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Aeneas Georg
Sott.net 2014-11-04 10:17:00
The above quote is from the Chancellor's speech in the movie V for Vendetta, but it could just as well have been from Obama, Harper or Cameron for that matter. Empires all go through a rising period, a flowering period and a collapse. No empires have escaped this fate and the current empire with its allies is no different, despite Obama's claim of this one being exceptional. All empires in the end have become thoroughly ponerized to the point that every person in a position of power will be suffering from some kind of psychological defect. As Lobaczewski writes: Our current empire of chaos is no exception. It is today ruled by a pathological elite that is thoroughly corrupt, that promotes sick morals and values, that uses torture and violence to squash dissent, that engages in war without end, that demonizes large sections of the world's populace due to color or religion, all the while claiming to protect democracy, freedom of speech and humanitarian ideals. These words spoken by the pathological elite are as vile and devoid of substance as a dead pig once the blowflies have done their job. | |
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Barrie Zwicker
Truth and Shadows 2012-11-05 16:03:00
Today, November 5th, is Guy Fawkes Day, also known as Gunpowder Day. In 2012 it's the 407th anniversary of The Gunpowder Plot or Gunpowder Treason, as it was first called. It also happens to be my 78th birthday. So I've been more aware of Guy Fawkes Day than most. I'm especially happy about how ubiquitous the Guy Fawkes mask has become. The mask was hugely popularized in the movie V for Vendetta. As stalwart 9/11Truther Kevin Barrett wrote, a year ago, in a piece entitled "Unmasking Media Lies: Why BBC's V-for-Vendetta Mask Piece is Fawked Up": | |
Comment: Well, isn't that interesting? Until 1959, it was law in the UK to ritually celebrate the execution of a
With this kind of indoctrination and programming laid down in the minds of generation after generation for hundreds of years, is it any wonder why people cannot see that no jet airliner hit the Pentagon and that two quarter-mile high buildings don't just blow away in the wind because some floors went on fire? | |
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RT
2014-11-05 22:21:00
George Bush won statewide office in Texas again. But he's not the former president, and he's not the governor-elect. George Prescott Bush will become the next state land commissioner after a landslide victory. Bush won the office with nearly 60 percent of the vote, AFP reported. The Texas land commissioner, "oversees matters that range from state lands and coastal issues to veterans affairs," according to the official website ‒ including lucrative mineral rights for oil and gas in the state. The money is used to fund public schools in the Lone Star State. "Our top job here at the General Land Office is to earn money for the school kids of Texas," outgoing Commissioner Jerry Patterson said in a statement last month, announcing that the oil boom had helped pump a record $1 billion into the fund during fiscal 2014, according to the Texas Tribune. The 38-year-old is the nephew of former President George W. Bush, grandson of ex-President George H. W. Bush and son of potential presidential candidate and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. (George P. told ABC News last month that he believes his father will "more than likely" run for president in 2016.) | |
Comment: We must learn from history so as not to repeat the same mistakes.
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Tyler Durden
Zerohedge 2014-11-05 19:07:00
The European Union and the euro could founder if its members don't stand together against Russia,George Soros said Tuesday in Düsseldorf. George Soros, one of the world's richest men and a tireless defender of Comment: Ah yes, the old "Russian aggression" argument tirelessly being trotted out again and again on absolutely zero evidence. What Soros and his ilk are really afraid of is the Eurozone waking up to the fact that the European Union doesn't have the common people's interests at heart. Russia, on the other hand after a long history of struggles, understands the strength and needs of the common people. Speaking on Tuesday in Düsseldorf at a dinner sponsored by Handelsblatt, Mr. Soros, an 84-year-old Hungarian-American who survived the Holocaust and then fled the Soviets, said the future of the European alliance of nations stretching from Ireland to Estonia could hang in the balance. Comment: No, it's the elites' hold on power that is being threatened by people actually seeing what is going on, not by Russia. Russia this year seized the Crimean peninsula from the Ukraine and is now arming and supporting a separatist movement in the eastern part of the country, an action which has been met with economic sanctions from the United States and the European Union. Comment: Of course Russia is accused of "seizing" Crimea when the fact is the people voted with 96.8% approval to rejoin Russia. The sanctions have hurt Russian and European trade, and have led to a slowdown of economic growth on the Continent. In Germany, some business and political leaders are now calling on political leaders to abandon the E.U. sanctions. In other parts of Europe, the call is growing louder for a softer line with Russia. "I think the real question is whether the European Union will break up over Russia," Mr. Soros told 400 people at a dinner held in a Düsseldorf museum by the German financial publishing group. "The E.U. is under threat from Russia... The E.U. is broken, and it is not functioning." | |
Comment: No Mr. Soros, that sucking sound you hear is money flowing from the poor to the rich. Is there a plan in the works that Soros knows about?
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Lauren McCauley
Common Dreams 2014-11-05 19:53:00
GMO bans pass in counties in Hawaii and California, while millions in industry spending drown out labeling efforts in Colorado. Residents of Maui County in Hawaii, frequently referred to as 'GMO Ground Zero,' claimed a victory Tuesday evening when a measure to ban the planting of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) passed with 50.2 percent. Agribusiness giants Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences, which for decades have run enormous growing and testing operations on the island, spent nearly $8 million dollars to defeat the ban, making it the most expensive campaign in Hawaii's history, according to Honolulu Civil Beat. Known as the Maui County Genetically Modified Organism Moratorium Initiative, the measure will ban all GMO growth, testing or cultivation in the county until an environmental and public health study is conducted and finds the proposed cultivation practices to be safe and harmless. | |
Comment: Pesticide & GMO companies spend big in Hawai'i
Hawai'i has become "ground zero" in the controversy over genetically modified (GMO) crops and pesticides. With the seed crop industry (including conventional as well as GMO crops) reaping $146.3 million a year in sales resulting from its activities in Hawai'i, the out-of-state pesticide and GMO firms Syngenta, Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer, Dow Chemical, BASF, and Bayer Crop Science have brought substantial sums of corporate cash into the state's relatively small political arena.The information about big spending from GMO and pesticide firms in Hawaii, commonly referred to as the Biotech Industry, has greatly influenced Hawaii lawmakers move to block local bans on GMOs & pesticides! Community opposition to GMO foods in Hawaii has been growing steadily over the past few years and local people are making their voices heard: How Monsanto annihilated paradise and turned it into an island of sickness. While Biotech industries tout that their Big Ag corporations bring much needed jobs and revenue to the islands, residents are tired of being Guinea Pigs in a mass pesticide and GMO experiment! This community victory is just one step in long journey for agriculture reform in the Hawaiian Islands | |
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James F. Tracy
Using the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre as its justification, the Obama administration has recently given the psychiatric business and pharmaceutical industry a major gift by quietly introducing a behavioral and mental health program in public schools throughout the United States. The maneuver was initially laid out on January 16, 2013 in President Obama's executive policy, Now is the Time: The President's Plan to Protect Our Children and Our Communities by Reducing Gun Violence.Global Research 2014-11-04 20:49:00
The document is partly devoted to articulating Obama's proposed gun control measures that failed to move gain legislative traction in 2013. Yet an under-reported section of Now is the Time is applied to "making schools safer" and "improving mental health services" for students.[1] While presented by the Obama administration as "commonsense solutions to gun violence," one is left to consider the long range implications of such an initiative, particularly in light of the Affordable Care Act and the psychopharmaceutical complex's never-ending drive to expand its clientele. On September 22, 2014 Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell announced $99 million in new grants "to train new mental health providers, help teachers and others recognize mental health issues in youth and connect them to help and increase access to mental health services for young people."[2] On September 23 the Department of Education announced an additional $70 million in "School Climate Transformation grants." According to the DOE, over half of the funding "will be used to develop, enhance, or expand systems of support for implementing evidence based, multi-tiered behavioral frameworks for improving behavioral outcomes and learning conditions." The goals of such measures include "connecting[ing] children, youths, and families to appropriate services and supports," and "increase[ing] measures of and the ability to respond to mental health issues among school-aged youth."[3] Both HHS and DOE explicitly cite Obama's Now is the Time declaration as rationale for the new programs. "The administration is committed to increasing access to mental health services to protect the health of children and communities," Secretary Burwell asserts. "If kids don't feel safe, they can't learn," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan similarly remarks. "Through these grants of more than $70 million, we are continuing our commitment to ensure that kids have access to the best learning experience possible." | |
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Mitchell Plitnick
Lobe Log Foreign Policy 2014-10-31 20:00:00
The obsession in politics and diplomacy with decorum - largely a relic from the past - can easily distract people from the realities of the present. Case in point, the uproar over Jeffrey Goldberg's latest article in the Atlantic, the headline of which, The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here, would seem important enough to warrant more attention than it has gotten so far. Instead, the whisper of an unnamed "senior Obama administration official," who called Netanyahu a "chickenshit," has occupied headlines. And instead of taking a strong, or even a weak stance on Netanyahu's repeated declarations about expanding settlement activity everywhere in Jerusalem and the West Bank, the White House has only tried to distance itself from the remark, describing it as "unauthorized" and "inappropriate." As Goldberg himself pointed out, the fact that Bibi is a chickenshit is not entirely a bad thing. Whatever else it does, it also makes him quite afraid to back up his rhetoric with action. Even in Gaza this summer, the ongoing slaughter seemed, from Netanyahu's point of view, to be something that spiraled much further out of control than he had intended. Indeed, his constant shifting of the mission's goal posts indicated the lack of any sort of planning beforehand. Political pressures kept driving him on, as they do with most of his actions. But at least the "chickenshit" was never going to attack Iran despite his bellicosity, as the United States seems to finally understand. Being less of a leader and more of a leaf blowing in the political wind is an apt description of Netanyahu, and it is strongly suggested in Goldberg's piece. But it also applies to the Obama administration, which has repeatedly refused to use the tools it has at its disposal to create real pressure on Israel to, at the very least, desist from its actions that are obviously intended to destroy any possibility of a two-state solution. So, chickenshit cuts both ways. Comment: There is also another angle to the whole "chickenshit" story that should be considered as well. As Joe Quinn points out in a recent SOTT Focus: Maybe Goldberg intended the chickenshit comment to overshadow the rest of his point, maybe he didn't. But the assertion that we are in a period of crisis for US-Israel relations is a very important one. The question is: are we? The simple answer is no, but Goldberg is not wrong in suggesting that such a crisis could occur in the near future. One can understand why Goldberg focuses so much on personal clashes. Never in the history of Israel has there been a government that so arrogantly insulted the United States so frequently. Whether it's Netanyahu, Finance Minister Naftali Bennett, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, or some other member of the Knesset, anti-American statements have risen to unprecedented levels. | |
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RT
2014-11-05 15:57:00
The leaders of Islamic terrorists could be under the direct influence of NATO and Western powers using their movements to threaten Russia's territorial integrity, says a former general of Russian military intelligence service. "There are some grounds to suspect that American and British special services could support the Islamic extremists in order to target the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation," Lieutenant-General Nikolai Pushkaryov, formerly of the Central Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff said in an interview with the RIA-Novosti news agency. "The top of these movements can be under the influence of NATO agents," he added. The general also commented on the statement by the head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, who promised to destroy any Islamic terrorist who voiced threats against Russia. Kadyrov also told reporters that Chechen special services intended to hunt down and kill Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi - the head of the Islamic State group (also known as ISIL and ISIS), adding that this man had been recruited to work for the US by General David Petraeus, the former director of the CIA, and former commander of coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Back then, Kadyrov claimed the Islamic State "was acting on orders from the West and Europe." | |
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Chris Powell
GATA 2014-11-04 00:00:00
Echoing the work of GATA's late board member Adrian Douglas from 2010, market analyst and fund manager Dave Kranzler of Investment Research Dynamics in Denver today published a chart showing that gold almost always rises when the Asian physical markets are open and falls when the London and New York paper markets are open. Douglas' study of the dichotomy is posted at GATA's Internet site here: http://www.gata.org/node/8919 Comment: The work of Adrian Douglas (noted above) is nothing short of mathematical proof of long-term gold market price manipulation. | |
Comment: As Kranzler points out, 5 years of daily statistical data cannot lie. Adrian Douglas' analysis showed that if you simply traded your paper gold daily between NY/London and Asian markets, you would have compounded your investment at a massive rate.
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SOTT Exclusive: Ex-Russian intel officer - 'U.S. lying about MH17, using ISIS to destabilize Russia'
Harrison Koehli
Sott.net 2014-11-05 13:43:00
Lieutenant General Nikolai Pushkarev is a retired member of the Russian Armed Forces' Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). He recently spoke with Russian wire service RIA Novosti on MH17 and the role of ISIS in covert geopolitics. There's no doubt Russia's intelligence agencies know a lot more about what really goes on in the world of covert operations, but when and how they choose to release such information is often hard to know. For example, it's widely assumed Russian intel is responsible for leaking Victoria Nu-speak-land's infamous "Fuck the EU" conversation. And President Putin has made numerous statements hinting that he is aware of the dodgy antics of his Western colleagues. For just one instance of this, in his much-vilified speech at the annual Valdai conference last month, he said this: Sott.net has been saying this for years. Sure, it's obvious (the FBI has been doing it since its inception), but the mainstream media ignores it, and Putin is the first person of his stature to just come out and say it. So it's interesting to hear what an "ex-GRU" man has to say about two of the hottest topics of this year as a possible clue as to what Russian intelligence really knows, and what they're willing to share to combat the information war currently being waged against them by Western powers. | |
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Eric Zuesse
Global Research 2014-11-04 10:03:00
We'll go considerably farther than has yet been revealed by the professional intelligence community, to provide the actual evidence that conclusively shows that (and how) the Ukrainian Government shot down the Malaysian airliner, MH-17, on July 17th. The latest report from the intelligence community was headlined on August 3rd by Robert Parry,"Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts," and he revealed there that, "Contrary to the Obama administration's public claims blaming eastern Ukrainian rebels and Russia for the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, some U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded that the rebels and Russia were likely not at fault and that it appears Ukrainian government forces were to blame, according to a source briefed on these findings. This judgment - at odds with what President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have expressed publicly - is based largely on the absence of U.S. government evidence that Russia supplied the rebels with a Buk anti-aircraft missile system that would be needed to hit a civilian jetliner flying at 33,000 feet, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity."It's actually based on lots more than that; it's based not on an absence of evidence, but on positive proof that the Ukrainian Government shot the plane down, and even proving how it was done. You will see this proof, right here, laid out in detail, for the first time. The reader-comments to my July 31st article, "First Examination of Malaysian MH-17 Cockpit Photo Shows Ukraine Government Shot that Plane Down," provided links and leads to independent additional confirmatory evidence backing up that account, of retired Lufthansa pilot Peter Haisenko's reconstruction of this event, to such an extent that, after exploring the matter further, I now feel confident enough to say that the evidence on this matter is, indeed, "conclusive," that Haisenko is right. | |
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RT
2014-11-04 08:24:00
Facebook manipulated the news feeds of almost 2 million American users during the 2012 presidential election without telling them. The manipulation led to a 3 percent increase in voter turnout, according to the company's own data scientist. In a stunning revelation, the three months prior to Election Day in 2012 saw Facebook "tweak"the feeds of 1.9 million Americans by sharing their friends' hard news posts rather than the usual personal posts. The effect was felt most by occasional Facebook users who reported in a survey they paid more attention to the government because of their friends' hard news feeds.Facebook didn't tell users about this psychology experiment, but it boosted voter turnout by 3 percent. The experiment was first shared with the public in two talks given by Facebook's data scientist, Lada Adamic, in the fall of 2012, and more details were disclosed recently by Mother Jones. In those talks, Adamic said a colleague at Facebook, Solomon Messing, "tweaked" the feeds. Afterwards, Messing surveyed the group and found that voter turnout and political engagement grew from a self-reported 64 percent to more than 67 percent. | |
Comment: A high voter turnout would make it seem as if the voting process is legitimate, but as we saw with the Scottish independence referendum, that is simply not the case.
See also: Is Facebook manipulating your news feed without your knowledge? It's probably best not to rely on social media like Facebook if you want to rise your awareness about what's going on in the world. Also, knowing how our own thinking works can provide us with some protections against these sorts of manipulations. See: 58 Cognitive biases that screw up everything we do | |
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RT
2014-11-04 01:13:00
As questions continue to be raised about the legality concerning the National Security Agency's vast surveillance apparatus, the NSA's ex spy chief is now coming under attack for ties he had to a tech company while in office. A report published on Monday this week by Shane Harris at the Daily Beast revealed that Gen. Keith Alexander, the recently retired head of the NSA, bought and sold tens of thousands of dollars' worth of stock in a firm called Synchronoss Technologies Inc. while he ran the United States' intelligence gathering agency. According to financial disclosure forms reviewed by the Beast, Alexander invested in Synchronoss in 2008 during his NSA tenure as that very company was selling technology to AT&T that allowed the telecom to activate and lock Apple iPhones onto its network. "The carrier was then the exclusive voice and data service provider for the popular new iPhone, so Alexander stood to profit every time someone bought an iPhone and automatically became an AT&T customer," Harris wrote. "The NSA also had its own special relationship with AT&T," he added. "Under secret court orders, the agency was then hoovering up the phone records of AT&T's subscribers and pouring them into a database of who called whom in the United States, stretching back several years" Since leaving the NSA earlier this year, Alexander has come under fire time and time again not just for the surveillance operations he authorized as the head of the spy office, but for the relationships that have already been developed during his post-government career. Questions have since been raised about Alexander's new private sector company, IronNet Cybersecurity, after the firm hired a current NSA exec to work concurrently with that group and the government, and Alexander's monthly consulting fee, upwards of $1 million per client, has caused concern as well. | |
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David Stockman
Contra Corner 2014-11-04 00:47:00
Let's see. In the case of the US, real economic growth has been faltering since the year 2000. During the last 14 years real GDP growth has averaged 1.8% per annum - the lowest rate of growth for an equivalent period in modern times. In fact, it is barely half the average growth rate during the second half of the 20th century. Not only is there no correlation between fiscal deficits and economic growth over those 50 years, but the real evidence is more nearly the opposite. During the the golden era of sound money and fiscal rectitude between 1953 and 1963, for example, real economic growth averaged 4.0% per annum. And that was achieved during a period in which the budget deficit averaged only 1% of GDP - with Washington actually recording surpluses during much of the Eisenhower presidency. It might also be noted that during this same period, the inflation rate averaged only 1.2% annually - far lower than today's phony 2% target peddled by the Fed. Except no one called it deflation. Nor did they wring their hands about impending economic doom because the dollar's purchasing power was not shrinking fast enough. | |
Comment: Gross is tooting the PTB's horn of course. "Don't worry, everything will be fine. We have the solutions to the problems." Needless to say who created the problems in the first place. The PTB are desperate to keep the fake economy going but will fantastically fail.
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Bryan MacDonald
RT 2014-11-01 00:00:00
Putin has called for a "new world order," with the aim of stabilizing the globe. He believes the US is abusing its role as global leader. What's not being widely reported is the fact that the pillars of the old order have been crumbing for years. It used to be all so simple. The world was split into two camps - the West and the rest. And the West was truly the best. Twenty years ago, six of the world's biggest economies were part of the pro-Washington world. The leader, the US itself, was so far in front that its total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was more than four times larger than China's and nine times the size of Russia's. The world's most populous country, India, had almost the same gross income as comparatively tiny Italy and the UK. Any notion that the order would change so dramatically in a mere two decades seemed laughable. | |
Comment: Washington's neoliberals are short-sighted and overwhelmed by greed, instant gratification, and a dream of controlling the world's resources, money and people. But their empire is doomed as the tide is already shifting to a multi-polar world. Not a minute too soon:
The Zionist-Anglo-Saxon caliphate vs the BRICS The Bricso vs. the U.S. Dollar: What will happen to the global economy if BRICS announce launch of new currency? | |
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RT.com
2014-11-05 22:27:00
Protesters and police engaged in a tense and prolonged stand-off outside London's Buckingham Palace as metal barriers cordoning off the area were removed and protesters incited police to fight. "Move back now," police yelled. "Piggy piggy piggy, fight fight fight," protesters shouted at police. Jostling with the metal barriers segregating police from protesters took place, with some being lifted off the floor and hurled at the law enforcement officials. As they were felled, some of the protesters sat down in front of the policemen, seeming to act as a replacement barrier of sorts from more violent demonstrators while still retaining masks. Some protesters sent fireworks over the crowd in direct contravention of a Met police directive for people not to use pyrotechnics at the march. | |
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RT
2014-11-05 19:03:00
One of the biggest shelters in Hawaii has secured the funding to start an initiative that will vet the homeless population of Waikiki and ultimately select 120 individuals to be flown elsewhere with one-way plane tickets. Hawaii's Institute for Human Services (IHS) officially launched its $1.3 million initiative to fight homelessness this week, and among the facets involved in the effort is a program that will put dozens of people on airplanes in order to relocate them away from the tropical island town. "We found out that many (Waikiki homeless) are transient who made a choice to become homeless, as well as people who became homeless shortly after arriving in Hawaii," Kimo Carvalho, development and community relations manager for IHS, told Civil Beat. "We are trying to do an aggressive public relations effort, trying to water down misinformation, basically not making Hawaii be an attractive destination to come and be homeless." To accomplish as much, officials behind the multi-pronged program plan on putting around 140 individuals into area shelters during the effort's first year, while flying another 120 "transient individuals" back to wherever they came from. Last year, the State Legislature approved $100,000 to be used towards a three-year "Return to Home" program that would have similarly involved purchasing one-way plane tickets for a substantial chunk of the Waikiki homeless population, but Governor Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat, refused to release the funds to Department of Human Services reportedly because he feared it would encourage individuals to come to Hawaii with the intent of receiving a free trip home. IHS Executive Director Connie Mitchell told Hawaii News Now last month that around 500 homeless people presently reside on the streets of Waikiki, a beachfront neighborhood in Honolulu that boasts a total population of around 18,000, according to census statistics from 2013. If the IHS succeeds, then ideally more than half of that figure will be admitted to a shelter or relocated off the island within the next year. | |
Comment: In a nation ruled by psychopaths, where the only value of human beings is expressed in dollar signs, empathy and compassion erode. The homeless are not another species of human who need to disappear from view and none of us are immune to misfortune:
Empathy & Apathy - Focus on Ponerology & Pathocracy
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David Edwards
Raw Story 2014-11-05 18:10:00
Oklahoma City police officer was charged with additional counts of rape this week after three more women came forward to say that he forced them to have sex with him while he was on duty. Earlier this year, prosecutors accused Daniel Holtzclaw of raping at least six women while he was on patrol. He was charged with 26 counts, including rape, sexual battery, oral sodomy, indecent exposure, stalking, and burglary. Some of the women said that Holtzclaw forced them to have sex to avoid being arrested. According to The Oklahoman, prosecutors filed six more counts against the officer on Tuesday. The latest charges included three counts of first-degree rape, forcible oral sodomy, sexual battery and second-degree rape. Court records obtains by KWTV said that Holtzclaw told one of the victims: "You are going to give me some sex...or you're a** is going to jail." "This is what you are going to have to do. I don't want to take you to jail," he allegedly warned another one of the women. Holtzclaw now faces 32 charges related to sex crimes, but he has continued to deny any wrongdoing. "Daniel denies that he's done anything wrong and looks forward to his day in court," Holtzclaw's attorney, Scott Adams, told reporters. "He's ready to get back to work at the police department." | |
Comment: Holtzclaw must live in an alternate reality to even be considering going back to work. That kind of aloof behavior is similar to how many psychopaths have reacted to being asked about their deadly crimes against innocent people. Does he actually believe that 9 unrelated women are all conspiring against him? To most logical people, the evidence is overwhelming and he would be best served by cooperating. But psychopaths aren't logical, so he'll fight the charges and probably end up getting a much harsher sentence as a result, which, if the allegations are true, is to the benefit of the public.
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RT
2014-11-05 17:54:00
Voters in Denton, Texas approved a ban on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, on Tuesday, making the city the first in Texas to outlaw the controversial gas-extraction process. The ban is likely to garner legal challenges, but, for now, supporters celebrating the landmark vote in a state famous for oil and gas development. "Denton, Texas is where hydraulic fracturing was invented," said Bruce Baizel, Earthworks energy program director, according to Reuters. "If this place in the heart of the oil and gas industry can't live with fracking, then who can?" Denton, a city of 123,000 people, is within the Barnett shale formation, where fracking was first developed. Polls showed the measure to ban fracking passed with 58 percent support out of the 25,376 ballots cast. According to Reuters, fracking opponents in Denton said drilling operations near residential areas are often noisy, can dominate local water supplies, and cause high traffic on nearby roads. Fracking supporters in the energy industry vowed to fight the ban. "It's essentially a ban on all drilling," said Ed Ireland, executive director of the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council, an energy industry mouthpiece. "No one would try to drill a well if they can't frack it, and that will unleash a torrent of lawsuits." Anti-fracking groups were outspent 10-to-1 during the campaign, Reuters reported citing local media. The city's decision to ban the practice comes amid a nationwide fracking boom that is not without major detractions that have triggered resistance from coast to coast. To unleash oil or natural gas, fracking requires blasting large volumes of highly pressurized water, sand, and other chemicals into layers of rock. The contents of fracking fluid include chemicals that the energy industry and many government officials will not name, yet they insist the chemicals do not endanger human health, contradicting findings by scientists and environmentalists. Toxic fracking wastewater is then either stored in deep underground wells, disposed of in open pits for evaporation, sprayed into waste fields, or used over again. Fracking has been linked to groundwater contamination, an uptick in earthquakes, exacerbation of drought conditions and a host of health concerns for humans and the localenvironment. Energy giant Exxon Mobil was the first to use hydraulic fracking, in the Barnett shale area. The company's CEO, an ardent fracking evangelist, was involved in a lawsuit as of earlier this year to rid his own suburban Texas neighborhood of fracking, operations of which were "creating a noise nuisance and traffic hazards," according to the suit. Meanwhile, cities in Ohio and California also voted on fracking-ban measures, with mixed results. The Ohio cities of Gates Mills, Kent, and Youngstown voted down bans, while the town of Athens approved one. Santa Barbara County, California rejected a ban, while Mendocino and San Benito counties voted to outlaw the practice. The local ordinances against fracking run afoul of state law that allow the process in both Ohio and California. Similar local bans have been passed in states like Colorado, where state officials have worked to supersede voter-approved bans through the legal system. Denton, 30 miles (50 km) north of Dallas, is home to about 270 drilling wells, according to Reuters. | |
Comment: This is how people take back their rights, working together in common cause. Notice how much money was thrown at the "yes' vote, but it was still defeated. Kudos to the local organizers. The fight isn't over though, as an appeal is sure to be made. The Beast does not willingly give up its food.
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Joe Vazquez
CBS SF Bay Area 2014-11-03 17:08:00
A San Francisco couple received a rude awakening over the weekend. Police said a naked man broke into their home and attacked them. Around 3 a.m. Sunday morning, folks on Brighton Avenue began to hear loud noises above their homes. Several neighbors heard the sounds because apparently, the intruder was going rooftop to rooftop before he decided to settle on a yellow house. According to authorities, he broke a side window and then went inside an upper story of the house. Police said the intruder was completely naked. He fought with the homeowner and bit him on the shoulder, then jumped into his wife's bed and bit her on the leg. Officers arrived quickly and took the intruder into custody. Neighbors said the burglar had to be restrained to a gurney and the intruder was screaming incoherently. "He was crazy," said Stephen Wong, an eyewitness. "I saw them take a guy out on a stretcher and put him in an ambulance." The suspect's name has not been released. | |
Comment: Perhaps the Canadian Parliament was wise to consider implementing a zombie invasion strategy!
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Jeff Barnard
The Associated Press 2014-11-05 13:18:00
Nearly a year ago Jillian McCabe was posting cheery videos on YouTube of her 6-year-old son, London, holding a stuffed toy lion while tossing coins in a fountain to make a wish, and her husband, Matt, lying in a hospital bed talking about his sudden struggle to walk and even talk. As darkness was falling Monday, according to a police affidavit, Jillian McCabe, 34, parked her car at the north end of the picturesque Yaquina Bay Bridge in Newport, Ore., took her son in her arms, carried him to the middle of the span, and threw him to his death in the water below. Then she dialed 911 on her cellphone. "I just threw my son over the Yaquina Bay Bridge," McCabe told the dispatcher, according to a probable cause affidavit filed by police Tuesday. She described her son, London Grey McCabe, and the clothes he was wearing, saying he was in the water and gone. Later that night, a body was reported in the water at a bayside resort about a mile from the bridge, and police said they confirmed it was the kindergartener. Attorneys appointed to represent her did not return calls for comment. "It's a great tragedy," said the boy's great aunt, Tanya McCabe. | |
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Philip Pullella
Raw Story 2014-11-05 02:40:00
Comment: It is not surprising to see the Vatican bashing the choice by Brittany Maynard to end her suffering since the Church is, and has been for hundreds if not thousands of years, actively involved in keeping people controlled and brainwashed. People are not allowed to stop their suffering, so the Church decides that life should end only at natural death. But what is natural about living in pain, just to live? All that that does is force people to suffer as long as possible. Why would the Church condone that? The Church thinks it's absurd, but to most rational, fair-minded people, it's a humane way for a person to die instead of slowly dying in pain. For more on this story, see: A Vatican bioethics official on Tuesday condemned the death by assisted suicide of American Brittany Maynard, a terminally ill 29-year-old who ended her life over the weekend, as an undignified "absurdity". "This woman (took her own life) thinking she would die with dignity, but this is the error," Monsignor Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, told the Italian news agency Ansa. "Suicide is not a good thing. It is a bad thing because it is saying no to life and to everything it means with respect to our mission in the world and towards those around us," the head of the Vatican think tank on life issues said in a report on the Ansa website. He described assisted suicide as "an absurdity". Maynard, who was diagnosed in January with a brain tumor and had announced plans to take medication to die when her pain became unbearable, had become the face of the right-to-die movement ahead of her death this weekend. The group Compassion & Choices, an Oregon-based nonprofit that assisted the young woman through her end of life, said on Sunday that she had passed away surrounded by friends and family. The Roman Catholic Church opposes euthanasia and assisted suicide, teaching that life starts at the moment of conception and should end at the moment of natural death. Source: Reuters | |
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Travis Gettys
Raw Story 2014-11-05 02:24:00
Comment: It's becoming more and more apparent that the police see themselves as above the law and see the people they are supposed to be protecting as the enemy. This man called 911 for help, because there was a time when he was younger that doing that would mean he would actually be cared for. But in psychopathic police state that the U.S. lives in today, the police no longer exist to "protect and serve". They exist to protect the elite and the rest of us are the enemies who are to be treated as such. A West Virginia man says he was thrown to the ground by a sheriff's deputy after he called for help while experiencing a possible medical emergency. Jerry Maynard said he was having chest pains Thursday after drinking some whiskey at his Delbarton home, reported WSAZ-TV, so he called 911. An ambulance arrived a short time later, and emergency medical crews examined him and found his vital signs normal. But the pains flared up again, Maynard said, so he called 911 a second time. Two Mingo County sheriff's deputies arrived this time with the ambulance, although the Mingo County sheriff declined to say why. Maynard said one of the deputies swore at him and threatened to kill him if he called 911 again. Surveillance video from a neighbor's home shows one of the deputies approach Maynard and shove him hard in the chest, knocking him flat on his back. | |
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RT
2014-11-04 01:44:00
Police in northern California are looking into who gave a plastic bag of methamphetamine to a trick-or-treating 8-year-old girl on Halloween. Her father found the small zip-style bag filled with powder-like substance among the kid's Halloween candy and called the police at around 8.30 am local time Monday. Police found that the bag contained one-tenth of a gram of crystal methamphetamine, AP reported. The girl had been trick-or-treating in the Promenade neighborhood of Hercules, a town in San Francisco Bay Area. It is not clear if the girl was given the drugs intentionally or by accident, and the authorities currently have no suspect, local Sergeant Ezra Tafesse told Contra Costa Times. The complications in finding the suspect are connected to the fact that it is hard to identify the fingerprints after so many people handled the evidence. | |
Comment: It's not just one sick person. The entire society in the U.S. is sick and the world is going to hell in a handbasket. It's easy to write off this incident as the actions of one individual, but the U.S. is in a moral bankruptcy and this incident is just a microcosm of that bankruptcy. From a former police chief sexually assaulting a 4-year-old girl to a man being sentenced to jail for feeding the homelessto a woman being kidnapped and sexually assaulted by the LAPD, this is a society in complete and total disarray, a sick society.
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Prof. James Petras
Global Research 2014-11-04 16:19:00
Washington escalates its military interventions abroad, launching simultaneous air and ground attacks in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan; multiplying drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia; training, arming and financing proxy mercenaries in Jordan, the Gulf States and Iraq; and dispatching National Guard battalions to West Africa, ostensibly to combat the Ebola epidemic, though they lack the most elementary public health capabilities. All in all the US spent $3.5 trillion for military invasions over 6 years. At the same time, the US domestic public health services have deteriorated. At the state and local level, like Dallas, Texas and at the national level, officials and major institutions demonstrate an inability to effectively detect and manage cases of Ebola infections among the general population in a timely manner. An infected Liberian immigrant was not diagnosed correctly when he presented to a major Dallas hospital emergency room. Instead he received irrelevant and unnecessary 'imaging studies' and was sent home with oral antibiotics. This confirmed the widespread belief that Emergency Room physicians and nurses are under pressure from their administration to order costly CT scans and MRI's on patients as a way to make money for the hospital and to cover-up their incompetence at basic patient history and physical examination. Despite the patient's informing hospital workers of his recent arrival from Liberia, an Ebola outbreak hot-spot, personnel did not put on basic protective gowns, gloves, hoods and masks and they allowed the febrile, vomiting, desperately sick man to contaminate large areas of the emergency department, waiting room and MRI suite. Quarantine was not even considered. . . . | |
Comment: The US is the greatest danger to itself and the planet. With the arming of lunatics in order to justify destroying their host countries, the US has proven that it has nothing to bring to the bargaining table except a plague of corruption. And the prognosis is not looking very good. As it's stated in the article, "The rise of the BRICS nations has ushered in a new order":
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Abayomi Azikiwe
Global Research 2014-11-04 16:22:00
Hundreds of thousands of people in Burkina Faso have forced the longtime imperialist-backed leader, President Blaise Compaore, to resign amid mass demonstrations and rebellions in several cities across the West African country. Compaore took power in a French-supported coup on Oct. 15, 1987 against revolutionary Pan-Africanist and socialist leader Capt. Thomas Sankara. Several political parties and movements that are seeking to reclaim the legacy of Sankara were very much in evidence during the unrest that reached a critical point on Oct. 30 when thousands stormed the parliament building and setting it alight. The legislative body was set to vote on a motion to extend the 27-year rule of Compaore, who although coming out of the military, ran for office repeatedly as a civilian candidate. Compaore sought to reassert his authority by refusing to formally resign from the presidency until the evening of Oct. 31. Gen. Honore Traore announced after the rebellion on Oct. 30 that he was assuming power and dissolving parliament. | |
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Simon Gongo and Pauline Bax
Bloomberg 2014-11-04 16:32:00
Burkina Faso's military told religious leaders today that it plans to hand over power to civilians to avoid sanctions against the West African nation. The heads of Catholic, evangelical Christian and Muslim faiths met with Lt. Col. Isaac Zida this morning, the Mogho Naaba, king of the Mossi ethnic group, said in an interview. The king was in the meeting. Zida was appointed as acting president after Blaise Compaore was ousted last week. "They came to tell us that they intend to hand over power to civilians in order to avoid international sanctions on Burkina," the Mogho Naaba said. "We're asking political parties to agree among each other to end the protests. We're also asking youth to refrain from looting to save our country." | |
Comment: It looks like the protests for Compaore to step down broke out due to his decision to extend his time in power. But ultimately, to those with real power, it doesn't matter who's in charge as long as no fundamental changes are allowed to occur. This is why Compaore was installed in the first place.
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RIA Novosti
2014-10-31 22:29:00
The bodies of 286 women have recently been discovered in the eastern Ukrainian city of Krasnoarmeisk while almost 400 women between the ages of 18 and 25 are still listed as missing, Alexander Zakharchenko, prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic said Friday. "Around 400 women between the ages of 18 and 25 have gone missing in Krasnoarmeisk where [Ukrainian forces] Dnepr-1 was based. The bodies of 286 women around Krasnoarmeisk who had been raped have been discovered," Zakharchenko said at a meeting with students from Donetsk National Technical University. The city of Krasnoarmeisk is located some 45 kilometers (28 miles) northwest of Donetsk, the capital of the self-proclaimed republic. | |
Comment: In another report we read that these women were later shot dead. Whether we have further confirmation or not, it would behoove us to remember that rape is a war crime and a major component of genocide - something that is definitely happening in Eastern Ukraine. It is a humanitarian disaster which only Russia has sought to relieve. For more information, see:
- Novorossiyan video testimony: Prisoners tortured in Ukrainian captivity, forced to run through mine fields, branded with swastikas - A look back at the trial that made rape a war crime - Russia's 6th aid convoy ready for Donetsk and Luhansk - Putin concerned over rise of neo-Nazism in Europe; calls for efforts to counter attempts to revise results of WW2 - What goes around comes around - The Nuremberg Trials: Charges and Verdicts - We have been transformed into a pathocracy: Political Ponerology, a must read - Judges judging judges - Judgment at Nuremberg | |
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Jo Tuckman
The Guardian 2014-11-04 16:52:00
The detention of the fugitive mayor and his wife, who are suspected of being behind the disappearance of 43 student teachers in the southern Mexican city of Iguala six weeks ago, in coordination with a local drug trafficking gang, has raised hopes that the missing will soon be found. "This was the missing piece," said Felipe de la Cruz, the father of one of the missing students. "This arrest will help us find our kids. It was the government who took our kids."
Abarca and his wife, María de los Angeles Piñeda, were detained in the early hours of Tuesday in Mexico City by the federal authorities. They were immediately taken to the office of the attorney general for questioning and medical tests. The government is under enormous pressure to find the students as a first step towards quelling the outrage triggered by the events in Iguala, in the state of Guerrero. The disappearance of the students has highlighted both the degree of collusion of some local authorities around Mexico with organised crime, as well as federal tolerance of this. There have been numerous large emotional demonstrations demanding more action to find the students, as well as a few violent attacks on government buildings. More protests are planned for this week. | ||
Comment: Mayor Abarca and his wife are publicly accused of being the masterminds behind the violent incidents of September 26, leading to six deaths (so far). More than 13 mass graves have been found since then with 38 still unidentified bodies. The students of the Ayotzinapa Teacher Training College, which is labelled by politicians as a "hotbed" for guerrilla groups, have been harassed by both the local and federal government. The disappearance of the missing 43 has prompted a wave of criticism all over the world against Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto.
For more on the missing students: http://www.sott.net/article/ http://www.sott.net/article/ | ||
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| Secret History |
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RT
2014-11-05 18:37:00
Abstract markings discovered under the floorboards of an historic aristocratic home have been identified by archaeologists as "demon traps" created to protect King James I during a visit shortly after the failure of the Gunpowder Plot. The grids, crudely carved into wooden floorboards at National Trust property Knole in Kent, stem from a superstitious zeal that descended upon England in the aftermath of the failed 5th November, 1605 conspiracy to assassinate James I and blow up the Houses of Parliament, when conspiracies against the monarchy were rife. The carvings, described as witchmarks, remained hidden for over 400 years and failed to surface in any historical documents, The Times suggests. But a group of archaeologists from the Museum of London Archaeology were able to pinpoint when they were created using advanced carbon-dating methods. Careful analysis of natural patterns in the wood revealed it stemmed from timber that had been felled in the winter of 1605. The archaeologists were able to discern the planks were laid in the property as flooring while they were pliable and fresh the following spring or summer. The dates reflect a period in British history when the 1st Earl of Dorset, Thomas Sackville, enticed King James I to stay at his residence in 1606 by constructing a group of royal apartments. An MP and Lord High Treasurer, Sackville was the nephew of executed Queen of England Anne Boleyn. Carpenters, in full knowledge they were constructing a bedroom for a monarch, strove to protect James I by carving special marks they believed would serve as talismans. | |
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Sci-News.com
2014-11-05 00:00:00
A team of paleontologists led by Prof David Krause of Stony Brook University has discovered a groundhog-like animal that lived in what is now Madagascar during the Late Cretaceous epoch, about 70-66 million years ago. The new fossil mammal, named Vintana sertichi, belongs to Gondwanatheria (or gondwanatherians), a group of early mammals that lived during the Cretaceous through the Miocene in the Southern Hemisphere, including Antarctica. The animal's skull was huge, measuring 13 cm long - twice the size of the previously largest known mammalian skull from the entire Age of Dinosaurs of the southern supercontinent Gondwana. | |
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Heritage Daily
2014-11-04 00:00:00
When the Lusitania left New York for Liverpool on what would be her final voyage on 1st May 1915, during the Great War, it would alter the course of history forever. Just a week later on 7th May 2015, the Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat resulting in the loss of 1,198 lives of both passengers and crew off the southern coast of Ireland inside Germany's declared, but unrecognised "zone of war." The sinking, without any prior search or warning, and with no regard for the safety of the passengers and crew, breached international law. Germany produced the argument (unconvincingly) that the liner was itself breaching international law by carrying munitions, and through doing so, providing Germany with justification for the attack. Novel research conducted by Dr. Matthew Seligmann, Reader in History, at the Department of Politics, History and Law at Brunel University London, has unveiled new information on the incident. Dr. Seligmann has uncovered records that demonstrate that the Lusitania, one of the two fastest and most luxurious British passenger liners built at the turn of the century, had a hidden purpose. It acted as a trade protection vessel against attacks on British merchant vessels by German commerce raiding auxiliary cruisers. | |
Comment: In contravention of the rules of war at the time (the Hague Conventions and the Cruiser Rules) the RMS Lusitania was carrying a considerable amount of ammunition, explosives, and other war materiel for the armies of England and France. Germans knew that The Lusitania was carrying military supplies bound for Germany's enemies on the Western Front. The German embassy in Washington even took the precaution of placing an advertisement in 50 U.S. newspapers warning civilians not to sail on the Lusitania. Due to the intervention of the State Department most of the notices were not published
The sinking of the Lusitania was a major catalyst for America's later entry into the World War. Total deaths from the War are estimated between 9 and 15 million souls; American casualties of dead and wounded were in excess of 300,000. But the House of Morgan, House of Rothschild, and other banksters were thoroughly pleased at America's entry into the War. It meant that they continued to benefit hugely from the wholesale slaughter and misery of millions of programmed human beings. When one thinks of Pearl Harbour, Gulf of Tonkin, 9/11, and other false flags it seems that some things never change. The lessons of history are quickly forgotten. See: Sinking the Lusitania: An act of mass murder by the banksters | |
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Hurriyet Daily News
2014-11-04 20:00:00
This year's round of excavations in Gaziantep's ancient city of Zeugma have ended, as the restoration period now begins Three new mosaics have been unearthed during the Muzalar House excavations in the ancient city of Zeugma in Turkey's southern province of Gaziantep. The uncovered mosaics were displayed at a press conference attended by Gaziantep Mayor Fatma Şahin and the head of the excavations, Professor Kutalmış Görkay. Görkay said excavations at Zeugma, which was one of the most important centers in the Eastern Roman Empire, had started in 2007, adding that good progress had been made with the support of the Culture and Tourism Ministry, the Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality and İş Bank. "There are still unexcavated areas. There are rock-carved houses here. We have reached one of these houses and the house includes six spaces. We have also unearthed three new mosaics in this year's excavations," he said. | |
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| Science & Technology |
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Irene Klotz
Discovery 2014-11-03 03:30:00
It wasn't SpaceShipTwo's hybrid rocket motor -- which was flying on Friday with a new type of fuel -- that caused the fatal crash, the head of the accident investigation agency said late Sunday. The ship's fuel tanks and its engine were recovered intact, indicating there was no explosion. "They showed no signs of burn-through, no signs of being breached," Christopher Hart, acting chairman of the National Transportation and Safety Board, told reporters at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, Calif. Instead, data and video relayed from the ship show its hallmark safety feature -- a foldable tail section designed for easy re-entry into the atmosphere from space -- was deployed early. "The engine burn was normal up until the extension of the feathers," said Hart. Normally, the feather system wouldn't be unlocked until the rocket-powered spaceship is moving about Mach 1.4, or 1.4 times faster than the speed of sound. Instead, the co-pilot moved the lever from locked to unlock when the spaceship was traveling at about Mach 1, Hart said. "I'm not stating that this is the cause of the mishap," he added. "We have months and months of investigation to determine what the cause was." In addition to the possibility of pilot error, Hart said the NTSB is looking a variety of other issues that may have caused or contributed to the accident, including training, spacecraft design and the safety culture at Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites, which designed and manufactured the spaceship. "There is much more that we don't know and our investigation is far from over," Hart said. | |
Comment: Variable geometry rudders can be "feathered" (rotated up 90 degrees) to increase drag and control vehicle yaw (a twisting or oscillation of a moving ship or aircraft around a vertical axis). They also reduce heating from friction. At 70,000 feet the rudders are de-feathered into gliding configuration.
Deploying the feather system is in two steps: move the lever to unlock, then move the lever to deploy. The co-pilot did the first but not the second step which is why it is called an "uncommanded" deploy. While the unlock was performed early on, they are not saying it was a pilot error that caused the crash. It is more likely a system failure of the second step, a tragic flaw unknowable by the pilot. A more thorough investigation will determine the final word on this fatal tragedy. As a totally commercial venture, the National Transportation Safety Board is the one handling the investigation. | |
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| Earth Changes |
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Euan Stretch
Daily Mirror, UK 2014-11-04 22:44:00
The poisonous Oceanic pufferfish - Lagocephalus lagocephalus is a delicacy in Japan but they rarely enter British waters A Beach walker was stunned when he found a deadly pufferfish - washed up in Dorset. At first glance the bizarre-looking fish appeared to be a large bloated mackerel. But it soon became apparent it was a deadly pufferfish, normally only found in sub-tropical waters. It appears to have died while in full defensive mode, with its stomach fully inflated. The species is well-known for ballooning in size by filling their bodies with water or air to deter predators from attacking them. | |
Comment: See also: Poisonous tropical puffer fish found dead on Dutch island beach
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BBC
2014-11-05 21:39:00
About 36 pilot whales that had become stranded in the Eastern Bay of Plenty in New Zealand have died. Two whale pods beached themselves in the Ohiwa harbour on the north-east coast on Monday. Wildlife conservationists launched a rescue operation and helped one pod to be refloated on Tuesday, while 21 more whales were successfully herded out to sea on Wednesday. The reasons for mass pilot whale strandings are not well understood.
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Khier Casino,
Opposing Views 2014-11-05 00:00:00
A Thai woman claims that she was nearly killed by a python that crawled out of her toilet Monday. Rampeung Onlamai, 57, of Samkok, Thailand, was taking a shower at her apartment north of Bangkok when the huge snake sank its fangs into her right hand and attempted to drag her down the drain, Metro reports. Rampeung grabbed a nearby broom to fend the animal off and called out for her daughter, who jumped in to save her and pull the python's head off her hand, Metro reports. The python then returned to its toilet nest. | |
Comment: See also: Snakes alive! Countless reports of snakes turning up in weird places
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Stuart Tomlinson
OregonLive.com 2014-11-05 18:36:00
A magnitude 4.9 earthquake rippled beneath the desert floor about 40 miles east/southeast of Lakeview late Tuesday night on the Oregon/Nevada border, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The quake was followed by a series of smaller quakes in the same general area. Four people reported feeling it; the nearest person was in Cedarville, California, about 45 miles west. USGS geophysicist Randy Baldwin says the Black Rock Desert area has had several minor quakes in the last few months. Seismologists with the Nevada Seismological Laboratory have been tracking swarms of earthquakes in the area since July. Nevada is the third most seismically active state in the nation behind California and Alaska. USGS list of earthquakes in most recent swarm | |
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Weather Channel
2014-11-05 17:36:00
Utility crews continued to restore power across Maine Tuesday, two days after a wicked fall snowstorm knocked out electricity to a bulk of customers along the state's mid-coast. While the number of customers without power dropped below 50,000 by evening, the outages forced election officials to make alternative plans for several polling places for Tuesday's midterm election. There was also one death attributed to the snowstorm. Troopers say a Lubec woman died when her pickup truck went off the road and overturned in the Washington County town of Trescott. They said 28-year-old Danielle Moores lost control of her pickup truck about 6:30 p.m. Sunday during the heavy snow from the weekend storm. The truck came to rest on its roof in a bog. Moores died at the scene. | |
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Nick Wiltgen and Jonathan Erdman
Weather Channel 2014-11-05 17:31:00
While the former Super Typhoon Nuri sent meteorological jaws dropping earlier this week, its remnant may have another impressive chapter in store in the Bering Sea and Alaska's Aleutian Islands. The remnant of Typhoon Nuri is expected to join up with the polar jet stream and a very strong disturbance in the mid-latitude belt of westerly winds, as highlighted above. Forecasts from both the European (ECMWF) and American (GFS) computer models continue to predict an extremely powerful non-tropical storm to develop from this merger over the Bering Sea, near the western Aleutian Islands of Alaska Friday into Saturday. | |
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thelocal.ch
2014-11-04 15:31:00
Hurricane-force winds swept through the Swiss Alps early on Tuesday registering as high as 187 kilometres per hour in the canton of Obwalden, weather services reported. This wind speed was recorded at Titlis, a 3,238-metre mountain in the Uri Alps, Meteo Group and SRF Meteo said in news releases. The high winds are due to a Foehn storm that began battering higher elevations late on Monday. There were no reports of substantial damage. Titlis is home to Europe's highest suspension bridge, a 500-metre-long foot bridge at 3,041 metres above sea level, 500 metres above the ground. | |
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thelocal.it
2014-11-05 15:03:00
UPDATED: Two residents in Tuscany have been found after being reported missing in floods, while five others have been airlifted to safety, according to Italian media reports. The two missing people were saved by rescuers in Carrara, the town's prefect and Mayor Mayor Angelo Zubbani told Il Tirreno. The news corrects an earlier report that one of the two people had died. Both had been living close to a sawmill on the edge of the Carrione river, which burst its banks following hours of torrential rain.
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| Fire in the Sky |
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| Health & Wellness |
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Dr. Mercola
Mercola.com 2014-11-01 21:20:00
Fluoroquinolones are among the most dangerous drugs on the market and should be avoided unless your life depends on it. Despite their dangers, they're the most commonly prescribed class of antibiotics in the United States... In 2010, Bayer's top two fluoroquinolones (Cipro and Avalox) brought in $1 billion in sales. That same year, Johnson & Johnson sold $1.3 billion-worth of its drug, Levaquin. All antibiotics carry a risk of side effects, but fluoroquinolones are in a class by themselves when it comes to potential health risks. No other antibiotic carries as high a potential to cause serious, permanent injuries and even death, as the fluoroquinolones do. Despite their higher than normal risks, doctors frequently prescribe them as a first line of treatment even for mild infections. Always ask your doctor if there is a safer alternative. And, adding insult to injury, most victims claim they were never warned that there are dire adverse effects associated with these antibiotics. I strongly advise you to educate yourself about the risks of fluoroquinolones, and refuse any prescription for these drugs unless absolutely necessary. | |
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Kelly R. Reveles
The Conversation 2014-11-05 12:15:00
Going to the hospital can save your life, but it is not without risks. Patients can be exposed to dangerous infections while receiving treatment. In the United States, health care-associated infections are the fifth leading cause of death among hospitalized patients, accounting for nearly 100,000 deaths in the US each year. Clostridium difficile is the most common bacterium contributing to health care-associated infections. It can colonize the gut and result in an intestinal disease called Clostridium difficile infection (CDI). CDI infection rates are going up, and the increase is tied to overuse of commonly used antibiotics. CDI causes mild diarrhea or more serious symptoms like abdominal pain and fever. In the most severe forms, CDI can result in severe inflammation of the intestines or even death. Approximately 9% of patients hospitalized with CDI die, compared to 2% for all other inpatients. Patients with CDI are often hospitalized at least one week, resulting in a mean cost per hospital stay of US$24,400. | |
Comment: One in seven patients can no longer be helped by antibiotics because they are increasingly ineffective after being prescribed too frequently. Doctors hand out prescriptions for ailments such as viruses, coughs and colds, for which antibiotics are ineffective, resulting in bacteria evolving into "superbugs" that are resistant to treatments that used to kill them.
Overmedicated: Antibiotics 'fail 15%' of patients due to superbugs and 'reckless' prescription Ditch big pharma's antibiotics | |
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Jon Rappoport
Activist Post 2014-11-02 01:48:00
"Elites who invent reality need an unimpeachable operation, headed up by people who are relentlessly promoted as the sanest, most intelligent, competent, and caring representatives of the human race. Guess who that would be?" (The Magician Awakes, Jon Rappoport) In 1976, the great critic of 20th-century society, Ivan Illich, wrote: The medical cartel is the answer to the question: what do you with the population of Earth once they are living under a globalist oligarchy? It's all about managing lives, from womb to grave, and no institution serves that management better than Medicine. First of all, you have a system that dispenses toxic drugs in an endless stream, killing in the US alone, by conservative estimate, 100,000 people per year. On top of that, medical drugs cause anywhere from two to four millions severe adverse effects annually. | |
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Mandy Oaklander
Time.com 2014-10-27 01:05:00
Two new studies in the New England Journal of Medicine rocked the world of celiac research, both proving that scientists have a ways to go in their understanding of celiac disease, which affects about 1% of the population, whether they know it or not. One Italian study wondered if the age at which gluten is introduced into the diet could affect a person's likelihood of developing the autoimmune disease - so they kept gluten away from newborns for a year. To the shock of the researchers, delaying exposure to gluten didn't make a difference in the long run. In some cases it delayed the onset of the disease, but it didn't stop people from developing the disease, for which there is no cure. The second study, of almost 1,000 children, introduced small amounts of gluten into the diets of breastfeeding infants to see if that fostered a gluten tolerance later on in those who were genetically predisposed to celiac disease. No such luck for them, either. Though both studies were excellently designed and executed, says Joseph A. Murray, MD, professor of medicine and gastroenterologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, each was "a spectacular failure." | |
Comment: For more information on gluten, the grain that damages the human brain, and the rise in gluten intolerance read the following articles:
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realfarmacy.com
2014-10-17 20:33:00
A Johns Hopkins scientist has issued a blistering report on influenza vaccines in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). Peter Doshi, Ph.D., charges that although the vaccines are being pushed on the public in unprecedented numbers, they are less effective and cause more side effects than alleged by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Further, says Doshi, the studies that underlie the CDC's policy of encouraging most people to get a yearly flu shot are often low quality studies that do not substantiate the official claims. Promoting influenza vaccines is one of the most visible and aggressive public health policies in the United States, says Doshi of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Drug companies and public officials press for widespread vaccination each fall, offering vaccinations in drugstores and supermarkets. The results have been phenomenal. Only 20 years ago, 32 million doses of influenza vaccine were available in the United States on an annual basis. Today, the total has skyrocketed to 135 million doses. | |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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ScienceDaily
2014-11-05 21:29:00
Researchers at the Cognition and Brain Plasticity group of the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) and the University of Barcelona have been tracking the traces of implicit and explicit memories of fear in human. The study has been published in the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and describes how in a context of fear, our brain differently encodes contextual memory of a negative event (the place, what we saw...) and emotional response associated. The study measures electrodermal activity of 86 individuals in a fearful generated in the laboratory and in a neutral context in which they have to learn a list of words. One week and two weeks after the experiment they are tested to see which words they remembered. "In both contexts" explains Pau Packard, author of the study, "forgetting curve was normal. Over time they forgot all the words, the explicit trace. Moreover in the fearful context the electrodermal activity, the emotional implicit response, was exactly the same, much higher than in the neutral context." | |
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April Flowers
RedOrbit 2014-11-05 19:07:00
If you believed that Chuckie Cheese was heaven when you were a kid, there's a good chance you still believe that today. According to a new study from Rutgers University, what we believe about the soul and afterlife as children shapes what we believe about them as adults - regardless of what we say. "My starting point was, assuming that people have these automatic - that is, implicit or ingrained - beliefs about the soul and afterlife, how can we measure those implicit beliefs?" said Stephanie Anglin, a doctoral student in psychology in Rutgers' School of Arts and Sciences. Anglin recruited 348 undergraduate psychology students for the study. The students, with an average age of 18, completed a survey about their current beliefs on the soul and afterlife, as well as their beliefs on both at the age of 10. What she found was that their explicit beliefs - or what they said they believed now - did not match their implicit beliefs. Instead, their implicit beliefs were more in line with what they believed as children. Even when comparing implicit belief systems by religious affiliation, including believers and non-believers, Anglin found no difference. "That suggests that implicit beliefs are equally strong among religious and non-religious people," she said. | |
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Sarah Griffiths
The Daily Mail, UK 2014-11-05 02:49:00
It found that most people experience more than three emotions when listening to sad songs, which provoke a more complex reaction than happy pop songs. Music and brain researchers Liila Taruffi and Stefan Koelsch, of the Free University of Berlin, surveyed 722 people across the globe to understand how often they listen to miserable tracks and how they feel at the time. 'For many individuals, listening to sad music can actually lead to beneficial emotional effects,' they wrote in their study, which is published in the journal Plos One. 'Music-evoked sadness can be appreciated not only as an aesthetic, abstract reward, but [it] also plays a role in well-being, by providing consolation as well as regulating negative moods and emotions.' The study says that sad music stirs up a mixture of complex and 'partially positive' emotions, including nostalgia, peacefulness, tenderness, transcendence, and wonder, Pacific Standardreported. 'Results show four different rewards of music-evoked sadness: reward of imagination, emotion regulation, empathy, and no "real-life" implications,' the study says. Surprisingly, nostalgia rather than sadness is the most frequent emotion evoked by sad music. Nostalgia was the most common emotion experienced by listeners in Europe and the US, while people in Asia mostly reported feeling a peace. | |
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Try it for yourself! Above are some renditions of the pieces used in the study. | |
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Ben Cusack, Dan Cain
Daily Mirror, UK 2014-11-05 22:32:00
Residents of Tarring, West Sussex, say the body of the 4ft mammal was warm and dripping with blood - the RSPCA is investigating the strange discovery Residents of a village a mile from the sea are stunned after finding a dead porpoise in an alleyway -lying in a pool of its own blood. The 4ft long creature - similar to a dolphin - was discovered in Tarring, just outside Worthing, West Sussex, and appeared to have died recently. Locals have no idea how the 12 stone mammal got there. Tim Allen, 31, was one of the first people on the scene after being alerted to the grim discovery by a neighbour. | |
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Claire Carter
Mail Online 2014-11-04 19:29:00
When Chris Leadbetter took a photo of his grandfather in hospital, he hoped it would be an image he could treasure after the pensioner was told his bladder cancer was terminal. However when Mr Leadbetter examined the picture he noticed there was a chilling figure of a woman behind his grandfather, Bob Large. Stunned, he showed staff at the Countess of Chester Hospital the photograph who went on to describe the 'long haired blonde girl', who they claim, a lot of patients see lurking at the end of their beds. And the ghostly figure may have had an impact of Mr Large as he has since been released from hospital and sleeping better than before, despite the previous diagnosis. Mr Leadbetter had gone to visit his grandfather at the hospital in Chester, which is on the site of the former County Lunatic Asylum, built in 1829. The pensioner had been told his bladder cancer and kidney failure was terminal. Mr Leadbetter arrived to find the local vicar at his grandfather's bedside, praying for his recovery, and decided to take the 'last' picture on his mobile phone. But it was not until he got home a week later and examined it that he saw a spectre-like figure of a woman, dressed in a veil, lurking in the back of the picture. |
