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Sunday, July 1, 2012

The Sunday Morning News

Posted by on Sun, Jul 1, 2012 at 9:36 AM

Posted by news intern Joseph Staten

Egypt Has a New President: Mohamed Morsi was officially sworn in as Egypt's first democratically elected president yesterday. Now he just needs to figure out how to wrestle some power away from the military.

Colombia Doing It Right: As part of a sweeping drug law reform, Colombia has legalized personal use of marijuana and cocaine.

Australia Doing It Right: Australia has introduced a carbon tax on the 300 worst polluting companies in the country, which will require them to pay $23 for each ton of greenhouse gases product.

Poor, Poor Students: Congress passed a student loan deal on Friday which will stabilize interest rates for another year, while at the same time slashing Pell grants and adding as much as $20 billion to student costs over the next 10 years.

"This Feels Awesome": Around 150 Mormons publicly quit the church in Salt Lake City yesterday, signing a "Declaration of Independence from Mormonism."

Not As Split As You'd Think: The Supreme Court has decided unanimously on a surprising number of cases in the last term.

Speaking of Which: A sexier Supreme Court decision that flew under the radar this week was that CBS won't need to pay a $550,000 fine for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" at the 2004 Superbowl.

Bookmark This: The Atlantic Wire rounds up four things Mitt Romney has said about Romneycare that he's going to wish he hadn't.

The Force Is Strong with This One: A man who allegedly used a toy light saber to attack customers in a Portland Toys R Us parking lot then used it to fight off police tasers, according to a report.

It's What's on the Inside that Counts: A new study has found that breeding for pretty tomatoes has spread a genetic mutation that deprives them of their flavor, making many grocery store tomatoes very, very bland.

Body Found in Smokey Point Parking Lot: Police are investigating the cause and circumstances, but deem it "suspicious."

Super Guppy!!: A crazy lookin' NASA airplane delivered the heralded space shuttle training vessel to the Museum of Flight yesterday, and Steve Pool is really, really excited.

Making Useless Things Useful: Seattle police cannot currently use red light camera footage to help solve crimes, and the King County Prosecutor wants to change that.

And now, a parrot sings a lovely rendition of a 2000s hit rock song:

Thanks to Sloggers seatackled and rob! for story tips for today.

 

Comments (24) RSS

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1
Colombia, not Columbia. Jeesh.
Posted by bigyaz on July 1, 2012 at 9:42 AM
disintegrator 2
@1 beat me to it.
Posted by disintegrator http://bottlevariation.blogspot.com on July 1, 2012 at 9:44 AM
3
@1 @2 guys, guys, I CLEARLY meant the performance outerwear company. Try reading the link next time. (thank you)
Posted by Unpaid Intern on July 1, 2012 at 9:49 AM
stinkbug 4
Any reason you're posting about the light saber portland thing over six months after it happened?
Posted by stinkbug on July 1, 2012 at 9:55 AM
Matt from Denver 5
@ 3, I thought you meant the capitol of South Carolina.
Posted by Matt from Denver on July 1, 2012 at 10:00 AM
Fnarf 6
Tomatoes are also routinely picked by slaves. Not "slave-like conditions", but actual, honest-to-goodness slaves, bought and sold at auction, brought in clandestinely from far away, forbidden to leave, paid no wages. They also get to live ten to a filthy trailer with no water or toilets or washing facilities and are routinely doused from head to foot with terrifying chemicals, many of which are illegal to use on any crop except tomatoes. Welcome to Florida.

Buy heirloom or organic, or buy canned (which are different varieties and come from vastly different conditions in California).
Posted by Fnarf http://www.facebook.com/fnarf on July 1, 2012 at 10:03 AM
Supreme Ruler Of The Universe 7
Supermarket tomatoes have been bland for decades because of selective breeding for appearance, as the book "Tomatoland" amply documents:

http://www.amazon.com/Tomatoland-Industr…
Posted by Supreme Ruler Of The Universe http://www.you-read-it-here-first.com on July 1, 2012 at 10:13 AM
Supreme Ruler Of The Universe 8
By the way, Carpinito Bros in Kent is selling fantastic Yakima beefsteaks now.

Made a great ratatouille which I served over grilled polenta yesterday.
Posted by Supreme Ruler Of The Universe http://www.you-read-it-here-first.com on July 1, 2012 at 10:19 AM
Fnarf 9
@7, I've read the book "Tomatoland", which is mostly what I'm summarizing here, and you have it mostly wrong. Appearance is not the primary factor; it's shippability. Varieties that can be picked green, shipped long distances in trucks without splitting or spoiling, and ripened artificially at the destination make up virtually all tomatoes sold in US stores outside of the local growing season.

The author recounts the history of the science behind this, and relates how he saw green tomatoes fall off speeding trucks and bounce off the highway at 70 MPH, completely undamaged. Florida does grow other varieties, including heirloom and organic varieties, but are prevented by law from selling them out of state. The Florida State Legislature is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Florida Tomato Growers Association, to an extent that not even oranges or sugar can match.

The seven cases of slavery that have been successfully prosecuted in Florida in recent years, affecting 1500 imprisoned workers, is widely acknowledged to be just the tip of the iceberg.

Those "BC hothouse" tomatoes you see around here don't taste like anything either, but at least they're not grown with methyl bromide (illegal in every state but FL; mandatory in FL) or picked by slaves. Even Mexican tomatoes are infinitely preferable; worker conditions there are not great, but at least they are grown in places where tomatoes can grow without the worst pesticides and fertilizers -- Florida is entirely sand, and has no actual soil.

Posted by Fnarf http://www.facebook.com/fnarf on July 1, 2012 at 10:37 AM
Supreme Ruler Of The Universe 10

The weather in Pasco...is quite good:

http://www.weather.com/weather/tenday/99…

Posted by Supreme Ruler Of The Universe http://www.you-read-it-here-first.com on July 1, 2012 at 10:39 AM
11
So how did Kim Kardasian catch this genetic mutation?
Posted by Large Hardon Colluder on July 1, 2012 at 11:00 AM
12 Comment Pulled (Spam) Comment Policy
OuterCow 13
@11 HEYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Posted by OuterCow on July 1, 2012 at 11:16 AM
Pope Peabrain 14
There was so much to comment on until I saw "The force is strong with this one" and fell out of my chair.
Posted by Pope Peabrain on July 1, 2012 at 11:28 AM
Jessica 15
the idea that someone played that bird Drowning Pool so many times is horrific.
Posted by Jessica on July 1, 2012 at 11:36 AM
Pope Peabrain 16
@15 I would whistle to my bird three different whistles until he learned them. He turned them into ways he could express to me what he was feeling. So many ways it's practically a dictionary of expressions. And we understand each other so completely I feel part bird. They are such beautiful and loving creatures. And they get lonely. They need another to feel complete.
Posted by Pope Peabrain on July 1, 2012 at 12:21 PM
17
The Darkest Alliance

When the news was first reported that Gary Webb, Pulitzer-prizing winning journalist and author of Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, had committed suicide by multiple gun shots to his head, we were highly skeptical.

Although the tide was going heavily against Gary in his professional life for exposing the truth, he reported that he was being routinely followed and surveilled. The last time we heard people report that, it turned out to be part of the COINTEL program.

While the possibility exists that Gary Webb did actually commit suicide, in all probability he was executed for getting too close to the truth: at street level, the intel agencies’ involvement with drug dealing and smuggling, but at the overall level, the entire structure consisting of an extraordinary financial enterprise, highly profitable in ill-gotten gains, at the cost of many innocent lives!

As with so many news events, the intelligence establishment’s MK ULTRA program was framed as a national security project run amok, but was it really?

When examined from the forensic financial view, forgetting for the moment those thousands maimed and murdered by their hideous program, it appears as an incredible financial scam of the highest order.

The drug companies, pharmaceutical corporations, benefitted tremendously from free research --- at the terrible cost to innocents victimized in human experimentation --- they also benefitted greatly from both public government contracts for those experiments, plus corollary research, as well as shadow budget funds, never accurately tracked, which flowed to their accounts for many years, and may have never stopped!

It doesn’t end here, for the drugs researched and created fall into two categories: legal and illegal.

The legal drugs profited those pharmaceutical companies in the commercial market, while illegal drugs produced multiple profit streams.

Illegal drugs are sold outright, for untaxed profit, but have also been used as the currency for political control and influence, exchanging drugs as payment for militias and armies to instigate insurgencies leading to various coups to overthrow democractically-elected governments.

Illegal drugs have also been used as a weapon; in much the same manner as the British Empire once used opium against the Chinese, flooding foreign markets, and select American areas, for nefarious purposes.

Viewed from afar, the MK ULTRA program appears a multi-faceted profit center of gargantuan proportion: the taxpayer-underwritten creation and production of drugs benefitting the economic elite, but also used to topple governments and regions for their further economic gain, while providing an infinite revenue stream from illegal markets.

They create the markets --- they control the markets --- and they use those markets to increase their wealth while destroying the lives of so many others!

Don’t think for a moment those profits and wealth simply remained at the executive suite --- they were shifted to buying their homes abroad, yachts, fleets of private aircraft --- and bribing endless numbers of politicians, both at home and abroad.

How many islands, castles and chateaus are owned outright from that blood money?

When David Rockefeller’s protégé, Peter G. Peterson through his Blackstone Group, purchased money laundering operations in Vanuatu and Vietnam, what money did he use?

When the Carlyle Group purchased Booz Allen (a major component of the privatized intelligence contracting), where did those buyout funds originate?

Years ago, John D. Rockefeller would criminally blow up the refineries of his competitors to control the market, while in modern times David Rockefeller has his lackey, Peterson and his Blackstone Group, purchase refineries, then shut them down; killing the competition, driving up oil prices, and surreptitiously stealing workers’ pension and retirement funds in the process!

But where does the money come from to undertake such perfidy?

These are not idle questions!

When the Rockefeller Foundation, and other Rockefeller family foundations under various names, disbursed funds for MK ULTRA experiments, illegal under both national and international laws, and claim philanthropic undertaking when it is profit-motivated in the most Satanic sense, those questions must be asked and investigated.

There was a concrete reason why CIA director, Richard Helms, ordered the immediate destruction of all MK ULTRA records when word of a congressional inquiry reached him. The very same Richard Helms whose grandfather, Gates McGarrah, occupied the position of chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank before becoming the first president of that central bank of all central banks, the Bank for International Settlements, in Switzerland.

When we drill down and find those who own the pharmaceutical corporations are, not surprisingly, also those who own the banks and oil companies and insurance companies, the pattern should be obvious to one and all --- excepting those who one observes aping the latest beer commercial they have viewed, incapable of thinking for themselves --- and that too is MK ULTRA!

Wonder at the colossal pushback to legalizing drugs?

Well, who owns the monopoly?

Today, with a privatized intelligence establishment and privatized prisons, and a completely corrupted, bought-and paid-for government, it continues.

John F. Kennedy once gave his definition of courage: A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality.

Gary Webb:

Born: August 31, 1955
Executed: December 10, 2004

John F. Kennedy

Born: May 29, 1971
Executed: November 22, 1963
More...
Posted by sgt_doom on July 1, 2012 at 12:49 PM
18
According to the article about the student loan deal, they're getting rid of the six month post graduation grace period that students formerly had before beginning to repay their staffords. If the government is planning on having millions of unemployed kids default on their loans, they're dong a heckuva job.
Posted by Joe Glibmoron on July 1, 2012 at 2:16 PM
19
You are missing a big piece of important news. Hong Kong, the former British colony, experienced the largest protests since its hand over to mainland China in 1997. Estimates by organizers have as many as 500,000 protestors rallying against Beijing's increasing control and the installation of yet another unelected chief executive of the city's government. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/world/…
Posted by Lone Operator http://loneoperator.wordpress.com on July 1, 2012 at 2:21 PM
Last of the Time Lords 20
@19 being part of Britain would be much nicer than being part of China.

Posted by Last of the Time Lords on July 1, 2012 at 2:50 PM
21
¡Vive Colombia!
Posted by katallred on July 1, 2012 at 10:11 PM
Lord Basil 22
You mean the Muslim Brotherhood has a new president, and he has more than $1.5 billion in aid that the Kenyan Marxist homosexual sent to him.

Don't tell me I didn't warn you about the worldwide caliphate they want to build!
Posted by Lord Basil http://lordbasil.blogspot.com/ on July 2, 2012 at 2:19 AM
Theodore Gorath 23
@22: You are such a scared little man.
Posted by Theodore Gorath on July 2, 2012 at 6:22 AM
venomlash 24
@22: Cool story bro.
Posted by venomlash on July 2, 2012 at 6:43 AM

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