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Pepe Escobar
Asia Times Online 2014-11-21 10:05:00
These are bleak times. I've been in serious conversation with some deep sources and interlocutors - those who know but don't need to show off, privileging discretion. They are all deeply worried. This is what one of them, a New York strategic planner, sent me: The propaganda attack against Putin equating him with Hitler is so extreme that you have to think that the Russians cannot believe their ears and cannot trust the United States anymore under any circumstances.That may sound somewhat extreme - but it's a perfectly logical extension, further on down the road, of what the Russian president intimated in his already legendary interview with Germany's ARD in Vladivostok last week: the West is provoking Russia into a new Cold War. [1] | |
Comment: To have a look at NATO's global military bases, watch this video from 2011:
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| Puppet Masters |
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Harrison Koehli
Sott.net 2014-11-27 16:28:00
Just another day of insanity on the big blue marble. First up, Afghanistan: Afghan drug traffic most serious threat to post-Soviet states - Russian official That's the whole point. The Taliban had almost stopped opium production entirely in 2001. The U.S. invasion changed that immediately, and Afghanistan has been a U.S. vassal state ever since, with slight attempts at resistance from ex-President Karzai. (See Corey Schink's SOTT Exclusive: SOTT Exclusive: Psychopathic "fun and games" continue in Afghanistan) The opium trade serves not only as a way of destabilizing 'enemy no. 1' (i.e., Russia), but also to line the coffers of the CIA's black budget. | |
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Will Kennedy and Jillian Ward
Bloomberg 2014-11-27 17:48:00
OPEC policy on crude production will ensure a crash in the U.S. shale industry, a Russian oil tycoon said. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries kept output targets unchanged at a meeting in Vienna today even after this year's slump in the oil price caused by surging supply from U.S shale fields. American producers risk becoming victims of their own success. At today's prices of just over $70 a barrel, drilling is close to becoming unprofitable for some explorers, Leonid Fedun, vice president and board member at OAO Lukoil (LKOD), said in an interview in London. "In 2016, when OPEC completes this objective of cleaning up the American marginal market, the oil price will start growing again," said Fedun, who's made a fortune of more than $4 billion in the oil business, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. "The shale boom is on a par with the dot-com boom. The strong players will remain, the weak ones will vanish." Oil futures in New York plunged as much as 3.8 percent to $70.87 a barrel today, the lowest since August 2010. At the moment, some U.S. producers are surviving because they managed to hedge the prices they get for their oil at about $90 a barrel, Fedun said. When those arrangements expire, life will become much more difficult, he said. | |
Comment: Many "experts" have chimed in on the possible repercussions if OPEC keeps it's policy unchanged but no consensus on what the outcome will look like so it's anyone's guess. It appears the US oil producers are not worried at all in the drop in oil prices and are in fact confident their technology in reducing extraction costs will overcome OPEC's dominance. If that is true, then it seems Russia, Iran and Venezuela are the targets in the oil price war. The moves Russia has made with the international community and trading oil in other than US dollars will make this price war very interesting to observe.
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Douglas Ernst
Washington Times 2014-11-27 17:16:00
Time is a killer on the battlefield when troops are wounded, but the Pentagon is betting that "hibernation" drugs being pioneered by an Australian researcher will mitigate that problem. Dr. Geoffrey Dobson of Queensland's James Cook University and the Division of Tropical Health and Medicine hopes that through science they can essentially rewire the body's natural response to trauma so that deployed troops have enough time to get their injured comrades medical attention. "During the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 87 percent of all deaths among allied soldiers occurred in the first 30 minutes, before they could get to a hospital," Dr. Dobson told an Australian news website Wednesday. "Nearly a quarter of these, almost a thousand people, were classified as having potentially survivable wounds. Time was the killer. The idea of our research is to save that thousand lives." The goal is to change the human body's normal response to shock while also forcing it to provide enough blood pressure to vital organs to keep wounded individuals alive. "You want to stabilize the system because of the long retrieval times in forward areas for these special operations soldiers," he said. "We increase the blood pressure to a low 'optimal' level sufficient for survival, we reduce inflammation and we correct the blood coagulation - stop it getting thinner." | |
Comment: What hypocrites. The government isn't interested in saving the ones who have already served. The U.S. is interested in saving lives? With perpetual wars, the death tolls in the Middle East, and funding of Israeli war-crimes, their actions say the opposite. It's much cheaper and easier to keep the brainwashed, programmed military they already have than train new recruits.
See also: Global war of terror: entire world is a battlefield for Pentagon | |
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RT
2014-11-27 15:02:00
Kiev is enforcing an economic blockade on eastern Ukraine, where banks are closed and cash machines and credit cards aren't working. Disrupted social payments to the elderly have become the most acute issue. Only a handful of cash machines are still functional in the breakaway parts of the Donetsk and the Lugansk regions, after local banks received an order from Ukraine's central bank earlier this week to "suspend" operations. This follows a controversial decree signed by Ukrainian President Petro Porishenko on November 16 that is now coming into effect. Kiev is cutting economic ties with rebel-held areas by freezing bank accounts and stopping social payments, including pensions. "As soon as we regain control [over E. Ukraine], all of the payments will be carried out," Ukraine's PM, Arseny Yastenyuk, said on Wednesday. "We would have liked people in the Lugansk and the Donetsk regions to be able to get their payments now, but we can't send money there, because it gets stolen in banks and in cash delivery vehicles." Those willing to withdraw whatever's left on their accounts have to spend hours standing in queues. And what's left is not much. "I was getting my pension via Oshchadbank," a woman from Makeevka told RIA Novosti. "I have 3,000 hryvnas (around $200) left on my account. But I can't get them. There has been no money in the banking machine for a week already. How am I supposed to live? I don't even have money for my medicines." The only option left for many in the breakaway areas is to go to nearby towns under Kiev's control and try to withdraw cash there. Many are trying to reissue their bank accounts in government-held areas, so as not to lose money. Queues at bus stations are huge. | |
Comment: The economic blockade Kiev has implemented seems to be designed to bring E. Ukraine to it's knees and capitulate to Kiev's Nazis but could be a NATO ploy to try and draw in the Russian military.
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Maram Susli
New Eastern Outlook 2014-11-27 09:24:00
Many mainstream media websites helped a fake video go viral this month. The video showing a young Syrian boy running through sniper fire to save a little girl, was exposed as a fake when the Norwegian producer Lars Klevberg made the fact public. One of the stated aims of the Norwegian film makers was to "see how the media would respond to a fake video." This article examines how that experiment went. The western press very quickly accepted the video as real and used it to support the US administration's narrative on Syria. Many top US news sources began to spread the story. Even though the producer said he explicitly added big hints that the video was fake, like the children surviving multiple gun shots. Propagating false stories on Syria, is nothing new for the western press. In the lead up to the conflict many stories were exposed as frauds, such as the Anti-government activist "Gay Girl in Damascus" which turned out to be a middle-aged American man in Scotland. Syrian Danny Abdul Dayem which was frequently interviewed by CNN was using fake gun fire and flames in his interviews. Comment: Subverting Syria: How CIA Contra Gangs and NGO's Manufacture, Mislabel and Market Mass Murder The fake sniper video wasn't enough to support US government narratives by itself, as the nowdeleted original upload didn't suggest the identity of the snipers. So the west's media suggested that it was Syrian military snipers that were targeting the children without any evidence.Journalists failed to mention how they reached the conclusion that an actor in Malta was shot by the Syrian military. It may be that the western press is quick to trust pro-rebel sources, as the video was uploaded by the pro-rebel Sham Times along with their own twist. | |
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John Logan
Truthout 2014-11-26 13:16:00
That was the question posed last week by Public Eye, a counter-event to the World Economic Forum, as it sought a worthy winner for its "lifetime achievement award." For sure, Walmart - which has already won a Public Eye award in 2005 for labor rights violations in its global supply chain - faces stiff competition in the online poll. Among the other outstanding nominees for the world's worst corporation are Goldman Sachs, Chevron, Dow Chemical and Union Carbide. Walmart's impeccable credentials for the world's worst corporation were covered last week by Truthout. The company denies a living wage, full-time work, predictable scheduling and employment security to its global workforce of 2.2 million people. It drives down wages and labor standards in its enormous global supply chain, most notably in the Bangladesh textile industry and the Thai shrimp industry. Walmart's contempt for the core labor and human rights of its global workforce and supply-chain workers is arguably second to none. | |
Comment: It's been said numerous times before but it bears repeating; boycott Walmart.
Once again Walmart asks employees to donate goods, rather than paying staff a living wage Walmart gets $7.8 billion a year in tax breaks and subsidies from the US tax system - Employees forced to depend on social programs to get by Walmart's death grip on groceries is making life worse for millions of people | |
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RT
2014-11-26 19:17:00
Comment: It's amazing how quickly a media puppet buckles when called out on their failings. CNN editors cut out what could only be labeled a tantrum by Christiane Amanpour at being questioned about her record of consistently supporting US foreign policies with her reportage. RT has served the cause of media transparency by publishing the full transcript of Ms. Amanpour's conversation with RT host Anissa Naouai and Russian fifth-columnist Mikhail Kasyanov. Last week, CNN's Christiane Amanpour invited RT's Anissa Naouai to discuss what the US channel called 'a heated propaganda war' by the Russian government. But it never showed viewers Naouai's criticism of Amanpour's own propaganda exercises. Naouai, host of RT's In The Now, was invited to speak along with Mikhail Kasyanov, a former Russian prime minister and a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin's policies.
RT offers a complete video of Naouai's answers, as well as the full transcript of the discussion below. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Mr. Kasyanov, Anissa Naouai in Moscow, thank you both very much indeed for joining me. Let me first ask you, Mikhail Kasyanov, Mr. Putin, President Putin seems to believe that Russia has an image problem and wants to change the way Russia is portrayed around the rest of the world. It is an image problem or is there a problem, a policy problem? MIKHAIL KASYANOV: That's a deep problem of the policy. The problem of Mr. Putin, because Mr. Putin believes that such a policy he pursues internally and externally, that's normality in 21st century, which is absolutely not. And therefore he is sometimes even angry on the Western society, why the Western society doesn't accept his regime as normal one. Therefore that's a problem of mentality rather than of image. CA: Anissa, let me ask you, do you feel that "Russia Today" and other state-sponsored media is specifically designed to counter what your government, your president believes is a bad image problem, an unfair shake in the West? | ||
Comment: And with that childish parting shot, Amanpour shuts it down. A disgraceful performance by a so-called "leading journalist".
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| Society's Child |
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Brad Oswald
Winnipeg Free Press 2014-11-27 03:00:00
The term "psychopath" tends to conjure up a specific set of images -- pop-culture creations likePsycho's Norman Bates or Silence of the Lambs' Hannibal Lecter, or real-life serial killers such as Clifford Olsen, Paul Bernardo or Jeffrey Dahmer. But the reality is that those monstrous characters represent only the extreme end of the personality disorder covered by that word, and that it's very likely that you know someone who could rightly be described as a psychopath. Local filmmaker Jeremy Torrie examines the broader scope of psychopathy with a fascinating hour-long documentary called The Psychopath Next Door, which airs Nov. 27 on CBC's Doc Zone. "You're going to run into one of these individuals sometime in your life, more than once," University of British Columbia forensic psychologist Dr. Robert Hare says in the film. "And the encounter could either be exhilirating, thrilling (and) exciting, or devastating. More likely the latter. "Most of these psychopaths are living right next to us, living a reasonably normal life but creating some sort of distress -- psychological or environmental or financial -- for others around them." Hare, who's apparently known in scientific circles as "the godfather of psychopathy" for, among other things, having developed a 20-point checklist for identifying psychopaths, notes that the main attribute that separates them from the rest of the population is a total disregard for the distinction between right and wrong. | |
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Marisa Mauro, Psy.D.
Psychology Today 2010-03-21 18:59:00
If you are confused about your own people pleasing tendencies, need for external approval, and even your own feelings, I suggest you read The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment by Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman and Robert M. Pressman. In their work as therapists, the authors discovered an unusual trend - patients with traits similar to adult children of alcoholics, but no evidence that their parents were substance abusers. Moreover, many of the patients did not recall any overt abuse as children. So why then were these patients exhibiting the dysfunctional psychological, interpersonal, and work traits of abuse survivors? The answer was a different type of dysfunctional family. Coined by the authors as the narcissistic family, what these patients all had in common was that as children, the needs of their parents took precedence over their needs. This is in contrast to healthy families, who put the needs of their children first. Without further explanation, this discovery might not seem wholly worthy of the label 'dysfunction'. So to explain, a basic goal for most families is to raise healthy children who will one day become independent adults. In a healthy family, parents work to accomplish this task by assuming responsibility for their children's emotional and physical needs. Over time, parents gradually teach their children to be independent by allowing them to assume responsibility for meeting their own needs in a developmentally appropriate manner. Thus, the primary work of children is to learn to become independent adults. Along the way, they learn to identify and act on their feelings, wants and needs. Parents take care of their own needs or seek help from adults. As a bonus, the children have also learned how to be good parents through the process of observational learning. In narcissistic families, this basic goal becomes skewed and the meeting of parental needs becomes of primary importance for the family. This twist generally takes place some time after infancy, as the authors point out that most children of narcissistic families were well cared for as babies. In fact, it is mostly likely to occur some time after the child begins to differentiate him or her self from the parents and begins to assert their own needs. This normal developmental process is difficult for parents who are most concerned with fulfilling their own needs as a result of job stress, physical or mental disability, or lack of parenting skills, to name a few reasons. To compensate, the parents fight back, ignoring the child's needs and at the same time forcing the child to respond to their own by withholding attention and affection until they do so. In this way, the children's emotional needs go unattended and they are deprived of the opportunity to experience gradual independence and learn about themselves. Instead, they learn to wait to see what their parents expect and then react, negatively or positively, to those expectations. | |
Comment: When pleasing others is done out of fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of humiliation, fear of punishment or other negative feelings it usually arises from people who have/had overly critical parents. Typically, a need to please and care for others is a healthy trait to have. In the narcissistic family dynamic, it is twisted and distorted to serve the needs of the parents. In that environment, a child must conform to the wants and needs of the parent and does not develop their own individuality or learn to express their OWN emotions or needs.
These dynamics are perfectly mirrored by people in society who look to assuage their fear in the wrong places, motivated by them, seeking some sense of security. Additional narcissism resources | |
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Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Beacon Broadside 2014-11-27 02:37:00
Thanksgiving is the favorite holiday of many US Americans; unlike the rather boring or divisive holidays that honor Columbus, Presidents, Martin Luther King, Jr., Independence, veterans and war, the birth of a religion, and a new year, Thanksgiving is centered on sharing food with family and friends. Individuals and families travel long distances at great expense to be with one another. It might be surprising to learn that the cherished tradition of Thanksgiving is, in fact, the most nationalist of all holidays because it narrates the national origin myth. The traditional meal, as we know, consists of the foods cultivated by Indigenous farmers - corn, squash, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, and turkey. The US origin story of a covenant with God goes back to the Mayflower Compact, the first governing document of the Plymouth Colony. It is named for the ship that carried the hundred or so passengers, half of them religious dissidents, to what is now Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in November 1620. This compact marked the beginning of settler democracy, which from its inception sought the elimination of the Indigenous. Behind the black clothed and solemn "Pilgrims," was a corporation of shareholders, the Virginia Company, accompanied by armed and seasoned mercenaries on a colonizing project ordered by the English King James. If any local Natives were present at a colonizers' celebratory meal, they were surely there as servants, and the foods were confiscated, not offered as a gift. | |
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The Moscow Times
2014-11-17 17:45:00
The hard-pressed chief of bankrupt 2014 Winter Olympics builder Mostovik has now been charged with tax evasion and embezzlement in the Siberian region of Omsk, adding to earlier charges of withholding wages from employees. Oleg Shishov, who is CEO of Mostovik and a member of the region's legislative assembly, was put under house arrest early last week for allegedly failing to pay Mostovik employees for six months straight. Shishov was then slapped with two additional charges: evading more than 515 million rubles ($10.9) in taxes from 2009 to 2012 via falsified tax documents and embezzling 500 million rubles ($10.6 million) from the Omsk regional budget, according to a statement last week on the regional investigative department's website. | |
Comment: Every country has corruption. Singling out Russia is simply part of the West's information war. But at least Russia is doing something about their corruption. See: Putin's not corrupt, he's fighting corruption: Squandering of state funds will not go unnoticed
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Matt Agorist
The Free Though Project 2014-11-25 12:11:00
The Denver police department has been accused of using excessive force after a video, which they allegedly deleted, survived on the cloud and was turned into FOX 31. The incident started as two officers approached David Nelson Flores, who was in his vehicle with his seven-and-a-half-months pregnant wife and their child, to shake him down after suspecting him of being in possession of a substance deemed illegal by the state. Upon their approach, officers said they saw Flores put a white sweat sock in his mouth. Because the US is involved in an immoral war on drugs, this 'sock in mouth' move apparently gave the officers the right to yank Flores out of his car and proceed to pummel the man on the asphalt. According to the police report however, a pair of plain clothes officers "assisted" suspect David Nelson Flores out of his car and they all "fell to the ground." The pummeling was for Flores' own good, according to the police report. They bashed in his face and head so he wouldn't "choke." | |
Comment: It's highly unlikely that even with this retrieved footage the Denver cops will face any ramifications for their actions. Welcome to Police State America where goon cops go wild.
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RT
2014-11-27 15:31:00
The Ebola death toll is up to 5,689 out of nearly 16,000 cases reported in eight countries by November 23, the World Health Organization said in its latest update. Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia were the hardest hit by the virus outbreak, with 600 new cases recorded just last week. "The total number of cases reported in Sierra Leone since the outbreak began will soon eclipse the number reported from Liberia," the WHO said. Sierra Leone had 6,599 cases in comparison to 7,168 in Liberia. A month ago, those figures stood at 5,235 for Sierra Leone and 6,535 for Liberia, with the number of deaths, respectively, 1,500 and 2,413, according to the WHO. The situation is said to be more or less stabilizing in Guinea and Liberia, but just the opposite is happening in Sierra Leone, according to the update. However, officials in Sierra Leona insist that the outbreak is losing momentum. "We believe that now that those treatment centers are ready, the transmission of new cases will start reducing," Sierra Leone's minister of information, Alpha Kanu, told journalists. "I don't think we can get any higher than we are now - we are at the plateau of the curve and very soon we will have a downward trend, once we have somewhere to take people." The World Health Organization said it was able to isolate more than 70 percent of those infected with Ebola in Guinea, referring to the international target set for December 1, but had failed to do so in the other two countries. "Liberia and Sierra Leone report that fewer than 70 percent of patients are isolated, though there is wide variation among districts," the WHO said, adding that the final goal is to isolate 100 percent of those infected by January 1. Meanwhile, eight more cases have been reported in Mali, with six dying. | |
Comment: The efficacy of vaccines certainly comes into question with reports like these:
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Mark Gillispie
Associated Press 2014-11-26 02:04:00
The police officer who fatally shot a 12-year-old boy carrying a pellet gun fired within 1½ to two seconds of pulling up in his cruiser, police said Wednesday. During those few moments, he ordered the youngster three times to put up his hands, they said. The city released a surveillance video that shows the shooting of Tamir Rice, who was carrying an airsoft gun that shoots non-lethal plastic pellets. Much of the footage shows what appears to be a bored kid alone in a park on an unseasonably warm November afternoon. Tamir is seen pacing, occasionally extending his right arm with what appears to be a gun in his hand, talking on a cellphone and sitting a picnic table with his head resting on his arms. The gun wasn't real. It can be bought at sporting goods stores for less than $20. Tamir's was lacking the bright orange tip that is usually put on such weapons to indicate they're not real guns. The patrol officer who shot Tamir was identified Wednesday as Timothy Loehmann, a 26-year-old rookie who began his career in Cleveland on March 3. He previously spent five months in 2012 with a department in the Cleveland suburb of Independence, but four of those months were in that city's police academy. Loehmann's partner that day was identified as Frank Garmback, 46. He has been with the department since 2008. Both are on paid administrative leave pending a decision by the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office whether to pursue any criminal charges.
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Comment: The video makes it clear that this incident is cold-blooded murder. The boy did not point the gun at the cop. He didn't have time to do anything else. In a just society, this cop would be going to jail for murder. Instead, the authorities will cover for him and explain away the right for cops to protect themselves lethally whenever they feel like it.
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David Edwards
Raw Story 2014-11-25 01:48:00
A Houston pastor has come under fire for refusing to bury a 93-year-old woman who had been a member of his church for 50 years but had not tithed enough as her death neared. Barbara Day told KRIV that she was devastated by the way pastor Walter F. Houston treated her when she contacted him about a funeral at Fourth Missionary Baptist Church for her mother, Olivia Blair. "It was like the last insult in the world, there was nothing else that I could do for my mommy but funeralize her in the church that she loved and worshiped all of her life, even as a little girl," Day said, explaining that Houston told her that Blair "had not paid her dues, and she had not attended the church in recent years." "For the last two years, my mother has been in either a nursing home or she's been in a hospital," she pointed out. "And the last few months, she was in a coma!" Day said that she could not understand why Houston would force her to find another place for the burial after her mother had supported him for so many years, and her stepfather had also been buried at the church. | |
Comment: The actions of Fourth Missionary Baptist Church and pastor Walter Houston are totally opposite of Christian. The supposed holy people actually care only about lining their pockets, devoid of any compassion or conscience.
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CNSNews.com
Nearly one in five U.S. households will celebrate Thanksgiving on food stamps this year, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on participation in the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program.2014-11-26 18:52:00 Back in fiscal 2000, there were 106,061,000 households in the United States and, according to aUSDA report published in November 2012, there was a monthly average of 7,335,000 households - or 6.9 percent - getting food stamps that year.
As of this August, according to the most recent data released by USDA, there were 22,729,389 households on food stamps. That equaled 19.75 percent of 115,048,000 households in the country at that time. In each of the two previous fiscal years, the percentage of American households on food stamps in the average was near 20 percent, hitting 19.4 percent in 2012, 20.4 percent in 2013. | |
Comment: A sign of the soaring inequality in the U.S thanks to the rapaciousness of the psychopathic elite.
Wealth inequality in America | |
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Scott Kaufman
Raw Story 2014-11-26 01:32:00
Greek leaders at San Diego State University have announced that they were suspending all fraternity parties and social functions indefinitely after a weekend that not only involved taunting people protesting sexual assault, but also the seventh sexual assault at a fraternity house since the semester began in September, U-T San Diego reports. The InterFraternity Council admitted that the fraternity members who pelted participants in Friday's Take Back the Night protest against sexual assault with eggs and waved dildos at them behaved in a manner that did "not reflect the values of the Greek community at SDSU." "I've been to about three demonstrations before," Jordan Busse, who helped organize the Take Back the Night protest, told KPBS. "This is the first time where I've actually felt scared." She said that men at both the Sigma Phi Epsilon and Delta Sigma Phi fraternities shouted obscenities and waved dildos at the protesters, and that drivers along fraternity row threw eggs at them. On Saturday, police responded to a sexual assault on the very same street on which the protesters had been taunted. This confluence of events prompted Greek leaders to suspend all fraternity "social activities in order to focus on educating its members about sexual assault prevention." Although the suspension is indefinite, critics noted that it began the week of Thanksgiving, when no fraternity events are planned because most students return home for the holiday. However, SDSU student president and Sigma Phi Epsilon member Jonathan Cole told KPBS that "[w]hen we get back, [the length of the suspension] is one of the discussions we'll have." | |
Comment: Something is rotten in American frat houses. The rape culture that pervades throughout either needs to be seriously addressed or fraternities should be completely banned. They seem to exist to primarily prey on young, vulnerable women:
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All three of their babies have been taken away from them and placed in the care of strangers. Levi was 10 months old when his mother, local singer and songwriter Erica May Rengo, gave birth to his twin brother and sister, at their home in Bellingham, Washington. "Our birth was glorious," she said, and the twins were reportedly healthy, full-term babies, who had no problem quickly figuring out how to breastfeed. The little family was overjoyed until CPS stepped in to "help." It is another medical kidnapping according to the parents. The Rengos have chosen a wholesome, holistic lifestyle, based in their Christian faith. But CPS has stepped in to override the parents' decisions. Now Erica and Cleave are living what they call a nightmare, separated from their children for reasons that don't make any sense at all to them. Decision to Home Birth It was only natural for Erica to choose normal, family-centered birth. Erica herself was born at home, and says that her mother was a homebirth educator and La Leche League leader (a world-wide support and education group for breastfeeding mothers). She and Cleave chose a birth-center birth with their first baby, but decided to birth at home the second time. She knew that her body was perfectly designed to work for birth. She believed this was the direction God was showing them for the birth. Erica was very careful during her pregnancy to watch her diet and exercise, in preparation for the birth. She read, researched, and prepared. She describes her homebirth as "exquisite" and "empowering." Morna Kai Grace and Daniel Clemente were born into their parents' loving arms. The birth was perfect. There were no complications with the birth or afterwards. But Erica and her husband Cleave had agreed to notify the local paramedics, in an effort to appease concerned family members who were fearful of their decision to birth at home. That is where their problems began. | |
Comment: It is inhuman what Child Protection Services (talk about an oxymoron!) is doing to parents and children based on the most flimsiest of accusations. This is a system that needs a total overhaul, because it is broken. It is traumatizing children who should be with their parents and causing untold emotional heartbreak. The people who enforce such psychopathic rules should be ashamed of themselves. This isn't the first time they've been involved in what should be deemed illegal behavior, but condoned by the state:
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| Secret History |
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John Markoff
The New York Times 2014-11-24 10:20:00
A riddle for the ages may be a small step closer to a solution: Who made the famed Antikythera Mechanism, the astronomical calculator that was raised from an ancient shipwreck near Crete in 1901? The complex clocklike assembly of bronze gears and display dials predates other known examples of similar technology by more than 1,000 years. It accurately predicted lunar and solar eclipses, as well as solar, lunar and planetary positions. For good measure, the mechanism also tracked the dates of the Olympic Games. Although it was not programmable in the modern sense, some have called it the first analog computer. Archaeologists and historians have long debated where the device was built, and by whom. Given its sophistication, some experts believe it must have been influenced, at least, by one of a small pantheon of legendary Greek scientists - perhaps Archimedes, Hipparchus or Posidonius. Its purpose has been debated, too. It has been described as, among other things, an eclipse predictor, an astrological forecasting system and an astronomical teaching device. Now a new analysis of the dial used to predict eclipses, which is set on the back of the mechanism, provides yet another clue to one of history's most intriguing puzzles. Christián C. Carman, a science historian at the National University of Quilmes in Argentina, and James Evans, a physicist at the University of Puget Sound in Washington, suggest that the calendar of the mysterious devicebegan in 205 B.C., just seven years after Archimedes died. | |
Comment: Ooparts (out of place artifact) like Antikythera are fascinating, because they lead us to the topic of the secret history of the world. Maybe Antikythera show hints of some technological knowledge that survived from earlier catastrophic event caused by cometary bombardment. What we know of our ancient history is highly distorted because these cataclysmic events seem to happen on a regular basis and also correlate with the periods of exceptional social turmoil. This is the key factor that our uniformitarianist science doesn't take into account.
Here is more information of Antikythera Mechanism:
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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
RINF Alternative News 2014-11-25 15:36:00
When Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, they don't know what they are celebrating. In American folklore, Thanksgiving is a holiday that originated in 1621 with the Pilgrims celebrating a good harvest. Some historians say that this event is poorly documented, and others believe that the Thanksgiving tradition travelled to the New World with the Pilgrims and Puritans who brought with them the English Days of Thanksgiving. Other historians think the Pilgrims associated their relief from hunger with their observance of the relief of the siege of Leiden. The Pilgrims' Thanksgiving, if it happened, might not have been the first in the New World. Historians say the Virginia colonial charter declared a Day of Thanksgiving in 1619, and other historians say the first Thanksgiving was observed by the Spanish in Florida in 1565. | |
Comment: For more on the sordid history of Thanksgiving see:
Lest we forget: The genocidal roots of Thanksgiving Cooking the History Books: The Thanksgiving Massacre American Thanksgiving: A pure glorification of racist barbarity | |
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| Science & Technology |
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Sarah Knapton
Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest, are populated by a very narrow section of society, scientists warn The Telegraph, UK 2014-11-27 19:00:00
Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook should not be used to gauge human behaviour or trends because they are too biased, scientists have warned. Increasingly, social researchers and media organisations use sites to glean information about public views and interests. But computer scientists at McGill University in Montreal and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh warn that the data omits the opinion of large portions of the population who are either under-represented, or who choose not to engage in social media. They claim the sites 'misrepresent the real world.' One of the major problems with sites like Twitter, Pinterest or Facebook is 'population bias' where platforms are populated by a very narrow section of society. Latest figures on Twitter suggest that just five per cent of over 65s use the platform compared with 35 per cent for those aged 18-29. Similarly far more men use the social networking site than women. Instagram has a particular appeal to younger adults, urban dwellers, and non-whites. | |
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Kate Kelland
ABC Science, Australia 2014-11-27 19:20:00
In a discovery that experts say could revolutionise fuel cell technology, scientists have found that graphene, the world's thinnest, strongest and most impermeable material, can allow protons to pass through it. The new discovery reported in the journal Nature raises the possibility that graphene membranes could one day be used to "sieve" hydrogen gas directly from the atmosphere to generate electricity. "We are very excited about this result because it opens a whole new area of promising applications for graphene in clean energy harvesting and hydrogen-based technologies," says study co-author Marcelo Lozada-Hidalgo of Manchester University. Graphene was first isolated in 2004 by the leader of this study, Professor Andre Geim who, with fellow researchers was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2010 for the work. At just one atom thick graphene is renowned for being the thinnest material on Earth. It is 200 times stronger than steel, and impermeable to all gases and liquids, giving it the potential for a range of uses such as corrosion-proof coatings, impermeable packaging and even super-thin condoms. | |
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Phys.org
2014-11-26 19:00:00
A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder has discovered an invisible shield some 7,200 miles above Earth that blocks so-called "killer electrons," which whip around the planet at near-light speed and have been known to threaten astronauts, fry satellites and degrade space systems during intense solar storms. The barrier to the particle motion was discovered in the Van Allen radiation belts, two doughnut-shaped rings above Earth that are filled with high-energy electrons and protons, said Distinguished Professor Daniel Baker, director of CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). Held in place by Earth's magnetic field, the Van Allen radiation belts periodically swell and shrink in response to incoming energy disturbances from the sun. As the first significant discovery of the space age, the Van Allen radiation belts were detected in 1958 by Professor James Van Allen and his team at the University of Iowa and were found to be comprised of an inner and outer belt extending up to 25,000 miles above Earth's surface. In 2013, Baker - who received his doctorate under Van Allen - led a team that used the twin Van Allen Probes launched by NASA in 2012 to discover a third, transient "storage ring" between the inner and outer Van Allen radiation belts that seems to come and go with the intensity of space weather. The latest mystery revolves around an "extremely sharp" boundary at the inner edge of the outer belt at roughly 7,200 miles in altitude that appears to block the ultrafast electrons from breeching the shield and moving deeper towards Earth's atmosphere. "It's almost like theses electrons are running into a glass wall in space," said Baker, the study's lead author. "Somewhat like the shields created by force fields on Star Trek that were used to repel alien weapons, we are seeing an invisible shield blocking these electrons. It's an extremely puzzling phenomenon." | |
Comment: See Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection for in depth explanations of the winning Electric Universe theory, plasma (one characteristic of which is the creation of an 'insulating bubble' around charged bodies), discharge modes and much more.
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| Earth Changes |
Roaming dogs, the number of menacing dogs and attacks on people are on the rise in Queenstown. The number of attacks on people increased from six in the 2012/13 financial year to 19 in the last period. The number of dogs classed as "menacing" more than doubled from eight to 19, while the number of infringement notices for failing to keep a dog under control leapt from 17 to 37. Councillors will consider a dog control report during a Queenstown Lakes District Council meeting today. Council regulatory manager Lee Webster said there was a small increase in the number of dogs registered in the district but the increased number of attacks may also be due to more reporting. "Over the last year we have seen an increase in the overall number of attacks [on people and animals] from 24 to 46 which has generated significant demand for the animal control service," the report said. | |
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James Urton
Monterey Herald 2014-11-19 21:44:00
Over the past few days, the tide has brought in more than just kelp. Recently, observant beachgoers have reported dozens of bird corpses along the high-water mark of several local beaches. On Wednesday morning, there were over four dozen dead seabirds along a 1.5-mile stretch of Monterey Municipal Beach, including Cassin's auklets, western grebes, northern fulmars and murres. Seabirds can die during fall migration if they are too old, weak or malnourished. Also, warm near-shore waters may have decreased local populations of krill, a common food for seabirds, according to Raphael Kudela, professor of ocean sciences at UC Santa Cruz. Occasional algal blooms can also kill seabirds. The causes of death of the birds spotted Wednesday were not known. But, dead seabirds are not an unusual feature of Monterey-area shorelines during autumn, experts with the Audubon Society and the Monterey County chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said. "This appears to be one of those things that can happen every year around this time," said Jessica Shipman, a spokeswoman with the Monterey County SPCA. | |
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In what became a Golden Bay community event, hundreds of people turned up at Rototai beach to see and touch three dead sperm whales that had become stranded. The whales, which ranged in length from 14 to 17 metres long were located about one kilometre out on tidal flats from the beach carpark. Local iwi gathered to bless the three whales, which were towed by tug boat to Farewell Spit last night, once the tide was high enough to move them.
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The Island (Sri Lanka)
2014-11-27 16:39:00
Two men were killed in a wild elephant attack on Monday night at Ellakattuwa, The deceased were A. Gunadasa (65) and P. G. Sambarana (62). The Wildlife officials said that the elephant had emerged from the jungles of Nochchiyagama and moved to Malwathu Oya after killing the two persons. A team of Wildlife officials had moved to the area to capture the elephant and relocate it, the officials said. Source: NP | |
Comment: The other reports this week: Father and son killed in elephant attack, Sri Lanka
2 people killed in another elephant attack in Sri Lanka Other recent reports from Sri Lanka: Wild elephant attacks kills two in Sri Lanka One person killed in wild elephant attack in Sri Lanka Fourth elephant attack within four weeks in Sri Lanka Two killed in a wild elephant attack in Maankulam, Sri Lanka | |
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Mary Callahan
The Press Democrat 2014-11-23 15:46:00
Scientists up and down the West Coast are monitoring what appears to be a large-scale die-off of young Cassin's auklets, small seabirds whose breeding grounds include a colony in the Farallon Islands west of San Francisco. Emaciated, white-bellied birds have been washing ashore in Sonoma County and along a broad swath of California coastline since early November after a period of ocean warming in the Farallones region and disappearance of the tiny krill that provide their main source of food, researchers say. Scientists are still collecting data, but the largest concentration of dead birds appears to be in northern Oregon, according to monitors in the Pacific Northwest. Birds have been washing up in Washington, as well. Scientists say anyone who finds a dead bird should leave it alone so that monitors surveying the beaches can collect accurate records on the die-off. | |
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ODFW will conduct necropsies, Audobon Society helping to investigate About 30 dead crows were found along the Willamette River waterfront and some Portland parks,and officials don't have any idea at this time what caused their deaths. Several crows were seen suffering seizures and flopping on the ground at Waterfront Park, police said, and several dead crows were seen nearby. Other dead crows were found around Chapman and Lownsdale Square parks and the Lovejoy Fountain. PPB Sgt. Roger Axtelm said the bureau "had a number of phone calls from citizens calling about the blackbirds that were down and apparently ill. Some were deceased." A few of the birds were alive but in bad shape. Bob Sallinger with the Portland Audobon Society said the ones still alive "were convulsing."
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| Fire in the Sky |
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| Health & Wellness |
LDL or low density lipoprotein has been given a bad rap. Every since someone decided to call it "bad cholesterol" it has been demonized as being responsible for just about everything bad in the world. Medical doctors and cardiologists in specific have joined the crusade against LDL with a pervasive mentality that somehow the lower the blood value of LDL, the better. Fortunately, the justification for this altruism is unjustified. So let's take a step back for a moment and review just exactly what LDL is and does, and then I'll move on and explain why the notion of it being something to fear is ill founded. LDL is what we call a carrier protein. And one of it's important jobs is to carry a fundamentally important chemical to every cell in the body. This chemical is a critical component of cell membranes, serves as a brain antioxidant, and is the raw material from which your body manufactures vitamin D, cortisol, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. And this important, life-sustaining chemical ischolesterol. So the notion that LDL is "bad cholesterol" is flawed on two counts. First, it is, in and of itself, not cholesterol, it is a protein. Second, now that you've embraced all of its functions in human physiology, it's clear that LDL is anything but bad. How could we castigate a part of our biochemistry so fundamental for life? | |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Melinda Wenner Moyer
Slate 2014-11-25 16:33:00
I vaguely remember my son's first crawl, his first steps, and the first time he said "mama." But I really remember the first time he swore. It was shortly after he had turned 3. He was playing with his toys in the other room, and I'm guessing he was getting frustrated because, for the zillionth time, his zoo animals weren't fitting in his zoo truck. Suddenly I heard: "Fuck it chuck it!" I froze. | |
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| High Strangeness |
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Jill Reilly
Daily Mail, UK 2014-11-26 13:46:00
Twenty-one dolls on bamboo stakes have been mysteriously found in an Alabama swamp. Autauga County sheriff's deputies traveled by canoe into Bear Creek Swamp on Tuesday to recover the dolls, whose faces and hair were painted white. Most of the dolls are porcelain and have the appearance of being antique, reports The Montgomery Advertiser. 'I noticed the dolls several weeks ago while driving through the swamp working on a stolen vehicle report,' he sad. 'I noticed the dolls several weeks ago while driving through the swamp working on a stolen vehicle report,'said Autauga County Chief Deputy Joe Sedinger 'I just thought they were a Halloween prank, and really didn't give it much thought after that.' But on Tuesday morning they decided to investigate after people expressed concerns on social media. 'I admit it looked kind of creepy,' Sedinger said.
'You could see them from the road. We figured it was best to get them up.' The Montgomery newspaper reports that it has been a rite of passage for generations of teenagers to enter the area at night looking for creatures said to roam the swamp. | ||
Comment: Now that is just weird and creepy!
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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Matthew Abeler
YouTube 2014-11-10 19:22:00
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