BAD NEWS is what the people crave so DON'T KILL the messanger

A negative news story is embedded with advice on how to avoid the tragedies in life -- and that, scientists say, is what consumers want.

The media is regularly criticized for focusing exclusively on negative news -- for nonstop coverage of tragedy and controversy. But a new study suggests readers, viewers and buyers are simply getting what they want. The public, scientists say, craves negative press.

Researchers at Washington State University built an algorithm to analyze the new cycle from the perspective of consumer demand. The results showed news consumers, newspaper readers in particular, favor bad news over good.

Media companies feed consumer habits to maximize profits; they're not delivering anything their customers don't want, and researchers set out to understand that demand.

Specifically, scientists built a model to predict consumer behavior. Their model was based on the economic principle that the more well-off a person is, the less each successive dollar is worth. Every dollar is worth a lot when a person isn't sure where their next meal is coming from. But when necessities are covered, the stakes are lowered.

"When you are very poor and hungry, for example, each dollar is worth a lot as it helps you buy enough food to eat," study author Jill McCluskey, an economist at Washington State, explained in a press release. "But once you have more money and can count on regular meals, it's the losses that will affect you more. In terms of happiness and well-being, a $1,000 loss will affect you more than a $1,000 windfall."

This concept translates to news buying in that readers are more likely to focus on stories that inform them about the equivalent of the $1,000 loss. A positive news story may provide clues as to how to secure that next $1,000 windfall, but a negative story is embedded with advice on how to avoid the tragedies in life -- and those are what matter most.

Collectively, this phenomenon creates a societal demand for more bad news than good.

"Newspapers act on this demand by reporting more bad news to attract readers and sell more papers," McCluskey said.

But there is such a thing as too much of a bad thing. An excess of negative press has negative consequences. News overload can inspire depression in viewers and readers, and a focus on negative occurrences can push public opinion away from scientific consensus -- as has happened in the debate over genetically modified food.

A string of negative stories can also have long lasting economic effects.

"Even after the E. coli scare was over, people still wouldn't buy spinach. There can be a lot of impact on growers and wasted food with these scares," McCluskey added.

Francis Predicts His Papacy Will Be 4 to 5 Years, Misses Pizza

Pope Francis has said he will probably remain pope for only a few years, adding that his predecessor was very brave for retiring.

"I have the feeling that my pontificate will be brief, four or five years — I do not know, even two or three," he said in an Spanish-language interview with Mexican broadcaster Televisa. "I have the feeling that the Lord has placed me here for a short time but it's a feeling."

Francis, 78, who has said he thought he'd be pope for only a few years, added that Pope Benedict XVI showed great bravery when he decided to step down and become emeritus pope in 2013.

"I think what Benedict did with so much courage was open the door to popes emeritus," Francis said in the interview broadcast late on Thursday. "Benedict should not be considered as an exception but as an institution."

Francis, who was marking the second anniversary of his election, also mused about what he missed as pope.

"The only thing I would like is be able to go out one day, without being recognized, and go to a pizzeria to eat a pizza," he said.

Also on Friday, Francis announced a Jubilee Year focused on forgiveness and mercy.

TEXAS BILL WOULD MAKE RECORDING POLICE ILLEGAL

A bill introduced to the Texas House of Representatives would make it illegal for private citizens to record police within 25 feet.

House Bill 2918, introduced by Texas Rep. Jason Villalba (R-Dallas) on Tuesday, would make the offense a misdemeanor. Citizens who are armed would not be permitted to record police activity within 100 feet of an officer, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Only representatives of radio or TV organizations that hold an FCC license, newspapers and magazines would have the right to record police.

The legislator disagreed with people on Twitter who said he’s seeking to make all filming of cops illegal.

“My bill … just asks filmers to stand back a little so as not to interfere with law enforcement,” Villalba tweeted.

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Behind The Big News: Propaganda and the CFR

“The executives, the editors in print media, the senior producers, executive producers in the visual media – these are the people who have the ideological bias and what’s probably almost as important – their personal friendships. They go to the same country clubs, they go to the same dinners, they socialize with a lot of the people that they cover.” –Roger Charles, former Correspondent at ABC News

The mainstream news media, while Americans rely on it daily for the latest reports on world and domestic events, a recent study conducted by the Cronkite School of Journalism indicates that nearly 67% of Americans don’t trust major media for accurate reporting. Ask Americans specifically why they distrust the media and the answers are generally vague. After all, reports of news media abuses aren’t normally found on the front page or the nightly news. Nonetheless, they do exist. Today, standards in mainstream news reporting had more to do with career enhancement than reporting the truth.

Today the CFR maintains its’ goal is to “increase America’s understanding of the world.” However, the actual objective of this highly exclusive club is revealed by the rare admonitions of the insiders themselves. In the early 60’s, a Georgetown University Professor collects information for a book favorable to the network of powerful men who founded the CFR. For two years, Professor Carroll Quigley is allowed to examine the confidential papers and secret records of this network. Quigley reveals that these men aim “to create a world system of financial control, in private hands, able to dominate the political system of each country, and the economy of the world as a whole.” In short, they seek total and quiet control of the entire world and the CFR is the most visible conduit for carrying out that agenda

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Human Rights Watch FAIL: Uses Photo of American Bombing Destruction To Condemn Assad

Putting its hypocritical and biased nature on full display once again, the alleged human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, was recently caught in an attempt to fabricate “evidence” of Assad’s use of barrel bombs in civilian areas for the purposes of further demonizing the secular Syrian government.

On February 25, HRW posted a photo of a devastated civilian area in Syria with the tagline “Syria dropped barrel bombs despite ban.” The “ban” HRW is referring to is the ban on bombing civilian areas that applies to both sides in Aleppo after the United Nations stepped in to save the Western-backed terrorists from annihilation. Assad’s forces had surrounded the city and had cut off a major supply route for the death squads from Turkey thus making the ultimate elimination of the jihadist forces a virtual inevitability.

As Somini Sengupta wrote for the New York Times on February 24, 

Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that the Syrian government had dropped so-called barrel bombs on hundreds of sites in rebel-held towns and cities in the past year, flouting a United Nations Security Council measure.

In a report released Tuesday, the group said it relied on satellite images, photos, videos and witness statements to conclude that the Syrian government had bombarded at least 450 sites in and around the southern town of Daraa and at least 1,000 sites in Aleppo in the north.

The report focused on the period since Feb. 22, 2014, when the Security Council specifically condemned the use of barrel bombs, which are large containers filled with explosives and projectiles that can indiscriminately hurt civilians and are prohibited under international law.

There was only one problem with HRW’s tweet – the photograph the organization provided was not Aleppo. 

In fact, the damage that had been wrought upon the civilian area in the photograph was not committed by the Syrian military but by the United States.

The photo was actually a picture of Kobane (Ayn al-Arab), the city which has been the site of heavy US aerial bombardment over the last several months as the US engages in its program of death squad herding and geographical reformation of sovereign Syrian and Iraqi territory.

But, while HRW was content to use the destruction of the city as a reason to condemn the Assad government and continue to promote the cause for US military action in Syria, the “human rights organization” was apparently much less interested in the exact same destruction wrought by US forces. 

In other words, if Assad’s forces bomb a civilian area into the stone age, it is an atrocity, a war crime, and justification for international military involvement. If the United States bombs a civilian area into the stone age, it’s no biggie.

Partially funded by George Soros, Human Rights Watch has repeatedly shilled for NATO and America’s imperialist aims, particularly in Syria.

For instance, when Western media propaganda had reached a crescendo regarding the outright lie that Assad had used chemical weapons against his own people, HRW stood right beside Barack Obama and John Kerry in their effort to prove Assad’s guilt. HRW even went so far as to repeat the lie that the UN report suggested that Assad was the offending party, driving the final nail into the coffin of any credibility HRW may have had. 

When a last-minute chemical weapons deal was secured by Russia in an effort to avoid yet another US/NATO invasion of Syria, HRW did not rejoice for the opportunity of peaceful destruction of chemical weapons and a chance to avoid war, it attacked the deal by claiming that it “failed to ensure justice.” Of course, the deal did fail to ensure justice. There were no provisions demanding punishment of the death squads who actually used the weapons or the US/NATO apparatus that initiated and controlled the jihadist invasion to begin with.

Regardless, when Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross released her report that refuted what the US/NATO was asserting in regards to chemical weapons in Syria, HRW embarked upon a campaign of attack against her and her work. 

Even as far back as 2009, however, HRW was showing its true colors when it apparently signed off on and supported renditions – the process of kidnapping individuals off the street without any due process and “rendering” them to jails and prisons in other countries where they are often tortured – in secret talks with the Obama administration. 

If HRW ever had any credibility in terms of the question of actual human rights, then all of that credibility has assuredly been lost. HRW is nothing more than a pro-US, pro-NATO NGO that acts as a smokescreen for the continuation of the violation of human rights across the world – that is, unless those violations are committed by America’s enemies.

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The CIA Helped Develop Planes that Scrape Cell Phone Data

The US may be using cellphone-sniffing planes to find suspects across the world, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. In November, the Journal revealed the US Marshal’s secret program to locate specific fugitive through airplane equipped to mimic cell towers. Flying over an urban area, the planes can pinpoint the location of a single number amid a million or more phones. The new report shows the technology first originated with the CIA, which guided the initial deployment of the planes by the Marshal Service. Furthermore, Journal sources say continues to be used to locate intelligence targets overseas.

If true, the report unveils a powerful weapon in US intelligence efforts abroad, but also reveals a troubling trend of foreign intelligence tools used for domestic law enforcement purposes. The plane-mounted cellphone detector is a potentially ingenious tool for intelligence gathering, but it seems to have moved from CIA intelligence work to domestic fugitive tracking with little to no oversight, a troubling reminder of how easily tools designed for the War on Terror can be put to domestic ends.

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Obama’s Venezuelan Dictatorship

Ever since the advent of the Cold War, U.S. officials have told us that it was necessary for the United States to adopt the totalitarian structure known as the national-security state in order to combat communist totalitarianism.

We are now witnessing a similar spectacle with respect to President Obama’s exercise of dictatorial powers to deal with the socialist regime of President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela. Obama’s justification for his embrace of dictatorial powers would undoubtedly be the same as that of the old Cold Warriors — that in order to combat the dictatorial powers of Maduro, it has become necessary for Obama himself to assume and exercise dictatorial powers here in the United States.

Yesterday, President Obama issued an executive order declaring the Venezuelan government “an extraordinary threat to the national security of the United States.” According to the New York Times, as part of his executive order Obama froze the American assets of various Venezuelan law enforcement and military officials.

Imagine that — an “extraordinary threat to U.S. national security.”

What is the exact nature of this “extraordinary threat to national security.” According to the New York Times, the Obama administration said in a statement, “We are deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government’s efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents.”

What?

Pray tell: How in the world does the Venezuelan government’s intimidation of political opponents constitute a grave threat to the “national security” of the United States? That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

Is Obama saying that Maduro might begin intimidating the U.S. Congress or the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Or is he saying that Maduro’s socialist philosophy might spread to the United States and result in an even bigger expansion of Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, and other socialist programs here at home? Or is he saying that Maduro might start mobilizing his army to begin sweeping up Central America and up through Mexico with the aim of invading and conquering the United States and taking over the public schools, the IRS, Social Security, the Interstate Highway System, and other socialist institutions here in the United States?

I suppose that in the long history of the U.S. national-security state since 1947 there have been more ridiculous notions regarding so-called threats to “national security,” but certainly this newest one has got to rank in top 5 of the most ridiculous.

Obama justified his arbitrary seizure of assets belonging to Venezuelan officials by claiming that such officials have “links” to human rights violations in Venezuela.

Really? How does Obama know that the people whose property he has seized are guilty? Did he file a legal action, either civil or criminal, against those officials before he seized their property? Did he produce competent evidence in a court of law establishing that they were guilty of violating the law? Did he secure a court order authorizing the asset seizure? Did he provide argumentation to a U.S. judge as to why the U.S. Empire has jurisdiction to enforce the laws of Venezuela? Did he provide notice and hearing and other aspects of due process of law to the people whose property he seized, enabling them to defend against his actions in a court of law? Indeed, did Obama even go to Congress to seek authorization for his extraordinary action?

The answer is: Obama did none of those things. Instead, in the battle against his personal nemesis, Nicolas Maduro, he has adopted and exercised the same type of dictatorial powers embraced and exercised by Maduro and, for that matter, other Latin American dictators. No legislative authorization. No judicial approval. No due process of law. Just raw dictatorial power manifested by a decree that is no difference from decrees issued by totalitarian dictatorships. (The dictator Pinochet called his decrees “decree laws” while Obama calls his decrees “executive orders.”)

Responding to Obama’s dictatorial action, Diosdado Cabello, the Venezuela National Assembly speaker, said, “We are a threat to the United States? What is being planned are attacks against our land, against our country, military attacks.”

Cabello might have a point. After all, the U.S. national-security state has a long history of targeting socialist regimes in Latin America whose rulers refuse to kowtow to the U.S. Empire with regime change, including ones where the country’s president has been democratically elected. Guatemala, Grenada, Panama, Chile, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Brazil come to mind.

Is this what we want for America? Dictatorship in the name of combatting dictatorship? It’s bad enough that Venezuelans have to experience this type of thing. Why make it worse by having Americans experience the same thing? Obama’s dictatorial actions are just one more perverse outcome of having grafted a national-security state apparatus onto our federal structure and of having adopted a way of life based on the ludicrous and meaningless notion of “national security.”

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