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Harrison Koehli
Sott.net 2015-01-20 18:09:00
Alfred Hitchcock was an artist. He understood the language of film like few others have or do - how to communicate on a visceral, emotional level with imagery and sound - and it shows in his psychological thrillers, like Psycho, The Birds, and Vertigo, among countless others. But he also made a film most people haven't heard about. In 1945 he was commissioned to assist in a documentary film utilizing footage taken by British, American and Russian cameramen/soldiers of the liberated concentration camps stretching across Europe in the wake of World War II. Hitchcock himself only ended up working on the film for a month, helping with the visual presentation of the footage and refusing payment, before various delays cropped up, studio executives axed the project, changed its focus, got a new director (Billy Wilder), and eventually released a shortened, totally different version entitled Death Mills. On January 26, HBO will air a new documentary, Night Will Fall, telling the story of the original film, which sat unseen in an archive for decades, and its restoration. FRONTLINE first broadcast a restored version of the film, Memory of the Camps, in 1985. You can watch it below. (It is also available on PBS's website.) The original purpose of the film was to show people the horrors of Nazi Germany, "as a document, to serve our collective memory". In other words, to never forget. To see the absolute horror of which 'humanity' is capable, and hopefully to learn the lesson so that it might not happen again. "Never again!" is the slogan that most immediately comes to mind when I think of the Holocaust, and it is a good sentiment, if only we would open our eyes and ears, in order to truly see what it will take to prevent another atrocity on this scale. But we can't. We are on the same road to destruction. It will happen again, and humanity won't see it coming. Well, very few will see it, and their voices will count for nothing. There were those who saw what was coming before World War II, and they were ignored, ridiculed, arrested, or killed. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Watch the film first.
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Gregory Wallace and Brian Stelter
CNN 2015-01-20 22:31:00
Comment: Fox News has been leading the charge with its racist fearmongering of Muslims since the Paris shootings. It's good to see somebody standing up to the ridiculous claims by the network. While many have said that a lawsuit is unlikely to succeed, at the least there are some in the government who are not giving in to the incredibly overblown racist rhetoric permeating at places like Fox News. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told CNN Tuesday she intends to sue Fox News in the wake of the channel's coverage of supposed "no-go zones" for non-Muslims. Hidalgo said the channel had "insulted" her city. "When we're insulted, and when we've had an image, then I think we'll have to sue, I think we'll have to go to court, in order to have these words removed," Hidalgo told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. "The image of Paris has been prejudiced, and the honor of Paris has been prejudiced." Fox News representatives did not respond to requests for comment, and outside legal analysts largely dismissed the likelihood that a lawsuit would succeed. Hidalgo's warning about a lawsuit came after a series of Fox segments suggested there are parts of Paris and other European cities where Islamic law is practiced and where police are fearful to work. The "no-go" zone segments were widely mocked and challenged as inaccurate, particularly by French media outlets. Some critics have accused the network of using the controversial "no-go zones" idea to perpetuate a fearful narrative about Muslims, particularly in the days since terror attacks in Paris.
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Julie Hyland
World Socialist Web Site 2015-01-20 22:07:00
The former head of Britain's intelligence agency MI5, Lord Evans, has added his voice to demands for a clampdown on the Internet and e-communications in the wake of the terror assaults on theCharlie Hebdo office in Paris and a Jewish supermarket, in which 17 people were killed. His remarks underscore that the British government is leading efforts in Europe and internationally to exploit the events of January 7 in France to significantly strengthen the repressive powers of the state. Under the banner "Je suis Charlie" (I am Charlie) and the supposed defence of free speech, police state measures are being imposed. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Evans claimed that the UK's existing anti-terror legislation was "no longer fit for purpose" and that new laws were "vital" to enable the state to monitor services such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Snapchat, as well as encrypted communications. His op-ed appeared just two days after Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking in Washington alongside President Barack Obama, called for "pressure" to be exerted on Internet companies such as Facebook and Twitter to work more closely with UK intelligence agencies. Cameron has pledged that if the Conservatives return to power after the May General Election, they will press ahead with plans for a "snoopers' charter" Communications Bill giving the British intelligence agencies MI5, MI6 and the Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) the power to access encrypted communications. Simultaneously, it was announced that Britain's Intelligence and Security Committee, consisting of nine senior Members of Parliament and peers, would announce plans for sweeping new state powers in the next weeks. | |
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Global Research
2011-03-31 21:26:00
Never before has it been so important to have independent, honest voices and sources of information. We are - as a society - inundated and overwhelmed with a flood of information from a wide array of sources, but these sources of information, by and large, serve the powerful interests and individuals that own them. The main sources of information, for both public and official consumption, include the mainstream media, alternative media, academia and think tanks. The mainstream media is the most obvious in its inherent bias and manipulation. The mainstream media is owned directly by large multinational corporations, and through their boards of directors are connected with a plethora of other major global corporations and elite interests. An example of these connections can be seen through the board of Time Warner. Time Warner owns Time Magazine, HBO, Warner Bros., and CNN, among many others. The board of directors includes individuals past or presently affiliated with: the Council on Foreign Relations, the IMF, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Warburg Pincus, Phillip Morris, and AMR Corporation, among many others. Two of the most "esteemed" sources of news in the U.S. are the New York Times (referred to as "the paper of record") and the Washington Post. The New York Times has on its board people who are past or presently affiliated with: Schering-Plough International (pharmaceuticals), the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Chevron Corporation, Wesco Financial Corporation, Kohlberg & Company, The Charles Schwab Corporation, eBay Inc., Xerox, IBM, Ford Motor Company, Eli Lilly & Company, among others. Hardly a bastion of impartiality. And the same could be said for the Washington Post, which has on its board: Lee Bollinger, the President of Columbia University and former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and individuals associated with (past or presently): the Coca-Cola Company, New York University, Conservation International, the Council on Foreign Relations, Xerox, Catalyst, Johnson & Johnson, Target Corporation, RAND Corporation, General Motors, and the Business Council, among others. | |
Comment: It really cannot be argued that if you get your news from the mainstream media, you are getting the version of reality that the government wishes to send out. The idea of America as the "bastion of free speech" has long been disproven. We live in a country where every piece of data that is disseminated to the public is part of the campaign to control our thinking and manipulate our emotions.
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Sputnik
2015-01-20 16:20:00
After visiting the Unity March in Paris last week, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko attends yet another march holding a placard written in French. This time it is "Je Suis Volnovakha" during a rally in Kiev, meant to commemorate victims of a tragic incident in eastern Ukraine that killed 13 people. Thousands of Ukrainians have marched on the streets of Kiev Sunday, holding banners that read "Je Suis Volnovakha", at a rally meant to commemorate victims of a tragic incident in eastern Ukraine, in which 13 people were killed. Top Ukrainian officials, including the country's President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk joined the march. The title under which the march was organized is a copy-cat slogan of the now-famous "Je Suis Charlie" that started in Paris, after gunmen killed 12 journalists of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine on January 7. The bus attack in Volnovakha resulted in the death of 12 people, injuring at least 17 others. Kiev said that the bus was hit by rockets fired from the east, where local independence fighters were allegedly present at the time. However, the authorities of the self-proclaimed people's republic of Donetsk (DPR) have stressed that they were not involved in the attack. On Saturday, the OSCE released a report that said the rockets, which hit the bus, were fired from a north-north-eastern direction. Earlier, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine confirmed that Kiev forces and DPR have agreed on the launch of a joint inquiry into the attack.
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Comment: As with the Charlie Hebdo attack, it seems Volnovakha bus attack was also a false flag event.
CyberBerkut hacktivists leak docs suggesting Volnovakha bus attack was a false flag Along with shouting Je Suis Volnovakha, the authoritarian followers attending the rally also shouted kill Russian.
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Jon Queally
Common Dreams 2015-01-19 21:00:00
New Oxfam report shows the scale of global inequality is 'simply staggering' In less than two years, if current trends continued unchecked, the richest 1% percent of people on the planet will own at least half of the world's wealth. That's the conclusion of a new report from Oxfam International, released Monday, which states that the rate of global inequality is not only morally obscene, but an existential threat to the economies of the world and the very survival of the planet. Alongside climate change, Oxfam says that spiraling disparity between the super-rich and everyone else, is brewing disaster for humanity as a whole. "Do we really want to live in a world where the one percent own more than the rest of us combined?" asked Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of Oxfam International. "The scale of global inequality is quite simply staggering and despite the issues shooting up the global agenda, the gap between the richest and the rest is widening fast." According to the report - titled Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More (pdf): Global wealth is becoming increasing concentrated among a small wealthy elite. Data from Credit Suisse shows that since 2010, the richest 1% of adults in the world have been increasing their share of total global wealth . Figure 1 shows that 2010 marks an inflection point in the share of global wealth going to this group. Figure 1 : Share of global wealth of the top 1% and bottom 99% respectively ; Credit Suisse data available 2000 - 2014. In 2014 , the richest 1% of people in the world own ed 48% of global wealth , leaving just 52% to be shared between the other 99% of adults on the planet. 1 Almost all of th at 52% is owned by those included in the richest 20%, leaving just 5.5% for the remaining 80% of people in the world. If this trend continues of an increasing wealth share to the richest, the top 1% will have more wealth than the remaining 99% of people in just two years with the wealth share of the top 1% exceeding 50% by 2016.The report also shows that even among the über-rich there remain divisions, with an outsized majority on the list of the world's wealthiest people hailing from the United States. And it's not an accident. The world's most wealthy, as the Oxfam report documents, spends enormous amounts of their money each year on lobbying efforts designed to defend the assets they have and expand their ability to make even more. | |
Comment: The greedy psychopathic 1% at the top of the pyramid are not interested in a stable and prosperous world. They have an insatiable desire for more power, more resources, and more money. The only way to reverse the trend is to remove psychopaths from power throughout the world. Anything else will be blocked by the elites.
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On 8 January 2015, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk demonstrated once again that he is either a liar or an ignoramus (inspired by Russophobia) when he told a German TV channel, "I will not allow the Russians to march across Ukraine and Germany, as they did in WWII." Putting aside his ludicrous bravado - analogous to a crazed, dying gnat promising to stop a bull elephant - only the untaught do not know that it was Hitler's Nazi Germany that invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Moreover, while most military historians specializing in the history of the Eastern Front (including this writer) know that the Red Army played by far the greatest role in saving Europe from prolonged Nazi rule, only an ignoramus or liar like Mr. Yatsenyuk would say, "We all very well remember the Soviet invasion of Ukraine and Germany, and we have to avoid it." Mr. Yatsenyuk, you'll recall, was the darling of Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt; two U.S. officials who plotted to place him into Ukraine's government as Prime Minister. Coincidently, Mr. Yatsenyuk became Prime Minister. Imagine that! Yet, he clearly is in over his head as a leader of what historian J. Arch Getty has labeled the "erratic state" of Ukraine. But, "erratic" is far too mild a word to use when describing a statement made by Prime Minister Yatsenyuk in June 2014. It was then that Mr. Yatsenyuk pandered to all of his neo-Nazi supporters fighting for his regime in eastern Ukraine by asserting - on the homepage of the Embassy of Ukraine in the United States of America, no less - that Russians in eastern Ukraine were "subhumans." (Check the widely available screenshot.) Hitler would have been proud.
But, if Yatsenyuk is either a Russophobic ignoramus or liar who spreads filthy propaganda about Russians and Russian history to people who have no sense of history, what are we to call the editors, columnists and reporters at the New York Times, who do the very same thing? The Times commenced its latest propaganda campaign against Russia on 28 November 2013, when it published an overwrought editorial titled, "Ukraine Backs Down." Clearly, some Russophobe's head must have exploded. Who, but an outraged Russophobe would conclude that President Vladimir Putin's "strong-arm tactics" against Ukraine would cost Russia its chance "to find its place in the democratic and civilized world." | ||
Comment: "the shock created by the bloodshed" caused by sniper fire on the morning of February 20, 2014 "prompted a mass defection by the president's allies in Parliament and prodded Mr. Yanukovych to join negotiations with a trio of opposition politicians."
In fact, that is not true. Yanukovych signed the agreement BEFORE most of the deaths by sniper had occurred. We suspect, therefore, that the point of the killings was to make it impossible even for the agreement, which effectively met all of the opposition demands, to be implemented. Someone wanted to force Yanukovych to flee the country so that Ukraine was politically wide open for the US State Dept. to work its magic. | ||
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Evgenia Pismennaya, Anna Andrianova and Torrey Clark
Bloomberg 2015-01-20 16:41:00
The man Vladimir Putin is relying on to end the deepest currency crisis of his presidency has seen worse. As deputy head of the central bank after the Soviet Union fell in 1991, Dmitry Tulin, then in his mid-30s, had to help organize the rollout of a dozen new currencies against the backdrop of runaway price growth across the former communist empire. Now 58, Tulin is back at Bank of Russia, this time to craft monetary policy as the ruble's biggest retreat in 17 years shakes the foundations of a shrinking economy. | |
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Luke Baker
Reuters 2015-01-20 15:04:00
The militant group Islamic State released an online video on Tuesday purporting to show two Japanese captives and threatening to kill them unless it received $200 million in ransom. A black-clad figure with a knife, standing in a barren landscape along with two kneeling men wearing orange clothing, said the Japanese public had 72 hours to pressure their government to stop its "foolish" support for the U.S.-led coalition waging a military campaign against Islamic State. "To the prime minister of Japan: Although you are more than 8,500 km away from the Islamic State, you willingly have volunteered to take part in this crusade," said the militant, who spoke in English. | |
Comment: So, by publicly threatening Japan, we're supposed to believe that ISIS' main intent is to end its support for the War on Terror. NATO is obviously going all in.
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Eric Draitser
Land Destroyer 2015-01-19 14:19:00
An interesting thing happened in Washington recently, and it had nothing to do with Beltway politics, Democrats vs. Republicans, or any of the other standard fare for the middle of the week in mid-January. Rather, a relatively small, little publicized event took place at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a prominent liberal-leaning think tank in Washington. The event, "Russia's Opposition in a Time of War and Crisis," featured prominent Russian liberal opposition parliamentarian (member of the Russian Duma) Ilya Ponomarev, a noted critic of Russian President Putin, providing a detailed presentation regarding the current political climate in Russia, and the potential for the ousting or overthrow of the Russian government. Yes, you heard that right. A Russian elected official came to the United States to give a talk about how best to effect regime change in his own country. At this point, the question is not so much whether what Ponomarev did was improper. The much more pressing issue is whether or not, by making this presentation in Washington precisely at the moment of heightened tensions between the US and Russia, Ponomarev has committed treason. While this may seem a rather extreme characterization, it is in fact quite appropriate. The entire presentation can be viewed here. What Is Treason and Does It Apply? If we define treason as "the offense of acting to overthrow one's government or to kill or harm its sovereign," then Ponomarev's actions seem to tread very close to the threshold for treason. Moreover, the fact that such a presentation was delivered at CSIS - a think tank rife with "strategic planners" and proponents of the use of "soft power" to expand US hegemony - is instructive as it provides a window into both Ponomarev's thinking and, perhaps more importantly, that of the political establishment in the US. During his presentation, Ponomarev touched on a number of critical issues related to Russia's domestic political situation, trying to illustrate for the attendees that the political reality in Russia, despite the simplicity of the western corporate media narrative, is rather complex. Though he described the Putin-led government as "Bonapartist," he noted that "Putin is Russia's only reliably working institution." While the veracity of that statement is debatable, it does seem interesting that an elected Russian lawmaker would go to a foreign country under the auspices of wanting to help his country move forward, and then proceed to advocate the overthrow of the "only reliable institution." Would this not be a thinly veiled attempt to advocate for destabilization, putsch, or something similar? The most significant portion of Ponomarev's presentation centered on a slide titled "Conditions for the Change of Power in Russia," which laid out essentially a roadmap or blueprint for regime change in Russia.Ponomarev's slide outlined what he believes to be the essential elements for successful overthrow of the democratically elected government. These include:
Of course the prescription above is nothing new to keen political observers who have followed the development of the crisis in Ukraine, and who have knowledge of how "soft power" works, and the concept of the "color revolution." What Ponomarev is describing has happened more than a few times before. What is particularly troubling this time is that a sitting parliamentarian, himself a beneficiary of the democratic electoral process, is openly advocating an anti-democratic, unconstitutional overthrow of his own government. And Ponomarev is perfectly aware of this fact. Indeed, he included in the slide entitled "Conditions for the change of power in Russia" the following points:
Second, and this is crucial to the question of treason, is the fact that Ponomarev is advocating "non-violent or violent revolution" in collaboration with a foreign power. Here the propagandists and assorted mouthpieces for the Empire might argue that CSIS is a private institution that is not affiliated with the US Government. One would have to painfully naïve about the nature of power in the US and how it functions to believe such a line of argument. CSIS, with its long association with individuals such as Zbigniew Brzezinski who come from the uppermost echelons of power, is one of a small number of hugely influential think tanks that directly impact US foreign policy. CSIS, along with the Rand Corporation, Council on Foreign Relations, and a handful of other groups, are a useful barometer for measuring the pulse of the US establishment, and for individuals such as Ponomarev to get close to the levers of US power. Therefore, it could be argued that Ponomarev is openly collaborating with a foreign government - in this case through the nominal intermediary of CSIS - to bring about the overthrow of his own government. I would refer readers back to the above-referenced definition of treason. Third, and perhaps most telling about Ponomarev, is the fact that he openly warns against any form of compromise with the government, or the elites with influence in the government. Such a preemptively hostile, and inherently adversarial, relationship with the government precludes any possibility for dialogue or even negotiation. Considering the fact that, at best, Ponomarev and the liberal opposition represent a relatively small proportion of the Russian people (primarily the western-oriented business, finance, and media community, and the young liberals they can mobilize on the streets), the net effect of what he is advocating is that a small, foreign-backed minority with deep pockets seize control of the government in a quite possibly violent putsch. Ukraine anyone? Treason anyone? While such open treason might come as a shock to many outside Russia, those who follow the country closely are all too aware of the insidious role of the United States in fomenting unrest and bankrolling the liberal opposition. It is an open secret in Russia that many, if not most, of the opposition liberals are either directly or indirectly collaborating with the US against their own country. Liberal Opposition or Agents of a Foreign Power? It would be an extreme oversimplification, and not entirely honest, to characterize all Russian liberals as foreign agents. Some are simply socially liberal people who see in the West a political, economic, social and cultural template for their own society. Needless to say, such a view is a small minority in Russia where traditional values and social/cultural conservatism have been on the rise since the end of the Soviet Union, and especially since Putin came to power. However, when one examines key figures and institutions of the liberal establishment in Russia - both in politics and civil society - it becomes clear that some of the most influential are in fact collaborating with foreign powers (especially the US) to undermine the Russian government. | ||
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Daniel Merolla
Yahoo! News 2014-10-01 20:55:00
Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner charged in an emotional address that domestic and US interests were pushing to topple her government, and could even kill her. Domestic business interests "are trying to bring down the government, with international (US) help," she said. Kirchner said that on her recent visit to Pope Francis -- a fellow Argentine whose help she has sought in Argentina's ongoing debt default row -- police warned her about supposed plots against her by Islamic State activists. "So, if something happens to me, don't look to the Mideast, look north" to the United States, Kirchner said at Government House. Don't believe US: Kirchner Just hours after the US embassy here warned its citizens to take extra safety precautions in Argentina, an aggravated Kirchner said "when you see what has been coming out of diplomatic offices, they had better not come in here and try to sell some tall tale about ISIS trying to track me down so they can kill me." | |
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Police State USA
2015-01-20 06:54:00
The project leader of the controversial film, "Gray State," along with his wife and daughter, were found dead in their home in what authorities have labeled an "apparent murder-suicide." The bodies of David Crowley, 29, his wife Komel, 28, and their 5-year-old daughter were discovered lying in their home by a neighbor. The Crowley family had not been seen since before Christmas, and neighbors assumed that they were on an extended vacation. Neighbor Collin Prochnow said he grew concerned when packages piled up on the couple's doorstep and he heard a dog barking inside. When he looked in the window on the morning of January 18th, 2015, the grim discovery was made. It was reported that the bodies appeared to have been inside for weeks before being discovered. Christmas lights were still illuminated and presents were left unopened under the Christmas tree. Mr. Prochnow told KARE-11 News that he "Never heard any yelling, never heard any screaming, a husband and wife fight or anything like that." | |
Comment: This is very suspicious to say the least. And they were dead in their home for nearly a month before anyone noticed??
Network, people, you must be part of an active network if you're going to engage in the information war, or you will be snuffed out like Crowley and his family. You cannot rely on your 'normal' neighbours to even notice that something isn't right. By all means, live among the sleeping ones and practice strategic enclosure, but you must simultaneously link up with people who are awake and aware. | |
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Russia Insider
2015-01-19 13:55:00
The Western-backed Kiev junta army has reignited its war against the people of Eastern Ukraine. Several areas of Donbass and Luhansk have experienced heavy indiscriminate shelling and bombing from Kiev war planes. Dozens of civilians have been killed. | |
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Olivier Cyran
Posthypnotic 2013-12-05 00:00:00
Translated by Daphne Lawless He worked there from 1992 to 2001, before walking out, angered by "the dictatorial behaviour and corrupt promotion practices" of a certain Philippe Val [former CH editor - trans.] Since then, Olivier Cyran has been an observer from a distance, outside the walls, of the evolution of Charlie Hebdo and its growing obsession with Islam. He went over this long-term drift on the occasion of an opinion piece in Le Monde, signed by Charb [Stéphane Charbonnier, one of the cartoonists murdered in January 2015 - trans.] and Fabrice Nicolino. Postscript 11 January 2015: to all those who think that this article was validation in advance of the shameful terrorist attack against Charlie Hebdo (that they were asking for it), the editorial team of Article 11 would like to give a hearty middle finger to such vultures. To make things absolutely clear, please see this text. * Dear Charb and Fabrice Nicolino, "We hope that those who claim, and will claim tomorrow, that Charlie is racist, will at least have the courage to say it out loud and under their real name. We'll know how to respond." Reading this rant at the end of your opinion piece in Le Monde[1], as if to say "come say it to our face if you're a real man", I felt something rising within me, like a craving to go back to fighting in the school playground. Yet it wasn't me being called out. Which upright citizens you hope to convince, moreover, is a mystery. For a good long while, many people have been saying "out loud" and "under their real name" what they think about your magazine and the effluent flowing out of it, without any one of you being bothered to answer them or to shake their little fists. And so Le Monde has charitably opened their laundry service to you, for an express steam-cleaning of your rumpled honour. To hear you talk, it was urgent: you couldn't even go out in Paris without a taxi driver treating you like racists and leaving you helpless on the footpath. I understand your annoyance, but why did you have to go give yourself another black eye in a different publication than your own? Don't Charlie Hebdo, its website and its publishing house give you space to express yourself to your heart's content? You invoke "Charlie's" glorious heritage of the 60s and 70s, when it was political censorship and not haunting disrepute that gave your magazine something to worry about. But I doubt that, at the time, writers like Cavanna or Choron would have asked for help from the posh press to make themselves respectable. | |
Comment: Kudos to Mr. Cyran for picking apart all that is so horribly wrong about Charlie Hebdo and how the publication has negatively effected France. Perhaps not surprisingly, we also learn that this sort of racist, idiotic, and damaging type of discourse is also propagated by a good number ofother French media outlets. Coupled with this country's utter acquiescence to the West's and Israel's 'war on terror' dictates after the Paris shooting, we see yet another historical replay in new clothes; its become Vichy France all over again. Only far worse.
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Mayanthi Fernando
The Conversation 2015-01-15 20:17:00
Commentators in France and elsewhere have taken the recent terrorist attacks in Paris as an occasion to reflect more broadly about Muslims in France. Many read the attacks as a sign of French Muslims' refusal to integrate. They've asked whether Muslims can be fully secular and expressed doubt as whether one can be both Muslim and French. Even as we try to make sense of what happened, however, we should be wary of myths about French secularism (laïcité) and French citizenship being spun in the aftermath of the attacks. France understands itself and is often accepted as a preeminent secular nation that fully separates church and state and restricts religion to the private sphere. The reality is more complicated, as more than 10 years of research on this issue have taught me. In 1905, a major law officially separated church and state in France, though it did not go into effect in the northeastern region of Alsace-Moselle, which was under Prussian rule at the time. Even when Alsace-Moselle was reintegrated into France, however, it remained exempt from the 1905 law, and Catholicism, Calvinism, Lutheranism, and Judaism are still officially recognized religions in the region. As a result, religious education in one of those religions is obligatory for public-school students and the regional government pays the salaries of clergy of the four recognized religions. Other exceptions to the separation of church and state The 1905 law itself contains a number of exceptions. For instance, though it forbids government financing of new religious buildings, it allows the government to pay maintenance costs for religious edifices built before 1905 - most of them Catholic churches. Thanks to later laws, the state also subsidizes private religious schools, most of them Catholic, some of them Jewish. And there exist other traces of Catholicism within the education system, like a public school calendar organized around Catholic holy days and public school cafeterias that serve fish on Fridays. However, when Muslim French request the kind of accommodations offered to other religious communities in France, for example, state-funded Muslim schools, a school calendar that incorporates Muslim holy days, and the official recognition of Islam in Alsace-Moselle, they are reminded that France is a secular country where proper citizenship requires separating religion from public life. | |
Comment: The French approach to its Muslim population is an excellent example of the 'hollowing out' of language and stated principles as explained in Political Ponerology, The original intent of a law or a group's aims no matter how lofty, are gradually inverted by pathological members to mean something entirely different to the inner core.
Paramoralisms: The conviction that moral values exist and that some actions violate moral rules is so common and ancient a phenomenon that it seems to have some substratum at man's instinctive endowment level (although it is certainly not totally adequate for moral truth), and that it does not only represent centuries' of experience, culture, religion, and socialization. Thus, any insinuation framed in moral slogans is always suggestive, even if the "moral" criteria used are just an "ad hoc" invention. Any act can thus be proved to be immoral or moral by means of such paramoralisms utilized as active suggestion, and people whose minds will succumb to such reasoning can always be found. | |
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Philip Weiss
Mondoweiss 2015-01-18 02:34:00
There are two big opposing political memes touching on Zionism in the wake of the Paris terror attacks. One is that Europe is unsafe for Jews. This idea is the very basis of Zionism. Our site will be chronicling the upsurge in this belief because it is an important news story: more and more Zionists are expressing it. (Abe Foxman: "if France doesn't heal itself, ultimately, the Jews will leave."Commentary: Muslims pose the threat of another Holocaust: "Jews in France - and, given certain trends, elsewhere in Europe, from Great Britain to Scandinavia - have to consider their literal survival.") The other meme is a bit quieter, but it's out there: Israel is losing legitimacy in the eyes of the world because it discriminates on a religious basis and occupies Palestine and is causing problems for the west. The country's claim to be a Jewish democracy is an anachronism in our age, and one that sticks out like a sore thumb in the wake of Gaza. The people who express fears about the Jewish place in Europe tend to deny that Israel's actions have anything to do with European or Muslim attitudes about Jews. But even these advocates are painfully aware of Israel's delegitimization. | |
Comment: Israel will not take these change of events lying down. It will scream, kick, fight and create world chaos as it goes down.
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Matthew Brown
Phys.org 2015-01-20 00:00:00
A cancer-causing component of oil has been detected in the drinking water supply of an eastern Montana city just downstream from a crude oil spill that entered the Yellowstone River. Elevated levels of benzene were found in water samples taken from a treatment plant that serves about 6,000 people in the agricultural community of Glendive near the North Dakota border, officials said. Scientists from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the benzene levels are above those recommended for long-term consumption but don't pose a short-term health hazard. Truckloads of bottled water were coming in Tuesday, and residents were warned not to drink or cook with water from their taps. Some residents criticized the timing of the Monday advisory, which came more than two days after 50,000 gallons of oil spilled from a break in 12-inch pipeline owned by Wyoming-based Bridger Pipeline Co. It emerged as a concern over the response to the Saturday accident. Adding to the frustrations was uncertainty over how long the water warning will last and why company and government officials still don't know how to remove crude trapped beneath the ice-covered Yellowstone River. | |
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RJ Marquez
KSAT.com 2015-01-20 15:28:00
A chaotic brawl and shooting on the East Side left two people dead and others wounded late Monday night, San Antonio police say. Police believe a total of seven people were shot when gunfire rang out before 10:30 p.m. at a car wash on North New Braunfels Avenue and Gibbs Street. Officers arrived at the scene and also had to break up a disturbance that followed the shooting, and may have involved as many as 100 people. According to a preliminary SAPD report, several unknown suspects drove up into the car wash and began to fire multiple rounds at a crowd of victims. | |
Comment: Society continues its downward spiral in the US, no doubt fueled by skyrocketing povertyand the stress of living under the rule of psychopaths.
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Cliff Weathers
Alternet 2015-01-20 19:04:00
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A 5-year-old boy shot his 9-month-old brother, killing him with his grandfather's handgun on Monday in the tiny rural town of Elmo in northwest Missouri. Reportedly, the weapon was not locked up and the older sibling had easy access to it. It is not believed that the shooting was intentional. The Nodaway County Sheriff's Department received a 911 phone call from the boys' mother, 24-year old Alexis Wiederholt, at around 9 a.m. The mother told authorities that she believed her elder boy shot his brother with a paintball gun. But when emergency first responders arrived soon after they found that the boy had been shot above the right ear with an exit wound on the other side of his skull, but was still alive. A loaded .22-caliber revolver was found on a bed near the playpen where the baby was found. A medical evacuation helicopter arrived at the residence and flew the boy to Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, some 120 miles away where he died just before noon. |
Comment: "Law" or not, anyone who owns firearms should keep them locked up when there are children around. This should be common sense, but unfortunately it isn't. Because of the carelessness of these adults another child is dead.
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Cassandra Rules
San Francisco, CA - A video clip uploaded to Facebook on Sunday shows an officer attempting to throw a man from his wheelchair and into the street until someone rushes over to intervene.The Free Thought Project 2015-01-20 18:29:00 The man who uploaded the clip, Edwardo Delacruz, is the cousin of two of the men seen in the video, and he alleges that the officer attempting to toss his paralyzed relative off of the curb is Officer Carrasco, badge number 1341, of the San Francisco Police Department. Several other officers are also visible in the video and do nothing to stop the assault. Thankfully the man was strapped into the chair and the officer did not complete his goal of smashing his face into the pavement. Another video of the incident shows just how disgusting this officer's actions were.
The Free Thought Project spoke to Delacruz who explained to us that one of the men sitting on the ground and the man in the wheelchair, Devaughn Frierson, are his cousins. Frierson is a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down after an accident 2 years ago. He has enough limited movement in one arm to control the wheelchair only. According to Delacruz, the police officers in the video knew this. The men were joking around as Frierson did wheelies and tricks in his chair and the man on the ground playfully called the police over to come arrest the man for messing around. | |
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Leanne Suter
ABC7 2015-01-18 14:59:00
Three male suspects lit a homeless man on fire while he was asleep in his sleeping bag at Ventura Beach. A Good Samaritan spotted the 5 to 6 feet flames at about 11 p.m. Saturday at the end of South Seaward Avenue in the Pierpont neighborhood of Ventura. The Good Samaritan put out the fire with sand before calling 911. The three suspects had allegedly poured lighter fluid on 58-year-old John Frazier and his belongings. "Three males that might have been involved in it actually used lighter fluid to pour on the victim's sleeping bag and other items that were near him and set it on fire," Ventura Police Commander Thom Higgins said. When police officers and firefighters arrived, Frazier's items were still smoldering. Frazier suffered second- and third-degree burns on his upper torso and face, but is expected to survive. He remains at Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center. Flowers, a single candle and a black char mark on the wall now mark the spot of the vicious and fiery attack. "It's just really sad. It's sad that a man is sleeping on the beach and then three knuckleheads just put him on fire for whatever reason," said Charon Shirk of Ventura. "It's just sick. It's really sick." At this point, Ventura police have no motive for the crime and a only a vague description of the suspects -- three white males in their late teens or early 20s with shaved heads and dark clothing. "Who would be so cruel to do something like that to a human being? I could see if, I don't know, it was a pile of trash, but, I mean, that was a human being," said Peter Cardindale of Ventura. | |
Comment: Elected leaders and other people in authority in our society show extraordinary indifference and contempt towards the homeless population and human life in general. Those three men, if not psychopathic themselves, were following our conscienceless leaders.
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Ryan Koronowski
Climate Progress 2015-01-19 14:15:00
On Saturday morning, a pipeline in Montana spilled up to 50,000 gallons of crude oil into the Yellowstone River, the pipeline's operator confirmed Sunday night. Some residents are reportedly smelling and tasting oil in their drinking water, causing the EPA to test water samples and the city water plant to cease drawing water from the river. The 12-inch diameter steel pipe breached and spilled anywhere from 12,600 to 50,000 gallons of oil nine miles upriver from the town of Glendive, with an unknown amount of it spilling into the partially frozen river, according to a statement from Bridger Pipeline LLC. The company said the spill occurred at 10 a.m. and they "shut in" the flow of oil just before 11 a.m. - meaning that though the pipeline section could still empty itself of its contents, no new addition oil would flow into the spilled area. "Oil has made it into the river," Bridger spokesperson Bill Salvin confirmed to the AP on Monday. "We do not know how much at this point." Observers spotted oil, some of which was trapped under the ice, up to 60 miles downstream from Glendive. Paul Peronard, the EPA's on-scene coordinator, said crews were attempting to use booms to prevent the spill from spreading further but the ice on top of the river was forcing them to "hunt and peck" through it. This photo from the Billings Gazette shows the oil visible through the icy river from the air. Clean-up crews were en route to the site on Sunday afternoon after local, state, and federal levels were notified. The pipeline sits at least eight feet below the river bed. There are concerns that the water supply could be compromised, though the City of Glendive Water Plant said on Sunday that nothing unusual had been detected. "I am not saying the water is unsafe. I am not saying it is safe," said Dawson County Disaster and Emergency Services coordinator Mary Jo Gehnert, according to MTN News. "We are waiting for officials to arrive who can make that decision." "We think it was caught pretty quick, and it was shut down," said Montana Governor Steve Bullock spokesperson Dave Parker, noting that the river was frozen over near the spill, which could help isolate the spill. | |
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RT
2015-01-19 12:52:00
A full passenger plane was quarantined in Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport for about 4 hours, after pilots told the ground staff one of the travelers was suffering from suspected Ebola symptoms. "Several minutes before landing we received an alert from the pilots about a passenger, and after being put in quarantine, she was looked at by doctors from several departments in accordance with a special protocol," Anna Zakharenkova, the Sheremetyevo press officer said to RT by phone. After completing their examination, Medics from Russia's health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said the patient was suffering from acute respiratory infection. The traveler and her husband, who were both transiting through Moscow, have been given a temporary visa to receive treatment at a specialized clinic in the city. | |
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The Burning Platform
2015-01-19 15:41:00
When I see the results of polls like the one below, I realize there is no chance the majority will do anything to reverse the course of our nation in terminal decline. It will take a complete collapse and bloody reset before we have a chance at putting this country back on a sustainable rational course. How the f*ck can Americans actually think terrorism should be Obama and Congress' top priority? Are Americans really that stupid? WTF do they want Obama and Congress to do? Double the DHS budget? Increase electronic surveillance on our communications? Give local police more military hardware? Ban guns? Repeal the 4th Amendment? | |
Comment: It is truly a sad state of affairs for the US.
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Brad Haynes
Reuters 2015-01-19 04:05:00
Rolling blackouts swept across parts of Brazil on Monday as the grid operator ordered select power cuts to avoid a larger crisis, drawing attention to a fragile electric system that is buckling under the strains of record-breaking heat and dryness. Grid operator ONS said it orchestrated 2,200 megawatts of controlled outages in eight states as the hottest day of the year in Sao Paulo, where the temperature hit 36.5 Celsius (97.7 Fahrenheit), and other southeastern cities led to surging demand from air conditioners and other power-hungry appliances. Eletronuclear, a unit of state-run power company Eletrobras , said nuclear reactor Angra I powered down automatically at 2:49 p.m. local time (1649 GMT) due to a drop in frequency on the national grid. The company said there were no risks to workers or the environment due to the stoppage. Brazilian officials have repeatedly denied the need for energy rationing, even as the driest spell in more than 80 years drains hydropower reserves and forces the use of more costly thermal plants. The drought has also raised the specter of water rationing in Sao Paulo, Brazil's business hub and South America's largest metropolitan area. Shares of electric companies tumbled on the Sao Paulo stock exchange, dragging an industry index nearly 5 percent lower as news of the power cuts spread. CPFL Energia SA fell more than 7 percent, while AES Eletropaulo, Light SA and Copel each lost around 6 percent. A privately run subway concession in Sao Paulo, ViaQuatro, said it suffered an electric failure at 2:35 p.m. After 90 minutes ViaQuatro said it had restored service to part of the subway line, but two downtown stations remained closed. ONS said the national grid was back to normal by 3:45 p.m. after controlled outages affecting less than 5 percent of the system's total demand. | |
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RT
2015-01-19 02:58:00
Gas-guzzling cars are gaining favor once again, as low oil prices are cheapening petrol, driving consumers away from more economic and expensive eco-friendly models. Both Brent and West Texas Intermediate crude have fallen below $50 per barrel, greatly cheapening the cost of refined products such as gasoline and petroleum. In the US, gasoline for cars is selling for about $2 per gallon according to the Automobile Association of America (AAA). In Dallas, Texas, a nationwide record was set on Saturday of $1.30 per gallon. Last week oil prices fell to six year lows, with Brent and WTI both dropping below $45 a barrel for the first time since 2009. | |
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| Secret History |
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Richard Van Noorden
Nature News 2015-01-20 19:37:00
Scientists have read ancient scrolls not opened since they were carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius almost 2,000 years ago. Although only a few letters have been deciphered so far, classical scholars hope that the advance could lead to the rediscovery of lost Greek or Roman works of literature in hundreds of papyri that are too fragile to unroll and read. "It is a revolution for papyrologists," says Vito Mocella, a physicist at the Institute of Microelectronics and Microsystems in Naples, Italy, and a co-author of the study, which is published in Nature Communications. The eruption of Vesuvius in ad 79 obliterated the nearby towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. But the volcanic ash preserved what it destroyed - including, in Herculaneum, a library in a lavish villa thought to have belonged to Julius Caesar's father-in-law. The library contains hundreds of papyrus scrolls, dried and blasted by hot gases into what look like twisted logs of charcoal, and then buried deep under the ash. | |
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Jan Jarboe Russell
disinformation 2015-01-20 17:55:00
The general history of America's internment of its own citizens during World War II has focused on the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese, 62 percent of them American-born, who were forcibly evacuated from the Pacific coast after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But few people know that Executive Order 9066, signed by President Roosevelt, which permitted the roundup of Japanese and their American-born children, also paved the way for the arrest of Germans and Italians who the FBI considered security risks and labeled as "enemy aliens." Indeed the day before Roosevelt signed the order FBI agents had arrested 264 Italians, 1,296 Germans, and 2,209 on the East and West Coast. The hunt for perceived enemies was on. | |
Comment: Will history repeat itself by the U.S. interning those with "extremist views" in FEMA camps?
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| Science & Technology |
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| Earth Changes |
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The Extinction Protocol
2015-01-20 19:04:00
The Hawaii Tribune-Herald reports an active breakout of the Kilauea Volcano lava flow that began June 27 advanced about 120 yards toward Highway 130. An update Saturday from the Hawaii County Civil Defense said the original flow front and south margin breakout remain stalled. However, a breakout along the north side of the flow remains active and has advanced down slope below an area near the stalled front. The leading edge of the breakout was 0.4 miles from Highway 130 and west of the Pahoa police and fire stations. The Civil Defense agency says dry weather is likely to keep brush fires a concern. Source: Fox 8 Tonga underwater volcano creates new island: A Tongan volcano has created a substantial new island since it began erupting last month, spewing out huge volumes of rock and dense ash that has killed nearby vegetation, officials said on Friday. The volcano, about 65 kilometers (40 miles) northwest of the South Pacific nation's capital Nuku'alofa, rumbled to life on December 20 for the first time in five years, the Lands and Natural Resources Ministry said. It said the volcano was erupting from two vents, one on the uninhabited island of Hunga Ha'apai and the other underwater about 100 meters (328 feet) offshore. The ministry said experts took a boat trip to view the eruption on Thursday and confirmed it had transformed the local landscape. "The new island is more than one kilometer (0.6 mile) wide, two kilometers (1.2 miles) long and about 100 meters (328 feet) high," it said in a statement. "During our observations the volcano was erupting about every five minutes to a height of about 400 meters (1,312 feet), accompanied by some large rocks... as the ash is very wet, most is being deposited close to the vent, building up the new island." It said ash and acidic rain was deluging an area 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) around the volcano, adding: "Leaves on trees on Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha'apai have died, probably caused by volcanic ash and gases." A number of international flights were cancelled earlier this week amid concerns about the volcano's ash plume but they resumed on Wednesday, with authorities saying debris from the eruption was not being thrown high into the atmosphere. "Tonga, which is almost 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) northeast of New Zealand, lies on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire," where continental plates collide causing frequent volcanic and seismic activity. Source: Discovery News | |
Comment: Click play below to see a map of the volcanic activity around the world for the past 90 days.
See also: Volcano eruptions found to have cooled global temperatures since 2000 | |
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Karyn Nicholson
Sott.net 2015-01-08 00:00:00
This is according to a André Droxler, an Earth scientist at Rice University and co-author of this new study. It's inaccurate to say that the Maya "disintegrated"; approximately seven million are alive and living today in Central America. The Maya may have experienced epic drought, but was that the whole picture? Drought. Maya demise. Checkmark. Perhaps not! But let's follow this thinking for a bit... | |
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Business Insider
Chasing Ice is a 2012 documentary film about the efforts of nature photographer James Balog and his Extreme Ice Survey to publicize the effects of climate change, directed by Jeff Orlowski. It was released in the United States on November 16, 2012.2015-01-19 16:23:00 The documentary includes scenes from a glacier calving event that took place at Jakobshavn Glacierin Greenland, lasting 75 minutes, the longest such event ever captured on film. Two EIS videographers waited several weeks in a small tent overlooking the glacier, and were finally able to witness 7.4 cubic kilometres (1.8 cu mi) of ice crashing off the glacier. "The calving of a massive glacier believed to have produced the ice that sank the Titanic is like watching a city break apart." The calving event lasted 75 minutes, and the glacier retreated a full mile across a calving face three miles wide. The height of the ice is about 3,000 feet - 300 to 400 feet above water, with the rest below water.
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USGS
2015-01-20 17:18:00
Event Time
15.022°N 91.339°W depth=161.9km (100.6mi) Nearby Cities
Seismotectonics of the Caribbean Region and Vicinity Extensive diversity and complexity of tectonic regimes characterizes the perimeter of the Caribbean plate, involving no fewer than four major plates (North America, South America, Nazca, and Cocos). Inclined zones of deep earthquakes (Wadati-Benioff zones), ocean trenches, and arcs of volcanoes clearly indicate subduction of oceanic lithosphere along the Central American and Atlantic Ocean margins of the Caribbean plate, while crustal seismicity in Guatemala, northern Venezuela, and the Cayman Ridge and Cayman Trench indicate transform fault and pull-apart basin tectonics. | |
Comment: Earthquakes worldwide for the past week:
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KUSI.com
2015-01-20 09:43:00
A light earthquake has shaken a Central California region southeast of Monterey Bay.The U.S. Geological Survey says the magnitude-4.4 tremor struck at 5:21 a.m. Tuesday. The epicenter was 17 miles northeast of King City. The USGS says the quake occurred at a depth of 6 miles. The immediate area is largely rural and lightly populated. The USGS public reporting pages show it was felt lightly or weakly around Monterey Bay and to the east in some San Joaquin Valley cities. | |
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Dawn Rhodes
Chicago Tribune 2015-01-20 16:52:00
Coyotes usually try to avoid human contact. Yet animal experts say an increasing number of coyotes are setting up shop in one of most dense urban labyrinths: downtown Chicago. The seemingly incongruous marriage between coyotes and a people-packed habitat has occurred naturally, according to Stan Gehrt, an Ohio State University professor who specializes in coyote research in Cook County, which includes Chicago. Gehrt said he and his team know of no deliberate efforts to release coyotes into the downtown area. "They're all homegrown coyotes, all born and bred in Chicago," Gehrt said. Gehrt, who runs the Urban Coyote Research program, said the coyote population swelled tenfold during the 1990s. Coyotes are very territorial and only will tolerate so many living in a certain area. | |
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Andrew Bailey
The Vancouver Sun 2015-01-09 16:32:00
Ted Benson stares down wild animal that entered his home in pursuit of his pet cat Ted Benson was getting ready for bed Tuesday night when his cat walked in, followed closely by a cougar. "It was weird, there was no sound, no nothing, it was eerily quiet and just all of a sudden I see my cat squirt in and, next thing you know, all I hear is claws trotting across concrete," Benson said. "My cat wasn't sprinting at super-human top-speed and neither was the cougar; it was like slow motion: 'Oh, there's my cat,' and then, 'Oh, there's a big cat trying to eat it." The 37-year-old had opened the front door of his Norah Street home to air it out after having the wood stove burning all evening. He went into his bedroom around 10:45 p.m. to plug in his cellphone and was walking back into the living room to close the door when he saw his house cat come in from outside. "Then, all of a sudden, I heard claws on the cement floor and saw a big head lunging to eat my cat," he said. "I thought it was a dog originally; a cougar would be the last thing I'd expect." | |
Comment: See also: Odd puma behaviour? Vancouver Island woman slams door on curious cougar
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The sight of four eagle rays with their tails cut off has shocked beachgoers at Murrays Bay on Auckland's North Shore. Kourtney Magasiva was walking her dog on the beach with friends just after 10am on January 14 when she saw the dead rays. "It's terrible animal cruelty to do that to a perfectly healthy creature of the sea," she said. Magasiva had never seen anything like it at Murrays Bay before. "Someone's done it on purpose. I'd hate to think they're still doing it," she said. Agnes Le Port, formerly part of the University of Auckland's marine team, now works at James Cook University in Australia and has caught stingrays and eagle rays for scientific research. Le Port understood fishers wanting to protect themselves from the barbs but said a better option was to slice them off while leaving the rest of the tail intact. | |
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| Fire in the Sky |
No new articles.
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| Health & Wellness |
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Gary Ruskin
U.S. Right to Know 2015-01-20 21:52:00
U.S. Right to Know - a new nonprofit organization - released a new report today on Big Food's PR campaign to defend GMOs: how it manipulated the media, public opinion and politics with sleazy tactics, bought science and PR spin. Since 2012, the agrichemical and food industries have mounted a complex, multifaceted public relations, advertising, lobbying and political campaign in the United States, costing more than $100 million, to defend genetically engineered food and crops and the pesticides that accompany them.The purpose of this campaign is to deceive the public, to deflect efforts to win the right to know what is in our food via labeling that is already required in 64 countries, and ultimately, to extend their profit stream for as long as possible. This campaign has greatly influenced how U.S. media covers GMOs. The industry's PR firm, Ketchum, even boasted that "positive media coverage has doubled" on GMOs. | |
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Sayer Ji
Greenmedinfo.com 2015-01-19 21:25:00
A new observational study confirms the hypothesis that Roundup herbicide (glyphosate) is behind the mysterious global epidemic of chronic kidney disease that has taken thousands of lives. Back in early 2014, in an article titled Roundup Weedkiller Linked To Global Epidemic of Fatal Kidney Disease, we first reported on a paper proposing a causal link between exposure to the world's most popular herbicide (glyphosate) and a mysterious and deadly kidney disorder afflicting agriculture intensive areas in Sri Lanka. The paper would eventually garner such widespread attention that it compelled the Sri Lankan government to order a ban on Roundup in March of 2014, but it has since been reported that it is still being made widely available for purchase. | |
Comment: Make no mistake about the toxic herbicide Roundup's reach, it is present in all tested human and animal samples! Read more frightening information on the cumulative and synergistic toxicity of glyphosate:
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Ewen Callaway
Nature News 2015-01-19 19:14:00
From the dawn of agriculture to the fall of the Soviet Union, major events in human history have left marks in the DNA of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB). A study of nearly 5,000 samples ofMycobacterium tuberculosis from around the world shows how a lineage of the bacterium that emerged thousands of years ago in Asia has since become a global killer that is widely resistant to antibiotic drugs. Although M. tuberculosis probably first emerged some 40,000 years ago in Africa, the disease did not take hold until humans took to farming - with the consequent settling down - says Thierry Wirth, an evolutionary geneticist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and lead author of the study. The grouping together of people in settlements made it easier for the respiratory pathogen to spread from person to person, says Wirth. A previous analysis by his team had shown that the common ancestor of all the M. bacterium strains circulating today began spreading around 10,000 years ago in the ancient Fertile Crescent, a region stretching from Mesopotamia to the Nile Delta that was a cradle of agriculture - enabling lots of people to live in close proximity. "It's basically a dream setting for a bug like TB," says Wirth. Comment: Settlements may have been a factor for the respiratory pathogen to spread, but an important factor that is ommited is that switching to agricuture weakened immune system dramatically. | |
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Marco Torres
PreventDisease.com 2015-01-20 17:14:00
An individual's view of health determinants is directly correlated to their sources and how they process information. Regardless of its accuracy, when something is repeated a sufficient number of times, people will start to believe it. The cancer and sunscreen industries have made it their mission to convince the world that sunlight is a primary cause of skin cancer, when it fact it has been shown to prevent it. In fact, considerable evidence shows that blocking the sun's rays from reaching our skin with, for example sunscreen, significantly decreases our uptake of vitamin D levels, leading to higher mortality, critical illness, mental health disorders and cancer itself. The southern hemisphere is currently experiencing record temperatures raising the mercury to levels many regions have never experienced. Some climatologists have stated that the trend will continue in the northern hemisphere come July. With these hot temperature come extreme warnings from public health officials to slather on the sunscreen to prevent skin cancer and specifically protect us from melanoma. Is melanoma deadly? It definitely can be. There are more than 70,000 cases in the US alone every year and almost 10,000 people will die of the disease yearly. Melanoma accounts for less than two percent of skin cancer cases, but the vast majority of skin cancer deaths. Of the seven most common cancers in the US, melanoma is the only one whose incidence is increasing. Between 2000 and 2009, incidence climbed 1.9 percent annually. It's also the most common form of cancer for young adults 25-29 years old and the second most common form of cancer for young people 15-29 years old. Now what's fascinating is the claim by public health watchdogs that almost 90 percent of melanomas are attributed to exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun. They claim that regular daily use of an SPF 15 or higher sunscreen reduces the risk of developing melanoma by 50 percent. Oh really? What's interesting is how many people never stop to think about how humans survived on this planet for thousands of years working outside for hours on end before the industrial era. There was no sunscreen. There was common sense and people were not getting skin cancer. Oh my, how did we ever make it without sunscreen, drugs, and vaccines for thousands of years and suddenly we can't survive without them? All of these artificial substances do not increase a healthy life expectancy, they increase a diseased life expectancy. People are far more sick and ill today than they ever were a century ago. Yes they are living longer, but at what expense? By the way if you haven't read my recent article on how fear mongers depend on keeping you in a state of panic for profit, it may help clear up any confusion on their motives moving forward. The scare tactics regarding the sun and UV rays are no exception. It's also interesting how when traveling from either pole to the equator, UV exposure increases up to 5000% whereas ozone depletion only increases UV exposure by 20%. If UVB exposure and ozone depletion were the cause of skin cancer, those populations living closest to the equator would be diagnosed with malignant melanoma at a phenomenal frequency. The opposite is true. | |
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Lauren DeCuir
Parent Society 2015-01-15 07:29:00
I don't know about the rest of you, but lately my poultry purchases at my local market have become more and more of a "hit-and-miss" situation, with more "misses," if I'm being honest. As I bite into my homemade chicken nuggets or Coq au Vin (when I'm feeling fancy) I can't help but feel that the chicken just tastes weird, stringy, just ... funny. So a few days ago, when I turned on the tube and saw the news headlines stating that the FDA has finally confirmed that chicken meat sold in the USA contains arsenic, my head, and stomach, nearly hit the roof. This cancer-causing toxic chemical, which in high doses could kill you, is actually being added to chicken feed on purpose, giving store-bought chicken the illusion of healthy coloring and plump appearance. Shockingly, this is the case with more than 70 percent of all U.S. chickens! That is just awful! The FDA has asked Pfizer to stop manufacturing the arsenic-containing drug, Roxarsone, that was found in the livers of nearly half of all chicken tested. According to The Wall Street Journal: "The agency said it recently conducted a study of 100 broiler chickens that detected inorganic arsenic at higher levels in the livers of chickens treated with 3-Nitro compared with untreated chickens ... Pfizer said sale of 3-Nitro would be stopped by early July in order to allow animal producers to transition to other treatments." | |
Comment: It's not only Pfizer! Factory poultry farms produce enormous amounts of concentrated waste, and poultry processing byproducts, which are later fed to pigs, cows and fish, are loaded with arsenic. Dangerous concentrations of arsenic in the water supply is a global threat because it induces both genetic and epigenetic changes related to lung cancer and other diseases.
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Be Scofield
Tikkun Daily 2012-11-15 23:26:00
This quote by the Dalai Lama is going viral on the internet, "If every 8 year old in the world is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation." Marianne Williamson shared this quote via her Facebook account and it received a tremendous reception. Google the quote and you will find tens of thousands of web sites, Facebook pages and twitter feeds where it has appeared. Needless to say, the enthusiasm over the Dalai Lama's statement is profound. It has struck a cord for sure. His words reflect the more widespread belief that spiritual practices can provide grounding for more ethical and wise action. One could substitute meditation in the quote with yoga, prayer, chanting or sacred dancing and people would generally agree that these types of things will inspire compassion, kindness and generosity. Through meditation one can hopefully gain a better realization of the interconnectedness of all things. Many believe, or at least hope, like the Dalai Lama, that this renewed sense of awareness will inspire us to take action against injustice in the world. While for much of my life I've also shared this popular sentiment I've now come to see it much differently. Based on years of research and writing as well as personal practice of yoga, meditation and Chi Kung I've discovered some very strong flaws in the Dalai Lama's argument. Furthermore, I actually see these types of statements are very irresponsible as they mislead the public about the causes and solutions to violence. The real conversations about these very challenging issues that need to take place could potentially be minimized by these types of statements. | |
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Barry Lessin
The Fix 2014-12-25 01:45:00
With unusual honesty, Barry Lessin highlights the indefatigable work and refusal to submit to multiple frustrations and setbacks that is often required in psychotherapy with challenging clients. He describes how his long-term work with a woman whose history of severe sexual, physical and emotional abuse leads to hope and healing in a larger family context. This piece lays bare the complexity of mental health and addiction work, allowing old wounds to heal in a atmosphere of trust and safety. -Richard Juman Each person's path to recovery is unique. Because the possible combinations of life history, pre-morbid personality and substance misuse are practically infinite, my work as an addiction psychologist is always intriguing. I look forward to each opportunity to share in my clients' journeys. By the time people see me for consultations about their substance-using family member, they're generally feeling pretty battered and bruised. Feelings of helplessness and hopelessness often aren't far behind, but the very fact that they present for treatment indicates that they still believe that change can happen. That part of the family psyche is my ally in treatment, the aspect that I rely on to help me move the family forward to a new way of responding to problems and, ultimately, a new paradigm for operating as a system. Here, things get even more complicated when a woman's history of trauma and substance misuse have multiple ramifications on the work that we do as a family around her son's substance misuse. |
