From the Trenches World Report

Washington Post – by Keith L. Alexander

The illuminated billboard in the Judiciary Square Metro station near the F Street entrance was strategically placed.

Prospective jurors who take the subway to D.C. Superior Court and exit near the National Building Museum see these words: “Good jurors nullify bad laws” and “You have the right to ‘hang’ the jury with your vote if you cannot agree with other jurors.”   Continue reading “Billboard advocating jury nullification concerns local prosecutors”

Business Insider – by JIM EDWARDS

This is a picture of what is allegedly another Google shipping-container barge being towed into port off the coast of New England. It was taken by the Portland Tugboat company, and posted Facebook with the caption “ROWAN towing the ‘mystery barge’. Entering Portland harbor.”

We recently told you about the mysterious barge Google built which floats in San Francisco Bay. It is surrounded by secrecy, and is either a floating data center or a marketing stunt for Google Glass, depending on which rumor you prefer.   Continue reading “Google Has Reportedly Built Another Mystery Barge — This One Is Floating Off The Coast Of Maine”

Map Light – by Donny Shaw

Later this week, the House of Representatives will be voting on a bipartisan bill to repeal financial bailout protections that Congress passed in 2010 as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The bill, H.R. 992 or the “Swaps Regulatory Improvement Act,” would severely limit the reach of Sec. 716 in Dodd-Frank, which requires banks that are eligible for Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or Federal Reserve lending discounts to spin off their derivatives activities into separate corporate entities that would not be eligible for federal assistance.   Continue reading “House to Vote on Derivatives Bill That Was Written by Citigroup Lobbyists”

The Organic Prepper

Food storage calculators recommend 300 pounds of grains per person for a one year supply. For a family of four, that is a whopping 1200 pounds of food that you should store if you are trying to build a one year pantry!

That sounds like a really daunting number until you remember that it is divided over many different items.  To name a few:   Continue reading “The Pantry Primer: Stockpiling Grains”

Zero Hedge – by Tyler Durden

It’s quite simple really, and as the WaPo explains, the NSA “has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials. By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from among hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot.”   Continue reading “How The NSA Spies On Your Google And Yahoo Accounts”

Common Dreams – by Lauren McCauley

Regulators with Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority gave the final OK Wednesday for the operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to begin to remove the 1300 spent fuel rods from the badly damaged Unit 4 pool, thus initiating a decommissioning process which anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman describes as “humankind’s most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis.”   Continue reading “Japan Greenlights ‘Perilous’ Cleanup at Fukushima’s Reactor 4”

Reuters – by Harriet McLeod

Six people, including two children, were shot to death in a South Carolina home on Tuesday in what police believe is a murder-suicide involving members of a family, authorities said.

Investigators in Greenwood County, where the shootings took place, did not immediately release the identity of the shooter.   Continue reading “Six people killed in apparent murder-suicide in South Carolina”

While on active duty I was stationed in many places. I was in Desert Storm and OIF 2003-2004. I have trained until I thought I couldn’t go any more. But the best training I ever had was one event at Ft. Polk in the late 80s.

We had a system called P1 and P2. P1 was field time (two weeks, generally) P2 was recovery and prep for field time. I thought it sucked more than anything I had ever done, but looking back it was some of the best training ever. I was young, dumb and full of crap.   Continue reading “The best training I ever got”

Press TV

Having failed to convince Washington to launch a military strike against Iran, the powerful Israel lobby in the United States is now focusing its efforts to “sabotage” the nuclear talks between Tehran and the world powers, an American professor says.

“In the face of that problem of not being able to mobilize the United States to go to war with Iran, they’re focusing on strangling the economy,” James Petras, Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, told Press TV on Wednesday.    Continue reading “Israel lobby trying to ‘sabotage’ Iran-US nuclear talks: James Petras”

Natural Society – by Elizabeth Renter

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from medical marijuana advocates, requesting the classification of marijuana as a Schedule I substance be reconsidered. With that denial, the Supreme Court said lower courts were right in upholding the DEA’s determination that the Food and Drug Administration must be the ones with the final say. In other words, marijuana is still considered a highly dangerous and addictive drug with no medical applications.   Continue reading “Appeal for Marijuana Reclassification Rejected: Still Deemed “Dangerous” and Medicinally Uselss”

CNS News – by Patrick Goodenough

Secretary of State John Kerry expressed his frustration Tuesday with the fact that even in the United States, “a very educated country,” there are those who do not recognize the urgency of combating global warming.

Addressing the D.C. Greening Embassies Forum, which encourages the “greening” of foreign mission in Washington, Kerry took aim at those who challenge the notion that the science is settled when it comes to climate change.   Continue reading “Kerry ‘Amazed’ That Some Americans Still Don’t Grasp Urgency of Global Warming”

WND – by Bob Unruh

American taxpayers have been frustrated by the failures of the Obamacare Healthcare.gov website – wrong responses, no responses, messages to just wait or come back later – but a headline in Digital Trends perhaps best captures the outrage over the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the unsuccessful project.

“We paid over $500 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404 (error code),” it states.   Continue reading “Healthcare.gov Most Expensive Website Ever”

Firefighter Close Calls

Wednesday, October 30, 2013 Did you see the Detroit FD movie “Burn”? If so, you know the story of FF Brendan Milewski, who on August 13, 2010, had his lie change forever. He was operating at a building fire and was hit with a massive chunk of limestone, and that basically exploded his seventh thoracic vertebra. He now lives the rest of his life as a T6 Paraplegic. Fortunately, his city takes care of Firefighters injured in the line of duty….forever. Nope.   Continue reading “THEY HAVE YOUR BACK? Don’t Count On It.”