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Harrison Koehli & Niall Bradley
Sott.net 2014-08-29 07:48:00
Remember when August was considered a 'slow-news month'? Neither do we! Hot on the heels oflast week's failed attempt to smear the Russian humanitarian aid convoy as a 'Russian invasion of Ukraine', US-led hysteria reached fever-pitch yesterday when blanket media coverage once again shrieked 'Russian invasion of Ukraine!' Citing 'US intel' about Russian troop movements and Porky-shenko's alleged claim that Russian military had crossed into Ukraine, the US government called - via puppet state Lithuania - an emergency UN Security Council meeting to discuss the "thousands of Russian troops crossing into Ukraine". "10,000" Russian troops in a full-scale ground invasion became "1,000" Russian troops, which became grainy satellite images of dubious quality, which became USA's UN lobbyist for perpetual war, Samantha Power, posting tweets from the UNSC meeting that amounted to 'Russia is a poopy-head'. The timing reflects the extent to which Kiev has lost military control of the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, now called Novorossiya, to say nothing of political influence over the people living there. As a result of this consolidating of the 'reality on the ground', the peace talks between Russia, the EU and other Eurasian partners in Minsk this week, and the upcoming EU Summit in Brussels and NATO's Summit in Cardiff next week, this latest volley of propaganda fired at Russia by the US empire-builders is a sign of their desperation to prevent the inevitable: rapprochement and back-room deals between the EU and Russia.
On August 7, Aleksandr Zakharchenko was made Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Donetsk People's Republic, replacing Alexander Borodai (now deputy PM). The man who assumed leadership of the Donbass Militia in April, unifying the rag-tag groups of fighters into a single fighting force, Igor Strelkov, has been replaced by Vladimir Kononov. The leadership in Lugansk has experienced a similar shuffling of personnel. Considering Strelkov's reputation in the region, this came as a shock to many, with rumors of his being seriously wounded in battle. (These rumors have been denied by Novorossiyan sources). But if recent events are any judge, the new leadership has signaled a turning point in the war of independence being fought in the Donbass. | ||
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SCG
[Editor's note: This is possibly the best video presentation on the truth behind 'ISIS/IS' available. Spread it far and wide.]2014-08-29 13:51:00
The Islamic militant group ISIS, formerly known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and recently rebranded as the so called Islamic State, is the stuff of nightmares. They are ruthless, fanatical, killers, on a mission, and that mission is to wipe out anyone and everyone, from any religion or belief system and to impose Shari'ah law. The mass executions, beheadings and even crucifixions that they are committing as they work towards this goal are flaunted like badges of pride, video taped and uploaded for the whole world to see. This is the new face of evil. Would it interest you to know who helped these psychopaths rise to power? Would it interest you to know who armed them, funded them and trained them? Would it interest you to know why?
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Moon of Alabama
2014-08-28 05:12:00
Comment: We are not the only ones that see that all this media hype about a "Russian invasion" is nothing but propaganda reminiscent of Iraq's WMDs fabrications. And we know the fate of Iraq and the Iraqis ever since! The authors of this NYT piece, Ukraine Reports Russian Invasion on a New Front, are not really convincing when presenting these reports by the Ukrainian government as truthful: The latest incursion, which Ukraine's military said included five armored personnel carriers, was at least the third movement of troops and weapons from Russia across the southeast part of the border this week, further blunting the momentum Ukrainian forces have made in weakening the insurgents in their redoubts of Donetsk and Luhansk farther north. Evidence of a possible turn was seen in the panicky retreat of Ukrainian soldiers on Tuesday from a force they said had come over the Russian border.The "momentum" the Ukrainian troops had was never as big as the Ukrainian government had claimed. A few motorized brigades ran through open territory held by few insurgents and when coming to a halt at their primary target were immediately cut off and surrounded. Their morale is bad, their equipment old, ammunition is low and the entire aim of their campaign is dubious. Now even a few weak counterattacks, the "counteroffensive", have them on the run. | |
Comment: Think back, if you can, to the headlines when you woke up just two days ago.
In case you're having trouble recalling anything from two days ago - thanks in large part to the disorienting effects of having the entire Western media screaming the same Big Fat Lie in unison - here's what you were being told: Not only was this in no way true, the real story they were trying to drown out were the complete routing of Kiev's forces in the breakaway republics of Novorossiya... Ukraine on verge of collapse as Kiev forces capitulate: U.S. 'catapults the propaganda' with another desperate 'Russian invasion' ploy | |
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Jason M Vaughn
Gawker 2014-08-29 15:09:00
It might be a good time for the homeless, or teenagers, or Latinos, or African-Americans, or...actually, shit, pretty much everybody in Albuquerque to get out of town because about 500 cops from across the nation and beyond are set to descend on New Mexico's largest city to play with their guns. In one of the more shockingly tone-deaf events in recent memory, the shooting scandal-plagued Albuquerque Police Department and the National Rifle Association are gearing up for the Albuquerque Police Pistol Combat Tournament and National Police Shooting Championship in September. Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry says that they are thrilled to host the event - but the angry families of the many, many victims of recent police shootings in Albuquerque are calling the event "insulting" both to them and their city. According to the Albuquerque Journal, armed security guards actually locked the doors to Mayor Berry's City Hall office on Wednesday after a small group of protestors - mostly the families of police shooting victims - attempted to personally deliver a letter condemning the event. The guards promised to deliver the letter to the mayor, but refused to allow them into his office to meet with him in person. According to the NRA (PDF), in addition to target and speed shooting tournaments, one of the main event programs, "incorporates competitive based skill and scenario courses of fire to allow you to practice and evaluate your skills using your duty firearms and gear in hypothetical police related encounters and solve the challenges presented according to your own tactics. Just bring your duty guns, gear, ammunition, and a desire to learn and have fun."
There will also be a number of vendor booths set up, where visiting police officers - when they're not having fun competitively pretending to kill people in "skill and scenario courses of fire" - can learn all about the latest weaponry and tactical gear available to their departments back home. Any way you look at it, Albuquerque seems a blatantly antagonistic location for a law enforcement shooting competition - especially given that there have been an awful lot of people shot and killed by the Albuquerque Police Department since just 2010 alone - 40 shootings, 26 of them fatal. | |
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Alexei Anishchuk
Reuters 2014-08-29 15:11:00
President Vladimir Putin said on Friday Russia's armed forces, backed by its nuclear arsenal, were ready to meet any aggression, declaring at a pro-Kremlin youth camp that foreign states should understand: "It's best not to mess with us." Putin told the assembly, on the banks of a lake near Moscow, the Russian takeover of Crimea in March was essential to save a largely Russian-speaking population from Ukrainian government violence. He said continued fighting in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists launched an uprising in April, was the result of a refusal by Kiev to negotiate. | |
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Itar-Tass
2014-08-28 12:03:00
Russian and Iranian Foreign Ministers Sergei Lavrov and Mohammad Javad Zarif during their meeting in Moscow on August 29 will discuss the Iranian nuclear program, the situation in the region and preparation for the Caspian summit, which will be held in the Russian city of Astrakhan in the autumn this year. Russian-Iranian relations based on principles of friendship and mutual respect for interests of each other, political contacts and practical cooperation have been actively developing in recent time, the ministry said in a statement on Thursday in connection with the planned visit by the Iranian foreign minister to Moscow. A number of important documents are expected to be signed during the Caspian summit, the ministry said. Russia and Iran seek to unite efforts to accelerate their social and economic development, first of all to increase bilateral trade volumes. Russian-Iranian cooperation may have a positive effect on the situation in the Middle East and create additional conditions to ensure security and stability in the region, the ministry said. | |
Comment: It seems that Russia has been the only one so far to recognize 'the exclusively peaceful character of Iran's nuclear program'. It is worth mentioning that time and again, it has been proven that Iran's nuclear program does not have a military purpose:
- Iran explains why it needs nuclear program - Experts: No evidence of Iranian nuclear weapons program - No Concrete Proof Iran Nuclear Program Is Military Meanwhile, the U.S. has been easing sanctions on Iran in an effort to hurt Russia. From Did Iran just knife Putin in the back?: | |
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Michael Krieger
Liberty Blitzkrieg 2014-08-29 12:11:00
Most of us woke up this morning to news that the UK had raised its terror threat level from "substantial" to "severe." Considering the competence and trustworthiness of the nation's Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, there must be some specific threat they're concerned about to justify instilling fear in a population of 65 million. Nope. Although the new threat level rates the risk of an attack on the UK to "highly likely," Home Secretary Theresa May stated that "there was no evidence to suggest one was imminent." Well then. It makes you wonder if the the change in threat level is being used in part to justify the extraordinary $80 million sum spent on building a fortress around the Newport and Cardiff city centers in Wales, which many are describing as "similar to the Berlin Wall," or a "zoo," in an unprecedented display of protection for many of the world's most corrupt politicians. | |
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PressTV
2014-08-29 12:34:00
The newest crisis in the Middle East has pulled the U.S. into yet another insoluble military problem. Obama is again considering a bombing campaign in Syria after infamously not bombing the country last year. This time, however, he's not targeting his enemy Bashar al-Assad, but his enemy's enemy - ISIL - now referred to as the Islamic State. By attacking the Islamic State in Syria, Obama will become a de facto ally of the Syrian government, just as Obama and ISIL were de facto allies when they were both targeting Bashar al-Assad. Most Americans are likely fed up with Obama's zig-zagging foreign policy, and with each new U-turn support drops for the next war. Comment: Obama will hardly be an ally of Syria, this just gives him a reason to invade Syria and re-instigate his failed war on the Assad government. As White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, "We're not interested in trying to help the Assad regime." The Syrian bombfest begins! Washington has gone stark raving mad But the U.S. has no plans to leave the Middle East to its own devices, and "fixing" the current problems will mean that Obama will need to tear up the patchwork of alliances previously pieced together amid past U.S. wars. The next U.S.-led "solution" will only compound the catastrophe, and continue the senseless logic of permanent war. The situation has become so absurd that the U.S. is now spending millions of dollars bombing U.S.-made military equipment in Iraq - itself worth millions, previously gifted to the Iraqi government and then taken by ISIL. | |
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Anne Williamson
Lew Rockwell 2014-03-14 11:50:00 Comment: A prescient article by Ms. Williamson, with a good analysis of the conditions leading up to the Ukraine crisis.
The NATO Syndrome, the EU's Eastern Partnership Program, and the EAU In 2009, Poland and Sweden, ever attentive to the US's geostrategic goals of isolating Russia and gaining control of China thereafter, initiated the Eastern Partnership program, which its sponsors said was intended to tighten ties with former Soviet Republics, such as Moldova, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine. A trade pact is a part of the Partnership's Association Agreement (AA) deal. What the Russians saw in the EU initiative was a repeat of the "NATO Syndrome," in that what was promised would soon be betrayed, i.e. no NATO expansion in exchange for a Soviet agreement to the reunification of Germany. To Russian eyes, NATO's 1999 expansion throughout Eastern Europe and the subsequent celebratory bombing campaign against Serbia, inaugurated just one month later, and the still later Albanian annexation of Serbia's heartland province of Kosovo, were altogether the Clinton Administration's triple-combo opening salvos in an American campaign to recreate the Versailles Treaty's cordon sanitaire. And the 2009 Association Agreement is but a Trojan horse whose only practical purpose is to advance US and EU interests at the expense of the former Soviet republics' naïve hopes and Russian security. Dangling the Association Agreement's implied - but not certain - right of eventual EU membership before the economically struggling former Soviet republics was but a means to beguile them into the EU orbit and thus US control with a future as NATO base hosts and IMF lab rats. When the terms of the AA are examined, Russian skepticism is understandable. The 350 laws alone that Ukraine would be required to institute over a ten-year period at a cost of twice the nation's projected GNP in the same time period would overwhelm the struggling country, few of whose industrial and manufacturing products are either wanted or needed in the EU. But whether or not Ukraine ever managed to fulfill EU conditions for membership would be of no importance to the U.S. Once bound tight with IMF conditions and saddled with World Bank loans and perpetual debt, thereafter the west could leave the AA's signatories to rot in limbo for years while their territory, cheap labor and resources were put to other, alien purposes. | |
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RT
2014-08-26 14:28:00
Switching over to EU trade standards and nixing duty-free trade with Russia will cost Ukraine €165 billion over the next 10 years, President Putin warned at a meeting with President Petro Poroshenko in Minsk on Tuesday. Russia will be forced to cancel all preferential trade agreements for Ukraine's imports and switch to a standard regime when it ratifies its EU trade association agreement in September, the President said. "In full accordance with the terms of agreement with the CIS free trade zone and WTO standards,we will be forced to cancel preferential imports from Ukraine," Putin said. Russia will cancel its duty-free relationship with Ukraine, which will lead to import tariffs of up to 8 percent affecting 98 percent of commodities. Russia insists it needs to protect domestic markets from the flood of European goods on the Ukrainian market, which will in turn make Ukrainian goods less competitive. If the trade corridor of Ukraine is left wide open, Russian, Belarusian, and Kazakh products are at risk. In response, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that he would like to establish a monitoring group to assess the actual damage of Ukraine's association with the EU. "Today we can agree to set up a monitoring group that will assess real and not hypothetical potential damage," said Poroshenko. "After this damage is calculated we can put in protection mechanisms." Moscow has warned Kiev that signing the Association Agreement (AA) with the EU would beeconomic suicide, and Moscow is also poised to suffer a €2 billion blow, according to Putin. "Entire sectors of industry and agriculture business will be hugely impacted, and there will be negative implications on the pace of economic growth and employment," the Russian President said. Losses will not only be absorbed by Russia, but also by Customs Union members Belarus and Kazakhstan, he added. The Minsk talks are the first meeting between Putin and Poroshenko since early June when the two informally met on the sidelines of the World War II commemoration ceremony in Normandy. | |
Comment: See also:
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"The aim, of the unfolding events, - is an internal Slavic war, the final solution to the Russian question." The events in Ukraine and around the Crimea - "dust" from a long-running project - are part of a plan to eliminate Russia as the only barrier to the North Atlantic elites scheme to dominate the world. Those are the deductions of Andrew Fursov, the director of the Centre of the Russian Studies of MGU (Moscow State University), the director of the Systematic-Strategic analysis Institute, the scholar of the International Academy of Science (Austria), the main editor of the magazine "Востоковедение и африканистика" ("Orientalism and Africanism"), an often guest lecturer in European and American Universities.
(This is a slightly earlier interview with A.I.Fursov, but it goes into a lot more detail about the events in Ukraine. Please note that half a year has passed, and he was right and accurate, about the events which had already happened and are still unfolding - MR) Q: Andrey Iliych, the main geopolitical question of today is the Russian geopolitics in Ukraine. Let's start our conversation with the analysis of that situation. What happened there? A: The situation in Ukraine, I would put on a par with the situation in Syria. And if the Syrian question was met with conflicting views - the leaders of the world Capitalism, the Elite, did not want an escalation of the conflict in Syria and its transformation into a regional war - the Ukrainian question was met by the West as one. It is obvious that, economically, Ukraine is of no interest to the northern-Atlantic Elite. It is, rather, a geopolitical necessity to tear Ukraine from Russia, to turn it into an anti-Russian foothold. | ||
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ITAR-TASS
2014-08-29 10:00:00
NATO is establishing four trust funds to finance the modernization of the Ukrainian armed forces, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Friday. "We are establishing four trust funds to finance concrete initiatives within four areas; logistics, command and control, cyber defence, and help to military personnel, including wounded personnel," Rasmussen said. He also said that some NATO member-states "announced concrete financial contributions to these trust funds and it was signalled that more announcements may come forward at the summit in Wales next week." "The whole purpose of these trust funds is to finance activities that can assist Ukraine in reforming and modernizing the armed forces with a view to making them stronger to defend Ukraine," Rasmussen said. Earlier on Friday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that his governmentwould seek the cancellation of Ukraine's non-aligned status and resumption of the country's course for NATO membership. Rasmussen also accused Russia of being involved in the Ukrainian conflict. | |
Comment: NATO shows that it is a heartless and soulless entity, that seeks conflicts and wars, rather than diplomacy and peace. It serves the interests of the military industrial complex for whom war, misery and destruction means profit. Will the Ukrainian population revolt against their new EU/NATO overlords, once they realise that joining the Western psychopathic club does not mean food, clothes, medicine or a rebuilding of their country, but just untold suffering with no future prospects?
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Tony Cartalucci
The Land Destroyer 2014-08-28 09:36:00
The US has claimed it will begin reconnaissance flights over Syria - a tentative first step toward direct military intervention it has sought in attempts to overthrow the Syrian government since 2011. While the US is using the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS) as a pretext to carry out these intrusions into Syrian territory, it was the US itself that created and to this day perpetuates ISIS and other extremist militant fronts amid a documented attempt to reorder the entire Middle East. What is expected to follow is an incremental expansion of US military intervention in eastern Syria that will include further arming and funding of the very terrorist networks it claims it is violating Syria's borders to attack, culminating in eventual military operations carried out against the Syria government itself. The US' justification for directly intervening in Syria however, only further undermines the very "international norms" it claims to champion, and opens the door for other nations it is menacing to use more direct means to confront its agenda of global military aggression, including along Russia's border with Ukraine. | |
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Itar-Tass
2014-08-28 09:40:00
The escalation of the situation in the southeast of Ukraine has become a direct consequence of Kiev's criminal policies, which is waging a war against its own people, Russia's UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said at the UN SC meeting on Thursday. "With support from and under the influence of a number of well-known states the Kiev authorities have torpedoed all political agreements on settling the crisis in Ukraine, including the Geneva statement of April 17 and the Berlin declaration of July 2," Churkin said. The Russian envoy remarked that President Pyotr Poroshenko's peace plan for settling the conflict in Ukraine "was a step towards further escalation, because it pegged armistice to the capitulation of militias." Churkin recalled that just yesterday, when he was commenting on the results of the meeting in Minsk, Poroshenko said that Kiev's main goal was peace. In the meantime, "the Ukrainian forces in defiance of all norms of international humanitarian law and just moral principles are indiscriminately attacking cities, residential areas and infrastructures. | |
Comment: Churkin is right, but the West isn't listening. Just yesterday, Kiev targeted two busescarrying Ukrainian refugees -- including women, children, and disabled people -- to Russia.
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Press TV
2014-08-29 09:14:00
The commander of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says the Islamic Republic will continue to support the Palestinians against the Israeli aggression. Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari said in a message on Friday that resistance by the Palestinians in the face of the 51-day Israeli military aggression against the besieged Gaza Strip was the starting point for the collapse of the Zionist regime. The Iranian commander also said the "revolutionary people of Iran and the IRGC" will continue toprovide "defense and social" support to the Palestinians. | |
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RT
2014-08-26 00:00:00
Russian and Ukrainian leaders have concluded their first official face-to-face meeting in Minsk during which they discussed Ukraine's Association Agreement with EU and the crisis and humanitarian disaster in the east of the country. Russia will do everything to facilitate a peace process in Ukraine, President Putin told the press following the 2-hour talks, which he described as "positive." However, Russia did not and had never set forth conditions for settling Ukraine's internal conflict, Putin added, so a ceasefire agreement was not discussed during the talks in the absence of peace suggestions from Ukrainian leadership. "We, Russia, cannot talk about any ceasefire conditions whatsoever, or possible agreements between Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk," Putin stated. "We can only facilitate the creation of an environment of trust in the course of this possible and much needed, in my opinion, negotiation process. This is what we talked about," Putin added. | |
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Robert Parry
The Smirking Chimp 2014-08-19 08:14:00 Comment: As Robert Parry, who the Iran-Contra story in the '80s, writes below, it's difficult to fathom the fact that so many Americans can believe the audacious lies spouted by their government and media. It's a two-pronged problem: On the one hand we have the psychopaths in power who simply tell bald-faced lies, completely manufactured out of thin air -- the "Big Lie" -- and those in on the game who repeat the lie because it supports their interests, like the presstitute media. (E.g., "Russia invades Ukraine!") On the other, we have the people, who can't fathom that anyone could tell such a lie. "They must have some justification for believing that. They wouldn't say it otherwise!" That's exactly with the PTB are counting on. Facts and evidence be damned.
When even smart people like economist Paul Krugman buy into the false narrative about the Ukraine crisis, it's hard to decide whether to despair over the impossibility of America ever understanding the world's problems or to marvel at the power of the U.S. political/media propaganda machine to manufacture its own reality. On Monday, Krugman's New York Times column accepts the storyline that Russia's President Vladimir Putin instigated the Ukraine crisis and extrapolates from that "fact" the conclusion that perhaps the nefarious Putin did so to engineer a cheap land grab or to distract Russians from their economic problems. "Delusions of easy winnings still happen," Krugman wrote. "It's only a guess, but it seems likely that Vladimir Putin thought that he could overthrow Ukraine's government, or at least seize a large chunk of its territory, on the cheap - a bit of deniable aid to the rebels, and it would fall into his lap. ...Or you could look at the actual facts of how the Ukraine crisis began and realize that it was the West, not Russia, that instigated this crisis. Putin's response has been reactive to what he perceives as threats posed by the violent overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych and the imposition of a new Western-oriented regime hostile to Moscow and Ukraine's ethnic Russians. | |
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Dmitry Orlov
Club Orlov 2014-08-29 08:40:00 Comment: Dmitry Orlov, a Russian-American engineer, offers you the tools to navigate through the Western propaganda without becoming hostages to lies. Because there is a genocide going on and by believing and spreading lies, we become accomplices.
With regard to the goings-on in Ukraine, I have heard quite a few European and American voices piping in, saying that, yes, Washington and Kiev are fabricating an entirely fictional version of events for propaganda purposes, but then so are the Russians. They appear to assume that if their corporate media is infested with mendacious, incompetent buffoons who are only too happy to repeat the party line, then the Russians must be same or worse. The reality is quite different. While there is a virtual news blackout with regard to Ukraine in the West, with little being shown beyond pictures of talking heads in Washington and Kiev, the media coverage in Russia is relentless, with daily bulletins describing troop movements, up-to-date maps of the conflict zones, and lots of eye-witness testimony, commentary and analysis. There is also a lively rumor mill on Russian and international social networks, which I tend to disregard because it's mostly just that: rumor. In this environment, those who would attempt to fabricate a fictional narrative, as the officials in Washington and Kiev attempt to do, do not survive very long. There is a great deal to say on the subject, but here I want to limit myself to rectifying some really, really basic misconceptions that Washington has attempted to impose on you via its various corporate media mouthpieces. | |
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Russell Brand
The Trews 2014-08-27 17:01:00
Fox News' Greg Gutfeld was angry with a recent episode of the Trews which disagreed with Jason Riley's view that the protests in Ferguson had nothing to do with the history of racial and economic tensions there. In this episode of the Trews, Russell gently deconstructs Greg's hate-filled psycho rant.
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RT
2014-08-29 17:03:00
The family of a man who died after police used a stun gun on him as many as 13 times while he was handcuffed has filed a lawsuit against the two former officers of East Point, Georgia, according to the family's lawyer. East Point police officers repeatedly stunned Gregory Towns Jr. on April 11 after he was apprehended by police, according to the lawsuit filed in Fulton County Superior Court. The lawsuit claims former police sergeant Marcus Eberhard and former corporal Howard Weems used excessive force to subdue Towns, who apparently would not sufficiently follow police orders to move after apprehension. "It's just heinous," attorney Chris Stewart told AP. "This isn't one of those cases where he punched an officer and they had to Taser him to calm him down." Stewart said some officers act as if any disobedience is call for extreme action, such as was allegedly used against Towns, a black man. "In our case, it wasn't about color, obviously, because the officers were black," Stewart said. "It was about power. He didn't walk when they said walk. He didn't stand when they said stand. And he didn't move fast enough when they said move." | |
Comment: Try to solve your own problems within your community of family and friends. Don't give these cretins any reason to intrude in to your lives.
Police are more dangerous to citizens than criminals | |
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RIA Novosti
2014-08-28 13:02:00
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev expressed his concern Thursday over the disappearance of Rossiya Segodnya's Russian photographer Andrei Stenin (#FreeAndrew). "Today, we are all concerned about the photographer from Rossiya Segodnya agency, Andrei Stenin, who disappeared in Ukraine, and we hope that he'll return home," Medvedev said at the opening of an exhibition in Moscow called Looking Into War's Eyes. A Russian journalist working for Rossiya Segodnya International News Agency, Andrei Stenin, wentmissing in eastern Ukraine on August 5. Stenin's current whereabouts are unknown. On August 9, Rossiya Segodnya filed a request with the Ukrainian Interior Ministry to take immediate action to locate the photographer. | |
Comment: A compilation of Andrei's work in Ukraine:
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John Avignone
How did Fox News run a totally bogus Ferguson story? Welcome to the truly slimy side of the right-wing hit machine Salon 2014-08-28 18:02:00
The killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed young black man shot at least six times by police officer Darren Wilson, and the resulting protests in Ferguson, Missouri, left the right-wing media machine in something of a conundrum. Days ticked by and still there was no viable right-wing narrative. Then, six days after the shooting, Ferguson police chief Thomas Jackson bowed to pressure from the community and media and identified Wilson as the cop who shot Brown. At the same time, Jackson released two new bits of information. He said Wilson had been taken to a hospital after the shooting with swelling to his face. He also released a store surveillance video that showed Brown reaching over a counter and grabbing a handful of cigars, then pushing a store clerk on his way out. This was a turning point in the story: Ferguson police seemingly wanted to transform Michael Brown from an innocent victim to a criminal. Still, it was hard to justify killing a young man with no previous record - especially shooting him six times, for allegedly stealing a handful of cheap cigars. It wasn't long before Fox News was pushing a new narrative: Michael Brown wasn't just the latest in a depressingly long line of unarmed young black men to be gunned down by a white cop. He was a thug, they suggested, a criminal who deserved what he got, because he posed a deadly threat to Officer Wilson. This was proven, Fox News reported with an unnamed source, because "the officer had sustained a fractured eye socket in the incident." Ann Coulter even suggested, incorrectly, that we'd seen X-rays of the fracture. Fox went on to claim "solid proof" of a battle between Wilson and Brown for the officer's handgun. It was not long, of course, before CNN and others disproved such bogus claims. But how did such fiction make it all the way to an outlet as major, if intellectually challenged, as Fox News? | |
Comment: Another example of the psychopathic wishful thinking of Fox News and Jim Hoft.
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Levi Rickert
Native News 2014-08-27 13:33:00
For five-year-old Malachi Wilson, the first day of kindergarten will always be one he remembers. As it turns out, Monday, which was the first day of school for students at F.J. Young Elementary School in Seminole, Texas, was not Malachi's first day of school because he was sent home because of the length of his hair. School principal Sherrie Warren informed April Wilson, Malachi's mother, that Malachi's hair is too long since he is a boy; therefore, he would not be able to attend classes until he got a haircut. Malachi is Navajo on his father's side of the family and Kiowa on his mother's side. Seminole is located in southwest Texas. F. J. Elementary School is home of the Seminole Indians. A sign near the school's gymnasium reads: "Welcome to the Tribe." | |
Comment: As if the Native Americans haven't been screwed over enough, denying a 5 year old going to school because of his hair?! Discrimination and racism is alive and well in the ponerized good old US of A.
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RT
2014-08-29 09:00:00
All Ukrainian refugees of pension age will receive their pensions in Russia, Deputy PM Olga Golodets has said in a radio interview. She oversees the social and health policies of the government, and said that Russia and Ukraine had a bilateral agreement allowing citizens to receive pensions in another country if the need arises. "We will pay the pensions to the refugees," Golodets told reporters. She declined to expand on the approximate number of future recipients saying that the number of Ukrainian refugees in Russia was constantly growing. The deputy PM also told reporters she estimates about 50,000 Ukrainian children will start attending Russian schools at the beginning of the new academic year on September 1. Earlier this month the United Nations released a report estimating the number of Ukrainian refugees in the Russian Federation at 730,000. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday that this number was nearing 1 million. | |
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phys.org
2014-08-29 12:16:00
The protracted and uneven recovery from the Great Recession has led most Americans to conclude that the U.S. economy has undergone a permanent change for the worse, according to a new national study at Rutgers. Seven in 10 now say the recession's impact is permanent, up from half in 2009 when the recession officially ended, according to the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. Among key findings in "Unhappy, Worried and Pessimistic: Americans in the Aftermath of the Great Recession," the center's latest Work Trends report, are:
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Gallup
2014-08-28 00:00:00
Americans are more than twice as likely to say they "strongly disapprove" (39%) of President Barack Obama's job performance as they are to say they "strongly approve"(17%). The percentage of Americans who strongly disapprove of Obama has increased over time, while the percentage who strongly approve has dropped by almost half. In the first year of Obama's presidency, the percentages of Americans who had strong views about the job he was doing were essentially tied, but the strongly negative responses now significantly outweigh the strongly positive ones. The largest segment of Americans today, 39%, strongly disapprove of Obama's job performance, while 14% moderately disapprove. Another 27% moderately approve, while 17% strongly approve. Strong disapproval of the president's job performance has been within 30% to 39% the four times Gallup has asked the question -- in 2009, 2010, 2011, and now this year -- but has risen by five percentage points since 2011, and by nine points since the first month Obama was in office. At the same time, strong approval has fallen by nine points in the last three years, and by 15 points since January 2009. Comment: Hardly big news since Obama has done nothing but disappoint all those who were foolhardy enough to believe his election propaganda. The honeymoon is definitely over. All over for Obama? Polls say public has given up on his ability to accomplish anything The Growing Nose of Barack Obama | |
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RT
2014-08-29 00:29:00
A new audio recording that allegedly captures a series of gunshots at the time of Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri, has been confirmed to be real by the developers behind the software used to capture it. The 12-second audio clip first came to light on CNN earlier this week, and features a man chatting with a friend of his using a video-recording messenger system called Glide. As the unnamed individual records his message, a string of gunfire can be heard in the background. Numerous gunshots can be heard before the action is broken up with a pause. Shortly afterwards, though, another barrage of shots occurs. At least 10 gunshots total can be heard during the recording, which Glide certified as being captured at 12:02 pm on Saturday, August 9th. This is the same time that 18-year-old Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot and killed by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. "A Glide user living nearby (whose identity is being protected) was simply using the Glide app on their smartphone exactly as it was designed - to instantly communicate with a friend through our real-time video texting service," the app stated on its blog. "Simultaneously, they also captured audio in the background of the gunshots allegedly fired at Michael Brown." "Because Glide is the only messaging application using streaming video technology, each message is simultaneously recorded and transmitted, so the exact time can be verified to the second." | |
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Aviva Rutkin
On-body cameras mean police use less force, and a range of new apps are giving citizens new ways to hold errant police officers to accountNewscientist.com 2014-08-27 11:42:00
Who watches the watchmen? Since the riots started in Ferguson, Missouri, many have decried the police shooting of teenager Michael Brown and brutal crowd-control tactics at the protests following his death (see "Crowd-control policing in the US is stuck in riot mode"). The uproar has turned into a call for better surveillance of the police. How might that be done? The US Department of Justice has the power to investigate and overhaul problematic police departments. Ferguson has not yet been investigated, but it's a likely candidate. "Police misconduct is not usually just caused by one rotten apple. It is caused by a rotten barrel," says Stephen Rushin at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign. "A lot of people would argue that you're seeing that in Ferguson." For the US public, an investigation would not be enough. A petition to the White House has called for a "Mike Brown Law", requiring all police to wear an on-body camera while on duty. It garnered more than 100,000 signatures, which obliges the White House to respond to the request. On-body cameras automatically record an officer's interactions from a first-person perspective. Quite a few US cities are using them, including Salt Lake City in Utah, and Oakland in California. Last year, Barak Ariel at the University of Cambridge conducted the first major study of on-body cameras, with police in Rialto, California. He found that officers were 60 per cent less likely to use force when wearing them. Citizen complaints, too, fell sharply. Ariel's group is now monitoring the cameras' impact in two dozen police departments around the world. | |
Comment: Cameras will not change the violent nature of police.
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RT
2014-08-28 10:02:00
Kiev's troops had to leave the eastern Ukrainian city of Novoazovsk to save their lives, said the country's Security and Defense Council. The authorities admitted that self-defense forces are advancing and leading a counteroffensive in the southeast. Along with Novoazovsk, Kiev troops have lost control over the villages of Amvrosiivka and Starobeshevo in the Donetsk Region of Eastern Ukraine. According to Ukraine's Security and Defense Council, on Wednesday Kiev's troops were shelled by Grad rocket launchers and then attacked by two military columns of self-defense troops. The columns included tanks and armored infantry vehicles. "Later in the afternoon two Russian columns entered Novoazovsk," the council said in a statement. Comment: Ha! Kiev is like the school bully who finally gets pounded by the scrawny kid he's been beating on for months. "He and his big Russian friends teamed up on my, I swear!" Sorry guys, but it turns out the DPR and LPR are just a whole lot better than you. No Russians required.
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RT
2014-08-29 09:50:00
Hundreds of people have gathered in front of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry in Kiev, demanding resignation of President Petro Poroshenko and the defense minister over the poor handling of the military operation in the southeast. The demonstrators, many of whom were mothers and wives of the soldiers involved in the fighting in the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions, have blocked traffic at one of the capital's arterial roads, the Vozdukhoflotsky Boulevard. They called on the army to urgently send reinforcements, including tanks and other heavy military vehicles, to the city of Ilovaysk in the Donetsk Region. This strategic town was retaken by the self-defense forces after several days of fighting on Wednesday, which led to the encirclement of a large group of Kiev's troops. The protesters also insisted on the resignation of defense minister Valery Geletey and all other top commanders of Kiev's so-called "anti-terrorist operation" in southeast Ukraine. | |
Comment: The mothers and wives of the Ukrainians are correct. Their sons and lovers are being sent to the southeast as cannon fodder, and the Donetsk and Lugansk armed forces are making mincemeat out of them. But the solution isn't to send more troops, more weapons; it's to get the hell out of Novorossiya and stop the slow genocide of the people living there.
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Paul Peachy
The Independent 2014-08-26 07:13:00
The child victim had been repeatedly raped before she found the courage to report her story to the police. She had tried to escape, but the perpetrators had broken her brother's legs and smashed the windows of her parent's home as a warning. When she finally visited the police station, she received a text from her main abuser who made it perfectly clear what would happen to her 11-year-old sister if she spoke out. "Your choice," he wrote repeatedly - and the girl refused to give a statement. The case - from 2001 and detailed in today's independent report - was the last straw for the Home Office researcher who had persuaded the young victim to go to the police. She wrote to the chief constable of South Yorkshire police and at a subsequent meeting with a senior officer and council staff was firmly told never to do such a thing again. When she handed in her research data to the Home Office, the council suspended her erroneously, and then sidelined her so that her part of a report on prostitution was never completed. The story highlights the atmosphere of cover-up and collusion at Rotherham Council. Nobody in the upper echelons of the child-care system could say they were not aware of the raft of warnings. But a collective failure of leadership meant continued, well-founded warnings about the widespread sexual abuse of children were suppressed, ignored or played down because of short-term political considerations. Comment: There is more at play here.Take into account that we can find sexual predators among councillors, police officers, social workers up till the highest level of society and you will get the picture. | |
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RT
2014-08-28 08:26:00
RosRAO, a subsidiary of Russian nuclear giant Rosatom, is among the three companies selected to build a system to filter radioactive tritium out of the contaminated water collected at the stricken power plant - a task that has so far defied engineers. Fukushima Daiichi operator TEPCO, which has resorted to erecting thousands of water tanks to contain the toxic run-off from the plant, is already trialing a system that filters 62 radioactive materials. But the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) does not filter tritium, a mildly radioactive byproduct of nuclear generation, which nonetheless means that water cannot be safely discharged into the Pacific Ocean. RosRAO, which was built on the foundations of Soviet-era waste disposal research institutions, won the TEPCO tender for a filtration system - alongside US firm Kurion Inc, and GE Hitachi Canada, a joint project between the Japanese and US corporations - beating 26 other companies. | |
Comment: So much for Russia being backwards!
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ITAR-TASS
2014-08-29 08:24:00
The self-proclaimed republics' forces have practically encircled the city of Mariupol in Ukraine's embattled southeastern Donetsk region, the Novorossiya News Agency said on Friday. "During the fighting overnight, the Novorossiya forces took control of the villages of Starchenkovo, Respublika, Zeleny Yar, Boyevoye, Malinovka, Demyanovka, Starodubkovka, Chervonoye Pole and Osipenko," the news agency said. "At present, the operational situation is the following: Donbass' defenders blocked a section of the Mangush-Osipenko road. The clashes are continuing in Urzuf," it said, adding "Chances are high that today [Ukrainian] punitive troops will be finally entrapped in Mariupol." Earlier reports said Ukrainian units deployed near Novoazovsk had retreated to Mariupol. "Militias took control of checkpoints and strong points on the outskirts of the city, as well as a bridge across Gruzsky Elanchik River." Mariupol residents said the regional administration and most of the military had left the city; food stores had run out of stocks, with cereals and sugar no longer available; and drivers were experiencing serious fuel shortages. "People are waiting for the Donetsk People's Republic troops to come," eyewitnesses said. Militias have begun what they call a humanitarian-combat operation to push the Ukrainian army away from major cities and to stop its artillery strikes on densely populated residential areas. | |
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| Secret History |
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Joshua A. Krisch
The New York Times 2014-08-28 07:29:00
Seven hundred years ago, the Dorset people disappeared from the Arctic. The last of the Paleo-Eskimos, the Dorset had dominated eastern Canada and Greenland for centuries, hunting seal and walrus through holes in the ice and practicing shamanistic rituals with ornate carvings and masks. Then, they promptly ceased to exist. Modern archaeologists have scoured troves of Arctic artifacts, searching for clues to the Dorset's sudden extinction. Did they assimilate when the Thule, ancestors of the modern Inuit, advanced from the Bering Strait with dog sleds, harpoons and large skin boats? Or did they die out, victims of either an unfortunate epidemic or a violent prehistoric genocide? Now, scientists have begun to chip away at this and other mysteries of the New World Arctic. In apaper published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers analyzed 169 ancient DNA samples to study the origins and migration patterns of early Arctic cultures. The results point to a single, genetically distinct Paleo-Eskimo population that thrived in isolation for more than 4,000 years, only to vanish in a matter of decades. | |
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| Science & Technology |
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Sciencedaily.com
2014-08-29 14:50:00
How nerve cells within the brain communicate with each other over long distances has puzzled scientists for decades. The way networks of neurons connect and how individual cells react to incoming pulses in principle makes communication over large distances impossible. Scientists from Germany and France provide now a possible answer how the brain can function nonetheless: by exploiting the powers of resonance. As Gerald Hahn, Alejandro F. Bujan and colleagues describe in the journal PLoS Computational Biology, the ability of networks of neurons to resonate can amplify oscillations in the activity of nerve cells, allowing signals to travel much farther than in the absence of resonance. The team from the cluster of excellence BrainLinks-BrainTools and the Bernstein Center at the University of Freiburg and the UNIC department of the French Centre national de la recherche scientifique in Gif-sur-Yvette created a computer model of networks of nerve cells and analyzed its properties for signal propagation. | |
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Dan Vergano
National Geographic 2014-08-27 13:41:00
Like twins separated at birth who are later reunited, two laser beams revealed invisible objects in a display of their weird quantum connection, researchers reported on Wednesday. The images, of tiny cats and a trident, are an advance for quantum optics, an emerging physics discipline built on surprising interactions among subatomic particles that Einstein famously called "spooky." A conventional camera captures light that bounces back from an object. But in the experiment reported in the journal Nature, light particles, or photons, that never strike an object are the ones that produce its picture. "Even other physicists say 'you can't do that' at first, but that is quantum behavior for you, very strange," says Gabriela Barreto Lemos of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information in Vienna, Austria, who led the study. A 2009 University of Glasgow experiment with a divided laser beam first demonstrated such "ghost imaging." But experts say the new technique, which uses two laser beams of different colors, offers new visualization advantages. The two laser beams are "entangled" in quantum physics terms, meaning their photons share characteristics even when far apart. So broadly speaking, altering one alters the other. "What they've done is a very clever trick. In some ways it is magical," says quantum optics expertPaul Lett of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, who was not part of the experiment team. "There is not new physics here, though, but a neat demonstration of physics." | |
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| Earth Changes |
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Ollie Gillman
Daily Mail, UK 2014-08-13 16:00:00
* Two seriously injured in attack by wolves driven mad by hunger * One victim has ear torn clean off, while others suffer scratches to face * Starving beasts attacked humans after drought killed off their usual prey These shocking images show the horrifying injuries suffered by villagers in China when a pack of starving wolves attacked. Up to five of the animals surrounded the small farming community before viciously mauling the six people living there, leaving two seriously injured in a previously unheard of attack. One of the victims had their ear torn off by the wolves, who had been driven mad by hunger, while others suffered bites and scratches to the face, neck and chest.
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Comment: There appears to have been a spate of unusually aggressive animal attacks on humans of late including some by species normally thought of as being wary and retiring when encountering people, see also: Giant anteaters kill Brazilian hunters!
Bear attacks kill at least three people with many others injured in Siberia and far-east Russia Boy and grandmother attacked and injured by river otter on Pilchuck River, Washington Paddling family of three attacked by a beaver in Austria 400 pound alligator attacks 9-year-old boy, Florida Crocodile kills fisherman in front of his wife in Northern Territory, Australia Man mauled by bear in Italian wood Minneapolis girl attacked and chased by otter in Wisconsin lake More unusual animal behaviour: Crocodile attack earns Florida swimmers dubious distinction Aggressive dolphin tried to push swimmer underwater off the coast of Ireland | ||
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John Hollenhorst
Deseret News 2014-08-29 13:55:00
Circleville, Piute County - Farmers in southern Utah are scratching their heads and trying to figure out what caused an unusual phenomenon in an irrigation pond. Earlier this week, Gary Dalton of Circleville discovered a mysterious crater that suddenly appeared under the water. "The sun was just right," Dalton said, "so I saw this blasted thing that no one had ever seen." He noticed it after most of the water was drained from the pond for irrigation. Just beneath the surface he saw concentric circles in the pond bottom with a diameter of about 25 feet. The outer ring is a circular depression filled with algae. An inner circle looks as though something erupted from beneath, forming what looks startlingly like a small volcanic crater. "My heck, I guess that's Martian art," Dalton said. "I don't know." Experts from the Utah Geological Survey took a look and were initially baffled. "Well, yeah, we've got several theories," said veteran geologist Bill Lund as he examined the pond. "Most of them have gone up in smoke." Most of the theories were disposed of almost immediately. Some had speculated that the feature was caused by a natural spring, pushing up from under the pond after being supercharged by recent rains. But Lund said that theory was quickly disproved by aerial photos that were taken before the pond was excavated 2 ½ years ago. "This was an alfalfa field and there was no spring here," Lund said. "It's not a spring." Another theory was that a buried pipeline had been punctured during construction of the pond. But Lund said there is no pipeline. Another possibility is that there was a burp of methane gas from decaying organic material under the pond. Lund strongly doubts that theory because the local geology isn't the type that sometimes causes such events. "If we were in coal country," Lund said, "I'd be thinking about that a little harder but, you know, we're not." | |
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Kristen McConnaughey and Johnathan Mack
ABC 9 News 2014-08-27 21:19:00
A deer crashed into the windows of Rebos on Wednesday afternoon, shattering one of the two panes. There is no significant damage to the restaurant and nobody was injured. The deer was still breathing when ABC9 crews arrived at the scene. Customers and staff say they were pretty shaken up about the whole ordeal. "It was about the noon hour and it sounded like, I don't know what it was. All we heard was a big giant crash, a very loud band and everything in the restaurant stopped," said Ryan Brun, Rebos bartender.
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Residents near an erupting volcano in Papua New Guinea are waiting to see if they need to evacuate, and a giant ash cloud is affecting some flights to and from Australia. Mt Tavurvur, in East New Britain province, began erupting overnight. The volcano destroyed nearby Rabaul township in 1994, and residents fear a repeat, PNGLoop reported. Authorities were still considering the situation. The eruption, which began between around 3.30am local time, caused explosions strong enough to rattle residents' windows. Ash covered Rabaul and shops were closed, but otherwise life was continuing as normal, PNGLoop reported.
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Sarah Griffiths
Daily Mail, UK 2014-08-11 11:16:00
With their friendly faces and playful natures, it may seem that wild dolphins are always friendly. But a bottlenose dolphin has been reported to have deliberately pushed a man underwater while he was swimming in the sea off County Cork, in the Republic of Ireland. The animal is said to have 'lashed out' at the swimmer twice with its tail, prompting experts to warn swimmers to keep out of the water near the large predators. The incident occurred on July 26 off Sherkin Ireland, according to a report made to the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG) which stated that the animal acted 'aggressively'. Known as Clet, the adult bottlenose dolphin is thought to have come to the area from France, after spending time off the coasts of South Devon, Cornwall and Wales. The IWDG said that Clet is a non-social solitary dolphin who does not seek out and engage with swimmers. The group's log book reads: 'We are aware of a report of an adult swimmer nearby in wetsuit and mask, from a yacht at anchor, being aggressively pushed underwater by the dolphin. They got a bit of a shock as a result.' | |
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Anthony Watts
Watts Up With That? 2014-08-29 12:10:00
From the University of California at Santa Barbara - By Julie Cohen | Most of North America's megafauna - mastodons, short-faced bears, giant ground sloths, saber-toothed cats and American camels and horses - disappeared close to 13,000 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene period. The cause of this massive extinction has long been debated by scientists who, until recently, could only speculate as to why. A group of scientists, including UC Santa Barbara's James Kennett, professor emeritus in the Department of Earth Science, posited that a comet collision with Earth played a major role in the extinction. Their hypothesis suggests that a cosmic-impact event precipitated the Younger Dryas period of global cooling close to 12,800 years ago. This cosmic impact caused abrupt environmental stress and degradation that contributed to the extinction of most large animal species then inhabiting the Americas. According to Kennett, the catastrophic impact and the subsequent climate change also led to the disappearance of the prehistoric Clovis culture, known for its big game hunting, and to human population decline. In a new study published this week in the Journal of Geology, Kennett and an international group of scientists have focused on the character and distribution of nanodiamonds, one type of material produced during such an extraterrestrial collision. The researchers found an abundance of these tiny diamonds distributed over 50 million square kilometers across the Northern Hemisphere at the Younger Dryas boundary (YDB). This thin, carbon-rich layer is often visible as a thin black line a few meters below the surface. | |
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CBS Sacramento
2014-08-27 10:18:00
Hundreds of people in a California town have no water after wells ran dry during the state's drought.The small town of East Porterville in Tulare County has about 7,300 residents, and at least 300 homes have been without water for weeks. "We can't shower. We're wearing dirty clothes. My kids had to wear dirty clothes to school this morning," said Elizabeth Baker. "I had to go across the street last night to get water for my kids from the fire department." The county set up a 5,000-gallon water tank for residents to help with flushing toilets and irrigation, but now drinking water is the problem. They had to distribute more than 15,000 gallons of drinking water last week. There are fears the problem could be even worse as people believe some people aren't reporting their wells have gone dry out of fear their landlords will evict them, or their children will be taken away. In fact, the county didn't know how dire the problem was until they were tipped off by a nonprofit group. Donna Johnson has been delivering water to those in need for months. She's even taken out a loan to pay for the water. | |
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Megan Gannon
Live Science 2014-08-27 09:35:00
Images from space show the massive Hurricane Marie poised to swallow another tiny storm off the Pacific coast of Mexico. Newly released photos from NASA show the big and little storms swirling side by side. The images were taken by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Earth-watching GOES-West satellite yesterday (Aug. 26) at around 8 a.m. EDT (5 a.m. PDT). But Karina may not be such a substantial snack by the time Marie devours her. With winds that slowed to 30 miles per hour (48 km/h), Karina weakened from a tropical depression into a remnant low-pressure system last night, after roaming the Pacific for two weeks, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) announced. | |
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Ben Russell
Daily Mirror, UK 2014-08-24 10:54:00
Aaron Frost, 25, was travelling home from work when he was caught in a freak ice storm which caused him to lose control of his BMW and crash into a concrete barrier A motorist died when a hail storm turned a busy road into a thick sheet of ice, an inquest heard. Aaron Frost, 25, was travelling home from work when he was caught in a freak ice storm. He lost control of his BMW saloon and crashed into a concrete barrier at the side of the road. The car then hit a lamp post and overturned before coming to rest on its side in a ditch. The inquest heard the kitchen fitter was travelling back home to Bognor Regis, West Sussex on the on the A27 near Emsworth, Hampshire. | |
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BBC
2014-08-29 08:56:00
The Icelandic Met Office has lowered its aviation warning from red to orange near the Bardarbunga volcano, which saw an eruption begin overnight. The new alert, the second-highest, means that aviation authorities can now decide if planes may travel over the volcano's airspace. Scientists said a fissure eruption 1km (0.6 miles) long started in a lava field north of the Vatnajokull glacier. The volcano has been hit by several recent tremors. The Icelandic Met Office confirmed to the BBC that since no ash was detected in emissions from the volcano's eruption, it was now possible to downgrade the earlier alert level. Civil protection officials said Icelandic Air Traffic Control had closed the airspace above the eruption up to a height of 5,000ft (1,500m), but now some aircraft will be able to pass over the volcano if aviation authorities give airliners the go-ahead. The fissure eruption took place between Dyngjujokull Glacier and the Askja caldera, according to a statement from the Department of Civil Protection. | |
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The West Briton
2014-08-29 06:54:00
Hundreds of tiny dead fish have been found washed up in Mullion harbour. The beach was left littered with the small whitebait at low tide after they became stranded. The same phenomenon has been reported all along the south coast as far as Dorset over the past two weeks. The fish get driven into shore after they are chased by predators - in this case mackerel. Bob Felce, who has written a book on the history of the cove, said it was an extremely rare sight. "It is a rare occurrence. One fisherman who has lived here for over 60 years says he can only remember this happening on two or three previous occasions," he said. "Mullion is an enclosed, small harbour so the trap was laid when they chased them in. The coast around the Lizard has been full of mackerel for a couple of weeks; I had a few hours in a boat off Coverack last week and you could almost walk on them. | |
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Richard Luscombe
The Guardian 2014-08-26 06:13:00
Miami pair Alejandro Jimenez and Lisset Rendon become first people to be bitten by American crocodile, wildlife officials say Two swimmers taking an early morning dip in a Florida canal have earned the dubious distinction of becoming the first humans in the United States to be bitten by an American crocodile, wildlife officials say. Alejandro Jimenez, 26, and Lisset Rendon, 23, came face to face with the 9ft reptile at 2.30am on Sunday, after taking to the water during a house party in Gables by the Sea, an upscale neighbourhood of South Miami where saltwater crocodiles are prevalent. As Jimenez recovered in hospital Tuesday from bite wounds to his torso and hands, and his girlfriend, who was bitten on her shoulder, rested at home, trappers continued to scour the canal for the giant critter. Residents say there are at least three large crocodiles living in the water behind their homes and have given them the nicknames Pancho, Snaggletooth and Streetwalker, the last apparently noted for taking late-night strolls across roads in the neighbourhood. | |
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Youtube
2010-06-02 05:49:00
"A major theory is that oceans can and have produced methane gas, and was responsible for the Permian Mass Extinction. This explosion killed up to 95% of life on earth during that period. A seafloor basin of methane saturated water may have a breaking point. An earthquake, underwater landslide, or even a meteor impact could have triggered this, and suddenly, like shaking a giant soda bottle, the deepest part of the ocean would have exploded in a deadly storm of methane bubbles." Something similar happened in 1986 in Lake Nyos in the nation of Cameroon in Africa. This created a ground level carbon dioxide cloud that killed many nearby villagers. This is also mentioned in this video. Watch it below: | |
Comment: The segment of the video was posted in 2010 and it is all happening today! With that knowledge in mind the following events from the last few months make even more sense and is a dire warning of our near future:
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Anastasios Papapostolou
Greek Reporter 2014-08-29 05:34:00
An earthquake with magnitude 5.6 occurred between the Peloponesse and the Cyclades in Greece at 6:44 am on Aug 28, 2014. The epicenter was located beneath the seabed about 140 kilometers (86 miles) south of Athens and near the island of Milos. There have been no reports of injuries or damages, however, the shock was widely felt in Athens and Crete. The U.S. Geological Survey gave a preliminary magnitude of 5.6, while the Greek Institute of Geodynamicsr gave it as 5.7. | |
Comment: With the increase in volcanic and seismic activity around the world, this one is too close for comfort to the volcano of Thera (modern day Santorini).
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Jack Crone
These incredible photos capture the biblical-like scenes in Madagascar where a plague of locusts - numbering in their billions - have descended on the country's farmland for the third year running.The Daily Mail 2014-08-28 04:55:00 An enormous dark cloud of the flying insects is pictured obscuring the sky in the east African island country's capital of Antananarivo, sparking panic for Madagascar's nine million agricultural workers. After first occurring in 2012 - the gigantic plague is no longer a phenomenon but an annual migration of the bugs - which can each eat their own body weight in food every day.
Left to themselves, the locusts would devastate the country's agriculture, each consuming around two grams of food each day that they are among crops. Desperate farmers have been attempting to protect their land by starting fires and increasing their use of insecticides, the Independent reports. | |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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TVNZ
2014-08-29 04:25:00
Hundreds of witnesses have described the magnificence of watching a meteor flash across the New Zealand sky last night. Seen from all different parts of the country, most eye witness accounts describe a fast moving green light with a white tail flying over the sky between 6pm and 7pm. "Wife and I saw a bright blue/greenish light with white tail as we were crossing the Auckland harbour bridge into the city around 6:25pm. We initially thought it was fireworks but was puzzled as it came out of nowhere from the sky and flew near-horizontally before it vanished. It appeared pretty close, as if it was flying just over Freemans Bay," James commented to Weather Watch. Did you see the meteor and manage to get a photo? Send to newsviews@tvnz.co.nz Stardome Observatory educator Tim Jessop confirmed the siting to Weather Watch. | |
Comment: Just one out of many this year.
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| Health & Wellness |
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RIA Novosti
2014-08-23 13:13:00
The three molten cores at Fukushima plant, each weighing a hundred tons, are so radioactive, that no one can approach them, including robots, which melt down immediately, Dr. Helen Caldicott, the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, physician and anti-nuclear advocate, states in an interview toRadio VR: "And no one ever will, and the contamination will go on for hundreds of years," Ms. Caldicott cites top physicists as saying. | |
Comment: Also see: TEPCO reports Fukushima nuclear meltdown worse than originally reported
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Breitbart.com
2014-08-29 12:41:00
College students from West Africa may be subject to extra health checks when they arrive to study in the United States as administrators try to insulate campuses from the worst Ebola outbreak in history. With the virus continuing to kill in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, the expected arrival of thousands of students from those countries has U.S. authorities on alert but cautioning against alarm. "I can see why there would be concern; there's no vaccine for it," said Fatima Nor, an 18-year-old freshman at the University at Buffalo, where about 25 students from Nigeria are enrolled for fall. But she said knowing that the virus is transmitted strictly through direct contact with bodily fluids of sick people, and not by sitting next to someone in class, should be enough to calm nerves. "As long as everyone keeps their personal space, it should be OK," said Nor, of Buffalo. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued no specific recommendations for colleges, some state health departments, including in South Carolina and North Dakota, have spelled out for administrators what symptoms to look for and how to react. Elsewhere, universities are drafting their own precautionary plans against the often-fatal hemorrhagic fever, which causes weakness, vomiting, diarrhea, internal bleeding and sometimes bleeding from the nose and ears. | |
Comment: One of the best protections you have against Ebola is through diet.
See also: Vitamin C - A cure for Ebola | |
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RT
2014-08-29 06:43:00
Two Japanese citizens with suspected Ebola symptoms were taken from Chisinau airport to a Moldovan clinic on Friday, Moldovan border guard police said. The passengers had signs similar to the Ebola virus-caused disease, including a high temperature. They confirmed that they began feeling unwell after returning from southern Africa where they were on a business trip, the border guard press service said. The Japanese citizens flew from Japan to Moldova via Istanbul. They were taken to the Moldovan National Public Health Centre. | |
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Yahoo! News
2014-08-26 00:00:00
Peter Piot, the Belgian scientist who co-discovered the Ebola virus in 1976, on Tuesday said a "perfect storm" in West Africa had given the disease a chance to spread unchecked. "We have never seen an (Ebola) epidemic on this scale," Piot was quoted by the French dailyLiberation as saying. "In the last six months, we have been witnessing what can be described as a 'perfect storm' -- everything is there for it to snowball." The epidemic "is exploding in countries where health services are not functioning, ravaged by decades of civil war," Piot said. "In addition, the public is deeply suspicious of the authorities. Trust must be restored. Nothing can be done in an epidemic like Ebola if there is no trust." | |
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Clarence Roy-Macaulay
ABC News 2014-08-27 08:54:00
A third top doctor has died from Ebola in Sierra Leone, a government official said Wednesday, ashealth workers tried to determine how a fourth scientist also contracted the disease before being evacuated to Europe. The announcements raised worries about Sierra Leone's fight against Ebola, which already has killed more than 1,400 people across West Africa. The World Health Organization said it wassending a team to investigate how the epidemiologist now undergoing treatment in Germany may have contracted the disease that kills more than half its victims. "The international surge of health workers is extremely important and if something happens, if health workers get infected and it scares off other international health workers from coming, we will be in dire straits," said Christy Feig, director of WHO communications. Dr. Sahr Rogers had been working at a hospital in the eastern town of Kenema when he contracted Ebola, said Sierra Leonean presidential adviser Ibrahim Ben Kargbo on Wednesday. Two other top doctors already have succumbed to Ebola since the outbreak emerged there earlier this year, including Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan, who also treated patients in Kenema. | |
Comment: Assuming that becoming infected is dependent on coming into direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person is playing Russian roulette. Ebola may have become airborne and it is time to begin making changes in your diet that can improve your immune system:
Are you prepping your diet? Scientists stumble across the obvious treatment for Ebola: tobacco | |
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Heather Callaghan
I mentioned the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in a recent article highlighting the social guiding that came with all the "disease awareness" we've been involuntarily immersed in via the media in the last few weeks. ALS meaning Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as "Lou Gehrig's Disease," meaning in short, a progressive neurodegenerative disease. Those challenged during the campaign were compelled to dump a bucket of ice water on their heads while video recording and challenging three more people to do the same, or else pay $100 to ALS research for the cure.Activist Post 2014-08-25 18:26:00 As Dr. Scott Graves points out in "Why I'm Not Participating in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge," it's been 60 years of funneling money into cancer research - with what results? According this the ALS Association, it "has received $62.5 million in donations compared to $2.4 million during the same time period last year..." From the Ice Bucket Challenge alone...can you believe that? |
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Sayer Ji
Greenmedinfo.com 2014-08-27 17:45:00
Watch the CNN Coverup Story here. CNN just dropped the bomb many of us have been waiting for: pure denial. They have been waiting patiently for the journal - Transactional Neurodegeneration - which published the historical study on the link between autism and MMR vaccine to retract, redact and otherwise deny the truth of the study. For the record, we contacted the editor-in-chief of Transactional Neurodegeneration, Professor Shengdi Chen tonight, with this communication:
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Michael Bernstein,
RedOrbit 2014-08-29 13:50:00
New evidence puts into doubt the long-standing belief that a deficiency in serotonin - a chemical messenger in the brain - plays a central role in depression. In the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience, scientists report that mice lacking the ability to make serotonin in their brains (and thus should have been "depressed" by conventional wisdom) did not show depression-like symptoms. Donald Kuhn and colleagues at the John D. Dingell VA Medical Center and Wayne State University School of Medicine note that depression poses a major public health problem. More than 350 million people suffer from it, according to the World Health Organization, and it is the leading cause of disability across the globe. In the late 1980s, the now well-known antidepressant Prozac was introduced. The drug works mainly by increasing the amounts of one substance in the brain - serotonin. So scientists came to believe that boosting levels of the signaling molecule was the key to solving depression. Based on this idea, many other drugs to treat the condition entered the picture. But now researchers know that 60 to 70 percent of these patients continue to feel depressed, even while taking the drugs. Kuhn's team set out to study what role, if any, serotonin played in the condition. | |
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Medical News Today
2014-08-29 03:00:00
Over confident people can fool others into believing they are more talented than they actually are, a study has found. These 'self-deceived' individuals could be more likely to get promotions and reach influential positions in banks and other organisations. And these people are more likely to overestimate other people's abilities and take greater risks, possibly creating problems for their organisations. The study by researchers from Newcastle University and the University of Exeter, has also found that those who are under confident in their own abilities are viewed as less able by their colleagues. The findings, which are published in the journal PLOS ONE, are the first time a link has been found between a person's view of their own ability and how others see their abilities, and could partially explain financial collapses and other disasters. | |
Comment: Pathological individuals are drawn to institutions like banks and the military because they are able to exercise power and control over others. Those with high levels of narcissism and psychopathy flock to areas where they are experts, heroes, or are able to climb high up the career ladder. These disorders 'want' adoration.
The successful pathological Social status and incompetence: Why are people overconfident so often? | |
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| High Strangeness |
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Russia Today
Sky gazers in the Lone Star State are still scratching their heads as they look for an explanation behind mysterious sets of lights photographed earlier this month over the city of Houston.2014-08-29 13:51:00 Images taken on August 11 during a rain storm and posted to social media have had some Texans for nearly two weeks now trying to identify what select skeptics say is an unidentified flying object, or UFO.
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