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Joe Quinn
Sott.net 2013-01-12 07:44:00
Many of the most notable events in modern (and even ancient) history have provoked some form of 'conspiracy theory'. That is to say, ordinary people were not satisfied with the official story about how the event unfolded because all or some aspects of that story simply did not objectively make sense. Despite what the mainstream media would like us to believe about 'conspiracy theories', most conspiracy theories are based on objective problems with the official narrative. But note that I said 'based on'. The problem with conspiracy theories is that, while they usually reflect a more accurate overview of a major event, they are forced to rely on theory (due to deliberate with-holding of data by official sources) rather than hard evidence (which would disqualify them as theories) and are therefore open to abuse by people who tend to use their imaginations to complete the picture rather than the more critical functions of the human mind. Compared to other similar events where many people found the official story implausible, the Sandy Hook massacre has provoked a veritable flood of conspiracy theories, and many of them are not based on any hard evidence. A large majority of the alternative news pundits that have attempted to independently investigate the Sandy Hook massacre have engaged in some seriously irresponsible and shoddy journalism. Among the more outlandish and baseless theories, we find the claim that "actors" took the place of the parents and siblings of the Sandy Hook victims, and that no children were murdered at all because, the theory goes, if they were, "why haven't we seen any bodies?" I've already exposed the logical fallacies in a few of these theorieselsewhere, but there is one theory that still refuses to go away, perhaps because it is slightly less obviously bogus, and many people are still touting it as the single fact that "busts open" the official story as a "hoax". The theory in question is that a man named Christopher Rodia was the REAL owner of the black Honda Civic, which has been identified as the car of Adam Lanza's mother that was found outside the Sandy Hook elementary school. The basis for this erroneous belief, still held by many, is police scanner audio that was picked up from the morning of Dec. 14th and which details Connecticut State Police response to the massacre. | |
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YouTube
The following documentary provides compelling evidence of deep and disturbing connections between intelligence agencies, abusive cults, and the failure of government anti-cult organizations like MIVILUDES to investigate the widespread reports of ritual child abuse around the world.2013-01-14 07:36:00 Just as the 'war on terrorism' - conducted by the biggest perpetrators of terrorism - has been used to justify the removal of our civil liberties, governments around the world are clamping down on alternative lifestyle choices - irrespective of whether or not they are actually beneficial choices - under the guise of protecting people from 'cultic deviances'. Meanwhile they have consistently covered up, whether at local or national levels, the most horrific sex crimes, including what can only be described as satanic ritual abuse and trulycultic deviance, committed against children as young as new-born infants by what are clearly organised, powerful and ruthless individuals.
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Glenn Greenwald
Guardian 2013-01-13 19:42:00
Aaron Swartz, the computer programmer and internet freedom activist, committed suicide on Friday in New York at the age of 26. As the incredibly moving remembrances from his friends such as Cory Doctorow and Larry Lessig attest, he was unquestionably brilliant but also - like most everyone - a complex human being plagued by demons and flaws. For many reasons, I don't believe in whitewashing someone's life or beatifying them upon death. But, to me, much of Swartz's tragically short life was filled with acts that are genuinely and, in the most literal and noble sense, heroic. I think that's really worth thinking about today. At the age of 14, Swartz played a key role in developing the RSS software that is still widely used to enable people to manage what they read on the internet. As a teenager, he also played a vital role in the creation of Reddit, the wildly popular social networking news site. When Conde Nast purchased Reddit, Swartz received a substantial sum of money at a very young age. He became something of a legend in the internet and programming world before he was 18. His path to internet mogul status and the great riches it entails was clear, easy and virtually guaranteed: a path which so many other young internet entrepreneurs have found irresistible, monomaniacally devoting themselves to making more and more money long after they have more than they could ever hope to spend. But rather obviously, Swartz had little interest in devoting his life to his own material enrichment, despite how easy it would have been for him. As Lessig wrote: "Aaron had literally done nothing in his life 'to make money' . . . Aaron was always and only working for (at least his conception of) the public good." | |
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In 2010 our friend was raped/sexually assaulted by a U.S. Marine she was dating and had just come back from deployment to Camp Pendleton. She didn't go to the police immediately because this Marine used a tactic he was taught by the Marines to premeditate and get out of being reported. And this was by their own admission. We knew something was wrong when she came back from the trip because she wasn't acting like herself and was having trouble being out with friends immediately. She also told us the sex was scary. We didn't know about the rape/sexual assault until she knew she had to contact the base after continued threats and erratic and unstable behavior, she told us she was going to have to tell them what he did to her. It took months for us to learn the details, and lots of crying and alcohol. We knew she had been concerned about his mental health during deployment from things she had started to witness before he deployed. He had started to use drugs again, his behavior was slightly erratic and she wasn't sure if it was fear or his mental health. He was saying how they would tell them women would cheat and break up with them during deployment all the time, and things like his facebook page saying his political view was "killing bodies." (Click here) But before we go into the story know that this Marine had a criminal record for drugs before he enlisted. (click here) He told our friend this month's after they started dating and had said he was clean. However this Marine continued to do them along with several other Marines while they served our country under the guise of hero's. | |
Comment: Visit the site to check out more articles on similar crimes taking place up and down the chain of command in the US military:
theusmarinesrape.com | |
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Ry Dawson
Ry Dawson dissects AJ's latest insane rant during his appearance on CNN's Piers Morgan TV show, an appearance that was clearly intended to discredit all alternative political views as the delusions of crazed conspiracy theorists .YouTube 2013-01-08 12:55:00
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Ross Gittins
Sydney Morning Herald 2012-12-31 17:51:00
If you've ever suspected politics is increasingly being run in the interests of big business, I have news: Jeffrey Sachs, a highly respected economist from Columbia University, agrees with you - at least in respect of the United States. In his book, The Price of Civilisation, he says the US economy is caught in a feedback loop. ''Corporate wealth translates into political power through campaign financing, corporate lobbying and the revolving door of jobs between government and industry; and political power translates into further wealth through tax cuts, deregulation and sweetheart contracts between government and industry. Wealth begets power, and power begets wealth,'' he says. Sachs says four key sectors of US business exemplify this feedback loop and the takeover of political power in America by the ''corporatocracy''. First is the well-known military-industrial complex. ''As [President] Eisenhower famously warned in his farewell address in January 1961, the linkage of the military and private industry created a political power so pervasive that America has been condemned to militarisation, useless wars and fiscal waste on a scale of many tens of trillions of dollars since then,'' he says. | |
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Fars News Agency
2013-01-14 06:46:00
Armed groups in Northern Mali vowed on Monday to strike "at the heart of France" to avenge a fierce military offensive against them. "France has attacked Islam. We will strike at the heart of France," said a leader of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), an offshoot of AQIM (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb). Asked where they would attack, Abou Dardar told AFP by telephone, "Everywhere. In Bamako, in Africa and in Europe. " Another MUJAO leader Omar Ould Hamaha, nicknamed "Redbeard", warned on radio Europe 1 that France had "opened the doors of hell" with its intervention and faced a situation "worse than Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia". France intervened in the country on Friday and has caused heavy losses in the extremists' ranks. | |
Comment: "..The French bombing of Mali, perhaps to include some form of US participation, illustrates every lesson of western intervention. The "war on terror" is a self-perpetuating war precisely because it endlessly engenders its own enemies and provides the fuel to ensure that the fire rages without end.."
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Washington's Blog
Preface: My entire purpose for writing this essay is to urge that decision-makers do what is best for our planet and not do something which will cause more harm than good. Environmentalists should check my background below before dismissing this out of hand.2013-01-14 16:12:00 When I pointed out a couple of days ago that a group of scientists and much of the popular press warned in the 1970s of an imminent ice age, I didn't realize they had such a prominent member. Specifically, as New York Times science columnist John Tierney noted in September: |
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SFGate
2013-01-14 16:00:00
India's army chief on Monday accused Pakistan of planning an attack in which two Indian soldiers were killed in the disputed Kashmir region last week, and warned of possible retaliation. Gen. Bikram Singh's strong words are a clear message that India believes the Jan. 8 attack was a deliberate provocation and not an unintentional skirmish of the kind that often breaks out along the Line of Control, the de facto border between the two archrivals in the Himalayan territory. Pakistan did not immediately respond to the comments, which are likely to raise tensions further. The tit-for-tat fighting began Jan. 6 when Pakistan accused Indian troops of raiding an army post and killing a soldier. India denied attacking the post, and said its troops fired across the border in response to Pakistani shelling that destroyed a home on the Indian side. | |
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Garikai Chengu
Information Clearing House 2013-01-14 15:47:00
Contrary to popular belief, Libya , which western media described as "Gaddafi's military dictatorship" was in actual fact one of the world's most democratic States. In 1977 the people of Libya proclaimed the Jamahiriya or "government of the popular masses by themselves and for themselves." The Jamahiriya was a higher form of direct democracy with 'the People as President.' Traditional institutions of government were disbanded and abolished, and power belonged to the people directly through various committees and congresses. The nation State of Libya was divided into several small communities that were essentially "mini-autonomous States" within a State. These autonomous States had control over their districts and could make a range of decisions including how to allocate oil revenue and budgetary funds. Within these mini autonomous States, the three main bodies of Libya 's democracy were Local Committees, People's Congresses and Executive Revolutionary Councils. In 2009, Mr. Gaddafi invited the New York Times to Libya to spend two weeks observing the nation's direct democracy. Even the New York Times, that was always highly critical of Colonel Gaddafi, conceded that in Libya, the intention was that "everyone is involved in every decision...Tens of thousands of people take part in local committee meetings to discuss issues and vote on everything from foreign treaties to building schools." The purpose of these committee meetings was to build a broad based national consensus. | |
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Patrick Cockburn
Information Clearing House 2013-01-14 15:42:00
It is a ferocious war waged by assassination, massacre, imprisonment and persecution that has killed tens of thousands of people. But non-Muslims - and many Muslims - scarcely notice this escalating conflict that pits Shia minority against Sunni majority. The victims of the war in recent years are mostly Shia. Last week a suicide bomber walked into a snooker club in a Shia district of Quetta in Pakistan and blew himself up. Rescue workers and police were then caught by the blast from a car bomb that exploded 10 minutes later. In all, 82 people were killed and 121 injured. "It was like doomsday," said a policeman. "There were bodies everywhere." Responsibility for the bombing was claimed by the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni fundamentalist group behind many such attacks that killed 400 Shia in Pakistan last year. The dead in Quetta come from the Shia Hazara community, many of whom migrated from Afghanistan in the last century. "They live in a state of siege," says Ali Dayan Hasan, of Human Rights Watch. "Stepping out of the ghetto means risking death. Everyone has failed them - the security forces, the government, the judiciary." In this they are little different from the 30 million Shia in Pakistan who are increasingly beleaguered and afraid in the midst of a rising tide of anti-Shia sectarianism. The atrocity in Quetta will soon be forgotten outside the area ,but the victims were not the only Shia community to come under attack last week. In Bahrain, where the Shia majority is ruled by the Sunni al-Khalifa royal family, the high court confirmed prison sentences - including eight life sentences - on 20 activists who took part in the pro-democracy protests in 2011. This happened even though the original sentences were passed by military courts using evidence extracted by torture. | |
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Glenn Greenwald
Guardian 2013-01-14 15:30:00
The west African nation becomes the eighth country in the last four years alone where Muslims are killed by the west. As French war planes bomb Mali, there is one simple statistic that provides the key context: this west African nation of 15 million people is the eighth country in which western powers - over the last four years alone - have bombed and killed Muslims - after Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and the Phillipines (that does not count the numerous lethal tyrannies propped up by the west in that region). For obvious reasons, the rhetoric that the west is not at war with the Islamic world grows increasingly hollow with each new expansion of this militarism. But within this new massive bombing campaign, one finds most of the vital lessons about western intervention that, typically, are steadfastly ignored. First, as the New York Times' background account from this morning makes clear, much of the instability in Mali is the direct result of Nato's intervention in Libya. Specifically, "heavily armed, battle-hardened Islamist fighters returned from combat in Libya" and "the big weaponry coming out of Libya and the different, more Islamic fighters who came back" played the precipitating role in the collapse of the US-supported central government. AsOwen Jones wrote in an excellent column this morning in the Independent: | |
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Chris Hedges
Truthdig 2013-01-13 15:16:00
Clive Hamilton in his "Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change" describes a dark relief that comes from accepting that "catastrophic climate change is virtually certain." This obliteration of "false hopes," he says, requires an intellectual knowledge and an emotional knowledge. The first is attainable. The second, because it means that those we love, including our children, are almost certainly doomed to insecurity, misery and suffering within a few decades, if not a few years, is much harder to acquire. To emotionally accept impending disaster, to attain the gut-level understanding that the power elite will not respond rationally to the devastation of the ecosystem, is as difficult to accept as our own mortality. The most daunting existential struggle of our time is to ingest this awful truth - intellectually and emotionally - and continue to resist the forces that are destroying us. The human species, led by white Europeans and Euro-Americans, has been on a 500-year-long planetwide rampage of conquering, plundering, looting, exploiting and polluting the Earth - as well as killing the indigenous communities that stood in the way. But the game is up. The technical and scientific forces that created a life of unparalleled luxury - as well as unrivaled military and economic power - for the industrial elites are the forces that now doom us. The mania for ceaseless economic expansion and exploitation has become a curse, a death sentence. But even as our economic and environmental systems unravel, after the hottest year in the contiguous 48 states since record keeping began 107 years ago, we lack the emotional and intellectual creativity to shut down the engine of global capitalism. We have bound ourselves to a doomsday machine that grinds forward, as the draft report of the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee illustrates. | |
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The Daily Bell
2013-01-14 15:07:00
It's Death of Little Nell time again in the field of climate "science." The New York Times - aka Pravda - has announced the closure of its Environment Desk. Rumours that the entire environment team, headed by Andy Revkin, have volunteered to be recycled into compost and spread on the lawn of the new billion dollar home Al Gore bought with the proceeds of his sale of Current TV to Middle Eastern oil interests are as yet unconfirmed. - UK Telegraph Dominant Social Theme: A tragedy of unparalleled proportions has befallen the environment. It is getting harder and harder to save the world ... Free-Market Analysis: The irascible and brilliant James Delingpole has just posted an article over at the UK Telegraph announcing the closure of the New York Times's environmental desk. Big news, indeed ... It is an article that lampoons its subject even while declaring victory. Delingpole, in fact, deserves this moment. A novelist and a determined opponent of the power elite's global warming propaganda, he has been at the forefront of mainstream debunkery of "warmist" nonsense. | |
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RT.com
2013-01-14 14:01:00
A US defense report has called for contingency planning to neutralize a vast Chinese tunnel network with both "conventional and nuclear forces." James Corbett told RT the "Underground Great Wall" scare is being used to mask US nuclear ambitions. Orders for the Commander of the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) to submit a report on means of nullifying China's underground tunnel network were outlined in the new National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed by President Barack Obama on January 2. The NDAA-directed report will further seek to identify knowledge gaps regarding China's nuclear weapons programs, a request which was likely spurred by a controversial 2011 study out of Georgetown University entitled "Strategic Implications of China's Underground Great Wall." The researchers claimed that China's Second Artillery Corps, a secretive branch of the country's military tasked with protecting and deploying its ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads, had dug some 3,000 miles of tunnels which currently housed up to 3,000 nuclear warheads - ten times US intelligence estimates. | |
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RT.com
2013-01-14 13:51:00
Drones have already been deployed across several US states, but thousands of UAVs could soon be flying all across the country for surveillance purposes that some privacy advocates consider unconstitutional. The Federal Aviation Administration has received at least 60 applications for drone employment in the US and this month approved 348 drones for domestic use. Most of the currently employed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are being used along the Mexican border to help law enforcement officers crack down on illegal immigration, but some drones will soon be used to monitor civilians. The sheriff's office in Orange County, Fl., has already experimented with two domestic surveillance drones that it plans to use over metro Orlando starting this summer, the Orlando Sentinel reports. The drones would not be armed, but would be used to track down criminals, terrorists and illegal immigrants, as well as be used for environmental monitoring and wildfire surveillance, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS). The FAA predicts that 30,000 UAVs will fly over the US in less than 20 years, which has alarmed privacy advocates who claim the drones are a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against 'unreasonable searches'. "This is unwise and unnecessary. ... Sheriffs are supposed to be sheriffs, not the US Army," said Doug Head, a Democratic activist who closely follows Orange County politics. | |
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David Edwards
Raw Story 2013-01-14 13:21:00
Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus says that conservative lawmakers in blue states like Wisconsin "ought to be looking at" ways to rig the Electoral College system to tilt elections towards Republican candidates in a way that could have allowed presidential candidate Mitt Romney to win. On Sunday, the Journal Sentinel reported that Priebus had called on states that traditionally vote for Democratic presidential candidates - but are controlled by Republican legislatures - to devise a scheme to split electoral votes instead of awarding them to a single candidate. "I think it's something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red ought to be looking at," the RNC chairman explained, noting that such a system would give state lawmakers "more local control." | |
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RT.com
2013-01-14 13:11:00
Bahraini government forces clashed with protesters on Sunday at the funeral of a demonstrator killed by teargas at a previous rally. Violent crackdowns continue as the demonstrators protest against the royal family, ruling for more than 40 years. Scores of Bahrainis attended the funeral of the protestor Haj Habib Ibrahim Abdullah, which resulted in another demonstration against the ruling Al-Khalifa family's regime. Protesters shouted slogans against the regime and called for release of jailed activists. Government forces fired teargas and birdshot to disperse the crowd.
A demonstration on Sunday was held at the funeral of Abdullah, who died after inhaling poisonous teargas. He and his grandson were exposed to lethal gas fired by government forces during a peaceful anti-regime demonstration last Monday. The nine-year-old grandson is now suffering from side effects and is being treated abroad, Ahlul Bayt News Agency reports. Abdullah and his grandson were exposed to gas during a previous peaceful demonstration which was held in Malkiya village last Monday aftertop Bahraini court overturned an appeal by 13 anti-regime activists on their sentences for protesting in 2011. Seven of the activists received life sentences, the other sentences ranged from five to 15 years in prison. The 13 whose appeals were overturned were originally part of a group of 20 activists convicted by a military tribunal of conspiring against Bahrain's Sunni royal family and "setting up terror groups to topple the regime." They then lost an appeal in civilian court in September 2011. Seven chose not to appeal again. | ||
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Alex Halperin
"The more opportunity you have, the more responsibility you have," the linguist and activist told Al-Jazeera .Salon 2013-01-14 13:03:00 In an extensive interview with Al-Jazeera, the political activist and linguist discusses the Tea Party, Israel and why America's rightward course can be reversed. |
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Andy Kroll
Mother Jones 2013-01-14 12:21:00
The IRS needs to crack down on political nonprofits, experts say - or risk looking weak and useless. Big dark-money groups like the Karl Rove-advised Crossroads GPS promised the IRS they would have "limited" involvement in politics - in order to protect their non-profit tax-exempt status - yet went on to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to influence the 2010 and 2012 federal elections. Now several tax policy experts, including a former high-ranking IRS official who ran the division overseeing nonprofits, say the IRS must bring the hammer down on these shadowy nonprofits or risk looking weak and useless. "The government's going to have to investigate them and prosecute them," says Marcus Owens, who ran the IRS' tax-exempt division for a decade and is now a lawyer in private practice. "In order to maintain the integrity of the process, they're going to be forced to take action." | |
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Ben Child
Raw Story 2013-01-14 16:25:00
David Clennon has urged others to snub Kathryn Bigelow film at awards for 'promoting acceptance of the crime of torture'. Hollywood studio Sony has been forced into a fresh defence of the controversial film Zero Dark Thirty, about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, after a member of the body thatorganises the Oscars called for a boycott. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Ampas) member David Clennon said last week he would not be voting for Kathryn Bigelow's film, which has been nominated for five Oscars, and urged others to snub a movie that he said "promotes the acceptance of the crime of torture, as a legitimate weapon in America's so-called War on Terror". Writing on the truth-out.org website, he added: "I cannot vote for a film that makes heroes of Americans who commit the crime of torture." In response, Sony president Amy Pascal said she was "outraged" that an Academy member would try to influence the voting process. "Zero Dark Thirty does not advocate torture," she said on Friday. "To not include that part of history would have been irresponsible and inaccurate. We fully support Kathryn Bigelow and [screenwriter] Mark Boal and stand behind this extraordinary movie. We are outraged that any responsible member of the Academy would use their voting status in Ampas as a platform to advance their own political agenda." | |
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Tracie Cone
The Sacramento Bee 2013-01-14 16:22:00
A 16-year-old student who was teased by his California high school classmates for his red hair, social awkwardness and bookish appearance will be charged as an adult for allegedly wounding a classmate with a shotgun and trying to target another. Bryan Oliver will face two counts of premeditated attempted murder and three counts of assault with a firearm in the attack Thursday at Taft Union High School that left another 16-year-old wounded, the Kern County district attorney's office said. Oliver was scheduled to be arraigned at 3 p.m. PST. "It was just the factors of the case," said Mark Pafford, the chief deputy district attorney, about the decision to charge Oliver as an adult. "The severity of the actions, the injuries to the victim, that a firearm was used. Those are the things we considered." The potential penalty for just one count of premeditated attempted murder with a firearm is 32 years to life, Pafford said. If he had been charged as a juvenile and convicted, he would be held until his 23rd birthday. | |
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James Scalzitti
Chicago Sun-Times 2013-01-14 16:06:00
A Rockford man will face a bond hearing Monday after he was charged with criminal trespass and disorderly conduct when police found him hanging around a swim meet at Riverside Brookfield High School. | |
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NY Daily News
2013-01-14 16:03:00
Richmond Phillips shot his mistress dead and left their child to die in a car, says Prince George's County, Md., State's Attorney Angela Alsobrooks.. Prosecutors say a D.C. police officer involved in a paternity dispute with his mistress shot the woman dead and left their infant child to die in a hot car. Prince George's County, Md., State's Attorney Angela Alsobrooks said during opening statements Monday that Richmond Phillips killed the two because he didn't want to pay child support. Phillips is being tried on two counts of first-degree murder along with child abuse and firearms charges. | |
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Arturo Garcia
Raw Story 2013-01-14 15:56:00
New Jersey police said the suspect in a hit-and-run incident over the weekend has had 52 driver's license suspensions and 16 moving violations since getting her license in 1986. WCAU-TV reported on Monday that authorities arrested 44-year-old Michele Toussaint in connection with the incident that hospitalized Catherine Calalang, 28, and her 20-year-old cousin, Laurene Jiminez. Toussaint is accused of driving on a suspended license when she hit the two women on Saturday. | |
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Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story 2013-01-14 15:52:00
If a cold has you feeling woozy and you take NyQuil or Sundafed to make it through your drive home, you could be a criminal in New Hampshire. A new law that took effect at the beginning of 2013 bans driving under the influence of not just illegal drugs, alcohol and prescription painkillers, but all over-the-counter drugs as well, along with "any other chemical substance, natural or synthetic, which impairs a person's ability to drive." That means driving on Sudafed or NyQuil or even ibuprofen is out of the question if it affects your mental state, according to The Eagle-Tribune. | |
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eirigi
2013-01-14 15:30:00
As so often has been the case in the past, when unionism in the Six Counties finds itself facing any form of internal turmoil, it inevitably strikes out at what can be perceived, in unionist eyes at least, as a common enemy. Those unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of such reactionary violence are, more often than not, nationalists living in isolated and vulnerable communities. Saturday (January 12) was the latest manifestation of this unpalatable reality when up to 1,000 unionists, allegedly engaged in a 'peaceful' protest connected with the ongoing controversy over the flying of the British flag, launched yet another orchestrated physical assault against residents and homes in the Short Strand area of Belfast. Those who live in more sophisticated societies will not readily appreciate the fear and the terror which these organised sectarian forays engender in such a vulnerable, minority community. | |
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Michael Krieger
A Lightning War for Liberty 2013-01-14 15:21:00
It takes a person like Aaron Swartz to remind you how little you are actually doing to bring forth social, political and economic justice in this increasingly insane and sick world. I'm not exaggerating when I say his life was an inspiration. At 14 years old he helped start the RSS feed system, which so many now use to read content online. He also co-founded Reddit, and its sale to Conde Nast is what afforded him the resources to dedicate his life to the defense of a free and open internet. His most remarkable success in this regard was the creation of the organization Demand Progress, which was instrumental in defeating the internet censorship bill know as SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act). He ran afoul of the law due to his actions in the fall of 2010 when he downloaded millions of academic journal articles from the nonprofit online database JSTOR. While JSTOR could have pursued charges against Aaron for his activities, they decided against it. However, our Federal Government was not so kind. They decided to make an example of Aaron and charged him with multiple felonies. Charges that carried up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines. Aaron was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment this past Friday, in an apparent suicide. If you had asked me about Aaron Swartz three days ago I could have told you none of the above. This is despite the fact that I now spend pretty much all of my time trying to read through news and understand the true nature of the world around me. Even more pathetically, it is despite the fact that a close friend of mine had met Aaron this past summer and was trying to coordinate a time for us all to meet. Sadly, we never connected. As part of my tribute to Aaron, I will commit myself even more fully to the cause of freedom in America. I spent the last 12 hours reading about him and I have compiled some of the most interesting excerpts from various sources below. Please take the time. | |
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Mark Koba
NBC 2013-01-14 15:00:00
The severe drought that swept through much of the U.S. last year is continuing into 2013, threatening to cripple economic growth while forcing consumers to pay higher food prices. "The drought will have a significant impact on prices, especially beef, pork and chicken," said Ernie Gross, an economic professor at Creighton University and who studies farming issues. "Forecasts are for a four percent (price) increase in food this year, but I think that's on the low side if the drought continues," Gross said. "Food prices will likely be going up much more than the forecast." Lack of rain and extremely warm temperatures - thought to be from global warming as well as natural climate changes - are blamed for the drought. Last year's severe weather put nearly 80 percent of the continental United States in drought conditions - the worst in 50 years. Particularly hard it areas include the Midwest states of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, as well as Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and many parts of Colorado and California. | |
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Natasha Lennard
Salon 2013-01-14 15:04:00
Reports from insiders say system to find justice for burned homeowners was "a facade". Last week Salon reported that 10 major banks, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase, agreed to pay a settlement of $3.3 billion in cash to 3.8 million mortgage borrowers who were foreclosed upon in 2009 or 2010. The settlement came after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Reserve Board closed down a vast project of independent reviews aimed to correctly determine how homeowners were burned and how much compensation they should receive. The independent auditing project was deemed too costly, so instead - to the dismay of a number of commentators and homeowner advocates - the mortgage companies themselves will determine distribution of the $3.3 billion settlement sum. "It is just incomprehensible to me that they could not find a third party that has the wherewithal and independence to fairly determine what the damage is to homeowners," John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, said when the settlement was announced. | |
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Guardian
2013-01-14 15:01:00
Judge finds boy, now 12, accountable for second-degree murder after trial that centred on child's grasp of right and wrong. A California judge found Monday that a boy was responsible for the second-degree murder of his white supremacist father when the defendant was just 10. Prosecutors had argued at trial that the boy, now 12, knew what he was doing when he shot 32-year-old Jeff Hall - a regional leader of the National Socialist Movement - and the slaying was premeditated. Defense attorney Matthew Hardy countered that his client grew up in an abusive and violent environment and learned it was acceptable to kill people who were a threat. Hardy contended the boy thought if he shot his dad, the violence would end. The boy, who is not being identified by the Associated Press because of his age, did not testify at the trial. | |
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As I wrote on Jan. 11, Jackson County Kentucky Sheriff Denny Peyman has made it clear that gun laws which violate the United States Constitution or the Kentucky Constitution will not be enforced in his county. On Jan. 12, he followed this up with a press conference in which he explained that a Sheriff's powers are predominant over the powers of federal and state agents. When he says these things he drives gun-grabbers batty because he says them with the conviction that rests on knowledge, and he has no intention of backing down. | |
Comment: While the Kentucky sheriff may feel like he can stand his ground against the Feds, the fact is that no matter what laws he feels are on his side, if the government wants to take their guns away there is very little that any sheriff can do about it.
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RT.com
2013-01-14 13:57:00
Members of the hacktivist movement Anonymous gained access to MIT's website over the weekend and published a statement celebrating recently deceased info activist Aaron Swartz while attacking the justice system that stood to imprison him for decades. Swartz, who co-founded both the website Reddit and the activism organization Demand Progress, passed away Friday of a reported suicide. And while he openly discussed his bouts with depression in the past, Swartz' parents and advocates alike have suggested that a serious legal fight that has dominated the activist's life in recent years played a role in his passing. The 26-year-old Harvard fellow was slated to appear in federal court during the coming weeks because the United States says he illegally download millions of academic papers from the website JSTOR, presumably for public distribution, while logged onto the computer network of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. David Segal, the executive director of Demand Progress, originally equated it to "checking too many books out of the library." If convicted, however, Swartz could have been sentenced to upwards of 35 years in prison. In a statement published shortly after his death, the family of the activist said, "Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts US Attorney's office and at MIT contributed to his death." | |
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Raw Story
2013-01-14 13:42:00
A former star of the British soap "EastEnders" was beaten to death and dismembered by her brother after they argued over an overflowing sink, a court heard on Monday as the murder trial opened. Tony McCluskie, 35, denies murder but has admitted the manslaughter of his sister Gemma, whose headless and limbless torso was found in a London canal last March. Tony McCluskie had left the bathroom taps on at the east London flat they shared and his 29-year-old sister had driven home to tell him this was the "last straw" and he had to move out, London's Old Bailey court heard. Prosecutor Crispin Aylett said McCluskie had killed his sister after the argument on March 1, cut up her body and dumped it in the Regent's Canal in east London. | |
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Raw Story
2013-01-14 13:34:00
Facing new regulations that target high-calorie soda drinks, US soft-drink giant Coca-Cola will unveil a pair of television ads this week that acknowledge the calories in its products and encourage consumers to burn them off. A two-minute video titled "Coming Together" will begin airing on national cable news networks late Monday, reminding viewers that all calories count in managing their weight, including those that come from Coca-Cola beverages. The purpose of the ads is "to highlight some of the specifics behind the company's ongoing commitment to deliver more beverage choices, including low- and no-calorie options, and to clearly communicate the calorie content of all its products," Coca-Cola said in a news release. | |
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| Secret History |
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Australian Associated Press
Australia might not have been as isolated for the 40,000 years before European colonisation as once thought.2013-01-14 10:15:00 A new study has found evidence of substantial gene flow between Indian populations and Australia about 4000 years ago. The researchers also suggest the dingo might have arrived on Australian shores about that time, along with tool technology and food processing. The study, published in the journal PNAS, says it was commonly assumed that Australia remained largely isolated following initial colonisation some 40,000 years ago - but genetic histories had not been explored in detail. Irina Pugach, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, joined colleagues in analysing large-scale genotyping data from Aboriginal Australians, New Guineans, island Southeast Asians and Indians that suggest a new possibility. The authors found a common origin for populations in Australia, New Guinea and the Mamanwa (a Negrito group from the Philippines) and estimated these groups split from each other about 36,000 years ago. |
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| Science & Technology |
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Washington's Blog
2013-01-14 16:18:00
Reddit co-founder and free speech activist Aaron Swartz killed himself due to government censorship and harassment. (He was probably clinically depressed and apparently committed suicide; no one is alleging that he was murdered.) Aaron developed RSS, created the architecture for the Creative Commons licensing system, helped lead the charge against SOPA and other Internet censorship attempts, and fought passionately for free speech and the use of the Web as a force for good. | |
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RT.com
2013-01-14 15:09:00
The Federal Aviation Administration is in the midst of upgrading its air traffic control system at a cost of tens of billions of dollars. A big price might not fix an even bigger problem, though, as hackers suggest that system could be compromised. The FAA is already in the process of rolling out its Next Generation Air Transportation System, of NextGen, a state-of-the-art program that will keep tabs on every plane in US airspace using GPS technology in lieu of relying on traditional radar. In the wake of a series of incidents where GPS signals were spoofed, though, serious problems could emerge in the coming years. "If I can inject 50 extra flights onto an air traffic controller's screen, they are not going to know what is going on," Canadian computer consultant Brad Haines told NPR last year. Because Haines and others can emulate unencrypted and unauthenticated GPS signals sent from imaginary planes, he says NextGen stands to warrant some upgrades before it's ready for the rest of the world. "If you could introduce enough chaos into the system - for even an hour - that hour will ripple though the entire world's air traffic control," Haines told NPR. | |
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Lee Clippard, Media Relations
University of Texas at Austin 2013-01-10 13:54:00
The detailed changes in the structure of a virus as it infects an E. coli bacterium have been observed for the first time, report researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UT Health) Medical School this week in Science Express. To infect a cell, a virus must be able to first find a suitable cell and then eject its genetic material into its host. This robot-like process has been observed in a virus called T7 and visualized by Ian Molineux, professor of biology at The University of Texas at Austin, and his colleagues. The researchers show that when searching for its prey, the virus briefly extends - like feelers - one or two of six ultra-thin fibers it normally keeps folded at the base of its head. Once a suitable host has been located, the virus behaves a bit like a planetary rover, extending these fibers to walk randomly across the surface of the cell and find an optimal site for infection. At the preferred infection site, the virus goes through a major change in structure in which it ejects some of its proteins through the bacterium's cell membrane, creating a path for the virus's genetic material to enter the host. After the viral DNA has been ejected, the protein path collapses and the infected cell membrane reseals. "Although many of these details are specific to T7," said Molineux, "the overall process completely changes our understanding of how a virus infects a cell." For example, the researchers now know that most of the fibers are usually bound to the virus head rather than extended, as was previously thought. That those fibers are in a dynamic equilibrium between bound and extended states is also new. | |
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Samantha Kimmey
The Raw Story 2013-01-13 03:35:00
German activists are attempting to destroy security cameras in anticipation of the European Police Congress in Berlin in February, according to Michael Ebeling, an opponent of public surveillance writing for France 24′s The Observers. The group organizing the actions, CAMOVER, believe such cameras lead police to discriminate and use stereotypes in search of criminals and criminal activity. They are encouraging people to participate in the "game" until Feb. 19, when the congress convenes. A debate over surveillance cameras was ignited in late 2012 after an attempted bomb attack in a Bonn train station, when cameras did not store recordings of the station and so police had no images of potential suspects or of the bomb being planted. The country's Interior Ministry claims the cameras have been shown to reduce crime by almost 20 percent. Watch the video, via CAMOVER, below. | |
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Graham Warwick
Aviation Week 2013-01-11 03:19:00
Arguing it is costly and complex to send large numbers of warships to forward operating areas - and that the energy and logistics needed to deploy lower-cost unmanned systems over oceanic distances limits their usefulness - DARPA has come with another idea. That idea is to pre-deploy "deep-ocean nodes" in forward areas years in advance. These would be commanded from a safe stand-off distance to launch to the surface and release waterborne or airborne unmanned systems to disperse and provide ISR or "non-lethal effects" over a wide area in contested environments. The program is called Upward Falling Payload (UFP), and DARPA plans to brief industry at a proposers' day on Jan 25 in Washington, DC. | |
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ThunderboltsProject
2013-01-13 22:39:00
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Raw Story
2013-01-13 20:14:00
A new DNA test can restore at least part of the identity of long-dead people who left no trace of their image, scientists reported on Monday. The technique has revealed the hair and eye colours of unknown individuals slaughtered as sub-humans by the Nazis and of a mystery woman buried alongside monks in a mediaeval crypt, they said. "This system can be used to solve historical controversies where colour photographs or other records are missing," said Wojciech Branicki from Poland's Institute of Forensic Research in Krakow. The system, called HIrisPlex, is a fine-tuned version of a tool presented two years ago that looks at tiny variations in the DNA code, and converts these into probabilities for hair and eye colour. It can be used on teeth and bones, whose DNA survives better than soft tissues, and which explains the interest in using it for ancient forensics. | |
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Andrew McFadyen
Al Jazeera 2013-01-12 16:44:00
Aberdeen, Scotland- With one of the world's most famous railway lines, Stockton-on-Tees has already given birth to one transport revolution. On September 27, 1825, it carried the first ever passenger rail service along its 40km route through industrial north-east England - changing the world forever. Today, it is at the centre of another technological breakthrough that some scientists and engineers believe could be just as significant as steam locomotion. A small company working in two converted shipping containers says it has found a way to make petrol from fresh air and water. Air Fuel Synthesis Chief Executive Peter Harrison says the process could help curb climate change by providing a cleaner alternative to oil. "We've taken carbon dioxide from air and hydrogen from water and turned these elements into petrol," he told Al Jazeera. "For a country like the UK it means we could create all the fuel you want from renewable energy." The 58-year-old civil engineer, who used to work in the offshore oil industry, describes it as an amazing project to be involved with. Harrison explained that they use a 30 foot tower on top of their first container to capture CO2 from the air. The process of separation involves combining the air with sodium hydroxide and passing it through an electrolyser. A similar method is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The CO2 and hydrogen are then synthesised to make methanol, and eventually petrol. | |
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Walter Jayawardhana
Lanka Web 2013-01-13 12:27:00
A meteorite that Landed recently, close to the ancient city of Polonnaruwa in Sri Lanka has been described as the most important scientific discovery in the last 500 years as it carried "compelling evidence of life" from outer space. The scientists who discovered the contents of the meteorite said, "we report here the first compelling evidence for life existing outside the earth.' Following extensive lab work in the United Kingdom and Sri Lanka four scientists in a paper said , "We report the discovery for the first time of fossilized diatoms in a carbonaceous meteorite that fell on 29 December 2012". Diatoms are a variety of algae. They very firmly said contamination, a hazard scientists face when examining things fallen from the sky on the ground is excluded in the meteorite they have named Polonnaruwa. The four scientists, Chandra Wickramasinghe, J. Wallis, D.H.Wallis, and Anil Samaranayaka said, there are also structures in the meteorite similar to the red rain cells that fell within days in the area. The team in a paper to be published in the Journal of Cosmology added, "The new data on fossil diatom provide strong evidence to support the theory of Cometary Panspermia" -a theory that says life came to our planet earth and other worlds hitchhiking on comets from far corners of the universe. | |
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Seiichi Yoshida
Discovery Date: January 3, 2013Aerith Net 2013-01-13 12:19:00 Magnitude: 18.6 mag Discoverer: Robert H. McNaught (Siding Spring)
The orbital elements are published on M.P.E.C. 2013-A14. | |
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David Ferguson
Raw Story 2013-01-12 14:53:00
A species of mouse that lives in the Southwestern deserts of the U.S. eats scorpions and other living things, hunts by night and howls at the moon. According to New Scientist, the grasshopper mouse (Onychomys torridus) will eat crickets, tarantulas, even other rodents. Even the fearsome Arizona bark scorpion is not safe from the grasshopper mouse. New Scientist said, "It fights bravely, stinging its attacker on the nose. To no avail. The mouse ignores the painful venom and cruelly breaks the scorpion's tail by pummelling it into the ground, then bites its head and feasts on its flesh." From virtually the day they are born, grasshopper mice are what New Scientist calls "natural killers." Even baby mice, which are called pups, raised in captivity learn quickly how to take down and eat prey much larger than themselves. Watch video of the mouse howling:
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| Earth Changes |
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WashingtonsBlog
2013-01-13 16:54:00
Is a Planetary Cooling Spell Straight Ahead? All climate scientists agree that the sun affects Earth's climate to some extent. They only disagree about whether or not the effect form the sun is minor compared to man-made causes. | |
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Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
What's Up With That? 2013-01-14 16:40:00
The truth is out. No amount of hand-wringing or numerical prestidigitation on the part of the usual suspects can any longer conceal from the world the fact that global warming has been statistically indistinguishable from zero for at least 18 years. The wretched models did not predict that. When I told the December 2012 UN climate summit in Doha that there had been no warming for at least 16 years, the furious delegates howled me down. The UN later edited the videotape to remove the howling. The delegates were furious not because I was speaking out of turn (they did not know that at the time) but because the truth was inconvenient. | |
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9News, Australia
2013-01-14 13:53:00
Residents on Tasmania's northern coast have woken to tremors after a 3.4-magnitude earthquake struck 10km from the shore. The earthquake, about 10 to 12 kilometres from Wynyard, hit at 7.21am (AEDT) on Sunday, sending short and sharp tremors to nearby Burnie and as far away as Launceston, said Geoscience Australia seismologist Jonathan Bathgate. Mr Bathgate said the agency received around 100 calls from residents who felt the tremors. "It's been fairly widely-felt across that section of Tasmania," he said. "They generally hear a loud noise and feel a sharp, sudden jolt. "The phones have been just ringing constantly. "I think it woke a few people up." | |
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Brian Edwards
AccuWeather 2013-01-14 10:10:00
With a very dynamic weather pattern in place across the United States, records were broken across the country Saturday afternoon into Sunday. Dozens of record highs were set or tied from Ontario through Florida on Saturday while record lows were found throughout the West. Additional records have been broken as of Sunday afternoon, especially over the mid-Atlantic into western New England. Below is a list of selected official record high temperatures from Saturday:
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Douglas Main
LiveScience 2013-01-12 16:59:00
Populations of bluefin tuna in the western Pacific Ocean are down by nearly 97 percent from pre-fishing levels, according to a stock assessment by researchers. "We found the Pacific bluefin stock is being overfished," said Steve Teo, a fisheries biologist at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif., who was involved in the assessment. The news comes a few days after an enormous, 489-pound (222-kilogram) tuna fetched $1.76 million at a Japanese auction, the Associated Press reported. Strong demand for tuna, primarily for use in sushi, has driven increased harvesting of the fish. Over the past 15 years, its population in the western Pacific has steadily declined and is now at or near an all-time low, Teo told LiveScience. There are currently no catch limits for tuna in the western Pacific. About 90 percent of the fish that are caught are juveniles, according to the stock assessment. Amanda Nickson, director of global tuna conservation for the Pew Environment Group, called for a temporary halt to fishing. "We think the most responsible thing to do is to suspend the fishery until we can put measures in place that will ensure that the population decline is reversed," Nickson said. She called on the governments of the countries that harvest the fish - including Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Mexico and the United States - to do something about the tuna's plummeting numbers. | |
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Ashish Khanal
Earthquake Reports 2013-01-13 00:00:00
Strong earthquake in the Gulf of California, Mexico Preliminary readings are reporting a M5.7 to M5.9 earthquake The epicenter was located in the middle of the Gulf which means that both coasts (Baja California and Mexico) will have been shaken but will normally not have damage or injuries. | |
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T
Volcano Discovery 2013-01-12 10:40:00
An large eruption seems to have occurred this morning around 05:30 GMT from Manam volcano north of New Guinea. VAAC Darwin reported an ash plume rising to 45,000 ft (approx. 14 km) altitude. A hot spot is visible on MODIS satellite data. For the moment, no precise other information about the nature of the eruption is available, as the island is remote and most of its population had been relocated after the last major activity in 2004. | |
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RT.com
2013-01-12 12:09:00
Air pollution in the Chinese capital has hit dangerous marks, reaching beyond the permissible level of pollution on the local environmental center's scale. Beijing residents are recommended to stay indoors by local authorities. The Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center has reported the rising of air-quality indices since Friday in many parts of the city. A warning scrolled across the monitoring center's website says that the density of PM 2.5 had reached 700 micrograms per cubic meter in many parts of Beijing and that the polluted air was expected to linger for the next three days. The index indicates the level of airborne PM 2.5 particulates, at which particle matters are considered the most harmful to health. Air is considered good when the index is at 50 or below, but hazardous with a reading between 301 and 500, when people are warned to avoid outdoor physical activities. The city's authorities have blamed a lack of wind and foggy conditions for the high concentration of air pollutants. "It is expected that air pollution in Beijing will remain heavy during the daytime today... people are advised to stay indoors as much as possible," China's state TV quoted Beijing's environmental protection center as saying on Friday. | |
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Suzanne Goldenberg
Guardian 2013-01-11 18:35:00
Draft report from NCA makes clear link between climate change and extreme weather as groups urge Obama to take action. Future generations of Americans can expect to spend 25 days a year sweltering in temperatures above 100F (38C), with climate change on course to turn the country into a hotter, drier, and more disaster-prone place. The National Climate Assessment, released in draft form on Friday , provided the fullest picture to date of the real-time effects of climate change on US life, and the most likely consequences for the future. The 1,000-page report, the work of the more than 300 government scientists and outside experts, was unequivocal on the human causes of climate change, and on the links between climate change and extreme weather. "Climate change is already affecting the American people," the draft report said. "Certain types of weather events have become more frequent and/or intense including heat waves, heavy downpours and in some regions floods and drought. Sea level is rising, oceans are becoming more acidic, and glaciers and Arctic sea ice are melting." | |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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Robert Lunsford
American Meteor Society 2013-01-13 09:44:00
The American Meteor Society has received 50 reports of a bright meteor that occurred near 06:33 EST on Saturday evening January 5, 2013. Brightness estimates of this fireball vary considerably, but the average lies near magnitude -18, which lies between the light produced by the full moon and the sun. Every color of the rainbow has been reported with green being most mentioned. Below is a map of the witness reports for the NE USA fireball event and can also be found in the fireball logs, refer to event 28 for 2013. Click the image below to see the interactive event map. For those not familiar with meteors and fireballs, a fireball is a meteor that is larger than normal. Most meteors are only the size of small pebbles. A meteor the size of a softball can produce light equivalent to the full moon for a short instant. The reason for this is the extreme velocity at which these objects strike the atmosphere. Even the slowest meteors are still traveling at 10 miles per SECOND, which is much faster than a speeding bullet. Fireballs occur every day over all parts of the Earth. It is rare though for an individual to see more than one or two per lifetime as they also occur during the day, on a cloudy night, or over a remote area where no one sees it. Observing during one of the major annual meteor showers can increase your chance of seeing another one of these bright meteors. | |
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| Health & Wellness |
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Sean O'hare
Daily Mail 2013-01-14 17:39:00
Twenty-four states and New York City were at the worst levels for the week ending Jan. 5, according to the Centers for Disease Control. That's five fewer states than the previous week, lending a bit of hope that the epidemic has begun to wane since those states with decreased activity, such as Florida and South Carolina, were also where the flu first started growing at a terrifying pace. "It may be decreasing in some areas, but that's hard to predict," CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said. "Trends only in the next week or two will show whether we have in fact crossed the peak." But the positive news was tempered by the startling figure that 47 states now report widespread flu activity. The only states not on that list are Hawaii, California and Mississippi. The death toll continues to rise with 21 children nationally having passed away from the flu, which has hit harder and earlier than previous years, USA Today said. Officials in New York City are warning that the 'severe' strain has reached epidemic proportions across the city. | |
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Allan Smith was near death in a coma and about to be taken off life support, with swine flu, non-functioning "white" lungs and leukemia when he was given high-dose intravenous vitamin C, followed by a new oral "nano-sized" vitamin C product that anyone can buy or make in our kitchens. (See instructions later in this report.) He started to revive from the coma when he was given daily doses of intravenous vitamin C ranging from 25 grams to 100 grams a day. Then a new hospital doctor didn't believe that vitamin C caused the improvement in his condition so he lowered the dose to 2 grams a day, wherebye Mr. Smith continued to improve, but far more slowly. That's when his family started giving him 6 grams of liposomal "nano" vitamin C a day, orally. He continued to improve and today he is healthy and his leukemia is gone. Click here to watch a New Zealand television news report video about him. The video is 17 minutes long. Towards the end you'll see him being given a 1 gram packet of LivOn Brand Lypo-Spheric Vitamin C, which is a very high quality commercially available version of liposomal "nano" vitamin C that costs about a dollar per gram (1,000 mg) of vitamin C. Or go here to read, in detail, what happened. This includes details of studies that show that IV vitamin C can effectively fight cancer because it can deliver high enough vitamin C blood levels, where oral tablets or capsules cannot create high enough blood levels. | |
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Rob Graham
Findings on heart muscle growth could lead to novel approaches for treating heart failure in children.Boston Children's Hospital 2013-01-10 13:42:00 Researchers at Boston Children's Hospital have found, for the first time that young humans (infants, children and adolescents) are capable of generating new heart muscle cells. These findings refute the long-held belief that the human heart grows after birth exclusively by enlargement of existing cells, and raise the possibility that scientists could stimulate production of new cells to repair injured hearts. Findings of the study, "Cardiomyocyte proliferation contributes to post-natal heart growth in young humans," were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Online Early Edition, the week of Jan 7-Jan 11, 2013. The study was led by Bernhard Kühn, MD, of the Department of Cardiology at Boston Children's. Beginning in 2009, Dr. Kühn and his team looked at specimens from healthy human hearts, ranging in age from 0 to 59 years. Using several laboratory assays, they documented that cells in these hearts were still dividing after birth, significantly expanding the heart cell population. The cells regenerated at their highest rates during infancy. Regeneration declined after infancy, rose during the adolescent growth spurt, and continued up until around age 20. |
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Dan Flynn
Food Safety News 2013-01-14 12:18:00
At least 26 E. coli O157:H7 illnesses in northeastern Canada have now been linked to California-grown lettuce served at KFC and Taco Bell outlets, health officials say. Dr. Frank Atherton, Nova Scotia's deputy chief medical officer, on Friday said health officials believe that is the "common source across three provinces" of the outbreak that sickened people beginning in late December. The E. coli outbreak involves ten confirmed cases in Nova Scotia, six in neighboring New Brunswick, and ten more in Ontario. While the source of the contamination has been found, the cause is another story. Atherton says some of the KFC/Taco Bell outlets have been inspected, as has their Ontario-based supplier, and no problems have been found. Federal inspectors have been called in to continue the investigation by moving further up the food chain. | |
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Sean Croxton
Underground Wellness 2012-10-17 19:36:00
This stuff is awesome. Never in my life did I imagine I'd be so head over heels about a soup made from bones. I guess you can say I have quite the man crush on the rich, brown liquid that fills my coffee cup each morning. It makes me feel warm inside, and puts a little pep in my step. And oh my, is it tasty! But my fondness for bone broth goes well beyond its taste and warmth. There's a reason why it's called the magic elixir - and it's a darn shame that more people aren't drinking it. There was a time, not long ago, when bone broth was a part of just about every meal we consumed in this country, as it provided the base for soups, gravies, and stews. Unfortunately, with the disappearance of the local butcher as well as the invention of brain-cell-killing MSG - which gave processed foods an artificial meaty flavor - preparing broth became a lost art. | |
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Sugar and artificial sweeteners are so accessible, affordable and socially sanctioned, that few consider their habitual consumption to be a problem on the scale of say, addiction to cocaine. But if recent research is correct their addictive potential could be even worse. Almost 40 years ago, William Duffy published a book called Sugar Blues which argued that refined sugar is an addictive drug and profoundly damaging to health. While over 1.6 million copies have been printed since its release in 1975, a common criticism of the book has been that it lacked sufficient scientific support. Today, William Duffy's work is finding increasing support in the first-hand, peer-reviewed and published scientific literature itself. Not only is sugar drug-like in effect, but it may bemore addictive than cocaine. Worse, many sugar-free synthetic sweeteners carry with them addictive properties and toxicities that are equal to, or may outweigh those of sugar. Back in 2007, a revealing study titled, "Intense sweetness surpasses cocaine reward," found that when rats were given the option of choosing between water sweetened with saccharin and intravenous cocaine, the large majority of animals (94%) preferred the sweet taste of saccharin.[i] This preference for sweetness was not attributable to its unnatural ability to induce sweetness without calories, because the same preference was found with sucrose; nor was the preference for saccharin overcome by increasing doses of cocaine. | |
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Daisy Luther
Activist Post 2013-01-12 16:03:00
If you're looking for a deeply scientific treatise on the flu shot, this isn't it. I'm not a chemist, a physician or someone with an advanced degree in biology. I'm just a mom with an Internet connection. I'm a person who has researched and compiled an assortment of worrisome facts that point in one direction: the flu shot is NOT beneficial. Some of these reasons are backed up by science, and others are an acceptance of that little voice of reason whispering "Something just isn't right about this." As a reader, you are welcome to take my personal instinct with a grain of salt. I strongly encourage you to do your own independent research and come to your own conclusions. Look for sources that are not linked to the dollars being earned from these flu shots - no Big Pharma funded studies, no CDC, no FDA. Check out the funding for the studies that you cite and then judge the findings accordingly. | |
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Dr. Mark Sircus
Activist Post 2013-01-13 14:53:00
Saying no to vaccines in the face of the gale wind of propaganda and govern-mentally supported vaccine campaigns is high treason punishable to the point of having your kids taken away if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. True medicine cries out against vaccines and all the harm they are doing to children and people around the globe, but we have medical authorities claiming them to offer deliverance when in reality they offer little of anything but further toxic attacks on the body and immune system. Medical truth is obviously against deliberately poisoning people, but don't tell that to anyone at the FDA whose staff falls all over itself to promote the most dangerous drugs ever known to mankind. Vaccines are loaded with crude materials that will never make anyone well. Poisons usually have the habit of poisoning people and the amount of mercury in the influenza vaccine is dangerous no matter what these un-trustable medical officials say. Mercury is much more toxic than lead but there is not a doctor in the world stupid or crazy enough to inject lead into children's veins, yet there are plenty who will gladly with a smile inject mercury. | |
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Dr Sircus
In Nature this month there is an essay about natural catastrophes that might overtake us. One of these focuses on the threat posed by local fungus populations:Dr Sircus.com 2013-01-10 21:57:00 Although viruses and bacteria grab more attention, fungi are the planet's biggest killers. Of all the pathogens being tracked, fungi have caused more than 70% of the recorded global and regional extinctions, and now threaten amphibians, bats and bees. The Irish potato famine in the 1840s showed just how devastating such pathogens can be. Phytophthora infestans (an organism similar to and often grouped with fungi) wiped out as much as three-quarters of the potato crop in Ireland and led to the death of one million people. Researchers estimate that there are 1.5-5 million species of fungi in the world, but only 100,000 have been identified. Reports of new types of fungal infection in plants and animals have risen nearly tenfold since 1995. Fungi are dreadful enemies. During their life cycle fungi depend on other living beings, which must be exploited to different degrees for their feeding. Fungi can develop from the hyphae, the more or less beak-shaped specialized structures that allow the penetration of the host. The shape of a fungus is never defined; it is imposed by the environment in which the fungus develops. Fungi are capable of implementing an infinite number of modifications to their own metabolism in order to overcome the defense mechanism of the host. These modifications are implemented through plasmatic and biochemical actions as well as by a volumetric increase (hypertrophy) and numerical hyperplasia[1] of the cells that have been attacked. In 1999, Meinolf Karthaus, MD watched three different children with leukemia suddenly go into remission upon receiving a triple antifungal drug cocktail for their "secondary" fungal infections.[2] |
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Raw Story
2013-01-12 14:46:00
Dense smog shrouded Beijing on Saturday, with pollution at hazardous levels for a second day and residents advised to stay indoors, state media said. The municipal environment warning centre issued an alert advising the elderly, children, and those suffering respiratory or cardiovascular illness to avoid going out or doing strenuous exercise, Xinhua reported. Those who did venture out wore facemasks for protection, with visibility low, the skyline shrouded, and the sun hidden in the smog. Air quality in Beijing showed airborne particles with a diameter small enough to deeply penetrate the lungs at a reading of 456 micrograms per cubic metre, the warning centre said. | |
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timesunion.com
2013-01-12 14:23:00
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has declared a state public health emergency in response to the severe flu season and has issued an executive order allowing pharmacists to give flu vaccines to those between six month and 18 years of age, in addition to those who are older. The order suspends for the next 30 days the section of State Education Law that limits pharmacists to administering immunizations only to those ages 18 and older. | |
Comment: While our government may rely on vaccines as a way to look like they are trying to help heal the sick, vaccines are not the perfect remedy that state and media make it out to be. It would be far better for people to look at changes in their diet instead of relying on the government to heal them, a government which clearly is not focused on taking care of its citizens. Here are just a few stories collected on SOTT regarding the dangers of vaccines:
Over forty children paralyzed by vaccines in one village The entire vaccine industry is being exposed for unproven assumptions and misrepresentations of data The shocking lack of evidence supporting flu vaccines Still think vaccines are good: Two chicken vaccines combine to form deadly virus Vaccines are causing mutations that may jeopardize the health of future generations | |
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David Ferguson
Raw Story 2013-01-12 13:10:00
The United States is currently in the grip of three separate epidemics. According to LiveScience.com, influenza, whooping cough and norovirus - a stomach virus that causes diarrhea, vomiting and cramping - are all currently storming through the population, and some experts warn that the flu season is just getting started and will only get worse from here. MyHealthNewsDaily.com explained that the flu epidemic is particularly bad this year because the main strain circulating, influenza A (H3N2), is a nasty one. Flu seasons caused by influenza A tend to have a higher number of hospitalizations and deaths than other strains. Also, this year flu season started early, in the first week of December rather than the fist week of January as it normally does. It was the earliest start to a flu season since winter of 2003-2004. Twenty-nine states and New York City are reporting higher than average levels of flu activity. CNN reported on Friday that 18 children have died already this flu season, and the U.S. is still at the early stages of the year's outbreak. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, told CNN on Thursday that the country is in the midst of a full-blown epidemic, but that the disease is "still on the uptick." | |
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Peter Osborne
Gluten Free Society 2013-01-08 10:18:00
To date, there have been 100′s of symptoms, syndromes, and diseases linked to gluten exposure for those with gluten sensitivity. One of these little known diseases is alopecia areata (autoimmune hair loss). This condition can effect men and women and typically manifests as circular balding patches over the head. Other forms of autoimmune hair loss can cause total baldness and in even more severe cases, can lead to universal body hair loss. The study below illustrates the connection between celiac disease and autoimmune alopecia. A patient with coeliac disease presenting alopecia areas as the only symptom is described. Alopecia disappeared completely after a few months of strict gluten free diet and reappeared after an unintentional prolonged introduction of gluten. After a severe gluten free diet, a new and persistent hair growth in the alopecia areas was observed. The possibility a direct relationship in some cases, between coeliac disease and alopecia areata is confirmed.Minerva Gastroenterol Dietol. 1999 Dec;45(4):283-5.Gluten Can Cause Nutritional Hair Loss as Well... Aside from causing autoimmune hair loss, gluten can cause malnutrition leading to nutritional forms of alopecia. One of the primary side effects of gluten is damage to the intestinal lining. This damage can lead to malabsorption of vitamins and minerals The loss of nutrients long term can contribute to many problems, one of which is hair loss. For example, gluten intolerance and sensitivity can create nutritional deficiencies in protein, iron, vitamin C, calcium, selenium, B-vitamins, and many others necessary to maintain proper and healthy hair growth. Watch the video for more on gluten and nutritional deficiencies... | |
Comment: For more information on how to deal with this Cereal Killer, check out Life Without Bread.
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Due to biochemical reactions in your body that occur with every type of food you eat on a daily basis, some foods age you FASTER than your real age, while other foods help to FIGHT aging. Eat the wrong foods regularly, and you can look and feel 10 or more years OLDER than your real age (not fun!) ... but eat the right foods, and over time, you can start to look 5-10 years YOUNGER than your real age. Three of the processes that go on inside your body that have a MAJOR impact on your rate of aging are called "glycation", "inflammation", and "oxidation". When we talk about aging, we're not just talking about wrinkles on your skin or how thick your hair is... we're also talking about factors that you can't see, such as how well your organs function, and whether your joints are degrading. Yes, I'm sure you'll agree this is much more important than just how you look superficially (although we'll show you how to improve BOTH!) So let's dig right in and I'll show you how your rate of aging can be directly related to the foods you might eat every day, and how to protect yourself... Food #1 that ages you faster: Wheat (yes, even "whole wheat")
Before I tell you why wheat can actually speed up the aging process in your body, let's clarify some simple biochemistry in your body... This deals with "glycation" in your body, and substances called Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs). These nasty little compounds called AGEs speed up the aging process in your body including damage over time to your organs, your joints, and of course, wrinkled skin. So with that said, what is one of the biggest factors that increase production of AGEs inside your body? This may surprise you, but high blood sugar levels over time dramatically increase age-accelerating AGEs in your body. This is why type 2 diabetics many times appear that they have not aged well and look older than their real age. But this age-increasing effect is not just limited to diabetics. So, let's get back to how "whole wheat" relates to this... | |
Comment: So the question remains, what to eat? See our forum discussion Life Without Bread and Ketogenic Diet for a rejuvenating diet and lifestyle.
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Yahoo! Canada News
2013-01-11 00:00:00
Halifax, Canada - Health officials say lettuce at KFC and Taco Bell locations is the likely source of a recent outbreak of gastro-intestinal illness caused by E. coli bacteria in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Ontario. Dr. Frank Atherton, Nova Scotia's deputy chief medical officer of health, says investigators believe that lettuce distributed to the fast-food outlets is behind the outbreak. He says lettuce has a short shelf life and no new cases have been reported in more than a week, so it's unlikely the lettuce is still in the food chain. But as an added precaution, Atherton says the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is recalling the lettuce believed to be at the centre of the outbreak. | |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Tara Womersley
Scientists have shed light on how mechanisms in the brain work to give us a sense of locationUniversity of Edinburgh 2013-01-10 17:26:00 Research at the University of Edinburgh tracked electrical signals in the part of the brain linked to spatial awareness. The study could help us understand how, if we know a room, we can go into it with our eyes shut and find our way around. This is closely related to the way we map out how to get from one place to another Scientists found that brain cells, which code location through increases in electrical activity, do not do so by talking directly to each other. Instead, they can only send each other signals through cells that are known to reduce electrical activity. This is unexpected as cells that reduce electrical signalling are often thought to simply supress brain activity. The research also looked at electrical rhythms or waves of brain activity. Previous studies have found that spatial awareness is linked to not only the number and strength of electrical signals but also where on the electrical wave they occur. |
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RT.com
2013-01-14 13:17:00
British scientists have proved that reading Shakespeare and other classics can stimulate the mind and has a beneficial effect on brain activity. Scientists at Liverpool University have monitored the brain activity of a number of volunteers while they were reading works by William Shakespeare, T.S Eliot and others,The Daily Telegraph reports. Then the original texts were altered and "translated" to simpler modern language and given to the readers again. The data recorded during reading both versions of the text proved that the more "sophisticated" the language in both prose and poetry the more electrical activity the reader's brain showed. Scientists tracked the brain activity caused by certain words and saw that unusual words and complicated sentence structures stimulated the brain. | |
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| High Strangeness |
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Taylor K. Vecsey
East Hampton Patch 2013-01-14 17:17:00
Police are investigating a mysterious exploding sound that has been occurring intermittently in Montauk for months. Investigators believe someone is setting off a large mortar fireworks, but they have no arrests have been made since officially beginning an investigation in October. The explosions, about a half-dozen or so, mainly occur in the evening, on weekends, sporadically, and only once on any given day. The most recent sound was reported on Sunday, police said. | |
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The Phuket News
2013-01-14 16:07:00
On December 25, Sawang Dindaeng School in Sakon Nakhon organised a variety of outdoor activities to celebrate its Sports Day. One of the participants, Thidarat Boonlee, decided to take a photo to commemorate the occasion. At 2pm, she used her cellphone to take a snapshot of her friends, who were seated on the grandstand opposite. In addition to her friends, the high-schooler found that she had snapped a photo of a flying saucer. Incredulous about her find, Thidarat attempted to take a second photo of the coconut tree behind which the UFO had appeared, but the saucer failed to make a second appearance. | |
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Jeannette I. Andrade
Philippine Daily Inquirer 2013-01-13 21:49:00
The ghost of his wife allegedly drove a 65-year-old widower to hang himself on Saturday morning inside his house in Novaliches, Quezon City. "Look, it's my wife. She wants me to go with her so I'm going," were reportedly the last words of Nonito Locaya to his sister who minutes later found him hanging from a beam inside his room, a telephone cord looped around his neck. Locaya was subsequently declared dead on arrival by attending doctors at Bernardino General Hospital. Police Officer 3 Edison Banguilan, a first responder of the Quezon City Police District Novaliches station, said the victim's 69-year-old sister, Milagros Valenciano, found his body around 6 a.m. on Saturday in their house on Garcia Street, Doña Faustina Subdivision in Novaliches. Banguilan quoted Valenciano as saying that several minutes before the incident, her brother suffered what she called a hallucination. | |
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NewsGuy
A UFO Grey Alien may have been photographed by a man in Texas. At least, it LOOKS like the classic alien shaped head seen in popular science fiction movies and TV shows.Bubblews 2013-01-10 23:12:00 According to a video posted to YouTube, a man named Gary Richards was photographing the woods in Cibolo, Texas. After reviewing the photos later, he noticed a strange shape poking out between two trees. The shape appeared to be the classic face of what is called the Grey Alien, supposedly the cause of many UFO sightings around the world. In order to verify his findings, Richards returned to the spot the next day, but was unable to see the same figure between the trees. Does this mean Richards caught an alien on film? What happened to the strange figure the next day. If it was just a trick of light, wouldn't it have been seen on the following day?
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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Patrick Jackson
BBC News 2013-01-13 18:11:00
Anglers are scratching their heads after a pike was found dead with a zander - a fish of similar size - jammed in its mouth in the Netherlands. Rene Spaargaren, from Almere near Amsterdam, noticed the dead fish locked together in water near his home and dragged them out with a boat hook. "It was clear that the pike had bitten off more than it could chew - or swallow, rather," he told BBC News. British angling expert Charles Jardine said the event was "really unusual". "What on Earth possessed the pike to take on prey that size?" he asked. "Gluttony just killed that fish." Mr Spaargaren reported his find to the Dutch nature conservation news website Natuurbericht, which published the story and one of his incredible photographs. | |
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The Inquisitr
2013-01-13 16:20:00
A lost cat has reportedly walked 190 miles in order to return to its owners. The trek took the missing kitty nearly two months to complete. Jacob and Bonnie Richter said the last time they saw the cat she was running out of their motor home following a fireworks display at Daytona Speedway Park last November.According to KSLA, the couple searched desperately for the cat before packing up and heading home to West Palm Beach. They never thought they'd see their furry friend again. Although someone had reportedly spotted the missing cat at an area restaurant known for feeding strays, the feline was long gone by the time the Richters arrived at the scene. Saddened that their missing kitty hadn't been found, the couple returned home empty-handed once again. However, the missing cat turned up in the garden of West Palm Beach resident Barb Mazzola. She said the wandering feline was so weak that she could barely utter a single meow. The woman took the tired animal to a local vet, who scanned the kitty's microchip. Now she's back home where she belongs. |
