Presstitutes

Rasmussen Poll: Nullification Goes Mainstream

"Day after day, the media pounds out a relentless drumbeat against nullification. Pundits, commentators and so-called legal experts demonize it as unconstitutional, villainize it as racist and trivialize it with slurs like 'wacky' and 'kookie.' But while the political class continues to arrogantly ridicule Madison and Jefferson’s principles, everyday Americans embrace them in increasing numbers. A Rasmussen poll released Monday indicates that nullification is growing more and more popular in mainstream America. More people than not approve of nullification in general." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingRasmussen Poll: Nullification Goes Mainstream

Bloomberg News Used Its Private Data to Spy on Geithner and Bernanke

"CNBC has learned from a former Bloomberg employee that he accessed usage information of the company's data terminals of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. The information appeared to concern general functions used by the officials and the frequency with which those functions — such as looking at a bond, equity markets or news — were accessed. The source said all Bloomberg journalists who knew of this capability of the terminal would have had access to the usage information of the officials." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBloomberg News Used Its Private Data to Spy on Geithner and Bernanke

Bloomberg News Spying on Goldman Sachs Employees

"Irked Goldman Sachs brass recently confronted Bloomberg LP over concerns reporters at the business news service have been using the company’s ubiquitous terminals to keep tabs on some employees of the Wall Street bank, The Post has learned. The ability to snoop on Bloomberg terminal users came to light recently when Goldman officials learned that at least one reporter at the news service had access to a wide array of information about customer usage, sources said." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBloomberg News Spying on Goldman Sachs Employees

The New Truth About the Cop Shot in Watertown: Friendly-Fire in a Getaway

"The way the nation met 33-year-old MBTA Transit Police officer Richard Donohue was — like much of the conflicting information from that night of mayhem in Watertown, Massachusetts — violent, fast, and scary: He was exchanging fire with the Tsarnaev brothers, the story went, and he took a gun shot to his right thigh from the Boston bombing suspects — an injury that would see Donohue lose all of his own blood, sever three blood vessels, send him into cardiac arrest, and almost die. Now comes a more complete picture, with more eyewitnesses telling a new story, that Donohue was probably shot by a fellow police officer." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingThe New Truth About the Cop Shot in Watertown: Friendly-Fire in a Getaway

Gun Violence in the USA Has Declined for 20 Years

"Gun violence has been falling in the United States for two decades. Between 1993 and 2010, the gun homicide rate fell by 49%. The public does not perceive this, thanks to media attention to specific cases of gun violence. Rates for all categories of violence have fallen. This includes gun violence. The same study revealed that 56% of those surveyed believe that gun violence is worse today than in 1993. Another 26% think it is about the same. Only 12% think it has declined. What about mass shootings? These account for 1% of all homicides. But stories about them attract readers. The public is uninformed. This comes as no surprise." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingGun Violence in the USA Has Declined for 20 Years

CIA requested ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ rewrites, memo reveals

"A newly declassified CIA document suggests members of the US agency did help to shape the narrative of Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s recent film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. It has now emerged that the CIA did successfully pressure Boal to remove certain scenes from the Zero Dark Thirty script, some of which might have cast the agency in a negative light. Details emerged in a memo released under a US Freedom of Information Act request. It summarises five conference calls held in late 2011 for staff in the agency’s Office of Public Affairs 'to help promote an appropriate portrayal of the agency and the Bin Laden operation'." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCIA requested ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ rewrites, memo reveals

Publishing Atrocity: The 1963 Edition of Human Action

"This is the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most scurrilous incidents in academic publishing. The victim was Ludwig von Mises. The perpetrator was Yale University Press. This travesty was quite self-conscious. The editor knew exactly what he was doing. He was in control. Mises was not. This was how establishment liberalism worked in 1963. Today, ebooks, PDFs, and other technologies have broken the hold of traditional paper-based publishers. You can download the 1949 edition for free. But there was a time when they called the shots. Mises found out just how completely they called the shots at Yale University Press in 1963." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingPublishing Atrocity: The 1963 Edition of Human Action

The Permanent Overclass’s Propaganda System: A Century In The Making

"Two major social engineering projects were underway: one, the manufacture of ideology, largely the initiative of philanthropic foundations (and the social sciences), and the other, public relations as a modern form of propaganda. Through the educational system, the social sciences, philanthropic foundations, public relations, advertising, marketing, and the media, America and the industrialized states of the world developed a unique and complex system of social control and propaganda for the 20th century and into the 21st. It is imperative to recognize and understand this complex system if we are to challenge and change it." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingThe Permanent Overclass’s Propaganda System: A Century In The Making

UN Commission Investigator: It Was The Syrian Rebels Who Used Sarin

"It made all the sense in the world for the insurgents to release some sarin here and there, make some videos of the victims, and email the links to some very willing Israeli generals and McCainian rabid warhawks in the US and their absurd poodles in the UK and France. The question is, whence came the chemical weapons? Perhaps the Syrian government was not lying when it asserted at the end of last month that the chemical weapons used by the Syrian rebels originated in Turkey. The Syrian official's claim was reported in the Western press as an example of mendacity, laughed at by the US administration. But it seems he may well have been telling the truth." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingUN Commission Investigator: It Was The Syrian Rebels Who Used Sarin