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Michael Snyder
Investment Watch 2014-06-10 13:37:00
The Russians are actually making a move against the petrodollar. It appears that they are quite serious about their de-dollarization strategy. The largest natural gas producer on the planet, Gazprom, has signed agreements with some of their biggest customers to switch payments for natural gas from U.S. dollars to euros. And Gazprom would have never done this without the full approval of the Russian government, because the Russian government holds a majority stake in Gazprom. There hasn't been a word about this from the big mainstream news networks in the United States, but this is huge. When you are talking about Gazprom, you are talking about a company that is absolutely massive. It is one of the largest companies in the entire world and it makes up 8 percent of Russian GDP all by itself. It holds 18 percent of the natural gas reserves of the entire planet, and it is also a very large oil producer. So for Gazprom to make a move like this is extremely significant. When Barack Obama decided to slap some meaningless economic sanctions on Russia a while back, he probably figured that the world would forget about them after a few news cycles. But the Russians do not forget, and they certainly do not forgive. | |
Comment: See also:
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James Corbett and Prof Michel Chossudovsky
In this stage of advanced globalization, banks earnings and corporate profits continue to soar even as real wages continue to plummet. This does not just lead to mass poverty and unrest, but it sows the seeds for geopolitical conflict and military confrontation.Global Research 2014-06-10 16:00:00
Comment: Prof. Chossudovsky ends his report with a call to face the problem head on and 'dismantle the mainstream media' as the solution to altering the elites' global agenda. The likelihood of that succeeding is small. Much better to ignore the drivel put out by the MSM. Reading SOTT is a great step forward in doing just that. Help your fellow human beings by sharing SOTT as a source of objective analysis of MSM lies and spin. Dismantling the MSM may not be so feasible, but starving it of an audience is! | |
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Esther Han, Inga Ting
The Age 2014-06-09 22:59:00
The federal government has bagged an unprecedented $360 million from household bank accounts since a controversial change to unclaimed money laws, figures from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission show. Pensioners and others saving for a rainy day have reported trying to access their savings only to discover their money had been seized by the government because it had been dormant for three years or more. The government has collected more money from inactive bank accounts under the three-year rule than the total amount captured in the past five decades combined.
The government takes away Kim Taylor's money from her bank account because she hadn't touched it in more than three years
Nearly $360 million from 80,000 accounts was funnelled into government coffers in the year to May after Labor lowered the threshold, eclipsing the $330 million netted between 1959 and 2012, during which time idle accounts could only be touched after seven years. The Treasury now looks poised to raise the threshold in the face of fierce lobbying from the banking industry, with Finance Minister Mathias Cormann releasing a discussion paper on changing the definition of inactivity from three years to five. Such a change would halve the number of inactive accounts taken by the government each year, he said. | ||
Comment: Big Government just seizes your bank accounts after only three years of inactivity - and then YOU have to take the time, effort and money to get it back!
And that's assuming you'll get it back... This is definitely another sign that CorpGov intends to just swipe everyone's money while the they can (and while money still has perceived value). | ||
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Call it programming, operant conditioning, entrainment, thought control, mind control, emotion control. The war of back-and-forth competing racial and religious slurs has a planned aspect. It's a form of propaganda, and it begins with a heavy overemphasis on politically correct speech. This sets the stage. It establishes an "official level" of sensitivity to language, and promotes the notion that words which exceed this level are uniformly damaging to defined groups. The program has two goals: inflame feelings to create discord and animosity, and limit, in wide-ranging ways, what a person will permit himself to say or think. Create an overall sense of caution that goes beyond the racial and religious. Notice that this objective is the also Surveillance State's objective. The two programs work hand in glove. We live in an increasingly collectivist nation, and to guide its devolution, leading it into deeper levels of slavery, clearly defined groups must work off their frustrations by attacking each other. The eventual goal is enlisting everyone in groups, up to their eyeballs. Thus, an individual's sense of himself as independent is lost. | |
Comment: Mind control is most successful if it is inflicted upon those who have pre-conditioned susceptibility and fall under the influence of others. Consider mass media's numbing effect on the public and the persuasive methodologies utilized in the Science of Communication. To ensure the predictability of a large democracy, manipulation is guised as collective freedom and individual free will, a palatable package of mass delusion, social conditioning and behavior control.
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Abayomi Azikiwe
Global Research 2014-06-10 10:42:00
Discontent among the people with the French-imposed government in the capital of Bangui in the Central African Republic (CAR) has erupted in demonstrations by both the Muslim and Christian communities. These developments are taking place amid the increasing deployment of foreign military forces mandated for peacekeeping operations by United Nations Security Council and other regional bodies. The number of troops now occupying the CAR include a bolstered French force of 2,000 along with 6,000 personnel from regional African states (MISCA), European Union Forces (EUFOR) of 1,000 and the impending intervention of some 12,000 other soldiers under the rubric of the Security Council. Nonetheless, the minority Muslim community is still facing organized violence while more people are being forced out of Bangui and other cities across the country. Interim President Catherine Samba-Panza was appointed after the forced removal at the aegis of Paris of the previous transitional leader Michel Djotodia in January. A Muslim, Djotodia came to power in March 2013 when Seleka Coalition rebels entered Bangui without any real opposition from French troops that were already maintaining a presence in the CAR. | |
Comment: See also:
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RT
2014-06-10 08:06:00
Heavily-armed, Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants have seized the Iraqi city of Mosul, driving back government forces. Officials say the Iraqi Army's soldiers are demoralized and are no match for the attacking militant forces. "The city of Mosul is outside the control of the state and at the mercy of the militants," an Interior Ministry official told AFP on Monday. It is now the second city to fall under control of Islamist fighters since the beginning of this year. In January militants seized the city of Fallujah, displacing over 70,000 people On Monday night fighters from Al-Qaeda affiliated group Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) stormed provincial government headquarters armed with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns.
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Comment: The U.S has actively trained and funded the ISIL to fight in Syria. Now that life is getting increasingly difficult for terrorists in Syria, they turn to easier targets. Chaos in the Middle-East is to the benefit of the U.S.
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Lisa Zyga
Govtslaves.info 2014-06-05 00:01:00
A recently unclassified report from the Pentagon from 1998 has revealed an investigation into using laser beams for a few intriguing potential methods of non-lethal torture. Some of the applications the report investigated include putting voices in people's heads, using lasers to trigger uncontrolled neuron firing, and slowly heating the human body to a point of feverish confusion - all from hundreds of meters away. A US citizen requested access to the document, entitled "Bioeffects of Selected Non-Lethal Weapons," under the Freedom of Information Act a little over a year ago. There is no evidence that any of the technologies mentioned in the 10-year-old report have been developed since the time it was written. The report explained several types of non-lethal laser applications, including microwave hearing, disrupted neural control, and microwave heating. For the first type, short pulses of RF energy (2450 MHz) can generate a pressure wave in solids and liquids. When exposed to pulsed RF energy, humans experience the immediate sensation of "microwave hearing" - sounds that may include buzzing, ticking, hissing, or knocking that originate within the head. | |
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Pakistan airport shootout: "Well-armed" Taliban tried to hijack airplane leads to at least 27 killed
Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge 2014-06-10 03:23:00
"The main goal of this attack was to damage the government, including by hijacking planes and destroying state installations," said Shahidullah Shahid, a Taliban spokesman, as Reuters reports a well trained and heavily armed group of Taliban fighters attacked Pakistan's largest airport in an attempt to hijack a plane. 27 people were killed (including 10 militants ) as the Taliban spokesman added ominously, "this was just an example of what we are capable of and there is more to come. The government should be ready for even worse attacks." This attack comes a day after John Kerry's dismissal of threats by some released Taliban prisoners that they will return to the battlefield and kill Americans as "a lot of baloney." As Reuters reports, a squad of highly trained Taliban fighters attacked Pakistan's biggest airport in what they clearly expected to be a protracted siege. | |
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Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge 2014-06-10 03:11:00
Having previously admitted its an idiot and a liar over Greece forecasts, constantly missed world expectations with a much more rosy picture of hockey-stick-like growth than actually occurs, and now Ukraine's insanely optimistic assessments; we thought it only fair to point out that, yet again, Christine Lagarde has been forced to say "we got it wrong." This time the IMF underestimated UK growth - a year after blasting the nation's planners for "playing with fire" by cutting its budget spending. As Bloomberg reports, pressed on whether she had apologized to Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, Lagarde stopped short of saying so and said "Do I have to go on my knees?" | |
Comment: Without doubt the average person living in Britain will say: "What growth?"
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Matt Apuzzo
The New York Times 2014-06-08 22:23:00
Neenah, Wisconsin. - Inside the municipal garage of this small lakefront city, parked next to the hefty orange snowplow, sits an even larger truck, this one painted in desert khaki. Weighing 30 tons and built to withstand land mines, the armored combat vehicle is one of hundreds showing up across the country, in police departments big and small. The 9-foot-tall armored truck was intended for an overseas battlefield. But as President Obama ushers in the end of what he called America's "long season of war," the former tools of combat - M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers and more - are ending up in local police departments, often with little public notice. During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft. The equipment has been added to the armories of police departments that already look and act like military units. Police SWAT teams are now deployed tens of thousands of times each year, increasingly for routine jobs. Masked, heavily armed police officers in Louisiana raided a nightclub in 2006 as part of a liquor inspection. In Florida in 2010, officers in SWAT gear and with guns drawn carried out raids on barbershops that mostly led only to charges of "barbering without a license." | |
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WRAL.com
2014-06-05 21:49:00
Benson - Area residents expressed concern Thursday about a proposal to extend a major natural gas pipeline through the Triangle. Duke Energy and Piedmont Natural Gas have teamed up on the pipeline and are seeking bids from companies to build and operate it for the two Charlotte-based utilities. Duke and Piedmont said the growing demand for gas, both to supply customers and to power electric plants, necessitates a second pipeline to North Carolina. The first connects the state to the Gulf Coast, and they requested that the 20 bidders on the project provide them with geographic diversity in the source of the natural gas. Houston-based Spectra Energy, which is competing to build the pipeline, has proposed a route from the shale gas hotbed in southwestern Pennsylvania through Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia. In North Carolina, Spectra's pipeline would cross Warren, Franklin, Wake, Johnston, Harnett and Cumberland counties before terminating in Robeson County. Many local officials don't know anything about the project, however. "I have not been contacted, and this morning I talked with six other mayors in Wake County. They have not been contacted," Garner Mayor Ronnie Williams said. But some Garner residents have. Spectra sent them letters providing background on the $4 billion project - it would carry enough gas to meet the annual needs of 4 million homes - and asking for permission to survey their land. Some live near major electric transmission lines. Transmission lines also run near Marjorie Shahravar home outside Benson, and she said receiving letters from Spectra upset her. "I'm not real comfortable with the process," Shahravar said, adding that she's more concerned about safety than about the impact of a pipeline across the wooded 10-acre property she and her husband have owned since 1991. | |
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Professor James Petras
Global Research 2014-06-07 00:00:00
An Open Letter to the Graduates of West Point Distorting the Past: Defeats and Retreats Converted into Victories One of the most disturbing aspects of President Obama's speech is his delusional account of US military engagements over the past decade. Obama's claim that, "by most measures America has rarely been stronger relative to the rest of the world", defies belief. After 13 years of war and occupation in Afghanistan, the US has failed to conquer the Taliban and is leaving behind a fragile puppet regime on the verge of collapse. The US was forced to withdraw from Iraq after causing the deaths of hundreds of thousand of civilians, the displacement and wounding of millions and the ignition of a sectarian war, which has propelled a pro-Iranian regime to power in Baghdad. In Libya, the Obama pushed NATO to destroy the entire country in order to overthrow the secular Gadhafi government, thus undermining any possibility of reconciliation among opponents. He has brought bands of Islamist terrorists to power who are profoundly hostile to the United States. | |
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Press TV
2014-06-09 20:53:00
The international pressures against Israel's crimes in Palestine are escalating as the US global dominance is gradually fading away, a political analyst tells Press TV. In a Saturday interview with Press TV, Richard Herman, with Orange County Friends of Palestine, pointed to marginalization of anti-Israel movements by the US in the past years and noted, "Those days are changing and today there are more and more actions against Israel, against the crimes that Israel commits and those are building and over time...they will mount up to the point where the UN will finally vote against Israel...." "As the United States declines in its world domination, the UN and all the countries of the world will act against Israel," he pointed out. The analyst noted that at present the UN is unable to take any action against Israel's crimes as the organization is extensively under the US sway. | |
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Susan Frazer
Yahoo News 2013-06-22 11:51:00
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has blamed a wave of anti-government protests in Turkey on a foreign-led plot to destabilize his government, suggested Saturday that protest-hit Brazil was the victim of the same alleged conspiracy. Erdogan was addressing tens of thousands of his supporters in the Black Sea coastal city of Samsun, the latest stop in a series of rallies he has called to shore up his political support. The protests in Turkey erupted three weeks ago after riot police brutally cracked down on peaceful environmental activists who opposed plans to develop a park next to Istanbul's Taksim Square. The demonstrations have turned into expressions of discontent with what critics say is Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian bent since taking power a decade ago. Thousands of protesters returned to Taksim Square on Saturday for a memorial for at least four people - three demonstrators and one police officer - killed during the protests. Some chanted "Dictator Tayyip!" Erdogan denies he is authoritarian and points to elections in 2011 that returned him to a third term in office with 50 percent of the vote. | |
Comment: Considering that the USA via its CIA agents has been busy fomenting worldwide rebellion, it's not a stretch to assume that Turkey and Brazil may also be in the cross-hairs.
Michael Parenti: U.S. Empire successful in stopping the betterment of the world's people Venezuela accuses U.S. of fomenting color revolution unrest | |
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Emily Mieure
WDRB.com 2014-06-06 17:34:00
A Louisville attorney says one of her clients was stripped naked and left for hours inside a Floyd County Jail cell and she said she has reason to believe it happens all the time. Attorney Laura Landenwich represents Tabitha Gentry of New Albany, who was arrested and booked into the Floyd County Jail on March 30. After reviewing surveillance video that captured the actions of staff members during Gentry's incarceration, Landenwich says what happened inside the jail during the next few hours should be discussed in front of a judge. | |
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Joe Kemp, Corky Siemaszko
New York Daily News 2014-06-10 15:17:00
A lone gunman armed with an assault rifle invaded an Oregon high school Tuesday and opened fire, killing at least one student. The gunman was also later killed, police said, although it was not clear if he was felled by police bullets or by his own hand. What was clear is that once again an American school where kids are supposed to be safe was transformed by a gun-toting maniac into a crime scene. It was the 74th shooting at a school since the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. - and the 37th just this year, according to a tally by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. "This is a very tragic day, one that I hoped wouldn't be part of my experience," schools superintendent Linda Florence said. "We feel very sorry for our parents." | |
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James Bloodworth
The Independent 2014-06-04 10:23:00
What do you want to be when you grow up? I remember a careers advisor asking me just that question shortly before my sixteenth birthday. Like most of my peers I had very little idea as to what I wanted to do with my life when the seemingly endless horizon of school came to an end. Drink beer, smoke cigarettes and chase girls was about the sum of it. Looking back, though, the question was a strange one. We insist on asking children what they want to do with their lives when most of the time it's set in stone when they pull on their first school uniform. If they are born poor they will almost certainly stay poor; if their parents have money then it's likely that they will too. The more unequal a society is the truer this statement becomes. Yes we insist on telling children that they can be 'whatever they want to be', knowing full well that crushing disappointment lies further in their future. Every nation relies to some extent on fairy tales. In Britain we cling to the idea that you can be or do anything in life so long as you put your mind to it. In the process we hand our politicians the one thing they can use to justify the obscene privileges at the top and the revolting squalor at the bottom: the indomitable myth of meritocracy. | |
Comment: The psychopathic politicians don't care about the poor and care even less about equitable distribution of education and wealth. Worldwide, we have a pathological social and educational control system designed to benefit those at the top of the food chain:
Equality, empathy and psychopathy Further reading: Political Ponerology: A Science of Evil Applied for Political Purposes The Pathocrats | |
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RT
2014-06-10 09:37:00
A US Defense Department official has anonymously confirmed to AP that five ISAF servicemen killed by friendly fire in southern Afghanistan were actually American soldiers. This could become the worst friendly-fire incident in 13 years of the Afghan War. On Tuesday, international coalition officials confirmed that five servicemen died on Monday in what appeared to be a friendly-fire incident, without giving the details or disclosing the nationalities of the deceased. Reportedly, the servicemen came into contact with adversaries in Arghandab district of Zabul province and came under an airstrike alongside the enemy forces. The soldiers who died in the incident allegedly called in the airstrike that killed them. "ISAF troops were returning to their bases after an operation when they were ambushed by the insurgents. The airstrike mistakenly hit their own forces and killed the soldiers,"shared local Police Chief Ghulam Sakhi Roghlewanai. Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Taliban movement, claimed that a group of insurgents engaged with an ISAF unit when assault helicopters got into combat and mistakenly attacked the foreign unit. | |
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Dr Jerome
Is this a happy Tuesday? Well... probably not, so let's talk about other stuff.TFMetalsReport.com 2014-06-10 00:00:00
Early in 2012, with gold soaring, and a key restriction lifted off my retirement account as I switched jobs, and with a severe case of fiat angst, we decided to reject the system and convert our fiat into precious metals (FARTS) (I love acronyms). So we withdrew it, paid fiat tax, paid a fiat penalty (about 20% total) and took the remaining fiat to the LCS. I had figured gold was headed higher shortly and would creep even higher in the days beyond.Wait, that shows my ignorance; gold doesn't creep anywhere, it is fiat that changes in value. Well, you know what happened in April as gold approached 1700. A month later, I was 47% poorer, if I count wealth in fiat. I was not happy, yet I did not despair, but I was feeling something. And "poorer?" Really? Was I poorer? No, I was more stable than ever and the angst was gone. Hmmm... | |
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RT
2014-06-09 23:35:00
Over 2,000 care-home kids were secretly vaccinated against diphtheria in the 1930s in medical trials undertaken by international drugs giant Burroughs Wellcome, Irish media reveal. Among the testing sites was a recently discovered mass grave. The medical records cited by the Irish Daily Mail show that some 2,051 children and babies across several Irish care homes may have been subjected to the practice. Michael Dwyer, of Cork University's School of History, found the data after foraging through tens of thousands of archive files and old medical journals. What he did not find is whether any consent was gained for these alleged illegal drug trials or any records of the effects on the infants involved. Dwyer discovered that the tests were carried out shortly before the drugs were made readily available in the UK. The homes involved included Bessborough, County Cork, and Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, County Tipperary. | |
Comment: The Irish people have been exploited by psychopathic institutions for centuries, this too would need to be aired ( and studied with the lens of Political Ponerology) before coming to terms with a shattered Irish identity. For example the sanitized history of the Great Famine could be more realistically framed as the 'Irish Holocaust', or something alike. Not to start an identity industry of victim-hood or hatred, but to spread awareness of ponerology in all its stages.
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Voice of Russia
2014-06-10 01:25:00
Eurofighter jet crashes killing its pilot at attemt of landing at air base in southwestern Spain on Monday, defence ministry said. The sole pilot of the plane, 30-year-old air force captain Fernando Lluna Carrascosa, was killed in the accident, which happened at around 2 pm (12:00 GMT), the defence ministry said in a statement. Carrascosa, who was married with a young daughter, had over 600 hours experience flying Eurofighter jets, the statement added. The cause of the accident is still unknown, the ministry said. The Moron air base, located about 35 miles (55 kilometres) southeast of Seville, is shared by Spain and the US Air Force, but only Spain operates the Eurofighter jet. The Eurofighter, a multi-purpose twin-engine fighter jet introduced in 2003, is built by a consortium made up of British defence group BAE, European aerospace group Airbus and Italian defence contractor Finmeccanica. It is designed as a highly agile multi-role aircraft, capable of ground attack as well as its primary air defence role. The Eurofighter consortium, Europe's largest defence programme, is in fierce competition with other fighter-jet makers such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Dassault Aviation. Last month the head of Airbus' defence division, Bernhard Gerwert, said the consortium would stop making the Eurofighter jet in 2018 if it did not win new export contracts for the fighter jet. Talks were under way to sell Eurofighter jets outside of Europe, to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Malaysia, he said. | |
Comment: Was a little sabotage involved to make sure that production of the Eurofighter jet would stop in 2018, as the head of Airbus had announced, in case of no new contracts?
It is only a few days ago that two fighter jets crashed in the U.S. within a 24 hour period. Is U.S. military technology falling apart? Second jet crashes off California coast in 24 hours And the French also suffered a crash a few weeks ago: French Fighter jet crashes into field | |
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Pepe Escobar
RT 2014-06-10 00:56:00
It's high fever time in Sao Paulo. The Dutch are chilling in Ipanema, right in front of the beach. The Italians are in their own Riviera 100 kilometers from Rio. The Germans are in a sprawling beach bunker along the coast were Brazil was "discovered"in 1500. The English team is visiting a favela this Monday. The whole country is slowly being draped in green and yellow. One hell of a party is about to begin. And yet, all across the planet, the nagging question remains; will Brazilians set this World Cup - literally - on fire? Is this show worth over $11 billion? Well, that's actually a non-issue, picked up by those who don't know how football - it's not "soccer", it's "football", as the English invented it - is embedded in the Brazilian psyche. Emerging from a bulletproof SUV into a trendy Japanese restaurant where she is greeted like Madonna, my good friend Barbara Gancia - arguably Brazil's top social critic - went for the jugular: "There will be protests until Neymar strikes the first goal. Everybody, no exceptions, will root for the national team. And then, even if Brazil wins the Cup, the protests will pick up again." | |
Comment: Listen to SOTT talk radio interview with Pepe Escobar on many geopolitical topics:
Dissecting Globalistan: Interview with Pepe Escobar | |
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Justin Fenton
A man who was shot by a Baltimore Police officer on Friday morning in West Baltimore was at the time fighting with a man who had just robbed him at gunpoint, police said Monday.The Baltimore Sun 2014-06-09 22:25:00 Both have been criminally charged for their roles in the incident. Police said Friday that officers were handling a domestic violence call around 7 a.m. when they heard gunshots nearby and rushed to the scene to find two men struggling in the street, at the intersection of North Fremont Avenue and West Fayette Street. One of them was holding two guns, and cash littered the ground. The man holding the guns refused to drop the weapon, and was shot by an officer, police said. According to charging documents provided by police, Alexander Brown, 24, had been robbed at gunpoint by Xavian Chriscoe, 36, and an unknown accomplice, who told him to hand over cash his belongings "or you gonna catch all six of these," referring to bullets. Brown handed over his property - $90 cash, an ID, and a bank card - and the two men fled, police said. Brown then pulled a .38 caliber revolver from his pants leg and fired four shots at Chriscoe and the other man as he gave chase. Brown wrestled away Chriscoe's .32 caliber revolver and the two began to struggle over the weapons. Officers heard shots - police say Chriscoe had a graze wound to the side of his head - and saw Brown standing over Chriscoe, holding a gun to his head. Police say Officer Valentine Nagovich, 41, an 11-year veteran, fired multiple shots, striking Brown in the left forearm. Brown was taken into custody, but told the officers that Chriscoe had robbed him. Both were detained, and officers found Brown's driver's license in Chriscoe's possession. Police said video of the incident captured from a camera showed what appeared to be Chriscoe and the second, unknown person robbing Brown. Brown, of the 4500 block of Shamrock Ave., is charged with first-degree assault and multiple handgun charges for firing at Chriscoe after being robbed. Chriscoe, meanwhile, of the 1700 block of Bloomingdale Ave., was armed robbery, assault, and handgun charges. Both men are being held without bond, and attorneys were not listed in court records. |
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Susanne Posel
Investigative Headline News 2014-06-09 22:12:00
Beginning August 1st of this year, JP Morgan & Chase Co. will charge their customers fordepositing cash into their accounts. According to an internal document sent to account holders, in less than a month from now "the fee for all types of Cash Deposit Processing (CDP) will be $0.25 per $100 [deposited]. The CDP fee will only apply after you exceed your account's cash deposit limit." One reason for Chase to charge their customers a fee on cash deposits may reside in the fact that the major banks are "charging customers who deposit lots of cash." Wherein Chase is charging customers for every $100 in cash deposited, other banks are charging on every cash deposit of $10,000; or $0.20 on every $100 deposited. Kris Dawsey, economist for Goldman Sachs, warned about banks charging customers fees for simply depositing cash into their account in 2013. When asked about a meeting of the Federal Reserve (Fed) Board and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), wherein it was revealed that the 0.25% annual interest rate on money that the banks keep in the Fed would be reduced, Dawsey said: "One risk is that the move could prompt charges ... on bank deposits." Last November, Kristin Lemkau, spokesperson for JP Morgan & Chase Co said: "We have no intention of charging for retail customer deposits." However this promise has not been kept. | |
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The Voice of Russia
2014-06-08 00:00:00
Russia sees no need for retaliatory sanctions against the West but such a move is possible if a third wave of measures to isolate Moscow is introduced, the speaker of Russia's upper house has said, according to RIA Novosti. "We do not think it is necessary to adopt retaliatory sanctions, although they have been prepared, considered and weighed. If our partners threatening us with a third round of sanctions do not stop, time may come when we will have to respond," Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko said in the Pravo Znat (Right to Know) program on TVC news channel on Saturday. "But I do not want such a scenario to take place," she added. Isolating Russia is impossible as it has been integrated into the world economy and is a member of the UN Security Council. Today European countries are not interested in severing ties with Russia, she stated. | |
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Lily Dane
The Daily Sheeple 2014-06-09 10:27:00
In recent years, the news has been flooded with more and more stories of sex infiltrating our schools. The stories range from those about questionable sex education curriculum to teachers having inappropriate relationships with students. Last week was no different. Here's a small sampling of shocking occurrences from around the United States. At Woodland Park Middle School in San Marcos, CA, 8th graders were forced to participate in a classroom activity that has parents furious. The story was reported to 10News by the parents of a 14-year-old student who said that as part of a sex education lesson, students were told to stand under signs labeled "smiled at, hugged, kissed, above the waist, below the waist, and all the way." | |
Comment: This is called the ponerization of society where psychopathic traits, such as child sexual exploitation, are passed off as normal and acceptable to the general public.
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Brad Knickerbocker
Yahoo! News 2014-06-07 18:09:00
The gay rights movement has advanced with head-spinning speed in recent years. "Hate crimes" now include attacks on individuals because of their sexual orientation. Government and employment benefits now are extended to same-sex couples. The US military has scrapped its "don't ask, don't tell" ban on openly-gay service members. A string of federal judges - most recently in Wisconsin this week - have ruled state bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia now have what advocates call "freedom to marry." Gay judges, lawmakers, and other public figures are serving openly. "US public opinion about gays has changed drastically in recent decades on the issues of marriage equality and LGBT acceptance as a whole, possibly related to the fact that three in four Americans say they have a friend, relative, or coworker who has told them that he or she is gay," Gallup reported recently. Public support for same-sex marriage has reached an all-time high of 55 percent - more significantly, nearly 80 percent among young adults. Approval of gay or lesbian relations jumped 19 percent between 2001 and 2013 (from 40 percent to 59 percent, again according to Gallup). Still, Americans are about evenly divided on whether homosexuality is something a portion of the population is born with or, instead, it is a characteristic resulting from upbringing and environment - present before birth or acquired. | |
Comment: The gay rights movement has largely been a success, based on the above statistics. But like every other ideological movement, there is a psychopathic element with motives far removed from those popularized with the general public, and even those fighting for and from within the movement itself. For more details see Pierre Lescaudron's article Mummy, why is Daddy wearing a dress? Daddy, why does Mummy have a moustache?
As for the science, since the question about gays has been raised, what about a more fundamental question: what is the cause of human sexuality in general, includingheterosexuality? Is it fully genetic? The result of behavioral imprinting? The fact is, we don't even know that. | |
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Tafline Laylin
Green Prophet 2014-03-06 17:07:00
More than 40 million people worldwide have been displaced from their homes and left to find shelter in strange lands. Maybe they find a tarp, or a tent, but their quality of life almost always remains dismal. To close this gap in need, Jordanian-Canadian architect and designer Abeer Seikaly designed a new kind of shelter. One that allows refugees to rebuild their lives with dignity. Seikaly, now living in Amman, Jordan is well poised to design a dwelling for refugees given that her ancestors in Jordan probably toggled between nomadic and sheltered life in the desert for centuries.
"The movement of people across the earth led to the discovery of new territories as well as the creation of new communities among strangers forming towns, cities, and nations," writes Seikaly in her design brief. "Navigating this duality between exploration and settlement, movement and stillness is a fundamental essence of what it means to be human." But today, a great deal of migration is no longer voluntary, as wars and climate change force people out of their homes - often with very little money. The collapsible woven shelters, which are conceptual but proven to work, would allow these people to carry their homes with them. | ||
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Thunderbolts.info
2014-06-09 09:22:00
Scientists in the United Kingdom have reported findings that could change our understanding of lightning. Researchers have discovered a link between charged particles on the Sun and increased lightning on Earth. Wal Thornhill explains why this is not a surprise to the Electric Universe community. For a background discussion on lightning in the Electric Universe, see video below: | |
Comment: Looks like the word is getting out.
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RT.com
2014-06-09 12:36:00
A Texas observatory has captured a powerful gamma-ray burst - the violent death of a massive star - that happened relatively "soon'" after the Big Bang. Understanding such hard-to-spot events gives us insight into how the early universe developed. While the observation was published only this week, the transient flash of the dying star GRB 140419A was detected on April 19 by NASA's space satellite, which relayed the info an automated telescope belonging to Southern Methodist University (SMU). It is only these sophisticated and integrated technologies that allow us to systematically observe gamma-ray bursts, mysterious phenomena that were only discovered in the 1960s. "Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the universe since the Big Bang. These bursts release more energy in 10 seconds than our Earth's sun during its entire expected lifespan of 10 billion years," said Farley Ferrante, the SMU student who monitored the event. Like some other similar disintegrations, GRB 140419A might have been a star up to 50 times bigger than our sun that ran out of fuel, and collapsed upon itself, creating a black hole - a mass so dense and with so much gravity that nothing can escape it. The explosion happened relatively soon - 1.7 billion years - after the Big Bang, which occurred 13.82 billion years ago. "Considering this thing was at the edge of the visible universe, that's an extreme explosion. That was something big. Really big," said Robert Kehoe, the leader of SMU's astronomy team. | |
Comment: Although the media often acts as if the "Big-Bang" is an accepted fact, it is merely a theory and there is much dissension in scientific circles. Pierre Lescaudron discusses this and also explains some of the most recent theories concerning the electric universe in his book Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection.
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| Earth Changes |
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Jill Reilly
Daily Mail, UK 2014-06-10 10:40:00
* In Duesseldorf, two men and a woman were killed when a large tree fell on them * Police say two bicyclists were killed when hit by falling tree limbs in separate incidents in Cologne and Krefeld * A man in Essen collapsed and died near midnight as he was working to clear debris from a street * Storm front moved further northeast and there are weather warnings for regions including Hanover and Bremen Heavy rains, hail and high winds have left at least six people dead in western Germany after violent storms battered the region. In the North Rhine-Westphalia capital of Duesseldorf, police said two men and a woman who had sought refuge in a garden house were killed late Monday when a large tree fell on the building, the dpa news agency reported Tuesday. Firefighters were able to rescue six others, who were taken to hospitals.
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Andrew Freedman
Mashable 2014-06-09 00:00:00
It's not just the U.S. that has suffered a damaging onslaught of massive, wind-driven hails lately. On Sunday and Monday, powerful thunderstorms erupted across France and Belgium, dropping baseball to tennis-ball-sized hail near Brussels as well as the French countryside. Hail also fell in Paris overnight Sunday. These hailstones formed inside massive supercell thunderstorms, which are long-lived storms that feature rotating updrafts, which allows them to produce large hail, damaging winds, and in some cases, tornadoes. While thunderstorms are typical in France during the summer, this storm outbreak has produced unusually large hail for the region, and it has hit Paris particularly hard. As of Monday evening in France, Meteo France had posted an "Orange Alert" across west-central and northern parts of the country, with the threat of severe weather stretching northeastward into Belgium and the Netherlands. Meteo France is urging people to take "special vigilance" as the country faces yet another stormy night.
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India Today
2014-06-08 20:15:00
Temperature in the Capital touched 45.1 degree Celsius on Sunday while it was 47.8 degree C in and around Palam airport making it the hottest day in 62 years giving no respite to people reeling under a blistering heat wave. Adding to the woes of heat-ravaged Delhiites, frequent power cuts across the city aggravated the situation and made life miserable. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said there is no relief likely from the heat wave on Monday and similar weather conditions will continue. | |
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globalpost
2014-06-09 17:15:00
Flooding caused by torrential rains over the weekend has killed at least nine people and left three missing in southern Brazil, officials said Monday, declaring an emergency in 77 towns. The flood-hit areas include the state of Parana, whose capital, Curitiba, is one of the 12 host cities for the World Cup, which opens Thursday. The worst-affected areas however are located around 300 kilometers (185 miles) from Curitiba. More than 55,000 people's homes were flooded in the 77 towns where Parana Governor Beto Richa declared a state of emergency. | |
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Carli Teproff and Beatrice Dupuy
Miami Herald 2014-06-09 00:00:00
People just waking up didn't know what to make of the strange haze hanging in the sky. Was it fog? Was a nearby building on fire? Was it a Miami Heat hangover? For hours on Monday morning, the surreal scene covered much of South Florida, cutting visibility in some places to a mile or two, obliterating parts of the skyline, closing a major road, forcing a health advisory, and sending first-day summer campers indoors. The smoke came from a huge Everglades brush fire in West Broward, which burned nearly 20,000 acres, according to the Florida Forest Service. Less smoke wafted into the suburbs and along the coast Tuesday morning, although the fire continued to burn.
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Scott Rasmussen
San Juan Journal 2014-06-03 08:22:00
An uptick in harbor porpoise strandings has local biologists scratching their heads, looking for clues and wary that mid-May's unusually high death toll may signal something other than the natural die-off of a population on the rise. Although, that just might be the case. "We've also heard there's been an increase in the number of strandings in the (British Columbia) area," said The Whale Museum's Jennifer Olsen, coordinator of the San Juan County Marine Mammal Stranding Network. "But we're not sure of what the total is or exactly where they were found. We didn't have a single stranding a year ago in May." | |
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Heather Alexander
Houston Chronicle 2014-06-04 07:32:00
A Houston fisherman's latest catch is going viral after after photos came out of a massive Warsaw Grouper he caught off the Louisiana coast. Cullen Greer caught the huge 267-pound fish at the end of May and is looking to get into the state record books. His 6' 6" long giant would be the fifth largest ever caught in this species. KETK report that Greer hopes the ugly grouper will also rank as the third largest caught on a hand crank. | |
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CBS Minnesota
2014-06-07 12:43:00
It may be June, but a Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources warden discovered some icebergs still afloat in Lake Superior near Madeline Island on Friday. DNR Marine Warden Amie Egstad spotted the floating ice - which was covered in resting seagulls - while doing a routine check of commercial nets in the largest of the Great Lakes. | |
Comment: So much for 'global warming'! Considering the extremely cold winter and the unprecedented ice cover on the Great Lakes this winter, it's hardly surprising to see icebergs still floating on the lake:
Why it's a big deal: Half of the Great Lakes are still covered in ice Drastically cold temperatures create greatest ice cover on the Great Lakes in 20 years Ice Age Cometh: Great Lakes ice cover spreading rapidly - Lake Superior sets new record | |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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| Health & Wellness |
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Dr. Mercola
Mercola.com 2014-06-03 13:41:00
The United States uses about 1.1 billion pounds of pesticides each year.1, 2Worldwide pesticide use amounts to approximately 5.2 billion pounds annually. There's little doubt that the current pesticide load is taking a toll, as mounting research has linked pesticides to an array of serious health problems. Processed foods form the basis of nearly everyone's diet, as 95 percent of the food Americans buy is processed. If this is you, then you can consider yourself in the highest risk category, as such fare tends to contain the greatest amounts of hidden genetically engineered (GE) ingredients, and hence the highest pesticide load. Avoiding pesticide exposure - around your home, in your community, and via the food you eat - is important for reducing your risk for a number of chronic and devastating diseases, including Parkinson's and DNA damage indicative of early-stage cancer.3, 4 Now, with the publication of a new meta-analysis,5 the evidence linking pesticides to cancer is stronger than ever. The analysis, which included 44 papers exploring the impacts of pesticide exposure on non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, concluded there appears to be a strong link between the two. The study, which was done by a team at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France, covering nearly three decades' worth of epidemiologic research, will likely be taken seriously worldwide. | |
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Gluten Free Society
2013-12-10 08:37:00
Gluten is a nutritional problem One of the biggest problems facing those with gluten related issues is doctors. For years, doctors have dismissed gluten sensitivity and other food allergies as a potential health problem for those suffering with disease. It is the proverbial 8,000 pound gorilla in the room. Everyone knows it, many ignore it. Choosing to ignore it doesn't make it go away. You are what you eat. The wrong food can impact your health in a detrimental way. Why are medical doctors part of the problem? They simply don't understand nutrition well enough. Now before any of you start getting upset, remember that this is not a blanket statement that encompasses all doctors. There are many doctors that study nutrition and have a wonderful knowledge of the science. Problem is, they are few and far between. For example, let's look at gluten. This nutritional disease was originally identified as a food based problem in 1952. 61 years later, we have come to accept it as a society (kind of). You see, despite the massive quantity of research that has been conducted, many doctors continue to blatantly ignore gluten and its associated diseases (beyond Celiac). The question is why? How much nutritional knowledge does your doctor have? The truth is, unless they seek a post graduate education on the topic, not much at all. The last few studies investigating nutrition taught in medical schools had this to say... ...data suggest that medical students' perception of the importance of clinical nutrition can decrease during medical school.Source: Curr Gastroenterol Rep. 2011 Aug;13(4):376-9 | |
Comment: Doctors don't need five letters after their names to certificate what is now common knowledge among certain people. An open mind and willingness to research and learn for the sake of their patients will do. For more information, see our forum discussion"Life Without Bread".
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| Science of the Spirit |
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ScienceDaily
2014-06-10 14:03:00
After initially visiting a school psychologist, adolescents in the United States with a mental disorder often go to seek care from their pediatricians or family doctors. Fewer of them continue their treatment directly with a psychotherapist or doctor specialized in mental disorders. This shows an analysis conducted by scientists at the University of Basel that has just been published in the academic journal PLOS ONE. The results are based on a nationally representative cohort of 6,500 U.S. teenagers. A considerable number of children and adolescents suffer from a mental disorder at some point of their time in school. In these cases, school psychologists are an important first contact point. However, their ability to provide comprehensive psychotherapeutic treatment directly is limited. Ideally, school psychologists should guide the way through the health care system in order to ensure children get access to adequate mental care from specialists. But what does the reality look like? Which role do school psychologists play in the trajectory of children and adolescents with mental disorders in the health care system? PD Dr. Marion Tegethoff and her research team from the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Basel tried to answer this question in a research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. They analyzed data from a nationally representative United States cohort of 6,483 students aged 13 to 18. | |
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Jonathan O'Callaghan
Daily Mail, UK 2014-06-10 10:23:00
* Scientists in Ontario and Michigan studied how people deal with trauma * They found people made more rational decisions if they were detached * When tackling a problem as an observer, they made a 'better' decision * But when thinking of their own problem they would make rash judgements * Study also reveals that people don't necessarily get wiser as they get older Having problems in life? Then you need to detach from your issues and try to see the world through someone else's eyes. Research has found the best way to tackle a heartbreaking or personal trauma is to distance yourself and think about the problem in the third person. During tests, people faced with the idea of a cheating spouse, for example, were more likely to think wisely about the situation, if they considered it as an observer would. | |
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Gregory L. Jantz
Psychology Today 2014-05-01 10:04:00
A recent Harris poll revealed that only 33 percent of Americans are very happy. Ifhappiness is a natural state of being, why is this number so low? What is keeping us from being happy? Below are four "happiness roadblocks" that might be inhibiting your bliss. 1. Unfulfilled Expectations Whether we realize it or not, we all have an underlying set of expectations for life. We have expectations for ourselves: how we should act, how successful we should be. We have expectations for others: how they should act, how they should treat us. We also have expectations for life and how our days should unfold. Some of these expectations are fulfilled, and others are not. That's life, plain and simple. Having expectations is an important part of life that helps direct the course of our lives and relationships. If we didn't expect ourselves to get up each morning and fulfill our responsibilities, there would likely be an increase of pizza deliveries and online movie streaming! Having expectations for how others should behave and treat us allows us to set boundaries and maintain healthy relationships. Often, however, these beliefs about how ourselves, others, and life are supposed to be are so ingrained in us that the possibility of failing to meet said expectations is too much to bear. The problem lies in us attaching our personal happiness to the fulfillment of these expectations that are often out of our control, and the difficulty some of us have in accepting unfulfilled expectations. Releasing our tight grip on how we expect people to act and how life should unfold gives us the space to experience life as a journey. Loosening our expectations and control allows us to maintain equilibrium and happiness when things don't go according to our plans. | |
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| High Strangeness |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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RT
2014-06-09 02:23:00
The governor of South Carolina created a mini-Twitter firestorm among the chattering class on Monday by mistakenly announcing that the state, in the process of passing education reform, "will no longer educate children." Governor Nikki Haley, a Republican, seemed to type out a complete tweet only to attach an Instagram link at the end of it, a situation in which Twitter likely chopped up the message at an unfortunate point. The tweet has since been deleted, but screenshots of the image remain thanks to a number of political pundits and a mounting number of re-tweets. | |
