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Brently Kopopolous
Sott.net 2014-12-27 14:58:00
Electronics and media giant Sony was hacked last month by a group of hackers calling themselves the "Guardians of Peace" or GOP. The group claims they stole over 100 terabytes of data, which has been slowly trickling out via torrent peer-to-peer software. The data ranges from employee emails and personal information to financial and other proprietary data. A lot of it is pretty funny, here's a short list:
The sad reality is that Eric Garner and Michael Brown's deaths are merely the tip of a huge iceberg, one in which police can bully, assault, kill and/or otherwise harass individuals who are either innocent of any wrong-doing or suspected of - at worst - minor, non-violent crimes. The system is designed to protect and serve these officers. The topic is being summarily dismissed by police union chiefs and other representatives of the establishment, because if these protests continue and real reform is actually implemented, they will lose a lot of the authority they have and be held accountable for criminal behavior - something they most definitely do not want. | |
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Sott Editors
Sott.net 2014-12-27 13:33:00
Dear Readers, 2014 is about to end, and if you have been following our website closely, you will be aware that it has been one heck of a year! By paying attention to the truth behind events as they unfold on our planet,you begin to see the world more as it is rather than as you would like it to be. That knowledge can bring you a certain sense of liberation, where you finally understand what is wrong with our world. With that understanding, you can then begin to make the choices that will change your life for the better, despite the increasing chaos all around you. As we're fond of saying, 'knowledge protects'. And that is what we wish you for the incoming year: Knowledge and awareness, and hence protection. Saying goodbye to the year 2014, we'd like to tell you a little bit about our accomplishments, since you may not be aware of them all. We have reason to be proud. There is always much more we can do, but this year, just as we thought our plates were too full, thanks to our readers' support, and the impetus from many new volunteers around the world, we have been expanding! The SOTT Talk Radio Show has now become the SOTT Radio Network, with three different shows:"Behind the Headlines" (Sundays), "The Truth Perspective" (Saturdays), and "Atando cabos"(Saturdays, in Spanish). Listeners from all over the world listen in and participate. If you haven't tuned in yet, you're missing out! More shows are planned for 2015, including a show on health, psychology and well-being, to be launched in early January. Some articles we picked up this year 'went viral' in 2014 (such as this one, this one and this one), and we have also been producing much more original content. In addition to our SOTT Focus articles, SOTT Exclusive articles analyze and summarize breaking news events and global trends. Meanwhile, our Earth Changes Summary monthly videos are now being translated into multiple languages, including French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Croatian, Russian, and Vietnamese. Recognizing how important these "signs of the times" are, people have been sharing them far and wide on social media. This year we also launched SOTT WorldView, a visual, interactive map of world events that lets you read the news in a whole new way by seeing the links between different types of events for any chosen time period. Check it out, and search according to the parameters that interest you most. We have also been working hard to release, early in 2015, SOTT.net in 5 new languages: Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Greek and Croatian. More and more people are going to be able to read our news, without being hindered by language barriers!
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| Puppet Masters |
Plummeting oil price blowback in US: Industry begins layoffs while oil states suffer budget deficits
RT
2014-12-27 18:09:00
Thousands of recently highly paid workers have been laid off after the oil price plummeted 50 percent in 2014. At least four American oil-producing states are already facing budget problems due to decreasing oil revenues. The price plunge has affected petroleum production in all oil-extracting countries, including the US. Currently cheap fuel is still believed to be providing an overall boost to the US economy, as consumers can spend less on gasoline and more on shopping and services. But for the American energy sector the future looks less bright. It's effecting places like Alaska, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas, the New York Times reports. | |
Comment: It seems the scheme intended to sink Russia is coming home to roost. Millions of people reliant on the oil industry for jobs will suffer needlessly because the psychopaths running the US cannot see, nor do they care about, the consequences of their ill-conceived policies. Worse, it appears that the US 'ally' Saudi Arabia may be putting additional pressure on prices to eliminate competition.
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Larry Bowers
Sott.net 2014-12-27 16:27:00
Last month, Yevgeny Alexeyevich Fedorov, Deputy of the Russian State Duma and the coordinator of the National Liberation Movement for restoring sovereignty of Russia (http://eafedorov.ru/), delivered an impassioned interview regarding the role of the Russian Central Bank in Western plans to displace Putin by fomenting Maidan-style protest through economic attack - all part of a larger Western fifth column attack designed to bring Russian wealth/resources (one third of the World's wealth) under Western control. The Youtube video description reads: | |
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Maria Tsvetkova
Yahoo 2014-12-26 16:05:00
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a new military doctrine, naming NATO expansion among key external risks, the Kremlin said on Friday, days after Ukraine made fresh steps to join the Atlantic military alliance. Moscow's previous military doctrine, signed by Putin in 2010, also identified NATO expansion as a top risk to Russia, but the stakes have risen sharply over the past year. Russia said this week NATO was turning Ukraine into a "frontline of confrontation" and threatened to sever remaining ties if Ukraine's hopes of joining NATO were realized. The Kiev parliament's renunciation of Ukraine's neutral status on Tuesday in pursuit of NATO membership has outraged Moscow and deepened the worst confrontation between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War after Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula this year. NATO has already boosted its military presence in eastern Europe this year, saying it has evidence that Russia orchestrated and armed a pro-Russian rebellion in eastern Ukraine that followed the overthrow of a Kremlin-backed president in Kiev. Moscow denies supporting the rebellion, and is currently trying, along with Kiev and the rebels, to renew efforts to find a political solution to the crisis in eastern Ukraine. It is likely to take years for Ukraine to meet the technical criteria for accession to NATO and, even then, there is no certainty that the alliance is ready to take such a decision. A NATO official said on Friday the alliance respected the move by Ukraine's parliament, and so should Russia. "Should Ukraine decide to apply for NATO membership, NATO will assess its readiness to join the Alliance in the same way as with any candidate. This is an issue between NATO and the individual countries aspiring to membership." | |
Comment: It's not just Russia that NATO threatens. The whole world is endangered by the U.S.-controlled NATO. Psychopathic Western leaders are trying to take over the whole world and keep all of humanity under their thumbs. Putin is one of the few people who seems willing to stand up to them and show that there is some humanity left on the global political stage. Let's hope others join him.
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Andrew Korybko
Oriental Review 2014-12-26 15:22:00
Russia's vision of the Eurasian Union is one in which it sits at the center of an interconnected supercontinent, with Moscow taking the initiative in bringing all sides closer together for their joint and multivectoral benefit. The West's confrontation with Russia and the New Cold War may actually have been a blessing in disguise, as ever since then, Moscow has been propelled with a renewed sense of urgency to probe and clinch major deals all across Eurasia. Stretching from the coasts of Vietnam to the world's most populous Arab country, Egypt, it feels as though Russian diplomacy is omnipresent nowadays. The purpose behind Russia's pan-Eurasian foreign policy push is to cement an alternative political and economic arrangement to challenge Western dominance and facilitate the birth of a truly multipolar world. From Network Diplomacy... The underlying basis of Russia's foreign policy successes has been that all of its strategic partners, in one way or another, understand the necessity of a multipolar world in order to safeguard their full sovereignty (cultural, political, historic, etc.). Incidentally, it was the US and its own foreign policy fumblings (especially in the post-9/11 era) that convinced most of the world that multipolarity was their only practical option for survival in the 21st century. Working with the West carries with it certain privileged benefits (as Saudi Arabia and its Gulf clients know firsthand), but a non-Western state's existence within this system is tenuous, and once its leader's utility inevitably expires (as Mubarak's did) or the state refuses to follow essential unipolar dictates (like Gaddafi's Libya did), then the country is done away with, destroyed, and redefined as a dystopia.
Even before the 'Arab Spring' theater-wide Color Revolutions, this nefarious objective was apparent to Russia and China, which entered into a strategic partnership in 1997 in order to help one another build the multipolar world. Shortly thereafter, they transformed the Shanghai Five into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in order to safeguard themselves and their allies against the asymmetrical Western weapons of terrorism, separatism, and extremism (political, religious, economic [sanctions], etc.). A few years later, the emerging economic reality in the non-Western world led to the bestowing of the BRICS moniker, which quickly evolved into an dynamic political and economic grouping dedicated to multipolarity. In order to bridge any potential rivalry and divergence between its two largest members, Russia solidified its strategic partnerships with China and India, forming the geopolitical glue of trust that has kept either of them from completely falling for the tempting and Brzezinski-esque Western trap of intra-BRICS conflict. It's not to say that this doesn't exist to some level, but by Russia positioning itself as the mediator via its bilateral partnerships with both, it joins them closer together than if it hadn't, and it also provides a trustful go-between intermediary in case tensions risk boiling over some time in the future. Seen from another angle, the SCO and BRICS form the institutional cores of multipolarity in the Eurasian supercontinent, while the Russian-Chinese and Russian-Indian Strategic Partnerships provide the bilateral boosts to this process. Supplementary to these Eurasian anchors' agreement on the world's destiny, each of their own lesser (but no less important) strategic partnerships, such as the Russian-Iranian and Chinese-Pakistani ones, add a deeper network vector to this global vision and work to erode unipolar hegemony. | ||
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RT
2014-12-26 13:42:00
Officials from Washington, Tokyo and Seoul will sign a trilateral intelligence-sharing pact in an effort to strengthen their surveillance network on the nuclear-armed pariah state of North Korea, Seoul officials said. Although the United States already shares intelligence on North Korean activities separately with South Korea and Japan, the trilateral agreement marks a historic partnership for the three nations. Due to historic tensions connected to Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945, the sharing of intelligence between Tokyo and Seoul marks a significant step forward in bilateral relations between the two Pacific powers. In April, President Obama's Asia tour seemed to have succeeded in reducing regional tensions over historical and territorial issues hampering Washington's efforts at trilateral cooperation. During his visit, the US leader gave Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe assurances that the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, which have been a matter of controversy with China, are Japanese territory. Obama thus became the first US president to have "overtly stated that the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands fall within the purview of the US-Japan security treaty," the Diplomat reported. Comment: Meaning that the disputed Islands are U.S. occupied. Later, at a press conference with South Korean President Park Geun-hye, Obama touched upon the sensitive subject of so-called comfort women - females forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, which was "a terrible, egregious violation of human rights." These statements soothed historic tensions and helped seal the deal between Seoul and Tokyo. According to the agreement, to be signed on Monday, South Korean and Japanese officials will share intelligence on Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs, via Washington, South Korea's Defense Ministry said in a statement, AP reported. On October 9, 2006, North Korea stunned the world when it carried out its first underground nuclear test, followed by a second test almost three years later. On February 12, 2013, the closed communist country announced it had conducted its third underground nuclear test in seven years, although Japanese and South Korean investigators had failed to detect any radiation. | |
Comment: As with all U.S.-led alliances, they hide the real criminals. There is no proof that North Korea is implicated in the Sony hacking incident, and as usual, that won't stop the 'reality creators,' they'll just go ahead with their plans.
See:
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Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD
The People's Voice 2014-12-26 23:39:00
Leader across the globe use the Xmas and the New Year's Eve as convenient opportunities to echo festive messages of peace and optimism as if they long the humanity. Despite the inherent wickedness of warmongers and institutions, the global community is tolerant and open to listening to the abstract and absurd alike. Analyzing critically and objectively, there is hardly any international leaders capable of articulating an effective and credible message of hope and change under the present global affairs. No matter where you look to the East and West, South and North, forces of darkness and evil go unchecked as if the mankind was just numbers and digits and nothing else in reality. | |
Comment: One way of reversing this cycle of violence is to learn about psychopathology. An excellent book on this subject and how it affects our world today is Political Ponerology.
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| Society's Child |
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Dawn Roberts
The Fix 2014-12-15 23:29:00
Much has been written about the troubled teen industry by former clients, advocates and journalists. On a daily basis the "still-traumatized" post their experiences on social media platforms. They bear witness to friends who died during or after abuse at facilities that were supposed to help create lives of meaning and purpose. The community of survivors publish online to help make sense of their struggles. They also want to raise awareness about punitive and damaging treatments doled out by certain institutions. The industry that has arisen around troubled teens is a profitable one, estimated at over two billion dollars a year. A wide range of behavioral and psychological issues affect adolescents who are remanded to residential facilities. They include substance abuse, ADHD, oppositional defiance, conduct disorder, and many other diagnoses. A common thread runs through family narratives; they can no longer manage the behavior of their children. Parents are fearful, bewildered, overwhelmed and often angry about their children's actions. Teens, on the other hand, may see their parents' responses as hand-wringing overkill. When these conflicts come to a head, an adolescent can find himself awoken in the middle of the night by strangers with restraints, and forcibly taken to a residential boarding school far from home. | |
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John Clarke
The Raw Story 2014-12-27 19:14:00
Five people were stabbed early on Saturday in a restaurant in Washington, D.C., police said. The incident occurred around 12:30 a.m. at McFadden's, a popular restaurant and nightclub on Pennsylvania Avenue, eight blocks from the White House in the nation's capital. All five victims were taken to hospital with knife wounds, a police spokesman said Saturday. Their identities have not been released. Police said the stabbing happened inside the bar. Photos posted on Twitter Saturday show a blood-splattered sidewalk. | |
Comment: This have been multiple incidences of stabbings this year. Oddly, there was a rash of such incidents back in 2010, and hopefully this is not an indication of more to come.
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thewhiteboardpig
2014-12-24 18:21:00
It's no revelation that the majority of America is asleep at the wheel (both figuratively and literally). I get it. People are really busy taking the kids to soccer, sitting glued to American Idol, and buying up $300 pairs of Nikes manufactured in Vietnam for $1.68/each. No one has the time or energy to care about trivial things like the killing of 5,000+ Americans orheads of state breaking international law. The common folks are just too preoccupied to realize that they're paying multi-billion dollar companies welfare, all while complaining about "ghetto queens" buying a $3 Red Bull with an EBT card. I feel for these people whose few spare moments are consumed with the socially necessary memorization of sports statistics and analysis of who sportsed the hardest at sports this week. It is because of this empathy that I felt compelled to write a summary public service announcement which will inform people on proper behavior in our newly transformed society. I'm calling it... | |
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thewhiteboardpig
2014-12-20 18:07:00
If only cops feeling up OWS girls were the worst of our problems... First off, this is not a violation of my blog's foundational rules. This post merely contains a list. It is not a "list post". My previous post that pointed out the destructive-to-the-cause nature of turning "all lives matter" into "black lives matter" ended up being quite controversial. Of course, it must be noted that "the cause" refers to the desire that many of us have to end America's police state and hold police to the same standards they hold the public. If your cause is to divide people, then this "black lives matter" narrowing of the issue is doing that beautifully. The latter holds true for an unfortunately large number of people who are fully convinced that police brutality and police state America are solely black community issues and white people should mind their own business because these things don't affect them. Then of course there's this other large group of people, the "cops are just doing their jobs" and "being a cop is so stressful" and "there isn't actually a problem, it's being blown out of proportion" people. I wanted to do something for both these groups of people, to help them see reality, to help them see the absurdity of their positions, and to reinforce my previous post. Both groups are doing harm to a cause that is ultimately going to decide whether future America will be a free country or not.They need to get back in touch with reality. So, without further adieu, I give you my list... | |
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Sean Kelly
Opposing Views 2014-12-27 00:00:00
An attorney paid a stranger's $983 fine so he could help the man avoid having a felony conviction on his record. Colin M. Murphy, a civil attorney in Portland, OR, was sitting in the gallery of a courtroom waiting for his case to begin when he overheard the attorneys and judge from a separate case discussing the defendant, who was about be convicted as a felon simply because he couldn't pay $983 in restitution. Castor Conley, 27, a married father with a 17-month-old child, would have faced a misdemeanor sentence if he were unable to pay the fine. Murphy, having never met Conley before, said he could tell that the court did not want to overly penalize the man and were just looking to compensate a man whose truck was damaged. He also realized that a felony conviction could seriously hurt Conley's ability to get a job or rent/buy a house. Murphy was compelled to help, approaching the judge and offering to pay the fine himself. | |
Comment: This was an incredibly kind gesture, and one that will likely change this stranger's life. Many people are being thrown in jail in the US these days, simply for being too poor to pay finesimposed by the courts, often for minor infractions. As an attorney, he is no doubt well aware of the descending spiral that the stranger faced for nothing more than being poor, and had a heart big enough to change this. Kudos!!
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Scott Kaufman
Raw Story 2014-12-26 23:38:00
An Edwardsville, Illinois police officer was arrested on charges of having burglarized homes and businesses while on duty and in uniform, the Belleville News-Democrat reports. Officer Brian Barker, a 19-year veteran, was arrested after being accused of entering Reality Salon and Spa and removing money from the cash register while on duty. When the Edwardsville Police Chief Jay Keeven discovered that the suspect was one of his officers, he turned the investigation over to the Madison County Sheriff's Department. "It isn't that I don't have faith in my investigators, but for the public trust, it's best to have an independent agency investigate your agency," Keeven said. Officer Barker is also accused of stealing money and weapons from a private residence, as well as a number of Edwardsville businesses, including Afsanehs Alterations, Edible Arrangements, Edison's Entertainment, Extreme Vapor, Headstrong Hair, The Little Gym, and Pedegos. "We put all this trust, faith and power in police officers, but with that comes gigantic stresses," Madison County State's Attorney Tom Gibbons told the New-Democrat. "When they breach that trust, it's so much worse. The magnitude of this breach of public trust necessitates a very harsh penalty, and we will be seeking prison time." "It's really sad to see someone who's supposed to be the good guy go wrong. But the measure of character of leadership is what they do when it happens," he added. "In this case, [the Edwardsville Police Department] absolutely did the right thing." Officer Barker stands accused of 10 counts of burglary, one count of residential burglary, and one counted of aggravated possession of stolen firearms. | |
Comment: Another example of police thinking they are above the law. Hopefully this officer is prosecuted for his crimes and realizes that even police officers are held to the standards of law like everyone else.
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David Ferguson
Raw Story 2014-12-26 23:30:00
An off-duty sheriff's deputy from Palm Beach, Florida reportedly shot and killed his 21-year-old son on Christmas Eve at an apartment complex in Delrey Beach. According to the Broward-Palm Beach New Times' Pulp blog, Khamis Shatara was shot and killed by his father, a Palm Beach Sheriff's Office deputy, in a dispute that took place on Wednesday. The deputy's name is Shatara K. Shatara, who has been with the sheriff's department since 2006. Khamis Shatara was a criminal justice major at Palm Beach State College and a staunch supporter of the police. He intended to enroll in the police force after graduation to follow in his father's footsteps. Police were called to the apartment complex shortly before 8 a.m. on Wednesday. When they arrived they found Deputy Shatara and his son, who was dead of a single gunshot wound. | |
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Tom Boggioni
Raw Story 2014-12-26 23:19:00
A New York State Trooper, annoyed that a motorist was recording their interactions, threatened to "find a way to arrest" him during a recent traffic stop. In the video recorded by John Houghtaling, the trooper - identified as Officer Rosenblatt - walks up to the car and immediately holds his hand up to block the view of his face from the camera. "Put the phone down," The trooper tells Houghtaling, who asks the officer "why?" adding, "Am I not allowed to record, officer?" After asking the trooper for his badge number, Houghtaling asks, "Am I being detained?" The officer claims he stopped the car for a traffic violation and requests Houghtailing's license and registration, before once again complaining about being filmed and threatening Houghtaling. | |
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Raúl Ilargi Meijer
Automatic Earth 2014-12-26 22:50:00
From just about as early in my life as I can remember, growing up as a child in Holland, there were stories about World War II, and not just about Anne Frank and the huge amounts of people who, like her, had been dragged off to camps in eastern Europe never to come back, but also about thethousands who had risked their lives to hide Jewish and other refugees, and the scores who had been executed for doing so, often betrayed by their own neighbors. And then there were those who had risked their lives in equally courageous ways to get news out to people, putting out newspapers and radio broadcasts just so there would be a version of events out there that was real, and not just what the Germans wanted one to believe. This happened in all Nazi - and Nazi friendly - occupied European nations. The courage of these people is hard to gauge for us today, and I'm convinced there's no way to say whom amongst us would show that kind of bravery if we were put to the test; I certainly wouldn't be sure about myself. Still, without wanting to put myself anywhere near the level of those very very real heroes, please don't get me wrong about that, that's not what I mean, I was thinking about them with regards to what is happening in our media today. I've mentioned before that I don't think Joseph Goebbels had anything on US and European media today. | |
Comment: That is exactly what we try to do here at SOTT: bring you the real news and the state of our world as objectively as possible.
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| Secret History |
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Stephanie Linning
MailOnline 2014-12-27 18:41:00
Most fairytales are overrun with wicked witches, entrapped princesses and dashing young princes. But a new collection offers a different take on the classics - without the Happily Ever After. The stories were compiled by German historian Franz Xaver von Schönwerth in the 1880s - around the same time as the Brothers Grimm folk tales - from across the Bavarian region of Oberpfalz. And now the collection, which lay undiscovered in a local archive for 150 years, is set to be published in English for the first time, the Guardian reports. While the well-known Grimm fairytales often feature a vulnerable princess and dragon-slaying hero, Schönwerth reverses their roles - offering readers powerful female and vulnerable male characters. In Schönwerth's fantastical version Cinderella, for example, the heroine uses her golden - not glass - slippers to rescue her lover from beyond the moon. But his work, which also includes untold tales such as The Stupid Wife and The Girl And The Cow, failed to attract the same attention as that of the Brothers Grimm and faded into obscurity. | |
Comment: For more background on Schönwerth's folklore and the ancient origins of fairy tales, see:
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| Science & Technology |
No new articles.
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| Earth Changes |
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bhubaneswarbuzz.com
2014-12-27 21:13:00
In the second incident of its kind this month, the carcass of a large whale was found at the Gouda Nuagaon beach under Krushnaprasad block near Brahmagiri in Odisha's Puri district today. The dead whale measuring around 30 feet in length, 12-15 feet in girth and weighing approximately 10 tonnes was sighted by villagers at about 2 pm today. Curious villagers have gathered in huge numbers on the beach to have a glimpse of the large aquatic mammal. Awestruck by the size of the dead creature, the villagers said they had never seen anything like in their lifetime. | |
Comment: See also: Dead sperm whale found off Odisha coast, India
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economictimes.indiatimes.com
2014-12-26 20:21:00
At least 14 people have been killed and 750,000 affected in Sri Lanka due to floods and mudslides caused by heavy rains across the country in the past three days as the air force deployed helicopters for rescue operations in the central hills today. "At least 14 people are dead while 11 remain missing in Badulla," police said. Helicopters were deployed after flash floods caused mudslides and several roads were rendered impassable due to incessant rains. The worst affected was Rilpola town in the central hill district of Badulla where five people were killed as mounds of earth fell on homes. | |
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Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research 2014-12-26 00:00:00
One of the most destructive and powerful earthquakes in recorded history, more than a quarter of a million recorded deaths, local economies destroyed, the lives of entire communities shattered, and no serious investigation into the flaws of the global seismic warning system is contemplated. According to Columbia University's Earth Institute the M-9.0 Sumatra - Andaman Island earthquake on December 26th released energy, equivalent roughly to 700 million Hiroshima bombs. Seismic information regarding what scientists identify as a "rare great earthquake", was available in near real time (i.e. almost immediately) to seismic centers around the World. Other types of data, including satellite imagery were also available in near real time. The advanced global seismic information and communications systems were fully operational. Why then, did the information not get out on the morning of December 26th? Tens of thousands of lives could have been saved. | |
Comment: So the Powers That Be may have stood by while the Christmas 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami wiped out a quarter of a million people.
It's a scary thought, but it's worth considering, especially in light of how we know - as described in Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine - Western and local oligarchs behaved in the aftermath of the disaster: they left the survivors to rot while they carved up valuable coastal real estate for the tourism industry. | |
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wlox.com
2014-12-25 15:49:00
Marine biologists are in Waveland this morning. They rushed to Hancock County after getting reports that a dead manatee washed ashore. Representatives from IMMS say this is the second manatee to be found in Mississippi waters this month. They call this a "very unusual" trend, because during the winter, manatees aren't normally in the northern Gulf of Mexico. They usually migrate to Florida. According to the Save the Manatee Club, "Manatees can be found in shallow, slow-moving rivers, estuaries, saltwater bays, canals, and coastal areas - particularly where seagrass beds or freshwater vegetation flourish. Manatees are a migratory species. Within the United States, they are concentrated in Florida in the winter. In summer months, they can be found as far west as Texas and as far north as Massachusetts, but summer sightings in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina are more common." Manatees are an endangered species. | |
Comment: See also: Manatee from Florida makes rare visit to Texas waters
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A 40-year-old man who gave his pit bull a rawhide bone as a Christmas gift was attacked and killed by the dog. Edward L. Cahill was found dead on the living room floor with bite marks on his arms and face, thePorter County coroner said. Cahill was home alone with his two pit bulls on Christmas morning when he gave Fat Boy a bone. When his wife arrived home later in the afternoon, she found Cahill in a pool of blood and the dog nearby.
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Ted Thornhill
Daily Mail, UK 2014-12-12 23:43:00
It could be a severe case of bird-bird, or strange weather patterns causing confusion, but at the moment scientists remain baffled about instances of flamingos flying north to bitterly cold Siberia for the winter, instead of south. Four flamingos recently touched down in various parts of Siberia, to the astonishment of locals, in temperatures as low as -30C. One landed in the Evenkia district of vast Krasnoyarsk region, which is just 310 miles south of the Arctic circle. | |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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| Health & Wellness |
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Larry Schwartz
Alternet 2014-12-16 22:04:00
Ice pick through the eye socket, anyone? If it wasn't already clear to the public at large, the recent suicide of comedian Robin Williams drove home the point: mental illness can be devastating. It is hardly limited to people we sometimes see on the street railing against apparent voices in their heads, or obsessive-compulsive television characters like "Monk." It is widespread and debilitating and it can kill. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 1 in 17 Americans, including children, are dealing with serious mental illnesses like depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. That's 6% of the population, almost 2 million people. In any given year 1 in 4 American adults experience some kind of mental health issue. The U.S. Surgeon General reported that 1 in 10 children suffer some form of mental illness, disrupting home and school lives around them. Mental illness is responsible for 4 out of every 10 cases of disability in the country. It often affects adolescents and young adults, and the cost to society is enormous, over $100 billion a year in the U.S. alone, from disability, unemployment, drug abuse, suicide, homelessness, and prison incarceration. | |
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Beyond Pesticides
2014-12-23 21:16:00
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) has posted a report on its data from the 2013 Pesticide Data Program (PDP) Annual Summary, concluding that although over half of the food tested by the agency for pesticide residues last year showed detectable levels of pesticides, these levels are below the tolerances established by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and do not pose a safety concern. The residues reflect a pesticide use and exposure pattern that raises hazard scenarios that are not fully evaluated by EPA for chemical mixtures, synergistic effects, impacts on people and environments with high risk factors, and certain critical health endpoints, such as endocrine disruption. Excluding water, of the 9,990 samples analyzed, 23.5 percent had one pesticide detected and 36 percent had more than one pesticide. Residues exceeding tolerances were detected in 0.23 percent (23 samples out of 9,990) of the samples tested. Of these 23 samples, 17 were imported and 6 were domestic. Residues with no established tolerances were found in 3.0 percent of samples, of which 50.2 percent were domestic and 49.2 percent imported. | |
Comment: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) statement that said 'pesticide levels do not pose a safety concern' is ridiculous! Daily reports are coming to light about the serious negative health effects of pesticide residues on food. Recently a documentary was released that depicts the growing concern about 'unacceptable levels' of (toxic) chemicals in the human body:
Documentary: 'Unacceptable Levels' - The chemicals in our bodies; how they got there and what to do about it Study after study reveals the negative health impact of the chemical concoction that we encounter daily in our foods, in our environment, and in consumer products. | |
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Ethan A. Huff
Natural News 2014-12-26 08:25:00
They say there's only two things constant in this life: death and taxes. But a third viable contender might be cancer, which an extensive cohort of scientific research has found is caused by prolonged exposure to radiation from cell phones and their associated communication towers. Contrary to what you may have heard in the mainstream news, mobile phones and the antennas that allow them to communicate emit powerful, microwave radio frequencies capable of penetrating our bodies and cells. And constant exposure to these frequencies, according to the science, appears to be one of the leading causes of cancer in the modern age. | |
Comment: Many people view their cell phones as an extension of themselves. If you are unable to get rid of the cell phone, see this Dr. Mercola article for ways to limit your exposure to harmful cell phone radiation.
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Dr. Mercola
Mercola.com 2014-12-24 22:25:00
A number of chemicals found in plastic products are known to act as endocrine disruptors. Being similar in structure to natural sex hormones, they interfere with the normal functioning of those hormones. This is particularly problematic in children who are still growing and developing, as the glands of your endocrine system and the hormones they release influence almost every cell, organ, and function of your body. Your endocrine system as a whole is instrumental in regulating mood, growth and development, tissue function, metabolism, as well as sexual function and reproductive processes, and endocrine-disrupting chemicals have in fact been linked to a number of reproductive health problems.
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Comment: No surprise that the FDA keeps telling people this toxic chemical is safe:
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| Science of the Spirit |
In the modern age, we know more than ever before, and the information has never been so readily available. And yet individuals and organizations often fail to deliver on the promise of all this knowledge. In fact, we are often the victim, and the architect, of head-slapping displays of incompetence when it comes to delivering what's been promised, or forgetting routine things that have no business being overlooked. Why is there so often this mismatch between potential and application? As our knowledge about the world increases, so too does its complexity. And as complexity goes up, so do the opportunities for failure. Medicine is a great example of where our increased knowledge has made things better, but also more complex, with more possibilities for snafus. Before the mid-20th century, medicine was pretty simple. There wasn't much specialization; when you went to the hospital, there was usually one doctor and a few general nurses overseeing your care. Now when you go to the hospital, you can have several teams taking care of you. Nurses, nurse technicians, radiologists, dieticians, oncologists, cardiologists, and so on and so forth. All these people have the know-how to deliver top-notch healthcare, and yet studies show that failures are common, most often due to plain old ineptitude. For example, 30% of patients who suffer a stroke receive incomplete or inappropriate care from their doctors, as do 45% of patients with asthma, and 60% of patients with pneumonia. It's not ignorance or ill-intent that causes these failures. Knowledge abounds among our healthcare practitioners. The problem is that because medicine is more sophisticated and specialized, applying that knowledge correctly across several teams is harder. There are multiple streams of information to remember and manage. | |
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ScienceDaily
2014-12-23 14:47:00
Cildren who play the violin or study piano could be learning more than just Mozart. A University of Vermont College of Medicine child psychiatry team has found that musical training might also help kids focus their attention, control their emotions and diminish their anxiety. Their research is published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. James Hudziak, M.D., professor of psychiatry and director of the Vermont Center for Children, Youth and Families, and colleagues including Matthew Albaugh, Ph.D., and graduate student research assistant Eileen Crehan, call their study "the largest investigation of the association between playing a musical instrument and brain development." | |
Comment: See also: Music therapy reduces depression in children and adolescents
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