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The Truthseeker
13 minutes of essential viewing. A short history of government false flag operations, right up until this year in Ukraine. Psychopaths in power are the cause.RT.com 2014-05-20 11:54:00
US intel source claims Ukraine part of NATO secret campaign Gladio; psychopathy tests for our leaders; and a mainstream host storms out the studio after a vicious exchange on false flags. Seek truth from facts with Questioning the War on Terror author Kevin Barrett, StopImperialism.org's Eric Draitser, James Corbett of The Corbett Report, and possible 2016 presidential candidate Jesse Ventura.
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| Puppet Masters |
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Kevin Gosztola
The Dissenter 2014-05-16 12:57:00
Yasser Al-Zahrani was twenty-one years-old when he died at Guantanamo Bay. The US military claims he, along with two other prisoners, committed suicide in their cells. However, a new document uncovered by journalist Scott Horton and published by Harper's Magazine strongly suggests that they were killed at a CIA black site prison. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) investigated the deaths of Al-Zahrani, Ali Abdulla Ahmed, and Mana Shaman Allabard al Tabi. They concluded that they had died on June 10, 2006, after taking their own lives by making a rope out of bed sheets and T-shirts and hanging themselves. Both Ahmed and Allabard were allegedly declared to be dead immediately when their bodies were discovered. Al-Zahrani, on the other hand, was transported to the Naval Hospital at Guantanamo and then pronounced dead later. Horton uncovered a document, Exhibit 25, which was missing from the NCIS report on the "suicides" released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. It features statements from Master-at-Arms Denny, a member of the escort team who helped transfer the three detainees to the hospital. | |
Comment: There's no use trying to appeal to the judicial/military/government authorities in terms of normal human values. Psychopaths have nothing but contempt for human values, and the judicial/military/government authorities involved here are clearly psychopaths. Unfortunately, in a system that is set up to protect torturers and murderers, torture and murder will be the inevitable result. It's horrific and reprehensible, but it shouldn't come as a shock to anyone that this is what goes on behind closed doors in any number of closed military/intelligence facilities. These people enjoy torturing and murdering.
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The Saker
The Vineyard of the Saker 2014-05-20 12:30:00
I think that we can all agree that the situation in the Ukraine is one of total chaos.
I think that while it is premature to make grand conclusions and predictions, we can begin by agreeing on a number of basic facts. | |
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Andrew Levine
Counterpunch 2014-05-16 12:31:00
Is a new Cold War looming? It seems so. This shouldn't be happening, but it is. The confusion that followed the end of the old Cold War is one reason why. That confusion has been a problem for the anti-imperialist left. While the Cold War was on, there was seldom any need to fall back on principles. Then it was easy for right thinking, well-informed people to side with insurgencies fighting imperial domination; that was what common decency required. This has not been the case in recent years. The empire's stewards in the Obama administration and in the military-national security state complex are taking full advantage. So are ostensibly independent NGOs. It is a risky business - made all the riskier by the cluelessness of the principals. On Team Obama, they know not what they do. | |
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Seyed Mohammad Marandi
Press TV 2014-05-20 12:01:00
At the Fourth Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) that opens May 20 in Shanghai, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will meet with both Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Among other things, the summit will underscore how rising non-Western powers are playing ever more prominent roles on the global stage. However, Western elites remain stuck in a time warp, wherein the United States and its European partners are the imperial masters of all they survey. In this regard, it is an interesting coincidence how mainstream Western media outlets consistently produce narratives that are almost indistinguishable from official government statements regarding countries and leaders with dissimilar worldviews from their Western counterparts. For instance, we repeatedly hear about the democratically elected "dictators" in Venezuela, yet we are assured that friendly dictators are "moderate reformers". | |
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Neil Clark
RT 2014-05-20 11:07:00
Just imagine if the democratically-elected government of Canada had been toppled in a Russian-financed coup, in which far-right extremists and neo-Nazis played a prominent role. That the new unelected 'government' in Ottawa cancelled the law giving the French language official status, appointed a billionaire oligarch to run Quebec and signed an association agreement with a Russian-led trade bloc. Just imagine... If Russia had spent $5 billion on regime change in Canada and then a leading Canadian energy firm had appointed to its board of directors the son of a top Russian government politician. Just imagine... If the Syrian government had hosted a meeting in Damascus of the 'Friends of Britain'- a group of countries who supported the violent overthrow of David Cameron's government. That the Syrian government and its allies gave the anti-government 'rebels' in Britain millions of pounds and other support, and failed to condemn 'rebel' groups when they killed British civilians and bombed schools, hospitals and universities. That the Syrian Foreign Minister dismissed next year's scheduled general election in the UK as a 'parody of democracy' and said that Cameron must stand down before any elections are held. | |
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Youtube
2014-05-07 06:53:00
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Roy Greenslade
The Raw Story 2014-05-20 07:02:00
Egyptian authorities move him from prison cell Jailed Al-Jazeera journalist Abdullah el-Shamy, who has been on hunger strike in Egypt for more than 100 days, is near to death according to his doctor. "He has started to have impaired liver and kidney function," said the doctor, Mohamed Osama el-Homsi. "It means that his organs are in danger." He has lost a third of his body weight. El-Homsi said El-Shamy's condition was life-threatening and he could "die within a few days". He was moved from his cell in Tora prison to an undisclosed location after his lawyer, Shaaban Saeed, asked the authorities to transfer him to hospital. | |
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Glenn Greenwald
Tomdispatch.com 2014-05-13 06:23:00
Make no mistake: it's been the year of Edward Snowden. Not since Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War has a trove of documents revealing the inner workings and thinking of the U.S. government so changed the conversation. In Ellsberg's case, that conversation was transformed only in the United States. Snowden has changed it worldwide. From six-year-olds to Angela Merkel, who hasn't been thinking about the staggering ambitions of the National Security Agency, about its urge to create the first global security state in history and so step beyond even the most fervid dreams of the totalitarian regimes of the last century? And who hasn't been struck by how close the agency has actually come to sweeping up the communications of the whole planet? Technologically speaking, what Snowden revealed to the world -- thanks to journalist Glenn Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras -- was a remarkable accomplishment, as well as a nightmare directly out of some dystopian novel. From exploiting backdoors into the Internet's critical infrastructure and close relationships with the planet's largest tech companies to performing economic espionage and sendingspy avatars into video games, the NSA has been relentless in its search for complete global omniscience, even if that is by no means the same thing as omnipotence. It now has the ability to be a hidden part of just about any conversation just about anywhere. Of course, we don't yet know the half of it, since no Edward Snowden has yet stepped forward from the inner precincts of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, or other such outfits in the "U.S. intelligence community." Still, what we do know should take our collective breath away. And we know it all thanks to one young man, hounded across the planet by the U.S. government in an "international manhunt." | |
Comment: What a show! Sony Pictures has already optioned the rights to the movie.
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RT
2014-05-20 02:02:00
Thailand's military leaders declared martial law Tuesday in a surprise move which they say aims to restore peace and order after months of anti-government demonstrations and unrest have left the nation teetering. Army chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha made the announcement on military television at 3:00 a.m. local time and assured the public that even though soldiers will now be in command of public security, order will rule the day. Dozens of people have been killed as a result of the protests since the demonstrations began in November 2013. "We are concerned this violence could harm the country's security in general. Then, in order to restore law and order to the country, we have declared martial law," Prayuth said, as quoted by Reuters. "I'm asking all those activist groups to stop all activities and cooperate with us in seeking a way out of this crisis." A decades-long dispute over power has culminated within the past six months with large demonstrations and unrest. The situation escalated earlier in May, when Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra was forced from office. Her ouster made way for sitting Prime Minister Niwatthamrong Boonsongphaisan, who said Monday that his administration would not step down. The opposition demands that the government give way to an unelected administration that would then rewrite the constitution. | |
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The Huffington Post
2014-05-19 06:00:00
Washington -- The European Union is pressing the Obama administration to expand U.S. fracking, offshore oil drilling and natural gas exploration under the terms of a secretnegotiation text obtained by The Huffington Post. The controversial document is an early draft of energy policies that EU negotiators hope to see adopted under the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) trade deal, which is currently being negotiated. The text was shared with American officials in September. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative declined to comment on the document. Environmental groups fear the broad language proposed for the deal would eliminate key restrictions on the export of crude oil and natural gas, fossil fuels that contribute to climate change. The document marks the first major bone of contention in the EU deal, amid anoutcry from environmentalists over leaked terms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a separate pact that the U.S. and 11 Pacific nations are also negotiating. "Exports of energy goods to the other Party shall be deemed automatically to comply with any conditions and tests foreseen in the Parties' respective legislation for the granting of export licenses," the memo reads, defining "energy goods" as "coal, crude oil, oil products, natural gas, whether liquefied or not, and electrical energy." The U.S. government treats trade negotiation texts as classified information. Previous leaks concerning the EU deal have focused on lighter topics, including whether American cheesemakers can call their products "feta" or "parmesan." By encouraging more crude oil and natural gas exports to the EU -- a massive economic force that uses a tremendous amount of global energy -- the proposal could spur more domestic oil and gas drilling and discourage the development of green energy in the EU, dealing a significant blow to efforts to avert climate change. Some environmental and citizens groups also object to the fracking process itself -- in which a high-pressure mixture of chemicals, water, and sand is injected into rock formations to release natural gas -- because of concerns that it might affect groundwater supplies. "Encouraging trade in dirty fossil fuels would mean more dangerous fracking here in the U.S. and would push more climate-disrupting fuels into the European Union," Ilana Solomon, director of the Responsible Trade Program at Sierra Club, told HuffPost. "The oil and gas industry is the only winner in this situation." | |
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RT
2014-05-20 00:17:00
North Carolina legislators are considering a bill that would make it a crime to publicly disclose toxic chemicals that energy companies use in the hydraulic fracturing process, with offenders on the hook for fines or even jail time. Known as the Energy Modernization Act, the bill would make any unauthorized disclosure of fracking trade secrets - including the chemicals used - punishable with a Class I Felony, according to an Energywire report. Fracking, a gas and oil mining technique which involves injecting a mixture of sand and chemicals deep into the earth, has been blamed for contaminated drinking water, infertility, birth defects, cancer, air pollution, and other serious concerns. Americans opposed to fracking have not only struggled with obstacles put in place by gas and oil companies, but also with the high profits and employment that come to struggling communities along with the process. Environmentalists have called for more transparency in the conversation over the chemicals used, although gas companies have fought back by saying that their chemicals are a trade secret and thus should be protected. Now, under the parameters of the North Carolina bill, even firefighters and individual healthcare workers could be in trouble if they openly discuss the chemicals that are injected into the ground near their home. "The felony provision is far stricter than most states' provisions in terms of the penalty for violating trade secrets," Hannah Wiseman, a Florida State University assistant law professor who studies fracking laws, told Mother Jones. If the bill, which has the backing of the state's top Republicans, is signed into law, major corporations could be given the power to force emergency officials to sign confidentiality agreements, although the penalty for breaking that agreement is unclear. "I think the only penalties to fire chiefs and doctors, if they talked about it at their annual conference, would be the penalties contained in the confidentiality agreement," Wiseman went on. "But [the bill] is so poorly worded, I cannot confirm that if an emergency responder or fire chief discloses that confidential information, they too would not be subject to a felony." | |
Comment: Why would they not want people to know what's in fracking fluids?
Study says fracking chemicals interfere with endocrine functions, linked to heightened risks of cancer, low fertility rates and decreased sperm quality What fracking can do to your health Fracking: Scientific review reveals public health hazards and data gaps | |
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Melissa Melton
thedailysheeple 2014-05-18 20:09:00
As the fight against genetically modified foods continues to intensify across the country, protesters like those involved in March Against Monsanto continue to march on. Unfortunately, in a staunchly pro-Monsanto state like Missouri - home to Monsanto's global headquarters - those protests just became a little more difficult to hold at the site itself. Apparently Monsanto protesters have traditionally gathered on a large median on Olive Boulevard outside the Monsanto world headquarters complex at 800 N. Lindbergh Blvd in St. Louis to hold up signs and give out informational pamphlets. | |
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Johnny Punish
Veterans Today 2014-05-16 00:00:00
A new poll taken by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reports that about 50% of people under the age of 35 are unaware of the Nazi crimes committed against their fellow Europeans commonly known as the Holocaust. (Read Full Report: ADL GLOBAL 100: An Index of Anti-Semitism) Like so many other unspeakable crimes against humanity before and after, the European Holocaust committed by the Nazis was pure evil; plain and simple. Whether it was 6 million, 4 million or 1 million people who were murdered, it was horrific period! There is no debate about it! And it should be recognized as such, period! However, it was not the only genocide committed against humanity in history. In fact, there have been many sick crimes committed by mentally ill humans with massive power in history both in antiquity and in modern history e.g.. Holdomar in Ukraine, Rwanda in Africa, the Armenian Genocide, the Native Americans in North America, the Circassian Genocide and much more...... Zionism Plays Cards Better Than Steve McQueen in Cincinnati Kid The big difference is the way the Holocaust has been utilized by leading propagandists in the Zionist political movement. In fact, by far, the Holocaust is the most exploited genocide in history making the others seem relatively benign and inconsequential. And so, for Zionists who's ambition is Eretz Israel, playing the Holocaust Card has become predictable on American media to make sure "we never forget". I mean, you can call it out every time there is a hiccup on the road to their conquest, the card gets played. It's as predictable as the OMAHA call by the Denver Broncos Peyton Manning! You know it's coming! | |
Comment: Zionism is a secular, political movement. It has nothing to do with Judaism or antisemitism; it is about territory and power and usurping religious principles for personal profit. Zionism has the most to gain from manipulating antisemitism, convenient myths, unbiblical heresy and "existential threats." Zionists will flaunt the cards as long as Americans blindly play the hand!
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| Society's Child |
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Rachel Chase
Peru this Week 2014-05-20 16:00:00
Archaeologists working at the Wari archaeological complex in the Vegachayoq Moqo sector have made new discoveries that promise to illuminate the mysterious pre-Inca society. Mario Cueto Cardenas from the Ayacucho Culture Board told Andina that "Archaeologist [José Ochatoma Paravicino of the Universidad San Cristobal de Huamanga] presented a report and is preparing an exposition for the new Wari finds, which will allow us to explore unknown spaces, because [at the Wari site], we're just getting familiar with the citadel, there are more mysteries that will allow us to better understand their economic and cultural system." Juan Arango Claudio, local tourism official, told Andina that "In spite of all the effort that has been expended, we only know a small percentage, that can't be more than 10%, about the Wari, but we're hoping that these advances will allow us more tourism flow, because these historical spaces are being evaluated." Specifics about the new findings are expected to be announced in coming weeks, Andina reports. The Wari were an expansive civilization that lived in Peru from around 500 AD to 1000 AD. Their capital city, also called Wari, was located near the city of Ayacucho, in inland Peru. | |
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RT
2014-05-20 11:24:00
Russia and China have agreed to build the first cross-border rail bridge over the Amur River by 2016, following President Putin's visit to Shanghai. The bridge will cut transportation times and increase trade. Construction of the bridge is scheduled to start within the next few months. "It is the first ever bridge between Russia and China. Now generally there are no bridges between our countries: neither automobile, nor railway," Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund told journalists on Tuesday. "RCIF [Russia-China Investment Fund] not only builds financial bridges between Russia and China, but also invests in the infrastructure to benefit both countries," Dmitriev said in apress release on Tuesday. The bridge will be a project of the Russian-Chinese Investment Fund and will be able to handle 21 million tons of traffic a year. It will connect the Jewish Autonomous Region with the Chinese province of Heilongjiang. | |
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RT
2014-05-20 10:47:00
A freight train crashed into a passenger train in the Moscow Region. Dozens of people are injured and at least six confirmed dead. Injured passengers were being carried out of the carriages by hand. Rescuers are working at the scene. "Today at 12:38pm (08:38 GMT) a freight and a commuter train collided on the Bekasovo-Nara railroad near the regional center of Naro-Fominsk," reported the transport police press service. According to preliminary reports, six people were killed in the incident, one of them dying in hospital. Five out of six dead were the citizens of Moldova. Up to 45 passengers have been injured, 28 have been taken to hospitals, 15 of them are in a serious condition. Three of the injured are children. "We now know about five dead," confirmed the head of Naro-Fominsk Region Vadim Andronov. "It is possible that the number of dead and injured passengers will grow as one overturned passenger carriage has been blocked by a container from the freighter train, which now remains on top of it. Rescuers are entering the second damaged passenger carriage right now.."
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Chris Hedges
Truth Dig 2014-05-18 06:53:00
Update: On May 19 Cecily McMillan was sentenced to three months in jail and five years of probation, plus community service. Click on the word Guardian and the words Huffington Post to see articles on the sentencing. Cecily McMillan, the Occupy activist who on Monday morning will appear before a criminal court in New York City to be sentenced to up to seven years on a charge of assaulting a police officer, sat in a plastic chair wearing a baggy, oversized gray jumpsuit, cheap brown plastic sandals and horn-rim glasses. Other women, also dressed in prison-issued gray jumpsuits, sat nearby in the narrow, concrete-walled visitation room clutching their children, tears streaming down their faces. The children, bewildered, had their arms wrapped tightly around their mothers' necks. It looked like the disaster scene it was. "It's all out in the open here," said the 25-year-old student, who was to have graduated May 22 with a master's degree from The New School of Social Research in New York City. "The cruelty of power can't hide like it does on the outside. You get America, everything America has become, especially for poor people of color in prison. My lawyers think I will get two years. But two years is nothing compared to what these women, who never went to trial, never had the possibility of a trial with adequate legal representation, face. There are women in my dorm who, because they have such a poor command of English, do not even understand their charges. I spent a lot of time trying to explain the charges to them." | |
Comment: Once again police can can use brutality to subdue nonviolent peaceful protesters and walk away scot-free, while peaceful protesters are thrown in prison and denied rights to defend themselves by corrupt judges...welcome to America home of the free!
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Jordyn Taylor
BetaBeat 2014-05-13 07:00:00
In case you needed more proof that all our jobs will one day be occupied by robots, a Hong Kong V.C. firm has just named an artificial intelligence tool to its board of directors. The company's also insisting the tool will be treated as an "equal" to the other board members. Sure, it's all probably a bid for press - but it's still pretty funny. A press release from Aging Analytics UK, a company that conducts research on biotechnology and regenerative medicine, made two announcements this morning: first, that they've launched an new A.I. tool called VITAL (Validating Investment Tool for Advancing Life Sciences); and second, that they've licensed VITAL to Hong Kong V.C. firm Deep Knowledge Ventures, where the tool will become an "equal member of its Board of Directors." Yes, that means it'll have exactly the same power as a living, breathing, presumably college-educated human being. | |
Comment: Judging by the lack of conscience in boardrooms, this addition of an artificial intelligence in charge of overview seems a perfect extension of our core problem in human looking outfits; the psychopath. It's the next logical step in human devolution.
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James Howard Kunstler
Kunstler.com 2014-05-19 00:05:00
Funny how, in the current national rapture of techno-narcissism, it is harder than ever to do something that for generations used to be as simple as pie: to get somebody on the telephone. It's especially funny in a time when phones have become a prosthetic extension of every human hand and pretty much the be-all and end-all of human culture. I hold a phone, therefore I am! It's not so funny that the places where it is most difficult to connect to a live human being are among the most critical activities, most particularly every branch of health care. Hospitals now operate under the entirely false and obviously dishonest premise that a robotic phone routing system is the best way to handle communications. Notice that, in the logic of this system, no distinction is made between mundane business and medical emergencies. Everybody who calls get's the same perky robot - always a woman, by the way, in a dishonest attempt to provide false reassurance that a "caring" presence (Big Sister) is at the other end of the line. Whether you call about a billing error or having just shredded your foot in a rototiller, the message at the other end will always be democratically the same: "Your call is important to us." (Not.) | |
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CBS DC
2014-05-16 19:05:00
David Letterman regrets the way he treated Monica Lewinsky throughout the years over her affair with then President Bill Clinton while she was a White House intern. With retiring ABC News' Barbara Walters as his guest on his CBS show Wednesday night, "The Late Show" host said he started to feel bad about the role he played taking shots at Lewinsky after she penned a story for Vanity Fair opening up about the affair and the troubles she had finding a job. "Now I started to feel bad because myself and other people with shows like this made relentless jokes about the poor woman and she was a kid. She was 21, 22," Letterman said, adding that it was a "sad human situation." Letterman continued: "I feel bad about my role in helping push the humiliation to the point of suffocation."
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CBS Chicago
2014-05-16 18:58:00
A Wisconsin father has taken out a restraining order against a 5-year old boy who he claims has been bullying his 6-year-old daughter. WBBM Newsradio's Dave Berner reports Brian Metzger said his daughter was threatened and attacked by one of her classmates at Prairie Lane Elementary School in Pleasant Prairie. He said his daughter used to love kindergarten, but doesn't want to go to school anymore. He told WISN-TV his daughter told him the boy said, "I want to slit your throat and watch you bleed." Metzger said his daughter has been harassed by the boy for the whole school year, but the school failed to protect his daughter. | |
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Star News Online
2014-05-16 18:49:00
The mother of a mentally ill, homeless veteran and inmate who was found dead in a one-hundred-degree New York City jail cell that overheated due to an equipment malfunction in February plans to file a $25 million wrongful death lawsuit against the city, her lawyer plans to announce. Alma Murdough's attorney, Derek Sells, also will ask the city to preserve all communications and 911 recordings regarding former Marine Jerome Murdough's death on Rikers Island at a press conference on Friday, he said. Sells filed a notice of claim, the first procedural step necessary for a civil suit against the city, with the comptroller's office on April 30 on behalf of the inmate's 75-year-old mother. In it, he writes that 56-year-old Murdough's death was caused by carelessness and negligence by Department of Correction employees. Prosecutors in the Bronx are investigating the death. | |
Comment: See: Riker's Island inmate found 'baked to death' in his cell
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David Ferguson
Raw Story 2014-05-16 18:43:00
A former pastor and Christian university professor plead guilty Tuesday in Kent County, MI Circuit Court to charges that he climbed a ladder to peer into an upstairs window at a couple having sex. Michigan Live reported that 42-year-old Jeremy Grinnell plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of surveilling unclothed persons that stemmed from an incident on Nov. 7, 2013. Grinnell reportedly propped a ladder against the side of a Cannon Township couple's home, climbed to a second floor window and spied on the man and woman as they had sex. He returned to the house later that evening, but was caught by the male resident, who called police. Grinnell was arrested at the scene. | |
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David Edwards
Raw Story 2014-05-15 18:36:00
Students at New York's Columbia University have taken matters into their own hands after the school was accused of mishandling sexual assault cases. According to WABC, a list of alleged rapists began appearing this week around campus, including in several of the women's bathrooms. Students were also reportedly handing out fliers with the same names. Earlier this month, CNN reported that a group of 23 students filed a federal complaint against the university, saying that the school failed to protect them from sexual assaults. The complaint said that the school discouraged reporting assaults, and failed to properly punish rapists. | |
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| Secret History |
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| Science & Technology |
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Eric Niiler
Discovery News 2014-05-20 11:45:00
The movement to sell locally sourced, artisanal food and drink has picked up steam in recent years as many consumers demand better quality products with a smaller environmental footprint and traceable pedigree. But some Dutch researchers are taking this idea a step further, proposing the creation of village-level "meat factories" that would produce unique flavors of artificial beef, pork or chicken, all from a biotech reactor. The study builds upon work done last year, the so-called "test-tube hamburger" that was created by researchers at the University of Maastrict in the Netherlands and unveiled at a tasting in London. This latest study by a pair of researchers at Wagenigen University proposes a device that can create meat cells in a metal container - enough to feed a small amount of "cultured beef" each month to a village of 2,650 people. "We thought it was interesting and most promising to do cultured meat on a small scale," said Cor van der Weele, professor of philosophy who wrote the paper with biotechnology professor Johannes Tamper in the journal Trends in Biotechnology. "A small scale is also good from a biotechnology point of view." Van der Weele said she was inspired to come up with this alternative to meat because of her concerns over animal welfare, as well as the environmental impact of land used to grow beef cattle. "Raising small numbers of animals in a village is fine," Van der Weele said. "But the way animals are raised now is not in small amounts but in large scale and factory farms." | |
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Megan Gannon
Live Science 2014-05-20 11:59:00
"Fairy circles" that form in the arid grasslands of Namibia have baffled scientists for decades. In the latest attempt to explain the cause of these mysterious circular patches, a group of researchers turned to aerial images. From the aerial images, the scientists discovered that fairy circles are distributed in surprisingly regular patterns, which might rule out the popular theory that termites are the creators. "The occurrence of such patterning in nature is rather unusual," study researcher Stephan Getzin, of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig, Germany, said in a statement. "There must be particularly strong regulating forces at work." [Image Gallery: Amazing 'Fairy Circles' of the Namib Desert] Fairy circles are barren patches, typically surrounded by a ring of thriving vegetation. They can grow to be 65 feet (20 meters) in diameter and can linger for as long as 75 years. For the past several years, scientists have offered up a variety of hypotheses for why these rings form in the arid grasslands transitioning into the Namib Desert. Their explanations have ranged from grass-killing seeps of hydrocarbons to carnivorous ants to termite feeding patterns. | |
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Dee Mueller
Guardian Liberty Voice 2014-05-19 19:53:00
Mitochondria not only come exclusively from an organism's mother, they are the power generators of the cells, creating a source of chemical energy known as ATP or adenosine triphosphate. The amount of mitochondria in a cell is based upon the metabolic requirements of that particular cell and the numbers present may range from only one up into the thousands. Therefore, the more demanding the cell's energy requirements, the more of these so-called cellular power plants are required. While mitochondria are inherited maternally, it is currently unknown as to what exactly causes the destruction of the paternal side. Paternal mitochondria are not passed on to an organism. They are either prevented from somehow doing so or are simply destroyed before they can be passed on to any offspring. Scientists are currently looking at this phenomenon to try to find both the reason behind this evolutionary enigma and the manner in which it occurs. Recently, Dr. Eli Arama and colleagues from Weizmann Institute have discovered some specialized cellular vesicles which come from the egg to be fertilized. These vesicles not only locate but also actively cause the destruction of the father's paternal mitochondria during the fertilization process. The team from the Institute's Molecular Genetics Department worked with fruit flies to conduct this study. Past studies to determine the cause of the absence of the father's power cells were undertaken using worms and mice. Unfortunately, the sperm of worms are very different from those of a human, not having the same head or tail structures as mammals. While other studies were preformed on mice, those studies were trying to determine whether the absence was caused by some passive dilution process. The passive dilution theory, however, could not explain why autophagy markers, where vesicles actually engulf the cell's unwanted structures, were still found. It appears that they actually seek out the paternal mitochondria in order to actively destroy them instead of relying on a passive method of dilution. | |
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| Earth Changes |
Clean up efforts were considered over, but thousands of small dead fish remained in the waters off of Marina del Rey on Monday morning, two days after they were first discovered. Scores of dead fish, believed to be mostly anchovies, began washing up in a corner of the marina near Bora Bora Way on Saturday night, creating a foul-smelling, silvery blanket on top of the water. "It's horrible. There's like a million dead anchovies floating around, as well as other fish," said Lisa Lascody, a resident of the area. "It's creepy and weird." Crews spent Sunday cleaning up, and although carcasses continued to litter the water on Monday, a supervisor with the Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors said clean up efforts were over. The supervisor estimated that about 3,000 to 4,000 fish carcasses were removed from the harbor. | |
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NewsChannel5
2014-05-20 02:45:00
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. - A 40-foot sinkhole has opened up on the football field at Austin Peay State University. It all started a couple of weeks ago when a small sinkhole first appeared. Officials say it was about the size of a desk. Crews started work to stop the hole from growing and it wouldn't. Monday, the sinkhole was estimated to be 30 by 50 feet wide -- and 40 feet deep! So far it has swallowed part of the field and track of Governors Stadium. The stadium is currently undergoing renovations. "We're not going to skip any steps. That's the reason I brought the engineers back out because it's not going the way we thought it was going so it's time to let the professionals look at it and tell us which way to go. Once they do that we can just continue the process," said project superintendent Mike Jenkins. | |
Comment: As seen in the video, repurposing early sinkhole indents as they call 'the bowls', for student use and merely landscaping around them, looks like a nomination for aDarwin award. These holes are potentially deadly as they open up in no time, and like academics are most they choose to just sweep the inconvenient evidence under the carpet. Earth is increasingly opening up at an alarming rate:
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Rusmir Smajilhodzic
AFP 2014-05-20 04:59:00
Bosnia said Monday it was witnessing "the biggest exodus" since the 1990s war after the worst floods in a century inundated huge swathes of the Balkans, killing at least 47 people. Muddy waters from the Sava River have submerged houses, churches, mosques and roads in Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia after record rainfall last week wreaked havoc across the region. There were fears that dead bodies and animal carcasses could lead to disease outbreaks, while officials warned that 120,000 unexploded mines from the conflicts of the 1990s could be dislodged. "More than 100,000 people" have been evacuated in Bosnia alone, said Stanko Sliskovic of Bosnia's emergency services, with tens of thousands more displaced in neighbouring countries. "This is the biggest exodus since the end of the 1992-1995 war," he told AFP.
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| Fire in the Sky |
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| Health & Wellness |
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ScienceDaily
2014-05-20 15:05:00
Both high and low frequency hearing impairment have been linked with sleep apnea in a new study of nearly 14,000 individuals. "In our population-based study of 13,967 subjects from the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos, we found that sleep apnea was independently associated with hearing impairment at both high and low frequencies after adjustment for other possible causes of hearing loss," said lead author Amit Chopra, MD, currently at the Albany Medical Center in New York. The study was presented at the 2014 American Thoracic Society International Conference. All subjects underwent successful in-home sleep apnea studies and on-site audiometric testing at baseline. Sleep apnea was assessed with the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI), which indicates sleep apnea severity based on the number of apnea (complete cessation of airflow) and hypopneas (partial cessation of airflow) per hour of sleep. Sleep apnea was defined as an AHI ≥ 15 events/hour. High frequency hearing impairment was defined as having a mean hearing threshold of greater than 25 decibels in either ear at 2000, 3000, 4000, 6000 and 8000 Hz, and low frequency hearing impairment was defined as having a mean hearing threshold of greater than 25 decibels in either ear at 500 Hz and 1000 Hz. | |
Comment: Those who suffer from sleep apnea might want to take a look at this article:
Breathe in: Exercises may help sleep apnea Also if you haven't tried any breathing techniques, you can check out the Éiriú Eolas breathing program here. | |
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Catherine J. Frompovich
Activist Post 2014-05-16 11:39:00
What happens when the 'Average Joe' gets caught committing a crime? He or she usually gets the book thrown at them, most often spending time in the slammer. However, what happens when "corporations too big to fail" get caught with "their hands in the cookie jar," so to speak? Not very many folks pay the time, but the corporate treasury pays the fine. Why? Apparently, large sums of money can "absolve corporate sins" time after time after time. One industry that has had enormous fines levied against it is the pharmaceutical industry, also known as Big Pharma. It is the opinion of this writer that Big Pharma's corporate largess is too tempting to resist by federal government agencies, and fines work nicely. Pharma's lobbyists spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year contributing to congressional campaign coffers, which should be outlawed because it is nothing short of bribery - plain and simple. Obviously, a member of Congress will champion a cause - or is 'morally' obligated to do so - for the money Pharma's lobbyists freely hand out. [3] | |
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Jeannie Stokowski-Bisanti
Digital Journal 2014-05-14 00:43:00
The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is given to prevent the risk of cancer associated with HPV and is typically administered between the ages of eight and 26. Opponents argue that not only is the vaccine risky, but it is of no value. The HPV vaccine effects are said to last for only about five years. In a Health Impact News Daily Post dated today, Dr. Mark Flannery states that, "The problem with this vaccine is this: Even though it's estimated 60 percent of women have the HPV virus, only 1-2 percent of the total population gets cervical cancer, and most of those women get the cancer in their 50s. If the vaccine only works for five years, is administered up to age 26, and yet most cases of cervical cancer happen to women in their 50s, the benefits of the Gardasil vaccine are questionable given the severe consequences it can cause." In Dr. Flannery's practice, he has worked with a number of people injured by the Gardasil vaccine for HPV and, according to SaneVax, Inc., as of 2013 more than 32,000 people have reported adverse affects to the Gardasil vaccine, more than 145 have died, over 1,000 are permanently disabled, and more than 6,400 have yet to recover. Dr. Flannery writes, "The evidence shows HPV rarely proceeds to cancer and that very few women with HPV develop cervical cancer, as other risk factors are involved." | |
Comment: In short: Gardasil: Medical torture and child abuse by Big Pharma. See alsoVaccine's safety: A crime against humanity.
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Kari Hamerschlag
Civil Eats 2014-05-08 19:36:00
Several weeks ago, a group called Academics Review published a report harshly attacking the organic industry and its nonprofit allies for what they called "deceptive marketing practices," designed to instill "false and misleading consumer health and safety perceptions about competing conventional foods." The study also implicates the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as a willing partner that allows companies to use their sanctioned organic label to deliver fear-mongering messages about the dangers of industrial food. And while most coverage of the study appeared in small and agriculture-focused publications, some other sources, like the New York Post and Food Safety News, picked up the story without much in-depth research about its source. The headlines "Report: Organic Industry Achieved 25 Years of Fast Growth Through Fear and Deception" and "The Organic Industry Has Been Fibbing All Along" were especially alarming. | |
Comment: More evidence on WHY consumers care about pesticides, antibiotics, hormones or GMOs in our food:
Other Key Health Benefits of Organic Food Paying for Health: The Cost of Organic Food Versus Conventional Going organic for one week cuts pesticides in urine by 90% The Obvious Advantage of Organic Food Over Conventional New Study Confirms: Organic Food is Far Healthier Than Conventional More propaganda: organic food has no added nutritional benefit, says Food Standards Agency Organic vs. Conventional: Pundits are welcome to their own opinion, but not their own facts New 'Study' Based on Crops No Longer Grown, Twists Its Own Results, and Fails to Analyze Thinking Outside the Processed Foods Box: Health and Safety Advantages of Organic Food | |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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James Corbett
BoilingFrogsPost.com 2014-03-26 15:22:00
Are you irate, irritable and irrational when presented with evidence that goes against your preconceived notions of how the world operates? Looking for a solution to your stress? Join us this week on The Eyeopener as we examine the theory of cognitive dissonance and how it stops people from confronting the uncomfortable truths about the way the world really works.
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| High Strangeness |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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