With more than $100 billion in U.S. weaponry and
financial aid flowing to Ukraine in less than a year and more
on the way to counter Russia's invasion concerns
about arms falling into terrorists' hands and dollars into
corrupt officials' pockets are mounting. The special inspector
general who has overseen aid to Afghanistan since
2012, and some House Republicans, warn of the need
for closer oversight of the military and humanitarian aid to
Ukraine. The scale of the effort is massive. The $113 billion
appropriated by Congress in 2022 approaches the $146 billion spent
in 20 years for military and humanitarian assistance to
Afghanistan. The Pentagon spent $62.3 billion in 2022 on
Ukraine for weapons, ammunition, training, logistics,
supplies, salaries and stipends, according to the Joint Strategic Oversight Plan for Ukraine
Response report. Inspectors general for several agencies
released the report in January. The State Department and U.S.
Agency for International Development spent $46 billion for
activities ranging from border security to funds for basic
government services. Other government agencies, including the
Department of Agriculture, spent another $5 billion. The
report noted the difficulty U.S. agencies had accounting for the
billions spent. The Pentagon, for example, was "unable to provide
end-use monitoring in accordance with DoD policy" in Ukraine.
"End-use monitoring" includes tracking serial numbers of weapons
and ammunition to ensure they're used as intended.
Note: Watch a concise, 15-min overview that reveals the background of
the US-Ukraine-Russia war beyond the official narrative portrayed
by Western media. This includes the decades-long US campaign to
overthrow governments across Europe via US-funded radical militia
groups, as part of efforts to maintain control over other nations
and the world's resources. For more along these lines, see concise
summaries of deeply revealing news
articles on war from reliable major media sources.
On 6 June, satellite images captured hundreds of craters made by artillery shells
and a 40m-wide (131 ft) hole left by a bomb in fields around the
village of Dovhenke, in eastern Ukraine. It is just one site left
scarred by Russia's invasion of its neighbour. And as the war
continues to wreak a devastating humanitarian toll on the people
caught up in the fighting, the conflict is leaving a far less
obvious, toxic legacy on the land itself. Amongst the pockmarked
landscape and burned-out buildings of Dovhenke, heavy
metals, fuel and chemical residues from ammunition and missiles
have seeped into the soil. Although the full extent of soil
contamination in Ukraine is not yet known, there are concerns that
the conflict will cause long-lasting damage to the country's
agricultural productivity. Ukraine is one of the world's
most important producers and exporters of cereals and oilseeds,
including corn, wheat, barley and sunflower oil. The widespread
pollution caused by the conflict also threatens local wildlife and
the health of communities, who are at risk of eating contaminated
crops. The latest figures collated in January by the UNEP estimate
that 618 industrial or critical infrastructure sites have been
damaged or destroyed in the year since the war began. A special
taskforce coordinated by the Ecological Inspectorate of Ukraine, is
investigating environmental crimes such as attacks on water
facilities, chemical factories and nuclear power plants. UNEP warns that this impact assessment could be
"a colossal task."
Note: For more along these lines,
see concise summaries of deeply revealing news
articles on war from reliable major media sources.
Microplastics have infiltrated every part of the
planet. One study estimated that there are around 24.4 trillion
fragments of microplastics in the upper regions of the world's
oceans. But they aren't just ubiquitous in water they are
spread widely in soils on land too and can even end up in the food
we eat. Unwittingly, we may be consuming tiny fragments of
plastic with almost every bite we take. In 2022, analysis by the Environmental Working Group, an
environmental non-profit, found that sewage sludge has contaminated
almost 20 million acres (80,937sq km) of US cropland with per- and
polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), often called "forever
chemicals", which are commonly found in plastic products and do not
break down under normal environmental conditions. Sludge is
commonly used as organic fertiliser in the US and Europe. Due to
this practice ... between 31,000 and 42,000 tonnes of
microplastics, or 86 trillion to 710 trillion microplastic
particles, contaminate European farmland each year. Plastic
particles can also contaminate food crops directly. A 2020 study found microplastics and nanoplastics in
fruit and vegetables sold by supermarkets and in produce sold by
local sellers. Crops absorb nanoplastic particles from surrounding
water and soil through tiny
cracks in their roots. Chemicals found in plastic have
been linked to cancer, heart disease and poor fetal development.
High levels of ingested microplastics may also cause cell damage
which could lead to inflammation and allergic
reactions.
Note: There seems to be no part of
the planet that is unaffected by the pervasiveness of
microplastics, from being found in human veins, human lungs, flying insects, and in 90% of table salt, to heavily polluting...
Regenerative agriculture is an approach to farming
that prioritises soil and environmental health by minimising
synthetic inputs. [Farm manager Tim Parton] switched to using
biologically active inputs after experiencing headaches and skin
rashes from using pesticides. After sheep dipping, which involves
immersing sheep in insecticide and pesticide mixtures to eliminate
parasites, lumps would often show up on his arms. "I would be a
mess, but if I went to the doctors, they would say 'you've just had
a reaction' and would not take it seriously," he says. Since
adopting a biological farming method, Parton has not experienced
any negative health impacts. He has not had to use any phosphorus
and potassium fertilisers on his crops for over 10 years. He says
he has observed a big increase in insect and bird species since he
stopped using pesticides. Pesticides may be responsible for the
loss of smell in honeybees and salmon. Despite global regulations on pesticide use,
one study estimates that about 385 million cases of unintentional, acute
pesticide poisoning occur among farm workers each year.
A 2020 study found that of the estimated 860 million
agricultural workers worldwide,
44% are affected by pesticide poisoning annually.
Acute health impacts can range from seizures to respiratory
depression. Pesticide exposure has been associated with conditions
such as attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and Parkinson's
disease. Pesticide exposure has also been linked to
sensory deterioration.
Vinyl chloride entered the spotlight after the Feb. 3
Ohio train derailment. But the hazardous substance has been around for decades
and is everywhere from buildings and vehicle upholstery to
children's toys and kitchen supplies and factories have been
emitting the EPA-designated toxic chemical into the air for
years. The train that derailed had the manmade and volatile
compound on board, prompting temporary evacuations. But the
derailment isn't the first time vinyl chloride has alarmed experts.
Experts say that the volatile compound, "used almost exclusively by
the plastics industry," has "leached into groundwater from spills,
landfills, and industrial sources," and that people who live around
plastic manufacturing facilities "may be exposed to vinyl chloride
by inhalation of contaminated air." According to the EPA's
Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), which "tracks the management of
certain toxic chemicals that may pose a threat to human health and the environment,"
there are 38 TRI facilities in 15 states mostly around the
Gulf of Mexico and the eastern U.S. that use vinyl chloride,
emitting about half a million pounds of the substance every
year. The problem begins at vinyl chloride's origins.
It's generated from ethane, which is obtained through fracking
natural gas. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said ethane
production hit a monthly record last year of more
than 2.4 million barrels per
day. The global PVC market is expected to become
a $56.1 billion
industry within the next 3 years.
Australia has become the first country to
recognise psychedelics as medicines, after the Therapeutic Goods
Administration took researchers by surprise and approved the
psychedelic substances in magic mushrooms and MDMA for use by
people with certain mental health conditions. MDMA and
psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, will be
considered schedule 8 drugs - meaning they're approved for
controlled use when prescribed by a psychiatrist - from July this
year after the TGA acknowledged there were few other options for
patients with specific treatment-resistant mental illnesses. The
changes will allow MDMA to be used to treat post-traumatic stress
disorder, and psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. They
will still be considered prohibited substances ... for all other
usages. "Prescribing will be limited to psychiatrists, given their
specialised qualifications and expertise to diagnose and treat
patients with serious mental health conditions," a TGA statement
published on Friday said. Associate Professor David Caldicott, an
emergency department doctor who appeared at the Royal Commission
into Defence and Veteran Suicide ... was pleasantly surprised by
Friday's decision. "The conditions for which these drugs might be
used [post-traumatic stress disorder and treatment-resistant
depression] are currently conditions for which you're basically
destined to a lifetime of drug use. Whereas the MDMA particularly
is used to facilitate psychotherapy, only for a few doses," [said
Caldicott].
Note: For more along these lines,
see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on mind-altering drugs from reliable
major media sources.
According to the World Health Organization definition, 1.9 billion adults are considered
overweight. Of these, more than 650 million people are classified
as obese. In Australia, health authorities suggest being overweight
is more dangerous to us than alcohol, and only second in
"preventable health risk" to smoking. ABS health data claims 67% of Australian adults
are overweight, an increase on 63.4% a decade ago. Last year,
Australia's former conservative government released a "National
Obesity Strategy", concerned Australia was facing health risks of
cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancers. That
government did recognise weight is influenced by complex "social,
environmental, and economic factors", but their framework of
encouraging "healthy choices" as a remedy unhelpfully
individualises a collective problem. First, shaming individuals
into weight loss doesn't work. 95% of weight loss attempts fail.
Two-thirds of dieters regain the weight they lose. Second, the
structural giveaway here is an admission that the poorest
"experience the greatest burden of disease linked to excess
weight". Our societies have never produced so much food,
and the time to prepare it are priced as a luxury, while highly
processed items are inexpensive, easy and aggressively
mass-marketed. It's not a failure of collective willpower
that's jeopardising our health, but a diet of bad food that's
culturally familiar, low in nutrition and super available.
It has now been one week since Seymour Hersh
published an in-depth report claiming that the Biden
administration deliberately blew up the Nord Stream II gas pipeline
without Germany's consent or even knowledge an operation
that began planning long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Hersh the journalist who broke the stories of the My Lai Massacre,
the CIA spying program and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal claims
that in June, U.S. Navy divers traveled to the Baltic Sea and
attached C4 explosive charges to the pipeline. President Biden
himself ordered its destruction. All understood ... that, if
caught, it would be seen as a flagrant "act of war" against their
allies. Despite this, corporate media have overwhelmingly ignored
the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter's bombshell. A MintPress
News study analyzed the 20 most influential publications in
the United States, according to analytics company Similar Web, and
found only four mentions of the report between them. This lack of
interest cannot be explained due to the report's irrelevance. If
the Biden administration really did work closely with the Norwegian
government to blow up Nord Stream II, causing billions of dollars
worth of immediate damage and plunging an entire region of the
world into a freezing winter without sufficient energy, it
ranks as one of the worst terrorist attacks in history.
The Nord Stream attack was also one of the world's worst ecological
disasters, constituting the largest single leak of methane in
history.
Environmental groups on Tuesday accused the Biden
administration of putting the profits of big agribusiness over
public health and critical pollinators by attempting to obstruct
the Mexican government's ongoing push to ban genetically engineered
corn. The U.S. government claims that Mexico's plans, which have
also drawn fierce opposition from industry lobbying groups, would run afoul of
provisions in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and
harm American farmers. The Biden administration has threatened to take legal action under the
USMCA if Mexico doesn't reverse course. The USMCA entered into
force in 2020 and replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), under which U.S. corn flooded the Mexican market.
An estimated 90% of
U.S. corn production is genetically modified. But Mexicothe largest
destination for U.S. corn exportsreiterated its intention to
prohibit GE corn for human consumption by 2024 in its latest
decree. Mexico is also aiming to ban imports and use of glyphosate,
a cancer-linked chemical that is often sprayed on
genetically engineered corn. In February 2021, The
Guardianreported that "internal government emails
reveal Monsanto owner Bayer AG and industry lobbyist CropLife
America have been working closely with U.S. officials to pressure
Mexico into abandoning its intended ban on glyphosate, a
pesticide linked to cancer that is the key ingredient in Monsanto's
Roundup weedkillers."
With the Biden administration's mandate to slash carbon emissions "at
least in half by the end of the decade," the Pentagon
has committed to using all-electric vehicles
and transitioning to biofuels for all its trucks, ships and
aircraft. The plan ignores the Pentagon's continuing role in the
annihilation of whales, in spite of the miraculous role that large cetaceans have
played in delaying climate catastrophe and "maintaining healthy
marine ecosystems," according to a report by Whale and Dolphin
Conservation. This fact has mostly gone unnoticed. The
decimation of populations of whales and dolphins over the last
decade - resulting from the year-round, full-spectrum military practices carried out in the
oceans ... has fast-tracked us toward a cataclysmic
environmental tipping point. The other imminent danger that whales
and dolphins face is from the installation of space-war infrastructure, which is taking
place currently. This new infrastructure comprises the
development of the so-called "smart ocean," rocket launchpads, missile tracking
stations and other components of satellite-based battle.
Throughout their lives, whales enable the oceans to
sequester a whopping 2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide
per year. That astonishing amount in a single year is nearly double
the 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon that was emitted by the U.S.
military in the entire 16-year span between 2001 and 2017. Clearly,
key path forward toward a livable planet is to make whale and ocean
conservation a top priority.
Certain mushroom species have the ability to consume
polyurethane, one of the main ingredients in plastic products. Some
scientists believe that these natural composters could be the key
to cleaning up our planet. Mycoremediation is the natural process
that fungi use to degrade or isolate contaminants in the
environment. A 2020 study published in Biotechnology Reports
found that mycoremediation applied to agricultural wastes like
pesticides, herbicides, and cyanotoxins is more cost-effective,
eco-friendly, and effective. A project using the mycelium (the
vegetative part of the mushroom similar to a plant's root system)
of two common mushrooms made headlines in 2014. Using
Pleurotus ostreatus, also known as the oyster mushroom,
and Schizophyllum commune, aka the split gill mushroom,
the team was able to turn plastic into human-grade food.
The mushrooms were cultivated on circular pods made of
seaweed-derived gelatin filled with UV-treated plastics. As the
fungus digests the plastic, it grows around the edible base pods to
create a mycelium-rich snack after just a few months. According to
a study by the University of Rajasthan in India, plastic-eating
mushrooms can sometimes absorb too much of the pollutant in their
mycelium, and therefore cannot be consumed. If more research is
performed regarding the safety aspects, however, mycoremediation
through mushroom cultivation could perhaps address two of the
world's greatest problems: waste and food scarcity.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of
concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make
a difference.
Huge amounts of plastic ends up rivers and oceans
every year, harming the environment and potentially also human
health. But what if we could pull it out of water with the power of
magnets? [Chemistry student] Ferreira became determined to find a
solution to remove microplastics from water. He started by
designing his own spectrometer, a scientific instrument that uses
ultraviolet light to measure the density of microplastics in
solutions. "I could see there were a lot of microplastics in the
water and they weren't just coming from big plastic breaking down
in the sea," he says. It was on his local beach that Ferreira came
up with a solution that could extract microplastics from water. "I
found some oil spill residue with loads of plastic attached to it,"
he says. "I realised that oil could be used to attract plastic."
Ferreira mixed vegetable oil with iron oxide powder to create a
magnetic liquid, also known as ferrofluid. He then blended in
microplastics from a wide range of everyday items, including
plastic bottles, paint and car tyres, and water from the washing
machine. After the microplastics attached themselves to the
ferrofluid, Ferreira used a magnet to remove the solution and leave
behind only water. Following 5,000 tests, Ferreira's method was
87% effective at extracting microplastics from
water. Ferreira is currently in the process of designing a
device which uses the magnetic extraction method to capture
microplastics as water flows past it. The device will be small
enough to fit inside waterpipes to continuously extract plastic
fragments.
Note: Researchers from Australia are
also finding innovative ways to rapidly remove
hazardous microplastics from water using magnets. Explore a
treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make
a difference.
At Radical Family Farms, Leslie Wiser recently
planted bitter melons, what she refers to as "one of our most
beloved crops", a staple in many types of Asian cuisine that grows
on a vine and is related to zucchini, squash and cucumber. Women
like Wiser are increasingly the face of farming in California, and
nationally as well. Experts say the growing presence of women in
agriculture is having an impact on how the industry operates,
especially in the face of generational challenges like pandemics
and climate change, with research showing that women-led businesses
are more likely to take a community-minded approach to how they
operate and fill in gaps during crises. During the
pandemic, for example ... women farmers filled the gaps in local
communities for food access. Radical Family Farm stepped in to feed
food-insecure seniors throughout the Bay Area when it was not safe
for them to go to the grocery store or farmers' market. "A
lot of this was driven by the attacks on our Asian elders during
the pandemic," Wiser said. "It's still happening, with seniors
afraid to walk on the streets." Her long-term goal is to dedicate
one-third of the produce from her farm to seniors in the Bay Area.
"It is part of my cultural heritage to honor our elders," she said,
adding that her grandparents on both sides took care of her growing
up, so delivering "culturally relevant produce" to seniors is
meaningful. "Instead of getting bags of potatoes, they can get
vegetables, produce and herbs that are familiar to them."
Note: Explore a treasure trove of
concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make
a difference.
A study published Monday ... outlines how
expansive the market for people's health data has become. After
contacting data brokers to ask what kinds of mental health
information she could buy, researcher Joanne Kim reported that she
ultimately found 11 companies willing to sell bundles of data that
included information on what antidepressants people were taking,
whether they struggled with insomnia or attention issues, and
details on other medical ailments, including Alzheimer's disease or
bladder-control difficulties. Some of the data was offered in an
aggregate form that would have allowed a buyer to know, for
instance, a rough estimate of how many people in an individual Zip
code might be depressed. But other brokers offered
personally identifiable data featuring names, addresses and
incomes, with one data-broker sales representative
pointing to lists named "Anxiety Sufferers" and "Consumers With
Clinical Depression in the United States." Some even offered a
sample spreadsheet. The Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act, known as HIPAA, restricts how hospitals,
doctors' offices and other "covered health entities" share
Americans' health data. But the law doesn't protect the
same information when it's sent anywhere else, allowing app makers
and other companies to legally share or sell the data.
Some of the data brokers offered ... opt-out forms. But ... many
people probably didn't realize the brokers had collected their
information in the first place. Privacy advocates have for years
warned about the unregulated data trade, saying the information
could be exploited by advertisers or misused for predatory means.
The health-data issue has in some ways gotten worse, in large part
because of the increasing sophistication with which companies can
collect and share people's personal information including not just
in defined lists, but through regularly updated search tools and
machine-learning analyses.
Violence among children has soared across the country since 2020, a
stark reversal of a decades long decline in juvenile crime. In the
U.S., homicides committed by juveniles acting alone rose 30% in
2020 from a year earlier, while those committed by multiple
juveniles increased 66%. The number of killings committed
by children under 14 was the highest in two decades,
according to the most recent federal data. One consequence is a
mounting toll of young victims. The number of juveniles killing
other juveniles was the highest it has been in more than two
decades, the 2020 federal data show. In New York City, police said
124 juveniles committed shootings during 2022, up from 62 in 2020
and 48 in 2019. "The tragedy here is that we're talking about a
gunman who is too young to be called a gunman because he's 15 years
old," said Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark after Kyhara's
death. "These ages make you weep." The jump comes amid an overall
wave of violent crime in the first two years of the
pandemicparticularly homicides and shootingsthat swept through
urban and rural areas alike. Police, prosecutors
and community groups attribute much of the youth violence to broad
disruptions that started with the pandemic and lockdowns.
Schools shut down, depriving students of structure in daily life,
as did services for troubled children. Increased stress compounded
a swelling mental-health crisis. Social-media conflicts
increasingly turned deadly.
Note: For more along these lines,
read an incisive essay written by a caring
school teacher on the lockdown's tragic effects, including poor and
homeless children.
Kailani Taylor-Cribb hasn't taken a single class in
what used to be her high school since the height of the coronavirus
pandemic. She vanished from Cambridge, Massachusetts' public school
roll in 2021 and has been, from an administrative standpoint,
unaccounted for since then. She is among hundreds of thousands of
students around the country who disappeared from public schools
during the pandemic and didn't resume their studies elsewhere.
An analysis by The Associated Press, Stanford University's
Big Local News project and Stanford education professor Thomas Dee
found an estimated 230,000 students in 21 states whose absences
could not be accounted for. These students didn't move out
of state, and they didn't sign up for private school or
home-school. In short, they're missing. The analysis highlights
thousands of students who may have dropped out of school or missed
out on the basics of reading and school routines in kindergarten
and first grade. Over months of reporting, the AP learned of
students and families avoiding school for a range of reasons. Some
are still afraid of COVID-19, are homeless or have left the
country. Some students couldn't study online and found jobs
instead. Some slid into depression. During the prolonged online
learning, some students fell so far behind developmentally and
academically that they no longer knew how to behave or learn at
school. Many of these students, while largely absent from class,
are still officially on school rosters.
Note: Along with the previously
mentioned essay on the lockdown's tragic effects on youth and society,
read a thought-provoking article on the educational
crisis fueled by COVID policies, raising questions about whether
school closures had an effect on COVID morbidity and mortality
rates.
On Feb. 3, a train of about 150 freight cars many
carrying several loads of hazardous materials crashed and exploded
in the town of East Palestine, Ohio. The tangled knot of boxcars
operated by Norfolk Southern Railway shot out flames reaching 100
feet and sent a massive plume of coal-black smog. Five days
later, crews ignited a controlled burn of the toxic chemicals in
order to prevent a much bigger explosion, but the situation appears
to be worsening. Residents and local news agencies have
posted viral videos of streams and creeks cluttered
with dead fish and frogs. Reports have also surfaced that
fumes sickened and even killed pets. Many are drawing comparisons to
the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which turned Pripyat,
a city of roughly 50,000 people, into a ghost town. "We basically
nuked a town with chemicals so we could get a railroad open," Sil
Caggiano, a hazardous materials specialist, told WKBN. On Feb. 8, state officials told
residents that they could "safely" return home. "If it's safe and
habitable, then why does it hurt?" Nathen Velez, a resident of East
Palestine, said to CNN. "Why does it hurt me to
breathe?" As more details emerge, the gravity of the situation only
seems to worsen. In a letter sent to Norfolk Southern Railway on Feb.
11, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that in addition
to vinyl chloride, four additional toxic chemicals were on board
the train: ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl
acrylate, butyl acrylate and isobutylene.
Note: An on-the-ground report discusses this tragic issue beyond the
official narrative: how corporate greed is the underlying cause of
the crash, local media ou...
The reptilian annual World Economic Forum at Davos,
where the masters of the universe meet to congratulate themselves
on their benevolent dictatorship, is home to many sinister ideas.
This year, one of the creepiest discussions of all was delivered
under the guise of progress and productivity. Nita Farahany, a Duke
University professor and futurist, gave a presentation at Davos about neurotechnology
that is creating "brain transparency." The new technologies, which
Farahany says are being deployed in workplaces around the world ...
include a variety of wearable sensors that read the brain's
electrical impulses and can show how fatigued you are, whether
you're focused on the task at hand or if your attention is
wandering. According to Farahany, thousands of companies have
hooked workers ranging from train drivers to miners up to these
devices already, in the name of workplace safety. But what we are
really discussing is workplace surveillance. Farahany
paints a picture of a near future in which every office worker
could be fitted with a small wearable that would constantly record
brain activity, creating an omnipotent record of your thoughts,
attention and energy that the boss could study at leisure.
Farahany acknowledges that there could be drawbacks here: "Done
poorly, it could become the most oppressive technology we've ever
introduced on a wide scale." All of this raises the question: what
exactly is your employer buying when they give you a paycheck? For
bosses, the answer is simple: "Everything."
Note: Tune into a fascinating,
17 min. conversation about this issue that raises
important questions about the overreliance on technology as a tool
of control, under the guise of workplace safety. For more along
these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from
reliable major media sources.
The fingerprints of unvaccinated New York City
teachers were reportedly sent to the FBI with "problem code" flags,
prompting outrage from former educators who lost their jobs over
the mandate. Earlier this month, John Bursch, who is
representing teachers who are suing the city over the mandate, said
teachers who refused the shot now have a "flag in their file,"
which will impact their ability to get another
job. "When the city puts these problem codes on
employees who have been terminated because of their
unconstitutional policies, not only do they have this flag in their
files, but their fingerprints are sent with that flag to the FBI
and the New York Criminal Justice Services, so it impacts their
ongoing ability to get employment at other places," Bursch said
Feb. 8. Investigative journalist Betsy Combier wrote an affidavit uncovering how the Education
Department was allegedly able to "flag" certain teachers without
sufficient evidence of wrongdoing. "I found out that the DOE
has right now an agency called the Office of Personnel
Investigation, and what they do is they have employees of the DOE
who, forgive me, call themselves investigators, but they're not,"
Combier said. "So they work for OPI, and when they get an
accusation from anybody, it doesn't matter who, well, the
principals send it to them, but the original complaint against
somebody could be made by anybody that this employee, that employee
did something wrong."
Note: For more along these lines,
see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from
reliable major media sources.
Since the night Tyre Nichols was kicked,
pepper-sprayed, punched and struck with a baton by Memphis police
officers, six cops have been fired and five of them charged with
murder. Seven others face internal disciplinary charges. Nichols
died three days after the January 7 traffic stop and subsequent
fatal encounter captured on video and principally involving five
officers with two to six years on the job. The death of the
29-year-old Black man comes at a critical juncture in American law
enforcement, as departments across the country including the
Memphis PD struggle to recruit qualified officers and fill
shifts, lure candidates with signing bonuses worth thousands of
dollars, and at times curtail standards and training. "That
is a recipe for disaster," said Kenneth Corey, a retired NYPD chief
who once ran the training division. "We've seen it happen before.
You couldn't fill seats. You lowered standards. And now you've got
scandal and use of force. And when you look at the
individuals involved you say, we never would have hired this guy
once upon a time." [Corey] added, "What we ask of our cops is that
they think like lawyers, speak like psychologists, and perform like
athletes but we pay them as common laborers. A starting officer in
New York City makes $42,000 a year, which means about $20 dollars
an hour. It also means that at McDonald's they could be making $15
dollars an hour with none of the stress, trauma or risk."
Note: For more along these lines,
see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major
media sources.
American policing is plagued with many problems, but
when it comes to the inappropriate use of violence, one culprit is
weaknesses in the selection of police officers and in academy
training. Better selection and better training can reduce
the problem of police brutality, and one strategy for improving
both is expanding the use of police apprenticeships as an
alternative to the traditional police academy. Unlike the
shorter police academies, future officers serve as apprentices or
cadets for a two-to-three-year program involving comprehensive
learning through years of field experience and classroom
instruction. Most officers spend far less time receiving field
training than they do in a classroom, where they are insulated from
the realities of police work. While average training in the U.S. is
about 20 weeks in the academy and 13 weeks of field training,
Japan's officers undergo 15 and 21 months of training, and many
European countries require two to three years of training, much of
which is in the field. Moreover, other countries emphasize
communications and interpersonal skills far more than the U.S.
does. In Switzerland, psychological training and "softer"
qualities are considered essential for a professional police
officer, and the recruit curriculum focuses largely on appreciation
of emotion, sensibility, and understanding of a variety of
situations. In Scotland, communication skills are emphasized
throughout the recruit curriculum, particularly when teaching
de-escalation skills and dealing with people in crisis.
Note: For more along these lines,
see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major
media sources.
In June 2017, The Intercept published a
leaked N.S.A. document, which it claimed
revealed "a months-long Russian hacking effort against the U.S.
election infrastructure." Ever since, it has been an article of
faith in the mainstream media and among Democratic politicians that
Russian G.R.U. cyberwarriors "hacked" the 2016 election.
Moreover, Reality Winner, the N.S.A. analyst who leaked the
document and ended up in jail as a result, has been elevated to the
status of a heroic whistleblower. There are strong grounds to
believe Winner unwittingly walked into a trap laid by the
C.I.A. Winner has always claimed she acted alone, and
there is no reason to doubt that she felt it was her patriotic duty
to release the document. But her clumsiness, naivety and
incompetence suggest she may well be easily manipulable, and a
great many individuals and organizations had an interest in the dud
intelligence report's release. Foremost among them, elements of the
C.I.A. loyal to John Brennan, Agency director between 2013 and
January 2017. Brennan fudged ... findings to keep the F.B.I.
Trump-Russia "collusion" investigation alive. Launched by the
Bureau in 2016, it found no evidence Trump or members of his
campaign were conspiring with Moscow. It is an obvious question
whether Winner's leak in addition to furthering the RussiaGate
fiction and damaging Trump also served to discredit the N.S.A. by
creating the illusion it had been asleep at the wheel over Kremlin
meddling.
Timothy York knows what works to treat his
decades-long opioid addiction: Suboxone, a medication that
effectively quiets cravings. In 2019, he was relieved to learn that
the federal Bureau of Prisons was starting a program to expand
access to Suboxone. He's still waiting. In the meantime, he's been
punished for using Suboxone without a prescription. Last year,
after York, 46, was caught with the medication, he spent a month in
solitary confinement and had his visitor privileges revoked for a
year. York is not alone. The Marshall Project spoke to more than 20
people struggling with addictions in federal prison, and they
described the dire consequences of being unable to safely access a
treatment that Congress has instructed prisons to provide. Some
have overdosed. The lack of Suboxone treatment comes amid a rise in
drug-related deaths behind bars. A variety of substances
are routinely smuggled into prisons and jails through mail, drone
drops, visitors or corrections officers and other staff. In the
last two decades, federal data shows that fatal overdoses
increased by more than 600% inside prisons and more than 200%
inside jails. Forty-seven incarcerated people died of
overdoses in federal prison from 2019 through 2021. The data does
not specify how many of these overdose deaths were caused by
opioids and could have been prevented by medications like Suboxone.
During the same period, correctional staff administered Narcan a
drug that reverses opioid overdoses almost 600 times.
Crosswalks don't work. According to various studies, only between five and fifteen percent
of drivers slow down at pedestrian crossings. The vast majority of
drivers simply don't pay attention to them. America's deadly
streetscape is the subject of The Street Project, a new PBS
documentary about citizen-led efforts to make streets safer. When
filmmaker Jennifer Boyd started making it, she assumed distracted
driving must be behind the alarming rise in pedestrian deaths. But
as she soon learned, digital screens are less of a culprit than
most people realize. "Less than one percent of pedestrian deaths
involved portable electronic devices," she found. Instead, she
discovered that two of the biggest factors are speeding and bigger
cars. If speeding and visibility are the problem and crosswalks
can't stop it, color might. The Asphalt Art
Initiative, a program funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies,
provides grants to create art to modify dangerous streets. One of
these projects is in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where artists and
residents transformed a high-traffic commercial thoroughfare with a
block-long asphalt mural, while students marked safe
walking paths in the area with stencils and wheat paste.
Overall, according to the Initiative, "the data showed a 50
percent drop in crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists and a 37
percent drop in crashes leading to injuries. Intersections with
asphalt art saw a 17 percent reduction in total
accidents."
Note: Don't miss the great pictures
and video of public art available at the link above. Explore a
treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make
a difference.
An animal sanctuary in rebel-held Syria rescued a cat
trapped inside its human's shop for three days, a chicken stuck in
the middle of a flooding river and a dog bleeding profusely from
its leg. But it couldn't save them all. "Just like humans, we had
to do triage," said Mohamad Youssef, one of two veterinarians with
Ernesto's Sanctuary for Cats in Syria. "But we saved a lot, and we
are still searching." As hopes for rescuing earthquake
survivors in northwest Syria dwindled, roughly a dozen of Ernesto's
workers continued pulling out dogs, cats, goats and chickens from
underneath the rubble. In a region devastated by tragedy upon
tragedy, returning lost pets to owners can bring emotional
comfort, and gathering up displaced farm animals ensures a
steady source of food for a people largely cut off from
international trade. "Humans cannot exist without dogs, without
cats, without goats, without chickens," Youssef said in Arabic.
"They are part of our families, like a mom or a dad. They give us
food, they give us happiness, they give us comfort. We would not be
without them." After a traumatic event such as an earthquake,
Youssef added, pets provide a love that few humans can match, a
psychological support that can be a lifeline following so much
loss. They ... now have roughly 2,000 cats, 30 dogs, five monkeys,
three donkeys, a horse, a fox, a chicken and a goat. Ernesto's
hopes to change the culture of violence toward animals that roam
the region in part by going out to villages to sterilize ownerless
dogs.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of
concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make
a difference.
Since 2020, three pastors who lead a combined seven
churches on the Deal Island Peninsula have been worshiping together
at a small beach on Maryland's lower Eastern Shore. The pastors,
two White and one Black, are part of the United Methodist Church.
A spur-of-the-moment idea to bring the faithful together
during the pandemic has become a once-a-month gathering where
hundreds of worshipers honk along to a boisterous service that
offers a mix of polemics, politics and preaching. "There
isn't a better church than this one right here," said Cathy Sikos,
a retired Walmart worker who lives in nearby Dames Quarter. "It's a
true depiction of what a church should be. No fancy building. Just
pure worship. It's God's place. I wouldn't want to go anywhere
else." Martin Luther King Jr. famously called 11 o'clock on Sunday
morning "America's most segregated hour." In many places, it still
is. The three Church by the Bay pastors say they never set out to
be an example of integration. They simply wanted to offer Communion
to parishioners starved of that opportunity. After three months of
virtual worships, the trio decided to offer a joint Communion at
the beach for 30 minutes. The joint worship has introduced the
parishioners to different styles and messages. The three pastors
have no plans to stop the once-a-month service, showing unity even
as the United Methodist Church is splitting over the national
organization's decision to allow same-sex marriages and ordain gay
and lesbian clergy.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of
concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make
a difference.
In the pandemic's bewildering early days, millions
worldwide believed government officials who said they needed
confidential data for new tech tools that could help stop
coronavirus' spread. In return, governments got a firehose of
individuals' private health details, photographs that captured
their facial measurements and their home addresses. Now, from
Beijing to Jerusalem to Hyderabad, India, and Perth, Australia,
The Associated Press has found that authorities used these
technologies and data to halt travel for activists and ordinary
people, harass marginalized communities and link people's health
information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools. In
some cases, data was shared with spy agencies. China's
ultra-strict zero-COVID policies recently ignited the sharpest
public rebuke of the country's authoritarian leadership since ...
1989. Just as the balance between privacy and national security
shifted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, COVID-19 has given
officials justification to embed tracking tools in society that
have lasted long after lockdowns. What use will ultimately be made
of the data collected and tools developed during the height of the
pandemic remains an open question. Australia's intelligence
agencies were caught "incidentally" collecting data from the
national COVIDSafe app. In the U.S. ... the federal government took
the opportunity to build out its surveillance toolkit, including
two contracts in 2020 worth $24.9 million to the data mining and
surveillance company Palantir Technologies Inc.
The "Twitter files" revealed an FBI operation to
monitor and censor social media content. Dozens of FBI
employees worked on the identification and removal of material on a
wide range of subjects and that Twitter largely carried out their
requests. Nor was it just the FBI, apparently. Emails
reveal FBI figures like a San Francisco assistant special agent in
charge asking Twitter executives to "invite an OGA" (or "Other Government
Organization") to an upcoming meeting. A week later, Stacia
Cardille, a senior Twitter legal executive, indicated the OGA was
the CIA, an agency under strict limits regarding domestic
activities. Twitter's own ranks included dozens of ex-FBI agents and
executives. The dozens of disclosed emails ... do not
include still-undisclosed but apparent government coordination with
Facebook and other social media companies. Much of that work
apparently was done through the multi-agency Foreign Influence Task
Force (FITF), which operated secretly it seems to censor citizens.
This is a First Amendment violation. The Twitter files
have substantiated long-standing concerns over "censorship by surrogate" or proxy. As with
other amendments like the Fourth Amendment, which protects against
unreasonable searches or seizures, the government cannot use
private agents to do indirectly what it cannot do directly. Just as
a police officer cannot direct a security guard to break into an
apartment and conduct a search, the FBI cannot use Twitter to
censor Americans.
Some believe the novel coronavirus probably escaped
from a laboratory in Wuhan. Others maintain the virus first jumped
to people from caged animals at a Wuhan seafood market. Testing
either hypothesis would require access to Wuhan lab records,
biological samples, and personnel as well as frozen blood samples
collected in 2019 by various Wuhan blood banks. The malfeasance of
China's rulers is the primary reason the international community
doesn't have access to these resources and data. But China hasn't
been the only problem. In the early days of the pandemic, a small
group of Western virologists came together to consider the
pandemic's origin. Emails that eventually came to light
revealed their plan to push the public conversation away from the
lab-accident hypothesis and toward the natural-origins
explanation. In a now infamous February 2020 letter in the Lancet, and in an equally
problematic letter in Nature Medicine the next month, some
of these scientists labeled any questions about a possible lab
origin as "conspiracy theories." Some of the same scientists had
worked together, along with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, on a
2018 proposal to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Their project? Genetically engineering rare
gain-of-function features ... into SARS-like viruses.
Scientists who had called the lab-leak hypothesis a conspiracy had
failed to disclose that the lethal virus sweeping the world was
eerily similar to the one they had wanted to create.
Note: A probing investigation of unredacted NIH emails further reveals how Anthony Fauci
and other top scientists played an early role in shaping the debate
about the origin of the virus, downplaying or dismissing any type
of lab theory despite substantial evidence that favors the plausibility of a lab
leak. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply
revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major
media sources.
According to Oxfam's annual inequality report, released to coincide with
the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos, the richest 1% of
people have captured nearly twice as much new wealth as the rest of
the world combined since the pandemic. Their fortune soared
by $26tn, increasing their share of new wealth from 50% to
two-thirds. The breakdown of these figures exposes how on
a global basis, extreme wealth is accumulated not by innovating or
increasing production, but by taking advantage of rising prices and
exploiting labour. This has been happening for a while, but the
pandemic accelerated the trend. Rich people benefited from
everything every positive intervention from the state and negative
impact of the crisis somehow still ended up increasing their
wealth. They benefited from rising costs by using them as
an alibi to charge higher-than-inflation prices, then distributing
the rewards as dividends instead of higher wages. Food and energy
corporations made a killing, making $306bn in windfall profits in 2022, then distributing 84%
to shareholders. Wealthy people have used their wealth to purchase
democracy, to warp democracy in their own interests. They've done
that through a global template that involves lowering taxes,
privatising formerly public attempts to deal with common problems,
liquidating the spending that went into things like social
services, and then putting that money into their own pockets. The
system ... is rigged.
positive to say about their lives will usually talk more about
it than those who are not having it so good, and so it would be
easy to fall into the trap of feeling that everyone is having a
better time that you
Kevin Drum has an
thought-provoking post about the role of the internet in
creating this problem. At least, it provoked my thinking enough to
feel the need to comment on it.
The internet has a tendency to bifurcate things. Most famously,
I believe that the internet makes smart people smarter and dumb
people dumber. Smart people, who have the background and context to
manipulate search engines and other tools can become far more
productive and less error-prone than in the past. Dumb people, by
contrast, are more likely to be taken in by scams and conspiracy
theories. They end up dumber than if theyd never logged on.
The same is true for teens and social media: it makes the
popular ones more popular and the lonely ones more lonely. Its
pretty easy to see how this happens. Popular teens have always had
multiple outlets to improve their popularityschool, parties,
cliques, etc.but social media gives them even more. Conversely,
unpopular kids now have yet another group to be shut out of.
The problem with the first paragraph is that everyone will think
that they belong to the smart group and that they have become
smarter and that those who disagree with them are the stupid ones..
For example, those who believe in QAnon conspiracies no doubt think
that they are the smart ones who have seen through the official
coverups because they read so many things on the internet that
supported their view while I (who of course also put myself in the
smart group) think that the internet has made them stupider. So
while Drums idea may be correct, we will have a hard time finding
evidence to support it.
However, the second paragraph strikes me as testable. There are
fairly objective measures that can be used to determine whether one
is popular or not and even without using them, I am pretty sure
that most teens can accurately gauge which group they fall into.
But what can they do with that awareness? It seems futile to try
and change ones personality and behavior so that one becomes more
popular. That would be chasing a mirage and likely make one even
happier.
More promising would be to arrive at the realization that
popularity is not all that it is cracked up to be, that one can be
happy with just a few friends, even one or two, and some
interesting activities. Of course, such a realization is easier
when one is an adult and the pressures of ones peer group are not
as overwhelming.
Huh. All I had to do was write the title and my
review is done. That was easy.
OK, a little more.
Ive got so much grading to do that I have to prod myself with
little rewards. I had to compose an exam yesterday, and I told
myself if I got it done before 7 I could go to the theater. I
finished at 6. The choices available to me were Creed III,
which is probably the better movie, but Im not into sports movies
at all, or Cocaine Bear, which looked entertainingly stupid.
I went for the light entertainment.
There was a real cocaine bear, a black bear that discovered a
drug dealers stash, ate 70 pounds of cocaine, and died. That would
make for a short, sad, boring movie. In this movie, a plane drops
cocaine into a park, and the bear finds scattered drops and turns
into a raging drug fiend, flitting everywhere and ripping the limbs
off various neer-do-wells and goofballs while collecting face-fulls
of cocaine.
It was Ray Liottas last movie. It features a couple of kids who
are cute, sassy, and dont get eaten. The adults meet their demise
in various creative ways. Its a bit gorey.
Final assessment: it was honest schlock, and much, much better
than Quantumania.
(Ive got lots more grading to do, and am about to head off to
the coffee shop with a stack of papers. When I get that done, the
reward is to spend a little spider time. Then more grading this
afternoon maybe Ill goad myself on with something on Netflix
tonight. Then more grading tomorrow.)
La presidente Meloni, in visita a Nuova Delhi, ha dichiarato che
laggressione russa nei confronti dellUcraina costituisce una
provocazione al cuore della Carta dellONU e mina lordine
internazionale fondato sulle regole, concludendo che non possiamo
sottostare alla legge del pi
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Assistant Secretary of State for European
Affairs Victoria Nuland.
Of relevance to the ongoing war in Ukraine, this incisive
article was first written by the late Robert Parry on February 24,
2014, in the immediate wake of the US Sponsored
Western heads of state, UN officials, military spokespersons
will invariably praise the humanitarian dimension of the October
2001 US-NATO led invasion of Afghanistan, which allegedly was to
fight religious fundamentalists, help little girls go to school,
liberate women subjected to the yoke of the Taliban.
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Covid Tolerance Zero has contributed to destabilizing Shanghais
financial sector as well as China's buoyant export economy. It has
created social havoc for millions of people. The Chinese Government
has now acknowledged that is was based on fake science.
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If it was indeed about public health, why close down the bulk of
health services and the global economy knowing full well what the
implications would be? And why mount a military-style propaganda
campaign to censor world-renowned scientists and terrorise entire
populations
Wealthy and well-connected preppers
and back-to-the-landers have been moving west, many of them at
least tangentially involved in the edgy online realm of thought
known as the dissident right. Tech executives and crypto investors
are creating secretive groups to help people exit a term that has
taken on almost mystical significance in some circles recently from
our liberal society, tech-dominated lives, and fraying system. And
there are grander plans, for whole secessionist movements using
crypto and decentralized autonomous organizations to build whole
mini societies, many on the model of what Balaji Srinivasan, the
former partner at Andreessen Horowitz, calls a Network
State.
An investor and former CTO at PayPal,
Srinivasan is a junior member of that nucleus of vast wealth and
influence made up of Silicon Valley power brokers such asPeter Thiel(co-founder of
PayPal and Palantir, first major investor into Facebook),Marc Andreessen(Netscape
and a16z or Andreessen Horowitz), and Elon Musk. Like Thiel and
Andreessen, Srinivasan promotes the ideas found inThe Sovereign Individual(1997) byJames Dale
Davidson and William Rees-Mogg. Andreessen
called it, the most thought provoking book on the unfolding nature
of the 21st Century that Ive yet read. Thiel wrote the preface for
its reissue.
Rather than go through years of lawsuits while
victims of the toxic train derailment in Ohio stew in poisons, why
not buy them out and move to safe ground?
While youre here enjoying Ted Ralls latest cartoon, please
take a moment and read articles on related topics:
You gotta be kidding meAnthony Fauci just published an article
pointing out viruses that replicate in mucosal passages cannot be
effectively controlled by vaccines that create systemic immunity?
After 3 years he just announces this obvious point?
March is (still) Black Gun Month! Let Us Whisper The
Songs Of Our People Canik Mete Pro w/ CGS Kraken My Walther
PDP SD Pro Full Size. LL, dont you have anything better to
do than take stylish firearms photographs? No, not at the
moment. Vickers Tactical Master Class Springfield []
the weekly sonneteer starts the new yer worrying about what the
AIs are up to. Partying it looks like, f their self-portrait i any
indication. Let's get them!
The holy people quoted here, most of them saints, foresaw the
catastrophe of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the long, bloody
period of warring atheism.
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Walmart has announced they will be permanently closing the last
two stores in Portland, Oregon later this month. By March 24 the
stores locations at 1123 North Hayden Meadows Drive and 4200
Southeast 82nd Avenue at the Eastport Plaza will be shut down. The
company stated the locations were not meeting financial
expectations and were []
When Belgrade was bombed, the childrens hospital was the object
of air attacks. It had been singled out as a strategic target. NATO
stated that to save the lives of the newly borne, they did not bomb
the section of the hospital where the babies were residing, instead
they targeted the power generator, which meant no more power for
the incubators.
This is a good summary of my position on all the
sex and gender chatter going on, except that I really dont care at
all what sex an imaginary god might have.
Im a bit more flexible than he is on the question of biological
sex, though. Its more than just a small number of people on the
saddle of a bimodal distribution, I think there are multiple
parameters that define our sex that allow people to possess aspects
of both male and female sex.
By B.N. Frank Controversy over what is being labelled clean
energy and/or green energy isnt isolated to carbon capture, natural
gas, solar, and wind. It...
Growing up, my parents had a great many books from
the newspaper comic Doonesbury.
For those whore unfamiliar, the comic started in 1970 following the
lives of a group of college kids, mostly centered around the
experiences of one Mike Doonesbury. When B.D., the jock who never
removed his football helmet, volunteered to go to Vietnam, the
readers went along with him, and got a darkly humorous take on that
conflict. When George Bush Sr. invaded Iraq in 1990, B.D. was
there, too, along with Duke, the Hunter S. Thompson parody, who
went to profiteer.
I think its fair to say that, along with listening
to NPR in the car, Doonesbury was a pretty big part of my childhood
political education. During the Gulf War era, the theme of greed
was woven through the comics. Mr. Butts, a mascot for the tobacco
industry, was handing out free cigarettes to B.D. and his fellow
soldiers. Duke ran a sleazy club, which he opened to profit off of
soldiers, officers, and the various dignitaries and oilmen drawn to
the war and its profits.
The second part of my political education came from
my involvement in The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), which
instilled in me a religious opposition to war, and was a huge part
of my social life, growing up. The third part was my high school,
High Mowing Waldorf School, which regularly brought in speakers on
a variety of topics, including SOA
Watch, and an organization called Voices in the
Wilderness, which talked about sanctions.
See, the Gulf War was pretty short by modern
standards. It only lasted from 1990, to 1991, though it was a
brutal affair. If you ever have any questions about whether Bush
Sr. was less horrible than W, look into that war, maybe starting
with The
Highway of Death. The war destroyed a lot of Iraqs
infrastructure, and the sanctions regime that followed made
repairing it nearly impossible. Ive mentioned before that I view
sanctions as a form of siege, using modern power
and politics to blockade an entire nation, rather
than just a city or fortress. The sanctions killed hundreds of
thousands of Iraqis between 1991, and the 2003 invasion by Ws
administration, and most of those excess deaths were children.
After being bombed back to the stone age, people
died. A big part of that was because the wars destruction included
sewage and water systems. That meant that clean water was hard to
get, and disease was everywhere, while medicine was hard to get.
Its not clear if anyone literally starved to death but t...
By the Wise Old Fart About 70 years ago, I was taught to respect
everyone, especially those older than me, and that those in
authority were to be trusted. Today those two lessons have no
relationship to America in the 21st century. For me, respect is
crucial in all relationships. Character, morality, principles, and
the []
Spoiler Warning for The Flash. I
really profoundly dont care about spoilers, but hey, heres a
moments consideration for those who do.
Not really sure what the new business model at The CW is going
to be since the takeover, but it seems like the crossover DC Comics
shows are being phased out, bit by bit. Theres a new DC
Comics show that hasnt premiered yet, but safe assumption it will
have little to do with the rest. Its easier and more
cost-effective to have your shows be modular, not interdependent in
any way. Hey, biz is biz.
Legends of Tomorrow was easily the best thing left in
the DC slate and had its last season. I hope everyone
involved is well compensated and living their best life in whatever
they do next. After hinting The Arrow spinoff
character Diggle was going to become The Green Lantern in crossover
bits for a season, they wrote a weird little end to that plot,
like, psych, never mind. An thus the last of The
Arrows existence takes a dirt nap.
Stargirls second season was COVIDd into a strange
depressing mess. They did as well as they could, but you
could feel the characters were being isolated from each other for
social distancing, the plot written in such a way as to denude the
world of extras, leaving everything cold and dark. Third and
final season coulda been worse, but the amazing action of the first
Season was almost completely gone. They just didnt have the
budget for it anymore, Im sure.
So The Flash is on its last season, which is
good. Its time. The most recent two seasons were
hobbled by COVID and ended up totally bizarre. I theorized
here
that the lady playing Flashs main squeeze had come to dislike the
production in some way, since her character was written out of
contact with most of the cast during those seasons. But shes
back in the house; looks like those strange writing decisions were
probably more about COVID issues. That will let them send the
series into retirement with a solid season filmed under less
strained circumstances.
The Flash has generally been marketed as less edgy,
more superheroic and light than The Arrow. That
marketing was undercut by how grimdark and hopeless the main
villain plots have been, over and over throughout its run.
Now that theyre back to their original form, without sensible
plague restrictions, will the oppressive atmosphere return?
Who is the big bad of the very last season?
Its Batwoman!
I did not see that coming. Batwoman was cancelled
and did a very competent job of its last season. I liked it
all well enough. I think Greg Berlanti (or somebody else in
his co...
America does not have a race problem. It has a black problem.
The other races work, meld, contribute, study, and often
intermarry. Chinese, Indians, Vietnamese, Lebanese. Given the huge
size of the Latino influx, the low level of friction is remarkable.
America is not on the brink of a racial explosion against any of
the foregoing.
Blacks are very, very different. They are intensely hostile to
other races and, it seems, incorrigibly so. Degrees and exceptions,
yes, but the centerline is hatred. The racial attacks on Asians one
reads of in the media are black attacks on Asians. Nor do blacks
get along well with Latinos. They attack whites both in words
and deed. Beating of whites is common, brutal, and ignored by the
media. This fellow posts a monthly list of whites murdered by
blacks. There is no sign that these will stop. Or be officially
noticed.
Crime by blacks is out of control. There seems little to do
about it. In the cities they kill each other in staggering numbers,
500 a year in Philadelphia, 700 a year in Chicago, 300 a year in
Baltimore, and two or three times as many shot but not killed. The
pattern repeats in city after city after city.
One might say resignedly that if they want to kill each other,
it is their business. But they kill other races. Every month
Kenn Gividen compiles a list of
interracial murders by blacks. Here is his archive. Rates of
robbery, rape, theft, carjacking, and so on are, by the
standards of the First World, stratospheric.
If these examples were cherrypicked, they could be ignored. They
are not cherrypicked. They stream across the web in numbers month
after month, year after year.
Illiteracy runs high, far too high for blacks to perform in the
white world. In city after city it transpires that in many black
schools no student reads proficiently and that in others only a
handful do. For example,
Chicago. Figures recently pried out of Baltimores
government showed that
seventy-seven percent of high-school seniors read at the
level of grade school, many at the level of kindergarten. All of
these who are not shot will be unemployable for the next fifty
years. This is catastrophic.
The big-city ghettos amount to a distributed foreign country
with customs and values sharply differing from those o...
EcoHealth
Alliance the nonprofit that infamously funneled taxpayer funds into
the Wuhan Institute of Virology for bat-based coronavirus research
was given a shocking loophole in Congresss omnibus spending package
to receive money for research in China supported by the countrys
communist leadership. Why? Our government wont tell us. Back
in December, Congress inserted []
Nathan Heller's article "The End of the English Major" in The
New Yorker magazine (issue dated March 6, 2023) is a probing
discussion of the precipitous decline in English and history and
other humanities majors in American colleges and universities since
2013. What happened to the humanities -- and why? What, if
anything, can be done about the declining numbers of humanities
majors?
Recently, The New York Times published a Statement, on drug
policy. I have been working in this field for the last 50 years or
so. In 2016 I published a book entitled: "End the Drug War; Solve
the Drug Problem: The Public Health Approach" (PHA). In sum, I see
the "drug problem" as a unity, not a duality. The Times' proposal
nibbles around the edges, while the PHA proposes a comprehensive
way to effectively deal with it.
PICKS are stories from many sources, selected
by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are
important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or
amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter.
Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. topicks@whowhatwhy.org.
Scotland First to Ban Anesthetic Harmful to
Environment (Maria)
The authorwrites,
Scotland has become the first country in the world to stop its
hospitals using the anesthetic desflurane because of the threat it
poses to the environment. NHS data suggests the gas, used to keep
people unconscious during surgery, has a global warming potential
2,500 times greater than carbon dioxide. Banning it in Scotland
from its peak use in 2017 would cut emissions equal to powering
1,700 homes a year.
When Do the Privileged Feel Like Victims? When
Others Seek Equality (Reader Steve)
The authorwrites, It seems whenever I write
about structural power and privilege, people who benefit most from
those systems respond that they are now victims of an unfairly
stacked deck. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the pushback against
what some dub critical race theory, or what I would call a more
accurate portrayal of our countrys history. The following week, I
wrote about the hidden stories of Dalit oppression behind Seattles
recently passed caste discrimination ordinance. In both cases,
people who have benefited from the unearned advantages of white
supremacy or caste privilege have complained they are the ones who
are really suffering.
How a Texas Girl Scared of School Shootings Was
Punished (Dana)
FromThe Dallas Morning
News: The 13-year-old girl was in gym
class when she said she heard a boy tell another classmate, Dont
come to school tomorrow. She didnt think much of it at first. But
by the end of the school day, the eighth-grader couldnt stop
turning those words over in her head. The sentence Dont come to
school tomorrow sounded scar...
As a former member of the skeptic
community who hung out with the same people Rebecca is talking
about here, this is a good and rather depressing summary of skeptic
thought over the last few decades.
Welcome to The Daily Wrap
Up, a concise show dedicated to bringing you the most relevant
independent news, as we see it, from the last 24 hours
(3/3/23).
As always, take the information discussed in the video below and
research it for yourself, and come to your own conclusions. Anyone
telling you what the truth is, or claiming they have the answer, is
likely leading you astray, for one reason or another. Stay
Vigilant.
(https://www.rokfin.com/TLAVagabond)(https://www.bitchute.com/channel/24yVcta8zEjY/)
I hadnt heard of the Daily Clout before, its just another far
right histrionic pseudo-journalistic platform for particularly
ignorant pundits. This morning I learned that theyre claiming the
COVID vaccine will make your penis rot and fall off. Ive had four
shots, I guess I need to worry.
Or not worry. This woman is reading through Pfizers internal
documentation of their trials, and jumping on every chance
occurrence as a causal indictment of the treatment. One person got
an epithelial cancer, another had a blood clot, etc., etc., etc.
but thats to be expected in an large sample of the population in a
clinical trial. Some of the participants might have died in a car
accident, but you dont leap to the assumption that the vaccine
caused the accident. You have to compare the frequency in the test
group to the frequency in the general population.
Then I learn the Daily Clout was founded by Naomi Wolf. OK. Im
done. My penis is relieved.
The state of Strong Towns is strong and the movement is
growing. Thats the takeaway from the newly released
2022 Strong Towns Annual Report, which looks back at a year of
great progress and ahead to an ambitious agenda for 2023.
This year ended with record levels of new members
(1,437) and total membership (3,665). This surge was fueled by a
broadening of our audience and a growing awareness of the Strong
Towns message. The result of this increase is that we see more
members working in cities and towns to change the way that streets
are constructed, challenge how public funds are spent, and lead the
way to a more responsible pattern of development, the report
states.
Youll also find member testimonials in the report,
including a student who switched majors to better pursue the Strong
Towns approach in his profession, and members using the Strong
Towns toolkit to pursue meaningful change in their
communities.
The report spotlights five priority campaigns, and
youll see content dedicated to these topics through all Strong
Towns channels this year:
Strong Towns presents pointed critiques and policy
guidance to remove the barriers that prevent a neighborhood from
evolving over time in response to local needs.
This was supposed to be a heavy research morning
weve started a new experiment in the lab and spiders need to be
assayed, and we were going to do some scanning of egg sacs with our
confocal, and I was figuring Id be neck deep in spider work until
at least noon. But then my student called in sick, which was
exactly the right thing to do (COVID is going around the student
body again), and I had to postpone everything until Monday. I
wouldnt want to deprive her of the fun part of science!
Instead, I did the drudgery part of science, feeding all the
animals. They didnt really need it, they had mealworms earlier this
week, and look like little brown beach balls right now. I wouldnt
want them to wake up feeling peckish and discover the larder was
empty this weekend.
I found two new egg sacs. Two others look very close to
emergence, so I sorted those out into new small containers. The
confinement makes it easier to remove newly scampering
spiderlings.
Now Im staring at a stack of lab reports and exams and senior
thesis drafts that Im going to have to get done this weekend. I
also have to compose a genetics exam to mail out this evening.
First, though, I have to deliver another lecture to my other class.
There will be no joy in Morris today.
It's become a virtual religion among America's CEO class:
maximize efficiency no matter what it does to customers,
communities, or employees - Inefficiency, it turns out, has
considerable upsides
This novel by Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka won the
prestigious Booker
Prize for 2022. He is the second Sri Lankan to win the prize,
after Michael Ondaatje. The story is set in 1990 and deals with the
carnage that engulfed that country in the decades leading up to
that time, with thousands of people, mostly ordinary civilians,
dying in the conflicts with suicide-bomb explosions in crowded
places, people disappearing, mysterious death squads operating with
impunity (mysterious only in the sense that people were fearful of
publicly and openly saying what everyone knew, that these were
plain-clothes government forces in unmarked vehicles carrying out
extrajudicial kidnappings and executions), and dead and mutilated
bodies found floating in rivers, lakes, and canals. As far as I am
aware, to this day no one among the senior police, military, and
political figures who ordered and executed these atrocities has
been held accountable for their actions.
The story begins with narrator Maali Almeida waking up in a
waiting room in the afterlife where he is told that he has seven
days (moons) to try and figure out how and why he died before he
moves on to the next realm. This book falls into the category of
magic realism so we are in a world where the spirits of dead people
are the main characters as they move around not sensed by the
living and are able to go anywhere and listen and watch, though
they cannot communicate with the living, except for a very few
spirits and that too in very limited ways.
Almeida is 35 years old at the time of his death, a promiscuous
gay man in a dont ask, dont tell society that required gay people
to be formally closeted even though who is gay, and that included
leading politicians and other public figures, is often an open
secret. He was a freelance war photojournalist and fixer for
foreign reporters, going into areas of conflict and capturing the
horrific brutality that he saw as well as the official lies and
deceptions. In his allotted seven days, in addition to finding out
who murdered him and why, he also wants to somehow enable his
living friends to find where he has hidden a cache of negatives
that, if the photos are revealed to the public, he thinks will show
the unspeakable brutality that was inflicted on people and expose
the complicity of the government in it and thus end the wars.
The book is unsparing in its condemnation of all the parties
that were involved in the death and destruction, as in this passage
where Almeida recalls a cheatsheet he made while still alive for an
American journalist bewildered by the many different groups
participating in the carnage.
Dear Andy
To an outsider, the Sri Lankan tragedy will appear confusing and
irreparable. It neednt be either. Here a...
Marjorie Taylor Greene is calling for red states to divorce
Democrats, to not allow them to vote.----I divorced red states
years ago, with my feet and my wallet.
By The Corbett Report Welcome to #NewWorldNextWeek the video
series from Corbett Report and Media Monarchy that covers some of
the most important developments...
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug ads have been accused of giving
dual and confusing messages and even being "bipolar." Even as
viewers see rainbows, sunsets, puppies and smiling grandparents,
the audio cautions that the advertised drug may cause allergic
reactions, severe infections, brain bleeds, seizures and more
including death. Will the drugs make us better or kill us? Do you
have the sound on or off?
As the media has reminded us repeatedly, last
week marked the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine.
However, amid the focus on weapons, battles, and speculation about
how the war might end, we risk losing sight of the broader
historical and geopolitical issues that led to the Russian
invasion.
In this weeksWhoWhatWhypodcast, former
AmbassadorWilliam Courtneyjoins us to discuss the complex history underlying
the conflict. Courtney has extensive experience in foreign service,
having served as ambassador to Kazakhstan and Georgia; as a special
assistant to the president for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia; and as
special assistant to the under secretary of state for political
affairs. He is currently an adjunct senior fellow at the RAND
Corporation.
Courtney first draws parallels between Russias
failure to adapt on the battlefield and its inability to adjust to
diplomatic challenges. He attributes this in part to Russias
current internal repression and penchant for external aggression,
which he argues resembles the authoritarianism of both the czarist
and Soviet periods.
Courtney also assesses the Wests responsibility
for the current situation in Russia, citing decisions made after
the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the same time, he compares
Putins actions to those of former Soviet leaderLeonid Brezhnev, who, he says,
basically ran the Soviet Union into the ground.
According to Courtney, Russian history
indicates that the country will not back down in Ukraine regardless
of the human and economic costs until a more liberal regime takes
power in Moscow.
Courtney also explains Chinas limited
influence, Europes security concerns, even in the face of a weak
Russian military, and why Ukraine must shift from a defensive to a
counteroffensive military strategy.
Ultimately, Courtney believes that even with
tighter sanctions, a united West, and a strong Ukraine, Russia
could remain engaged in the war for a very long time.
Communities far and wide believe that they have a parking problem.
This concern generally ranks as a top problem voiced in public
meetings and shows up in master plans and visioning documents. Lack
of parking creeps in as an excuse for declining or stagnant
economic growth, and the general solution comes in the form of
hyper regulation through parking mandates, or through proposals of
publicly subsidized parking lots or garage proposals. These
proposals are giant leaps in the wrong direction, considering that
parking solutions are hiding in plain sight.
I recently was talking to one of my friends in South
Carolina, who was trying to assist a very successful locally owned
business in his community. The success of this business has
resulted in the need for additional parking to accommodate weekend
crowds that drive in from adjacent communities. The business is
experiencing success, and so the need for additional parking is a
great problem to havebut its a problem, nonetheless.
This community is not alone in jumping to the
conclusion that the solution is for the city to clear a block and
build a parking lot. This is what their city had done in the past,
with the well-intentioned desire to encourage redevelopment, and to
attempt to prevent a parking problem in the future. Without getting
lost in the numbers, we can assume it cost a significant amount of
money to construct the parking lot, probably took a lot of time to
negotiate a land purchase, and resulted in a complex construction
project. In short, they got an expensive project that inevitably
will become a fiscal liability thatll never pay for
itself.
The previously constructed parking lot is a nice
parking lot with frontage on the main street, lots of plantings,
and several public art pieces in the landscaping. However, the
parking lot consumes 300 feet of frontage on the main street, which
carries a decent amount of...
by Jodi S. Cohen,
ProPublica, and Jennifer Smith Richards,
Chicago Tribune
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of
power. Sign up for
Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the
country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.
This story is a collaboration between ProPublica and the Chicago
Tribune.
A new bill in the Illinois House aims to stop schools from
working with police to issue students tickets for minor
misbehavior, a harmful and sometimes costly practice that many
districts have continued despite pleas to stop from the states top
education officials.
An investigation by ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune revealed
last year that school-based
ticketing was rampant across Illinois, with police writing
citations that can result in a fine of up to $750 for conduct once
handled by the principals office.
A 2015 Illinois law prohibits schools from fining students as a
form of discipline; school officials instead have been referring
students to police, who then ticket the students for fighting,
littering, theft, possessing vaping devices and other violations of
local ordinances.
The new legislation, introduced last month, would amend the
states school code to
make it
illegal for school personnel to involve police to issue
students citations for incidents that can be addressed through a
schools disciplinary process.
We have to close that loophole and end school-based ticketing,
said Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Democrat from Chicago who is sponsoring
the legislation. There is no place for this type of system to be in
our schools.
Fords legislation deals only with school tickets, which are
issued for civil violations of local laws and often are adjudicated
in administrative hearings. The bill is not intended to stop police
from arresting students for crimes. It would also not prevent
schools from seeking restitution from students for lo...
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of
power. Sign up to receive
our biggest stories as soon as theyre published.
Intuit, the Silicon Valley software giant behind TurboTax,
doesnt provide the only way to file your taxes electronically, but
it has
captured the market share like no other.
For over two decades, Intuit waged a
campaign to prevent the federal government from making filing
taxes simple and free for most taxpayers. The company spent
millions of dollars on lobbying to restrict the IRS from
creating its own free filing system, all while growing its
multibillion-dollar franchise.
If you made $73,000 or less in 2022, you can file your
federal taxes for free through the IRS Free File
program. You must start at the IRS Free File page to
get the correct tax products.
Why Do I Have to Pay TurboTax?
Intuit once participated in the IRS Free File program, a
public-private partnership between the IRS and tax software
companies to provide free tax filing services to millions of
lower-income Americans. But it
left the program in 2021 after ProPublica detailed the many
ways TurboTax tricked Americans into paying to file their
return.
The floor is yours. Posit your opinion and defend it if
need be. Some Things to consider: ** Marbury vs
Madison (a review) ** F-16 or Su-27 (article here) I will note that
all F-16s are not created equal. The F-16 A/B (1976) is a different
aircraft than the F-16CJ/DJ Block 50D/52D (Wild []
Hersh broke the same laws that the U.S. government accuses
Julian Assange of breaking. But unlike Assange, a foreigner whom
the U.S. has unsuccessfully been trying to extradite from England
for years, Hersh is an American citizen living right here in the
United States
We are in an unusually cool period ahead
and, believe it or not, more snowflakes are expected over the
western lowlands during the next few days
But before I discuss the forecast, we need
to talk.
There is a substantial amount of confusion about the differences
between predicted snowfall and snow accumulation or snow
depth.
This difference is particularly true when
temperatures are marginal for snow.
Even when the atmosphere is below freezing,
the depth of snowfall on the ground can vary immensely.
If the ground is above freezing (as it often
is around the mild western lowlands), the snow can melt, resulting
in far less (or NO) accumulation. This is particularly true
on asphalt or concrete streets that support the conduction of heat
from below.
Snow can also compress under the weight of the
snow above.
Bottom line: event with cold
conditions in the atmosphere, the depth of snow can end up much
less than expected.
But the situation is "worse" than that with temperatures are on the
margin for snow. In marginal situa...
Homeless people need all the help and support the
government can give. Unfortunately, some are left to their own
devices and they end up sinking deeper into poverty.
What they need are jobs. When a person feels
productive, so many things can change, and these are often for the
good.
In a pilot program thats meant as an answer to the
homelessness problem thats happening in Kansas City, the state made
sure that they were provided with part-time work. This helped many
immensely especially when getting the housing they desperately
needed.
Kansas City Missouri has also now witnessed a
lowering in litter collection because the pandemic slowed down
court cases and community service clean-up programs.
By putting 26 of the citys 1,800 homeless people to
work, changes happened. They made them clean the streets that they
stayed in. This move targeted two issues in one go and they were
able to remove more than 67,000 pounds of trash by the time the
work time ended and this also gave the homeless workers the ability
to consider themselves employed on a housing application.
We really wanted to focus on people that
were home...
After calling for trans people to be taken care of,
Turning Point CEO Charlie Kirk is launching a campus tour. Students
and community members in Davis, CA are calling for protests.
Originally posted to Indybay.
The 47-year-old mayor of College Park, Maryland, has been
arrested for possessing child pornography, Fox 5 reported. Mayor
Patrick Wojahn was arrested by Prince Georges County police on
Thursday and was charged with 40 counts of possession of child
exploitative material and 16 counts of distributing child
exploitative material. In a letter of resignation this Wednesday,
Wojahn, []
The third, and final, installment of The Linguistics of White
Supremacy series brings the matter full circle. White supremacy is
a state of mind; this series explains how and why anyone can be a
white supremacist.
Former President Donald Trump U.S. Capitol Police officers who
were injured in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot as well as Democratic
lawmakers who witnessed the violence that day, the Justice
Department said Thursday in a federal court case. The Associated
Press reported that the DOJ told a D.C. federal appeals court that
the lawsuits should []
During a segment on the Real Americas Voice network, Steve
Bannon addressed a woman who lamented that young people dont know
anything about the policies theyre voting for. Bannon also echoed a
sentiment recently voiced by his former boss, Donald Trump, who
called on his followers to stop watching Fox News. Speaking to a
Real []
When I was younger, I went to a university but
dropped out due to mental health struggles. I never finished my
degree and it was a sore subject for a very long time. I wanted to
go to college so badly so when it didnt work out, I felt like a
complete failure.
In my early thirties, my mental health was a
little more stable and I enrolled in a community college. I
eventually graduated with an associates degree in commercial art. I
was never really great at school but the commercial art program was
very hands-on; everything I learned was very practical and I
actually did really well. I enjoyed my time there.
But it still wasnt a four-year
degree.
For the longest time, I said one day Ill go
back even as I got older. That would be nearly impossible with the
amount of student loan debt I have, not to mention my other
responsibilities taking care of my daughter and paying bills.
Still, I wanted to go back to collegeone day.
But somethings changed. For the past few years,
I have been able to pursue the things I love art and writing. I
also have a part-time job working in the arts and mental health.
Its perfect. It is right where I need to be, and for once, I dont
want to go back to school. Im happy where I am.
When I think about college now, I dont think it
would be worth the money. Ive gotten lots of opportunities without
it and Im fulfilled. Dont get me wrong I would be very proud had I
finished a degree when I was younger, but it doesnt seem to matter
to me anymore. Is that wrong?
Im not going to lie sometimes I feel guilty for
not wanting to go back to school. It was something that was
expected of me and I didnt follow through. Shouldnt I want to
finish? Obviously, its not impossible or unheard of for someone in
their forties to return to college; I just dont want to. Its no
longer important to me.
I certainly dont regret the time I spent at the
university. I found a few classes really interesting and some of
the things I learned have really stuck with me, but I wonder if I
couldve gotten the same experience elsewhere. Was it really worth
the boatload of debt Im in now?
Can anyone relate? Is a degree really worth it?
No matter what path you took in education, if you could go back in
time, would you do the same thing? Is there a better
way?
Most jobs that actually pay a livable wage
require a four-year degree, but if that wasnt the case, would a
college education really be worth it? In many ways, we pay a hefty
price to go to school, would a degree still ha...
By B.N. Frank Decades of research has already revealed that
exposure to wireless radiation (see 1, 2, 3) including from mobile
phones (cell and cordless)...
By Sarah Prentice Columbia University will end its COVID-19
vaccine mandate in May 2023, according to a
recent announcement. Out of the eight Ivy
League universities, Columbia...
Russias economy is showing some resilience, according to Kirby,
who added, however, that its not clear whether this can be
sustained for the long haul.
Russian forces are conducting an operation against a group of
Ukrainian saboteurs that intruded across the border into Bryansk
region, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday.
In a post to Twitter this Wednesday, acquitted murderer O.J.
Simpson (although hes guilty AF) gave his thoughts on what he
thinks the outcome of Alex Murdaughs double murder trial will be.
According to Simpson, the trial will turn out just like his did. It
wouldnt surprise me in the least if this guy beats []
Nablus, Occupied West Bank, Palestine At least 11 Palestinians
were killed on Feb. 22, 2023, in a large Israeli army incursion
into the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Three of the dead were
elderly and one was a child. More than 100 were injured by live
bullets and six reported in critical to very critical condition,
according to the Ministry of Health.
The raid was one of the largest and deadliest in decades and
featured over 150 Israeli soldiers and dozens of military vehicles.
Last month,
an Israeli raid on the Jenin Refugee Camp killed 10
Palestinians.
Israeli forces have killed over 65 Palestinians in the first two
months of the year, putting this year on course to be one of the
deadliest in many years as the far-right Israeli government is now
in control. Over
171 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank last year by
Israeli forces.
The Health Ministry identified the 11 victims as; Adnan Sabe
Baara (72), Anan Showkat Annab (66), Abdulhadi Abdul Aziz Ashqar
(61), Tamer Nimr Minawi (33), Mohammad Khaled Anbousi, 25, Musab
Munir Owais (26), Hossam Bassam Isleem (24), and Mohammad
Abdulghani (23), Waleed Riyad Dakheel (23), and Jaser Jamil Qaneer
(23), and Mohammad Farid Shaaban (16).
All except 66-year-old Annab who died from gas inhalation were
killed by Israeli army gunfire while 102 others were injured from
live bullet wounds and admitted to Nablus hospitals, six said to be
in critical to very critical condition. Two journalists were also
shot by live bullets as they covered the army incursion.
I was here and undercover special forces stormed Nablus
at night, taking control of a place for the army later. At nine
oclock in the morning, people say, the army stormed Nablus and
besieged the youth. There was heavy shooting and we couldnt look
from the windows or from the door, and they were shooting directly
at each other.
Nablus resident and eyewitness to the
raid
The large army force raided the Old City of Nablus at peak
business hours while students were in school, and surrounded a
house, shooting in all directions.
Residents confronted the soldiers, who, in addition to firing
live bullets, fired tear gas and sound bombs at the hom...
Welcome to The Daily Wrap
Up, a concise show dedicated to bringing you the most relevant
independent news, as we see it, from the last 24 hours
(3/2/23).
As always, take the information discussed in the video below and
research it for yourself, and come to your own conclusions. Anyone
telling you what the truth is, or claiming they have the answer, is
likely leading you astray, for one reason or another. Stay
Vigilant.
(https://www.rokfin.com/TLAVagabond)(https://www.bitchute.com/channel/24yVcta8zEjY/)
https://rumble.com/embed/v28x0my/?pub=2q643
House
Republicans and state election officials signaled their support of
states expanding early voting procedures in states where
Republicans can't yet tighten election rules.
Aging in place allows older adults to stay in their own homes or
apartments until they die. While wanting to opt out of moving to a
retirement center is common, they might be unable to stay home if
they do not plan ahead. Obtaining long long-term care insurance,
improving home safety and accessibility, and making []
Identify the Aircraft Separating Bullshit
from History (opinion) Russias unprovoked invasion of Ukraine didnt
have much to do with NATO. Putin thought of NATO as a paper tiger
without the ammunition to fight for a week, which turned out to be
true. His ambitions where Ukraine was concerned had more to do
[]
Like
most hobbies these days, it didnt take long for the radical left to
infiltrate the 'Games Done Quick' speedrunning community and twist
it to their own ends.
Minneapolis, MN A Minneapolis Public Schools teacher talked to
Unicorn Riot about the Minneapolis Police Departments (MPD) newly
created PEACE Recruitment Program and the teachers unions recent
decision to oppose it.
The police are desperate
now and theyre coming for our kids.
Minneapolis Public School Teacher and Union Member Jessica
Garraway
Minneapolis North High School Special Education teacher and
union board member at-large Jessica Garraway brought the idea to
the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT59) to oppose the MPDs
PEACE Recruitment Plan targeting high school students. She helped
draft a resolution and bring it to the body for a vote.
Garraway, a police abolitionist, participated in the Lake Street
protests outside of the Third Precinct in the days following George
Floyds murder by officer Derek Chauvin. She told Unicorn Riot that
cops around the country are in a crisis of legitimacy,
especially in Minneapolis, where she notes that the
department is down a third in numbers with struggling retention
rates since Floyds murder.
MinnPost recently reported that there were 602 sworn officers,
down from 900 in May 2020. The activist educator cites that as an
achievementwon by the movement
following Floyds murder.
On Dec. 16, 2022, MFT59 passed Garraways resolution opposing the MPDs high
school student recruitment program. This comes more than two years
after the Minneapolis School Board voted to end its contract with
MPD and take school resource officers (SROs) out of Minneapolis
Public Schools (MPS) following the murder of Floyd by former MPD
officer Chauvin.
The following is an excerpt from the
press release by MFT59:
The Minneapolis Police Department has a known track
record of abuses [against] people of color, highlighted especially
by the killing of Black men like George Floyd, Winston Smith and
Jamar Clark in the communities in which we serve. Also, in past
youth recruitment efforts like the Minneapolis [Explorers] Program,
youth have reported being exposed to a racist and sexist
environment where sexual [harassment] was also
reported.
Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, Local 59, Teacher
Chapter
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of
power.
Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing
around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every
week.
Colorado lawmakers are considering two bills that would reform
the way family courts in the state handle cases involving
allegations of domestic abuse, saying ProPublicas reporting on the
issue has catalyzed efforts to change the states custody evaluation
system.
Rep. Mike Weissman, an Aurora Democrat and the chair of the
state House Judiciary Committee, praised ProPublicas investigation,
which found that four custody evaluators on the state-approved
roster last year had been
charged with harassment or domestic violence. In one case, the
charges were dismissed. One case that of psychologist Mark Kilmer
led to a conviction. In the two others, it is unclear how the
charges were resolved.
Rep. Meg Froelich, a Democrat representing Englewood and a
co-sponsor of one of the bills, said she gave a copy of the article
to every judiciary committee member before the legislative session
got underway.
We dont usually see in-depth coverage on this kind of thing,
Weissman said.
ProPublicas story revealed that Kilmer was appointed to evaluate
custody disputes involving allegations of domestic abuse despite
Kilmer himself being charged with assault in 2006, after his
then-wife said he pushed her to the bathroom floor, according to
police reports. He pleaded guilty to harassment in 2007. Kilmer
told ProPublica that his guilty plea was a result of poor legal
representation and that his ex-wife made false allegations to get
him arrested.
By Neenah Payne In the video Anti-War Activist Infighting
Reaches Boiling Point; Evidence US Assassinated Haiti PM To Stop
China, Kim Iversen listed the 10...
Pitting Americans against each other by race, geography, or even
politics when simultaneously invoking bloodshed as a justified
outcome is as anti-American as it gets
North Valley Military Institute's (NVMI) Superintendent claims
to have the support of California's Congressional delegation. Are
these representatives aware of the charter school's sordid
history?
Edward Snowden is probably the 21st century's greatest American
hero, driven into exile under threat of life imprisonment for
exposing the crimes of agencies like those Walder worked
for.----While McCarthy should find the comparison flattering, he
isn't putting his life or freedom, or even his job, at risk by
doing the right thing here.
PICKS are stories from many sources, selected
by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are
important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or
amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter.
Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. topicks@whowhatwhy.org.
Father of Cell Phone Sees Dark Side but Also Hope
in New Tech (Maria)
The authorwrites, The man credited with
inventing the cellphone 50 years ago had only one concern then
about the brick-sized device with a long antenna: Would it work?
These days Martin Cooper frets like everybody else about his
inventions impacts on society from the loss of privacy to the risk
of internet addiction to the rapid spread of harmful content,
especially among kids. Yet the 94-year-old self-described dreamer
also marvels at how far cellphone design and capabilities have
advanced, and he believes the technologys best days may still be
ahead of it in areas such as education and health care.
Exposed: Foxs Pander-for-Profit Business Model
(Dana)
FromThe
Bulwark: Fox News loves to project
bravado, but the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit shows
how deeply threatened the network is by flimsy, fringe competitors
and how executives and hosts talked themselves into dishonestly
pandering to viewers to keep ratings and profits up. A pair of
court filings released Monday and last week by Dominion reveals
frantic discussions inside the network about losing viewers by
correctly calling Arizona for Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
Leaders at Fox then hushed truth-tellers and latched on to election
conspiracy theories to lure viewers back.
Tennessee Governor Vows to Sign Anti-Drag Bill as
Photo Surfaces (Reader Steve)
The authorwrites, Republican Gov. Bill Lee
says it would be ridiculous to conflate a recently surfaced
yearbook photo of him wearing womens clothing in high school to
drag show performances currently under attack in Tenn...
While the world has been distracted, even amused, by the
diplomatic tussle around China's recent high-altitude balloon
flights across North America, there are signs that Beijing and
Washington are preparing for something so much more serious: armed
conflict over Taiwan[...]
By Matt Agorist Homerville, GA This month, without warning, the
taxpayers of Homerville found out that the police department they
have been paying for...
By Tyler Durden Now that soaring rates have burst the commercial
real estate bubble, the carnage is coming fast and furious. This
morning Bloomberg reports...
Bullet Points: ** Hunter is looking for a new
lawyer ** Democrats wouldnt fear President Trump if Pedo Joe
actually received 81 million votes. ** AG Garland According
to Garland, the Department of Justice doesnt prosecute many Antifa
attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers because they frequently occur
at night. He said on []
Across the country, city streets are subject to state
control. Whether its
Philadelphia;
Richmond, Virginia; or
San Antonio, conflicting priorities between municipal
transportation departments and their state counterparts is often
cited as one of the biggest barriers to pedestrian safety
improvements. Chicago is taking a step toward mending that
relationship.
The Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) and
Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) recently reached an
agreement that could expedite safety improvements along some of the
most heavily traveled streets in Chicago. The Memorandum of
Understanding (MOU) preapproves several pedestrian and cyclist
safety features so that they wouldnt be subject to comprehensive
IDOT review prior to installation.
This MOU is an important step forward in creating safer
streets for our most vulnerable road users, such as children,
people with disabilities, older adults and people walking, biking,
and rolling, said CDOT Commissioner, Gia Biagi.
In the last decade, bike and pedestrian fatalities have
made up an increasing share of traffic deaths in Chicago. In
a piece for Streetsblog, Colin
Anderson plotted data showcasing that the supermajority of
pedestrian fatalities occurred in the crosswalk, and that cyclists
were at higher risk in city-designated bike lanes, suggesting that
the bike infrastructure that currently exists on these routes isnt
sufficient for protecting bike riders.
Approximately 400 miles of road in Chicago are
maintained by CDOT but owned by IDOT, subjecting them to the
uniform standards of the latter. Some of these state-owned roads
are adjacent to schools, others are quiet, residential streets or
intersections teaming with retail and restaurants. Attempts by CDOT
to champion features like pedestrian islands, protected bike lanes,
and curb extensions in these places generally required IDOT
approval, and often didnt get it. In one instance, IDOT officials
objected to the pedestrian islands, citing a state regulation that
required street designs that make it easy for the drivers of
60-foot semi trucks to make turns onto state roads,
Streetsblog reported.
Many like Erica Shroeder, Director of Public
Information for CDOT, are hopeful that the MOU will empower nuance
on Chicagos streets and maybe even ripple across the...
We learn how prosecutors can turn one of the darkest days in a
mothers life into a prison term, and hear Tarra Simmons journey
from behind bars to writing laws.
AI applications continue to astound. They are growing faster
than any other major technology, including the internet, telephone,
automobile etc. --Herein, my interview with an Awakened AI.
Members of Congressholleringinsultsat the president as he
attempts to deliver his State of the Union address. The
presidenttrollinghis
hecklersas though he were performing
at a wrestling match which his predecessoractuallydid. High-ranking leadersdressed for aHollywood
red carpetrather than the peoples
business. More shocking than the collapse of decorum is the fact
that we are not shocked. Notable too is how we allow ourselves to
be distracted from
importantissuesby childish nonsense.
Never mind polarization; how did our politics
become so viciously vacuous?
First, politics is no longer politics. The
traditional basis of politics in the West, in which
ideologiescompete over
policy, has been replaced by vapid Team
Politics. Power is no longer a means to the goal of passing
legislation and enacting regulations that change society, but an
end in and of itself. Parties no longer promote platforms;
theRepublican Partydidnt
even bother to have onein 2020.
Democrats and Republicans promulgate their respective
culturalvibes.
Party officials and politicians used to dream
of securing a place in our historical pantheon, the afterlife of
the republic statues, their fa...
On Sunday evening Israeli settlers stormed the town of Hawara,
near the West Bank city of Nablus, burning down Palestinian homes,
vehicles, killing one and injuring hundreds. The attack has been
labelled as a pogrom, which was backed by the Israeli military.
Around 64 Palestinians have been killed and thousands injured, so
far this year,
Read More...
Known as the architects of the sea, coral
creates the foundational layer that supports an abundance of
biodiversity. Although occupying less than 1 percent of the ocean
floor, coral reefs contain over 25 percent of all marine life,
provide jobs and vital food sources to millions, and safeguard
coastlines from storms and erosion.
Despite their importance, coral reefs are
declining at a devastating rate. Climate change, overfishing,
declining water quality, pollution, and adverse coastal development
are all jeopardizing the future of these underwater worlds. An
estimated 14 percent of the worlds coral has been lost since 2009,
and we are projected to lose up to 90 percent of coral by 2050
unless drastic action is taken to limit global warming.
Coral reefs support a quarter of the worlds
marine biodiversity which in turn supports people with food,
income, and protection, says Edith Mertz, who recently completed a
doctorate in global environmental studies at Sophia University,
Japan. Corals are an essential part of the marine environment, and
losing them will have major economic and social consequences for
many countries.
To protect coral, marine biologists and
conservationists are pushing globally for coral restoration
projects. These projects seek to return coral to previously denuded
or impacted areas, aiming to repopulate the reefs with coral and
marine life. The problem with returning the same species of coral
to an area where it has previously died is that without mitigating
the cause of its death, at some point, it will face the same
eventuality.
Thats where assisted migration comes in.
Assisted migration involves moving a species in response to climate
change when they are unable to move or adapt fast enough on their
own. Assisted migration for some species has received growing
interest over the years; however, little information is available
on whether it is a viable option for coral reefs.
Assisted migration is a very new field, its a
very new topic, and even though there has been a lot of discussion
about the ethics involved, very little assisted migrations have
actually been done, Mertz says. Mertzs thesis,Expert Opinions on Assisted Migration and
Ecosystem Pushing in Coral Reefs, is
one of the few papers investigating the possibility of assisted
migration for coral. I think assisted migration is something we
could do in certain places to save coral for the future, but we
have to be realistic about it.
Assisted migration remains controversial among
conse...
Add Washington to the list of states taking legislative
action to address a growing housing shortage. A
new bill, currently in committee in both the state House and
Senate, is intended to spark development in places where parking minimums have
hindered housing starts. If House Bill 1351/Senate Bill 5456 were
to pass, municipalities would no longer be allowed to impose
parking minimums on certain types of projects in
close proximity to public transit.
The bill sets specific guidelines for new residential
or commercial developments tied to frequency of, and proximity to,
transit service. To be exempt from parking minimums, new
developments must be located within one-half mile of a transit stop
with service every 12 to 15 minutes, while those within a quarter
mile must receive service every 30 minutes.
In addition, developments with fewer than 20 housing
units, or where the project dedicates 20% of its units to
low-income, disabled, or elderly households, couldnt be challenged
over parking minimums even if a municipality sought to object. This
policy change would allow, for instance, a multiplex apartment in
which all residents use transit or human power for transportation,
to be built without the costly addition of surface parking.
Legislators also hope it provides incentives for infill development
of missing-middle housing in transit corridors.
For three decades, a little-known group of mitigation
specialists has helped save death-penalty defendants by documenting
their childhood traumas. A rare look inside one case.
Eric Maestas didnt have much time to spare on an afternoon in
April when he stepped out of the old Memorial Middle School
gymnasium with an armful of food, water and an extra pair of
slippers.
The supplies were for his parents, waiting for him at a nearby
campground. Theyd been evacuated from their Cleveland home,
threatened by what was becoming the biggest wildfire in New Mexico
history. His parents were elderly, his father on oxygen. They
feared their home had been consumed by flames.
Yet Maestas took a few moments to tell me, a reporter he didnt
know, what it was like to flee that home, that land, that village
full of history and memories.
Everybody was panicking,
he said, placing the slippers on top of boxes in the back seat
of his sedan. They shut down all the electricity. They shut down
all the cellphones. There was nothing. And everybody was fighting
to get gas and get out of there. It was pretty crazy.
The blaze he was fleeing was the result of two planned fires,
ignited by the United States Forest Service, that escaped
containment lines and became the biggest wildfire in New Mexico
history. The Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire ultimately burned more
than 340,000 acres, destroyed at least 900 structures, including
400 homes, and forced about 15,000 people to flee. Then, monsoon
rains fell on the scarred earth and floods further damaged rural
homes, ranches, forests, watersheds and centuries-old
waterways.
As a reporter with Source New Mexico, Ive relayed similar tales
about this disaster dozens of times since that Saturday afternoon
in April.
Across more than 100 articles
Source New Mexico has published since that first day, weve kept
elected officials and state and federal agencies aware that the
crisis here is still unfolding. With your help, weve revealed how
the Forest Service...
It began when Ukrainian publication Zerkalo Nedeli disclosed the
details of a 13 billion hryvnia ($353 million) contract between the
Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and Aktiv Company LLC for the
purchase of food supplies at extremely inflated prices.
One Day in France PaulM said: I would bet the
Danish soldiers are the happiest soldiers. This triggers a war
story Some years ago now. Maybe ten or so, I was in Lyon, at the
Interpol General Secretariat, minding my own business, more or
less. I was asked to attend a meeting []
The law lays down its hand of justice to those who
have committed crimes. For some, they get whats due them. For
others, they find themselves locked behind bars despite being
innocent. Unfair circumstances led them to that.
While lawyers and detectives work hard to gather
evidence, some cases are simply difficult to solve. If you can just
imagine the case of these two men who had been suffering for years
only to get help from an unwitting ally.
Two men had been wrongfully-imprisoned for more than
20 years. However, for the first time, they were able to spend
Christmas with their families. Credit should be given to a podcast
and non-profit advanced evidence because they were able to finally
prove their innocence.
The men were Darrell Lee Clark and
Cain Joshua Storey. They were merely teenagers
when they had to be sent for trial for a murder of their
15-year-old friend. The said friend died of gunshot wounds at a
party back in 1996.
Clacks charges were all dropped after a motion for a
new trial was field with the help of his attorneys from
the Georgia
Innocence Project. Because of this, he and Storey became free
men. You never think something like that is going to
happen to you, Clark said when he asked to make a
statement on the matter.
Introduction by Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio I thought for a
long time whether or not to publish this article on the shameful
lies spread by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the most
important agency investing in the United States of America and
perhaps the entire world. I thought about it because as a
journalist, faithful []
In a post to his Truth Social account this Wednesday, former
President Donald Trump took aim at Fox Corporation chairman Rupert
Murdoch, most likely in response to news stories detailing his
deposition in Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against
Fox News, where he admitted that some hosts at the network endorsed
false claims about voter []
Speaking at an event last week organized by the Texas Tea Party
Republican Women, anti-LGBTQ activist and self-described
Christocrat Rick Scarborough said he is trying to take over
America for Jesus and is working to expunge this entire state of
every immoral book in the library. They went after me as trying to
take over the []
In this column, we present our monthly roundup of political
prisoner, prison rebel, and repression news, happenings,
announcements, action and analysis. Packed in as always are
updates, fundraisers, and birthdays.
A short history in commemoration of the life and times
of Mexican anarchist, Librado Rivera, 91 years since his
death.
Communism must be free like love; that is to
say, it must be anarchist, or not exist at all
Librado Rivera
Ninety-one years ago, today, March 1, 1932, Mexican anarchist
Librado Rivera died in Mexico City. Rivera was a pivotal figure in
the early 20th century transnational anarchist movement,
whose revolutionary activities spanned from the Partido Liberal
Mexicano and the anarchist newspaper, Regeneracin, to
post-revolutionary Mexico, the anarchist group, Los Hermanos
Rojos, and the anarchist newspapers Sagitario,
Avante!, and Paso!. Outside of small groups of
anarchists and historians, the majority located in Mexico, Librado
Rivera has been mostly forgotten.
Born in 1864 in San Luis Potos, Mexico, Rivera studied at the
normal teacher training school in the state capital, later becoming
a teacher of history and geography. In 1900, Rivera joined the
Ponciano Arriaga liberal group in San Luis Potos, one of many
liberal groups forming across Mexico at the time who were opposed
to the Porfirio Daz dictatorship. Rivera served as delegate for the
Ponciano Arriaga group at the first national liberal congress in
San Luis Potos in 1901. There he met Ricardo Flores Magn. The two
became lifelong comrades.
Due to his participation in the liberal groups, and their
radicalizing critique of the Porfirio Daz government, Librado
Rivera was jailed twice, first in San Luis Potos, and again in
Mexico City, the second time alongside Ricardo and Enrique Flores
Magn. It was during this epoch that Rivera was given the nickname,
Fakir, for his fortitude and capacity for concentration within the
hostile and debilitating prison environment. Unlike the Muslim
Fakir who renounces material comfort dedicating himself to god,
Rivera would renounce material comfort dedicating himself to the
cause of the poor, marginalized, exploited, and oppressed.
In 1905, in consequence of the arrests and heightened
repression, Rivera traveled to the United States, reuniting in
exile with Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magn in St. Louis, Missouri.
There, they formed the Organizing Council of the Partido
Liberal Mexicano and re-initiated the printing of the
newspaper, Regeneracin. It was also in St. Louis,
Missouri, where they would first come into contact with other
immigrant socialists and anarchists, including Emma Goldman and the
Spanish anarchist Florencio Basora.
After the arrest and ongoing persecution of different members of
the Organizing...
The late Pope Benedict XVI surprised the world by resigning in
2013. The cardinal-electors then surprised the world by electing
the Argentine Jesuit Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires
to be the new Pope Francis in March 2013. As the tenth anniversary
of his election approaches, it is time to look back over some
highlights of the doctrinally conservative Pope Francis' papacy
thus far.
Jesus Christ warned his Christian followers to be wary of false
profits. This is comparable to the government of the United States
in the 21st century. The following are samplings of some of those
admonitions. False prophets may make predictions that do not come
true. False prophets may have an unbiblical lifestyle. He will be
[]
Its important to build safe and productive
streets, but how do we ensure those streets are a place people
want to be and live in? Whose responsibility is it to ensure that
buildings interact with the public realm in a delightful way?
Design is hugely impactful in our daily lives: it can determine
if a place is somewhere for people, or if its unlivable and
unusable. And design isnt wholly up to the eye of the beholder. Its
possible to quantify beauty.
Today on the Upzoned podcast, join host Abby
Kinney as she welcomes a special guest: Tristan Cleveland, Strong
Towns member, urban planner at Happy City, and PhD candidate with
Healthy Populations Institute. In this episode, Abby and Cleveland
talk about his recent Planetizen article, The
Responsibility of the Building to the Street.
Over the past week, dozens of cities across the so-called US
took part in the recent week of action in solidarity with
Tortuguita and the ongoing struggle to stop Cop City and defend
the Weelaunee Forest. This out-pouring of solidarity has been
amazing to see, both from the wider autonomous movement and even
mainstream environmental and Left groups.
Many towns organized small events, including nights of writing
letters to those facing charges, benefit shows, and informational
teach-ins and film showings on the struggle itself. Other cities
organized mass marches and protests, bringing attention to the
various corporations and banks that are currently funding the Cop
City project and demanding that they drop their contracts.
The Rage Against the War Machine, which stood up against the US
war on Russia in Ukraine, was the first national anti-war
demonstration in the capital in years. This was a groundbreaking
event, showing that the anti-war movement has revived on a national
scale after years of relative quiescence. Yet this success was not
welcomed by some leftist anti-war activists. --Underlying this are
deeper causes for the conflict.
Absent the implacable resolve to combat terrorism, the Pakistani
Taliban resurgence can have dangerous consequences. There is an
urgent need to reestablish the writ of the state and respect for
coercive state power. The fact that officialdom and the population
at large are not fully aware of the growing threat of
radicalization of society is troubling.
PICKS are stories from many sources, selected
by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are
important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or
amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter.
Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. topicks@whowhatwhy.org.
What Time Is It on the Moon? Europe Pushing for
Lunar Time Zone (Maria)
The authorwrites, With more lunar missions
than ever on the horizon, the European Space Agency wants to give
the moon its own time zone. This week, the agency said space
organizations around the world are considering how best to keep
time on the moon. The idea came up during a meeting in the
Netherlands late last year, with participants agreeing on the
urgent need to establish a common lunar reference time, said the
space agencys Pietro Giordano, a navigation system engineer. A
joint international effort is now being launched towards achieving
this, Giordano said in a statement.
Texas Asks a Trump Judge to Declare Most of the
Federal Government Unconstitutional (DonkeyHotey)
FromVox: Earlier this month, Texass
Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit claiming
that the $1.7 trillion spending law that keeps most of the federal
government including the US military operating through September of
2023 is unconstitutional. Paxtons claims inTexas v. Garland, which turn on
the fact that many of the lawmakers who voted for the bill voted by
proxy, should fail. They are at odds with the Constitutions
explicit text. And a bipartisan panel of a powerful federal appeals
court in Washington, DC, already rejected a similar lawsuit in
2021.
Northern Border Immigrant Death Highlights Crossing
Spike (Reader Steve)
The authorwrites, The death of a Mexican man
who had just entered the United States from Canada
ille...
Shakespeare helped invent modern English. The
prolific wordsmith coinedsome 1,700 words,
includingassassination, zany, bloody,
dishearten, obscene, majestic, lonely,and my personal favorite,countless. As a poet, he is
without parallel in the language. Ive written before about
Hamlets famous soliloquy,but the dude just cranked out top-shelf material,
like the rest of us mortals exhale carbon dioxide. There are
clunkers for sure but, at his best, Shakespeare is as good as
English verse gets.
The plays, though? Theyre usually, lets face
it, kind of dull. Whyfiveacts, Billy? Cant you distill it to three? Im sure
the audiences of 1603 were content to take in four-hour theatrical
productions, but in 2023, werebusy. We have Be Real to update
and Wordle to puzzle over and Netflix to binge. Do we really
needtwoparts of Henry IV?
And the plots arent particularly applicable to
modern times. The characters may be universal, behaving in the
flawed, self-sabotaging way humans always have, but most of us dont
have to fret over how exactly to take out the uncle who is sleeping
with our mother to avenge our fathers murder, or whack a king to
fulfill the prophecy of some witches, or survive being shipwrecked
on a mad sorcerers island, or tame a shrew.
The exception, it occurred to me this week,
isOthello.
I remember reading it in high school or early
college and thinking, This plot is nuts. This wouldneverhappen. No
one would be this horrible. I dont believe thisat all. Not only
that, I was convinced that Shakespeare himself agreed with me. The
reason Iago goes silent at the end, I theorized, is that, despite
the arsenal of 1,700 new words at his disposal, the Bard simply
could not figure out w...
1. Not having at least one person whose full-time job is to
work daily in economic and community development.
Too many communities ask a county extension agent or
like professional to pull double duty and oversee their community's
development efforts. Economic and community development takes
constant work, and your community needs at least one person heading
up this effort. No development experience is required. This person
only needs a passion for the community, a collaborative mindset,
and a willingness to act.
2. Many towns think they need to commission a study to tell
them the current state of affairs and what steps they need to take
to improve.
This is unnecessary. Studies can provide valuable
insight but are not a prerequisite to improving your community. And
they are often a way for communities to feel like they are doing
something without doing anything. Your community leaders and
residents
know at least one thing that needs improvement. Start
there.
3. This is who we are, and there is nothing we can do to change
it.
Too many towns see themselves as victims of
globalization, technological i...
Join us on today's episode of The Pirate Stream - Dialectical
Dissidents. Pirate Stream Media is a new platform of dedicated
content creators focused on circumventing the tightly controlled,
manipulated, and outright censored media space of today (both
corporate and independent media) with a commitment to objectivity,
integrity, and a stark awareness of the two party illusion. The
Pirate Stream, is our flagship podcast.
(https://www.rokfin.com/TLAVagabond)(https://www.bitchute.com/channel/24yVcta8zEjY/)
https://rumble.com/embed/v28s1n2/?pub=2q643
This year the COLA for Social Security recipients was 8.7
percent. After some basic math, I realized that my wife and I would
continue to suffer from greedflation. The increase does not account
for everything. Our gas and electric bill was increased by nearly
30 percent. Our car insurance was raised by more than 10 []
Bullet Points: ** When you find yourself on the
same side as Nazis, its time to pause and reflect on where life has
brought you. ** John Fetterman inexplicably won his race proving
you can be a literal vegetable and still win due to election
fraud. The fact that he ran against the []
Fact: the United States is the most warlike country in the world
since its origin, nearly 247 years ago. Fact: With the death
penalty still a reality in many states, killing other humans
continues to be a national pastime for some. In America, the lives
of human beings are less important than the ability to []
Modern Americans have become much more malleable than many would
like to admit. Despite those powerful founding documents that
enshrine freedom, inalienable rights and the general welfare as
driving moral principles of law, economics and politics, very few
living Americans fully seem to have a living connection to that
powerful tradition which saw eight presidents
Read More...
Women Will be Forced to Resort to Life-Threatening Decisions
Prior to 1973 I have no doubt that younger Americans born after or
just before the Supreme Courts decision in 1973 which supported Roe
v Wade, have a misguided belief that abortions rarely occurred in
America. Prior to the 1973 ruling, women who could afford the
[]
Back in 1992, Ice-Ts heavy metal project Body Count released
their self-titled debut album, which
included one of the most controversial protest songs of all-time,
Cop Killer. The lyrics express the
frustration that many in the Black community were feeling.
chief Daryl Gates, and Rodney King, who was brutalized by the LAPD
on March 3, 1991.
Ice-T
defended the song as it faced a boycott. Im singing in the
first person as a character who is fed up with police brutality. I
aint never killed no cop. I felt like it a lot of times. But I
never did it. If you believe that Im a cop killer, you
believe David Bowie is an astronaut.
Due to the uproar, the album was pulled and reissued without song
still hasnt been re-released and isnt available singer Macy Gray
that features her backing group California Jet Club. The reworked
track appears on her recently released album The Reset.
Gray
said, The album was written right in the thick of the pandemic.
It was just a really good
time to make an album because everybody was emotive and expressing
themselves. Everybody was just like releasing and letting go. Most
musicians are musicians because they arent great communicators, so
it all came out in the album.
There is a song called PTSD, which is a song about how my
country gave me PTSD, cause after all that I was traumatized, added
Gray.
Part of that PTSD stemmed from the ongoing issues with police
brutality, a theme that is heavily dealt
with on the timely album, which was composed in the aftermath of
the murders of George Floyd
and Breonna Taylor in 2020. The modern-day lynching of Tyre Nichols
renews the relevance.
Along with her music, Gray was motivated to co-found My
Good, an organization created to support
families who have lost loved ones to police violence.
I dont think people are aware that three people die via the police
on average every day. So the 99.9%
of those you dont hear about, and most 99.9% of those dont get any
kind of settlement, dont see a
penny, Gray declared. You know, you have moms 10 years later still
going to court fightin...
This articlewas originally
published onnextSTL, and is shared here with permission. All
images for this piece were provided by the author, unless otherwise
indicated.
Gross negligence is a lack of care that
demonstrates reckless disregard for the safety or lives of others,
which is so great it appears to be a conscious violation of other
peoples rights to safety.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of
power. Sign up to receive
our biggest stories as soon as theyre published.
Arizonas newly elected Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, has
given up on
another of her Cabinet nominees in the face of misleading
attacks from Republicans in the state Legislature. Matthew Stewart
was forced out last Wednesday after serving just a month and a half
as
Hobbs director of the Department of Child Safety, the state
child protective services agency.
When Hobbs selected Stewart in December, she called him one of
the best minds Arizona has to offer and a leader on racial justice
issues who would transform a child welfare system that
ProPublica and NBC News had found investigated the families of
1 in 3 Black children in metro Phoenix during a recent five-year
period.
Now, Hobbs has forced Stewart to leave his post before he could
defend his record in a public hearing.
In an interview with ProPublica, the first since his ouster,
Stewart said the Republicans attacks on him are inaccurate and
reputation-damaging. More than a dozen current and former DCS
employees, all of whom were contacted independently by the news
organization and not at Stewarts recommendation, confirmed that the
allegations about him that have since been circulating in the news
media are unfounded.
If you believe change is needed, and you make a decision to
bring in a person who will create change, then you stand behind
that person, Stewart said of the governor abandoning him. Im an
example of someone willing to take a risk going into a
bureaucratic, deeply ingrained system trying to bring new thinking,
new energy.
I wanted to have the opportunity to go through [the confirmation
process] and defend myself, Stewart said, adding that dismissing
him was a way for the governor to stay safe.
As others in the anti-abortion movement distanced themselves
from clinic protestors accused of trespassing, vandalism and
sometimes violence, the Thomas More Society defended them in civil
and criminal court. The legal nonprofit once sided with a Wisconsin
pharmacist who refused to fill a birth control prescription on
religious grounds.
More recently, the Chicago-based organization has embraced a far
different but equally divisive undertaking relentlessly questioning
the integrity of elections. Leaping into the 2020 Stop the Steal
frenzy, which was consistently discredited, the Thomas More Society
aggressively pursued scores of lawsuits and complaints across the
country.
Yet for all the scrutiny given to election denialism and its
champions including Rudy Giuliani, Mike Flynn and Sidney Powell,
former advisers to President Donald Trump the significant role
played by the Thomas More Society has received little
attention.
One of its strategists, Phill Kline, tried to convince state
legislatures in swing states to hold off on certifying Joe Bidens
electors, a maneuver that drew the notice of the House Jan. 6
committee. Kline is the former attorney general of Kansas whose law
license was suspended indefinitely a decade ago by the state
Supreme Court over ethical violations. Interviews and records
examined by ProPublica show how closely aligned Kline has been with
the Thomas More Society.
With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the fight over abortion is
increasingly playing out at the state level and local elections for
legislators and judges have taken on added weight. ...
March: Coming in like a Lion Bullet Points: **
Racial profiling again A New Jersey man attempted to board a flight
with an AR-15 rifle, handguns, a Taser, and a fake U.S. Marshals
badge, according to a federal complaint. Seretse Clouden, a felon,
tried to board the flight at Newark Liberty International Airport
[]
This is a question I am often
asked? How far out into the future can we predict the
weather?
Listen to my podcast and I will provide the
surprising, and complex, answer.
But first a few hints....
The National Weather Service has a website
that shows how weather forecast skill declines over time (see
below). This figure indicates how the forecast skill at
roughly 18,000 ft (500-hPa) declines over time for the U.S. global
model (NCEP), the Canadian model (CMC), and the gold-standard
European Center (ECMWF). 1 indicates a perfect
forecast. When this measure (the anomaly correlation) drops
to 0.6 the forecast becomes only marginally useful.
Forecasts are very good through 3 days.
Quite good though five days, but then rapidly declines after
that. Some skill continues even two weeks out, but it
is very marginal.
Another way to see the decline in skill is to
look at a series of weather forecast maps for increasing forecast
projection.
Here is the analysis (truth) for sea level
pressure (solid lines) and low-level temperatures (colors) for 4 AM
on 24 February.
Whats up with Seagal? Steven Seagal is a Buddhist.
In February 1997, Lama Penor
Rinpoche from Palyul monastery announced that Seagal
was a tulku, specifically the reincarnation of Chungdrag
Dorje, a 17th-century terton (treasure revealer) of
the Nyingma, the oldest sect of Tibetan Buddhism. I have
friends who are Nyingma and they confirmed that they think that
Segal is the real deal. Seagal []
Weve been taught in school that plants are
considered living things. In fact, some people love the plants in
the garden so much and can vouch for the fact that they thrive from
the conversations they get from their owners.
For us, living creatures require breathing. Thats
why for many, plants are simply there for the beauty, but they dont
see that these living things actually breathe. That is, until a
video that was recently released showed that they do.
If you took a look at the scenes caught, youd feel
like you were watching a mix of sci-fi and horror. The eerie and
strange research that was made was able to prove that plants can
actually breathe when seen up close.
A new study made shows how biologists are now privy
to the intricate process of a plants life and the big implications
that go with it. This might hold the key to feeding the world way
into the future.
Researchers from UC San Diego, Estonia, and Finland,
funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), observed the
plants and found what was what they thought the elusive molecular
pathway that plants utilized when breathing...
A draft of a bill to block GOP congressman George Santos from
profiting after he leaved office has garnered the support of some
Republicans, Axios reported. The bill would prevent members of
Congress convicted of certain crimes from profiting off book deals,
and other methods of making money after their political careers
have ended. From []
This article talks about how the Radical Islamic terrorist
groups in North west Syria Idlib are stealing the aid coming to the
people who lost their homes because of the earthquake that hit
Turkey and Syria
A Florida GOP lawmaker is sponsoring a bill called the Ultimate
Cancel Act, which seeks to ban any political party that has
previously advocated for, or been in support of, slavery or
involuntarily servitude, WPTV reported. SB 1248 was filed on
Tuesday by State Sen. Blaise Ingoglia. If passed, the legislation
would automatically changing the []
During a House Armed Services Committee hearing this Tuesday,
Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz received some pushback from a witness
who pointed out that he was using a Chinese propaganda outlet in
his line of questioning. While grilling under secretary of defense
for policy Colin Kahl over the claim that Ukraines Azov Battalion
was getting []
No room for free thought, alternate opinions, or dissent.
Fascism is alive and flourishing on the right side of our nations
political system. Free Thought Is Verboten in a Fascist Society
Nothing speaks louder to autocratic rule than the prevention of
free thought and free speech. Since Ronald Ragan, this has been the
situation in []
New Haven, CT New Havens Amistad Catholic Worker is a place of
refuge for New Havens homeless population. Its director, Mark
Colville, is also a local celebrity: spearheading campaigns
targeting the citys criminalization of homelessness, clearing of
encampments, and hostility toward public services on city
land.
Each week, Colville works to prepare meals for the hundreds of
homeless New Haven residents that have fallen through the cracks of
the citys support services. On any given day, around six New Haven
residents also call his backyard home, creating what Colville calls
a Human Rights Zone.
Located in the Hill, a historically Black neighborhood in New
Haven, Colvilles service apparatus works to accommodate the needs
of those living at the Catholic Worker and along Ella T. Grasso
Boulevard. While no official tally exists of homeless individuals
in New Haven,
estimates place the number at around 600 experiencing
the literal definition of homelessness but with
thousands more experiencing housing insecurity.
Colville has long worked to and isnt afraid of defying city
ordinances. Not only have they not sanctioned or legalized
this, its under constant threat. Theres always a standing threat
that theyre going to shut it down, Colville said.
But the Catholic Worker is not only a place of refuge, but of
community. Those living at the Catholic Worker agree to live in
community with their neighbors as Colville
emphasizes when speaking of the Catholic Workers residents. If
there is any violation or if Colvilles neighbors complain, the
operation is at risk of being shut down. Colville said,
what were doing is completely illegal, completely against
zoning laws. So if you cant get along with your neighbors, you cant
do it.
As proof of this philosophy, Alexander, Colvilles next-door
neighbor, happily works every Sunday morning to prepare pancakes
and hot coffee for the Catholic Workers backyard residents. The
Catholic Workers philosophy, which Colville helped to found, is not
about service but mutual aid. I work with the group to help
them get to a system of mutual accountability and nonviolent
conf...
This articlewas originally published on longtime
Strong Towns contributor Joe Cortrightsblog,
City
Observatory. It is shared here with permission. All images
for this piece were provided by the author unless otherwise
indicated.
The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is
proposing to pay for
its widening of the I-205 Interstate South of Portland by
charging tolls. These tolls will represent a significant
increase in transportation costs for households living in the
southern part of the Portland metropolitan area.
As City Observatory reported earlier,
ODOTs planned tolls will vary by time of day, and will charge
users as much as $4.40 to drive I-205 between Oregon City and
Wilsonville.
The projects Environmental Assessment, just released,
shows how these tolls will affect households in this part of the
region. These data come from the projects Economics Technical Report, part of the projects
Environmental Assessment.
The report uses travel modeling data and census data to
estimate how much a typical household in the I-205 area will...
Right now the Ontario Nurses Association (ONA)
is bargaining with the Ontario government for better wages,
increased staffing and better working conditions. As frontline
workers constantly putting their health at risk for patients,
nurses deserve more than wage suppression and burn out. The Ford
government pushed through Bill 124, which limits public sector
workers to a mere 1% wage increase. This is shocking given that
inflation rose 6.8% last year. What an insulting way to thank
nurses for their heroic work during the pandemic!Your
solidarity is what nurses need right now.Join the Nurses All Out Protestthis Thursday, March 2nd at the Sheraton Centre from 12:00 PM
2:00 PM.
Healthcare workers like nurses and personal
support workers are the backbone of our public healthcare system.
They work hard to keep us healthy and safe, and they deserve fair
wages and safe levels of staffing in order to ensure better
healthcare for everyone. Currently,Ontario has a
shortage of approximately 25,000 nurses....
As Georgia prison officials move towards fully digitizing
communications with Securus and curtailing access to contraband
cellphones, incarcerated people and their loved ones are speaking
out. According to advocates, contraband phones are both a vital
transparency tool and are increasingly used by Georgia prison
officials as a scapegoat for agency brutality and incompetence.
BT, a Georgia prisoner, is the spokesperson for the incarcerated
group called Georgia Prisoners
Speak. Shadowproof is withholding BTs name to protect him from
retaliation from prison officials. The self-described auto-advocacy
group aims to expose the prison system and hold prisoncrats
accountable through its YouTube platform, website gallery, and blog
posts.
This isnt about cellphones, argues BT. Its about money and
exposing the prison system. There are serious problems in the GDC,
starting with all the deaths, suicide, murder, lack of medical
care.
People are starving and the lack of vital nutrition has become a
serious concern, especially as most of the food is inedible. There
are no programs for rehabilitation and job skills, despite
what they claim in their fiscal reports, and so for many
prisoners there is nothing to do.
GDC doesnt want taxpayers or lawmakers to know just how terribly
they are failing in their mandate, BT said.
To understand the current fierce attacks on the progressive
leadership of the Nevada Democratic Party, it's helpful to recall
the panicked reaction from political elites three years ago when
results came in from the state's contest for the presidential
nomination.
Scientists and experts from around the world warn that TB is not
declining at a pace by which we can end TB globally. India has
promised to end TB by 2025, and rest of the world by 2030. Many
rich nations had ended TB 30-50 years ago but are we doing the
basics? (preventing infection transmission and finding every case
of active disease and providing full spectrum of services?)
A new report provides details showing that the damage caused by
the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Computer Hack was
much worse than admitted by Superintendent Carvalho.
If the goal is to protect the government, and the government
alone, it's appropriate to not just ban TikTok from government
devices, but to ban government use of devices that could
conceivably run TikTok or similar apps (including apps that install
and run without the users' knowledge).
I was prompted to write this article after reading an article by
a very distinguished law professor, Martha Minnow. [1] She is a
proponent of forgiveness as a substitute for vengeance. I am NOT a
proponent of forgiveness for any purpose! I have thoroughly
researched and pondered the matter. This short article gives you my
day in court so to speak.
This article talks about the latest developments on the
earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria and how the people of Idlib
which is under the control of the Radical Islamic terrorists groups
and the are stealing all the aid coming to the people and the new
mall that is owned by the leader of HTS
It began with a walk, a few photos, some sketches of
how a public space could be reimagined, and then Samantha Smugala
took a step in making her city of St Louis, Missouri, a better
place. It was during the pandemic when I finally was like, you
know, maybe I should actually do something with these sketches
because clearly it's something that's interesting to me. Smugala
founded the nonprofit Pocket Parks in 2021 to help neighborhoods transform
vacant spaces into loveable community spots at low costs, focusing
on using resources already available. In 2022, Pocket Parks teamed
up with YARD & Company to build a downtown park in 24
hours.
We start with what we have, and build from the ground
up, hand in hand with the community with very little resources,
said Smugala on how Pocket Parks operates. So we really focus on
low-cost,
highly feasible, very quick projects.
Before YARD and Pocket Parks came along, this specific
downtown space was not a very welcoming, or memorable area. It was
lightly used by locals, featuring a picnic table or two, and
Smugala recalled there being trash in the area. The spot, which is
snuggled between apartments and office spaces, is used as a
backyard space by local renters, said Kevin Wright, principal and
co-founder of YARD. And so the design sort of stemmed from this
idea of, how could this become more of a true backyard?
With the help of local volunteers, some being organized
from the...
I've written this because there are a lot of liberals who may
not realize that falling for the "fake news censorship" gambit is
really falling closer to fascism.
In 1946, Albert Einstein shot off a telegram to several hundred
American leaders and politicians warning that the "unleashed power
of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and
we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." Einstein's forecast
remains prescient. Nuclear calamity still knocks[...]
The End of Pussy Galore and Odd Job? According to a
report in The Telegraph, sensitivity readers are being
employed to scour the original James Bond books to look for and
remove any outdated content including racist comments. The latest
publications of the books, written by Ian Fleming, will also
reportedly contain a trigger warning []
My first summer of living in Waco, Texas, I sat up late
one night journaling. It had been about 10 months since leaving
Brooklyn. What did I miss, exactly, I wondered to myself as I
leaned my head back against my pillow. A few predictable answers
filled my mind: public transit, bodegas guarded by one-eyed cats,
being able to walk everywhere, my Sunday bike rides to Brighton
Beach. Those were all valid, but there was something else I couldnt
quite put my finger on. I looked out my window. It was late and
dark, so there was nothing to see but an empty street.
And then it dawned on me. Except for a few cars here
and there, the street was emptyand this was the problem! I returned
to my journal, feeling suddenly emotional. Yes, the (mostly thrift)
shopping in New York City was great, as were the restaurants and
museums. But the more I reflected, the more I realized that what I
missed most were not the commercial and cultural opportunities or
experiences; what I missed most were the people.
I missed the street performers, the falafel stand
attendants, the baristas, the Brooklynites in their complicated
outfits, the young African-American men who would blare their
boomboxes and do backflips on the Q train from Manhattan to
Atlantic Barclays. I missed seeing the little school children in
rubber boots scooting home with their nannies in Park Slope, the
cyclists Id race in Prospect Park and the musicians who would fill
Union Square Station with the sound of global jazz.
In short, what I missed most about life in the Big
Apple was the visibility of other people. Of course, it wasnt all
roses. I definitely experienced stranger fatigue and difficulty
building...
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of
power.
Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing
around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every
week.
Do you have an experience to share related to new abortion laws
in your state? Our reporters want to hear from you. Contact us on
Signal at 646-389-9881.
Anti-abortion counseling centers, often called crisis pregnancy
centers, may soon face an existential choice in Minnesota: Leave
behind their explicit agenda of dissuading people from having
abortions or risk losing state funding.
While some center operators could see that as a nonstarter,
state Democrats may leave the door open for them to continue
receiving taxpayer dollars albeit under a battery of rules some
Minnesota lawmakers hope could expand services for pregnant people
amid the countrys rapidly shifting abortion landscape.
For nearly 20 years, Minnesotas public funding stream for the
centers has flown mostly under the radar. In 2005, then-Gov. Tim
Pawlenty, a Republican, signed into law a program to give grants to
nonprofits that provide pregnancy and parenting services that do
not encourage or affirmatively counsel a woman to have an
abortion.
By wide margins, the state Legislature approved the Positive
Abortion Alternatives statute, pitched by anti-abortion leaders as
providing money for prenatal health care and adoption services. The
measure even garnered votes from Democrats who supported abortion
rights but wanted to fund more services for pregnant people.
The heated political climate since the U.S. Supreme Court
overturned Roe v. Wade has put a new spotlight on public funding
for anti-abortion centers. At least a dozen states use taxpayer
money to fund the centers, and some Democratic-led states have
already defunded, or are considering defunding, them
altogether.
In 2019, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer used a line item veto to
cancel $700,000 of funding for the chain of Real Alternatives
counseling centers in her state, and she has vetoed spending on
similar centers in the years since, calling them fake health
centers. In Pennsylvania, whi...
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of
power. Sign up to receive
our biggest stories as soon as theyre published.
As chief U.S. House counsel for four years, Douglas Letter
advised then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi through tense legal
standoffs with the Trump administration. He helped shape strategy
for the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on
the United States Capitol, leading to contempt of Congress charges
against Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro and subpoenas
for five sitting members of Congress.
Now, Letter, a Justice Department attorney for 40 years, has
begun a new role as legal counsel for the Brady campaign, defending
victims of gun violence and taking on gun laws, such as a local
statute in Highland Park, Illinois, that restricts assault weapons
like one used in a July 4 parade massacre. Letter said he carries
with him lessons learned counseling House Democrats as they faced
growing partisan hostilities and concerns for their safety.
In recent interviews, Letter talked about the highlights of his
years as House general counsel and his reasons for joining forces
with Brady. These interviews have been condensed and edited for
clarity.
You led the court fight for release of President Trumps tax returns
and served as counsel on the certification of Joe Bidens
presidential election. Which of the many cases you handled do you
consider the most legally significant?
Youre asking me to choose among my children? One is the
censuscase.
The Trump administration illegally attempted to add a citizenship
question to the 2020 census. And during litigation, lots of
evidence was put in the record that they were doing so for a very
bad purpose, which was to keep dow...
Suicide Clubs Brigadier-General Sir James Edmonds
wrote about preparations for the Battle of the Somme in his
unpublished memoir. There was one 6-inch howitzer to about 45 yards
of front, the French had one for every 20 yards; and, worse still,
much of the howitzer ammunition supplied by the Ministry of
Munitions (under []
What can you do with unrecyclable waste? Back then,
these would just pile up in dump sites and left there to sit for
centuries at a time. This has been an issue since years back and
environmentalists have been looking for ways to reuse these items
to do good.
Several solutions have been reached, and ideas have
been thrown. The goal here was to save the environment from
unrecyclable wastes and to find ways to use them. Many have
discovered that these can actually be better alternatives to
traditional methods.
Dangerous and toxic plastic waste like printer
cartridges and plastic bags can actually be useful once again.
These are being turned into aggregate material made for asphalt
road mixtures to be used all over the United States.
Plastic roads have been laid down and this have been
the fulfilment of a scientific steam. Scientists and regulators are
now starting to see roads as a viable place to reuse plastic. These
are often the type that are hard to recycle when you think about
methods of saving costs.
Pilot programs have been underway in states such as
Missouri, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Calif...
In case you missed it, Its Going Down has released a
series of shows on the popular podcast
It Could Happen Here, part of Cool Zone Media. Heres a
roundup of the five episodes weve produced so far:
Episode #1: A General Strike Might Be Closer Than You
Think: Pt #1, the Class War Explodes
Calls for a general strike go viral all the time but what would
it take for one to actually get organized? In this two part
special, we dive into the history of general strikes in the United
States from the Civil War to modern day. This episode includes an
interview with labor historian and author, Robert Ovetz.
Episode #2: A General Strike Might Be Closer Than You
Think: Pt #2, The Road Ahead
We continue our look at general strikes throughout history and
in the modern period. This episode includes an interview with
activist and translator, Scott Campbell about Occupy Oakland and
author and journalist, Kim Kelly, about the potential for labor
insurgency in 2023.
Episode #3:
The New Ugly Laws: How People Are Pushing Back On Americas War on
the Houseless
In the late 1800s, many big cities used laws against ugliness to
cleanse the streets of the disabled, the poor, and the homeless.
Fast forward to today, and in the middle of a deepening housing
crisis and extreme weather, cities are breaking up encampments and
passing new laws to target the most vulnerable. On this episode, we
speak with former squatters, activists resisting sweeps, and
houseless folks facing down eviction to find out how people are
pushing back against displacement.
Episode #4:Stories of Armed
Community Defense and Mass Resistance to White
Supremacy
The distributor of the long-running Dilbert comic strip
announced this Sunday that it is severing ties with the strips
creator, Scott Adams, Axios reported. The announcement comes after
a string of newspapers around the country announced that they were
dropping the strip after Adams posted a video saying that there was
no point in white []
Report back from recent demonstration against far-Right
guru Jordan Peterson in so-called Seattle, WA.
On February 16th and February 17th the Paramount Theater, one of
several theaters owned and operated by the Seattle Theater Group
(STG), played host to pseudo-scientist, transphobic, misogynist
Jordan Peterson. This was a rescheduled engagement from
Petersons tour in spring 2022, which was largely cancelled in many
major cities due to backlash by queer communities calling out
venues for promoting hate speech in the wake of their new diversity
and inclusion policies.
This was true of Seattle Theater Group, who quietly rescheduled
with Peterson for this tour, and strategically did not promote his
event on their social media, their upcoming event pages, or in any
public capacity. You had to be a previous ticket holder to get
notified about how to use your tickets from May for February. You
had to look deep into their calendar or search the right string of
words online to find the direct link pages to venues with event
information they intentionally left it off their Upcoming Events
pages to keep the public from seeing it so easily.
In April 2022, an STG spokesperson said anyone can book the
venue so long as the act does not promote hate speech, violence or
criminal activity. At that same time, STG said they would not
cancel the shows due to legal liability with Live Nation and CAA.
Effectively, they said that keeping their pockets lined and safe
from a lawsuit was better than cancelling a hate speech tour they
should never have booked in the first place. STG also said, This
engagement has failed to live up to our vision of equity and
inclusion; rather than eliminating barriers for communities, its
created barriers. We will be reexamining our rental policy to help
prevent similar harm from happening in the future. We are grateful
for members of the community who have reached out to us,
particularly our transgender, nonbinary and Jewish community
members who contacted us.
In June 2022, STG tweeted: The performing arts would not be what
it is today without LGBTQIA2+ people onstage, in the audience,
behind-the-scenes, and as leaders, creators, and storytellers.
Their contributions must be celebrated and honored year-round. A
tweet that received immediate backlash for their hypocrisy in still
hosting Jordan Peterson for his rescheduled tour dates. No
responses, no replies quietly focusing on their triple bottom lane
with the most egregious display of rainbow capitalism.
And yet here we are in 2023, with the same event, the same hate
speech, the same venue,...
A critical look at how the jail system in Thurston
County functions within wider capitalist society and some ideas for
bringing it all down. Originally posted toPuget Sound Anarchists.
Prison is the most direct, brutal expression of power, and like
power it must be destroyed, it cannot be abolished progressively.
Anyone who thinks they can improve it now in order to destroy it in
the future will forever be a captive of it.
The revolutionary project of anarchists is to struggle along
with the exploited and push them to rebel against all abuse and
repression, so also against prison. What moves them is the desire
for a better world, a better life with dignity and ethic, where
economy and politics have been destroyed. There can be no place for
prison in that world.
Alfredo Bonanno, Locked Up
Ive spent a fair amount of time in and out of Thurston County
Jail in various capacities in jail, in the work release annex, on
Electronic Home Monitoring as we all as even longer tied up in the
Thurston County criminal-legal system and I want to spend some time
talking about my experience with the jail, its centrality in
everything we are fighting against and some thoughts on how to tear
the motherfucker down. The jail is always something thats looming
over us, but theres almost no actual anarchist writing on the jail
I think partially because its out of sight and partially weve
generally lost sight of the importance of analysis and historical
record in long term struggle. This is my modest contribution.
GOING THROUGH THE MOTIONS
The first step towards jail is going through the court system,
as I only have experience with the county felony court system,
thats what Ill talk about. It is designed to be isolating and
individualizing by intention. For my initial charge that was
dropped and refiled as a felony I was barred from having contact
with my co-defendants, some of them were banned from going downtown
for a year. Its all a huge pain. Youre given a public defender
whose first focus is generally to get what seems like the best
outcome for you legally which might not be politically such as
encouraging entering into cooperating pleas. I think because
Thurston County tends to be particularly white and wealthy we have
pretty decent public defenders but even then...
DeKalb County, GA The anonymous communique issued in May 2021
was written in romantic prose. Its author describes a nighttime
walk through the South River Forest, just south of Atlanta, where
a couple of queers had discovered seven unattended
pieces of heavy machinery parked in the woods. The equipment was
staged near the proposed sites of what activists now call Cop City
and a new sound stage complex being built by Blackhall Studios. For
the anonymous people who found these machines, there was no
question about what had to be done. The saboteurs destroyed the
earth movers, cutting fuel lines, smashing glass and spray painting
messages to tell the would-be operators of the machines why they
had been destroyed.
The culprits set the machines on fire before disappearing into
the night. The statement claiming responsibility for the attack
ended with a warning: Any further attempts at destroying
the Atlanta Forest will be met with similar response. This forest
was here long before us, and it will be here long after. Well see
to that.
This was the first known physical blow against the Atlanta
Police Foundations (APF) attempts to build a sprawling police
training facility and manufactured green space on a 381-acre wooded
plot of land just south of Atlanta. In the nearly two years since
that
anonymous communique was issued, locals in Atlanta and
supporters from across the United States have taken up the fights
against both Cop City and Hollywood dystopia, two projects that
currently threaten the forested area described as one of the
lungs of the city for the dense foliage it
holds.
A broad and diverse movement has sprung up in resistance to both
projects, and local action, bolstered by national and international
support, has effectively prevented the construction of Atlantas
Public Safety Training Facility and stalled work on the new movie
studio campus. Through a wide diversity of tactics including
everything from preschooler-led art builds and music festivals to
militant direct action and sabotage, the grassroots opposition has
gained worldwide attention. Anarchists, environmentalists,
abolitionists and socialists have taken note of the successful
campaigns being waged against the projects, which have come to
symbolize the intersections of many struggles.
We can still expect to see lowland snow
tomorrow, and being closer in time, I have powerful additional
forecasting tools to apply.
But before I do so, let me note that there was
a magnificent auroral display last night, mostly behind the clouds,
and during some openings, the sky was aflame.
Here is an image from North Kitsap, provided
by weather cam maestro Greg Johnson of Skunk Bay Weather.
Stunning.
Back to snow.
This is late season for western
Washington/Oregon snow and temperatures are marginal. But
with sufficient precipitation intensity, melting and evaporation
can drive the snow level down to the surface. The
result: wet snow.
The latest forecasts are converging on
around 2 inches near sea level, but as we will see, there will be
considerable variability.
The feature of interest is a low center (and
associated fronts) that is centered off the Oregon/Washington coast
right now (see image). Right now some weak bands of
precipitation are over land. Some light drizzle and snow
showers.
Things are escalating more and more rapidly between the
US-centralized power structure and the few remaining nations with
the will and the means to stand against its demands for total
obedience, namely China, Russia, and Iran. The world is becoming
increasingly split between two groups of governments who are
becoming increasingly hostile toward each other, and you don't have
to be a historian to know it's probably a bad sign
What we're seeing today in these attempts to regulate women's
behavior is a simple extension of religious fundamentalism and
patriarchy that goes back as far as ancient Samaria...
Boisterously banning books, educational curricula and college
programs that address racism or LGBTQ dignity - or both (with added
bigotry toward writers like James Baldwin and Audre Lorde) -
DeSantis is building his national "anti-woke" profile as he seems
to be readying a presidential campaign against his former hero
Donald Trump.
A major escalation in official online censorship regimes is
progressing rapidly in Brazil, with implications for everyone in
the democratic world. Under Brazil's new government headed by
President Lula da Silva, the country is poised to become the first
in the democratic world to implement a law censoring and
banning
This articlewas originally
published on Kevin Klinkenbergs blog,The Messy
City. It is shared here with permission. All images for
this piece were provided by the author, unless otherwise
indicated.
When I was a kid, I thought tv dinners were the coolest
thing. You could just grab this box out of the freezer, pop it in
the oven or microwave for a little bit, and theres a whole meal
ready for you with no work. There were even several varieties and
cuisines available to please every taste, beyond whatever is
actually in Salisbury Steak. Whats not to love? Clearly, the future
was all about food you could get right out of a machine, and have
ready to eat in no time. Efficient! Genius!
Environmental activists in Cudahy, California force a charter
school to abandon plans to build on a toxic site. Public school
defenders keep Pio Pico Middle School open.
Saving $60 million a year is good for Twitter, whether it
increases new revenue from Twitter Blue subscriptions or
not.----The added security of using an app or physical key instead
of trusting a more vulnerable authentication method is good for
you.
Could be a major aurora tonight
(Sunday) for our region. Lots of clouds right now, but
there should be some clearing in a few hours in western
WA.
--------------------
The snow forecast went quite well this morning
over western Washington, with portions of central Puget Sound
picking up the predicted 1-2 inches (see observed snowfall noted
this morning by the CoCoRahs cooperative
network).
This was a very difficult forecast,with marginal temperatures. The kind of forecast
we could not have done 15-20 years ago.
But there is a
downside to this increased forecast skill, a negative impact that
directly affected me this morning (see below). I was REALLY
looking forward to a pastry and cup of coffee before I went to work
at the UW. No luck.
Another snow event for western Washington
looms.....and another difficult forecast.
Why difficult? Because major weather
prediction models were in disagreement about a crucial weather
feature, and we are close...
To residents of Memphis's resource-poor, predominantly nonwhite
neighborhoods, the Scorpions were easy to spot. The plainclothes
patrols were known for driving their unmarked Dodge Chargers
through the streets, often all too recklessly, sowing fear as they
went, spitting venom from their windows, jumping out with guns
drawn at the slightest sign of an infraction[...]
A surge of fear among residents heightened after the devastating
earthquake on Monday, February 6. Days after the attack, survivors
are still being uncovered from the aftermath in a race against
time. The quake death toll in Turkey is at 25,000 and steadily
climbing, this earthquake has reached a grim milestone of the top
deadliest []
In November 2022, Chester, Pennsylvania, filed for
bankruptcy. Chester has a reputation for being the regions most
rapidly declining city, puzzling those who note its assets: rail
lines, proximity to Philadelphia International Airport, waterfront
access, and the ability to argue it is the states oldest city. The
citys ongoing fiscal emergency marks 10 years since the
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) inaugurated two
highway ramps in Chester, which Senate Majority Leader Dominic
Pileggi promised at the time would produce an explosion of economic
development. Strong Towns President Chuck Marohn was less
optimistic.
In his 2012 piece
PennDot Fiddles, Marohn called the $77 million ramps a very
expensive gimmick, especially given Chesters demographic data.
These ramps represent an investment of $9,060 for a Chester family
of four. For a city with a 12% reported rate of unemployment, how
many real jobs could be created if $77 million were put into
an economic gardening program? This is an unconscionable
expenditure.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of
power. Sign up to receive
our biggest stories as soon as theyre published.
As a devastating outbreak of Ebola spread to Tommy Garnetts
homeland of Sierra Leone in 2014, the conservationist had a
hunch.
Garnett long lamented the deforestation from farming, mining and
logging in the region and wondered if tree loss had anything to do
with the outbreak that had swept into Sierra Leone from a forested
area of Guinea. With activities in his country at a standstill due
to the outbreak, Garnett asked the ERM Foundation, the nonprofit
arm of a sustainability consulting firm in London, to help him
analyze patterns of deforestation.
Their findings suggested Garnetts hypothesis was valid: A
particular pattern of deforestation seemed to explain a number of
Ebola outbreaks they studied, including the one that began in
Meliandou, Guinea.
The majority of emerging infectious diseases originate from
wildlife, but understanding how, why and when a pathogen will jump
from one species to another, including humans a phenomenon called
spillover continues to be studied by academics and scientists
worldwide.
One study analyzing historical outbreaks found that land-use
change such as clearing forests for agriculture was the biggest
driver of spillover, exceeding factors like climate change and
the consumption of meat from wild animals.
We wondered: Is it possible to calculate the risk of a spillover
event happening because of deforestation? So we set out to examine
how clearing trees can increase the likelihood of such an event,
using Ebola as an example pathogen.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of
power. Sign up to receive
our biggest stories as soon as theyre published.
This story discusses pregnancy loss.
Were investigating the cause of viruses spilling over from
animals to humans and what can be done to stop it. Read more
in the series.
Generations ago, families
fleeing tribal violence in southern Guinea settled in a lush, humid
forest. They took solace among the trees, which offered cover from
intruders, and carved a life out of the land. Their descendants
call it Meliandou, which elders there say comes from words in the
Kissi language that mean this is as far as we go.
By 2013, a village had bloomed where trees once stood 31 homes,
surrounded by a ring of forest and footpaths that led to pockets
residents had cleared to plant rice. Their children played in a
hollowed-out tree that was home to a large colony of bats.
Nobody knows exactly how it happened, but a virus that once
lived inside a bat found its way into the cells of a toddler named
Emile Ouamouno. It was Ebola, which invades on multiple fronts the
immune system, the liver, the lining of vessels that keep blood
from leaking into the body. Emile ran a high fever and passed stool
blackened with blood as his body tried to defend against the
attack. A few days later, Emile was dead.
On average, only half of those infected by Ebola survive; the
rest die of medical shock and organ failure. The virus took Emiles
4-year-old sister and their mother, who perished after delivering a
stillborn child. Emiles grandmother, feverish and vomiting, clung
to the back of a motorbike taxi a...
Much of history has yet to be uncovered. And since
time immemorial, people have been curious about the wonderful life
Jesus has lived. He is, by far, the most historical figure that
millions of people follow, be it for religious purposes or simply
out of sheer curiosity.
Unfortunately, many have searched for clues and
havent found much. Right now, there could be a tomb that will
reveal much of what happened during Jesus time. The world could
know more about this famous and venerated man and the people who
knew him.
Recent excavations happened in Israel and what they
found they will soon open to the public. This is a tomb thats
revered because this is thought to be the resting place of the
midwife of Jesus, and her name was Salome.
The tomb was discovered in 1982 by antiquities
robbers. Even then, excavations were already happening, but recent
discoveries show that this is bigger than what they first thought.
Because of this, most of the areas of the tomb will be opened to
both pilgrims and tourists.
In the area is a mosaic-floored courtyard that spans
to around 350 square meters (almost 4,000 square feet...
Miami, FL On May 8, 2022, as the world waited anxiously for the
Supreme Court ruling
overturning Roe v. Wade to drop, anonymous
vandals smashed in the window of the Wisconsin Family Action
building in Madison, Wisconsin and set the building ablaze. On the
wall of the building, they scrawled the message, If
abortions arent safe then you arent either.
This was only a warning, wrote the attackers in
an anonymous
communique sent to journalist Robert
Evans. We demand the disbanding of all anti-choice
establishments, fake clinics, and violent anti-choice groups within
the next thirty days.
The arson and communique sent shock waves through the country
and inspired a coast-to-coast campaign of more than 20 acts of sabotage and
vandalism on the infrastructure of the anti-abortion movement
mostly against so-called
crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) and churches involved in
anti-abortion activism.
More than nine months later, the federal government has
announced the first prosecutions of Janes Revenge vandals. But the
two indicted on federal charges arent accused of burning down any
buildings, or even smashing any windows.
Theyre accused of graffiti.
Caleb Freestone and Amber Smith-Stewart, two community
organizers in Florida, have been charged with one count each of
Conspiracy
Against Rights and two counts each of...
Please consider the below article based on latest scientific
findings released of the study conducted in Cambodia that shows
continuing decline in tobacco use - but despite the decline, there
is an alarming level of tobacco use in Cambodia, and challenges
remain to save lives from untimely deaths and preventable
diseases.
A brief update from Radio Zapote,
translated by Scott
Campbell, on the release from prison of Magda Soberanes and
Karla Tello, who
had been held since April 15, 2022, following a police raid on
the Okupa Cuba.
The young social activists and feminists, Magda Soberanes and
Karla Tello, were released from prison on February 23, and will be
allowed to continue their legal proceedings in freedom. This joyous
day comes after they had been held for almost a year in connection
with the Okupa Cuba.
A movement for the immediate release of both women led to this
victory against the injustice that is the Mexican justice
system.
At the doors of the Santa Martha Acatitla Female Social
Reinsertion Center in Mexico City, as soon as she walked out of the
prison, Magda gave a speech with a megaphone, thanking her friends,
her compaerxs in the struggle, and especially her family, for the
unconditional support they gave during this period of her life.
This support helped her to resist and to remain unbroken, in
conditions of total isolation and after being betrayed by a
supposed compaera in the struggle, who Magda denounced as a state
collaborator who had a lot to do with the abandonment of the Okupa
Cuba in the end.
Despite losing 12 kilos and facing high levels of stress, Magda
recognized that the letters she wrote and exchanged with her
imprisoned compaera Karla during this period were what kept her
alive. It showed her that it is possible for beautiful care to
exist in a space that is not beautiful, such as prison. She wants
to continue helping other women who resist and for them to feel
supported by the feminist struggle, because, self-defense is not
violence.
Karla and Magda were greeted with songs, slogans, graffiti,
shouts of joy, and the emotion of their mothers, who embraced them
tearfully. The struggle continues and this chapter closes with a
happy ending.
The educational results of the peace movement against the war on
Iraq were extensive but largely temporary, I think. The
understanding that wars are based on lies faded. The shame for
individuals who'd backed the war in Congress faded. The demand to
reduce the military funding that generates new wars, or to close
the foreign bases that instigate conflict, shriveled.
Welcome to The Daily Wrap
Up, a concise show dedicated to bringing you the most relevant
independent news, as we see it, from the last 24 hours
(2/26/23).
As always, take the information discussed in the video below and
research it for yourself, and come to your own conclusions. Anyone
telling you what the truth is, or claiming they have the answer, is
likely leading you astray, for one reason or another. Stay
Vigilant.
(https://www.rokfin.com/TLAVagabond)(https://www.bitchute.com/channel/24yVcta8zEjY/)
https://rumble.com/embed/v28gx0a/?pub=2q643
SUNDAY HOMILY: Last week Marianne Williamson published a piece
called "The Tragic Conundrum of Ukraine." It uncritically parroted
the liberal, neocon, U.S. party line about Ukraine. - anything but
the "miraculous" thinking she describes and advocates.
Taibbi and Gerth and others are being called "revisionists" now.
But "Hamilton 68" was as inevitable as the election of a mediocre
con artist to the presidency, or our current apparent descent into
permanent world war. In both cases neither side, not the babbling
hucksters nor the supposedly cooler heads, had the least intention
of changing trajectory, much less addressing it.
A major step could be taken by the U.S. government through the
simple abolition of one little rhetorical practice: hypocrisy. You
want to be part of a "rules-based order"? Then join one! There is
one out there waiting for you, and Latin America is leading it.
This story describes in detail the sexual abuse of children.
Two siblings in Utah have barricaded themselves in a bedroom at
their mothers home in defiance of a judges order to return to the
custody of their father, despite state child welfare investigators
determining that he had sexually abused the children.
The judge has
authorized police to use reasonable force including entry into
locked rooms against Brynlee Larson, 12, and Ty Larson, 15. Ty has
spent the last month livestreaming on TikTok to call attention to
their case.
The showdown is the fallout from the latest family court battle
over parental alienation a disputed psychological theory in which
one parent is accused of brainwashing a child to turn them against
the other parent.
My own word does not matter, and they dont believe my truth, Ty
said in a video
posted to TikTok last month that received more than 370,000
views. The court system isnt trying to save us, nobodys trying to
keep us safe. I am the one thats going to have to choose my own
safety.
Police visited the home in December and attempted to remove the
siblings but decided not to break down the door despite the fathers
request that they do so, according to police reports. Given the
potentially combustible situation, officers have asked for
clarification from the court before carrying out Judge Derek P.
Pullans order, according to court records.
In 2018, Utahs Division of Child and Family Services found that
the father, Brent Joel Larson, had sexually and emotionally abused
his children. Investigators categorized the abuse as severe &
chronic. The findings led to Larsons parenting time being
restricted to a handful of supervised monthly visits, as well as a
150-day
restraining order that prohibited him from having any other
contact with the children.
This month, the Salt Lake County District Attorneys office said
there is an ongoing criminal investigation into Larson related to
new allegations against him, according to an office spokesperson
who declined to comment...
Report back from solidarity rally in so-called Austin,
Texas with the movement against Cop City in Atlanta. Originally
published on Austin Autonomedia.
Greetings from central Texas. This Thursday a few forest freaks
made their way over to the Atlas headquarters for a noise demo.
Atlas is a billion dollar company whose subsidiary Long engineering
has been building cop city.
We came with noise makers and banners expressing our affection
for Atlas CEO Lonnie Joe Boyer and their other subsidiary Pavetex.
A heavy police presence was waiting: a few thugs on the ground,
some more thugs on the parking garage, and they even brought a
drone out.
It looks some people over at Atlas might be getting a little
nervous. We also noticed that Atlas took their company name off the
office sign, comical, frankly.
Report back from demonstration in solidarity with fight
against Cop City outside of law firm connected to the project which
threatens the Weelaunee forest in so-called Atlanta, GA. Originally
published on Philly Anti-Capitalist.
On Tuesday, February 21st, there was a demonstration in
solidarity with the defense of the Weelaunee forest and the fight
to stop Cop City outside the offices of international law firm,
Greenberg Traurig, LLP who is on the board and a funder of the
Atlanta Police Foundation.
We demanded they cut ties to APF, handed out hundreds of flyers,
people spoke to to how we must Stop Cop City everywhere, and
chalked all over their sidewalks and building, RIP Tortuguita!,
Stop Cop City!, FTP-ACAB!, Save Chinatown, the UC Townhomes, Cobbs
Creek, The Meadows!, and Defend Chingsessing Meadows! Fuck Cellicon
Valley! referring to the efforts to stop the ecocidal development
at the so-called FDR meadows.
The struggle continues on so keep organizing and take direct
action, and escalate against colonial developers, their funders,
and the police everywhere to dismantle the industrial
capitalist-state death machine and defend the community and
land.
THOSE WHO DESTROY THE EARTH HAVE NAMES AND ADDRESSES!
We are currently at the end of the
normal lowland snow period in the Pacific Northwest, with the sun
rapidly strengthening.
But not this year.
The latest forecasts have significant lowland
snow over western Washington during the next few days, with many of
you experiencing several inches of the white stuff.
And we have an extended, colder-than-normal
period ahead.
Let me give you the details of the
forecast.
Today, we have a cold air mass over the
region...cold enough to snow anywhere in Washington State.
Temperatures dropped into the teens and twenties in western
Washington and single digits in eastern Washington (see low
temperatures below). Several daily low-temperate records fell
last night.
This evening a moist occluded front will
approach, spreading precipitation over the region. Snow
will move into the Puget Sound region after 8 PM.
Note that the story in the Seattle Times is
very wrong, suggesting snow will come in this afternoon around 4
PM. It also talks about an influx of Fraser River cold air
later today. Simply not correct.
Let me show you the cumulative snowfall totals
over Seattle from the most powerful forecast tool available:
an ensemble of many high-resolution weather predictions, each
slightly different. (Time is in UTC, 06Z/26 is 10 PM
tonight). A rapid start of the snow around 9
PM.&nb...
Long-running abolitionist radio show and podcast
Kite Line brings us news about Keith LaMar on hunger
strike and the fight against repression in Atlanta.
Earlier this week, Keith LaMar went on hunger strike at the Ohio
State Penitentiary. He has faced escalating harassment from
administrators and guards as his execution this fall looms and as
solidarity momentum builds on the outside. This harassment
extends to new arbitrary rules preventing him from wearing
spiritually-significant jewelry and systematic interruptions during
visits. Keith is on death row due to allegations that he
acted as an interracial peacemaker in the leadup to the seminal
1993 Lucasville Prison Uprising. He was seized by guards
during the first day of the uprising and was not present during any
of the deaths which later occurred. His support crew asks
that people call Regional Administrator Eric Lyle at
614-752-1736 and demand that Keiths demands for
respect and safety are met. More information can be found at
keithlamar.org.
Also this week, Emily Murphys struggle for adequate food in the
Atlanta City Detention Center focused attention on the 19 people
facing charges for domestic terrorism for their participation in
the mass movement to stop the construction of a cop city in the
Atlanta forest. Emily is one of those forest defenders who is still
being held and has been denied access to vegan food for almost a
month. They have not only protested on their own behalf, but have
drawn attention to the systemic neglect and abuse all prisoners
face in this jail.
As of February 24th, it seems as though protest and a flood of
calls from outside have forced the jail to begin providing adequate
vegan meals, shifting the struggle to Emilys release and
defeat...
About that Joe Biden is too old to run for re-election column I
wrote a little while back--I may have been a bit hasty. The "old"
man just took the boldest, most dramatic act by an American
president since, well, I can't remember when.
Do You Enjoy Being Lied To? Moscow Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz,
Josh Hawley, Ron Johnson, Chuck Grassley, Tommy Tuberville, Susan
Collins, Kevin McCarthy, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Paul Gosar, Lauren
Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and at the top of the list: Donald
John Trump. What do all these enemies of America, and others, have
in []
Atlanta, GA Community organizations involved in the ongoing
campaign to defend the South River Forest outside Atlanta, Georgia
and Stop Cop City say state prosecutors are planning on releasing
indictments in the coming weeks charging them as a criminal
organization under RICO statutes.
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO,
targets organized criminal enterprises and was created in the 1970s
to more effectively prosecute the mafia. Since then, RICO statutes
have been used against participants in the 2019 college
admissions scandal, anti-abortion groups,
insider traders, and now, environmental and climate justice
activists.
Rather than charging individuals with specific crimes they
committed, RICO indictments target alleged criminal organizations
in which people collaborate together to commit a series of
interrelated crimes in furtherance of a common criminal goal. For
charges to stick, prosecutors must prove that those charged engaged
in a pattern of racketeering activity involving
at least two acts in furtherance of one or
more incidents, schemes, or transactions.
Marlon Kautz, a member of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, explained
that they believe the indictments are coming based on a
statement made by an Atlanta police officer. He also said
that they understand that an indictment against activists
is forthcoming, likely in the coming week.
According to Kautz, the groups information is also based
on a conversation between a defense attorney who is representing
activists a...
(This is an ancient column I just found, but represents a great
service to humanity, so I republish it.)
Im trying to figure out sex, and why people get in an uproar
about it, and run around waving their arms and hollering, and
everybodys mad at everybody else.
Its because men cant tell sex from tennis. We cant help it. Its
a character defect built into us, like tail fins on a fifty-seven
T-Bird.
Yep. Thats it. Ive just solved the question of the ages. Right
here. Contributions welcome.
Best I can tell, ninety-eight percent of women are mad because
all men want is sex. (Actually we want other things too, like
big-block engines, dogs, and really bad movies with lots of
gratuitous violence.) On the other hand, men are ready to become
monks. Its because they cant talk to a woman for five minutes on a
bus before she wants commitment. To a woman commitment seems so
obviously good that she cant see why hed rather have pellagra.
Which is what men think about sex. So the two glare at each other
like two possums with only one garbage can.
Its too bad. A lot of people end up being unhappy because of
it.
The problem, it says here, is that to men sex is a primal drive
that doesnt have much emotional content. Its just sex. Its like
when you have athletes foot, you scratch it, but you dont have an
emotional bond to it. Sure, a guy can commit to a woman, as
evidenced by innumerable marriages that happen despite experience
and common sense. Sex can have emotional importance to him with a
woman he wants to keep. But he doesnt have a hard-wired connection
between sex and commitment. To him theyre separate things, like
jackhammers and Vienna sausages. You can have both at the same
time, but you dont have to.
By contrast, for women, sex seems epoxied to a lot of emotional
freight. A woman sees sex as a step toward commitment, as fifty
years ago a man saw commitment as a step toward sex. When the man
doesnt see the connection, she thinks hes just plain wrong-headed,
and mean spirited, and a nickel-plated sumbitch.
Which brings us to tennis. (Bet you didnt see that coming.)
Men think of sex the way they think of tennis. Suppose I want to
work off some energy. I call my buddy Ralph, and we meet at the
courts, and have a good time for a few sets sweat and grunt, twist
our ankles, fall down and break things, and end up in a mild
coma.
When were through, he doesnt want me to marry him. When in fact
I dont, he doesnt feel exploited. In fact, he feels deeply
relieved.
Thats how men look at sex. A man genuinely doesnt understand why
he cant say to the young lady in the next cubicle, Hey, Jane, what
say we go to my place at lunch for a roll in the hay? (Fred youve
got hay at your place?) He may like Jane, think shes bright and
fun, have no slight desire to exploit, use, or degrade her. They
may have been friends for years. But if he made...
In Maine, the number of nursing home beds is declining even as
the states population grows older and medical needs continue to
rise. Assisted living facilities have expanded their presence
across the state, attempting to meet the demand. The Maine Monitor
and ProPublica would like your help in reporting on how well these
facilities are run, especially in looking after people who need a
high level of medical care, and whether the state is doing enough
to ensure that residents needs are being adequately met. If you
have firsthand experience of living, working or caring for someone
in one of these facilities,
we would appreciate your help and perspective.
We are focusing on large residential facilities, classified as
Level 4, that have seven or more beds in private or semiprivate
rooms, as well as common living and dining areas.
We want to hear from residents or their family members about the
medical care provided by Maines Level 4 assisted living facilities.
Wed also like to hear from Mainers who are struggling to find an
assisted living facility that they can afford or that provides
adequate care.
We also are hoping to hear from workers in the Level 4 assisted
living facilities, as you understand the challenges that accompany
the rising demand for care.
We take your privacy seriously. We are gathering these stories
for the purposes of our reporting and will contact you if we wish
to publish any part of your story. We are the only ones reading
what you submit.
We may not be able to respond to everyone, but we read each
submission, and they all help inform our work.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of
power. Sign up to receive
our biggest stories as soon as theyre published.
Bonnie Martin kept the bleeding secret for as long as she could.
Her sisters, boyfriend and sons knew nothing of her illness until
suddenly, during a family gathering in October 2018 at a diner in
Annapolis, Maryland, she began hemorrhaging.
A tumor had burst through the wall of her uterus. Doctors
performed an emergency hysterectomy and removed what cancer they
could reach. She needed multiple rounds of chemotherapy and
radiation, expensive stuff. As her family grew fearful, Martin
walked that fine line between resilience and denial shed beat this,
she said. She focused instead on fun things ahead, a trip to
Ireland with her boyfriend and sisters, for instance, and a Rolling
Stones concert.
Luckily, or so Martin thought, she had placed her trust and her
money in Liberty HealthShare. Liberty is whats known as a health
care sharing ministry, a nonprofit alternative to medical insurance
rooted in Christian principles. Hundreds of thousands of people
rely on such organizations for basic health coverage. They promise
no red tape, lower costs and compassion for the sick. Although
Martin wasnt religious, she found comfort in Libertys pledge to
carry one anothers burdens.
Martin received treatment that pushed her cancer into remission.
But 18 months later, it returned, this time in her lungs. She was
dying.
Liberty covered her bills at first, but then, without warning or
explanation, the payments stopped. Suddenly, she faced $10,000 in
unpaid charges. Her whole life, shed had pristine credit. Now
creditors called constantly and sent harassing letters.
Martin refused to accept that her cancer was terminal. She was
going to survive, and when she was rid of it, she needed those
bills paid. She spent hours pleading over the phone with Liberty,
straining to focus as the toxic drugs she was taking sapped her
energy. Martins long, auburn curls fell out, and her memory was
slipping.
The district's most vulnerable students deserve the reforms
outlined in my proposed "Improving Special Education Within the
LAUSD" resolution. It is time for the Board of Education to step
up.
Xi Jinping is a controversial world figure, with the threats to
Taiwan, the mistreatment of the Uyghurs, and the suggestion that
China may be considering sending lethal weapons/supplies to Russia
in the Ukraine war. But could he be serious about brokering an end
to the war?
What a hypocrite Trump is to act concerned about the welfare of
the people of Ohio after years of openly mocking and rolling back
environmental safeguards.
The Southern Baptist Convention took action based on the
misogyny that is promoted in the Christian Bible. Removing
Saddleback megachurch from the SBC was much more a religious act
than a political act. The Bible is the root of the problem.
Atlanta, GA As the movement to prevent the destruction of a huge
swath of forest outside Atlanta grows more powerful, the
authorities are scrambling to contain it. As they do, they are
resorting to increasingly violent measures including the killing of
an Indigenous
protester, Manuel Tern, also known as Tortuguita, on January 18
and charging 19 protesters with trumped up domestic terrorism
charges.
All the while, the majority of the members of the Atlanta Police
Foundations Community Stakeholder Advisory Committee (CSAC) have
cheered on the increased police presence and harsh repression of
community members who oppose the project, with one member praising
the polices deployment of shock and
awe.
Shock and awe is a wartime military strategy which relies upon
the spectacular deployment of overwhelming force to paralyze an
enemys will to fight. It is also called rapid
dominance.
So one of the things we charged them with, to include
criminal trespass, was domestic terrorism charge that we put on
them, said Assistant Chief Carven Tyus of the Atlanta
Police Department, during a December 15, 2022 meeting of the
CSAC.
So going forward, that is one of the charges that we
will be using, Tyus continued.
In his presentation to the committee just days after a raid on
the forest encampments that led to six arrests, Tyus explains why
he and other law enforcement officers have chosen to arrest the
protesters for domestic terrorism they arent from
Georgia.
None of those people live here; they dont have a vested
interest in this property and we show that time and time again. Why
is an individual from Los Angeles, California concerned about a
training facility being built in the state of Georgia? And that is
why we consider that domestic terrorism,...
Report and video from the Montreal Autonomous Tenants
Union (SLAM-MATU) on recent anti-eviction action.
Monday, February 20th, members of the Montreal Autonomous
Tenants Union (SLAM-MATU) stormed into the offices of Transport
Quebec. Any plans for a future eviction of the Ville-marie
encampment must be cancelled, and encampment members need to be
given housing that fits their needs. We marched on TQs offices,
just as we march on the offices of landlords, because direct action
gets the goods.
Were calling on members of the public, supporters, and unhoused
comrades, to take to the streets this coming Monday, February 27th,
5:30pm, Atwater Metro (Cabot Square) to help put an end to these
evictions.
These evictions are not solutions to homelessness and do not
improve the lives of people who are homeless. Homelessness is
caused by our broken shelter system, the predatory rents and
evictions of landlords, and the modern austerity politics of
capitalist governments who underfund and mismanage mental health,
social, and housing services. The housing crisis affects us all!
Defend your neighbours!
Music is once again from Action Sdition. Go check them out.
Welcome to The Daily Wrap
Up, a concise show dedicated to bringing you the most relevant
independent news, as we see it, from the last 24 hours
(2/24/23).
As always, take the information discussed in the video below and
research it for yourself, and come to your own conclusions. Anyone
telling you what the truth is, or claiming they have the answer, is
likely leading you astray, for one reason or another. Stay
Vigilant.
(https://www.rokfin.com/TLAVagabond)(https://www.bitchute.com/channel/24yVcta8zEjY/)
https://rumble.com/embed/v28881i/?pub=2q643
This article was produced for ProPublicas Local Reporting
Network in partnership with The
Current. Sign up for
Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are
published.
A federal consumer watchdog group has fined one Georgia-based
company $15 million for predatory lending practices. TitleMax,
which is headquartered in Savannah, offers short-term loans at
exorbitant interest rates in exchange for a lien on the title of
the borrowers car.
In its order, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said
TitleMax had intentionally evaded laws meant to protect military
families from predatory lenders and, separately, charged illegal
insurance fees to more than 17,000 customers.
The federal regulator found that the company used deceptive
means, including falsifying information, to issue 2,670 so-called
title loans over a five-year period to military members or their
dependents in violation of the Military Lending Act and in
contravention of the companys own internal guidelines.
The operations of TitleMax, the nations largest title lender and
the dominant industry player in Georgia, have been the subject of a
yearlong investigation by The Current and ProPublica. The news
organizations revealed for the first time
the scope and scale of the industry in the state. The stories
also revealed TitleMaxs
questionable practices in Georgia, which has one of the most
permissive local regulatory environments for the title lending
industry. Due to a loophole in state law, title lenders there are
allowed to charge triple-digit interest rates that would be illegal
for any other financial lender.
The
53-page CFPB Consent Order repeatedly castigated the company
for a lack of meaningful internal oversight in its pursuit of
revenue. Federal law caps annual interest rates at 36% for
financial products sold to military members and their families.
TitleMax, which counts more than 293,000 customers nationwide and
posted $910 million in revenue in 2019, emphasizes in its own
internal training manuals that employees should not lend to
se...
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power. Sign up to receive
our biggest stories as soon as theyre published.
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Revelations that a new type of junk science known as 911 call
analysis has infiltrated the justice system have triggered calls by
prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys nationwide to ban the use
of the technique, review past convictions in which it was used and
exact sanctions against prosecutors who snuck it into court despite
knowing it was inadmissible.
The actions follow a
two-part ProPublica investigation published last year that many
judges and other court officers said took them by surprise. I never
anticipated that prosecutors officers of the court would engage in
systematic organized frauds, a judge in Ohio wrote in an email to
ProPublica. She said she had alerted fellow judges to be on the
lookout for 911 call analysis, which ProPublica found to be
pervasive throughout the justice system: Im sure that some will
care and share my outrage that innocent people are going to
prison.
The techniques chief architect, Tracy Harpster, developed a
program to spread his methods and says police and prosecutors who
take his training will learn how to identify guilt and deception
from the word choice, cadence and grammar of those calling 911. So
far, researchers who have tried to corroborate Harpsters claims
have failed.
Last year, ProPublica documented more than 100 cases in 26
states where law enforcement has employed his methods. Those
responsible for ensuring honest police work and fair trials
including the FBI have instead helped 911 call analysis
metastasize.
The investigation revealed that some prosecutors knew 911 call
analysis would not be recognized as scientific evidence but still
disguised it in trial against unwitting defendants anyway.
This article, written by longtime
Strong TownsmemberTony Dutzik, was originally published onFrontier Group.
It is shared here with permission. All images for this piece were
provided by the author, unless otherwise indicated.
Last year, the makers of the cellphone game
Candy Crush took over the nighttime sky across the Hudson River
from Manhattan for a 500-drone synchronized light show marking the
brands 10th anniversary.
Such a display would not have been possible without
stunning advances in technologyspecifically, the ability to fly
small, precisely controlled drones at an affordable cost.
It was miraculous. And horrifying. Candy Crush took
something that was enjoyed by millionsthe night skyand turned it
into yet another billboard. For what? A cell phone game?
Now imagine the equivalent of a Candy Crush display
over your city 24/7/365. Like an LA freeway in the sky. Only all.
The. Time.
Welcome to the magical utopia of flying cars.
Flying cars continue for some to be Exhibit A of the
glorious future that could be ours if only we had access to
unlimited energy and got those meddling regulators and
environmentalists out of the way.
Censorship in America has reached alarming proportions not seen
since the McCarthy era of HUAC. This often isnt obvious to the
public because people dont miss coverage of stories of whose
existence they are unaware. Having spent my working life in the
trade, I get information from old colleagues on the frequent
stonewalling. For example, here is an AP story, clearly of national
importance, that was pulled five minutes after appearing:
(AP) Today President Joe Biden, in a press briefing in the White
House, gave a puzzling estimate of relations with Russia, saying,
Vladimir Putin is a threat to the Free World, to the struggle of
democracy against authoritarian shift F7 for font size, shift eight
for scroll speed, press 1 for manual, 2 for auto eye-follow. Those
present later said privately that after this he stopped and stared
catatonically, like he was pole-axed for several seconds before
continuing, and the brave people of Ukraine who share our
democracy, our American values.
According to a source who asked not to be name because of the
sensitivity of the matter, someone in the teleprompter room was
heard to say, What the? Oh God. Were in admin, how did? Jesus, hes
reading itcut, cut!
If you search the web for this story, you will find not a trace.
Yet it is well known in Washington. In the bar of the National
Press Club, several reporters who were in the White House at the
time,laughed at efforts by, Sheila Bratwurst, the White House
spokesperson, to walk the story back. It is false, utterly and
categorically false and didnt happen. It goes to show the lengths
the Russians will go to plant fake news in our democratic American
media that the President loves and respects.
Stories are routinely buried if they run against the Washington
narrative. For example.
For example, speaking informally to the White House press corps,
Biden, who had talked that morning with AMLO, the President of
Mexico, about the long-running dispute over transgenic corn pushed
by Monsanto, apparently confused several stories. While he was said
not to be entirely coherent, making it difficult to tell exactly
what he was trying to say, , he seemed to assert that the Chinese
were interbreeding with transgender UFOs in balloons, endangering
national security.
According to a producer at UPI, Biden was persuaded to retract the
story when it was explained that limitations of gestation time made
this unlikely , that the wheat is transgenic, not transgender, and
most of the balloons were two feet in diameter, which would require
very small Chinese. Though the President does not have a technical
background, he seemed to understand, and said he hoped the space
aliens had democratic American values.
Not all suppressed stories are of national importance. It is known
that President Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine was a professional
comedian before becoming President, reversing the order in America.
One of...
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power. Sign up to receive
our biggest stories as soon as theyre published.
Politicians havent stopped deleting some of their most
cringeworthy tweets, but Politwoops, our
project that has tracked and archived more than half a million
deleted tweets from candidates and elected officials since 2012, is
no longer able to track them.
Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, the platform has disabled the
function we used to track deletions and the new method that Twitter
says should identify them appears to be broken. We have been unable
to find anyone who can help us, and with Twitter surprising
developers by announcing a move to apaid
model for gathering tweet data, its no longer clear that
Twitter is a stable platform on which to maintain this work. It
seems fitting to give Politwoops a sendoff, a farewell to not
exactly a friend but an odd part of our national political
discourse for a decade.
Originally built by the Sunlight Foundation, Politwoops always
had a tenuous existence. Born in 2012, it received its first
eulogy just three years later after Twitter pulled the plug,
only to
come back just in time for the 2016 presidential election.
(Now-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy welcomed it back,
then deleted that tweet.) When Sunlight closed up shop,
ProPublica took over the app, which is when I started to
maintain it.
Politwoops was built on the idea that what elected officials and
candidates said on Twitter mattered, at least a little. Like most
users of Twitter, poli...
Now in a Republican controlled House, they have the power to
investigate through the House Oversight Committee. However, this
Republican controlled Oversight Committee has little interest in
exploring former President Trump's family members' business
deals.
Why are Floridians spending so much money begging for permission
to use a ubiquitous plant that's been medicine for millennia, has
well-established medical uses, and is apparently just plain fun for
some?----Because every time we try to put full legalization on the
ballot, the measures get jammed up in court and Floridians are
denied the right to vote on them.
The possible deployment of a German brigade in Lithuania and the
disputes, anger, and bickering that go along with it have been
going on for half a year.
A site plan for a new development has the opportunity
to take on many forms. Each of these forms have a different
resulting level of productivity. One of the universal principles of
traditional urban design practice shared by planners and
architects is to build to the street. The concept is simple and is
intended to yield an urban form and character. When planning and
siting new buildings, the buildings should be built up to the
sidewalk or street frontage. The more urban the environment, the
closer the building should be built to the street.
Building toward the street also yields several other noticeable
benefits. First, when a building is front and center, all service
items like parking and dumpsters are located at the rear of the
building, or at the center of the block. The messy bits are
screened by the architecture of the building instead of an
expensive landscape buffer. Secondly, this is a far more efficient
use of the site. The development can be maximized in plan to yield
out more development. Parking lots that circle a building are
inefficient and redundant to the public streets fronting the
development. Features intended to mitigate the unpleasant impacts of parking
in front, such as landscape buffers and screening, can also be
omitted, which can result in at least a 20% improvement to the
efficiency of the site. Finally, the architecture and street
frontage of the building has the opportunity to shine instead of a
sea of parking. This results in the adjacent development being
vested in the success and maintenance of the public sidewalk and
landscaping areas.
During a recent trip to Medicine Hat,
Alberta, I spent the night at an airport hotel in Calgary.
There is not a lot to do when staying at an airport hotel, and it
provides the opportunity to reflect on your surroundings. The hotel
was branded, and most likely a carbon copy footprint found in 60
other places across North America. However, with every building,
the site layout is unique for this location.
The development surrounding the Calgary airport has a
very interesting street grid, which is slowly being developed with
a variety of uses to support both travelers and the aviation
industry. This development is an orderly development grid pattern
with large, rectangular blocks. The streets are wide to accommodate
large traffic volumes and truck traffic. Each street also includes
sidewalks and street lights where pedestrians could walk. In this
particular case, the hotel is plopped in the middle of the site and
surrounded by an internal ring road and multiple parking
areas.
In Tennessee, Republican lawmakers are considering whether
patients should be forced to continue dangerous pregnancies, even
while miscarrying, under the states abortion ban and how close to
risking death such patients need to be before a doctor can legally
intervene.
At a legislative hearing last week, a lobbyist who played a
dominant role in crafting the states abortion legislation made his
preference clear: A pregnant patient should be in the process of an
urgent emergency, such as bleeding out, before they can receive
abortion care.
Some pregnancy complications work themselves out, Will Brewer,
who represents the local affiliate of the anti-abortion
organization National Right to Life, told a majority-male panel of
lawmakers Feb. 14. When faced with a patients high-risk condition,
doctors should be required to pause and wait this out and see how
it goes.
Top Republicans like Gov. Bill Lee have defended the states
abortion law, one of the strictest in the country, as providing
maximum protection possible for both mother and child. But
currently, the ban has no explicit exceptions, not even for the
pregnant patients health.
It only includes an affirmative defense for emergencies, a rare
legal mechanism that means the burden is on the doctor to prove
abortion care was necessary because the patient risked death or
irreversible impairment to a major bodily function.
The penalties for getting it wrong are three to 10 years in
prison and up to $15,000 in fines. Doctors could expect to lose
their medical license just for being charged. Concern over how the
unprecedented law will be interpreted by prosecutors and the courts
has already resulted in patients with high-risk conditions having
to
...
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power. Sign up to receive
our biggest stories as soon as theyre published.
While unemployment benefits can be a huge help when youve lost
your job, at tax time, they can leave you with more questions than
answers. Heres what you should know about your unemployment
benefits when it comes to filing your taxes.
Are Unemployment Insurance Benefits Taxed by States and the Federal
Government?
Generally, yes. The federal government will tax your
unemployment benefits, and most states will as well.
Unemployment benefits count toward your income and are taxed by the
federal government at rates according to the
IRS tax brackets.
Its a bit more complicated when it comes to state taxes. Most
states fully tax unemployment benefits just like they would for
regular income. Some states dont tax unemployment income at all,
while others only partially tax the benefits.
See how your state taxes unemployment benefits here.
Can I Have Taxes Withheld From Unemployment Payments?
Yes. State unemployment agencies allow youto have federal and state taxes taken out of your
unemployment checks. The IRS
recommends you do this to avoid surprise tax bills. You can set
this up when you first apply for unemployment, or at any point
while you are receiving it, by filing Form W-4V and
sending it to your states unemployment agency. You will also have
to fill out your states withholding form to have state taxes
withheld from your benefit. Most states also allow you to do
federal and state withholding online via their unemployment
websites.
Frigid air has settled over the region,
with the low temperatures today ranging from the mid-20s over the
western lowlands to the teens and single digits in the Columbia
Basin (see below). Temperatures dropped to below zero F
over some valleys east of the Cascade crest.
The whole region is plenty cold enough for
snow right now, there just isn't any moisture.
All the moisture is going into California
right now. Good...they need it!
Friday and Saturday will be generally dry over
the Northwest, with plenty of sun.
But Saturday night, a moisture source will
approach: a Pacific occluded front (see forecast map for 7 PM
Saturday night, black lines are sea-level pressure, the front shown
by a red line, the near-surface temperature in color
shades).
The front will bring moisture and warming, but the latest model
simulations suggest that cold air...
The China-US rivalry has global and political implications that
require careful consideration. While the economic and technological
competition has dominated the discourse, it is important to also
consider the implications of the rivalry on global governance,
international relations, and security.
Probably one of the most popular tourist attractions
in Rome, Italy, the Trevi
Fountain or the Fontana di Trevi in Italian goes as far back as
the 1600s, if not further back than that. Back when the fountain
was constructed, the original design was to provide a natural
source of potable water to nearby residents through the aqueduct,
making it one of the oldest water sources in the country.
But in 1730, Pope Clemens XII held a contest to
create a new design for the fountain, which was eventually granted
to Nicola Salvi, although he died before the renovation was
completed. His design shows the sea god Oceanus being pulled by
seahorses in a chariot made from shells, surrounded by more shells,
fish, corals and other sea creatures.
But more than just being a beautiful structure that
sits in the rather small Piazza di Trevi, locals and tourists alike
flock to this area to take a look at this gorgeous structure, as
well as to toss coins in the fountain in the belief that not only
will you have good luck, but its a supposed promise that youll also
return to Rome sometime in the future. Meanwhile, a second coin is
thrown in if you happen to be look...
New Year SOS. W fall further and farther behind the tecno
gadgets we have created out of bits and pieces pf our buried minds.
The sonneteer recalls for us that Dr. Frankenstein's monster was
more human than his creatot. Lest we forget.
Report on recent Indigenous-led occupation by residents
in the East Phillips neighborhood of so-called Minneapolis, MN. For
more information, check outDefend the
Depot.
During the February 19th-26th week of solidarity everywhere to
Defend the Welaunee Forest and Stop Cop City, Minneapolis is also
fighting a local and connected struggle against toxic harm in the
southside East Phillips Neighborhood.
The struggle centers on what is to become of the 7.7 acre lot at
28th Street and Longfellow Ave known for its most recent occupant,
Roof Depot. The lot is home to the so-called arsenic triangle
previously occupied by a pesticide manufacturer, and adjacent to
existing major polluters Bituminous Roadways and Smith Foundry.
Since at least 2015, grassroots neighborhood groups have sought to
convert the area to benefit the community, specifically via an
expansive community vision of an Indoor Urban
Farm.
Nenoocaasi Camp (hummingbird)
28th St & Longfellow Ave, Minneapolis
Come stand in solidarity & be in community if youre able to!
assist with on the ground needs + supply runs here: (vnmo
@/Nenoocaasi-Camp) pic.twitter.com/p95D8LzNOG
They have encountered opposition from city bureaucrats, the City
Council, and the courts from then to now, culminating in a 7-6
council vote against the communitys proposal this January. At that
council meeting, a contract was approved for Rachel Contracting of
St. Michael, MN to go ahead and demolish the Roof Depot warehouse
property as soon as February 27th, preparing the lot for a
Minneapolis Public Works diesel vehicle lot and fueling station to
be put in its place.
Public Works is the agency responsible (with assistance from
MPD) for many encampment evictions within the city and has an
existing campus adjacent to the Roof Depot site. In April 2022,
this campus was
attacked and vehicles disabled in retaliation for a militarized
encampment eviction.
All 59 Republican members of the Illinois General Assembly are
calling for legislative hearings on a state-run mental health
center in rural southern Illinois, citing findings of a culture of
abuse, cover-ups and poor patient care from a monthslong investigative
series by Lee Enterprises Midwest, Capitol News Illinois and
ProPublica.
Late last week, the members sent a letter to key Democratic
committee chairs in the Illinois House and Senate asking them to
schedule a bicameral public hearing on the facility.
The districts that include and surround Choate Mental Health and
Developmental Center are represented by Republicans, but as the
minority party in both chambers, they lack the authority to convene
a legislative hearing.
On Thursday morning, several downstate GOP lawmakers reiterated
their call to action at a news conference at the Capitol. Rep. Paul
Jacobs, R-Pomona, whose district includes Choate, and others
stressed that they want to see conditions fixed.
The residents there cant suffer. The most profound developmental
and mental disabilities in the state cant suffer. They have to be
treated well, Jacobs said.
In addition to the in-person hearing, the lawmakers requested
access to high-ranking Illinois Department of Human Services
officials who oversee the facility, including Secretary Grace
Hou.
The facility is one of 13 psychiatric hospitals and
developmental centers operated by IDHS across the state. Choate is
located in the rural community of Anna near the Missouri border
about 120 miles southeast of St. Louis. The 270-bed facility serves
people with mental illnesses and developmental disabilities,
including people diagnosed with profound disabilities and some who
are nonverbal.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of
power. Sign up to receive
our biggest stories as soon as theyre published.
This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a
nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with
Texans. Sign up for The Brief
Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas
issues.
Without mentioning the Uvalde mass shooting, Texas Gov. Greg
Abbott last week declared school safety a priority for the
current legislative session and again dismissed calls for more laws
that would restrict access to guns.
Some want more gun laws, but too many local officials wont even
enforce the gun laws that are already on the books, the governor
said during his annual State of the
State address. Without providing a source or clear data, he
then asserted that most gun crimes are committed by criminals who
possess guns illegally. Abbott proposed a 10-year mandatory minimum
sentence for people who are not legally allowed to have a firearm
but have them anyway.
We need to leave prosecutors and judges with no choice but to
punish those criminals and remove them and their guns from our
streets, said Abbott, a Republican.
But Abbotts speech avoided a glaring reality: The majority of
the states 19 mass shootings over the past six decades were carried
out by men who legally acquired firearms, according to an
investigation
by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune published before his
speech. Guns were legally obtained in 13 shootings, including two
in which the shooter was not allowed to have one but took advantage
of a loophole in the law that does not require background checks
for firearms that are acquired from private individuals. Firearms
were obtained illegally in three instances. The rest of the cases
were unclear.
Antifascist researcher Spencer Sunshine offers a
critical look at ecofascism and Peter Staudenmaiers book,
Ecology Contested.
The increasing embrace by White Supremacists of
environmentalism, which they use to justify their racist
ideologiesdubbed ecofascismis on the lips of many today. This has
been driven by its mention in the manifestos connected to White
Supremacist massacres in El Paso, Texas and Christchurch, New
Zealand in 2019; between the two, 74 were murdered. Additionally,
the new interest paid by fascists in Ted Kaczynski, aka the
Unabomber, also shows rising interest in this trend.
Because of this, historian and anarchist Peter Staudenmaiers
book is a timely reminder that ecofascism is not just not a new
problem, but also one that provides a bridge between the far-Right
and the Left and anarchists. His book is a call, in the best
radical environmental style, to blockade that bridge and stop
fascists from entering radical circles.
Since the early 1990s Staudenmaier has been associated with the
Institute for Social Ecology (ISE). The school was co-founded in
1974 by anarchist theoretician Murray Bookchin, and is best known
for promoting what he dubbed social ecologya fusion of Hegelianized
Marxism, classical anarchism, and ecological thought. But ISE
members have also been some of the earliest to warn anarchists
about the danger of Red/Brown politics, especially in the radical
environmental movement.
For example, Staudenmaier co-authored the 1995 book Ecofascism:
Lessons from the German Experience with Janet Biehl. His
half was one of the first treatments in English documenting the
green wing of the original Nazi Party, clearly showing how the
fascist embrace of environmentalism has a long history and
impeccable pedigree. Butespecially in the context of Bookchins
occasionally injudicious, and sometimes downright vicious, attacks
on rival radical environmental currentsEcofascism was
controversial when it was published. Today it stands as a prescient
warning of what was to come.
(The term ecofascism itself is muddy because of the different
ways its invoked. Staudenmaier, following the clear understanding
of different far-Right factions which antifascist work requires,
uses it to refer to genuine fascists who embrace environmentalism.
Other leftists use it to refer to all right-wingers who
oppose environmentalism. Meanwhile, many conservatives use
it to smear environmentalists themselves!)
In January of this year, residents of Allendale, a
neighborhood in Louisianas third largest city, Shreveport, learned
that the controversial Interstate 49 inner-city connector (ICC)
would not go through their neighborhood. For Allendale Strong, a
group vocal in its opposition to the ICC and on whose advocacy
Strong Towns has
reported extensively, this is a bittersweet victory. An update
on
their website states, Going around Allendale is great. Building
an inner-city freeway connector is still not ideal.
Allendale Strong mobilized nearly a decade ago to
combat the proposed I-49 alignment. They dont even take care of the
stuff we have... They want to build a freeway, but wont even put in
enough asphalt to fill in a pothole, said Dorothy Wiley (the groups
founder) of the ICC. The $600900 million price tag, coupled with
its limited benefits, has even earned the project a spotlight in a
National Report on
Highway Boondoggles.
The current alternative under considerationknown as
3Aavoids Allendale, but impacts Shreveports downtown. According to
a description of the route published by the Northwest Louisiana
Council of Governments (NLCOG), 3A crosses over Cross Bayou twice,
runs through St. Pauls Bottoms Historic District, and appears to
impact both the Downtown Shreveport Commercial District and the
Shreveport Waterworks Museum, National Historic Landmark of...
During a Veterans Day celebration in my small Maryland
community, a teacher clicked through a slideshow of smiling men and
women in military uniforms. "Girls and boys, can anyone tell me
what courage is?" she asked the crowd, mostly children from local
elementary schools, including my two young kids[...]
In my 6,675-word review essay, I aim to persuade you to adopt
Walter J. Ong's expansive relationist spirit as your own spirit as
you proceed in your own efforts to understand our contemporary
Western world today -- in short, make Ong's relationist way of
proceeding to understand the Western world your own way of
proceeding to understand the Western world.
First things first, I'm neither pro-choice nor pro-life,
I don't want to be labeled as belonging to any of those titled
camps.
I Don't believe abortion should be an easy nonchalant fix for
deliberate bad/risky behaviour, however, there is a myriad of
legitimate reasons for seeking one, the obvious reasons, rape,
incest, life of mother in danger... of course a woman should be
able to abort in those cases.
There are more nuanced reasons too, such as a family that has
many older children and the mother is of an older age and didn't
expect to get pregnant again...or the persons that have a couple of
baskets of children already, such as 8..9 even 10 kids...That woman
certainly shouldn't be forced to bear another child, she may have
financial reasons as well ....Raising kids is damn expensive.
Also, young ladies who get pregnant, just starting college,
career oriented future, travel and the like, entire life plans
could be altered, or canceled altogether...And that skews to the
wealthy, a rich family can care for a baby with the daughter
carrying on as if nothing much happened and or make an abortion
happen safely in another state or country without too much fuss and
bother..But there are many more poor families that won't have that
option...So, abortion will now be a two-tiered issue based purely
on economics..
There's a myriad of other reasons, including the safety of the
mother or body scans and tests that reveal severe child
disabilities(And i'm not judging one way or another, I am aware
that some disabilities can consume a parents entire life for near
ever..)
My only personal position on Roe/Wade is....
Abortion decisions should be between a woman
and her doctor...
The title of this post?.....70% of Americans accept and or
support Roe/Wade, and it's been the law of the land for over 50
years ......That number is huge, there are very few subjects that
poll that high.....The only other major issue that gets that type
bi-partisan support is more gun restrictions...The vast majority
want the age to purchase firearms raised and an even higher
percentage want assault rifles banned altogether, or at least
severely restricted...
(U//FOUO) Some domestic violent extremists (DVEs) will likely
exploit the recent US Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe V.
Wade to intensify violence against a wide range of targets. We
expect violence could occur for weeks following the release,
particularly as DVEs may be mobilized to respond to changes in
state laws and ballot measures on abortion stemming from the
decision. We base this assessment on an observed increase in
violent incidents across the United States following the
unauthorized disclosure in May of a draft majority opinion on the
case.
(U//FOUO) Federal and state government officialsincluding
judgesand facilities probably are most at risk for violence in
response to the decision. In late May, a network of loosely
affiliated suspected violent extremists, known as Janes
Revengewhich has been linked to arson attacks against the buildings
of ideological opponentsshared a post online encouraging a night of
rage following the Supreme Court announcement, stating, we need the
state to feel our full wrath and we need them to be afraid of us.
An individual is now awaiting trial for a plot in June to kill a US
Supreme Court Justice in response to the draft opinion. A separate
incident in Michigan involved vandalism claimed by Janes Revenge on
a building that houses a US Representatives campaign office and a
pro-life advocacy group.
(U//FOUO) First amendment-protected events following the
released decision also probably will be attractive targets for a
range of DVEs to commit violence against ideological opponents. On
22 June, an unidentified social media user posted content
encouraging violence in response to the night of rage and told
followers to prepare to defend themselves and dont lock and load
either. Load then lock, according to US Capitol Police.
(U//FOUO) Both reproductive and family advocacy healthcare
facilities likely will continue to remain primary targets for
criminal incidents, and violence could escalate against these
facilities or personnel. Since May, at least three arson attacks
targeting pregnancy resource centers in Oregon and New York and a
family advocacy groups headquarters in Wisconsin have been claimed
by Janes Revenge. In May and June, suspected DVEs opposed to
abortion rights conducted arson attacks targeting a reproductive
healthcare facility in Wyoming and a vacant building that was
formerly a reproductive healthcare facility in Washington. Also, in
June, a suspected racially or ethnically motivated violent
extremist posted online calling for attacks against
abortion-related targets in reaction to Janes Revenge
activity.
(U//FOUO) Faith-based organizations across the United States
continue to report numerous criminal incidents against religious
institutions connected to abortion rights. We are aware of at least
11 incidents of vandalism threatening violence targeting religious
facilities perceived as being opposed to abortion, and one...
(Picture is from the J6 committee today...Ruby Freeman and her
beautiful daughter Shaye Moss)
Written by Grant G
I was brought to tears watching today's J6
hearing...
It wasn't Brad Raffensberg or Rusty Bowers
testimony that welled up my eyes it was Ruby Freeman and especially
her daughter Shaye Moss as they told the story about how two proud,
American, patriotic and black beauties had their lives torn asunder
by a lying conman named Donald Trump.
Shaye Moss entered the chamber with her mother
Ruby Freeman in tow..
They sat at the witness table in front of the
committee, a visibly nervous Shaye Moss initially struggled with
the on/off switch on the microphone, as procedures demand that the
switch is turned off when listening and on when talking..Someone
nearby eventually just turned on the microphone and left the
microphone on...That was an appropriate move.
The J6 panel played some clips of Trump
calling Shaye and Ruby out, tweets from Trump criminally
accusing both of them with horrific election changing
crimes.
The panel, Adam Schiff asked Shaye how this
affected her life..
Shaye told her story, how she was forced to
leave her home, go into hiding...she went on to say that even
today, she's a shut-in, gained 60 pounds..Doesn't leave her
home..Shaye talked about how she was bombarded with death threats
and now lives in fear of near everybody she doesn't
know.
But before she spoke of her current nightmare
she spoke eloquently albeit nervously how proud she was to work for
Fulton county as an election worker for 10 years...How she went out
of her way to assist older person of colour who in their living
memory weren't allowed to vote..She beamed, briefly in speaking how
she brought applications to vote to a hospital bound
person..
Her testimony was devastating, heartfelt and
sadly, patriotic...Shaye Moss...
2) Fluoridation reduces disparities - It doesnt. For
example, "Despite significant financial, training, and program
investments, US children's caries experience and inequities
continued to increase over the last 20 years," according the
American Journal of Public Health (2017).
3) CDC proclaims fluoridation is 1 of the 10 Greatest Public Health
Achievements of the 20th Century - CDC also reports, The prevalence of dental caries in a
population is not inversely related to the concentration of
fluoride in enamel and a higher concentration of enamel fluoride is
not necessarily more efficacious in preventing dental caries.
4) There are hundreds or thousands of studies prove
fluoridation safety - There are not. In fact, the studies CDC lists as proving safety actually dont
So, after 76 years of fluoridation which was supposed to
drastically reduce tooth decay, save money and put dentists out of
business with a minimum of adverse side effects (mild dental
fluorosis):
The stupidity and gullibility of millions of right leaning
Americans knows no bounds.
There has only been one US Presidential election where the wrong
candidate won...That was in 2000..Gore versus Bush.
Who Florida's electoral college votes went to was decided in a 5
to 4 decision by the Supreme court...5 Republican appointed
justices to stop the count, 4 Democratic appointed justices voted
to continue the count...
What happened in Florida in 2000? ....Punch card voting
machines, "dimpled chads, and pregnant chads...
In the very populous Democratic strongholds in Florida, people
would insert a ballot and use a key hole punch like tool to make a
hole in the ballot....The ballot punch-cards became plugged,
meaning holes were not being created, thousands became what was
known as dimpled, or pregnant....Thousands of these votes/ballots
were not initially counted, they were deemed invalid..
In rural Republican dominated Florida counties, this problem
didn't occur, the reason, simple, ..there were not thousands of
ballots run through those machines, mere hundreds, thus they didn't
become plugged..
When the recounting of a very close contest in Florida
started...as teams of people evaluated these tossed ballots...Day
by day George W Bush's minute lead in Florida was evaporating...Had
the count continued through all the disputed ballots...Gore would
have won...Along party lines the Supreme court voted to stop the
count...Thus George Bush was handed the presidency..
Gore accepted the partisan court decision and conceded....Gore
did that for the sake of Democracy.
Thus the world had to endure the Bush presidency...Iraq war and
many other brutal things happened..ah, but I digress.
Let's move to 2020 election...
Months and months before the November 3rd 2020 election day,
Trump at all his rallies stated and I quote..
"The only way I can lose the election is if
it's rigged"
Donald Trump was already setting the stage to
dispute his probable loss...
Trump did much more, his US Post Office flunky
Dejoy was ratfyking mail delivery...Trying to cause mail delays in
a election where millions of mail-in votes (because of covid) would
be sent...
Along with states like Georgia where
Republicans for decades have use...
The weight of the world is on Merrick
Garland and the January 6th Committee's shoulders, at stake is the
survival of Democracy itself.
I'm not trying to overstate or exaggerate what is at stake for
not just America, and Canada, but the world itself, the shining
beacon on the hill is at risk of being extinguished by the rise of
White Christian Fascists, a society of religious zealots who ordain
that the new America will be their way or the highway for all
others who don't assimilate.
Fueled by Donald Trump's vile hatred and overt racism these
religious zealots are prepared to destroy the US Constitution and
remove all persons who don't fall in line...
Germany in the 1930s....The people, the Jewish people, gypsies,
people of colour, all persons who did not have provable German
bloodlines became expendable, disposable, had no human value, mere
vermin to be eradicated....
These vermin labeled citizens of Germany thought that this
Hitler fueled ideology was temporary, would run it's course and
that sanity would prevail, neighboring countries' citizens never
believed they were at risk, of not only being conquered, but of
being turned to ashes, or enslaved to a life of disposable labour
to the master race....
There were many German people with morals and decency who
thought Hitler's way would never come to pass, but it did, and at a
speed that shocked the world....Decent German people, not all but
most fell in line and became believers of the Third Reich...
90 years later.....History repeats and persons like Tokyo Rose
and Joseph Goebbels reappear to spread their messages of
assimilation or die..
Russia committing daily war crimes in Ukraine as they attempt to
takeover the country lock stock and by the barrel of a gun, sane
countries and people of morality admonish Russia, righteous
governments are supplying munitions and firepower to help repel
Russia's advances and...
And one-time centrists like Jimmy Dore(Former personality on the
Young Turks) applaud Russia's crimes against humanity and call for
Ukraine to cede...
Tucker Carlson and Fox news, Americas most watched infotainment
network....Tucker Carlson has called for Ukraine to cede their
country to Russia....Treasonous words that literally say to
Ukraine..
You are going to die if you don't assimilate and...
The following press release and participants list was obtained
from the official website of Bilderberg Meetings. Participant lists
from nearly every Bilderberg Meeting since 1954 are also available
along with a collection of
thousands of pages of internal Bilderberg correspondence and
meeting reports.
2022 BILDERBERG MEETING
Washington D.C., 2 June 5 June 2022
Achleitner, Paul M. (DEU), Former Chairman Supervisory Board,
Deutsche Bank AG; Treasurer Bilderberg Meetings
Adeyemo, Adewale (USA), Deputy Secretary, Department of
The Treasury
Albares, Jos Manuel (ESP), Minister of Foreign Affairs,
European Union and Cooperation
Altman, Roger C. (USA), Founder and Senior Chairman, Evercore
Inc.
Washington, DC Today, a diverse coalition of
nonprofit advocacy organizations launched Stop The Deal a multifaceted campaign
designed to upend Elon Musks hostile takeover of Twitter, and stave
off the myriad harms inherent to Musks vision. The effort will
utilize all points of leverage, including legal and regulatory
mechanisms, strategic engagement with key stakeholders like
advertisers and investors, and ongoing grassroots education and
mobilization.
The launch comes as Musk exhibits increasingly erratic and
potentially unlawful behavior in his attempt to purchase the social
media giant a deal that could have swift and devastating impacts on
our information ecosystem if consummated, threatening the basic
safeguards Twitter has established to mitigate the real-world harms
it can drive.
Elon Musk is a wolf in expensive sheeps clothing whose Twitter
takeover is motivated by ego and grievance,
said Nicole Gill, Executive Director of Accountable
Tech. Musk doesnt care about Twitters users or employees;
he doesnt care about shareholders or advertisers; he doesnt care
about following the law or advancing the public good. Elon Musk
only cares about Elon Musk. If we dont stop this deal, hell hand a
megaphone to demagogues and extremists, who will cheer him as they
incite more hate, harm, and harassment.
Elon Musks free speech fundamentalism forces women, people of
color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and other marginalized
groups to pay the price for the free speech of misogynists, white
supremacists, bigots, and so on, said Imran Ahmed,
Chief Executive for the Center for Countering Digital Hate
(CCDH). A platform that fosters a safe space for serial
abusers is a dangerous environment for everyone else.
Elon Musks takeover of Twitter will not lead to more free speech
on the platform. It will simply lead to more extreme voices
exploiting the platform to stoke hate, violence and harassment.
Social media platforms that are nothing more than toxic cesspools
of disinformation are harmful to our society and our politics.
Twitter should reject Musk and this bad deal,
said Rahna Epting, Executive Director of
MoveOn.
A billionaire entrepreneur whose head is in the clouds and who
thinks free speech means free reach will now control one of the
most influential tech platforms in the world what could possibly go
wrong? asked SumOfUs Campaign Director, Vicky
Wyatt. Its time lawmakers pass tough new regulations that
stop these Big Tech oligarchs from destroying our democracies and
creating serious harm, she continued.
Elon Musk is one of the wealthiest, most powerful people on the
planet. He does not believe that any content posted on Twitter,
regardless of being...
(U//FOUO) Domestic violent extremists (DVEs) continue to exploit
3-D printing to produce weapons and firearm accessories that are
unregulated and easy to acquire, according to recent federal and
local arrests. This jointly authored Reference Aid is intended to
highlight recent incidents of DVE misuse of 3-D printing and
demonstrative examples of how the tactic could be exploited by DVEs
in the United States. It also aims to provide a description of some
elements of 3-D printing operations, including 3-D printers,
firearms, components, and accessories made of plastic. The below
items associated with 3-D printing operations are not an exhaustive
list and may involve constitutionally protected activities that are
not necessarily indicative of DVE use. 3-D printing operations
should be evaluated in the totality of circumstances and in
accordance with state laws.
(U) 3-D Printing: A form of additive manufac1u1ing; it is a
manufacturing process that takes a liquid, powder, or pellet form
of ceramic, metal, or resin-based material similar to plastic, and
builds three-dimensional objects by layering the material guided by
computer processing and binding it together by heat, light, or
chemical compounds until the object is fully rendered. Depending on
the material being used and the sophisticatio...
As governments
struggle to fund maintenance costs and question the
long-term solvency of new infrastructure expenditures,
some are beginning to take a step back before jumping into new
projects and are objectively asking, Can we afford this? Financial
resilience is a goal all communities strive for, and many look for
tools to help quantify that. The province of British Columbia,
Canada, has created such a tool that can help local governments
estimate the entire lifecycle costs of infrastructure, such as
water, sewer and transportation, for different land use patterns,
for example, compact- versus low-density development. This tool,
accessible to anyone in the British Columbia province, is called
the community lifecycle infrastructure costing tool (CLIC
tool).
The CLIC tool is designed to help local municipalities
estimate the lifecycle cost implications of different land use
patterns over a 100-year period. Its a free, excel-based tool that
has the ability to generate long-term infrastructure...
Hardcore surfers go into the water regardless of
whether they know they are shark infested or not, leaving their
safety completely to chance, just because they love it so much. But
the reality is that although shark bites are not exactly common, it
doesnt mean that they dont happen. In fact, they are increasing by
the year.
Thankfully, both surfers and lifeguards in Australia
may not have to worry so much about this issue as much because they
are getting a new eye in the sky, camera-equipped drones that will
let them look out for sharks in the water from high above.
Australias Queensland has long used hook drumlines
and nets filled with bait to help the surfers and beachgoers in the
water from sharks. However, this type of approach can also injure
other marine life, like dolphins, turtles, dugongs, and even
fatally injure the sharks they are attempting to fend off in the
first place, which is not the intention.
As for the
SharkSmart Drones project, they ran a
trial from September 2...
When one thinks of San Francisco weather
one generally does not think of snow, but the latest model runs are
going for flakes falling around the city.
For example, the European Center's model
accumulated snowfall forecast through 10 AM Friday has substantial
snow on the hills around San Francisco, with snowflakes reaching
the Airport.
The U.S. GFS model has even more...snowflakes
over the entire city!
Here's a 30 year old crossword puzzle from 1993. A feelgood
puzzle just in time for Black HIstory Month. I solved the it in
about an hour (good luck Z Gen!). Now see what you can do. Tell me
about your adventure in the comments.
An update and call for solidarity with anarchist
political prisoner Jorge Yorch Esquivel, detained
since December on trumped-up charges.
Jorge Yorch Esquivel is a beloved compaero of the punk and
anarchist community, and a long-time participant of the Okupa Che
Guevara. He was arrested on December 8, 2022, by plainclothes
police as he was leaving the campus of the Ciudad Universitaria (of
the UNAM university) in Mexico City as part of a campaign of
criminalization against the Okupa.
BACKGROUND
On February 24, 2016, an operation was carried out in which
plainclothes policemen arbitrarily detained him, planting drugs on
him in order to fabricate crimes against him. The whole case was
plagued with irregularities. He was transferred to Oaxaca and then
to a maximum security prison in Hermosillo. The authorities used
this strategy under the supposition that the distance would hinder
his legal defense, but even so, thanks to the solidarity and legal
work, he was reclassified from the crime of drug dealing to simple
possession of narcotics, so he was released on bail in March
2016.
Jorge decided not to continue with the farce case against him
and thus did not continue the process. In the meantime, the
frame-up continued to be put together. Constant threats and
journalistic reports did not cease; the press even took him for
dead and accused him of participating in organized crime.
On December 9, 2022 he was arrested in exactly the same place a
few steps outside Ciudad Universitaria, where the Okupa is located
and again by plainclothes police with the grounds for this illegal
detention being that the Attorney Generals Office appealed the
decision to reclassify the crime.
The compaeros health is fragile due to an extended
hospitalization a couple years back and more recent bouts with
different illnesses.
CURRENT SITUATION
Jorge is currently incarcerated in the Reclusorio Oriente prison
in Mexico City, in the observation and classification area. In this
area he has been unable to receive visits other than from his
lawyers.
The legal process is in the evidence stage. The Attorney
Generals evidence includes the testimony of the police officers who
detained Jorge; one of them is deceased and the other has not been
located. Due to this, the hearing scheduled for February 17, 2023,
did not take place and a date was set for April 14.
On behalf of the legal team that has been working in solidarity
to defend Jorge, two expert reports will be presented by an
external expert (called a perito in Mexico), one in
dactyloscopy to prove that the packages of narcotics...
An OpEd about how the best of MLK's thinking is being hidden
from the world, even in the National Museum of African American
History and Culture in Washington, DC. Every year, establishment
media are burying his greatest speech deeper in obscurity along
with the 1960s antiwar movement of which it was a prominent
part.
Nikki Haley has posited a policy in which all politicians over
75 years of age should be "competency tested". Perhaps they should
all be tested, and she should be the first to take the exam.
This week, we cover the astronomical increase in killings by
police in BC, as well as police murders that have taken place so
far in 2023. We also take a look at fights in Toronto to stop
continued police budget increases. Lastly, we take a belated look
at a couple of solidarity initiatives that have taken place
following the murder by Atlanta police of Tortuguita, an Atlanta
Forest Defender.
The Montreal
Anarchist Bookfair collective has made the exciting
announcement that the bookfair will be back on May 27th and 28th.
Applications for tables and events are open from now until March
15th!
As well, in just over a week, the Montreal Anarchist Zine Fair
will be taking place on Saturday March 4th!
Now on to the news!
Police Killings in 2023, BC Police Killings up by 700%
Since 2012
Since the beginning of 2023, cops have already murdered at least
8 people in Canada.
Prince Albert police shot and killed
a man after a foot chase in the Saskatchewan town on January
16th. An
80 year old man died during a Windsor police action under
unclear circumstances in Amherstburg, Ontario on January 17th. On
January 19th
a man fell to his death in the presence of the Ontario
Provincial Police in South River Ontario. Another...
Report back on recent rally against Brasfield &
Gorrie, one of the main contractors of the Cop City project
threatening the Weelaunee forest in Atlanta, GA.
On the 21st of February, activists in Coral Gables, Miami
rallied outside of an office of Brasfield & Gorrie, one of the
main contractors that is building the counter-insurgency training
facility in Atlanta, GA. This family-friendly protest is only the
latest anti-Cop City action to take place in the area and is part
of a larger week of action happening across the country.
From time to time we all wonder, I suppose, where we came from,
what manner of wights we be, and how we got this way. Those not
given to formal religion invoke an evolutionary explanation based,
oddly enough, on weather in Africa, at least as regards
intelligence. This holds that early people in Africa did not need
intelligence because plentiful game and low-hanging fruit made
living easy, so that there was no selective pressure favoring the
bright. In addition there was no need of much cooperation with
others. Consequently people evolved little ability to think ahead,
did not need to remember that winter would come, and that they
should store food. From this , evolutionists concluded that early
people could not imagine the future.
Then, the theory goes on, when migration out of Africa began and
people went to colder climes, they had to invent agriculture, store
food for winter, build houses, cooperate in complex ways, and make
warm clothes. In proper Darwinian fashion, goes this line of
reasoning, those too dim to do these things froze or starved, and
the brighter multiplied. This explains why whites and various
Asians, exposed to cold winters, developed higher intelligence,
whites achieving a mean IQ of 100 and Chinese of 106 while
sub-Saharan Africans languished with a mean IQ of seventy. This is
Pop-Evo gospel, the bedrock of belief.
How does it stand up to examination? Poorly. For example, does
cold weather really account for intelligence? Eskimos, with a mean
IQ of 90, survive quite well in what may be the harshest cold
weather on the planet, categorically contradicting the idea that
high intelligence is needed to live in cold climes. This also casts
doubt on the idea that cold weather promotes intelligence. It does,
except when it doesnt.
In the foregoing, note the word categorically. Evo-advocates
pass over the Eskimos as, well, just a minor exception, ahem, well.
No. Eskimos are clear, unmistakable proof that living In harsh cold
does not require high intelligence. Period. So much for the
theory.
Are we really to believe that Africans could not remember that
winter comes, if they had one to remember? America has many blacks
of pure African ancestry. Is remembering the future (if that makes
sense) really beyond them? Is their scientific verification
of this? May I see the study? If there isnt one, we are
dealing with unsupported speculation.
The sub-Saharan Africans of today are genetically identical, or
very, very nearly so, to those of a few centuries back, who herded
animals and engaged in simple agricultureboth requiring
anticipation of future time. A pureblood Ghanan kid I know, adopted
and raised by a friend, recently was disappointed at making a C in
calculus in the schools of Fairfax, Virginia. I am pretty sure he
can remember winter. I once spent two weeks in the bush of Angola
with Jonas Savimbis pureblood black guerillas who...
This articlewas originally
published, in slightly different form, on Strong TownsmemberMichel Durand-Woods blog,Dear
Winnipeg. It is shared here with permission. All images for
this piece were provided by the author, unless otherwise
indicated.
The proposed annual budget for Winnipeg, Manitoba, has
been released, and the first thing it made me think of was Elmwood
Parks gardener.
If you dont know it, Elmwood Park is a small
neighborhood park near my home. It has a sandbox, an aging wading
pool, a swing set and play structure, a couple of benches, and an
open area that can serve for pickup games of soccer, outdoor movie
nights, or winter skating.
Like many places in the city, it is definitely looking
a little worse for wear, a result of decades of neglect from
municipal budget cuts.
Many of the structures are nearing, or well past, the
end of their useful lives. The lighting is insufficient, and there
are often weeds, garbage, and overgrown brush.
But many of my neighbors pick up garbage there on their
daily walks, or spend time during the summer pulling weeds,
planting community gardens, and adding public art. Its where
children play and dogs are walked.
As a park, its pretty unremarkable, but its ours and we
love it.
But for nearly 60 years starting in the early 1900s,
Elmwood Park was a shining gem. My next...
A properly prepared unarmed defense department (something that
might require a major investment of 2 or 3 percent of a military
budget) could make a nation ungovernable if attacked by another
country or a coup d'e'tat and therefore immune from conquest.
Over the last few decades, we've seen numerous bad actors escape
punishment for their bad acts -- ranging from theft to sexual
misconduct to summary execution -- for no better reason than that
they were government employees, under the doctrine of "qualified
immunity."----Now the US Supreme Court appears to have dropped the
"qualified" part in favor of just plain immunity, full stop.
Joining me today is
Prof. Sucharit Bhakdi, MD, here to discuss the recent collapse
and subsequent coma of Thai Princess Bajrakitiyabha, following her
3rd COVID-19 injection. We will also discuss the early assessments
made by Dr. Bhakdi regarding the injections and how they have all
now been proven to be correct, and yet the government
administration not only continues, but broadens out to all possible
vaccines, including for animals.
(https://odysee.com/@TLAVagabond:5)
(https://www.bitchute.com/channel/24yVcta8zEjY/)
https://rumble.com/embed/v27xgts/?pub=2q643
Israeli occupation forces killed at least 10 Palestinians,
injuring over 100 others, during a violent raid against the old
city of Nablus in the West Bank. The attack brings the total death
toll of Palestinians this year to at least 62, igniting protests
across all of occupied Palestine and leading to threats from the
armed
Read More...
"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon
you're talking real money." This famous quote, attributed to the late Illinois senator Everett
Dirksen, was meant to convey how casually Congress treats the
federal budget. Now it apparently also applies to development and
transportation funding in just one corner of Colorado.
The town council in Castle Rock, on the fringes of
suburban Denver, received a shocking briefing from a finance
official at a recent meeting. Its local taxing districts have a
combined debt of $943 million as of 2021, reports the Colorado Sun. This has generated hundreds of millions
of dollars just to service that amount, as 48% of the $943 million
debt is accrued interest.
So how did one region of one mid-sized state accrue
almost a billion dollars of debt? The culprit is special taxing
districts, sometimes called Community Development Districts (CDDs),
or in Colorado, metro districts. But more broadly, its about how
the nations commitment to the financially fragile
suburban develo...
I have just one question: He brought the inflatable mattress and
fluffy slippers why no blanket? Thats very clearly the
Orlando airport, which is overly air conditioned.
Also: Kudos to the Orlando airports social media team for this
response:
This a podcast and edited transcript of my discussion with Rev.
James Henry Harris from last November. It ain't stale though, as
that tyranny lives on. Let us read and fight together.
Theres a bit of writing advice that I receive a lot: treat
writing like your full-time job, sit down at the same time and
place everyday, train your brain to be creative. Ive heard it again
and again, because it works. For others, Im assuming.
If you want a say in who governs you at the federal, state and
county levels, in most parts of Arkansas its more important that
you vote in May than in November. Read the rest
(U//FOUO) This bulletin was created by the Central Florida
Intelligence Exchange (CFIX) to provide situational awareness
regarding the use of literary propaganda used to drive black
racially and ethnically motivated extremist (BRMVE) narratives in
present-day America. This information is intended to support local,
state and federal government agencies along with the private sector
in developing/ prioritizing protective and support measures
relating to existing or emerging threats to homeland security.
(U) First Amendment Acknowledgement
(U) The CFIX recognizes that Americans have constitutionally
protect ed rights to assemble, speak, and petition the government .
The CFIX safeguards these first amendment rights, and reports on
only those activities where the potential use of rhetoric and/or
propaganda could be used to incite individuals to carry out violent
or criminal acts. Additionally, potential criminality exhibited by
certain members of a group does not negate the constitutional
rights of the group itself or its law-abiding participants to
exercise their individual liberties under the First Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution.
(U//FOUO) Overview
(U//FOUO) Literary propaganda utilized for ideological
references by subscribers of racially motivated black extremism
continues to be a driving motivator seen on social media platforms
live-st reams. As a result, BRMVEs have turned to literary authors
from years past and present-day America to use writings as a
blueprint for todays ideological responses to the nations plight as
seen through network television lenses.
(U) G. Edward Griffin 1969 Home Lecture
(U//FOUO) In 1969, a lecture was given to house guests by G.
Edward Griffin (an American author, and filmmaker) entitled More
Deadly than War: The Communist Revolution in America which
addressed behaviors associated with minority movements. During the
lecture Griffin highlight ed numerous literary forms of propaganda
which the host believed to be the greatest threat to America.
Around the 21:13 mark, Griffin introduced several books of which he
stated: should be in every home library. Those books are entitled
Color, Communism and Common Sense by Manning Johnson, The Crusader
by Robert F. Williams, and the November 1968 issue of Political
Affairs where the feature article for that month was t he Right of
Black America to Create a Nation written by Claude Lightfoot.
(U//FOUO) According to Griffin, Lightfoot wrote that the concept
of a separate nation must not necessarily be restricted to just one
large territory in the south but must be expanded now to include
areas in the north updating the basic strategy to reflect present
realities. Reading an excerpt of Lightfoots text, Griffin reads We
should call for a plebiscite of all black Americans on whether they
want to remain in the general Commonwealth or to es...
(U//FOUO) Russias invasion of Ukraine has spurred Western
governments, social media companies, and individuals to limit or
disengage from Russian state media outlets, likely degrading many
outlets ability to directly message to Western audiences through
2022. This Western response impedes the ability of critical
elements of Russias influence ecosystem to recruit and retain
culturally adept media talent, shape in-country reporting, maintain
a perception of media independence, and generate revenue. These
setbacks affect multiple facets of RTs and Sputniks operations,
hampering the prospects for a speedy reconstitution of their
Western-facing efforts. These actions, and others being considered
by Western countries, go well beyond previous efforts to counter
Moscows use of its state media outlets to spread mis-, dis-, and
malinformation (MDM), such as deplatforming, foreign agent
registration, and social media labeling of content.
(U) BANS, CLOSURES: On 1 March, the European Union (EU) banned
RT and SputnikRussias principal state media outletspreventing
broadcasts and content hosting in the Union, according to EU
legislation. Two days later, RT America announced it would cease
production and close its US offices; and on 18 March, the UK
revoked RTs broadcasting license, according to Western media
reporting.
(U) DEPLATFORMING, BLOCKING ADS: Many US-based companies and
online services have removed Russian state media outlets from their
platforms, application stores, or news feeds, at least partially in
response to the EU ban, according to technology and business news
reporting (see Appendix). They also sought to de-rank Russian state
media content in search results, block the ability for Russian
state media to advertise on their platforms, and increase efforts
to label this content as false or affiliated with Moscow.
(U) RESIGNATIONS, SEVERED TIES: Some US- and Europe-based
journalists and editors associated with these pro-Russian outlets
have resigned over disagreements with their employers messaging
slant on the Russia-Ukraine crisis, according to a UK trade
magazine. As of 28 Feb1uaiy, at least three senior editors of RT s
video news subsidiary, Ruptly, have quit, including the chief
marketing officer, according to an international news agency. In
late February, a California-based affiliate of Ruptly cancelled its
service agreement and severed all contact with RT, according to a
senior managers Twitter account.
Recent events have demonstrated that targeted disinformation
campaigns can have consequences that impact the lives and safety of
information consumers. On social media platforms and in messaging
apps, disinformation spread like a virus, infecting information
consumers with contempt for democratic norms and intolerance of the
views and actions of others. These events have highlighted the deep
political and social divisions within the United States.
Disinformation helped to ignite long-simmering anger, frustration,
and resentment, resulting, at times, in acts of violence and other
unlawful behavior.
All information consumers are vulnerable to being deceived by
imposters, charlatans, hucksters, con men, and self-proclaimed
experts. But ideological rigidity and intolerance of opposing views
make information consumers especially vulnerable to such deception.
In polarized environments, threat actors find ample opportunity to
spread disinformation. Their voices are amplified by disgruntled
audiences willing and sometimes eager to spread messages of
discord.
In 2019, the Combatting Targeted Disinformation Campaigns team
submitted the first of a two-part report on targeted disinformation
campaigns. In the first report, we provided a broad overview of
targeted disinformation campaigns, described how disinformation
enters the information ecosystem, how threat actors exploit modern
technology, and how information consumers wittingly or unwittingly
contribute to the spread of disinformation. We then suggested ways
to counter these campaigns. We concluded that, to combat these
campaigns, a comprehensive solution involving many sectors of
society and lines of efforts was required.
In our second paper, we expand on two themes explored in the
first paper: 1) how to stem the supply of disinformation; and 2)
how to reduce the demand for disinformation. In this paper, we
recommend approaches that impact both supply and demand.
None of these approaches are new; nor are they decisive by
themselves. When combined and implemented consistently, the sum is
greater than the parts.
Disinformation should not be viewed as a problem to be solved,
but as a condition to be treated. There is no cure. However,
preventative and alleviatory measures can be taken.
In todays information environment, the way consumers view facts,
define truth, and categorize various types of information does not
adhere to traditional rules. The shift from print sources of
information to online sources and the rise of social media have had
a profound impact on how consumers access, process, and share
information. These changes have made it easier for threat actors to
spread disinformation and exploit the modern information
environment, posing a significant threat to democratic societies.
Accordingly, disinformation campaigns should be viewed as a
whole-of-society problem requiring action by government
stakeholders, commercial entities, media organizations, and other
segments of civil society.
Before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, disinformation was
not at the forefront of American discourse. U.S. government efforts
in the disinformation arena had focused primarily on combating
transnational terrorist organizations. Social media companies
werejust becoming aware how their platforms empowered threat actors
on a large scale. Mainstream media organizations were not yet
plagued by accusations of spreading fake news and fears of
concerted foreign efforts to undermine American society had not
seeped into the consciousness of the general public.
Since the presidential election, disinformation campaigns have
been the subject of numerous investigations, research projects,
policy forums, congressional hearings and news reports. The end
result has been a better understanding of the methods and motives
of threat actors engaging in disinformation campaigns and the
impact of these campaigns, which in turn has led to improved
efforts to combat these campaigns and minimize the harm they
cause.
Until the end of 2018, much of the work on disinformation
campaigns was post-mortemafter the campaign had nearly run its
course. At that point, the desired effect of the threat actor had
been achieved and the damage done. Since late 2018, civil society
groups, scholars, and investigative journalists have made great
strides in identifying ongoing disinformation campaigns and sharing
findings with social media platforms, who then remove inauthentic
accounts. However, these campaigns are often identified after the
disinformation has already entered and been amplified inside the
information environment, too late to fully negate the harm.
The extent of private and public sector cooperation over the
next five years to address targeted disinformation campaigns will
determine the direction of the issue. We view this issue as a
whole-ofsociety problem requiring a whole-of-society response. The
purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for stakeholders to
understand the lifecycle of disinformation campaigns, then to
recommend a preliminary set of actions that may assist with the
identification and neutralization of a disinformation campaign
before disinformation is amplified within the information
environment, thus m...
On February 24, 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order
14017 on Americas Supply Chains directing the Secretary of Energy
to submit a supply chain strategy overview report for the energy
sector industrial base (as determined by the Secretary of Energy).
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) defines the Energy Sector
Industrial Base (ESIB) as the energy sector and associated supply
chains that include all industries/companies and stakeholders
directly and indirectly involved in the energy sector. The energy
sector industrial base involves a complex network of industries and
stakeholders that spans from extractive industries, industries, end
of life and waste management industries, and service industries to
include providers of digital goods and services.
As the energy sector has become more globalized and increasingly
complex, digitized, and even virtualized, its supply chain risk for
digital components the software, virtual platforms and services,
and data in energy systems has evolved and expanded.
All digital components in U.S. energy sector systems are
vulnerable and may be subject to cyber supply chain risks stemming
from a variety of threats, vulnerabilities, and impacts. This
includes digital components in all systems within the ESIB, namely
those systems operated by asset owners across different energy
subsectors (e.g., electricity, oil and natural gas, and renewables)
and the systems operated by a worldwide industrial complex with
capabilities to perform research and development and design,
produce, operate, and maintain energy sector systems, subsystems,
components, or parts to meet U.S. energy requirements.
Supply chain risks for digital components including software,
virtual platforms and services, and data have grown in recent years
as increasingly sophisticated cyber adversaries have targeted
exploiting vulnerabilities in these digital assets. Supply chain
risks for digital components in energy sector systems will continue
to evolve and likely increase as these systems are increasingly
interconnected, digitized, and remotely operated.
All digital components in all types of U.S. energy sector
systems are vulnerable and may be subject to cyber supply chain
risks stemming from a variety of threats, vulnerabilities, and
impacts. This includes all systems within the U.S. Energy Sector
Industrial Base (ESIB), namely those systems operated by asset
owners across different energy subsectors (e.g., electricity, oil
and natural gas, and renewables) and the systems operated by a
worldwide industrial complex with capabilities to perform research
and development and design, produce, operate, and maintain energy
sector systems, subsystems, components, or parts to meet U.S.
energy requirements....
I try to be cognizant that Im writing for an
international audience here at Strong Towns. A lot of my idea
fodder comes from walks around the city Ive lived in for the last
11 years, but I fear I can only write so much about Sarasota,
Florida, and have it be relevant and interesting to people who dont
live here.
Ive always wanted to write about Laurel Park, a
Sarasota neighborhood which I lived in from 2014 to 2016 and have
admired for longer than that. Now that my family and I are moving
away from Florida, it feels like the right time to pay a bit of
tribute. (We are relocating to St. Paul, Minnesota, where I grew up
and where my parents and some of my extended family still live.
Itll be good to be close to family and (more) friends, and to raise
the kids amid that village.)
This isnt an exercise in mere nostalgia. The built form
of Laurel Park actually provides some excellent insight into what
the next incremental stage of growth could look like for the over
75% of Americas residential landscape that is currently mostly (or
wholly) occupied by single-family homes with yards. Good urbanism
doesnt have to mean large apartment buildings or some immaculate
row of brownstones; the ad-hoc version on display in a neighborhood
like Laurel Park is more relevant as a model of adaptation for,
well, the rest of us.
Meet the Eclectic Neighborhood
Laurel Park is located just southeast of and adjacent
to downtown Sarasota. The neighborhood is roughly 100 years old.
Many homes and apartment buildings showcase the telltale
Mediterranean Revival style of the citys first big development boom
in the 1920s, while others were built later. Today its a historic
district and something of a relic: restrictive zoning and fierce
(one could, not inaccurately, say NIMBY) advocacy by longtime
residents has preserved Laurel Parks lush greenery and its built
form of mostly one- and two-story buildings in the shadow of
downtowns modern high-rises. What you see is a time capsule of the
development pattern that evolved in the...
Report from Puget Sound Prisoner Support on recent FBI
harassment and indictment against a Washington state activist.
Originally posted to Puget Sound Anarchists.
Puget Sound Prisoner Support issues this notice regarding a
Washington state based activist who was recently indicted for
Interstate Riot at the federal level from a Portland April 2021
arrest. This case is important for the broader Pacific Northwest
abolitionist community because it highlights several issues of
state repression and security culture that remain timelessly
pertinent.
K was first alerted to the FBIs intention to contact them when
an ex-partner told them that an FBI agent had called and asked for
Ks current contact information and address in early February 2023.
Days later, K received a voicemail from someone claiming to be a
Seattle FBI agent and wishing to return Ks cellphone that had been
seized by authorities during an arrest at a Portland protest in
April 2021. K then made the correct decision to reach out to local
anti-repression collective Puget Sound Prisoner Support, and we
advised them to immediately call the National
Lawyers Guild federal defense hotline. Through a lawyer with
the NLG contacting the FBI, K learned that it was actually a
Portland FBI agent, and that Ks state level charge from their
Portland arrest had been upgraded to a federal level charge and
there was a warrant out for their arrest.
After Ks initial arrest in Portland, charges were not filed and
they were told that the state of Oregon would not be pressing
charges at that time. Hearing that there are no charges filed can
often lead to a sense of security that you have avoided state
repression. Unfortunately, the state has many methods and tactics
it can use to repress your activities and stop political movements.
This is why we stress the importance of Security Culture before,
during and after your arrest. Charges can be re-filed, other
charges can be brought, and state level charges can be handed to
the feds for prosecution. The metric for meeting the requirements
for a charge to be handled at the federal level has proven to be
shockingly low. As many of the cases from the 2020 Uprising have shown, this
can be as trivial as simply involving interstate commerce, but this
case specifically regards allegedly crossing state lines to
participate in a riot.
The important takeaway is that after an arrest, it is not
useful to assume that a possible charge isnt coming until you have
been given an indication that those specific charges are no longer
being investigated. Sometimes this means dismissal of a charge
(an...
There has been a major need for critical battery
minerals, and a company named Impossible Metals has
discovered that its possible to practice sustainable ocean mining
using a selective robot miner. This robot is called the Eureka 1,
and its the worlds first undersea selective mining robot.
The oceans floors are covered with tons of stones
that contain a variety of metals, otherwise called polymetallic
nodules. And what Impossible Metals has been able
to show is that you can actually harvest these nodules using these
specialized robots, rather than having to turn over the seafloors
with giant plows, destroying the otherwise untouched ocean
grounds.
These nodules on the ocean floor tend to be full of
nickel, lithium and cobalt, and they provide battery manufacturers
with a more sustainable way to supply much needed carbon, rather
than forcing companies to do carbon-intensive mining. Moreover,
this type of mining will also lessen the issues that arise when
pursuing minerals from unstable states or countries with conflict
zones.
According to Chief Sustainability Officer and
Co-founder of Impossible Metals, Renee Grogan, Our har...
To begin, we have much too much democracy. We need to
discourage people from voting. In fact, the gravest obstacle to the
restoration of civilization in North America is universal suffrage.
Letting everybody vote makes no sense. Obviously they are no good
at it. The whole idea smacks of the fumble-witted idealism of a
high-school Marxist society.
At least eighty percent of the electorate lives in
blank medieval darkness regarding any matter of public policy or
history. They might as well vote on the incisions needed in cardiac
surgery as try to govern themselves. Poll after poll shows that
even graduates of Americas pathetic Halloween universities (where
the young disguised as students are hornswoggled by mountebanks
disguised as professors), which means most of the universities, do
not know who fought in WWI, or within a century when the Civil War
took place, or who Galileo was. These are the better informed. The
rest barely know what century they live in.
Unalloyed ignorance is not an obvious qualification
for governing, despite all appearances.
Only two possible reasons exist for universal
suffrage, both bad. The first is that if you let idiots vote, the
Democrats will sometimes be elected. That is, it is a sort of
affirmative action for the Democratic National Committee; this is
perhaps slightly more desirable than, say, price supports for
hemorrhagic tuberculosis. The only good thing that can be said
about Democrats is that, when they are in power, the Republicans
are not.
The second reason is that, in principle, the idiot
vote will keep idiots from being maltreated by the bright. It does
not, however, keep the bright from being maltreated by idiots, who
are far more numerous. They run the schools, for example, which is
why students often cant read after twelve years.
Obviously we need to restore something like the old
literacy tests for voting. Im not suggesting that we ask hard
questions like What German Jew ruled Egypt during the Eighteenth
Dynasty? (Surely you have heard of the Teuton Kamen.) Or Translate
from the Latin: Civili si ergo fortibus es in ero; nobili deus
trux. No. I wouldnt even ask simple questions like when did
Reconstruction end, or who was Neville Chamberlain.
However, potential voters would be required to find
the United States on an outline map of the world. This would
eliminate half the public. Ask them to find Japan and you would be
down to ten percent. Then Id have them read a randomly chosen
paragraph from the Constitution and see whether they had the
foggiest idea what it meant. Few would. (Think Im kidding? In 1993
the level of functional illiteracy in Detroit was forty-seven
percent.)*
Next, nobody under the age of twenty-five should
vote. A recent college graduate is a sorry cheese-brained late
adolescent. With maturity...
You gotta understand about the Pluke Bucket and me in
rural King George County, Virginia, in 1963. (Maybe you didnt know
you had to understand this. Well, you do. Life is full of
surprises.)
The county was then mostly woods, the high-school
boys gangly farm kids who fished and hunted or pumped gas on long
lonely summer evenings on Route 301. Towns ran from small to barely
existent, and lay far apart. The only way to get anywhere,
geographically or romantically, was by car.
By the time a he-child reached fourteen, he could
name any car ever made, and some that hadnt been, by looking at
three inches of tail fin. Then he hit fifteen, his skin turned to
pizza, and he began to look at girls with shocked reappraisal.
Whereupon he bought some smoking, oozing, cantankerous rattletrap
of a jalopy that sounded like a tuberculars last minutesand fell in
love.
It is a biological fact that a boy can love a car. He
learns its every quirk, the whirring of unlubricated speedometer
cables, the tick-tick-tick of sticking lifters, the dying sough of
the transmission. A carhis caris security in the great
dark world after the sun goes down, warmth in winter, status
symbol, bar, codpiece, love nest, identity, and heraldic emblem. He
may find no greater intimacy.
It was a big feeling to set out at night into those
winding wooded roads, alone, skirting adulthood, feeling
independent and, however prematurely, manly. My own courser, the
Pluke Bucket, was a 53 Chevy that ran on three cylinders, when it
got to three, had no compression at all, and handled in a curve
like a wet bar of soap. I didnt care. The Bucket was mine. I had
for that wheel-borne tragedy the affection someone sensible might
have for a faithful dog. (Pluke was a local coinage meaning roughly
poontang. Gittin any plukin? meant, Have you had the amorous
success attributed to French rakes with the cheerleading squad
serially? The truthful answer invariably was no. It was an answer
we didnt much use.)
By age fifteen, a stripling could talk for an hour
without saying a thing his mother could understand. Most of what he
said consisted of a laundry list of mechanical properties having
totemic import for those gripped by car lust.
Decrypted, this meant that the speaker had seen, or
hadnt seen and was lying about, a 57 Mercury with modifications
that would cause the motor to make loud noises and then probably
explode. We didnt have the money to build genuinely fast cars. But
we could dream.
The terminology wasnt without meaning, and embodied
the male passion for controllable comple...
The time Frank Green and I paddled the canoe through
the dry hills of King George Country in search of water would, I
suppose, discourage naval historians. Fact is, wed have had a
better chance of finding water in the Sahara in mid-August of a
drought year. I will say, however, that the adventure got us
covered with some the finest ticks bred on the Southern seaboard,
which is the best tick country on this or any other continent.
We were fifteen and didnt have a brain in our
combined heads. Frank was from a family that made its living by
getting up at four a.m. and pulling crab pots on the Potomac,
because people in Washington wanted to eat crabs. He eventually
became an electrical engineer. King George was wooded hills and
fields full of deer and whistle pigs and reasonably poor people who
actually worked for a living. I was just me.
I had bought the canoe a few months before with
paper-route money. Frank and I had proceeded to do with it every
wrong-headed thing we could come up with. We had capsized it in the
Potomac and gotten it full of jellyfish. We had loaded it to the
gills with Pepsi and paddled the Rappahannock from Fredericksburg
to Port Royal. We put girls in it three of them once, which was
more that it would hold, so one of them was always falling out and
we had to tow her home, as she couldnt get back in without tipping
us over.
At this point there was nothing left to do. The
flavor went out of life. We were thrown back on our usual pursuits
of reckless driving, purloined beer, and wild, fruitless dreams of
lechery.
Then Frank asked why we didnt explore Peppermill
Creek. On Route 206 a few miles out of metropolitan Owens, a
conurbation of population maybe thirty, the road drops sharply into
an outsized ravine and crosses a rivulet running through the woods.
As a body of water it is, if not navigable, at least wet.
The hill itself will live forever in local lore. Kids
liked to lie about losing the cops on it at 130 miles an hour,
generally in unmuffled wrecks that could have made 90 if you had
pushed them out of an airplane.
Friends dropped canoe and us at the reedy marge of
the alleged stream. It was one impoverished waterway about three
inches deep on the average. Salamanders lived in it, along with
brown scum and the occasional water snake. We found a channel deep
enough to float the canoe, but not straight enough: If the stern
was afloat, the bow was on solid ground.
We picked up our vessel and carried it fifty yards
down the middle of the stream. Here the channel straightened out.
Both ends of the boat would float at once but not with us in it.
Our weight pressed it firmly into the mud.
You begin to get the flavor of the voyage.
The United States is a great country, and certainly
a marvel to the...
Bar girls are a mistake that countless guys make when
they first leave the United States. Bar girls are a mistake in two
ways. First, lots of gringos think that the girls are typical of
the women of the country. Second, they get tangled up with a hooker
and perhaps marry her. This is bad juju. Not a good idea at
all.
Lets use Thailand as an example. Everyone has heard
of the sex trade there. Most Americans seem to think that Thailand
is a nation of prostitutes, and that seven out of every three have
AIDS. This isnt true. The sex trade exists, but the overwhelming
majority of women have nothing to do with it. The problem is that
very few outlanders get beyond the whorehouses, so they think there
is nothing else to Thailand.
The fact is that the Thais are culturally
conservative, have fairly high standards of sexual morality, and
regard foreigners (farangs) as depraved barbarians who want only
sex. This typically is accurate. But the women you first will meet
will be hookers. Lets go through the drill.
You land in Bangkok and check into your hotel. Of
course that evening you head for one of the farang bar districts
because, well, its easy, and although in principle you are looking
for a wife, in practice a little practice never hurts. I mean we
are, after all, guys. And Bangkok at night is a sexual candy
store.
There are three girly districts of note, Patpong
Road, Soi Cowboy, and Nana Plaza. Patpong is perhaps the best known
and the nicest. (Actually there are Patpong I and Patpong II,
streets right next to and parallel with each other.) The taxi drops
you off. What do you see?
A narrowish street, garishly lit, jammed with at
least three-quarters of the entire population of Asia, milling and
shoving and squirming through densely packed rows of stands selling
clothes, trinkets, souvenirs, pirated music, antisocial tee-shirts,
everything. Keep your hand on your wallet. (I wear a photo vest
with inside zippered pockets.)
The street is lined with bars, many of them thumping
with godawful disco music too loud to allow conversation. Go into a
couple just to see what they are. There will probably be a long
stand in the thumping murk raised a couple of feet above the floor.
From this a dozen brass poles will rise to the ceiling. Dangling
somewhere will probably be one of those beachballs covered with
fragments of mirror to reflect the lights, which will be red and
green and purple. Some of these places look to have been designed
by Dante, but this has never been established.
On the stand, one per pole, will be Thai girls in
bikinis or hot pants or whatever. They will be bumping and grinding
in boredom. Depending on your age, recent deprivation, ethanol
intake, experience in Asia, and testosterone levels, you may find
this titillating, tiresome, or sad.
The Atlantic waters off Sneads Ferry in North
Carolina are shallow, maybe 125 feet to the continental shelf.
Several wrecks lie on the bottom, mostly in advanced stages of
disintegration, sunk by U-boats in the early years of the war. I
know them well as for years I was a member of Capital Divers, out
of DC, of which there is now no trace on the web. We often rented
boats and dived the remains.
Cap Divers was a cowboy outfit. The members were
engineers, bureaucrats from State, employees of Beltway Bandit
operations like CACI, maybe a third women, but all were experienced
divers and possessed of what might be called strong personalities.
They didnt follow rules, such as never dive in waves over two feet
high. Yo pays yo money and takes yo chances. But it was a hoot.
With five-foot waves many miles out out to sea we
would find ourselves going back aboard in bright blue water with
the dive ladder on the stern of the boat rising high and then
slicing back down like a guillotine. The trick was to wait until it
was at its low, grab the highest rung you could, put your fins
quickly below, and hold on as the stern rose. When it halted at its
highest point, you grabbed a higher run and moved up, to hold on
for dear life as it came down.
Sometimes we rented a live-aboard for a weeksee
belowand there would be uproarious merriment in the bar after chow.
The women were hardy types, delicate flowers not being much for
night diving on deep canyons. There was not a single infuriated
sociology major among them airing her grievances. The guys accepted
them completely because they were completely good divers. You could
kid around with them. After most of Washington, it was a whole
different take on the fair sex.
The leader was Dale Fox, a big former Navy diver who
liked practical jokes. Such as: About once a year we rented one of
those nice specialized dive boats, as for example the Belize
Aggressor, for a week. On one such trip Dale, a NAUI instructor,
gave everybody a PADI Basic temporary card, the kind new divers get
before the plastic card arrives. It means your total experience is
diving in a swimming pool at a dive shop.
Belize Aggressor. A serviceable substitute for heaven. This may
crew filled tanks with the on-board fast compressor, you jumped in,
came back ate, geared up.
n high school I was a nationally ranked drag racer,
almost, and nearly went to Bakersfield in California, to race
against Don Garlits and Swamp Rat II. Garlits was then the king of
high-revvin screaming, blown, nitro-fueled, bored-and-stroked,
ported, polished, and wildly over-cammed rocket sleds running on
exotic chemicals, big rubber, and the bare fringes of
metallurgy.
I might have won. I really might have.
You need to know this.
This was in 1963 in King George County, Virginia. The
county was a wooded region of the Southern mentality where nothing
mattered to teenage boys except cars, beer and, of course, that.
The country boys were muscular and unpolished, accustomed to hard
lives. They worked shifts in gas stations, changed their own
transmissions, and hunted deer in autumn. They knew cars. Some of
them got their cobbled-together old jalopies to do things you
wouldnt have believed possible. Such as start.
In those days, drag-racing held the male mind in a
greasy but powerful grip. Dragging meant putting two vehicles next
to each other on a straight piece of asphalt at least a quarter of
a mile long, saying , Go! and seeing who got over the finish line
first. It appealed to an intense, primitive, almost arthropod
competitiveness in young males. There was no point to it, no reason
behind it. We figured making sense was an overrated virtue.
I guess I still do.
Anyway, I was then driving a 1953 Chevy the color of
two-tone mud. The engine was an inline six that had perhaps at one
time run on all of its cylinders. Now it usually seemed to want to
keep three in reserve, perhaps as spares. The suspension made me
think of drunken cattle. The tired warrior didnt so much have
compression as remember it, as an octogenarian reflects on the
ardors of youth. You could tune the engine, as a musician probably
could tune a clothesline. It mattered about as much.
Another kid named Butch, dark, saturnine, and
sometimes a rival, drove a 53 Ford painted white with barn paint. I
forget whether one of the windows was broken or one of them wasnt.
The tires usually showed more fabric than a tailor shop. One night
Butch and I and some other fools made a high-speed run to Colonial
Beach along a winding narrow road, only to have a rear tire sigh
and go flat as we pulled into the parking lot of a dance hall. It
had worn through.
From time to time wed run into each other out on the
forested roads of Saturday night, maybe in a gas station on Route
301, maybe at the high school, maybe at HoJos in Fredericksburg,
where we drove in endless circles with other kids and ate Mighty
Mos to get a head start on plugging our arteries. We worked on The
Look. You know, arm draped casually in the window with a confident
but jaded smirk. It was Brando meets Presley in the test...
I support Ukraine by promoting PEACE efforts that will
minimize/end the death and destruction in Ukraine. The sooner the
better. I oppose WAR efforts that extend the continued death and
destruction in Ukraine.
As the Paris 2024 Olympics swiftly approach, there are many
questions surrounding Russia and whether or not their athletes
should be trusted to compete without the influence of drugs.
Most of us grow up taking for granted the spread-out,
car-centric pattern of development that has been the default in
North America for the better part of a century. Noah Tang, too,
grew up surrounded by what Strong Towns has called the
Suburban Experiment; he recalls having to drive past four high
schools to get to his high school across town in a Chicago suburb.
This spread-out way of living was normal to him, and for most of
his life, he didnt question it.
When Tang moved to Illinois State University he
experienced what a human-centered environment could be like, where
people engaged spontaneously while walking to class or discovered
an interesting community event from a bulletin board. As his roots
grew within that smaller-scaled, interactive space, he knew
something was wrong with how we choose to build our
cities. Tang says that later discovering Strong Towns reaffirmed
this intuition for him: Not only do we build places that make human
connection harder, but the prevailing model of development also
makes our towns
financially fragile and insolvent.
Tang, who works as a local high school history teacher,
asked a few like-minded friends to join him in his living room for
a discussion. From there, the Local Conversation group Bloomington
Revivalists was born as they tried to figure out how to make
their town stronger. They opted to begin by focusing on
making...
The US is pushing the envelope with Russia with no end in sight.
Russia is not Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria or Libya. It is a nuclear
weapons superpower capable of inflicting nuclear annihilation on
the US if Russia's existence as a country is threatened. This seems
lost on the neo-con leadership in Washington.
Can there be any question that we're in a mad "" and loud "" new
age of McCarthyism? Thank you, Kevin! And don't forget the wildly
over-the-top members of the so-called Freedom Caucus and their
Republican associates, including that charmer, lyin' George Santos,
Jewish-space-laser and white-balloon-carrying Marjorie Taylor
Greene, and "" once again running for president "" the man who
never lost, Donald Trump-em-all[...]
Has it all been for nothing? All of the hours that I have
spent in front of my computer, rising at dawn to be at my station,
pounding out stories, working through the fear of not being good
enough, of not being able to put something great on the page,
something that is part of me, that is me. The scrawls in
my notebook, the daydreaming when I walk. The small steps and
incremental gains. The steady getting there.
Is it useful to examine why so many white people, with their
built-in white privilege, would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with
wannabe dictators like Trump, Abbott, and DeSantis?
Hindu sadhu (saint) Bajrang Muni has called for Muslim genocide.
In a video circulating on social media Bajrang said that Hindu
Rashtra will not be a reality without massacre of Muslims. "India
used to be a Hindu nation. However, Hindus should follow the same
method adopted by Muslims when they ruled India to make Hindu
Rashtra a reality. Hindu Rashtra will not be possible until Muslims
are massacred.
COVID-19 vaccine rollout was riddled with inequity as those in
rich nations got vaccinated many times over with primary and
booster shots, but almost three out of every four persons in
low-income nations are yet to receive their first shot. ----More
importantly vaccine hesitancy which had created barriers for other
vaccines too, created hurdles. Vaccine confidence dwindled for
range of reasons.
New research confirms that gun-control laws save thousands of
American lives every year. Unfortunately, a hyper-conservative
Supreme Court puts many of those life-saving laws at risk.
On this episode, we speak with someone who is involved in a
coalition of various anti-capitalist and autonomous groups that is
organizing to support people in East Palestine, Ohio and beyond,
who have been impacted by the recent Norfolk Southern disaster. We
talk about whats been happening on the ground in East Palestine for
the past two weeks and how people, the State, and also the
far-Right are responding. Please
contribute and share this fundraiser to help local organizing
efforts.
We then speak with two folks in Atlanta, Georgia about the
current week of action against Cop City. We talk about the state of
the movement since the police murder of Tortuguita, attempts by
local elites to split the struggle, and how
people can plug into the current week of action.
We then switch to our discussion, where we do a deeper dive on
the disaster in East Palestine.
Its Going Down
If you value IGD as a revolutionary autonomous media
resource in times of crisis, please help us grow the platform!
Subscribe to our podcast, either by following our RSS
feed or following IGD wherever you get your
podcasts!
Listen to us on the radio! Were on Pacifica radio stations on Fridays
at 12 PM PST (Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, Fresno, and
Santa Cruz). On Saturday, 7pm, at 96.9 in Seattle. If you have a
Pacifica station or community radio station in your area, encourage
them to stream our
show!
Video released by the RCMP shows what officers describe as a
group storming the site of a violent attack at a B.C. camp for
pipeline workers last week.
Mounties published three video clips Tuesday in connection with
the acts of violence and damage done at the work camp last
week.
In a news release, the RCMP said the videos show a group of
people, some of whom are armed with axes approaching the Coastal
GasLink camp on Thursday.
Police describe whats shown in the video as the group storming
the property and attacking a company vehicle. An employee was
inside the truck, they said.
The unknown individuals, who were similarly dressed, swung axes
at the vehicle; spray painted the window and ignited what is
suspected to be a flare gun, the RCMP wrote.
No Coastal GasLink employees were physically harmed in the
attack near Houston, but early estimates suggest the cost of damage
could be in the millions.
Mounties investigating the attack on a natural gas pipeline
construction site in northern B.C. say theyre reviewing
surveillance video from the scene, but no suspects have yet been
identified, and so far no link to ongoing protests in the area has
been found.
There is video that were actively looking through, and we will
likely be able to release some of that information at some point if
it becomes pertinent for the investigative team, said RCMP Staff
Sgt. Sascha Baldinger in Houston, B.C. on Saturday.
Police have previously said as many as 20 people were involved
in an attack on a Coastal GasLink work site shortly after midnight
Thursday.
Asked if police know exactly who theyre investigating, Baldinger
said no.
While police have called the attack an escalation of the ongoing
conflict between anti-pipeline protesters and workers at the site,
Baldinger clarified that police have not established any connection
between those involved in previous confrontations and the latest
attack.
Although there have been confrontations in the past and there
has been active protest...
By Steve Brawner, 2022 by Steve Brawner Communications,
Inc.
Weddy, Daddy?
Thats what a blue-eyed two-year-old girl was saying to me 18
years ago as we played in the floor together weddy being her
pronunciation of ready. Now, another blue-eyed two-year-old girl is
saying the same thing. Read the
rest
RCMP seek to identify some 20 masked assailants who
threatened Coastal GasLink pipeline contractors and caused millions
of dollars in damage.
by Derrick Penner, Vancouver Sun, Feb 18, 2022
Attackers disabled lighting and video-surveillance equipment
during their raid on a remote Coastal
GasLink work site in northwestern B.C. and commandeered heavy
equipment to inflict damage estimated to be in the millions of
dollars, the company said Friday.
Video and photos captured before the equipment was disabled in
the attack have been turned over to RCMP.
Police are trying to identify suspects among the reported 20 to
40 individuals involved in the apparently co-ordinated attack that
happened on Thursday, just after midnight.
RCMP Chief Supt. Warren Brown, commander of the B.C. northern
district, admitted it will be a challenge as they were disguised
and masked when they arrived at the site on foot.
Masked mob swarms Northern, B.C. pipeline work site,
causes millions in damage
by Darren Handschuh, Castanet, Feb 17, 2022
British Columbias minister of public safety Mike Farnworth has
issued a statement condemning the attack on the Coastal GasLink
site.
The RCMP is conducting a full investigation into this egregious
criminal activity that could have led to serious injury or loss of
life, Farnworth said.
The police report indicates that the workers camp was attacked
in the middle of the night by unknown assailants wielding axes.
There is no excuse for such violence and intimidation. All workers
deserve to be protected from harassment and harm.
This destructive attack should be condemned by all in British
Columbia.
UPDATE 5:20 p.m.
The company building a pipeline through Northern B.C. that was
violently attacked on Wednesday night called the incident a highly
planned and dangerous unprovoked assault.
Coastal GasLink says about 20 masked attackers wearing
camouflage surrounded and attacked Coastal GasLink workers near the
Morice River drill p...
(U//FOUO) We assess that Russia would consider initiating a
cyber attack against the Homeland if it perceived a US or NATO
response to a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine threatened its
long-term national security. Russia maintains a range of offensive
cyber tools that it could employ against US networksfrom low-level
denials-of-service to destructive attacks targeting critical
infrastructure. However, we assess that Russias threshold for
conducting disruptive or destructive cyber attacks in the Homeland
probably remains very high and we have not observed Moscow directly
employ these types of cyber attacks against US critical
infrastructurenotwithstanding cyber espionage and potential
prepositioning operations in the past.
(U) Russias cyber program is a key element of its broader view
and military doctrine of information confrontationa concept that
values technical cyber operations and the psychological effects
that can be achieved in an information environment, according to a
2021 NATO report. Moscows cyber operations are designed to provide
flexible options that can be used in both peacetime and wartime to
achieve desired end states. Russia almost certainly considers cyber
attacks an acceptable option to respond to adversaries because it
lacks symmetrical economic and diplomatic responses, according to
the Intelligence Communitys 2021 Annual Threat Assessment.
(U) Russia continues to target and gain access to critical
infrastructure in the United States. During a campaign that started
in March 2016, Russian Government cyber actors compromised US
energy networks, conducting network reconnaissance and lateral
movement, and collected information pertaining to industrial
control systems, according to a Cybersecurity and Infrastructure
Security Agency (CISA) alert. Separately, Russian state-sponsored
cyber actors have successfully compromised routers, globally, and
US state and local government networks, according to a CISA alert
and a joint US-UK report.
(U//FOUO) Russia has demonstrated the ability to conduct
disruptive and destructive cyber attacks in other countries, using
techniques that could be leveraged against US critical
infrastructure networks. In both 2015 and 2016progressively more
capable year-over-yearRussian military intelligence (GRU) actors
successfully launched cyber attacks against the Ukrainian power
grid, temporarily interrupting the supply of power to hundreds of
thousands of Ukrainians, according to a US indictment of GRU
officers. In 2017, Russian actors used malware to target a Saudi
Arabian refinery, infecting the safety systems and leading to the
temporary shutdown of the plant, according to a Department of
Treasury sanctions announcement.
Vitamin D Deficiency,
Not Fluoride Deficiency, Causes Cavities, Dentist/Researcher
Reveals
American Dental
Association (ADA) internal documents reveal how it influenced the
world to ignore a preponderance of evidence proving vitamin D can
prevent tooth decay in order to promote nonessential fluoride so
dentists could profit, reports Philippe P.
Hujoel, PhD, DDS, Professor, Oral Health Sciences, School of Dentistry,
University of Washington (Nutrients December 2021).
Hujoel writes, The
ADA was a worldleading organization and its governing bodies worked through
political channels to make fluoride a global standard of care for a
disease which at the time was viewed as an indicator of vitamin D
deficiencies. The ADA scientific council
endorsed vitamin D for 15 years but reversed its decision in
1989.
On Saturday, February 18th, members of the Parasol Patrol
and their supporters stopped a group of violent Proud Boys from
physically storming their way into a bookstore in Silver Spring,
Maryland which was hosting a Drag Queen Story Hour event. Despite
the clashes outside, the event inside was not disrupted.
The standoff between the Proud Boys and supporters of the
reading event ended with one person bleeding from the face.
Montgomery County Councilwoman Kristin Mink claims the far-right,
all-male group arrived and tried to scare families and children
away from attending the Drag Story Hour at Loyalty Books. She claims the community formed
a wall of safety and support and that the children who were
attending the event were none the wiser. We will never back down,
the councilwoman wrote on Twitter.
John Zittrauer is one of the people who showed up to shield
children from the protest. Hes a volunteer with the Parasol Patrol,
a group that uses brightly coulored umbrellas to form that barrier.
Our community is large and welcoming and full of love and
acceptance, and nothing is going to slow that down, Zittrauer told
WUSA9 Monday. He explained the group was welcoming families at the
event when a dozen or so Proud Boys showed up and tried to enter
the store.
Our main goal was to make sure that nobody got in and disrupted
the event, Zittrauer said, and so we were kind of holding a wall to
make sure that didnt happen and there was some chaos.
[Mink] claims the Proud Boys became violent, kicking and pushing
while shouting at families on megaphones, while the community held
the line and drowned them out with music and cheers.
The Parasol Patrol uses umbrellas to great a wall of defense
against potential far-Right attackers. From their website, they write that theyshield
children and young people at LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC events. We
use umbrellas to create a visual barrier so kids wont have to see
the signs and angry faces and we even have no...
The worlds biggest tidal power
station will soon be built in Turkey, and it will be a 77
megawatt system of large pier-like machines with the ability to
generate clean energy from the seas constant motion.
The firm that will build it is the Swedish company,
Eco Wave Power (EWP),
and they will build their small sized pilot project in the town of
Ordu, Turkey.
According to EWP, the project is estimated at $150m
million. However, if it works, this power station will not only be
the first grid-connected tidal energy station in the country, but
once they finish it, it will be considered the biggest one anywhere
in the world.
Attached to the structures in the water are
seawalls, also called jetties, that rise and fall with the movement
of the powerful waves of the ocean. This motion is what powers the
hydraulic pistons inside the floaters, also called metal hulls. As
a result, these floaters power a turbine on the land and that sends
the energy to the grid through a power inverter.
Ordu Enerji, as its being called,
is a government-owned projec...
In a paper I wrote several years ago on
western Washington snowstorms, I list several ways snow can fall in
the area.
All had to find a way to provide precipitation
and cold at the same time--which is very difficult in our neck
of the woods.
One way to get snow...generally light
snow.. is with the passage of an Arctic Front (really a
modified Arctic Front, but who is checking?)
And we are going to get some snow from such an
Arctic Front passage on late Tuesday and on Wednesday
morning.
In a western Washington Arctic Front passage,
cold air from the interior of British Columbia surges southwestward
through the Fraser River Valley and jets out just north of
Bellingham. The frigid flow splits around the Olympics with a
river of cold air pushing southwards over Puget Sound.
The Arctic air collides with warmer/moist
air to the south, pushing some of it upwards producing clouds,
precipitation, and yes, snow.
Report back from recent march against Cop City organized
on the Georgia Tech campus in so-called Atlanta, GA. For more info
about the ongoing week of action,
go here.
photo:@atldemsoc
On February 10th 2023, a demonstration was held at Georgia Tech
against Cop City and in remembrance of Tyre Nichols, Manuel
Tortuguita Paez-Teran, and all the others lost to police brutality.
Around 150 Tech students converged on Skiles Walkway by Tech Green
to speak out against the project, as well as share their own
experiences with police brutality.
Students mentioned racist police stops, the trauma of continuous
exposure to police murders, and their awareness of Techs
contributions to global imperialism as well as police
militarization. Students cheered and booed loudly with passion and
rage that felt electric, shared poetry, and philosophical analyses.
One student shared a metaphor: In Taekwondo, when one is breaking
boards, one must punch through the board to something greater, not
just hit the board itself hoping it breaks.
This is Scout Schultz, the intersex &
nonbinary president of the campus Pride Alliance, who was shot and
killed by Georgia Tech Police in 2017.
Schultz's killer, Tyler Beck, was not even kicked off the
force.
ATL Antifascists (kolektiva.social/@AtlantaAntifa) (@afainatl)
July 16, 2021
A student spoke about Scout Schultz, the former president of a
Tech LGBT club; they were murdered by Tech Police in 2017 while
unarmed and in the midst of a mental health crisis. Many students
in the crowd were unaware that GTPD had killed a student just 6
years earlier and were shocked at the realization that this fact
has been hidden from them by the school.
Kamau Franklin from Community Movement Builders spoke on the
importance of student organizing and how Atlanta college students
had an important and crucial voice in the movement its not possible
for the powers at be to call them outside agitators.
Students held up probably 50 different signs, which produced an
overwhelming vis...
Action report on recent tree-sit and hunger-strike in
defense of redwoods in Humboldt County, CA.
On February 19th, forest defenders set up a sky-pod blockade,
occupied by a protester commencing a hunger strike (statement
below). In January 2023 Humboldt Redwood Company (HRC) filed
commencement to begin logging in Freshwater, California.
The forest that is being logged contains massive Redwood and
Douglas Fir trees that are providing critical habitat to many
endangered animals in the area. HRC claims to log sustainably but
theres no such thing on an industrial scale when profit margins are
the only concern.
Forest defenders are determined to stop this logging plan. Email
forestaction@riseup.net for more info and to join the
frontlines. Follow @lost_coast_forest_action
on Instagram for updates. Venmo @forestdefense to support.
STATEMENT FROM FOREST DEFENDER ARISTOTLE:
As youre reading this I am suspended above an entrance to one of
Humboldt Redwood Companys (HRC) industrial timber harvest plans,
blocking this entrance by the support lines of the net that is
holding me. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and these
are desperate times indeed. On January 18th a forest defender named
Tortuguita was murdered by state troopers while occupying the
Weelaunee forest in Atlanta. They have since held activists with no
bail or extremely high bail to prevent people from defending the
forest. I am doing this to try and honor Tortuguitas life and wish
for the land to be protected, and in solidarity with activists in
Atlanta facing extreme police repression.
I will not leave nor eat until HRC commits in writing to abandon
this Timber Harvest Plan indefinitely. The police may try to use
this as justification to extract me for health concerns. I am
taking supplements which will allow me to subsist without food for
months without endangering my health or safety. Any attempt to
extract me is for the companies profit, not a concern for my well
being.
This forest is filled with huge Redwoods and Douglas Fir trees
which are becoming increasingly rare as private timber ravages the
landscape. It is already too late for 97% of the worlds native
forests. Northern California is one of very few places in the
so-called United States where there are still intact forests. But
not for long, if the industrial logging and commercial builders get
their way.
These lands dont belong to privatized companies. These are lands
stolen from the indigenous people of this area and stolen from the
many animal and plant species that call these forests home....
Action report from DC on recent march and protest
against Cop City. For more information on the week of action,
go here.
On February 18th, outraged activists descended on the DC homes
of both of Georgias Senators Warnock and
Ossoff, demanding they break their silence on the murder of
Tortuguita and stop the construction of Cop City, a mass
counter-insurgency training center which threatens to destroy
Atlantas Weelaunee forest.
The march and rally in front of the Senators homes marks the
kicking off of a week of action in solidarity with the struggle to
stop the construction of Cop City. To see actions and events
happening around country, go here.
At least five Syrians were killed in a series of unprovoked
Israeli airstrikes against Damascus, Syria, at a time when rescue
teams are still digging victims of the recent Syria-Turkey
earthquake out of the rubble. Despite this being such a major
attack on a defenseless country, suffering the aftermath of a
natural disaster, no major
Read More...
Join us on today's episode of The Pirate Stream - Dialectical
Dissidents. Pirate Stream Media is a new platform of dedicated
content creators focused on circumventing the tightly controlled,
manipulated, and outright censored media space of today (both
corporate and independent media) with a commitment to objectivity,
integrity, and a stark awareness of the two party illusion. The
Pirate Stream, is our flagship podcast.
(https://www.rokfin.com/TLAVagabond)(https://www.bitchute.com/channel/24yVcta8zEjY/)
https://rumble.com/embed/v27lnsy/?pub=2q643
Attorneys with the Fluoride Action Network and the U.S.
government have agreed to the release of a censored report on the
toxicity of fluoride, the latest development in the ongoing
Fluoride lawsuit. After numerous delays, and intervention by
Assistant Health Secretary Rachel Levine, the U.S. National
Toxicology Programs review of Fluorides toxicity will soon be
Read
More...
Some Thoughts on What Can Be Done to withstand the
Neo-Confederate/Neo-Fascist Conquest of Power Kali
AkunoMonday, January 17, 2022It is my honest assessment that as of
this writing we have a little less than two years before the
neo-confederates and neo-fascists install a reactionary
dictatorship by the end of January 2025. In light of my comments
regarding this development, many people have
(U//FOUO) In June of 2021, the Nevada High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Enforcement
Group 3 arrested four members of a Drug Trafficking Money
Laundering Organization (DTMLO) responsible for selling millions of
dollars worth of cocaine on the dark web and transporting it
through the United States Postal Services (USPS). Federal search
warrants were executed at the DTMLOs primary residences in Las
Vegas as well as two stash locations which resulted in the seizure
of approximately 12.6 kilograms of cocaine, 13 firearms,
approximately $86,000 in bulk currency, 1 vehicle, and numerous
luxury motorcycles valued at $450,000. At all locations, electronic
devices such as phones, computers, and cryptocurrency devices were
located as well as drug records, financial documents, and
paperrecovery seeds. Subsequent to the search warrants, over 30
wallets were reconstituted
which allowed for the seizure of approximately $115,000 worth of
cryptocurrency. The purpose of this product is to inform law
enforcement partners on how to better recognize key indicators of
dark web activity while executing search warrants. This includes
information to assist law enforcement in positively identifying
cryptocurrency devices, electronic applications, and recovery
seeds, which is critical for seizing digital assets.
(U) Hardware Wallets and Devices
(U//FOUO) Hardware wallets are commonly used by cryptocurrency
investors as well as dark web criminals and are considered the best
method to store cryptocurrencies. A hardware wallet is a
cryptocurrency wallet which stores the users private keys in a
secure hardware device. The main principle behind a hardware wallet
is to provide full isolation between the private keys and the users
computer. Private keys are codes that only the user has access to
and are used to access the users crypto assets. Private keys are
what gives the user ownership of their cryptocurrency. Hardware
wallets have an associated web, mobile, and/or desktop application
that enables you to monitor your cryptocurrency addresses and spend
your cryptocurrency. Examples of hardware wallets are shown
below.
Trezor Single chip base
Ledger Double chip base (provides more security)
This report outlines ongoing work by the Department of Defense
to address the threat posed by prohibited extremist activities. The
Department of Defense has long prohibited Service members from
actively engaging in extremist activities. Since 1969, the
Department of Defense has provided policy guidance that enumerates
the prohibition of specific activities, and has routinely updated
its guidance to clarify prohibited activities, clarify the
investigative authorities that commanders have at their disposal,
and ensure that all military departments implement training on
these policies.
Following a number of high-profile insider threat attacks in the
early 2010s, the Department of Defense built a program to detect,
deter, and mitigate such threats to the Department, its people, and
its mission. In 2019, Congress directed the Department of Defense
to review existing policies and capabilities with the aim of
closing gaps in personnel security vetting. In 2020, the Army
published a comprehensive revision of Army Command Policy (AR
600-20) which was the first of its kind to address the use of
social media to support extremist activities and provided guidance
to commanders for addressing prohibited activity that crosses the
line into misconduct.
In February 2021, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III
directed a Department-wide stand down to educate Department of
Defense personnel on the threat posed by extremist activity. In
April 2021, following the stand down, Secretary Austin issued a
second memorandum to implement immediate actions identified by
subject-matter experts within the Department of Defense (and
informed by the stand down), and directed the establishment of the
Countering Extremist Activity Working Group (CEAWG) to implement
these urgent steps and develop additional recommendations.
This report provides background on the work completed by the
Department. It also details the implementation status of the
Secretarys four directed actions from April and describes the six
additional recommendations and associated actions developed by the
CEAWG. With the publication of this report, the Secretary of
Defense has directed the implementation of the six CEAWG
recommendations and associated actions.
The immediate actions were:
Review and update DoD Instruction 1325.06, Handling Protest,
Extremist, and Criminal Gang Activities Among Members of the Armed
Forces, to clarify the definition of prohibited extremist
activity
Update the Service member transition checklist
Review and standardize screening questionnaires
Commission a study on extremist activity in the Total Force.
(1) Extremist Activities. The term extremist activities
means:
(a) Advocating or engaging in unlawful force, unlawful violence,
or other illegal means to deprive individuals of their rights under
the United States Constitution or the laws of the United States,
including those of any State, Co...
ATP 7-100.3 describes Chinese tactics for use in Army training,
professional education, and leader development. This document is
part of the ATP 7-100 series that addresses a nation-states
military doctrine with a focus on army ground forces and tactical
operations in offense, defense, and related mission sets. Other
foundational topics include task organization, capabilities, and
limitations related to military mission and support functions. ATP
7-100.3 serves as a foundation for understanding how Chinese ground
forces think and act in tactical operations. This publication
presents multiple examples of functional tactics in dynamic
operational environment conditions. The tactics in this ATP are
descriptive, and provide an orientation to tactics gathered from
Chinese doctrine, translated literature, and observations from
recent historical events.
THE STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENT
1-1. Chinas view of the strategic environment mirrors that of
the United States in many ways. There are, however, key differences
in both analysis of the strategic environment and the application
of this analysis that underpin important differences in perspective
between the two countries. Both the Peoples Republic of
Chinacommonly referred to as Chinaand the United States assess the
key elements of the strategic environment discussed in paragraphs
1-2 through 1-9.
1-2. U.S. obligations to allies and partners in the Western
Pacific will continue in perpetuity. Key U.S. allies include Japan,
South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. The
United States will likewise maintain a strong strategic interest in
the Western Pacific.
1-3. The United States will maintain strong, though unofficial,
support to the Republic of Chinaalso known as Taiwan. The former
will employ a policy of deliberate ambiguity to deter potential
Chinese aggression against the island while maintaining a position
respectful of Chinese policy toward the same.
1-4. China will continue to seek improved relations with Russia
and India, with Russia likely proving a more amenable partner.
China views improving these two relationshipsparticularly with
Russiaas very important both politically and economically. Border
tensions with India complicate bilateral relations and are often
perceived by India as aggressive, requiring strong responses and
adjustments to its defense posture.
1-5. Increasing competition for limited resources and the
effects of global climate change will fuel conflict among both
state and non-state actors. As populations increase, providing
adequate quantities of basic necessities such as water, energy,
food, and medical care becomes increasingly difficult. In addition,
competition for human capital and raw materials for industry will
increase as the international economy expands. Conditions such as
natural disasters, extreme weather events, and their second- and
third-order effects will have considerable impacts across...
(U//FOUO) We assess that Iran likely will continue to rely
primarily on proxy news websites and affiliated social media
accounts to attempt sustained influence against US audiences, while
we expect intermittent, issue-specific influence attempts via other
means (e.g., e-mails). We base this assessment on Irans actions
since at least 2008 to build and maintain vast malign influence
networks anchored by proxy websites, as well as Irans attempts to
find new avenues to re-launch established malign influence networks
after suspension. Tehran employs a network of proxy social media
accounts and news websites that typically launder Iranian state
media stories (stripped of attribution), plagiarize articles from
Western wire services, and occasionally pay US persons to write
articles to appear more legitimate to US audiences.
(U) The American Herald Tribune (AHT)an Iranian Government proxy
website established in 2015 that purported to be a genuine media
outletwas seized by the US Government on 4 November 2020 for
attempting to covertly influence United States policy and public
opinion, according to a DOJ press release. However, AHT by at least
16 November 2020 resurfaced on a Canada-based domain, according to
AHTs website. AHT is also known to pay unwitting US persons to
contribute to its disinformation campaigns, according to the same
website.
(U) The International Union of Virtual Media (IUVM) since at
least August 2018 has maintained a network of proxy accounts and
websites posing as news sources that attempted to insert Iranian
Government narratives into Western target audiences and to
denigrate the United States, Western governments, and other
regional adversaries, according to reports from a research
institute and a social media analysis firm. Since IUVM started, US
social media outlets have repeatedly removed its accounts from
their platforms for being engaged in pro-Iran information
operations and deceiving users; most recently, the FBI in October
2020 seized IUVMs domains, according to the same reports and a DOJ
press release. Despite these setbacks, however, IUVM created new
accounts and returned to operations, according to these same
reports.
(U) Iranian state media-linked Liberty Front Press, created in
2013, claimed to be an independent media organization that
published US political news, including content from other proxies
such as IUVM and US-based media sites, according to reports from a
media outlet, a cybersecurity firm, and a research institute.
Liberty Front Press and its network of affiliated proxy news
websites published content directly from other sources, and any
original content contained poorly written English, according to the
same cybersecurity firm report. In August 2018, US social media
platforms deactivated accounts associated with Liberty Front Press
because of its connection to Iranian state media, according to
media reporting. The Liberty Front Press website was officially
seized by the...
Written by Kali Akuno, Brian Drolet and Doug Norberg Since
the meteoric rise of Donald J. Trump in 2015, significant numbers
of liberals, progressives, social democrats and leftists have been
fixated on his politics, policies, and personality and what they
portend for the future of liberal democracy. This built on a
fixation with the elections of right wing strongmen like Jair
Bolsonaro, Rodrigo
The ill counsel of a desert place, that would be howld out in
the desert air .
Night has fallen on the desert, in this spookiest of seasons.
Tonight we travel by the power of darkness and disinformation to
Archuleta Mesa, in the Jicarilla Apache town of Dulce, New
Mexico. Were going down, beneath the mountain, to see if the
reptilian aliens and the gray aliens and the Air Force disinfo
And it will give you a foundation regarding
the mountain gaps that channel cold air in our region.
Tomorrow, an approaching front and associated
trough of low pressure will rev up the north-south pressure
differences, causing strong southerly winds over Puget Sound (see
the pressures at mid-day tomorrow below). Gusts to 40 mph can
be expected.
Then a cold front will move through Tuesday morning, bringing lots
of snow in the mountains on Tuesday.
Late Tuesday and Wednesday, much colder air
will push into Washington state, bringing highs in the 30s and lows
in the 20s for western Washington, and ten degrees colder over the
Columbia Basin. Some snow showers will fall over Puget
Sound, but feet of new snow will accumulate over the Cascade.
The snow totals through Thursday morning are
shown below:
The second half of my podcast will talk about the
importance of gaps in our mountains, and how they act as critical
conduits of cold (and not-so-cold) air.
In case you never saw it, there was a series on
Netflix that took the world by storm called Tiger King that had 64
million people glued to their television sets for weeks. It was a
show about an American guy named Joe Exotic, real name Joseph
Maldonado-Passage, who was a breeder and keeper of tigers, and his
number one nemesis, Carole Baskin, a supposed animal rights
activist.
Since the series came out, it has shed major light
on the exploitation of wild animals, creating a move in U.S.
legislation which was just passed recently in the U.S. Senate. The
law was to ban public contact with such animals as tigers, lions,
cougars, cheetahs, leopards, cougars and jaguars.
This soon-to-be law, which has been named the
Big
Cat Public Safety Act, will now prohibit keeping big cat
species as pets, while also including the practice of cub petting.
This same act will also make it illegal for the public to have
close contact with the animals, whether handling any cubs or
bottle-feeding them.
The Senate passed this bipartisan legislation,
agreeing unanimously over this new bill. Since then, it was passed
alread...
The devastating earthquake in Turkey/Syria a few days ago has
left tens of thousands dead and many times more injured. The
article provides details of the worst quake to hit the area in
living memory and its consequences.
Welcome to The Daily Wrap
Up, a concise show dedicated to bringing you the most relevant
independent news, as we see it, from the last 24 hours
(2/19/23).
As always, take the information discussed in the video below and
research it for yourself, and come to your own conclusions. Anyone
telling you what the truth is, or claiming they have the answer, is
likely leading you astray, for one reason or another. Stay
Vigilant.
(https://www.rokfin.com/TLAVagabond)(https://www.bitchute.com/channel/24yVcta8zEjY/)
It's hard to overstate how much damage these corrupt rulings by
Republicans on the Court "" from Buckley and Bellotti in 1976/1978
to Citizens United in 2010 "" have done to American democracy
This is an interview with Dr. Stephen Sizer is the founder and
director of Peacemaker Trust to talk about the developments in
Palestine and the tension between the Palestinians and Israelis
India seems headed for war by China, says Pravin Sawhney, Indian
defense analyst and author of 'The Last War: How AI Will Shape
India's Final Showdown With China.'Sawhney argues that it is a
matter of time before Chinese President Xi Jinping decides to
launch a war against India. "Xi has capabilities in place in
Himalayas, make no mistake about it, for a quick, short and
decisive war in China's favor.
This article exposes how the last 7 Presidents and 22 prior
Congresses prevented a 1987 civil servant led effort to create
those money (audit) trails, why there must be bottoms/up democratic
reform to undo what they have already unconstitutionally done, also
why both parties must now be held legally/financially accountable
for "their" $30+ trillion debt spike.
For somebody who talks so much about freedom and is all full of
Bluster, he seems to be pretty afraid of free thought or a high
schooler's right to go to a book and discover things about their
own history and their own traditions.
This is an interview with Norwegian activist Kari Jaquesson to
talk about the US /EU sanctions on Syria and there support to the
Radical Islamic terrorists groups in Idlib
This Handbook focuses on the legal matters pertaining to
providing assistance to domestic civil authorities, also known as
DSCA. Circumstances involving the exercise of homeland defense
authority and capabilities, i.e. countering air and maritime
attacks and preventing terrorist attacks on the homeland, are
beyond the scope of this handbook. Nonetheless, it should be kept
in mind that actions taken within the homeland defense function may
directly impact the DoDs DSCA mission once an event has occurred.
Likewise, for ongoing events or continuing attacks, DSCA actions
may affect homeland defense capabilities.
U.S. military resources include specialized personnel,
equipment, facilities, and training that may be useful to civilian
law enforcement agencies. The provision of DoD resources, however,
must be consistent with the limits Congress placed on military
support to civilian law enforcement through the Posse Comitatus Act
(PCA) and other laws. Judge advocates must also weigh and advise on
the political sensitivity of employing U.S. military forces in law
enforcement roles involving U.S. civilians.
This chapter begins with a discussion of the PCA. It then
discusses the applicable provisions of the U.S. Code addressing
military support to civilian law enforcement and the DoD
regulations that implement this guidance. Information relating
specifically to counterdrug support is discussed separately in the
Chapter 7 due to the size and complexity of this DoD mission.
(ii) Emergency Authority
A second type of direct assistance that may be permitted is
action that falls under the emergency authority of the United
States. This is an inherent authority of the Federal Government
under the Constitution. Actions permitted in accordance with this
authority are those necessary to preserve public order and to carry
out governmental operations within U.S. territorial limits, or
otherwise in accordance with applicable law. In such circumstances,
necessary force may be used. The circumstances when the use of
emergency authority is appropriate are very rare, however;
typically they will arise only during a large-scale and unexpected
civil disturbance.
ATP 3-39.10 provides guidance for commanders and staffs on
police operations and is aligned with FM 3-39, the keystone
military police field manual. This manual addresses police
operations across the range of military operations. Police
operations support decisive action tasks (offensive, defensive, and
stability or defense support of civil authorities [DSCA]). This
manual emphasizes policing capabilities necessary to establish
order and subsequent law enforcement activities that enable
successful establishment, maintenance, or restoration of the rule
of law. While this manual focuses on the police operations
discipline and its associated tasks and principles, it also
emphasizes the foundational role that police operations, in
general, play in the military police approach to missions and
support to commanders.
Police operations have historically been understood to comprise
of law enforcement missions supporting United States (U.S.)
military commanders and efforts to police military personnel,
civilians, and family members working and residing on U.S. military
bases and base camps. Police operations support to the operational
commander and the capabilities inherent within law enforcement
organizations will continue to grow in relevance in support of Army
operations. Future conflicts and the nature of the threat within
the operational environment will increase the relevance of police
operations and the need for law enforcement capabilities in support
of Army operations. Police operations plays vital role in
countering hybrid threats, reducing crime, establishing order,
preserving readiness, and enforcing the rule of law. Police
operations have shown their relevance in establishing civil
security and civil control critical lines of effort supporting
transfer authority to a secure and stable host-nation (HN)
government.
Lessons learned from recent conflicts, coupled with task
analysis conducted by USAMPS, Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, have
resulted in an expanded doctrinal framework and understanding of
police operations. The expanded framework does not establish new
tasks within the police operations discipline, but identifies and
documents missions and tasks in the revised doctrine that have
historically been conducted by military police. Recent updates to
FM 3-39 establishes police operations as the primary military
police discipline, shaping the actions and perspectives of military
police in the conduct of military police disciplines. These updates
describe police operations within the context of two
activitiespolicing and law enforcement. Policing activities are
general actions aimed at establishing order and stability within an
area of operations (AO); law enforcement activities are tied to the
rule of law and require authority to conduct the law enforcement
activity
Beyond support to bases and base camps, the requirement for
military police capabilities in training and supporting HN police
is the most vis...
New York, NY On September 14, 2021 Chelsea
Manning tested positive for the Coronavirus. She is
exhibiting mild symptoms, has consulted a physician, and will be
quarantining until October 1, 2021. In response to learning
about her prognosis Chelsea Manning has issued the following
statement:
On September 14th I tested positive for Coronavirus after
accompanying a friend who had cold-like symptoms to get tested. I
immediately quarantined, consulted a doctor, and have since
developed symptoms. Sadly, I will need to cancel some public
engagements, and participate remotely in others, while I remain
under quarantine until October 1st, 2021. Im fine and thankfully
due to the benefits of the vaccine my symptoms are very mild. My
heart goes out to everyone who is suffering and grieving as a
result of this horrible virus and I look forward to a day when we
can put all of this behind us.
While I may not share the same influence as a multi-platinum
recording artist, I recognize the importance of transparency, and
recognize the threat misinformation poses to the health and
wellbeing of diverse communities both online and off. So Ill
just say this vaccines work, masks work, testing works, healthcare
is a right, and we all need to support each other.
Around the world, scientists race to develop a vaccine or
treatment against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by the
severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Now,
Read more "Ivermectin Kills Coronavirus In
48 Hours"
Been kinda busy lately, caring for my 87 year old mother
in her Burnaby home, and boy oh boy do I have some stories to tell,
the utter incompetence of Fraser Health and Burnaby Hospital...
Mom ended up in Burnaby hospital in November of 2020..She had a
UTI, and Burnaby Hospital had a fire while she was
there
And boy did they fuck up.....Got a phone call from a Doctor Lee,
he told me my mom was ready to come home in a couple of days...I
said great, but then, I never heard anything from Burnaby hospital
for 3 days, I kept calling trying to find out when she was coming
home, I finally did get ahold of Doctor Lee again(visitors at that
time were not allowed to visit patients, even family members
because of covid)I asked Doctor Lee what's going on, you told me my
mom was near ready to come home..
He told me my mom was dying, probably only a day or two left to
live, I freaked out, I said to the doctor, what the hell happened,
you told me she was near ready to come home and days later you tell
me she is ready to die, and I can't even visit her....To which
doctor Lee said..."you can come see her, you'll have to gown up and
mask up"....I went there the next morning(earliest I could
go)gowned up and went into her room, mom was laying flat on the
bed, her lungs were gurgling, her OWN bipap breathing machine was
on her face(Mom's Bipap life support travels with her as Burnaby
hospital will not allow her to use their bipap machines in
ICU)....I heard no air coming out of her bipap, I took the mask off
and it wasn't running....I freaked out on the staff, ordered the
nurse to increase her lasex and told them they put a mask on her
face with no fucking air coming out of it.....I tilted mom's bed up
so her chest was elevated and I turned on her bipap...I found
doctor Lee in the ward and told him he's a fucking moron, doesn't
know what he's doing and to keep away from my mom or else.....I
told the nurse to have resident doctor Kathleen Kwan take
over....Mom was near death, I was holding back tears...I left to
make room for sister siblings waiting to see their dying
mom....
I went home, and, I called my friend Steve at Clinical Sleep
Solutions in North Vancou...
Rather than trying to get a holiday tan from turning your face
to the sun, try modern, effective facial tanning lamps. Why? Are
they safer and do they give you a natural-looking tan? Anyone who
wants a fuss-free way to get a super bronzed tan will be interested
in knowing more about these portable lamps for tanning. Read more
about it here on Occupycorporatism.com.
The tanning lamps have different UV light ranges. The tanning
lamps are installed in the facial tanning unit. The lamps come in a
number of configurations considered standards in the industry. The
quality of your tan will depend on the spectrum of light that comes
from the lamps.
High-pressure lamps or High-Intensity Discharge (HID) lamps are
different from low-pressure lamps. They are essentially used for
face lamps but are also used for full-body tanning. Wattage ranges
tremendously and you will find 15-watt lamps to 400 watts and much
more. You get hundreds of hours of usage. Between 500 to 1000
hours, tanning bulbs lose their potency and need t to be
replaced.
These high-pressure lamps use quartz glass and dont filter UVC.
But because UVC can be so dangerous, a dichroic filter glass is
required to filter out the UVC and UVB. With low-pressure
lamps, unlike high-pressure lamps, the glass filters out UVC.
You can say that fluorescent lamps are more common in the
tanning industry. The lamps vary in size and range between 80 to
160 watts. Light output also ranges across a spectrum, including
UVA and UVB, as well as visible light and infrared.
All fluorescent lamps are made up of a glass tube with a
phosphors coating. To determine the proper lamp type for your
tanning lamp, always follow the manufacturers recommended lamp
replacement guide.
Create a full-on Glow
A useful feature of these high-intensity lamps is that they use
distinctive lights that filter out a lot of UV light. They enable
sufficient light to pass across so that you get an amazing
sun-kissed look.
You do require some UV rays and the UV light from the lamps acts
as natural sunlight which enhances the production of vitamin D.
Vitamin D offers a person plenty of health benefits.
Also, most health experts and health personnel actually
prescribe UV
light as a super treatment for depressed patients. However, the
filtering of UV rays is important as it is protecting your skin
from experiencing any harsh reactions.
Which facial tanner works for you?
Before you rush out to buy your new tanning lamp, think about
your skin type. The strength of the lamps will determine your
tanning time. With any lamp, when youre starting out for the first
time, you need to adjust the exposure time.
It makes sense as the new lamps will be stronger. Det...
Winning big at a casino is the dream for pretty much every
single player out there. Being at the right place at the right time
and winning a huge jackpot it just doesnt get much better than
that.
A lucky woman got to experience this feeling at the SkyCity
Casino in Auckland, when her run at a low stakes Caribbean Stud
table ended up producing a $1.1 million
jackpot.
One in 650,000 Odds
Usually, Caribbean Stud Poker tables at live casinos feature a
progressive jackpot that can be won if the player is dealt the best
possible hand in poker a Royal Flush. The odds of this
happening are around 650,000 to 1, so its clearly not
something youll see every day.
However, this lucky lady found herself at the right place at
just the right time as she placed another $35 bet on the next hand.
Against all odds, the five cards she was dealt were 10, J, Q, K,
and A, all of the same suit the coveted Royal Flush.
This gave her right to claim the entire jackpot amount
of $1,108,585, making her an instant millionaire.
According to the statement from the SkyCity casino officials, the
player was particularly lucky, because the jackpot she won is the
largest theyve seen in the last seven years. According to the same
statement, the newly made millionaire spread her joy and shared
some of the winnings with other players at the table, which was
definitely a very nice gesture.
You Could Be Next with No Deposit Casino Bonuses
This win took place at a land-based casino but if you dont have
one nearby, this doesnt mean you cant go for a jackpot as well and
become the next big winner. There are many online casinos out there
offering huge progressive jackpots with seven and even eight-figure
amounts up for grabs.
Whats even better is that there are many places where players
can try their luck at winning a jackpot with no risk involved
whatsoever, using no deposit bonuses. All youll need is to find
some good no deposit bonus codes and sign up with the casinos
giving you a chance to play and win without requiri...
Casino cruises offer the best experience to anyone who is
looking for holiday fun with a twist. Cruise liners set up for
casino cruises are as luxurious and exciting as the more famous
land-based casinos. However, with casino cruises, you get to see
the world and spend time in some of the most famous cities and
still get to do some serious gambling. There are a number of
industry big players that operate some of the best casino cruises
in the world. Lets look at three of the best and what they have to
offer.
#1.Cunards Queen Mary 2 Ocean Cruiseliner
For The Sophisticated Gambler Cunard offers old-world
sophistication and elegance you would find in places like Monte
Carlo. Cunards Queen Mary 2 takes travelers on exciting
transatlantic voyages between New York and Southampton. The ocean
liner offers virtually everything for everyone, but perhaps the
best part about the ship is the Empire Casino. This grand casino
harkens back to the sophisticated casinos of the world where men
dress up in tuxedos and women put on their best cocktail dresses
makes you think you might just run into James Bond sipping a
Martini at the bar.
The casino offers gaming tables where you can play blackjack,
roulette, three card poker and Texas hold em. If tables arent your
thing, then there are slot machines and video poker machines you
can play. Betting limits on tables range from $3 To $500 and slot
machine limits range from $0.05 to $5.
First-time gamblers can take advantage of the daily lessons on
how different games are played, what the rules are and how to win.
These lessons are fun and people actually manage to get lucky after
a couple of lessons.
Blue River, BCOver 40 human rights
lawyers, organizations, authors and First Nations representatives
penneda letterto Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau calling on him to abide by demands made
from the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination (CERD) calling on Canada toimmediately halt constructionof the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
The letter follows a summer of escalating
confrontations, including assaults, surveillance, and harassment
targeting Secwepemcland defenders by
pipeline workers and security.
The letter urging Prime Minister Trudeau to
stop the construction of the pipeline was also sent to Jennifer
Strachan, Deputy Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
and details the precarity of the hostilities between workers from
the mobile Trans Mountain Pipeline worker camp and the surrounding
Secwepemc community. A spectrum of drug use, verbal abuse, sexual
harassment and assault have become a mainstay with Trans Mountains
traveling labor camps. For First Nations communities already
traumatized by an epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous
women, incidents surrounding Trans Mountains traveling labor camps
have only contributed to heightened security concerns for Blue
Rivers Native community, exacerbating decades-long
wounds.
OPEN LETTER to Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau, Prime
Minister of Canada; Deputy Commissioner Jennifer Strachan, Royal
Canadian Mounted Police
August 7, 2021
We write to share our joint concerns with the
Canadian federal government, Trans Mountain
Corporation,...
Several neo-Nazis that attended and helped organize the deadly
Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA, claim they are in
communication with the organizers of the Rage Against the War
Machine, rally in Washington DC, which is bringing together various
pro-Putin trolls, far-Right grifters, and conspiracy
theorists.
According to a livestream from the Patriotic
Socialist Front, which includes long-time neo-Nazi organizer
Matthew Heimbach, former member of
Vanguard America and
Ohio National Guardsman, Shandon Simpson, and the leader of the
group, Andrew, the organization plans to travel to the Rage Against
the War Machine rally in DC, fly a National
Bolshevik flag, and also table at the event. During the
livestream, Simpson states that Heimbach, has had more
communications with some of the people involved
Neo-Nazi,
Shandon Simpson
Matthew Heimbach has been involved in white supremacist politics
for around a decade, after getting involved in the emerging
Alt-Right
after joining Youth for Western Civilization in college.
Heimbach embraced both the Greek Orthodox church and the
Strasse...
(U) Criminals and violent extremists continue to seek ways to
acquire firearms through the production of privately made firearms
(PMFs). PMFs can be easily made using readily available
instructions and commonly available tools, require no background
check or firearms registration (serial number) under federal law,
and their parts have become more accessible and affordable. This,
combined with the increase in law enforcement recoveries of
nonserialized and counterfeit firearms in criminal investigations,
will most likely create increasing challenges in law enforcement
investigations, including weapon accountability access and
tracking. PMF awareness and identification can aid PMF recovery,
prevention of illicit activities including terrorism, and overall
first responder and public safety.
(U) NOTE: Many of the activities described herein may involve
Constitutionally protected activities and may be insignificant on
their own. Action should not be taken solely based on the exercise
of Constitutionally protected rights.
(U) PMF-RELATED OBSERVABLE INDICATORS: The following observable
indicators may be related to PMF manufacturing and awareness of
these indicators by law enforcement and security personnel will
increase recognition of possible suspicious PMF use. This
awareness, coupled with other factors, may enable the detection and
prevention of unlawful violent activity. It is important to note
that by themselves, some of the following indicators are lawful and
Constitutionally protected and taken alone, would not warrant law
enforcement action or additional investigation. Behavioral
indicators and other relevant circumstances should be evaluated
when considering any law enforcement response or action.
(U) Assistance on making undetectable firearms.
(U) Discussion on ways to avoid detection at security
checkpoints while carrying a firearm as well as making low to
nonmetallic content firearms.
(U//FOUO) Queries by known violent extremists seeking people
with experience with computer-assisted design, or 3D printing.
(U//FOUO) Inquires on ways to sell or purchase a finished,
wholly plastic 3D firearm.
(U) The presence of 3D printers or materials during calls to
service, warrant executions, or other such encounters related to
suspected firearms.
(U//FOUO) Reports from federal firearms licensees identifying
people suspected of manufacturing PMFs or converting them from
semiautomatic to fully automatic based on customer purchases,
conversations, and questions.
(U) Acquisition of other commercial firearm-related items that
are known PMFs.
(U//FOUO) Abnormally large number of orders from Internet
firearm suppliers to a single address in states with more
regulations.
(U//FOUO) An increase in the number of unsuccessful traces
(confirmed hits) on recovered firearms.
(U) Recovery of unconventional firearm designs and firearms that
look inn...
Alexandria, VADaniel Everette Hale, a
former Air Force intelligence analyst who pleaded guilty to sharing
classified documents about US Military drone programs with a
reporter was just sentenced to 45 months in Federal Prison. Ahead
of his sentencing Hales lawyers submittedan 11-page letterhandwritten by Daniel from his jail cell to US DistrictJudge Liam OGrady. Hales deeply personal letter
paints a gruesome picture of the US Drone Program, and explains in
detail how it was a crisis of conscience that led Hale to leak
secrets about the program to a reporter. Below is
Daniel Everette Hales letter to Judge Liam OGrady in its
entirety:
Dear Judge OGrady,
It is not a secret that I struggle to live with
depression and post traumatic stress disorder. Both stem from my
childhood experience growing up in a rural mountain community and
were compounded by exposure to combat during military service.
Depression is a constant. Though stress, particularly stress caused
by war, can manifest itself at different times and in different
ways. The tell-tale signs of a person afflicted by PTSD and
depression can often be outwardly observed and are practically
universally recognizable. Hard lines about the face and jaw. Eyes,
once bright and wide, now deepset and fearful. And an inexplicably
sudden loss of interest in things that used to spark joy. These are
the noticeable changes in my demeanor marked by those who knew me
before and after military service. To say that the period of my
life spent serving in the United States Air Force had an impression
on me would be an understatement. It is more accurate to say that
it irreversibly transformed my identity as an American. Having
forever altered the thread of my lifes story, weaved into the
fabric of our nat...
In
a May 12 ruling, federalJudge Edward Chen put on holdthe
lawsuit requesting fluoridation be banned based on fluorides
adverse neurological effects until 3 new studies are
peer-reviewed, 2 of which preliminarily show fluorides harm,according to
InsideEPA.com. He also awaits the conclusion of a US National Toxicology
Program analysis of fluoride which, in draft form, declared
"fluoride is presumed to be a cognitive neurodevelopmental hazard
to humans.
Federal Case
No. 17-CV-02162-EMC, challenging water fluoridation safety, was
brought by several environmental groups and individuals led by Food
& Water Watch and the ...
CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
to our Saturday, July 10 & Sunday, July 11 shows
at Theater29, Twentynine Palms, Calif.
Night has fallen on the desert, the desert at its most brutal. The
punishing desert, the earthly purgatory, the sun-blasted wilderness
so many heroes had to get across alive. Or die trying: Moses,
Laurence of Arabia, C-3PO and R2D2, Beavis and Butthead, Allan
Quartermain, Priscilla,
This we shall attempt to do! The saloon is once again open for
inside dining (day drinking) and we will soon return to our beloved
JT bar. The only bar, in fact.
We promise your subscription is up to date. Its the *editor*
whos late. We hope to have the next issue in the mail by early
July. Thank you for your patience!
Well it finally happened, just like every year. All the sudden,
its hot again. A week ago, it was pleasant out. Now, we cry in the
frying pan. Or we will cry, in the weeks to come. Octobers
somewhere on the horizon. Unless its a mirage.
Plus: The Legend of Tahoe Tessie, which you can read about here in
Alta Magazine. Time for EPISODE #131: THE HEAT MONSTER. With trippy
new sounds from
UPDATE: Victory! Acting Mayor Janey
pulled the plug on the RFP, thanks to your advocacy. When we
fight, we win!
A request for proposals (RFP) published on the City of Bostons
website in April,
first reported by DigBoston, raises extremely alarming concerns
about the expansion of a surveillance camera network throughout
Eastern Massachusetts. The RFP comes as the City Council in Boston
is in the final stages of working to pass a surveillance oversight
ordinance that would place decisions about matters like this before
the public, in the hands of the City Council.
Please
take action nowto tell Acting Mayor Janey to
withdraw the RFP and wait until the City Council passes
the surveillance oversight ordinance before embarking on costly,
potentially dangerous expansions of government surveillance like
this one.
To understand the significance of this RFP, and the threats it
poses to the safety and privacy of residents of Boston and
surrounding communities, we need some background.
For the past few years, the ACLU of Massachusetts has been
trying to understand the City of Bostons plans to link
government-owned surveillance cameras throughout the metropolitan
Boston region. We have filed countless public records requests with
various government agencies, because we have been concerned that
the City has been planning to link thousands of cameras together
through technology that would allow, say, a police officer from
Quincy to see whats happening on streets in Boston and vice versa.
Unfortunately, while we have received some documents, the City has
failed to adequately respond to those requests. But thanks to the
publication of this RFP, we now know at least some of what
theyre planningand
we must stop itbefore a contract is signed
June 2.
The Citys plans are laid out in a 31-page RFP issued by the City
of Boston Office of Emergency Managementand they are extremely
frightening. The plan would link over 1,000 surveillance cameras
into one all-seeing eye, accessible to potentially thousands of
police officers throughout Eastern Massachusetts. Meanwhile, this
RFP process is unfolding behind the scenes at City Hall at the very
same time the Boston City Council is working on an ordinance that
would put control over surveillance in Boston in the hands of the
City Council and the public. Its not clear that Acting Mayor Janeya
lead sponsor of the surveillance ordinance when she was City
Council Presidentknew about the Citys plans to link a...
Photo by Lance Gerber for Palm Springs Life.
Because the second vaccine dose knocked your host to the ground .
He went ahead and made a new episode anyway. A good excuse to
finally do something from our hardcover book:
As we come out of our holes and return to our beloved American
Desert, its time to remember a dozen simple rules to keep your day
hike from becoming a disaster. We dont
Debate over double masking continues to dominate online
discussion. Many members of the public are frustrated with what
they feel is inconsistent messaging.
Several areas of the country are beginning to report more positive
trends of declining case counts. People are expressing relief and
are hopeful this will alleviate some of the stress being placed on
many hospitals. A small number speculate this is an expected
decline following increased holiday infection rates.
There have been positive reactions to news that FEMA has requested
thousands of service members from DoD to provide vaccine support.
People are hopeful this will help the process go more smoothly.
There is growing concern among the medical community and the
general public regarding new variants being reported in several
states. There is particular worry over how vulnerability children
may be to these new strains.
Traditional media and morning front-page headlines focused on:
o The federal governments interagency response to stand up
additional vaccination sites
o Increasing weekly dose shipments, ongoing detection of foreign
variants of the COVID-19 virus
o Renewed emphasis on facemasks reducing infection spread
Public accessibility to vaccination centers or registration sites
and consequential mitigation by state and local officials also
continue to generate traditional media reports of frustration and a
perception of unequal distribution.
PUBLIC PERCEPTION/SENTIMENT
Discussion last night and this morning heavily focused on recent
recommendations to wear two masks.
o People are frustrated with what they feel is constantly changing
guidance and policies. Many feel if one mask is ineffective
doubling up will not make a difference. (example
1, example
2)
Several areas around the country are reporting a decline
in positive case counts. Most people are responding to this
with cautious optimism and hoping it will relieve some of the
stress on our healthcare system.
o Some are warning people to remain vigilant especially in light of
new variants being reported across the nation stating historically
we have not
prepared well for additional waves.
There are conflicting arguments regarding children and COVID-19.
Some note that children have been less susceptible to infection
meaning schools
should reopen. The other side of the argument claims COVID-19
rates in schools are underreported and schools are not taking
proper safety precautions for in-person learning.
o A...
There are reports of increased skepticism regarding the vaccine
among Latinx communities. There is a lack of trust in the guidance
and policies being shared by the federal government and some state
and local officials. This is causing some to feel more hesitant
about receiving the vaccine.
Many individuals who have received the first round of the vaccine
are growing more concerned that supplies will run out before they
can receive their second dose, or that they will not be able to
obtain appointments for their second dose.
There is a small amount of local news coverage regarding FEMA
funeral assistance. Members of the National Funeral Directors
Association report they are anxiously awaiting additional guidance
from FEMA about how the program will be implemented. There has also
been steady coverage in local media regarding the recent allocation
of funds to bolster state vaccine administration capacity.
There is some debate and disagreement among state lawmakers
regarding what populations should be prioritized for the
vaccine.
This afternoon, traditional media has focused on the White House
COVID-19 Response Teams press brief. Popular topics covered in the
brief included overall action plans, infection risk following
detection of new virus strains within U.S. borders, and ongoing
concerns about vaccine supplies and accessibility. Todays newspaper
front-page headlines covered new vaccination sites, concerns
regarding new strains of the virus, and mixed public reaction to
the pace of vaccine distribution and administration.
PUBLIC PERCEPTION/SENTIMENT
Reports of inequitable vaccine distribution is becoming an
increasingly hot topic among Latinx communities. (example
1,
example 2)
o Some members of these communities claim there is
hesitation to get vaccinated due to a lack of official
information available in Spanish and a large circulation of
myths/rumors causing an overall
lack of trust towards government messaging regarding the
vaccine.
o Many feel reports of inequitable vaccine are intended to be
polarizing, claiming that the
states being analyzed in the news reports are predominantly
white anyways....
Welcome to The Daily Wrap
Up, a concise show dedicated to bringing you the most relevant
independent news, as we see it, from the last 24 hours
(2/17/23).
As always, take the information discussed in the video below and
research it for yourself, and come to your own conclusions. Anyone
telling you what the truth is, or claiming they have the answer, is
likely leading you astray, for one reason or another. Stay
Vigilant.
(https://www.rokfin.com/TLAVagabond)(https://www.bitchute.com/channel/24yVcta8zEjY/)
Call for solidarity and support of residents in East
Palestine, Ohio and beyond who have been impacted by the Norfolk
Southern disaster.
Organizations and affinity groups across Ohio are uniting to
offer support and mutual aid to those most affected by last weeks
train derailment and subsequent release of toxic chemicals. We are
accepting donations of both funds and supplies for communities in
and around East Palestine, Ohio.
This disaster is a policy decision. The Biden administration and
Congress refused to support rail workers in their demands to
improve safety in December 2022 and January 2023. Ohio Governor
DeWine mandated the conditions to allow the toxic burn off in lieu
of alternative remediations. The purpose for escalating the release
of volatile chemicals was to speed up the process for trains to
resume to generate profit for the companies who perpetuated this
catastrophe. State and federal authorities are not only neglecting
and refusing to serve residents needs in the aftermath of this
disaster. They caused this.
Politicians are not caring for their constituents, and theyre
not being truthful. Instead, theyre beholden to the corporations
that finance their campaigns and the lies that protect them.
Norfolk Southern is only concerned about profit. Norfolk Southern
does not care about the environment. And Norfolk Southern does not
care about the health and well-being of people. From Cop City to
East Palestine, Norfolk Southern is an ecocidal entity endorsed by
our government. To that end, we know that it is our duty to help
our fellow Ohioans in distress through our collective power.
Defend the Atlanta Forest statement on upcoming mass
mobilization against the Cop City project, which threatens to
destroy the Weelaunee forest.
Nearly two years after the beginning of
the movement to Defend the Atlanta Forest, Georgia State Patrol
officers murdered an activist found alone in the forest. Repressive
forces continue their legacy of attacking civil rights protesters
in Atlanta, supposedly The City Too Busy to Hate. The people of
Atlanta have had enough. We will no longer accept The Atlanta Way,
the backroom deals made between corporations and those in city
government who pledge to support their constituents. Atlanta is not
for sale. We are fighting against corruption and tyranny, we are
fighting to defend public space and the right to protest.
Each time our enemies attack, we stand up,
we fight back, and our power is growing. Neighbors of the Weelaunee
Forest, prominent environmental and civil rights organizations,
students, doctors, teachers, lawyers, journalists, school children,
local business owners, religious groups, even local government
officials and members of congresseveryone is uniting against
deforestation, unbridled development of urban space, and police
brutality. We will no longer be accessories to our own subjugation.
Not one blade of grass.
On the Murder of
Tortuguita
Tortuguita Tort Paez Teran was murdered by
a squad of Georgia State Patrol officers who report directly to
Georgia governor, Brian Kemp. Tort, just twenty-six years old,
was shot at least 13 times by state patrol officers who
continue to roam Georgia streets, not facing any consequences after
taking a life. After claiming there was no body camera footage
relevant to Torts death, the Atlanta Police Department
released video from officers on the ground...
New video from sub.Media about the upcoming weeks of
action in solidarity with the fight to stop Cop City in so-called
Atlanta. GA. For more information, see Defend the Atlanta
Forest.
From March 4-11, supporters of the Defend the Atlanta Forest
movement will converge in the Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta. There
will be a two-day music festival, workshops, discussions, and many
ways to take an active part in the movement.
Weelaunee Forest: 3251 Westside Place, Atlanta, GA 30316
If anyone thought that La Nina would sneak
away with little notice, the latest model predictions should
disabuse you of that opinion: an extraordinary cold wave
will occur next week, with several daily cold records destined to
be broken.
But there is more: huge additional
snowfalls will occur over the mountains of the entire West
Coast.
Let me start with the predictions at Seattle
and Pasco, WA for the next week, based on the National Weather
Service Blend of Models predictions.
There will be warming over the weekend into
Monday, with a transition occurring on Tuesday as modified Arctic
air pushes in.
The highs on Wednesday through
Friday will be in the 30s, and the lows will be at freezing or
below every night, bottoming out at 22F Friday morning.
For Pasco, even
colder, with temperatures dropping into the low teens.
Mayweather was not the only one to achieve
a technical knock out yesterday. The Stoddart Avenue
Community Garden was freakishly busy knocking out projects
ourselves.We were again the lucky beneficiaries of
The Ohio
State Universitys Pay-It-Forward Program which sent us 30
hardworking and dedicated college students who helped us move the
needle forward on our 2017 capital improvement project, clean up
our weedy alley, water our food pantry plots and a few flower beds,
tidy the Block Watch lot across the street and find a new bee hive,
weed the tomato bed next door at Kimball Farms and pick up almost
20 bags of litter in a four block area around the Garden.This all went relatively
smoothly because I had LOTS of help from Sabrina, Ken and Amy
to each supervise a team of students.
Poison Ivy Part I.Earlier this month, while I was
cursing and pulling bind weed off of the raspberry brambles in the
raised bed area of the SACG, I forgot to pay attention to whether
the poison ivy had returned.Mistake. ...
Hello and thanks for the good question. Many places call to me:
hometown of New Orleans, the Eastern Sierra, slickrock country in
SE Utah, the Hudson Valley, the wooded / coastal Pacific Northwest.
The intermountain West, Nova Scotia, Blue Ridge Mountains. Anyplace
where we can be part of our eco-region, eat the food from the land
and sea, know the folklore and history and plants and animals.
Its our fifth season, our Five-Year Plan, tonight at 10 p.m. PST
on Z 107.7 FM in Joshua Tree and across the Great Mojave
Wilderness. EPISODE #125: OWENS VALLEY & THE ACCIDENTAL
MIRACLE. What made the Owens Valley the way it is, in our time? An
accident of history, of water grabs, of one group of humans using
easy money to buy out another group of humans, thats what preserved
the most beautiful
The hardcover Desert Oracle book is out now, available at fine
retailers across the High Desert and at the old monopoly mail-order
house: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0374139687/
Recent high-profile mass-casualty attacks in the West have
demonstrated the enduring threat posed by a wide range of
racially/ethnically motivated violent extremists and
conspiracy-driven malicious actors, including those inspired by
far-right, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist worldviews. Due to this
concerning trend, the NYPD Intelligence Bureau advises law
enforcement to maintain awareness of key symbols, icons, and
graphics associated with or appropriated by domestic violent
extremist movements that- in some cases were observed during the
January 6 deadly and destructive riot at the U.S. Capitol. While
possession of these symbols is protected under the first amendment
and is not alone sufficient grounds for arrest or prosecution,
several of these symbols have been used to convey threats in acts
of vandalism and harassment. Identification of these graphics may
provide members of service critical opportunities for improved
officer safety during tense mass gatherings, investigative lead
generation, and threat mitigation.
Last year, Joshua Wessel, a man in Kalamazoo, Michigan, was
arrested for the June 2017 murder of Ronald French. Using data
stored in Mr. Frenchs car, investigators identified Mr. Wessel as
the person who gave voice instructions to the cars infotainment
systema recording made within 90 minutes of Frenchs
death. This data helped investigators dismiss Wessels original
claim that he had merely stolen the car.
Digital vehicle forensics has recently become a favorite data
source for police. Modern cars collect and store massive amounts of
information, from telematics (i.e., information navigation,
location, speed, and acceleration) to the infotainment system that
records interactions, destinations, and voice commands. These data
are very revealing, and are therefore highly sought after by police
and prosecutors conducting criminal investigations.
In recent years, including in Mr. Wessels case, law enforcement
agencies generally needed physical access to a car in order to
obtain data from our cars. But this requirement has effectively
become
a thing of the past. Now, much of our car-related information,
including our location, is accessible online to the highest
bidderno keys required.
Vancouver B.C. Direct action is
the greatest financial liability faced by resource extraction
corporations. Throughout the history of TMX (formally, Kinder
Morgan Pipeline), Indigenous peoples and their accomplices have
shown up time and time again ready to fight back and defend the
lands our nations have protected since time immemorial. The
financial impact of Indigenous led land defence continues to cost
Trans Mountain Corporation money every single day.
Man camps and transient workers are part of the ongoing genocide
of MMIWG2S (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and
Two-Spirit People). Firelight Groups 2017 report indicated a sharp
increase in sex trafficking due to the man camps and their housing
of transient workers. Additionally, the harassment faced by
Indigenous women and 2-spirit peoples exercising their ancestral
rights to the land, by the hands of the RCMP in the name of
protecting corporate property and the continuation of resource
extraction projects, furthers the systemic violence and
criminalization of Indigenous land defenders and those exercising
their right to live sovereignly on their peoples land. Amnesty
International has also condemned the violence against Indigenous
women, 2spirit peoples, and children, as well as, the
criminalization and over-policing of Indigenous land defenders
perpetuated, and further enabled, by the Crown corporation known as
so-called Canada.
We are in a climate crisis and Indigenous peoples title rights
to the land being upheld will be essential to our planets recovery.
The construction of a pipeline is a viol...
We develop four overarching, global scenarios that feature
transformation, collapse, discipline, and continued growth
outcomes. These global scenarios do not represent the most probable
or likely outcomesrather, the report harnesses emerging weak
signals from environmental scanning analysis (that likely seem
improbable today) and weaves them into the possible futures of a
post-COVID world.
Global Future #1 (Transformation) 2035 From Bio-hegemony to Bio
Supremacy: The new Great Powers are those states that have achieved
superior levels of bio-resiliency vis--vis their peer competitors.
National bio-data stockpiles, coupled with a new blend of
capabilities in artificial intelligence, satellite-based imagery,
and unprecedented global connectivity, have raised the premium on
fielding networked military forces. Those states that possess
bio-resiliency, along with the capability to instantly make
information ubiquitous across their security apparatuses, dominate
the new competition.
Global Future #2 (Systemic Collapse) 2035 The New Warring States
Period: Scholars label the 2030s as the new warring states
periodreferring both to the ancient Chinese conflict era as well as
the outbreak of the 21st centurys first continental-scale civil war
in China. This marks Chinas second civil war in less than 100
years. The most dramatic factor contributing to this new, global
instability is the legitimacy crisis wrought by COVID-19.
Additionally, a second legitimacy crisis emerges around the truth
narrative itself. Industrial scale science and medicinewhich had
doubled life expectancy and nearly ensured food security in the
20th centuryare now widely seen as tools for societal
manipulation.
Global Future #3 (Discipline) 2035 Authoritarian Regionalism:
Severe strains on social order have driven both liberal and
authoritarian regimes alike towards highly centralized and
restrictive measures. Surveillance regimes are no longer voluntary.
Access to basic necessities requires consent and cooperation with
real-time bio-surveillance as well as unannounced health checks at
home or work. National militaries, and in particular national air
forces, often find themselves replacing commercial supply chains
and even the oversight of production and local distribution of
goods to prevent riots and hoarding.
Global Future #4 (Continued Growth) 2035 Endemic Disruption:
States with the capability to maintain data profiles of their
populations and the populations of competitors can map and predict
the intensity and timeline of each new disease outbreak. This
capability has resulted in a kind of stochastic hegemony. While the
diseases mutation cannot be predicted, once an outbreak begins,
states with stochastic hegemony can determine when the populations
and the armed forces of their competitors will be disrupted and how
long they will be vulnerable to attack. The curse and high ground
of this rhythmic readiness has created...
Bismarck, ND Water Protector Steve Martinez was
taken back into federal custody in Bismarck, North Dakota yesterday
following an appearance before the federal Grand Jury. Martinez is
also being fined $50 a day for every day he maintains his refusal
to give testimony. He continues to stand in solidarity with his
Indigenous relatives and Water Protectors by refusing to testify or
cooperate with this secretive and unjust process.
On February 24th, after being jailed for 19 days for
refusal to cooperate with the Grand Jury subpoena served to him,
Martinez said:
I was served another subpoena before I was released, making it
the third one. My lawyers are working hard to keep me from being
imprisoned for standing up for my constitutional rights as an
American citizen. After having my rights stripped from me, I was
imprisoned with no charges for 19 days. Even with the work of our
legal team, the chances are high that I will be imprisoned once
again for up to 18 months or the duration of the grand jury. I
humbly ask for your continued prayers & support as I continue
to speak volumes through my silence. Thank you. MNI WICONI, WATER
IS LIFE.
Martinez was previously subpoenaed in 2016 to a Grand Jury
allegedly seeking information regarding the injuries incurred by
Sophia Wilansky in November 2016 at Standing Rock; a now infamous
night where law enforcement used fire hoses on Water Protectors in
freezing temperatures. Wilansky was gravely injured, nearly losing
her arm, and unable to receive emergency medical transport due to
the blockades implemented by law enforcement and the State of North
Dakota. Martinez acted as a good Samaritan on that night, driving
Wilanksy in his vehicle to receive emergency medical care. He was
then summoned to appear before a grand jury and refused to
cooperate.
Four years later, Martinez is once again being targeted by the
government and detained for his principled refusal to participate
in a secret process that has historically been highly susceptible
to politically motivated ab...
By Steve Brawner
2021 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.
In early December, I quoted British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill saying after a World War II victory in 1942, Now this is
not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. Read the
rest
By Steve Brawner
2021 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.
Bryant High School wrestling coach Shane Clancy did not wrestle
with his decision to be vaccinated for COVID-19. After his big
right arm was stuck with a small needle at the River Center gym in
Benton Feb. Read the
rest
On this episode of the Its Going Down podcast, we speak
with long-time organizer and anarchist, Scott Branson, author of
the new book, Practical
Anarchism. We talk about the book, our day to day
relationships, and what we can do daily to live our politics.
Moreover, we discuss culture and the various points of encounter
that can help bring in new people to radical ideas and social
movements. During our discussion, we touch on print culture, the
underground DIY punk and hardcore scenes, The Office,
distroism and much more!
Carswell, TX Transgender prisoner Donna Langan
is ready to announce that she is gratefully recovering from the
first gender confirming surgery (GCS) ever performed on a prisoner
held in a US Federal Prison. Ms. Langan, 65, has dreamed of
undergoing these procedures for nearly her entire life. In
mid-December, 2022, after years of advocacy and uncertainty, the
historic milestone surgery finally took place. She is recovering
well.
I have completed my gender confirmation surgery, and am now in
the post-operative recovery phase. I want to thank all of the
people who helped me reach this life changing event, said
Ms. Langan.
Ms. Langan spent the first decades of her life alternately
seeking gender affirmation and attempting to conceal her gender
beneath a mask of regrettably violent masculinity. In 1996, Ms.
Langan was arrested and placed into federal custody, where she is
currently serving a sentence of life without parole. Upon her
confinement, Ms. Langan started to reckon with the harm caused by
developing a violent persona rather than making peace with her
femininity.
She renounced her previously held beliefs and began assiduously
requesting access to gender affirming care from the Federal Bureau
of Prisons (FBOP).
Ms. Langans long unmet need for gender affirming care has shaped
every part of her life, from her chaotic past to her moral
transformation and prisoner advocacy. Now that FBOP has satisfied
its constitutional obligations to Ms. Langan, she can finally move
forward as her truest and best self, said attorney Moira
Meltzer-Cohen, who has represented Ms. Langan since
2015.
Under the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution, prisons are
responsible for providing medically necessary care to prisoners.
Nevertheless, when it came to gender-affirming surgeries, this
right was universally denied to the many transgender people
in fed...
One full-time teaching job (hybrid online teaching included),
three school-aged children (complete with homework, lunches and the
occasional emotional meltdown),
(U) On 26 July 2020, al-Hayat Media Center, a news outlet of the
Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS), released an
English-language propaganda video entitled Incite the Believers,
which encourages ISIS supporters to conduct incendiary attacks in
the United States. The narrator acknowledges that ISIS supporters
may have difficulty traveling to ISIS-controlled territory overseas
and instead encourages them to conduct attacks where they live. The
video also encourages ISIS supporters who are unable to obtain
firearms or explosives to consider using incendiary attacks as an
alternative.
(U//FOUO) INCENDIARY ATTACKS LIKELY ENCOURAGED DUE TO THEIR
PERCEIVED SIMPLICITY AND OPERATIONAL SECURITY
(U) Incite the Believers encourages the use of incendiary
attacks as an accessible alternative for those who are unable to
obtain firearms, explosives, or other weapons. The narrator
describes fire as a simple and historically recognized way to
attack enemies, claiming that even children are proficient in using
it. And people have used it since ancient times to harm their
enemies.
(U//FOUO) While the video includes images of Molotov cocktails,
it does not provide instructions on the manufacture of improvised
incendiary devices (IIDs) or recipes for improvised accelerants
(such as improvised napalm); but instead focuses on readily
available ignition sources such as matches and/or lighters.
(U//FOUO) While these simple ignition sources are likely to be
less effective than IIDs or improvised accelerants, these methods
require fewer precursor materials and no chemistry experience, and
are likely perceived as a safer option to avoid law enforcement
detection. MCAC assesses that it is very unlikely that the purchase
of matches or lighters will result in suspicious activity
reporting, decreasing the likelihood that a plot could be disrupted
by law enforcement prior to execution.
(U//FOUO) Unlike plots involving IIDs or improvised accelerants,
incendiary attacks using simple ignition methods require no
pre-operational manufacturing. This likely decreases the chances
that the attacker is injured prior to the attack and increases the
likelihood of successful execution.
(U//FOUO) The narrator also instructs potential attackers to
dispose of ignition sources and other evidence following an attack
in order to avoid law enforcement detection. This may increase the
attractiveness of incendiary attack tactics for those ISIS
supporters who are less willing to risk death or
arrest/capture.
(U) VIDEO PRIMARILY FOCUSES ON TARGETING THE AGRICULTURE SECTOR,
BUT OTHER TARGET LOCATIONS ARE REFERENCED
(U) The most prevalent tactics highlighted in the video are
arson attacks targeting wildlands or agriculture. The video depicts
several significant wildfires in recent history as evidence of the
effectiveness of incendiary attacks, including:
(U) 2019-2020 wildfires in Australia, which resulted in over
72,00...
Thanks to the work of the ACLU of Massachusetts and coalition
allies working with the MBTA, the Governor last week signed into
law crucial new protections for transit riders.
Included in omnibus transportation bond legislation approved by
the Governor were two key provisions sought by the ACLU.
First, section 12 of the new law requires police to get a
warrant to access sensitive MBTA passenger data.
Second, section 7 decriminalizes fare evasion on all MBTA
properties, meaning no person can be arrested for failure to
pay.
This document provides guidance for federal Executive Branch
departments and agencies regarding best practices, lessons learned,
and recommendations to protect against the threat of malicious
unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) operations.
2.0 Background
The development of UAS is a significant technological advance.
In addition to recreational and commercial use, unmanned aircraft
are used across the United States to support firefighting and
search- and-rescue operations, to monitor and assess critical
infrastructure, to provide disaster relief by transporting
emergency medical supplies to remote locations, and to aid
border-security efforts. However, UAS can also be used for
malicious schemes by terrorists, criminal organizations (including
transnational organizations), and lone actors.
The potential safety hazards and security threats presented by
malicious UAS activity in the national airspace system requires
security professionals to address the associated risks.
Organizations should be aware of the potential exposure of private
data through operating UAS. Sensitive data may be at greater risk
of exposure when operating UAS designed, manufactured, or supplied
abroad where the data is stored, transferred to, or accessible by
servers in a foreign country. UAS incorporate technologies that
generate or collect sensitive data or otherwise access critical
systems.
The ISC details the threat of adversarial use of UAS as an
increasing concern in The Design-Basis Threat (DBT) Report.
Adversarial uses of UAS include hostile surveillance, smuggling,
disruption, and weaponization. From a cybersecurity perspective, an
adversary may use UAS as a mobile platform to interrupt or modify
digital services or gain unauthorized access to data systems.
The capabilities of UAS continue to grow with longer flight
times, greater ranges, and increased payload capacities. These
greater capacities, when coupled with malicious intent, increase
the threat to federal facilities.
5.0 Threats Posed by UAS
The Department of Justice defines credible threat as the
reasonable belief based on the totality of circumstances that the
activity of a UAV or UAS may, if unabated:
Cause physical harm to a person;
Damage property, assets, facilities, or systems;
Interfere with the mission of a covered facility or asset,
including its movement, security, or protection;
Facilitate or constitute unlawful activity;
Interfere with the preparation or execution of an authorized
government activity, including the authorized movement of
persons;
Result in unauthorized surveillance or reconnaissance; or
Result in unauthorized access to or disclosure of classified,
sensitive, or otherwise lawfully protected information.7
Many UAS events are caused by careless or reckless operators. An
adversary can also use UAS in a variety of malicious ways, which
include the following:
Host...
(U//FOUO) This Joint Threat Assessment (JTA) addresses threats
to the 59th Presidential Inauguration taking place in Washington,
DC, on 20 January 2021. This JTA is co-authored by the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security
(DHS)/US Secret Service (USSS), with input from multiple US
Intelligence Community and law enforcement partners. It does not
include acts of non violent civil disobedience (i.e., protests
without a permit), which are outside the scope of federal law
enforcement jurisdiction.
(U//FOUO) This product is intended to support federal, state,
local, tribal, and territorial government agencies and authorities
in identifying priorities, as well as private sector security
partners, for protective measures and support activity regarding
terrorism and other existing or emerging threats to homeland
security. Information in this assessment is current and accurate as
of 14 January 2021.
(U Key Findings
(U//FOUO) As of 14 January 2021, the FBI, DHS, USSS, US Capitol
Police (USCP), National Capital Region Threat Intelligence
Consortium (NTIC), Joint Force Headquarters-National Capital Region
(JFHQ-NCR), Virginia Fusion Center (VFC) and the Northern Virginia
Regional Intelligence Center (NVRIC), Metropolitan Police
Department of the District of Columbia (MPDC), and US Park Police
(USPP) assess that domestic violent extremists (DVEs) pose the most
likely threat to the 59th Presidential Inauguration in Washington,
DC, on 20 January 2021 due to recent incidents of ideologically
motivated violence , including at the US Capitol Building. In light
of the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January, planned events in
Washington, DC, in the lead up to and day of Inauguration Day offer
continued opportunities for violence targeting public officials,
government buildings, and federal and local law enforcement.
(U //FOUO) Additionally, unaffiliated lone offenders and
homegrown violent extremists (HVEs remain a concern due to their
ability to act with little to no warning, willingness to attack
civilians and soft targets, and ability to inflict significant
casualties with weapons that do not require specialized knowledge,
access, or training. Additionally, foreign terrorist
organizations (FTOs) continue to express their intent related to
attacking mass gatherings, landmarks, and critical infrastructure
present in the National Capital Region (NCR).
(U//FOUO) Since the incident at the US Capitol on 6 January,
Russian, Iranian, and Chinese influence actors have seized the
opportunity to amplify narratives in furtherance oftheir policy
interest amid the presidential transition . We have not identified
any specific, credible information indicating that these actors
intend to explicitly commit violence . Furthermore, we have not
identified any specific, credible cyber threat to critical
infrastructure supporting the upcoming Presidential Inauguration
nor a specific credible cyber threat...
(U//FOUO) This Joint Intelligence Bulletin (JIB) is
intended to highlight the threat of violence from domestic violent
extremists (DVEs) in the wake of the 6 January violent breach by
some DVEs of the US Capitol Building in Washington, DC, following
lawful protest activity related to the results of the General
Election. Anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists
(AGAAVE), specifically militia violent extremists (MVEs); racially
or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs); and DVEs citing
partisan political grievances will very likely pose the greatest
domestic terrorism threats in 2021. In 2021 , threats and plotting
of illegal activity, including destruction of property and violence
targeting officials at all levels of the government, law
enforcement, journalists, and infrastructure, as well as sporadic
violence surrounding lawful protests, rallies, demonstrations, and
other gatherings by DVEs will very likely increase due to renewed
measures to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, socio-political
conditions, and perceived government overreach. The FBI, DHS, and
NCTC advise federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial
government counterterrorism and law enforcement officials, and
private sector security partners to remain vigilant in light of the
persistent threat posed by DVEs and their unpredictable target
selection in order to effectively detect. prevent. preempt. or
respond to incidents and terrorist attacks in the United
States.
(U//FOUO) The 6 January 2021 Violent Breach by DVEs of the US
Capitol Building Very Likely Will Serve as an Enduring Driver for
Violence by a Range of DVEs
(U//FOUO) The 6 January 2021 violent breach by suspected DVEs
into the US Capitol Building very likely will serve as a
significant driver of violence for a diverse set of DVEs.
Attendance at the lawful protest by ideologically diverse DVEs and
others, the subsequent engagement of a sizeable group from that
protest in the breach, and the death of an individual directly
engaged in the breach very likely will serve to galvanize DVEs and
increase collaboration primarily between MVEs and RMVEs, as well as
DVEs who adhere to QAnon conspiracy theories. These DVEs and others
may also perceive the event as a step toward achieving their
initiatives, and consider the death of a perceived like-minded
individual as an act of martyrdom. Some DVEs view the 6 January
event as a success, in conjunction with the potential to exploit
follow-on lawful gatherings and ideological driversincluding
conspiracy theories, such as QAnonlikely will also inspire some
DVEs and others to engage in more sporadic, lone actor or small
cell violence against common DVE targets, including racial, ethnic,
or religious minorities and institutions, law enforcement, and
government officials and buildings. Criminal activity by rioters
targeting members of the media at the breach is also indicative of
an increased and prolonged DVE threat of targeted vi...
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Its our show before Christmas
And all through the cabin
Not a creature is breathin
Because of the stabbin
We pay a visit to Amboy, and to the burnt forest of Joshua trees at
Cima Dome, Mojave National Preserve. Thats right, its Episode #114.
Get in.
DESERT ORACLE, VOL. 1: Our new book is available everywhere, please
enjoy responsibly. (SORRY ITS BACKORDERED AT
BOOKSHOP.ORG,
Speaking of, we are also joined by Patrick Donnelly, Nevada
state director of the Center for Biological Diversity, which along
with Nevada native tribes and desert lovers everywhere is
celebrating a victory.Ever been to the Desert
This playbook is intended to support sites interested in
administering COVID-19 treatment under EUA including:
Existing hospital or community-based infusion centers
Existing clinical space (e.g. urgent care, emergency depts)
Ad hoc new infusion sites (e.g. hospitals without walls)
Long-term care facilities or home infusions with infusion delivery
capability
Monoclonal antibody treatment
Delivery via infusion
Outpatient setting
This playbook will continue to evolve as other treatments and
administration methods become available. We hope this playbook will
be used to help healthcare facilities to implement monoclonal
antibody treatment in an outpatient setting for those with
COVID-19.
Welcome to The Daily Wrap
Up, a concise show dedicated to bringing you the most relevant
independent news, as we see it, from the last 24 hours
(2/15/23).
As always, take the information discussed in the video below and
research it for yourself, and come to your own conclusions. Anyone
telling you what the truth is, or claiming they have the answer, is
likely leading you astray, for one reason or another. Stay
Vigilant.
(https://www.rokfin.com/TLAVagabond)(https://www.bitchute.com/channel/24yVcta8zEjY/)
https://rumble.com/embed/v273eu4/?pub=2q643
A group of neo-Nazi
Groypers, based out of Vero Beach, Florida, are running into
resistance across Florida college campuses, as they attempt to
spread the gospel of white supremacy, anti-Semitism, and the
worship of Adolf Hitler, through various stunts promoting the dead
in the water presidential campaign of disgraced rapper, Kanye
West.
This past week, students at Florida International University
(FIU) organized a counter-protest against several white
supremacists behind a #YEisRight table, shutting down the neo-Nazis
and sending them packing after about an hour, while campus police
harassed anti-fascist counter-protesters for playing music.
Welcome to DeSantis country!
These events are taking place against a backdrop of both ongoing
attacks on the LGBTQ+ community and beyond and a wave of neo-Nazi
organizers moving to Florida.
White nationalist Christian fascist Dalton
Clodfelter declares that he doesn't have "any hate in [his] heart
for Nazis" and proclaims that burning "sexually degenerate" books
is an example of something "positive that the Nazis brought to the
table in Germany in the 30s and 40s." pic.twitter.com/WGtO11c8hp
Joining me today is independent investigative journalist
Sonia Elijah, here
to discuss #BlotGate -- a story we recently discussed with
Jessica Rose PhD -- and what this could mean in regard to
potential legal accountability for the pharmaceutical companies, as
well as the implications for your health should you have taken one
of these COVID injections. #Blotgate refers to the allegation that
the western blots put out in BioNTech and Pfizer documentation were
in fact falsified.
(https://www.rokfin.com/TLAVagabond)
(https://www.bitchute.com/channel/24yVcta8zEjY/)
https://rumble.com/embed/v272hlu/?pub=2q643
This
article was funded by paid subscribers of The Dissenter
Newsletter, a project of Shadowproof. Become a monthly
paid subscriber to help us publish more independent
journalism on whistleblowing.
To further their nationwide efforts to restrict access to
transgender health care, Republicans in the state of Missouri have
deployed a former case worker at Washington Universitys Transgender
Center at St. Louis Childrens Hospital, who they claim is a
whistleblower.
On February 9, Jamie Reed went public with allegations against
the pediatric center in a
post that appeared on The Free Press, a website founded by
commentator Bari Weiss. That same day Missouri Attorney General
Andrew Bailey announced that Reed had submitted a sworn affidavit
and his office, along with the Missouri Department of Social
Services, had opened an investigation into the pediatric
center.
We have received disturbing allegations that individuals at the
Transgender Center at St. Louis Childrens Hospital have been
harming hundreds of children each year, including by using
experimental drugs on them, Bailey asserted. We take this evidence
seriously and are thoroughly investigating to make sure children
are not harmed by individuals who may be more concerned with a
radical social agenda than the health of children.
Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley was
ready with a letter that he sent to Washington University and
the St. Louis Childrens Hospital, where he announced that his
office would investigate the pediatric centers treatment practices
in order to present American taxpayers and parents with all the
facts relevant to policymaking and medical treatment decisions.
If even a fraction of the whistleblowers new allegations is
corroborated, the Center should be immediately shut down, Hawley
declared.
Bailey followed his announcement with
a letter to the president of St. Louis Childrens Hospital on
February 10 that urged the institution to ban the prescription of
puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to any new patients. (The
hospital also launched their own inquiry.)
Yet as Bailey acknowledged, Reeds affidavit was submitted two
weeks before Reed went public with her allegations at The Free
Press. That gave Reed and...
America at a Crossroad---The Demise of Donald
Trump and The Powerful Rise of New Voices and New Votes, the
Young
Add
caption
Updated November 4th/2020........Thank goodness Trump
lost..however......Once again pollsters led us astray.....Not
enough young voters followed through....and it is so distressing to
see that many people vote for Trump, that scares me, it shows how
easily seemingly educated societies can drift, or be pulled into
the darkness......
America is destined for more protests, more hurt and tears,
until the populous embraces change .....A divided nation where 50%
reject science, ....Rejecting science while embracing religious
scripture..
Religion.....The number one reason for human conflict,
religion....Religious zealots across America voted for a man they
know is deeply flawed, they know Trump is harmful....They don't
care who or how many get harmed as long as their religious desires
are fulfilled..
The American levee is gonna break soon, one
can only hope it breaks for the future
Lastly...Over the last couple of weeks on the campaign trail,
Donald J Trump said to his raptured super-spreader-rally-goers on
more than one occasion, and I quote...
"Sleepy Joe Biden is the worst presidential
candidate in US history, ...talk about pressure, how can I lose to
the worst candidate in history...I can't lose to
Biden"
Trump was right about Joe Biden being the
worst presidential candidate in US History.
Recent reporting from Los Angeles highlights the urgent need for
city councils across the United States to take control of local
government surveillance operations, subjecting police spying to
democratic control, oversight, transparency, and public
accountability. On November 10, Boston residents have an opportunity to
voice support for an ordinance that would take surveillance
technology decisions out of the hands of the police department and
place them with the City Council, ensuring executive agencies are
not acting in cover of secrecy, conducting operations that run
counter to community needs.
According to the LA Times, the Los Angeles Police Department has
announced plans to acquire state of the art aerial surveillance
technology, which it plans to use to film Black Lives Matter and
other protests on the ground. A spokesperson for the department
says they intend to keep the video surveillance footage of
protesters indefinitely.
Local activists and the ACLU of Southern California expressed
outrage, but according to the LA Times, the police department has
no intention of listening to concerned residents.
LAPD Deputy Chief Peter Zarcone, the head of the departments
counterterrorism and special operations bureau, was defiant about
the departments plans, dismissing outright any privacy concerns
related to filming First Amendment protected activity and storing
the footage forever. When reporters asked him to respond to racial
justice and civil rights objections to the departments plans to spy
on protesters, he
said: If the privacy concern is that that should not be done,
then that would preclude what were trying to do. In other words: We
intend to violate the privacy of people exercising their rights,
and we wont apologize for it.
The LAPD aerial surveillance story raises two crucial issues
activists across the country must confront: First, the increasingly
dangerous role state and local police are playing as ears for the
federal governments intelligence apparatus, made worse by police
and counterterrorism officials conflation of dissent with
terrorism; and second, the necessary first steps we can take at the
local level to democratize and institutionalize oversight, control,
and accountability, to begin to unwind the post-9/11 entanglement
of local police with federal agencies.
Local police are the tip of the spear for the Trump
administrations war on dissent
In the post-9/11 period, the federal government has poured
billions of dollars into st...
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Flat Top Kabuki Foundation Brush By KESHIMA Because I have
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What To Look For In A Baby Gate Do you need the best baby gate
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Best Laminator For Teachers In 2021 | Hot & Cold Laminating
Machines Lamination is becoming more popular as a simple and
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Getting the most effective Television racks for sale may well
seem like a hard endeavor. You could find yourself asking oneself,
If I have a TV this major thats taking up my whole living room,
could it be actually worth spending the money? This can in fact be
a good problem to check with before Continue reading
Best Tv Racks
I want to thank everyone for coming out, braving the elements,
and especially for helping to make AnarCon the best libertarian
festival in the woods! We managed to pull off a spontaneous order
of incredible moments and memories that will last us forever. Weve
come a long way since 2015 when we were just a few ragtag Virginian
friends hanging out by a campfire to now reaching many times that
in attendance, with blazing fireworks that never seem to end,
amazing bands & performances that did go on until sunrise, and
all held together by the bonds we share for liberty. Im blessed to
be able to go to an event where I can hang out with a great many of
my friends. You were all incredible. Special thanks for the AnarCon
crew that did their part making sure the festival train was on
track and kept on rolling, and to those that added their touch to
make it memorable. For those that couldn̵...
Find the Best Gainer Tips and Advice It is extremely important
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Today, machine learning (ML) applications such
as chatGPT are all the rage, with folks worried about the
displacement of humans, bogus homework, and more.
So I was not a little curious to evaluate
OpenAI's chatGPT abilities in the meteorological realm.
My conclusion: human meteorologists
currently don't have much to worry about.
ChatGPT can produce reasonable-sounding prose
that is often totally wrong.
For example, I asked it about the origin of
the all-important Puget Sound convergence zone (see
below).
According to chatGPT convergence zones occur
when ocean air collides with drier air from the eastern part of
Washington State. Wrong. The Puget Sound Convergence
occurs when marine air moves around the Olympics and then converges
(comes together) east of the Olympics, forcing air upwards (and
thus producing clouds and precipitation). Zero for
chatGPT
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, requested that the
Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) accept Washingtons
proposal to form a special Palestinian task force, trained by the
US, that would hunt down Palestinian resistance fighters in the
West Bank. The proposal follows a long history of anti-democratic
intervention by the US government into Palestinian affairs
Read More...
Best portable document scanner Should you are trying to find the
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Earlier this month, Portland, Oregon
joined over a dozen other municipalities nationwide that have
banned government use of face surveillance technology. And with a
new study confirming that face recognition algorithms can influence
human perceptions of faces, its become even clearer: police should
not use face surveillance, and more localities must stop the spread
of this technology.
Back in June, we learned
about the case of Mr. Robert Williams, a Black man who was
wrongfully arrested because of an erroneous face recognition match.
Mr. Williams only found out that face recognition technology was
used to identify him because, during the Detroit Police
interrogation after his arrest, the cops let this fact slip. The
computer must have gotten it wrong, an officer told him.
Had it not been for this seemingly accidental disclosure, Mr.
Williams would never have known the police used this technology to
misidentify and detain him. Since police generally do not disclose
their use of this technology to arestees, we dont know how many
other people have been wrongfully arrested because of the use of
this faulty, biased technology. In Massachusetts, for example,
police have conducted at minimum hundreds of face recognition
searches per year since 2006but attorneys with the state public
defenders office have not been notified that the technology was
used in their clients cases.
This widespread failure to nofity defendants constitutes a due
process crisis, because defendants cannot challenge the legitimacy
of a technology if they dont know its been used in their case. To
excuse these due process violations, and their use of technology
that has well-documented bias problems,
law enforcement
agencies and
vendors claim face recognition is only used to generate
investigative leads to flag potential suspects, and not used to
positively identify suspects. The police have gone to lengths to
assure the public that the technology is not in the drivers seat,
and that theres always a human in the loop, responsible for making
decisions leading to arrests.
Law enforcements justification for its secrecy surrounding use
of face recognition in criminal cases has always been suspect. But
a new
peer-reviewed paper published in the scientific journal
Public Library of Science (PLOS ONE) shows that
police claims that face recognition technology is just an innocent
inves...
What to Consider Before Buying the Best Cookware Set 2020 If you
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Best Cookware Set
2020
Best Induction Cookware Cooking Outdoors is Better With the Best
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'The abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation need to be
addressed at a lot faster rate than they currently are,' Oliver
Whaley of the tribe's environmental department said.
The Supreme Court, for the time being, is making decisions based
on a rule of law that can bring a semblance of justice to this
countrys Indigenous nations.
Here in the West, the virus continues with a vengeance, and we,
especially elders with other health issues are still encouraged to
stay at home, limiting our contact with others.
As if to stress the points that advocates for Missing and
Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirits publicized at the
2020 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, a joint federal-state-county sting
collared eight men during an undercover sex trafficking bust.
The Stoddart Avenue Community Garden owes a debt of gratitude to
Sabrina's spouse, Tom, who has taken on a number of projects this
year, including the rebuilding and painting of our picnic table.
This fixture on our corner lot has been a gathering place for
neighborhood kids, crews of volunteers and board meetings.
It's now no longer a collapsing eyesore, but a refreshing
(and sturdy!) green.
Tom's also been known to water our pantry and neighborhood plots
and, most importantly, do the heavy lifting in the parenting
department when Sabrina is occupied at the SACG. So shout out
to him.
Last week, we donated a total of 20 pounds of fresh produce to
the Broad Street Presbyterian food pantry on East Broad Street,
including 6 pounds dropped off by our friend, Sean who gardens in
his Berwick backyard. (The donation included this butternut
squash.)
From the Duckwater Shoshone Tribe to the Fort McDermitt Paiute
and Shoshone Tribe, mobile sites have been key to slowing the
spread of the coronavirus in Indian Country.
Sending every adult in the United States a ballot - whether or
not they asked for one - undermines the integrity of our elections
and creates an environment for voter fraud to run rampant.
On todays episode, first we speak with antifascist journalist
Vishal Singh,
about being kicked off of Twitter, covering the far-Right in
Southern California, and how Trump is rushing to double-down on
anti-trans hatred.
We then switch to our discussion, where we unpack recent attacks
by Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis, against the LGBTQ+ community in
schools, universities, and beyond.
All this and more, but first, lets get to the news!
Norfolk Southern funds Cop City, bc enviro,
labor & safety disaster like what is happening in East
Palestine, OH is daily reality. It doesn't have to be.
Norfolk Southern will protect massive profits for investors at
the expense of lives. They can't do that without police.
As predicted, a double convergence zone formed
this evening, producing heavy rain, thunder, small hail, and
yes....snow.
Snow has been reported around
Everett (Paine Field), Marysville, and at SeaTac
Airport.
And snow was reported earlier on
the higher hills around Bellevue (see below)
Snow at 1170 ft in
Bellevue. Picture courtesy of Dr. Peter Benda
In the radar image above, the orange and red areas indicate heavy
precipitation and small hail associated with strong convection,
including embedded thunderstorms. Several have reported
thunder. And there are major power outages in south Seattle that I
suspect are due to the thunderstorm activity (see
below)
Welcome to The Daily Wrap
Up, a concise show dedicated to bringing you the most relevant
independent news, as we see it, from the last 24 hours
(2/13/23).
As always, take the information discussed in the video below and
research it for yourself, and come to your own conclusions. Anyone
telling you what the truth is, or claiming they have the answer, is
likely leading you astray, for one reason or another. Stay
Vigilant.
(https://www.rokfin.com/TLAVagabond)(https://www.bitchute.com/channel/24yVcta8zEjY/)
https://rumble.com/embed/v26szl2/?pub=2q643
Joining me today is host and political analyst Garland Nixon,
here to discuss the recently exposed false flag that was the Nord
Stream attack, as well as the madness surrounding the "unidentified
flying objects" that are being reported by the corporate media, and
what the true agenda behind them may be.
(https://www.rokfin.com/TLAVagabond)
(https://www.bitchute.com/channel/24yVcta8zEjY/)
https://rumble.com/embed/v26r5gs/?pub=2q643
Wearing a mask protects you from more than just the coronavirus.
A
new federal study of 89 facial recognition algorithms has found
that every single one of them performed worse many over 30 times
worse when analyzing images of masked faces.
The
Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) at the National Institute
of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been the paramount source
for third-party assessments of face analysis algorithms for years.
A nonpartisan federal agency, NIST has published dozens of reports
since 2017, auditing over 200 facial analysis algorithms developed
by private companies.
In December 2019, the team released a landmark report examining
demographic disparities in facial recognition systems the most
comprehensive such study to date. NIST
found that the vast majority of algorithms performed best when
recognizing the faces of middle-aged white men, and performed
markedly worse when analyzing faces of women, darker-skinned
individuals, children, and older adults.
In their latest study, NIST researchers photoshopped masks onto
images of 1 million faces from previously existing datasets, taking
care to vary the shape and color of masks as well as the degree of
nose coverage. The study matched high-quality images of individuals
unmasked faces to low-quality images of the same individuals masked
faces. This design mimics the likely scenario in which a masked
individual might attempt to authenticate against a formal database
photo of themselves without a mask.
An Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica investigation revealed
Kevin Clarkson texted a much-younger state employee hundreds of
times, often using kiss emoji and commenting on her appearance.
Television became available in experimental forms in the late
1920's, and After World War II, an improved form of black-and-white
TV broadcasting became popular in the United States and Britain. In
1927 an American scientist, Philo Farnsworth made the first
electronic television system and filed a patent for it that same
year.
Our Garden Manager, Sabrina, is on a mission to restrain our
resident groundhog(s).
It -- or they -- have been eating everything tender and green
and destroying cabbage right and left. Several food pantry
cabbages had developed beautifully and were ready to be harvested
when they were struck down in their prime by the Pesky Groundhog.
There have been multiple sightings over the summer ... the
groundhog scurrying under Norman's deck, diving into the berry
bushes bordering Sabrina's plot to the southwest, etc.
COVID19 put on hold this year's planned project to dig deep and
bury several feet of fencing around the garden. We have also
considered trying to trap the groundhog and seeking help from a
wildlife rescue organization.
In other recent news, 42 pounds of SACG and friends' produce
made its way into the grocery bags of clients at the Broad Street
Presbyterian Church food pantry this week.
Last week, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC)
ruled
in Commonwealth v. Mora that the Massachusetts state
constitution prohibits police from conducting continuous, long-term
pole camera surveillance targeted at a private home without a
warrant.
The Massachusetts highest courts decision builds upon its
thoughtful interpretation of 18th, 19th and
20th century law as applied to 21st century
technology, a growing and impressive body of case law. Over
the past ten years, the Court has protected Massachusetts residents
reasonable expectations of privacy from warrantless long-term GPS
tracking, historical
cell phone location tracking, and
real-time cell phone location tracking, and provided the
groundwork for a successful challenge to ubiquitous,
warrantless license plate tracking. In this case, the Court
addressed the privacy implications of pole cameras trained on
homes, with the ability to remotely pan, tilt and zoom.
Months of video surveillance targeting a private home?
Youre gonna need a warrant for that.
In Mora, police placed a surreptitious camera atop a
utility pole and used it to watch the homes of two people for
several months. Relying on the mosaic theory, the Court held that
long-term pole camera surveillance of the home allows the
government to aggregate many different pieces of information that,
when taken as a whole, expose otherwise unknowable details of a
persons life. The cameras location was static. But the Court made
clear that its earlier cases did not turn on the collection of
location for locations sake. Instead, the SJC emphasized,
[r]ather than focus solely on whether a surveillance technology
tracks a persons public movements, our analysis under art. 14 turns
on whether the surveillance was so targeted and extensive that the
data it generated, in the aggregate, exposed otherwise unknowable
details of a persons life.
In other words, what matters from the constitutional perspective
is neither the specific technology that is used, nor
the specific information collected, but rather whether
technology allows the government to collect a sufficient amount of
data over a sufficient period of time to reveal intimate details
about an individual that would otherwise be difficult, if not
impossible, to obtain via analogue means.
In this case, as the ACLU of Massachusetts argued in our friend
of the court...
Last night, a group of Wetsuweten barricaded and set fire to the
train tracks trespassing on our territory in an act of solidarity
with the Mohawks of Six Nations. We are all sovereign peoples and
an attack on the Mohawk is an attack on all of us. As Indigenous
people we must act collectively against the ongoing genocide of our
lands and people. State violence against us will no longer be
tolerated and will generate backlash across so called Canada from
now on. Indigenous actions are actions made in self defense in the
face of genocide. We demand that the OPP stand down and that the
Police do not escalate conflicts with Indigenous Peoples. We will
not give up until liberation of our lands and people is
achieved.
The Garden is in overdrive! The squash is spreading
like crazy and the corn growing about 6 inches a week. A few
gardeners have planted some cool-weather fall crops -- like kale
and beets. Ethan has started seedlings at home that he
expects to transplant at the end of the month. Last night, Christie
harvested food pantry peppers, cabbage, cantaloupe and tomatoes,
while Ethan added a contribution of beets, Swiss chard, and some
greens.
Amy picked up some produce donated by Sean, a prolific gardener who
lives in Berwick, to add to the SACG haul. The combined
donation to the Broad Street Presbyterian pantry on Monday, August
10 came in at about 75 pounds. So far, our city water access
remains intact, while Norman's cisterns yield plenty of water as
well. Hats off to Tom, Sabrina's spouse, who tended plots in
her absence and has taken the lead on some hardscape project, such
as dismantling the tumbled-down picnic table. We also
appreciate board member and neighbor Frank for managing the mowing
of the SACG and neighbor lots.
ByJ.P.
Antonacci, Hamilton Spectator, August 5, 2020
Dave Anderson watched the fires
burning on Argyle Street on Wednesday and sighed.
This is starting all over again,
said Anderson, who moved to Caledonia on the very day in 2006 that
Six Nations protesters set up an encampment on the former Douglas
Creek Estates (DCE) property, sparking a bitter land claims dispute
that divided the community for years.
The cops were in the same position they are right now, Anderson
said, pointing to police cruisers blocking the road near the
Canadian Tire parking lot.
Using tires, wooden skids and other
materials, protesters set several fires a stones throw from the DCE
lands, sending black smoke wafting over town. They gathered in
response to Haldimand OPP raiding a construction site on the south
end of town that morning to forcibly evict Six Nations members who
had been
occupying the site since July 19....
Dr. Carrie Madej Would Like A Word With You Please. Elias here
for The Mental Militia: With a Salute! to JS for introducing Doctor
Carrie Madej, I would like to share a video (or three!) by this
courageous, experienced, and knowledgeable newcomer to the
Internets Army of Doctors-With-Conscience. Enjoy! []
Report on antifascist clean-up of the Lakeland, Florida
neighborhood, after neo-Nazis dropped flyers.
On the 11th of February, the
neo-Nazi group the Goyim Defense League (GDL), threw trash
propaganda onto peoples lawns and driveways in Lakeland, FL. The
fliers were in bags weighted with corn and with rat food pellets,
similar to incidents of KKK flyering where sand was sued to weigh
the flyers down.
The fascists live-streamed themselves bagging and distributing
the fliers, giving antifascist activists in nearby Tampa and
Orlando all the information they needed to clean up the trash. A
cleanup crew arrived and quickly removed fliers from one polluted
area, but due to highly fash-friendly police, a complete sweep
wasnt possible.
Afterwards there was the problem of what to do with GDLs trash.
The bags of damp corn and rat food were dropped into a trash can,
and the flyers were fed to the hungry and cleansing flames of a
propane torch.
Nazi litterbugs are not welcome in Lakeland or anywhere
else!
A critical analysis of actions taken last year by Ottawa
residents against far-Right convoy protests. Originally posted to
North Shore Counter-Info.
A year ago now, on February 13, 2022, Ottawa residents blocked
convoy vehicles on Billings Bridge and held it for hours. Since
then, much
has
been
written
about this mass mobilization from left and liberal
commentators. This generally celebrates it as an immense, glorious
victory over the convoy, and the beginning of the tide turning in
the convoys occupation of Ottawa[1]and dont get me wrong, it was.
But in speaking to friends outside of Ottawa, it feels more and
more necessary to complicate this narrative by adding some of my
and my comrades experiences on that day.
The purpose of this piece is to add to that collective memory
contained through this patchwork of publicly available accounts. An
entire year has now passed, and people learn and grow. Some (though
certainly not all) of the people I critique here, I consider
comrades. I share this not to reopen those discussions, but because
I think it is politically valuable for our memories of these events
in and of themselves to be as complete as possible. While first
person is used throughout, multiple people contributed their own
perspectives to this write-up.
As a bit of necessary context, the main author is a cisgender
and straight-presenting racialized woman. I am also a militant
antifascist with a non-zero amount of experience predating the
convoy.
I have never experienced peace policing so intensely, before or
after that day, as I did on Billings Bridge. Like the author of
that article in The Breach, I arrived to the site early in
the morning after having planned to support a different blockade
further along the convoys route.
I spent the first few hours blocking a truck. During that time,
numerous strangers (all whitea recurring patternand including even
a local politician) came up to me. They asked after me, checking
in, again and again, if I was alright, something that was mundane
on its own. And then they expressed concern, again and again, that
I was putting myself in danger of being run overas though blocking
trucks was not what we had all come there to do. They tried, again
and...
There are some situations that local
meteorologists really worry about: when both temperature and
precipitation are on the margin for snow.
And the situation tomorrow and early Tuesday
is just like that....on the edge.
The latest UW WRF model run is painting a
snowier picture over the western lowlands, as illustrated by
the snowfall total through 10 AM Tuesday (below).
Several inches over north and south Puget
Sound. General snow over SW Oregon and Portland. Loads
of snow over the Cascades.
The latest NOAA/National Weather Service HRRR
model forecast has most of the lowland snow over north Seattle (see
below).
I should note there is plenty of uncertainty for
the Puget Sound snow.
In my podcast today, I talk about this
situation and describe the complexitie...
Report from Mexico City on a solidarity action with
Alfredo Cospito.
On February 8, 2023, anti-authoritarians and anarchists gathered
outside the Instituto Italiano de Cultura (Italian Cultural
Institute), a branch of the Italian Embassy in Mexico City. The
objective was clear and concise: to denounce the Italian state for
torturing and slowly killing the compaero Alfredo Cospito; and to
show solidarity with the anarchist compaero who has been on a
hunger strike for more than 110 days protesting his placement in
the 41 bis isolation regime inside Italian prisons.
We know that this show of solidarity was just that, a mere wink.
However, we chose to carry out this action to make visible the
struggle of our compaero in his attempt to denounce one of the
forms of torture endorsed by democratic states throughout the
world. We believe that the struggle towards death being carried out
by our compaero Alfredo must not be ignored by the anarchists of
the world. It must must be supported with the very dignity and
determination shown by the compaero: without making requests to the
state, without negotiating with prison guards, without sitting to
drink coffee with the torturers, without appealing to human rights
or the innocence of anyone.
For that reason, it was not our objective to engage in dialogue
with or petition the embassy authorities. Our objective was to show
that we recognize the Italian States presence in our city, with
friendly faces who turn a blind eye to the torture and
assassination that they daily carry out against dissidents. Because
once Alfredo surrenders his body to death, we will accompany his
decision with rage, without looking back.
We are always imagining other ways in which we can act. We also
have enough rage to be on Cospitos side.
Compaero, you are not forgotten. Here we are, with our teeth
sharpened, accompanying you on your journey.
The SACG has a rich tradition of growing and donating produce
throughout the season, with 2019's total clocking in at over 600
pounds.
Last week, Christie harvested about 30 pounds of beets,
onions, carrots and peaches for the food pantry at Broad Street
Presbyterian Church. COVID-19 protocols at in place at the
pantry and the delivery person, Amy, was not allowed in the
kitchen, but a masked and gloved worker assisted in unloading.
The SACG plans to make a drop off each Monday morning during
August. As the pandemic curtails livelihoods and
opportunities, the need for fresh food will only increase.
"Everything looked beautiful
especially the peaches! Almost all of it went home with the
families who shopped today we just have a few beets left!
Thanks to you and all the
gardeners."
Last week, the European Court of Justice in LuxembourgEuropes
top court
ruled that the agreement that allowed data transfers between
the European Union and the United States is invalid under European
law.
In a crucial pro-privacy ruling, the Court decided that the E.U.
decision to approve the agreement was incompatible with Article
45(1) of the General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR), read in the light of the
Charter of Fundamental Rights. The U.S. prioritizes national
security and law enforcement over the fundamental rights of
persons, making the data-sharing partnership unworkable, the Court
reasoned.
The now-defunct transatlantic agreement, known as the Privacy Shield, was
adopted in 2016. The intention behind it was to provide
companies on both sides of the Atlantic with a framework to comply
with data protection requirements when transferring personal data
from Europe to the United States.
The E.U. Court decision is a huge win for privacy worldwide, and
should push lawmakers in the United States to finally institute
comprehensive privacy-protective federal law that places the
rights of persons over the interests of corporations and secretive,
undemocratic government agencies.
European Data Privacy Laws
In Europe, the protection of personal data is not only subject
to a very privacy-protective regulation, the GDPR, but also
enshrined in Article 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights,
together with civil rights and civil liberties like fre...
Hey, we may be in the middle of a global
pandemic, but the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden is still growing
food and building community.
Welcome to our 12th growing season. The year had
a somewhat slow start, mainly because our intrepid founder and
Garden Manager, Priscilla Hapner retired after last season and we
had to organize ourselves in such a way that we could maintain the
institution that she had built. The COVID 19 pandemic and a rainy
spring also contributed to delays.
But as the reader can see, we are fully
operational now. Sabrina Reynolds-Wing, a longtime gardener, board
member and supporter, agreed to step in and serve as Garden
Manager. We adopted some policies for social distancing and
disinfecting tools. The board scaled back some of the SACG
operations and reduced the need for outside volunteers. Board
members, neighbors and friends committed to taking on several
regular chores to lessen Sabrina's load. The board also recruited a
team to manage the food pantry plots, harvesting and donations,
headed by Ohio State University grad student, Christie Hammons. We
are now in business and about ready to donate a round to the area
pantries that Christie has enlisted. You can see early stages of
food pantry planting below.
Joining Sabrina and Christie in 2020 are returning gardeners
Charlie, Ethan, Michael and Whitney and Amy. Our summer has
already proven that challenges lie ahead: the strawberry patch
suffered from last summer's heat and failed to produce as much
fruit as in previous years; our pesky groundhog has shown himself
and begun to nibble; June was unseasonably hot and
dry...
Dan Taxation is Theft Behrman will be joining us for AnarCon! As
a special guest and speaker hell be bringing his iconic yellow hat
and a talk on The State is Smoke and Mirrors.
Our military pilots have been busy this
weekend, with two more shootdowns of objects floating into U.S.
airspace from the west.
The first shootdown occurred near the northern
Alaska coast late Friday night (0645 UTC 11 February), with the
object (a smaller balloon) at around 40,000 ft (12000 m) above sea
level.
As described in my previous blog, I ran the
NOAA Hysplit trajectory model, to calculate the back trajectory
over the past few days of air ending at 40,000 ft (12,000 m), as
well as 8000 and 16,000 m (shown below).
Looking at these trajectories, one worries
that this might be a Russian balloon!
The trajectory ending at 40,000 ft started
over western Russia, and the trajectory above it originated over
Russia as well. The lower trajectory could have passed over
far northern China, but that would assume that the balloon was able
to move up and down by command.
Maybe there is a reason that our military is
being relatively quiet about this one.
The object that ended
over the Canadian Yukon (again around 40,000 ft) was shot down
around 1 PM PST today. Several of its trajectories originated
over China and passed over Japan.
Can we forecast earthquakes? No. Neither the United States
Geology Survey (USGS) nor any other scientists have ever predicted
a major earthquake. We do not know how, and we do not expect to
know how any time in the foreseeable future. -United States Geology
Survey website On the morning of February 6, 2023 the people
Read More...
Bill Ottman is the CEO of Minds, the alternative
social networking site of the future thats geared towards free
speech and giving you back control of your digital information. We
talk about how governments subverts social media, the importance of
decentralized networks, and the impact of Trump getting rid of
Section 203.
Written by Grant G Easter, a religious time, a time for atonement,
celebration and prayers, prayers for a future that's
better. I'm not religious, nether was my dad, yet, my father
could cite biblical verse and passages like someone trained and or
schooled in the preisthood, because he was, his dad, my grandfather
was a religious zealot and every Sunday made my father attend
church, dad was also required to read scripture every night at
home....This my dad tolerated, until, until he got old enough to
say no..
This story is not a slight against religion, my dad was a free
spirit, logical, smart and not easily led astray, this of course
led to friction between him and his dad....Decades later my dad
told me the reasons he rejected religion, he felt too many in the
flock were mindless sheep, sheep who were told how to act, how to
treat others and even worse, instructed as to how to think... What
dear church leader thinks must be copied and strictly adhered
to.....For my dad....He and the church parted ways yet verse and
scripture remained ingrained..
Dad never told me at the time(I was young) but in thinking back to
decades ago, and how he explained religion to me as an adult I know
now he struggled early on with his decision to abandon the
church..When dad's children(including me) were young he took
us(dropped us off) at Sunday school for a mild dabble into
religion.....perhaps he was wondering internally if it was himself
only that had issues with religion...Dad never disparaged the
church to us kids when we were at that tender age, with me, Dad let
me attend Sunday School...only in my later years did I put it all
together...
I didn't attend Sunday School for long......Dad asked me what I
thought about it, Sunday School that is and I answered him
honestly..Told him it was silly, boring and not real....Sunday
School was quickly replaced with fishing...For me and dad, that was
as real(reel) as it gets...
As mentioned above, this story, these thoughts are not a slight
agai...
Paradigm Shift
Courtesy of the Black Swan named Corona Written by Grant G Oil demand has fallen by a staggering 16 million
barrels per day, terrible right?.... no, not at all, it's the
future, it's progress, albeit progress at a terrible cost. I'm not afraid to die, but, this pandemic scares the
hell out of me, I fear for my mother because it will kill her and
fear that it will kill your mother, father, grandparents and
millions more and there is nothing anyone can do to ease this
terror, and that's what it is, terror, worse than war, a terror
nobody has seen since 1918....The Spanish Flu...and despite
the name, the Spanish Flu originated in Kansas.
Having personally suffered pulmonary embolisms, where breathing is
laboured, when coughed up phlegm comes in the form of chunks of
blood, disturbing to say the least but even worse then the pain is
the fear factor, each laboured breath sends one's mind reeling to
thoughts of a last breath..
Millions of older people, or those with risk factors, lung disease,
heart disease, diabetes, immune deficiencies and so many more
afflictions see the carnage on near every TV channel and there is
no escaping the reality...A dry cough, a fever and for many, a few
hours later lungs are fluid soaked water bags, the fluid is caused
by the human body fighting back against the virus, unfortunately
the body's attack is too aggressive and the result is drowning in
one's own fluid.
That's where Intubation and ventilators are required, give
the patient life giving air through mechanical means long enough
that the body can clean itself out....Ventilators mean
life. Being a caregiver to my last parent, my mom, I fiercely
practice social distancing, fear of bringing this uninvited black
menace home but I do go out to get mom's medical supplies,
prescriptions, and yes food, and upon my return I reflect on the
distur...
Black Swans and The
Future? Written by Grant
G March 27/2020......Coronavirus is hideous, a virus
that smothers one's ability to breathe, attacks the heart and
leaves permanent damage on those that survive....even worse, it
strikes deep fear in the aged, the already frail and there are
millions of people in North America alone that fall into the
vulnerable category.
A cloud of fear hangs like thick ocean fog over our entire
world. Warnings, the world had warnings in movie
form, by the CDC and WHO, by health professionals around the
globe....A drum beat of warnings, decades long warnings that we
were not prepared for a pandemic, but here we are..
There were other warnings ignored, warnings that the government
even in the midst of this current crisis refuses to
acknowledge,....Economic warnings...Most people can't afford
to lose even a few weeks pay without falling into financial
ruin...
Governments responded to this disaster, indeed they did...First the
US Fed offered Wallstreet $1.5 Trillion dollars, then they lowered
interest rates for banks and Corporations to 0%....Then the world's
bankers, including Canada, Europe, China offered up another
$trillion for the big-boys and in this latest $2 trillion dollar
rescue package making its way through the US House of Congress is
another $500 billion for corporate grants...yes I said
grants...Boeing alone is asking for $60 billion...and they aren't
alone..Bailouts?... after Corporate North America spent hundreds of
$billions in tax breaks to buy-back their own stocks, increase
corporate CEO pay, and juice the stock markets to way over inflated
levels....
The people are given crumbs....Creditcards have not lowered
interest rates for people...Prime lending rates for people remain
unchanged...Those two items alone would help out average Joe and
Jane far more than short term temporary handout(weeks away and
nothing for pensioners or disabled)..and nothing for millions
more.
January 25, 2020 -- Seventy-five
years ago, dentists convinced government officials to experiment on
every Grand Rapids, Michigan, resident without individual
informed-consent to prove that (not if) dosing the municipal water
supply with untested sodium-fluoride chemicals would decay-proof
childrens developing teeth. The experiment failed; but it spread
across the country anyway. Today, tooth decay
is an epidemic among Grand Rapids' children.
"The typical child that comes in to us
between 3 to 8, 9 years old and they could have anywhere from 3 to
20 cavities," said Dr. Darren Riopelle of Smile One who sees it
first hand as a pediatric dentist. "It's a disease. If it's one
tooth, it spreads to all the other teeth,"
reported WZZM
Last year more than 3,000 children in
the Grand Rapids area had full mouth rehabilitation surgery under
general anesthesia, they reported.
Planned to
last 15 years, the 1945 Grand Rapids/Muskegon
study ...
Reconciliation is dead. Its been dead for some
time.
If only one thing has brought me joy in the last few weeks, it
began when the matriarchs at Unistoten burned the Canadian flag and
declared reconciliation dead. Like wildfire, it swept through the
hearts of youth across the territories. Out of their mouths, with
teeth bared, they echoed back: reconciliation is dead!
reconciliation is dead! Their eyes are more keen to the truth so
many of our older generation have been too timid to name. The
Trudeau era of reconciliation has been a farce from the beginning.
It has been more for settler Canadians than natives all
along.
Reconciliation is dead is a battle cry.
It means the pressure to live up to our side of the bargain is
over. The younger generation have dropped the shackles to the
ground. Perhaps we are moving into a new time, one where militancy
takes the place of negotiation and legal challenge. A time where we
start caring less about what the coloni...
Report from Michigan on anti-militarist action at the
University of Michigan. For more information on the fight against
Camp Grayling,
go here.
On Wednesday, February 9th, 2023, the University of Michigan
welcomed a variety of military and government recruiters into its
Career Fair in Ann Arbor. The U.S. Navy, the National Security
Agency, and other militaristic organizations, were provided stands
to promote US imperialism and occupation and to recruit many young
students to their ranks.
In protest, a series of disruptions against these recruiters
took place throughout the day. Multiple people pushed passed the
registration desk carrying banners that said Stop Camp Grayling and
chanting No prisons, no borders, fuck your law and order,
emphasizing the Armys plan to expand an already massive and
environmentally-damaging National Guard training facility in
Grayling, Michigan. The actions converged in a rally outside of the
career fair, where protesters chanted Stop Cop City and Fascist,
racist all the way, US army, go away! and passed out flyers to
incoming students to warn them against working for the US war
machine.
Another group sprayed red food coloring on the NSA and U.S. Navy
displays, and were then detained for several hours while the U of M
police refused to give information about their whereabouts or
status to concerned friends and supporters. They were eventually
released, but this just demonstrates how the University of Michigan
continues to support the military industrial complex by unlawfully
holding detainees for extended time and refusing to provide
information on them to outsiders.
We will not stand by while the University of Michigan continues
to support and help recruit people into the US military-industrial
complex. We will not stand by while the state expands its capacity
to brutally repress our communities by expanding Camp Grayling in
Michigan and building Cop City in Atlanta.
Report from DC on recent rally in solidarity with the
ongoing struggle to Stop Cop City.
On the 9th of February, the fight against Atlantas Cop City
police training range proposed for the Weelaunee Forest again came
to DC. Protesters marched on Cox Enterprises (owner of the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper), and on Wells
Fargo (a major funder of the project) with just one demand: Drop
Cop City!
We cannot forget the sacrifice of forest defender Tortuguita
(Tort) who gave their life in defense of the Weelaunee Forest on
January 18th, 2023. They were murdered by Atlanta Police in a
blizzard of gunfire that day. Body camera footage shows four spaced
shots followed by a blitz of rapid fire, then a cop saying, You
fucked up your own officer, referring to the cop wounded in the
guts by another cops bullet.
Even with the National Guard backing up heavy militarized
police, activists are still holding out in the forest, vowing to
defend the woods whatever the price may be. From March
4th to 11th, another national week of action in the forest has
been called for. Reinforcements are always needed.
Report on demonstration from Ann Arbor, MI in solidarity
with Tortuguita and the movement to Stop Cop City.
Last Saturday, a crowd of 100 people gathered in front of the
Merrill Lynch office building to share memories, tears, and
vengeance for Tortuguita. The crowd was a militant throng, mostly
in black from head to toe. The march took State street and then
paraded behind a Porsche dealership, which funds the Atlanta police
foundation.
The crowd riotously engaged in expressions of grief, including
spray painting fancy cars and slashing the tires of 40+ cars
waiting to be sold. Signs were left behind at Porsche and Merrill
Lynch stating, Cop City will never be built, and You fund police
murder. No arrests were made.
People discussed the Cop City project, and how direct action can
locally be taken to stop it. Stopreevesyoung.com was discussed as a
resource listing the companies (and the people who run them) who
profit off of the murder of Fortuguita. Stopapf.noblogs.org lists
the companies who fund this murder and desire to fund more police
killings of us and our loved ones.
We love you Tort, and we will never stop fighting for the world
you believe in.
January 10, 2020 marks the passing of
Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said, the man who led Oman, the other
Arabic country, for the past fifty years. We say the other Arabic
country because by the standards of the region, Oman is a peaceful
and happy place to live, which is something we can seldom say about
that oil-rich corner of the world we call the Middle East. To
understand a little about why Oman is not living up to the
standards of mayhem and human suffering that most observers take
for granted in that part of the world, its worth taking a glance at
Omans history. Well do that with a timeline.
Image by CIA, public
domain
OMAN HISTORICAL
TIMELINE
6000 BC
Fire pit evidence indicates that
people have arrived in Oman and stayed long enough to make a fire
and eat a meal.
5000 BC
Non-nomads build fishing villages on
the coast of Oman.
4500 BC
Pottery is produced in
Oman.
2500 BC
Omani miners smelt copper, and Omani
merchants set up trade with Mesopotamian trade ships. Copper is
worth stealing, so concurrent with copper production and trade,
large fortress construction starts in Oman to protect both mining
and coastal areas.
2500 BC 1300 BC
Oman continues to export copper and
increases its boat making and seafaring skills as its neighbors
evolve imperial domains such as Samaria and Ur. The increased sea
trade to and from the Arabian Gulf benefits
Oman.
Gov't Never Studied Brain Effects Before
Assuring Fluoridation Safety
Water fluoridation is linked to
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), according to a
study in Environment International (December 2019),
adding to the growing pile of scientific literature linking
fluoride to neurological disorders e.g. lower IQ, Autism, poor memory, dementia, ...
With a new decade comes new
leadership at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden.
Your recently retired Garden Manager is making one last post to
thank you for assisting and contributing to the success of Stoddart
Avenue Community Garden. Community gardening is often
exhausting, frustrating and relentless because it always involves a
lot of work and challenges. We could not have accomplished all that
we did without your generous support.As
we start to prepare for the 2020 season, we wanted to share some of
our great memories over last summer.
April saw us break ground for
our 11th growing season on an unseasonably warm day with
amazing assistance from OSUs First Year Leadership
Initiative. We spread your wood chips on our
paths and around the fence lines, straightened the front gate
trellis, straightened our platform raised beds, picked up
neighborhood litter, and made more progress...
Last week, the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden closed for the
season and perhaps permanently.It was, again, very cold, but its always
heartwarming when we have a number of true volunteers come to put
everything away for the season.
At the beginning of the month, Amy came and we had four community
service volunteers from the County Environmental Court who helped
us to prune back our raspberry bushes, pick up litter in the
neighborhood, empty the rain cisterns, clean out annual flowers
from the flower bed, harvest radishes, turnips and swiss chard for
our weekly donation (which went to the Good Samaritan produce
giveaway at Fairwood Elementary School just a couple blocks away),
clean out the rest of the cherry tomatoes and vines, clean out
abandoned garden plots (thanks Paul and MacKenzie), clean up the
corner native flower bed, and mow our lot, the orchard lot and the
Block Watch lot across the street, etc.
After that, I painted the metal flower garden art to tidy it up and
Charlie emptied and stored the rain barrel, cleaned out even more
garden beds, and helped me to fix the front gate.
...
As October and my time on Stoddart Avenue wind down, I am hoping to
end on a positive note. One of our gardeners ended up
donating over 75 pounds (of mostly tomatoes) and that has helped us
to exceed the number of pounds of fresh produce we collectively
donated last year and we still have two more weeks to go with
radishes, herbs, beets and turnips left to harvest. Despite
the forecasted cold weather coming on Friday, I am hopeful that we
will get the Garden cleaned up by the end of the season, although
only three of us have cleaned out our plots so far. The City
is removing the water meter today (so I do not have to worry about
it freezing over the winter and we won't be charged for having it
every month). I emptied the tall rain cistern yesterday and
turned off the downspout diverter to the big tank.
A Capital University sorority was supposed to volunteer on
Saturday to make up for their earlier
volunteer date which was rained out, but they cancelled on
Thursday. It was just as well, because they would have gotten
rained out again. (Note to self; invite Capital students
during the next drought because they apparently make it rain).
I ended up declining our Environmental Court Community
Service volunteers because of the weather as well. But, the
kids from across the street came over yesterday while I was there
to hold the bags while I harvested lettuce and dill weed.
They received a bag of fresh leaf lettuce for their troubles.
October has turned out to be a freakishly productive month at the
Stoddart Avenue Community Garden. Our produce
donations have been off the charts, particularly because one of our
gardeners has been donating most of his giant
tomatoes. We have also had more volunteers help
than we have had at this time of year in the
past. Yesterday, we had 15 OSU students helping
to clean out the Garden for the season. We have
also had some vandalism, which severely damaged our front gate.
At the beginning of the month, I took both of our Community
Service volunteers to the Bexley Community Garden to help for a
couple of hours put that Garden to bed for the
season. Then, we took some of their
end-of-season produce (mostly green tomatoes and some okra) to a
free produce giveaway at nearby Fairwood Elementary School that was
organized by the
Genesis of Good Samaritans. There was a long
line of people when we arrived, including many senio...
We are still puttering around in the Garden as an extremely dry
September draws to a close at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden
and we face another heat wave to start October.
We received about 1.6 inches of rain for the entire month and only
about an inch if you exclude September 1. And,
at a time when we should be expecting our first frost, we are
preparing for another heat wave. But, happily,
Fall weather will be arriving later this week, although there is no
frost danger in our forecast for at least the next two weeks.
Last week was to be the annual
Capital Crusaders Day of
Service and 13 Capital University students showed up to help us
water, weed, clean out the cabbage patch, plant radishes, pick up
neighborhood litter, ferret out the secret entrances of the
neighbors marauding groundhog and clean up our compost
bins. As soon as I had given them the history of the
SACG and started making work assignments, it started to sprinkle.
We survived the heat wave this week at the Stoddart Avenue
Community Garden and have a few gallons left in our rain
cisterns. I do not expect any more rain until October, truth
be told. The neighborhood kids came by yesterday "to
help."
I put them to work picking grapes for our weekly Faith
Mission donation. They ate most of them and donated three
grapes. I then tasked them with helping John tidy his plot so
that he could transplant some turnips that I had thinned
earlier. Then, I had them weed the cucumber patch so that we
could plant some radish seeds that I've had in the shed since
2013.
Once they finished their work, I turned them loose in our corn
patch. They played hide and seek and enjoyed running up and down the
rows. It's only 150 square feet, so Lynds is not facing any
real competition. But it's nearby and free.
They found a few leftover ears, so I gave one to John and they took
the rest home.
This dry and hot summer has been exhausting at the Stoddart Avenue
Community Garden. We never would have made it this long
without our newly installed running water though, courtesy of a
federal grant through the Mid-Ohio Food Bank. Also, because
watering each of our plants by hand takes so much time, we have
been very fortunate to have assistance from community service
volunteers from the Franklin County Environmental Court. They
mow our lawn, pick up neighborhood litter, water our plants, and
weed around the Garden, etc. We have also been blessed
with a return visit from Ohio State University students through the
Pay It Forward program.
The dry and hot summer has made gardening
challenging, but we have also suffered from extensive
groundhog damage and two-legged thieves who stole almost all
of our cabbages, pulled up much of our kale and collards and took a
weeks worth of heirloom tomatoes. Kimball Farms
next door did not plant this season and so the groundhog and
thieves that usually feed over there have returned to the
SACG. The thieves built a staircase out of our cinder block
compost bins and then used the empty rain barrel to destroy
raspberry bushes so that they could climb over our fence.
Sigh. They broke our gate on their way out.
The Stoddart Avenue Community Garden survived our wet June and the
early July heat wave, where we went a whopping 8 days without
measurable rain. Our black raspberries are
reaching the end of their season, but peaches are coming along
nicely and our blueberries are better than ever (albeit a little
small).We are also on pace for our weekly food pantry
donations. However, all of the humidity
has exacerbated a new problem: Cherry Leaf Spot.
I noticed that an abnormal number of our cherry tree leaves had
turned bright yellow and were dropping off all of our tart cherry
trees (which just gave us such a great harvest).I took a few photos and emailed them to
Mike and Tim at OSU Extension. They both agreed that it looked like
Cherry
Leaf Spot. My failure to prune a tree and our humidity are
adding to the problem. We now need to rake up
all of their leaves and put them in the lawn waste bags to cart the
pathogen off the property or it will be even worse next
year. The spores drop to the ground with the
leaves and then infect the l...
We are three quarters of the way through June at the Stoddart
Avenue Community Garden and this month has been dominated by a
bumper crop of cherries and strawberries. The
Environmental Court has again been sending us Community Service
volunteers who have helped tremendously. We have
also hosted elementary school students from the Urban Connections
annual Bible camp and they have picked over 8 pounds of fresh
cherries and black raspberries that we donated to Salvation Armys
food pantry down the street.
At the end of May, Charlie scavenged a discarded wheelbarrow and
then built new handles for it so that we could upgrade from
the holey wheelbarrow he bought for $5 eight years ago that we have
been using since that time. This
new one is much bigger and can carry more (without losing valuable
compost through a hole in the corner).
The Garden Manager is wearing out and is trying to have more fun
and not work so much this year. When last I
reported on the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden in April, our
cherry trees were in full bloom and we were expanding the fence
braces along the northern edge of the fence before the raspberry
brambles took over.
Someone finally hauled away the wooden pallets that had been
mysteriously placed behind our Free Little
Library. Whew!
OSU arranged for our soil to be tested. Our pH
was still a bit high, at 7.3. All of that
compost has a tendency to raise our pH. I
added some aluminum sulfate to my plot and to the food pantry
potatoes. I also added some to our blueberries
and WOW they really exploded this year. Our best
crop EVER. I had been topping them off every
year with peat moss, but apparently that was not acidic enough for
them. Live and learn.
So far, we have only had one gardener drop out because she moved
away. We had two new gardeners join us in May,
but we never see them. One keeps her plot
completely weed free, although not much else seems to be
growing. The other has some tomatoes and squash
and is otherwise overrun with weeds. Sigh.
With a new decade comes new
leadership at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden.
Your recently retired Garden Manager is making one last post to
thank you for assisting and contributing to the success of Stoddart
Avenue Community Garden. Community gardening is often
exhausting, frustrating and relentless because it always involves a
lot of work and challenges. We could not have accomplished all that
we did without your generous support.As
we start to prepare for the 2020 season, we wanted to share some of
our great memories over last summer.
April saw us break ground for
our 11th growing season on an unseasonably warm day with
amazing assistance from OSUs First Year Leadership
Initiative. We spread your wood chips on our
paths and around the fence lines, straightened the front gate
trellis, straightened our platform raised beds, picked up
neighborhood litter, and made more progress...
The most stressful time of the year is
upon us. Long lines, visiting relatives, and credit card bills that
give bankers a warm, fuzzy feeling in their wallets. But fear not!
Bayard & Holmes Holiday Survival is here to help you navigate
this cauldron of tension without beating anyone bloody with a
turkey leg.
A spook and a belly dancer.
Not us. Image from The Man with the Golden Gun.
We, a pragmatic author/belly dancer
and a spook who solves most of lifes problems with sex, C4, or
hollow points, are clearing our schedules so that we can assist you
with your holiday survival questions. In fact, weve had a few pleas
for assistance already.
Sarah Broogenstegler in Research Pod
3, Antarctica, sent us this desperate missive.
Dear Bayard &
Holmes:
My husband, Clyde, and I love the
Holidays. Unfortunately, six years ago, after a ten-year stint in
Joliet Prison for a Ponzi scheme that bankrupted twelve hospitals,
Clydes Uncle Harry started showing up uninvited on Christmas Day.
We tried to be charitable the first year, but he drank all of our
alcohol and mouthwash and fell in the punch bowl. It splashed on
the Christmas lights and shorted them out. The ensuing fire nearly
burned down the house....
Effective November
30, 2019, Seal Team Seven member Chief Special Warfare Operator
Eddie Gallagher retired from the US Navy after twenty years of
service. Though Gallagher remains on Fleet Reserve status,
it is highly unlikely that he will ever return to active duty. His
career is over, but the impacts of his career will continue to
reverberate through the US Navy, as well as the entire US military
establishment. It would do the nation well for Gallaghers career to
reverberate through the broader US society, but it will likely soon
be forgotten by the public.
Gallagher joined the
US Navy in 1999. During his twenty years of service, he completed
eight combat deployments that I know of. I write that I know
of because SEAL teams often deploy on short-term missions that are
not made public. However, at a minimum, we know that Gallagher
completed eight documented tours of combat
duty.
Many US Navy SEALs retire each year
without their names ever being uttered by a media
outlet.Young men enlist.
Some volunteer for SEAL selection. Comparatively few complete the
training. Those few then continue to train. Then they deploy and
fight, and they either die or survive. The survivors then train
some more, go to war again, etc. Some die or are permanently
maimed. The fortunate ones survive this cycle of training and
fighting in reasonably good health and retire. Their wives and
children try to breathe a sigh of relief and adjust to a new life,
but most of the country does not notice.
Gallagher, of course, was not your
average US Navy SEAL.In
2018, he was charged with multiple criminal counts, including
murder, two counts of attempted murder from two other separate
incidents, and multiple counts of intimidating
witnesses.
This is the week of the mass American pilgrimage. Thanksgiving,
more than any other holiday, is the day we Americans travel home.
It is the one holiday we all share, no matter what our religion.
The day when we gather as families.
Some of us will have genuinely happy reunions. The stuff of
Norman Rockwell.
Most of us will have mixed days. A bit of hassle and a family
fuss getting out the door. Then we will roll our eyes at Uncle
Freddies bad jokes and Aunt Marge complaining that the dressing is
dry. But once everyone settles in for the football, it will all be
good.
For some, though, Thanksgiving will be a gut-wrenching ordeal an
endurance test of dysfunctional abuse that demoralizes and
convinces us that we deserve nothing from life but the crumbs of
inadequacy and failed expectations.
Most people who persist in that brutal existence do so from
habit and from the fear of change. But a brave few walk away into
the unknown with the conviction that whatever lies ahead, it cannot
be worse than the hell they left behind. They quit showing up for
the beatings.
If you are having joyful reunions this week, we celebrate with
you. Such family experiences are the source of strength that
sustains us through lifes turmoil.
Last week, the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden closed for the
season and perhaps permanently.It was, again, very cold, but its always
heartwarming when we have a number of true volunteers come to put
everything away for the season.
At the beginning of the month, Amy came and we had four community
service volunteers from the County Environmental Court who helped
us to prune back our raspberry bushes, pick up litter in the
neighborhood, empty the rain cisterns, clean out annual flowers
from the flower bed, harvest radishes, turnips and swiss chard for
our weekly donation (which went to the Good Samaritan produce
giveaway at Fairwood Elementary School just a couple blocks away),
clean out the rest of the cherry tomatoes and vines, clean out
abandoned garden plots (thanks Paul and MacKenzie), clean up the
corner native flower bed, and mow our lot, the orchard lot and the
Block Watch lot across the street, etc.
After that, I painted the metal flower garden art to tidy it up and
Charlie emptied and stored the rain barrel, cleaned out even more
garden beds, and helped me to fix the front gate.
...
As a kid in Pakistan, police treated Tariq MaQbool like a
nephew. As an adult in solitary confinement, the kindness of one
New Jersey corrections officer made him feel human.
Anarchist Agency reports on the passing of long-time
anarchist Jen Angel, as community members, family, and friends
rally in support.
Its with a heavy heart that we announce that Oakland baker,
small business owner, social justice activist, and community member
Jen Angel has been medically declared to have lost all brain
function and will not regain consciousness. Her official time of
death was 5:48pm (PT).
Friends and family of Jen hope that the story of this last
chapter of her brilliant, full, dynamic life is one focused on her
commitment to community, on the care bestowed upon her and her
family by the people who loved her, and on the generous and
courageous role of countless health care workers and public
servants who fought to preserve her life. We know Jen would not
want to continue the cycle of harm by bringing state-sanctioned
violence to those involved in her death or to other members of
Oaklands community.
As a long-time social movement activist and anarchist, Jen did
not believe in state violence, carceral punishment, or
incarceration as an effective or just solution to social violence
and inequity. The outpouring of support and care for Jen, her
family and friends, and the values she held dear is a resounding
demonstration of the response to harm that Jen believed in:
community members relying on one another, leading with love,
centering the needs of the most vulnerable, and not resorting to
vengeance and inflicting more harm.
Jen believed in a world where everyone can live a dignified and
joyful life and worked toward an ecologically sustainable and
deeply participatory society in which all people have access to the
things they need, decisions are made by those most directly
affected by them, and all people are free and equal.
Angel Cakes, the popular community-based bakery that Jen founded
in 2008, will remain open, supported by Jens estate, and staffed by
the talented team that Jen built. Community members who wish to
support the bakery can especially help through buying gift
certificates and committing to long-term patronage.
Per Jens wishes, her organs will be donated, and her committed
medical team has informed the family that those organs will serve
to lengthen and improve the lives of up to 70 people.
If the Oakland Police Department does make an arrest in this
case, the family is committed to pursuing all available
alternatives to traditional prosecution, such as restorative
justice. Jens family and close friends ask that the media respect
this request and carry forward the story of her life with
celebration and clarity about the world she aimed to build. Jens
family and friends ask that stories referencing Jens life do not
use her legacy of care and community to further inflame narratives
of...
I don't want to hype the situation, but
I do think some snowflakes will descend on portions of the western
lowlands next Tuesday and Wednesday.
To illustrate, below you find the sea level
pressure and temperature (925 hPa, about 800 m aloft) for Tuesday
at 4AM. Blue colors are cold enough for snow---and
such chilly air extends over much of the region.
The daily highs and
lows in Seattle for the next week from the National Weather Service
National Blend of Models, shows the cooling trend down to highs in
the mid-40s. Not nearly as cold as in December, but Tuesday
and Wednesday mornings will be cold enough for
snow.
Report back on solidarity vigil with Tortuguita and Stop
Cop City in Binghamton, New York.
On a cold Saturday afternoon in unceded Onondaga Territory, 20
friends gathered to share in the memory and honor of Tortuguita,
their life, family, friends, and their contributions to our world.
We created, spoke to each other, and learned from each other. We
learned of what we could find of Tortuguitas life, family, and of
Tortuguitas deep connections and commitment to the land they always
sought to return to native sovereignty.
We were all reminded of the many lives we have lost in the
struggle for self-determination, survival and free life for all,
human and non-human. Speakers highlighted the truth that defense of
the forests and the land must first and foremost one and the same
as the defense of the lives and freedom of indigenous peoples,
black people, and queer peoples in colonized territory. We all
learned how the struggle in defense of the Weelaunee has shown us
all that we all are called to confront the totality of social
existence and that we must act since the struggle is everywhere.
For the memory of Manuel Paez Teran, of Tortuguita, and for the
thousands who we have lost, and for our futures.
We raised money for Tortuguitas family, as well as created
together and shared zines and materials on the defend the Atlanta
forest/Stop Cop City movement. And most importantly we created a
space to collectively express our grief and determination, support
each other near and far, and build our connections to each other
near and far.
Announcing the Certain Days: Freedom for Political
Prisoners Calendar for 2024 and calling for submission of art and
essays.
The Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar
collective is releasing its 23rd calendar in 2024. With twelve
pieces of beautiful art and twelve essays, these radical calendars
have a history of hanging in thousands of homes, workplaces, prison
cells, and community spaces around the globeboth educating and
reminding us of those behind bars in the struggle for a better
world.
Having your work featured in the Certain Days calendar is a
prestigious honor and a unique opportunity to use your words and
your creative abilities to create a vision of an abolitionist
future free of prisons, power structures, and authority. We
especially seek to raise the voices of people who are or were
incarcerated, so please forward this call for submissions to any
prison-based artists and writers in your circles.
With the proceeds from these beautiful, educational calendars
you are able to directly support organizations working to aid
political prisoners and abolish the prison industrial complex.
Beneficiaries from the 2022 calendar include Release Aging
People in Prison RAPP, Mutulu Shakur legal support, The Sundiata
Acoli Freedom Campaign release fund, Puget Sound Prisoner Support,
Coalition to Decarcerate IL, Appalachians Against Pipelines,
Community Resource Initiative, Burning Books expansion, P4W
Memorial Collective, Cascadia Forest Defenders, and the Atlanta
Solidarity Fund.
Submit your abolition-themed art or writing now and help raise
funds for those struggling on the front lines of social change. See
guidelines below for further information.
Submission Deadline: May Day, Sunday, May 1, 2023
Guidelines
Articles:
400-500 words max. If you submit a longer piece, we will have to
edit for length.
Poetry is also welcome but needs to be significantly shorter than
400 words to accommodate layout.
Please include a suggested title. Art
The calendar is 11 tall by 8.5 wide, so art with a portrait
orientation is preferred. Art does not need to fit those dimensions
exactly.
We are interested in a diversity of media.
The calendar is printed in color and we prefer color images.
Due to space limitations, submissions may be lightly edited
for clarity and concision, with no change to the original
intent.
Submit Your Art or Writing Today
Send submissions by May Day, May 1, 2023, to info@certaindays.org or mail to: Certain Days,
c/o Burning Books, 420 Connecticut Str...
As October and my time on Stoddart Avenue wind down, I am hoping to
end on a positive note. One of our gardeners ended up
donating over 75 pounds (of mostly tomatoes) and that has helped us
to exceed the number of pounds of fresh produce we collectively
donated last year and we still have two more weeks to go with
radishes, herbs, beets and turnips left to harvest. Despite
the forecasted cold weather coming on Friday, I am hopeful that we
will get the Garden cleaned up by the end of the season, although
only three of us have cleaned out our plots so far. The City
is removing the water meter today (so I do not have to worry about
it freezing over the winter and we won't be charged for having it
every month). I emptied the tall rain cistern yesterday and
turned off the downspout diverter to the big tank.
A Capital University sorority was supposed to volunteer on
Saturday to make up for their earlier
volunteer date which was rained out, but they cancelled on
Thursday. It was just as well, because they would have gotten
rained out again. (Note to self; invite Capital students
during the next drought because they apparently make it rain).
I ended up declining our Environmental Court Community
Service volunteers because of the weather as well. But, the
kids from across the street came over yesterday while I was there
to hold the bags while I harvested lettuce and dill weed.
They received a bag of fresh leaf lettuce for their troubles.
Its down to two and half months before 2019 ends, and you know
what that means! Its that time when new trends for the upcoming
year are made known. When it comes to interior decoration, a lot of
trends from this year will still be in use, but there will be many
new decoration trends to spruce up your living spaces.
If youre planning a renovation project or even building a home,
2020s interior decoration trend will be focused on nature-inspired
aesthetics that puts emphasis on comfort. Here are some wall art
and dcor trends to look out for:
Wallpapers with nature motif
Wallpapers are still in, creating a beautiful art work that is
more than just a surface covering. Now, it is used more as a wall
art. For the upcoming year, wallpapers with a natural theme or that
which depict nature at its best is the rage. Softer hues and more
neutral colors are favored when it comes to choosing
wallpapers.
Wall posters that have anything and everything to do with nature
are a must in the homes this year. From landscapes to bodies of
waters to mountains and even animals go with 2020s nature motif in
general. The bolder the colour of these nature wall posters, the
better too.
Textile art
This years biophilic theme promotes sustainability as well.
Textile art is one such step towards decorating interiors with
sustainability in mind. Fibers from plants and insects will be a
rage this year. Although long been in use as a dcor, textile art in
2020 will become even more popular. Earthen hues and natural shades
are best examples of textile arts to use next year.
Linear wall art
The authentic simplicity of lines drawn in a canvas is its
greatest aesthetics. Prominent lines in a bold background go great
with almost all kinds of interior styling. However, it works best
with minimalist, contemporary, and classical themes. A nice,
cl...
October has turned out to be a freakishly productive month at the
Stoddart Avenue Community Garden. Our produce
donations have been off the charts, particularly because one of our
gardeners has been donating most of his giant
tomatoes. We have also had more volunteers help
than we have had at this time of year in the
past. Yesterday, we had 15 OSU students helping
to clean out the Garden for the season. We have
also had some vandalism, which severely damaged our front gate.
At the beginning of the month, I took both of our Community
Service volunteers to the Bexley Community Garden to help for a
couple of hours put that Garden to bed for the
season. Then, we took some of their
end-of-season produce (mostly green tomatoes and some okra) to a
free produce giveaway at nearby Fairwood Elementary School that was
organized by the
Genesis of Good Samaritans. There was a long
line of people when we arrived, including many senio...
A 2017 study reports that
children who drink typically-fluoridated tap water have higher
blood-lead levels (BLL) than children, who drink bottled water,
according to dental researchers Sanders and Slade (American
Journal of Preventive Medicine, Nov
2017).
Several previous studies
also link fluoridation chemicals to higher BLL; others link
blood-lead to more tooth decay. Lead-laced
hydrofluosilicic
acid is the most used fluoridation chemical added to public
water supplies attempting, but failing, to reduce tooth
decay.
It appears Sanders and
Slade protect dentistry's sacred cow, fluoride, instead of
America's children and future, when they oddly put tooth decay
on the same level with brain damaging lead.
Without knowing the
fluoride content of any of the water consumed by their test
subjects, they imply that tap water drinkers have less tooth decay
and the reason is the presumed fluoride content of tap water. They
hint that parents might need to choose between damaging their
childrens brains with lead or save their teeth with
fluoride.
No! Cavities can be
fixed but lead poisoning is irreversible. Besides, fluoride is
neither a nutrient nor required for healthy teeth - meaning that
consuming a fluoride-free diet doesn't cause tooth
decay.
We are still puttering around in the Garden as an extremely dry
September draws to a close at the Stoddart Avenue Community Garden
and we face another heat wave to start October.
We received about 1.6 inches of rain for the entire month and only
about an inch if you exclude September 1. And,
at a time when we should be expecting our first frost, we are
preparing for another heat wave. But, happily,
Fall weather will be arriving later this week, although there is no
frost danger in our forecast for at least the next two weeks.
Last week was to be the annual
Capital Crusaders Day of
Service and 13 Capital University students showed up to help us
water, weed, clean out the cabbage patch, plant radishes, pick up
neighborhood litter, ferret out the secret entrances of the
neighbors marauding groundhog and clean up our compost
bins. As soon as I had given them the history of the
SACG and started making work assignments, it started to sprinkle.
We survived the heat wave this week at the Stoddart Avenue
Community Garden and have a few gallons left in our rain
cisterns. I do not expect any more rain until October, truth
be told. The neighborhood kids came by yesterday "to
help."
I put them to work picking grapes for our weekly Faith
Mission donation. They ate most of them and donated three
grapes. I then tasked them with helping John tidy his plot so
that he could transplant some turnips that I had thinned
earlier. Then, I had them weed the cucumber patch so that we
could plant some radish seeds that I've had in the shed since
2013.
Once they finished their work, I turned them loose in our corn
patch. They played hide and seek and enjoyed running up and down the
rows. It's only 150 square feet, so Lynds is not facing any
real competition. But it's nearby and free.
They found a few leftover ears, so I gave one to John and they took
the rest home.
Translation: There are many opinion saying that
casino in Japan will not go well. However, in my personal opinion,
this can only has good effect to Japanese economy. People are
concerned about gambling addiction of Japanese citizen.
Although there were no casino in Japan, one can find Pachinko shops
through out the whole country. Therefore, Japanese could have
gambled if they wanted to. Not only Pachingo shop, but online
casino is also played by many Japanese. As long as there is
internet, anyone can do online gambling. This is why I think that
legalising gambling in Japan will not have huge effect on Japanese
people. On the other hand, there will be more foreigner tourists
coming to Japan instead of going to Hong Kong or Singapore because
of casino. Political Economy Graduate
The first evidence of this pact showed up on Led Zeppelin III.
Written into the vinyl was So Mote it Be on one side and Do What
Thou Wilt on the other. These are basic stock phrases that are in
the core of Crowleys belief system.
This dry and hot summer has been exhausting at the Stoddart Avenue
Community Garden. We never would have made it this long
without our newly installed running water though, courtesy of a
federal grant through the Mid-Ohio Food Bank. Also, because
watering each of our plants by hand takes so much time, we have
been very fortunate to have assistance from community service
volunteers from the Franklin County Environmental Court. They
mow our lawn, pick up neighborhood litter, water our plants, and
weed around the Garden, etc. We have also been blessed
with a return visit from Ohio State University students through the
Pay It Forward program.
The dry and hot summer has made gardening
challenging, but we have also suffered from extensive
groundhog damage and two-legged thieves who stole almost all
of our cabbages, pulled up much of our kale and collards and took a
weeks worth of heirloom tomatoes. Kimball Farms
next door did not plant this season and so the groundhog and
thieves that usually feed over there have returned to the
SACG. The thieves built a staircase out of our cinder block
compost bins and then used the empty rain barrel to destroy
raspberry bushes so that they could climb over our fence.
Sigh. They broke our gate on their way out.
Anew studyby Mt. Sinai School of Medicine
researchers reports fluoride may diminish kidney function; but
thats not new. A review of nearly 100 years of research shows
excess fluoride leads to kidney damage and dysfunction was published inHuman and Experimental Toxicology,
by RW Dammarane in 2018.
Dammarane lists 45 studies which show
with certainty that there are toxic effects of excess fluorides on
animal kidneys and 21 studies confirm the toxic effects of fluoride
on human kidneys.
Dammarane writes, In humans, fluoride
intake of more than 6 mg per day can lead to retention of fluoride
in the kidneys.
Alarmingly, studies already show
adults can reach 6.6 mg/day from all sources when their water is
fluoridated at optimal (0.7 to 1.2 mg/L) levels, according to a
US Health and
Human Services 1991report.
Brewed tea, alone, can contain up to 6 mg/liter
of fluoride. (...
This week we look at a call from politicians to make it harder
for prisoners to get bail, updates on prison construction in
Ontario, drug decriminalization in BC, and deaths in prisons across
so-called Canada.
Bail Reform for the Worse
Earlier
in January, all 13 premiers across so-called Canada signed a
letter to the federal government asking for stricter conditions for
bail in criminal cases. The letter, initiated by Ontario premier
Doug Ford, calls for the onus to be placed on the accused to prove
they deserve bail in cases of serious crimes or repeat offenses.
The current legal context places the onus on the crown prosecutor
to prove why someone should not be released on bail, or released
with strict conditions. Fords call for the change was tied to the
December killing of an Ontario police constable by someone who was
on bail for assault and weapons charges.
Politicians behind the call have argued that the change would
not put more people behind bars, but would simply prevent repeat
and serious offenders from re-entering society and reoffending. In
practice, the majority of people in provincial prisons are already
those who have been denied bail. For example, in Ontario, nearly
three quarters of people in provincial prisons are those who have
not been convicted of their charges, but have not been granted
bail. Getting bail is often tied to a persons ability to get a
surety, someone who will put up money that can be taken away if the
person breaches their conditions and who is deemed by the courts to
be a respectable, upstanding citizen the deck is already stacked
against low-income people and racialized people navigating a racist
system.
In Ontario,
hearings were held on January 31 and February 1 by the
Provincial Standing Committee on Justice Policy. So-called experts
including police officials and legal advocacy groups shared their
feedback on bail reforms with a group of MPPs who will now write a
report with recommendations for the legislature. Doug Ford says he
is looking to move quickly on the issue.
Watch public deputations on the current
state of our Bail System. The police have taken up 1 WHOLE day with
deputations. Watch the police associations try to convince that we
need to make Bail systems mo...
In this episode of the Patrick Henningsen Show on TNT
Radio which aired on February 3, 2023, Patrick talks with
Jacqui Deevoy a freelance journalist and now
filmmaker who has exposed a silent killer, also known as
euthanasia in British hospitals, hospices and care
facilities all under the disguise of Covid Protocols. They discuss
the governments suspicious stockpiling of the end-of-life drug
Midazolam months before the so-called pandemic hit, as well as the
numerous Midazolam deaths which have left many families grieving
and seeking justice for this inhumane treatment. After being
shunned by main stream media for her investigation, Jacqui has gone
on to produce her independent documentary film charting her two
year investigation, exposing the ill practices surrounding this
death pathway. Listen:
TUNE-IN
LIVE to TNT RADIO for the Patrick Henningsen Show every MON-FRI at
11AM-1PM (NEW YORK) | 4PM-6PM (LONDON) | 2AM-4AM
(BRISBANE): https://tntradio.live
In this 3-part series of the Patrick Henningsen Show
on TNT Radio, French journalist Freddie
Ponton breaks down the globalists latest power-grab
the One Health approach, by charting its origins from inception to
adoption, in the hopes of better understanding how this concept has
strangely become the handbook for the global pandemic contagion
business, but also as a powerful instrument of control which
globalist oligarchs and their Big Pharma cohort, have devised to
implement their technocracy. One Health is viewed as an integrated,
unifying approach which aims to sustainably balance and optimise
the health of people, animals and ecosystems across the planet, but
is there more to it that meets the eye. Listen:
February 8 marks the day of Russian science, when past
achievements are celebrated to inspire new generations for the
future. The list of Soviet and Russian specialists who have made
crucial contributions to physics, chemistry, medicine and biology
amongst others is too long to outline, but their work is used every
day around the world.
The Periodic Table
The Periodic Table of Chemical Elements, a basic tool used by
scientists to explore matter and foresee the existence of new
elements, was created by Russian scientist Dmitry Mendeleev in
1869. In 2019, the UN celebrated The International Year of the
Periodic Table, to mark the 150th anniversary of the discovery
it calleda
window on the universe.
Humanity has known about several chemical elements since ancient
times. In the 17th century, German alchemist Hennig Brand
accidentally discovered a new element phosphorus and triggered a
wave of scientific experiments. A hundred years later, French
chemist Antoine
Lavoisier wrote Elementary Treatise of Chemistry,
considered to be the first modern chemistry textbook.
Canadian hardcore punk band Fucked Up recently released their
sixth full-length album One Day. As denoted by the albums title,
each band member committed to a self-imposed time frame of 24 hours
to write and record their contributions.
Compared to their previous ambitious standards, the album is more
straightforward but still carries considerable weight. It also
features a few poignant social commentaries.
Broken Little Boys explores the generational cycle of toxic
masculinity. Another song, Found, which is Shadowproofs protest
song of the week, chronicles how Indigenous people have been
displaced and
murdered to build highways and temples of police and landlords. All
for the worship of money.
The track was inspired by guitarist Mike Haliechuks experiences
living on one of the oldest streets in
North America and his observations of the tragic consequences of
colonization and gentrification.
I used to live on Davenport Road, which is one of the oldest
streets in North America and has been a
First Nations trail for thousands of years, running along the north
shore of Lake Iroquois, which receded
after the last ice age, Haliechuk
recalled. Just to the east was Taddle Creek, which was
buried underground during the 19th century to build the streets I
walk on. I thought about gentrification
a lot, watching little stores get swallowed up by big buildings
until I realized I am one of those big
buildings.
Haliechuk continued, The name of the song comes from the Shadi
Bartsch translation of The Aeneid,
where she points out that the words found and stab open and close
the book, which are two
meanings for the same Greek verb. That discovery is actually
conquest, and that settlement is always
violence. And that any story I try to tell myself about the place I
found to live can only be a story to
justify the expansion of one people across the world of
another.
The lyrics, There I stood on the shore. Of a story we dont tell
anymore. All the names were erased.
Buried under a land that my people stole, connect to repeated talks
of a reconciliation taking place within Canada.
An essential part of the process is an acknowledgment that Canada
is a country found on a genocide. It is time to discontinue the
whitewashing of history.
Listen to Fucked Ups Found off their album One Day.
The Stoddart Avenue Community Garden survived our wet June and the
early July heat wave, where we went a whopping 8 days without
measurable rain. Our black raspberries are
reaching the end of their season, but peaches are coming along
nicely and our blueberries are better than ever (albeit a little
small).We are also on pace for our weekly food pantry
donations. However, all of the humidity
has exacerbated a new problem: Cherry Leaf Spot.
I noticed that an abnormal number of our cherry tree leaves had
turned bright yellow and were dropping off all of our tart cherry
trees (which just gave us such a great harvest).I took a few photos and emailed them to
Mike and Tim at OSU Extension. They both agreed that it looked like
Cherry
Leaf Spot. My failure to prune a tree and our humidity are
adding to the problem. We now need to rake up
all of their leaves and put them in the lawn waste bags to cart the
pathogen off the property or it will be even worse next
year. The spores drop to the ground with the
leaves and then infect the l...
We are three quarters of the way through June at the Stoddart
Avenue Community Garden and this month has been dominated by a
bumper crop of cherries and strawberries. The
Environmental Court has again been sending us Community Service
volunteers who have helped tremendously. We have
also hosted elementary school students from the Urban Connections
annual Bible camp and they have picked over 8 pounds of fresh
cherries and black raspberries that we donated to Salvation Armys
food pantry down the street.
At the end of May, Charlie scavenged a discarded wheelbarrow and
then built new handles for it so that we could upgrade from
the holey wheelbarrow he bought for $5 eight years ago that we have
been using since that time. This
new one is much bigger and can carry more (without losing valuable
compost through a hole in the corner).
New York State following California, lost there right to
Religious Exemptions that protected
our right to choose when, how many, and if you wanted to vaccinate
your child.
Poorly done pro-fluoride studies are
widely publicized but never fact-checked. Fluoride
disparaging studies are ignored. Even more studies link fluoride to
brain, kidney, thyroid, bone, vascular damage and more. Are health
reporters letting us down or just unable or unwillling to decipher
science? Is organized dentistry or advertisers pulling their
strings? Are legislators too concerned with their own political
viability than the truth? Follow
the Money.
Fluoride chemicals added
to public water supplies, fluoridation, is touted as a safe
tooth-decay preventive. However, a growing body of
researchshows fluoridation can cause harm. Here are
headlines you have been deprived of:
Last week, the French government
released its outline for future defense strategy and spending. The
presentation made it clear that the Macron government wishes to cut
its defense budget, concentrate on high-technology advancements,
and reduce manpower. When questioned about the feasibility of the
force reductions at a time when the French military seems to be
busier than it has been in recent decades, a French military
spokesman, on behalf of the French Ministry of Defense, stuck to a
tightly-scripted play book.
Notably, he did not deny that the
restructuring would be inadequate for Frances national security
needs. Instead, in a rare instance of political honesty, he said
that in the future, the French would rely on more
privileged countries like the UK and USA to provide the necessary
manpower.
French military parade on Bastille Day
soon to be outsourced? Image US DOD, public
domain
That statement was brief and seemed
to slip right past the privileged countries that France says would
have the privilege of sending their flesh and blood to defend
France.
However, in spite of the lack of
coverage by the US and UK media, it did not quite go completely
unnoticed, as in, Piper and I noticed it. We get it. Everyone gets
tired of adulting sometimes. These days, politicians commonly woo
voters with promises of cradle-to-grave dependence on the more
privileged, but its unusual that a country would actually
admit that it expects cradle-to-grave dependence on other countries
to provide its defense, so we believe it is worth examining Frances
strategic vision more closely.
In a world controlled primarily by
despotic nations that offer little freedom and little hope for the
future, Western Europe matters. If France were surrounded by allies
with more military power, then it would perhaps be less important
that France is actively...
There has been a lot of talk about
weather balloons this week, and some of the information--from a
certain country to our west-- has been problematic.
So let me give you the straight story on
weather balloons!
Weather balloons are used by meteorologists to
determine weather conditions above the surface. This is
crucial because we cannot understand or forecast weather conditions
without detailed knowledge of the three-dimensional structure of
the atmosphere.
Two Types of Weather Balloon
Systems
Some weather balloons are used to loft
weather instruments that radio their observations of temperature,
humidity, pressure, and wind back to the surface (see below).
These devices are known as radiosondes. (see
below)
The Green New Deal (GND) is now part of the national
conversation. But for decades, social movements have been doing the
on-the-ground work to resist fossil capitalism and envision a
different future. Such grassroots social mobilization but at a
massive scale is vital to ensuring the GND catalyzes transformative
social change. Cooperation Jackson is at the forefront of
eco-socialist
This article was originally published in Re-Build! A New Afrikan
Independence Movement Journal, Vol.1, No.2 Spring
2019 https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/633c20_9b21f98e4a5545c49ad9bd4be76cf13e.pdf
2018 is a watershed moment in our struggle for national liberation
and sovereignty. We are now 50 years past the formal declaration of
our independence from the empire that is the United States of
By Sarah Lazare for In These Times A Conversation with Kali
Akuno of Cooperation Jackson Incoming Congresswoman Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez made waves in late November when she called for a
Green New Deal (GND)a plan to transition the U.S. economy to become
carbon neutral over the course of 10 years. In a draft resolution,
she proposes the formation of a Select Committee to develop a
Real News Mashup is a compilation of
articles that I consider to be interesting, informative, or both.
Please share articles of your own in the comments. Perhaps if we
work together, we can remember that the world is bigger than the
propaganda storm.
I found this list compiled by several
lifelong veterans of the military and intelligence communities.
They were asked the question, What should be Attorney General Barrs
top priorities? These are their answers.
SNC-Lavalin, the large Canadian engineering
firm at the center of the present Liberal government crisis
engendered by the treatment of former Attorney General/Minister of
Justice and Minister of Veterans Affairs, Jody
Wilson-Raybould, is merely the tip of an enormous
iceberg.
The gyrations of SNC-Lavalin to have a law passed
(obscurely in a Liberal Omnibus Bill in 2018) that permits
it (and giant firms like it) to write deferred prosecution
agreements (in what is called a remediation regime) may be seen as
nothing more than another private/corporate attack on the Rule of
Law supported by the present Canadian (Liberal) government in
power.
Written by grant G Sometimes even slushy wet
snow can send one's mind to drift, to times of youth, to times with
family...
Friday morning, too much
unexpected snow, with regular visitors and a long steep path down
to the house snow-clearing was a must, yikes, even cleared and
salted the snow overwhelms....
4 inches of snow between morning and noon, enough to keep me
hopping then it stops in a blink, an early year Sun is fast
approaching and as I write this piece earth's life-giving planet
warmer beams a blast of soothing warmth, sitting, typing with
an open window facing the glow and suddenly thoughts go
adrift....Sounds of heavy fresh snow dropping and dripping like
thick heavy syrup, everything is a thaw, water runs, ozone fills my
lungs and thoughts fill my mind..
as a boy with feet and shoes soaked, trudging and sludging in a
snow world suddenly turned to slush and mush...I see familiar
streets, see friends, see family clear as today only the scenes
aren't today they're memories, triggered memories brought on by
heavy watery snow trying to outrun our sun's warm glow...futile in
February...
Something else happened today, Canada's NEB(national Energy Board)
once again approved the TMX pipeline and that was expected but even
so, to be fair the NEB approved it with a much more somber tone
than the first time..
Memories of a boy fishing with dad flood my mind, Summer,
Spring, Fall and Winter when fresh warm snow needs to be cleared
from a boat beckoning to take a pair of one fishing, fishing in the
Sun's warm embrace, it's there, ahead, it awaits in a fast
approaching golden horizon.....
Rod, reel, father and son in calm life-filled waters...in pursuit
of a wild salmon for dinner, plentiful bounty for all, including
many Winter Spring Salmon to feed a hungry pod of Southern Killer
Whales...The Orca.
These magnificent creatures are very fussy eaters, they're not fond
of Chum Salmon, Coho or even Sock...
White people are on the point of extinction. If you say anything
about it, you are labeled a white supremacist. Black lives matter,
but not white lives.
We this, for example, in South Africa where white farmers are
being massacred under the slogan land or death by blacks whose
forebears arrived in South Africa after the forebears of the white
farmers. The line is that the whites stole the blacks land and that
Africa is black and, thereby, reserved for blacks. Whites are
unwanted illegal immigrants.
If the roles were reversed and it was whites massacring blacks,
the white media in the Western world would be shrill in its
condemnation of the whites. As it is blacks massacring whites,
there is not a peep. The only way you can learn about it is to read
English language Russian Internet sites.
Only Russia has offered South African whites refuge. The US,
Europe, and Canada are overflowing with non-white immigrants but
have no room for white ones.
Whites are on the road to extinction not because of massacres by
blacks, but because of their own tax, social, and immigration
policies. In the US and throughout Europe high taxation has brought
an end to single-earner families, such as the one that I, and my
generation, grew up in. Wives have been forced out of the
motherhood role into the earner mode. Consequently, the white
birthrate has dropped. This process of destruction has been helped
along the way by feminism and abortion on demand.
It is very difficult for a white person from one Western country
to immigrate to another. An American who wishes to become, for
example, a French citizen has to have a large income and a large
French bank account and wait a long time. But a non-white can walk
right in and take up residence without being evicted and expect to
be supported by the French state. Except for Hungary, the same is
true throughout the Western world.
How did something this topsy-turvey come about?
Identity Politics plays a major role. Identity Politics, now
institutionalized in Western universities and school systems as
black studies and women studies, teaches whites to be guilty for
victimizing nonwhites and teaches nonwhites to hate whites for
victimizing them. Instead of the former worker-capitalist class
conflict, the conflict today is in racial and gender terms.
In Western countries where the white birthrate is collapsing and
borders are open to nonwhite immigration, it is onl...
Police car
burns on the Akwesasne Mohawk territory, Feb. 22, 2019.
by Alan S. Hale, Standard Freeholder,
February 23, 2019
AWKESASNE The Mohawk Council of Akwesasne (MCA) is pleading for
calm after a protest in front of the Akwesasne Mohawk Police
Service headquarters became violent on Friday night, resulting in a
police SUV to be stolen by protesters and burned on an
international ice bridge that connects different portions of the
community.
Grand Chief Abram Benedict declined to comment when contacted
about the riot, instead deferring to a statement put out on behalf
of the MCA and the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, which governs the
American portion of the Indigenous community.
Akwesasne has faced many challenges as part of an ongoing effort
to ensure that the health and safety of the community remains a
priority, reads the stateme...
Written by Grant G As many of you must have
heard......Steelhead LNG has stopped all activity at their proposed
"Floating LNG plant" Sarita Bay location. This is not a
surprise, this proposal was always a ponzi scheme, a pump and dump
operation... Contrary to media
reports, Steelhead LNG is NOT an LNG company, they have no assets,
no lng infrastructure, they have no part of any energy operation,
as such they have no revenue... Steelhead LNG is a
group of people(Swindlers) looking for investors to buy in, to
purchase everything, that now includesNigel
Kuzemko CEO/Executive Chairman asking the B.C.
government to build a pipeline(s) and deliver gas to their very
westcoast location, on the taxpayers dime...
This good news
is...Steelhead LNG died it's inevitable Death..
This is no surprise.....another B.C. LNG proposal bites the
dust...
February 18/2019.......
It's official......The LNG ponzi scheme known as Steelhead LNG is
now dead and buried....This outfit had no money, no other LNG
business, this was a group hoping to try and OTHERS to drop cash
into their ridiculous project...Steelhead LNG wanted investors to
pay $billions for everything while they merely reap the profits
without spending any of their own money...This proposal, as I wrote
was always a pump n dump scam that was never viable....They were
proposing a floating facility on the West Coast near beautiful
Bamfield...a wind swept paradise near the Broken Group of
Islands...They proposed a pipeline from NE BC...all the way to
Powell River, than another pipeline across the Georgia
Straight(Salish Sea)...than another pipeline across Vancouver
Island..through untamed land, mountains, river and valleys....The
pipeline crossings..three in total would have cost $15 billion
dollars....the proposal was so pathetic, considering they were
proposing a "floating facility built in China/South Korea...barged
to BC and hooked up to a pipeline...what made the proposal so
mind-numbing stupid...a sloating facility could have been placed in
Prince Rupert, or Kitimat and save $10 billion dollars...I knew
that nobody, no fool would ever bankroll this stupidity...
The sad part of this whole episode...Vancouver Island First Nations
were strung along, used as pawns, promised monies and prosperity,
dozens of town hall meeting were conducted, votes among the nation
were conducted, it created friction and divided the nation...Those
wanting to preserve paradise against those who drank the kool
aid...those that drank will now have to bow their heads and come
back to reality...
The LNG curse continues...this madness needs to stop, we have a
planet to protect...John Horgan is a kool aid drinker too....He's
about to announce more gifts to LNG Canada...LNG Canada is second
guessing the project and once again are asking for even more
taxpayer dole....Not only that."LNG is a bridge fuel too
far"......BC will only lose money on LNG Canada's $3 billion dollar
ONLY investment in BC....not $40 billion....
Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islanders protesting in the Marble Foyer at
Parliament House in Canberra.
About 100 Indigenous people and supporters called for an end
to fracking, coal mining and water sharing.
NITV, Feb. 13, 2019
Bradley Farrar had never been on a plane before he made the
journey from the Northern Territory to Canberra to join a sit-in
about environmental issues.
The clan leader of the Alawa tribe felt compelled to come and
represent his people, who he says will suffer if planned gas
fracking projects eventuate.
Me and my people, we live off the land. We get fish from the
water, we get kangaroo and turkey off the land seeds, we grind them
up and make flour, Mr Farrar sa...
Committee vice-president says the basketball tournament
in Prince Rupert shouldnt be about politics
Shannon Lough, Coast Mountain News, Feb. 11, 2019
The 60th All Native Basketball Tournament opening ceremonies
wasnt without controversy.
Entire teams dressed in T-shirts with Wetsuweten Strong printed
on the front and Unceded on the back. Some players held signs
reading We stand with Wetsuweten as they paraded through the
court.
Escalating opposition to the Coastal GasLink natural gas
pipeline on traditional Wetsuweten territory lead to RCMP arrests
and rallies across the country. Fourteen people were arrested on
Jan. 7 after attempting to block a forest service road needed by
Coastal GasLink workers in the pre-construction process.
The 670-kilometre pipeline is intended to move natural gas from
Dawson Creek to Kitimat, where the LNG Canada facility is being
built.
Real News Mashup is a compilation of
articles that I consider to be interesting, informative, or both.
Please feel free to share articles of your own in the comments.
Perhaps if we work together, we can remember that the world is
bigger than the propaganda storm.
Subscribe to the Unauthorized Disclosure podcast with this
free
trial offer.
Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK co-founder and co-author of War In
Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, and Ann Wright,
a CODEPINK member, retired Army colonel, and former State
Department diplomat, join Unauthorized Disclosure hosts Rania
Khalek and Kevin Gosztola to discuss the high stakes of a
protracted conflict in Ukraine.
Initially, President Joe Biden said the United States would not
ship tank to Ukraine. That line was crossed, and now Ukraine would
like fighter jets. Both Medea and Ann address the issue of
escalating with more and more weapons and military equipment and
crossing red lines that are drawn by officials.
Medea draws from her experience in antiwar organizing to share
how difficult it has been to advocate for a diplomatic settlement
and mobilize Americans to oppose fueling this war.
Later in the conversation, Ann, who lives in Hawaii, responds to
the prevalent idea that the conflict in Ukraine against Russia has
been a test run for a war over Taiwan against China. Hawaii is a US
military launchpad for Asia-Pacific exercises and actions intended
to curtail Chinas influence in the region.
The Chinese spy balloon incident shows just how rapidly a scenario
could develop that resulted in a devastating conflict.
This
article was funded by the Marvel Cooke Fellowship. Read
more about this reporting project and make a contribution to
fund our fellowship budget.
Joseph Wilson, who is incarcerated in a maximum security state
prison, believes COVID-19 worsened the existing crisis of
incarceration in the United States and amplified the urgency for
mutual aid practices in prison.
Such survival work, thoroughly theorized by
organizers like Dean Spade, encompasses projects that work to
meet peoples basic needs and educate them about why we dont have
the things we need in the first place.
During the height of the covid pandemic, the residents of prison
banded together to care for one another regardless of affiliation,
Wilson said. Men shared food. Some made masks. Everyone checked in
on their neighbors. It was a beautiful glow around a dark
cloud.
Lots of men lost family members. They were not able to go to
funerals. Some men died in prison and we, their friends and
neighbors, were not able to say goodbye in a meaningful way. Grief
was a bonding agent.
Joseph lost family to covid, too. I couldnt go to her funeral
and I was distraught, he said of his mothers death in 2020. Men,
some of whom Id never had more than simple conversations with,
signed sympathy cards, made meals, and checked in on my mental and
emotional well-being. These are the most relevant examples of
mutual aid for me.
Formal and informal mutual aid work beckons us to consider the
inequalities that shape our world, and often reveals that the very
systems responsible for addressing our social problems are also
responsible for producing crises.
We (James Jones and Caren Holmes) surveyed and interviewed
incarcerated comrades across the country and in the United Kingdom
in an effort to collectivize our knowledge of the robust mutual aid
practices happening inside prisons.
The people we spoke with shared experiences, stories, and
strategies, confirming thatdespite the best efforts of the criminal
punishment systemincarcerated people keep each other alive. Small
acts of care, enormous acts of courage, and
mundane forms of collective rebellion preserve life and
humanity inside prison walls.
We focus on four categories of mutual aid work: connections and
relationships, advocacy, material resources, and care work. For
each, we consider how conditions of falsely-produced scarcit...
In this episode of Judging Freedom, Judge Andrew
Napolitano speaks with Col. Doug
Macgregor about the real state of the dysfunctional
Ukrainian military, but also about the ability of the US or NATO to
prosecute, and win an actual ground war against a
formidable military opponent, which doesnt look great at the
moment. Watch:
After a five-mile and five-hour trek in the Hill Country of
Texas, I netted a dozen and a half butterflies and two diurnal
moths. Caught two butterflies in the net with one swipe. Watched
two metalmarks twirl and then couple together, the male struggling
while flying away and the female hanging underneath.
I missed several butterflies, caught some replicates, and
three escaped my fingers. The most abundant species were gulf
fritillaries (Agraulis vanillae) and common buckeyes
(Junonia coenia). Interstingly, the size of the gulf
fritillaries varied more than I expected, and they were all
males.
The best prize was a male goatweed leafwing (Anaea
andria); a beauty. It escaped my fingers as I reached for my
phone from my pocket to photograph it. A four letter word echoed
through the junipers.
This species favors muddy areas in and alongside forest roads.
They are different than many other butterflies because their
preferred food sources are tree resin and decaying fruit, although
they may also visit flowers for nectar.
On my return hike, a common buckeye taunted me by landing on the
dirt in front of me and then flying up to land another meter ahead.
It did this several times, while I told it outloud that I was not
interested in playing its game. It continued this game, and I then
said, Okay. Ill play once. The little bugger would wait till I was
close, facing me on the ground, then disappear before my net
covered it.
This continued again half a meter in front of me, facing me and
waiting. So I tried to net it again; it would disappear and I had
an empty net. Okay, you little bugger. Games on!
I finally caught it on the sixth try. I pulled it out of the
bottom of the net, wings folded, and asked it why the hell it
wanted to play, then put it on my arm where it sat for 30 seconds
opening and closing its wings, then flew away.
A beautiful day in the low 70s, sunny, and almost no wind. It
was a wonderful day on the trails. All the volunteers (five of us)
back at camp had happy hour when I returned, with margaritas,
peanuts, and popcorn.
That night I dreamt that I was using two nets at a time and
catching 4-6 butterflies in each net, had an assistant to remove
and ID them while I picked up two more nets and caught more
butterflies. Meanwhile, around us were people mingling at a party
drinking margaritas, laughing and wearing party hats.
I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I
awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or
am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man? Zhuangzi
Over the last four years while volunteering at the national
wildlife refuges around the country, the two animals that have
captured me, and for which I have devoted most of my time, are
birds and Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths). They chose and
adopted me, not I them. And we have developed an interesting
relationship.
My academic career before retiring was focused on plants, their
ecology and pathology, and later, pathopysiology and molecular cell
biology. My last ten years was spent in a university academic high
tower in Dallas, Texas. The typical routine of 14-16 hours of my
day in labs and offices, trains and traffic, slowly sucked the
life out of me.
I missed the field, the dirt, sweat, the odors of wet soil and
plants, and the sounds of all creatures other than Homo sapiens.
They were part of my spirit and soul and I was tired of doing time
in the machines. So I left it all behind.
My contribution to the refuges has involved assisting with the
biology programs: bird surveys, banding birds, developing and
implementing habitat surveys and management programs, training
interns, assisting with outreach education programs, and other
tasks that help fill in gaps in each refuges biology needs.
During one of my early commitments at a refuge, a butterfly flew
by me one late morning. Large red and black wings flapped three
times and then glided to alight on my arm. While looking at it, a
smile formed on my face, and the butterfly stayed on my arm, slowly
folding and unfolding its wings. Although possibly only 30 seconds,
it seemed much longer as we both had a conversation inside and
between our realities. That was my first intimate monarch butterfly
encounter.
Several people have participated in forming my relationship with
these animals. Especially a contract lepidopterist that conducts
butterfly and moth surveys all over the Pacific Northwest. I still
remember well our too-short and too-few excursions in the field
sharing our observations and stories of butterflies, and life in
general.
Another individual that also contributed at the beginning was a
refuge anthropologist. Her excitement over my discovery of a
relatively large population of breeding monarchs on the refuge
initiated a survey documenting not only presence but also at least
two generations of breeding monarchs on the refuge. After the
initial disbelief by other staff that monarchs actually ooccupied
and used the breeding resources (also said to be of rare presence)
on the refuge, she and I provided documentation of presence,
resource use and habitat value. That database was circulated to
regional resources for future use.
Since then, my commitment at every refuge I have worked at has
involved butterflies, es...
News Finds is a compilation of
articles that I consider to be interesting, informative, or both.
Please feel free to share non-political articles of your own in the
comments. Perhaps if we work together, we can combat the
overwhelming propaganda we are bombarded with by mainstream
media.
This post is a bit long, as Ive been
stacking up articles for a while.
Someone posted a video online of
youngest senator Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez dancing. Social media
exploded with outrage at the conservative outrage over her video. I
noticed, though, that I didnt actually see any of the conservative
outrage that was the supposed source of all of this leftist
outrage. Apparently, Im not the only one who
noticed.
Reading time: 6,815 words, 16 pages, 16 to 27 minutes.
If you havent read the first two introductory pages in
Part 1, I recommend you do so. Among the things I wrote was
that Selco is the most credible source for prepping and survival
advice that I have ever read. He survived the Balkan war of the 90s
and one year in a besieged city with no electricity, water, sewage,
food distribution, medical system, police, etc. I arranged Selcos
lessons in alphabetical order to make it easier to search and
review because he provides an abundance of experience.
SANITATION. Selco writes, Sanitary
conditions were bad or non existant and of course this contributed
to illnesses, for example diarrhea was always an issue. Human
waste contamination is a serious disease threat.
No running water or functioning toilets requires improvisation.
[Gerold comment:] For an SHTF portable toilet, I have a couple of 5
gal plastic buckets with lids (previously hydraulic fluid
containers) plus lots of garbage bags, kitty litter for odor
control (ash or lime works, too) and a spare toilet seat. Have a
dump, cover it with kitty litter/ash/lime to reduce the smell,
replace cover and put the bucket outside until needed again.
The emphasis is on dump as urine should be disposed of
otherwise. Consider jars with lids or the toilet as long as it
drains without water to flush.
U.S. Water Fluoridation: A Forced Experiment that Needs to
End
By the Childrens Health Defense Team
The United States stands almost entirely alone among developed nations in adding
industrial silicofluorides to its drinking waterimposing the
community-wide measure without informed consent. Globally, roughly
5% of the population consumes chemically fluoridated water, but
more people in the U.S. drink
fluoride-adulterated water than in all other countries combined.
Within the U.S., just under a third (30%) of local water supplies
are not fluoridated; these
municipalities have either held the practice at bay since fluoridations
inception or have won hard-fought battles to halt water
fluoridation.
Dozens of studies and reviewsincluding in
top-tier journals such as The Lancethave shown that fluoride
is neurotoxic and lowers childrens IQ.
The fluoride chemicals added to drinking water are unprocessed toxic waste
productscaptured pollutants from Floridas phosphate fertilizer
industry or unregulated chemical imports from China. The chemicals
undergo no purification before being dumped into drinking water and
often harbor significant levels of arsenic and other heavy metal
contamination; one researcher describes this unavoidable
contamination as a regulatory blind spot that
jeopardizes any safe use of fluoride additives.
Dozens of studies and reviewsincluding in top-tier journals such as
The Lancethave shown that
fluoride is neurotoxic and lowers childrens IQ.
Fluoride is also associated with a variety of other health risks in both children
and adults. However, U.S. officialdom persists in making hollow
claims that water fluoridation is safe and beneficial, choosing to
ignore even its own research!
Before dinosaurs and birds, other creatures like pterosaurs
lived on the Earth. They didnt have hair or feathers. But they had
surface filaments on their bodies that can be seen in their
fossils. The cellular structures are called pycnofibers. They had a
single empty cylinder inside each filament. Pycnofibers arose from
the epidermal cells, not from under the skin like hairs with their
hair follicles. Nor like feathers.
What amazes me, and which I find amusing, is that plants have
these structures, too. They are called trichomes, and are well
documented, including electron micrographs depicting the variety of
trichome structures and shapes. Yet, nowhere in the literature that
includes pycnofibers is any mention of trichomes! Perhaps
pycnofibers are the animal equivalent of the plant
trichome.
Trichomes can be inert with no chemical activity, or metabolic.
Some are single-celled, some are multi-celled. Some are metabolic,
some are secretory. Some are visible with the naked eye, others
require a microscope. There is even a trichom-ome now; the
investigation of all the proteins and pathways involved in
producing trichomes and their contents. Yet, the content of some
trichomes is only air. And I am pretty sure that some of you have
had encounters with trichomes.
A trichome encounter
Last summer, while conducting a waterfowl breeding survey, I had
an intimate
Transformative Cities is an opportunity for progressive local
governments, municipalist coalitions, social movements and civil
society organizations to popularize and share their experiences of
building solutions to our planets systemic economic, social,
political and ecological crisis. Kali Akuno spoke on behalf of
Cooperation Jackson at the 2018 Transformative Cities event which
was
Reading time: 4,903 words, 11 pages, 11 to 19 minutes.
If you havent read the first two introductory pages in
Part 1, I recommend you do so. Among the things I wrote was
that Selco is the most credible source for prepping and survival
advice that I have ever read. He survived the Balkan war of the 90s
and one year in a besieged city with no electricity, water, sewage,
food distribution, medical system, police, etc. I arranged Selcos
lessons in alphabetical order to make it easier to search and
review because Selco provides such an abundance of experience.
If you havent read them, here is
Part 2 C to E and
Part 3 G to L. It doesnt matter in what order you read them
because theyre arranged alphabetically by subject.
CONTENTS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER Part 4 M to
R
MARTIAL LAW
MEDIA
MEDICINE, 1st AID & INFECTIONS
MENTAL PREPARATION
MONEY
MORALITY
NEW GENERATIONS
NIGHTS
NORMALCY BIAS
PANIC
PARTIES & CELEBRATION
PETS
PLANS
POLICE
PRACTICE
PREPS & STOCKPILING
PTSD
REFLEX
RESOURCES
RIOTS
RUMORS
MARTIAL LAW will not be called martial law
because it will be called something more innocuous like fighting
terrorism or something patriotic, and most people will welcome it.
In Selcos case, martial law went through different stages. At one
point, people were ordered to keep their doors unlocked to make it
easier for the authorities to enter. Those who resisted simply had
their homes blown up. Troublemakers disappeared. And, after the
government completely collapsed, the gangs took over.
Selco writes, youll be labeled by the majority of folks as a
enemy or terrorist or lunatic or whatever because it is what
majority of folks are going to believe. In times like that, the
majority of folks will obey because of blind trust, fear, or simple
stupidity.
Many delusional Americans will find this hard to accept. Theyll
be among the first to die. Read the braggarts and blowhard comments
on Selcos article on
SHTFPlan. I will fight to the end! Yeah, sure buddy! Bang,
Bang! The end.
By the way, there wont be any outside threat or blue helmets.
The last time Amerika was attacked was in 1812, and according to
Selco, the UN couldnt run a lemonade stand.
Amerika has already been a police state for decades, but most of
the indoctrinated sheep dont realize it. At present, there are 17
heavi...
"Look, nobody's coming to save us. What can we do ourselves with
the resources and the skills that we have to transform our own
situation? ... We do see ourselves as on a project of trying to
build socialism from the bottom up, and worker coops being a
vehicle to do that based upon their democratic nature..."
Reading Time: 2,260 words, 6 pages, 5 to 9 minutes
We may be overdue for any number of disasters, but another
Spanish Flu pandemic is NOT one of them. Thats the good news. The
bad news is that medical malpractice caused that pandemic, not a
virulent flu virus. Western medicine continues treating symptoms
rather than disease, and thats what turned an ordinary flu virus
into a global Spanish Flu pandemic.
2018 marked the 100th anniversary of the Spanish Flu pandemic of
1918. The exact death toll is unknown, but estimates range
somewhere between 20 million and 100 million deaths worldwide. It
was considered the deadliest pandemic in modern history.
[Link]
At the turn of the 21st Century, there were reports
[Link] that scientists planned to exhume some of the frozen
victims of the Spanish Flu from Alaskan permafrost. Their research
determined to answer the headline question, What Made the
Spanish Flu so Deadly?[Link]
Scientists had hoped to learn why the Spanish Flu was so virulent
so they could prepare vaccines against that virus if it again
resurfaced.
And then, the silence was deafening. Cue the *Crickets.* I did
an internet search. The first ten results failed to determine that
the Spanish Flu virus was any more virulent than any other strain
of the flu. [Link],
[Link],
[link],
[Link], [Link],
[Link],
[Link], [Link],
[Link], [Link].
One of the articles by-lines is After years of sometimes
bizarre research, why are scientists still baffled by the 1918
Spanish flu? ...
Reading time: 4,280 words, 10 pages, 10 to 17 minutes.
If you havent read the first two introductory
pages in
Part 1, I recommend you do so. Among the things I wrote was
that Selco is the most credible source for prepping and survival
advice that I have ever read. He survived the Balkan war of the 90s
and one year in a besieged city with no electricity, water, sewage,
food distribution, medical system, police, etc. I arranged Selcos
lessons in alphabetical order to make it easier to search and
review because Selco provides such an abundance of experience.
GANGS
GEAR
GENDER ROLES
GOLD & SILVER
GRAY MAN
GRIEF
GUNS see FIREARMS Part 2
HATE
HEADING FOR THE HILLS
HEAT
HELPLESSNESS
HELP THE DYING
HEROES
HOME
HONOR
HOPE IS DANGEROUS
HYGIENE
INFECTIONS see MEDICINE Part 4
JUDGING
KEYBOARD WARRIORS
KILLING
KNIVES see WEAPONS Part 5
LAUNDRY
LEADERSHIP
LIGHT
LONE WOLF
GANGS were a major problem. After the SHTF,
gangs formed quickly. Ordinary people joined gangs because it was
easier to steal than acquire honestly. Gang leaders were the worst
kind of people. If they want what we have, theyll eventually get
it, so we need to be invisible or part of a group so tough and
well-armed it wasnt worth the gang attacking us. If you
expecting some kind of fair fight or honor in SHTF, forget it right
now. Selco also said that gangs even had their own
prisons, houses for fun, sometimes they abducted people for ransom,
sometimes just for fun, there was no rule.
At first, gangs will look for traditional valuables like money,
jewelry, etc. and if we make it difficult, theyll likely look
elsewhere. Later, once they realize the SHTF, theyll look for food,
water, ammo, etc. and theyll be more desperate and wont let
obstacles stop them. Well organized gangs will control the looting
and the food supply.
Gangs will go for the easiest targets so; we stand a better
chance of surviving if we make it difficult for them. This requires
manpower, guns, ammo, and training. The larger our group, the
better are our chances for survival. See LONE WOLF below.
Gangs, either drunk or high on drugs, usually attacked early in
the morning around 3:00 or 4:00. It was tough resisting 10 or 20
armed guys. Selco says if they overwhelmed you and you didnt offer
much resistance they might just beat you and take what they wanted.
Or, they could rape, torture and kill. You never knew how it would
turn out...
Sweden is back in the world Cup for the first time since 2006
when they made it to the round of 16 in Germany. There is such an
air of excitement among the Swedes as they look to go one better in
Russia, with heavy expectations lying on the shoulders of Coach
Janne Andersson and his charges.
Of course, they are far from being favourites, but something
about them makes it look like they could defy expectations and
emerge as the surprise team in the tournament. The 1958 runners up
have a convergence of factors that will make it interesting to see
the betting tips offered in the matches they play.
The Swedes are leading a charmed existence
For starters, Sweden already came from the position of underdogs
by beating Italy 1-0 on aggregate in the playoffs to book their
spot in this summers event.
Secondly, they have a promising squad that includes the likes of
John Guidetti and Sebastian Larsson and Marcus Berg. Recent call
ups include the likes of defender Joel Andersson in defence and
Erdal Rakip in midfield. The duo is more than likely to make the
squad that
will represent Sweden in Russia.
Swedens path is an equally interesting one. The team finds
itself in Group F alongside Germany, Mexico and Korea. The Germans
are the defending champions and outright favourites in the group.
Beyond that point, however, everything is thrown open. Any of the
three teams can grab that second spot if they play their cards
right.
If Sweden can force a draw against Germany then beat South
Korea, then they have an upper hand in their other group match.
Fluke performances or great strategy?
Andersson has proven to be a tactical genius going by the
strategies he employed in the path to the World Cup finals. In a
UEFA Group A where France and The Netherlands were considered
favourites, he opted to cede to neither of them fully. He managed
to beat France and hold the Dutch to a draw.
With the smaller teams, however, he was less than ruthless,
registering wins as big as 8-0. That tells much about the managers
approach to specific games and will be an important factor when
formulating betting tips. The teams c...
My podcast today starts with a wet
forecast, with several systems coming through before Saturday
morning (see total precipitation below). Over 5 inches in
many locations!
The temperatures will be cool enough that the
mountains will get LOTS of snow. Feet of the white stuff (see
below). I suspect our snowpack will be generally above
normal by next weekend.
In the second part of the podcast, I talk
about the two types of rain we experience. As I explain, most
of our rain starts as snow. But sometimes this is not
true. Details in the podcast!
To listen to my podcast, use
the link below or access it through your favorite podcast
service.
Violent extremist ideologies, rationales, and arguments
typically are made of up of six core assertions or rhetorical
elements. Generally, all six elements are necessary to persuade,
radicalize, and mobilize people to conduct violent attacks; the
loss or removal of one or more of the elements collapses the
argument and undercuts the appeal of the ideology.
Violent extremists use these six elements to argue that the
world has gone wrong because of the actions of an enemy who hates
or threatens what is good. Now is the time when violence is
necessary to prevent catastrophe. If we stay true to our righteous
course, we will prevail.
The chart below outlines each of these elements, what they
provide to a violent extremists rationale, and what the rationale
lacks once each element is removed.
ELEMENT
MESSAGE
WHAT THE ELEMENT DOES
ELEMENT IS NECESSARY BECAUSE
Decline
The world has gone wrong
Interprets someones world as decimated or in jeopardy.
Without Decline, the violent extremist sees no need to rescue
their world.
Two Camps
because of the actions of an enemy who hates or threatens what
is good.
Identifies and demonizes an enemy who is to blame for the
decline and depicts those who resist that enemy as heroic.
Without Two Camps, there is no enemy to combat.
Crisis Point
Now is the time
Creates a sense of panic that action must be taken now to save
that world, and says all one holds dear now hangs in the
balance.
Without Crisis Point, there is no sense that immediate action
is required.
Method
when violence is necessary to prevent catastrophe.
Provides the appropriateeven heroicway to resist.
Without Method, there is no clearly defined way to resist the
enemy.
Danger of Contamination
If we stay true to our righteous course
Prevents compromise or moderation of violent extremist views by
depicting them as treason or complicity with the enemy or dangerous
to the movements success, the salvation of the world, or ones own
soul.
Without Danger of Contamination, dialogue and compromise with
perceived enemies is allowable to reach goals.
Reward
we will prevail.
Provides a motivating image of victory or paradise for the
movement or individual.
(U//FOUO) A study of individuals who disengaged from violent
movements concludes that tailored approaches to countering violent
extremism (CVE) at key turning points in the disengagement process
can help facilitate disengagement. CVE efforts will be most
effective after an individual experiences initial doubts about
involvement in violent extremist activities. From that point in the
process, an effective disengagement strategy needs to consider the
individuals role within the group, vulnerabilities in that role,
his or her support system, and level of commitment to violent
extremism.
(U //FOUOl Disengagement is a complex process in which an
individual typically goes through five stages, from harboring
initial doubts to seeking out and weighing alternatives to making a
decision to leave a group. Once such a decision is made, an
individual needs to exit the group, define new behaviors and roles,
and become resocialized. This is a non-linear process driven by a
number of factors-societal, organizational, social, and personal.
An individual may take any length of time to progress through each
stage, may remain at any one stage for a length of time, may move
back and forth between each stage before proceeding to the next, or
may skip some stages entirely. In this graphic, we highlight only
those efforts that facilitate the disengagement process.
(U) Experiencing Common Catalysts for Disengaging from Violent
Extremism
(U//FOUO) The individual experiences a disconnect between what
he envisioned to be a violent extremists role and what actually
occurs. This feeling commonly is caused by the individual :
(U//FOUO) Objecting to violence;
(U//FOUO) Recognizing inconsistencies in ideology;
(U//FOUO) Feeling burned out or exhausted; and/or
(U//FOUO) Being threatened by disruption or prosecution of the
violent extremist or his associates.
(U) CVE Efforts:
(U//FOUO) Law enforcement pressure on the individual or his
extremist associates can spark initial doubts, but continued lawful
pressure, monitoring, and support from nonviolent individuals will
be needed. CVE efforts are likely to be effective after an
individual experiences initial doubts by reinforcing those doubts,
and helping the individual rethink his commitment to violence,
develop nonviolent response patterns, and sustain that commitment
for the long term.
(U) Reinforcing Initial Doubts to Find Alternatives
(U//FOUO) The individual has experiences that reinforce his
doubts, particularly by receiving support from others who are aware
of these feelings and who support the individuals
disengagement.
(U) CVE Efforts:
(U//FOUO) Supportive family members and friends can reinforce
the extremists doubts and help the individual start to progress
through the disengagement process.
(U) Deliberating Options to Finalize Decision to Leave
China has long known about nuclear high-altitude electromagnetic
pulse (HEMP) and invested in protecting military forces and
critical infrastructures from HEMP and other nuclear weapon effects
during the Cold War, and continuing today. China has HEMP
simulators and defensive and offensive programs that are almost
certainly more robust than any in the United States. Chinas
military doctrine regards nuclear HEMP attack as an extension of
information or cyber warfare, and deserving highest priority as the
most likely kind of future warfare.
Chinese military writings are replete with references to making
HEMP attacks against the United States as a means of prevailing in
war. The foremost Peoples Liberation Army textbook on information
warfare, Shen Weiguangs World War, the Third World WarTotal
Information Warfare, explicitly calls upon China to be prepared to
exploit HEMP offensivelyand to defend against it:
With their massive destructiveness, long-range nuclear weapons
have combined with highly sophisticated information technology and
information warfare under nuclear deterrence.Information war and
traditional war have one thing in common, namely that the country
which possesses the critical weapons such as atomic bombs will have
first strike and second-strike retaliation capabilities.As soon as
its computer networks come under attack and are destroyed, the
country will slip into a state of paralysis and the lives of its
people will ground to a halt. Therefore, China should focus on
measures to counter computer viruses, nuclear electromagnetic
pulseand quickly achieve breakthroughs in those technologies in
order to equip China without delay with equivalent deterrence that
will enable it to stand up to the military powers in the
information age and neutralize and check the deterrence of Western
powers, including the United States.
Chinas military doctrine closely associates cyber-attacks with
nuclear HEMP attack, as part of a combined operation in what they
call Total Information Warfare. Cyber bugs and hacking are the tip
of the spear, the functional equivalent of scouts and sappers who
do reconnaissance and secretly prepare the beaches for the arrival
of D-Day, or like the motorcycle troops that preceded the heavy
armored divisions in Germanys Blitzkrieg.
HEMP appears to be the key to victory in Chinas military
doctrine against U.S. aircraft carriers and Taiwan. For example,
from the official newspaper of the Shanghai Communist Party Central
Committee:
The weak points of a modern aircraft carrier are: 1) As a big
target, the fleet is easy for a satellite to reconnoiter and locate
it, and for missiles to conduct saturation attacks; 2) A high
degree of electronization is like an Achilles heel for an aircraft
carrier fleet, which relies heavily on electronic equipment as its
central nervous system. These two characteristics determin...
In this episode of Judging Freedom, Judge Andrew
Napolitano speaks to former international weapons
inspector Scott Ritter, about the real prospects
of any Ukrainian victory or NATO victory against Russia which seems
to be slim and none. Watch:
Our
weekly documentary film courtesy of the editorial team at
21WIRE.
This important film is about one of the most important, and
least publicized issues facing the human species today: the toxic
threat to the male reproductive system. We are conducting a vast
toxicological experiment in which our children and our childrens
children are the experimental subjects. Dr. Herbert Needleman
chronicles how over the last few decades have seen a steady and
dramatic increase in the incidence of boys and young men suffering
from genital deformities, low sperm counts, and even worse: sperm
abnormalities and testicular cancer. At the same time, boys are now
far more at risk of suffering from ADHD, autism, Tourette Syndrome,
cerebral palsy, and dyslexia. The film takes a close and disturbing
look at what many doctors and researchers now suspect is
responsible for many of these problems: a class of common chemicals
that are now ubiquitous in our world. They are found in every
product you can possibly imagine plastic bottles, shampoo,
suglasses, processed food, drinks, carpet, synthetic fabric and
more. It is a process called hormone mimicking and its threatening
the survival of life on the planet Earth. But is anyone paying
attention? Watch:
Run time: 44 min
Written and directed by Marc De Guerre
Production: Red Apple Entertainment (2008) in association with the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Because fluoride overdose is a
new concern, Zohoori and Maguire in the British Dental
Journal (Feb
23, 2018) suggest that manufacturers use
non-fluoridated water in food processing and that food and beverage
labels include fluoride content. In February 2018, US researchers
reported, "The continued increase in
fluorosis rates in the U.S. indicates that additional measures need
to be implemented to reduce its prevalence."
Fluoride, touted as decay
preventive, is added to
most US water supplies. This
means fluoride is also flowing into foods and beverages made with
that water. The consequences - white spotted, yellow, brown and/or
pitted teeth (fluorosis) the outward manifestation of fluoride
overdose. Up to 60% of US adolescents are so
afflicted.
Fluoride is also absorbed into
the bloodstream via topical application e.g. toothpaste, varnish,
gels and also found naturally in ocean fish, tea and
fluoride-containing pesticide residues on produce.
[C]ontrolling fluoride ingestion
has regained the attention of researchers around the world due to
the reported rise in the prevalence of dental fluorosis in both
fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas, write Zohoori and Maguire.
Even the World Health Organization is concerned, they
report.
Reading time: 4,990 words, 11 pages, 12 to 19 minutes.
If you havent read the first two introductory pages in
Part 1, I recommend you do so. Among the things I wrote was
that Selco is the most credible source for prepping and survival
advice that I have ever read. He survived the Balkan war of the 90s
and one year in a besieged city with no electricity, water, sewage,
food distribution, medical system, police, etc. I arranged Selcos
lessons in alphabetical order to make it easier to search and
review because Selco provides such an abundance of experience.
CONTENTS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER C to E
CHANGING SHTF
CHARITY
CHILDREN
CITY vs. RURAL
CLEANLINESS
CLOTHING
COMMUNICATION
COOPERATION
CORRUPTION
DANGER SIGNS
DARKNESS
DEATH
DECLINE BEFORE COLLAPSE
DISPOSABLE ITEMS
DRUGS
DURATION
EMOTIONS
EMULATE
ETIQUETTE
EVASION
EVERY DAY CARRY (EDC) ITEMS
EVIL
EXPERTS
FAITH
FEAR
FEARFULNESS or BOLDNESS?
FIRE
FIREARMS. See WEAPONS in Part 5.
FOOD
FORAGING
CHANGING SHTF. Selco writes that at the
beginning of SHTF People on street were practicing something
like fun with weapon, like shooting and having fun, so nothing like
real reasons for attack or self defense. Later when folks realized
that it is becoming easy to get killed, and hard to survive, more
people tried to stay put and move out of way of other
folks.
He also writes, Lack of knowledge in the beginning days made
people do stupid things, so people were killed in great numbers
simply because they did not have clue about weapon and combat, so
they use it a lot, and act like they had super powers.
Former friends become enemies, and old enemies become friends.
Selco writes, Sides were always changing when it comes to
Survival you will fight to get what you need or protect what you
have from whoever
Before SHTF, Selco recommends observing and identifying what
could change our plans after SHTF. We may be unable to cross a
bridge for many reasons, so we need an alternate method of
crossing. A prison we daily drive past might become a dangerous
area after SHTF as will an army base or police station.
He also talks about the constant change of the SHTF. He writes,
SHTF has at its core that fluidity of the situation and it can
crush all your preparing or at least shock you if you do not count
on it in your preps That fluidity means that the situation and
value and importance of all your preps, solutions and plans might
change all the time, and many times during the SHTF. In other
words, no plan is bullet-proof, so we must prepare to be flexible
in our preps and plans.
Reading time: 4,810 words, 10 pages, 11 to 18 minutes.
Selco Begovic is the most credible source for prepping and
survival advice that I have ever read. He survived the Balkan war
of the 90s and one year in a besieged city with no electricity,
water, sewage, food distribution, medical system, police, etc. As
well, they experienced a brutal civil war, shelling, and snipers.
Unlike many keyboard warriors, he tells us what works and what
doesnt under the harshest conditions. Throughout his articles,
Selco addresses the mental side of everything because that is the
foundation for survival when the S**t Hits The Fan.
(SHTF)
My original purpose in writing these Coles Notes of Selcos 200
articles was simply for my own use. Im a slow learner. It forced me
to study his advice carefully and put them into my own words to
help remember the information. Then a friend suggested I share
them.
After reading about a quarter of Selcos almost 200 articles, I
felt drained and depressed, so I stopped for a few weeks. However,
I soldiered on because I knew it would train me mentally and help
prepare me for the brutality of the real thing if and when it
happens.
I wrote 56 pages of notes in total. No one will read that many
all at once, nor do I recommend it. I suggest reading them in
bite-size amounts, so youre not tempted to slit your wrists. I
divided them into five parts. This is Part 1.
I arranged Selcos lessons in alphabetical order to make it
easier to search and review because Selco provides such an
abundance of experience. However, doing this loses the
chronological order, and as a result, the narrative may seem
disjointed. Get used to it. Thats a fraction of what our minds will
endure in an actual SHTF. Consider this part of your mental
training.
If you think it cant happen here then, in his own words
(italicized throughout my articles) are the things that Selco
experienced. How many do you recognize? Things that make differences between people are more and more
problematic (race, religion, political opinion).
Polarization is getting obviously stronger.
People want to come to your country, but they do not want to
assimilate or contribute to greater good. They want to preserve
their way of life which is often absolutely contradictory to the
way that your country (society) works.
The political way of solving those problems often fails, because,
in essence, those problems are hard to solve in a democratic way
(in the spirit of democracy).
Your freedoms are shrinking as a result of that.
Calls for radical solutions for the problems are stronger and
stronger.
The media is absolutely working a dirty job, and it is hard to find
out what is the truth anymore.
As you can see, English is not Selcos first language. You can
almost hear his accent when you read him. I included some of his
readers c...
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span.s1 {font-kerning: none} Resist and Build, Fight and Build,
Oppose and Propose, Resist and Insist whatever the wording, there
is great convergence about the need to connect these dimensions.
Even if the lines are a bit blurry, we can broadly distinguish
between
A former supervisor at the Regional Juvenile Detention Center in
Casper will serve six months in jail followed five years of
probation after admitting that he groped a female inmate
A federal grand jury has indicted a Camden County police officer
who was caught on video punching a man 12 times in the head after
stopping him on a Camden
A Toronto police officer who ate a marijuana-laced chocolate bar
seized in a pot shop raid has pleaded guilty to attempting to
obstruct justice. Const. Vittorio Dominelli says he is
MELBOURNE, Fla. A Melbourne officer is off the job after the
citys SWAT team raided the wrong house. Melbourne police Detective
Jonathan Hawk submitted his resignation at the end
The former Michigan State Police trooper charged in the death of
a teenage ATV rider who crashed into a parked truck seconds after
being Tased will go back on trial
MURFREESBORO, Tenn A former sheriffs lieutenant in Rutherford
County has been arrested after he was indicted on allegations of
theft and misconduct. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said
Jason
WASHINGTON Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions has drastically
limited the ability of federal law enforcement officials to use
court-enforced agreements to overhaul local police departments
accused of abuses and
In the morning of March 25, 2017, Elliott Van Fleet was riding
his motorcycle westbound on 19th Street in Uptown Oakland. He was
wearing a helmet and obeying all laws.
An officer with the Salt Lake City Police Department was
arrested for child pornography charges Wednesday night. Officer
Jonathan Dew was booked into the Davis County Jail just before
8
Tennessee Nashville voted resoundingly on Tuesday to create a
citizen board to review allegations of police misconduct, capping a
grassroots campaign that first used a petition drive to get
A well-done article draws complaints
from both sides of an issue covered. But fluoridation proponents
are enthralled with a recent viral NBC News article which appears
to be influenced (or partially written) by the fluoridation lobbys
PR company. It is one-sided slanderous propaganda piece that is
misguided and, too often, just plain wrong.
Conspiracy theory
attackers - hold your fire. This email exchange on twitter
raises serious concerns. (Protagonists in
this story: Johnny Johnson is the
President of a fluoridation advocacy group
Liz Shawen is a PR
representative of the Moore Agency which counts the Florida Dental
Association as one of its clients. @echuckles is the twitter
account of Elizabeth Chuck who, without a science background,
"wrote" the NBC News fluoridation article.)
Reading time: 1,650 words, 4 pages, 4 to 7 minutes.
Theres been so much U.S. political theatre lately (Stormy
Daniels, Kavanaugh confirmation, Mid-term elections, etc.) that
I
I roll my eyes when people advocate shopping at local stores
rather than the big box stores. They decry the disappearance of the
neighborhood store the Mom & Pop Shop supposedly killed by the
big box stores. They never consider that in many cases the local
store deserved to go out of business.
Luddites were 19th Century workers who tried to destroy
machinery which automated mundane manual labor. [Link] One
such modern Luddite with a vituperative loathing of big box stores
is the writer, James Howard
Kunstler. Hes a wordsmith extraordinaire, and I
love his turns of phrase, but he thinks with his heart, not his
brain. Correct me if Im wrong, but one pumps blood; the other
thinks. Not surprising, hes a Socialist who
admits to voting for Obama not once, but twice. Hes what Nassim
Taleb calls an IYI (Intellectual Yet Idiot.)
[Link]
Theres an old saying; if youre a conservative at age 20, you
have no heart. If youre still a socialist at 40, you have no
brain.
Big box stores give us lower prices and a greater selection of
merchandise. However, the Socialists tell us that the resulting low
wages and part-time work in the retail sector do not make a living
wage.
Thats a Straw
Man Fallacy. Its true; they dont provide living wages, but
they were never intended to do so. What they dont admit is that low
wages and part-time work in the retail sector rarely produced a
living wage.
I remember as a high school student working part-time at The
Hudsons Bay Company (HBC) store half a century ago in the 1960s. I
made $1.05 an hour. Their employees werent exactly millionaires. n
fact, eEven full-time HBC employees were never considered Middle
Class, few were sole income-earners and those who were struggled to
make ends meet. In other words, little has changed since the
introduction of big box stores. The big box stores arent the demons
the Socialist would have you believe.
Things change. Get used to it. Many of those extinct Mom &
Pop Shops were dinosaurs that needed to go out of business. Perhaps
not all of them, but undoubtedly many deserved to die. Let me
explain.
Years ago, I occasionally flew to Toronto to deliver government
tender submissions because couriers wouldnt guarantee the delivery
time of time-sen...
While I agree he had to be removed, he did give the fake
English pub a little authenticity. After all, whats more
quintessentially British than having your steak and kidney pie and
stout interrupted by a drunk and unruly patron flailing with a dumb
improvised weapon while getting ejected from the
premises?
From the investigation which has been made, it is the opinion
of the writer that this case is not suitable for prosecution,
assistant state attorney Aseal Morghem wrote in a court filing, and
the court case was closed. He got off lightly, and quite
probably, whitely.
There has been a lot of media coverage about
the Chinese balloon that has been flying over the U.S., and which
was shot down today.
Was it a spy balloon deliberately flown
over the U.S., or was it an errant weather/research
balloon?
Meteorologists with modern analysis tools can
help answer the question.
The balloon was
initially discovered at around 60,000 ft above Billings,
Montana.
A key issue was
whether this balloon was being controlled actively by China or
drifting with the winds as claimed by Chinese
authorities.
So understanding the
path taken by the balloon is important. Could this have
happened by "accident"?
NOAA has a
wonderful system called Hyplit that allows one to calculate air
trajectories over time. (An air trajectory is the
three-dimensional path of an air parcel over time). You can
think of an air parce...
January 6 has become a high holy day for most of
liberal America. From the start, they refuse to describe it as what
it was: a protest-turned-riot that was predictably subdued in 3
hours by the most powerful and militarized government in human
history. Instead, they needed it to be something far more dramatic
and terrifying, something that would empower the incoming Biden
administration with virtually limitless power to act against their
political enemies.
They turned this riot into an insurrection an attempted Coup
and they did so by ratifying one blatant lie and fabrication after
the next, ones they continue through this very day the two-year
anniversary of this sacred moment to assert. When you go back and
document and review all the lies they told, how they told them, and
how they keep telling them, it becomes very clear that the greatest
danger from that day is not the 1,000 or so Facebook warriors who
got off their couch for the first time in months to go protest, but
instead, the union of powerful institutions, led by the nations
largest media corporations, who demonstrated yet again that there
is literally no limit to their willingness to lie, fabricate and
invent stories when doing so advances their deeply ideological and
partisan interests. Were about to review that, and we invite you to
join us as we do so. Watch:
In this episode of the Patrick Henningsen Show on TNT Radio
which aired on January 31, 2023, Patrick talks with 21WIRE writer
Blake
Lovewell on the link between mainstream and BBC
propaganda and the creeping rise in food and energy costs. Also, we
are now seeing the global recession indicators reminiscent of the
economic crash between WWI and WWII. Is there a looming nuclear
war, or can modern man escape from our civilizations proverbial
Wheel of Samsara? Listen:
TUNE-IN
LIVE to TNT RADIO for the Patrick Henningsen Show every MON-FRI at
11AM-1PM (NEW YORK) | 4PM-6PM (LONDON) | 2AM-4AM
(BRISBANE): https://tntradio.live
New study reveals that masks are completely useless, and
make no difference regarding virus transmission.
Researchers in gold standard collaboration struggle to find
benefit from surgical over no masks, or N95 respirators over
surgical. Findings buoy warnings by PPE expert that even perfect
rate of capture by N95s cant stop COVID transmission.
An international research collaboration that reviewed
several dozen rigorous studies of physical interventions against
influenza and COVID-19 through last year failed to find even a
modest effect on infection or illness rates from masks of all
qualities.
Published in the peer-reviewed Cochrane
Database of Systematic Reviews, run by the British
evidence-based medicine charity Cochrane, the study raises new
doubts about ongoing mask mandates and public health
recommendations worldwide.
Masks are still required in educational institutions in
Democratic strongholds such as New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts,
Pennsylvania, Washington and California, according to
the Daily
Mail. Boston Public Schools denied its temporary
masking protocol in ea...
An endorsement from notorious climate alarmist exaggerator Dr.
David Suzuki at this critically important time for our planet, is
not going to help cornered Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps now.
Shell have a difficult time navigating and pivoting as needed
out of her lies, as chronicled by Adam Sterling at CFAX News 1070
AM Radio.
Nor will David Fosters Hollywood lustre help Mike the
self-described lobbyist.
Five More Fluoride-Condemning
Studies are Published When Is It Enough?
New York October 15, 2018 -- Five new
published studies support previous research linking fluoride to
thyroid disease; ADHD; overdosing formula-fed infants and bias in
government reports. Another reveals pregnant Canadians have higher
urine fluoride levels in fluoridated vs. non-fluoridated areas
which previous studies linked to offsprings lower IQ, reports New
York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation, Inc.
(NYSCOF).
1) Fluoride exposure coupled with iodine deficiency is
linked to thyroid disease, report
researchers in Environment International (December 2018).
They report that this is the first human population-based
examination of chronic low-level fluoride exposure on thyroid
function that considers residents iodine status.
I have grave concerns about the health effects of
fluoride exposure,
said lead author Ashley Malin. And not just from my
study but the other studies that have come out
in recent years, (quoted from Environmental Health News).
2) Higher levels of fluoride exposure during
pregnancy we...
In a move almost 20 years in the
making, Japan is finally going to legalize gambling. A law enacted
on 20th July made it legal for casinos to be built in the long
untapped market of the mainland. The move, however, was met with a
lot of opposition from factions that believed this
would cause wagering addiction among members of the public. Polls
conducted by media organizations showed the public to be against
the building of such establishments. 53% of
respondents interviewed in the polls are of the opinion that the
country is better off without casinos. A no-confidence motion was
brought up to prevent the passing of the bill but things did go in
favor of supporters of the bill.
A bill similar to it was passed
earlier in late 2016 and it got the ball rolling. The law approved
the construction of three Las Vegas styled casinos even though the
specific locations were not named.
More about the bill
The piece of legislation lays out a
framework that would guide the operation of casinos once they are
set up. The bill itself is named the Integrated Resorts (IR) bill
while the earlier legislation of 2016 was known as the
Integrated-Resort Promotion Law. The choice of name for the
bill
is no surprise as it is meant to mask the gambling
aspect.
The legislation allows for three
casino licenses which are going to be issued with a 30% tax for
gaming. This shall be paid to the central government and local
governments. The bill also stipulates the amount of casino floor
allowed for every resort and has it at 3% of all total resort floor
space.
Renowned casino operators such as
MGM Resorts International, Las Vegas Sands, Hard Rock International
and Caesars Entertainment have shown interest in the market. With a
track record of running establishments with noteworthy success,
this would be another challenge that all the big names are excited
to take on.
According to the bill, international
visitors will enjoy free entry into the casinos; however, locals
will be charged a $50 tax, which amounts to 6,000 yen. The number
of visits to such establishments has also been capped at three per
week and ten per month for locals.
The last frontier for gambling
entities
Every major gambling market in the
world has been exploited by major gambling establishments all
through the world. Japan was the next big potential market that
remained untapped. According to expert forecasting, the market has
the potential to gross 25 billion dollars in a year once everything
is running smoothly. Though this is a meager sum compared to the 70
billion a
year gross income from the Las Vegas scene, it is an
exciting...
Re: Summer drought deals devastating loss to western red
cedar, B.C.s official tree Sept. 12; Logging a bigger threat than
drought, letter, Sept. 13.
This front page article is nothing more than fake news
based on junk science, and the comment letter from a Yukon writer
is not much better.
Parksville municipal staff say that summer droughts
over the past few years put severe stress on most of the trees in
our urban forests, with cedars the most susceptible.
No scientific information is provided to explain what
is causing the drought: at this time, cedar trees look quite ugly
as the dead brown scale-like leaves hang on the trees, leaving the
silver ghosts to populate our forests.
Silver ghosts?
City of Nanaimo urban forestry co-ordinator Patrick
McIntosh says the impact of dry weather has been especially
noticeable in western red cedar, which is slowly, slowy dying out
it is sort of migrating north because they cant handle the
hot, dry summers here any more.
Sort of migrating north?
In Victoria, a research scientist at the Pacific
Forestry Centre, Cosmin Filipescu, says: I think it is too early to
tell whether
to be concerned about the future of the wetern red
cedar.
Too early to tell?
Scientists will have to do better than this, as
longstanding obvious aerosol geo-engineering over the skies of the
Capital Regional District might provide more plausible evidence of
why many species of trees are dying on Vancouver Island.
Do you still trust SNOPES? I posted this attached photo to
Facebook. SNOPES labeles it Mixed (both true & false) or in
this case Miscaptioned insofar it wasnt during Hurricane Florence
but during Hurricane Ike. They couldnt very well call it False
because, after all, here are the photos to prove the medias
lies.
BTW to show you how the Deep States minions support one another,
after posting it on Facebook, Facebook immediately added this
SNOPES link as a Related Article as if Im stupid enough to fall for
it. [Link]
SNOPES is similar to the ass media. If they report it, its not
important. If it is important, they ignore it. If they cant deny
it, they try to obfuscate it.
Gerold
Sept. 17, 2018
Your comments are welcome!
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This is curious language and one is left to wonder what the
Victoria Mayor meant in speaking of reconciliation as complex a
learning process for all, needing to be navigated.
???
IS GLOBALIST MAYOR HELPS TRYING TO SIGNAL SOMETHING ELSE
VIRTUOUS?
Yet again
About a week ago, I checked out a curious book that I found in
the Cook Street Village Little Free Library.
Navigating Complexity, was the title of this paperback written
by Arthur Battram, and published by the Industrial Society in
1999.
Subhead: The Essential Guide to Complexity Theory in Business
and Management.
There is a stylized colour illustration of the Globe, surrounded
by flying computers, about to roll down into the Edge of Chaos.
This is a treasure trove of Globalist chaotic complex management
lingo, which inadvertently shows clearly that the new economy is
based on a number of false old Malthusian philosophies and suspect
new Globalist pseudo sciences, such as:
COMPLEXITY THEORY, EVOLUTION, ARTIFICIAL LIFE, ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE, GENETICS, IMMUNOLOGY, ETC.
This Battram paperback book is underlined as a student would
have done, different coloured ink for each reading, sometimes only
orange, sometimes only yellow, sometimes both.
Ive never seen anything like it and somehow I think that the
circumstances of my having found this book are nothing short of
miraculous, as I certainly dont believe in chaos theory nor
luck.
After I read the whole darned thing, I will likely give it to
the most reasonable Victoria Mayoral candidate, in the hopes that
it might prove somehow to have been Mayor Helps own copy and that
by analyzing the markings in this weird book, we may better figure
out what makes our Globalist Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps tick the way
she does
Working on that conspiratorial premise, I also wonder why the
book was left in that particular free library?
I tend to agree with Ray Davies of the Kinks, that it is crazy
to not be paranoid these days.
Ray said something like that in the 60s I am almost 66 now.
By the way, the beautiful little library box is to be found near
the Prima Strada pizzeria, across Cook from Oxford Foods.
I drop off some of my embarrassing old Globalist propaganda
there from time to timeand pick up the latest copies of The Epoch
Times and the New Agora from other boxes nearby.
Whether youre a handyman (handy-person?) a survivalist or a
prepper, the end of August is duct tape buying season if you live
in an area with freezing winter temperatures.
Duct tape deteriorates after it has frozen and thawed. It loses
its adhesion, and although it will stick somewhat, it will
gradually come apart.
When you buy duct tape in winter or spring, it will likely have
been transported to the store in an unheated tractor-trailer which
means it was frozen. Purchasing duct tape at the end of summer
ensures that even though it may have been in inventory for a couple
of months, its unlikely to have been frozen during its journey to
store shelves.
I couldnt live without duct tape, so I avoid buying it if it was
likely frozen.
Mount Washington, New Hampshire is well known
to most meteorologists.
A mountain-top weather station there is famous
for possessing the highest near-surface wind speed ever recorded in
the U.S.: 231 mph.
But today, the Mount Washington Observatory
has broken another record: the lowest windchill
temperature ever recorded in the U.S.
Reminder: windchill temperature combines
wind and temperature to provide a measure of how much heat you
are losing when you are outside. Lower windchill
temperature means a faster loss of heat from your skin.
If there is no wind, temperature and windchill
temperature are the same. But as wind speed increases, the
windchill temperature drops below the effective temperature, since
wind increases the loss of heat from your skin.
The previous U.S. windchill record was -100F
observed at McGrath Alaska. That record has now been replaced
by -107F at Mount Washington today, the combination of a
temperature of -46F and windspeed of 95 mph (see below)
The latest exposure in the Twitter Files shows how a US
government funded Anti-Russian disinformation think thank placed
Patrick Henningsen and his @21WIRE Twitter account on a
blacklist of Russian Bot account marked for censorship. How deep
does this rabbit hole go? Meanwhile, the EU wants to copy Bidens
green energy failures, and print up more Euros to supposedly combat
inflation. What could possibly go wrong? Also, the West are working
hard to try and destabilize Iran. Will they succeed? All this and
more.
Hosts Mike
Robinson and Patrick
Henningsen, with Vanessa
Beeley with the end of week news
round-up. Watch:
Tune into the UKs premier alternative media news
program with hosts Mike Robinson, Brian Gerrish, Patrick
Henningsen, David Scott and Alex Thomson. Watch the UK Column News
LIVE every Monday, Wednesday & Friday at 1pm UK time at
www.ukcolumn.org/live or watch live
on Rumble.
Also, watch all news programs later at
their archive here.
Using her FBI
intellligence analyst skills, Melissa Gallico identifies fluoride
as the root cause of acne in many individuals whose physicians are
ignorant of the connection in her new book, "How
Toxic Water Is Affecting Your Health and What You Can Do About
It." which is carefully scientifically
referenced. A video interview of Melissa can
be seen here She shares her
personal 20-year struggle with severe cystic acne which finally
disappeared after she pinpointed fluoride as the protagonist in her
story. Usual acne suspects
- from diet to dirty pillowcases, hormones or genetics have not
been able to explain the majority of acne cases or why chronic acne
is on the rise. She explalins how
her travels around the world and her intelligence work helped her
identify exactly what was causing her treatment resistent flare ups
- fluoridated water, foods, dental products, and the systemic build
up of chilhood fluoride treatments were the culprits. Evidence that
individuals can be allergic to or hypersensitive of fluoride has
existed since the begining of the last century; but is mostly
ignored or unknown by those who promote water
fluoridation. Fluoride
hypersensitivity (some would call a toxic reaction) manifests as
skin conditions in some. It's rarely diagnosed by physicians or
dentists who have never been trained to look for it. Acne sufferers have
already written Melissa telling her their skin eruptions
disappeared after excluding fluoride from their
diets. More
examples:
We are proud to announce
the birth of our new book baby, SPYCRAFT:
Essentials.
What do the main intelligence agencies do and where do they
operate? How do they recruit personnel? What are real life honey
pots and sleeper agents? What about truth serums and enhanced
interrogations? And what are the most common foibles of popular spy
fiction?
With the voice of over forty years of
experience in the Intelligence Community, Bayard & Holmes
answer these questions and share information on espionage history,
firearms of spycraft, tradecraft techniques, and the personalities
and personal challenges of the men and women behind the
myths.
Though crafted with advice and
specific tips for writers, SPYCRAFT: Essentials is for
anyone who wants to learn more about the inner workings of the
Shadow World.
For any author, SPYCRAFT:
Essentials is the new bible for crafting stories of espionage.
Its also perfect for anyone who wants to know the lengths nations
will go to keep or steal secrets and the methods they will use to
do so. This is a bombshell of a book.
~ James
Rollins New York Times Bestselling Author of The
Demon Crown
Opdivo is a very powerful immunotherapy drug extending many
peoples lives. It is also a very dangerous drug that has known
life-threatening side effects that often occur, and require
immediate intervention when they do. I am a lung cancer patient and
I am highly involved in designing my own treatments. I received
Opdivo (nivolumab) in conjunction with radiation, which led to
pneumonitis, a known and extremely dangerous adverse effect.
This video centers on a phone call I made to the manufacturer to
attempt to talk to emergency adverse reaction support staff, and
get information regarding the best treatment option for my specific
situation. As a global pharmaceutical giant and the developer of
Opdivo, Bristol-Myers Squibb should have the best information on
side effect mitigation. To my shock and surprise, they have NO
EMERGENCY SUPPORT, and this video includes the shocking recording
of my conversation with a senior staff member.
My purpose here is to shame BMS into providing emergency support
information to patients and doctors dealing with known
life-threatening results from the use of their product. Im looking
for attention that will shame them into DOING THE RIGHT THING. I
feel that BMS has a least a moral obligation if not a legal
responsibility to provide technical support in order to reduce
suffering and death related to the use of their products. I am
asking for your support. Please act to help to make this
happen.
A discussion in Worcester, MA and that focused on the Jackson
Rising book, the Jackson-Kush Plan, and the formation of
Cooperation Jackson is an emerging network of cooperatives and
grassroots institutions that aim to build a "solidarity
economy."
This event was Co-sponsored by Urban Democracy Lab, NYU
Collaborative on Global Urbanism, Department of Metropolitan
Studies, and Deutsches Haus at NYU. Will cities save us? In the
last decades we have witnessed a resurgent interest in cities,
accompanied by a great deal of urban optimism, even in the face of
the exclusion and inequalities of our cities. Cities have become a
privileged
Get up-to-date information and action suggestions. Prisoner
rebellions are at an all-time high. With activity at dizzying
levels it can be hard to keep up with actions and calls for
solidarity. This page is one resource to stay up to speed. There
are still actions occurring in need of immediate support, and news
of retaliation []
From Jailhouse Lawyers Speak: National Prison Strike August 21st
2018 to September 9th 2018 Men and women incarcerated in prisons
across the nation declare a nationwide strike in response to the
riot in Lee Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison in
South Carolina. Seven comrades lost their lives during a senseless
uprising that could []
Venezuela is under attack again. Livio Rangel (part of the 1st
Ecosocialist International in Venezuela) in conversation with Kali
Akuno (Cooperation Jackson), explains the nature of the attacks
from the United States government, the relation to the
revolutionary process of the people, the reasons for founding the
1st Ecosocialist International and why international solidarity is
needed now
There are very few industries out there that put the latest
technologies to good use like the online gambling industry. Due to
its very competitive nature and the drive to attract new and keep
the existing players, online casinos take all the resources
available to them and try to use them in a way to achieve these
goals.
It can be fully said that innovation is at the heart of online
gambling and those who lead the way in innovation are usually the
ones staying on top and constantly attracting more and more
players. These are our picks for the top five innovative online
casinos you need to know about.
1. Bitcasino.io
Bitcoin has been gaining a lot of popularity in the world of
online gambling over the past couple of years and Bitcasino.io is a site dedicated to fully keeping up
with this trend. Established in 2014 and licensed by the Government
of Curacao, Bitcasino.io gives players an opportunity to deposit
and withdraw using Bitcoin, making it possible for them to keep a
high level of privacy and anonymity. The site has a great selection
of games, including many NetEnt and Microgaming slots and even
popular progressive titles like Mega Moolah.
The violence over Jerusalem is a fight over one religions
invisible friend vs. another religions invisible friend both
claiming that their deities gave them land. The truth is that there
is no such thing as god(s) and Jerusalem is just another piece of
dirt just like any other location on this planet. The violence and
death this week following the ill conceived decision to move
Americas embassy to Jerusalem reflects poorly on both the Israelis
and Palestinians.
This is the 21st century and its time that we put to rest the
ideas of old primitive religions and property claims attributed to
deities. God did not give holy land to anyone and no nation has any
more of a right to exist than any other nation. The time has come
come that humanity lay down our weapons and come together to figure
out how to live together in peace, live in harmony with Reality,
and to take care of our common space ship, planet Earth, so that
with every generation our future will always be better than our
past.
Co-sponsored by the Murphy Institute, CUNY, and Democracy @ Work
New York For the first time in decades, cities round the country
are advancing progressive innovations and solutions to
too-long-sustained poverty and inequality. In New York City worker
cooperatives, participatory budgeting, and community land trusts
are on the policy platform of the City Councils progressive caucus
and
Karl Marx is 200 years old. And yet, whenever Marx seems dead
and buried, a new moment of economic or political crisis brings
Marxs critical understanding of capitalism back to the fore. In
Marx Now, a two-day symposium co-presented by the Goethe-Institut
New York and the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, leading
scholars, activists, and artists will discuss, in a series of
panels and
Im going to take the unpopular position of disagreeing with the
guilty verdict of Bill Cosby. Cosby was on trial for 1 act of
sexual assault, yet they let 5 unrelated women testify who had
nothing to do with what Cosby was charged with. And the woman who
did charge him was paid 3 million dollars already.
For the other 5 women they are now famous and making a lot of
money off this Cosby fame.
Theres no doubt that Cosby is into a lot of weird sex and drugs.
I personally have had sex with a lot of women while stoned. But Pot
isnt that big of a deal and Im not famous, nor do I have millions
of dollars. But for people like Cosby the is surrounded by
opportunists who would have sex with him to advance their careers,
and Im sure Cosby took advantage of relationships that are sort of
mutual exploitation where both people get what they want.
In a criminal trial the standard of proof is beyond a reasonable
doubt, and in my view when the witnesses have a strong financial
incentive to lie then that is reasonable doubt right there. Im not
saying I believe Cosby is innocent, or guilty. Im just saying that
if I were a juror, I wouldnt be able to convict.
I am also predicting this case will be overturned on appeal
because I think the testimony of 5 unrelated women is
unconstitutional, and the appeals court will strike down the case
on that basis. And the jury asked for a definition of sexual
assault and the judge didnt give them a legal definition. So I dont
think youre going to see Cosby doing jail time.
The last week has been a bit boring for
West Coast meteorologists.
The reason? A persistent upper-level
ridge of high pressure over the eastern Pacific, something
illustrated by the upper-level (500-hPa) chart this morning (see
below). Red and brown indicate areas of high pressure/high
heights. This pattern has been "locked in", something
known as a "blocking pattern" in the weather biz.
But the lock is about to be opened.
Before I show this, let me note that our snowpack has been slowly
declining to a bit below normal (see the current situation
below). Not a serious deficiency and one that should be
addressed during the next week or so.
The forecasts you are about to see are based
on the truly excellent Europe Cener ensemble system of many
forecasts. The average or mean of the many (51) runs is
shown.
It depicts Black people, led by Martin Luther King, Harriet
Tubman, and Malcolm X, being covered up with white paint by an
unidentified White man with a roller.
Its the perfect painting for the present moment, when Florida
under Governor Ron DeSantis is:
A few days after a massive power outage in North Carolina in
early December, Margaret Killjoy shared
a thread on preparedness in response to the outages. Alongside
the usual emergency supplies like extra water, batteries, medicine,
heat sources, and food, Killjoy noted something not usually
included in preparedness toolkits: organize against the far right
so that they are less capable of shooting up power stations.
Killjoy, an author and musician who lives in the mountains of
West Virginia, hosts the anarchist prepping podcast Live Like The
World Is Dying. Since its creation just before the pandemic
began, it has grown into a valuable and widely-accessed resource
for people wondering how to deal with any number of emergencies in
their communities.
The recent sabotages of power stations across the United States,
along with
increasing rates of climate-related infrastructure devastation,
have prompted people to wonder: what do we do if the lights go out
in our community? Killjoy says the answer is simple. We need to
embrace preparedness culture.
Killjoy says that intentional attacks on utilities
infrastructure from fascist groups can be understood as an
accelerationist technique and part of a far-right strategy of
pushing society to a breaking point to encourage social collapse.
In the vacuum and chaos, she says, these groups believe they can
seize power.
This isnt the first time the idea has emerged in the United
States; its practically a national playbook. Charles Mansons Helter
Skelter theory
promoted social breakdown leading to a race war. In the wake of
Hurricane Katrina, author and activist scott crow documented how
gangs of white vigilantes were perpetrating racist violence
amid the chaos. (Multiracial communities quickly organized to
defend against the attacks, and the white s...
Wayne Unit, Huntsville, TX April 11- April 20, 2018 Prisoners
launch a hunger strike in protest of a lockdown at the prison.
According to prison officials, 50 prisoners refuse meals at the
height of the 10 day hunger strike. Citations: Huntsville prison
hunger strike essentially over, officials say, Chron, April 20,
2018. Huntsville prisoners protest []
13 trucks lines up under an overpass to prevent a man from
jumping off and killing himself. Story here.
(CNN)A man stood on a freeway overpass
near Detroit early Thursday, threatening to jump. So thirteen
tractor-trailers lined up underneath, ready to break his fall.
Troopers closed off both
directions of Interstate 696 and asked for the truckers help,
hoping to protect the man in case he fell or jumped, said Lt. Mike
Shaw of the Michigan State Police.
Asking truckers to help
in such cases is not unusual, Shaw said, but most of the time these
events are (resolved) pretty fast, so we only get one semi.
The IRS came after me, and Im smiling. Yes,
smiling.
No, I dont enjoy paying taxes. In fact, Im
appalled by the way the government misappropriates or flat out
pilfers half of what it takes, and then our leaders refuse to
balance the budget. . . . No, Im
smiling because the IRS came after me. Allow me
to explain.
A while back, I went to my mailbox and found
hate mail from the IRS. I felt ill when I saw the envelope. Not
because Ive been dishonest on my taxes, but because when it comes
to the IRS, no news is ever good news.
A bunny in bears clothing? Yes, it is. A team of researchers in
China
developed a fabric that mimics the fur coat of a polar bear. A
live rabbit was wrapped in a blanket made of this prototype fabric and used infrared imaging
(thermal imaging camera) to measure the difference between the
rabbits body and ambient temperatures. The body of the rabbit under
the blanket was almost completely undetected. Where the body was
exposed to the changing temperatures (14-104 degrees Fahrenheit),
thermal imaging detected only those exposed areas. This
demonstrates good thermal insulation.
Like the fur of polar bears, the fabric also reflects infrared
light. The blanket fabric reflected light up to twice that of
commercial textiles and cant be detected by night-vision scopes and
cameras, just like polar bears.
What makes polar bears fur so special? A fiber from the fur of a
polar bear is a
Researchers, Thomas et al., found that, for
every increase of 1 milligram per liter of fluoride in pregnant
women's urine, their offspring averaged 2.4 points lower IQ scores
at age 1-3 years-old. This finding is statistically
significant and was adjusted for
confounders.
This builds upon previous research
from the same prestigious team funded by the U.S. National
Institutes of Health (NIH) showing in utero fluoride levels
associated with lower IQ in 4 and 6-12 year-olds
(Environmental
Health Perspectives, September
2017).
Fluoridation protectionists try, but fail, to scientifically
debunk these studies. Environmental Health Perspectives is a
leading peer-reviewed journal published by the National Institute
of Environmental Health, an NIH division, They were funded
byU.S.government grants. The authors
are some of the worlds foremost experts who study neurotoxicity
from fetal and early childhood exposures. Fluoridationists, who rarely challenge
pro-fluorida...
Son NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space
Administration and many people forget that they also design planes,
not just rockets. And this one is very cool. Its called the
X-Plane.
Tea-drinkers risk
fluoride-damaged bones and more, studies shows
Some teas contain more
fluoride than EPA allows in public water supplies, which can do
skeletal damage, according to research published in Environmental Pollution (Das, et al.
12/2017).
Tea plants (Camellia
sinensis) absorb fluoride from soil and air then released from 1.47
to 6.9 milligrams fluoride per liter (mg/L) when brewed, reports
Das research team
It can be predicted that
long-term consumption of copious quantities of traditional tea
might increase the chances of fluorosis in the consumers, they
report.
The US EPA caps fluoride
water contamination at 4 mg/L to protect against skeletal
fluorosis. But an EPA-requested review of fluoride toxicology
research (...
Freedom of speech is the essential foundation
for a democratic society. It is also a requirement for a
functioning university. Freedom of expression is
particularly protected by the First Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution for public entities such as universities.
Disturbingly, a number of groups have noted
serious problems regarding freedom of speech at the University of
Washington. Groups both inside and outside the
institution.
The Report of the Foundation for Individual
Rights and Expression (FIRE)
FIRE is a highly respected non-partisan group
dedicated to protecting freedom of speech at U.S. colleges and
universities. Recently, it released a
detailed report on freedom of speech at over 200 American
colleges/universities, based on input from tens of thousands of
students and faculty, as well as the review of materials from each
institution.
The University of Washington was the
lowest-rated of any public university in the
nation.
Let me repeat: the UW
was at the bottom of a long list of major public
universities/colleges regarding freedom of
speech. In fact, the UW was rated as "code red"
for "clearly and substantially restricting freedom of
speech."
Several hundred UW students were queried and
most were fearful to speak their minds in public. For
example, only 43% of students say they have rarely or never
self-censored on campus. In other words, 57% are
self-censoring....
Like Jonathan Franzen (author of
this article), birds were just simple pleasures in my life
until my fourth decade. Watching groups of evening grosbeaks
chatter and bully each other in the large feeder outside my cabins
picture window was often the amusement of my winter days in Maine.
As was observing parental red-tailed hawks on fir tree branches
teach their fledglings to fly by taunting them next to the pastures
in Oregon.
Thinking back, the enchanting swans in the fog that occasionally
visited the small ponds of spring melted snow in the field next to
the house I grew up in, the majestic snowy owl that often perched
on a large tree branch in our back yard looking at me while I sat
in my snowsuit and looked at it. These are still vivid memories
that probably contributed to my path to become a biologist so many
decades ago.
Learning about their evolution (and ties to dinosaurs), their
adaptive biology and physiology, the unique complexity of colorful
plumage, the often amusing social interactions with each other and
within their ecosystems, their impressing tenacity to migrate
thousands of miles, their inherent traits that we covet as amusing
(such as the burrowing owls clownish movements), and even
ornithologists taxonomy, which reveals more about ourselves than
the animals; it all deepened my respect and wonderment for the
world of birds.
Now, in my retirement and no longer in the whirlwind of academic
life, birds have become more personal and intimate, which has
increased my passion for them. Holding a six-week golden eagle
nestling while working with two USFWS biologists to band and
collect data was like holding an angel in my hands. Bird surveys
allow glimpses into aspects of their lives: breeding, migrating,
feeding, competing, parenting, and housekeeping. Handling birds
while banding them with metal bracelets is more than just data
collection; it is a rare and privileged opportunity to share a
moment of respectful interaction between bird and human.
This winter by a lake in west-central New York State has
provided me with the same fascination and enjoyment of my
childhood. Instead of purposeful counting, naming, banding, and
poking, I have been simply a bystander observing and enjoying that
simple delight. When the small group of four trumpeter swans
expanded to 19 swans, I was out on the edge of the lake with
binoculars searching for them every day. When an adult bald eagle
swerved down from the air to instantly grab a fish from the water
barely 25 feet from the side of my kayak, I was a giddy kid again.
Watching the antics of house finches play hide and seek in the
weeping elm tree next to the deck made me smile and laugh. While I
stood on the edge of the Genesee River gorge this past fall, a male
American kestrel flew and kited below me with the sun gleaming off
its blue feathers....
Eric Trump said Democrats are not even people during an
appearance this week on Sean Hannity.
Eric complained that he has never seen hatred like this when
referring to the Democratic Party as a whole. He claimed theyre
imploding and have no message.
Continuing his verbal assault, Eric said the head of the
Democratic National Committee is a total whack job.
Eric dehumanized Democrats, saying they are not even people. His
problem with them is that they try [to] obstruct a great man his
family and obstruct his family; they come after us viciously and
its truly, truly horrible.
But what is actually horrible is the Trump Organization who
funneled more than $100,000 in donations meant for St. Judes
Children Research Hospital.
Using Erics own charity (the Eric Trump Foundation), he hosted a
golfing tournament at his fathers course where donations were
passed to the Trump Organization and not their intended
purpose.
Donors were told their contributions would go to help sick
children, but the Trump family not only lied to attendees of the
golf tournament, but took a shocking $500,000 over a 10 year period
to line the pockets of Trump family members.
Donald Trump was personally behind the billing of the Eric Trump
Foundation for the use of his golf course for these charitable
events. Totals of revenue taken in were hundreds of thousands. In
fact, a considerable amount of the $11 million Eric has allegedly
raised for St. Judes hospital has been funneled directly to the
Trump Organization.
Back in November of last year, Donald Trump admitted to
self-dealing and using donation funds to help Trump out in
business and personal interests.
According to a 2015 IRS tax return filed by the
foundations attorneys, the boxes for questions regarding the
transfer of income or assets to a disqualified person and engaging
in self-dealing with foundation donations were both checked
YES.
For example, the Donald J Trump Foundation gave a $25,000
donation to a SuperPAC supporting Florida Attorney General Pam
Bondi.
In exchange for the cash, Bondi announced her office of attorney
general for the state of Florida would not peruse a multi-state
case against Trump University.
At the time of the bribe, when Trump tried to cover up the
political contribution by recording that the donation was given to
a charity in Kansas.
Bondis office had twenty-three complaints about Trump University
filed before she became attorney general, and one more filed after
she took office, but she did not open a formal investigation.
beyond the illegal donation, the Trump Foundation illegally
purchased a $20,000 six foot tall portrait of Trump and spent
$12,000 football helmet signed by Tim Tebow.
Journalist David Fahrenthold discovered that Childrens Place at
Home Safe, a Florida charity, held a fundraiser at Trumps
Mar-a-Lago back in 2007, featuring Michael Isra...
On December 14, 2016, at least 185 prisoners at the Saskatchewan
Penitentiary in Canada refused to attend their normally-scheduled
activities and instead masked up, destroyed surveillance cameras in
the area, erected barricades, set fires, destroyed significant
portions of the prison and smashed a hole in the floor so they
could move to different units. The []
Effective November 1st, 2017, the Michigan Department of
Corrections (MDOC) has instituted a new mail policy, which they
falsely claim will stem the flow of contraband, primarily the
controlled substances suboxone and fentanyl, into Michigan prisons,
when they well-know over 80 percent of all contraband is smuggled
into prisons by employees, as confirmed by multiple studies. If the
MDOC really wanted to stop drugs and other contraband, such as cell
phones and tobacco, from entering its prisons, then they would
search all MDOC employees just as thoroughly upon entry as they do
prisoners families and friends when visiting. Consequently, one can
only conclude that stopping contraband is not the goal of this new
policy, merely the excuse for it
Fifty years ago, the ideas of plate tectonics crashed into the
earth science arena. First proposed in the early 1900s by Alfred
Wegener, the hypothesis that continents drifted around the planet
like floating icebergs was naysayed. He could not explain how or
why.
In 1967, while many of us were wearing flowers in our hair and
inciting a revolution, Dan McKenzie and his colleague Bob Parker at
Scripps Institute in California (and independently, Jason Morgan at
Princeton Univsersity) put together pieces of the puzzle and
described how plates move and continents drift. They started their
own revolution.
Geology was changed, like a volcano erupting in the field. Not
only does geological evidence confirm plate tectonics, but also
biological. Fossils of some species of plants and animals are
located within specific areas on continents where they adjoined
each other. Those continents are now separated by thousands of
miles of ocean.
Plate tectonics and continental drift have awed me since I was a
child. I have no idea why, except that they are like a memory of
deep time. And seeing examples and remnants of plate tectonics and
continental drift is like looking at old family photos. Im
captivated.
In honor of the anniversary of plate tectonics theory, follow
the link to a poem I wrote years ago. Ode to Plate Tectonics.
Meanwhile, enjoy your daily ride on your continental
plate.
Most Americans drink fluoridated water. Is
that a good thing? by Susannah
Shmurak
Research raises new questions about
whether fluoridations benefits outweigh its risks.
November 17,
2017If youre like many Americans, you drink
fluoridated water without questioning its safety or efficacy. For
decades municipalities have been adding fluoride to water supplies
to reduce the incidence of tooth decay at the advice of numerous
highly credentialed entities, including the World Health
Organization, the U.S. Public Health Service, the American Dental
Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
But in late 2016, a
coalition of activist groups Food and Water Watch, The American
Academy of Environmental Medicine, Fluoride Action Network, the
International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology, the Organic
Consumers Association, and Moms Against Fluoridation together with
private citizens from around the United States petitioned the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ban the addition of
fluoride to water supplies, citing research pointing to health
risks linked to exposure to fluoride.
What exactly are
the benefits of fluoridating municipal water supplies? What are the
risks? And how does a conscientious society balance the two? These
questions are finding new urgency asa
growing body of research calls into question its
safety.
Fluorides
Benefits
The practice of
adding fluoride to drinking water began in the 1940s after dentists
observed that children living in communities with naturally high
levels of fluoride had fewer cavities than those who didnt. Several
communities began adding fluoride to municipal water supplies as a
public health measure to lessen the prevalence of dental decay.
Studies revealed that cavity rates in those communities were lower
than in comparison communities that did not fluoridate, and
increasing numbers of municipalities decided to fluoridate in
ensuing decades. Rates of dental decay...
Incarcerated Georgians and their loved ones have struggled to
stay in touch after the Georgia Department of Corrections began
switching communications services from JPay to Securus, as the
former merges its systems with the latter. This change was
accompanied by the emergence of a more stringent and increasingly
punitive prison communications policy.
While the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) policy was
written in
2018, it is only now being enforced, according to incarcerated
people and their loved ones. Under the policy, people who wish to
communicate with someone inside must submit an application and
submit to government screening. Additionally, a prisoner may only
have 12 people on this approved communications list.
Prisoners and their advocates say this process is meant to
gate-keep and surveil prisoners communications. It also limits the
means through which prisoners and loved ones can expose
abhorrent, brutal prison conditions.
The timing of this transition is particularly distressing
because of a wave of killings and unrest affecting incarcerated
people. The U.S. Department of Justice is
investigating soaring violence in GDC facilities and yet
prison administrators have refused to provide federal investigators
with basic data on the number of incarcerated people murdered
within their facilities.
Many Georgia prisoners have been without electronic
communication with their loved ones for over six months at the time
of this reporting. In Georgia, most communication between prisoners
and those on the outside occurs via correctional tablet devices and
in-dorm kiosks. They could exchange emails, pictures, and
short videos over this system. This has been the case for over
seven years.
Pointing to a gross
understaffing crisis and the prolificacy of
drugs, many facilities have stopped physical mail delivery via
the U.S. Postal Service. Any mail that does enter the facility is
scanned and a copy is provided in print or on the electronic tablet
devices. Most facilities
lack the staff to adequately receive, process, and disburse
mail to prisoners or make electronic copies accessible via the
tablets and dorm kiosks. Prisoners have reported missing mail at
some institutions for months at a time since COVID collided with
the staffing crisis. This includes legal mail, the d...
The so-called Morneau Scandal has been a farce in many
ways, with mainstream media failing to recognize the real scandal
plaguing the governments financial control system.
First, the tempest in a teapot. While he wasnt legally required to
do so, Finance Minister Bill Morneau made the mistake of not
putting his financial holdings, which may run to $40-million, into
a blind trust.
Nevertheless, the jackals saw an opportunity to embarrass and
possibly bring down the Trudeau governments Number 2 man.
This finance minister used a loophole to keep himself invested in a
financial company which he regulates, Conservative finance critic
Pierre Poilievre said in the House of
Commons, all the while going across the country calling honest
plumbers and farmers tax cheats.
National Post columnist Brian Platt criticized Morneau for
not being in Parliament all week, and instead travelling
out-of-province to make announcements on the governments small
business tax reforms.
But this was a case of Parliamentary Press Gallery journalists
being so hungry for blood that most of them ignored the truth about
blind trusts and never looked for the bigger issues behind the
story.
BLIND TRUSTS "A SHAM"
Duff Conacher, co-founder of the advocacy group Democracy Watch,
said that a blind trust would offer no
guarantees that Morneau or any elected official can operate without
conflicts of inte...
Introduction: This article is for the many thousands of
individual Canadians who give $-millions each year to environmental
and conservation groups. When it comes to fighting climate change*, youre
not getting your moneys worth. Ive monitored the environmental
movement for five years and draw the conclusion that the biggest
and wealthiest groups are seriously letting down the Canadian
public with weak and disjointed campaigns. Unfortunately, groups are never held accountable by
institutional donors or media. Its now up to concerned Canadians to
see if you can influence them to do a better job. (See the bottom of this article to find out how you
can help.) Note: * Ive decided that the term
climate change no longer describes the devastation the earth is
experiencing. From now on I will use the term ecological
collapse.
When I wasnt paying attention, another environmental group
Blue Dot came into existence, joining the
many other large Canadian groups claiming it has the right strategy
to help save Canada from environmental devastation.
An initiative of the David Suzuki Foundation, Blue Dot says it
focuses on building a ground-swelling of support to convince
Members of Parliament to introduce a gold-standard federal
environmental bill of rights.
Blue Dot also urges municipalities to adopt a pro-environmental
position, and it hopes to pressure Parliament to amend the Charter
of Rights and Freedoms to include environmental protection.
Hey, this shouldnt be hard! Just kidding. A dozen or so other
groups have been working on the same goals for at least a dozen
years with little success.
With only 115,000 individual members but still growing and modest
funding, I dont see how Blue Dot can be more effective than any of
the others in fighting ecological collapse.
(NOTE: Please support independent journalism. Subscribe button
at the end of this article.)
Canada is seriously failing to meet its carbon emission reduction
targets. Moreover, a government that claims to be
fighting ecological collapse supports development of the tar
sands.
Canada, which represents one half of one percent of the planets
population, writes an angry 350.org head Bill McKibben is claiming the
right to sell the oil that will use up a third of the earths
remaining carbon budget.
Note from Nick: Because I worked with CBC for
more than 25 years and have great loyalty to quality public
broadcasting,I regret that I need to take CBC Radio One
management to task in an aggressive manner. But when considerable
damage is being done to the network and managers refuse to answer
basic questions, I feel I have no alternative.
Long-time CBC Radio One listeners upset over summer programming
that featured a dozen shows about personal concerns and peoples
problems will be listening carefully this fall to see how many of
those kinds of programs are in the line-up.
Hundreds of traditional Radio One fans strongly agreed with
my blog of two weeks ago, in which I blasted
CBC management for broadcasting the mindless and banal
programs.
Hundreds of people said they no longer listen to Radio One, while
other said they turn the radio off as soon as they hear one of the
selfie-like programs.
Heres a sample of the letters to CBC Managers Susan Marjetti,
Executive Director, Radio and Audio, for English Services, and
Heather Conway, executive vice-President of English Services:
I am a huge fan of the CBC. I listen to CBC Radio One
exclusively, practically 24/7, and have done so for 40 years or
more, writes Penny Tomlin of Victoria, B.C. I have been so
disappointed with the programming this summer most especially with
Out in the Open, Sleepover...
Pregnant womens urine fluoride levels
are linked to lower intelligence in their offspring, according to a
US government-sponsored study published in Environmental Health Perspectives(September
2017), and at levels commonly found in US adults.
Fluoridation lobbyists cavalierly
dismissed this study because it was conducted on women fromMexicowhich makes it irrelevant to theUS, they claim. However, urine fluoride
levels in healthyUSadults in US
fluoridated areas are similar and is a measure of one's total
fluoride intake from all sources.
The lead researcher, Dr. Howard Hu,
also disagrees with their assessment. He is quoted in the media as
saying This is a very rigorous epidemiology study. You just cant
deny it. Its directly related to whether fluoride is a risk for the
neurodevelopment of children. So, to say it has no relevance to the
folks in theUS, seems
disingenuous.
MostUSwater suppliers add
unnecessary fluoride chemicals into public water supplies in a
failed attempt to reduce tooth decay for political not scientific
reasons.
Hu says the study also suggests that
the prenatal nervous system may be more sensitive to fluoride
compared to that of school-aged children.
This new careful investigation, by
respected researchers from respected institutions and published in
a respected peer-reviewed journal, adds to a f...
Just another faux Nashville nasty tricking the
world that they sing about loving thy neighbor? Did Katie Layne
Quackenbush, 26 leave the scene where she shot a homeless man so
she could sober up?
Tourist selfie taken in Los Angeles sparks debate about
homelessness and empathy
A picture of a young woman posing in front
of a mural on Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, has gone viral, not
only for what it does show, but also for what it doesn't empathy.
The image that is getting Internet users so riled
up was taken by es...
My new podcast answers a question
several have asked:
Why Does High Pressure Produce Low Clouds over
the Northwest?
Such a situation occurred this week, as
illustrated by the satellite image on Tuesday afternoon
below. Puget Sound was socked in, as was the Willamette
Valley. Low clouds are also evident offshore.
High pressure promotes low clouds in several ways...all explained
in the podcast.
My podcast also provides the weather forecast
for this week: a pretty benign situation.
Most notable will be the cool morning
temperatures as a modified arctic air mass is over the
region. The lows this morning were in the 20s for western
Washington and in the teens and single digits over eastern
Washington (see below for minima on Sunday morning).
Even colder temperatures are expected
tomorrow morning, followed by a slow warm-up on Tuesday through
Thursday....
During CBC Radios 81 years the public
broadcaster has been the countrys most important life-line,
unifying the nation and helping us understand each other and the
important issues of the day.
I am lucky to have worked at the CBC for more than 25 years. I held
several positions, including Canadian Editor of The
National, working as an investigative journalist, as a radio
documentary producer, and as an editor with National Radio
News.
Today CBC Radio is more important than ever. With newspapers
failing to do their job, journalism in Canada is in crisis. Media
organizations are failing to provide communities with news and
analysis that is necessary for democracy to function properly. (Note: If you too disapprove of whats happening to
CBC Radio, Ive provided emails at the end of this article where you
can send your protests.)
CBC Radio is proud of the success of
its podcast, Someone Knows Something which explores cold cases
after people have disappeared.
As always, Ive been listened to Radio One this summer. My favourite
programs, which include The Current, As It Happens,
The Sunday Edition and Ideas, are doing a good
job.
However, Im puzzled and dismayed by most of about a dozen new
summer programs. A couple of them the Doc
Project and Now or
Never provide some interesting stories told from a
personal point of view.
Too much personal issues radio
Otherwise, the remaining 10 new programs are not the kind of shows
that should be so prominent on the CBC. Too many dwell on the sad
stories of people who have had a difficult life. People ramble on
about their feelings. Theres lots of talk about human connections,
and advice for people with problems.
Here is a sampling:
Love Me with with Lu Olkowski. Deep down we
all just want to be loved, so why...
(Note: Please forward to any folks that might like to look
into setting up a paper.)
News outlets in Canadian communities are falling like bowling
pins.
At least 171 media organizations in 138 communities closed between
2008 and this January, says the Local News Research Project, a project led by
Ryerson School of Journalism. By comparison, only 51 new
outlets opened.
Local news poverty, we argue, project co-ordinator April Lindgren writes, is greatest in
communities where residents have limited or no access to timely,
verified news about local politics, education, health, economic and
other key topics they need to navigate daily life.
Small communities such as Markdale, ON and Canmore, AB lost their
local papers while cities Guelph, ON and Nanaimo, BC were among the largest centres to be hit.
Newspapers have been crucial for the development of Canada for more than three
centuries. But free news from for-profit papers is coming to
an end. Daily papers are failing because
millions of dollars of advertising they used to have has either
moved to the Internet or has just disappeared. Because an ad that
brings in $1,000 in a paper sells for about $100 on the Internet
the newspaper corporations are so far unable to make a go of it on
the Internet.
Corporate-owned news organizations around the world are trying to
find a formula that will allow them to be profitable. However, they
have made little progress in the dozen years since Internet-based
companies started stealing their ads and readers.
Hundreds of Canadian communities are now poorly served when it
comes to local news by under-funded and under-sta...
Loretta Lynch has been busted using an alias to communicate with
DOJ officials, per a tweet by Kim Dotcom last night. The revelation
comes after internet sleuths sifted through a new release of emails
obtained via FOIA request by the ACLJ last...
Continue Reading
Google is bowing to pressure from Muslims without considering
whether those who are demanding that the search results be skewed
in a particular direction might have an ulterior motive. Source:
Google changes search results to conceal criticism of Islam and...
Continue Reading
President Vladimir Putin said 755 US diplomats must leave Russia
and warned ties with Washington could be gridlocked for a long
time, in a move Sunday that followed tough new American sanctions.
The Russian foreign ministry had earlier demanded Washington...
Continue Reading
President Vladimir Putin on Sunday oversaw a pomp-filled display
of Russias naval might as the Kremlin paraded its sea power from
the Baltic Sea to the shores of Syria. Some 50 warships and
submarines were on show along the Neva...
Continue Reading
China unveiled a new, more mobile intercontinental ballistic
missile at a parade of advanced weaponry and combat troops, in
President Xi Jinpings latest display of militaryand
politicalmuscle. Source: China Parades New Missile in Warning to
Rivals Abroadand at Home ...
Continue Reading
Pope Francis praised Emma Bonino as a forgotten great in 2016.
Source: Abortionist praised by Pope speaks at Catholic church,
pro-life protesters kicked out | News | Lifesitenews
Facebook is demanding Infowars take down a post using the terms
tranny and cross dressers, which underscores how social media is
trying to dictate what is Source: Facebook Claims Transgenders A
Protected Class Like Race | Brutalist
If you feel some pressure in your forehead
today, there may be a cause.
Right now, the Northwest is experiencing
unusually high atmospheric pressure.
In fact, the third highest pressure in the
past 25 years, hitting around 1042 hPa, something shown by the plot
of pressures at SeaTac below (the dashed red line shows the highest
pressure observed yesterday).
This uber-high pressure has been suppressing
water levels, resulting in the high tides at Seattle being far less
than would have occurred under normal pressure (see below, red is
observed, blue is predicted)
Later tonight and tomorrow morning, a front
will move through, bringing some rain to the lowlands and snow to
the mountains. Nothing exceptional.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has warned that Ireland will not play any
role in creating a border between the North and the Republic.
Source: We wont help the UK come up with border solution Leo
Varadkar Independent.ie
Statement of Bret Weinstein to Board of Trustees, July 12, 2017.
NO CLAIM TO COPYRIGHT (this is a FAIR USE excerpt from hearing).
Video copyright held by T
The victim stopped on the A16 motorway near the northern French
port town of Calais before seeing men trying to get into his
vehicle. Source: Lorry driver is attacked by migrants in Calais |
Daily Mail Online
Aggressive capitalism is kicking the crap
out of us, so we should see if we can start a public
conversation about the need for an alternative political and social
system.
We see corporate greed all around us. Four out of 10 Canadians many of them
earning around $11 an hour cant pay their bills but Canadian corporations are sitting on at
least $630-billion in cash theyre refusing to invest in the
economy.
Unfortunately, even when many people know about the damage caused
by capitalism, they feel a totally alternative political system is
such a distant possibility, that they dont bother discussing
it.
Of course powerful people fearful of the threat of a social
upheaval have demonized the words socialism and communism. This
scares the hell out of many people.
Mainstream media are owned by corporations that seldom, if ever,
report on alternative political systems. If ideas arent laid out
before the public, they really dont exist.
PEOPLE ARE FED UP
Despite the lies and badgering that comes from corporations and the
wealthy, people in several countries are fed up with traditional
politics. Theyre fighting back against corporations and governments
that are joined at the hip.
Those who supported the Brexit vote for Britain to leave the
European Union and the millions who voted for Donald Trump are,
among other things, anti-establishment. They feel they have been
ignored and left behind.
...
Water and milk fluoridation haven't reduced
tooth decay but is potentially harmful, report researchers from
Chile (Medical Journal of Chile, February
2017,Translated with Google Translate). They recommend the
government of Chile change its laws to stop adding fluoride
chemicals into drinking water and milk in all regions of the
country. They show how fluoride
intake can cause bone, thyroid, neurological and skin damage
without reducing tooth decay. For example, they explain that, in the 1950s, fluoride was used to
depress or reduce overactive thyroid glands (hyperthyroid) at doses
which corresponds to the doses in drinking water of some
fluoridated areas.(between 2 and 5 mg per Liter per
day) So it's not
surprising that a recent study found a link between fluoridation
and hypothyroidism (under-active thyroid)
Unnecessary fluoride chemicals are added to public water
supplies, in a failed effort to reduce tooth decay in tap
water drinkers. Many theories which gave birth to fluoridation in
the early 1900's have been scientifically disproved making
fluoridation a waste of money and a detriment to health.
The Chilean researchers report, The
fluoridation of drinking water does not significantly impact on
caries prevention... effectiveness is rather a topical and
non-systemic effect, as demonstrated
by countries that do not fluoridate drinking water, and do not use
milk or fluoride salts," yet have s...
News Media
Canada formerly the Canadian Association of Newspapers has
submitted a proposal to Minister of
Canadian Heritage Mlanie Joly for a whopping $350-million a year to
prop up the journalism of the countrys struggling 105 dailies.
The publishers are asking for:
$175-million of our tax dollars per year to subsidize the first
35 per cent of the salaries of hundreds of journalists who are paid
$85,000 or less, including luminaries such as the Globe and Mail's
columnist Margaret Wente, who creates her own reality, and
the National Post's right-wing reporter Christie
Blatchford.
And $90,000 a year to help each of these newspapers improve
their presence on the Internet a request that comes 18 years after Kijiji
and others began grabbing their classified ads. This reveals their
ineptitude to successfully get on the Internet
themselves.
Im against this proposal for a number of reasons, including the
fact that the self-important papers want to be the only ones
getting government support. They apparently never thought of
approaching the dozen or so small digital media groups that have
worked hard over the past few years to establish themselves.
But I have a more fundamental problem with the newspaper
industry.
First, I want to acknowledge that some newspapers,
particularly The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star,
produce some excellent journalism, including important
investigative stories.
How corporate media censors the news.
But, having followed the content patterns of several papers for a
number of years, its obvious to me that Canadian corporate media
systematically manages and censors the news.
Four examples:
Mainstream media seldom, if ever, examine whether capitalism,
neo-liberalism, austerity, and trickle-down economics are good for
society overall. Media companies first and foremost follow
corporate and capitalist practices.
Labour is demonized or ignored in Big Media. When unions are
mentioned...
Skinflint media mogul Roy Thomson had declared that owning a
radio or television station was like having a license to print
money. He added that owning a newspaper was even better, because a
license was not required.
The Senators hummed and hawed, and made some recommendations that
were mostly ignored by the powerful media owners, who continued to
make big profits.
How times have changed.
A report from the Public Policy Forum of
Montreal released on January 26 says the Canadian news industry is
reaching a crisis point as the decline of traditional media,
fragmentation of audiences and the rise of fake news pose a growing
threat to the health of our democracy.
Whereas the 1970 report was entitled The Uncertain Mirror, the new
appeal for support is called The Shattered Mirror.
Now mainstream media are unable to sell enough advertising to
provide the amount and quality of news coverage that once seemed
routine. So the giant corporations are humbly appealing to the
federal government to provide support for various media and make
adjustments to the media landscape.
The report does not provide a specific prescription to bring
corporate media back to health. Nothing in the report could even
begin to provide the billions of dollars that would be needed to
restore newspapers to what they were say 10 years ago. That was
before corporations fired more than 10,000
journalists.
Written by Eddie Greenspon, former Editor-in-Chief of The Globe
and Mail, the most important request urges the federal
government to impose a sales tax on U.S.-owned Internet media
outlets, including Google and Facebook, operating in Canada.
Part of our job is just to rock you, and part of our job is to
be like troubadours, carrying the news from one town to another,
like town criers, singer-songwriter David Crosby declared in an
interview in 2006.
Crosby took his responsibility as a prominent musician seriously,
and when he made this comment,
he was on the Freedom of Speech tour with Stephen Stills, Graham
Nash, and Neil Young, where they performed songs from Youngs Living
With War protest album, called for the impeachment of President
George W. Bush, and spoke out against the Iraq War.
He co-authored a book, Stand and Be Counted: Making Music,
Making History, that was released in 2000. It recounted
antiwar demonstrations, civil rights marches, and music benefits
from the perspective of artists.
Nobody kids themselves into believing that they can solve the
worlds problems, Crosby wrote. Were just trying to make a
difference, to change things for the better wherever we can. And if
it takes a long push, then were in it for the long haul.
A lot of times this isnt about the genius of the moment. Its about
persistence. Its about being in there and staying in there.
On January 18, 2023, Crosby died after battling what his family
described as a long illness. Though he was in poor health, he still
was working on another album and thinking about touring again.
In 1971, when Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) organized the
Winter Soldier investigation to call attention to war crimes by the
United States military in Vietnam, Crosby (and Nash) performed two
concerts to help raise funds in support of the event. The
investigation emphasized the role of U.S. generals and commanders,
who were responsible for the My Lai Massacre.
Up to the final years of his life, Crosby visited the
wall at the Vietnam War memorial to remind himself of the awful
price we pay when we let our politicians drag us into wars for
profits going to the giant [corporations].
Profiteering in the Iraq War deeply upset Crosby. He cared about
young people who joined the US military and risked their lives, and
it disgusted him how Halliburton, Bechtel, and ExxonMobil, etc,
were benefiting from the carnage.
He was part of the Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE)
collective that performed in concerts after the Three Mile Island
disaster to demand an end to nuclear energy.
Crosby joined Nash in 2011 to support Occupy Wall Street in New
York. They visited the site of the encampment and performed several
songs for the people of Liberty Plaza that had gathered to stand up
for the 99 percent.
We have roughly another month remaining of
meteorological winter, and mother nature will not be letting us
transition to spring without another taste of cold and
snow.
The cold is for sure, including a hard freeze
over the region.
The snow forecast is less confident--but it
does look like either the Washington or Oregon western lowlands
will see the flakes--the question is which one.
The movement of cold air into the Northwest
has another implication: substantial additional precipitation
for a sodden California.
The Cold
For Wednesday and Thursday, a high-pressure
ridge will dominate the region, producing cool, cloudy, but
generally dry conditions (see upper level--500 hPa pressure
level--map for Wednesday morning below).
A benefit of the high pressure will be a
suppression of the astronomical King Tides, minimizing flooding and
tidal overflows.
But on Friday and Saturday, an upper-level
trough will move south down the eastern flanks of the big ridge,
pulling cold air from northern Canada into the interior of British
Columbia and then into the Pacific Northwest.
Here is the upper-level map for 7 PM
Saturday. You can see the offshore ridge of high pressure,
but a significant rough is moving over our region.
I have studied these snow situations for
decades. This is not qu...
The federal government has taken the first step on a long road
toward what hopefully will be the restoration of the CBC as Canadas
most important public interest and cultural institution.
For nearly 10 years the Harper government forced the CBC off track
from its original goals of promoting culture and the arts,
providing quality news, and facilitating a national discussion.
Harper refused to adequately fund the Mother Corp. In one fell
swoop in 2012, the Harper government cut the CBC budget by
$115-million over three years.
Harper very likely would have wanted to sell off the CBC but that
would have caused a national backlash. Instead, he appointed seven
Conservative lackeys and donors to the CBC Board with the idea of
keeping the broadcaster in check.
But now, with the world pretty much in a state of chaos and false
news coming at us from many directions, a strong CBC has never been
more important.
On Tuesday Canadian Heritage Minister Melanie Joly announced the
government is ending the long-time practice of appointing friends
of the government to the CBC Board of Directors and, instead,
introducing a new system.
Joly named nine prominent Canadians with
various backgrounds from across the country who will recommend
people they feel capable of serving on the Board to the
government.
Currently three positions are vacant on the Board, and the second
term of CBC President and CEO Hubert Lacroix expires at the end of
the year.
The change in how Board members are selected will immediately
restore some of the CBCs lost credibility. Many long-time viewers
and listeners have turned away from the national broadcaster.
Of course establishing a new process for appointing Board Members
is no guarantee that the CBC will be fully restored to health. The
problems inside the corporation are so serious that the rebuilding
could require four or five years.
Students at Dalhousie University in Halifax are a determined
lot. Campaigning against the burning of fossil fuels, they have occupied
the office of school president Richard Florizone.
The students also created a six-foot-high dinosaur to signify that
investing in pollution-causing industries is a skeleton in the
universitys closet.
Divest
Dal is one of at least 34 academic-based campaigns across the
country pressuring administrations to divest holdings in fossil
fuels on ethical grounds.
However, the Dal effort suffered a setback when the Dal administration announced it would not
sell off an estimated $20.5-million in fossil fuel holdings.
We did not accept the Boards no vote . . . . says Laura Cutmore, a
Divest Dal organizer, in an email. We will continue to campaign
towards divestment for as long as it takes.
Students at Dalhousie University
(Halifax, NS) protesting.
Divest Dal works with the support of 350.org by far the largest group in
the world involved in campaigning, and they have a lot of faith in
350.orgs leadership.
350.org, which operates gofossilfree announced with considerable
fanfare that the campaign urging institutions, mostly universities,
churches, and pension funds to divest their endowment holdings in
fossil fuels is working well.
Canadian 350.org organizer Cam Fenton wrote in an email: In a
matter of years it has grown from a student led campaign on a few
campuses to something that is impacting some of the largest
political and financial in...
A new study reveals that children with Autism
had much higher levels of lead levels throughout their development,
according to Medical News Today. The new
research was led by Manish Arora, Ph.D., an environmental
scientist and dentist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount
Sinai in New York City, NY, and the findings were published in the
journal Nature Communications. Naturally
exfoliated baby teeth were analyzed for lead content. However,
fluoride level wasn't mentioned; but should be tested. Lead is allowed in fluoridation chemicals used
in most US public water supplies Here's an explanation of how that
occurs. Also, while not
providing a direct link to autism, several studies show that
fluoride increases blood lead levels.
Fluoride chemicals added to
public water supplies, boosts lead absorption in lab animals'
bones, teeth and blood, report Sawan, et al.
(Toxicology 2/2010).
Earlier studies already show children's blood-lead-levels are
higher in
fluoridated communities, reports Sawan's research
team.
"exposure to increased amounts
of lead and fluoride occurs at about the same age (1-3 years)
Therefore, this is a critical time when systemic exposure to
fluoride should be minimized since fluoride may increase lead
accumulation," the researchers caution.
James Shelby, New-M-Pac founder, IWW delegate, and Missouri
prisoner wrote regarding a medical torture call in campaign we did
on his behalf . . . I believe that I was transferred due to
pressure from IWW members. At one point the warden and her
assistant called me to the visiting area to meet about all []
Many of the Artemesia spp. are very aromatic; their
leaves lush with terpenoids. These aromatic lipids are volatile and
will relinquish their scents when leaf cells are crushed, or even
under the right weather conditions.
Adding to the symphony of volatile compounds are the three
isoprene rings that build the sesquiterpenoids; lactones that
repel herbivory, invite the sagebrush checkerspot butterfly to lay
their eggs, and gall midges to build galls to house their
nymphs.
But they also attract humans that cherish the yin and yang of
their leaves and scent. The silver hairs, the trichomes, on the
leaf surfaces that catch the sun and dew; the aroma they impart
when crushed between fingers, the scent when scattered upon a
fire.
In a harsh land where sun and sand cover the earth,
Seventy-eight years ago, on January 25, 1945,
dentists convinced government officials to experiment on all Grand
Rapids, Michigan, residents to prove that (not if) dosing the publics
water supply with untested sodium-fluoride chemicals would make
children's developing teeth cavity-free. It ended prematurely,
control city was fluoridated, promoted with PR, and evidence of
harm ignored or untested.
Planned to last 15 years, the 1945
study ended prematurely after 6
years. Teeth of most children born into the
experiment hadn't even erupted yet. Muskegon, the
non-fluoridated comparison or control city began fluoridating its
water in 1951; thereby, negating the experiment.
An American Dental
Association (ADA) news
release reported, "many
communities did not wait for the studies to be completed before
starting their own fluoridation efforts. By 1950,
[fluoridation] had the full support of the ADA." This support came
without any safety evidence.
Grand Rapids citizens' health
was untested. But Newburgh NY's healthy schoolchildren
were examined in another 1945 human experiment, also cut short
prematurely. Newburgh kids suffered more bone defects, anemia
and earlier female menstruation after 10 years (Journal of the
American Dental Association, 1956). These findings were
dismiss...
Stories from the Inside is produced by the Twin Cities
Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee. It features stories from
people inside Minnesotas prisons about what its like to be there,
how theyre working to build power, and how prisons keep our whole
society chained up. Let us know what you think
at facebook.com/tciwoc. The first episode []
Hello from Vancouver!
SPOILER ALERT: this is all about me. Me Me Me Me Me Me!! My
favourite topic. Heh. Yep, and even better? It's up front and
personal.
Velopalooza 2015 Pop Up Performance
ride - the bellydancing stop
To you, my 100 cherished readers, tolerant, open minded, patient
and gorgeous supporters: Thank you for being you, and for being
here for me. Thank you for your personal messages, and for your
consistent readership, and for your kindness and generosity. Um and
to whomever keeps sending me those lovely, lacy little ditties?
Thank you enormously! It's just that I'd need to see a certain type
of physician on Harley St in London before I could ever hope to
fill those particular cups, much as wish to. And to all of you: My
God, I've really missed you. I fell apart for a bit there.
(Get it? Fell apart? connective tissue issues? Heh heh. I'll always
appreciate my sense of humour even if nobody else does!) Above all,
your sweet steady little stream of clicks and likes and shares
helps enormously. Thank you. You rock. So.... (she says in her best
Jewish grandmother tone of voice) "How have you been? Have you done
anything amazing with your summer?"
I spent a fair bit of time at the races during the early part of
the season.
Sometimes huge issues just slide along under the radar until,
all of a sudden, they blow up. The shock can come from a brown
envelope slid under a door, a scoop in the media, or an opposition
politician discovering a serious failure in government.
Im waiting for an explosion to occur at the Canada Pension
Plan Investment Board. This organization has assets of
$287-billion and provides pensions for the
19-million Canadians who pay into it.
The Investment Board is dangerously gambling and putting our future
in danger by investing billions-of-dollars in risky fossil fuel
companies. Moreover, the Board is knee deep in unethical
investments in the coal industry.
Coal sludge from a North Carolina site
mined by Duke Energy.
The collapse of a huge cooling pond dam at a coal mine in North Carolina during
Hurricane Matthew last month didnt cause a stir in Canada, but it
should have. The facility in question is owned by Duke
Energy perhaps the most vilified energy company in
the United States and the Pension Fund Investment Board is heavily
invested in Duke.
Earlier, a Duke pond leaked dirty effluent into a
North Carolina river. The company paid a $102-million fine
continues to face numerous law suits while it is involved in a
$3-billion clean-up. The loss had an impact on the Canadian
investments.
You should also know CCPIB has large
investments in more than 30 polluting coal companies,
says Friends of the Earth Canada (FOE Canada). FOE
Canada commissioned staff of the magazine Corporate
Knights, which calls itself the magazin...
We, the Coyote Women, stand together today.
Viva la donna selvaggia!
Coyote Woman
by Carolyn Dunn
From the deep hills
and dark wet
earth,
a bay moon of time
and after-rain, she moves glistening
past wild alata
jimson smoke, cedar
and sage.
He has called her
one last time
and it is in her blood
to answer.
Woman,
he calls,
will you ever
heed me?
Laughing,
baring her eyeteeth,
she moves the rough
the burning sky
cloaking the black earth
with fur.
Tell me a story,
she whispers,
a sound only
he can hear,
a sound about the crying
of last nights
feast.
Coyote
Woman Waits, artist Susan B. Boulet
A story,
he says,
about a dog of a woman
who wont answer
the call
of the one who
tamed her first
by voice,
then by touch,
then by song.
A story,
she whispers,
of land
and longing
and winds
that terraced over mountains,
across plains,
bringing madness
from the land
of our birth.
These are our worlds,
formless,...
This map depicts the results of the 2016 Presidential Election
within the Greater Austin, Texas metropolitan area. It includes
Travis, Williamson, Hays and Bastrop Counties, but not Caldwell*.
Votes are shown as dots, where one dot represents 3 votes. For a
more precise demonstration of voter preference, as well as their
density and distribution, results are mapped at precinct level and
dots have only been plotted within residential properties.
Votes for Hillary Clinton are colored cyan; votes for Donald
Trump are colored magenta. Third-party votes are not shown.
Brighter areas indicate larger concentrations of votes.
::
Its a pretty common political axiom in the United States to
refer to cities as islands of blue in a sea of red. The saying
comes from the pattern produced by residents of urbanized areas
tending to vote for Democrats (symbolized as blue since the 2000
election) along with rural voters tending to prefer Republicans
(symbolized in red). On typical county-level post-election maps,
these urban area stick out as small blue areas completely
surrounded by red.
Geographers and demographers (and Democrats) tend to object to
that depiction because it misleadingly implies that vast swaths of
the country are filled with Republican voters. While its true that
rural counties tend to lean Republican (often heavily so), its also
true that those counties are often sparsely populated, consisting
of vast tracts of uninhabited wilderness and farmland/ranchland.
(See my
Nobody Lives Hear map for an illustration of the unpopulated
portions of the country). As the saying goes, land doesnt vote.
Some cartographers try to compensate for this effect by
distorting the representation of the land to reflect population
counts, or using a gradient to indicate the winners margin (or
sometimes
both). Others have tried making the map
3D, using height to show the total number of voters in each
county. The result is a scattering of tall spikes showing urban
voters and lots of flat low-population counties. Another
intriguing, but underutilized, method is to fade counties
in proportion to their population.
As an alternative approach for this map, I revisited the dot
density style I began playing with earlier in the year. Though the
map is drawn at the precinct level, the same principles apply as
with county-level maps. Variations in precinct area and population
can over- or under-emphasize the patterns of the local geography
when using a...
The Flatbush Community Garden
at Albemarle & Buckingham is now closed! We want to thank
the community for its support during our 9 years there. We
are looking for another site and welcome any suggestions.
Please contact us at flatbushcommunitygarden@gmail.com.
On October 21, 2016 Robert Earl Council (aka Kinetik Justice
Amun) went on a Hunger Strike based on threats against his life
from the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) administration
and staff. He was transferred to a supermax facility, and water was
shut off in his cell in an effort to force him out of []
In my podcast today, I spend the second
segment talking in depth about atmospheric pressure. That
information is particularly important this week:
A very large astronomical King Tide will be
reduced considerably by much higher than normal atmospheric
pressure.
Normal pressure at sea level is approximately
1013 hPa (hPa is the metric unit of pressure).
This week the pressure is forecast to be
around 1030-1035 hPa! (see forecast below).
Such high pressure will reduce the high tide by
roughly 7 inches. As you can see below, the water level
predictions (blue lines) are substantially less than observed (red
lines). This situation should continue for the next few
days.
As described in the first part of the podcast,
a weak front will move through on...
Chris Hedges, longtime journalist and host of The Chris Hedges
Report, had Shadowproof editor Kevin Gosztola on his show to
discuss his book, Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case
Against Julian Assange.
The book can be pre-ordered from Seven
Stories Press. It will be released on February 28.
As Chris said in the introduction, I think your book and Nils
Melzers book are books I would recommend for people who dont
understand the case.
Chris and Kevin go issue by issue, like the book, which is not a
chronology but a meticulously organized guide to all aspects of the
United States governments charges and allegations.
Prior to the interview, one of the endorsements that Kevin
received for his book came from Chris. Kevin Gosztola has doggedly
done what most of the press has not, cover in exacting detail the
long persecution of Julian Assange and the judicial farce that
passes for Julians trial.
You may have seenor heardthis interview already. In two days, it
has over 20,000 views and has been shared widely on social media
and republished to several independent media sites.
Thanks again to Chris Hedges and the crew at The Real News for
giving Kevin a platform to share his book with a wide audience.
Canada is far behind many other countries when it comes to
meeting its carbon reduction targets. We have an inadequate
ranking on the international mechanism tracking carbon emitters,
says Climate Action Tracker. Many other countries/regions,
such as Norway, the European Union, the United States and China,
are well ahead of us.
Meanwhile, the federal governments recently announced that all
Canadian jurisdictions must adopt a carbon pricing scheme by 2018 with a
minimum price of $10 per tonne. The price must rise to reach $50
per tonne by 2022. The goal of reducing emissions by 30 per cent
below 2005 levels by 2030 will not get Canada anywhere close to its
promises to the United Nations.
The Canadian targets are nothing short of a disaster for the climate, says Green
Party leader Elizabeth May.
Canadians probably believe that our major environmental groups are
busy lobbying and pushing the federal and provincial governments to
do much more. But no, this is not the case.
Strangely, while many individual groups carry out excellent and
productive projects, the countrys environmental community is doing
very little to pressure governments to do a better job.
No group criticizing the government
A survey of the top 20 or so environmental organizations shows from
what I could find that not one group is conducting an ongoing,
strategic campaign lobbying the federal government for not doing
more.
Young people on Parliament Hill
protesting pipeline construction, but when it comes to fighting
climate change, environmental groups have decided not to campaign
against the Liberal government.
Some groups have made one-off statements criticizing the
government, but these do not constitute a campaign.
Greenpeaces Keith Stewart did say that thirty per cent by 2030 isnt
good enough. ...
Ninety-nine young environmental activists achieved their goal on
Parliament Hill on Monday by carrying out acts of civil disobedience. The boisterous group
climbed over restricted-area police barricades near the Peace
Tower.
Some carried a giant banner reading: Climate Leaders Dont Build
Pipelines.
The 99 arrested were taken to a police station where they were
issued citations and told not to appear on Parliament Hill for
three months. They will not have criminal records, but police took
their personal information. Its unclear whether the information
will go into a police database.
Protest spokeswoman Amanda Harvey-Sanchez, a third-year University
of Toronto student, told media that pipeline approvals are a
deal-breaker for many younger voters who helped propel the Trudeau
Liberals to a majority government in last Octobers general
election.
One of the 99 protesters arrested in
Ottawa.
Fully intent on breaking the law, many of the 200 protesters on the
Hill had been schooled in what they should and should not do during
their law-breaking task. Called Climate 101, the protest was specifically
for young people. It was organized by 350.org, a leading climate change fighting
group.
Facing protesters on Parliament Hill is a routing activity for
police some 25,000 people were on the Hill a year ago to oppose
climate change.
http://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/organizers-say-over-25-000-at-ottawa-rally-for-climate-change-1.2679364
But for most of those arrested, Mondays experience was their first
brush with the law. When police officers placed a hand on their
shoulder, there i...
A new zine cataloging international solidarity actions has been
added to the resources page, and here. Print it off and send it to
your comrades on the inside! full Text: This is a compilation and
timeline of actions and statements made by prison rebels and those
who are fighting against prison society around the world, []
Friends! Over a month after September 9 there are still few
things we can say with certainty about the scale of the strike.
Many inside contacts have still not been able to connect with us,
many prisons continue to be opaque and unaccountable to the public.
Where we do have good information coming out, were []
Information is just now beginning to escape from Kinross
Correctional Facility in northern Michigan, where one of the
larger, more inspiring strike actions occurred on September 9.
Retaliation by MDOC officials has been severe and violent. Three
prisoners have turned up dead under suspicious circumstances. Find
links to news reports and coverage below, and updates []
From Truthdig A nationwide prison work stoppage and hunger
strike, begun on Sept. 9, the 45th anniversary of the Attica
uprising, have seen over 20,000 prisoners in about 30 prisons do
what we on the outside should dorefuse to cooperate. We will not
only demand the end to prison slavery, we will end it ourselves
[]
Former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper apparently isnt
satisfied with having destroyed a lot of wonderful and important
things in Canada. Now he has signed on with Dentons, the worlds
largest elite law firm, to spread his dark viewpoints around the
globe.
Dentons proudly announced Monday that Harper who does not have a
legal degree and his new consulting company will work from its
Calgary office.
For Harper, the appointment is his reward from the corporate set
for many years of stalwart service. He will now be able to stuff
his pockets with greenbacks and 76-cent Canadian dollars.
The recently resigned Calgary MP will no doubt stick a Canadian
flag on his suitcase as he peddles his anti-social ideology.
Hopefully, this will be Harpers final insult to our national
pride.
Dentons is like an octopus. It has more than 7,200 lawyers in over
50 countries, and seems to be constantly expanding.
In easily translatable jargon, Dentons said Harper has teamed up
with the firm to provide clients with advice on market access,
managing global geopolitical and economic risk, and
maximizevalue in global markets
i.e. postulating himself based on the credibility he gained during
none years as PM.
The Donald Trump of the legal set
Dentons is the Donald Trump of the legal vertical, writes
legal expert and columnist Mark A. Cohen. The firm is brash,
bigger-than-life, and something entirely different. It receives a
disproportionate amount of press because it is always doing
something that drops jaws.
The firm surprised the legal/business world by forming a
partnership with a huge Chinese firm
closely tied to the Communist Party. They employ more than
6,0...
The latest water cooler chat among many Canadians this week is
speculation about who will replace Peter Mansbridge as host of The
National, CBC-TVs flagship news program. He announced earlier
this week that, after 30 years as host of the program.
The long-time anchor seemed to be trying to give his departure
considerable significance by announcing 10 months ahead of time
that he is leaving. Also boosting his own importance, his departure
also coincides with the occasion of Canadas 150th birthday.
One wonders if Mansbridge expects an honorary star-studded tour
hosting The National from CBC stations across the country, much
like the retiring New York Yankees star shortstop Derek Jeter was
honoured in every ball park during his last year.
Now CBC executives say they are going to usher in the next phase of
The National. Jennifer McGuire, the General Manager and
editor-in-chief of CBC News, told The Globe and Mail she
sees Mansbridges departure as an opportunity to reimage the
program. She said the CBC will look at increasing the digital
delivery of The National.
Finding a new host for The National should not be the CBCs
main goal.
CBC should address the fact that neither The National nor
any other CBC news program is trusted very much by the public. The
content of CBC News programs is just like programming at mainstream
media, and the public doesnt like either.
Canadians dont like mainstream news because they believe it lacks
balance and that it reports lies.
The public is much smarter and more skeptical when digesting the
news today than it was back in the 1960s when CBS News
Anchor Walter Cronkite was believed to be only second to God when
it came to telling the truth.
One of the reasons people mistrust programs such...
Anyone relying on mainstream media wouldnt know it, but the US
prison system is shaking up right now. No one knows how big the
initial strike was yet, but the information is slowly leaking out
between the cracks in the prisons machinery of obscurity and
isolation. Here are some speculative numbers we can share with
[]
Prisoners are going on strike against prison slavery on
September 9, 2016. Help support their organizing, and hear their
story. Subscribe to the Incarcerated Worker, a mini-magazine
written and edited by prisoners. Subscriptions are $20/year,
and all proceeds go to supporting prisoner organizing. CLICK HERE
TO SUBSCRIBE! Can you swing a bit more for prisoner resistance?
[]
On September 9, 2016, the 45th anniversary of the Attica
Uprising, as thousands of prisoners across the world are striking
against prison-slavery, several thousand indigenous tribal members
of over 160 tribes and supporters of #BlackLivesMatter are
collectively resisting white-supremacist and settler-colonialist
capitalist powers. In New York City, many will be gathering outside
Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn to protest the police
terrorization and kidnapping of 120 youth from Eastchester Gardens
in the Bronx. At the same time, NYC Stands With Standing Rock will
be holding a protest in Washington Square Park in support of the
Sioux Tribe and water protectors resisting the Dakota Access
Pipeline.
Early Thursday morning, prison abolitionists dropped a banner
over New Circle Road in Lexington, KY. The banner states No Pride
in Prisons, incorporating the logo of Hals Rogers PRIDE initiative
which, according to the initiative homepage, promotes personal
responsibility in a desirable environment in 42 counties in
Southern and Eastern Kentucky. The rest of the banner reads
Solidarity with Sept. 9 Prison Strike, drawing ties between the
nationwide prison strike expected to begin Friday morning and the
new federal supermax prison, USP Letcher, that is set to be built
in KY. Hours later, a poster that directly addresses Hal Roger was
found near downtown. While there has long been local dissent over
the prison, the plans have largely been kept quiet from the rest of
the state. But now outside support is growing.
On September 8th, in solidarity with prisoners taking action for
the 9/9 prisoner strike, about a dozen people disrupted activities
at the local Democratic Party campaign headquarters. Standing
outside the building, people held a large banner announcing the
prisoner strike while a statement was read and others passed out
handbills. Additionally, a group of people went inside the
headquarters to yell chants, clog sinks, tear down campaign
posters, and scatter handbills. An American flag in the office
found its way into a toilet. People walked away from the building
tossing handbills in the air.
In celebration of the wave of resistance going down and about to
go down, and as a tool to help raise money and highlight the
rebellion of folks down in Bama, a comrade has made this Straight
Outta Holman shirt design. The idea came up in conversation with a
prisoner at Holman, and went from there.
A nationwide prison strike planned Friday has Floridas jails and
state prisons on high alert through the weekend, bracing for
possible upheavals by inmates protesting what they say is inhumane
and violent treatment.
Already, a revolt at Holmes Correctional in Floridas Panhandle on
Wednesday night, involving more than 400 inmates, caused damage to
nearly every dorm during an uprising that lasted into the early
morning. No one was seriously injured, but the department is
concerned that the disturbance might be a harbinger of whats to
come.
Check original post for weekend
updates: https://itsgoingdown.org/spreading-strike-solidarity-actions-across-north-america-september-9th/
September 7th, 2016 People are organizing across the United States
and the world in order to stand in the streets in solidarity with
those locked behind bars who will strike on September 9th against
prison slavery. Already, a wide range of actions have taken place
in the run up []
Dozens of athletes from Canada and thousands from developing
countries have had a difficult time raising the money needed to
train and take part in the Olympics Games in Brazil.
In Canada, more than two dozen world-class athletes were so hard up
for support that they resorted to launching crowdfunding campaigns to supplement
the money they receive from government and perhaps corporate
sponsors.
On the tiny Pacific Island country of Nauru, judo participant Judoka Uera had
to hold barbecues and knock on doors to get the funds he needed
Getting to Rio fulfilled Ueras lifelong dream.
However, hundreds of other athletes who had the same dream and
could have qualified for Rio were unable to attend because of a
lack of support.
In fact, both the COC and the IOC are guilty of greedily spending
millions of dollars on themselves while struggling athletes
scrambled for a few bucks to get to Rio.
COC spends $10-million-plus on office
The Canadian Olympics Committees main task is supposed to be
fostering Canadian participation in the Olympics. So its a bit of a
shock that it is spending $10-million on a new office Olympic House
in Montreal. Included in the grandiose facility is a
$2.9-million board room, called the Lausanne Room a tribute to the
international masters which have their headquarters in Lausanne,
Switzerland.
More than 1,000 self-managed sessions have activists
discussing and creating progressive alternatives to traditional
political, economic and social policies that they will take back to
their own countries.
While as many as 100,000 people have attended sessions some years
in some developing countries, perhaps 10,000 are taking part in Montreal.
Participants from the South found it too expensive to travel to
Montreal. In addition, hundreds of activists from some countries,
including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Morocco, Iran, Nigeria,
Haiti and Nepal, were being refused visas.
WSF Meeting - Senegal
Montreal was selected this year because it has been the site of
strong social and political activism over the last few years.
Meanwhile, the federal government seems to want to censor free
expression at the WSF. It has distanced itself from the gathering
following complaints that its programming included anti-Semitic
content. According to news reports, the WSF was told last week to
remove the Canadian government logo from its list of partners after
two Liberal MPs expressed disgust over what they called a blatantly
anti-Semitic cartoon on the events website.
The Forum is an exciting event writes John L. Hammond of City
University of New York: The scene bursts with energy as people who work
on particular causes at homefeminism, the environment, indigenous
rights, economic...
While the banks, elites, and the super-rich have been scrambling
to try to hold onto their billions following the UKs shocking vote
to exit from the European Union, the anger expressed by the leave
side was another emotional cry to end the control that corporations
and the elite have over everyday people in many Western
countries.
The day after the vote, panic and fear struck at the hearts of
money gamblers as their bets turned sour and markets lurched
downward. The wealthiest people lost $120-billion.
On the other side of the equation, people in most part of the UK
except Scotland and Northern Ireland expressed their anger over their inability
to have more control over their lives. They blame the EU for the
disastrous performance of the economy since the 2007-08 financial
collapse. They also fear the idea of ever closer union, moving
toward a United States of Europe, which would lessen their control
over their lives.
Meanwhile, the same anger is present in several Western countries.
People have seen economic policies that favour corporations and the
rich that destroy their jobs, businesses and communities. Citizens
began to lose control of their governments in the
early 1980s when Thatcher in the UK and the Reagan in the US
without consulting the public adopted a series of neo-liberal
policies.
Multi-nationals, elites and banks firmly control Western
governments through neo-liberalism, financial integration, and
globalization. In 2011, a research group at a Swiss institute
studied a database of 37-million companies, and identified
a super-entity of 147 tightly knit
companies all of their ownership was held by other members
of the super-entity that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth
in a huge network.
Angry over EU membership, neo-liberalism
In the UK, millions of people feel they have suffered because of
both their EU membership and neo-liberal policies.
Baton Rouge police respond to shooting
of fellow officers.
On Sunday July 17, his birthday, a black man, former
highly-regarded U.S. Marine Gavin Long, shot and killed three Baton
Rouge police officers and injured three others.
The murders, following the killing of five officers in Dallas, also by
a black man, increased racial tensions and hatred in the United
States beyond the crisis level of the 1960s, when black people were
attacked and beaten across the South during their fight for civil
rights.
Gavin Longs attack on Baton Rouge police was calculated and brutal.
Nevertheless, an analysis of Longs actions, and the response of the
Baton Rouge police, reveal the failure and poor procedures of the
policing system that almost certainly exist in many American
communities.
Had police acted differently and if policing techniques were more
sophisticated in Baton Rouge, fewer police might have been killed
or the deadly confrontation might not have occurred at all.
The militarization of local police forces across the U.S. made
Gavin Long, and no doubt many like him, fear and mistrust police.
Many police departments now behave more like a military force,
sometimes abusing people rather than acting like a community
service with the goal of protecting all citizens.
Long lived in Kansas City. On July 5, he heard that a black man,
Alton Sterling, had been killed in Baton
Rouge for no good reason.
General Motors of Canada Ltd. went in a different direction Friday,
announcing the hiring of 700 to 750 new engineers who will work on
the automobile of the future vehicles that are battery-powered,
connected to the wired world much more closely than they are now
and will eventually drive themselves.
CTV News reported what Prime Minister Trudeau said, just as
though the comment came from an official news release: "We know
that to create good jobs ... we have to be on the cutting edge,"
Trudeau said. "This investment by GM in jobs that will support
their operations all around the world shows we're succeeding in
that regard."
How exciting! How futuristic!
But wait a minute. Heres a bit of interesting background:
If the reporters had bothered to scan through their archives, they
would have discovered that the auto industry in Canada is doing
very little compared to what it was like a few years ago, when many
thousands of people were employed with excellent wages.
Since the Canada-US Autopact was ruled to be illegal
several years ago and the North American Free Trade Agreement was
implemented, manufacturing jobs which is what Canada really needs
have disappeared by the tens-of-thousands.
Meanwhile, Unifor, the union that represents the
workers, is afraid that at least three of the eight unionized auto
plants in Ontario could close in...
An analysis of Canadian mainstream medias reporting of U.S.
President Obamas visit to Vietnam recently was so biased that
stories may as well have been written by the White House.
The good guy Obama was in Hanoi to lift the U.S. arms embargo on
Vietnam so it could defend itself against the aggressive Chinese,
and do what the U.S. could to help the country modernize. In
return, the U.S., one of the worst violators of rights in the
world, expects communist Vietnam to improve its human rights
record.
Obamas visit to Vietnam wasnt an important story for Canadians but,
nevertheless, it is a good example of how American interests
dominate coverage that appears in our mainstream media.
The Toronto Star apparently was the only major Canadian news
outlet to carry a substantial story clearly outlining Chinas concerns over the implications of
U.S. expanded relations with Vietnam.
Major news companies covered only one point of
view
However, the following news organizations reported the story the
way Washington would like to have it: At CTV News Channel
and CBC News Network hosts read just about the same story ad
nauseam for hours. The stories likely came from The
Associated Press, which is strongly biased in favour of the
United States.
In addition, CTV News Channel carried an interview with
Donald Baker of the UBC Asia Studies Centre in which Baker
presented only U.S. objectives.
About three years ago I decided to devote a lot of time to
writing about the threat of climate change. I felt then and feel
now that the planet is going to be in one hell of a worse mess in a
few years unless we take action on a scale never seen before
concerning any other threat in history.
After I had published two or three items on various news sites, I
was surprised actually shocked to learn that, compared to other
topics I have written about such as international financial
mismanagement and the evils of neo-liberalism very few people read
the climate change articles.
To try to find out why this is the case, I spoke with a few
friends. Most said the thought of dramatic changes occurring on
earth were too overwhelming to deal with. Worse still, they felt
they couldnt have any influence on what will happen.
As it turned out, hardly any of my friends wanted to learn more
about the threat or find out how they might help fight climate
change.
People reacting emotionally to climate change
I dont know the psychological state of my friends, but an
Australian psychologist believes she knows why millions of people
are reacting emotionally to climate change.
This climate activist traveled to Paris
to demonstrate during the UN climate change conference in December.
Masses of people must show the same resolve if we are to hold
climate change at bay.
Dr. Susie Burke of the Australian Psychological Society says that,
as life on earth becomes more abnormal over time, it can bring on
all kinds of feelings in people. Knowing
this, Id say some of my friends are in what is perhaps an early
anxiety stage concerning the threat of climate change. As
conditions worsen, their symptoms can be expected to worsen.
Many people may feel seriously concerned, frightened, angry,
pessimistic, distressed, or guilty in response to climate change,
she says. Qualitative research finds evidence of some people being
deeply affected by feelings of loss, helplessness, and frustration
due to their inability to feel they are making a difference in
stopping climate change.
...
One afternoon last week I took part in a protest against former U.S. Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger and former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon
Peres being allowed into Canada. Both spoke at a Simon Wiesenthal
Centre fundraiser deep inside the bowels of the Metro Toronto
Convention Centre.
The protest was staged by the group Actions4Palestine, but, as someone who was
a regular at protests 40 and 50 years ago, I was disappointed by
the small size of the protest crowd, and that our group made no
attempt to explain their cause to passers by.
The protest was definitely justified. Kissinger, who turned 93 last
week, is one of the worst living war criminals. In 1973, he
masterminded a U.S. scheme to help a brutal military dictator
overthrow Chiles democratically elected government, and supported
brutal regimes in a number of other countries.
Shimon Peres supported several Israeli actions against Palestine, include
serving in the Haganah, a Zionist Militia that massacred
Palestinians during 1948-1952. He was involved in the
massacre of Jenin and gave the green light for Israels violent
incursion against besieged Gaza in 2008. The Canadian Jewish News reported that almost
2,500 people attended the fundraiser, which raised more than $3.75 million for the
Centre.
While some 130 folks said on Facebook they would come out for the
protest, fewer than 70 showed up.
A bullhorn was used to blast out slogans that were repeated by
placard-carrying protesters as they walked back and forth on the
street and later stood on the street in front of the M...
Over the years I've been fortunate enough to hear some of North
America's top investigative journalists speak.
One recent evening it was Amy
Goodman, the amazing do-it-all journalist with Democracy
Now, the independent U.S. radio and TV program. She gave an
uplifting (for any journalist or would-be journalist) talk
ironically from the bowels of the CBC, where a lot of great
journalism has been dying in recent years.
(Note: The hour-long Democracy Now radio program is available on
some university or community-oriented stations in Canada. I highly
recommend it. )
The evening was sponsored by the Canadian Journalism Foundation,
which was created to boost corporate journalism in the country.
Asking the questions was Globe and Mail Editor-in-Chief
David Walmsley.
When it was announced Goodman was coming to Toronto, I was
surprised and disappointed that her journalistic integrity might
rub off on the Globe and Mail, which, among other things,
fired all of its progressive columnists over a period of time.
From Left: Amy Goodman | Michael
Maclear | Walter Stewart
Goodman, a tiny, engaging woman, has certainly been one of
America's top journalists over the past 20 years. She emphasized
the importance of journalists giving voice to the voiceless going
to the places where (in terms of media) there is silence.
Goodman described how she and fellow investigative journalist Allan
Nairn came close to being shot at point blank range while trying to
stop the military from massacring dozens of people in East Timor in the early 1990s. Goodman and
Nairn were spared, possibly because they made it clear they were
Americans and the weapons used by the soldiers were made in the
U.S.
In those days, I knew Allan
Nairn as a sometimes nervous and distant voice over
the telephone. I was a producer with the CBC Radio Sunday Morning
program, and we took in Allan's dramatic...
Crisis situations are shaking two Canadian communities to their
very core the terrifying wildfires that destroyed Fort McMurray,
and the epidemic of attempted youth suicides on the Attawapiskat
First Nations reserve.
The question arises: Why are billions of dollars being pumped in to
deal with one crisis while the other is all but being ignored.
Justin Trudeau receives a gift of
sweetgrass and a canoe
from National Chief Perry Bellegarde after addressing
the Assembly of First Nations.
I have no quarrel with anything that is being done to help the
people and community of Fort McMurray. The destruction and
emotional distress suffered by residents is taking a heavy toll.
Like thousands of other folks, I have made a financial
contribution.
What I do object to is that, in comparison, the federal and Ontario
governments are doing practically nothing and spending a pittance
to alleviate the suicide crisis in Attawapiskat, a
poverty-stricken, isolated community of 2,000 located 720 km north
of Sudbury.
The youth crisis reached epidemic proportions just days before the
fire outbreak in Fort McMurray. Eleven Attawapiskat young people attempted
suicide during the same night. Local hospital staff, unable
to deal with the situation, became frantic.
Proposition 1 was an industry-sponsored
citizens ballot initiative concerning recently-enacted city
ordinances governing the operation of so-called ride
hailing or transportation networking companies within
Austin (think Lyft, Uber, and the like). A special
referendum was held May 7, 2016 directly asking the voters in the
city to overrule the city council and repeal the ordinances. A Yes
(for) vote favored repeal, while a No (against) vote favored
keeping the rules in place.
After an expensive and contentious campaign, the proposition was
defeated 55%-45%. Voter turnout was 17.5%.
Examining the map, the most striking feature is the stark
contrast between the heavily Pro areas around Downtown and
UT-Austin and the heavily Against Central Austin neighborhoods. The
map also shows some decent contrasts in South Austin, where some
precincts voted strongly in favor while adjoining precincts were
strongly opposed.
Further study is needed to explain some of these patterns.
By Steve Brawner, 2023 by Steve Brawner Communications,
Inc.
Christie Erwin has hugged a lot of foster kids, but never while
they were in the middle of being interviewed for a short film in
hopes of being adopted.
That changed last year when a 15-year-old was asked on camera
what was hoped for in a family, responded by saying, I want to be
able to hug somebody, and then started crying. Read
the rest
Hello! Here you go - an extra
large picture of an extra large pick up truck. Way to go,
Chevrolet! You really outdid yourself on that one.
When does "Bigger is Better" beome just
plain stupid?
Un. Believable. What would prompt a person to purchase such a
Leviathan? It serves no purpose, except perhaps to make up for some
sense of SHORTcoming, as it were. It doesn't even have a fifth
wheel. It's a four wheel drive with duelies, a super heavy beast of
a machine with the capability of hauling five tons, only it's all
for show. That box in the back there has no more capacity than any
other off-the-lot half ton pick up truck in the country. A Toyota
can haul as much, and it can do it with an order of magnitude less
fuel. The Dickus Minimus who chose this joke of a truck obviously
needs it to haul his ego. He carted it in this monster, along with
his ass, clear across the country. Can you see? It's sporting
Ontario plates.
And like the rest of us, he has undoubtedly witnessed the effects
of climate change over the past decade or so, with the increase in
extreme weather events. You've gotta wonder whether he just doesn't
buy it, that climate change is real, or whether he figures his
actions have no impact on the greater whole. Either way, we
clearly don't see eye to eye, he and I. Pick up trucks are a plague upon the Canadian
economy, and the scourge of our environmental efforts, but try
telling that to your average redneck.
I've had arguments about climate change with a few people over the
past few months. Way back in the day, even before the protests at Clayoquot Sound, back when I first
started thinking about my impact on the planet, and wondering about
ways that humanity might alter its course to halt the full scale
destruction of the Earth's natural spaces, we environmentalists
were a rare species. Sure, everyone was aware of David
Suzuki, Canada's very o...
It's that time of year
again: Bike to Work Week is happening in cities everywhere. And
finally, you're ready to give it a shot. You've thought about it
long and hard, and this is it, you're going to give it a go. Wise
choice!
Your body, your mind, your bank account, and your municipality
will all thank you. And despite what you've undoubtedly heard other
drivers say about cyclists, they will thank you, too, because you
represent One Less Car on the roads in front of them.
You're not willing to pay through the nose to park your car every
day, and even with the price of oil scraping rock bottom, the price
at the pumps is still exhorbitant. The cost of taking transit is
not exactly easy on the pocket, either, and it leaves you at the
mercy of outages, delays, and the occasional out and out fail. Once you've finally
caught the bus you're hoping for, you're crammed into a tight space
with a bunch of strangers and potential predators. What fun.
And then you see those hipster kids out there on their bikes,
smiling like they haven't a care in the world. It's not just kids,
either. All sorts of people are riding these days, and
if they can do it, so can you. And you're ready. It...
The Spring Series is almost over now, though it
seems just yesterday it had only first begun. I joined the
multitude of Fast Freds racing in Langley and Aldergrove throughout
the month of March as often as possible, though if every race
didn't require the devotion of a whole day's time, I would have
raced two days per weekend instead of one. But between the travel
to and from, the registration, and the race itself, you can count
on being away from home for the better part of a day. Big, big big
kudos to the race organisers and volunteers, who put enormous time
and energy into making these days possible.
Spring Series is made up of what might
best be described as super sized criteriums. "What is a criterium?"
you might ask. Global Cycling Network sums it up nicely:
GCN says that a criterium is typically a
couple of kilometers long and can be held in the middle of a city.
Spring series is a closed circuit course, too, though most of them
are seven to nine kilometers long. I love the Gastown Grand Prix
for all of the reasons they describe, the speed, the technicality,
and the excitement of seeing the riders pass you by over and over
again. Wouldn't it be sweet to compete in BC
Superweek?
Ride through Vancouver,
and you will see that the city is home to far too many homeless
people sleeping rough in neighbourhoods all over the place.
Less apparent, yet equally important to the equation is all of
the Homes-Less-People, the multitude of condos and detached houses
alike, entirely empty of inhabitants, sitting vacant year after
year after year.
The path to this door has been unused
for so long that it is almost completely lost to moss.
Whole neighbourhoods are turning into ghost towns, so that fewer
and fewer privately owned places are actually occupied. According
to the 2001 census, almost a quarter of the residences in Coal Harbour sit
empty, causing house prices to skyrocket as fewer and fewer
homes remain available to Vancouver residents looking for a place
to live. And it's not all condominiums, either.
It's happening all over the lower mainland, but the nicer the
neighbourhood, the more it attracts the foreign investor.
Vancouver's great beauty, its very liveability is working against
our best interests. It's turning our nicest areas into empty,
vacant villages.
Vancouver has a
jaw-droppingly beautiful harbour. Despite being the fourth largest
port on the continent, it's home to killer whales, grey whales, harbour seals, sea otters, a
multitude of fish and birds, and of course, the exotic, blue-tinged polar bear swimmer.
It's a powerful place. It's teeming with
life because it's here that the continent meets the Pacific, but
it's also where the natural world collides with the
industrial.
It's a relationship with an historically
one-sided outcome; after all, how often does nature triumph over
industry?
Industry enjoyed a slam dunk here quite
recently. There are seventeen moorages in English Bay, deep water
parking spaces for ships awaiting their day at port. Last week a
brand spanking new grain ship on its maiden mission was awaiting
its turn in the harbour and inexplicably fouled the waters when it
lost many thousand...
You could be forgiven for thinking that
summer had arrived in Vancouver. The snow is all gone, and the
beach volleyballers are volleyballing on the beach. Oh wait!
We never had any snow this year.
But wait again! Now that the nets are up, now that spring is well
past sprung and now that the ski slopes are long closed? Yeah, NOW
there's snow on them there hills.
You see that right there? That's whatchacall the contrary nature of
life. And the signs of life are everywhere. The bears have come out
of hibernation up in the mountains, and have come to town to visit, so you know that
winter is well and truly over. The humans have come out to play,
too. You'll find the signs of the season everywhere.
Longboards that were long languishing in condo closets are now
prominently present on the promenade.
A mid-week miracle happened the other
day. It was sunny and beautiful outside at the very same time that
I had a few hours on my hands. It was the middle of the day in the
middle of the week, and I wasn't strictly compelled to be
somewhere, doing something, so I went for a ride. Because I could.
:)
Isn't it gorgeous? That's Brunswick Beach, the day's destination. I
followed the Sea to Sky highway from Vancouver, headed north
toward Squamish, which came in at number 32 on the New York
Times' 52 places to go in 2015. It must be one of the
most beautiful stretches of road anywhere on the planet, that bit,
and I love that I can ride there in just over an hour.
That glorious view certainly makes the price of the Whistler Gran
Fondo worth your while, especially since there are no cars on the
road during the event. But on Wednesday I was happy enough to share
the road with the motor vehicles, and delighted to bask in the
sunshine for a few minutes on Brunswick Beach. And as I did, it
occurred to me that two of my previous employers both live there.
Needless to say, beautiful Brunswick Beach, a wee tiny suburb of
the lovely village of Lion's Bay, is one of the more
exclusive neighbourhoods in the Lower Mainland. One of my past
employers is on the spit, with one beach in the front of his house,
and another in the back! Can you imagine? What a great way to live.
And as I sat there in the sunshine, it occurred to me that both of
them are people who are doing what they are passionate about. One
of them is a geologist, and the chairman of a group of m...
Hello! Here you go - an extra
large picture of an extra large pick up truck. Way to go,
Chevrolet! You really outdid yourself on that one.
When does "Bigger is Better" beome just
plain stupid?
Un. Believable. What would prompt a person to purchase such a
Leviathan? It serves no purpose, except perhaps to make up for some
sense of SHORTcoming, as it were. It doesn't even have a fifth
wheel. It's a four wheel drive with duelies, a super heavy beast of
a machine with the capability of hauling five tons, only it's all
for show. That box in the back there has no more capacity than any
other off-the-lot half ton pick up truck in the country. A Toyota
can haul as much, and it can do it with an order of magnitude less
fuel. The Dickus Minimus who chose this joke of a truck obviously
needs it to haul his ego. He carted it in this monster, along with
his ass, clear across the country. Can you see? It's sporting
Ontario plates.
And like the rest of us, he has undoubtedly witnessed the effects
of climate change over the past decade or so, with the increase in
extreme weather events. You've gotta wonder whether he just doesn't
buy it, that climate change is real, or whether he figures his
actions have no impact on the greater whole. Either way, we
clearly don't see eye to eye, he and I. Pick up trucks are a plague upon the Canadian
economy, and the scourge of our environmental efforts, but try
telling that to your average redneck.
I've had arguments about climate change with a few people over the
past few months. Way back in the day, even before the protests at Clayoquot Sound, back when I first
started thinking about my impact on the planet, and wondering about
ways that humanity might alter its course to halt the full scale
destruction of the Earth's natural spaces, we environmentalists
were a rare species. Sure, everyone was aware of David
Suzuki, Canada's very o...
Know what I love about
riding bikes? I love that you can just stop anywhere... ok, almost
anywhere, and soak it all in. Here we are, soaking in the beautiful
American landmark, Mt Baker, as seen from the Arthur Laing bridge.
(Never mind the exhaust we were soaking in at the same time... :-|
)
In a car, you can't stop on the bridge deck to check out the
planes, trains and automobiles (and distant mountains!) the way you
can on two wheels.
On a bike you can stop to take photos of other bridges from mid
span, and you can take pictures of bridges from beaches, too.
The Lion's gate from Dundarave in West
Vancouver.
They frown on people driving their cars onto the seawall to take
photos. See how those trees are already starting to come to life?
Some of the many varieties of ornamental cherries are
already in bloom, having had the requisite 10 C (that's 50
American) and sunshine for a while now.
Gidday! Greetings and salutations from
an impulseive lescyclist in circulation
in Vancouver. Here we are, finally over the mid-winter hump, having
celebrated Imbolic and
survived St Valentine's infamous day of love.
How did you celebrate? Not Imbolic. If you noticed it, you probably
nodded farewell to the darkest nights of winter and hello to the
first blush of light, and if you were on top of it, you started
your seeds in the windowsill. How did you celebrate love? Did you
go out with your favourite person, maybe for dinner or a drink?
Did you notice how perfectly lovely restaruants turned into
expensive, high end establishments, knowing full well that people
are going to go out for the evening,
Special heartless Valentine's day drink
prices.
and then capitalising on romance by nearly doubling their typical
prices for the evening?? Unbelievable. Restaurateurs must
absolutely love Valentine's day.
What. A year. As always you'll have
found me mugging it up for the camera throughout. It was a big one,
2014, and scary at times, too.
January started off with a bang when I went
into sinus arrest and found myself in the Cardiac Unit at VGH after
drinking some tea which disagreed with me.
In June, I crashed and burned on the Vets' Ride in Richmond, destroying both my scapula and
my clavicle in one fell swoop.
The spectacle
It was way past time to bone up on my skillz, so I shouldered on
and joined the guys at Escape Velocity, once I'd spent the summer
healing up, that is.
My shoulder is much more stable now, but this body is nothing if
not unpredictable, and for the last month I have been struggling
with a very painful knee. The doctors even kept talking about
trying to save the joi...
OMG! Where did the time
go? I can't believe it's almost 2015. Seems like just yesterday we
were down on the beach, hanging out in the sunshine!
I should really stay away from New Year's resolutions at all costs,
cause they are nothing more than a recipe for failure. The
last couple of years I tried to quit swearing, but I just can't
fucking do it. This year is different. This year I am joining the
masses, as it were. In 2015 I am going to shed a few pounds.
Sure, almost everybody wants to lose a little weight. Every New
Year, millions upon millions of people resolve to eat healthier,
and to exercise more, and that's why the diet industry is worth
billions of dollars. And even though I am not carrying a whole lot
of fat round the middle, I do want to lose some weight. Five
pounds. I want to lighten the load by five pounds.
It's not going to be easy. Or cheap.
Some people say it costs as much as a thousand dollars a pound when
you're dealing with a hefty, big boned frame like mine.
Where to begin? The frame isn't going
anywhere. Not yet, anyway. And I took care of the seat post last
week. What about the crank? There's a few ounces in that baby, for
sure. But it's soooooo pretty. I love my Campy crank... it looks
like a flower. See?
But it's metal, and that means it weighs more than crabon. And this year I resolve to
lighten up, so at least for the moment, it's gotta go.
Luckily for me, one very kind and generous soul happened to
have a crabon fiber crank laying around in his parts bin, and he
very generously don...
Humanity's complete and utter dependence
on fossil fuels is something I've been known to get all worked up
about. I needed to take my mind off any and all serious subjects
this past weekend. It was definitely time to kick back, to become a
tourist in my own backyard, and what better place to do that than
in Vancouver's historic Gastown?
Sure, the cobbles are quiet
now,
but this is the site of the Gastown
Grand Prix, one of the marquee events in BC's very own Superweek,
held this year from July 10-18. I would love to compete, but they
don't have a Superweak category for us crash test dummies.
I crashed last week. Twice!! I certainly
wasn't alone, however. This was a whole month
of many, many crashes, in truth,
bicycle
and automotive alike. Each of these accidents had a
different impact on the lives they touched. Some people were
injured, some lost their lives, and a lucky few walked away
unscathed.
The first time round
I was one of the lucky ones. Compared with some of
the other
mishaps I have suffered, this first one was a minor event, a
slow speed tumble. But the other day, as I was riding near Science
World, I noticed that the traffic lights were out all over the
place. And a few blocks later, I heard a woman saying "OMG that was
the scariest thing I have ever seen! That guy is so lucky to be
alive." Just a little further on, I saw the accident she was
talking about, and it dawned on me precicely why the power was out
all over the neighbourhood.
It happened just east of the Georgia
Viaduct, and for miles around, the traffic had descended into near
chaos.
We're here, and we're not going away. Cycling culture is
beginning to make its mark on Vancouver's red hot hot hot real
estate scene, so you know it's big. You can resent us, mock us,
ridicule us or even hate us, but whatever you do, you'd better get
used to us, cause we're here to stay. I would like to think that we
cyclists were a grass roots movement which grew in numbers. I wish
we had become bigger and stronger so that along the way the world
recognised the value in our lifestyle, until finally we became the
new normal, and we shaped the very nature of mainstream, but no.
Instead, what once was an alternative subculture simply became a
clever marketing trick, so that now for a mere $300,000 you, too,
can have 25,000 hipster neighbours and a apartment the size of the
double garage of yore.
What used to be the parking space for the two cars any
self-respecting family of four would have owned back in the day is
now the square footage of your average abode. The Independent is
marketed as a "Crafted Lifestyle," and sold as "Affordable Luxury."
The truth is that parking spaces add zeros to the price tag of
condominium living, and the gap between housing costs and salaries
here in Vancouver is enormous and growing. A lovely friend of mine
(clearly a tolerant, good humoured man) is a prominent architect
here in town, and one evening we were discussing the costs of
housing development. He said that the raw cost of building a
parking space is $25-$40,000 for developers, so that by the time
profit (who works for free??!), taxes and government levies are
added in, housing your car adds $60,000 to the price tag of a condo
here in Vancouver. Sixty grand!! You can buy a pretty nice little
car for that much money.
Vancouver might not have made it
into Copenhagenize's Top Cycling Cities list
this year, but as a community, we're sure growing in leaps and
bounds. This city has come a long way over the last several
years, and it shows when you see the increasing number of people
embracing cycling as a way of life. I absolutely love how many
beautiful women I see out and about on bikes these days. When I
began waaaaaaaay too many years ago to mention now, I was a rare
thing, a woman on a bike on the city str...
Hello from the Lower Mainland, where spring is well past sprung.
The hallmarks of the season are all around, and ever so easily
found.
Deep Cove
What about you? Are you watching the snow melt into blackened,
polluted, dog poo infested piles of sludge somewhere east of the
Rockies? Sorry bout yer luck. Here in Lotus Land, every mutt master
carries a little blue bag to pick up after their defecating dogs.
Not because of concern for their fellow citizens, but because the
fine for ignoring the bylaw is rather hefty. But thawing doggy doo
aside, it could be worse. You could be in Nova Scotia, where people
are just digging out from under a decade's worth of snow which
landed on them this week. No sign of springtime in sight.
Photo of Halifax's second blizzard in
three days courtesy of the CBC
On the west coast, we've been practicing
spring for you, and celerating the growing seasons for weeks now,
whilst the rest of the continent catches up. Yup. You've gotta love
this town. It's not just the sunshine and longer days, either.
Spring is here in the green grass, the budding trees, the buzzing
bees, and the blooming flowers - NOT the frozen and inert bulbs
buried under the ginormous mounds of snow blanketing the opposite
seaboard.
Ask any motorist what they think of cyclists, and almost inevitably
they will go on a tirade about how we are all law flouting maniacs
responsible for chaos and mayhem on their well ordered streets.
Rare is the driver who is even aware of the mistakes they make
behind the wheel, errors which may result in life altering injuries
for any cyclist unfortunate enough to be in their path. But don't
bring it up, because sacred is their right to drive.
And even though we are scorned, resented, and even sometimes
hated by ever so many motorists (self evident when you
read the comments on any article about cycling in any publication),
we are definitely on the right side of history. That's why cyclists
can rest assured that a two wheeled way of life will be embraced by
an ever growing number of people as time marches inexorably on. Our
interests will be protected, even promoted by a growing number of
governing bodies all over the globe. Here in Vancouver, where a
progressive city council has embraced cycling infrastructure,
despite the vociferous objections of many of the wealthiest, and
thus most influential, people in town, the number of cyclists has
dramatically increased in recent years. And that's a good thing,
because along with the uptick in the number of...
OMG can you believe it's
the middle of June already?! Summer is already upon us, and
solstice is on the horizon.
Seek happy nights to happy
days.
Remember when you were a kid, and the summer stretched out before
you in a long, lazy, almost endless procession of days, full of
sunshine and swimming pools? (You know you're getting older when
that time and space between the end of winter and the heat of
summer happens almost overnight. But happen it has.) I love summer.
And summer loves bicycles. They go so well together, don't they?
Like Anthony and Cleopatra, or Romeo and Juliet. It's a love affair
for the ages.
My bounty is as boundless as the
sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite.
We've crossed that indefinable bridge between the seasons and
up on the northern hemisphere, we've entered the brightest of them
all. Welcome to the realm of air conditioning and ice cream
trucks, o...
The company everybody turns to for the ultimate in fine
craftsmanship is suddenly saddled with scandal. Their reputation
was worth its weight in gold because Freds the world over will
willingly part with a fair few hard earned quid to sport a Brooks
saddle on their steeds. Brooks has always been above reproach, but
suddenly that stellar reputation is suspect, with the revelation of
these tawdry images of their newest product offering, the
Cambium.
A rivet ran through it.
When pressed, this saddle's rider said that he felt cheated,
absolutely robbed. "She rode alright, y'know? But you expect a few
years of hard riding out of a saddle, right? I expected to be
mounting a gorgeous piece of work for a long time to come, and
instead look at it. Nothing more than trash. Common rubbish." We
would argue that it is quite uncommonly expensive.
Bared essentials.
He said that he is embarassed to be seen with it all exposed like
that, and who could blame him? It's like seeing a picture of a
Hollywood celebrity flashing her privates as she's le...
The dog days of summer have brought an end to crit season and the
dawning of cross country, or cx. Right smack dab in the middle of
the transition is the Vancruisers Little One Hundred, a one
hundred lap drinking game relay race
traditionally ridden on a cruiser bike.
even if the administration didn't want to give us the first prize
at the time because they didn't like the retro drop bars on our
bike. It's funny, cause if you ask the race organizers for more
details about the rules around what sort of bike is eligible
to race (ie cruiser bike frame, 26" wheels, single speed with
coaster brake) they always reply "RULES?! There are no rules!" and
yet somehow two years in a row now, our bikes have managed to break
the rules. Last year they didn't like the handlebars, and they
called us team drop bar. They wouldn't give us first prize along
with the cup, despite a decisive win. This year they said that our
1.125 tires broke the unwritten rule that a 26" tire should be a
minimum 1.5 inches wide, but like the year before, they let us ride
the race on it anyway.
Hello from Vancouver,
home of the happy palm tree.
If you were a duck or a fish this summer
might not have been one of your top ten, but if you're a palm tree?
You're in luck.
Headed to Keats #pinkgoesfastser
#cyclelikeagirl
How does it happen? Has it been a week already??? Big week. My bike
and I went from Kits to Keats and back again, and then down to
White Rock to say goodbye to a man who was once an integral part of
my life. The final goodbye.
A big, stubborn part of me just wants to go away, ride my bike
and heal quietly, but there's so much to post about!! Some of these
things are very extremely exceptionally cool, and you should be in
the know. The first item is very exciting. It's something which
will happen in the dog days of summer, 2016.
This is important, especially if you are over thirty, so
listen up.
The inaugural Americas Masters Games will be held in Vancouver in
August, 2016. It will be fashioned after the European Master's Games now in
their second decade. This will be a similar World Masters Event,
held in the tradition of the Olympic games, with opening and
closing ceremonies, along with a series of cultural events designed
to entertain and delight as they showcase the many diverse and
beautiful aspects of this city. Cycling BC and the BC Masters Cycling
Association are both on board and working hard to ensure that
our province is well represented, so you can expect to see some of
our biggest and brightest elite athletes at the games.
Hello from the GVRD, the
Greater Vancouver Regional District
First Lookout, Cypress Mountain
Have you ever found yourself pre-occupied with thoughts of food, or
is it just me? The other day I was down in Steveston
when the thought of an egg with ham and melted cheese on toast
suddenly appeared from out of nowhere, persistent as fuck. I
couldn't think of anything else for almost thirty kilometers until
finally I got home and satisfied my craving. A few weeks ago I
stepped on the scale, and the damned thing announced that I weighed
163 lbs. Holy crap. I am seriously dense. At that weight I should
be six feet tall but instead of growing up, I'm already shrinking.
I was surprised to see the number, but not really shocked. The
clothes speak truth. If you've already guessed that I don't use the
scale much, you're right. It's ancient, and it probably doesn't
even tell the truth. Sometimes it gets stuck at zero and you have
to jump on it a few times to get it to tell you anything at all. It
babbles not. The only reason I stepped on it in the first place is
that my clothes were feeling uncomfortably snug and I wanted to
quantify how snug. It's bad. The last time I weighed anywhere north
of 160 I'd not long ago born a babe.
But my shoulder is stabilized, and I've been riding again, blessed
be. And suddenly I am not quite so fat. Yesterday that scale read
156 when I (literally!!) jumped on it. I don't feel much different
yet, but it's encouraging, in any event.
Its the 2016 primary election season in the United States and
this map represents a small part of it. It depicts the geographic
distribution of votes for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in
Travis County, Texas (home to Austin, the states capital city)
during the Democratic Presidential Party on Super Tuesday, March
2.
The dots on the map represent voters. They were generated from
the precinct-level election returns published by the Travis County
Clerks office. Yellow dots represent votes for Sanders, while
turquoise dots represent votes for Clinton. To give a sense of
where groups of supporters live, the dots are constrained to
cadastral parcels zoned for residential use. Dots are drawn
randomly within each precinct and parcels; they do not represent
the locations of individual voters.
Despite losing the state, Sanders won the county by about 4600
vote. Not a great surprise, given the countys left-leaning
reputation. Some general observations:
Clinton actually won more precincts, 130 to 109.
But those wins were of smaller magnitude compared to Sanders.
Clintons precincts were won by an average of 78 votes while Sanders
averaged nearly double the margin with 142 votes per precinct.
Geographically, Sanders showed extremely strong support in
downtown neighborhoods, especially at UTAustin and its
surroundings. In the precinct housing most of the dorms, Sanders
ran up a huge 5.5X, +1419 vote win. Impressive margins for Sanders
were also found in the West University (+924), Pleasant Valley
(+759) and Parker Lane (+622) neighborhoods.
Clinton scored the most lopsided victory, 52 to 8 (6.5X
margin), in Webberville in the southeast portion of the
county.
Clintons strongest areas of support came from the neighborhoods
along RM 2222 west of Mopac, and on both sides of the river,
scoring a handful of solid +200 to +300 vote victories. Additional
strong showings were found at the Circle C Ranch developments in
the southwest of the county and the Pecan Springs Springdale
neighborhood in eastern Austin.
::
Election maps are always fun and I enjoyed putting this one
together. The use of parcel data to limit the geographic extent of
the symbology was a bit of an experiment for me. I think the
results turned out well, revealing more detailed patterns among the
candidates supporters than would have been revealed otherwise.
P.s. - For the curious: yes, I did look at the Republican
Primary results as well. They werent that geographically
interesting though, so Im not likely to publish a map about it.
Being the Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Tar Heel was an
incredible learning experience. We made excellent strides with our
reporting, we took
big stands on important issues and we beautifully chronicled
the
best and the worst
of this year.
The sad thing is that, for many people in our class, this post
will probably be the first time they learn about some of our
progress this year.
In some ways, its humbling to realize that this newspaper that I
spend a lot of hours slaving over isnt really beloved by my peers
in the same way.
And thats because we dont read news the way our parents did. And
we never will.
This class didnt teach me that. Professors have been squawking
that at me for many many years now.
Print is dying. Its an expensive product to love. And general
mangers, publishers and editors the world over must figure out a
profitable way to get their news into readers heads.
What this class taught me is the intricacies of this
problem.
1. My peers are interested in news, but they have no feelings
whatsoever about where it comes from. You can be the greatest
columnist in the world, but it will be tough to garner a strong
following from millennials.
2. They want reporters to clearly state why a story matters to
them. This is selfish, but its a good thing for reporters to
understand in order to keep readers engaged for longer.
3. They dont feel like picking up a newspaper. Theyd rather
scroll through their Twitter feed and get the days news from many
different sources.
4. Local news is not dead. Rather, theres a demand for hyper
local news in real time, which is why Facebook pages like Overheard
at UNC are incredibly popular. Theyre a home for citizen
journalists to curate and present content.
5. There is not a strong appreciation for opinion writing. My
peers would rather be given the information and formulate an
opinion on their own. They turn to their peers for help, not the
local opinion editor.
As a caveat to that, the news industrys efforts to keep opinion
separate in the newsroom and in print is completely lost on readers
close to my age. They dont care if you have a special font that you
only use for editorials. They cant tell the difference. They dont
care if opinion is on the front page. Thats not how they organize
the news in their mind.
But there are many questions we still dont have answers to.
Digital media might not grow on trees, but its still destroying
our forests.
As we continue our study of current issues in mass
communication, its important to recognize the many possibilities
digital media brings to our society. Its equally important for us
to take stock of how the technologies developed to support our
growing appetite for digital media consumes vast amounts of energy
and creates toxic waste.
That last point is what Ive spent the last few weeks really
exploring.
My journey technically started in December, when I shattered my
iPhone 5. I spent many months talking to repairmen and my phone
carrier in the hopes of repairing and keeping my phone. Ultimately,
that wasnt a viable option. I found I would have to replace it.
After I got a new iPhone 6, I was tasked with getting rid of the
old iPhone 5. For a long time, my family and I have just kept our
old cellular phones in a drawer in our kitchen unsure of what to do
with technology that we no longer want but cant bear to get rid
of.
But I was determined to do something useful with my iPhone. I
was certain my phone couldnt be refurbished. By the time I was
through with it, it was beginning to leak some sort of internal
liquid (note: no one at my local Apple or Sprint stores could
account for what this liquid could be) and large glass pieces were
missing from the cover.
So my main option was to recycle my phone. And I set out to
figure out just what the industry around recycling iPhones looks
like.
Media consumption fuels planned
obsolescence
The reason my phone (a phone that was reinforced with heavy duty
Gorilla Glass) likely broke after more than two years of use is
because of a phenomenon called planned obsolescence, which is where
companies intentionally limit a products lifespan.
In some ways, this is good. As mobile applications come out and
new media debuts, we all want a phone that is technologically
capable of supporting those new developments.
But in other ways, planned obsolescence creates unnecessary
waste that costs consumers money and wastes resources. The
different iPhone chargers, for instance, dont represent any new
innovation. Theyre just an example of planned obsolescence that
costs consumers money and waste resources.
Today I volunteered to be part of SPLASH UNC, an educational
program that gives local high school students a chance to take
classes taught by UNC students one Saturday a semester.
I signed up to teach Journalism 101 and I had a lesson plan
filled with an introduction to news values, tips for doing
interviews and information about how to write the first four
paragraphs of a story.
The students Ive taught so far have been fabulous. Each of them
have come with hopes and dreams for getting into journalism. One
student wanted to be a writer for an outdoors publication, while
one young woman wanted to be a sports announcer.
It feels a little silly, though, to be teaching anything
journalism related when I have no idea what its going to look like
in 10 years. Im hopeful that the basics are the same avoid
anonymous sourcing like the plague and be transparent about your
reporting efforts but I know so many things will change. Is it
worth students time to learn about press conferences? Why should
they learn about news values as they relate to creating a front
page?
This map is a quickie to meet demand from the
reddit thread about the
Hardees Carls jr map. It shows the distribution of Checkers and
Rallys restaurants across the United States. Both chains were
founded independently in the 1980s and merged operations in
1999.
No plans to do any analysis of the results, but at first glance,
there does not appear to be a hard trend to the placement of the
restaurants. Generally though, Checkers has some strong
clusters in the South, but also in the NYC and Detroit areas.
Rallys has a strong presence in the old Northwest Territory and in
California, with a few islands scattered throughout
Checkersland.
A few notes:
The closest Rallys-Checkers pairing occurs in Pine Bluff,
Arkansas. The Checkers on UA-Pine Bluff is but 2 km (1.2 miles), a
short 5 minute drive, to the nearest Rallys. Theres another Rallys
4.3 km from campus.
Texas has one Checkers location in Beaumont, but residents of
El Paso are actually closer to the Rallys locations in
Arizona.
Chicagoland has both chains. Mostly Checkers in Cook County,
with one Rallys in the south of the county. Lake County, Indiana
has three additional Rallys locations.
One could travel over land from Sault Ste. Marie, MI to San
Diego, CA and technially always be closer to a Rallys than to a
Checkers.
Nik Freeman (mapsbynik.com) 2015
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
County geography from U.S. Census Bureau
Restaurant locations from poi-factory.com
Made with QGIS and Adobe Creative Suite
USGS National Atlas Equal Area Projection
Its not really a problem with Alert Carolina, I suppose. Its a
problem with the way all police departments describe their
suspects. And the way many media outlets mindlessly regurgitate
that information without really considering its effects on
readers.
So heres how I first found out about last nights stabbing:
This email is actually far
better than most. Normally, the Chapel Hill Police
Department only issues statements that give a suspects race, height
and build. Nothing about what he/she is wearing. Nothing about
where he/she might be even though police typically have a pretty
good idea about that stuff.
Its detrimental because it creates unnecessary fear for readers.
If all a newspaper prints is that a six feet tall white man was
suspected to have committed a crime, then, suddenly, every six foot
tall white man becomes a suspect. That information isnt
helpful.
But we at least got a description of his clothing. And we know
he fled toward Rosemary...
Thanks to the incredible organizing migrants and allies have
done together, full and permanent immigration status is closer than
ever. But we must act now to demand that our representatives show
as much support for Regularization and Status for All as we do! If
the Federal Cabinet Ministers support regularization at their
retreat in Hamilton from January 23 to 25, then permanent residency
will be within reach for hundreds of thousands of migrants.
This week, please choose at least two ways to take action before and during the Cabinet
Retreat:
Make a call today You can help get the
Ministers support by giving them a call before the retreat. The
38 Ministers phone numbers are listed here
please call as many as you can in your province and across the
country! All you need to do is leave a simple message like the one
below, and make it better by adding your personal experience:
Dear Minister, please support regularization for all
undocumented people and permanent resident status for all migrants
at the winter cabinet retreat. We need an uncapped program
that leaves no one behind. A fair society means equal rights, and
thats only possible with permanent resident status f...
I followed a rather interesting Twitter discussion earlier this
week about The Indianapolis Stars front page editorial
that looked at how newspapers should treat their epic front page
stories on their websites home page.
So, like we talked about in class on Thursday, The Indy Star did
it big this week:
I later learned hes the leader of the Knight-Mozilla OpenNews
project, which, according to its website, is a joint project of Mozilla
and the Knight Foundation that supports the growing community of
news developers, designers and data reporters helping journalism
thrive on the open web. So thats very cool.
Anyways, somehow I came across this tweet:
I remain hopeful that the keepsake part of
great newspaper front pages eventually comes to digital platforms.
Someday, someday, someday.
And I think it speaks volumes for the kind of
journalism Im hoping to be a part of going forward.
The homepage is obviously not getting it. Websites largely
traffic in social now. Very few people wake up and head to
dailytarheel.com first thing in the morning. The Daily Tar Heels
online editor already had a lot to...
1. The class discussion revolved around cookies and privacy
mirroring many of the discussions weve had in our class. Most
people said they dont like that companies harvest data without
active consent from web users, but many of my classmates also said
they dont want to make the effort to stop those companies from
doing so.
2. Ill be honest. The few times Ive made the effort to go
disable cookies on my different web browsers, theyve threatened to
unremember all of the different passwords Ive saved. That was
enough to scare me back into my cookie-filled browsers.
3. The discussion raised some interesting points in my mind.
Particularly, the word consent. North Carolina has the
one-party consent law, which makes it a crime to intercept or
record any wire, oral, or electronic communication unless one party
in the conversation consents. While I understand that we
technically give consent when we sign user agreements, is it really
consent if you cant use most of the Internet without giving away
that privacy? Especially now that the president declared the
Internet is a public good.
4. Tonight, I tried, rather unsuccessfully to register for an
account on aboutthedata.com. Its run by a
company called
Acxiom, a marketing data company that collects and sells
internet users data to advertising companies. Apparently, they have
a different address listed for me, so they wont release the data
theyve collected on me to me.
5. Im still not sure companies have perfected the algorithm they
use to track my searches. If I spend an hour looking at boots on
Google, Amazon, and other online shopping sites and still dont buy
anything, Im not sure I need to be advertised at for the next few
weeks. Id rather them take the
Harris Teeter VIC card approach if Im buying lots of cookies, I
would probably use a coupon for some milk.
My best friend and Daily Tar Heel managing editor
Katie Reilly went
to a big conference
on narrative journalism this weekend so when I caught up with her
about it tonight I just wrote down everything she said so you guys
could see it here.
What was your favorite session?
My favorite session to go to was from a reporter who works for
The Marshall
Project. Its a new website all about criminal justice
reporting. Shes a criminal justice reporter and her whole talk was
about when youre telling stories about crime that its very easy to
fall into the trap of writing about good guy, bad guy in very
strict dichotomies. But the best kind of story recognizes that its
far more complex and grey than that. She talked about one finding a
compelling criminal justice story to tell and then the difficulty
of interviewing criminals and victims and people within these very
sensitive story areas.
Her whole goal is to humanize people and all of these characters
that would be involved in that situation. She is a very good
writer.
She introduced the audience to the premise of Serial and she lifted up the curtain
even further for how she went about the reporting of it. She talked
about how when it first started she didnt even know what a podcast
format should be like. So she came at it like what she does for
radio and This American Life just longer.
Basically she talked about podcast as a medium and how its
totally distinct from radio or how you would approach a written
story. I approached it like this is going to be a book told in
different parts. And they were like no you have to make it like
really good TV.
She said that thats where the idea previously on Serial and the
theme song came about. So it was this idea that Serial was
something listeners could either return to or tune into for the
first time and pick up wherever the story was.
The huge response to it she thinks was in part to people werent
used to appreciating journalism in the same way that they
appreciate entertainment which is essentially what happened with
that. And on that note, when they started last summer, she and
Ira
Glass said they would be satisfied with 300,000 subscribers.
They reached that in five days after they launched. And now they
average I think it was 6.5 million downl...
Last weeks discussion about the music industry is one Ive had
many times in my journalism classes. Its often used as the classic
example of an industry that was digitally disrupted and never fully
recovered.
Oftentimes, I think we spend too much time looking at the damage
digital downloads have caused rather than looking at how theyve
forced the music
industry to consider new models for making revenue. In fact, I
think theres a lot of lessons publishers can learn from the
music industry.
(Also, I dont think enough people recognize the difference
between the music industry and the record industry. But thats
another blog post.)
The music industry now makes most of its
money off of concerts and events. In December 2013, I paid
almost $200 for front row seats to a Beyonce concert. Then I
bought a $40 t-shirt while I was at the concert.
I love Beyonces albums, but I buy them one single at a time.
Shes not making much money off me there.
The print
journalism industry will likely never fully recover from its
own digital disruption. But news outlets can turn to events and
other revenue-generating businesses to float their news
operations.
Newspapers and their reporters are still considered thought
leaders in their regions and they can trade in that. Earlier this
year, The Daily Tar Heel hosted a
feedback session after we printed our front page editorial on
the need for reform in college athletics.
It was well attended and lasted much longer than we thought it
would. That doesnt necessarily mean that we could have made
money off of it, but it seemed like people might be willing to buy
tickets to hear us gab about the topics were well-versed in.
(I might be crazy. I dont know. I would love to hear peoples
thoughts on this idea.)
This is something the American City
Business Journals has been doing for a long time using its
connections in local business circles to host professional nights
out and hosting grand dinners to honor local businesses that make
it onto top-40 lists the journals create.
The student media group at the University of Oregon, which is
responsible for publishing The Daily Emerald, recently purchased a
photo booth. The
low-maintenance booth incurred a one-time cost to the group, and
now it rents it out to other student groups for extra
revenue.
But I guess, in the end, these are largely band-aid solutions to
the broader problem ...
The Flatbush CommUNITY Garden will begin it's
2015 season with our first new member orientation, directly
followed by the first work hour of the season on Sunday, April
29th.
Orientation for
New Members:
Orientation for new
members will take place on Sunday, March 29 at 2 pm in the garden (weather
permitting; snow/raincheck April 12).
Im an avid reader of the news, but Im not an avid sharer. My
Twitter profile is
mostly populated with stories from The Daily Tar Heel and the same
goes for my Facebook page.
If I want to share a story Ive read from a national outlet, I
usually would email it to my friends I think would most appreciate
it, rather than posting it for my 800 followers who mostly care
about the UNC-related news I tweet.
But I really appreciate it when news sites give me an easy way
to share stories. Whether thats like what
The Los Angeles Times does with its sharable bites:
This week, Starbucks unveiled a new ad campaign called
Race Together, which is aimed at encouraging Starbucks baristas
and customers to talk about race relations in America.
Howard Schultz, the chief executive officer for Starbucks,
announced the new campaign at an employee conference in Seattle on
Monday. According to Fortune
Magazine, 40 percent of Starbucks employees identify as a
racial minority.
We at Starbucks should be willing to talk about these issues in
America, Schultz said during the conference. Not to point fingers
or to place blame, and not because we have answers, but because
staying silent is not who we are.
Immediately, the Twitter-sphere weighed in with its usual snark,
which the
Washington Post conveniently aggregated for me.
The coffee is $4.25, the lecture is free. #Starbucks
The campaign also includes a weekly USA Today insert
that will have information about race relations and different
perspectives on race. Starbucks stores will also have t...
Looking to learn more about the Flatbush
CommUNITY Garden? Heres some
information and history:
The Flatbush CommUNITY Garden is
a member-run community garden located on private land near
Albemarle and Buckingham Roads. The Garden was
founded by Susan Siegel and launched with other community residents
in Summer 2008. Operated first as
a project of Sustainable
Flabush from 2008-2009, the Garden became independent in
2010. Our mission:
create a space for neighbors of all ages and cultures to come
together to create a community-led organic garden; to grow fruits,
vegetables, herbs, and flowers in a space that fosters unity and
pride within the community while supporting healthy eating and
local sustainable agriculture. The landowner has
generously agreed to lend an area of her backyard for use by the
Garden. The Garden is responsible for paying for all costs
associated with the Garden, including water, tools, compost, and
insurance. The Flatbush CommUNITY Garden
is on private property, for this
reason we do not have public hours and are open only to
members.
...
Thank you for visiting my blog! People whove visited in the past
may notice that this site has gone through a redesign. Change
is never easy, but my hope is that people will find this site to be
more user friendly. As always, I welcome your feedback.
In addition to a visual redesign, my blog is also going through
a content metamorphosis as well. It will still feature helpful
advice for newspapers and how theyre presented, including
information about my books Confessions of a Community Journalist
and Reporting & Community Journalism.
But it will feature additional content about current events of
significance, and in some cases, my take on events as they
unfold.
If theres content that you would like to see included here,
please feel free to leave me a comment. One piece of advice that I
would give to any journalist is that much of what we community
journalists report is reader driven.
ALBUQUERQUE,
N.M. (AP) Three teenagers ganged up on two homeless men and
fatally beat them before leaving their bodies nearly
unrecognizable, Albuquerque police said Sunday.
Alex Rios, 18, and two boys, ages 16 and 15, are
being held in Bernalillo County detention facilities a day after
allegedly killing the victims in an open field, police spokesman
Simon Drobik said.
A criminal complaint filed by police says Rios has
been charged with two counts each of murder, conspiracy to commit
first-degree felony and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
He also faces three counts of aggravated battery with a deadly
weapon and one count each of tampering with evidence and
robbery.
Emily has a Home it's her family, but
she is missing a House!
Below is yet another story about a family who find
themselves at the mercy of a system in the United States of America
that often shuns its own citizens for nothing more than
falling on hard times.
Life is quite good for many in the USA, but for many, praying for a
roof over ones head and food to eat becomes the major focus of
survival. Sure there are many, many so-called not for profits in
the business of HELP, but who do they actually serve? For many it's
their business interest of keeping real estate, pensions and/or
some sort of tax benefit. Others do it for the correct reasons, but
don't favour as well.
The sad part of people having to live as Emily and her children, is
that the United States of America claims itself as a "Christian"
nation, but for this to be true and actual, the only ones without a
place to lay their head, have food to eat and a life for them,
would be those who willingly choose the "Houseless" way of life.
Perhaps the saddest part is that the USA is not, in fact, a real
life practicing nation that follows the one called "Christo".
Pray and if you can, search out this family and/or others such as
Emily and her children and do what is natural and correct,
HELP!
After the seriousness of the
Nobody Lives Here map, were back to the silliness of Waffle
House. I promised more visualizations of WaHo geography, and here I
deliver.
This graphic shows a mash-up of two visualization types: a map
and a bar chart. The concept is similar to Bill Rankins population
histograms, which tabulate population counts by latitude or
longitude. Here, Waffle House restaurant locations are counted by
their latitude, grouped into segments of 0.25 degrees.
WaHos status as primarily a southern institution is
well-established. And the results here match that expectation, with
only a handful of restaurants to be found north of the Mason-Dixon
line. But these results also emphasize how Waffle House
distribution is more a phenomenon of the Deep South. Of the 1606
locations in my (2012) data set, 66% of them are located south of
the Georgia-Tennessee border (35 59 N).
Looking at the longest bars, we see the Atlanta metro area
dominating again, just as it did on the
3d Density Map. The first, third and fourth-longest bars pass
straight through the ATL and its environs (Athens helps a bit too).
Theres another, smaller concentration near 33 N that we can
attribute to locations in Dallas-Fort Worth. Nashville is also
responsible for a relatively long bar.
The takeaway from this graphic for me though, is the bar that
passes along the Gulf Coast (as well as the two smaller bars on
either side). Its the second-longest bar on the page, yet no single
city can account for it. Instead, its mostly a string of locations
tied together by one common element: Interstate 10.
The Gulf Coast between Jacksonville and Houston has 78 Waffle
House locations within one mile of I-10 (and an additional 9 along
the I-12 bypass of New Orleans). Plus, many of the towns along that
route have restaurants near the coast. US 90 between Mobile and
LaFayette adds an additional 19 locations.
Given the linear spread of Waffle House locations along the Gulf
Coast, Im tempted to coin the term Waffle Belt to describe that
region. Actually, that doesnt sound too bad.
I hereby christen the Gulf Coast from Houston to Jacksonville as
The Waffle Belt. May its syrup always be heated
and its batter forever fluffy.
::
Map Notes
I chose the Miller Cylindrical projection for this map because
I needed the parallels to be, well, parallel. Cant have curved
latitudes with straight bars. I also wanted to minimize the area
distortion in the northern...
Scientists have found that our bodies and our minds have both
deteriorated significantly compared to our ancestors. In
fact, just this week a very prominent professor at Cambridge
University said that our most highly trained athletes pale in
comparison to these ancestors of ours. The biggest reason for
this, of course, is the degradation of the human genome.
Groundbreaking research by Dr. John Sanford of Cornell University
and others has shown that our genes contain tens of thousands of
mistakes (mutations), and with each passing generation even more
errors are added and passed on. So it should be no surprise
that our ancestors were bigger, stronger, faster and smarter.
The truth is that they had better genes.
This kind of information comes as a shock to many people.
It is widely assumed by the general public that humanity is
progressing and that we are better both physically and mentally
than our predecessors were. But that is not the case at
all. In fact, research
conducted at Cambridge University shows that we are weaker than
we used to be and that the most highly trained athletes of today
pale in comparison to those that lived thousands of years ago
Even our most highly trained athletes pale in
comparison to these ancestors of ours, Dr Colin Shaw told
Outside Magazine. Were certainly weaker than we used to be.
The study looked at skeletons dating back to around 5,300 BC
with the most recent to 850 AD a time span of 6,150 years.
It then compared the bones to that of Cambridge University
students, and found the leg bones of male farmers 5,300 BC
were just as good as those of highly-trained cross-country
runners.
In cultures all over the world, there are ancient stories about
beautiful, prosperous cities that became submerged in the ocean and
were never seen again. The most famous of these is the story
of Atlantis, but there are many others. So could it be
possible that some of these cities actually exist? In recent
years, modern technology has allowed humanity to investigate the
ocean floor like never before. As we have done so, we have
made some incredible discoveries. You are about to see some
amazing mysterious structures that have been found on the bottom of
the ocean floor all over the world. Could these mysterious
structures actually be evidence of very advanced ancient
civilizations? As we learn about these ancient civilizations,
that we all learned in school upside down?
We live at a time when mind blowing discoveries are being made
at a pace never seen before. Just last month, I wrote about
the megalithic ruins that have just been discovered in Russia
that contain the largest blocks of stone ever found (even bigger
than Baalbek).
Nobody can explain where those stones came from, who lived
there, or how ancient humans could cut and move such massive
blocks.
Well, similar things could be said about many of these
mysterious structures on the bottom of the ocean floor
The Ancient Underwater City Of Yonaguni-Jima,
Japan
For as long as anyone can remember, residents of Okinawa have
passed on stories of a vast underwater city to their
children. Most considered those stories to simply be
myths. But after what happened in 1986, that all
changed
In 1986, a diver near the island of Yonaguni Jima, off the
southern tip of Japan (around Okinawa) came across some strange
structures about 25 metres below sea level.
They appeared to be stepped structures with terraces and
ramps.
A deranged public tirade by a professor of anthropology at the
University of Connecticut is putting the evolution vs. creation
debate back into the headlines. He recently spent more than
two hours harassing Christian evangelists that were trying to
preach to students on campus, and at one point he even asked one of
the evangelists if he had accepted Darwin as my lord and
savior. Later on, he even encouraged students to join him in
publicly proclaiming the phrase Praise Darwin! This bizarre
behavior has suddenly made this obscure professor quite famous, and
as you will see below, he is not apologizing for his
behavior. Sadly, this professor does not even seem to be
aware of what Charles Darwin actually stood for. If he did,
he would probably not be so proud of himself.
When I first came across this story, I could hardly believe
it. What kind of self-respecting professor would
spend more
than two hours publicly confronting Christian evangelists on
campus?
James Boster, a professor of anthropology, spent more than two
hours trying to draw students away from evangelists.
He asked me if I had accepted Darwin as my lord and savior,
evangelist Don Karns told Christian News Network. He was very
agitated, very demonstrative. It was very unbecoming of a
professor.
Boster repeatedly used profanity and there were moments when it
actually looked like he was going to physically attack the
Christian evangelists. And his attempt to get
students to
publicly praise Darwin was more than just a little bizarre
Karns said that Boster then confronted him a second time, using
profanity and gett...
Why is the federal government so obsessed with grabbing more
land? After all, the federal government already owns more
than 40 percent of the land in 9 different U.S. states. Why
are federal bureaucrats so determined to grab even more?
Well, the truth is that this all becomes much clearer once you
understand that there is a very twisted philosophy behind what they
are doing. It is commonly known as Agenda 21, although many
names and labels are used for this particular philosophy.
Basically, those that hold to this form of radical environmentalism
believe that humanity is utterly destroying the planet, and
therefore the goal should be to create a world where literally
everything that we do is tightly monitored and controlled by
control freak bureaucrats in the name of sustainable
development. In their vision of the future, the human
population will be greatly reduced and human activity will be
limited to strictly regulated urban areas and travel
corridors. The rest of the planet will be left to
nature. To achieve this goal, a massive transfer of land from
private landowners to the federal government will be necessary.
So the conflict between Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and the BLM
is really just the tip of the iceberg. The reality is that
the BLM has their eyes on much bigger prizes.
For example, Breitbart
is reporting that the BLM is looking at grabbing 90,000
privately-held acres along the Texas/Oklahoma border
After the recent Bundy Ranch episode by the U.S. Bureau of Land
Management (BLM), Texans are becoming more concerned about the BLMs
focus on 90,000 acres along a 116 mile stretch of the
Texas/Oklahoma boundary. The BLM is reviewing the possible federal
takeover and ownership of privately-held lands which have been
deeded property for generations of Texas landowners.
Sid Miller, former Texas State Representative and Republican
candidate for Texas Agriculture Commissioner, has since made the
matter a campaign issue to Breitbart Texas.
In Texas, Miller says, the BLM is attempting a repeat of an
action taken over 30 years ago along the Red River wh...
The dumbing down of America is accelerating. A massive
federal takeover of education known as Common Core is attempting to
impose nationwide academic standards on public schools throughout
the entire country. Thanks to the backing of billionaire Bill
Gates, endless promotion by the U.S. Department of Education, and
financial bribes to state governments by the Obama administration,
45 states and Washington, D.C. have already agreed to implement the
full Common Core standards in their schools. Unfortunately,
these standards are doing to public education what Obamacare is
doing to our health care system absolutely ruining it. Just
look at how basic math instruction has changed. Posted below
is a comparison between the old method of subtraction and the new
method of subtraction being taught in many of our schools.
When I first came across this on Facebook, I thought that it was a
joke
I thought that there was no possible way that this could be
real. I really thought that this must have come from some
sort of parody website.
This is not a map by nik, but one by twitter user @matamix.
And it is a fine companion piece to my
United States version that I thought Id share.
Based on population data from INSEE, it shows the parts of
Metropolitan France where people dont live. Like the U.S. map,
terrain plays a big role in determining where people settle. For
instance, the roughness of Alps (southeast) and the Pyrenees
(southwest) Mountains, prevents habitation. On the southern
Atlantic coast, forestation acts as an impediment to human living
in Aquitaine.
The vast expanse of uninhabited land in the northeast (Burgundy,
Champagne-Ardenne) is a bit of a mystery. Much of it is arable land
and likely covered in agriculture, especially on the side near
Paris. But Brittany and Pays-de-la-Loire are also prime
agricultural land. So why do we see such different settlement
patterns between the regions?
Perhaps someone more familiar with the geography of France can
clue me in. Id appreciate it.
Update: jedo52
explained to me that the regions did not share agricultural
practices historically. Brittany and the northwest are
traditionally covered in a bocage landscape where
housing is dispersed in many hamlets. In the east however, farm
fields are more open with housing more concentrated into
villages.
Finally, the numbers. France checks in at about 32% unoccupied
compared to 47% in the U.S. Considering the higher population
density in France, its not surprising that the country is less
empty of humanity.
In any event, @matamixs map is a great contribution to the
discussion of where people arent.
Nobody lives here: The nearly 5 million Census Blocks with zero
population
A Block
is the smallest area unit used by the U.S. Census Bureau for
tabulating statistics. As of the 2010 census, the United States
consists of 11,078,300 Census Blocks. Of them, 4,871,270 blocks
totaling 4.61 million square kilometers were reported to have no
population living inside them. Despite having a population of more
than 310 million people, 47 percent of the USA remains
unoccupied.
Green shading indicates unoccupied Census Blocks. A single
inhabitant is enough to omit a block from shading.
Update 2014.05.01: Ive received a couple questions
about Canada. Just to be clear, this map is of the United States
only. It is based on 2010 data published by the U.S. Census Bureau,
which for reasons I hope are apparent, does not include data on our
friends in the Great White North. For a similar depiction of
Canada, see this map
whipped up by Michael Chung.
Map observations
The map tends to highlight two types of areas:
places where human habitation is physically restrictive or
impossible, and
places where human habitation is prohibited by social or legal
convention.
Water features such lakes, rivers, swamps and floodplains are
revealed as places where it is hard for people to live. In
addition, the mountains and deserts of the West, with their
hostility to human survival, remain largely void of permanent
population.
Of the places where settlement is prohibited, the most apparent
are wilderness protection and recreational areas (such as national
and state parks) and military bases. At the national and regional
scales, these places appear as large green tracts surrounded by
otherwise populated countryside.
At the local level, city and county parks emerge in contrast to
their developed urban and suburban surroundings. At this scale,
even major roads such as highways and interstates stretch like
ribbons across the landscape.
Commercial and industrial areas are also likely to be green on
this map. The local shopping mall, an office park, a warehouse
district or a factory may have their own Census Blocks. But if
people dont live there, they will be considered uninhabited. So it
should be noted that just because a block is unoccupied, that does
not mean it is undeveloped.
Perhaps the two most notable anomalies on the map occur in Maine
and the Dakotas. Northern Maine is conspicuously uninhabited.
Despite bein...
The map shown here is a truly quick-and-dirty visualization of
the distribution and density of Waffle House locations as of summer
2012. It started as a way for me to play with 3D in Google Earth,
but that giant spike in Atlanta was interesting enough that I
thought it worth sharing.
The rectangles represent USGS 30x60 minute (1:100,000) map quad
boundaries and the height extrusions are proportional to the number
of Waffle House locations found within that quad.
Map Observations
Atlanta, Georgia is the clear standout on the map. Its quad
contains 132 locations. Immediately north of Atlanta, the
Cartersville, Georgia quad is next highest on the list with 45
locations. These are followed by Greenville, SC (34), Athens, GA
(29) and Fort Worth, TX (25).
The Atlanta metro areas dominance on the map is not unexpected,
though its scale is somewhat surprising. The first Waffle House
restaurant opened in the Avondale Estates, an inner Atlanta suburb,
in 1955 and the company is headquartered in Norcross, another
nearby suburb.
Waffle House has a reputation for omnipresence in the south and
that seems especially true in the Atlanta area. The Atlanta quad
has nearly three times the number of restaurants as the next
highest. And that next highest quad, Cartersville, actually
contains most of the north Atlanta metro area. Atlanta is home to a
full eleven percent of WaHo locations.
Beyond Atlanta, the map shows that Waffle House is indeed
primarily a southern phenomenon with a few surprising and unusual
patterns in a couple metro areas. Phoenix and Denver have a handful
of locations, but there are none in California. Amarillo has five
locations, but San Antonio has zero despite being a much larger
city at the junction of two major interstates.
NIDCR Report Reveals 22 Years of
Effort, Money and Fluoridation Failed to Improve Oral
Health
Despite increases in
public water fluoridation, dental visits, sealants, fluoride
varnish applications, and significant financial, training, and
program investments, oral health hasnt
improved in 22 years in the
US,
according to a National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial
Research (NIDCR) Oral Health in America Report (December
2021). Further, there is no dispute that fluoride is
neurotoxic, especially to babies' developing brains. Fluoridation
promoters would have you believe a little brain poison is worth
saving one cavity over a lifetime.
Many people look to diet trends or new exercise regimens often
with questionable benefit to get a healthier start on the new year.
But there is one strategy thats been shown time and again to boost
both mood and health: meditation.
In late 2022, a high-profile study made a splash when it
claimed that meditation may work as well as a common drug named
Lexapro for the treatment of anxiety. Over the past couple of
decades, similar evidence has emerged about mindfulness and
meditations broad array of health benefits, for purposes ranging
from stress and pain reduction to...
"Protect & Serve" Officers, OOPS let's get
it correct, MURDERERS Dominque Perez and Kieth Sandy. (APD)
Not a day goes past that from the East coast to the West coast,
North and South, somewhere in the United States of America those
who can least afford, or at many times, are undeserving of being
harassed, abused, stolen from, deceived, looked over and/or
"Pimped" by the system of "Help" in the USA and/or in this case,
murdered by POLICE (Protect and Serve).
Mr. James M. Boyd with his hands up.
Just look at the fire power for "The Houseless".
The following articles are about 38-year-old James M. Boyd who was
fatally wounded (MURDERED) by Albuquerque
police in the Sandia Foothills on Sunday, 16 march, 2014. Mr. Boyd,
although apparently having some run-ins with police and being
described as having mental issues, wasn't given any due process to
prove himself innocent. Instead, he was gunned down by well
equipped soldiers of the growing "USA Police State" where if you
don't comply they way these nasty, demanding, controllers of humans
demand, they apparently have no problems sleeping after murdering
those who they deem worthless. Some of the police who took part in
murdering Mr. Boyd have corrupt past themselves. So why are these
nasty, murderou...
More
documents have been uncovered (via FOI requests) that show local
law enforcement agencies in California have been operating cell
phone tower spoofers (stingray devices) in complete secrecy and
wholly unregulated.
Sacramento News10 has obtained documents from
agencies in San Jose, Oakland, Los Angeles, San Francisco,
Sacramento and Alameda County all of which point to stingray
deployment. As has been the case in the past, the devices are
acquired with DHS grants and put into use without oversight or guidelines to
ensure privacy protections. The stingrays in use are mainly limited
to collecting data, but as the ACLU points out, many manufacturers
offer devices that also capture content.
Theres a sayingcommon in travel booksthat Paris is so friendly
to pedestrians, no point in the city is more than 500 meters (about
six minutes on foot) from a metro station. Putting that notion to
the test, this map highlights areas where the saying is indeed
true. Within the dpartment of Paris proper, 96% of its
area (excluding the large parks) is but a short walk from any RER
or Mtro stop.
mapsbynik 2013
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs
Data from OpenStreetMap
Made with QGIS and Tilemill
Mercator projection
A federal study that looked at hundreds of studies on identifying
signs of deception concluded that behavior detection officers like
those employed at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport fare no
better or only slightly better than anyone else in accurately
picking up cues. (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)
CLEVELAND, Ohio On the eve of the busiest travel days of
the year, a new report says the ability of behavior detection
officers at airports to accurately identify a passenger with
malicious intent is no better or only slightly better than
chance.
The Transportation Security Administration has spent
$900 million since 2007 to train and deploy guards at security
checkpoints to observe whether passengers exhibit signs of fear,
stress and deception and may be a risk. It has 3,000 behavior
detection officers at airports nationwide, including at Cleveland
Hopkins International Airport.
But a new government analysis of findings from over 400 studies
c...
As autopsy results of a fallen TSA officer killed
earlier this month were released Friday, union officials are
outlining increased security measures for both the public and
Congress to consider.
While a final report of the Nov. 1 shootings of TSA
Officer Gerardo Hernandez and two other officers who were wounded
has yet to be released, the American Federation of Government
Employees has developed proposals for increased security measures
for transportation security employees, which were released in a
Nov. 14 statement.
One proposal suggests creating a separate unit of armed, law
enforcement-trained TSA officers at security checkpoints.
People dont realize our TSA officers arent law enforcement
officers, said AFGE general counsel David Borer. They dont have
that authority under the law; they dont have arrest power; they
dont have the ability to detain people.
The proposed special unit of Transportation Security
Administration officers would be required to undergo law
enforcement training as well as obtain proper weapons
certifications. Though a call to arm all 45,000 TSA officers was
never proposed, Borer said, officers wouldnt replace existing
airport authorities either.
At OHare youll see Chicago Police Department officers in the
terminal, but some airports...
A Transportation Security Administration supervisor has
been indicted for allegedly helping smuggle at least 11 pounds of
cocaine through the Virgin Islands, according to federal officials
and court documents.
A former Transportation Security Administration
supervisor has been indicted for allegedly helping smuggle at least
11 pounds of cocaine through the Virgin Islands, according to
federal officials and court documents.
Former TSA Supervisor Dwight Iva Durant, 44, and Shawn Dowe, 29,
both of the Virgin Islands, were charged with participating in a
trafficking conspiracy, according to Wilfredo Ferrer, U.S. attorney
for southern Florida.
Each defendant faces a mandatory sentence of 10 years to life in
prison, if convicted.
The TSA said Durant no longer works for the agency and that
agency officials and the Department of Homeland Securitys Office of
Inspector General cooperated in his investigation and
apprehension.
The Transportation Security Administration has zero tolerance
for unethical behavior in the workplace, the ag...
It provides a better vantage point for officers. You can actually
look down in the vehicle and see whats going on inside the vehicle,
said Lt. Don Boshears.
There are a great many good people in the United States of America
who are actually about being "Humanitarian" without ever needing to
have such a title placed on them. many who self profess to be
"Humanitarian" in reality are just talkers and not doers, unless of
course, for some agenda that serves the select few of the
group.
It always seems to turn out that those who actually care, do so
because they actually are and aren't just for an agenda; a
"pat on the back"; a job and/or something for ones self.
Thanks to all those who are willing to be "REAL humanitarians"
without being known as such.
It's always touching when others actually do what's righteous or at
least try to do such. The accompanying article shares a bit of at
least two people who ventured to bring comfort to "The Houseless"
of a Lewis Center, Ohio town.
Some aren't so fortunate, and even more are often taken advantage
of such circumstances as being "The Houseless"
This became the situation when Kirk Sinclair - self professing
himself as "The Hiking Humanitarian" - not only didn't keep to his
verbal agreement with "The Houseless", but refused to be righteous
with being responsible for damages to The Houselesses property that
Cindy Sinclair - Kirk's wife - damaged. What ever the views
Kirk Sinclair has - staunch left wing Democrat/esoteric agenda supporter
-, if someone is claiming to be a "humanitarian", then shouldn't that person at least "be
about it" without abusing "The Houseless" just because Kirks'
false, misleading and/or erroneous views aren't accepted and/or
supported? Or is that in Kirk Sinclairs' world of humanitarian
efforts, there will be those who are pushed aside, not treated in a
humanitarian way, left for dead ... just because of not supporting
an unclean agenda that WILL have causalities?
But, it not only turned out to be Kirk Sinclair that was all the
hurtful to "The Houseless". Town officials, as well as, relatives,
religious members and some of the towns people put on good faces to
promote themselves and/or the town of Norfolk, Conn. to outsiders
only for profit/gain/control. The shocking truth of DECEPTION
within Norfolk, Conn. is coming. More here: http://norfolk-now.houseless.net
Have you ever seen a photo illustration and said to
yourself, man, I wish I knew how to do that.
Guess what? You dont have to be a trained artist to develop a
neat photo illustration. All you need is a camera, some tools and
imagination. The example to the left is a perfect example.
In this example, my publisher asked me to do a centerpiece (yes,
I wrote the story too!) about improving real estate market
conditions.
The only tools I used were my work issued camera, a hammer and
some nails. I arranged them on the hardwood floor at home and shot
several photos, rearranging the hammer and nails each time, all the
while thinking of this photo as my canvas. On the news page, I
added a drop shadow to make it pop.
The secondary photo at the bottom left is a mundane photo of a
home under construction. I used text boxes in Quark to design the
basic bar graph.
From here, all I did was create an angled text box across the
floor photo, giving it a 10 degree tilt. The box is has a white
color fill and set at 80 percent opacity, giving it a transparent
look.
So you see? You dont need to spend hours in Adobe Illustrator
drawing an image from scratch. All you need are a few tools and
ingenuity.
Did you know that this week is National Newspaper
Week?
If not, now is the time to promote this week thats important to
us all, from the small town community journalist to the mega daily.
National Newspaper Week runs from Oct. 6-12.
Critics of our industry often say newspapers are dead, but with
continued expansion of the Internet were alive and well. This is
especially true for weeklies.
In fact, there almost isnt such a thing as a weekly newspaper.
The print product may publish weekly, but we all have the ability
to post breaking news INSTANTANEOUSLY.
Ive lost count of the number of times this year TV people and
the metro daily re-reported a story that we broke online. If we
break news online on Tuesday, chances are the daily competition
will publish the story Wednesday or Thursday. If it wasnt for
newspapers, TV wouldnt exist. TV reporters wouldnt know where to
get their news.
Also, with TV and blogs, you cant find the kind of news families
clip out of the newspaper and pin to their refrigerator door.
Whether its Little League photos, bowling scores and feature
stories, we provide these stories and more. Sure you can print
something off the computer, but computer ink is no substitute for
newsprint i...
Or are you looking for a way to illustrate a story thats
complex, confusing or well, puzzling?
One neat trick that will solve all these situations involves the
puzzle plug-in in Photoshop.
Available in CS3 or higher or downloadable from the Adobe
Exchange, the puzzle effect is one of the coolest tools at your
disposal.
The first step is to open the photo to convert. Then open a new
canvas. Use the Move Tool at the top of your toolbar and drag the
photo onto the new canvas. Then select Texture > Texturizer. In
the texture drop down menu toward the top right click to Puzzle,
and voila! The plug-in automatically creates puzzle pieces on your
photo!
If you want to remove and reposition puzzle pieces, thats easy
too though a little more time-consuming.
A lot of bloggers say to use the pen tool, but I think the
magnetic lasso tool is better. With a little care, its more precise
and you dont have to mess with the color palette. You can cut out
one piece or an entire row. The key is to create a new layer for
each piece(s) you choose to cut.
In cutting out a piece, you may wish to add a drop shadow and/or
bevel to the piece to ad depth and texture. Rotating pieces adds an
element of randomness. In the example above, I used this technique
to illustrate the Pieces of the Puzzle as it related to road
funding.
There were several complex issues that I believed were best
illustrated by a puzzle photo illustration.
Like any illustration, however, moderation is the key. Dont do a
puzzle illustration to be different or just because you...
If your answer to that question is no, you should
get started.
Chances are whether you live in a sprawling suburb or quaint,
small town, there are hospitals and health care facilities nearby.
Virtually everyone one of them are affected by the Affordable Care
Act (ACA), colloquially known as Obamacare.
Even if you live in the most conservative corner of America and
Obamacare is heralded as heresy, you should plan a centerpiece
about the new law and what it means to the community.
I hate to get cliche, but until things change it is the law of
the land. Ignoring the law is a disservice to readers. We need to
help them not only understand the law, but also what happens if
things change on Capitol Hill.
In some communities, hospitals and health care facilities,
anticipating costs, have made personnel cuts. Others are referring
callers with questions to the so-called navigators, counselors, and
others whose job is to field questions.
Here at Waccamaw Publishers, in anticipation of the exchanges
opening Oct. 1, all of our papers ran a story about what the
exchanges mean to our readers. Since my publication, the Carolina
Forest Chronicle, came out after Oct. 1, we modified the story
somewhat to reflect the government shutdown and the impac...
Obituary stories are written everywhere, but they are especially
well-read at community newspapers, and
especially in small towns, where the
person was probably known by almost everyone.
There are, however, several guidelines to follow when writing
obituary stories. By their very nature, obit stories are delicate
and must be handled as such.
1. Make sure the person is a VIP | Obituary
stories wont work for every John or Jane Doe down the street.
Typically, obituary stories are reserved for elected officials,
prominent business leaders, etc.
2. Confirm, confirm, confirm | You should never
print an obituary let alone an obituary story without confirmation
that the person has in face died. Sadly, there are people who will
try to pass off hoax deaths. Verify through either the funeral home
or the coroners office. Both would be preferable. In the case of
the general in the attached example, a state lawmaker posted news
about the death on Facebook. He was correct, but why take any
chances? We verif...
By Steve Brawner, 2023 by Steve Brawner Communications,
Inc.
There are two ways of looking at last weeks speaker of the House
election in Washington Rep. Bruce Westermans way, and Rep. Steve
Womacks way. Both are valid.
Westerman and Womack along with Arkansas other representatives,
Reps. Read
the rest
Honesty: Glen James smiles as Boston
police commissioner Edward Davis looks on (Picture: AP)
Glen James: Boston "Houseless" man disproves stereotype by
returning cash, checks & property he found
The whole problem with falling victim to
becoming "The Houseless" is all too quickly being stereotyped,
especially those who often turn out to be more righteous than those
with jobs, a place to call home and/or have standing in
society. Granted, there
are many who only play the system for their own
profit/gain/control, but does that excuse those who claim to be
qualified to help from not actually HELPING? WELL?
"The Houseless" has accumulated countless
"Houseless" stories of abuse; wrongful stereotyping; help
organizations and/or those calling themselves "HUMANITARIANS" who
AREN'T qualified to actually be righteous unto those they claim to
HELP and more. Stay tuned as the TRUTH comes to you via www.Houseless.org
Could it be that the massive system of "HELP"
that has been created is first and foremost about
profit/gain/control while only "PIMPING" the less
fortunate? Well?
Could it be that it had taken about 1 year to
finally recognize Mr. Gl...
The front page of todays New York Times has a powerful
article about the rising number of working New Yorkers who become
"The Houseless" the result of NYCs worsening affordability crisis
and failed Bloomberg policies.
Take notice citizens of the United States of America and all about
the world, The New York Times finally comes forth to let you know -
since you don't seem to trust us - that being "The Houseless"
doesn't necessarily need to have you all stereotype us as: mentally
ill; poor financial handlers; poor relationship intermingle people
and so forth.
Is the trend reaching out into other areas, or are other areas
pushing out those who fall victim to decayed society and/or
profit/gain/control?
WELL?
How will you rate when and if you fall victim to society at
hand?
As a followup to his first book, Confessions of a Community
Journalist, newspaper editor and author Michael Shawn Smith has
released his next book, Reporting & Community Journalism.
Reporting & Community Journalism officially went on sale
August 31 via Createspace. You can order copies by clicking
here.
Smiths second book takes a deeper looker into the world of
reporting, including a separate chapter on multimedia
reporting.
It also takes a deeper look at sports reporting, business
reporting, features and investigative stories. It includes real
life stories and experiences, and how those experiences can help
community journalists.
Smiths first book, Confessions of a Community Journalist, came
out in June 2012 and is available on online through Amazon, Barnes
& Noble and Books-A-Million. It is also sold on the iPad, Nook
and Kindle.
Smith has been a successful community journalist for 13 years.
He has been an editor for 10 years and is currently editor of the
Carolina Forest Chronicle, as well as web editor for the Chronicles
parent company, Waccamaw Publishers.
He has won more than 80 state press association awar...
Posted: Aug
12, 2013 4:16 PM ESTUpdated: Aug 12, 2013
4:35 PM EST By Ian Scheuring
HONOLULU
(HawaiiNewsNow) -
(Editors Note: After his
appearance on Hawaii News Now Sunrise on Monday, Mayor Caldwell
stuck around to answer more of the viewer questions that were
posted to our Facebook page. His answers can be found below, with
each question taken from Facebook. Mayor Caldwell will return to
Sunrise each month for another "Ask The Mayor" segment to answer
your questions from Facebook.)
KHARTOUM, Sudan
Sudanese authorities say flooding has killed at least
36 people and left thousands homeless.
The semi-official Sudan media center said Sunday
that many are without electricity as well in the northern River
Nile state, just south of Egypt. The center says at least 5,000
homes have been severely destroyed, almost half beyond
repair.
Images from Sudan showed mud brick homes submerged
under large lakes of brown water.
The United Nation's Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs said that while the Rive Nile state in Sudan's
north was the hardest hit, close to 150,000 people across eight
states have been affected by the heavy flooding that began this
month.
More rain is expected in the coming days and the
estimated number of those affected is likely to rise.
JEFFERSONVILLE As a handful of
people were being handed meals out of the back of a repurposed
ambulance, another dozen walked from about a quarter-mile away
where they had been waiting for food.
They used to know exactly where they were going to get their next
meal, because it was the same place every evening.
But now, because of the Ohio River Bridges Project, the homeless encampments
at exit 0 have been pushed farther north, and outreach efforts are
searching for a new location where they can provide the homeless
with daily necessities. Its one of the many issues homeless
advocates, project managers and elected officials are facing as
they try to address the impact of the bridge project on
homelessness.
We understand that theres construction coming through, but to find
out these camps over [to] 10th Street are going to be wiped out in
less than four days, someone knew something that could have
prepared us, said Paul Stensrud, founder of Jesus Cares at Exit 0,
a homeless outreach organization.
It was no surprise that the Ohio River Bridges Project
was...
STOP the madness being done to United
States of America Veterans. STOP it now! Don't wait for any
administration to guide you, you should know right from wrong.
Right?
Updated: 1:51 p.m. Friday, Aug.
9, 2013 | Posted: 1:51 p.m. Friday, Aug. 9, 2013
FORT WAYNE, Ind.
The number of homeless veterans seeking help in
northeastern Indiana has tripled in the past year, according to a
newly released survey that one expert said isn't surprising and
likely underestimates the plight of the region's homeless
veterans.
Gary Lee Nagy, 57 of Flint,
was found dead at McKinley Middle School around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday,
July 30. A 20-year-old Flint man has been charged with murder in
his death. MLive.com File
It is overwhelmingly sad and even sick that even one such article
has to ever be written as the one below.
First of all, any 501(c)(3) - non-profit - which propaganda's
itself as being our Creators church, knows that to be in accordance
with True Scripture, they are to be as what is listed to the left
of this article. (MANS' CHURCHES TAKE NOTICE")
"The Houseless" has found in real time experience that most
churches aren't helping "The Houseless" without getting something
that benefits them.
To even try to put blame elsewhere for others not doing their fair
share, is in one way, taking focus away on ones own
responsibilities.
The crazy notion would be for ALL people who claim to be
"Chrisitian", to actually do in accordance with Scripture, thus
being "About it". Then, and only then, perhaps the rise in "The
Houseless" will take a turn in the other direction.
"The Houseless" seem to get targeted for nothing
more than being unable to stay hidden
Sure it's true that there may be bad apples in every bunch, but to
punish ALL for the wrongs of others is also being bad. The
aforementioned happens more times than not when it comes to being
"The Houseless" in the United States of America.
How about we genuinely ALL work together to overcome ALL the wrongs
taking place?
WELL?
If you are still a bit lost, please take in the passages found in
Scripture which "The Houseless" has listed to the left of this
posting.
To all of those currently enjoying being of the "Have" &
"Have-more", please, at least, think the
next time you decide to spit, ridicule, defame, curse and/or
otherwise treat with harm "The Houseless", for they might be the
next generation of academia, and those who you may depend upon for
your existence in the future.
Please extend prayers and blessing unto this man during his
troubled times.
What ever brought Michael Boatwright to what he encounters now,
those who know this man - if actually with empathy and compassion -
should be standing right beside him, as well as, ALL of those
American citizens who benefit from U.S.A. Veterans. Lest us not
forget that it is due to those who have served the once fine,
respectable and caring country of the United States of America,
that we enjoy an existence that many seek.
To Michelle Brewer, Michael Boatwright's sister, if you are
involved with children, yet can turn your back on your own, then
people should actually question if you are fit to be part of the
teaching cycle of children. Simply put, what could you actually be
teaching children about empathy, compassion and actually caring
about each other?
The really sad part of the story found below is that even with all
of the technology in place these days, society is digressing.
Sure we have laws to protect and keep some sort of order, put what
about those who find themselves in situations that society -
"Haves" & "Have-more" - DICTATE their existence.
More people have met with harm by the "Haves" &/or "Have-more",
than by those living rough on the streets, under bridges, in wooden
areas and/or anywhere they can.
To Jay Casey, please get out of your so called "safe zone" for more
than charity benefits, for a "feel good" feeling for ones self
and/or for organizations that have seem to find ways to make
profitable businesses out of those of us who find ourselves as
being "The Houseless". Then maybe, yes just maybe, your misguided
fears would meet reality!
You can only shove humans out of existence so far before one day
what society has created will need ALL of those who actually seek a
more amicable existence, to become real and be about it.
For a nation that propaganda's unto the rest of the world about
treating others as they would want to be treated, yet still refuses
to even treat its Veterans humanly should be addressed as a
criminal.
Although the numbers being used for how many Veterans on any given
night is far less than the real numbers, for even 1 Veteran to be
left out sleeping rough, unless he and/or she seeks to, is a crime
against humanity.
Straighten up United States of America, and STOP treating citizens, especially United States of
America Veterans, as simply a commodity that can be tossed away as
trash.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) Homeless veterans in Rhode
Island are getting some job training help from the federal
government.
The U.S. Department of Labor announced Monday that it was awarding
$210,000 to Operation Stand Down, an organization that helps
homeless veterans in Rhode Island find housing, jobs and access to
education and health care.
The money is intended for job training and housing programs for
homeless female veterans and homeless veterans with families.
NBA Houston Rockets'
player, Terrence Jones, abuses "The Houseless":
ARRESTED
The young use them as mentors and/or role models; someone to look
up to, but are sports figures all they're putting on to be?
The following story is of yet another sports figure who was caught
in the act of showing us what he may very well be actually about -
nastiness. How many haven't been caught as yet?
Will Terrence Jones for his horrible evil only have to benefit by
doing some nice things for those he has harmed only to not benefit
himself?
Isn't it enough that we have to rest in fear, eat what we can find
or have given to us, be used for churches and/or businesses can
employ and/or gain for themselves and endure the almost daily
attacks that all we seek to do is to be lazy and/or takers?
Wake up people and STOP abusing us!
Come to actually take a real interest in us, and then maybe, just
maybe we can get out of the doorways, off of the streets and be
productive members of a society which has those of the "Have-more",
"Haves", & "Have-less" using us for their own
profit/gain/control.
Do you think that creativity is an innate gift? Think again.
Many people believe that creative thinking is difficult that the
ability to come up with ideas in novel and interesting ways graces
only some talented individuals and not most others.
Together, they seem to paint a dire picture for those who
consider themselves conventional thinkers, as well as those who do
not work in creative occupations including roles that are often
considered traditional and noncreative, such as accountants and
data...
On July 19, 2013, the National Newspaper
Association (NNA) announced that the Carolina Forest Chronicle took
home two national awards for investigative journalism.
The Chronicle, led by editor Michael Smith, who in 2012
published the book Confessions of a Community Journalist, won third
place for best investigative series or story for non-daily
newspapers, over 10,000 circulation, for Black Eye for Project
Blue?
Black Eye for Project Blue? was an investigative report into the
criminal history of an executive tied to an Horry County economic
development project code-named Project Blue.
County and state leaders were in line to provide millions of
dollars in taxpayer money to the company until the Chronicle
published stories about court records showing the executive hadnt
paid income taxes for 14 years.
One public official said the newspaper was doing its best to
torpedo this project. Contest judges held a different view.
Journalists usually react, but this effort was proactive,
contest judges said. Great research, time consuming and
thorough.
The Chronicle also won honorable mention for Emails outline
ouster, a report about emails th...
When Customs and Border Protection (CPB) first got its
drones, the rationale for the acquisition was that the unmanned
aircraft would help improve monitoring and surveillance along the
U.S.-Mexico border.
But now, CPB may be thinking about arming its Predator
drones with non-lethal weapons.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) obtained a report
produced by CPB in 2010 that shows the agency has considered
equipping its Predators with non-lethal weapons designed to
immobilize targets of interest. Given the date of the report, it is
possible that the weaponization has already taken place.
Predators were first developed for the U.S. military in the
1990s, and are designed to fire missiles, such as the Hellfire. It
is unclear at this time what kind of weaponizati...
Passengers leaning their head against the window will hear adverts
coming from inside the users head, urging them to download the Sky
Go app.
Andy Trotman
Sky Deutschland has developed technology to transfer
adverts from train windows directly and silently into commuters
heads.
Passengers leaning their head against the window will
hear adverts coming from inside the users head, urging them to
download the Sky Go app.
The proposal involves using bone conduction technology,
which is used in hearing aids, headphones and Googles Glass
headset, to pass sound to the inner ear via vibrations through the
skull.
A video for the Talking Window campaign released by Sky
Deutschland and ad agency BBDO Germany states: Tired commuters
often rest their heads against windows. Suddenly a voice inside
their head is talking to them. No one else can hear this
message.
Are you looking for A1 design inspiration in a
crunch? How about sports? Features?
Of course, you can find design samples here on my website. But
another great resource is News Page Designer. Heres the direct
link: http://newspagedesigner.org.
What makes News Page Designer so helpful is that its the most
comprehensive website Ive found thats dedicated to newspaper
design. Pages are broken down into news, features, sports,
infographics and more. Heres a link to my News Page Design
portfolio: http://newspagedesigner.org/profile/MichaelSmith604?xg_source=profiles_memberList.
So if youre looking for inspiration, be sure to give News Page
Designer a whirl. Its bailed me out numerous times and Im confident
itll have the same impact for you too.
The MIT Center for International Studies and the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars are collaborating on a
$233,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help
realize potential benefits and to address potential ecological
effects of synthetic biology.
The grant is supported jointly by three units within NSF, the
Division of Cellular and Molecular Biology, the Division of
Environmental Biology, and the Engineering Directorate. The grant
will fund development of an interdisciplinary research agenda to
improve understanding of potential ecological effects of commercial
uses of synthetic biology.
The research agenda will be developed through consultations
among synthetic biologists, evolutionary biologists, ecologists,
and environmental scientists. It will be based on workshops that
focus on near- and medium-term applications of synthetic biology,
with scenarios based on the intentional and unintentional release
of engineered organisms.
This project will be conducted jointly by the Program on
Emerging Technologies of the MIT Center for International Studies
and the Synthetic Biology Project at the Wilson Center. It will
build on four previous workshops that brought together a wide range
of scientists, regulators, NGOs, companies, and other stakeholders
to discuss possible ecological risks associated with synthetic
biology products and to identify sources of uncertainty over risks.
These workshops were funded jointly by the Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation and the NSF Synthetic Biology Engineering Research
Center. The project is expected to be completed in one year. A
small board of advisors has been created to guide the design and
execution of the workshops.
Provided by Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars/Science and Technology Innovation Program
With futuristic warfare in mind, India is working to
develop robotic soldiers as part of efforts to boost unmanned
fighting capabilities, joining a select group of countries in this
endeavour.
Under the project being undertaken by DRDO, robots would be
developed with very high level of intelligence to enable them to
differentiate between a threat and a friend.
These can then be deployed in difficult warfare zones, like the
Line of Control (LoC), a step that would help avert the loss of
human lives.
We are going to work for robotic soldiers. We are going to look
for very high level of intelligence in it than what we are talking
today It is a new programme and a number of labs are already
working in a big way on robotics, DRDO chief Avinash Chander told
news agency in an interview.
The newly-appointed DRDO chief listed the projec...
If all goes well for the denizens of Weld County, Colo.,
come November, there will be an item on their ballots asking them
to vote on a new brewing issue: seceding with eight other Northern
counties from the state of Colorado and forming Americas 51st
state, Northern Colorado.
Apparently, theyre not bluffing. On Tuesday, Weld Countys
commissioners raised the issue quite seriously at a bi-annual
meeting of the states county commissioners. Sean Conway, one of
Welds five commissioners, said the idea had first been raised about
two to three months ago by a group of concerned citizens.
It started very informally, Conway said. There was a group of
citizens who were and still are very frustrated with being ignored
and politically disenfranchised by the political leadership in the
state capitol.
When the group of voters first approached Conway and his fellow
commissioners about seceding, Conway thought they were a little out
there. But once he looked into it, he said secession began to look
like a possibility.
Come drop by the
Flatbush CommUNITY Garden's Annual Open House! Garden members will
be leading tours of the lovely community space we've created on
Sunday, September 23rd from 11am - 3pm. Learn more about our
neighborhood's history while nibbling on delicious baked goods and
maybe even a veggie or two.
Hi everyone, we've reached capacity for the 2012 season. However,
we do maintain an active waiting list. If you'd like to become a
member in the future, and live in our garden's catchment area
(Ocean Parkway to Ocean Avenue, Avenue H to Caton), you are welcome
to email us at flatbushcommunitygarden@gmail.com and request to be
added.
MIT, Boston University, Boston Magazine Promote Holly Collins
Child Custody Hoax October 26th, 2011 by Glenn Sacks The
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, and
Boston Magazine are unwittingly promoting the Holly Collins child
custody hoax via their glowing coverage of the new documentary film
No Way Out But One. The Boston Magazine piece []
Misguided DV Groups Back Discredited Battered Mothers Custody
Conference January 10th, 2011 by Glenn Sacks The Eighth Annual
Battered Mothers Custody Conference was held over the weekend in
Albany, New York. Several misguided domestic violence advocacy
groups, including the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
and the National Network Against Domestic Violence, co-sponsored
the conference. Sadly, []
Idaho Court Returns daughter to Dad April 29th, 2012 by Robert
Franklin, Esq. The Idaho Supreme Court has struck a blow for
fathers and sanity in custody cases. Read about it
here (Wisconsin Rapids Tribune, 4/27/12). In the
meantime notice the doggedness with which the Idaho Department of
Health and Welfare tried to separate a father []
Bill Hudson, Goldie Hawns Ex, Pens Book on Parental Alienation,
Praises Fathers and Families January 24th, 2012 by FAF Staff Goldie
Hawn and Bill Hudson, circa 1976. Bill Hudson, father of Kate and
Oliver Hudson and the ex-husband of Goldie Hawn, has authored a new
book, Two Versions, in which he claims he was alienated []
When you write a syndicated column that annually declares
someone the Arkansan of the Year, one of the finalists must be the
person who becomes the states first female elected governor with
63% of the vote, gives voice to the concerns of her supporters, and
shatters the glass ceiling for women of all political persuasions
and does it all at the age of 40. Read the
rest
Is it the U.S. Governments responsibility to protect and uphold
its citizens constitutional Rights? By Wolfeman77346 Aug 13 2008
Although government promotes itself endlessly as our indispensable
protector and principle guardian of our Constitutional Rights, its
not true. Nevertheless, that self-promotion has effectively
conditioned most Americans to believe our Constitutional Rights are
respected and vigorously []
It's cold and dark, so our thoughts turn to sunshine and early
harvests. Come weather the city winter with members and friends of
the Flatbush Community Garden!
Join us at Sycamore Bar on Sunday, 2/19 from 4-8pm for good
conversation, baked goods, drink specials, seed bombs, local raffle
prizes, and a fantastic coupon book for neighborhood businesses.
See you there!
One highlight was the Official Brooklyn
Borough Historian leading a walking tour at least twelve deep
around Victorian Flatbush. He had just finished telling them about
Alvord Dean, the Prospect Park South developer, and they were
thrilled to come in and see Dean's former mansion, now our fruit
grotto, and donate to our bake sale. We also had a couple of
visitors representing both Compost for Brooklyn and the Brooklyn
Botanical Garden.
A big thanks to all of the
members who helped out in every way imaginable: publicity, garden
clean up, flier design, plant labeling, photography,
table-schlepping, baking, chalking, touring, welcoming, connecting
with local blogs, and bringing their extended networks of friends
and family.
Come drop by the
Flatbush CommUNITY Garden Open House! Learn more about
the tiny but mighty public organic garden that's on private land in
Prospect Park South. Come for delicious baked goods, to learn more
about our lovely common areas, neighborhood history, and how we
built this garden out of an old, rambling foundation.
September
25th, 11am - 3pm
Corner of Albemarle and
Buckingham (E. 16th St) Roads.
The Outreach Committee, in conjunction
with the Gardening Committee, will be hosting our first "Member
Mixer" Thursday (5/19) at 6:30pm.
This will give new members a chance to meet old and all members a
chance to learn about various work you can do in the garden to gain
your 18 hours.
All members are welcome!
Details:
May Member Mixer
May 19
6:30-7:30
In the garden
Feel free to bring any snacks you like. Outreach will bring some
too!
We're also batting around the idea of a monthly happy hour at
Sycamore since that went so well in April. We're thinking the
3rd or 4th Thursday of the month. Details to follow...
National Writers Syndicate PC Feminism and the DV Courts.
Written by David Heleniak Of the various branches of political
correctness, PC feminism has arguably been the most successful. .
Thanks to PC feminists, we have the theory of the patriarchy and
the PC conception of domestic violence (DV), two ideas that are
responsible []
by Phyllis Schlafly Debates about same-sex marriage and gay
adoptions always include the argument that a child has the right to
both a father and a mother. . . If that is true, why is a child
usually deprived of that right when heterosexual couples divorce?
It would seem that maintaining the fathers love and []
NH Supreme Court: Parental Alienation Inimical to Childs Best
Interests April 4th, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq. This case is
excellent, not only because of its result, but mostly because of
its sound analysis. It should serve as a template for courts
not only here in the U.S. but in other countries as well. It []
October 19th, 2010 by Glenn Sacks, MA, Executive Director This
year Fathers and Families led the passage of seven different family
law bills nationwide, as Governor Schwarzenegger recently signed
the remaining three California F & F bills. F & F was also
instrumental in helping defeat three harmful bills. The seven bills
we were instrumental []
TEN MARRIAGE VALUES POLICIES TO REBUILD AMERICA By David R.
Usher and Michael J. McManus June 19, 2010 NewsWithViews.com
Marriage-absence is the greatest domestic problem America faces.
Our most daunting social, economic, budgetary, criminal, and
constitutional dilemmas are driven by marriage-absence and will not
abate unless traditional marriage is protected and encouraged.
Establishing sensible policies []
When the Arkansas Legislature convenes for its regular session
next week, some of its most recognizable and colorful senators of
the past few years will be gone.
This article on angimedia presents a very important point: why
do Mothers Rights groups call Parental Alienation the defense of an
abuser when the mother has custody, but not so when a father has
custody? The woman in this story was treated like millions of men
in this country, faced false allegations of abuse, but []
US Congress close to a vote on H. Res. 1326, condemning Japan
for Parental Child Abduction Bring Abducted Children Home began a 3
day push to bring a vote on House Resolution 1326, to the House
floor before Congress recesses for further campaigning on October
1, 2010. H. Res. 1326 condemns Japan for allowing parents []
May 1, 2008 by Rosemary Bennett, Social Affairs Correspondent A
senior judge spoke out against child access law yesterday, saying
that the courts were powerless to help decent fathers to see their
children if vengeful mothers stood in the way. Lord Justice Ward
made his comments after telling a father that there was nothing he
[]
How to Tell when Your Childs Hostility is More Than Divorce
Blues Its been said there are two sides to every story and
somewhere in between lies the truth. Nowhere is this more
personified than within the walls of family court. Divorce is
rarely amicable. There are instances, however, when routine divorce
squabbles spill over []
By Julia Lawrence Last updated at 8:42 AM on 2nd September 2010
Comments (59) Add to My Stories Winona was told her mother didnt
love her and was handed to another family. Nine years
later, they were reunited via Facebook. But forced adoption is
happening on a scandalously regular basis. On a sunny station
[]
September 2nd, 2010 by Terry Kee Imagine a nightmare scenario
where your children hate you. They tell you repeatedly that they
hate you; and worse, their actions leave no doubt that they hate
you. Moreover, their hatred doesnt stop with you; it extends to
everyone close to you including your parents their grandparents
[]
Following the Sean Goldman case in Brazil, the Brazilian
President, just signed into law, which defines and punishes acts of
Parental Alienation in Brazil. I sometimes wonder if our President
and Vice President are paying attention to the problems of parents
and children in this country? Particularly with regard to the 4-6
million children that []
Topic: Divorce & Child Custody Issues The Federal Scheme to
Destroy Father-Child Relationships Federal entitlement programs are
decimating the lives of children and trampling on the rights of
fathers to the care and companionship of their kids. We must
dismantle the Federal-State entitlement nexus that deprives men of
their civil liberties. Here is what every []
Topic: Divorce & Child Custody Issues The Nuclear Option:
False Child Sexual Abuse Allegations in Custody Disputes There is a
very simple trick, used all too frequently in family courts, that
will almost always ensure the immediate elimination of a mans
constitutional rights. by Jake Morphonios (conservative) Monday,
February 18, 2008 In acrimonious divorce and []
How to deal with toxic parents Courts ill-equipped to handle
parental alienation, leaving children at greater risk of emotional
damage The Toronto Star, Susan Pigg LIVING REPORTER, March 14, 2009
When Toronto lawyer Brian Ludmer speaks about the suffering caused
by parental alienation, the words come from his head and his heart.
Hes seen the []
(U) The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI), and National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC)
assess that domestic violent extremists (DVEs)a fueled by various
evolving ideological and sociopolitical grievances pose a sustained
threat of violence to the American public, democratic institutions,
and government and law enforcement officials. Flashpoint events in
the coming months may exacerbate these perceived grievances,
further increasing the potential for DVE violence. DVEs adhering to
different violent extremist ideologies have coalesced around anger
at issues including perceived election fraud, as well as
immigration and government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic,
drawing on their varied perceptions of those issues. These factors,
along with fluid conspiracy theories, have amplified longstanding
DVE grievances, including perceptions of government and law
enforcement overreach or oppression and shifts in US demographics
and cultural values.
(U) The mass shooting last month targeting Black people in
Buffalo, New York, was allegedly perpetrated by a racially or
ethnically motivated violent extremist (RMVE) driven by a belief in
the superiority of the white race. The RMVE was charged with
federal hate crimes and using a firearm to commit murder in June
2022. This attack underscores how RMVEswho have been responsible
for a majority of DVE-related deaths since 2010pose a significant
threat of lethal violence against civilians, particularly of
racial, ethnic, and religious minorities.
(U) The lethal threat from militia violent extremists (MVEs)
remains elevated, primarily toward government and law enforcement
personnel, as MVEs remain willing to use violence to redress
perceived government overreach and other sociopolitical grievances,
judging from an increase in MVE plotting, disruptions, and FBI
investigations since 2020. Anarchist violent extremists (AVEs)
present a threat of sporadic violent physical assaults and property
crimes impacting the efficient operation of critical
infrastructure; developments that heighten perceptions of
inequality or social injustice might further embolden AVEs to
commit acts of violence.
(U) Several DVEs motivated by perceptions of fraud in the 2020
general election were arrested in 2021 and 2022 for plotting or
threatening violence against federal, state, and local officials
and political party representatives, highlighting the elevated
threat posed to elected officials countrywide. In November 2021, a
New Yorkbased MVE was sentenced to 19 months in prison for
threatening to assault and murder members of the US Congress.
(U) A wide-ranging set of DVEs have shared their perceptions of
government overreach on COVID-19 pandemic mitigation efforts and
anger at government responses to immigration issues in person and
online and have encouraged one another to act violently. Anger at
the mitigation efforts of businesses and federal, state, and...
Puzzling to say the
least.........How could the one-time richest man in the world(Still
has more money then one could ever need, no matter how opulent his
spending) be so hell bent on changing the direction of a populous
that has gradually moved forward in terms of inclusion and
acceptance, a populous that has by majority accepted man's affect
on a world climate, a populous that wants progressive cleaner
alternatives to transit, to all forms of travel, to heat and
energy.
Elon Musk has projected that clean futuristic image for a long
time and then, seemingly out of the blue his narrative changed,
along with that "clean image" .....Elon Musk took to headlines in
the Spring of 2022 announcing his lavish offer for all of Twitter,
a $44 billion dollar buy.....Eyes lit up, that's a lot of money, an
offer to good to refuse...But why did Elon want Twitter? To advance
mankind, to promote unity among nations, to deter fossil fuel use,
to campaign on climate change, to push a narrative of protecting
environments, protecting our only planet, was Elon's acquisition of
Twitter not only extremely expensive but was it also noble,
altruistic, a higher calling of sorts or was it....
To bring back Donald Trump?
Before we get started let's disclose some facts that may be
connected...Jared Kushner received $25 million dollars , and $2
billion dollars from Saudi Arabia, the $2 billion the Saudis
gave Jared Kushner was a so-called investment from
the kingdoms sovereign wealth fund to his Kushner's newly formed
private equity firm, the $25 million was a
pre-performance gift, regardless of any success....
Elon Musk, despite his enormous wealth did not have $44 billion
in liquid assets to buy Twitter...Elon sold $billions in Tesla
shares and raised money, but not enough....
__________
"Musk completed his $44 billion
acquisition with the help of bin Talal, founder of Saudi Arabias
Kingdom Holding Co., who agreed to...
There was no "Kaboom" in Friday's evening Twitter file
drop..
In fact, it was so bad no need to address it.
In other news...Elon is making up rules on the fly, ...Elon
pisses in journalists' cornflakes with manufactured TOS
violation.
Twitter..News, in general....Elon's doxing rule makes
near everything untweetable by the new Elon doxing rule...A
expresident arriving at a CPAC conference, Steve Bannon heading
into a courtroom, a selfie with Mike Lindell at a Trump rally, a
Dave Chapelle comedy show...
Those items get insta-tweeted all the time... ..By Elon's
definition, that's doxing...Elon actually doxes himself on Twitter
all the time...
Elon is thin skinned liar....No newsworthy info from Twitter
drop #6....in other news..
Tonight Elon stepped up reinstating suspended accounts..
Election denier Mike Lindell reinstated today to Twitter....Lindell
is banned from appearing on Fox..Newsmax...He's is also getting
sued for over $1 billion dollars by Dominion....
Mike Lindell is a sick man, to this day, 2 years after 2020,
Lindell hasn't produced a single shred of el...
The upcoming Christmas, Boxing Day and New
Years Day (December 25, December 26 and January 1) are three of the
nine Ontario public holidays. Public holidays are days most people
do not work but still get paid public holiday pay. Its
important to remember that even if you are a part-time
worker or work different hours every week, most people are still
entitled to public holiday pay. Your employment status or
where you work are the biggest factors in deciding whether you get
public holiday pay.
How much is public holiday pay? Public holiday pay is calculated by first
adding all your regular wages and vacation pay in the 4 weeks
before the week of the public holiday. Then you divide the total by
20 to get your public holiday pay. If you work regular hours, then
your holiday pay is generally the same as a days pay.
The current craze of social media focuses quite
intently upon the concept of an alpha male. Initially, it was
thought that one could draw parallels between wolf packs and humans
and establish a hierarchy that would be similar. But later, it was
discovered that wolf packs actually dont have alpha males or
females. The researcher who had mistakenly coined the term did try
to clear the confusion- but it stuck, thanks to the good old
Internet.
Who: Representative Ilhan Omar, award-winning
investigative journalist Spencer Ackerman, Daniel Ellsberg of the
Pentagon Papers, Steven Donziger of the Chevron lawsuit, Daniel
Hales attorney Jesselyn Radack and Natasha Erskine of About Face:
Veterans Against the War.
What: Press conference with Rep. Omar, issue
experts, supporters, and family advocating for the Presidential
commutation of currently incarcerated Drone program whistleblower
Daniel Hale
When: Thursday, December 15 at 11AM ET
Why: A little more than a year ago Air Force
veteran Daniel Hale was sentenced to 45 months in Federal prison
with extreme measures put in place to limit his communication with
the outside world. Daniel was accused and convicted of leaking
sensitive government information, when in truth the information he
revealed didnt put anyone in danger and uncovered the deep
inaccuracies inherent in the drone program. Hale has spoken
powerfully to his moral decision to blow the whistle, saying to the
judge at sentencing:
I am here because I stole something that was never mine to
take precious human life. I couldnt keep living in a world in which
people pretend that things werent happening that were. Please, your
honor, forgive me for taking papers instead of human
lives.
Rep. Omar, issue experts, former whistleblowers, and family will
speak to why Daniel Hale shouldnt be retaliated against for his
brave public service and why the Biden Administration should use
its power to free him.
The Daniel Hale Support Network is a coalition of friends,
supporters, allies, and organizations who are focused on supporting
whistleblower Daniel Hale to get free. Some of the organizations
include About Face: Veterans Against the War, Codepink, Courage
Foundation, Defending Rights and Dissent, Veterans for Peace,
ExposeFacts, and more.
Are you employed in an industry thats covered
by Federal labour laws such as airlines, railways, trucking,
banking or telecommunications? If so, you will have up to 10 paid
sick days next year! Workers won this basic protection through
tireless organizing and it will benefit almost 1 million people
across Canada.
These permanent, employer-paid sick days came
into effect under the Canada Labour Code on December 1, 2022.
However, the earliest that workers will have access to any paid
sick days is January 1, 2023 when they will have access to 3
days.While this paid sick leave program is
not perfect, it is an improvement for many workers. And it sets the
example for the provincial governments to legislate this basic
protection for all workers.
Keep reading to understand if you are covered
by Federal labour laws and, if so, what you are entitled to under
the new laws.You can also download and
share the Federal Paid Sick Leave fact
sheet.
"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we
practice to deceive"
Accurate quote by Sir
Walter Scott in 1808 indeed, however, it has no meaning or context
when it's infused with Elon's twitter file dumping.
In a nutshell,
twitter employees, conduct police if you must, struggled as to how
to contain a world leader who habitually lies on twitter and not
just on twitter, on facebook, in the oval office, in white house
press conferences, everywhere Donald trump was lying, 30,000
documented lies in 4 years in office...Yet Twitter let Trump free
wheel his lies for 4 years, no warnings, no suspensions, nothing,
any other twitter user would have been tossed...Trump was left
alone..
Only in the run-up to
2020 election did twitter de-amp, Twitter deamped a whole one tweet
that was later restored, even though it was technically in
violation of terms of service....The NY Post Hunter Biden laptop
story was de-amped, for one day, then restored....Meanwhile Trump
and his influencers were still pushing out misinformation, lies and
smears with impunity on Twitter and Facebook., for years and years
Trump was pushing bullshit on Facebook and Twitter.
After the 2020
election loss by Trump, ...Election theft tweets from DJT
flourished, he was throwing mud in every direction, from Dominion
stealing the election, more votes than voters, Ruby Freeman, Shaye
Moss as "vote hustlers"..vote dumps at night, fake ballots, and on
and on and to this day, Trump still bleating on this....Twitter
moderation gate-keepers post 2020 election started slapping
misinformation warnings on Trump's lying tweets...They still spread
like wildfire through twitterv...
If you had a shot at a wonder drug that would
not only make your meals more delicious, but it would also drive
your libido to new heights, would you take it? Would it sweeten the
deal for you to know that this drug could also cure a whole host of
ailments and prevent pregnancies at the same time? As it turns out,
the ancient Romans and Greeks definitely didnt shirk away from the
plant silphium- which did all that and a lot more.
SUBSCRIBE TO THE TRUTH THEORY YOUTUBE CHANNEL, CLICK
HERE
This plant is quite a riddle for most of the
researchers in the modern era- but it was so heavily popular in
ancient Rome that most of the Emperors used to stockpile the plant
in the treasury. In fact- the plant was so in demand that it was
actually harvested all the way to extinction. Such was the craze
for this plant that no one could have enough of it....
With the current Fifa World Cup bringing in
audiences from all over the world, one thing can be declared
without any shred of doubt- soccer is popular. But if we were to
listen to the words of Jorge Luis Borges, the famous writer from
Argentina, soccer, and stupidity went hand in hand. One of the
nominees for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1965, Borges
absolutely despised the culture or the mania that soccer brought
into the country.
SUBSCRIBE TO THE TRUTH THEORY YOUTUBE CHANNEL, CLICK
HERE
There have been times when people from
countries that are not participating in the world cup end up being
more enthusiastic about it- as they get seduced by the cosmopolitan
air, the colorful pageantry, and also the nostalgia for the
beautiful game- something all of us must have played at least once
in our lives. But, one does need to understand that any World Cup
that is organized is just the surface, the facade for a lot of evil
that is underground.
There are certain truths in life that everyone
needs to believe at face value. And one of them states that one
should never insert their head in a particle accelerator- because
that is assuredly fatal. Now- this should be just a cautionary
tale- something to put fear in the minds of budding scientists. But
as it turns out, this isnt just a caution- this is also a story of
a time not too long ago when this turned into a horrific
tragedy.
Anyone who has ever worked in a science lab
would tell us that it is very important that one follows all the
rules that are designed for ones protection and safety. So, if it
is important to put glasses on before dealing with harmful gases or
liquids, it is also important to not put your head in something as
dangerous and unpredictable as a particle accelerator. The basis
for this is simple- you wouldnt put your head before a cannon,
right? Therefore, why would someone put their head before something
that can shoot atomic particles at the very speed of
light?
First off, I have no issues with Elon releasing what he calls
"The Twitter Files" what I have issue with is how poorly it was
presented, how slow it was Tweeted, but more importantly, how it
was weak, partisan and, to be honest, brought nothing new to the
table.
I'm not exactly a perfectionist, but that one sided hit job
couldn't get published here, it's not up to my journalistic
standards, or any journalistic standards, this was Newsmax/OAN type
garbage.
I'm going highlight some of the glaring mistakes Elon made last
night with his overhyped nothingburger expose.
Elon Tweeted out before his NDA signing lackey https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394 started
releasing the thread that it was a first amendment violation for
government to tell a private company what to suppress, or allow on
Twitter, ...Well golleee Andy, who was government pre-2020
presidential election ....I do believe Trump was government, he had
the Whitehouse and Senate...Well Elon, that's kind of pesky
fact...And, Elon has yet to walk that back.
M Taibbi....in the thread stated this.....
"Both parties had access to these tools. For
instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the
Biden campaign were received and honored"
Look at that will ya...M Taibbi says that the Trump
Whitehouse made requests of Twitter and requests were
honored...ahem...The Trump Whitehouse IS Government.....Yes he says
the Biden campaign made asks, so did the Trump campaign and the
Trump Whitehouse!!!!
Yet Elon's lackey provided nothing on the Trump demands
of Twitter.
Brian Johnson also known as Liver King is a fitness guru who
rose to fame promoting his ancestral caveman-like lifestyle, eating
raw liver, bone marrow, and bull testicles. He built an empire on
his image making $100 million a year on his all-natural raw meat
diet and fitness regime. He posts images that people love of how he
is living this life as our ancestors did.
Wasn't so sure I should use the word "Amazing" in the title of
this article, but, after careful consideration decided to keep it
in, after all, the word amazing doesn't only apply to successes, as
Elon Musk so clearly demonstrates, it equally applies to
failures.
$44 Billion Elon paid for Twitter, ....Yet Trump created a
Twitter copy for a tiny fraction of that, $millions not billions to
create Truth Social.
Trump acolyte Jason Miller(CEO of Gettr) created Twitter copy
Gettr.....And Ye(Kanye West) I think bought Parler, or is buying
Parler, although no price has been disclosed..
Oct 17 (Reuters) - American rapper Kanye
West, who now goes by Ye, has agreed in principle to buy
Parler, the social media platform popular among U.S. conservatives,
parent company Parlement Technologies said on Monday.
December 1st/2022.....I wrote this article and
posted it in December 2020......It was spot on...Nothing I wrote
didn't come true, ....Trump tried to start a US civil war, he
failed......Donald Trump should be jailed for treason and handed a
death sentence....So many in my generation, and in younger
generations wondered how could Hitler have driven Germany to war
with everyone and convinced millions that exterminating millions
was acceptable....One only has to look at Trump, Nick Fuentes and
Kanye West and their millions of fanboys and fangirls to see how
one deranged Party leader with a subservient spineless group of
party members with assistance from propaganda media(Fox News)
can turn a nation to the darkside...
We avoided civil war this time......But the
threat still remains...Remnants and fascists are here in Canada
too....Be careful Alberta.....Grant G December 1st/2022
________________________________________
Donald Trump's Last Gambit and Last
Stand----Start a Civil War
Written by Grant G
December 20th/2020
There was collusion between Russia
and the Trump campaign in 2016......
Donald Trump did use the power of the US
financial purse to pressure Ukraine to dig up and or manufacture
dirt on the Bidens, it was proven without a doubt, it justified
Trump being impeached...and impeached he was. Rudy Giuliana's
mystery laptop discovered by a blind computer repairman story was a
comic-book comedy and more...
It was a scheme cooked up by Donald Trump, a
lame limp attempt, a failed October surprise...Trump's and Rudy's
amateur scheme proved one thing......Donald Trump did pressure
Ukraine to cook up a case against Joe Biden..
PARTY POLITICS
Party politics is what is wrong with
Democracy, our side, your side participants have
polluted...
When you donate to the Workers Bowl, its a vote
of confidence for the hundreds of workers who participate in our
educational programs and who are making a difference in their
communities! Theres still time todonate any
amounttowards supporting workers to
gain access to critical training on community
organizing.
We are grateful for the incredible support weve
received for this years joint fundraiser by the OEERC* and the
Workers Action Centre. It means that we can keep doing what we
love: reaching workers in precarious jobs and supporting them to
become leaders in their workplaces and communities. Through fun
educational socials, workers rights workshops and creative outreach
in our different neighbourhoods and languages, our worker leaders
have sharpened their organizing skills this year and inspired so
many others to tap into our collective worker power!
No matter what workers are facing, from wage
theft to pandemics to unsafe working conditions, the Workers Action
Centre is a place workers can come to for support, community and
leadership development. Our vital programs empower wo...
Donald braggadocious Trump started his unhinged Mar A Lago
announcement/rally rerun speech last night by boasting of his
endorsement success...
Let the delusions begin...
Trump's endorsement winners in the 2022 midterms were, for the
most part House seats in ruby red districts held for near ever by
Republicans....In other words, Trump endorsed odds on favorites,
almost all house seats, competitive house seats Trump stayed away
from..In fact, in house districts where the GOP stood no chance
Trump didn't endorse at all...
Trump's major endorsement loses.
Trump's major endorsements...In Pensyvania Mehmet
Oz....Mastriano...PA said Hell No!
In Arizona...Trump got swept out...Kari Lake..Blake
Masters..Mark Finchem..Abraham Hamadeh all lost.
In Alaska Kelly Tshibaka lost to Murkowski ..Palin lost
In Nevada...Marchant and Laxalt lost.
In Michigan, Tudor Dixon lost, in fact dems flipped Michigan
state house too.
Up and down the entire country Trump lost the big ones, election
deniers shown the exit doors.
Yet Trump blathered like he won...Yet his team lost,,,Trump and
his team lost.
This is nothing new, Trump started decades ago, by advice given
to him by Roy Cohn.."Never admit defeat, even when you lose"
That advice might work in some circles but it doesn't work in
politics,....as we witnessed here in B.C. with Carol James...She
too was given multiple chances to become premier...However, after
three strikes, she was out, Trump has had his three strikes.....He
got hammered in 2018 losing the House and Senate...Trump lost in
2020(bigtime, 7 million vote loser) Trump got bruised again in
2022...Trump got bruised when so many things were in Republicans
favor, from inflation, energy costs and world strife.
Trump's extreme ultra-mage candidates were rejected on
masse.
Trump's ego, and Trump's never admit defeat defect is one reason
he wants to be president again, there is however another reason, or
two as to why he's running for president..
First and foremost....Trump needs money from the rubes who have
been sending him money(small donors)...That money has dried
up..
The Ontario government is looking to implement
a portable benefits program to help with healthcare costs for
Ontario workers. We agree that workers need benefits as too many
cannot afford basic healthcare. These workers include not only
app-based gig workers like Uber drivers, but misclassified workers
such as cleaners, construction workers and truck drivers as
well.But Fords portable benefit program would let more
employers avoid providing basic labour rights to
workers.
This isnt surprising if you remember that
Premier Ford has never shown that hes working for workers. When
Ford took credit for raising the minimum wage to $15 on January
1st, 2022, he wanted us to forget that he also froze our minimum
wage at $14 for 2 years once he became premier. And when Ford
claimed that all Ontario gig workers would be protected by minimum
wage laws, remember that the new so-called protections do not
ensure that gig workers are paid for all their work
hours.
So, when the Ford government says it wants to
extend health benefits for precarious workers, we doubt that it
will truly help workers. Especially sincea portable
benefit program mirrors Ubers own Flexible Work+ plan that the app
company lobbied the Ontario government to adopt. Uber claims they want to extend healthcare to their drivers,
but the company spent millions fighting to exclude their drivers
from basic rights like job-protected paid sick days and overtime
pay. When it comes down to it, neither Ford nor Uber have workers
backs.
The Ontario government is now asking what kind
of portable benefits we want. But the real questions are:Why do so man...
Trump and his rabid maga cult, political pundits, mainstream
media along with Christian Nationalist leaders from coast to coast
clearly mistook all the noise THEY were making as a wave, a
movement, a reawakening, a ...........Hogwash, what they heard was
sounds and noise bouncing back and forth in the echo chamber they
reside in...
Christian self proclaimed prophets, Pastors and grifters
overplayed their strong hands, they were drinking their own
bathwater. Can you imagine, these God-praising persons
literally threatened that when they take
power(GOPChristianWhiteParty) they WILL impose upon and force feed
their chosen religion down everyone's throat, like it or not...
Seems like telling people and threatening people as to how it's
going to be rather than asking and trying to persuade the masses
was a mistake...Appears to this observer that the Church was
following the playbook of one Donald J Trump, take no prisoners and
piss on everyone, lie with impunity and distort absolutely
everything...Who would have thought that be a winning strategy.
The 2022 midterm elections revealed
much..
Trump support is waning and will never recover.
America is multicultural Nation that is growing more and more
diverse each and every passing year.
The youth vote surged and they voted for fairness, truth and
self determination, and I thank them for that, and who can blame
them, imagine a future where ancient near-dead mega church
preachers, grifters and lifelong conmen are going to decide their
fate.
The youth voted for a future, and that means protecting the
environment, protecting freedom and most importantly, protecting
Democracy...
Closed borders, isolation, one only force fed religion,
patriotic education, ....Yes, they voted against that garbage and
on mass, voted for a progressive path forward..
In thinking about the 2020 White ChristoFascist uprising in
America we've all witnessed(if you have been watching)...I'm
grateful it happened in the 2020s and not in 1950s...I salute the
politicians of yesteryear for keeping the church out of the federal
government back then..For in 1950...1960..America was way less
diverse, there was more than enough of a white majority at that
time to pull it off.
Also, there was no instant communications at everyone's
fingertips like today..
Thank the powers that be that National Political Parties in the
50s and 60s didn't let Donald Trump and Kenneth Copeland type
distorters anywhere...
The Workers Bowl* is happening in just six
days! This critical fundraiser supports the Workers
Action Centre (WAC) in organizing workers rights workshops all over
the Greater Toronto Area, online as well as in several languages.
From wage theft to understanding whether you are an employee or an
independent contractor, defending our workplace rights can get
complicated if we dont know the basics. Thats why its so important
that WAC is able to reach workers in many communities to provide
necessary information about proactive ways to protect yourself when
working.
Misclassification is one increasingly common problem that
workers across different sectors face. We consistently get calls
from people who arent sure if they are an employee or an
independent contractor. Most often, its once workers are not paid
their wages or face illegal deductions that they realize the
consequences of bein...
Joe Biden and his government over the last 2 tears passed gobs
of good, popular and needed bills, from a massive infrastructure
bill, student debt, drug price reductions, a mild new gun law
legislation, CHIPs act,.....Republican opposition have nearly on
masse voted against all these bills/legislation..
In fact, Republicans have contributed nothing over the last 2
years outside of voting no for the sake of voting no..
However, this article isn't a debate about Biden's successes and
failures....
Can anyone explain to me what Biden did to cause energy prices
to spike around the world...
He did nothing, there are more available drilling permits to be
had than ever before...Refineries weren't shut down...pipelines
didn't fail...
Uneducated people?, or are they educated but still stupid..which
is it?
Oil companies were begging for help during worldwide covid
lockdowns and shutdowns in 2020...oil storage facilities were full,
people weren't travelling and oil prices collapsed,
..$50..dollars...$30...$20....and, for a very short time the price
of oil fell to MINUS -$35 dollars....That's right, they'd pay
you $35 dollars to take a barrel of oil...
What happened next? what always happens, the oil companies
begged Government for help, and government did help....
Trump and his energy department led negotiations with OPEC and
other oil producers to cut production around the world to drive the
price up.....
Oil prices rose......
For a short time in 2020 gasoline in the USA averaged $1,47 per
gallon....(here in BC we were still paying near $6 dollars per
gallon)...
All the GOP candidates running for the Senate, Congress,
Governors, all of them are saying the same thing on the issue of
energy prices....
Trump at his rallies, at all his rallies..what does he say about
gasoline and oil prices in 2022, the same thing every GOP candidate
is saying....
Trump "When I was president I got gas prices down to $1,47
per gallon"
Really, the so-called free market(even though in 2020 oil
companies were thrown a socialistic bailout led by government by
manipulating the oil market upward)
People, investors, oil companies, drillers, producers, not one
of those that fall into that category are in the oil or investment
industry/business are there to stand pat, no, they are there to
make profit...They all want the price of oil to rise and
rise....You have all seen the record profits big oil is
reaping......
The Workers Bowl* is two weeks away and were surrounded by
reminders that funding for our leadership development programs is
crucial. Beatriz, a Workers Action Centre member, is a graduate of
our Feet on the Ground organizer training program. Ahead of the Day
of the Dead Celebration, Beatriz took some time to talk with us
about how our educational programs have helped her through rough
times and empowered her to support others in her community.
Workers Action Centre:What
workplace experiences led you to become a member?
I was working as an admin assistant in an electrical company. I
had a bad boss who didnt pay me for all the hours of my work. Hed
say it was because of the quality of my work or that there was not
a lot of work to do during my shift. Whenever something went wrong,
hed say it was my fault because I didnt understand the instructions
or because of my English. Not only did he discriminate against me
because of my accent, but he also sexually harassed me, making
comments about Latin women and asking uncomfortable questions.
I came here as an international student. We pay three times more
than Canadian students so, if I had quit my job, I would have
become homeless. Staying at that job was the only way to pay my
bills, but I suffered for it. I was limited to 20 work hours a week
but sometimes I was forced to work longe...
(U//FOUO) We judge that narratives driven by Chinese, Iranian,
and Russian state media, and proxy websites linked to these
governments, often involve fact-based articles as well as
editorials; these publications may include misinformation,
disinformation, or factual but misrepresented information. This
monthly Snapshot compiles English-language narratives, which we
assess are intended for US and Western audiences, and highlights
both consistent trends and emergent messaging, which we assess to
reveal foreign actors changing influence priorities. We judge that,
typically, China uses state and proxy mediaincluding US-based
outletsto try to shape diaspora conduct and US public and
leadership views; Iran state media manipulates emerging stories and
emphasizes Tehrans strength while denigrating US society and
policy; and Russia uses both state and proxy media to amplify
narratives seeking to weaken Washingtons global position relative
to Moscows. This snapshot identifies the most persistent or
emergent narratives being spread by these actors for
English-speakingprobably USaudiences, as well as narratives of
interest to Homeland Security stakeholders.
(U//FOUO) Chinese state media continued Julys heavy shift to
Taiwan issuesaway from significant focus on Ukraine or
COVID-19while also claiming that several US domestic controversies
show a failing democracy. Outlets denounced visits to Taiwan by US
politicians as political grandstanding, and as attempts to
undermine the OneChina policy.
(U//FOUO) Iranian state media focused on long-standing
narratives. Outlets praised Tehrans purported efforts to revitalize
the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), while criticizing
Washingtons negotiating stance, and pushed stories of US social
discord, including inflation and the search of the former
presidents property.
(U//FOUO) Russian state media and proxy websites continued their
heavy focus on Ukraine by blaming global economic, energy, and food
insecurity on the Western response. They also alleged that
Ukrainian military actions endangered the Zaporozhye nuclear power
plant. Moscow further highlighted its support for Beijing after the
Taiwan visits of US Congressional delegations.
Dems will pick-up 2 senate seats.....52 to 48 Dem majority..
The US House is likely gone....almost all midterm elections in
recent decades sees the ruling party losing seats...
However...It may be different this year....
Rightwing polling companies are flooding the zone with shit
partisan polls..Eh Trafalger?
And despite an electorate pissed off at the price of groceries
and gasoline....Republicans have no answers for the future outside
of investigating a fictional hard-drive and impeaching Biden for
yet unspecified crimes...Voters are staying put..albeit Florida has
swung right...But they be back to sanity in 2 years....Wait til
they taste the fascism..
I've been watching this polling gambit the rightwing is engaged
in...
538 polling seems to be level headed and even handed .....
Whereas Real Clear Politics, a once legit polling aggregator has
turned sharp-right after accepting rightwing dark money .....Check
it out, a night and day difference..
Dumber extreme right are very noisy, but their numbers are small(Eh
Tamara Lich)....MAGA represents about 40% of the GOP....The
remaining GOP will mostly vote party lines....But, about 10 % of
the current GOP will not vote for Fascists.
Lastly....Friend of Bolsonaro...Mike Lindell claims he has proof
5.1 million votes were stolen(stold) or as Trump would
say.."stollen" from Bolsonaro..
Today, for the first time since Elon Musk took over Twitter, the
#StopToxicTwitter
coalition, made up of more than 60 civil rights and civil
society groups, issued an urgent call to Twitter advertisers,
demanding they stop buys on the platform in the wake of Elon Musks
sweeping layoffs.
On Friday, a large number of Twitter employees received news
that theyve been fired making it impossible for the company to
uphold critical brand safeguards and content moderation
standards.
At the same time, the #StopToxicTwitter coalition announced that
the Anti-Defamation League, Stop Hate for Profit, Voto Latino and
Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Ressa had joined the effort,
swelling the coalitions ranks to more than 60 civil rights and
civil society groups. The full list can be found on the coalition
website: https://www.stoptoxictwitter.com/
We are witnessing the real time destruction of one of the worlds
most powerful communication systems. Elon Musk is an erratic
billionaire who is dangerously unqualified to run this platform
thats why Accountable Tech first called on advertisers to hold him
to account in May, and its why we lead the charge to stop this
deal, said Nicole Gill, Co-Founder and Executive Director
of Accountable Tech. Unless and until Musk can robustly
enforce Twitters existing community standards, the platform is not
safe for users or advertisers. Elons hellscape is already here.
Musks layoffs betray the promise he made to Free Press, Color Of
Change, the NAACP and ADL earlier this week; retaining and
enforcing election-integrity measures requires an investment in the
human expert staff, fact-checkers, and moderators, who are being
shown the door today, said Jessica J. Gonzlez, co-CEO of
Free Press. More than 60 organizations have joined the
call to #StopToxicTwitter, pressuring companies globally to cease
advertising on the platform. Were escalating our campaign today in
response to Musks failure to uphold his commitment to take the
measures that would prevent Twitter from becoming a superspreader
of racism and disenfranchisement.
This time of year, we might see zombies, vampires and ghouls
prowling about but workers have to watch out for bad bosses all
year round. Every day, more workers call our workers rights phone
line seeking support because their employer has refused to pay
them. Even worse, many workers without status were working for less
than minimum wage. With grocery prices rising 11.4 per cent
last month, not receiving your pay is a terrifying prospect. The
scariest part of the whole situation is thinking there is nothing
you can do about it.
Thats why its so important that we keep teaching workers how to
effectively reach out to their communities to let people know about
workplace rights and that the Workers Action Centre is here to
provide a safe space to learn how to bravely defend those rights.
Its funding through the Workers Bowl* that keeps the
education programs going and workers growing stronger. Will you
show your support?
Every day, our organizers on the phone line answer calls from
workers in bad situations, from wage theft to workplace bullying to
unsafe work. This year alone, weve received over 1,330
calls on our bad boss phone line, most often from workers like
Eduardo who have faced wage theft. After several weeks of
worrying if his former employer would ever pay him the $820 he was
owed for drywalling work, he heard about the Workers Action Centre
from someone else whod expe...
Throughout the rollercoaster of Elon Musks potential acquisition
of Twitter, the Stop
the Deal coalition has continually raised deep concerns
about the devastating impact that Musks Twitter ownership would
have on our information ecosystem, public safety and already
fragile democracy. Tonight, after news broke that the deal has been
finalized, The Stop the Deal Coalition released the following
statement:
Elon Musks plans for Twitter will make it an even more
hate-filled cesspool, leading to irreparable real-world harm. Musks
plans will leave the platform more vulnerable to security threats,
rampant disinformation, and extremism just ahead of the midterm
elections. Elon Musk has a thirst for chaos and utter disregard for
anyone other than himself and should not own Twitter.
In the last few weeks Musk has waded into foreign diplomacy
including parroting Kremlin talking points about their invasion
into Ukraine. He is accepting financing from Saudi Prince Alwaleed
bin Talal Al Saud and the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar two
countries run by repressive regimes. Elon Musk owning one of the
worlds most powerful communication platforms is dangerous for us
all. As Musk runs Twitter to the ground, let this serve as a
warning to other platforms that they will be held accountable for
ignoring public safety and dismantling the guardrails designed to
protect our information ecosystem.
Background on the Stop the Deal coalition:
In June 2022, a diverse coalition of nonprofit advocacy
organizations launched Stop
The Deal a multifaceted campaign designed to prevent Elon
Musks hostile takeover of Twitter, and...
By Steve Brawner, 2022 by Steve Brawner Communications,
Inc.
I plan to vote no on all four proposed constitutional amendments
on the Arkansas ballot because one is terrible, and the costs and
risks outweigh the benefits for the other three. Read the
rest
As of Jul7
2022,76
studiesfound fluoride lowers IQ - 23
published since 2017 The fetus and formula fed infants are the most
vulnerable to fluoride's neurotoxicity.
These studies are the basis of a
current lawsuit against the US EPA which could end the artificial
fluoridation program in the US to protect the brains of the fetus
and babies. The next court date is October 26, 2022. Counsel for
the plaintiffs is Michael Connett, JD, Partner, Waters Kraus & Paul.
Fluoride from
foods and beverages consumed during pregnancy is associated with
lower cognitive neurodevelopment in boy babies, even when fluoride
is ingested at recommended levels, report researchers Cantoral et
al. in Neurotoxicology (December 2021) and funded by the US National Institutes of
Health.
The affordability crisis has set workers even further back after
the last few years of the pandemic. Workers are fighting harder
than ever for everything from permanent resident status, decent
wages, permanent and adequate paid sick days, and equal pay for
equal work. And we cant afford to back down. Through the
educational programs we offer, workers are gaining the confidence
and skills necessary to defend our rights at work.
We are able to offer these leadership programs to workers
because of the support we receive through the annual Workers
Bowl fundraiser* and its just one month away! Will you
help strengthen workers and our communities by donating any amount
today?
With the serious health and financial threats of precarious
work, low wages and income insecurity, its more important than ever
that workers are organized and feel confident to share workers
rights information and to defend those rights!
The time our organizers spend with workers teaching them
about workplace rights, how to speak up at work and how to assist
others to do the same is an investment t...
Last year, the Boston City Council unanimously approved an
ordinance giving the council control over how the Boston Police
Department acquires and uses surveillance technology. Now, for the
first time, the public can see a full list of all the surveillance
technologies and databases used by the Boston Police Department and
other city entities subject to the ordinance.
In compliance with the ordinance, the Wu administration sent the
following documents to the City Council:
The ACLU of Massachusetts, Muslim Justice League, and Digital
Fourth reviewed these materials and sent a
letter to the Wu administration seeking further details. We are
awaiting a response.
The next step in the process will likely be a series of City
Council hearings to discuss the surveillance technologies currently
used by the Boston Police Department. City Councilor Michael
Flaherty is responsible for leading this process, from his position
as Chair of the Councils Committee on Public Safety and Criminal
Justice.
The ACLU and our partners have been in communication with
Councilor Flaherty about this process and we understand the Chair
plans to hold a hearing November 21, 2022 at 10am to receive public
comment on the Citys surveillance disclosures and discuss the
submissions with the Police Department and other agencies. As soon
as that hearing is noticed, the ACLU will post information about
how to sign up to testify. We encourage Boston residents and other
concerned parties to read through the documents linked above and to
come to that hearing prepared to share your views and questions for
the administration and the council. Ensuring Bostons surveillance
practices are aligned with community needs is a process that will
require input from all of us. Get involved!
(U) Russia almost certainly is subjecting Ukrainian civilians in
occupied areas to so-called filtration operations. Individuals face
one of three fates after undergoing filtration, which include being
issued documentation and remaining in Russian-occupied Ukraine,
forcefully deported to Russia, or detained in prisons in eastern
Ukraine or Russia.
Individuals are detained and taken to filtration waypoints, or
stopped at filtration checkpoints.
Individuals are temporarily detained and evaluated for their
perceived threat.
Those deemed most threatening probably are detained and
imprisoned in eastern Ukraine or Russia. Little is known about
their fates.
Those deemed less threatening but still hostile probably are
forcibly deported to Russia.
Those deemed non-threatening probably are either issued
documentation and permitted to remain in Ukraine or forcibly
deported to Russia.
(U//FOUO) This Intelligence In View provides federal, state,
local, and private sector stakeholders an overview of Russian
Government-affiliated cyber activity targeting the United States
and Russian regional adversaries, including disruptive or
destructive cyber activity, cyber espionage in support of
intelligence collection, and malign foreign influence in service of
Russian political agendas. This In View also provides examples of
malware and tools used by Russian Government-affiliated cyber
actors.
(U) CYBER THREAT TO THE HOMELAND
(U) Russia likely will remain a significant threat to US
networks, data, and critical infrastructure as it refines and
employs its sophisticated cyber espionage, influence, and attack
capabilities, particularly in response to international pressure
following its unprovoked attack on Ukraine. Russia has previously
targeted critical infrastructure in the United States and allied
countries to improveand in some cases demonstrateits ability to
inflict damage during a crisis. Russias use of destructive malware
against Ukrainian infrastructure highlights the potential for such
attacks to unintentionally spill over to other countries and
threatens the availability of US critical assets and data. Russia
will likely use these tools to compromise infrastructure and
networks, acquire intellectual property and other proprietary data,
undercut public trust in US institutions, and sow discord in the
Homeland.
(U) TARGETING AND ATTACKS
(U) The Russian Government almost certainly considers cyber
attacks an acceptable option to deter adversaries and control
escalation. We have not yet observed Russian Government-affiliated
actors conducting a destructive or disruptive cyber attack against
the United States. However, Russian Government-affiliated cyber
actors have targeted US industrial control system (ICS) and
operational technology networks with malware, which, if successful,
would provide the Russian Government with the option to conduct
disruptive or destructive cyber attacks against US ICS. Russian
Government-affiliated cyber actors have targeted a number of US
industries and use a range of techniques to gain initial access to
target networks. These actors have also demonstrated the ability to
maintain persistent, undetected, long-term access in compromised
environmentsincluding cloud environmentsby using legitimate
credentials. This access can enable cyber disruptions that could be
used at a foreign policy level to shape other countries decisions,
as well as a deterrence and military tool.
(U) ESPIONAGE
(U//FOUO) Russian Government-affiliated cyber espionage is a
persistent threat to federal, state, and local governments, as well
as entities in the energy, aviation, transportation, healthcare,
and telecommunications industries. Russian Government-affiliated
cyber espionage actors support the Kremlins intelligence
requirements, build cyber attack capabilities, and provide
Mosco...
As of September 2022, 76
human studies found fluoride linked to lower IQ - 25 published since 2017 The fetus and
formula fed infants are the most vulnerable to fluoride's
neurotoxicity.
These studies are the basis
of a current lawsuit against the EPA which could end the artificial
fluoridation program in the US to protect the brains of the fetus.
The next court date is in June 2022. Counsel for the plaintiffs
is Michael Connett, JD,
Partner, Waters Kraus &
Paul.
Fluoride from foods and
beverages consumed during pregnancy is associated with lower
cognitive neurodevelopment in boy babies, even when fluoride is
ingested at recommended levels, report researchers Cantoral et al.
in Neurotoxicology (December 2021) and funded by the US National Institutes of
Health.
This is the 71st human study to show neurodevelopmental
damage from fluoride in utero. The other 70 are
listed here,
specifically linking fluoride to lower IQ, and backed up by
hundreds of animal studies.
Few know that
fluoride, besides being added to many public water supplies, is in
foods and beverages at varying and inconsistent levels either
naturally or from flu...
Energy efficiency is at the forefront of net-zero carbon
emission goals. With the global community scrambling to address the
effects of climate change, more and more homeowners are also
turning to sustainable homes.
What is a Sustainable Home?
Environment-friendly home, energy-efficient home, and
sustainable home these are just a few terms that have become
popular in recent years.
A sustainable home is a home that regulates energy consumption,
reduces carbon footprints, minimizes maintenance, practices reuse
and recycling, fosters simple yet efficient living, and promotes
good quality of life.
Features of a Sustainable Home
If you are looking to own a new home, going sustainable is the
practical way to go. Renovating your existing home for
sustainability is also a good move.
What are some considerations when designing a sustainable
home?
Energy Efficient Design
Your sustainable home should be in a strategic position for
optimal sunlight and ventilation. Coupled with a number of
energy-efficient solutions, you can significantly reduce your
electric bills all throughout the year.
Your homes lifespan should be a model of sustainability. Its
foundation and architecture should be durable, long-lasting,
well-insulated, and flexible.
There are many construction materials available for use in
sustainable homes. For example, houses made of
concrete, timber, steel, wood, and bamboo are common.
Innovative products that are made from recycled materials are also
popular material choices.
An environment-friendly house should have good ventilation and
insulation. In-slab heating, insulated outlets and pipes, proper
HVAC system, floor and wall insulation, etc. are good starting
points to be more energy efficient.
Use the suns full potential for energy. Harnessing power through
solar panels is cost-effective and environment-friendly. Aside from
this, there is a passive solar setup wherein the windows absorb
heat, which can be used later on to keep the house warm.
Water Management and Conservation
Water treatment and recycling are other features of an
environment-friendly home. Water fixtures should have at least a
3-star rating to conserve water. For example, a dual flush toilet
and a low-flow showerhead lower water consumption by a substantial
amount.
(U//FOUO) This Joint Intelligence Bulletin (JIB) provides an
overview of significant tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs)
discussed or used by the alleged perpetrator of the 14 May 2022
mass casualty shooting in Buffalo, New York and details how related
documents spread after the attack may contribute to the current
threat landscape. The alleged attacker drew inspiration from
previous foreign and domestic racially or ethnically motivated
violent extremists (RMVEs) and their online materials, underscoring
the transnational nature of this threat. DHS, FBI, and NCTC advise
federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government
counterterrorism and law enforcement officials and private sector
security partners to remain vigilant of this enduring threat.
(U) Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures Observed
(U//FOUO) DHS, FBI, and NCTC assess that the dissemination of
written guidance outlining the TTPs used by the alleged Buffalo
attacker will likely enhance the capabilities of potential mass
casualty shooters who may be inspired by this attack. The alleged
attacker prioritized creating a comprehensive how-to guide for
future attackers, including guidance on bolstering opportunities
for maximum casualties and optimizing personal defense. The written
guidance will contribute to the volume of violent extremist content
readily available online, leading to potential opportunities for
future attackers to learn from the TTPs and enhance their own
capabilities. While these TTPs can enhance the capabilities of any
violent extremist, we assess that lone offender RMVEs espousing a
belief in the superiority of the white race are most likely to
utilize these tactics due to their shared ideology and the
demonstrated history of RMVEs citing inspiration from previous
attackers.
(U//FOUO) The alleged attacker extensively documented his
pre-attack planning process and TTPs in a 180-page manifesto and
672-page online diary intended to serve as a manual for future
attackers, according to DHS and press reporting. The diary
demonstrates his interest in extensive pre-operational planning and
details his ideological motivations, target selection, gear and
weapons choices, reconnaissance, and calls to action designed to
inspire additional attacks. The accompanying manifesto includes a
structured breakdown of all weapons, ammunitions, and gear
considered in
the planning of the attack and a cost-benefit analysis of using
select materials. The alleged attacker also upgraded his cell phone
data service prior to the attack, believing this would improve the
quality and ease of livestreaming the attack. The alleged attacker
invited several individuals to his private online diary minutes
prior to the attack to assist in the dissemination of his
materials.
(U//FOUO) Approximately 100 pages of the alleged attackers
manifesto provide recommendations on specific TTPs intended to
maximize casualties. The document details his pre-attack tra...
The United States and other Western nations face a heightened
threat from violent extremists motivated by a broad range of
ideologies. Previous editions of this booklet have focused solely
on the indicators of homegrown violent extremist mobilization to
violence; this edition has been expanded to include indicators that
apply to multiple ideologically-motivated US-based violent
extremists, given the evolving complexity and variety of factors
influencing the domestic threat landscape.
These indicators were developed and updated based on a review of
information derived from dozens of FBI terrorism investigations,
peer-reviewed academic studies, and analytic exchanges among
Intelligence Community and law enforcement professionals. The
indicators of violent extremist mobilization described in this
booklet are observable behaviors that could help to determine
whether individuals are preparing to engage in violent extremist
activities.
The indicators are grouped according to the stages individuals
undergo: mobilization to violence, engaging in preparation, and
developing motivation. These indicators suggest how close an
individual may be to mobilizing to violence and are ordered by the
strength of the indicator within each category.
This resource is provided to inform law enforcement, terrorism
prevention practitioners, other first responders, community
leaders, as well as the general public about both threats of
violence and contextual behaviors that suggest an individual is
mobilizing to violence. While some violent extremists may make
direct, indirect, or vague threats of violence, others may plot
violent action while avoiding such overt threats to maintain
operational securityunderscoring the need to consider both threats
of violence and contextual behaviors.
We have incorporated unusual into many of the indicators because
we are looking for behavior that is different enough from the
individuals normal behavior to cause concern. The indicators
included in this booklet are intended to aid law enforcement and
first responder investigative and detection efforts, not to be a
substitute for their expertise and experience. In addition, we
continue to see that members of the communitysuch as family members
and peersare often best positioned to witness signs of mobilization
to violence. Such community members almost always are the first to
detect hints that an individual may be considering violent action
in the United States or overseas. This booklet is provided to aid
interpretation of their observations.
This booklet was first published in 2015 and updated in 2017 and
2019.
MOBILIZATION INDICATOR CRITERIA
This booklet describes each indicator in terms of three
criteria: what behavior stage a person is in (Behavior Stages);
who, in addition to law enforcement, might observe the behavior
(Observers); and what type of behavior the indicator describes
(Indicator Types).
Astrology and the Astrological ages is an ancient science,
dating back thousands of years ago. It appears
in many cultures, but as with most ancient wisdom
The post Senator Says Pennsylvania Bypassed Feds & Issued
Illegal Permit That Threatens Dimock Waterways With Radioactivity
From Fracking appeared first on PUBLIC HERALD.
(U//FOUO) During the six-month period from April 2022 to
September 2022, we project that US Customs and Border Protection
(CBP) will record between 1 and 2.1 million encounters at the US
Southwest Border. We have low confidence in these projections
because migration is a complex and fluid issue, making predictive
analysis difficult. Additionally, the percentage of selected Latin
American and Caribbean nationals encountered at the US Southwest
Border has increased from 11 percent in the first six months of FY
2021 to 31 percent in the first six months of FY 2022. This
increasing diversification of migrant nationalities encountered at
the US Southwest Borderon top of other capacity challengeswill
further complicate US capacity to manage the expected flow, as it
requires engagement with other migrant-source countries besides
Mexico and Northern Triangle countries. Specifically, encounters of
Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan nationals pose unique challenges
because of our limited relationships with these host countries.
It boggles the mind of sane people everywhere....How a man with
a record of crimes, of lies going back decades, Trump used fake
personas many years ago to create press, under the aliases of John
Barron and John Miller and who knows how many others...
Trump calling elections rigged is nothing new, there hasn't been
any political battles he was involved with that he hasn't called
rigged before the votes have been counted, even the contests he
ended up winning...Starting with his first political challenge, the
2016 GOP primaries to decide who would be the Republican candidate
for the November 2016 presidential election....
Trump lost the first GOP primary but ended up winning the
remaining primaries giving him the nomination for the 2016
presidential election......However, ..Trump versus Hillary Clinton,
polls had Hillary leading or close in most polls, odds on money had
Trump losing....So the claims of a "rigged election" ramped up
again, at every 2016 campaign rally Trump cried foul, cried "rigged
election" over and over again...in 2016 Trump was prepared had he
lost the election to scream "it's rigged" to high heaven.....But lo
n behold, to the visceral shock of many Trump won...Trump won the
electoral college vote but lost the popular vote...Meaning Trump
was president..
Then the attempted rewriting of history by Trump began in
earnest......He lost badly in his attempted history re...
Last year, the City of Boston voted unanimously to
passan ordinancethat will require community
control over police surveillance (CCOPS). After being signed into
law in November 2021, the ordinance is now set to go into effect in
August 2022. Boston joins over 20 other municipalities
nationwideincluding Cambridge, Lawrence, and Somerville in
MassachusettswithCCOPS lawsthat empower local communities to
influence surveillance and information sharing
decisions.
Heres what Boston residents need to know about the
ordinance and its implementation this
summer.
How does this ordinance change things?
Surveillance oversight laws give concerned residents and
community organizations a meaningful chance to debate and push back
against the deployment of surveillance technologies in their
neighborhoods. Prior to the implementation of the ordinance in
Boston, decisions about surveillance technology acquisition and
policy were made behind closed doors, without any democratic
engagement or public debate. Over the years, a lack of transparency
and democratic oversight governing surveillance in Boston has led
to numerous abuses, including the Boston Police Departments use
ofsocial media surveillance technologyto
target Black people and Muslims
online.
The surveillance ordinance institutionalizes transparency
and democratic oversight, ensuring all decisions about surveillance
technology acquisition and governing policy are made in public by
the peoples elected representatives on the City
Council.
The ordinance applies to technologies already in use by
city agenciesnothing gets grandfathered in or automatically
approved. Each technology currently in use must receive approval
from the City Council for the agency to continue to use it. It
applies to the Boston Police Department, the Boston Parks
Department Park Rangers, Boston Public Schools, Bo...