild and Adam Weishaupt as the real "founding fathers."

1770 was the year in which a new cycle of 242 years started, sectioned in 99,11,121,11 = 242 years! (=11x9, 99:9, 11x11, 121:11) (sequence= x9,:9,x11,:11 = ratio 9/11)

Right now we are living in the ':11 stage', meaning the LAST 11 years from SolarMax to SolarMax, starting from 2001 (WTC attack) to 2012.

11:11 as deceptive symbolism, means nothing more than the completion of their NWO in the last solar maximum cycle to 2012 with the start of their NWO in the new year 2013.

In 2013 there will have been a complete Venus Round of 243 years counting from 1770, and in THEIR (Illuminati/Elite) minds, the celebration of a new "spiritual era" but not in the sense as you think it will be, but with a "New Rome" represented by the United Nations (UN)/NATO in the spirit of ancient Babylon. The true meaning of the City and Tower of Babel.

We are still living under the Anglo-American World Empire. The key London oligarchs, bankers, the House of Windsor and those in alliance with them (who brought the Nazi system into power, starting in the 1920s) are still dominating the political-occult ruling Elite, of which the Bilderberg group.

Is it any coincidence the NEXT official summer Olympic Games will be held in 2012 and in the City of London? No.

'Criminally insane': No trial for Norway mass killer Breivik

Confessed mass killer Andres Breivik is not mentally sound and cannot be held accountable for the double terror attack in July, which ended with 77 people dead, doctors have determined, as cited by Norwegian media.

Psychiatrist Torger Husby, who was among the medical team examining the self-proclaimed crusader, said he and his colleagues had come to a clear conclusion on the 32-yaer-old’s mental health, but declined to elaborate.

Psychiatrists who evaluated the mental state of mass killer Anders Breivik have come up with an assessment for a Norwegian court on Tuesday.

The key findings are expected at a news conference later on Tuesday. The finding by the two forensic psychiatrists will help determine whether Breivik is sentenced to prison or psychiatric care.

"The conclusion is … is that he is insane," prosecutor Svein Holden told a news conference. "He lives in his own delusional universe and his thoughts and acts are governed by this universe."

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Photoshopped or Not? A Tool to Tell

“Fix one thing, then another and pretty soon you end up with Barbie,” said Hany Farid, a professor of computer science and a digital forensics expert at Dartmouth.

And that is a problem, feminist legislators in France, Britain and Norway say, and they want digitally altered photos to be labeled. In June, the American Medical Association adopted a policy on body image and advertising that urged advertisers and others to “discourage the altering of photographs in a manner that could promote unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image.”

Dr. Farid said he became intrigued by the problem after reading about the photo-labeling proposals in Europe. Categorizing photos as either altered or not altered seemed too blunt an approach, he said.

Dr. Farid and Eric Kee, a Ph.D. student in computer science at Dartmouth, are proposing a software tool for measuring how much fashion and beauty photos have been altered, a 1-to-5 scale that distinguishes the infinitesimal from the fantastic. Their research is being published this week in a scholarly journal, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Their work is intended as a technological step to address concerns about the prevalence of highly idealized and digitally edited images in advertising and fashion magazines. Such images, research suggests, contribute to eating disorders and anxiety about body types, especially among young women.

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Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers to Trek Trail of Tears With Australian Horse Trainer

The International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers is planning to trek more than 800 miles from Oklahoma to Montana on the Trail of Tears led by Australian horse trainer Carlos Tabernaberri.