Author: Paul

Crikey – by DR MATTHEW RIMMER

Last Wednesday, WikiLeaks once again broke the secrecy surrounding the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), releasing the draft text of the investment chapter of the Pacific Rim Treaty. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange issued a dire warning about the agreement:

“The TPP has developed in secret an unaccountable supranational court for multinationals to sue states. This system is a challenge to parliamentary and judicial sovereignty. Similar tribunals have already been shown to chill the adoption of sane environmental protection, public health and public transport policies.”

Continue reading “New TPP leak reveals how we’re trading our sovereignty for cheap tariffs”

Natural News – by Doug Cragoe

For a planned county communications system called LA-RICS, new cell towers are being installed at fire stations across Los Angeles County. They are being installed overnight without any notice to residents. All environmental regulations and required studies have been pushed aside and ignored.

Firemen sleep and reside at firehouses for days at a time, with a cell tower just a few feet away. The fireman’s union opposes this and many firefighters and citizens showed up at a recent Los Angeles County supervisor’s meeting to protest. The firefighters are asking for public support. This story made the local TV news.   Continue reading “New cell towers and smart meters increase radiation exposure across Los Angeles”

BBC

A 1,000-year-old treatment for eye infections could hold the key to killing antibiotic-resistant superbugs, experts have said.

Scientists recreated a 9th Century Anglo-Saxon remedy using onion, garlic and part of a cow’s stomach.

They were “astonished” to find it almost completely wiped out methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, otherwise known as MRSA.   Continue reading “1,000-year-old onion and garlic eye remedy kills MRSA”

CopBlock – by Janel

Around 1am on Saturday morning police were called to a resident’s home by the boyfriend of 26 yr old, Meagan Hockaday, regarding a “domestic dispute”. Two officers from the Oxnard, CA Police Department showed up, and as they were speaking to the man who called, Meagan entered the room with a knife and was immediately shot. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

According to Oxnard Police Chief Jeri Williams:   Continue reading “Police Shot and Killed Woman 20 Seconds After Entering Her Home”

AlterNet – by Michael Arria

Nashville’s district attorney recently banned his staff from using invasive surgery as a bargaining chip, after it became apparent that local attorneys had been using sterilization as part of plea bargains.

In the most recent case, a woman with a long history of mental illness was charged with neglect after her young baby died. Jasmine Randers, 26, suffers from paranoia and had fled from a Minnesota treatment facility where she was under state commitment. The district attorney refused to go forward with a plea unless she agreed to be sterilized.    Continue reading “Nashville Prosecutors Have Made Sterilization of Women Part of Plea Deals”

Ole, the smoothest-talking Norske in the Minnesota National Guard and a natural born salesman, got called up to active duty.

Ole’s first assignment was in a military induction center.

Because he was a good talker, they assigned him the duty of advising new recruits about government benefits, especially the GI life insurance, to which they were entitled.   Continue reading “Square Head Ole Olson”

Reuters

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in a U.S. television interview that Islamic State, which has seized swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq, has been gaining recruits since the start of U.S.-led air strikes against the militant group.

Asked how much benefit he was getting from the strikes in Syria that began last September, Assad told CBS’ “60 Minutes: “Sometimes you could have local benefit but in general if you want to talk in terms of ISIS, actually ISIS has expanded since the beginning of the strikes.”   Continue reading “Syria’s Assad says Islamic State has expanded since start of U.S. air strikes”

Common Dreams – by Sarah Lazare

How do you calculate the human costs of the U.S.-led War on Terror?

On the 12th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, groups of physicians attempted to arrive at a partial answer to this question by counting the dead.   Continue reading “Body Count Report Reveals At Least 1.3 Million Lives Lost To US-Led War On Terror”

Jon Rappoport

“The combined death rate from scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough and measles among children up to fifteen shows that nearly 90 percent of the total decline in mortality between 1860 and 1965 had occurred before the introduction of antibiotics and widespread immunization. In part, this recession may be attributed to improved housing and to a decrease in the virulence of micro-organisms, but by far the most important factor was a higher host-resistance due to better nutrition.” —Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis, Bantam Books, 1977

Albuquerque Journal, 3/20, “Los Alamos schools top NM in vaccine exemptions”, reports:

2.3% of kids in Los Alamos public schools don’t get vaccinated. Their parents have received exemptions.   Continue reading “Top gov’t. scientists say no to vaccines for their kids”

Poor Richard’s News

This law is much needed.  How many videos have we seen of police threatening citizens who film them and lying about it being illegal?

from ABC 7  Denver:

A package of police oversight bills introduced in the Colorado Legislature includes a measure that would impose up to $15,000 in civil penalties if a law enforcement officer seizes or destroys a citizen’s recording or interferes with someone trying to film them. Continue reading “Colorado bill would impose $15,000 fine on cops who try to stop people from filming them”

Huffington Post – by Nick Wing

North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R) signed a bill into law on Friday that lays the groundwork for a commercial hemp industry and explicitly cuts the federal government out of the state’s licensing process.

House Bill 1436 establishes guidelines for the state’s industrial hemp program and allows people to apply to grow the plant for either research or commercial purposes. With its provision for commercial hemp, the law goes beyond the federal Farm Bill, passed by Congress last year, which allowed some states to cultivate the plant, but only for research purposes and in more restricted pilot programs.   Continue reading “North Dakota Takes Bold Step Forward On Commercial Hemp Industry, Tells Feds To Stay Out”

Consortium News – by Robert Parry

If two major newspapers in, say, Russia published major articles openly advocating the unprovoked bombing of a country, say, Israel, the U.S. government and news media would be aflame with denunciations about “aggression,” “criminality,” “madness,” and “behavior not fitting the Twenty-first Century.”

But when the newspapers are American – the New York Times and the Washington Post – and the target country is Iran, no one in the U.S. government and media bats an eye. These inflammatory articles – these incitements to murder and violation of international law – are considered just normal discussion in the Land of Exceptionalism.   Continue reading “NYT Publishes Call to Bomb Iran”

The Guardian

 

World leaders, current and former, were due to attend the state funeral on Sunday of Singapore’s first prime minister and founding father Lee Kuan Yew.

The Indonesian president Joko Widodo, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe will attend as will the Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott.

Former leaders, including US president Bill Clinton and US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, will also be among mourners.   Continue reading “World leaders gather for Lee Kuan Yew’s funeral in Singapore”