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Adrian Salbuchi
RT.com 2014-09-03 16:35:00
Once again Israel is very much in the news these days, especially after its new bout of aerial bombardment of Gaza. As if under a knee-jerking hypnotic trance since these raids began in early July, the Western media again went into "poor-little-Israel-is-only- Anyone daring to say otherwise will feel the full impact of the "A" word: "anti-Semitism!" That dreaded insult is unleashed like a bolt from Zion's "Olympus" upon all who criticize Israel! Jews are a very tiny group of people: just under 16 million worldwide in a planet where over 7 billion people live and toil. That's a mere 0.2 percent of the global population; the other 99.8 percent of mankind is a wide assortment of ethnic and religious groups. That in our day and age any man, woman or child should be attacked or harassed on account of race, creed, nationality, ideology, social or physical characteristics is completely unacceptable. As I mentioned earlier, the world needs to come to grips with the age-old tragedy of Jews being so often discriminated and persecuted. However, continuously crying "Anti-Semitism!" to stifle all criticism of Israel's seventy years of genocidal attacks on the Palestinians does not and should not work anymore. | |
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| Puppet Masters |
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RT
2014-09-03 13:22:00
France has suspended delivery of the first of two Mistral helicopter carrier ships to Russia, due to events in eastern Ukraine. "The situation is serious. Russia's recent actions in the east of Ukraine contravene the fundamental principles of European security," said a statement from the office of President Francois Hollande. "The president of the Republic has concluded that despite the prospect of ceasefire, which has yet to be confirmed and put in place, the conditions under which France could authorise the delivery of the first helicopter carrier are not in place." As the rift over Ukraine has widened, Russian officials have repeatedly said that they would accept the French government's failure to deliver the ships, as long as it paid the penalty for breaking the contract, which, could potentially exceed the cost of the ships themselves. "This is not a tragedy, though of course the news is unpleasant. It will not affect our armament plans. We will act in accordance with international laws and the statutes of the contract," said Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov, in a statement. The two ships were commissioned by Russia in 2011 at a cost of $1.6 billion. The first of these, the Vladivostok, was due to come into service at the end of this year, with the second, the Sevastopol, due to be completed in 2015. France's suspension does not fall under the sectoral sanctions the EU and the US imposed upon Russia for purported meddling in the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, introduced last month. That raft of sanctions did not cover deals signed before their imposition. But it could be covered under new sanctions the EU is expected to introduce this week, which may earn France a temporary reprieve from compensation under the terms of the contract. | |
Comment: Of course NATO and the EU are not forcing France to suspend the sale! France is completely free to make her own decision! They are just introducing the laws which are making the sale forbidden, which coincidentally dovetails with NATO and EU policy towards Russia. It's all a coincidence! Really!
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Pravda.ru
2014-09-02 13:32:00
NATO is skeptical about the chances of Kiev in the fight against the militia of the Donbass. In fact,the alliance recognized that the current Ukrainian authorities have lost the military conflict, German publication Der Spiegel wrote. The article in the newspaper said that after the militia took control of the airport of Luhansk, the superiority of militia forces became obvious. A senior military official said that NATO radically changed its attitude towards the military situation in Ukraine. | |
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Pravda.Ru
2014-09-03 13:21:00
The government of Ukraine is launching the project called "The Wall." Within the scope of the project, Ukraine intends to build a wall on the border with Russia, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk said at a cabinet meeting on 3 September. "We are starting "The Wall" project. This involves the construction of a real border between Ukraine and Russia," he said. | |
Comment: It's official: the Ukie government has completely lost it.
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Xavianthaze.blogspot.fr
2014-08-31 15:27:00
With the recent events in Ferguson, Americans are taking a closer look at the rise of police brutality now run amok nearly everywhere. The real highlight of this sad tragedy is the awareness it has shed on the absurd militarization of the police force. An event predicted by numerous scholars of the New World Order including myself. A roided out militarized police force is always a bad sign that your country is heading in the wrong direction. While the subject of racist pigs abusing and killing blacks and ethnic minorities in America isn't a new one, in fact it's a time honored tradition- the stark realization that the police are rolling through towns with armored tanks and weapons supplied by the military is new. Here is a short list of the Hoelice committing acts of brutality against minorities in America In 1977 the Puerto Rican community of Chicago rebelled against Police violence: Roots of the uprising The uprising began on June 12, the day after the very first downtown Día de San Juan parade ever. A cop named Thomas Munyon was chasing 20-year-old Arcelis Cruz and his friend through an alley near Damen and Division. Munyon drew his weapon and fired, hitting Cruz in the leg. This was witnessed by a group of people at the corner who attempted to come to Cruz' aid. When the rest of Munyon's cop squad showed up, they beat the crowd with their nightsticks and even let attack dogs loose on the people. This savage attack by the cops enraged the growing crowd, which began to fight back. | |
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RT
2014-09-03 12:36:00
The US and its allies are preparing to stage a military exercise in western Ukraine, close to the Polish border, in mid-September. The joint drill will involve over 1,000 troops from the US and Europe, as well as from Ukraine. Initially planned for mid-July, the exercise - code-named 'Rapid Trident' - was halted due to a significant escalation in the conflict between Kiev and the southeastern regions of Ukraine. Now, as the fighting between the two sides continues, the US Army's European Command (EUCOM) plans to go ahead and stage the exercise on September 16-26. | |
Comment: All of these things they report as "planning to do", they've already done.
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RT
2014-09-03 12:14:00
Farmers in Europe affected by the Russian food embargo will not receive full compensation, German Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt has said. He wanted to clarify the situation to avoid people getting the wrong impression that "there would be one-to-one compensation. There can't be that," AFP quotes Schmidt's Tuesday interview on German public radio. However, Schmidt promised there would be compensation in the form of support to get a better "grip on the market." He also urged people to consume more. "Eat! You should eat, I should eat, we should eat... Beginning in the early morning, five times a day," Schmidt said. Later on Tuesday Schmidt met with French counterpart Stephane Le Foll and Polish Agriculture Minister Marek Sawicki to discuss the effect the Russian food embargo has had to the agricultural sector, ahead of a wider gathering of EU agriculture ministers in Brussels on Friday. "Our aim must be to minimize the impact for those concerned, and also find new markets to cushion against future crises," Schmidt said in a statement after the meeting. | |
Comment: Ultimately it's the people that pay the price of the psychopaths in charge who care about nothing but fun and games. Even now they are announcing new sanctions. There is no other explanation as to why the EU keeps doing things that are counterproductive other than to suggest that the U.S. is in fact controlling the EU.
As Ukraine is losing the war the West escalates with more Russia sanctions | |
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Thierry Meyssan
While for the past 35 years Saudi Arabia has supported all the jihadist movements to the most extremist, Riyadh seems suddenly to have changed policy. Threatened in its very existence by a possible attack from the Islamic Emirate, Saudi Arabia has given the signal for the destruction of the organization. But contrary to appearances, the EIS remains supported by Turkey and Israel who sell their looted oil.Voltaire Network 2014-09-03 14:49:00 Preliminary: the EIS is a Western creation The unanimity of the Security Council against the Islamic Emirate (EIS) and the passage of the 2170 resolution are only a facade attitude. This cannot induce us to forget the state support provided the EIS and which it still has.
To take only the recent events in Iraq, everyone has observed that EIS fighters entered the country in columns of brand new Humvees, straight from US American Motors factories and armed with Ukrainian materials, also new. With this equipment they seized the US weapons of the Iraqi Army. Also, everyone was amazed that the EIS had civil administrators instantly capable of taking over the management of the conquered territories and communications specialists that promote its activities on the Internet and on television; personnel obviously trained at Fort Bragg. | |
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RT
2014-09-02 15:32:00
Slovakia initiated reverse deliveries of natural gas to Ukraine on Tuesday with enough capacity to cover up to a fifth of the country's needs. Twenty-seven million cubic meters of gas will be supplied daily, Vagram Chuguryan of Slovakia's national pipeline operator Eustream told RIA Novosti. Some technical work and adjustments need to be done before delivery is fully functional, which should be by March 1, 2015, he added. Slovakia can gradually reach a maximum supply capacity of about 10 billion cubic meters annually sometime in 2015. "If we put together three reverse points in Slovakia, Hungary and Poland then we can reach 25 billion cubic meters a year in the mid-term which would provide the solution Ukraine needs at the moment," Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico told reporters. The decision to start the so-called reverse gas flows is part of the EU's response to Gazprom's decision to cut supplies to Kiev on June 16. | |
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Craig Whitlock
Washington Post 2014-09-01 14:52:00
The Pentagon is preparing to open a drone base in one of the remotest places on Earth: an ancient caravan crossroads in the middle of the Sahara. After months of negotiations, the government of Niger, a landlocked West African nation, has authorized the U.S. military to fly unarmed drones from the mud-walled desert city of Agadez, according to Nigerien and U.S. officials. The previously undisclosed decision gives the Pentagon another surveillance hub - its second in Niger and third in the region - to track Islamist fighters who have destabilized parts of North and West Africa. It also advances a little-publicized U.S. strategy to tackle counterterrorism threats alongside France, the former colonial power in that part of the continent. Although the two allies have a sporadic history of quarreling when it comes to military action, U.S. and French troops have been working hand in glove as they steadily expand their presence in impoverished West Africa. Both countries are alarmed by the presence of jihadist groups, some affiliated with al-Qaeda, that have taken root in states whose governments are unable to exert control over their own territory. In Niamey, Niger's capital, U.S. and French forces set up neighboring drone hangars last year to conduct reconnaissance flights over Mali, where about 1,200 French soldiers are trying to suppressa revolt that erupted in 2012. | |
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RT
2014-09-03 14:54:00
Vladimir Putin's remark about "taking Kiev in two weeks" was taken out of context and its meaning was distorted, Moscow said, adding that it's ready to publish the president's conversation with the European Commission head. Moscow may reveal the full recording of the controversial phone call if European Commission president, Jose Manual Barroso, doesn't object in the next two days, Russia's permanent representative to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, said. La Repubblica newspaper earlier reported that outgoing European Commission president, Jose Manual Barroso, disclosed the content of his telephone conversation with the Russian president before the EU summit, which took place in Berlin at the weekend. According to the Italian daily, Barroso quoted Putin as saying: "If I want to, I can take Kiev in two weeks" after the issue of the presence of Russian troops in Ukraine was raised. The EU official said that it was a "threat" by the head of the Russian state, which may be fulfilled in case of further European sanctions against Russia. Presidential aide, Yury Ushakov, stressed that whether these words concerning Russian troops taking Kiev were pronounced by Putin or not, "this quote was taken out of context and had a very different meaning." | |
Comment: Even out of context, it hardly seems a threat, just a statement of fact. See also:
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PressTV
2014-09-03 14:14:00
Press TV has interviewed political analyst Gordon Duff to talk about the sanctions the European Union has imposed on Russia over the crisis in Ukraine. What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview: Press TV: What are you reading from the latest situation coming out of Moscow, now basically saying that Ukraine should look at making this a state, as far as... what exactly do you think [Russian President Vladimir] Putin means by this? Duff: I think that he is engaged in a political lawn game, playing with what he looks at as an attempted and resurgent NATO. NATO lost its military heath many years ago that it is trying to recreate its military presence right on Russia's border, built out of Polish artillery units, American missile systems, America's Navy in his backyard in the Black Sea and the American bases in Romania, while the heart of NATO, the third army, of 500,000 men in the middle of Germany, those people are long since gone. The real NATO is long since gone. NATO right now is playing a simple political game, and frankly, I think he sees signs that NATOs lawn game is to move into Russia itself and do the same thing in Russia that they have done in Kiev. | |
Comment: Duff is half-right. The West probably does have designs on stealing Russia's natural resources. But what Duff is missing or not saying is that the U.S. is a psychopathic regime whose greed is limitless and thirst for death and destruction is never sated. It just so happens that Putin had the temerity to stand up to the American psychopathic bullies, so now they are hell-bent on bringing Putin down a peg or two. Too bad for them that they can't see beyond their own wishful thinking and realize how such an attitude will lead to their own destruction.
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RT
2014-09-03 14:40:00
The new British public inquiry into the death of ex-FSB operative Aleksandr Litvinenko is unlikely to be really open and fair, the Russian Foreign Ministry has said in a statement. The ministry's release on Wednesday was a follow up to a move by Russia's top federal law enforcement body - the Investigative Committee - that officially refused to cooperate with the British side over fears that the inquiry would not be open. Russian diplomats noted that the Investigative Committee had been fully participating in the process and voluntarily assisted the British coroner who investigated the case. The Russian agency shared evidence with the British police and other security services, but it expected to participate in the probe till its completion. However, when the British government announced in July this year that it was launching an open inquiry into Litvinenko's death, it specified that some evidence in the case would be considered classified and the hearings on them would be closed. Therefore, neither Russian law enforcement nor the Russian public would have access to this data, the Foreign Ministry concluded. Comment: You can be pretty certain Russia wasn't involved in any given scandal when they are the ones calling for truly unbiased and transparent investigations, while those asserting Russia's guilt refuse to present evidence. Witness MH17, for example. "We have to state that the new 'public inquiry' in London is not going to be public. Whatever evidence the British authorities possess, it is obvious now that the British government will not allow this information to be used in an open process with the participation of Russian investigators. It is hard to imagine that such an inquiry will be objective," reads the ministry's statement. "It is highly regrettable that after going all this way the British administration is either incapable or unwilling to hold a really open, transparent and unbiased investigation of this case." | |
Comment: See Joe Quinn's coverage of the Litvinenko Affair here:
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RT
2014-09-02 14:58:00
Chinese authorities have demanded Britain drop an inquiry into the progress of democratic reforms in Hong Kong, accusing it of "highly inappropriate" interference in its internal affairs. The UK Foreign Affairs Committee has been sent a letter from its Beijing counterpart after announcing plans in July to look into the state of democracy in Hong Kong. The territory was handed over to Chinese control in 1997, over a century-and-a-half after first being leased as a British Crown colony. The letter said the probe would be a "highly inappropriate act which constitutes interference in China's internal affairs," according to the BBC. The move would send "a wrong political signal to the outside world, and disrupted Hong Kong's political reform." It would also "have a negative impact on the relations between our countries." The Chinese committee urged British lawmakers to "act with caution on the issue of Hong Kong, bear in mind the larger picture of China-UK relations and Hong Kong's prosperity and stability, stop interfering in Hong Kong's affairs and cancel the inquiry on UK-Hong Kong relations." | |
Comment: Given what Edward Snowden has revealed about Hong Kong and China:
and this:
You have to wonder about the timing of Britain's feigned concern for Hong Kong's sovereignty.
By design? Snowden's selection of Hong Kong to break NSA Prism spying scandal will test China-US ties | |
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Ian Traynor
Guardian UK 2014-08-31 14:20:00 Comment: More nonsense propaganda from the Guardian. They're on a roll lately!
European Union leaders have given Russia a week to reverse course in Ukraine or face a new round of sanctions as Kiev warns it is on the brink of full-scale war with Moscow. Comment: Imagine being told you have a week to stop beating your spouse, otherwise the authorities will cancel your credit card. The demand is absurd, based on a fabricated premise. Unless the EU is really telling Russia that it has a week to stop taking the peaceful, diplomatic, international law-based approach and start using real force. In other words, start a war or face sanctions. Fears are growing that the confrontation on the EU's eastern borders could engulf the whole continent after Russia sent troops to back a new offensive by pro-Kremlin rebels in south-east Ukraine. Comment: They didn't, and shame on the Guardian for regurgitating such unsubstantiated garbage. The EU president, Herman Van Rompuy, said the 28 leaders meeting in Brussels had agreed to take "further significant steps" if Moscow did not back down. Comment: How can Moscow "back down" when it is not involved? | |
Comment: To get some perspective of what's really going on in Ukraine at present:
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Itar-Tass
2014-09-01 14:11:00
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that Russia would defend the rights of its citizens residing in Crimea to travel abroad. The European Union banned its embassies and visa centers in Russia from issuing visas, including Schengen, to Crimeans after Crimea separated from Ukraine and reunited with Russia on March 18 this year. Comment: That's the EU for you. No matter which narrative you believe (the true one, or the lie), this can only be seen as collective punishment. Even if Crimeans were held at gunpoint to vote for being part of Russia, they would not deserve to be punished in this way. And since that did not occur, this can only be seen as punishment for choosing to leave Ukraine. "Following a decision by the European Council, EU visas will be issued only to residents of Crimea in Ukraine, because Crimea is a part of this country (according to Brussels)," the European Commission said in its report in March. Lavrov described the ban as unlawful. "It is not based on any international legal document. On the contrary, the EU is violating commitments which its members took on under the European Convention on Human Rights," Lavrov told the students and professors of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) at the traditional annual meeting on Tuesday. Lavrov said that Russia's European partners were resorting to the most intricate and sophisticated means to create artificial barriers to Crimeans, who now hold Russian passports, to travel abroad. "We are actively fighting against (such policies) and I am sure that we will be able to ensure the rights of our citizens," Lavrov emphasized. | |
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| Society's Child |
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Mac Slavo
SHTFplan.com 2014-09-03 11:55:00
Well known Shadow Stats economist John Williams has warned time and again that the narrative being crafted by government statisticians, elite bankers and politicians is nothing but smoke and mirrors. With an election coming up in just a couple months, it's highly unlikely that they'll come out and tell us right now how fundamentally troubled our financial, economic and monetary systems really are. But that doesn't change the facts. The reality, as Williams notes in a recent interview with Greg Hunter's USA Watchdog, is that the U.S. economy is in severe trouble and we may be just months away from the beginning of the next leg down, especially for the U.S. Dollar. | |
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Itar-Tass
2014-09-01 14:05:00
Prosecutors in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) put the commander of the Donbass punitive battalion, Semyon Semyonchenko, on a police wanted list on Monday. The Donbass battalion, a voluntary armed unit, was set up in April this year to carry out a security operation against the supporters of the DPR. Earlier this year, Ukraine's parliament-appointed Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk awarded the Order of Bogdan Khemlnitsky III class to Semyonchenko who appeared at a briefing in Dnipropetrovsk, without wearing his balaclava for the first time, on Monday. The order, however, did not prevent a failed operation in east Ukraine. "Moreover, it does not rid Semyonchenko of responsibility for his doings," DPR prosecutors said. | |
Comment: The NAF (Novorussian Armed Forces) recently came into possession of documents listing commanders and troops (and all their personal information, including attack coordinates, orders, and offensive actions) after they were left by a fleeing Ukrainian Army unit. As the video below shows, these documents will hopefully be used in future to prosecute even more war criminals than Semyonchenko.
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Betsy McKay
The Wall Street Journal 2014-09-02 07:55:00
A third American missionary has been infected with Ebola while working in Liberia and is being treated in an isolation unit in the Monrovia hospital where he works. The man, a doctor, was treating obstetrics patients, not Ebola patients. He is the second missionary working for SIM USA, a Charlotte, N.C.-based Christian organization, to contract the deadly disease. It isn't known how the doctor was infected, SIM USA said in a statement Tuesday. He isolated himself as soon as he felt symptoms and "is doing well and is in good spirits," the organization said. "My heart was deeply saddened, but my faith was not shaken, when I learned another of our missionary doctors contracted Ebola," said Bruce Johnson, president of SIM USA. | |
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David Blair
The Telegraph 2014-09-03 07:30:00
A suspected Ebola patient caused panic in a market in Liberia's capital when he left a clinic to find food. The man was caught by four medical personnel wearing yellow protective suits and bundled into a vehicle. Video footage, which has not been independently verified, shows a frightened crowd gathered near the scene in the capital, Monrovia. [watch below] The man, clad in shorts and a red t-shirt, apparently resists the medics and tries to avoid being taken back to the Ebola clinic. He is eventually overcome and driven away. At least 1,378 people have been infected with the Ebola virus in Liberia, according to the World Health Organisation, and 694 have died so far. | |
Comment: What a sad state of affairs! The poor man might be a victim of Ebola and he is treated like a criminal. But can we blame the people who are afraid of being also infected by a deadly disease that spreads so fast and no one in the world has tried to find a vaccine for it before because it so far affected only African countries? Just this one story contains so many elements of what is wrong with our world.
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RIA Novosti
2014-09-03 02:36:00
The official statement by the Director General of Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency Dmitry Kiselev on the death of photojournalist Andrei Stenin. "Our colleague, photojournalist Andrei Stenin has been killed. It turned out that he was not taken prisoner. It turned out, no one planned to swap him for any Ukrainian military personnel or accuse him of terrorist activities. All of the announcements that we heard from the Ukrainians about Stenin's fate were lies. He died one month ago in a car that he was in while fulfilling his journalistic duties. The vehicle came under fire and burned down on a highway near Donetsk. | |
Comment: For Andrei's work, see here:
Russian war photographer Andrei Stenin who disappeared in Ukraine still missing: not a word from Kiev | |
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John Vibes
The Free Thought Project 2014-09-02 21:29:00
A Maryland middle school teacher was recently placed on leave after local police informed his school that he was the author of a novel where a school massacre was depicted. Patrick McLaw, a teacher at Mace's Lane Middle School allegedly wrote two books under the pen name, "Dr. K.S. Voltaer." He is currently being held in police custody without any formal charges filed against him for what was contained in one of those books. The book in question, titled The Insurrectionist, includes a school massacre that is described as the biggest in history. The synopsis for the book reads, "On 18 March 2902, a massacre transpired on the campus of Ocean Park High School, claiming the lives of nine hundred forty-seven individuals - the largest school massacre in the nation's history. And the entire country now begins to ask two daunting questions: How? and Why? After the federal government becomes involved, and after examining the bouquet of black roses that lies in front of the school's sign, it becomes evident that the hysteria is far from over." How police discovered that McLaw was the author of these books is still unknown. | |
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Alexandra Ulmer
Reuters 2014-09-02 15:39:00
Caracas - A member of Venezuela's Socialist Party has rolled out a variation of the classic Christian "Lord's Prayer" to implore beloved late leader Hugo Chavez for protection from the evils of capitalism. "Our Chavez who art in heaven, the earth, the sea and we delegates," red-shirted delegate Maria Estrella Uribe recited on Monday at the PSUV party Congress. "Hallowed be your name, may your legacy come to us so we can spread it to people here and elsewhere. Give us your light to guide us every day," she said in front of an image of Chavez. "Lead us not into the temptation of capitalism, deliver us from the evil of the oligarchy, like the crime of contraband, because ours is the homeland, the peace and life forever and ever. Amen. Viva Chavez!" she exclaimed to applause. | |
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Sylvia Obell
Essence 2014-08-25 20:58:00
Texas mother Kametra Barbour was pulled over and arrested at gunpoint in front of her children after police mistook her for a suspect on the loose. The police were responding to a 911 call reporting a driver who was waving a gun out of a "beige-or tan-colored Toyota occupied by four black men." The caller told police that the suspect fled down the highway before turning off at a certain highway exit. When the officers explored the exit they found Barbour's red Nissan Maxima and proceeded to arrest her despite the fact that her car did not match the caller's description. | |
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Lucy Hunter Johnston
The Independent 2014-09-01 18:48:00
Taking naked photos isn't illegal. Stealing them and publishing online is. Yesterday, pictures of women posing naked were stolen from their phones and posted on image sharing forum 4chan by an anonymous hacker, supposedly in exchange for Bitcoins. He claims he has more to come. The photos are intensely private, taken in intimate situations by trusted partners, and have now been shared millions of times, viewed by hordes of salivating strangers across the globe. Why? Because the images are of celebrities. Jennifer Lawrence, Rihanna, Cara Delevingne, Kate Bosworth, Kate Upton: talented, beautiful women whose only mistake was to choose a career which erroneously gives the public a belief that we own their bodies. I can understand the temptation to perform a speedy search. Just to see what the fuss is about, obviously. You're not a bad person: you abhor the man who leaked them, but the pictures are already out there, so the damage has been done. One extra person quickly flicking through isn't going to add to the hurt and humiliation. You aren't even going to masturbate over them, just 'inform' yourself, and it's not as if you haven't seen almost all of it before - Kate Upton's swimwear shoots? Rihanna's mesh dress? These women aren't known for their modesty; they use their bodies to sell their brand. Plus if they were stupid enough to take explicit pictures and leave them lying around on the iCloud where any half-decent hacker with the inclination could access them then, frankly, they deserve everything they get. They knew the risks. But this is utterly, breathtakingly, wrong. Taking naked photos isn't illegal. Stealing them is. Searching out these images is to be complicit in the crime. Lawrence's spokesperson has already released a scathing statement, warning that the authorities will "prosecute anyone who posts the stolen photos". And rightly so. These women had a reasonable expectation of privacy from Apple's iCloud. Serious questions need to be answered about how their protection was breached so disastrously, and what is being done to ensure the safety of other users. | |
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Yahoo
2014-09-01 18:36:00
The FBI and Apple were urgently investigating after an apparent massive hack of a cloud data service unleashed a torrent of intimate pictures of dozens of celebrities across the Internet. Anonymous posters to online message boards boasted of having nude images of scores of female stars including Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence and top model Kate Upton. Reports suggested hackers had "ripped" private images from Apple's iCloud online data storage, a potentially embarrassing -- and damaging -- breach for the California tech giant. "We take user privacy very seriously and are actively investigating this report," said Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris, the Re/code website reported. The FBI has also joined the hunt, other US reports said. "The FBI is aware of the allegations concerning computer intrusions and the unlawful release of material involving high profile individuals, and is addressing the matter," The Los Angeles Timesquoted Laura Eimiller, spokeswoman for the FBI in Los Angeles, as saying. "Any further comment would be inappropriate at this time," she added. | |
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RT
2014-09-02 23:29:00
Anonymous UK's website was recently targeted and taken down in the midst of a four-day privacy rights protest organized by the collective. The demonstration was held outside Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). A spokesman for the hacktivist group believes the targeted attack was carried out by GCHQ officials. The protest, which began outside Britain's Cheltenham-based spy base last Friday, was reportedly launched to highlight an ongoing assault on Britons' privacy rights against a backdrop of increasing mass surveillance. But prior to the main day of protest scheduled for Saturday, Anonymous UK's website was taken down. The incident occurred late Friday evening. Anonymous protest disrupts UK spy agency #GCHQ#OpGCHQhttps://t.co/This is not the first time the group's communications platforms have been shut down. A spokesman for the hacktivist collective, who runs its online radio station, insists Anonymous UK has been unjustly targeted by GCHQ on several occasions. "One of our servers was destroyed and our UK radio station has been shut down," the told RT on Friday, adding that the group's site was also targeted following the launch of a campaign to feed homeless people. | |
Comment: If Anonymous UK has attracted the attention of the GCHQ, they are probably doing something right. Keep up the good works hacktivists!
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David Ferguson
The Raw Story 2014-09-02 10:54:00
A Gulfport, Mississippi man says that he was repeatedly molested by a teacher at the conservative Christian school he attended in the 1990s, beginning when he was 14 years old and ending when he was 17. The Washington Blade reported that Jeff White said his teacher at Bethel Baptist School in Wills, Mississippi justified the abuse by calling it "ex-gay therapy," designed to make White "hate men." White told the Blade that he was enrolled at Bethel from 1996 to 1999 and that his appointments with the accused teacher took place every Wednesday. "He would rape me because I was gay and because it would make me hate men and make me change," White said in a July interview. White's parents sent him to the school when he came out to them at the age of 14. The teacher is now an associate pastor at Bethel Baptist Church, which operates the Christian school. The church is known for its hardline approach to Christian doctrine. "[Bethel's pastors] looked at Southern Baptists like they were liberal faggots, like they would say from the pulpit," White told the Blade. "In general it was a cult," he said. "Aside from all of that other stuff going on, there was a thousand other things that they were doing." The Associated Press said that White was forced to have oral and anal sex with the pastor every week. | |
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| Secret History |
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| Science & Technology |
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Laura Geggel
Live Science 2014-09-03 13:54:00
Lurking some 3.2 miles (5.1 kilometers) beneath the Pacific Ocean, a massive mountain rises up from the seafloor, say scientists who discovered the seamount using sonar technology. The seamount is about two-thirds of a mile high (1.1 kilometers), researchers said. Seamounts, rocky leftovers from extinct, underwater volcanoes, are found on ocean floors around the world. The newly discovered seamount is about 186 miles (300 km) southeast of Jarvis Island, an uninhabited island in a relatively unexplored part of the South Pacific Ocean, experts said. "These seamounts are very common, but we don't know about them, because most of the places that we go out and map have never been mapped before," James Gardner, a University of New Hampshire research professor who works at the university's NOAA Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center, said in a statement. [See Images of the Newfound Pacific Ocean Seamount] | |
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Emily Underwood
Science AAAS 2014-09-02 19:15:00
The world's roughly 7000 known languages are disappearing faster than species, with a different tongue dying approximately every 2 weeks. Now, by borrowing methods used in ecology to track endangered species, researchers have identified the primary threat to linguistic diversity: economic development. Though such growth has been shown to wipe out language in the past on a case-by-case basis, this is the first study to demonstrate that it is a global phenomenon, researchers say. Many people know about the threatened polar bear and extinct passenger pigeon, but few have heard of endangered and extinct languages such as Eyak in Alaska, whose last speaker died in 2008, or Ubykh in Turkey, whose last fluent speaker died in 1992, says Tatsuya Amano, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and lead author of the new study. It's well known that economic growth or the desire to achieve it can drive language loss, he notes - dominant languages such as Mandarin Chinese and English are often required for upward mobility in education and business, and economic assistance often encourages recipients to speak dominant languages. Whereas specific case studies demonstrate such forces at work, such as the transition from Cornish to English in the United Kingdom and from Horom to English in Nigeria, this is the first study to examine losses worldwide and rank economic growth alongside other possible influences, he says. | |
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Irene Klotz
Discovery News 2014-09-03 12:00:00
Using a new mapping technique that takes into account the motions -- and not just the distances -- of nearby galaxies, astronomers discovered that the Milky Way is located in the suburb of a massive, previously unknown super-cluster they named Laniakea, a term from Hawaiian words meaning "immeasurable heaven." Actually, Laniakea's girth is measurable, though difficult to conceptualize. The super-cluster spans 520 million light-years in diameter, more than five times larger than the cluster previously believed to be the Milky Way's cosmic home. A light-year is the distance that light, moving at a speed of 186,000 miles per second, travels in one year. One light-year is about 5.88 trillion miles. Astronomers were able to identify the boundaries of Laniakea by charting the flow of more than 8,000 galaxies surrounding the Milky Way. By that yardstick, they discovered that the Milky Way, along 100,000 other galaxies, is sailing toward a region named the Shapley super-cluster. | |
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Dianne Depra
Tech Times 2014-09-03 06:55:00
The sun produced a flurry of flares this week says NASA, unleashing over half a dozen in one day alone. As summer draws to a close, the Sun decides to finish the season with a bang, releasing a number of solar flares as August winds down. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured all the action which peaked on Aug. 24. A mid-level solar flare started the event and soon more than half a dozen solar flares happened on the Sun's left side. Solar flares are highly powerful bursts of radiation. The Sun had been experiencing increased activity lately and this has manifested in more than a handful of solar flares taking place in the past few days. The biggest solar flare was the first solar flare reported for the event, an M-class flare which is known to be about 10 times smaller than the largest flare ever recorded, an X-class flare. | |
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Sciencedaily.com
2014-09-01 05:51:00
Neurons in human skin perform advanced calculations, previously believed that only the brain could perform. This is according to a study from Umeå University in Sweden published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. A fundamental characteristic of neurons that extend into the skin and record touch, so-called first-order neurons in the tactile system, is that they branch in the skin so that each neuron reports touch from many highly-sensitive zones on the skin. | |
Comment: Not only does every cell in our body contain reams of information, our very neurons are capable of performing complex feats of information processing. And yet mainstream science tells us all this information and creativity is the result of bits of matter randomly bumping into other bits of matter. What is the source of information, if not intelligence?
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RT
2014-09-02 22:19:00
Vladimir Putin has given his preliminary approval for the development of a Russian-designed rocket capable of lifting a record 150 tons of cargo into orbit, to rival similar projects from NASA and Elon Musk's SpaceX. "Today we heard the first concrete words about commencing work on the project. Previously, there was discussion and expert roundtables, but today President Putin gave the preliminary go-ahead for the new rocket," declared Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who curates the country's space industry, after touring the Vostochny cosmodrome in the east of the country with the Russian leader. The news comes on the back of a successful test launch of the long-gestating Angara rocket earlier this summer. The rocket, which is capable of delivering up to 35 tons of cargo into the Low Earth Orbit in its most powerful modification, is the first launch vehicle developed entirely after the fall of the Soviet Union. Rogozin said that work on the new super-heavy rocket would begin as soon as Angara is in regular use. | |
Comment: From a very low base due to widespread destruction of the country during the 1990s, Russia under Putin is fast catching up with the US in almost every key aspects while the US and its client states are in rapid decline. It is the result that counts and these results speak better than words ever could.
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How-To-Geek.com
2014-09-02 18:32:00
Google could be tracking and recording your every location on your Android device, and you may not even know it! The culprit is a largely ignored feature in Android called Google Location history. The actual location service isn't unusual. It uses information like Cell IDs and Wi-Fi routers to locate and place your device. Other companies such as Apple and Microsoft use similar services for their devices. The existence of Google's Location history is nothing new, in fact other sources have reported it previously, but it's still surprising how few people know or realize what it is and how it works. What isn't surprising are the reactions to it, which usually range from "creepy" to "scary" and a few others between. | |
Comment: How very interesting that Google make it so difficult for people to even know this facility exists as well as the serious ramifications for privacy. If you must use a mobile phone, turn off the location tracking and history service immediately.
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| Earth Changes |
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RT
2014-09-03 14:29:00
A volcanic eruption has created an almost post-apocalyptic landscape in Iceland. Streams of lava are spewing out, reminiscent of Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings. And there is still a significant risk to air traffic, with the current 'Orange' warning. The Orange level, is the second highest on a five-color scale. So far no ash has been visible, but this could change. Lava fountains rose to around 50 meters on Sunday at the Bardarbunga volcano, which took theaviation warning to red, the highest on the scale. There has been a lot of seismic activity in the area and Einar Heinarsson, a spokesman from Iceland's department of civil protections says, "The eruption is still going on at the same pace as before. It has been continuous."
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Michelle Lovato
Lake County Leader 2014-08-07 14:35:00
Zack Whipple, 9 of Polson was visiting grandma's house when he jumped into the cool water of Lake in the Woods northeast of Kalispell Aug. 4 and felt splashing underneath his feet that felt like fish swimming nearby. Thinking little of the flipping fins below him, he climbed out of the lake and did a cannon ball off the dock above. This time when he surfaced Zack spotted two adult otters who swam out from under the dock and began circling. Zack was amused by the creatures as he watched them form their circle. He'd never seen otters. But amusement transformed into panic quickly when the otters dove under water and bit his legs. | |
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Western Daily Press
2014-07-27 13:31:00
A cyclist in Swindon called police after he said he was attacked by a badger. The cyclist told officers that he was cycling along Thamesdown Drive late at night when the incident occurred. Wiltshire Police's North Swindon team recounted the tale, in a light-hearted fashion, on its Facebook page. It said: "One of our more unusual reports in the last week has been from someone who had a close shave with a bristly character in North Swindon. | |
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Daily Gloucester Press
2014-09-02 12:59:00
A dead whale, estimated to be about 54 feet long, lied sprawled across the beachfront after washing ashore over the weekend. It will stay there until nature takes its course, officials are saying. Rockport's Department of Public Works, in conjunction with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was tasked with disposing of the carcass, after the whale - estimated to have been dead for two to three weeks - rolled onto the rocky, jagged beachfront. In the past, Rockport officials have buried smaller whales, but this time large equipment would be unable to reach this beach. DPW Director Joe Parisi said officials have little choice but to let the carcass deteriorate and wash out to sea bit by bit. | |
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Linda Lam
Weather Underground 2014-09-02 00:00:00
This summer of extremes has seen numerous records broken across the country. June saw a number of record wet records fall in the Midwest and Plains, while July was one of the coolest months on record for many in the Midwest and South. August did see a pattern change from July, bringing a taste of the heat. Flooding was also a big story for the month of August. Summer Records As the summer of 2014 comes to a close, let's take a look at some of the records that have already been broken, as well as some that are in jeopardy. | |
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National Post
2013-09-09 08:53:00
A B.C. woman has been attacked and critically injured by a cougar. A spokesman with the Rescue Co-ordination Centre says the incident happened late Sunday afternoon on Flores Island in Clayoquot Sound, about 20 kilometres northwest of Tofino. He says the 60-year-old victim, who lives on the remote island, was attacked from behind by the big cat. A medevac helicopter could not reach the site because of poor weather so coast guard members stationed in Tofino rushed to the scene to transport the woman to Tofino by boat. She was then airlifted to hospital elsewhere on Vancouver Island. There's no word on her condition, but rescue officials say the woman's husband fought off the cougar and injured it, forcing it to retreat into the bush. | |
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youtube.com
2014-08-30 08:36:00
A routine day by the waters soon turned into a memorable afternoon for a fisherman from Hegan City, Heilongjiang Province, recently. The man netted a rare kaluga sturgeon on Monday. The fish weighed nearly 270kg. A day later, he sold the prized catch for a price of 60,000 yuan (approx. $10,000). Source: CCTV News | |
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Several days of heavy rain in south west China has caused flooding and landslides which have left at least 11 people dead and 27 still missing. One of the worst affected areas is Wuxi County in the province of Chongqing.
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Veronica Rocha
Los Angeles Times 2014-09-02 07:26:00
A roughly 64,000-acre wildfire burning along the Northern California-Oregon border for three weeks continues to threaten two communities. Officials have increased the number of firefighting personnel assigned to the Happy Camp Complex fire by 30% as flames advance in steep terrain, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
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Comment: See below for a chart of wildfires over the past year, note the unseasonal peak in January ( the vast majority of all reports are from the Northern hemisphere).
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A conservation officer has destroyed a coyote that he believes was one of three that attacked a woman and a dog in B.C.'s Okanagan region this week. The woman, Sarah James, was walking a friend's small Labrador Retriever on Wednesday on the Summerland Centennial Trail, a popular hiking trail in Summerland, when she was approached by three coyotes. The coyotes went after the dog, and James crouched over it to protect it from the attack. | |
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Steve Connor
The Independent 2014-09-01 04:09:00
A huge wave that lifted 70-tonne boulders as if they were grains of sand hit the island of Malta in the recent past and could do so again with devastating consequences, a study has found. Scientists have found the first evidence of a highly destructive tsunami in this part of the Mediterranean which was probably caused by an earthquake with an epicentre focused near Sicily or Greece. The researchers found that large boulders at more than two dozen sites in the north-east of Malta had been moved in land by up to 100 metres from the seabed as a result of a massive ocean wave. It is the first time that Malta has been directly linked with a Mediterranean tsunami and the scientists have already warned the Maltese authorities about the possibility that a similar event could occur in the future. "These tsunamis have happened in the past and the tectonic zones that caused the earthquakes are still there now. It could happen again, but the difference this time is that the island is now more densely populated," said Malcolm Bray of the University of Portsmouth. | |
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RT
2014-09-02 21:56:00
If the massive supervolcano at Yellowstone National Park erupted again, scientists believe it would blanket much of the United States in ash and potentially sever communication as well as travel between the country's coasts. According to a new study published by the US Geological Survey, cities about 300 miles away from the volcano's location in Wyoming would be covered in up to three feet of ash as a result of a supereruption, the largest kind of volcanic eruption possible. More than 240 cubic miles of material would be expelled into the atmosphere, reaching cities like New York and Los Angeles on both sides of the United States. In fact, the resulting ash cloud, or "umbrella," as scientists called it, would be so strong that it would overpower normal wind patterns in North America, potentially grounding all air travel throughout the entire continent and radically altering the region's climate. Electronic communication between the US' East and West Coasts could also become complicated, if not hopeless. | |
Comment: An eruption at Yellowstone supervolcano would have such disastrous consequence that it is worth keeping an eye on, no matter how small the probability. And considering the approach of Nemesis, the Sun's companion star that many scientists have speculated on, and the huge impact it would have on planets in the solar system, the probability of an eruption at Yellowstone may not be as small as thought.
Watch: Nemesis - The Sun's Evil Twin Brother for more information about the Sun's companion star And read Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection for an exposition on how the companion star's approach would impact everything on Earth. | |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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floodofextremes.wordpress.com
Video captures a huge fireball streaking across the skies of Campinas, a city in the Brazilian state of São Paulo just after 10pm Monday night.2014-09-01 06:47:00
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| Health & Wellness |
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Denis Campbell
The Guardian 2014-09-03 15:38:00
Women with breast cancer who opt for a double mastectomy to beat the disease do not increase their chances of survival, according to new research. Having both breasts removed did not extend patients' lives any more than having cancerous lumps removed, followed by radiotherapy. The findings are based on a study of 189,734 women in California with the disease. "We can now say that the average breast cancer patient who has bilateral mastectomy will have no better survival than the average patient who has lumpectomy plus radiation," said Dr Allison Kurian from Stanford University, the lead scientist for the project. Ten years after having both breasts removed, 18.8% of women had died, compared with 16.8% of those who had a lumpectomy, then radiation. The paper was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. | |
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Thanks to the tireless work of millions of activists, journalists and movements like the worldwide March Against Monsanto, the term "GMO" has become a word imbued with all sorts of negative connotations, one synonymous with the deception, health, and environmental risks of this dangerously under-tested technology. But Monsanto and the Biotech industry in general are working to undo their years of hard work by "rebranding" GMOs, genetically modified food, and other industry terms that have become the target of activists everywhere. | |
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CBS Atlanta
2014-09-02 13:27:00
The director for the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention says that the Ebola outbreak is going to get worse. Speaking to "CBS This Morning" following his trip to the West African countries dealing with the outbreak, Dr. Tom Frieden explained that they have to act now to try to get Ebola under control. "It is the world's first Ebola epidemic and it is spiraling out of control. It's bad now and it's going to get worse in the very near future," Frieden told CBS News. "There is still a window of opportunity to tamp it down, but that window is closing. We really have to act now." Frieden, who visited Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, will tell Washington tomorrow that the Ebola outbreak is "spiraling upward." The CDC director explained that these countries still need help to deal with the deadly outbreak. "We need to support countries with resources, with technical experts and with cooperation. Too many places are sealing off these countries," Frieden told CBS News. "If we do that, paradoxically, it's going to reduce safety everywhere else. Whether we like it or not, we're all connected and it's in our interest to help them tamp this down and control it." | |
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Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza
Pacific Standard Magazine 2014-09-02 08:48:00
You've seen Ebola and other viral hemorrhagic fevers depicted on screens both large and small, but what health care workers are currently fighting in West Africa is worse than anything writers have dreamed up. In sixth grade, I molded a human hand out of clay and then used acrylic paints to map the course of radiation poisoning. When a seventh-grade science teacher told us to create models of animal cells, mine had to be three-dimensional. I bought a fishbowl and some clear Jell-O. Over the course of an afternoon and night, I tiptoed into the kitchen every hour or two to pour a thin layer of gelatin onto my legume and pasta organelles. By eighth grade, I had moved on to viruses, becoming fascinated with the least-understood and most terrifying group known to man: viral hemorrhagic fevers, the genre that claims yellow fever, dengue fever, and the Marburg and Ebola viruses. I learned that Ebola isn't a scary virus - it'sthe scary virus. Yellow fever may have wiped out more than 10 percent of Philadelphia's population in 1793, but that stunning death toll is nothing compared to the devastation that Marburg and Ebola wreak. They're our epidemiological boogeymen. What Ebola does to the human body defies reason. It's like something out of a horror movie, not a textbook. A la Andromeda Strain, we know very little about where this virus comes from, just that the most likely "ground zero" is the fruit bat. These bats serve as natural reservoirs, occasionally infecting other animals - from primates to antelopes, porcupines, rodents, dogs, and pigs. Most strains that can infect humans are extremely contagious and exceedingly lethal, with fatality rates between 60 and 90 percent. Comment: There's undisputable evidence that the poor fruit bat could not be the culprit.Black Death was found to be Ebola-like virus, and Black Death had a Cosmic origin. Perhaps that's why it's the worst virus we've seen? | |
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David Kroll
Forbes 2014-09-02 08:07:00
If there can be any good news - or at least not further disheartening news - coming out of the African continent regarding this year's Ebola outbreaks, we have one positive report this morning. The World Health Organization has just confirmed that the newly-identified cases of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in the Democratic Republic of Congo is genetically unrelated to the strain currently circulating in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria. A WHO collaborating research center in Franceville, Gabon, the Centre International de Recherches Médicales, had previously identified six Ebola positive samples sent to the laboratory. They report today that, "the virus in the Boende district is definitely not derived from the virus strain currently circulating in west Africa." | |
Comment: How could anyone qualify these news as good news is beyond us! Bottom line, deadly diseases with very similar symptoms are spreading uncontrolled in different directions.
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Frankie Taggart
Agence France-Presse 2014-09-02 05:21:00
International medical agency Medecins sans Frontieres said the world was "losing the battle" to contain Ebola as the United Nations warned of severe food shortages in the hardest-hit countries. MSF told a UN briefing in New York that world leaders were failing to address the epidemic and called for an urgent global biological disaster response to get aid and personnel to west Africa. "Six months into the worst Ebola epidemic in history, the world is losing the battle to contain it. Leaders are failing to come to grips with this transnational threat," said MSF international president Joanne Liu. "The (World Health Organization) announcement on August 8 that the epidemic constituted a 'public health emergency of international concern' has not led to decisive action, and states have essentially joined a global coalition of inaction." | |
Comment: Fear makes everything worse, so don't give in to fear. Educate yourselves.
For more information:Nigeria declares Ebola outbreak national urgency - Minister of Health: "Everyone in the world now at risk". | |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Glenn Harris
University of Southampton 2014-09-03 11:43:00
New research has found that malicious behaviour is the norm in crowdsourcing competitions - even when it is in everyone's interest to cooperate. Crowdsourcing provides the ability to accomplish information-gathering tasks that require the involvement of a large number of people, often across wide-spread geographies, expertise, or interests. However, researchers from the University of Southampton and the National Information and Communications Technology Australia (NICTA) found that a significant feature of crowdsourcing - its openness of entry - makes it vulnerable to malicious behaviour. They observed such behaviour in a number of recent popular crowdsourcing competitions, through analysis based on the 'Prisoner's Dilemma' scenario, which shows why two purely 'rational' individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interest. | |
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Amy Bonomi, Andy Henion
Michigan State University 2014-08-21 10:58:00
Young adult women who read "Fifty Shades of Grey" are more likely than nonreaders to exhibit signs of eating disorders and have a verbally abusive partner, finds a new study led by a Michigan State University researcher. Further, women who read all three books in the blockbuster "Fifty Shades" erotic romance series are at increased risk of engaging in binge drinking and having multiple sex partners. All are known risks associated with being in an abusive relationship, much like the lead character, Anastasia, is in "Fifty Shades," said Amy Bonomi, the study's lead investigator. And while the study did not distinguish whether women experienced the health behaviors before or after reading the books, it's a potential problem either way, she said. "If women experienced adverse health behaviors such as disordered eating first, reading 'Fifty Shades' might reaffirm those experiences and potentially aggravate related trauma," said Bonomi, chairperson and professor in MSU's Department of Human Development and Family Studies. "Likewise, if they read 'Fifty Shades' before experiencing the health behaviors seen in our study, it's possible the books influenced the onset of these behaviors." | |
Comment: Fifty Shades of Grey is just one example of literature that glorifies psychopathic and sadistic perception of reality. More so, it makes it appear as cool and desired. No wonder normal women's psyche develops disorders in order to cope with the stress.
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When you take a moment and look around at the world, things can appear pretty messed up. Take 5 or 10 minutes and watch the 6 o'clock news. Chances are, the entire time, all you are going to see is war, conflict, death, illness, etc. Sure, this is part of the mainstream medias content strategy to sell drama and keep people focused on it, but besides that it reveals something real about the current state of our world. I believe Michael Ellner said it well in his quote: "Just look at us. Everything is backwards, everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, psychiatrists destroy minds, scientists destroy truth, major media destroys information, religions destroy spirituality and governments destroy freedom." Now obviously Ellner's quote is a simplified way of looking at our current state, but in many ways it's bang on. Most of what we do in the name of "good" ends up destroying something else in the process and is passed off mainly in the name of profit. We've seen over and over again how our ways have brought us to a point where we are destroying everything in our path, so the question must be asked, isn't it time for change? Are we fully capable, honest, and determined enough to look at our past, where our actions and though-patterns have brought us to this point, and now do something completely different in order to restore balance? | |
Comment: All aspects of our lives on Earth are infected when we allow psychopaths to take positions of leadership. Andrew M. Lobaczewski called this phenomenon Pathocracy, is his bookPolitical Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes:
See also: The Triumphant Beast
"Humanity is a Cosmic body and each individual is a cell in that body. But the humanity we see today is a disease-ridden idiot - a shambling, ragged, beast covered with oozing pustules of corruption representing science, religions and government - stumbling from one self-inflicted disaster to another. There can be only one outcome and this, too, is documented: in ancient literature describing how other 'mighty' cultures have ended:" | |
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My Catholic school third grade teacher was extremely tough on me. Her biggest gripe was my handwriting, which looks more like an EKG scan than penmanship. For years, I harbored not-so-fond memories of her, but now I know that her strictness about penmanship was actually helping my brain develop. Recently, scientists have shown that longhand writing benefits the brain. Today, cursive writing is becoming a lost art as note taking with laptops becomes more and more prominent in classrooms. But what we are losing is much bigger than a few scratches on a page - we are losing a robust way of learning. | |
Comment: Read more about the benefits of longhand (handwriting):
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| High Strangeness |
| No new articles. |
| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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Andy Borowitz
The New Yorker 2014-09-03 08:58:00
In what he called "a provocative and defiant act," President Obama charged on Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin has started letting his calls go directly to voice mail. Speaking at the White House before this week's NATO summit, a visibly furious Obama said that Putin's new practice of letting his calls go straight to voice mail "hampers our ability to discuss the future of Ukraine and other important issues going forward." Having left dozens of voice mails for the Russian President, Obama said that he tried to reach him via e-mail on Monday night but received an out-of-office auto reply. "Given what he has been up to in Ukraine over the past few weeks, I find it impossible believe he has been out of the office," Obama said. The President hinted that Putin's failure to respond to his voice mails could result in additional sanctions and signaled that he did not intend to call the Russian President again. "I have left my last voice mail for him," he said, adding that the last time he called Putin his mailbox was full. | |
Comment: Satire, but so close to the truth. However, it's not Putin who isn't listening. Mr. Teleprompter-in-chief Obama is the one ignoring the real humanitarian crisis and spouting bald-faced lies about what's really going on in Ukraine. If there's anyone who's more deserving of being 'unfriended', it's Obama and his scriptwriters.
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