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The Media Divides Us With Gorillas to Enable the Crimes of the Government

(ANTIMEDIA) United States — By now, we’ve all witnessed selective outrage in real time — a misdeed, tragedy, or other infuriating item blows up national headlines and almost immediately receives backlash in the vein of, ‘well, why isn’t anyone irate about ___ ?’ It’s as if society has developed not only an odd hypocritical corner on the market of concern, but a notable inability to impassion itself with more than one issue at once.

Dichotomized moral outrage receives an altogether greedy leg up from corporate media. After all, networks understand all too acutely how tragedy drives opportunity — and what better way to cash in on casualty than by capitalizing on ethical wedges people invariably manufacture?

Cleaving division, in fact, comprises the bulk of propaganda. Intense bickering and debate saturate social media, both obfuscating other potentially significant happenings and setting the foundation for further division in the future. If personally invested in passionate disagreement over one issue, people’s resentments linger — prejudicing friends, colleagues, and associates against one another when an equally divisive topic or incident takes place in the future.

Now that we’re about halfway through 2016, having seen this polarity replayed innumerable times, one conclusion can be surmised with a degree of certainty — people simply favor certain things over others. And the examples comprise a list both telling and distressing in scope.

1. Harambe, an endangered western lowland gorilla living in a confined space at the Cincinnati Zoo, died after staff decided extreme measures were necessary to save a hapless four-year-old boy — who inexplicably managed to escape his mother’s notice and slip into the animal’s habitat. When zoo director Thane Maynard faced the media to justify the shooting of Harambe, social media had already amplified the controversy to a feverish pitch.

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Chomsky: Europe Bows to Its ‘Washington Masters’ on Everything From Snowden to Iran

“While there are no freestanding foreign bases permanently located in the United States, there are now around 800 US bases in foreign countries. Seventy years after World War II and 62 years after the Korean War, there are still 174 US ‘base sites’ in Germany, 113 in Japan, and 83 in South Korea, according to the Pentagon. Hundreds more dot the planet in around 80 countries, including Aruba and Australia, Bahrain and Bulgaria, Colombia, Kenya, and Qatar, among many other places. Although few Americans realize it, the United States likely has bases in more foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.”

It’s commonly accepted that, in terms of economic and political policy, as Germany goes so goes Europe — and as the United States goes, so goes Germany. Essentially, European nations’ historical fealty to whims of the U.S. has created a juggernaut of obligatory policies with other countries, whether or not such dealings ultimately prove to be in Europe’s best interests. According to a U.S. Department of Defense report dated June 2015, over 80,000 troopswere stationed in various locations in Europe — including 44,660 in Germany, alone — and those numbers will be bolstered by 3,000 to 5,000 in 2017, “to help countries harden themselves against Russian influence,” as Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter stated in February.

But as Professor Noam Chomsky explained in an exclusive interview with AcTVism Munich, as the American empire gasps its last breaths, that tide appears to be turning — and Europe, with Germany unofficially stationed at the helm, stands before an open window to escape overbearing U.S. influence.

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Do Ongoing Global Events Prove the World Is Ready for Revolution?

(ANTIMEDIA) Earth — Paralleling the increasingly draconian policies marking a worldwide descent into fascism, are massive protests — born in the Arab Spring, but arguably an angrier, more potent extension of the Occupy movement — indicative of an unprecedented tipping point.

We, the people of this planet, now stand together, gazing over the precipice whose murky depths of State repression demand we ask one imperative question: have we finally had enough?

“[W]e have lost the way,” Charlie Chaplin implores us to consider in his renowned and timeless monologue from The Great Dictator, because “Greed has poisoned men’s souls — has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.”

And now, 76 years after Chaplin cautioned us to scrutinize our collective humanity, that avarice — evidenced in imperialism championed by the U.S. government — has ossified a lazy apathy in the populace, of seeming impenetrable resolve. Until now.

Chaplin revolution

Though sparks of revolution have sporadically ignited people’s movements countless times before, our present tipping point most likely began with the self-immolation of a young fruit cart vendor in Tunisia in 2011. So incensed by an unjust law and a policewoman’s disrespectful public slap as she attempted to confiscate his only means of supporting a large family, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in front of a government building  — and set off the tremendous wave of protests for democracy and human rights, which came to be monikered the Arab Spring.

Occupy followed shortly afterward in a moment many believed with certainty would force an unparalleled shift toward freedom. But the government, keen to maintain its maniacal chokehold of control, also knew this — and infiltrated the movement to impart divisive infighting and confusion to effectively quash the threat.

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Former Bush Official Just Confirmed That Our Wars Are for Corporate Interests

Major General Smedley Butler earned the highest rank in the U.S. Marine Corps, accumulating numerous accolades as he helped lead the United States through decades of war. He later became an ardent critic of such militarism and imperialism.

“War is a racket,” Butler famously said, and Wilkerson — who has also turned critical of U.S. imperialist policy — agrees with and admires the esteemed Marine.

Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to former secretary of state, Colin Powell, has grown tired of “the corporate interests that we go abroad to slay monsters for.”

Of the profiteering scheme that wars have come to embody, Wilkerson quoted Butler:

“Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

Noting Butler’s brief but accurate characterization of what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex, Wilkerson added that today’s war machine “is more pernicious than Eisenhower ever thought it would be.”

The willingness of such weapons and military equipment corporations to excuse the transgressions of repressive and abusive regimes in the Middle East and Asia for the sake of profit, Wilkerson asserted, stands as evidence Eisenhower underestimated the extent the to which the problem would manifest.

“Was Bill Clinton’s expansion of NATO — after George H. W. Bush and [his Secretary of State] James Baker had assured Gorbachev and then Yeltsin that we wouldn’t go an inch further east — was this for Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon, and Boeing, and others, to increase their network of potential weapons sales?” Wilkerson asked.

“You bet it was,” he answered his own question.

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Leaking Beachfront Nuclear Reactor Near Miami Threatening Florida Everglades

(ANTIMEDIA) Biscayne Bay, FL —According to a study released by Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez on Monday, the waters of Biscayne Bay measured 215 times the level of radioactive tritium as is found in normal ocean water.

Tritium is a radioactive isotope traceable to nuclear plant cooling tower operations. In this case, the leakappears to be emanating from the aging canals in the Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station located nearby.

“This is one of several things we were very worried about,” said South Miami Mayor and biological sciences professor, Philip Stoddard, as the Miami New Times reported“You would have to work hard to find a worse place to put a nuclear plant, right between two national parks and subject to hurricanes and storm surge.”

Biscayne Bay harbors one of the largest coral reefs on the planet and is situated near the Everglades. Hot, salty water from the canals appears to be flowing back into both national parks, which has caused concern among environmentalists and others from the time Turkey Point planned to expand its reactors in 2013.

“They argued the canals were a closed system, but that’s not how water works in South Florida,” Stoddard remarked.

“How much damage is that cooling canal system causing the bay is a question to be answered,” Everglades Law Center Attorney Julie Dick told the Miami Herald prior to reviewing the report. “There are a lot more unknowns than knowns and it just shows how much more attention we need to be paying to that cooling canal system.”

Tritium, a hydrogen isotope, is considered a precursor indication of leaks from nuclear plants, as it ‘travels’ or spreads faster than, and often precedes, other radioactive agents.

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Monsanto is Suing California for Telling People the Truth About Its Chemicals

(ANTIMEDIA) California — Monsanto is suing the State of California for its intent to include glyphosate — the main ingredient in its wildly popular herbicide, Roundup — on its Proposition 65 toxic chemicals list.

California’s decision came after the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen” in March 2015. Researchers discovered “limited evidence” of a link between the weedkiller and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in humans, as well as “convincing evidence” of its link to other forms of cancer in rodents. Thus, IARC decided unanimously that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic.”

California announced in September it would include glyphosate among the noxious chemicals under Prop 65, which “mandates notification and labeling of all known to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm, and prohibits their discharge into drinking waters of the state,” Alternet summarized.

Monsanto has pushed back against the classification by the IARC from the beginning. Glyphosate-laden Roundup remains the most heavily used herbicide on the planet — despite an ever-widening list of nations implementing whole or partial bans on the substance.

Indeed, Center for Food Safety believes the addition of glyphosate to the Prop 65 list is so imperative, Alternet reports the organization filed a motion to intervene in the Monsanto lawsuit on Wednesday:

“CFS was one of the first public interest organizations to raise awareness about how the use of glyphosate in Roundup Ready crop systems fosters herbicide-resistant weeds and increases the use of the herbicide and the detrimental effects associated with it, and has repeatedly sought to prevent the planting and approval of glyphosate-resistant, genetically engineered crops through federal litigation.”

Echoing concerns of an increasingly knowledgeable public, CFS believes in transparency and the right to be informed of risks from being exposed to toxic substances.

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Here’s the New Study the Fracking Industry Doesn’t Want You to See

Using human bronchial epithelial cells, which are commonly used to measure the carcinogenesis of toxicants, researchers confirmed fracking flowback water from the Marcellus Shale caused the formation of malignancies.

After conducting further tests on live mammalian subjects, researchers found five of six mice “injected with cells transformed from well water treatments developed tumors as early as 3 months after injection,” including a tumor in one mouse that grew to over 1 cm in size in just five months. A control group did not develop any tumors for the six months of the study period.

According to the study, performed by scientists from the Department of Environmental Medicine, as well as Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmaceutical at New York University, the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Rutgers, and esteemed partners from universities in China — results indicate fracking flowback water causes cancer.

Implications of the report’s findingswould be difficult to overstate considering how fracking wastewater is generated, stored, and treated, and how often spills, leaks — and even the wastewater injection process, itself — can lead to contamination of the potable supply. A concise but thorough explanation of the fracking process can be found in the introduction to the report, “Malignant human cell transformation of Marcellus Shale gas drilling flow back water,” which states:

“Natural gas is believed to possibly be a bridge to transitioning from coal dependence. Currently natural gas fuels nearly 40% of the U.S. electricity generation, and the Marcellus Shale formation in the Appalachian Basin is on the forefront of gas-shale drilling for natural gas production in the United States. 

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Zika Outbreak Epicenter in Same Area Where GM Mosquitoes Were Released in 2015

(ANTIMEDIA) United States — The World Health Organization announced it will convene an Emergency Committee under International Health Regulations on Monday, February 1, concerning the Zika virus ‘explosive’ spread throughout the Americas. The virus reportedly has the potential to reach pandemic proportions — possibly around the globe. But understandingwhy this outbreak happened is vital to curbing it. As the WHO statement said:“A causal relationship between Zika virus infection and birth malformations and neurological syndromes … is strongly suspected. [These links] have rapidly changed the risk profile of Zika, from a mild threat to one of alarming proportions.

“WHO is deeply concerned about this rapidly evolving situation for 4 main reasons: the possible association of infection with birth malformations and neurological syndromes; the potential for further international spread given the wide geographical distribution of the mosquito vector; the lack of population immunity in newly affected areas; and the absence of vaccines, specific treatments, and rapid diagnostic tests […]

“The level of concern is high, as is the level of uncertainty.”

Zika seemingly exploded out of nowhere. Though it was first discovered in 1947, cases only sporadically occurred throughout Africa and southern Asia. In 2007, the first case was reported in the Pacific. In 2013, a smattering of small outbreaks and individual cases were officially documented in Africa and the western Pacific. They also began showing up in the Americas. In May 2015, Brazil reported its first case of Zika virus — and the situation changed dramatically.

Brazil is now considered the epicenter of the Zika outbreak, which coincides with at least 4,000 reports of babies born with microcephaly just since October.

zika-microcephalyWhen examining a rapidly expanding potential pandemic, it’s necessary to leave no stone unturned so possible solutions, as well as future prevention, will be as effective as possible. In that vein, there was another significant development in 2015

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Stephen Hawking Warns Humanity: Leave Earth Before the Ruling Class Destroys It

Hawking described various “things that could go wrong” to an audience of hundreds attending the first in a series of BBC Reith Lectures, which pertain to research about black holes. He asserted the necessity for colonization of other planets to ensure survival of the human species. According to the BBC, Hawking cautioned:

“Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year might be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years.

“By that time, we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race.

“However, we will not establish self-sustaining colonies in space for at least the next hundred years, so we have to be very careful in this period.”

Though it would seem counterproductive for such a well-respected scientist to decry scientific progress as humanity’s most existential threat, this isn’t the first time Hawking has advised us to exercise caution, as Anti-Media has reported several times. Last summer, the theoretical physicist was among over 1,000 artificial intelligence experts who signed an open letter about the weaponization of robots and the ongoing “military artificial intelligence arms race” among the world’s military powers.

In October of last year, Hawking warned scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) about the potential for the Higgs Boson “God Particle” to initiate catastrophic vacuum decay — the formation of a quantum bubble that expands at the speed of light and could decimate the entire universe. Concern over the automation of the world’s workforce coupled with capitalist greed also earned the scientist’s stern alarm.

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Doctors Sound Alarm as State of Emergency Declared over CA Gas Leak: Leave Now

“I will tell you, this goes well beyond Porter Ranch. We’ve had complaints from as far as Chatsworth, Northridge, and Granada Hills,” emphasized Los Angeles City Councilman Mitchell Englander during a Porter Ranch town hall meeting on December 28. “Apparently this plume of toxic chemicals and whatever it might be, doesn’t know zip codes […] This is the equivalent of the BP oil spill on land, in a populated community.

Aliso Canyon sits less than two and a half miles from Porter Ranch and less than 30 miles from the city of Los Angeles — the second most populous city in the United States — whose outlying total statistical area includes nearly 18 million residents, as of 2013.

Brown has been widely criticized for lack of decisive action on the leak, which is erupting from its underground storage area with all the force “of a volcano.” Under Wednesday’s declaration“all state agencies will utilize state personnel, equipment, and facilities to ensure a continuous and thorough state response to this incident.”

Porter Ranch residents have been evacuating the area for some time, though SoCalGas’ rather maladroit handling of the relocation procedure has been a nightmare — and the cause for a mounting number of lawsuits, including one from the L.A. city attorney’s office.

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Time to Start Paying Attention: Why Saudi Arabia Might Pull the US into Another War

“This Saudi-Iranian sudden and acute crisis is a very worrisome development, and we must at all costs avoid that it produces a chain of violent consequences in the region,” warned United Nations mediator, Staffan de Mistura, in an email to the New York Times.

“This is a very disturbing escalation,” said Michael Stephens, an analyst with the Royal United Services Institute research center in London, according to the Times“It has enormous consequences for the people of the region, and the tensions between the two sides are going to mean that instability across the region is going to continue.”

On Monday, three Sunni-led nations — Bahrain, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates joined the Saudis in breaking or greatly reducing diplomatic relations with Iran.

Despite prior international calls to grant the outspoken cleric clemency — and sharp warnings from Iran of dire consequences should the execution be carried out — the al-Saud monarchy pushed ahead with its message via mass execution, ironically intended to quash possible violence against the State. As promised, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei issued a sharp rebuke condemning the execution of al-Nimr, published on his official website:

“Doubtlessly, this innocent martyr’s blood, which was spilled unjustly, will quickly show its effect and the divine vengeance will befall the Saudi politicians.

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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