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21st Century Wire
2014-11-03 22:55:00
Where is your nearest FEMA camp? An NBC news crew may have stumbled across one in upper state New York... Executive Directive 51 was signed by George W. Bush in 2007, which gives the US Federal gov't the power to declare impose martial law in the event a 'national emergency', giving the White House and Homeland Security (DHS) the ability to detain millions of Americans on US soil under Rex 84 and other military programs previously planned and run as inter-agency exercise drills. A number of bloggers, patriot groups, survivalists and preppers have compiled lists of FEMA Camp locations, but much of the reporting is still isolated and anecdotal. One reason why evidence is relatively sparse could be because it's not easy to film at these secluded sites with hired security personnel intimidating press and media. It's not just alternative media outlets being harassed by privatized government contractors. Even mainstream media crews are being chased off of these secret sites too... | |
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John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute 2014-11-04 22:39:00 Secret police. Secret courts. Secret government agencies. Surveillance. Intimidation tactics. Harassment. Torture. Brutality. Widespread corruption. Entrapment schemes. These are the hallmarks of every authoritarian regime from the Roman Empire to modern-day America, yet it's the secret police - tasked with silencing dissidents, ensuring compliance, and maintaining a climate of fear - who sound the death knell for freedom in every age. Every regime has its own name for its secret police: Mussolini's OVRA carried out phone surveillance on government officials. Stalin's NKVD carried out large-scale purges, terror and depopulation. Hitler's Gestapo went door to door ferreting out dissidents and other political "enemies" of the state. And in the U.S., it's the Federal Bureau of Investigation that does the dirty work of ensuring compliance, keeping tabs on potential dissidents, and punishing those who dare to challenge the status quo. Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans' phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government, or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation's secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss' dirty work. Indeed, a far cry from the glamorized G-men depicted in Hollywood film noirs and spy thrillers, the government's henchmen have become the embodiment of how power, once acquired, can be so easily corrupted and abused. |
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The Guardian
2014-11-04 22:32:00
The US air force has fired two more nuclear commanders and disciplined a third, fresh evidence of leadership lapses in a nuclear missile corps that has suffered several recent setbacks including the removal of its top commander. The most senior officer to be relieved of command was Colonel Carl Jones, second in command of the 90th Missile Wing at FE Warren air force base, Wyoming, in charge of 150 of the air force's 450 Minuteman 3 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles. He was dismissed on Monday "for a loss of trust and confidence in his leadership abilities" and reassigned as a special assistant to the wing commander. At the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, which also is responsible for 150 Minuteman 3 missiles, Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy "Keith" Brown was relieved of command "because of a loss of confidence in Brown's ability to lead his squadron", the air force said. Lieutenant Colonel John Sheets - a spokesman for Global Strike Command, which is in charge of the Air Force Minuteman 3 force as well as its nuclear bomber fleet - said an investigation "substantiated that Brown engaged in unlawful discrimination or harassment". He added that the probe found that Brown "made statements to subordinates that created a perception within his squadron that pregnancy would negatively affect a woman's career". | |
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Noam Chomsky
Truth-out.org 2014-11-03 20:51:00
"It's official: The U.S. is the world's leading terrorist state, and proud of it." That should have been the headline for the lead story in The New York Times on Oct. 15, which was more politely titled "CIA Study of Covert Aid Fueled Skepticism About Helping Syrian Rebels." The article reports on a CIA review of recent U.S. covert operations to determine their effectiveness. The White House concluded that unfortunately successes were so rare that some rethinking of the policy was in order. The article quoted President Barack Obama as saying that he had asked the CIA to conduct the review to find cases of "financing and supplying arms to an insurgency in a country that actually worked out well. And they couldn't come up with much." So Obama has some reluctance about continuing such efforts. The first paragraph of the Times article cites three major examples of "covert aid": Angola, Nicaragua and Cuba. In fact, each case was a major terrorist operation conducted by the U.S. | |
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Aeneas Georg
Has the recent elections in Donbass encouraged more regions or have the cumulative effects of the repression by the Ukrainian punitive forces spurred other militias to form. Whatever the reason, facts are that the Junta forces are encountering resistance in some of the neighbouring regions to Donetsk and Lugansk. In Mariupol bordering the sea there is this bit of information:
What is in interesting in the above info is the fact that the militia fighting here in the south of the Donetsk region is from Odessa, the region where the massacre happened in May at the Trade Union building.Sott.net 2014-11-04 20:23:00
To the north of Lugansk (photo above), the militia is actively attacking Ukrainian positions: In Kharkov region, which is neighbouring the Donetsk and Lugansk and with a population of almost 3 million, some resistance is starting to form. The website Fort Russ, which translates from Russian and Ukrainian sources has this information regarding Kharkov: In the meantime, the punitive action by the Ukrainian punitive troops continued. | |
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RT
2014-11-04 20:08:00
The Hungarian parliament has approved a law on Monday which allows building the South Stream gas pipeline without approval of the European Union. The European Commission has already demanded an explanation from Hungarian authorities. The European Commission's spokesperson said at a press briefing in Brussels on Tuesday that the EC was in contact with Hungarian authorities to get an explanation for their decision. The law was passed with 132 votes in favor and 35 votes against, allowing a company to construct a gas pipeline even if it doesn't have the licenses needed to operate it. According to the new law the only requirement for a company which wants to take part in construction is approval from the Hungarian Energy Office. "This is meant to give a boost to South Stream and is to show Russia that Hungary is taking the project seriously," Attila Holoda, an expert on energy regulation, said as cited by Bloomberg. South Stream is "extraordinarily important" for Hungary because it enhances the security of gas supplies to the country, Janos Lazar, the Minister in Charge of the Prime Minister's Office, told reporters on October, 22. Comment: The EU Commission has lost touch with reality in trying to please the US. Hungary however knows that without energy, no energy, no jobs, no money. Not wanting to be another failed state with unrest, they have wisely opted to defy the technocrats in power in Brussels. | |
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RT
2014-11-04 14:19:00
The largest-ever protest by Israeli top brass has taken place, with at least 105 retired generals and intelligence chiefs writing a letter to premier Benjamin Netanyahu, urging him to "initiate a diplomatic process" for peace with Palestine. "We, the undersigned, reserve IDF commanders and retired police officers, who have fought in Israel's military campaigns, know firsthand of the heavy and painful price exacted by wars.... Here we are again sending our children out onto the battlefield, watching them don their uniforms and combat vests and go out to fight in Operation Protective Edge," the letter read. A few of those who signed the letter told the state Mako-Channel 2 News that, in their opinion, Israel had the strength and means to come to a two-state roadmap to get out of the current crisis. The agreement wasn't reached due to "weak leadership," the country's top brass added. | |
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Press TV
2014-11-04 13:31:00
The Catalan government has requested Spain's constitutional court to allow a planned referendum on its independence to go ahead as scheduled, a poll which Madrid wants blocked. Francesc Homs, spokesman for the Catalan government, said Monday that it had presented a petition to the court "to prevent the constitutional court from suspending Sunday's referendum." The request came after Spain's central government asked the top court on October 31 to block the vote. Spain's Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria has claimed that Catalan's symbolic referendum represents a "legal fraud" and "a perversion" of democracy. Comment: It is 'a perversion of democracy' when the oligarchs of Spain are profiting from the resources of Catalonia at the expense of the people, and keep everyone under their thumb. Same story we saw unfolding in Scotland and these last days we see in Eastern Ukraine. Catalonia's President Artur Mas has condemned the central government for taking legal action against the vote, accusing Madrid of abusing its power. | |
Comment: God forbid self-determination, or taking ones resources away from the jaws of sharks!
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ITAR-TASS
2014-11-04 12:34:00
Russia has opposed a UN Security Council move to criticize elections held in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, with a senior official telling the United Nations a statement from the 15-member council is "inadequate". "There was a draft press statement which was inadequate. For this reason it was not adopted," Alexey Zaitsev, the First Secretary for Russia's permanent envoy to the UN, told TASS, commenting on remarks by Ukraine U.N. Ambassador Yuriy Sergeyev saying the proposed statement was blocked by Russia. The Lithuanian-drafted text stated that the elections held on Sunday in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions run counter to the provisions of the Minsk peace agreement, reached in September. | |
Comment: Russia has every right to veto the draft based on the Minsk accords themselves, which proclaim among others:
And this is what "elections under the gun" look like in East Ukraine:
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RT
2014-11-03 11:41:00
Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel has signaled she would rather see the UK leave the EU than compromise the free movement of immigrants, German magazine Der Spiegel reported. The UK is nearing a "point of no return," as British Prime Minister David Cameron attempts to renegotiate the terms of the country's EU membership targeting the freedom of movement, Merkel reportedly said. This was Merkel's first hint that the UK's exit from the union is a possibility, according to German media. Cameron earlier said he wants to renegotiate the country's EU membership before going through with a referendum on the subject, with the European principle of freedom of movement "at the very heart of my renegotiation strategy for Europe." Merkel has stressed that her support for UK membership could be reversed, if Cameron pursues migration reform. Cameron has extended the EU laws "to their limits," trying to turn away unemployed migrants and seeking deportation of those unable to make ends meet after three months, according to the report. | |
Comment: The upsurge in anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, xenophobic sentiments of the UK public is a welcoming result to the ruling class who instilled it through media propaganda in the first place:
Be Afraid! Foreign Office issues worldwide terrorism warning for British tourists Connecting the Dots: SOTT Talk Radio Weekly Broadcast - 2 November 2014 | |
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Allison Quinn
The Moscow Times 2014-10-29 10:45:00
The overwhelming majority of Russians view negative foreign media coverage of President Vladimir Putin and of Russia in general as an attempt to destabilize the country, pollster VTsIOM revealed Wednesday. The poll revealed that 87 percent of respondents see such ulterior motives in critical remarks released by foreign media outlets. A mere 4 percent of respondents said such criticism was intended to improve the country's situation. Of the 1,600 people polled, 82 percent said those who condemn Putin's policies want to see the Russian government's collapse. Similarly, 87 percent of respondents said they considered such criticism of Putin to be baseless, while the same number said such comments were a result of the Russian president following policies independently of the rest of the international community. | |
Comment: There's nothing more that the Western leaders wish for than to see Russia in pieces and its people suffering, just as it was after the collapse of the USSR. With Russia being a cohesive superpower with friends in high places in South America and Eurasia, the U.S. and its friends are having a more difficult time getting their bloody hand in every country and every resource. So information war becomes their modus operandi.
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RIA Novosti
2014-11-03 09:49:00
China respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, Chinese Foreign Ministry's spokesperson Hua Chunying said commenting on the elections in Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR) Monday. "China upholds the principle of non-interference in others' internal affairs and respects sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. We hope that all parties will hold dear the ceasefire that is not easily achieved, keep calm, exercise restraint, properly resolve relevant differences through dialogue and consultation and work in concert to push for the political settlement of the crisis," the spokesperson said. Elections in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, aimed at legitimizing new authorities, went ahead on Sunday with no significant incidents and with high voter turnouts. | |
Comment: So far only Russia respects the vote and the results and recognize it as the will of the people in action. Meanwhile the West and Kiev are huffing and puffing trying to convince the world of the "illegitimacy" of the elections in Eastern Ukraine. As Roman Lyagin, head of the election commission, told Deutsche Welle:
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RT
2014-11-04 09:35:00
Two Air Force nuclear commanders have been fired, with a third facing disciplinary measures, after the service cited a "loss of confidence" in their ability to lead their units, once again drawing attention to troubles within the US nuclear corps. The terminations come as the Air Force continues to reckon with leadership problems. Earlier this year, nine nuclear commanders were fired in connection to a test-cheating scandal, which implicated dozens of missile launch officers. Col. Carl Jones, the No. 2 commander of the 90th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming, was the most high-profile of the two commanders to be dismissed on Monday. Jones was responsible for 150 Minuteman 3 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles - the Air Force has 450 total - but his superiors determined there was "a loss of trust and confidence in his leadership abilities." According to Air Force Global Strike Command spokesman Lt. Col. John Sheets, Jones displayed conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman, as well as mistreatment of those below his rank. "In four separate instances, Jones acted in a manner that degraded his status as a senior officer and wing leader, including maltreating a subordinate," Sheets told AP. Meanwhile, Lt. Col. Jimmy "Keith" Brown was also fired due to questions over his leadership, with Sheets saying he "engaged in unlawful discrimination or harassment." Brown apparently "made statements to subordinates that created a perception within his squadron that pregnancy would negatively affect a woman's career." | |
Comment: There has been an ongoing change of the officers in charge of the US nuclear missiles. Is it just a case of a couple of rotten apples or are they all rotten apples and when some don't play the game anymore to the liking of the elite, that they then get fired? They will without doubt all have some compromising things that can be revealed when and if it is deemed expedient in order to maintain control.
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WashingtonsBlog
2014-11-03 08:42:00
Our Strategy Keeps Failing We've repeatedly noted that giving arms to the "moderate" Syrian rebels is idiotic ... as they'll just end up in the hands of the Islamic State. Even the CIA told Obama that this strategy wouldn't work. So we're shocked - shocked! - that one of the biggest "moderate" rebel groups backed and armed by the U.S. has just been wiped out ... and all of their arms and bases taken by ISIS. The Telegraph reports: Two of the main rebel groups receiving weapons from the United States to fight both the regime and jihadist groups in Syria have surrendered to al-Qaeda.Why did we get involved in the middle of Syria's civil war, again? | |
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Prachi Shrivastava
Legallyindia.com 2014-11-04 11:11:00
The Delhi high court noted in its judgement acquitting an alleged rapist, that sexual intercourse between the accused and the victim, who was "beyond the age of menopause", was "forceful [but] it was not forcible". A bench comprising justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Mukta Gupta ruled that the absence of the victim's consent for sex was not proved beyond reasonable doubt because even though "forceful penetration is evident from the injuries on the vaginal orifices [...] however, besides the injuries on the vagina there is no other injury mark on the body of the deceased [victim]". Acquitting the accused Achey Lal, justices Nandrajog and Gupta wrote in the judgement delivered on 30 October: With this precedent the bench takes a step back from the Mathura rape case in which it was held that there is no requirement of explaining injuries for rape and that consent should be unequivocal, reported DNA India. | |
Comment: We live in a culture that tends to blame the woman for rape in some way, shape or form. Menopause? How ridiculous!
See also: Rape cases in New Delhi jump 23 percent in 2012 | |
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J.D. Heyes
Global Research 2014-11-03 00:00:00
Noted infectious disease experts have said that the current strain of Ebola virus plaguing Africa and slowly spreading in the United States is potentially much more lethal than previous strains identified by virologists. As reported by Washington's Blog, Dr. Michael Osterholm, the head of the Center for Infection Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, a prominent public health researcher who is nationally recognized, gave a talk in recent days explaining what another top Ebola virologist has found. During his talk, which was broadcast on C-SPAN, Osterholm said Gary Kobinger, chief of Special Pathogens for Canada's national health agency, has said the current Ebola strain appears to be far worse than any previous strain. He added that Kobinger believes that the current strain could more easily be spread through aerosols than those previously identified as well. | |
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Scott Dolan
Portland Press-Herald 2014-11-04 22:17:00
A former Maine State Police chief accused of sexually assaulting a 4-year-old child is scheduled to change his plea to guilty on Tuesday afternoon to a charge of unlawful sexual contact. Andrew Demers Jr., 74, of New Gloucester is expected to be sentenced immediately after his plea in the Cumberland County Courthouse in Portland before Justice Thomas Warren at 2 p.m. Demers' attorney, Walter McKee, and Cumberland County District Attorney Stephanie Anderson confirmed last month that they had reached a plea agreement, but neither of them would release details other than to say the sentence will be contested. As part of the plea agreement, the more serious Class A felony charge of gross sexual assault is expected to be dismissed in exchange for Demers' plea to the lesser charge. Unlawful sexual contact is a Class B felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Demers could have faced up to 30 years on the Class A felony had he not reached a plea agreement. | |
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Eric W. Dolan
Rawstory 2014-11-04 12:02:00
Two ministers and a 90-year-old homeless advocate in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, face up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine for violating a city ordinance that effectively outlaws sharing food with homeless people in public. Homeless advocate Arnold Abbott, head of the group Love Thy Neighbor, has been feeding the homeless for more than 20 years. Abbott, along with pastors Dwayne Blackand and Mark Sims, were arrested on Sunday after distributing food to the needy on a public sidewalk. "As contemplated on Sunday, I was arrested for feeding the homeless and received a citation to appear in court," Abbott explained on Facebook. "However, only 4 people were fed before an officer told me to, 'Drop that plate immediately!' As though it were a weapon I was holding, and to go with him to the police car. After a time I was allowed to get the food back on the van and we were able to find a small churches driveway, where we set up, and fed the people who followed us over." The city commission voted Oct. 22 in favor of an ordinance that limits where outdoor feeding sites can be located, requires the permission of property owners and says the groups have to provide portable toilets, the Sun-Sentinel reported. The law took effect last Friday. The new ordinance is part of a broader effort to deal with homeless people. The city has also made itillegal to sleep in public places downtown and to beg for money at major intersections. Commissioner Dean Trantalis told WLRN he doesn't think the new laws are mean-spirited, citing services the city also provides. | |
Comment: Society has become so apathetic on account of the influence and nature of our psychopathic leaders. Homelessness is being criminalized all over the U.S. Cities are passing tyrannical laws against feeding the homeless and their homes are being destroyed. One city has even created a hotline to report their presence. The psychopathic U.S. wastes BILLIONS on endless, bloody wars, but no funds to take care of hungry citizens?
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RT
2014-11-04 17:26:00
The Million Mask March will course through London on Wednesday November 5. The march, in which all demonstrators obscure their faces to protect their identity, is in protest against austerity, mass surveillance and attacks on human rights. Organized by the global hacktivist group Anonymous, the London protest will march from Trafalgar Square and finish at the Houses of Parliament. It is unknown how many demonstrators will join the march, as pleas from police for information have remained unanswered. In 2013 the event gathered crowds of more than 2,500. The Facebook event suggests over 6,000 people may attend this year.
Speaking to RT, an Anonymous source said the Million Mask March, a tradition began in 2011, was originally called OpVendetta, and initially only gathered a crowd of 50. Within a year, the following had grown to 2,000, and in 2013 the decision was made to rename the march the "Million Mask March," the source said. | ||
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Ma'an
2014-11-03 12:15:00
Venezuela will sent 10 tons of humanitarian aid and medical equipment for the war-torn Gaza Strip on Sunday, the Palestinian embassy in Caracas said in a statement. A plane will carry the aid from Caracas to the Amman airport on Sunday, and the same plane will bring 100 Palestinian students who have been granted scholarships to study in Venezuela to the country, the statement said. Last week, Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro said his country would grant 1,000 Palestinians scholarships for Venezuelan universities. Linda Subih, the ambassador of Palestine to Venezuela, said in the statement that she and 31 young Venezuelan men and women would accompany the aid to Amman, after which it would be sent to Gaza. | |
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RT.com
2014-11-04 06:44:00
Florida police handed out citations and threatened to arrest two priests and a 90-year-old veteran volunteer for feeding the homeless. A recently passed city ordinance makes sharing food a citable offense. Fort Lauderdale police removed at least three volunteers, as well as the Sunday lunch they were serving to several dozen homeless people, citing a controversial new ordinance that prohibits food sharing. Passed in October, the measure was created to try to cut down the growing population of homeless people in Fort Lauderdale. In video footage from Sunday, three police officers arrive and interrupt the feeding program by removing 90-year-old Arnold Abbott, the Rev. Canon Mark Sims of St. Mary Magdalene Episcopal Church, and the Rev. Dwayne Black of the Sanctuary Church. A chorus of protest erupts from the crowd and follows the officers as they take the men to their patrol cards - "Shame on you, arresting an elderly man!" someone in the crowd says. "The whole world is watching!" says another. | |
Comment: "The ban on sharing food is part of city officials' recent efforts to cut down on the burgeoning downtown homeless population."
Well, here's a crazy idea, why not start creating more jobs with a decent wage so there won't be so many homeless people? But, oops, I guess that that goes against the "profit before people" mentality of the U.S. officials and their controllers. | |
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ITARR-TASS
2014-11-03 04:37:00
Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry said on Tuesday a new humanitarian aid convoy for Ukraine's embattled Donetsk and Luhansk regions was formed and ready for delivery. "We have completed forming a regular convoy of trucks with humanitarian aid, and it will leave for Donetsk and Luhansk soon," Oleg Voronov, deputy chief of the ministry's national crisis management center, told TASS. More than 100 tonnes of humanitarian cargoes, including medicines and fuel, have been loaded to some 20 trucks in Rostov region. This is the sixth humanitarian convoy for residents of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. On Sunday, more than 100 trucks delivered over 1,000 tonnes of foodstuffs, fuel, construction materials and medicines to the regions. Earlier, on October 31, about 100 trucks delivered about 1,000 tonnes of similar cargoes to Donetsk and Luhansk. Before at least 6,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid were dispatched to Donbass. | |
Comment: How ironic that Russia provides humanitarian aid and natural gas price cuts to Ukraine but US/NATO supplies weapons and debt. So who is really supporting humanity, freedom and democracy?
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Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project 2014-11-03 04:14:00
The city has settled dozens of brutality claims against this monster, consisting of everything from suffocation with plastic bags to electricity being applied to genitals to force confessions. The Illinois supreme court just dealt an insulting blow to the tax-payers of Chicago after their ruling to give a monstrous ex-cop his $4,000 monthly pension. Former detective commander Jon Burge has already cost the tax-payers of Chicago over $100 million to settle claims stemming from brutality that included suffocation with plastic bags, electricity applied to genitals and guns forced into mouths during interrogations, according toCourthouse News. As many as 120 men, mostly African-American, were victims of Burge's torture tactics. After Burge was fired in 1993, there was a groundswell of support to investigate his convictions. In 2002, a special prosecutor began investigating the accusations. The review, which cost $17 million, revealed improprieties that resulted in no action due to the statute of limitations. Several convictions were reversed, remanded, or overturned. All Illinois death-row inmates received reductions in their sentences. Four of Burge's victims were pardoned by then-Governor Ryan and subsequently filed a consolidated suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against the City of Chicago, various police officers, Cook County and various State's Attorneys. Burge avoided being charged for any of his past sadistic torture of his victims because of the statute of limitations. However, in 2011 he was sentenced to 4½ years in federal prison for perjury after being caught lying about the torture under oath. His lenient sentence sparked outrage in 2011 from individuals who had spent years in jail for crimes they did not commit after being tortured into confessing by this crazed sociopath. | |
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Ekaterina Blinova
RIA Novosti 2014-11-03 00:00:00
A corruption scandal which has cost US taxpayers millions has been exposed by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR): after five years and $18.5 million spent on renovating Pol-i-Charkhi prison, the project remains incomplete. This is just the latest in a series of costly blunders that have characterized US humanitarian efforts in the country. "The Department of State's (State) Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) paid Al-Watan Construction Company (AWCC) $18.5 million for work performed on a contract valued at $20.2 million, even though AWCC only completed about 50 percent of the required work," the SIGAR's report stated. The US watchdog on Afghanistan's reconstruction has accused the contractor of "defective workmanship," and indicated several serious flaws, particularly, "failure to backfill trenches, improper roof flashing, soil settlement issues, and the failure to connect six back-up generators to the prison's power grid." | |
Comment: This kind of corruption and mismanagement of projects has been ongoing in the reconstruction of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the US infrastructure has been crumblingfor years.
US: Pentagon Under Fire Over War Contracts How Not to Reconstruct Iraq, Afghanistan - or America: A Guide to Disaster at Home and Abroad | |
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David Edwards
Raw Story 2014-11-04 00:00:00
The police chief in Racine, Wisconsin has promised an internal review after a bizarre neighborhood dispute ended with a SWAT team killing a family pet. Resident Kim Polk told WITI that it all began when a neighborhood man's dog had crapped in her yard on Saturday afternoon. "His dog proceeded to soil my grass and I asked him you are going to pick that up because I don't want that sitting on my grass," Polk recalled. She said that the man responded by kicking the dog poop into a pile of leaves she was raking, and then threatening her family's dog with a bow and arrow. When Polk's husband went to talk to the man about the confrontation, she said that he came to the door armed. "He closed the door and came back to the door with a machete in his hand, a very long machete so at that time my husband backed up off the property and I had my daughter call the police," Polk explained. | |
Comment: It is sad that this dog was killed. Unfortunately, nobody is taking about what is really wrong with this society and how these types of incidents can be avoided.
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Fox News Latino
2014-11-04 00:49:00
Joran van der Sloot, the 27-year-old Dutchman who is the prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of U.S. teen Natalee Holloway, has been stabbed and may be in critical condition, according to a Dutch website. In an interview with a Dutch news outlet, van der Sloot's lawyer, Máximo Altez, said the convicted killer was stabbed in the shoulder and waist by fellow prisoners. Van der Sloot is currently serving a 28-year sentence for killing a Peruvian business student, Stephany Flores, in 2010. Van der Sloot was recently transferred to the Challapalca Penitentiary located in the Andean department of Puno, known for its harsh conditions - it sits at more than 12,500 feet, where temperatures range between minus 4 to 48 degrees Fahrenheit. Van der Sloot, who married his Peruvian girlfriend Leidy Figueroa in a prison ceremony in July, became a father of a baby girl in September. In the past few weeks, his 24-year-old wife has been repeatedly claiming van der Sloot is being abused in the new prison. In a report issued Sunday night on the Peruvian TV show Cuarto Poder, Figueroa said he and other inmates are made to perform exercises in the middle of the night and are routinely beaten on the knees and testicles for no reason. "They make them walk on stools, they have no electricity, they are locked 24 hours. In his ward there are people with tuberculosis, others will suffer from bleeding and infection, and nobody does anything," she said. However, also on Sunday, the head of the Peruvian system of prisons (INPE), José Luis Pérez Guadalupe, denied any wrongdoing and called the wife a "compulsive liar." "Absolutely nothing has happened. That lady is lying and it is not the first time she does it. She has been giving false reports to the media for weeks now: that he has been beaten, tortured, that they submerge him in water. We are facing a compulsive liar. Unfortunately she is wasting all of our time," Pérez Guadalupe told Canal N. | |
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Police State USA
2014-11-04 00:11:00
St. George - A Halloween-themed private event was targeted by police when there was a suspicion of dancing without a permit. It happened at the 2014 "Monster Mash" dance party, the third annual event of its kind. It was put on by the event promotion company, Heart of Dixie, and held at the Fiesta Fun Center in St. George, Utah (population 75,000). Over 400 guests were enjoying the festivities at the October 31st event, participating in all-night enjoyment of bumper boats, go-karts, mini golf, and music. After 9:30 p.m., St. George police arrived in force to investigate a case of unpermitted dancing. Around 5-6 officers challenged the organizers of the event as not having obtained a proper permit to host the dancing. The venue owner, event promoter, and security coordinator each presented their respective permits, which had been previously approved and issued by the city. "I told them, 'Well, I actually have a permit that was issued by the city this morning that has 'dance' and 'fun' checked on it, and a big stamp of approval on it,'" Heart of Dixie promoter Jared Keddington said. Police found the city-issued permits to be insufficient, and forced the organizers to announce over the loudspeaker that absolutely no dancing could be tolerated for the remainder of the night, as per the orders of police. | |
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| Secret History |
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Megan Gannon
livescience 2014-11-03 23:32:00
The wreck of a 17th-century Dutch warship has been discovered off the coast of Tobago, a small island located in the southern Caribbean. Marine archaeologists believe the vessel is possibly the Huis de Kreuningen, which was lost during a bloody fight between Dutch and French colonists. On March 3, 1677, the French Navy launched a fierce attack against the Dutch in Tobago's Rockley Bay. European settlers coveted Tobago for its strategic location; in fact, the island changed hands more than 30 times after Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World. The abbreviated story of this particular battle is, "Everybody dies, and every ship sinks," according to Kroum Batchvarov, an assistant professor of maritime archaeology at the University of Connecticut.Indeed, about 2,000 people were killed and up to 14 ships went down during the skirmish. But until now, none of those sunken vessels had been recovered. | |
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| Earth Changes |
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Mac Slavo
SHTFplan.com 2014-11-04 21:27:00
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has sounded a stark warning over California's sustained drought, publishing its latest findings where satellite surveys show a rapidly depleting groundwater supply. And with California as the United States' most valuable agricultural state, and thus key to America's food supply (and much of the world's as well) that could mean drastic consequences for food commodity prices and potential shortages. The Nature Climate Change journal carried the report, which Think Progress summarized:
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Comment: Water is perhaps the single most critical factor to sustaining human life, and no part of any economy can function without it. Water is an essential human right, and attempts to privatize water sources are fundamentally wrong. It is completely irresponsible that no restraints have been put on corporations to keep them from sucking the water from communities and agricultural regions, but it is also unsurprising, as in this psychopathically controlled world, profits trump everything.
Flow: How privatization is accelerating the world's water crisis Water industry, World Bank pilot new scheme to drive public water into private hands Coca-Cola and Nestle are sucking us dry without our even knowing, effectively privatizing water supplies | |
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Local media in Jordan have said that at least 3 people have died in flooding affecting the north west of the country. Two people died in Amman after being trapped in a flooded basement. A further victim died in Irbid after she was swept away by flood water outside her home. Jordan's Civil Defence Department (CDD) say that at least 54 people were injured in separate incidents after they were trapped by flood water in areas around Wadi Karja, Zarka Maein and Wadi Al Hamra. | |
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Phys.org
2014-11-04 18:25:00
A geologist in Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences has demonstrated that earthquakes - not climate change, as previously thought - affect the rate of landslides in Peru. The finding is the subject of an article in Nature Geoscience by Devin McPhillips, a research associate in the Department of Earth Sciences. He co-wrote the article with Paul Bierman, professor of geology at The University of Vermont; and Dylan Rood, a lecturer at Imperial College London (U.K.). "Geologic records of landslide activity offer rare glimpses into landscapes evolving under the influence of tectonics and climate," says McPhillips, whose expertise includes geomorphology and tectonics. "Because deposits from individual landslides are unlikely to be preserved, it's difficult to reconstruct landslide activity in the geologic past. Therefore, we've developed a method that measures landslide activity before and after the last glacial-interglacial climate transition in Peru." McPhillips and his team have spent the past several years in the Western Andes Mountains, studying cobbles in the Quebrada Veladera river channel and in an adjacent fill terrace. By measuring the amount of a nuclide known as Beryllium-10 (Be-10) in each area's cobble population, they've been able to calculate erosion rates over tens of thousands of years. | |
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In a Government House press conference earlier today, Argentina Cabinet Chief, Jorge Capitanich, said that the heavy rainfall and flooding that struck in the Province of Buenos Aires last Saturday has now affected 19 municipalities and forced 5,203 people to evacuate from their homes. He said that the districts affected were Luján, Marcos Paz, La Matanza, Bragado, Arrecifes, Pilar, Mercedes, San Miguel, Esteban Echeverría, Ensenada, Carmen de Areco, San Martín, Lomas de Zamora, Moreno, San Fernando, Tigre, Quilmes, Salto and Baradero. Currently there is no available information for flood damage in Berisso, Malvinas Argentinas, Campana and Exaltación de la Cruz. The floods first began on 30 October 2014, forcing over 1,000 from their homes.
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Sandy Fitzgerald
Newsmax 2014-11-02 00:00:00
The idea that there is significant man-made global warming is "a whole lot of baloney," Weather Channel co-founder John Coleman insisted on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday morning. "The government only gives money to scientists who will present their hypothesis," said Coleman, a meteorologist who helped found The Weather Channel 32 years ago. "They don't have any choice; if you are going to get the money, you have to present their position. Those are the ones the government pays for. That doesn't make it right, that only means it's bought and paid for." But Coleman, who debunked climate change in a letter to UCLA last month, told show host Brian Stelter Sunday that he resented him introducing him as a climate change "denier." "That is a word meant to put me down," he told him. "I'm a skeptic about climate change, and I want to make it darned clear that [Weather Channel CEO David] Kenny is not a scientist, I am." | |
Comment: Coleman was a member of the American Meteorological Society. He says he left the organization after he disagreed with its stance on global warming and climate change. He went on to call global warming, "the greatest scam in history".
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kuenselonline.com
2014-11-03 18:18:00
A 24-year-old man from Khelakha, below Nobdhing in Wangdue is recovering at the Bajo hospital after he survived a bear attacked on November 1. The victim, Lobzang, said the bear attacked him when he was on his way to the irrigation water source along with two friends and three small dogs when the bear attacked at around 11am on Saturday. "I was walking ahead. A big black bear came in front of me and suddenly attacked me," he said. "I managed to take out the knife and hit it once but it couldn't do much harm and the bear wrestled me to the ground." | |
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The Times of India
2014-11-03 17:59:00
Two persons were injured after a sloth bear attacked them at Korkoma region in Korba district on Saturday evening. Kurkuma village is located about 25km from Korba city which witnesses frequent instances of human-animal conflict involving both elephants and bears. The incident took place when Rajkumar Manjwar and Man Singh went into nearby forest for grazing their cow and a sloth bear along with its cub attacked the herd and the duo. Man Singh and Manjhwar were injured but they managed to flee. | |
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Tico Times
2014-11-04 16:08:00
Among the observations by volcanologists conducting weekend inspections in the area around Costa Rica's Turrialba Volcano were craters in the earth measuring up to one meter in diameter - the result of rocks shooting out from the volcano. Experts from the National Seismological Network (RSN) and the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica (OVSICORI) conducted the inspections in light of significant activity at the volcano that started last week. RSN volcanologist Gino González Ilama said the areas of impact are located on the south side of the volcano and cover 80 percent of the slope up to 400 meters from the volcano's crater. "We observed the impact of volcanic rock that had caused several craters on the ground. We believe the rocks were shot out of the volcano at speeds greater than 100 kilometers per hour, and this proves there is strong activity inside," González said. | |
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Becky Oskin
Live Science 2014-11-04 06:54:00
Two blobs of dense rock jammed deep beneath Chile's coastline acted like seismic speed bumps during the magnitude-8.8 Maule earthquake in 2010, according to a new study. Some of the world's largest earthquakes occur in Chile. The country sits above a subduction zone, where the Nazca tectonic plate dives down under the South America tectonic plate. Where the two plates lock together, a huge amount of strain builds up and is periodically released through earthquakes.
Ridges and undersea mountains on the Pacific Ocean seafloor (the Nazca plate) divide the coastline into segments that unleash earthquakes at different intervals, scientists think. After the subduction zone gobbles these seafloor barriers, they can stop earthquakes from movingthrough an area or serve as earthquake starting points. Now, researchers have discovered similar quake-controlling behavior from unusual geologic features bolted to the underside of the South American continent like a wad of chewed gum. The dense rocks seem to have played a key role during the devastating Maule earthquake, according to results published Nov. 1 in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. | ||
Comment: Planetary Impact - The M8.8 earthquake that struck Chile on February 27, 2010 resulted in movement of crustal material and redistribution of mass. According to NASA, the earthquake resulted in a tiny shift in the Earth's axis estimated at three inches (8 centimeters), which affected the rate of its rotation, thus shortening the length of a day by 1.26 microseconds.
It is believed that great earthquakes have a large enough moment to affect the earth's polar motion and that the impact is cumulative, not only on the Earth's axis of rotation and free nutation (due to non rigidity and spinning dynamics of the aspheric earth), but on the Chandler wobble (the Chandler Oscillation) of the earth's axis.The wobble is about 20 feet (9 meters) and has a period of 433 days. It combines with another wobble which has a period of one year, so that the total polar axis motion varies with a period of about 7 years. It is affected by gravitational attractions of the moon and the sun as well as planetary alignment and variations in the Earth's geomagnetic field. It would be expected that the shift due to great earthquakes would also have a cumulative impact to the Earth's axis of rotation and free nutation (due to non rigidity and spinning dynamics of the aspheric earth). Crustal Movements - Based on GPS Geodetic measurements, the continental block moved westward. Specifically, it was determined that the city of Concepción moved 3.04 meters (10 ft) west, Santiago 28 centimeters (10 in) to the west-southwest and even Buenos Aires - about 1,350 kilometers (840 mi) from Concepción - moved westward by 3.9 centimeters (1.5 in). Maximum uplift of more than 2 m was observed along the coast Arauco. Rupture - The earthquake had a complicated rupture process. The total rupture was about 550 km long, more than 100 km wide and extended to about 50 km in depth. It paralleled the coast of Chile and affected an area of about 82,500 square kms. | ||
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Alex Sosnowski
Accuweather 2014-11-04 08:11:00
Another shot of cold air will follow a fast-moving storm forecast to sweep from the Midwest to the East during the second half of the week. People from the Midwest to the East will need an array of outdoor gear into next week. Before the chill hits, temperatures will moderate during the first part of the week over much of the eastern half of the nation. Conditions will be favorable for storm cleanup early this week around the Chicago Lakefront and at midweek in northern New England. Waves washed over Lake Shore Drive in Chicago following a blast of snow on Halloween. Record snow amounts buried New England as the same storm pushed off the coast and ramped up. The milder air will also make raking leaves a little less painful from the Midwest to the Appalachians and Northeast. The storm later this week will not be as strong as the system that hit the Midwest and East this past weekend. However, it will bring spotty rain and snow to parts of the northern Plains Wednesday then the Great Lakes on Thursday. In the wake of the storm, winds will kick up, bringing in a quick dose of cold air and localized lake-effect snow to parts of the Upper Midwest. Winds with the cold shot will not be as intense and more from the west in the wake of the storm around the Great Lakes. The southeastern shoreline of Lake Michigan will be hit with wave action, rather than Chicago during this round. The northwest flow will bring more lake-effect flurries and snow areas farther east over the Midwest when compared to this past weekend. | |
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The Local
2014-11-04 13:09:00
Some fifteen departments in south eastern France were on alert on Tuesday as storms swept through the region. Residents in the Ardeche were some of the hardest hit as rivers burst their banks. Gale force winds and heavy rain lashed south eastern France on Tuesday leaving weather alerts in place for 15 departments. On Monday night the severe weather caused havoc in the Ardeche department and left over 6,000 homes without power. Firefighters were called out nearly 100 times to deal with incidents. "We have an enormous amount of damage, with walls collapsing onto roads," said deputy mayor of an Ardeche village Michel Aymard, who said it was the third time in two months the region had been hit by devastating floods. | |
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Annalee Newitz
io9 2014-11-03 17:00:00
The ABC is reporting an incredible sight in the skies over east Victoria, in the Gippsland area. It looks like a UFO, but it's entirely natural. No, it's not chemtrails. Instead, it's a type of cloud called a Fallstreak Hole. You may recognize that it glimmers in a way that's similar to the contrails of jets. That's because a similar phenomenon causes it. That rainbow look is the result of water crystals in the clouds freezing and refracting the light. Those frozen crystals have also made one patch of the cloud slightly heavier, pulling it downward from the rest of the cloud layer, and giving it that odd, punch-out look. I mentioned contrails earlier because they are also caused by frozen water droplets hanging in the air, gleaming in the sunlight. But contrails happen when warm air is released with jet exhaust and collides with supercooled water in the stratosphere. This causes the water to freeze instantly, and thus you can see a long trail of frozen vapor where a plane just flew overhead. | |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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MyFox8.com
2014-11-04 16:24:00
A large meteor was spotted streaking across the skies of central North Carolina and several other states on Monday evening. People in Greensboro, High Point, Asheville, Fayetteville and Raleigh reported seeing the fireball around 6:20 p.m. ET. Several eyewitnesses described the fireball as having a green tail. There were similar reports from eyewitnesses in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Kentucky and several other states. "AMS received 89 reports about this fireball seen over GA, IN, KY, MD, NC, OH, PA, SC, TN, VA and WV on November 3rd 2014," AMS wrote on its website. Steve Sobel captured a fireball on video over Chicago around 6:25 p.m. CT, an hour after similar reports in North Carolina and other states. It remains unclear if the sighting is related to similar sightings on the East Coast.
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UPI
A time-lapse video taken of the night sky over South Dakota shows a meteor exploding on impact with the earth's atmosphere. The video, taken by photographer Wes Eisenhauer on Oct. 16 outside the city of Custer, shows the meteor impacting the atmosphere at an estimated 180,000 mph and exploding into a circle of light.2014-11-04 16:17:00
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Michael King
USAToday 2014-11-04 08:29:00
Dozens of reports of a fireball crossing the sky emerged Monday evening across 12 eastern states, from as far north as the Great Lakes states and extending as far south as Georgia. As of 11:00 Monday night, the American Meteor Society said they had received nearly 200 reportsof one or more meteors crossing the skies at about 6:20 p.m. Monday. The reports came from Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. The five reports from Georgia included one each in Rossville, Statesboro, Homer, Doraville and Alpharetta. Most of the reports said the fireball was a greenish-to-white color as it crossed the sky. 11Alive's Greensboro sister station WFMY received a number of reports from viewers in their area. | |
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Japan Times
2014-11-04 07:00:00
A "brightly glistening object" moving across the sky was seen around 6 p.m. in Kyushu and the Chugoku region in western Japan, with witnesses reporting to local astronomical and weather observatories, prompting experts to suspect a meteor. Some 10 witnesses reported seeing the fireball to the Fukuoka district weather observatory in the city of Fukuoka. They described it as a bright, shining object moving from east to west and "a bright object like something burning," according to an official. A female visitor to Hoshi no Bunkakan, an astronomical observatory in Yame, Fukuoka Prefecture, saw a shining object in the southwestern sky and reported to the staff, the observatory representative said. | |
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WNEW
2014-11-03 21:56:00
Lanham, Maryland - A green fireball was spotted in several states, including Virginia, Monday night. WNEW received a call from a listener around 6:20 p.m. who said he saw what appeared to be a green and blue light larger than a shooting star cross the sky near I-66 W. He says it fell straight down and he was unsure at first if it was a plane that crashed. Soon after the call, people in other parts of Va. and across the U.S. took to Twitter to describe their own meteor sightings. | |
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| Health & Wellness |
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RT
2014-11-04 19:25:00
Working in shift patterns has a damaging effect on the cognitive ability of workers, a study has shown. The latest study by the Institute of Occupational and Environmental Medicine has shown that erratic working patterns lead to significantly reduced brain function, with a decade of antisocial shift work prematurely aging the brain by over six years. Shift working has already been proven to be responsible for poor physical health, contributing to conditions such as cardiovascular disease, breast cancer and ulcers. The team from the universities of Swansea and Toulouse studied 3,200 employed and retired workers over a period of 10 years. Speaking to the BBC, Dr Philip Tucker, a member of the Swansea research team, said there was a "substantial" decrease in brain function. He added: "It is likely that when [people on shifts are] trying to undertake complex cognitive tasks, they might make more mistakes and slip-ups, maybe one in 100 makes a mistake with a very large consequence, but it's hard to say how big a difference it would make in day-to-day life." | |
Comment: See also Working the night shift 'throws body into chaos'.
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| Science of the Spirit |
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| High Strangeness |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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Olivia Rzadkiewicz
The Telegraph, UK 2014-11-04 03:15:00
A bizarre video has emerged from China of a dancing manhole cover on a pavement in Chongqing. The footage shows the heavy cover rattling around on top of the manhole as though it is being pushed from underneath by an invisible force. Local residents have been trying to solve the mystery behind the strange occurrence since it began a couple of months ago. According to local media, the puzzle has now been solved, after it was revealed that a local restaurant had connected their chimney for waste gas emissions to the underground sewer pipe. | |
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Neil Clark
RT 2014-10-31 16:01:00
As RT UK launches, attacks on the channel in the British media have stepped up... The latest is a piece by Mr. Cyril Waugh-Monger, a very important newspaper columnist for the NeoCon Daily, a patron of the Senator Joe McCarthy Appreciation Society and author of 'Why the Iraq War was a Brilliant Idea' and 'The Humanitarian Case for Bombing Syria.' Dear socially inferior person reading this article. My name is Cyril Waugh-Monger (I'm called 'Mr Terribly Pompous Neo-Con' by my friends) and I'm here to tell you why on no account should you watch RT and why you should be making complaints to Ofcom about this dreadful channel so that in the interests of 'free speech' and 'democracy' we can get it off air. 1. RT doesn't peddle Russophobia Outrageously, RT doesn't compare Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler. It doesn't join in with the demonization of Russia and its leader. How can we have a channel which is watched by people in Britain, which doesn't do that? We neocons say that demonization of Russia and its leader is compulsory. How dare RT not do as we say! | |
Comment: Keep watching the MSM!
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Tom Boggioni
Raw Story 2014-11-03 00:00:00
Sarah Palin - the recurrent infection given to America by John McCain during his presidential campaign that crashed and burned like it was just another plane given to him by the Navy - is flaring up again. Haven't we suffered enough already for whatever it was that we did, particularly if we didn't mean to do it, whatever it was? Apparently not. Okay. Now what, Sarah? When we last heard from the matriarch of the Rock-em Sock'em Drunk'en Palin Partycrashers, she was very upset at America for laughing at her daughters who are apparently easily tipped over after a Zima or nine. Having thoroughly harangued the American media for lamestream "reporting" so-called "police reports" and "transcripts" of her daughter drunk-babbling "word-like sounds" at police officers, Palin has turned her disapproving eye on that colored Obamerbola guy for talking shit aboutsomeone's mom. According to Sarah - who is the mother of either four or five children depending upon whether you're Andrew Sullivan or not - Oebolabunglermomhater, "Declares Stay-at-Home Moms Aren't Worth a Hill of Beans; Says It's a Choice 'We Don't Want Americans to Make" | |
Comment: Comedians like George Carlin and John Stewart need to analyze the words and deeds of politician and the media to expose the truth in a entertaining way. Clowns like Sarah Palin just need to open their mouths to expose their stupidity. Can we say how fortunate we are she was not elected as cice president, though nothing new came out of Bushama other than continued warmongering?
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