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RT
2015-07-17 23:02:00
A year ago, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was brought down over the territory of conflict-torn Ukraine. This tragedy shocked the world and affected families in many countries. Today, debris can still be found in the area around the crash and the investigation, shrouded in secrecy, still hasn't reached a definitive conclusion. RTD talks to witnesses, experts and family members of MH17 passengers in a bid to understand whether the truth of what caused the tragedy will ever be established.
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Comment: After this documentary was aired, the Dutch Safety Board investigating the crash wrote to RT:
How's that for total incompetence? You'd think the DSB would've made a thorough effort to retrieve all the evidence a year ago. But there's really no need, when you're not really investigating in the first place...
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| Puppet Masters |
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John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute 2015-08-04 20:12:00
We're living in two worlds, you and I. There's the world we see (or are made to see) and then there's the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media. Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and "freedom," such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth. All is not as it seems. This is the premise of John Carpenter's film They Live (1988), in which two migrant workers discover that the world's population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace—blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives—has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like. It is only when homeless drifter John Nada (played to the hilt by the late Roddy Piper) discovers a pair of doctored sunglasses—Hoffman lenses—that Nada sees what lies beneath (see video below) the elite's fabricated reality: control and bondage. When viewed through the lens of truth, the elite, who appear human until stripped of their disguises, are shown to be monsters who have enslaved the citizenry in order to prey on them. Likewise, billboards blare out hidden, authoritative messages: a bikini-clad woman in one ad is actually ordering viewers to "MARRY AND REPRODUCE." Magazine racks scream "CONSUME" and "OBEY." A wad of dollar bills in a vendor's hand proclaims, "THIS IS YOUR GOD." When viewed through Nada's Hoffman lenses, some of the other hidden messages being drummed into the people's subconscious include: NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, CONFORM, SUBMIT, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WATCH TV, NO IMAGINATION, and DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY. This indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite in They Live is painfully familiar to anyone who has studied the decline of American culture. A citizenry that does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is submissive, does not challenge authority, does not think outside the box, and is content to sit back and be entertained is a citizenry that can be easily controlled. In this way, the subtle message of They Live provides an apt analogy of our own distorted vision of life in the American police state, what philosopher Slavoj Žižek refers to asdictatorship in democracy, "the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom." | |
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RT
2015-08-04 19:56:00
The deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security has admitted that a new cybersecurity bill could "sweep away" privacy protections, adding that it raises privacy and civil liberties concerns. The bill could hit the Senate floor this week. Responding to a July query from Minnesota Senator Al Franken, DHS Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that some provisions of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) "could sweep away important privacy protections"and that proposed legislation "raises privacy and civil liberties concerns." The bill authorizes companies to share information about cyber threats with "any federal entity." Any company participating in the data sharing would be immune from consumer lawsuits. If passed, it would mean that sectors of the federal government would begin to receive, store, and circulate sensitive information. The data would be exempt from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) disclosures. | |
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RT
2015-08-04 19:26:00
A video apparently showing the torture of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's son during interrogation in prison has been condemned by both HRW, and his legal representative, who told RT that the Gaddafi name alone is enough to guarantee "maximum sentence and maximum mistreatment." The undated video, recently released by Arabic Clear News outlet shows a group of men ill-treating several inmates and interrogating a captive who strongly resembles al-Saadi Gaddafi, the third son of the deceased Colonel who ruled the country for almost 40 years. "It does appear to be Saadi Gaddafi," Melinda Taylor, an international criminal court defense lawyer for Saadi Gaddafi told RT. "He looks the same in sense [that] his head ... [had been] shaved which happened to him last year." The footage shows the blindfolded man being forced to listen to the screams of at least two other inmates allegedly being tortured by the guards in the next room. Then he is made to watch them being beaten. No legal team is present during the "questioning."
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Comment: Hilary is probably laughing with glee... Putin was right to use Libya as an example of the results of American 'intervention'. This is what they wanted. And it bears no semblance of justice whatsoever. See: NATO Slaughter: James and Joanne Moriartyexpose the truth about what happened in Libya
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Edith M. Ledgerer
Yahoo! News 2015-08-02 00:15:00
Ukraine's foreign minister is calling on Russia to come to "real negotiations" about a cease-fire and stabilization in Ukraine's war-torn east which will require fair elections that are internationally monitored. Pavlo Klimkin said in an interview with The Associated Press that Russian military and special forces are "in full command" in the rebel-controlled eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. He cited Ukraine's capture a few days ago of a large Russian truck filled with weapons that was driven by a Russian special forces officer as one of many examples of Russia's presence. Russia has scoffed at the allegations and pro-Russia rebels dismissed the Ukrainian claim as a fabrication. Comment: Why doesn't Ukraine present the evidence for the truck instead of bombarding the media with baseless accusations? The Kiev government has had no control over parts of eastern Ukraine since pro-Russian separatist rebels began fighting government forces in April 2014, a conflict that has since claimed more than 6,400 lives and displaced more than 1.5 million people. An armistice signed in the Belarus capital Minsk in February requires both sides to pull back heavy weapons from the front line, but international observers vetting that process regularly note violations. | |
Comment: Is it in response to new poll that shows overwhelming support that Putin enjoys among Ukranians?
Ukrainian poll fail: 84% would entrust Putin to lead Ukraine | |
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RT
2015-08-04 18:28:00
Former Tory Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath has been accused of rape by an alleged victim, who was 12 years old at the time of the claimed assault. A police inquiry was opened on Monday urging others to come forward. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) launched an inquiry into thealleged cover-up of a criminal investigation after a suspect threatened to expose Heath as a child abuser. Heath served as a Conservative PM from 1970 to 1974. He died in 2005 at the age of 89.He is the most high profile figure to be accused of historic child sex abuse to date. Comment: Correction: he is the most high profile figure who is not alive. There are plenty of accused who have yet to be publicly named, because that would be terribly embarrassing for the British establishment. The victim, who says he was 12 when the former PM raped him, said he had been abused throughout his childhood by his father and other pedophile connections, including Heath. He alleges that he was picked up on the A2 road in Kent and taken back to an apartment on Park Lane in London where Heath raped him, the Daily Mirror reported. | |
Comment: What's up with all the 'sir knights' being accused of pedophilia? Is it a prerequisite or something?
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RT
2015-08-04 18:00:00
The most senior CIA officer on record yet has said he's "comfortable with saying" that waterboarding and related interrogation methods were "torture." He was commenting on the post-9/11 "enhanced interrogation" tactics used by the Bush Administration. The remarks by former executive director of the CIA, Alvin 'Buzzy' Krongard (2001-2004), were made to BBC's Panorama. The third most senior former official at the agency was asked if he thought waterboarding and related tools amounted to torture. "Well, let's put it this way, it is meant to make him (the suspect) as uncomfortable as possible. So I assume, without getting into semantics, that's torture. I'm comfortable with saying that." The torture debate has never let up. President Barack Obama famously put an end to torture in 2009, but failed to prosecute senior Bush-era officials for running such programs. | |
Comment: The purpose of torture is not to glean information and intelligence for the state to use to fight terrorism. It WAS terrorism, meant only terrorize the poor people who were caught up in the net of U.S. psychopathic actions. The techniques used were never meant to lead to any effective intelligence.
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RT
2015-08-04 17:42:00
Comment: No matter the propaganda spouted by Obama and his lackeys, this is essentially the beginning of overt war on Syria, a sovereign country whose only fault is that they are standing up against U.S. imperialism. For that, they are now being bombed into submission under the phony argument of "protecting U.S. trained rebels". The US president has reportedly authorized the Air Force to protect Syrian rebels trained by Washington to fight against Islamic State by bombing any force attacking them,including Syrian regular troops. Thus the US may become involved in the Syrian civil war on the rebel side. The change was first reported by US officials speaking on condition of anonymity with theWall Street Journal Sunday. The first airstrikes to protect American trainees in Syria have already taken place on Friday, July 31, when the US Air Force bombed unidentified militants who attacked the compound of the US-trained rebels. So far the fighter jets of the anti-Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) US-led coalition have been bombing jihadist targets in Syria's north and the national air defense units were turning a blind eye to foreign military aircraft in their airspace. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama's decision reportedly involves inflicting airstrikes against any force that attacks the Syrian rebel armed force being trained by American instructors and armed on money from the US budget, with the officially-proclaimed aim of dealing with the advances of IS.
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Paul Street
Information Clearing House 2015-08-02 17:31:00
Something was Missing at Bernie's talk to the SCLC. In the final years of his life, the increasingly radical Black Civil Rights, peace, and social justice leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke and wrote against what he called "the triple evils that are interrelated." The first such evil was racism, deeply understood to mean not just prejudiced white sentiments and formal segregation in the U.S. South but the racially separate and unequal functioning of the nation's basic institutions and social structures. The second evil was poverty and economic inequality - class injustice, which King rooted in capitalism. That system, King felt, "produces beggars" alongside luxuriant opulence, necessitating "the radical redistribution of economic and political power." The third evil was U.S. military imperialism - no mere afterthought in King's critique of the American System. Explaining why he had turned openly against Washington's monstrous war on Vietnam in 1967, King argued that conscience did not permit him to remain silent on the crimes the "strange [American] liberators" were committing in Southeast Asia. At the same time, he noted, his condemnation of America's role as "the leading purveyor of violence in the world today" (a description that still rings true today) was strongly linked to his struggles against racial and economic disparity in the U.S. | |
Comment: Don't hold your breath waiting for a candidate to address the real issues facing the United States and the American people. The corruption, rot and insidious nature of the US government and subsequent budding police state have become all encompassing and are easy to spot and describe given a person searches for and considers alternative news. Instead of someone working to change the system and the obvious to anyone paying attention, we get Donald Trump and the three ring circus followed through a worthless and compromised media. This is a tragedy and it will be a miracle if millions of Americans survive with their lives in the coming years.
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Dan Cohen
In less than eighteen hours from Thursday evening to Friday afternoon, Israeli racism and xenophobia exploded into three forms of extreme violence. I witnessed two of them.Mondoweiss 2015-08-03 16:45:00
Six people were stabbed by an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man named Yishai Schlissel at Jerusalem's Gay Pride Parade. Yesterday, sixteen-year-old Shira Banki succumbed to her wounds. Only three weeks before, Schlissel was released from prison where he served a commuted ten-year sentence for stabbing three gay men at the 2005 parade. Despite a massive security presence, they were unable to prevent him from attacking again. After the parade, right-wing Israelis gathered in Jerusalem's Zion Square to celebrate the stabbing rampage. While this attack was condemned by Israeli political figures, their statements ring hollow - some of these politicians have incited against the LGBTQ community. During a 2006 Gay Pride Parade MK Belazel Smotrich organized a Beast Parade, marching through Jerusalem with goats and donkeys. Earlier this year, Smotrich said "I am a proud homophobe" while on a panel at a school. At the Pride Parade, I spoke to a nineteen-year-old Israeli-American named Shmuel who would be enlisting in what he described as the "gay-friendly" Israeli Air Force. He acknowledged the Israeli military specifically targets gay Palestinians in order to coerce them to collaborate, but saw this homophobic tactic as unrelated to the acceptance of gay conscripts into the military. "It's totally separate," he told me. Shmuel's allegiance to the Jewish State and its homophobic tactics deployed against Palestinians outweighed his commitment to LGBTQ rights - a clear display of the racism he professed to be against. | |
Comment: Israel is shocked, SHOCKED, that such things could happen in 'the only democracy in the Middle East." Except they happen all the time:
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Ante Sarlija
Sott.net 2015-08-04 13:50:00
In concert with the constant shelling of east Ukraine by the Kiev junta, there is as always a barrage of propaganda coming from the Western media that conveniently shifts attention from the crimes committed by the Poroshenko regime. This time, The Times along withNewsweek and several other outstanding publications are claiming that the rebels in the east of Ukraine are building a dirty radioactive bomb. In this dastardly endeavor, the rebels are allegedly being helped by, who else, the Russians! Now where have we heard that one before? The source of these outlandish claims are "supposedly hacked emails between rebels and radio communication interceptions and field operatives." Not only could the details, as usual, not be independently verified, Western media hacks received the information directly from the SBU. How's that for an impartial source! Along with the alleged hacked emails, the following is also reported by Newsweek. | |
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Justin Raimondo
AntiWar 2015-08-04 15:26:00
We're in the summer doldrums of the news cycle, a perfect time for our government and the media - or do I repeat myself? - to drop certain inconvenient stories down the Memory Hole. My job, of course, is to retrieve them.... Remember Ukraine? I seem to recall blaring headlines about a supposedly "imminent" and "massive" Russian invasion of that country: the Anglo-Saxon media was ablaze with a veritable countdown to D-Day and we were treated to ominous sightings of Russian troops and tanks gathering at the border, allegedly just awaiting the order from Putin to take Kiev. And it turns out there has been an invasion, of sorts - although it isn't a Russian one. It's the Kiev regime's own foot-soldiers returning from the front and turning on their masters. The war is going badly for the government of oligarch Petro Poroshenko. The east Ukrainians, who rose in revolt after the US-sponsored coup threw out democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych, show no signs of giving up: they've repulsed the "anti-terrorist" campaign launched by Kiev, withstanding relentless bombardmentof their cities and enduring many thousands of casualties, not to mention widespread destruction. Indeed, the brutal protracted war waged by Kiev against its own "citizens" has arguably steeled the rebels' resolve and made any thought of reconciliation unthinkable. | |
Comment: The pathologicals are at each other's throats in Ukraine. This can be expected when the rule of law is torn apart (as in the Maidan coup) and the pathological 'law of the jungle' is the only order left.
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RT
2015-08-04 15:44:00
Russia's agency for especially important crimes has presented a major report on war crimes committed by Kiev military and volunteers in the southeastern regions of Ukraine that seek self-determination after last year's coup in the capital. The head of the Investigation Committee, Aleksandr Bastrykin, said in the Monday press release that the main objective of the project was to attract the attention of the international community and international Human Rights Group and to tell the truth about the "terrible fratricidal war started by the nationalist regime of Ukraine." He added that the Investigative Committee was looking into 54 criminal cases connected with the civil war in Ukraine and that the combined materials on these cases make 2,500 volumes, including the testimonies of over 100,000 witnesses. | |
Comment: To read an edition of the White Book, see here.
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Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post 2015-08-04 15:47:00
Fresh on the heels of the establishment of an "ISIL-Free Zone" (aka "No-Fly Zone") in northern Syria along the Turkish border, the United States has quietly announced that it will also extend its airstrike operations to act as the traveling bodyguard of the jihadists it has trained and "vetted." The policy, reportedly authorized by Barack Obama, would involve the US Air Force bombing any force attacking the so-called "moderate rebel fighters,"including the Syrian military. The announcement was first reported on Sunday by the Wall Street Journal via anonymous military sources. The senior military official told the WSJ "For offensive operations, it's ISIS only. But if attacked, we'll defend them against anyone who's attacking them. We're not looking to engage the regime, but we've made a commitment to help defend these people." | |
Comment: No surprise here - it's what the US has been doing across the Middle East as they maneuver ISIS wherever they deem it strategically effective. When anyone says there should be 'boots on the ground' in Syria, that's exactly what these psychopathic terrorists are.
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RT
2015-08-03 21:51:00
The Dutch agency heading the international probe into Malaysia Airlines MH17 crash in eastern Ukraine has contacted RT over the footage used in our recent documentary on the tragedy. RT's documentary discovered fragments of the plane still in Donetsk. The RT Documentary film, titled MH17: A year without truth, showed fragments of the crashed Boeing and pieces of luggage still scattered in the area at the time of filming. The RTD crew collected the parts of the plane's exterior they spotted, bringing them to the administration of the nearby town of Petropavlovsk. "With great interest we watched your documentary, 'MH17: A year without truth,'" Dutch Safety Board spokesperson Sara Vernooij wrote to RT. "In this film, RT shows parts of the cockpit roof which were found near Petropavlivka. We would like to gather those pieces and bring them over to the Netherlands so the Dutch Safety Board can use them for the investigation and the reconstruction." In the documentary, the RTD crew talked to witnesses, experts and family members of flight MH17 passengers in a bid to understand whether the truth of what caused the tragedy will ever be established.
The documentary also features relatives of those who perished in the MH17 crash who say they have no possibility to get information about the course of the investigation, and believe it is not objective. | ||
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Tom Chatham
Project Chesapeake 2015-06-26 00:00:00
There is no shortage of dangers in the world today. It seems every day something else appears from out of the blue and adds to the pile of potential problems we have to deal with. Some of these problems are covered over or ignored all together. They are hidden in the shadows to prevent people from protecting themselves from the dangers. The whole premise of hiding these dangers is that when someone loses in the future, someone else will profit from it. In our case, when many people lose, a few will profit massively. That is how the system has been set up. The people have been set up and the time is near when the plug will be pulled and chaos will be the order of the day. When that day comes many of the seemingly unconnected problems we face will coalesce into a massive problem few will understand or be equipped to deal with, and that is the hope of some. Here are some of the problems that will come together in the future and spell disaster for many: | |
Comment: There are many articles warning citizens of the upcoming culmination of the PTB plans to hold the USA hostage within its own borders. It cannot be emphasized enough that Americans are in jeopardy and need to be reminded on a daily basis how precarious is the balance and how fragile the illusion that all is still well in the great and mighty USA. As the PTB's cloaking device becomes more and more transparent, hopefully enough savvy citizens will come to their senses. This article is only a partial collection of the serious and heinous operations underfoot. Think about what else you know and multiply it by 1,000.
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| Society's Child |
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RT
2015-08-04 19:27:00
A deputy sheriff is being sued for shackling two Kentucky school children with learning disabilities as punishment for not following directions, according to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The children, an eight-year-old boy, and a nine-year-old girl, barely more than 50 pounds in weight, were so small that the school resource officer, Kenton County Sheriff's deputy Kevin Sumner, locked adult-sized handcuffs around their biceps and forced their hands behind their backs, the lawsuit charges. The incidents happened in autumn 2014. "Shackling children is not okay. It is traumatizing, and in this case it is also illegal," said Susan Mizner, disability counsel for the ACLU, in a statement about Monday's lawsuit.
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Carey Wedler
The AntiMedia 2015-08-03 17:46:00
Last week, a Denver man was arrested and charged with multiple felonies, but not for stealing, committing fraud, or engaging in violent crime. He was targeted for attempting to educate jurors about their rights in the courtroom. Mark Ianicelli, 56, set up a table outside of Lindsay-Flanigan Courthouse in Denver in order to educate jurors about jury nullification. Jury nullification is the process by whichmembers of juries can nullify unjust laws by finding defendants charged with them not guilty. Ianicelli is charged with tampering with a jury, a felony in Colorado that carries a minimum bond of $5,000. He was charged by the Denver District Attorney for seven counts of tampering, and has since bailed out of jail. Ianicelli was in the second day of a planned three-day outreach to educate jurors entering the courtroom about the power of jury nullification. He was handing out fliers when he was arrested. His goal was to inform potential jurors about a vital, centuries-old function of juries. | |
Comment: There is a precedent for this outrageous breach of justice: US: The Judicial Crackdown on Jury Rights Activists in Florida
Welcome to the kangaroo court system where ignorance rules.
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James Howard Kunstler
Kunstler.com 2015-08-03 00:00:00
That the snarkier circles of political commentary thrill to the elephantine bellowings of Donald J. Trump only shows the pathetic limitations of the snarkists. They enjoy Trump's filterless mouth, his harsh goadings of the other presidential wannabes, and his supposed telepathic empathy for the suffering public outside the magic kingdom of DC. Trump has one legitimate issue, immigration, plus a brief against the general incompetence of professional politicians, and a pocketful of grandiose claims about his majestic skills in business and deal-making. As business goes in this huckster's paradise, being a real estate developer is perhaps one click above being a car-dealer, and the fact that some of Trump's artful deals end up in bankruptcy court might argue against his self-proclaimed mastery. Hence, his relegation to the clown category. What Trump represents most vividly in this moment of history is the astounding lack of seriousness among people who pretend to be political heavyweights. No one so far, including the lovable Bernie Sanders, has nailed a proper bill of grievances to the White House gate. A broad roster of dire issues facing this society ought to be self-evident. But since they are absent so far in the public discussion, here is my list of matters that serious candidates should dare to talk about (all things that a sitting president could take action on): | |
Comment: Don't hold your breath waiting for a candidate to address the real issues facing the United States and the American people. The corruption, rot and insidious nature of the US government and subsequent budding police state have become all encompassing and are easy to spot and describe given a person searches for and considers alternative news. Instead of someone working to change the system and the obvious to anyone paying attention, we get Donald Trump and the three ring circus followed through a worthless and compromised media. This is a tragedy and it will be a miracle if millions of Americans survive with their lives in the coming years.
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RT
2015-08-04 15:32:00
Struggling with the pollution of the Spokane River, a town in the state of Washington istaking agrochemical giant Monsanto to court for selling chemicals that endanger human health and the environment, despite it allegedly having known of the hazard for decades. The lawsuit, filed in a US District Court in Spokane, Washington, holds Monsanto accountable for pollutants flowing into the 111 miles (179 km) long Spokane River that stretches from northern Idaho to eastern Washington. "Spokane filed a lawsuit to hold Monsanto Company responsible for PCB contamination that finds its way into the City's stormwater that flows into the Spokane River," Environmental Law Firms Baron & Budd and Gomez Trial Attorneys, representing Spokane said in a press release. The city seeks "compensatory damages," lawyer's fees, interest and any other relief the court deems appropriate. The suit doesn't specify the actual sum of damages being sought from the Iowa-based company. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) chemical compounds were developed and made by Monsanto from the 1930s until 1979, when Congress banned them over danger they pose to humans and the environment. | |
Comment: Monsanto has a history of contaminating the areas near their facilities with herbicides and PCB's, then attempting to downplay the risks. The health of millions has been compromised by living near Monsanto plants as the company routinely dumped chemicals into nearby creeks and streams, landfills or allowed them to flow off the property with storm-water.
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Lindsey Wise
The Wichita Eagle 2015-07-31 00:00:00
Kansas plans to keep a controversial $25 limit on ATM withdrawals by welfare recipients, despite the possibility that the restriction might violate federal law. Legislation was passed earlier this year to raise the limit, or do away with it entirely, but a newly revised version of Kansas' welfare plan does not permit withdrawals of more than $25 per transaction per day. Out-of-state purchases also will be blocked. A fee of $1 will be collected for every transaction, not including additional bank ATM fees. | |
Comment: Apparently Kansas could be in jeopardy of losing their TANF block grant funds if this restriction comes to pass. It is in conflict with federal statutes. The original bill was submitted to the Kansas legislature by the Kansas Dept. of Children and Families, a state agency that administers welfare in Kansas but that version did not cap ATM withdrawals. The cut to $25 was enacted legislation by the state senate. ATMs do not give out $5 increments so in reality, only $20 would be able to be withdrawn per day - minus the $1 fee assessed by the state. There is a "guarantee" provision that requires states to provide "adequate access" to benefits and "access to using or withdrawing assistance with minimal fees or charges."
According to those who study welfare, recipients usually prioritize the money for essentials. Dorothy...it's time to get out of Kansas! | |
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Counter Current News
2015-08-03 14:04:00
A Sheriff's deputy in Kentucky is being sued after handcuffing two third graders for nothing other than them displaying the symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD/ADHD). According to a federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Children's Law Center, and Dinsmore & Shohl, an 8-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl, were so young and small that the officer actually chose to handcuff them around their biceps instead of their wrists, as you can see in the disturbing video below...
Kenton County Deputy Sheriff Kevin Sumner of Covington, Kentucky (just across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio), locked the handcuffs around the children's biceps. He contorted and forced their hands behind their backs in painful positions, while they screamed out in pain. The boy in the video is being identified as S.R., and the girl as L.G. Both children were attacked by this deputy for behavior related to ADHD disabilities. Neither child ended up being charged with any crime, because - put simply - they didn't commit any. The officer assaulted and abused them nevertheless, and now a case is pending to that effect. "Shackling children is not okay. It is traumatizing, and in this case it is also illegal," Susan Mizner, disability counsel for the ACLU explained. "Using law enforcement to discipline students with disabilities only serves to traumatize children. It makes behavioral issues worse and interferes with the school's role in developing appropriate educational and behavioral plans for them." The suit claims that the Kenton County Sheriff's Office violated the Americans with Disabilities Act through its treatment of these children. "Kentucky's school personnel are prohibited from using restraints, especially mechanical restraints, to punish children or as a way to force behavior compliance," Kim Tandy, executive director of the Children's Law Center explained. "These regulations include school resource officers. These are not situations where law enforcement action was necessary." S.R.'s mother, T.R. said that "it is heartbreaking to watch my little boy suffer because of this experience. It's hard for him to sleep, he has anxiety, and he is scared of seeing the officer in the school." "School should be a safe place for children," she continued. "It should be a place they look forward to going to. Instead, this has turned into a continuing nightmare for my son." Kenyon Meyer, an attorney with Dinsmore & Shohl, broke it down even further. "There was no public safety threat in any of these instances that warranted throwing the regulations out the window and handcuffing these children. The school resource officer's involvement was harmful and unnecessary, and it escalated rather than helped the situations. We should expect that if school resource officers are in our school systems, their roles should be focused on safety and security, not discipline or punishment of special needs children." | ||
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David Edwards
Raw Story 2015-08-03 12:53:00
A lawsuit recently filed against a teacher at Forest Park Elementary School in Indiana alleged that a 7-year-old student was "banished" from sitting with other students at lunch after he revealed that he did not believe in God. According to the lawsuit obtained by The Washington Post, second grade teacher Michelle Myer interrogated the student, who was identified with the initials A.B., about his religious beliefs after he told his classmates on the playground that he did not go to church because he did not believe in God. As a result, the child was ordered to sit by himself during lunch for a three-day period. "The defendant's actions caused great distress to A.B. and resulted in the child being ostracized by his peers past the three-day 'banishment.'" "Ms. Meyer asked A.B. if he had told the girl that he did not believe in God and A.B. said he had and asked what he had done wrong," the lawsuit explained. "Ms. Meyer asked A.B. if he went to church, whether his family went to church, and whether his mother knew how he felt about God... She also asked A.B. if he believed that maybe God exists." Several days later, Meyer sent A.B. to talk to another adult at the school, who "reinforced his feeling that he had done something very wrong," the lawsuit said. | |
Comment: Religion May Cause Brain Atrophy
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| Secret History |
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Finian Cunningham
Strategic Culture Foundation 2015-08-02 16:37:00
Even if we accept that there was a plausible military imperative to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - to bring about a swift defeat of Japan and thus an end to the Pacific War - the horror of civilian death toll from those two no-warning aerial attacks places a disturbing question over the supposed ends justifying the means. But what if the official military rationale touted by US President Harry Truman and his administration turns out to be bogus? That is, the real reason for dropping the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 70 years ago on August 6 and 9, 1945, had little to do with defeating imperial Japan and saving the lives of American troops. What if the real reason was the deliberate and cold-blooded demonstration of raw military power by Washington in order to warn the Soviet Union of America's postwar demarcation of global hegemony? That leads to the most chilling conclusion - a conclusion far worse than the official American narrative would have us believe. For it means that the act of obliterating up to 200,000 Japanese civilians was an event of premeditated mass murder whose intent was solely political. Or, in other words, an ineffable act of state terrorism committed by the United States. | |
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| Science & Technology |
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Ian O'Neill
Discovery News 2015-08-04 13:28:00
Astronomers are constantly uncovering the "most distant," "most massive" or "most energetic" objects in our universe, but today, researchers have announced the discovery of a truly monstrous structure consisting of a ring of galaxies around 5 billion light-years across. The galactic ring, which was revealed by 9 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), is located 7 billion light-years away and spans an area of the sky more than 70 times the diameter of a full moon. GRBs are thought to be detonated when a massive star reaches the end of its life. As the star implodes after running out of fuel, a black hole is formed and vast quantities of energy are blasted in collimated beams. Should Earth be aligned with these beams, an incredibly luminous signal can be observed and these beacons can be used to precisely gauge the distance to the GRB and the location of the galaxy that hosts it. The GRBs are all cataloged in the Gamma Ray Burst Online Index, which precisely records each GRB distance and location, like pins on a cosmic map. Astronomers believe these GRBs (and therefore the galaxies they inhabit) are somehow associated as all 9 are located at a similar distance from Earth. According to its discoverers, there's a 1 in 20,000 probability of the GRBs being in this distribution by chance — in other words, they are very likely associated with the same structure, a structure that, according to cosmological models, should not exist. | |
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Radioactive decay rates, thought to be unique physical constants and counted on in such fields as medicine and anthropology, may be more variable than once thought. A team of scientists from Purdue and Stanford universities has found that the decay of radioactive isotopes fluctuates in synch with the rotation of the sun's core. The fluctuations appear to be very small but could lead to predictive tools for solar flares and may have an impact on medical radiation treatments. |
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Klaus Schmidt
High above the plane of our solar system, near the asteroid-rich abyss between Mars and Jupiter, scientists have found a unique family of space rocks. These interplanetary oddballs are the Euphrosyne (pronounced you-FROH-seh-nee) asteroids, and by any measure they have been distant, dark and mysterSpace Fellowship.com 2015-08-04 05:47:00 |
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