From the Trenches World Report

Mail.com

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. (AP) — It’s perhaps appropriate that President Barack Obama is vacationing this weekend in California, where the state flag features a roaming grizzly.

The restless president, who has compared himself to a caged animal on recent wanderings by declaring the “bear is loose,” took a long Father’s Day weekend away with his wife and older daughter. The visit to the desert resort area of Palm Springs is one of the ways Obama has been trying to escape during his sixth year cloistered in the White House.   Continue reading “Obama longs to break out of White House bubble”

Mail.com

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia cut gas supplies to Ukraine on Monday after negotiators failed to reach a deal on Ukraine’s unpaid gas bills and future gas prices amid deep tensions between the two neighbors over eastern Ukraine.

The decision provoked strong words from both sides but does not immediately affect the crucial flow of Russian gas to Europe. Ukraine itself has enough reserves to last until December, according to the chief of Ukraine’s state gas company Naftogaz.   Continue reading “Russia cuts gas supply to Ukraine as tensions soar”

Mail.com

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — In methamphetamine’s seedy underworld, traffickers are disguising the drug as a liquid to smuggle it into the United States from Mexico.

Dissolved in a solution, it’s sealed in tequila bottles or plastic detergent containers to fool border agents and traffic officers. Once deep in California’s Central Valley, a national distribution hub, meth cooks convert it into crystals — the most sought-after form on the street.

Tough policing has driven the highly toxic super-labs south of the border where meth is manufactured outside the sight of U.S. law enforcement, but the smaller conversion labs are popping up domestically in neighborhoods, such as one in Fresno where a house exploded two years ago.   Continue reading “Meth pours into Central California as liquid”

The Guardian – by Dominic Rushe

The State Department on Sunday said the US would remain “fully equipped to carry out its national security mission” in Iraq despite the evacuation of some embassy workers, as Republicans slammed the Obama administration over the growing Middle East crisis.

Responding to reports that embassy workers will be evacuated in the face of the continuing Islamic insurgency, the Pentagon confirmed some staff were being relocated.   Continue reading “Iraq crisis: US embassy workers evacuated as Republicans slam Obama”

The Sleuth Journal

Concerned about the bees and the butterflies? Interested in celebrating National Pollinator Week? It’s happening this week, June 16-22, 2014.

And it’s brought to you by the Pollinator Partnership, funded in part by none other than Monsanto and Bayer.

It’s all part of a well-documented, well-funded (and shameless) public relations campaign by the pesticide industry to give the appearance of “caring” about the die-off of bees and butterflies, while diverting attention from the cause of those die-offs—highly profitable products made by Monsanto and Bayer.   Continue reading “Bee Killers Sponsor National Pollinator Week”

RT News

With the traditional family dinner and other pastimes on the verge of extinction thanks to an array of distracting hand-held devices, mobile applications are now available for parents to remotely bloc access to smartphones and tablets.

Are you tired of your child behaving like Pavlov’s salivating dog, mindlessly jumping for some smartphone or tablet every time it rings, sings or vibrates, crashing the solemn family dinner, or disrupting homework time?    Continue reading “New ‘parent control’ app remotely turns-off your kid’s smartphone”

Think Progress – by Katie Valentine

A wildfire in central California has destroyed at least two structures and has forced the evacuation of more than 500 homes.

The Shirley Fire, which broke out late Friday and has so far burned through about 2,000 acres of land, was only about 10 percent contained as of Sunday. The fire is burning in and around Sequoia National Forest, which is home to 34 groves of giant sequoias. Right now, more than 1,100 firefighters are working to contain the fire, dropping fire retardant on the blaze from helicopters, and more are expected to join.   Continue reading “Wildfire Near California’s Sequoia National Forest Forces 500 Evacuations”

Brian’s Backpacking Blog

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Ka-Bar make great knives. Not just great knives, but legendary and highly functional knives that have stood the test of time. Yet despite knowing that, if you had told me that Ka-Bar could make a serious quality folding knife for $20, that I would actually want to carry, I would have just laughed at you.

Apparently the joke is on me though, because that’s exactly what Ka-Bar have done with their award-winning Dozier Hunter lock back all-purpose knife. The most affordable and practical every day carry folder that I have ever had the pleasure of using.   Continue reading “Ka-Bar Dozier Folding Hunter Knife”

AmmoLand

Israel –-(Ammoland.com)-   The DAN .338 is the first of IWI’s family of bolt action sniper rifles and was developed in cooperation with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)

Israel Weapon Industries (IWI) – a leader in the production of combat-proven small arms for governments, armies, and law enforcement agencies around the world – expands its portfolio of products by launching its exceptionally accurate and innovative DAN .338 Bolt Action Sniper Rifle during the Eurosatory 2014 Exhibition. Developed in cooperation with the IDF, the DAN .338 is the first of IWI’s new family of bolt action sniper rifles.   Continue reading “Israel Weapon Industries Announces the DAN .338 Bolt Action Sniper Rifle”

White House Dossier – by Keith Koffler

While President Obama returns from his latest California weekend of golftoday, maybe he will contemplate the utter catastrophe that is brewing in Iraq under his watch.

Veteran CBS News foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan Sunday offered up an alarming summary of the types of weapons the Islamist ISIS group  – which is literally rampaging through Iraq – may now be in possession of, including American fighting vehicles and, far worse, stinger missiles.   Continue reading “Do Iraq’s Islamist Rebels Have Our Stinger Missiles?”

Natural News – by J.D. Heyes

Workers at the federal government’s Hanford Site, a Department of Energy facility in Washington State that serves as a repository for spent nuclear power plant fuel rods, say their health has been adversely affected by what they say is toxic exposure to chemicals and radiation.

In an interview with a local NBC news team, truck driver Lonnie Poteet said he arrived outside the Hanford Site to deliver fuel rods and quickly began experiencing symptoms from exposure to chemical vapors. What he did not know, however, is that there had been a nuclear spill just hours before at the site. Continue reading “U.S. nuclear workers suffer severe brain damage, teeth fall out while truth is buried”

RT News

Nearly 95 per cent of terrorist arrests have been the result of FBI foiling its own entrapment plots as a part of the so-called post-9/11 War on Terror, a new study revealed.

According to the report entitled ‘Inventing Terrorists: The Lawfare of Preemptive Prosecution’, the majority of arrests involved the unjust prosecution of targeted Muslim Americans.

The 175-page study by Muslim advocacy group SALAM analyzes 399 individuals in cases included on the list of the US Department of Justice from 2001 to 2010.   Continue reading “‘Inventing terrorists’: New study reveals FBI set up terrorism-related prosecutions”

Zero Hedge – by Tyler Durden

It is no secret that as the Fed’s centrally-planned New Normal has unfolded, one after another central-planner and virtually all economists, have been caught wrong-footed with their constant predictions of an “imminent” economic surge, any minute now, and always just around the corner. And yet, nearly six years after Lehman, five years after the end of the last “recession” (even as the depression for most rages on), America is about to have its worst quarter in decades (excluding the great financial crisis), with a -2% collapse in GDP, which has been blamed on… the weather.   Continue reading “New York Times Says “Lack Of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth””

Tech Dirt – by Tim Cushing

The government does enjoy installing cameras pretty much everywhere it can do so with a minimum of complaints. If it thinks there might be some controversy, it just buries the detailsuntil after the fact.

Eugene Volokh has a roundup of new places state governments are planning to install cameras— only the government won’t be buying the cameras… or maintaining them… or even installing them. That’s left to the private businesses these bills are pushing additional surveillance requirements on.   Continue reading “State Legislators Discussing Laws That Will Put Law Enforcement Surveillance Cameras Inside Private Businesses”

New York Times – by JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG and MICHAEL CORKERY

In her early college years, when Charlette Williams started routinely mismanaging her finances and pushing her checking account balance into the red, she never thought the mistakes would haunt her five years later, she said. Now, she is paying a steep price.

Ms. Williams, a 25-year-old resident of Queens, is one of more than a million Americans who have been effectively blacklisted from the mainstream financial system because they overdrew their accounts or bounced a check — mistakes that routinely bedevil young and low-income consumers, financial counselors say. While Ms. Williams paid back Bank of America the roughly $700 that she owed, a record of her youthful transgressions remains in a vast private database, preventing her from opening a new account.   Continue reading “Over a Million People Have Been ‘Black-Listed” by Banks”