From the Trenches World Report

Mail.com

MAASTRICHT, Netherlands (AP) — A young man at a bus stop hisses at a passer-by: “What you looking for … marijuana?” It’s a scene of street peddling that the Netherlands hoped to stamp out in the 1970s when it launched a policy of tolerating “coffee shops” where people could buy and smoke pot freely.

But Maastricht’s street dealers are back, local residents complain. And the reason is a crackdown on coffee-shops triggered by another problem: Pot tourists who crossed the border to visit the cafes and made a nuisance of themselves by snarling traffic, dumping litter and even urinating in the streets.   Continue reading “As US states allow pot sales, Dutch reverse course”

Mail.com

BOBTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Critics are raging after an energy giant offered pizza coupons to a community near a natural gas well that exploded last month, killing a worker.

News stories, TV shows and blogs — many sarcastic or outright scornful — spread the word far and wide. “Shame on you,” one person wrote about the offer by Chevron Corp. “How insulting!” said another. Comedy Central’s satirical “The Colbert Report” skewered it.   Continue reading “Chevron pizza ‘scandal’ isn’t one in small town”

The Verge – by Adrianne Jeffries

An administrative judge on the National Transportation Safety Board has ruled that the commercial use of small drones is in fact legal, despite six years of Federal Aviation Administration statements to the contrary.

Today Judge Patrick Geraghty dismissed a $10,000 fine levied by the FAA against Raphael Pirker, a Swiss drone operator who used a camera drone to film on the University of Virginia campus. “At the time of respondent’s model aircraft operation … there was no enforceable FAA rule or FAR Regulation application to model aircraft or for classifying model aircraft as an UAS,” the judge writes.   Continue reading “Judge rules commercial drones are legal, undoing six-year ban”

Blacklisted News

This story is unbelievable. A woman who, acting in self-defense, shot a warning shot in the vicinity of her husband, was convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2012. She is in the process of appealing however, on the grounds that the judge inexplicably made her bare the burden of proof. What’s worse, the prosecution now wants to give her 60 years in prison because her husband had two of his children with him at the time of the warning shot.   Continue reading “Florida Woman May Receive 60 Years for Firing a Warning Shot in Self Defense”

Washington Post – by NICHOLAS QUINN ROSENKRANZ

Intelligence Squared presented one of its best debates Wednesday night at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia — “Resolved: The President has constitutional power to target and kill U.S. citizens abroad.”

Arguing for the motion were Alan Dershowitz, professor of law, Harvard Law School; and Michael Lewis, professor of law, Ohio Northern University School of Law.  Arguing against the motion were Noah Feldman, professor of law, Harvard Law School; and Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project.  All four debaters were superb.   Continue reading “Intelligence Squared debate: The president has constitutional power to target and kill U.S. citizens abroad.”

MassPrivateI

Few notice the “spotter car” from Manny Sousa’s repo company as it scours Massachusetts parking lots, looking for vehicles whose owners have defaulted on their loans. Sousa’s unmarked car is part of a technological revolution that goes well beyond the repossession business, transforming any ­industry that wants to check on the whereabouts of ordinary people.

An automated reader attached to the spotter car takes a picture of every ­license plate it passes and sends it to a company in Texas that already has more than 1.8 billion plate scans from vehicles across the country.   Continue reading “Repo companies a vast hidden surveillance network across the country”

Intellihub

LAS VEGAS (INTELLIHUB) — On the night of March 4, going into the morning of Wednesday, March 5, 2014, the city was bombarded by chemtrails released from militarized aircraft conducting geoengineering applications and possibly even entomological warfare on the citizens of Nevada. This was pointed out by YouTuber “dutchsinse” who located signs of scalar resonance and cloud seeding.

In the video’s description dutchsinse wrote what he saw in the radar imagery:   Continue reading “Populace of Las Vegas sprayed with chemicals via aircraft at night in recent government test”

The Daily Caller – by Greg Campbell

Since pot was legalized in Colorado in 2012, an average of 600 fewer people have been arrested per month on possession charges, according to the Colorado Judicial Branch. And a 2010 research paper  by the Cato Institute estimated that Colorado spent $1.3 billion per year enforcing marijuana laws that no longer exist.

But Colorado police chiefs want a piece of the estimated $133 million tax revenue that legal pot sales are expected to generate. Gov. John Hickenlooper earmarked the bulk of those funds for drug rehab and education efforts. Only $3 million is proposed to be spent on law enforcement and public safety, according to the Post.   Continue reading “Despite legalization, Colorado cops ask for more money for marijuana enforcement”

The Daily Caller – by Robby Soave

The Euharlee, Georgia police officer who shot and killed a teenager because she wrongly thought he was holding a gun had made a similar mistake in the past, and was fired from her previous job as a police officer as part of long history of blunders and poor job performance.

When 17-year-old Christopher Roupe answered the door at his home on the night of February 17, officer Beth Gatny opened fire on him. Gatny, who was there to serve a warrant on Roupe’s father, had thought the teenager was holding a gun. Lawyers for the Roupe family say the kid did not have a gun, and was likely holding a video game controller for the Nintendo Wii.   Continue reading “Unbelievable: Cop who wrongly killed teen had history of blunders, was fired from last job as cop”

USA Watchdog – by Greg Hunter

Economist John Williams says if Russia sells its U.S. dollar holdings, it could trigger hyperinflation.  Could it collapse the financial system?  Williams contends, “Yes, it certainly has a potential to do that.  Looking outside the United States, there is something over $16 trillion in cash, or near cash.  That’s about the same size as our GDP.  . . Nobody has wanted to hold the dollar for some time.  The dollar, fundamentally, is weak.  It couldn’t be weaker.  All the major factors are against it.  It’s just a matter of what would trigger the massive selling.  Nobody wants to hold it.  The Russians start selling, and you have China indicating a general alliance here in terms of what’s transpiring.  If the rest of the world believes this is what’s going to happen, people who have been wanting to get out of the dollar for some time very easily could front-run the Russians.  The scare is on.  People will try to get out of it as rapidly as they can.    Continue reading “Russian Dollar Dump Could Crash Financial System – John Williams”

The New American – by Alex Newman

With radical U.S. government and United Nations schemes such as “sustainable development” and UN Agenda 21 being quietly implemented across America at all levels of government under a variety of names and pretexts, lawmakers in the Oklahoma House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly this week for legislation to protect the unalienable rights to private property and due process in the state. The “Oklahoma Community Protection Act,” which would nullify Agenda 21 and other outside assaults on individual rights in the state, now goes to the Oklahoma Senate.   Continue reading “Oklahoma House Votes to Protect Property Rights from Feds and UN”

American Free Press – by Mark Anderson

Rampant hospital infections, which suddenly kill unsuspecting patients, even those who were expected to live, are the nation’s fourth leading preventable cause of death, ahead of heart disease, cancer and stroke. The inescapable irony is that people go to hospitals to treat the first three causes and too often die from the fourth.

We’ve reached the point where it’s time for the people to decide—once and for all—whether the dominant allopathic medical system should be allowed to keep its own monopoly on health. This is a crucial question, given that the allopathic method simply treats symptoms and not the root causes of illness, marginalizes or ignores natural treatments and keeps often-dangerous prescription drugs flowing.   Continue reading “Killer Hospitals”

Fox News

A 64-year-old Japanese-American man is vehemently denying any connection to bitcoin, despite a Newsweek cover story identifying him as the brains behind the bits.

‎Dorian S. Nakamoto, whom Newsweek identifies by his given name, Satoshi Nakamoto, told the Associated Press he has nothing to do with the bitcoin, a digital currency that has no physical form and lacks any ties to a country. Bitcoin is also wildly successful, as far as currencies go, with everyone from football teams to food shops announcing plans to accept the digital currency.   Continue reading “Calif. man denies he’s Bitcoin founder after Newsweek report”

Paul Craig Roberts

According to a report in Kommersant-Ukraine, the finance ministry of Washington’s stooges in Kiev who are pretending to be a government has prepared an economic austerity plan that will cut Ukrainian pensions from $160 to $80 so that Western bankers who lent money to Ukraine can be repaid at the expense of Ukraine’s poor. http://www.kommersant.ua/doc/2424454 It is Greece all over again.   Continue reading “The Looting Of Ukraine Has Begun”

CenturyLink – by DAVID EGGERT

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A convicted quadruple killer escaped from a Michigan prison for 24 hours last month primarily because guards didn’t properly operate the motion-detector alarms at a gate the inmate pried open with scissors and a belt buckle, investigators concluded Thursday.

A control center officer failed to reset two alarms for 5½ hours after they were tested, and a supervisor who noticed the problem left when her shift was over without notifying others to check the gate, according to a report by the state Corrections Department’s internal affairs division.   Continue reading “Michigan: Failure to reset alarms key to escape”

Daily Mail – by ADAM UREN

Government ministers have been urged to tread carefully before upping retirement ages for workers, as life expectancy predictions may be overly-optimistic.

The age at which people can claim their state pension will rise to 69 by the mid-2040s under the current government’s proposals in response to data that project life expectancies will have risen to 100 by 2062.   Continue reading “Are we jumping the gun with state pension age hikes? Study claims life expectancy not rising as fast as forecast”

WSWS – by Andre Damon

Since federal extended unemployment benefits expired at the end of December, the number of long-term unemployed in the US who have lost cash benefits has reached nearly 2 million.

Some 1.3 million people lost their unemployment benefits on December 28, and the ranks of those affected by the cutoff have been growing by 73,000 every week.   Continue reading “Number of US long-term jobless who lost benefits hits 2 million”