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Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.
Showing posts with label hunger science newmedia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hunger science newmedia. Show all posts

Friday, January 22, 2010

Personal Liberty Articles


Personal Liberty Articles

Bob Livingston Newsletter


KUSI-TV: NASA Manipulated Climate Change Data

A major embarrassment may be brewing for the U.S. government as researchers have allegedly found evidence that NASA scientists manipulated data in order to claim that the year 2005 was the warmest year on record, KUSI-TV has reported.
The San Diego-based TV station presented these findings in a one-hour special that aired on Jan. 14. It told the story of how computer expert E. Michael Smith and meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo discovered extensive manipulation of the temperature data by the government’s two primary climate centers—the National Climate Data Center in Ashville, N.C., and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University in New York.
Smith and D’Aleo claim these centers engaged in data manipulation in order to give the appearance of warmer temperatures than actually occurred by reducing the number and locations of weather observation stations from about 6,000 in the 1970s to about 1,000 now.
"That leaves much of the world unaccounted for," D’Aleo said, with his colleague adding that comparing data from years when the figure was produced by averaging a large number of temperatures with those produced from a small temperature base "is like comparing apples and oranges."


Earl_E says:
After scanning a few of these comments, I’m sure that America is mentally unbalanced.
Since 1952, our government has used the military to provide escorts for private oil enterprises. These private companies do not pay for this military cover.
That is socialism. We have been a socialist nation for over a half-century.
The lack of common sense in America isn’t a secret. If you notice all the unemployed people sitting around reading these useless websites, you’ll understand that America has lost it’s competitive edge right along with it’s manufacturing base.
I read these comments and wonder just what world these people live in, but it really doesn’t matter anymore.
There is no difference between the two parties. They both are bought and paid for by big oil and big weapons. You don’t have a choice. Are we still in Iraq? Are we still in Afghanistan? Do we still send a trillion dollars a year to the mideast for their oil?
Where is the new center of the financial world? Dubais?
Who is making solar panels? China?
During the last republican presidency we were attacked in New York city. We lost millions of jobs to overseas off-shoring, and as we approached bankruptcy the Fed doled out the cash to keep their buddies in charge.
What this country will get is a very long depression that no medication will help.
It doesn’t matter what you read, what sources you rely on, you can never know anything for sure.
The ice up north will melt away more this summer because the El Nino, the return of the sunspots, and an increase flow of warm ocean water under the ice.
I keep reading the question “Is global warming manmade or natural?”
Mankind is natural. I know that seems obvious, but people seem to think that what they do isn’t natural. The human brain is the brightest brain ever created by the universe. It has tinckered with fusion, the power of the stars. Do you really think a creature that can light fires as hot as the sun could not eviscerate all life on the planet?
Wake up sleepy cavemen, the world is your kindling, burn it however you want. Its natural to want to stay warm. But every society in history has failed because of natural events, diseases, droughts, volcanoes, and sometimes they killed themselves unintentionally, but they all died off.
I can guarantee that over the next 100 years over 6 billion people will die. That is a fact. Imagine if each person were placed in a gold lined casket and buried in a cemetary plot.
There wouldn’t be any trees or gold left.

Until the beginning of the development of modern antibiotics in the 1940s, colloidal silver was the natural antibiotic of choice and had been for 50 years. 
As there are more and more resistant strains to antibiotics, colloidal silver is reappearing. There is no doubt about the anti-bacterial and anti-microbial properties of colloidal silver.
The most resounding recommendation of colloidal silver, at this time, is that it has been officially disapproved of by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA fronts for big pharma, who do not want any competition from a low-cost natural antibiotic like colloidal silver.
The only caveat is that the overuse of certain types of protein-bound silver compounds cause a gray discoloration of the skin called argyria. Most colloidal silver preparations do not have this risk because they are prepared as a homeopathic substance rather than an antibiotic with, of course, the same medicinal effect.

Ancient Fighter of Rheumatoid Arthritis!

Scientists at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) carried out two impressive studies. The first shows that a cup of tea—specifically green tea—not only reduces the severity of RA but also, in some cases, prevents it all together! The second study offers even more promising hope as to the healing power of green tea for RA sufferers.
The usual prescription for a patient diagnosed with RA is bed rest and a regulated exercise program. But the mainstay of treatment is a two-tiered drug therapy. The first tier consists of what is known as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). These range from common over-the-counter analgesics—pain medications like aspirin and Bufferin®—to similar prescribed drugs which do nothing but lower the level of pain. Meanwhile, the person’s body is still slowly crumbling away.
Once the cornerstone of RA therapy, NSAID usage is declining because these drugs have been found to be more toxic than once believed. A recent study from the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center found that some of the new NSAIDs just recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) might increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes and other harmful cardiovascular problems! Additionally, almost all NSAIDs can cause serious gastrointestinal side effects—including ulceration, bleeding and perforation—at any time and without warning.
Second-line drugs are called disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs). These drugs actually address some of the causes of arthritic pain, such as inflammation and swelling. The belief is that their use may help prevent any further damage to the joints. But the price RA victims pay for this “cure” can be very high.
Among the least harmful side effects of the more commonly prescribed drug, Methodtrexate®, are headaches, upset stomach, loss of appetite and mouth sores. More dangerous is the drug’s potential to reduce the patient’s white and red blood cell counts and even to cause kidney damage! Cytoxan®, another commonly used DMARD, can increase the risk of developing leukemia and bladder cancer and can cause temporary or permanent sterility in both men and women!


Tai Chi Can Reduce Knee Pain

A new study, conducted by researchers from Tufts University, has found that patients over 65 years of age with knee osteoarthritis (OA) can improve their physical function and experience pain relief through regular tai chi exercise.


No airline employee—not a single pilot, flight attendant or even a mechanic—has to endure the same security procedures that you and I do. In many airports they have their own private entrances where all they need do is to flash some ID and, presto, they pass through their own private portal. I’ve been told that they never even have to take off their shoes.
How difficult would it be for a potential terrorist to steal or forge some airline ID? They’d be waved through security in a second, while some 80-year-old grandmother has her denture cream checked. (We can’t be guilty of “profiling,” don’t you know.)
Let’s be honest here: Airport security has become the biggest boondoggle since Franklin Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has given jobs to tens of thousands of people who would barely qualify to flip burgers at McDonald’s. And don’t some of them just love the authority they’ve been given to boss us around? Talk about creating several thousand petty tyrants.
Another issue that really rankles me is the millions of productive man-hours that are being lost every year, as we shuffle through lines that are longer, slower and far more degrading than anything you have to endure at Disney World.
Is there anything worse than being herded like sheep by people you probably would never hire at your office—all the while knowing that none of this is really making you any safer?
And worse than all of the individual indignities is the effect on us as a people. We are being conditioned to be docile and obedient… to never question authority, no matter how unreasonable or abusive it becomes. And that’s what frightens me the most.
Thanks to the ridiculous rules and their degrading enforcement by Homeland Security we’re becoming afraid to speak out, to protest when some low-level employee abuses his authority, to stand up and say, “This is wrong.”
I’d do it, but I don’t want to risk missing my plane.

Intelligence Ties to The Underwear Bomber

President Obama, in a news conference on Jan. 7, said a “systemic” failure allowed Abdulmutallab to board a plane at the Amsterdam Schiphol airport carrying the explosives. But was it a failure, or was it an orchestrated event?
WMR reports that the security company that cleared Abdulmtullab in Schiphol is the Israeli-owned International Consultants on Targeted Security (ICTS). Many of ICTS’s officers are former Israeli intelligence agents.
The firm also cleared attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid for a Miami-bound American Airlines flight from Paris in December 2001. And, on Sept. 11, 2001, ITCS handled security at Boston Logan Airport, Newark Airport and Dulles Airport, the three airports from which the ill-fated 9/11 planes took off. ITCS also handled security at the London transportation system when the July 7, 2005, bombing took place there.
There is another common link between Reid and Abdulmtullab: the explosive PETN. Duff told AFP that the explosives Abdulmtullab had on him “couldn’t have blown up his own seat. Even if full power, it wouldn’t have worked.”




Wednesday, August 5, 2009

5 Aug - an Evening's BlogNews

S Asia hunger 'at 40-year high'

food and fuel price rises and the global economic downturn: climate change and urbanisation also need tackling three quarters of the population in South Asia - almost 1.2 billion people - live on less than $2 (£1.2) a day. And more than 400m people in the region are now chronically hungry.
important for the two biggest countries in South Asia, India and Pakistan, to reduce their defence budgets to allow for increased social spending

Canadian winters no big deal for U.S ambassador nominee

On Afghanistan, Jacobson said Prime Minister Stephen Harper extended the mission at some political cost.
( Yes,well. We all have our concerns. I thought the end of the previous article had an interesting observation applicable here too. )

The myth of the American middle class

"No one wants to identify as working class.”

Nor does anyone want to identify as upper class.

It’s so different in the UK. We cling onto our working class roots like a badge of honour. It’s not so much about money here but culture.

I’ve been a teacher for 12 years now but would never declare myself as middle class-my cockney accent just wouldn’t allow it.

In the media the middle class and upper class have adopted ‘mockney’ accents to get on here-think Jamie Oliver and Guy Ritchie

The Destruction of the Black Middle Class

For African Americans - and to a large extent, Latinos - the recession is over. It occurred between 2000 and 2007, as black employment decreased by 2.4 percent and incomes declined by 2.9 percent. During the seven-year long black recession, one third of black children lived in poverty and black unemployment-even among college graduates-- consistently ran at about twice the level of white unemployment. That was the black recession. What's happening now is a depression.

Overfishing May Be Declining, But It Hasn't Gone Away-

Alterdestiny

Two years after a study warned that overfishing could cause a collapse in the world's seafood stocks by 2048, an update says the tide is turning, at least in some areas.

[...]Of 10 areas of the world that were studied, significant overfishing continues in three, but steps have been taken to curb excesses in five others, Hilborn and Worm report. The other two were not a problem in either study.

This is indeed some fairly good news in an area (fishing and the oceans) that has seen some of the worst news regarding environmental change in recent years.

Health-care reform may not be good for politicians' health Medicare reform can be a sinkhole - on both sides of the border

Japan has 50 per cent more seniors than Canada, yet spends a quarter less on health care – with better outcomes.
The Canadian Medical Association, the lobby group for the country's 80,000 doctors, has even made it the theme of its annual meeting this month. It's right there on the program cover: “Health Care Transformation: We can all do better.”

For the doctors, it's not clear that “all” includes them. The CMA will unveil the results of a fact-finding mission to Europe to investigate reform there, from Denmark's downloading of chronic care onto municipalities to Britain's funding of hospitals based on the number of patients they treat.

No government wants to take on the doctors lobby, not when Canadians trust their physicians so much more than their politicians. ( :)

Psychology is to blame for humans not acting on climate change, psychologists sayIt may seem a tad ridiculous to have to even say that human behavior is responsible for the failure of humans to act, let alone take 225 pages to say it. I mean, what else would likely be responsible than people's minds and brains -- their big toes?

But the report gets into useful specifics. It draws on past studies on people's behavior in disaster situations. It examines what science knows about how you can get people to alter their behavior and what doesn't seem to work at all, no matter how fine and dandy an idea may sound.

Science for Policy Project: the Final Report

The report focuses on the need to draw clean distinctions between science issues and policy issues:
"The fundamental theme of the report is that the Administration needs to put in place procedures to try to distinguish science questions from policy questions," said Boehlert. "Often, policy disputes are cast as fights over science. This damages the credibility of science and obscures the real issues that ought to be debated. For example, how much risk a substance poses to human health or the environment is a science question; how much risk is acceptable is a policy question."

( Sounds a bit like trying to promote conditions for peace without dealing with the problem of violence : the 'confusion' being political 'cover'. Kool Aid Alert )

Women Lead in Iran

Strong support among women for reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi also has been key. Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, played an especially visible role in her husband's campaign and continues to speak out, calling for protesters to chant from the rooftops in a show of solidarity. She is respected by many as Iran's first high-ranking female university professor and for her work as an artist.

Iran’s leading human rights leader, Nobel Laureate, and women’s rights attorney Shirin Ebadi has called for the Iranian government to void the presidential election results. Ebadi argues that the government should release individuals who were arrested for objecting to the election results, cease police violence towards protesters, pay compensation to those injured or killed, and order new elections. Several Iranian human rights leaders have reportedly been arrested after denouncing the election results and the ensuing violence.


How stories about the Secretary of State end up as “Sad Hillary” anecdrama

( or : 'Reporting' as Trivial Pursuit .... = trivial distractions )

Government 'panicked' by report of MoD wasting billions

The government has been accused of trying to suppress a report that found the Ministry of Defence is wasting billions of pounds every year as a result of ordering projects it cannot afford.
( Panic? That's an unlikely state of affairs. The MoD has been ordering work it can't afford for Generations. )
Baghdad blast walls to come down

Panetta: “CIA pays a price for enduring disputes over policies that no longer exist.”


British Lawmaker David Davis Challenges US Threats to Suppress Evidence of CIA Torture

A British court heard evidence last week that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to prevent the disclosure of details regarding the CIA’s role in the alleged torture of former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Binyam Mohamed. We hear from conservative British parliamentarian David Davis about the Obama administration’s attempts to suppress evidence in this case.

Twitter Iran delay 'not forced'

Commandos tackle S Korea strikers

South Korean police commandos have dropped from helicopters to try to end a factory sit-in by sacked workers demanding to keep their jobs.

More than 500 workers have occupied the main car plant of Ssangyong Motors for more than 10 weeks.

A Chinese teenager sent to an internet addiction rehabilitation camp has allegedly been beaten to death by its counsellors

Gangs are stealing taxpayers' passwords and submitting claims for tax refunds to be paid to them, HM Revenue and Customs has warned.

William Jefferson,A former US Congressman who was caught by FBI agents with $90,000 (£53,000) in his freezer has been found guilty of bribery and money laundering.

Russia keeps close watch on neighbours
They're much more interested in having a kind of zone of influence...Russia has had an especially close eye on Nato enlargement. The war with Georgia last August was the result of tension which had been building for years - and even if the conflict was ostensibly about the status of a separatist region, Georgia's desire for Nato membership was a major factor. Russia sees Nato's eastward expansion as a deliberate threat to its security.
Russia's approach to its disputes with its neighbours seems designed not only to secure advantage, but also as a demonstration of power.

( Funny how it's more authoritative for a Beebs stringer to say that than a blogger. Maybe I'm green over the exposure. The last laugh is to note both Britain { Europe ?} and the U.S. behave in exactly the same fashion. )
Pepe Escobar revisits the New Great Game-Part 1Part 2

The Bush administration has tried everything to drive a wedge between Iran and Russia - to no avail. The Obama administration now has to deal with some pretty established facts on the ground. In the first part of this report, Pepe Escobar analyzes the implications of the complex relationship between close allies Iran and Russia, articulated in three fronts: nuclear, energy security and weapons.

( None of my regular readers will fail to realize I believe U.S. policy towards the 'Axis of Evil' a total propaganda ploy : nonsense from beginning to end. Israel has 200 nukes. Iran 0. The UN Security Council have caused 2052 nuclear explosions : N. Korea 2.
Russia, on the other hand, should have an excellent supply of MIRVed ICBMs to complement their 'boomers' : honkin' big subs.
Nuclear scientists didn't trust an imbalance of power in the 50's and made sure the U.S.S.R. had the knowlege to fabricate a countervailing threat. I never thought I'd miss those days.

Bush and Cheney come from Big Oil. Think REAL is out to lunch about the real Powers That Be ? I sure don't. Love this analysis : notice it complements PNAC.
I'll have to get around to this one day. )

Google Reader Speeds Up Sharing With PubSubHubbub
Just for Shared Items right now, you can imagine that Google Reader will add further support as well in time. It really needs to in order to keep up with the speed at which information is traveling around the web on sites like Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed.
( Feedly is neat, too. Slows loading, though. )

Revamped Delicious Turns to Twitter for Real-Time Search

Delicious has debuted a redesigned home page with a new ranking system that uses Twitter, along with Delicious’ own data, to show a list of the most popular links on the web. These results show up in a new “What’s Fresh” tab, which makes up the default view on the site’s home page. In addition, Delicious’ search tools have been revamped and the site’s users can now e-mail and tweet bookmarks directly from Delicious.

( Good Grief. With Technorati doing popular sites andDel.icio.us and Twitter morphing in realtime, I'll never get current. I have, however, been monitoring Del.icio.us links in PageFlakes...well, when I get around to it. Checking out new tags in realtime is insane : too much data. I don't even dare try a comprehensive search in StumbleUpon ! Clipmarks isn't too bad ; they're set up for it. )

Facebook Is Now the Fourth Largest Site In The World

An Unholy Alliance
- Tali Shapiro
Amnesty International supporting Leonard Cohen’s breach of the boycott of Israel.

Irish composer and novelist Raymond Deane:

What could any reasonable person have against “programs for peace”?… By assisting Cohen in his ruse to bypass this boycott, Amnesty International is in fact taking a political stance, in violation of the premise of political neutrality with which it so regularly justifies its failure to side unambiguously with the oppressed. Amnesty is telling us: resistance is futile, the voice of the oppressed is irrelevant, international humanitarian law is a luxury.

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If asking for unconditional human rights is extreme, then I am a proud extremists. Many on the self-proclaimed Left are easy to spot, their key phrase is:

They deserve human rights/freedom/their own country, but…

This “but” is a fearful one, rooted in a deeply ingrained and denied racism. The people who say this are well aware of Israel’s crimes- past and present, and yet still afraid of what may happen, once we let the “two legged beasts” out of their cage, whether they call Palestinians that, or not. In my journey of discovering the truth behind Israel, I’ve realized some things are not negotiable.
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( So naturally the first commenter protects the firmly projected propaganda of the establishment. Well, what's the harm of a little fun ? I indulged. )