http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-25/pre-crime-upon-us-schools-assess-students-threat-level-kindergarten
“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.” - Plato
Seeking Truth in a World of Propaganda. Links do not necessarily indicate agreement with stories or perspectives.
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Harvard trained immunologist demolishes California legislation that terminates vaccine exemptions
Signs of the Times
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The following open letter by a PhD Immunologist completely demolishes the current California legislative initiative to remove all vaccine exemptions. That such a draconian and cynical state statute is under consideration in the 'Golden State' is as shocking as it is predictable. After all, it was mysteriously written and submitted shortly after the manufactured-in-Disneyland measles 'outbreak'. The indisputable science that is employed by Tetyana Obukhanych, PhD ought to be read by every CA legislator who is entertaining an affirmative vote for SB277. Dr. Obukhanych skillfully deconstructs the many false and fabricated arguments that are advanced by Big Pharma and the U.S Federal Government as they attempt to implement a nationwide Super-Vaccination agenda. When the California Senate refuses to consider authoritative scientific evidence which categorically proves the dangerous vaccine side effects on the schoolchildren, something is very wrong. Such conduct by the Senate constitutes criminal action that endangers the lives and welfare of children. Their official behavior must be acknowledged for what it is — CRIMINAL — and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
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The following open letter by a PhD Immunologist completely demolishes the current California legislative initiative to remove all vaccine exemptions. That such a draconian and cynical state statute is under consideration in the 'Golden State' is as shocking as it is predictable. After all, it was mysteriously written and submitted shortly after the manufactured-in-Disneyland measles 'outbreak'. The indisputable science that is employed by Tetyana Obukhanych, PhD ought to be read by every CA legislator who is entertaining an affirmative vote for SB277. Dr. Obukhanych skillfully deconstructs the many false and fabricated arguments that are advanced by Big Pharma and the U.S Federal Government as they attempt to implement a nationwide Super-Vaccination agenda. When the California Senate refuses to consider authoritative scientific evidence which categorically proves the dangerous vaccine side effects on the schoolchildren, something is very wrong. Such conduct by the Senate constitutes criminal action that endangers the lives and welfare of children. Their official behavior must be acknowledged for what it is — CRIMINAL — and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
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Friday, July 24, 2015
Texas Trooper Had No Right to Ask Sandra Bland to Put Out Her Cigarette
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There was nothing lawful about Trooper Encinia's order.
Asking a woman sitting in her vehicle to put out her cigarette during a traffic stop is not a reasonable request for a law enforcement officer to make, and Sandra Bland knew it.
“You mind putting out your cigarette, please?" Texas State Trooper Brian Encinia asked.
“I’m in my car. Why do I have to put out my cigarette?” Bland said.
“Well, you can step on out now,” Encinia replied.
We know what happened next, based on a dashcam video released by the Texas Department of Public Safety. Bland was violently pulled out of her vehicle, thrown to the ground after she refused to obey Encinia's "lawful order" and jailed at Waller County Jail, where she was found dead three days later under suspicious circumstances.
But let’s address the cigarette issue. Did Encinia have a right to ask her to put it out? Eric Sanders, a former NYPD officer and civil rights attorney, told AlterNet flatly, “No.”
“What law was he enforcing?” Sanders, who spent nearly 13 years years with the NYPD, asked. “Is there a law against her smoking a cigarette in her own car? The police only have power through the Constitution, so can you explain to me what was the legal basis for that command? The government can only tell you, as a citizen, to do something that has legal authority. Without legal authority, they have nothing. So tell me what did she do?”
Eric Guster, a civil rights attorney in Birmingham, Ala., says officers can ask drivers to comply with reasonable commands. For example, a cop can ask a driver to turn off the ignition to his or her vehicle because not doing so can endanger the officer’s safety. If a car has a lot of people in it, the officer can ask everyone to raise their hands so he or she can see them. The officer can also ask someone to turn on his or her car lights if the inside of the vehicle is dark.
After reviewing the video, Guster says Encinia’s request was far from reasonable.
“I just don’t think so,” he told AlterNet. “He wrote the ticket already. She said, ‘Give me the ticket.’ The officer had no reason to tell her anything else but give her the ticket and walk away. There can be a thin line about what is a legal command, but under these circumstances, I just don’t see what the officer did was reasonable.”
The Houston Chronicle published a report outlining Texas-specific rights officers have to stop a driver and when it is legal for the officer to ask passengers to exit the vehicle. None of the scenarios cited in the report suggest any wrongdoing on Bland’s part.
Walter Katz, a police oversight lawyer and monitor, wrote that Encinia escalated the situation after Bland accused him of speeding behind her, forcing her to switch lanes hastily without using her signal. Basically, she accused Encinia of creating the conditions that caused him to pull her over. He never explained the legality of his commands and Bland challenged why he didn’t.
“Sandra Bland failed the Attitude Test,” Katz wrote on his blog. “She refused to submit to authority in a way which satisfied the trooper. That was her greatest crime and one that we have seen far too often.”
The stop also failed the Constitution test. The Supreme Court ruled in April in Rodriguez vs. United States that police officers cannot prolong a traffic stop beyond the intended reason. In Bland's case, the stop was over when Encinia wrote Bland the ticket. He had no right to ask her anything else beyond that. Doing so violated her civil rights.
For those who say Bland should have just shut her mouth and complied with the trooper's requests, there is no legal basis for such submission. There is no law in Texas, or anywhere else for that matter, that gives cops the right to arrest someone for mouthing off. As AlterNet previously reported, judges across the country are tossing disorderly conduct cases in which cops arrest people for cursing at them. The video makes it clear that Encinia didn’t like Bland challenging his authority.
Sanders believes that most situations in which a cop gets into an altercation with someone is due to the cop not keeping his cool.
“You represent the government, which means you are subject to the wrath of the people,” he said. “If you are a police officer out there and your feelings are getting hurt, you’re in the wrong business. You’re taught that in the academy. You know that intuitively. There are no personal feelings. If someone is yelling at you, they’re not yelling at you, they’re yelling at your uniform.”
That’s what Bland was clearly doing. Encinia was operating beyond the duties of his uniform and Bland dared to challenge the officer on it. In return, she was brutally arrested, jailed and later died.
Bland’s death is being investigated as a possible homicide by local authorities. But according to the video, it appears her arrest had much more to do with Brian Encinia’s ego and the way he overstepped his authority because she refused to put out her cigarette.
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House Passes Bill Banning Labeling of GMOs
The Anti-Media
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On Thursday afternoon, the House of Representatives passed a controversial bill that would ban state and local food labeling laws.
The post House Passes Bill Banning Labeling of GMOs appeared first on The Anti-Media.
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Thursday, July 23, 2015
Obama Administration Suppressed FDA Warning About Mercury In Dental Fillings
LewRockwell » LRC Blog
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The proposal, approved by top FDA officials in late 2011 and kept secret since, would have told dentists they should not use mercury fillings in cavities in pregnant women, nursing moms, children under 6 and people with mercury allergies, kidney diseases or neurological problems. It also urged dentists to avoid using fillings that contain mercury compounds in any patient, where possible. Lobbying against any changes is the American Dental Association which has a political action committee that donated almost $2.5 million to Congressional candidates from 2013 to 2014. Read the rest, including a few case studies that suggest that the FDA is likely understating the problem. … Continue reading →
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The proposal, approved by top FDA officials in late 2011 and kept secret since, would have told dentists they should not use mercury fillings in cavities in pregnant women, nursing moms, children under 6 and people with mercury allergies, kidney diseases or neurological problems. It also urged dentists to avoid using fillings that contain mercury compounds in any patient, where possible. Lobbying against any changes is the American Dental Association which has a political action committee that donated almost $2.5 million to Congressional candidates from 2013 to 2014. Read the rest, including a few case studies that suggest that the FDA is likely understating the problem. … Continue reading →
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Wednesday, July 22, 2015
“If I Die in Police Custody”: Why Sandra Bland’s Death Is Just the Latest Evidence that Black America Is Under Attack
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No one should end up dead after a routine police stop, but Sandra Bland did. This country has much to answer for.
No one should end up dead after receiving a citation for failure to properly signal a lane change. However, this is exactly what has happened to 28-year-old Sandra Bland, a resident of Illinois who was pulled over in Waller County, Texas, two Fridays ago, where she was traveling to take a new job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University. According to police, after she refused an officer’s instructions to stop smoking a cigarette, she was ordered out of the car, accused of assaulting an officer, and then wrestled to the ground. The video of the arrest only shows an officer’s knees in her back, and her yelling that he had hurt her arm and slammed her head into the ground. She was taken to jail, arraigned, given a $5,000 bond, which she made arrangements with her older sister to pay, and set for release on Monday morning. Instead, she was found dead of an alleged suicide, having supposedly hanged herself with a plastic bag.
I do not believe that Sandra Bland hanged herself just a few hours before her sister was set to come and pay the $500 bail it would have taken to get her out of jail. I do not believe Sandra Bland hanged herself two days before taking her dream job at her alma mater. I do not believe Sandra Bland hanged herself.
No one with good sense believes that. And I challenge the sense of anyone who is willing to contort themselves into intellectual knots to make such a ridiculous story seem remotely plausible. This is what media reports about Sandra’s prior traffic tickets and minor previous arrest for smoking marijuana are supposed to make us do. This is what reports about her struggles with depression and PTSD are supposed to make us do. Depression and PTSD should not be conflated with being suicidal, and smoking marijuana is legal in a range of states and municipalities now. Moreover, PTSD diagnoses are rising at alarming levels in Black communities, because of continued exposure to poverty and violence.
Just one day after Sandra Bland was found, authorities in Homewood, Alabama, claimed that 18-year-old Kindra Chapman hanged herself in her jail cell not even two hours after being arrested for taking another person’s cellphone. On Tuesday morning, several Black Lives Matter protesters were arrested in Homewood, for protesting and demanding answers about Kindra’s suspicious death.
I do not believe the police accounts of these deaths. When story after story emerges of Black people who end up dead, over crimes for which they should never even have had to exit their cars, we should stop giving police the benefit of the doubt. Those of us with Black lives cannot afford such gambles. And the police should not be afforded such luxuries. As Ida B. Wells wrote just over a century ago, “Those who commit the murders, write the reports.” I recognize that in this moment, many folks become hyper-vigilant about “waiting for all the facts before making a judgment.” The fact of the matter is this: Police in Texas and Alabama would have us believe that Black women are committing suicide in the county or city jail for non-capital offenses.
When I was a kid, my cousins, country boys who spent their days fishing, hunting and riding four-wheelers, frequently teased me for having “book smarts, but no common sense.” Regardless, what I know for sure is that Black women don’t kill themselves when they know for sure that someone is on the way to get them out of prison for a minor traffic offense. Though I have a Ph.D., I certainly don’t need one to tell me that.
After the stories of Sandra’s and Kindra’s deaths started circulating, Black women in my Facebook community began posting pre-posthumous notes about what we should assume about them if they were ever to die in police custody. We should know unequivocally, each note made sure to say, that these women had not committed suicide. In my own pre-posthumous declaration, I wrote, “I didn’t commit suicide. I didn’t resist. I didn’t threaten the officer. I didn’t have a weapon. I prolly did ask a few pointed questions though.” On Twitter, Black women and men joined in with #IfIDieInPoliceCustody.
There are certain hashtags that just should not exist in a country that calls itself a democracy. There are certain subordinate clauses that should never grace the lips of a country’s citizens or visitors. There are a set of conditions under which no people who understand themselves to be free should ever have to live.
Black masculinity has long been criminalized, maligned and violently impugned. Black women (and children) have always been victims of state-sanctioned violence. But there is still something in this moment about the imagery of two Black women under age 30 hanging in jail cells by the most dubious of circumstances that suggests that law enforcement officers don’t even care anymore about the optics of Black death.
And that should scare all of us.
This is no time for white politicians to stumble over challenges from Black Lives Matter activists to affirm the value of Black life. This is not an “all lives matter” kind of moment. When more than 60,000 people have signed petitions calling for a Justice Department investigation into Sandra Bland’s death, Martin O’Malley cannot make empty gestures about “all lives mattering.” Bernie Sanders should also recognize that his long history of 20th century civil rights activism, which he defensively referenced, actually does not matter if he cannot unequivocally affirm the value of Black lives in the 21st century. That all lives matter is not the question. All lives do matter. This country just seems to forget that point when it comes to Black lives. Both O’Malley and Sanders have since apologized for their inappropriate remarks at last week’s Netroots Nation Conference. After being dragged mercilessly by Twitter, Bernie Sanders tweeted, “We want a nation where young black men and women can live without fear of being falsely arrested, beaten or killed. #BlackLivesMatter.” Having learned from the vehement responses to her opponents for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton declared on Facebook that “Black Lives Matter. Everyone in this country should stand firmly behind that.”
It has taken a full-scale movement of vocal protesters willing to disrupt and commandeer public space to get even these minor rhetorical concessions from candidates on the left. That is insulting. It is because of the Movement for Black Lives, which will host a historic convening in Cleveland this weekend, that we even have the resources and visibility to raise hell about the killings of Sandra Bland and Kindra Chapman. Hopefully this movement will continue to pull these candidates to the left, and force them to fully articulate a racial justice framework. That protesters showed up to vocally change O’Malley and Sanders suggests that those in the Movement are interested in electoral politics, and are willing to use the power of peaceful protest to force their concerns onto the national agenda. The Movement for Black Lives is reminding us of what democracy looks like.
Whatever their offenses, neither of these women should be dead. It is the responsibility of law enforcement to exercise the utmost care to protect those in their custody. This duty of care and protection seems highly negotiable when Black bodies are in custody, and such thinking must change.
Only time and diligent, honest police work will tell us what happened to Sandra and Kindra. But as a nation we should not accept that failure to hit the turn signal might become a death sentence.
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Which Advanced Country Has the Most Climate Sceptics? Hint: It's Not the United States
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A new study has ranked 14 industrialized nations by climate science denial, with surprising results.
It's not necessarily a competition you should be particularly keen to win, but which country in the world has the most climate change “sceptics”?
Most people would probably hazard a guess at the United States, what with its preponderance of climate science denialist think tanks, conservative television and radio hosts and politicians who think it’s all a hoax.
But a new study that analyzed identical surveys carried out across 14 industrialized nations has found that when it comes to climate science denial, Australia tops the pile.
Published in the journal Global Environmental Change, the study found that 17 percent of Australians were “climate sceptics”.
Norwegians come in second at 15 percent, followed by New Zealanders at 13 percent and then Americans at 12 percent. The U.K. was ranked joint fifth, together with Sweden and Finland, where 10 percent of people were sceptics. The lowest ranked country for climate scepticism was Spain, where only two percent of people were classified as climate sceptics. The authors wrote:
Climate scepticism persists despite overwhelming scientific evidence that anthropogenic climate change is occurring.
The study, authored by two scientists at the University of Tasmania, used data from surveys carried out in 14 countries in 2010 and 2011.
While the survey did not directly ask people if they accepted the science linking climate change to human activities, the respondents were asked how dangerous rising temperatures would be for the environment.
People who thought rising temperatures were “not very dangerous” or “not dangerous at all” and who also thought claims about environmental issues were exaggerated were classed as “climate sceptics”. While the authors accept in the paper that their approach was limited, they argue that the method enables them to do a valuable comparison of scepticism across countries.
Generally, the study found that climate scepticism tended to be associated with a lack of trust in governments and “positive attitudes” towards private enterprise. Sceptics also tended to be male and tended to vote conservative.
The researchers also tried to test the idea that climate sceptics tended to also be generally unconcerned about environmental issues, but found those two measures were only modestly linked with each other.
Across all countries, the authors wrote that only three factors — “political orientations (conservative), gender (male) and being unconcerned about environmental issues” — were “relatively consistent predictors” climate change scepticism.
The findings tend to support other studies that have found that conservative ideologies and support for private enterprise are strong indicators of climate scepticism and denial. The authors of the Global Environmental Change study concluded:
Low levels of trust in ‘the people in government’ is associated with climate scepticism, as is valuing private enterprise to solve economic problems. Rejecting government intervention in the reduction of income inequality also reflects laissez-faire attitudes towards ‘big government’ among climate sceptics.
But the finding that Australians, Norwegians and New Zealanders are more sceptical the Americans is surprising.
Last year, a survey from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication found that only 66 percent of U.S. voters thought that climate change was happening.
Only 51 percent of registered voters thought that global warming was mostly caused by climate change. But like the Global Environmental Change study, the Yale survey also found that conservatives tended to reject the evidence of human caused climate change. Among the most conservative Republicans, only 22 percent were willing to accept that climate change was mostly caused by human activities.
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Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Colorado City Stops Water Fluoridation Following Concerning Study
SGTreport - The Corporate Propaganda Antidote - Silver, Gold, Truth, Liberty, & Freedom
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by Christina Sarich, Natural Society:
Snowmass, a skier’s paradise tucked into the Colorado Mountains, and part of Aspen, has decided to stop fluoridating its water. The news comes just after the latest groundbreaking study on water fluoridation concluded that there was zero relationship between water fluoridation and cavity prevention.
As Anthony Gucciardi shared with [...]
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Today Congress Votes to Take Your Passport
LewRockwell » LRC Blog
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Revolutions most often become horrific parodies as they inevitably turn inward on their own people. The former subjects of Louis XVI soon understood liberté, égalité, fraternité to in fact mean the guillotine. In the name of fighting one’s enemies, the regime takes to cannibalizing its own citizens, as the motion of the action requires the “enemies” list to orient ever more inwardly. Which brings us to the matter of HR 237, a bill to “[t]o authorize the revocation or denial of passports and passport cards to individuals affiliated with foreign terrorist organizations, and for other purposes,” coming to the Floor … Continue reading →
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Revolutions most often become horrific parodies as they inevitably turn inward on their own people. The former subjects of Louis XVI soon understood liberté, égalité, fraternité to in fact mean the guillotine. In the name of fighting one’s enemies, the regime takes to cannibalizing its own citizens, as the motion of the action requires the “enemies” list to orient ever more inwardly. Which brings us to the matter of HR 237, a bill to “[t]o authorize the revocation or denial of passports and passport cards to individuals affiliated with foreign terrorist organizations, and for other purposes,” coming to the Floor … Continue reading →
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Monday, July 20, 2015
We Need A Crash To Sort The Wheat From The Chaff
The Burning Platform
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Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog, Once the phantom collateral vanishes, there’s no foundation to support additional debt and leverage. When a speculator bought a new particle-board-and-paint McMansion in the middle of nowhere in 2007 with nothing down and a $500,000 mortgage, the lender and the buyer both considered the house as $500,000 of […]
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Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog, Once the phantom collateral vanishes, there’s no foundation to support additional debt and leverage. When a speculator bought a new particle-board-and-paint McMansion in the middle of nowhere in 2007 with nothing down and a $500,000 mortgage, the lender and the buyer both considered the house as $500,000 of […]
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Sunday, July 19, 2015
Heads Up “Disloyal” Americans – MSM Openly Talking Detention Camps
Zen Gardner
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As surreal as this may sound, what we've been talking about for a long time is now being openly pushed. They're setting the stage - don't be on it.
The post Heads Up “Disloyal” Americans – MSM Openly Talking Detention Camps appeared first on Zen Gardner.
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Help Wanted
LewRockwell » LRC Blog
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Pull on those blue gloves and practice barking orders: the TSA’s looking for a few good pervs. It needs an “IT, Security Engineer” in Arlington, Virginia-–but catch the agency’s description of itself: JOB SUMMARY: About the Agency Securing Travel, Protecting People – At the Transportation Security Administration, you will serve in a high-stakes environment to safeguard the American way of life. “The American way of life”! Oh, too good! Who knew? Someone tell me when sexual assault, theft of iPods, and bullying little girls with spina bifida replaced apple pie and motherhood. And a “high-stakes environment”? What, do these deviants draw cards to … Continue reading →
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Pull on those blue gloves and practice barking orders: the TSA’s looking for a few good pervs. It needs an “IT, Security Engineer” in Arlington, Virginia-–but catch the agency’s description of itself: JOB SUMMARY: About the Agency Securing Travel, Protecting People – At the Transportation Security Administration, you will serve in a high-stakes environment to safeguard the American way of life. “The American way of life”! Oh, too good! Who knew? Someone tell me when sexual assault, theft of iPods, and bullying little girls with spina bifida replaced apple pie and motherhood. And a “high-stakes environment”? What, do these deviants draw cards to … Continue reading →
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