Sunday, May 31, 2015
Stop Calling the TPP a Trade Agreement – It Isn’t.
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Trade is a good thing. But enabling companies to move $30/hour jobs to countries with $.60/hour wages so a few billionaires can pocket the difference is not trade. Continue reading
The post Stop Calling the TPP a Trade Agreement – It Isn’t. appeared first on BillMoyers.com.
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UK Mainstream Media Prints the Truth About HPV Vaccine – Will Story be Retracted?
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"Non-GMO" Cheerios Oats Still Sprayed With Roundup, Supplier Announces
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General Mills Cheerios may now be "non-GMO" but it is virtually guaranteed to contain Roundup herbicide residues, as disclosed by North America's largest oat supplier.
While there are no genetically modified oats on the marketplace today, non-organic oats might as well be labeled Roundup Ready (RR). This is because it is common practice to spray them with Roundup's active ingredient glyphosate, putting them in the same category of glyphosate contaminated crops which includes RR GM soy, corn and canola.
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Marc Tucker: Time for the Civil Rights Community to Rethink Its Support for Annual Testing
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In this brilliant article, Marc Tucker explains why the civil rights community is making an error by supporting annual testing as a “civil right.” He knows their leaders believe that poor and minority children will be overlooked in the absence of annual testing. But he demonstrates persuasively that annual testing has done nothing to improve […]
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Saturday, May 30, 2015
46 Republican Who Just Voted to Eliminate Freedom of the Press
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Recently, I reported on the fact that the American Phoenix Foundation is in possession of what they claim are 800 hours of damning undercover video of Texas politicians engaging in corruption. I also told you that the Texas legislature was pushing to stifle freedom of the press in a new bill that would make illegal […]
The post 46 Republican Who Just Voted to Eliminate Freedom of the Press appeared first on Freedom Outpost.
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Rand Paul: “Tomorrow, I will force the expiration of the NSA illegal spy program.”
Thursday, May 28, 2015
The Danger That There Will Be No “Big Event”
Chris Hedges: America's Mania for Positive Thinking and Denial of Reality Will Be Our Downfall | Alternet
"The naive belief that history is linear, that moral progress accompanies technical progress, is a form of collective self-delusion. It cripples our capacity for radical action and lulls us into a false sense of security. Those who cling to the myth of human progress, who believe that the world inevitably moves toward a higher material and moral state, are held captive by power. Only those who accept the very real possibility of dystopia, of the rise of a ruthless corporate totalitarianism, buttressed by the most terrifying security and surveillance apparatus in human history, are likely to carry out the self-sacrifice necessary for revolt....
"The blundering history of the human race is always given coherence by power elites and their courtiers in the press and academia who endow it with a meaning and coherence it lacks. They need to manufacture national myths to hide the greed, violence and stupidity that characterize the march of most human societies....
"Wisdom is not knowledge. Knowledge deals with the particular and the actual. Knowledge is the domain of science and technology. Wisdom is about transcendence. Wisdom allows us to see and accept reality, no matter how bleak that reality may be. It is only through wisdom that we are able to cope with the messiness and absurdity of life. Wisdom is about detachment. Once wisdom is achieved, the idea of moral progress is obliterated. Wisdom throughout the ages is a constant. Did Shakespeare supersede Sophocles? Is Homer inferior to Dante? Does the Book of Ecclesiastes not have the same deep powers of observation about life that Samuel Beckett offers? Systems of power fear and seek to silence those who achieve wisdom, which is what the war by corporate forces against the humanities and art is about. Wisdom, because it sees through the facade, is a threat to power. It exposes the lies and ideologies that power uses to maintain its privilege and its warped ideology of progress....
"Resistance, as Alexander Berkman points out, is first about learning to speak differently and abandoning the vocabulary of the “rational” technocrats who rule. Once we discover new words and ideas through which to perceive and explain reality, we free ourselves from neoliberal capitalism, which functions, as Walter Benjamin knew, like a state religion. Resistance will take place outside the boundaries of popular culture and academia, where the deadening weight of the dominant ideology curtails creativity and independent thought."
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Tragedy of Whitney Houston and Her Daughter: The Surprising Factors That Can Make People 4600 Percent More Prone To Addiction | Alternet
The published research showed that for every category of trauma that happens to a child, they are two to four times more like to grow up to be an addict – and multiple traumas produced a massive risk. The correlation for addiction was startling. Nearly two-thirds of injecting drug use, they found, is the result of early childhood trauma. (7)"
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Anonymous Fear-Mongering About the Patriot Act from the White House and NYT
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Two paragraphs, courtesy of the Obama White House and the Paper of Record, illustrate the principal weapons that have poisoned post-9/11 political discourse in the U.S.
The post Anonymous Fear-Mongering About the Patriot Act from the White House and NYT appeared first on The Intercept.
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People Framing Critical Thinking and Political Engagement as “Negativity”
There are several issues I run into when writing about critical topics in the public domain. One of the main contentions people have with my public participation in the political/intellectual sphere is they perceive critical engagement as “negativity.” Specifically, when I share my critical articles with people close to me (which is rarely ever now), there is definitely a backlash for my behavior. Most people don’t directly confront me about it, but they feel my engagement with cultural issues is “negative.” In fact, I had a close family member tell me I should “just be positive and everything will turn out fine.”
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
BEST OF THE WEB: 3 years of confronting the Western Empire and its propaganda machine
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After my two days marathon discussion with Noam Chomsky, (at MIT in 2012), a bestselling book was born. Later this year a film will hit the cinemas. Noam and I discussed Western imperialism, and the terror it has been spreading around the world. After WWII, at least 50 million lives were lost. Lives of those whom Orwell used to call "unpeople"; lives brutally interrupted as a result of Western-led and orchestrated wars, invasions, coups and proxy-conflicts. We discussed at length the Western propaganda, which, for centuries, worked extremely hard to justify everything from the colonialist insanity, to supremacist and exceptionalist theories. After my encounter with Chomsky, I decided to dedicate at least two years of my life to visiting most parts of the world, where the Empire had been striking; where it was attempting to bulldoze all opposition that was standing on its way to the absolute control over the planet. My goal was Quixotic - a monster, 1000-page book, exposing and confronting techniques and dogmas utilized by the Empire in all corners of the globe, for purposes of destabilizing "rebellious" nations, overthrowing "unruly" governments, or simply grabbing natural resources.
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Medical holocaust: Psych drugs have killed more than 5 million people over the last 10 years
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(NaturalNews) If every single person currently taking psychotropic medications or antidepressants were to be pulled off these deadly drugs and given a new, safer regimen instead, society would be much better off. This is the larger inference of a new review published in The BMJ (British... |
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What a Stupid and Terrifying School Intruder Drill
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From Wyoming’s trib.com news comes possibly the dumbest school shooting drill I’ve heard of: Aubrey Truman was swinging on the playground at Worland’s East Side Elementary School about 10 a.m. Thursday when she received the scare of her life. A man in a hooded sweatshirt with a suspicious backpack appeared in the back of the […]
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Here’s how much corporations paid US senators to fast-track the TPP bill
“It’s a rare thing for members of Congress to go against the money these days,” said Mansur Gidfar, spokesman for the anti-corruption group Represent.Us. “They know exactly which special interests they need to keep happy if they want to fund their reelection campaigns or secure a future job as a lobbyist.
“How can we expect politicians who routinely receive campaign money, lucrative job offers, and lavish gifts from special interests to make impartial decisions that directly affect those same special interests?” Gidfar said. “As long as this kind of transparently corrupt behavior remains legal, we won’t have a government that truly represents the people.”
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/may/27/corporations-paid-us-senators-fast-track-tpp
Vaccinating the ‘herd’ | Consumer Policy Institute
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MARYLAND MEITIVS CLEARED OF FIRST “NEGLECT” CHARGE
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Hallelujah! Danielle and Alexander Meitiv have been cleared of any wrongdoing in the Dec. 20 incident when they let their kids walk home from the park in Silver Spring, MD. As Donna St. George in the Washington Post reports: A Maryland couple investigated for neglect after they let their two young children walk home alone […]
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It's Sinister: We're Locking Up Poor People in Debtor's Prisons to Fund Police Depts.
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Ray Charles Staten Sr. should have celebrated his 60th birthday this month. Instead, his family marked the fourth anniversary of his death. It all started, according to a lawsuit that settled in March 2015, when a small debt became a death sentence in the spring of 2011.
Unable to pay an outstanding debt of $409 in court fines, Mr Staten was arrested and sentenced to 16 days in Mississippi’s Harrison County Jail. Shortly after being booked at the jail, Mr Staten fell seriously ill. Despite his obvious symptoms and his cellmates’ cries for help, the jail’s privately-contracted medical staff allowed his condition to worsen until – on the fifth day of his sentence – he collapsed in his cell and, upon being transported to a medical center, could not be revived. He had suffered acute peritonitis, a life-threatening infection of the abdominal lining for which early treatment is essential.
Whenever the government locks someone in jail, it has a constitutional duty to provide adequate medical care, a responsibility that can’t be evaded simply by contracting it out to a for-profit company. Unfortunately, Mr Staten’s is a familiar story: the ACLU is currently litigating a case in a Mississippi prison that challenges, in part, the dangerously inadequate health care provided by Health Assurance, a private corporation also responsible for Mr Staten’s medical treatment — or lack thereof.
Mr Staten’s experience is far from unusual. Every day, indigent Americans are ripped from their homes and their communities and forced into jails of varying degrees of dysfunction and decay. The US supreme court ruled three decades ago that it is unconstitutional to imprison people because they cannot afford to pay debts. The ruling, however, hasn’t ended the practice of jailing people for unpaid government fees and fines.
In 2010, the ACLU found that courts across the nation regularly deny Americans proper consideration of their financial position and throw them into jail over fines they could never hope to pay. As a result, local jails nationwide have transformed into modern-day “debtors’ prisons” overcrowded with indigent people whose only punishable offense is being poor. The effects are devastating.
This growing phenomenon funnels poor Americans into the criminal justice system with sentences that disrupt their lives, too often trapping them in a damning cycle of poverty and incarceration that far outlasts their initial conviction. These practices have a disparate impact on communities of color in the United States.
Consider 19-year-old Kevin Thompson, a black teenager in DeKalb County, Georgia, who was jailed simply because he was unable to pay $838 in fines and fees associated with a routine traffic citation. Though only half of DeKalb County’s residents are black, nearly all probationers jailed for failure to pay by its recorders court, which handles minor offenses like traffic misdemeanors, are black. The ACLU filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of Mr Thompson and reached a settlement with the county that included a number of new reform measures aimed at preventing others from facing the same unconstitutional treatment.
Jail sentences like those imposed on Mr Thompson and Mr Staten aren’t just unjust – they’re also costly. The ACLU’s 2010 report In for a Penny found that individuals incarcerated for failure to pay often cost the state more than they owe. The report identifies one individual whose incarceration in New Orleans cost more than six times his $498 debt. So why are we stuck with this senseless system?
Local courts and municipalities – reliant on fines and fees as a source of revenue – are adopting increasingly aggressive collection practices. This was the case in DeKalb County, where county policymakers enlisted a for-profit company for the specific purpose of targeting those too poor to pay fines on sentencing day. And a report released in March by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division found that municipal courts in Ferguson, Missouri, prioritized revenue above fair administration of justice and imposed undue burdens on residents living in or near poverty, perpetuating and exacerbating racial and economic inequality in the community.
Too many Americans are locked away over small debts. At best, they will leave with few resources and diminished job prospects, trapped in a cycle of poverty and inequality. At worst, they will suffer and die due to the callous neglect of their jailers, like Mr Staten. Poverty should never be criminalized. Local courts and municipalities must find other sources of revenue that don’t make victims of their most vulnerable citizens.
Related Stories
- Infamous Chicago Jail So Overwhelmed with Mentally Ill Prisoners, Sheriff Appoints Psychologist to Lead It
- How Prisons Have Become a Cash Cow For the Rich
- Psychos: Congress Plots to Pay for Reviled TPP Deal by Raiding Medicare
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Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Praying for Peace While Waging Permanent War? » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
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Former CDC Director Julie Gerberding sells 38,368 shares of Merck Stock for $2.3 Million
Gerberding resigned from the CDC on January 20, 2009, and took over as the president of Merck’s Vaccine division, a 5 billion dollar a year operation, and the supplier of the largest number of vaccines the CDC recommends (article here).
It was reported earlier this month that Dr. Gerberding, now the executive vice president of pharmaceutical giant Merck, sold 38,368 of her shares in Merck stock for $2,340,064.32. She still holds 31,985 shares of the company’s stock, valued at about $2 million. (Source.)"
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The Global Elite’s Crimes Against Humanity
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By COLIN TODHUNTER | May 25, 2015 The Subversion of Life, Liberty and…
The post The Global Elite’s Crimes Against Humanity appeared first on The Liberty Beacon.
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Monday, May 25, 2015
Whatever Happened to Antitrust?
Sunday, May 24, 2015
These Are the 5 Stages of Collapse. We Are in Stage...
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"For the most part, Americans are completely oblivious of just how close the country is to a total disintegration of its fiat monetary system...the United States financial system died in 2008. It has been kept alive by policy deregulation, monetary printing, and market manipulation (including derivative manufacturing such as interest rate swaps). These collaborative short term machinations have a lifespan that is diminishing every passing day, while investors who have made the wise decision to exchange fiat money for gold and silver keep wondering how long this manipulation can continue. I remember watching Peter Schiff on CNBC and Fox Business between the years of 2005-2007 debating about the upcoming collapse of the mortgage and housing markets.
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Saturday, May 23, 2015
FBI forced to admit Patriot Act powers led to exactly zero major terrorism cases cracked
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FBI agents can't point to any major terrorism cases they've cracked thanks to the key snooping powers in the Patriot Act, the Justice Department's inspector general said in a report Thursday that could complicate efforts to keep key parts of the law operating. Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz said that between 2004 and 2009, the FBI tripled its use of bulk collection under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows government agents to compel businesses to turn over records and documents, and increasingly scooped up records of Americans who had no ties to official terrorism investigations. The FBI did finally come up with procedures to try to minimize the information it was gathering on nontargets, but it took far too long, Mr. Horowitz said in the 77-page report, which comes just as Congress is trying to decide whether to extend, rewrite or entirely nix Section 215. Backers say the Patriot Act powers are critical and must be kept intact, particularly with the spread of the threat from terrorists. But opponents have doubted the efficacy of Section 215, particularly when it's used to justify bulk data collection such as in the case of the National Security Agency's phone metadata program, revealed in leaks from former government contractor Edward Snowden. The new report adds ammunition to those opponents, with the inspector general concluding that no major cases have been broken by use of the Patriot Act's records-snooping provisions.
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Clinton and the Bankers — Guest Column by Nomi Prins
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Clinton Destroyed The Financial System Nomi Prins points out how Wall Street and the Big Banks used money to seduce the Clintons and then used the Clintons to remake the US financial system in the interest of the maximum profits…
The post Clinton and the Bankers — Guest Column by Nomi Prins appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org.
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Elites Panic as Information Control Flounders
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by James Corbett | 5.20.2015 TheInternationalForecaster.com Do you want the good news…
The post Elites Panic as Information Control Flounders appeared first on The Liberty Beacon.
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Photos: Massive 1/4 mile long military train loaded with vehicles seen near Colorado Wyoming border
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Alex Thomas | A massive quarter-mile long train full of military vehicles has been spotted near the Colorado Wyoming border.
The post Photos: Massive 1/4 mile long military train loaded with vehicles seen near Colorado Wyoming border appeared first on Intellihub.
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Friday, May 22, 2015
David Cameron's New Thought Police
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-21/david-camerons-new-thought-police
We certainly don’t like what one might term “extremist hate preachers” and the ideas they are propagating. We are just as repulsed by people glorifying fascism, communism or Islamist fundamentalism as almost all civilized people presumably are. We too find it extremely unfortunate that a number of impressionable young people have been taken in by the slick propaganda published by outfits like the Islamic State. However, once government becomes the arbiter of what speech is and isn’t legitimate, the door is inevitably thrown wide open to the suppression of all political dissent.
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Public school violates First Amendment by firing vegan teacher over private Facebook post
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(NaturalNews) A second-grade teacher in Smithville, Ohio, was fired from his job in December because he wrote on his Facebook page that he was against dairy farming.According to local affiliate Fox8, Keith Allison is a vegan and animal rights advocate who often openly posts his... |
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How Popular Music’s Lyrics Perpetuate American Idiocy
http://theantimedia.org/how-popular-musics-lyrics-perpetuate-american-idiocy/
From a political standpoint, all this ‘dumbing down’ makes sense: indoctrination creates obedience. If music and culture focus on mindless diversion, and education lacks, well, education, then people lack the acuity necessary to question the absurdity of the system. Those who manage to liberate themselves from this mold and have the gumption to question official authority will find a cozy spot on the government’s watch list. So while we bemoan our country’s lack of intellectual prowess, it isn’t by a failure of design.
Former Foster Parent Exposes How CPS Kidnaps Kids Away from Good Homes – Puts them on Drugs
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The Political Roots of Widening Inequality
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The key to understanding the rise in inequality isn’t technology or globalization. It’s the power of the moneyed interests to shape the underlying rules of the market. Continue reading
The post The Political Roots of Widening Inequality appeared first on BillMoyers.com.
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Let the Public Read the Completed Parts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
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We the People deserve to see the agreement before Congress essentially preapproves it by voting on fast track. Continue reading
The post Let the Public Read the Completed Parts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership appeared first on BillMoyers.com.
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Man Helps Boy Whose Ball Went Over Fence. Now Police Are Looking for Him
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. Alexandria, VA: From a country gone crazy with mandemonium (pandemonium sparked by seeing a man near a child) comes this all points bulletin, below. Notice that while “At no time did the unknown man attempt to leave the area with the child,” the police nonetheless give a detailed description of the suspect…er…Samaritan…er…suspect. And they […]
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Raider Focus: Military war games set to include 650 vehicles, will be largest military convoy seen in Colorado since World War II
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Alex Thomas | The simulated war game known as Raider Focus will pack Colorado highways with military vehicles.
The post Raider Focus: Military war games set to include 650 vehicles, will be largest military convoy seen in Colorado since World War II appeared first on Intellihub Transfer.
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Rising Police Aggression A Telling Indicator Of Our Societal Decline
Unfortunately there are far too many cases where the police have acted as judge, jury and executioner to suggest that there are just a few bad apples.
Instead there’s a pervasive atmosphere of hostility and force escalation better suited to war zones than maintaining civilian order. The lines have been drawn in many police departments: it’s us vs. them.
Trust in many departments has been utterly shattered within some communities because the police hold themselves to a different standard than they do the populace. Police commit brazen acts of brutality and get away with it, largely because they self-investigate and/or because the local District Attorney office is unwilling to press charges.
But the recent cases of police brutality are simply a symptom of a much larger problem. Society in the US is breaking down, civility has been lost, and the country is rapidly becoming uncivilized.
This extends within and across all of the most important institutions. Congress is known to work for corporations first and foremost. Democracy itself is bought and sold by the highest bidders. The Federal Reserve protects big banks from the costs of their misdeeds and enriches the already stupidly rich as a side benefit.
No Jail Time for Bankers
From comments at
http://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/92663/4-factors-signaling-volatility-will-return-vengeance
As happened, yet again, today:
Global Banks to Pay $5.6 Billion in Penalties in FX, Libor Probe
May 20, 2015
Officials said a 19-month investigation in which FBI agents conducted 175 interviews and reviewed a terabyte of trading data showed traders withholding bids or offers to avoid moving the rate in directions that would hurt open positions held by other members of the group, in violation of antitrust laws.
Members of the group discussed whether to allow one Barclays trader to join the chat room and ultimately decided to let him in for a “1 month trial,” but advised him: “mess this up and sleep with one eye open at night,” according to the New York Department of Financial Services.
The fines, which include penalties from the Federal Reserve and other regulators, come on top of a combined $4.3 billion many of the same banks paid in November to resolve similar charges from U.S. and U.K. regulators.
Bank of America Corp. will also pay a $205 million penalty to the Fed to resolve the regulator’s foreign exchange probe. Bank of America didn’t face similar action from the Justice Department.
Citigroup, which was accused of being involved in the misconduct from December 2007 through January 2013, is paying the largest criminal fine of $925 million, in addition to a Fed penalty of $342 million. The other banks were accused of engaging in the conduct for various periods within that time frame.
Note that not one single person will be facing any jail time. No indictments were handed down. This is despite specific email exchanges with people’s names on them.
Were this a normal prosecution of something or some entity that the Justice Department really hated and wanted to make an example out of, say an environmental organization or perhaps a raw milk collective, the normal procedure would have been to start with the persons on the email strings, threaten them with hundreds of potential years in the Federal Penitentiary, and then lean on them to name names higher up the ladder. You don’t stop until you reach as high into the organization as you can.
You see, the idea behind criminal probes is that you want to both catch and punish the prior wrong doings but also deter future criminal acts.
Let’s see how they did. Citi was fined fined the most and dinged for $925 million. First quarter 2015 revenues for Citi were $19.7 billion. This means that 4.5% of a single quarter’s incoming cash flows, or roughly 0.5 weeks of operational cash flows were dinged.
This would be like you robbing a bank, being caught, and then having the prosecutor come out and hit you for a half a week’s pay.
Not only is nobody else deterred by your “punishment” but you probably aren’t either.
While the Justice Department wanted to appear they were being tough, it was yet another massive failure on their part to do anything meaningful, and that means Obama's administration is literally the very worst on record for going after Wall Street fat cats. The bar is now so low, there's really no further to go...except to just default into overt Ukrainian style plutocracy.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
How the CIA tortured its detainees
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Waterboarding, confinement, sleep deprivation – Oliver Laughland takes a look at some of the ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ used by the agency
First published in December 2014
- CIA’s brutal use of torture revealed in landmark report
- Experts read between the redactions of the CIA torture report
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Big Banks Pay $5.6 Billion, Plead Guilty To Felonies Over Currency And Rate-Fixing
Latest USDA Scandal: Organic Program Dismisses Legal Complaints Targeting Factory Farms — Without Investigating
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
When Open Government Slams Shut
http://reason.com/archives/2015/04/30/when-open-government-slams-shu
In hindsight, Obama's oft-repeated vow to run the "most transparent administration ever" has become a punchline even among his own supporters. On March 17, the White House quietly deleted the part of the federal register requiring the White House Office of Administration to be subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. On March 18, the Associated Press reported Obama set a new record for the number of FOIA requests denied—over 55 percent were refused in 2014. The administration also set a record for improperly denied FOIA requests, with one out of every three denials that was appealed last year eventually getting overturned. And the White House is dragging its feet egregiously when it comes to making information public. Six years ago, over half of all speedy processing requests for FOIA claims were granted. Last year, the government granted just one in eight requests to expedite the information being sought.
Hillary Clinton's seemingly unusual email troubles have, in fact, been replicated throughout the executive branch. Obama's head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, stepped down in February of 2013 after the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Chris Horner discovered Jackson had been using a secret email account under the name "Richard Windsor" to obscure her communications. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Attorney General Eric Holder have both used multiple email aliases, we learned in the wake of the Clinton revelations.
The Justice Department claims with a straight face that hidden email accounts do not "in any way impact compliance with FOIA requests," but most journalists have no way of knowing which nom de email contains the information they're seeking.
28 Signs That The West Coast Is Being Absolutely Fried With Nuclear Radiation From Fukushima
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The map above comes from the Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center. It shows that radiation levels at radiation monitoring stations all over the country are elevated. As you will notice, this is particularly true along the west coast of the United States. Every single day, 300 tons of radioactive water from Fukushima enters the Pacific Ocean.
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8th Grader Arrested, Threatened with Beatings and Held for 6 Days in Jail – For Throwing Skittles
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Jefferson Parrish, LA — In a Jefferson Parrish School District in Louisiana, an eighth grader was handcuffed and dragged out of the classroom…for throwing skittles. He was then held for six days.
For throwing skittles.
The boy had allegedly thrown the candy on a school bus the previous day. A report from Vocativ states:
“The following day, as the boy was taking a social studies test, a police officer assigned to the school handcuffed him, dragged him out of class and arrested him. He was charged with “interference with an educational facility” and battery.
As the officer led the handcuffed teenager out of the school, both students and faculty heard him threaten to “beat the f*** out of [the boy],” or to have his son, who is about the same age, do it for him. The student, who is African-American, spent six days in a juvenile detention facility before seeing a judge, whose first comment was: “Am I to get this right? Are we really here about Skittles?”
The mother has pulled the young boy from the school.
This is no isolated incident. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Jefferson Parish School District has had over 1600 kids arrested for things like carrying a cell phone, swearing, or not adhering to dress code. Arrested.
In what universe is this acceptable?
They also found that black students make up 80% of those arrested, despite that fact that black students make up only 40% of the school district. The SPLC has reportedly called on the Department of Justice “to intervene with the school’s unwarranted arrests of overwhelmingly minority students.”
According to SPLC attorney Eden Heilman,
“The Jefferson Parish Public School System has continued its destructive practice of arresting and jailing children for minor, and often trivial, violations of school rules and decorum. It’s nothing less than a racially biased system of criminalizing African-American children.”
The school district stated publicly that it was aware of the situation and will be working to fix it.
Related Stories
- How the Civil War Never Ended for Black America
- Bernie Sanders Has Been Against CIA's Role in Destroying Democracy Since His Early Days in Politics (Video)
- Duke Professor on Leave After Making Insane Racist Remarks Linking Baltimore Riots with Black People's 'Strange' Names
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Monday, May 18, 2015
Monsanto’s Worst Fear May Be Coming True
The media lynching of Chipotle has an explanation that is important to the future of GMOs. The cause of it is that there has long been an incipient crack in the solid public front that the food industry has presented on the GMO issue. The crack originates from the fact that while agribusiness sees GMOs as central to their business future, the brand-oriented and customer-sensitive ends of the food supply chain do not."
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Sunday, May 17, 2015
The Trojan Horse President
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President Barack Obama speaks at an event at the White House in Washington, May 11, 2015. (Photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times)
I am not an economist, not even close, but Joseph Stiglitz is. Stiglitz is actually a Nobel Prize winning economist, former Chair of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, and former chief economist for the World Bank. Joseph Stiglitz is positively terrified of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal being pushed rabidly by President Obama. Because he is, I am also frightened by what this "deal" portends.
Fundamental to America's system of government is an impartial public judiciary, with legal standards built up over the decades, based on principles of transparency, precedent, and the opportunity to appeal unfavorable decisions. All of this is being set aside, as the new agreements call for private, non-transparent, and very expensive arbitration. Moreover, this arrangement is often rife with conflicts of interest; for example, arbitrators may be a "judge" in one case and an advocate in a related case.
If there ever was a one-sided dispute-resolution mechanism that violates basic principles, this is it. That is why I joined leading U.S. legal experts, including from Harvard, Yale, and Berkeley, in writing a letter to President Barack Obama explaining how damaging to our system of justice these agreements are.
Rules and regulations determine the kind of economy and society in which people live. They affect relative bargaining power, with important implications for inequality, a growing problem around the world. The question is whether we should allow rich corporations to use provisions hidden in so-called trade agreements to dictate how we will live in the twenty-first century. I hope citizens in the U.S., Europe, and the Pacific answer with a resounding no.
At the core of this Nobel Laureate's argument against the TPP deal is the simple fact that legal authority - basic, bedrock legal authority - would be transferred from the sovereign courts of the United States to multinational corporations if this "deal" comes to pass. Note well, also, this statement from Stiglitz: "Though corporations can bring suit, others cannot. If there is a violation of other commitments - on labor and environmental standards, for example - citizens, unions, and civil-society groups have no recourse."
That is utterly intolerable, and it's what the president wants.
Joseph Stiglitz is not alone. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has essentially gone to war with the White House over the issue of the TPP. While she deplores many of the aspects of the TPP, her main concern has been the secrecy behind the whole process, and the push in Congress to give the president fast-track authority to pass this thing ... which, by the bye, got a significant boost when the Senate voted against it, and then voted for it 24 hours later, much to the dismay of many who rightly oppose this thing. Progressives are particularly distressed; with friends like these, who needs enemas?
The president has committed only to letting the public see this deal after Congress votes to authorize fast track. At that point it will be impossible for us to amend the agreement or to block any part of it without tanking the whole TPP. The TPP is basically done. If the president is so confident it's a good deal, he should declassify the text and let people see it before asking Congress to tie its hands on fixing it.
I understand that we want to be a nation that trades, that trade creates many benefits for us. But only if done on terms that strengthen the American economy and American worker. I should say the American family, because that's what this is really about.
A Republican President could easily use a future trade deal to override our domestic financial rules. And this is hardly a hypothetical possibility: We are already deep into negotiations with the European Union on a trade agreement and big banks on both sides of the Atlantic are gearing up to use that agreement to water down financial regulations. A six-year Fast Track bill is the missing link they need to make that happen.
The funny part came when President Obama dismissed Sen. Warren as just another politician as a means of defusing her criticism. Richard Nixon said, "I am not a crook" while staring into a camera. He was in fact a crook, and President Obama is in fact a politician. A consummate one, if truth be told. Of course Sen. Warren is a politician, but she is endeavoring to do what the president is not: represent the people. The president, for his part, is actively representing the corporations that actually are allowed to read the details of this deal, while the rest of us are not.
Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders agrees:
Incredibly, while Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry and major media companies have full knowledge as to what is in this treaty, the American people and members of Congress do not. They have been locked out of the process.
The TPP follows in the footsteps of other unfettered free trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA and the Permanent Normalized Trade Agreement with China (PNTR). These treaties have forced American workers to compete against desperate and low-wage labor around the world. The result has been massive job losses in the United States and the shutting down of tens of thousands of factories. These corporately backed trade agreements have significantly contributed to the race to the bottom, the collapse of the American middle class and increased wealth and income inequality. The TPP is more of the same, but even worse.
TPP will allow corporations to outsource even more jobs overseas; Service Sector Jobs will be lost; manufacturing jobs will be lost; US sovereignty will be undermined by giving corporations the right to challenge our laws before international tribunals; wages, benefits, and collective bargaining will be threatened; our ability to protect the environment will be undermined; food safety standards will be threatened; prescription drug prices will increase, access to life saving drugs will decrease, and the profits of drug companies will go up; and Wall Street would benefit at the expense of everyone else.
Stiglitz, Warren, Sanders ... and they are not alone. A very interesting left-right coalition is coalescing around opposition to this mysterious, dangerous, perilous trade deal. The real mystery, however, is why President Obama - in his final years in office - would staple himself to such a divisive and damaging initiative. He has the opportunity to focus on infrastructure repair, an example made vivid by the recent rail calamity in Philadelphia. He could lean into pushing the ACA in Red states that still resist it. Hell, he could go wild and push for what they've done with solar power in Germany, panels right down the sides of the highways, free and open space to do all that green stuff he's been yapping about while approving oil drilling in the Arctic and the Atlantic Ocean.
But no, it's this terrible thing he has chosen for his "legacy."
Is he getting bad advice? Does he seek finally the chance to say he crafted a bi-partisan agreement on something?
Or is he what many of us have feared he is for a while now: a Trojan Horse president, presented at the gates as a progressive gift? Once let in, however, an army of Third-Way "Democrats," multinational corporations, insurance companies, banks and Wall Street masters-of-the-universe were unleashed to wreak havoc, again.
Res ipsa loquitur, the saying goes. The thing speaks for itself.
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53 ADMITTED False Flag Attacks
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/x-admitted-false-flag-attacks.html
There are many documented false flag attacks, where a government carries out a terror attack … and then falsely blames its enemy for political purposes.
In the following 53 instances, officials in the government which carried out the attack (or seriously proposed an attack) admits to it, either orally or in writing:
Saturday, May 16, 2015
‘We The People’ Need To Circle The Wagons: The Government Is On The Warpath
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This article was written by John Whitehead and originally published at The Rutherford Institute / Alt-Market.com "The government is merely a servant, merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them." - Mark Twain How many Americans have actually bothered to read the Constitution, let alone the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights (a quick read at 462 words)? Take a few minutes and read those words for yourself—rather than having some court or politician translate them for you—and you will be under no illusion about where to draw the line when it comes to speaking your mind, criticizing your government, defending what is yours, doing whatever you want on your own property, and keeping the government’s nose out of your private affairs. In an age of overcriminalization, where the average citizen unknowingly commits three crimes a day, and even the most mundane activities such as fishing and gardening are regulated, government officials are constantly telling Americans what not to do.
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I Went to Prison After Exposing US Torture. Why Weren’t the Perpetrators Charged?
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There's still time for the Obama administration to prosecute US human rights abusers. Continue reading
The post I Went to Prison After Exposing US Torture. Why Weren’t the Perpetrators Charged? appeared first on BillMoyers.com.
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Video: Marines Practice Subduing Citizens Inside Internment Camps
Death Penalty for Boston Marathon Suspect Drives Nail in the Coffin of US Justice System | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization
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Under sweeping subpoenas, Justice Department obtained AP phone records in leak investigation
In a sweeping and unusual move, the Justice Department secretly obtained two months’ worth of telephone records of journalists working for the Associated Press as part of a year-long investigation into the disclosure of classified information about a failed al-Qaeda plot last year. The AP’s president said Monday that federal authorities obtained cellular, office and home telephone records of individual reporters and an editor; AP general office numbers in Washington, New York and Hartford, Conn.; and the main number for AP reporters covering Congress. He called the Justice Department’s actions a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into newsgathering activities.
Friday, May 15, 2015
James Clapper: I Wasn’t Lying When I Said The NSA Doesn’t Spy On Millions Of Americans – I Just Forgot
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He forgot. Back in March 2013, when National Intelligence Director James Clapper was asked by Congress if the NSA collects any data on millions of Americans, he replied “no.” Sen. Ron Wyden asked again: “It does not?” Not “wittingly,” was the response. But – that’s precisely what the feds are doing. The NSA does exactly […]
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Putting Orwell’s “Thought Police” to Shame - Liberty News Now
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Time to Retire the USDA's Dietary Guidelines? | Alternet
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USDA Food Pyramid History
The wealth of gold standard research supporting a lower carb diet and reduced grain consumption was NOT reviewed, and sure enough, the pyramid continues to recommend the products that benefit agricultural and food processing interests."
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A Fatally Flawed Food Guide by Luise Light, Ed.D
When our version of the Food Guide came back to us revised, we were shocked to find that it was vastly different from the one we had developed. As I later discovered, the wholesale changes made to the guide by the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture were calculated to win the acceptance of the food industry. For instance, the Ag Secretary’s office altered wording to emphasize processed foods over fresh and whole foods, to downplay lean meats and low-fat dairy choices because the meat and milk lobbies believed it’d hurt sales of full-fat products; it also hugely increased the servings of wheat and other grains to make the wheat growers happy. The meat lobby got the final word on the color of the saturated fat/cholesterol guideline which was changed from red to purple because meat producers worried that using red to signify “bad” fat would be linked to red meat in consumers’ minds.
Where we, the USDA nutritionists, called for a base of 5-9 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables a day, it was replaced with a paltry 2-3 servings (changed to 5-7 servings a couple of years later because an anti-cancer campaign by another government agency, the National Cancer Institute, forced the USDA to adopt the higher standard). Our recommendation of 3-4 daily servings of whole-grain breads and cereals was changed to a whopping 6-11 servings forming the base of the Food Pyramid as a concession to the processed wheat and corn industries. Moreover, my nutritionist group had placed baked goods made with white flour — including crackers, sweets and other low-nutrient foods laden with sugars and fats — at the peak of the pyramid, recommending that they be eaten sparingly. To our alarm, in the “revised” Food Guide, they were now made part of the Pyramid’s base. And, in yet one more assault on dietary logic, changes were made to the wording of the dietary guidelines from “eat less” to “avoid too much,” giving a nod to the processed-food industry interests by not limiting highly profitable “fun foods” (junk foods by any other name) that might affect the bottom line of food companies.
But even this neutralized wording of the revised Guidelines created a firestorm of angry responses from the food industry and their Congressional allies who believed that the “farmers’ department” (USDA) should not be telling the public to eat less of anything, including saturated fat and cholesterol, meat, eggs and sugar."
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Government “Help” Makes Nutrition Worse: Fats | Somewhat Reasonable
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Internal TSA Documents: Body Scanners, Pat Downs Not For Terrorists Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!
But in a sealed version of the same documents, which were inexplicably uploaded to and found through PACER.gov (and available here), the redacted sections appear with incriminating clarity.
Through Redactions, TSA Admits Terror Threats are Slim to Nonexistent"
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Rebuilding Liberty without Permission
Thus, he writes, supporters of liberty should try to effect change through carefully chosen but broadly adopted acts of civil disobedience against publicly unpopular regulations. "
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'This Is the Most Closed, Control Freak Administration I've Ever Covered' -- Press Freedoms in the Obama Years
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U.S. President Barack Obama came into office pledging open government, but he has fallen short of his promise. Journalists and transparency advocates say the White House curbs routine disclosure of information and deploys its own media to evade scrutiny by the press. Aggressive prosecution of leakers of classified information and broad electronic surveillance programs deter government sources from speaking to journalists.
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Effort by Japan to Stifle News Media Is Working
“Some don’t like his method, but Mr. Koga did draw public attention to the Abe government’s pressure on the media,” said Takashi Uesugi, a media critic and one-time researcher at The New York Times who runs an independent online news program. “This was an inconvenient truth for both the government and the self-censoring journalists.”
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/world/asia/in-japan-bid-to-stifle-media-is-working.html
Monsanto knew 35 years ago that its glyphosate-soaked 'food' causes cancer
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(NaturalNews) Key data outlining the toxicity of glyphosate (Roundup) was recently uncovered, revealing that Monsanto knew about the cancer-causing effects of its best-selling herbicide more than 35 years ago, as did the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and yet neither entity... |
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Thursday, May 14, 2015
Since April 2014, Bee Population Has Declined 40% – 60%
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When bees go... so do we.
The post Since April 2014, Bee Population Has Declined 40% – 60% appeared first on The Anti-Media.
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Why Big Business Profit Is The Real Reason Behind NSA Surveillance
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Is the NSA "protecting our safety" like it claims, or is it protecting the pocketbooks of the surveillance-industrial-complex?
The post Why Big Business Profit Is The Real Reason Behind NSA Surveillance appeared first on The Anti-Media.
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Time for Action: Ending “bulk collection” of library records on the line in looming Senate vote
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by Adam Eisgrau, ALA Washington Office May 14, 2015 Crossposted from District Dispatch Last night the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly, 338 to 88, for passage of the latest version of the USA FREEDOM Act, H.R. 2048. The bill — and the battle to achieve the first meaningful reform of the USA PATRIOT Act since […]
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Early Academic Training Produces Long-Term Harm
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Many preschool and kindergarten teachers are extremely upset by the increased pressure to teach literary and numerical skills to little children and test them regularly. They can see firsthand the unhappiness generated, and they suspect that the children would be learning much more useful lessons by playing. Their suspicions are well validated by research studies.
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UN Report Says Small-Scale Organic Farming Only Way to Feed the World
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Nick Meyer, TechnologyWater, May 14, 2015
This article is really useful in helping me understand the scepticism people have about the sort of view of learning I espouse. When I looked at the headline my reaction was that there is no way small-scale individual food production could be sustainable, let along feed the world. That's what prompted me to follow the links to the source, rather than dismissing the idea as hooey (yes, even I dismiss some ideas as hooey!). And I think at the core of the UN report (341 page PDF) there is an analogue with distributed online personal learning (which is how I'm thinking of connectivism these days). Here's their take (quoted):
- The perception that there is a supply-side productivity problem is questionable. Hunger and malnutrition are mainly related to lack of purchasing power..
- The fundamental transformation of agriculture may well turn out to be one of the biggest challenges (with) mounting pressure on food security and related access to land and water
- The world needs a shift... toward mosaics of sustainable, regenerative production systems that also considerably improve the productivity of small scale farmers
- We need to see a move from a linear to a holistic approach... which recognizes that the farmer is not only a producer of agricultural goods, but also... water, soil, landscape, energy, biodiversity and recreation
- Significant governance issues, power asymmetries' problems in food input and output markets as well as current trade rules for agriculture pose considerable challenge
- Elements: increasing soil carbon content, reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions, closed nutrient cycles, reduction of waste, climate-friendly food consumption, reform of international trade regime
- Need for a holstic understanding of the challenges...
When put this way, the move away from large-scale automated agricultural production begins to make more sense. Many of the gains we see are illusory and non-sustainable. The same is true in learning. We may achieve what appear to be gains through massive-scale outcomes-focused education automation. But this is a misapplication of educational technology, and does not recognize the importance of education in an ecosystem, and the role educators play as stewards of far more than job-readiness in a society. The key to the MOOC (as I've always said, not that anyone listens) isn't the massive scale, though it is scalable, it's the return of education to individual autonomy, of localized knowledge production, of the integration of community-based learning with other social values (diversity, openness, etc.).
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Foster Care Children are Worse Off than Children in Troubled Homes – The Child Trafficking Business
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New Federal Vaccine Mandate Proposed: All Shots Required, No Parental Exemptions
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Wednesday, May 13, 2015
David Cameron Unleashes Frightening Attack on ‘Tolerance’ Through New Extremism Laws
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Wikimedia Less than a week into his second term as prime minister, David Cameron is set to introduce a series of tough new laws redefining what it means to be an extremist in Britain. “For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone. It’s often meant we have stood neutral between different values. And that’s helped foster a narrative of extremism and grievance. This Government will conclusively turn the page on this failed approach,” states a briefing released by Cameron’s office. Anyone expressing an ideology that the government views as “extreme” will be required to apply for permission to print or post to social media, and as part of the strategy, Cameron will fast-track powers to allow British police to vet the online conversations of those considered extremists. According to The Independent, the new package is expected to include: • The introduction of banning orders for extremist organizations that use hate speech in public places, but whose activities fall short of proscription. • New Extremism Disruption Orders to restrict people who seek to radicalize young people • Powers to close premises where extremists seek to influence others • Strengthening the powers of the Charity Commission to root out charities that channel funds toward extremism and terrorism • Further immigration restrictions on extremists • A strengthened role for Ofcom (the U.K.’s communications regulator) to take action against channels that broadcast extremist content. Vetoed in March by former coalition partners the Liberal Democrats on the grounds that they violate free speech, the legislation package is expected to be pushed through by the new Conservative majority as part of the Queen’s Speech proposals at the end of May. The proposed legislation has already drawn criticism from civil liberties groups that claim the ban on extremists could be adapted to cover anyone, including protesters the government disagrees with. As Emma Norton, a legal officer at the civil liberties organization Liberty, noted in a statement, “Just a few months after the prime minister marched in Paris in defense of free speech [in the aftermath of the attacks on the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo] he proposes measures to help shut it down.” “Driving those who despise diversity underground does nothing to challenge their beliefs,” she said, adding, “you don’t protect democracy by undermining the freedoms that sustain it.” —Posted by Roisin Davis
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'Sacred cow' of industry science cult should be slaughtered for the good of humanity, BMJ editor says
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(NaturalNews) Widespread acceptance of pre-publication peer review as the "gold standard" of science-based research is entirely misguided, warns a former editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ), one of the top scientific journals in the world.Richard Smith, who served as the... |
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Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Many of the NSA’s Loudest Defenders Have Financial Ties to NSA Contractors
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With the debate over NSA telephone surveillance at a critical juncture, it's worth examining how money flows from the spy agency to contractors and eventually to some of the NSA's loudest defenders.
The post Many of the NSA’s Loudest Defenders Have Financial Ties to NSA Contractors appeared first on The Intercept.
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Think Organic Doesn’t Matter? Watch This.
One Of The Most Important Scientists In The World: “Most Cancer Research Is Largely A Fraud” | Collective-Evolution
“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine” "
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