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Joe Quinn
Sott.net 2014-09-01 15:49:00
Within hours of the destruction of Malaysia flight MH17 on July 17th, with the wreckage and bodies still smoldering, western politicians already knew what had happened and who was to blame. This fact alone is highly suspicious and reminiscent of the 9/11 attacks when, within an hour of the first plane hitting the WTC, western politicians and media pundits had already named Osama bin Laden as the likely culprit. On both occasions, were reading from a pre-prepared script? Despite what you may have heard, or think you heard, there is no official explanation as to what happened to MH17. If you 'know' that Russia was responsible, then you've fallen victim to the lies and anti-Russian propaganda of the West. | |
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Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Sott.net 2014-09-01 10:07:00
At the annual party rally held in Nuremberg in 1935, the Nazis announced new laws which institutionalized many of the racial theories prevalent in Nazi ideology. The laws excluded German Jews from Reich citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of "German or related blood." These became known as the infamous "Nuremberg Laws." Many husbands and wives of Jews in Germany were forced to choose between divorce or concentration camps. Hitler would not allow "interracial" marriages and those that chose to remain married were punished by imprisonment in camps where many died. There were also many couples who committed suicide together. Three years later, at 11: 55 p.m. on November 9, Gestapo Chief Heinrich Mueller sent a telegram from Berlin to all security police stations and units in Germany. The following paragraph is an excerpt from that telegram: In shortest order, actions against Jews and especially their synagogues will take place in all of Germany. These are not to be interfered with... Preparations are to be made for the arrest of 20-30,000 Jews in the Reich. Primarily propertied Jews are to be selected...The Terror had begun in earnest. The Nazis engineered the Kristallnacht attacks so that they would appear to be unplanned and set off by the anger of the German people over the assassination of a German official in Paris at the hands of a Jewish teenager. In two days, over 1,000 synagogues were burned, 7,000 Jewish businesses were trashed and looted, dozens of Jewish people were killed, and Jewish cemeteries, hospitals, schools, and homes were looted while police and fire brigades stood by. The pogroms became known as Kristallnacht, or the "Night of Broken Glass, " for the great quantity of shattered glass from the store windows that littered the streets of Germany. | |
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Joe Quinn
Sott.net 2014-08-31 14:21:00
Did anyone else notice that the 'ceasefire' in Gaza sort of came out of the blue? Pundits put this down to 'war weariness' on both sides, but the precise timeline of events leading up to the ceasefire has me a little perplexed. On Monday, 18th August, a 72-hour ceasefire was declared as part of the talks in Cairo. The following day, Tuesday, the Israeli delegation left at 4 pm, precisely the time when the IDF would later say that Hamas had fired rockets at Beersheba, thereby "breaking the ceasefire". | |
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Al Arabiya News
2014-09-01 16:43:00
The United States sees Israel's announcement on Sunday of a land appropriation for possible settlement construction in the occupied West Bank as "counterproductive" to peace efforts and urges the Israeli government to reverse the decision, Reuters reported a State Department official as saying. Israel laid claim to nearly a thousand acres (400 hectares) in the Etzion settlement bloc near Bethlehem, a move which an anti-settlement group termed the biggest appropriation in 30 years and a Palestinian official said would cause only more friction after the Gaza war. "We have long made clear our opposition to continued settlement activity," the U.S. official said. "This announcement, like every other settlement announcement Israel makes, planning step they approve and construction tender they issue is counterproductive to Israel's stated goal of a negotiated two-state solution with the Palestinians." "We urge the government of Israel to reverse this decision," the official said in Washington. Comment: Ooh, yeah. That's gonna make Israel change its mind. Israel announced plans on Sunday to expropriate 400 hectares (988 acres) of Palestinian land in the Bethlehem area in the south of the occupied West Bank, the military said, Agence France-Presse reported. "On the instructions of the political echelon... 4,000 dunams at (the settlement of) Gevaot is declared as state land," the army said, adding that concerned parties have 45 days to appeal. Comment: Nice touch, but court appeals are never successful if you are a Palestinian. It said that the step stemmed from political decisions taken after the June killing of three Israeli teenagers snatched from a roadside in the same area, known to Israelis as Gush Etzion settlement bloc. Comment: So in addition to bombing Gaza to the point where estimates say it will take over twenty years to reconstruct it, the psycho Zionists now help themselves to some more Palestinian territory. But they say they want peace. Hypocrites. Israel has named three Palestinians from the southern West Bank city of Hebron as being behind the murders. The Etzion settlements council welcomed Sunday's announcement and said it was the prelude to expansion of the current Gevaot settlement. It "paves the way for the new city of Gevaot", a statement said. Settlements watchdog Peace Now expressed alarm. "As far as we know, this declaration is unprecedented in its scope since the 1980s and can dramatically change the reality in the Gush Etzion and the Bethlehem areas," it said. | |
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The Malaysian Times
2014-08-31 15:50:00
Vladimir Putin today dramatically raised the stakes in the Ukraine conflict by calling for the first time for statehood to be considered for the restive east of the former Soviet state. "We need to immediately begin substantive talks... on questions of the political organisation of society and statehood for southeastern Ukraine with the goal of protecting the lawful interests of the people who live there," Putin was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies on a TV show broadcast in the far east of the country. Russia has previously only called for greater rights under a decentralised federal system to be accorded to the eastern regions of Ukraine, where predominantly Russian-speakers live. Comment: Putin is the most careful of politicians. He would never say such a thing lightly. This change in language could portend a major shift in strategy. In the programme, taped on Friday, Putin did not directly address additional Western sanctions on Russia. Putin however blamed the crisis in Ukraine on the West, accusing it of supporting a "coup" against pro-Kremlin president Viktor Yanukovych in February. "They should have known that Russia cannot stand aside when people are being shot almost at point-blank," said Putin, adding that he did not have in mind "the Russian state but the Russian people." Putin has denied that Moscow has sent regular troops to fight in Ukraine, but pro-Russian rebels have said that many Russian soldiers have volunteered while "on vacation". Via Agence France-Presse | |
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RIA Novosti
2014-09-01 15:38:00
EU sanctions against Russia are unfair and unproductive, according to Thierry Mariani, member of the National Assembly of France. "I, and many of the other participants of today's meeting, think that the sanctions imposed against Russia are unfair, unconstructive and unproductive," Mariani said during a meeting between Sergei Naryshkin, Russia's State Duma (lower house of parliament) Speaker, with French political and social activists in Paris Monday. Over the past few months, the United States and the European Union introduced several rounds of targeted sanctions against the Russian economy, unjustifiably blaming Moscow for meddling in Ukraine's internal affairs. | |
Comment: Thierry Mariani is right on point. See: As Ukraine is losing the war the West escalates with more Russia sanctions
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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
"Every time you come to Russia with a sword, from a sword you will perish."Institute for Political Economy 2014-08-30 14:53:00
The Donetsk National Republic States The Facts The former Russian provinces, which Soviet party leaders carelessly attached to Ukraine at a time when it seemed to make no difference as all were part of the Soviet Union, are now independent republics with their own governments. The West pretends that this isn't so, because Washington and its puppet capitals don't recognize the independence of formerly captive peoples. But the West's opinion no longer counts. In the last couple of days the newly formed military units of the Donetsk National Republic have defeated and surrounded large portions of the remaining Ukrainian military. Russian President Putin asked the Donetsk Republic to allow the defeated Ukrainians to return home to their wives and mothers. The Donetsk Republic agreed to Putin's mercy request as long as the Ukrainians left their weapons behind. The Donetsk Republic is short on weapons as, contrary to Western lies, the Donetsk Republic is not supplied with weapons by Russia. Washington's puppet government in Kiev declined the mercy extended to its troops and said they had to fight to the death. Shades of Hitler at Stalingrad. Western Ukraine has remained the repository of Nazism since 1945, and it is Western Ukraine with which Washington is allied against freedom and democracy. Thanks to The Saker we are provided with a press conference with English subtitles that Alexander Zakharchenko, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Donetsk National Republic, held with media. Present are Russian and Western press. You will be impressed with the ease with which Zakharchenko handles the ignorant and corrupt Western media representatives, and your sides will burst with laughter at his reply to the media question: "Are there regular Russian military units fighting on your side?" The British and American journalists were the most stupid, as we already knew. You will die laughing at the response to the question, "why did you parade the prisoners." This person Zakharchenko puts to shame every politician in the US, Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, all of the puppet politicians of the American Empire. If only the United States had people of the character and quality of Zakharchenko. Now that Zakharchenko has revealed himself and made mincemeat of the stupid Western media, he will be demonized and misrepresented. So use this opportunity to see for yourself who has integrity and character. Hint: no one in political and media circles in the West. You might have to put the video on full screen to read the subtitles.
Comment: What a refreshing change from the mealy-mouthed propaganda exercises that pass for press conferences in the West. Not only is Zakharchenko a battle-hardened soldier and an educated lawyer, he is a human being who articulates the desire of normal people to be left in peace. | ||
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Japantimes.co.jp
2014-09-01 15:36:00
Cuban ex-President Fidel Castro lashed out at the United States and Europe on Monday, accusing them of war-mongering and comparing the NATO military alliance's representatives to the Nazi SS. In a tortuous column published in Cuban state media, the father of the island's communist revolution also attacked U.S. Sen. John McCain over United States policy in the Middle East, calling him "Israel's most unconditional ally." "The world has seen no respite in recent years, particularly since the European Economic Community, under the strict and unconditional leadership of the United States, decided the time had come to settle scores with what was left of two great nations (Russia and China) that ... had carried out the heroic deed of putting an end to the imperialist colonial order imposed on the world by Europe and the United States," said the 88-year-old leader. He accused the West of "cynicism" and said the trait had become "a symbol of imperialist policy." He singled out McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, saying he had supported Israel's Mossad intelligence agency and "participated together with that service in the creation of the Islamic State, which today controls a considerable and vital portion of Iraq and reportedly one-third of Syria as well." | |
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PressTV
2014-08-31 14:43:00
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has expressed Tehran's enthusiasm for the expansion of relations with Latin American countries, especially with Nicaragua. "The Islamic Republic of Iran and Nicaragua have great potentials for cooperation in various fields," Zarif said in a meeting with his Nicaraguan counterpart, Samuel Santos Lopez, in Tehran on Saturday. The top Iranian diplomat also highlighted the significance of taking effective steps to pave the ground for the development of ties between the two countries. He further emphasized that Iran and Nicaragua can cooperate in technical, engineering and agricultural areas. | |
Comment: Iran is not the only one: Building alliances! Putin makes unplanned stopover in Nicaragua
Also see: Bypassing US control: Grand $40 billion project of Atlantic-Pacific Nicaragua Canal finally completed | |
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Anthony Lawson
Youtube.com 2014-08-31 14:27:00
Here's a bright idea to try and change things: The next time you have to vote in any kind of parliamentary or congressional election, find out who came second last time, and vote for him or her. It may not change things all that much, but it could stir things up a bit and show the bribe-takers that we've got our eyes on them. This video is an update of a video I made for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. It did not take a lot of updating, just changing some titles and a few voice-over sections, replacing the number 10 with the number 13, demonstrating that, despite the overwhelming conviction of so many people - experts and sincere researchers alike - that the official 9/11 story was, as we used to say in the Old Country: 'A load of old toffee' but the powers-that-be still refuse to even contemplate a new inquiry.
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PressTV
2014-09-01 14:12:00
A senior Iranian lawmaker has slammed a fresh round of US sanctions against the Islamic Republic as contradictory to the interim nuclear deal between Iran and six powers, saying the new sanctions prove that Washington cannot be trusted. "By imposing new sanctions against our country which is in flagrant violation of the nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1, the US once again showed that it is not trustworthy," chairman of Iran's Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Alaeddin Boroujerdi said in a meeting with Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja in the Iranian capital, Tehran, on Sunday. | |
Comment: Unlike the U.S., Russia is acting in a trustworthy manner: Russian, Iranian foreign ministers to discuss Iran nuclear program
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Labor Day is a holiday that has outlived its time. Like Christmas, Labor Day has become a time-out period. As Christmas has become a shopping spree, Labor Day has become the last summer holiday. The holiday originated in 1887 to celebrate the contribution made by American workers to the strength and prosperity of the United States. The first Monday in September was chosen by President Grover Cleveland to avoid a May date that would keep alive the memory of the previous year's Haymarket Massacre in which workers striking for an eight-hour day suffered casualties from the Chicago police. As time passed union leadership became a career rather than a movement in behalf of a cause, but the labor movement in its initial years was reformist. It brought safer working conditions into industry and manufacturing. Unions served as a countervailing power and constrained the exploitative power of capital. An industrial or manufacturing job was a ladder of upward mobility that made the US an opportunity society and stabilized the socio-political system with a large middle class. A large and thriving industrial and manufacturing sector provided many white collar middle class jobs for managers, engineers, researchers and designers, and American universities flourished as did their graduates. The labor unions provided the Democratic Party with a financial base in labor that served as a countervailing power to the Republican base in manufacturing and finance. | |
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RT
2014-08-31 21:12:00
Human Rights Watch and London's Foreign Press Association have called for the release of Russian photo journalist Andrey Stenin, and information on his whereabouts. Stenin has been missing in eastern Ukraine for almost a month. HRW in particular has urged the Ukrainian authorities to disclose the information on Stenin's current location, Rachel Denber, the organization's Deputy Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division, told Latvian radio Baltkom. "The journalists' rights in Ukraine are breached both by self-defense forces and by Ukrainian military. Ukrainian authorities detained many Russian journalists. Unfortunately, I don't have any new information regarding Andrey Stenin. We're urging the Ukrainian authorities to disclose the whereabouts of Stenin," Denber said. Meanwhile, London's Foreign Press Association called on the release of Rossiya Segodnya news agency's photographer. "The Foreign Press Association in London shares the concerns expressed by international media organizations about the whereabouts and safety of the Russian photographer Andrei Stenin," the organization in charge of the accreditation of foreign journalists in the UK said in a statement. | |
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Matt McCaffrey
MisesEconomicBlog 2014-08-27 00:00:00
The 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I seems like an ideal opportunity to spread a message of peace and economic cooperation; sadly, 2014 has so far been a year of new and renewed conflict far more than one of reconciliation. By now, talk of the horrors of war is nothing new. Everyone knows about the total destruction war brings; in fact, we've known for millennia. As Lew Rockwell points out, "just about everyone makes the perfunctory nod to the tragedy of war, that war is a last resort only, and that everyone sincerely regrets having to go to war" - but war continues all the same. Even classical military strategists like Sun Tzu believed war should only be used only as a last resort, and argued that military campaigns could bankrupt states and ultimately, destroy them. Art of War actually states that "no country has ever profited from protracted warfare," and cautions generals to "fight under Heaven with the paramount aim of 'preservation.'" Yet as far back as we have historical records, these sorts of ideas have fallen on deaf ears among governments and military organizations alike. Economics offers many insights into war making and why it persists, but the most fundamental explanation is an institutional one. It's tragically simple: warnings about the horrors of war go unheeded because the power to make war - as well as "justify" it in the eyes of those forced to fight and finance it - lies in the hands of the state and its business and intellectual allies.States are monopolists of organized force, and as such decide when and how to use their power on a grand scale, especially when they wish to confront other monopolists. | |
Comment: The control of the US, and of global politics, by the wealthiest families of the planet is exercised in a powerful, profound and clandestine manner. It is a system in which the elite thrives on war and widespread human misery, on death and destruction by design. This control began in Europe and has a continuity that can be traced back to the time when the bankers discovered it was more profitable to give loans to governments than to needy individuals. These banking families and their subservient beneficiaries have come to own most major businesses over the two centuries during which they have secretly and increasingly organized themselves as controllers of governments worldwide and as arbiters of war and peace. Wars have been a huge - and regular - way for banks to create debt for kings and presidents who want to try to expand their empires. War is also good for banks because a lot of material, equipment, buildings and infrastructure get destroyed in war. Countries go into massive debt to finance war, and then borrow billions more to rebuild, thus benefiting the global psychopathic elites.
See also: David Rothkopf: Superclass - The global power elite and the world they are making | |
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Telesurtv.net
2014-09-01 13:48:00
Bolivia now categorizes Israel as a "terrorist state" after its assault on Gaza. Israelis wanting to visit Bolivia will now have to request a visa, effective from August 30, said an official source from the Migration Office. In July President Evo Morales announced "the firm decision to revoke the visa agreement with Israel of August 17, 1972, signed during the Bolivian dictatorship and that allowed Israeli citizens to enter Bolivia freely without even an entry visa." Between 10,000 and 12,000 Israeli tourists visit Bolivia each year, according to the Migration Office. The measure changes Israel's category from number "one" to number "three", "mean[ing], in other words, that we are declaring [Israel] a terrorist state," added Morales. The Andean country has recognized the Palestinian state and it suspended diplomatic relations with Israel in 2009 because of a military assault on the Gaza strip. Morales also presented a claim last month to the High Commissioner of Human Rights in the United Nations of "crimes against humanity." | |
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Memorial Day provides as good an opportunity as any to reflect on the horrendous and irreversible costs of war. For most people - and rightly so - the clearest costs are those in terms of human life, which is shattered both physically and psychologically. As John Denson writes, "In looking at the costs of war we must always keep in mind the reality experienced by soldiers in actual combat. The tallies of the dead and wounded soldiers cannot carry the full meaning of the terror of actually experiencing war... [and] the very real horror and violence known by those on the front lines who actually do the fighting." The destruction of life, civilian and soldier, is usually the goal and always the result of warfare in any age. Yet in addition to the human costs, which are themselves staggering, there are others as well. Denson further explains: In the war-torn [21st] century, we rarely hear that one of the main costs of war is a long-term loss of liberty to winners and losers alike. There are the obvious and direct costs of the number of dead and wounded soldiers, but rarely do we hear about the lifetime struggles of combat veterans to live with their nightmares and injuries. Nor do we hear much about the long-term hidden costs of inflation, debts, and taxes. Other inevitable long-term costs of war which are not immediately obvious are damages caused to our culture, to our morality, and to civilization in general.As writers like Bastiat and Hazlitt emphasized, economists must be careful to examine all costs, not just the most obvious ones. When we do that, we begin to understand the scale of the destruction that war inflicts on human societies. This is true even for the "winners"; no matter which side is deemed the champion, all victories are pyrrhic victories. As Sun Tzu stated many centuries ago, "No country has ever profited from protracted warfare." Mises was even blunter: "War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings." | |
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RT
2014-09-01 10:34:00
Hundreds of people have gathered in Wales for the second day running to march through the center of Cardiff and Newport in an anti-NATO rally ahead of the alliance's upcoming summit. Organized by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the Stop the War Coalition and South West against Nuclear, protesters gathered to state that 150 heads of state and ministers heading to the Celtic Manor Resort on Thursday and Friday will not be welcomed. | |
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RT
2014-09-01 00:00:00
A prominent human rights activist Maryam Al-Khawaja was arrested shortly after arriving in Bahrain to check on her father, who is hunger striking in prison along with thousands of sentenced activists, a key opposition figure Nabeel Rajab told RT. Maryam al-Khawaja, the co-director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights, has been detained upon arriving at the airport of Bahrain and was taken into custody on Saturday. She came to her native country to visit her father Abdulhadi Abdulla Hubail al-Khawaja, who was detained back in 2011 and is now on hunger strike. The public prosecution denied Maryam the right to meet with her lawyer before interrogation and during the questioning wasn't allowed to talk to her about her legal rights. | |
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Associated Press
2014-09-01 17:01:00
The parents say they want to give their 5 year-old-boy with a brain tumor the best chance to live with a revolutionary new treatment they learned about on the Internet. Their British hospital says the boy has a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of survival with the treatment it offers, and it's the parents who are putting the child at risk. Britain has become riveted by the case of little Ashya King, whose parents plucked him from a hospital in southern England and fled to Spain amid a dispute over treatment - with British justice close on the family's heels. Brett and Naghemeh King signaled Monday they would fight extradition, defying doctors and the legal system as a British court considers a ruling on forcing the family to come home. "I'm not coming back to England if I cannot give him the treatment I want, which is proper treatment," Brett King said as he cradled the child in a video posted before his arrest. "I just want positive results for my son." The Kings are seeking a new type of proton beam radiation therapy that typically costs at least $33,000. The Southampton General Hospital says that more conventional methods have a very high chance of succeeding. It said that while proton beam therapy is effective for some tumors, in other cases "there isn't evidence that this is a beneficial treatment." | |
Comment: This case is similar to that of Justina Pelletier, where the hospital and police have decided that they know what is best for children and are willing to kidnap children and arrest parents for daring to disagree with a diagnosis or treatment protocol. It's becoming frightfully obvious that the State wishes to eliminate parental rights. So we have now entered a new era of medical blackmail where some are finding the hard way how few rights they have and how fascist their medical "care" system really is.
Justina Pelletier's family promises to sue Massachusetts for abducting their daughter Ashya King case: Missing boy with brain tumor alive in Spain, parents arrested | |
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RT
2014-09-01 14:17:00
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he hopes Russia and the west can return to normal cooperation from the current mutually damaging "war of sanctions," as Europe ponders whether it should go further in penalizing Moscow. "Concerning limitations in trade and economic activity, at the end those who are implementing this policy will suffer most of the harm," Putin said, speaking at a meeting Monday devoted to supporting investment projects in Russia's Far East. "I hope that common sense prevails and we will work in a normal, modern way," he added. "And that neither we nor our partners suffer losses from these mutual pinpricks." Earlier Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he believed it was still possible to return to "pragmatic cooperation" between Russia and the West. "But for that, we need to abandon the futile policy of ultimatums, threats and sanctions," Lavrov said. By imposing sanctions, the US and the EU are simply pushing Russia toward shifting its cooperation priorities from the West to the East, he added. | |
Comment: The West would do well to heed Putin's conciliatory comments, however they are woefully adept at cutting off their noses to spite their faces, so it's questionable at this point if common sense will prevail:
Sanctions blowback: US shoots itself in foot again and the money goes to China More sanctions blowback: EU countries whine that Russian food embargo is hurting their economies Sanctions against Russia starting to backfire, particularly in Germany | |
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Redressonline
2014-08-31 00:00:00
Watch: US broadcaster Mike Malloy wipes the floor with Israel apologists Reasoning with a Zionist is an oxymoron. It is as self-contradictory as saying something is falsely true. This, we have no doubt, is the conclusion everyone who has tried to have a rational, fact-based debate with Zionists would have drawn. If that is also your experience - or if you have never had the misfortune of debating with a Zionist - then you will want to listen to the two short clips below from Mike Malloy's radio show. For those who don't know him, Malloy is a self-syndicated American radio broadcasterfrom Atlanta, Georgia, who describes himself as "a traditional liberal democrat doing his part to return the Democratic Party to its liberal roots". In this clip, he routs a Zionist caller who uses the jaded argument that Israel, the aggressor and occupier, has a right to defend its ill-gotten gains. | |
Comment: The are a few reasons why Mike Malloy - or anyone for that matter - cannot explain to or enlighten zionists as to why Binyamin Netanyahu and the government of Israel are behaving psychopathically. The first is that most zionists are programmed from a very early age to believe that Israel must defend itself; that's to say that Israel must defend itself, and, also, Israel must defend itself. In other words, Israel must defend itself. That's it. There is NOTHING - ever, provided in the way of objective facts or a true history of the conflict to let them understand that the Palestinians were, and still are, victims of a very systematic program of Ethnic Cleansing.
Secondly, the pathological programming that is zionism is hard-wired. This means that most people would have to undergo a great deal of mental and emotional pain to even bring themselves to the point of being receptive to the idea that they may be wrong about what they believe. How many people are willing to undergo such pain since it is so much easier to go with what they 'know' and remain comfortable with the programs they've lived with for so long? | |
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Lee Fang
The Nation 2014-07-01 00:00:00
Patrick Kennedy, son of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, did several stints in rehab after crashing his car into a barricade on Capitol Hill in 2006, a headline-making event that revealed the then - US congressman for Rhode Island had been abusing prescription drugs, including the painkiller OxyContin. Kennedy went on to make mental health - including substance abuse - a cornerstone of his political agenda, and he is reportedly at work on a memoir about his struggles with addiction and mental illness. In 2013, he also helped found an advocacy group, Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana), which has barnstormed the country opposing the growing state and federal efforts to legalize pot. Taking the stage to rousing applause last February, Kennedy joined more than 2,000 opponents of marijuana legalization a few miles south of Washington, DC, at the annual convention of the Community Anti-Drug Coalition of America (CADCA), one of the largest such organizations in the country. "Let me tell you, there is nothing more inconsistent with trying to improve mental health and reduce substance-abuse disorders in this country than to legalize a third drug," Kennedy boomed. The former congressman also praised his fellow speakers for standing up to the "extremist responses" from legalization advocates. Given that CADCA is dedicated to protecting society from dangerous drugs, the event that day had a curious sponsor: Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of Oxy-Contin, the highly addictive painkiller that nearly ruined Kennedy's congressional career and has been linked to thousands of overdose deaths nationwide. Prescription opioids, a line of pain-relieving medications derived from the opium poppy or produced synthetically, are the most dangerous drugs abused in America, with more than 16,000 deaths annually linked to opioid addiction and overdose. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that more Americans now die from painkillers than from heroin and cocaine combined. The recent uptick in heroin use around the country has been closely linked to the availability of prescription opioids, which give their users a similar high and can trigger a heroin craving in recovering addicts. (Notably, there are no known deaths related to marijuana, although there have been instances of impaired driving.) Comment: For organizations who claim to have the interests of society at heart by countering drug addiction, the fact that their financial support derives from the makers of some of the most deadly narcotics that kill more than heroin and cocaine combined is jaw-dropping! | |
Comment: While we don't recommend the use of any drugs, it must be stated that these organizations attempting to prevent the legalization of a relatively harmless substance while promoting the use of drugs that have unleashed an ongoing epidemic of addiction and deaths, is completely psychopathic!
Updated tally of all the people who have ever died from a marijuana overdose (Hint: it's less than 1 and more than -1) In 13 "medical pot" states nearly 25 percent lower opioid painkiller overdose deaths Let's end the prescription drug death epidemic | |
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Scott Kaufman
The Raw Story 2014-09-01 11:03:00
A Florida judge who is being investigated for sending a Facebook "friend" request to a woman whose expensive divorce case she was deciding is asking the state's Judicial Qualifications Commission to dismiss the charges against her, The Orlando Sentinel reports. In an August 25, 2014 hearing, Circuit Judge Linda Schoonover was charged with three dozen counts of improper conduct. Schoonover claims that all the charges should be dismissed because three allegations were removed from official court documents, which she believes means the Judicial Qualifications Commission needs to formally restart its entire investigation. The charges stem from behavior that fellow lawyers and judges described to The Orlando Sentinelas "bizarre," "inexplicable," "disruptive," and "paranoid." For example, Schoonover secretly installed a camera in chambers because she believed employees at the courthouse had bugged her office, and she wanted to record video of them retrieving the recording equipment. She contacted the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) and turned over the video. The FDLE reported that there were men in the crawl space above her courtroom, but they were heating and air conditioning contractors. She also punished a local real-estate agent with a harsh debt and property ruling after the woman refused her Facebook "friend" request. Schoonover is also accused of refusing to listen to the testimony of a litigant because "he annoyed her." Russell Hershkowitz, who is one of 17 lawyers whose cases Schoonover is barred from hearing,said that "she's got too much power and lacks the ability to control herself." | |
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Bernie Suarez
Activist Post 2014-08-30 06:51:00
Only time will tell, but is it too soon to guess whether the Ferguson, Missouri shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown will mark a turning point in our march toward tyranny in America? There are signs that this could be the case. Yes this could be an overly optimistic assumption about the current direction of the police state in America, but there is a slight chance that the consciousness that came with the Ferguson shooting may have been a badly needed cure to the metastasizing police state problem. Before anyone makes assumptions of how naive I'm being or overly optimistic, let's clarify. We are in a battle of competing paradigms and competing consciousness. One important thing to note about the police state is that authority, control, intimidation and police state madness is itself a real-time live form of consciousness. In this police state consciousness we can confirm the typical officer becomes consumed in their role. This disconnected behavior had been confirmed in previous psychology experiments, and we know how governments carefully train police to do as they are told. Add to that, the influence of the culture of police and what we see is a group of people acting within their own (twisted) consciousness to oppress others without consequences. We saw this in Nazi Germany and many other examples throughout history. Comment: Let's not forget that law enforcement agencies in the U.S. receive training from Israeli security forces. If you have been wondering why some police officers apart from murdering black (and white) people beat up and sexually assault women, kill dogs, threaten, handcuff and arrest young children and so on, there is your answer. "Israeli forces and US police departments are so entrenched that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) has opened a branch in Tel Aviv. " See: Psychopathic Israel-trained police "occupy" Missouri after killing of black youth | |
Comment: Only time will tell whether there will be a shift in the police state. It would help us, if good and decent police officers refused to do what they were told and side with the People.
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Extraordinary Tales, Extraordinary Writers: My name is Cara St.Louis and this is my show. Conversations with some of the most extraordinary people I have ever met. You will be seeing it as an acquisition elsewhere later. Please feel free to share. I bring you World Class Illustrator and Writer, Bridget Marzot and World-Renowned Jazz Artist and philosopher, Gilad Atzmon.
Part 1
Part 2
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Itar-Tass
2014-09-01 08:37:00
Comment: UPDATE: Apparently, leaders of both DPR and LPR have denied these reports (sources in Russian). Comment: Russia has started using the term 'Novorossiya' to refer to the People's Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in its official statements and documents these last few days. Putin even went so far as to refer to the 'state' or 'statehood' of the Republics in a recent interview, which was immediately picked up by media as an endorsement for the republics' independence. While Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said there was no official endorsement independence, adding that the areas should remain part of Ukraine, we wonder if this was Putin's subtle hint to Kiev: if it comes to it, Moscow will officially recognize Novorossiya. That could lead to more substantial support. Now, DPR and LPR, who have been pounding Kiev forces (retaking Lugansk airport and in the process of taking Donetsk's) -- and who have just recently called for nothing less than full independence -- come back with this compromise. Representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics (LPR and DPR) said on Monday they will make every effort to preserve Ukraine's unity if Kiev accepts their demands. Representatives of LPR and DNR have made public their position for the meeting of the Contact Group on Ukraine in the Belarusian capital Minsk that begins later on Monday. They say "equal talks are the only acceptable means for the settlement of the conflict and restoration of peace". They also base on principles worked out at the Geneva meeting of representatives from Russia, the US, the European Union and Ukraine on April 17, 2014. Vice-Premier of the DPR Andrei Purgin said on Monday he brought proposals for the contact group's meeting to reduce the duration of combat operations and the number of victims. "I've arrived here with proposals to find common points. They contain eight or nine points," Purgin said before the contact group's session. "These are initial proposals for the consultations," he added. Purgin said he did not expect a major breakthrough at the Minsk meeting. "This is an initial stage. It can hardly end with something drastically big," he added. | |
Comment: Could this be another offer Kiev can't sanely refuse, but which -- if they do refuse -- will end up backfiring and working to Russia and Novorossiya's advantage? (Kind of like the proposed humanitarian corridors for surrendering Kiev troops, rejected by Kiev but accepted by some individual commanders, thus making Putin look the savior to the mothers and wives protesting in Kiev.) However it turns out, it's better than a movie, that's for sure!
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RT
2014-09-01 03:24:00
Fukushima's governor has officially agreed to allow the country's authorities to store radioactive waste for 30 years in two municipalities in exchange for 300 billion yen ($2.89 billion) in subsidies. "It's a difficult decision, but I want to accept the construction plan," Governor Yuhei Sato told journalists on Saturday. Sato told The Japan Times he accepted the plan because he sees it as "necessary to advance decontamination and realize recovery of the environment." The mayor's formal acceptance should be also sent to Environment Minister Nobuteru Ishihara and Reconstruction Minister Takumi Nemoto on Monday, and he is also set to meet with the country's premier Shinzo Abe in Tokyo. On Wednesday, two Fukushima prefecture municipalities made the decision that they would accept the government's package of subsidies, allowing to build the storages. "We succeeded in greatly deepening (local officials') understanding (of our storage facility plan),"Nobuteru Ishihara, environment minister, told journalists on Tuesday, as quoted by The Asahi Shimbun media outlet, following his meeting with members of the town assemblies of Futaba and Okuma. | |
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Elisha Fieldstadt
NBCNews.com 2014-08-30 16:45:00
The parents of an ill 5-year-old British boy suffering from a brain tumor are under arrest and the child is receiving medical care at a Spanish hospital after police in that country stopped their car Saturday and ended a furious two-day international manhunt, authorities said. The ill boy, Ashya King, was found safe with "no visible signs of distress" after police in the Malaga region of Spain pulled over their Hyundai at just before 10 p.m. local time, Hampshire constable Chris Shead told reporters. It is unknown why his parents, Brett King, 51, and Naghemeh King, 45, took the child, whose condition requires complex care that police feared the couple would be unable to safely provide on their own. | |
Comment: If interested, there is a petition located here asking for both the release of Brett and Naghemeh and allowing them to choose the most appropriate care for Ashya.
The withholding of children from their parents by medical institutions is becoming a common theme as is illustrated in this article. | |
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Ian Simpson
Businessinsider.com 2014-08-29 14:37:00
Agricultural inspectors have seized 1,304 giant African snails, one of the world's most destructive invasive species, from sites around the United States, the Department of Agriculture said on Friday. The slimy pests, which can grow as big as rats, eat up to 500 different kinds of plants and can damage buildings and humans' health. They are a particular problem in Florida, where an extermination campaign is under way. The Agriculture Department said in a statement that officials with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service seized an adult giant African snail and 284 juvenile snails on New York's Long Island on June 26. The snail came from a seller in Georgia who owned 949 of them. He told officials they were originally bought from a British source and were sent to the United States by mail. All the snails were seized. Based on information from the Georgia man, the inspection service also confiscated one giant snail apiece in Indiana, Pennsylvania and Albany, New York. Inspection service officials also seized 67 snails in July that had been imported from Nigeria to theUnited States via Los Angeles. | |
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Martin Weil
Washington Post 2014-08-31 06:42:00
A single-engine airplane that was scheduled to land in Manassas crashed Saturday into the Atlantic Ocean off the Virginia coast, authorities said. The Coast Guard said the pilot, the only person on board, appeared unconscious as the plane flew southeast, at about 13,000 feet, through Washington's restricted airspace and eventually across Virginia's eastern shore. The plane eventually ran out of fuel and crashed about 50 miles southeast of Chincoteague, the Coast Guard said. | |
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Xinhua
2014-08-14 17:17:00
A Russian aid airplane carrying 15 tons of humanitarian aid arrived in Syria on Thursday, the official SANA news agency reported. The plane landed in the international airport of the coastal city of Latakia, the latest shipment from Russia in a bid to alleviate some of the suffering of the Syrian people.
Separately, SANA said the Syrian government sent on Thursday a total of 15 truckloads of aid rations to the western and northern parts of the northern city of Aleppo. | ||
Comment: Russia is rapidly replacing the USA/West as the benefactor and arbiter of what is good and right. Countries change with their governments; the USA changed for the worse, Russia changed for the better.While US and the West defame Putin, Russia quietly helps others and delivers a regular shipment of relief aid for Serbia's flood-stricken regions
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Ted Thornhill and Rajat Rai
A horrified villager rescued a young girl who had been buried alive in a cane field after hearing her crying for help.The Daily Mail 2014-08-27 16:31:00 Alok Kumar, from Maanpur village, Sitapur district, was returning from his fields on Monday evening when he heard the girl's desperate cries. He followed the muffled sounds to the middle of a cane field, where to his shock he found the soil moving as the girl tried to dig her way out.
Mr Kumar started digging and unearthed a small girl who was in a semi-conscious state. He quickly pulled her out and rushed her to the nearby Maanpur police station. | ||
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RT
2014-08-31 11:01:00
Seven people suffered injuries after riot police clashed with anti-fascists at a neo-Nazi rally in Stockholm. Police say four law enforcement officers needed treatment, along with three civilians. The march was organized by the Party of Swedes, a far-right organization, and attracted around 150 members. They were far outnumbered by those protesting against the gathering, with thousands gathering in the city center. The vast majority of protesters were well-behaved, but a minority attacked the police with firecrackers, bottles, eggs and panels from a security fence. "We have had violent riots with people throwing objects at police," police spokesman Lars Bystrom said, according to AP. He also mentioned that two arrests were made, one for "preparation of aggravated assault," and another for climbing onto the roof of the Royal Opera House, where the neo-Nazi group started and ended their march. The rally took place with Swedish parliamentary elections set to take place in two weeks. Just last week, on August 23, violence broke out at another march held by the Party of Swedes in Malmo, which has a high immigrant population with 31 percent of the city's residents having been born abroad, according to the city's official website. The trouble started after anti-fascists tried to block the neo-Nazi march and clashed with the police ahead of a speech by Stefan Jacobsson, the leader of the Party of Swedes. Ten people were injured during the clashes, with many of the demonstrators critical of the heavy-handed tactics used by the police, which includeda charge by officers mounted on horseback at the participants.
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| Secret History |
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Talal Al-Khatib
It's back-to-school season, and you know what that means: Despite receiving a king's ransom in new clothes, electronics and school supplies, children across the country are already complaining about the burden of regularly attending an affordable system of formal education.Discovery News 2014-09-01 13:00:00 If the "back in my day" speech hasn't set them straight, why not let them know of how much worse back-to-school season could have been for them had they been born a couple thousand years ago?
Before we get rolling, it's important to mention that in just about all of the following ancient societies, formal education was typically the privilege of wealthy families. | |
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Valerie Tarico
AlterNet 2014-08-31 00:00:00
Most antiquities scholars think that the New Testament gospels are "mythologized history." In other words, they think that around the start of the first century a controversial Jewish rabbi named Yeshua ben Yosef gathered a following and his life and teachings provided the seed that grew into Christianity. At the same time, these scholars acknowledge that many Bible stories like the virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, and women at the tomb borrow and rework mythic themes that were common in the Ancient Near East, much the way that screenwriters base new movies on old familiar tropes or plot elements. In this view, a "historical Jesus" became mythologized. For over 200 years, a wide ranging array of theologians and historians - most of them Christian - analyzed ancient texts, both those that made it into the Bible and those that didn't, in attempts to excavate the man behind the myth. Several current or recent bestsellers take this approach, distilling the scholarship for a popular audience. Familiar titles include Zealot by Reza Aslan andHow Jesus Became God by Bart Ehrman. But other scholars believe that the gospel stories are actually "historicized mythology." In this view, those ancient mythic templates are themselves the kernel. They got filled in with names, places and other real world details as early sects of Jesus worship attempted to understand and defend the devotional traditions they had received. | |
Comment: You don't want to miss the following.
Who was Jesus? Julius Caesar: Evil Dictator or Messiah for Humanity? Was Julius Caesar the real Jesus Christ? 'As important as the scientific discoveries of Darwin and Galileo': Linguist Francesco Carotta proves real identity of 'Jesus Christ' to be Julius Caesar | |
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April Holloway
Ancient Origins 2014-08-27 14:28:00
For the first time in history, the academic world is paying attention to the spectacular underground world of Ani, a 5,000-year-old Armenian city located on the Turkish-Armenian border. Hurriyet Daily News reports that scientists, academics, and researchers have just met at a symposium in Kars titled 'Underground Secrets of Ani' to discuss the city's underground world mentioned in ancient parchments as the location of an ancient Mesopotamian esoteric school. Located on a hilltop near the bank of the Akhuryan River, Ani is the most famous among the Armenian capitals. Renowned for its splendour and magnificence, Ani was known as 'The City of 1001 Churches' and 'The City of 40 Gates'. At its zenith, Ani rivalled the likes of Constantinople, Baghdad and Cairo in size and influence. By the 11th Century Ani had grown to over one-hundred-thousand people. It would later become the battleground for various contending Empires, leading to its destruction and abandonment. Today, hundreds of ancient churches, Zoroastrian temples, and other buildings, most of them in ruins, remain scattered across the rugged and desolate landscape. Excavations have revealed that the area has been inhabited since ancient times, from at least as early as the Bronze Age, but the first historical records that mention 'the Fortress of Ani' trace back to the 5th century AD. By the end of the 8th century Ani, with its nearby estates, got under the control of Bagratid dynasty. Ani began growing since 961 AD, when the Bagratid king Ashot III transferred his capital from Kars to Ani. During the period of only 40-50 years Ani transferred from a little fortress town to a big medieval city. | |
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| Science & Technology |
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Anthony Watts
That now failed headline is from Duncan Clark in the Guardian.Wattsupwiththat.com 2014-09-01 10:47:00
And, for good measure he added: Just a few small problems there:
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Lauren Said-Moorhouse and Amanda Sealy
CNN 2014-08-29 16:39:00
For centuries, man has been on a quest to find the elixir to eternal life. Alchemists struggled fruitlessly to create the legendary philosopher's stone, a mythical substance capable of turning base metals into precious gold and said to hold the key to immortality. But perhaps they were going about it the wrong way. Instead of searching for answers on land, maybe they should have been looking to the sea. In the seaside town of Shirahama, in Japan, one man thinks he knows what holds the key to everlasting life: jellyfish. | |
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Leonard David
Space.com 2014-08-25 08:03:00
The moon has a distinctive smell. Ask any Apollo moonwalker about the odoriferous nature of the lunar dirt and you'll get the same answer. With NASA's six Apollo lunar landing missions between 1969 and the end of 1972, a total of 12 astronauts kicked up the powdery dirt of the moon, becoming an elite group later to be tagged as the "dusty dozen." From the modest 2.5 hour "moonwalk" of Apollo 11 to the forays totaling just over 22 hours outside a spacecraft on Apollo 17, NASA's Apollo landing crews could not escape tracking lunar material inside their moon lander homes. Decades later, moonwalkers and lunar scientists are still trying to appreciate exactly what the moon's aroma brings to the astronaut's nose. That fresh lunar regolith smell "All I can say is that everyone's instant impression of the smell was that of spent gunpowder, not that it was 'metallic' or 'acrid'. Spent gunpowder smell probably was much more implanted in our memories than other comparable odors," said Apollo 17's Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, a scientist-astronaut who walked the moon's surface in December of 1972. | |
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David Shultz
Nautil.us 2014-08-29 17:12:00
How many animal species do you think go extinct every year? Last week I conducted a highly unscientific polling of around 20 of my Facebook and Google Chat contacts, asking that same question. I'm not trying to brag, but I have some really smart friends, many of them with degrees in biology. Typical answers ranged from about 17 to a seemingly ludicrous 400. They were all wrong though - off by orders of magnitude*. In July, a summary article of nearly 80 papers, published inScience, stated that, "Of a conservatively estimated 5 million to 9 million animal species on the planet, we are likely losing ~11,000 to 58,000 species annually." If that finding is true, then every year, between .12% and 1.16% of all the animals on Earth vanish. Rodolfo Dirzo, the lead researcher on the Science study from Stanford University, points out that we've already lost 40% of the Earth's invertebrate species in the last 40 to 50 years. Almost half the animals without skeletons have gone extinct within half a human lifetime. The wide range of these estimates reflects our own uncertainty on this subject, but even our low-end assessments are alarming. Bugs and worms are gross, though; who cares if there are fewer spiders in my house now than in the arachnid-infested '60s? Unfortunately the future looks just as bleak for mammals. Dirzo says that if current trends hold, "in 200 years, 50% of the [mammal] species are going to be driven to the very edge of extinction." | |
Comment: It won't be so easy to ignore. Cyclic cometary bombardments have wiped out this planet before:
Forget About Global Warming: We're One Step From Extinction! Fireballs reported since June 1, 2014:
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RT
2014-08-30 10:40:00
Scientists have for the first time detected the solar neutrino particles forged in the sun's heart that are eventually emitted into the galaxy as light. More than 100 international scientists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst worked together using the Borexino detector in Italy to make the discovery, which provides humans with a peak into the process of nuclear fusion that is responsible for bathing the Earth with light. The findings were first reported in the latest issue of the Nature journal. Although it only takes eight minutes for light from the sun to hit Earth, there is a substantially longer process that takes place before that can happen. After the solar neutrinos are formed in the sun's core, another 100,000 years must pass before they make their way to the star's surface and shoot out at the speed of light. "The first step in the dominant fusion process in the sun starts when two protons in its core fuse into a deuteron, creating a [proton-proton] neutrino," wrote Nola Redd at Space.com. "Other neutrinos are created in subsequent steps of the process, several of which have been detected, but the first-step neutrinos remained elusive." Now that these neutrinos have been detected, though, scientists are hoping to learn even more about the sun's energy-forming processes. "[The neutrinos] are the most direct confirmation that nuclear fusion is the source of energy [for the sun]," said Wick Haxton of University of California, Berkeley, to the website. | |
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Nick Bernabe
The Mind Unleashed 2014-08-28 01:04:00
One of the biggest problems facing the earth, plastic pollution, could soon meet its match if students at Yale University are able to breed a recently discovered plastic-eating fungus on a large scale. Plastic pollution, exemplified by the giant floating island of trash the size of Texas in the Pacific ocean, is highly detrimental to the world's ecosystem because it breaks down extremely slow. In fact, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, plastic doesn't actually biodegrade: This presents humans with a challenge that must soon be met, considering much of our plastic trash ends up in the ocean where it breaks down into toxic microplastics, winding up in sea life. Not only is this dangerous to the sea life, but it's also dangerous to people because we end up consuming these very fish which we are poisoning with our trash. | |
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| Earth Changes |
The Cook County Sheriff's office has issued a wolf warning in Cook County, Minn. Residents are being warned because at least five dogs, in the last two weeks, are assumed to have been killed by wolves in and around Grand Marais. A couple of the wolf attacks were witnessed by the dog owners. "I think if you're a dog owner anywhere in wolf country, northern, especially northeastern, Minnesota, then you should always attend your dog when it's outside - never leave your dog unattended," according to Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Conservation Officer Darren Fagerman. Sometimes attacks on dogs can occur because of territorial issues, or the wolves are looking for easy prey while in survival mode. If a wolf is attacking your dog, you are not allowed to shoot the wolf because discharging a firearm in Grand Marais is illegal. The sheriff's office says you could make an attempt to scare the wolf away with shouting, banging metal and making any loud sounds, and call authorities. | |
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Jon Erdman
Weather Underground 2014-09-01 00:00:00
Snow fell on the Labor Day weekend in parts of northern Alaska and Wyoming, providing a gentle reminder that summer is on its last legs. Snow levels lowered to 9,000 feet in northwest Wyoming. A dusting of snow was captured on Wyoming DOT cams Sunday morning northwest of Dubois, Wyoming along U.S. 26 and 287 at an elevation of 9,500 feet and coated the top of Grand Targhee Resort Sunday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service office in Riverton, Wyoming. Meanwhile, snow fell over remote parts of northern Alaska last Friday, and was expected to become heavy over the Brooks Range into Tuesday. This prompted the National Weather Service in Fairbanks to issue the first winter storm warning anywhere in the U.S. since mid-June. Up to 8 inches of wind-driven snow is possible over this remote part of the "Last Frontier," according to NWS-Fairbanks. | |
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Daily Reporter
2014-08-30 17:51:00
The city of Fairbanks has smashed - or, perhaps more appropriately, soaked - its record for wettest summer. A shower on Friday pushed the summer precipitation total to 11.62 inches, breaking the record of 11.59 inches set in 1930. Records have been kept since 1906. Precipitation totals are taken at Fairbanks International Airport, one of the driest locations in the area. Spots like Chatanika and Eielson can get considerably more rain. "Since (the airport) got a lot, the other places probably got a whole lot," National Weather Service meteorologist Scott Berg told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. The total encompasses the precipitation received in June, July and August, not the specific dates that mark summer. Fairbanks endured its wettest June on record and second-wettest July. August has been dry by comparison, with 2.28 inches of rain heading into what's forecast to be a dry Sunday. | |
Comment: Imagine if the record rains continue into the fall and winter and you can see the possibility of the start of an impending Ice Age setting in.
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Rose Troup Buchanan
The Independent 2014-09-01 00:00:00
An Ecuadorean volcano is spewing ash five miles into the air, closely monitored by experts, after an eruption this weekend. Ash from the Tunguarahua volcano, whose name means 'Throat of Fire' in the local Quechua language, was blown five miles, 28,000 ft, into the sky and drifted west. It was the latest eruption from the volcano after a period of calm. Tunguarahua volcano erupted on 29 July, 4 August and then again on 19 August. Homes nearby have felt the strength of the eruptions, with the blast causing windows and roofs to vibrate. Over the weekend the volcano started spewing small pyroclastic flows, a fast-moving current of hot gas and rock which can reach speeds of 450mph and temperatures of about 1,000 C. | |
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David Rose
Daily Mail 2014-08-31 06:32:00
The speech by former US Vice-President Al Gore was apocalyptic. 'The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff,' he said. 'It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.' Those comments came in 2007 as Mr Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaigning on climate change. But seven years after his warning, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that, far from vanishing, the Arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in succession - with a surge, depending on how you measure it, of between 43 and 63 per cent since 2012. | |
Comment: Despite the abundant information revealing the fact that global warming is a myth, the mainstream media continues to entertain it even though global cooling is much more likely in our future.
For the big picture you will not find anywhere else, especially the mainstream media, check out: Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection | |
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thelocal.se
2014-08-31 10:01:00
The Skåne region of southern Sweden was hit suddenly by extreme rains on Sunday morning, with houses flooded, buses evacuated, and people having to swim to safety from their cars. Malmö, southern Sweden, received 20 millimetres of rain in under an hour on Sunday morning. One area near the town of Falsterbo rececived as much as 43 millimetres of rain during the night and early morning. "We usually issue a warning if there will be 35 millimetres within 12 hours," Lovisa Andersson, meteorologist at Sweden's weather agency SMHI, stated. A Danish weather agency, DMI, issued a warning for extreme rains in the Copenhagen area at around 10pm on Saturday night. There was no such warning on the Swedish side. | |
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thelocal.dk
2014-08-31 09:40:00
Streets, basements and landmarks like Tivoli were flooded from the 100mm of rain that soaked the capital region in the early Sunday hours. Parts of Copenhagen were a wet mess on Sunday after more than 100mm of rain pummelled the city in the early morning hours. Historic amusement park Tivoli, the prison Vestre Fængsel and the fortress Kastellet were among the locations reported as flooded by the Copenhagen Fire Brigade (Københavns Brandvæsen), which received 44 calls about water problems overnight.
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news.com.au
2014-08-28 09:02:00
A hapless tourist nearly drowned in a vicious attack by two geese when he strayed too close to their river nest in southern China. Stunned Lu Chen had been paddling in the stream to cool down in Gaowen Village in China's Guizhou province, when the two large birds flew at him. "I didn't know what was happening at first. There was a tremendous hissing and then they came straight at me," he said later.
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firstcoastnews.com
2014-08-28 08:34:00
Two whales died after becoming stranded on St. Augustine beach Thursday. Florida Fish and Wildlife said the whales were stranded on the beach near Ocean Trace Road during the afternoon. Officials said a pygmy sperm whale calf was stranded alive on the beach. Its mother late became stranded. FWC is not sure what happened, but they think the deaths may have been related to the birthing process. During birth, the mother will head towards shore and the calf will follow. A necropsy will be performed tomorrow by the FWC and the Georgia Aquarium field station. If anyone sees wildlife in distress, call 1-888-404-FWCC. | |
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An Upstate New York man is recovering after being attacked by a beaver last week. WHAM-TV reports Michael Cavanaugh was in a kayak on Irondequoit Creek, about 7 miles outside of Rochester, when a beaver jumped out of the water and knocked him overboard on Tuesday, June 10. The Lima, N.Y., resident was pulled underwater, bitten on his back and suffered deep puncture wounds on his arm. "I heard my name called out from the shop and I ran out the door to see a guy getting pulled into the water," BayCreek Paddling Center trainer Nate Reynolds told the ABC affiliate of the attack on Monday. "It was like watching a horror film." According to UPI, Reynolds had to hit the beaver with a paddle multiple times to get it to let go of Cavanaugh, killing the rodent. The paddling center temporarily closed so animal control could find its carcass and test it for rabies.
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Marjorie Sturgeon
JRN.com 2014-08-31 22:04:00
Storms pushed through the area eastern Nebraska and western Iowa Sunday afternoon. Some of the heaviest damage was in Denison, Iowa, with toppled trees, powerlines and a flooded highway. The National Weather Service reported strong wind gusts, hail and heavy rain with these storms. | |
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KSN.com
2014-08-31 22:01:00
Westar is reporting over 5,000 people across several Kansas counties are without power as of 9p.m. The largest county without power is Riley County, which is the location of Fort Riley and Kansas State University. About 1/6th of the residents in the county are without power. Nemaha County, which is Northeast of Riley County has about 500 people without power, or about half of the households serviced by Westar. Westar has not released a time-table of when power will return to those people. | |
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Antonio Antenucci and Daniel Prendergast
New York Post 2014-08-31 20:55:00
Two people were struck by lightning Sunday when a freak thunderstorm swept through the area - causing massive flooding to area roadways, grounding several flights at local airports and cancelling many other Labor Day weekend events. Officials said the lightning struck beachgoers enjoying a day at Orchard Beach Park in The Bronx around 5 p.m. when the skies suddenly turned dark and gave way to a torrential downpour that lasted about a half hour. They were rushed to Jacobi Hospital in stable condition, according to the FDNY. The heavy rains also wreaked havoc on city highways, including the impassable Major Deegan Expressway. Tennis action was halted at the US Open in Queens and organizers of the Electric Zoo festival on Randall's Island were forced to cancel the remainder of the festival for concert goers safety. "Due to extreme weather conditions, the festival has shut down for the remainder of the day," organizers wrote on twitter. All three major airports - JFK, LaGuardia and Newark - reported significant delays due to the storm. | |
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Boston.com
2014-08-31 17:58:00
The fire department says the men were injured at Orchard Beach on Pelham Bay in the Bronx on Sunday evening as bad storms rolled through the area. The men are being treated at a hospital. The extent of their injuries is unknown. The lightning strike happened as heavy thunderstorms swept through the city. Torrential rain, thunder and lightning interrupted Labor Day weekend celebrations, halted play at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in Queens and forced the early end to a musical festival on an East River island. Dozens of commercial flights into the city's airports were delayed because of the severe weather. | |
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Becky Oskin
Live Science 2014-08-31 10:41:00
A new volcanic eruption in southeast Iceland on Sunday (Aug. 31) fountained lava nearly 200 feet (60 meters) into the air. Lava is spewing from the same crack as a small eruption that occurred Friday (Aug. 29). The fissure slices through the 200-year-old Holuhraun lava field, between Bardarbunga volcano and Askja volcano. The "calm" eruption is 50 times more powerful than Friday's outburst, according to the Iceland Met Office. Lava was streaming from the fissure at 15.9 million gallons per minute (1,000 cubic meters per second) at 7 a.m. local time (3 a.m. ET) on Sunday, three hours after the flare-up began. The basalt flow covered almost 2 miles (3 kilometers) by mid-morning local time. The crack feeding the lava flow has also expanded to the north and south, and is now almost 1 mile (1.5 km) long. The eruption can be seen on live webcams here and here, though a storm severely lowered visibility Sunday. Emergency officials briefly raised the aviation alert warning to red, but no commercial flights have been affected. | |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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| Health & Wellness |
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Andrea Grossman
Tufts University, Health Sciences Campus 2014-09-01 15:06:00
Comment: Ignore the blatantly incorrect and damaging dietary recommendations mentioned in the article and instead see beneficial tips at the end. But do pay attention to the methodology, because it's a good way of retraining one's brain. It may be possible to train the brain to prefer healthy low-calorie foods over unhealthy higher-calorie foods, according to new research by scientists at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University and at Massachusetts General Hospital. Published online today in the journal Nutrition & Diabetes, a brain scan study in adult men and women suggests that it is possible to reverse the addictive power of unhealthy food while also increasing preference for healthy foods. "We don't start out in life loving French fries and hating, for example, whole wheat pasta," said senior and co-corresponding author Susan B. Roberts, Ph.D., director of the Energy Metabolism Laboratory at the USDA HNRCA, who is also a professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University and an adjunct professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine. "This conditioning happens over time in response to eating - repeatedly! - what is out there in the toxic food environment." Scientists have suspected that, once unhealthy food addiction circuits are established, they may be hard or impossible to reverse, subjecting people who have gained weight to a lifetime of unhealthy food cravings and temptation. To find out whether the brain can be re-trained to support healthy food choices, Roberts and colleagues studied the reward system in thirteen overweight and obese men and women, eight of whom were participants in a new weight loss program designed by Tufts University researchers and five who were in a control group and were not enrolled in the program. | |
Comment: The key mechanism to influencing one's brain is retraining one's gut bacteria: Gut bacteria - puppet masters? In an ecosystem within us, microbes evolved to sway food choices
Also, consider the fact, that compromised health means lesser resistance to viruses, such as Ebola. Knowledge protects and ignorance endangers. A terrible virus such as this spreads terror and confusion, but being aware is the best protection that we have. One of the most efficient ways of strengthening the immune system and also losing weight is through adopting a Ketogenic Diet. | |
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Joanne Eglash
Examiner.com 2014-06-13 11:49:00
Ding-dong, the sandwich is dead. That rewriting of the "Wizard of Oz" song could become the mantra of low-carb dieters who are cheering as Time magazine reversed its previous views on saturated fat on Thursday. In addition, the "Today" show quickly followed, reporting on a new study showing no link between heart disease and the consumption of foods such as butter, bacon and beef. "I do agree butter, along with other saturated fats like poultry skin, coconut oil, full fat dairy and certain cuts of red meat, are no longer the enemy," NBC's diet expert Joy Bauer said Thursday. "And unfortunately when fat was vilified back in the 1970s, we replaced those fats with...you guessed it...refined carbohydrates." However, she cautioned that it's not time yet to start pouring massive amounts of butter over every food you eat. Instead, she does urge that we lose our fear of fats and lower the amounts of refined starch that we consume. Comment: Increasing saturated fat consumption is only effective as long as carbohydrate consumption in any form is gradually reduced to 50 grams per day or lower. It is important to educate yourself about the ketogenic diet before embarking on any dietary change. Bauer echoed the message in a new book that's attracting unprecedented attention from experts: "The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet." Investigative journalist Nina Teicholz devoted years to proving the message of that title: Low-carb high-fat (LCHF) diets can reverse the epidemic of obesity and linked conditions such as diabetes. | |
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On August 27, CDC whistleblower William Thompson came out of the shadows and admitted he had omitted vital data from a 2004 study on the MMR vaccine and its connection to autism. Thompson's official statement was released through his Cincinnati attorney, Rick Morgan. The key piece in Thompson's statement is: Everything else in Thompson's statement is backfill and back-pedaling and legal positioning and self-protection. | |
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Stephen Gbadamosi And Olayinka Olukoya, With Agency Reports
Nigerian Tribune 2014-08-31 00:00:00
Countries across the world battle to contain the spreads of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), thekiller ailment appears to be devising means of circumventing efforts to stop it, researchers have said. Experts claim that the virus is "rapidly and continually mutating, making it harder to diagnose and treat." This is just as former President Olusegun Obasanjo declared, on Saturday, that the index case, Patrick Sawyer, in a "devilish" connivance with some Liberian authorities, intentionally brought the disease to Nigeria. He also noted that the disease, which he said had become a global problem, had been taking a toll on Nigeria's economy, charging the Federal Government to partner the World Health Organisation (WHO), European Union (EU) and government of America in containing the virus. Sunday Tribune's finding showed that result of a research by a team of American scientistsindicates that the initial patients diagnosed with the virus in Sierra Leone revealed almost 400 genetic modifications, concluding that this could render current treatment ineffective and put vaccines that are being worked on for its cure in danger. Comment: Waiting for vaccines that probably won't work is a bad idea. There are much better ways to protect yourself. See: Are you prepping your diet? and Scientists stumble across the obvious treatment for Ebola: tobacco | |
Comment: BigPharma will no doubt produce an Ebola vaccine, but it's use could have devastating consequences. There are several reasons why being vaccinated might NOT be such a good idea:
1) If the vaccine fails - and vaccines have a solid track record of failure - those who were used as guinea pigs would be predisposed to infection. 2) A vaccine may exert selective pressure on the virus to produce "mutants" capable of being more pathogenic. See perfect examples here: Fail: Infant Hep B vaccines perform shamefully; time to end them? , Vaccine not virus responsible for Spanish flu and Children Who Get Flu Vaccine Have Three Times Risk Of Hospitalization For Flu, Study Suggests. 3) The Black Death which killed scores of people around the world was an Ebola-like virus 4) Mother nature doesn't need our help to create a deadly mutated virus: New Light on the Black Death: The Viral and Cosmic Connection. 5) Ebola is supposedly transmitted directly, but there are indications that it has become air-borne | |
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Press TV
2014-09-01 03:58:00
Swedish medical authorities are investigating a possible case of Ebola after a young man who recently had traveled to an Ebola-hit West African country was hospitalized in the capital Stockholm due to high fever and stomach pains. According to local media, the unidentified man had developed high fever and stomach pains and was taken to Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm on Sunday to receive medical care. "Yes, we have a suspected [Ebola] case, but it's not confirmed," a spokeswoman for Stockholm County Council said on condition of anonymity.Communicable disease specialist Ake Ortqvist said, "The risk that this is an Ebola case is minimal, but we are handling this with extreme care." He further noted that that the probability for an Ebola outbreak in Sweden is very low."The virus is not airborne, but is spread among humans through direct or indirect contact via blood and other fluids," he pointed out. Comment: This is criminally ignorant to say that the virus only spreads via blood or other fluids, when lots of information show otherwise. Perhaps the specialist is ignorant of this and/or just sticks to his preconceived ideas about the virus or he is knowingly spreading lies. Lies that will only result in many more people being exposed to the virus. More than 100 healthcare workers have died of Ebola and these are people who take the outmost precautions, when dealing with infected Ebola victims and yet they all died. The question about Ebola that no one can answer | |
Comment: Knowledge protects and ignorance endangers. Being aware is the best protection that we have. Check out the following for more information:
Pestilence, the Great Plague, and the Tobacco Cure Vitamin C: A cure for Ebola And of course there is the matter of strengthening the immune system through adopting aKetogenic Diet and doing EE, a gentle and effective breathing program, that brings balance to the body, mind and soul, eliminates toxins from the body and strengthens the immune system. | |
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Katie Valentine
Think Progress.orgThink ProgressThink Progress 2014-08-29 20:10:00
For the first time, Pennsylvania has made public 243 cases of contamination of private drinking wells from oil and gas drilling operations. As the AP reports, Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection posted details about the contamination cases online on Thursday. The cases occurred in 22 counties, with Susquehanna, Tioga, Lycoming, and Bradford counties having the most incidences of contamination. In some cases, one drilling operation contaminated the water of multiple wells, with water issues resulting from methane gas contamination, wastewater spills, and wells that simply went dry or undrinkable. The move to release the contamination information comes after years of the AP and other news outlets filing lawsuits and Freedom of Information Act requests from the DEP on water issues related to oil and gas drilling and fracking. The Pennsylvania DEP has been criticized for its poor record of providing information on fracking-related contamination to state residents. In April, a Pennsylvania Superior Court case claimed that due to the way DEP operates and its lack of public record, it's impossible for citizens to know about cases where private wells, groundwater and springs are contaminated by drilling and fracking. | |
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Todd C. Frankel
Washington Post 2014-08-31 06:47:00
The dreaded Ebola virus came to the children's hospital in the form of a 4-year-old boy. His diagnosis became clear three days after he was admitted. The Ola During hospital - the nation's only pediatric center - was forced to close its steel gates. Fear swelled. The boy died. The 30 doctors and nurses who had contact with him were placed in quarantine, forced to nervously wait out the 21 days it can take for the virus to emerge. And remaining staff so far have refused to return to work. They, along with millions of others, are facing the worst Ebola outbreak in history. Already, the hardest-hit West African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have reported more than 3,000 cases, including the infections of 240 health-care workers. | |
Comment: Knowledge protects and ignorance endangers. A terrible virus such as this spreads terror and confusion, but being aware is the best protection that we have. Check out the following for more information:
Pestilence, the Great Plague, and the Tobacco Cure Vitamin C: A cure for Ebola And of course there is the matter of strengthening the immune system through adopting aKetogenic Diet. | |
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Kris Gunnars
Healthy Debates 2014-08-31 00:00:00
Unhealthy foods are the main reason the world is fatter and sicker than ever before. Surprisingly, some of these foods are considered healthy by many people. Here are 15 "health foods" that are really junk foods in disguise. 1. Processed "Low-Fat" and "Fat-Free" Foods The "war" on saturated fat is the biggest mistake in the history of nutrition. It was based on weak evidence, which has now been completely debunked (1). When this started, processed food manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon and started removing the fat from foods. But there's a huge problem... food tastes horrible when the fat has been removed. That's why they added a whole bunch of sugar to compensate. Saturated fat is harmless, but added sugar is incredibly harmful when consumed in excess (2, 3). The words "low-fat" or "fat-free" on a packaging usually mean that it is a highly processed product that is loaded with sugar. | |
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Pooja Bhagat
International Business Times 2014-08-31 15:49:00
Shocking revelations about oxycodone, which is a commonly used opioid painkiller, have emerged during the Overdose Awareness Day held on Sunday. As per the report released by National Coronial Information Systems, oxycodone has even surpassed notorious drug heroine with respect to being the deadliest opioid drug in Australia. During the span of five years from 2007 to 2011, more than 3000 deaths have been recorded due to overdose on this opioid-based prescription medicine. This number has surpassed the deaths caused in the same span of time by heroin overdose. As per the report, about three quarters of all opioid drug deaths are results of an overdose, particularly when these drugs were taken with other deadly narcotics and/or alcohol. The acting CEO of Penington Institute, Wendy Dodd, shared some serious concerns with Herald Sun over these revelations. Penington Institute is a non-profit organization, which works closely with the issue of problematic drugs. "Heroin deaths appear to be declining which is great news, but pharmaceutical overdoses are rising alongside spiralling prescription rates," she said. | |
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Sayer Ji
Greenmedinfo.com 2014-08-30 14:03:00
The average American consumes their body weight annually in this cancer-causing substance, and yet hospitals freely feed it to their cancer patients, oblivious to the harm it does. Hospitals feed cancer patients sugar and high carbohydrate diets for a reason: they are abysmally ignorant of the role of nutrition in health and disease - hence their burgeoning growth and packed rooms. Even though the science itself shows - at least since the mid-20's with Otto Warburg's cancer hypothesis - that tumors prefer to utilize sugar fermentation to produce energy rather than the much more efficient oxygen-based phosphorylation* - hospitals have actually invited corporations likeMcDonald's to move into their facilities to 'enhance' their patient's gustatory experience, presumably to provide comfort and take the edge off of the painful surgery, radiation and chemo treatments erroneously proffered to them as the only reasonable 'standard of care.' But the times are changing, with new research requiring these medical institutions to reform their dietary strategies, at least if they wish to claim that their interventions are in fact 'evidence-based' ... | |
Comment: Solve Your Health Issues with a Ketogenic Diet:
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Julie Steenhuysen
Reuters 2014-08-29 10:21:00
A study of some of the earliest Ebola cases in Sierra Leone reveals more than 300 genetic changes in the virus as it has leapt from person to person. These rapid changes could blunt the effectiveness of diagnostic tests and experimental treatments now in development, say researchers. "We found the virus is doing what viruses do. It's mutating," says study lead author Pardis Sabeti of Harvard University and the Broad Institute. The study is based on samples from 78 people in Sierra Leone, all of whose infections could be traced to a faith healer whose claims of a cure attracted Ebola patients from Guinea, where the virus first took hold. The findings, published in Science , suggests the virus is mutating quickly and in ways that could affect current diagnostics and future vaccines and treatments, such as GlaxoSmithKline's Ebola vaccine, which was just fast-tracked to begin clinical trials, or the antibody drug ZMapp, being developed by California biotech Mapp Biopharmaceutical. | |
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RT
2014-08-30 17:57:00
Extremely low levels of THC compound, a chemical found in marijuana, may slow down or halt the progression of Alzheimer's disease, US neuroscientists have found, thus laying the ground for the development of effective treatment in the future. In recent research published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, scientists from University of South Florida revealed their findings, that may shed light on controversial therapeutic qualities of marijuana. Comment: A far safer and more useful means of halting the progression of Alzheimer's would be to switch to a ketogenic diet. This diet is helpful in enhancing the immune system and has been found to alleviate symptoms of numerous diseases. In addition to a healthy diet, researchers have long been aware that fewer smokers get Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases than non-smokers. Despite all the mainstream negative propaganda surrounding the use of tobacco products, pure additive-free tobacco actually has numerous health benefitsand may also be a good preventive for Ebola! | |
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Kyle Olson
EagNews 2014-08-31 06:52:00
Students arrived on the first day of school and realized a lot had changed over the summer. The lunch line they used to visit to pick up pizza and french fries now had "same school lunch food as the others with more salad." SCnow.com reports: Sophomore Madeline Taylor noticed that hardly anyone was eating. "The entire rest of the day all I heard about was how hungry everyone was," she said. "I then became very concerned about what would happen if this continued everyday throughout the school year." | |
Comment: The problem of the SAD (Standard American Diet) has been with us a long time and has done serious damage. In a time when the Ebola virus is spreading across the world, a healthy diet is crucial to our well-being, and Mrs. Obama replacing pizza with salads is simply not going to cut it:
Low carbohydrate diets look good for the prevention and treatment of cancer The ketogenic diet: An overview Gluten causes nerve damage The long list of hidden gluten: Unsafe ingredients for gluten sensitivity | |
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Joanne Eglash
The Examiner 2014-08-23 03:14:00
Life has not been easy for tiny Blake Shore and his family. When he was only one day old, he underwent open-heart surgery to remove a large tumor blocking his blood flow. And although the months since have involved medical challenges and adjustment, the baby is now celebrating his first birthday with a cake catering to the ketogenic diet needed to help control his seizures, reportedHigh Point Enterprise on Aug. 21. "He's started a ketogenic diet, which is a high-fat, low-carb diet that has almost no sugar," Amber Shore explained. "So as you can imagine, it was difficult figuring out what to do for his first birthday cake, but luckily we found a recipe." Blake's condition is called tuberous sclerosis. Although benign, the tumors cause problems based on their location. His brain tumors, for example, have caused up to 20 seizures daily. "That's been our biggest battle right now," revealed Amber. "We'll see him learn something, and then he'll have a seizure, and it almost instantly erases what he's learned. He just hasn't been able to take off developmentally because of these seizures." But miracles in the medical world do happen, and Amber is grateful for what her baby has achieved. Implementing a ketogenic low carb diet has made a dramatic difference. | |
Comment: Before reaching out for that milk, see Why Milk Is So Evil.
For more information, see: The Ketogenic Diet - An Overview. In fact, regardless of your health problems, prepping your diet is the way to go: -Ebola mutating very fast! Scientists dig into Ebola's deadly DNA for clues -Black Death found to be Ebola-like virus -Happy New Year 2014? -SOTT Talk Radio show #70: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made? -New Light on the Black Death: The Viral and Cosmic Connection | |
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Anne LeMind
The Mind Unleashed 2014-08-02 00:40:00
A total of 175 chemicals known to be harmful for health are used in food packaging on both sides of the Atlantic, in the European Union countries and the United States, according to a study published by a Swiss non-governmental organization. As the study authors point out, the use of many of these substances, which are linked to cancer, hormonal disorders or infertility in other products has already been limited or is to be prohibited. However, these regulations do not concern food packaging due to gaps in legislation. Researchers of the Food Packaging Forum, a non-governmental organization in Switzerland, compared two lists of hazardous chemicals - the so-called 'Substitute it now!' list, also known as Sin, and the TEDX list of endocrine disruptors - with three official lists of substances allowed to be used in the manufacture of food packaging, in particular, the ESCO Working Group list of non-plastic food contact substances by European Food Safety Authority, Annex I of EC 10/2011which includes the allowed plastic food contact substances and the so-called Pew list of food additives authorized in the United States. | |
Comment: Comment: "The best way to ensure that you avoid these chemicals ending up in your body would be to steer clear of packaged food all together. The alternative?" Read more aboutPackaging - unwrapped:
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Increasebrainpower.com
I2014-08-31 00:00:00
n life and in fiction we see power "going to the head" of a leader or other person in a position of authority over others. We've all watched this happen in our experience. Some of the most common effects are feelings of superiority and the poor treatment of subordinates. We also see the more dangerous aspects of power trips, such as when those in power make mistakes on a large scale due to what we might consider their arrogance. The heads of large corporations ignore common sense or advice and make big moves that prove disastrous, for example. The underestimating of the costs of wars by political and military leaders is another example. Comment: Most of these heads of state and corporations are actually psychopaths. They have risen to positions of power because that is what they crave and they will do anything to achieve their aims, no matter the cost to society. In most of these cases, these are not 'mistakes' or 'underestimating' the costs of war because they could not care less.Their arrogance and feelings of superiority often lead to their demise, but during their monstrous reign and fall they force the society of normal humans to suffer the devastating consequences of their actions. Psychopathy and the CEO: Top executives have four times the incidence of psychopathy as the rest of us Psychopaths run the world How much does power really affect our thinking though? It's a question that recent research has looked at. More specifically, researchers have asked if power creates illusions of control. Does it cause the holder to overestimate his or her ability to control or affect outcomes? The answer seems to be a definite yes. To some extent we actually lose our ability to realistically assess matters and our ability to control events when we are put in a position of power. | |
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"Wizard of Oz" heroine Dorothy only had to click her ruby red slippers together and they would spirit her home to Kansas.
Now, an Indian high-tech start-up is promising to do the same in real life with a new, GPS-enabled smart sports shoe that vibrates to give the wearer directions. The fiery red sneakers, which will also count the number of steps taken, distance travelled and calories burned, will go on sale in September under the name LeChal, which means "take me along" in Hindi. The shoes come with a detachable Bluetooth transceiver that links to a smartphone app to direct the wearer using Google maps, sending a vibrating signal to indicate a left or right turn. They are the brainchild of 30-year-old Krispian Lawrence and Anirudh Sharma, 28, two engineering graduates who founded their tech start-up Ducere in a small apartment in 2011 with backing from angel investors and now employ 50 people. "We got this idea and realised that it would really help visually challenged people, it would work without any audio or physical distractions," said Lawrence in an interview with AFP. | |
Comment: What about the safety of the patient immersed in wireless technology?
WiFi detrimental to health, New Zealand study suggests Cell phone could damage your sperm Cell Phone Use Increases Likelihood of Mouth Cancer | |
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Ellie Zolfagharifard
Daily Mail 2014-08-31 06:55:00
Brain-wave sensing machines have been used to 'telepathically' control everything from real-life helicopters to characters in a computer game. Now the technology has gone a step further by allowing someone in India to send an email to his colleague in France using nothing but the power of his mind. The researchers used electroencephalography (EEG) headsets to record electrical activity from neurons firing in the brain, and convert the words 'hola' and 'ciao' into binary. | |
Comment: For fascinating discussions covering all things remotely "paranormal" check out SOTT Blogtalk Radio:
Into the Mystic: Interview with Laura Knight-Jadczyk Into the Supernatural: Interview with Parapsychologist Stephen Braude | |
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| High Strangeness |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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Juice Rap News
RT 2014-08-31 09:04:00
The wickedly satirical Juice Rap News casts a discerning eye over the remarkable series of events over the last few weeks. From Gaza to Syria, ISIS to Ukraine, sinkholes to Ebola, and Ferguson to Robin Williams, the world has been experiencing a seemingly endless series of disturbing events: how do we manage to deal with all the painful ironies and bloody tragedies of these times?
Watch more at http://www.youtube.com/ | ||
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The Siberian Times
Siberian 'suslik' needs human rescue from passing motorists on Olkhon island in Lake Baikal.2014-08-28 16:23:00
A watchful couple notice the ground squirrel wedged in its hole in the middle of a dirt track on the popular tourist island. A female voice tells the driver to slow down and asks: 'What's up there?' A male voice answers: 'Is he stuck?' His companion says: 'Let me have a look... we've got to help', and walks out of the car. As she examines the marooned creature in its hole, he shouts: 'Don't touch him Tan (Tanya), he can bite!' |
