From the Trenches World Report

Mail.com

HOPEWELL, Va. (AP) — Federal agents intercepted the wealthy Iranian entrepreneur at a U.S. airport, questioned him about his business and charged him with illegal export of American-made satellite equipment to his native country.

Seyed Amin Ghorashi Sarvestani pleaded guilty soon afterward, but changed circumstances now have encouraged him to challenge his 30-month prison sentence. Since his plea, the federal government has approved for export to Iran the very products he was convicted of helping ship, his lawyers say. Then federal prosecutors in New York told a judge after the sentencing hearing that they had mistakenly exaggerated the equipment’s capabilities. The judge hasn’t moved to change the sentence, though lawyers for both sides are continuing to press their arguments.   Continue reading “Iranian satellite case in NY takes complex turn”

Mail.com

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The latest storm to roll off nature’s assembly line during this bustling winter spread heavy snow and sleet along the Northeast corridor Thursday, while utility crews in the ice-encrusted South labored to restore power to hundreds of thousands of shivering residents.

The storm shuttered schools and businesses, made driving scary, grounded thousands of flights and made more back-breaking work for people along the East Coast, where shoveling out has become a weekly chore — sometimes a twice-weekly one.   Continue reading “Another storm hits Northeast; ‘Oh, no, not again’”

Mail.com

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Comcast Corp. will buy Time Warner Cable Inc. for about $45.2 billion in a deal that would combine the nation’s top two cable TV companies and create a dominant force in creating and delivering entertainment.

The all-stock deal, which was approved by the boards of both companies, trumps a proposal from Charter Communications to buy Time Warner Cable for about $38 billion. It is expected to close by the end of the year, pending shareholder and regulatory approvals.   Continue reading “Comcast to buy Time Warner Cable for $45 billion”

Police State USA – by Marlon Brock

Americans are not typically aware of how their federal and state prison systems work. What we think we know, we learned from watching television. When I took my first walk through at FCI (Federal Correctional Institution) El Reno Oklahoma as a new employee, I was surprised at how non-Hollywood real prison life is. Frankly, all I knew about prison life was what I saw on television or at the movies. Not even close.     Continue reading “10 Prison Security Techniques Being Implemented on the American People”

New York Times – by DURAID ADNAN and TIM ARANGO

BAGHDAD — If there were such a thing, it would probably be rule No. 1 in the teaching manual for instructors of aspiring suicide bombers: Don’t give lessons with live explosives.

In what represented a cautionary tale for terrorist teachers, and a cause of dark humor for ordinary Iraqis, a commander at a secluded terrorist training camp north of Baghdad unwittingly used a belt packed with explosives while conducting a demonstration early Monday for a group of militants, killing himself and 21 other members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, army and police officials said.   Continue reading “Suicide Bomb Trainer in Iraq Accidentally Blows Up His Class”

More Than Just Surviving – by ELISE XAVIER

The Prepared Ninja

It’s easy for the prepper survivalist to get lost in the endless confusion, attempting to discern between wants and needs. Is it a small knife or big blade? Do you carry a handgun or a rifle? However, it is even more important to determine the difference between what is a trend…and what will actually work in the field. In most cases, the right answer is: it depends on the situation.   Continue reading “.22LR: Truth & Myth”

Propaganda Matrix – by Paul Joseph Watson

The Department of Homeland Security is set to activate a national license plate tracking system that will be shared with law enforcement, allowing DHS officers to take photos of any license plate using their smartphone and upload it to a database which will include a “hot list” of “target vehicles”.

The details are included in a PDF attachment uploaded yesterday to the Federal Business Opportunities website under a solicitation entitled “National License Plate Recognition Database.”   Continue reading “Homeland Security to Activate ‘National License Plate Recognition Database’”

Huffington Post – by Saki Knafo

Virginia Dickerson says she’s devoted the last three years to recovering from the drug problems that entangled her in the criminal justice system throughout her teens and 20s.

Now in her mid-30s, she’s been out of prison for more than a year, working 30 hours a week as a cook and server at a restaurant in Richland, Wash. She says she’s also looking for a full-time job, and volunteering for two organizations that help people overcome addictions and a third that provides arts programs to teens.   Continue reading “The U.S. Is Locking People Up For Being Poor”

Wired – by DAVID KRAVETS

ZeroHedge – by Tyler Durden

At first we thought Reuters had been punk’d in its article titled “EU executive sees personal savings used to plug long-term financing gap” which disclosed the latest leaked proposal by the European Commission, but after several hours without a retraction, we realized that the story is sadly true. Sadly, because everything that we warned about in “There May Be Only Painful Ways Out Of The Crisis” back in September of 2011, and everything that the depositors and citizens of Cyprus had to live through, seems on the verge of going continental. In a nutshell, and in Reuters’ own words, “the savings of the European Union’s 500 million citizens could be used to fund long-term investments to boost the economy and help plug the gap left by banks since the financial crisis, an EU document says.” What is left unsaid is that the “usage” will be on a purely involuntary basis, at the discretion of the “union”, and can thus best be described as confiscation.   Continue reading “Europe Considers Wholesale Savings Confiscation, Enforced Redistribution”