A simple injection is now all it takes to wire up a brain. A diverse team of physicists, neuroscientists and chemists has implanted mouse brains with a rolled-up, silky mesh studded with tiny electronic devices, and shown that it unfurls to spy on and stimulate individual neurons. The implant has the potential to unravel the workings of the mammalian brain …
Banks Closed in Greece, China Stock Market Effectively Shuttered, Commodities Plunging: Is the 2008 Crisis Back With a Vengeance? By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
It’s starting to feel like we never actually emerged from the 2008 crisis: the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve simply threw $13 trillion at the crisis and walked away, hoping that an endless zero-interest-rate-policy (Zirp) would patch over the cracks in the global financial system. What we seem to have now is an endless series of rolling crises instead of one …
China share rout hits global markets By Nick Beams
Chinese financial authorities have banned major shareholders, corporate executives and directors from selling their shares in listed companies for a period of six months. The ban is the latest in a series of increasingly desperate moves to try to halt the crash of the Chinese stock market, amid indications it is beginning to impact on the rest of the world. …
Hillary’s Emails: Missing the Story
The Congressional harrying of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over emails concerning the 2012 death of an American Ambassador and three staff members in Benghazi, Libya, has become a sort of running joke, with Republicans claiming “cover-up” and Democrats dismissing the whole matter as nothing more than election year politics. But there is indeed a story embedded in …
Are Human Rights Violations Already Being Trumped By Corporate Trade Deal? – Andrea Germanos
The Obama administration is reportedly poised to upgrade the ranking it gives Malaysia on its efforts to stamp out human trafficking. The move is being criticized as an affront to global human rights that could help move forward a pending controversial trade deal. The State Department gives the ranking in its annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, a tool the …
Are Big Banks Using Derivatives To Suppress Bullion Prices? – Paul Craig Roberts and Dave Kranzler
We have explained on a number of occasions how the Federal Reserve’s agents, the bullion banks (principally JPMorganChase, HSBC, and Scotia) sell uncovered shorts (“naked shorts”) on the Comex (gold futures market) in order to drive down an otherwise rising price of gold. By dumping so many uncovered short contracts into the futures market, an artificial increase in “paper gold” …
11 Things Other Countries Do Way Better Than America By Larry Schwartz
America! Land of the free, home of the brave, and the greatest country on the face of the planet, right? A country with seemingly limitless natural resources, and according to many politicians, anointed by God herself to lead the world out of the wilderness and into a bright new age of liberty and justice for all. Too bad the road …
Gaza, one year on: The body is tired, but our spirit is strong – Mohammed Omer
Often, I wake up thinking, this can’t be true – did we really survive it? How did we make it through the 51 days of bombs and missiles dropped by Israel on Gaza last year? Then I think if only these thoughts were nightmares and not the reality of long hot summer days spent in Gaza, where F16s roar overhead, …
Survey: 68% of Doctors Think GMOs Should be Labeled – Christina Sarich
Most Americans aren’t waiting for doctors to support GMO labeling. We have been very clear; we want GMO labeling now, and we are even willing to go to court for it. Now, mirroring what millions of Americans have voiced over the past years, a leading network of doctor’s has voted on GMO labeling, and they overwhelmingly support it. SERMO currently consists of 358,000 members – …
Austerity Has Failed: An Open Letter From Thomas Piketty to Angela Merkel By Thomas Piketty, Jeffrey Sachs, Heiner Flassbeck, Dani Rodrik and Simon Wren-Lewis
The never-ending austerity that Europe is force-feeding the Greek people is simply not working. Now Greece has loudly said no more. As most of the world knew it would, the financial demands made by Europe have crushed the Greek economy, led to mass unemployment, a collapse of the banking system, made the external debt crisis far worse, with the debt …