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The Guardian
2014-06-24 14:56:00
Gary Shopland says he was recruited by the police to infiltrate the British National party. Shopland worked as the BNP leader Nick Griffin's bodyguard during an election campaign. When his identity as a BNP member was exposed, Shopland claims the police failed to support him or admit he worked undercover for them. Comment: ...What they instead did, as you'll learn in the following video, was suggest he grow a beard and pretend to be a religious fanatic. Are you starting to get an idea of how screwed up the authorities really are?
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Comment: Same stuff happens all the time in the US too:
The ex-FBI informant with a change of heart: 'There is no real hunt. It's fixed' | ||
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RT
2014-06-24 17:25:00
President Vladimir Putin has proposed that the upper house call off the March 1 resolution allowing the head of state to use the armed forces on the territory of Ukraine, said presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov. "Because of the beginning of the three-party talks to settle down the situation in the eastern parts of Ukraine, the head of state has addressed to the Federation Council to repeal the resolution on the use of Russian armed forces on the territory of Ukraine," ITAR-TASS cited Peskov as saying. The president sent an address to Federation Council Valentina Matvienko today morning, ahead of leaving on official visit to Vienna. Deputy Head of the Federation Council's International Committee Andrey Klimov confirmed the upper house will back Putin's proposal and repeal the resolution on Wednesday, June 25. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has called the proposal of his Russian counterpart a "first practical step towards settlement of the situation in eastern Ukraine," reported the Ukrainian president's press-service in a specially released statement. The EU welcomed Putin's decision to reject the right to use military force to settle the crisis in Ukraine and welcomes its earliest realization, the press-secretary of EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton stated.
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Comment: Putin continues to play it safe in the face of provocation after provocation from the West. If Putin is anything (and he's many things!), he's patient.
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Aaron Klein
WND 2014-06-18 17:13:00
Benghazi suspect Ahmed Abu Khattallah, seized by the U.S. on Sunday, once served as a key conduit in an effort staged by the U.S. and Arab interests to aid insurgents fighting in Libya and later in Syria, according to informed Middle Eastern security officials. It was not immediately clear whether Khattallah himself worked directly with the Americans or if he knew he was part of an effort that involved the U.S.. He did, however, receive funds for his participation in a nexus coordinated by the U.S., Saudis, Turkey and other Arab countries to recruit the fighters that ultimately toppled Muammar Gadhafi's regime, the security officials said. Khattallah, the senior leader of the Benghazi branch of the Ansar al-Sharia terrorist organization, was later instrumental in helping to recruit fighters from inside Libya to travel to Syria to aid in the insurgency targeting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime in 2011, the officials said. Khattallah's participation came to a grinding halt following the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attacks in which he is accused of participating. Ansar al-Sharia was not yet declared a terrorist organization by the State Department during the period of Khatallah's alleged work to help recruit Mideast rebels. Prior to the Benghazi attacks, the U.S. relationship with those linked to Khattalah's group was so comfortable that it was the February 17th Martyrs Brigade, an Ansar al-Sharia offshoot, that officially served as the armed quick reaction force within the U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi. | |
Comment: Another American-controlled patsy/tool? Looks like it! "Khatallah's al-Qaida-linked Ansar al-Sharia group advocates strict Shariah implementation and the creation of the Islamic Caliphate." Since Al-Qaida and its subsidiaries are pretty much controlled by the CIA, it looks like our U.S. masters are fans of Shariah law and an Islamic Caliphate... over there, of course.
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Joachim Hagopian
Every chance President Obama gets he busily boasts about America's "exceptionalism," as if to convince himself of its truth by simply repeating the same lie over and over again. His speech a month ago at West Point was one big "I/we are so great!" Even the West Point cadets sat in subdued silence and bewilderment. Obama's foreign policy speech convinced no one of America's grand world leadership but only made a bigger fool of the US president than ever before.Global Research 2014-06-24 16:07:00
Obama is still feebly trying to capitalize on America's past glory, merely resting on its laurels and onetime greatness. Americans have traditionally embraced the notion that they are special and exceptional as the most well endowed, gifted nation on earth. After all, the US was the only superpower left on the planet after the dissolution of the Soviet Union more than two decades ago. Indeed over the last century Americans have been proudly raised to believe that their nation is the richest on earth, possesses the world's most powerful military fighting machine, and sentimentally, nostalgically and historically has always fashioned itself as the land of the free, a land of milk and honey with unlimited opportunity and freedom, and always considered the best country in the world to live in. But that was then and this is now. Now America's milk is contaminated with Monsanto fed toxins and the bees are fast disappearing due to Monsanto's fed flowers. After waking up from its patriotic pipedream that at this point in time amounts to no more than wishful thinking and delusions of grandeur, Americans today are nervously realizing that the United States is far from what it has been cracked up to be. In fact, its ever-widening, very glaring cracks in such falsely smug notions as exceptionalism, shameless self-promotion and near invincibility belie the cold hard reality that now casts a long and dark foreboding shadow over the once great land. America today is not the greatest nation on earth and it turns out Americans are not nearly so exceptional as Obama would have us believe. America is dead last in both healthcare and health and well-being of its people in a study that compares the US with ten other developed nations that include Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. As the only developed nation without some form of universal healthcare, Americans spend two to three up to ten times more on various healthcare services than all other nations. We spend $2.3 trillion annually on healthcare, about 18 percent of our Gross Domestic Product and way more than twice as much as other advanced countries. The Health at a Glance 2013 report of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows that the US lifespan that was 41 years ago ahead of the developed world's average longevity by a full year now is more than a full year shorter than the average lifespan, rising from 70.9 to 78.7 while the rest of the developed nations rose from 70 to 80.1 years. People live longer than Americans in 25 other nations including all of Western Europe along with Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Canada. Among developed nations, in 2009 an estimated total of nearly 50 million Americans were unable to even afford healthcare insurance despite the so called Affordable Healthcare Act. | |
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Chris Hedges
Truthdig 2014-06-22 00:00:00
The black-clad fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, sweeping a collapsing army and terrified Iraqis before them as they advance toward Baghdad, reflect back to us the ghoulish face of American empire. They are the specters of the hundreds of thousands of people we murdered in our deluded quest to remake the Middle East. They are ghosts from the innumerable roadsides and villages where U.S. soldiers and Marines, jolted by explosions of improvised explosive devices, responded with indiscriminate fire. They are the risen remains of the dismembered Iraqis left behind by blasts of Hellfire and cruise missiles, howitzers, grenade launchers and drone strikes. They are the avengers of the gruesome torture and the sexual debasement that often came with being detained by American troops. They are the final answer to the collective humiliation of an occupied country, the logical outcome of Shock and Awe, the Frankenstein monster stitched together from the body parts we left scattered on the ground. They are what we get for the $4 trillion we wasted on the Iraq War. The language of violence engenders violence. The language of hate engenders hate. "I and the public know what all schoolchildren learn," W.H. Auden wrote. "Those to whom evil is done do evil in return." It is as old as the Bible. There is no fight left in us. The war is over. We destroyed Iraq as a unified country. It will never be put back together. We are reduced - in what must be an act of divine justice decreed by the gods, whom we have discovered to our dismay are Islamic - to pleading with Iran for military assistance to shield the corrupt and despised U.S. protectorate led by Nouri al-Maliki. We are not, as we thought when we entered Iraq, the omnipotent superpower able in a swift and brutal stroke to bend a people to our will. We are something else. Fools and murderers. Blinded by hubris. Faded relics of the Cold War. And now, in the final act of the play, we are crawling away. Our empire is dying. | |
Comment: There you have it: $4 Trillion spent on killing and maiming many thousands of people, destroying the infrastructure of whole countries, inspiring the wrath of the most extreme elements those (and other) countries, and destabilizing whole regions of our planet as a result. If you were at the highest echelon of the US government, or in a position to influence the lives of many millions of individuals, how would you spend $4 Trillion??
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Simon Tisdall
The Guardian 2014-06-23 10:43:00
Egypt's military-dominated government has delivered a humiliating, public slap in the face to John Kerry, the US secretary of state, by sentencing three al-Jazeera journalists to long prison terms only hours after Kerry personally expressed his deep concern about the case in high-level meetings in Cairo. The snub represents a disastrous beginning to Kerry's already fraught Middle East tour, which took him to Baghdad on Monday for crisis talks about the Islamist extremist uprising. The verdict, by a court responsive to government wishes, will also be seen as a deliberate, crude signal to President Barack Obama, who criticised Egypt's deteriorating human rights record after the former general, Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, seized power in a coup last year. Sisi has since had himself voted president. His elected predecessor, Mohammed Morsi, and thousands of his Muslim Brotherhood supporters remain in jail while hundreds of others have been killed. | |
Comment: Nothing in politics happens by accident, including the particulars and outcome of Kerry's "naive" visit bearing kiss gifts. All the world is a stage and politicians are superb players on it. It is a sad day that journalists, who put themselves at high risk for arrest and persecution, are now being used politically to target Qatar's support for the Muslim Brotherhood through its media outlet. As for Mr. Kerry's ploy of righteous indignation, we might remind him that the U.S. holds innocent people in prison for political reasons too. Maybe he just forgot.
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Moscow Times
2014-06-24 12:09:00
The Syrian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday it had eliminated chemical weapons from its arsenal despite difficult security circumstances caused by its ongoing civil war. It credited the "firm political will of Syrian President Bashar Assad and the initiative of the President Vladimir Putin" to give up the arsenal under the supervision of the United Nations Security Council. "This significant achievement is further evidence that Syria adheres to its international commitments," the Syrian statement said. Syria's government agreed to surrender its arsenal last fall when the U.S. threatened punitive missile strikes after a chemical attack on a rebel-held suburb of Damascusbelieved to have killed more than a thousand people. Comment: A chemical attack perpetrated by the rebels and falsely blamed on the Syrian government. See: | |
Comment: Bravo Assad and Putin! This is what can be achieved with real diplomacy. The fact that Putin had to intervene (peacefully and successfully) just shows that the U.S.wants war. Thankfully, there are at least a few sane, non-psychopathic leaders in positions of power today.
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Gary Leupp
Counterpunch 2014-06-23 12:05:00
What Megyn Kelly should have asked The former vice president got his comeuppance on Fox News last Wednesday, producing a minor news story. Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz had published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journaladvocating renewed U.S. military involvement in Iraq to prevent a seizure of power by the al-Qaeda spin-off ISIS (or ISIL) and opining, "Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many." Citing this comment, Fox anchor Megyn Kelly unexpectedly snapped, "But time and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well sir." She referred specifically to the false accusation about weapons of mass destruction used to sell the Iraq War. A flustered Cheney fumbled his interrogator's name ("Reagan, um, Megyn") before declaring, "You've got to go back and look at the track record." (As though Megyn were doing something other than precisely that.) "We inherited a situation where there was no doubt in anybody's mind about the extent of Saddam's involvement in weapons of mass destruction ... Saddam Hussein had a track record that nearly everybody agreed to." In other words, the unfortunately mistaken but universal belief in Saddam's WMD preceded the Bush-Cheney administration, was part of its heritage but in no way its invention. Everybody was honestly mistaken. Thus he utterly rejects personal responsibility for crediting, promoting it, and using it to justify a war he badly wanted. He is lying, of course. There had been much skepticism towards the Bush-Cheney claims. I for one was convinced by a talk I attended by former weapons inspector Scott Ritter that it was unlikely Saddam retained any usable WMDs. And by the embarrassing episode in January 2003, when George W. Bush falsely asserted that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from Niger (only to be refuted by the IAEA almost immediately, when the documents Bush had cited were revealed as crude forgeries). | |
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Voice of Russia
2014-06-23 12:00:00
The Ukrainian Health Ministry told Interfax it has information that four children have been killed in a military operation in the Donetsk region. It has no information about children killed in the Lugansk region. The press service did not specify the causes of death. At the same time, Tatiana Bakhteyeva, head of the parliamentary committee on healthcare, said on Monday over forty children have died of shrapnel and bullet wounds in Donbass. "According to official reports filed by forensic experts, four people have been killed. Those children were killed in the Donetsk region. There is currently no information on the children killed in the Lugansk region," the Ukrainian Health Ministry press service reported on Monday. The press service for Tatiana Bakhteyeva said she has received information on over forty children killed in Donbass form her own sources. "She received this information from her own sources, primarily form morgues and doctors." "Unfortunately, information on the number of killed is not being collected in a centralized way," Bakhteyeva was quoted by her press service as saying. | |
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Voice of Russia
2014-06-24 11:51:00
All Ukrainian leaders, former and current, are responsible for the current events taking place in the country, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said. "We cannot but be alarmed by the events happening there. And what is happening there? Unfortunately, it is virtually a civil war," Medvedev said at a meeting with regional assets of the United Russia party. "In my point of view, unfortunately, the main blame for what is happening in Ukraine today, is on those, who made decisions, how Ukraine itself should develop and how to create the state," the prime minister said, Interfax reports. Medvedev said he did not refer to certain individuals in this case. "So all Ukrainian leaders are responsible for what is happening in Ukraine today. Former and current ones. And those, who instigated the events in Kiev and assisted revolts which took place in early 2014, have a considerable share of responsibility as well," he said. Comment: Diplomacy-speak translation: The Americans. | |
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Voice of Russia
2014-06-24 11:35:00
It is time for the European Union to stop calling the people of southeastern Ukraine "separatists," said the Russian Foreign Ministry in a statement on its website. "The EU still prefers to brand the population of southeastern Ukraine as 'pro-Russian separatists' and leave all our explanations unnoticed, Russia has repeatedly explained the purpose behind a number of our armed forces being near the Russian-Ukrainian border," the document said. "We consider the persistent attempts by Brussels to punish the residents of Crimea and Sevastopol, for their fair and clear declaration in a referendum on the peninsula's fate, to be absolutely unacceptable," the Foreign Ministry said in regard to a Council of Europe statement on Ukraine passed on June 23, Interfax reports. "If the EU is indeed interested in playing a serious positive role in resolving the Ukrainian crisis, it is time to start reconsidering its approach. It needs to adapt to the real situation and not fear inertia within the EU," the Russian Foreign Ministry said. Comment: Good luck convincing a gang of psychopaths to face reality! The Ministry described the statements adopted at the Council of the European Union on June 23 biased as far from reality. "Moscow has pointed out the 'conclusions' on the situation in Ukraine adopted at the session of the Council of the European Union on June 23," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a report posted on its website on Tuesday. "We have to state again that the evaluations given by Brussels of events in Ukraine and the continuing silence on facts that are 'inconvenient' for the European Union are biased, politically motivated and far from reality and the accusations made against Russia are ungrounded, if not clearly falsified," the Russian Foreign Ministry said. | |
Comment: The Russian Foreign Ministry should read Political Ponerology. Psychopaths lie constantly, and the idiots running the show in the EU, U.S. and Kiev are no exception.
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Paul Buchheit
Commondreams.org 2014-06-16 11:31:00
Examples of extreme inequality are becoming easier to find. Progressive leaders have us thinking about revolution. If a revolution is to take place, Americans - especially young Americans - need to know the facts, and they need to know how they're getting cheated, and they need to get angry. The following should help. 1. $1,000,000,000,000,000 in Sales. Not One Cent for Sales Tax The trading volume on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) reached an incomprehensible $1 quadrillion in notional value in 2012. That's a thousand trillion dollars. In comparison, the entire U.S. GDP is $17 trillion. On that quadrillion dollars of sales CME imposes transfer fees, contract fees, brokerage fees, Globex fees, clearing fees, and contract surcharges, many of them on both the buyer's and seller's side. As a result, the company had a profit margin higher than any of the top 100 companies in the nation from 2008 to 2010, and it's gotten even higher since then. But not a penny in sales tax for the taxpayers who provide publicly-funded infrastructure, technology, systems of law, and security to help them process billions of financial transactions. | |
Comment: See Money as Credit for details on the origins of money.
See also: SOTT Talk Radio: Interview with 'Web of Debt' author Ellen Brown - How the banking system controls the world | |
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Craig Whitlock
The Washington Post 2014-06-23 00:00:00
On the same day last month, airline pilots trying to land at two of the nation's busiest airports got on their radios to report the unnerving sight of small rogue drones buzzing at high altitudes. In the first incident on May 29, the pilot of a commercial airliner descending toward LaGuardia Airport saw what appeared to be a black drone with a 10-to-15-foot wingspan about 5,500 feet above Lower Manhattan, according to a previously undisclosed report filed with the Federal Aviation Administration. In the second, two airliners separately approaching Los Angeles International Airport soared past what they described as a drone or remote-controlled aircraft the size of a trash can at an altitude of 6,500 feet, FAA records show. The records do not name the airlines involved or say how close the aircraft came to the drones when they flew past. FAA officials said their inspectors could not track down the unregistered drones or determine who was flying them. "In many cases, radar data is not available and the operators cannot be identified," the agency said in a statement. | |
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The Voice of Russia
2014-06-24 06:27:00
Sanctions against Crimea deprive EU countries of the opportunity to work in the local market and profit from it, acting Crimean Head Sergei Aksyonov said. "They deprived themselves of markets to sell their products and of the opportunity to participate in investment program of Crimea," Aksyonov told reporters in Simferopol on Tuesday. The stance of the European Union, which banned imports from Crimea and Sevastopol, is not constructive, Aksyonov said. "It is a dead-end stance to punish citizens for the opinion on what country they should be in," he said. The EU decision to ban imports from Crimea was made under US influence, Aksyonov said. "General agitation over Crimea's accession to Russia has calmed down in the EU. As far as I understand in this case the US authorities push this stance," he said. Crimea's accession to Russia is irreversible, he said. | |
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E Hanzai
Of all the mega-corps running amok, Monsanto has consistently outperformed its rivals, earning the crown as "most evil corporation on Earth!" Not content to simply rest upon its throne of destruction, it remains focused on newer, more scientifically innovative ways to harm the planet and its people.Global Research 2014-06-22 06:28:00
1901: The company is founded by John Francis Queeny, a member of the Knights of Malta, a thirty year pharmaceutical veteran married to Olga Mendez Monsanto, for which Monsanto Chemical Works is named. The company's first product is chemical saccharin, sold to Coca-Cola as an artificial sweetener. Even then, the government knew saccharin was poisonous and sued to stop its manufacture but lost in court, thus opening the Monsanto Pandora's Box to begin poisoning the world through the soft drink. | |
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RT
2014-06-24 17:34:00
A week-long operation across the US against child sex trafficking has resulted in the rescue of almost 170 children and the arrest of 281 pimps, according to the FBI. The law enforcement operation represents the latest effort on behalf of the FBI's Innocence Lost program, which since its 2003 creation has resulted in the recovery of some 3,600 children who faced sexual exploitation. In addition to arrests and child recoveries operations have resulted in 1,450 criminal convictions, 14 life in prison terms and the seizure of over $3.1 million. "These are not children living in some faraway place, far from everyday life," FBI Director James Comey said in announcing the law enforcement sting, which is known as Operation Cross Country. "These are our children. On our streets. Our truck stops. Our motels. These are America's children." The massive anti sex-trafficking push was executed via partnerships between the Bureau and other law enforcement, including local and state police. The FBI currently operates 70 Child Exploitation Task Forces throughout the country. According to Comey, one of the most disturbing dimensions to child sex trafficking is the increasing prevalence of online prostitution. Moreover, many of the children who were rescued during the latest sting were never reported missing. | |
Comment: People (if we can even call them that) who prey on children are the lowest of the low. It says a lot about our society that crimes such as these take place, not only among the low, 'criminal' class, but also among the criminals masquerading as politicians and leaders of our society. If history teaches us anything, it's that the latter class of criminal will never be exposed, never be brought to justice.
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Brian Ashcraft
Kotaku 2014-06-23 16:56:00
Students getting drunk and passing out is part of the university experience. But this weekend, something strange and quite possibly sinister happened in Tokyo. On Twitter and Instagram (via 2ch), photos of a group of young women passed out in the middle of the street circulated online. It's believed that the women are college students at Meiji University and members of the school's tennis club. The university is currently investigating the issue, states website Buzzap. According to television reports, such as on morning show Tokudane!, over ten students fainted in Shinjuku after a drinking party. The incident was also covered on Excite News. Tokudane! is one of Japan's largest morning shows, and Excite News is a large website. Combined with reporting on the national news tonight, this story is getting mainstream coverage in Japan. Police arrived on the scene, and online, some thought that the students were passed out drunk. However, as one eye witness told Tokudane!, it was largely females who had passed out on the street. Many of the women were completely incapacitated, leading many online in Japan to wonder if they allegedly had their drinks spiked by the male members attending the drinking party. This is currently internet conjecture. | |
Comment: If it was merely a case of "excess drinking", as the university states, would all the women in question pass out at the same time on the same street? It looks like something else is going on here, whether drugging or something else entirely.
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Voice of Russia
2014-06-24 12:27:00
Eighty-five Ukrainian border guards who had been hiding on Russian territory for almost three days because of fighting at Ukraine's Izvarino border crossing point were turned over to the Kiev authorities at Russia's Chertakov-Melovoye border crossing, the Rostov region branch of the Russian Federal Security Service's (FSB) Border Guard Directorate said in a press release. "The information available to the FSB branch for the Rostov region indicates that 100 Ukrainian border guards, among them 20 officers, arrived from the Izvarino crossing point at Russia's Donetsk border crossing from 10:30 pm Moscow time on June 20 to 10:00 am on June 21. Of them, 15 border guards who crossed into Russia have refused to return, and the other 85 have been turned over to the Ukrainian side," according to the press release. Weapons and ammunition apparently abandoned by Ukrainian border guards - 53 AK-74 assault rifles, three pistols, one grenade launcher, 116 grenades, and 7,812 cartridges - have been found in the area surrounding Russia's Donetsk border crossing point, it said. More than 80 Ukrainian border guards crossed to Russia after the attack on Ukraine's Izvarino checkpoint overnight. Two people were wounded, the head of the Rostov regional border guard department, Vasily Malayev, told Itar-Tass. "Unidentified armed people on Friday attacked the Ukrainian checkpoint of Izvarino (named Donetsk on the Russian side). More than 80 Ukrainian border guards came from Izvarino to (the Russian station of) Donetsk at about 22:30 Moscow time and asked for shelter from pursuing armed persons. Two among the Ukrainian border guards were wounded. First aid was rendered to them," the Russian official said. None among Russian border guards and civilians was hurt. The Russian side took additional border guard strengthening measures. Earlier on Friday, another incident occurred on the Ukrainian-Russian border. Malayev said fighting started near the Ukrainian point of Dolzhansky (Novoshakhtinsk on the Russian side) at 18:40 Moscow time between militiamen who controlled the border and soldiers of Ukrainian armed forces or the National Guards. The Russian station was also under fire, and a Russian customs officer was wounded at the site. He has undergone an operation, and there is no threat to his life. The border checkpoint stopped working. Buildings, communication systems and other installations of Novoshakhtinsk were seriously damaged by mortar fire from the Ukrainian side. Marks were seen on buildings from ammunition of various calibers and systems, Malayev said, TASS reports. Comment: More and more of the Ukrainian military seem to be awakening to the real nature of the illegal, psychopathic "government" that sends them into battle. | |
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Andrea Germanos and Sarah Lazare
Commondreams.org 2014-06-17 11:52:00
As violence in Iraq escalates and hawks beat the drums of war, people on the ground in Iraq and across the U.S. are urging the Obama administration: don't go down the same path of military intervention that created the current crisis. Public Opinion vs. War Hawks According to a poll released Tuesday, 74 percent of people in the U.S. are against sending combat troops into Iraq. Rather than allowing that overwhelming opinion to shape the narrative, corporate media has given platform to the same hawkish voices who called for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Among the vocal proponents of using U.S. military might are Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham. The two issued a statement last week calling for "U.S. air strikes, among other military and intelligence actions and additional support for our Iraqi partners." In an op-ed published Tuesday, The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuval asked, "Can someone explain to me why the media still solicit advice about the crisis in Iraq from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)? Or Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)? How many times does the Beltway hawk caucus get to be wrong before we recognize that maybe, just maybe, its members don't know what they're talking about?" | |
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Tom Bevan
Real Clear Politics 2014-06-17 00:00:00
Hillary Clinton's minions are hard at work assembling a political machine and fine tuning it for another go at the White House. Mrs. Clinton is doing her part preparing for a run as well, churning out a bland memoir about the "hard choices" she faced as secretary of state and coyly positioning herself (again) as the inevitable nominee of the party. But after the troubled beginning to her book tour, we're beginning to see the reasons why Hillary may eventually decide to pull the plug on a 2016 presidential run. Here are five: 1) She's just not that good at campaigning. If the last two gaffe-prone weeks have reminded us of anything about Hillary, it's that she's a mediocre politician at best. Her shortcomings are significant: she can be stiff and wooden in public; she lacks the aura of a natural politician; she's not a great public speaker, and she can come across as politically flat-footed and tone deaf -- as she did with her "dead broke"response to a rather benign question about relating to the financial challenges of the average voter. People still seem to believe that the Clinton name is synonymous with political skill, but that assumption is only half-true: If Hillary possessed even half of Bill's political talent and acumen, she wouldn't have lost to Barack Obama in 2008. | |
Comment: The above are all good points, but let's face it - - Hillary is already running. To not do so, she has to quit running. Flaws? Strengths? So what. Look at the last two who were elected! The American public will have to dispel their mass illusion and see the sham our elections are to know it doesn't matter who the nominee is or for whom they vote. On some level it has already been decided and chances are the world will not be the better for it.
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seattle.cbslocal.com
2014-06-23 09:04:00
Seattle Police are investigating a report of a drone peeping into a woman's apartment window. Police were called to the downtown Seattle apartment complex on Sunday morning after she spied an unmanned aerial vehicle hovering outside the building. The woman said she was concerned the drone was looking into her apartment. After calling police, an employee of her apartment building says he went outside and saw two men piloting the drone. They packed up their gear, which included a video camera, and drove off before police arrived. Authorities say they are checking for surveillance video that may help identify the men. Drones and what role they should play in society have been a hot item in Seattle for quite some time. Last year, former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn ordered the Seattle Police Department to abandon its plan to use drones after an uproar from citizens and privacy advocates. Source: AP | |
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RT
2014-06-24 00:24:00
Exposure to several common agricultural pesticides during pregnancy increases the risk of developmental delays and autism in children by two-thirds, a new study found. While researchers did not say pesticides cause autism, a direct link is plausible. Researchers at the University of California, Davis' MIND Institute tracked associations with specific classes of pesticides (including organophosphates, pyrethroids and carbamates) and later diagnoses of autism and developmental delay in children. They used maps from the California Pesticide Use Report (1997-2008) and the addresses of expectant mothers to track women's exposure to agricultural pesticide spraying during their pregnancies. Developmental delay, in which children take extra time to reach communication, social or motor skills milestones, affects about four percent of US. kids, the authors wrote. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one in 68 children has an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), also marked by deficits in social interaction and language. | |
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Travis Gettys
Raw Story 2014-06-23 21:35:00
An official with New York's Oath Keepers organization denied the group held "far-right, anti-government views," and then called on law enforcement officers to disobey orders and join them in their fight against socialist tyranny. John Wallace, vice president of the state's Oath Keepers group, cited an alleged New York State Intelligence Center counterterrorism bulletin reportedly leaked to InfoWars that linked the organization and similar groups to the recent shootings of law enforcement officers by extremists. Wallace complains that the document, which has not been confirmed as legitimate, based its conclusions on news reports by "left-wing" and "communist" organizations such as the New York Times, Huffington Post, and CNN. "What the state of New York has done, used left wing publications, organizations to identify the targets that they want to eliminate and put pressure on so that we stop doing what we're doing," Wallace said. "How can you be in favor of the Constitution, how can you take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution and be a patriot, and be somehow put on a terrorist list made up and manufactured by basically communist organizations?" The Oath Keepers are primarily made up of current and former law enforcement officers who promise not to enforce laws they deem to be unconstitutional - and they urge others to do the same. | |
Comment: It'd be pretty amazing if the police stopped killing people, and started protecting them.
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Shannon Hall
Universe Today 2014-06-24 14:26:00
It's well accepted that moons form after planets. In fact, only a few months ago, astronomers spotted a new moon forming deep within Saturn's rings, 4.5 billion years after the planet initially formed. But new research suggests Saturn's icy moon Titan - famous for its rivers and lakes of liquid methane - may have formed before its parent planet, contradicting the theory that Titan formed within the warm disk surrounding an infant Saturn. A combined NASA and ESA-funded study has found firm evidence that the nitrogen in Titan's atmosphere originated in conditions similar to the cold birthplace of the most ancient comets from the Oort cloud - a spherical shell of icy particles that enshrouds the Solar System. The hint comes in the form of a ratio. All elements have a certain number of known isotopes - variants of that element with the same number of protons that differ in their number of neutrons. The ratio of one isotope to another isotope is a crucial diagnostic tool. In planetary atmospheres and surface materials, the amount of one isotope relative to another isotope is closely tied to the conditions under which materials form. Any change in the ratio will allow scientists to deduce an age for that material. Kathleen Mandt from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio and colleagues analyzed the ratio of nitrogen-14 (seven protons and seven neutrons) to nitrogen-15 (seven protons and eight neutrons) in Titan's atmosphere. | |
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Breitbart
2014-06-24 05:53:00
Japanese scientists on Tuesday unveiled what they said was the world's first news-reading android, eerily lifelike and possessing a sense of humour to match her perfect language skills. The adolescent-looking "Kodomoroid" -- an amalgamation of the Japanese word kodomo(child) and "android" -- delivered news of an earthquake and an FBI raid to amazed reporters in Tokyo. She even poked fun at her creator, telling leading robotics professor Hiroshi Ishiguro: "You're starting to look like a robot!" The pitch-perfect Kodomoroid was flanked by a grown-up fellow robot, who caught stage fright and fluffed her lines when asked to introduce herself. "Otonaroid" -- otona meaning adult -- excused herself after a quick reboot, saying: "I'm a little bit nervous." | |
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Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News 2014-06-24 05:00:00
Wolves and dogs can communicate using their eyes alone, suggests a new study in the journal PLoS ONE. The color of the face around the eye, the eye's shape and the color and shape of both the iris and the pupil are all part of the elaborate eye-based communication system, according to the research, which could apply to humans as well. Sayoko Ueda of the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kyoto University led the study, which compared these characteristics of the face and eyes among 25 different types of canines. The researchers identified three basic patterns: A-type: Both pupil position in the eye outline and eye position in the face are clear. B-type: Only the eye position is clear. C-type: Both the pupil and eye position are unclear. "A-type faces tended to be observed in species living in family groups all year-round, whereas B-type faces tended to be seen in solo/pair-living species," Ueda and colleagues wrote. Wolves and dogs exemplify the A-type. Humans fit into this category too! Such individuals invite you to look into their eyes. The researchers even suspect that the white of the eye (sclera) evolved, in part, to set off the darker hues of the iris and pupil. | |
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Bob King
Universe Today 2014-06-24 12:57:00
Have an 8-inch or larger telescope? Don't mind staying up late? Excellent. Here's a chance to stare deeper into the known fabric of the universe than perhaps you've ever done before. The violent blazer 3C 454.3 is throwing a fit again, undergoing its most intense outburst seen since 2010. Normally it sleeps away the months around 17th magnitude but every few years, it can brighten up to 5 magnitudes and show in amateur telescopes. While magnitude +13 doesn't sound impressive at first blush, consider that 3C 454.3 lies 7 billion light years from Earth. When light left the quasar, the sun and planets wouldn't have skin in the game for another two billion years. Blazars form in the the cores of active galaxies where supermassive black holes reside. Matter falling into the black hole spreads into a spinning accretion disk before spiraling down the hole like water down a bathtub drain. Superheated to millions of degrees by gravitational compression the disk glows brilliantly across the electromagnetic spectrum. Powerful spun-up magnetic fields focus twin beams of light and energetic particles called jets that blast into space perpendicular to the disk. Blazars and quasars are thought to be one and the same, differing only by the angle at which we see them. Quasars - far more common - are actively- munching supermassive black holes seen from the side, while in blazars - far more rare - we stare directly or nearly so into the jet like looking into the beam of a flashlight | |
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| Earth Changes |
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Boyce Thompson
SurvivalBackpack 2014-06-24 11:29:00
An early freeze in the Great Plains may cut corn production by 8%, according to Simon Atkins, CEO of Advanced Forecasting Corporation, who presented his long-range forecast in a webinar on Monday. The cause: above-average volcanic eruptions around the world for the last nine months, including three in the last month - in Eastern Russia, Alaska and Indonesia. The release of sulfur into the atmosphere from volcanic eruptions reflects sunlight back out to space. The meteorologist predicted cooler-than-normal summer temperatures "because of well-above-normal volcanic eruptions going back to the fall of 2013. We are not going to see many hot periods. Sure, there will be a few days here and there where temperatures reach 100 degrees in Oklahoma, but it's not going to be very common." "What's going to be more common is more moisture coming in off the Eastern seaboard of the U.S., and it will be pushing frontal boundaries from east to west, cooling down even parts of the Midwest in July and August," he continued. "We think the first two weeks of September will be warmer. But then it will be getting quite a bit colder toward the end of September, and even into October." These cooler temperatures could damage the corn crop, Atkins explained. "We think there's going to be an early frost [in the Plains west of Kansas], which could reduce the number of bushels per acre of corn - maybe by around 8%, our current rate of prediction," he said. "It will be a killing freeze, at least 10 to 15 days earlier than normal." Meanwhile, Atkins expects flash flooding in the Midwest this week, from Nebraska down to Arkansas, even reaching into parts of the Tennessee River Valley. "Some of these winds will reach 80 miles per hour with hail, producing lots of flash flooding. Some fields in the Midwest will suffer from too much rain," he said. | |
Comment: As happy as the increase in rainfall will make some farmers in the short term, this is one of the precursors of the onset of a new Ice Age. The increase in rainfall, coupled with temperatures that don't reach expected summer highs, means that winter snows never really go away. This increases the reflection of solar radiation away from Earth, further causing the temperature to fall. The cycle is self-reinforcing. Add to that the reflecting properties of volcanic eruptions, and the cycle speeds up even more.
Fire and Ice: The Day After Tomorrow Volcanoes Played Pivotal Role In Ancient Ice Age, Mass Extinction Forget warming - beware the new ice age | |
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thelocal.no
2014-06-24 11:00:00
A succession of rare 'mini tornadoes' have drawn crowds in the city of Arendal as they circled dramatically above the Skagerrak strait between Norway and Denmark. "It looked like the sort of thing you'd see on an American documentary or something," Espen Bierud from Norway's Institute of Marine Research, which faces onto the sea, told The Local. "Many people standing around me said they'd never seen anything like it Norway." He said that work at the Institute had ground to a halt as the researchers made their way outside to enjoy the spectacle. "It didn't take too many seconds before everyone at the Institute was down at the balcony or on the dock taking pictures," he said. "It lasted for about 20 or 30 minutes, and there were at least four different tornadoes." | |
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The northern Norwegian city of Tromso experienced a freak summer snowfall on Mondayafter freezing wind from the North Pole saw temperatures plummet. It was the first time since records began that the city had seen snowfall in June. Local meteorologist Trond Lien said that sleet and snow showers hit the city on Monday night, and there has even been some snow lying on the ground. He said that the situation was "very rare", noting that it must have been a long time since it snowed on 16 June. He added that he had found records showing that Tromso had experienced snowfall in July, but he could find nothing to indicate snow in June. Motorist Odd Arne Thomassen told reporters that he was driving over roughly four centimetres of snow when he was in Kvaenangsfjellet, in North Troms, early on Monday morning. He explained that it was not bad enough to make him feel he needed his chains on, but that there was certainly about four centimetres lying on the ground. Yr.no, the weather forecasting venture between the Meteorological Institute and TV station NRK, predicted that other areas of the country would also experience snowfall. It said that high-lying areas of western and southern Norway would likely see snow, despite the fact that the capital Oslo is lapping up temperatures in excess of 20C. | |
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US Geological Survey
2014-06-23 23:12:00
Event Time 2014-06-24 03:15:41 UTC 2014-06-24 15:15:41 UTC+12:00 at epicenter Location 52.307°N 176.693°E depth=35.0km (21.7mi) Nearby Cities 52km (32mi) E of Buldir Island, Alaska 1220km (758mi) E of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, Russia 1237km (769mi) E of Yelizovo, Russia 1237km (769mi) E of Vilyuchinsk, Russia 3035km (1886mi) W of Whitehorse, Canada Scientific Details | |
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Melissa Turtinen
Bringmethenews.com 2014-06-23 18:43:00
There is still snow on the ground in southern Minnesota. You read that correctly. ABC 6 Meteorologist Chris Kuball tweeted a photo of a snow pile, that looks more like a rock, at Marcusen Park in Austin, Minnesota, Monday morning. The park is a dumping site for snow in the area, Kuball says, and on June 23 there was still a pile of snow that was about 10 feet tall, 50 feet long and 30 feet wide, Kuball said in a Facebook post. Check out this then-and-now photo:
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Comment: Many areas have been experiencing the lingering effects from last winter.
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ABC7
2014-06-23 17:57:00
An 8.0-magnitude earthquake struck at 1:53 p.m. in Alaska, prompting a tsunami warning for the U.S. Pacific coast. A preliminary report indicated the quake was a 7.1 magnitude. That was revised minutes later to 8.0 by the U.S. Geological Survey. The warning for Southern California was downgraded to a tsunami advisory by the National Weather Service. The NWS reported that water was leaving the harbor of the city of Adak, Alaska, at 3:23 p.m. The Adak city manager confirmed to ABC News that water in the harbor was receding and people in that area were heading for higher ground. The earthquake struck 244 miles southeast of Attu Station in Alaska, about 15 miles off Little Sitkin Island. The earthquake occurred at a depth of 71.1 miles, according to the USGS. | |
Comment: The Aleutian volcanoes in Alaska are waking up and showing more activity than has been seen for decades in an already volatile region. The Pacific Ring of Fire has been quite active this year and will certainly be something to watch.
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| Fire in the Sky |
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| Health & Wellness |
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Dr. Sarah McKay
Mindbodygreen 2014-06-24 00:00:00
Knit one. Pearl one. Knit one. Pearl one. Knit one. Pearl one. The rhythmic and repetitive nature of knitting is calming, comforting and contemplative. It's not a stretch for you to imagine knitting as a mindfulness practice, or perhaps a form of meditation. I'm delighted to report that neuroscience is finally catching up on brain health aspects of the trend some have called "the new yoga." Research shows that knitting and other forms of textile crafting such as sewing, weaving and crocheting have quite a lot in common with mindfulness and meditation - all are reported to have a positive impact on mind health and well-being. In an online survey of more 3,545 knitters, by Betsan Corkhill, a UK-based knitting therapist who has done research on the therapeutic effects of knitting, more than half of respondents reported that knitting left them feeling "very happy." And many said that they knitted solely for the purposes of relaxation, stress relief and creativity. | |
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Jennie Agg
Daily Mail 2014-06-24 02:54:00
Are you a night owl who has to get up at the crack of dawn for work, leaving you constantly sleep-deprived and stressed? Or a natural lark who works evenings and nights? An out-of-sync body clock can raise your risk of cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes, and lead to weight gain, according to new research. It was reported last month that women who sleep in bedrooms with more light were more likely to be obese - possibly because bright light at night confuses the body clock, which in turn may affect appetite and metabolism. And leading sleep scientists have warned that the demands of our increasingly 24-hour society mean we're constantly over-riding our body clocks. 'Many people don't even realise they're sleep-deprived,' says Russell Foster, professor of circadian neuroscience at Oxford University. 'But if you need an alarm clock to wake in the morning, you probably don't get enough sleep - and are out of sync with your body clock.' So, what does the body clock do and why is it so important to health? Here we reveal the latest on this still emerging science ... | |
Comment: The importance of sufficient quality sleep cannot be overemphasized. Your brain functioning, overall health and emotional well-being depends on it.
See also: Sleep, Stress and Cancer: How to Get a Better Night's Sleep Why not enough sleep will make your life a nightmare The link between sleep and memory Dying to Sleep | |
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naturalblaze.com
2014-06-23 08:15:00
Many chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, can disrupt not only the human body's reproductive hormones but also the glucocorticoid and thyroid hormone receptors, which are necessary to maintain good health, a new study finds. The results were presented Monday at the joint meeting of the International Society of Endocrinology and the Endocrine Society: ICE/ENDO 2014 in Chicago. "Among the chemicals that the fracking industry has reported using most often, all 24 that we have tested block the activity of one or more important hormone receptors," said the study's presenting author, Christopher Kassotis, a PhD student at the University of Missouri, Columbia. "The high levels of hormone disruption by endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that we measured, have been associated with many poor health outcomes, such as infertility, cancer and birth defects." Hydraulic fracturing is the process of injecting numerous chemicals and millions of gallons of water deep underground under high pressure to fracture hard rock and release trapped natural gas and oil. Kassotis said spills of wastewater could contaminate surface and ground water. In earlier research, this group found that water samples collected from sites with documented fracking spills in Garfield County, Colorado, had moderate to high levels of EDC activity that mimicked or blocked the effects of the female hormones (estrogens) and the male hormones (androgens) in human cells. However, water in areas away from these gas-drilling sites showed little EDC activity on these two reproductive hormones. | |
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This morning I read a Wall Street Journal article about Americans without cellphones. Being an American without a cellphone myself, I was heartened to find out that a mere 88% of adult Americans have cellphones. I had thought the number would be much higher. Occasionally I try to convince people to give up the cell and reinstall the landline, but I realize that I'm tilting at the windmills. A few years ago, I offered a hefty amount of extra credit to one of my university classes. All the students had to do was hand me their phones for five days. Out of about fifty students, three took me up on the offer. As one girl handed me her phone, she announced that her dad would be so proud of her for putting academics first. The next day, the girl sheepishly returned, saying that her dad demanded that she get her phone back because she needed it "in case of emergency." And her dad was right, sometimes emergencies do happen. But emergencies by their very nature are rare, and I believe that cellphones take more than they give. Here are my four reasons why I'm glad that I don't have a cellphone. | |
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RT
2014-06-23 14:09:00
The UK army may be getting 'too fat to fight', failing basic fitness tests, with more than 22,000 overweight and at risk of serious health problems, according to recently released Ministry of Defence figures. Some 32,000 personnel failed a "basic" fitness test within the last three years, according to MoD figures released Sunday, the Sunday Times reported. The statistics are starting to ignite fears of an obesity crisis in the ranks. The personal fitness assessment is an obligatory undertaking twice a year. If the test is failed it must be retaken within seven days. A total of 29,600 men and 2,819 women failed their fitness tests between April 2011 and March 2014, according to the paper. "This figure represents 11 percent of the army serving in that period and many of those who failed will have subsequently passed their fitness test," the MoD said. "All personnel are provided with the support and training necessary to meet the army's physical standards, with additional help for those personnel who fail to meet this criteria...personnel who remain unable to meet the standard could ultimately be discharged,"the statement added. The test for men involves soldiers under 29 having to finish 44 press-ups in 2 minutes, 50 sit-ups, and a 2.4-kilometer run in under 10 and a half minutes. Women have to complete a slightly different test - 21 press-ups, the same number of sit-ups, and have an extra 2 1/2 minutes to complete the run. | |
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The Connexion
2014-06-16 19:39:00
A professional singer is ready to perform again, two months after doctors in France removed a tumour from her throat while she was under hypnosis. In a world first, surgeons at the Henri-Mondor hospital, at Créteil near Paris, performed the operation to remove the tumour from her vocal cords while their patient was awake. She had only a local anaesthetic to numb her throat during the delicate procedure. Alama Kante, the niece of Guinean singer Mory Kante, even performed her song Tolongfor the medics, allowing them to see how the procedure - to remove a parathyroid gland tumour - was progressing. According to Gilles Dhonneur, the doctor who carried out the operation, the only way of knowing if her vocal cords had been protected was to get Miss Kante to sing during the procedure. | |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Naomi Greenaway
Daily Mail, UK 2014-06-23 09:34:00
* The study found that men felt twice as emotional than women when shown heart-warming video clips * Emotions were measured by tracking physiological reactions * Despite showing stronger emotions, men reported feeling less emotional than women He might like you to believe he's as hard as nails, but don't be fooled by your man's tough exterior. Enlightening new research has found that men are in fact more emotional than women. The experiment found that when men and women watched the same heart-warming videos, it was the men who experienced stronger physiological reactions. But true to type, when asked about their emotions, the women admitted feeling more emotional than the men did. The research which was carried out by psychology research institute, Mindlab, and commissioned by the Royal Mail, dispels the myth that men don't experience the same range of feelings as women. Neuropsychologist Dr David Lewis who led the study said, 'Gender stereotypes about men being stoic and women being emotional are reinforced by our day to day consumption of media and our social interactions. | |
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PsyBlog
2014-06-23 00:00:00
Musical training can boost the executive brain function of both adults and children, according to new research. Both the brains and behaviour of adult and child musicians were compared with non-musicians in the study by researchers at the Boston Children's Hospital. Fifteen musically trained children and 15 adult professional musicians were recruited and matched with non-musicians on a number of variables, like family income, IQ, parental education and so on. They found that: "Adult musicians compared to non-musicians showed enhanced performance on measures of cognitive flexibility, working memory, and verbal fluency.Collectively these skills are known by psychologists as 'executive functioning'. High levels of executive functioning are what allow people to make good choices, effective plans and be flexible when situations change. | |
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| High Strangeness |
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The Daily Record, UK
2014-06-24 16:36:00
This is the ghostly image of a World War I Scots soldier captured by a schoolboy on his iPhone. Mitch Glover, 14, took several snaps when he visited a cemetery in France during a school trip. When he got home, he was shocked to see the image of a soldier in a kilt and Tam O'Shanter on one of the pictures. Mitch said: "I ran upstairs to show my mum. She was kind of freaked out." Mitch's mother Sue, 50, an antiques dealer, says: "You could see there was something in that one place. "A friend of mine said, 'Do you realise that looks a bit like outfits from the Seaforth Highlanders'." Mitch, of Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, took the snap in the Neuville-St Vaast German cemetery near Arras in northern France. It is a few hundred metres from Nine Elms military cemetery, where soldiers of the 114th Seaforth Highlanders fell in battle in April 1917. | |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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