Hypocrisy hyperbole: Russian 'aggression' in Ukraine vs. Saudi 'defense' in Yemen

Eric Draitser
New Eastern Outlook

The military intervention in Yemen by a US-backed coalition of Arab states will undoubtedly inflame the conflict both in Yemen, and throughout the region. It is likely to be a protracted war involving many actors, each of which is interested in furthering its own political and geopolitical agenda.

However, it is the international reaction to this new regional war which is of particular interest; specifically, the way in which the United States has reacted to this undeniable aggression by its Gulf allies. While Washington has gone to great lengths to paint Russia's reunification with Crimea and its limited support for the anti-Kiev rebels of eastern Ukraine as "aggression," it has allowed that same loaded term to be completely left out of the narrative about the new war in Yemen.

So it seems that, according to Washington, aggression is not defined by any objective indicators: use of military hardware, initiation of hostilities, etc. Rather, the United States defines aggression by the relationship of a given conflict to its own strategic interests. In Crimea and Ukraine, Russia is the aggressor because, in defending its own interests and those of Russian people, it has acted against the perceived geopolitical interests of the US. While in Yemen, the initiation by Saudi Arabia and other US-backed countries of an unprovoked war with the expressed goal of regime change, this is not aggression as it furthers Washington's interests. 

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Ankara, Turkey Major Power Cut Hits Dozens of Turkish Cities, Shuts Down Subway

Spuntnik

The power outage was presumably caused by the collapse of Turkey’s power distribution system.

Several Turkish regions have been affected by major power cuts after the failure of the country’s electricity distribution system.

The power failed at about 10:40 a.m., hitting several Turkish cities and shutting down the subway in Ankara and Istanbul.

The power cut also affected most Internet and telephone connections across the country and left people completely cut off.

The country is facing the worst such incident over the last 15 years. Authorities are currently examining the possibility of a terrorist attack.

North Dakota Takes Bold Step Forward On Commercial Hemp Industry, Tells Feds To Stay Out

Huffington Post

North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R) signed a bill into law on Friday that lays the groundwork for a commercial hemp industry and explicitly cuts the federal government out of the state's licensing process.

House Bill 1436 establishes guidelines for the state's industrial hemp program and allows people to apply to grow the plant for either research or commercial purposes. With its provision for commercial hemp, the law goes beyond the federal Farm Bill, passed by Congress last year, which allowed some states to cultivate the plant, but only for research purposes and in more restricted pilot programs. 

The new measure builds on previous legislation that had legalized industrial hemp farming in North Dakota, but had gone largely unimplemented. Harsh federal restrictions on hemp have left some growers open to prosecution, making many states wary of pushing forward with cultivation. In addition to North Dakota, twelve other states have passed legislation to establish commercial industrial hemp programs, and a handful more have approved hemp production for agricultural uses or academic research. However, a number of those states have not actually moved ahead with officially establishing commercial hemp operations. 

North Dakota will join the five states -- Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee and Vermont -- that actually implement the hemp laws they have on the books. The Hemp Industries Association, a nonprofit trade group consisting of hundreds of hemp businesses, recently reported that those states collectively planted approximately 125 acres of hemp crops last year.

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Facebook Reveals its Master Plan – Control All News Flow

Michael Krieger
Liberty Blitzkrieg

In recent months, Facebook has been quietly holding talks with at least half a dozen media companies about hosting their content inside Facebook rather than making users tap a link to go to an external site.

The new proposal by Facebook carries another risk for publishers: the loss of valuable consumer data. When readers click on an article, an array of tracking tools allow the host site to collect valuable information on who they are, how often they visit and what else they have done on the web.

And if Facebook pushes beyond the experimental stage and makes content hosted on the site commonplace, those who do not participate in the program could lose substantial traffic — a factor that has played into the thinking of some publishers. Their articles might load more slowly than their competitors’, and over time readers might avoid those sites.

- From the New York Times article: Facebook May Host News Sites’ Content

Last night, I came across an incredibly important article from the New York Times, which described Facebook’s plan to provide direct access to other websites’ content in exchange for some sort of advertising partnership. The implications of this are so huge that at this point I have far more questions than answers.

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Germanwings crash: Not the full story?

Joe Quinn
Sott.net

When I heard about the crash of Germanwings Flight GWI9525 in the French Alps on the morning of March 24th, I was shocked, but to be honest, not that shocked. It's not that I expected it to happen, but this was the fifth such incident in the last year. If that frequency is maintained, the statistically-very-low chances of meeting an untimely end on a commercial flight will have to be recalculated.

In the immediate aftermath of the crash I, like many others around the world, waited patiently for the details. What could possibly cause a modern, albeit a little aged, first-generation Airbus A320 to suddenly drop out of the sky and slam into a mountain side? I had a few theories, among them the incapacitating effects of an 'EMP' from an exploding overhead space rock. The shocking rise in fireball/meteorite sightings over the past 10 years makes this plausible, and might well have been the cause of the crash of AF447 into the Pacific ocean in 2009. But I waited, and I expected to wait because investigations of this sort can, and should, take quite a while to complete.

When dealing with airplane crashes, the most important information, even more important than the cockpit voice recordings, is the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) or ADR (Accident Data Recorder). The FDR records instructions sent to all electronic systems on an aircraft, including the auto-pilot and the security system for the entry to the cockpit.

Whatever information might be provided by the conversation between the pilot and co-pilot in the cockpit would have to be corroborated or confirmed by the hard data from the FDR. Analyzing this data naturally takes several days or weeks, so it was surprising that, within 24 hours of the crash, the New York Times had cited an unnamed "senior French military official" as saying that one of the pilots was locked out of the cockpit by the other and that was what caused the crash. The NY Times quotes the military official:

"The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door, and there is no answer," the investigator said. "And then he hits the door stronger, and no answer. There is never an answer. You can hear he is trying to smash the door down. [...] what is sure is that at the very end of the flight, the other pilot is alone and does not open the door."

The precipitous release of this information appears to have undermined the official investigation that is being conducted by the French 'Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety' (BEA) a civilian, not military, agency of the French government responsible for investigating aviation accidents, and established a narrative that has become the official truth of what happened to the plane - it was deliberately crashed by co-pilot Andreas Lubitz. 

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HILLARY’s EMAILGATE: The Height of Hubris and Chutzpah

State of the Nation

There are many deeply disturbing aspects about Hillary Clinton’s secret operation whereby she ran her own email server for all of her U.S. State Department business.  As a matter of fact, there are so many profound violations of law and broken department regulations involved it’s a wonder Ms. Clinton hasn’t been arrested and imprisoned — WITHOUT BAIL.

DISCLAIMER
SOTN has no dog in this fight as we have no party affiliation whatsoever.  Our commentary is the product of objective political analysis and unbiased government oversight.  While we do feel that Hillary Clinton is totally unfit to run for POTUS, we feel the very same way about Jeb Bush as well as many other prospective candidates on both sides of the aisle.
______________________________________________________________

As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton made a quite fateful decision to exclusively use her personal email account to conduct her official State Department business. Further complicating this unacceptable procedure, she housed and ‘secured’ all email data on her own personal server which was registered to her home address in Chappaqua, New York!

“… Clinton’s private server was registered to her home address in Chappaqua, with the name of “Eric Hoteham”.”[1]

Just in case the reader failed to understand the seriousness of this breach of the public trust, it will be restated as follows:

The former Secretary of State, in the conduct of some of the most highly classified and ultra-secret business of any branch of the U.S Federal Government, did so utilizing an unregulated, unmonitored and  unsecure server in what appears to have been located in her personal residence.

Why does this unjustifiable behavior pose such a HUGE problem?

There are many obvious reasons why such official conduct is unlawful and illegal, irresponsible and negligent, contemptible and reprehensible.
What follows is a list of those reasons, each one of which constitutes an actionable offense which ought to be fully prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

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‘Reuters lied’: MH17 witness says reporter falsified story

RT

A Lugansk region resident, whom Reuters cites as saying he saw evidence of a surface-to-air missile launched from rebel-held territory on the day MH17 was downed, told RT the news agency gave a false report of his interview.

For its March report on the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 tragedy Reuters talked to Pyotr Fedotov, a 58-year-old resident of the village Chervonniy Zhovten in the Lugansk Region of eastern Ukraine.
 
“When interviewed by Reuters, Fedotov, the witness who described the 'wiggling' rocket, at first said on camera that it was fired from territory held by the Ukrainian army. Later, off camera, he said it was launched from a nearby rebel area. Asked why he had originally said the opposite, he said it was because he was afraid of the rebels," the news agency said. 

RT spoke Fedotov, and he said Reuters correspondent Anton Zverev was not accurate in his report of the meeting, to put it mildly. 

“When we talked about the Boeing on camera, I explained everything as it was. The things that I allegedly said off-camera were just made up by the journalist. It's all lies. Off-camera, we never discussed the Boeing,” Fedotov told RT. 

He added that the Reuters journalist contacted him after taking the interview, but never showed him a draft of the article. Instead he was asking whether Fedotov had got into trouble for speaking to him. 

“The journalist called me and asked if I was in trouble. I was really surprised. Why would I be in trouble if I told the truth? And then my friends told me in the article I was saying different things when the cameras were on and off. That's when I understood why he was asking if I was in trouble,” the witness explained. 

“So it's mere fantasy from the journalist or maybe he was doing it for his own benefit,” he added. 

RT’s request to Reuters for comments on the controversy and raw footage of Fedotov’s interview was not replied to as of publication of this article. 

The Malaysian Boeing 777 airliner was downed over eastern Ukraine on July 17 last year, killing 298 people on board. The incident became an instant controversy, with Ukraine and its Western backers accused rebel forces and Russia of being behind the downing. 

Ukraine media falsely claim Dutch prosecutors accused Russia of MH17 downing 

An investigation into the incident is being conducted by the Netherlands, but the preliminary report released last year didn’t point even to a kind of weapon used in the downing of the aircraft, only that an outside force destroyed it mid-air. 

Russia called not to jump to conclusions and made military radar data public which indicated the presence of Ukrainian surface-to-air batteries and warplanes in the area on the day of the Boeing shooting. 

Earlier Ukrainian media falsely claimed that Dutch investigators concluded that MH17 had been shot down by the rebels with a Buk missile, citing a report in the Dutch media that outlined the popular theory, but didn’t claim it to be proven. Dutch prosecutors told RT at the time that the investigation had not been concluded. 

Are we ready for the next volcanic catastrophe?

Watts Up With That?

Eric Worrall writes: The Guardian has published an unusually interesting article about the danger to our civilisation, of a new Tambora scale volcanic eruption.

According to Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL;

“In April 1815, the biggest known eruption of the historical period blew apart the Tambora volcano, on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, 12,000km from the UK. What happened next testifies to the enormous reach of the biggest volcanic blasts.
The Tambora volcano had shown no signs of life for 1,000 years; a single eruption in the previous five millennia provided the only indication that magma was still churning far beneath. It is very likely that the residents of the island considered the volcano extinct, and possible even that they did not know the impressive 4,300m (14,107ft) mountain – at the time, probably the highest in the East Indies – was a volcano at all. This all changed, however, with the rumblings and earthquakes of 1812, a full three years before the climactic blast. Over time, the seismic shocks were superseded by steam blasts and small ash explosions, engendering increasing trepidation on the island and signalling that something bigger might be imminent. It was. On 5 April 1815, a titanic explosion hurled a cloud of ash to a height of more than 30km.”
…
The consequences for the developed societies of the northern hemisphere were dire. A dry, sulphurous, fog draped itself across the landscape of eastern North America, causing temperatures to plunge and bringing unprecedented summer cold. In New York State, snow fell in June, while the bitter cold and killing frosts wiped out crops and halved the length of the growing season across much of the region. On the other side of the Atlantic, Europe saw summer temperatures down by 2C compared to the average for the decade; the unseasonal cold accompanied by incessant rains and – into the following winter – by unusually powerful storms. Analysis of climate records reveals that 1816, the so-called “year without a summer”, was the second coldest in the northern hemisphere of the past six centuries.”
Read more http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/28/are-we-ready-for-the-next-big-volcanic-eruption-tambora-bill-mcguire

McGuire adds a minor obligatory genuflection towards climate change, this is after all The Guardian – but unusually for a Guardian story about the environment, the focus of the article is not on the alleged dangers of our industrial output of CO2. And what McGuire says is entirely pertinent – a Tambora style eruption could kill millions of people from starvation, as massive crop failures caused food prices to skyrocket. And Tambora is not the worst which could happen – The Toba eruption, which occurred 74,000 years ago, blackened the sky, causing massive die backs across the world – and may even have almost ended the human race. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Genetic_bottleneck_theory

McGuire then goes on to list a few of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes – though interestingly the Indonesian volcano Merapi, an unstable giant slumbering adjacent to a city of 3 million people, doesn’t make his list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Merapi

These colossal global catastrophes of the past, and the certainty that similar catastrophes will occur again in the future, maybe even in our lifetime, really puts the feeble temperature wobbles which are ascribed to humans into perspective.

Jihadi John keeps his bank account after Treasury freezes assets of only a handful of Islamic terrorists

Comment: More evidence that the British government is protecting its Jihadi assets. Gotta keep that terrorism rollin'....

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The Telegraph

Only six out of more than 600 British jihadists have had their bank accounts frozen under special terror laws, according to an official report.

The review also shows just £50,000 worth of assets was frozen in bank accounts opened by terror suspects operating in the UK. The amount was branded “remarkably low” by David Anderson QC, the Government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation and author of the new study.

Mr Anderson’s report into 'the operation of terrorist asset-freezing’ lays bare the Coalition’s failure to seize jihadists’ money under the Terrorist Asset-Freezing Act (TAFA) 2010.

His findings will be seized upon by critics who have complained the Coalition has failed to crack down on terror financiers.

The report says more than 600 British-based jihadists have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) and other terror groups such as al-Qaeda but only six currently have their assets frozen.

They are: Nasser Muthana, 20, and Reyaad Khan, 21, both from Cardiff, and Ruhul Amin, from Aberdeen, who all appeared in an Isil recruitment video last summer, which sparked widespread outrage.

Muthana’s 17-year-old brother Aseel Muthana has also been added to the list, having also fled to Syria.

The fifth man on the list is Nur Idiris Hassan, 21, from Manchester, who fled the UK for Syria last year with the help of chemistry teacher Jamshed Javeed who has since pleaded guilty to terrorist offences.

A further unnamed terror suspect believed to be linked to Isil is the sixth man on the list.

In total just 25 individuals are on the UK Treasury list.

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Questions Swirl Around the Death of Wall Street Journal Reporter, David Bird

Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall St. On Parade

Wall Street Journal oil reporter, David Bird, set out from his New Jersey home for a brief walk on January 11, 2014 and disappeared without a trace. Last Wednesday, 14 months after his disappearance and the very same day David Bird’s family had launched a web site to urge the public to help them locate their beloved husband and father, Bird’s body was found in the Passaic River. It was conclusively identified through dental records.

A search had been underway for Bird since the evening of his disappearance. He had left his home on Long Hill Road in the Millington section of Long Hill Township, New Jersey to take a short walk. The circumstances were inconsistent with someone who intended to disappear: he was wearing a bright red jacket with yellow zippers; he was a recipient of a liver transplant and did not take the anti-rejection, prescription medicine that he was required to take daily to stay alive.

The Morris County Prosecutor’s office released a statement on the discovery of the body last Wednesday, indicating that “at approximately 5:00 pm two (2) men canoeing in the Passaic River came across a red jacket located near branches…” More than a dozen neighboring police, fire and rescue departments were called in. Search boats were supplied by the Whippany Fire Department, Millington Fire Department and Berkeley Heights Fire Department. The Denville Dive Team was also called in according to the official statement. The body of Bird was located the same evening in the Passaic River, about 20 feet from the shoreline according to NJ.com.

How a veteran reporter for the Wall Street Journal set out for a brief walk and ended up in the Passaic River is now the subject of an ongoing investigation. The cause of death will be released at a future date by the Medical Examiner’s office.

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Forget your bank PIN: Halifax trials technology where customers are recognised by their heartbeat

Comment: Missed this one from earlier in the month...Welcome to Technocracy.

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The Telegraph
 

Halifax is believed to be the first British bank to trial technology which will allow customers to prove their identity through the analysis of their heartbeat.

Strings of passwords, login codes, PIN numbers and memorable words that we are all required to recall could be consigned to history.

Instead, bank customers of the future could wear slender bracelets which measure the intricate "cardiac rhythms" unique to every person.

The technology has been developed by Canadian firm Bionym.

As with today's existing contactless card technology, the bracelet, called a "Nymi", will communicate with a checkout till or cash machine to allow the customer to pay for goods or draw money.

The firm claims that this new "cardiac signature" will be a highly secure form of proof of ID: more secure than other forms of biometic identification such as eye-scanning or facial recognition technologies.

"In a world passwords and pin numbers, the Nymi Band will allow you to wirelessly prove that you are you to the world around you," Bionym claims. 

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Saudi Arabia invades Yemen with US-UK backing

Tony Cartalucci
Land Destroyer

 

Saudi Arabia, in an unprecedented act of unprovoked unilateral military aggression against Yemen by the autocratic absolute monarchy, was allegedly triggered in a US-backed attempt to restore what Riyadh is calling the "legitimate government of Yemen."

What exactly constitutes a legitimate government is not clear for a despotic regime where elections are not held, women cannot drive, and enemies of the state are beheaded in medieval displays of public barbarism not entirely unlike their ideological ambassadors among the so-called "Islamic State" or ISIS.

The Yemeni Houthi militias are in fact the only viable force fighting Al Qaeda and its affiliates in the Persian Gulf State located at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. With their recent successes on the battlefield leaving US-backed proxies in shambles, including apparently Al Qaeda itself, the West has decided it must take whatever measures necessary to stop them and reassert US interests in the region.  

Saudi Arabia, in an unprecedented act of unprovoked unilateral military aggression against Yemen by the autocratic absolute monarchy, was allegedly triggered in a US-backed attempt to restore what Riyadh is calling the "legitimate government of Yemen."

What exactly constitutes a legitimate government is not clear for a despotic regime where elections are not held, women cannot drive, and enemies of the state are beheaded in medieval displays of public barbarism not entirely unlike their ideological ambassadors among the so-called "Islamic State" or ISIS.

The Yemeni Houthi militias are in fact the only viable force fighting Al Qaeda and its affiliates in the Persian Gulf State located at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. With their recent successes on the battlefield leaving US-backed proxies in shambles, including apparently Al Qaeda itself, the West has decided it must take whatever measures necessary to stop them and reassert US interests in the region.

 

According to the New York Times in its report, "Saudi Arabia Begins Air Assault in Yemen," Saudi Arabia is intervening to stabilize the country before it descends into "civil war." It states:

Saudi Arabia announced on Wednesday night that it had begun military operations in Yemen, launching airstrikes in coordination with a coalition of 10 nations.

The strikes came as Yemen was hurtling closer to civil war after months of turmoil, as fighters and army units allied with the Houthi movement threatened to overrun the southern port of Aden where the besieged president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, has gone into hiding.

In reality, a US-backed regime propped up by a steady stream of support afforded by America's long-standing client state, Saudi Arabia, had been ousted from power. The civil war has already been fought, and the US-backed side has decisively lost.

Instead of allowing the Yemeni people to now determine their own fate, as the West had insisted regarding Ukraine, it is clear that everything up to and including military invasion has been reserved to ensure American interests prevail.
 

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IRS Scandal Deja Vu: Hillary Clinton's Email Server "Wiped Clean"

Zero Hedge

If, as one claims, one is innocent of i) using a personal email account to send out confidential information and/or to take advantage of one's political position to abuse opponents and ii) deleting said confidential emails against government regulations, what would one do when faced with a government subpoena demand? If one is the IRS' Lois Lerner, one would claim, against subsequently revealed facts, that a hardware error led to a permanent loss of all demanded emails, even though by email protocol definition, said emails are always stored on at least one off-site server. Or, if one is Hillary Clinton, one would just format the entire server. 

This, according to the Hill, is precisely what Hillary Clinton has done as the recent clintonemail.com scandal continues to grow bigger and impair ever more the already frail credibility and decision-making skills of the former first lady and democratic presidential hopeful.  According to the head of the House Select Committee on Benghazi says former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has erased all information from the personal email server she used while serving as the nation’s top diplomat.

“We learned today, from her attorney, Secretary Clinton unilaterally decided to wipe her server clean and permanently delete all emails from her personal server,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said in a statement Friday.

What difference does it make if she deleted all her emails? 

Apparently a lot.

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Another Week, Another War: The Iron Logic of America's Middle East Madness

Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque 

Another week, another war. And yet another American alliance with the forces of Islamic extremism. Washington is clearly the guiding force between the Saudi-led invasion of Yemen -- a move that will almost certainly lead to a protracted and ruinous conflict, spilling over many borders and, as usual, creating fertile ground for more extremism. In other words, America's war profiteers and military imperialists have given themselves another rich seam of loot and power. And in Yemen, as in Syria, the Yanks are fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with their old allies, al Qaeda, once again.

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China and Russia Firm Ties With High Speed Rail Link

New Eastern Outlook

The growing fusion of economic self-interest between Russia and China has just taken another major step forward with the final decision by Beijing and Moscow governments to build a critical link in a high-speed rail infrastructure that will connect Beijing and Moscow. It follows only weeks after signing major energy deals between the two Eurasian nations as Putin’s Russia continues her dramatic shift away from a contemptuous EU towards the world’s fastest-growing region. 

Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich announced at a Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum on February 27 that agreement has been finalized between the two countries on a proposal made by Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang during his October 2014 visit to Moscow to construct a 7,000 km and $242 billion high-speed rail corridor going from Beijing across Kazakhstan and Russia to Moscow. The project will include a high-speed Moscow to Kazar in Russia’s Autonomous Tatarstan.

While the economies of the EU sink deeper into debt and stagnation of investment in its own rail and other infrastructure, China has become the world’s premier infrastructure builder. In a space little more than thirty years, the Asian country has become the world specialist in railway construction with projects across China and beyond. Last year the Chinese government announced that it had made construction of a trans-Eurasian high speed rail project, the so-called New Silk Road, highest state priority.

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Scientists Call for a Summit on Gene-Edited Babies

MIT

A group of senior American scientists and ethics experts is calling for debate on the gene-engineering of humans, warning that technology able to change the DNA of future generations is now “imminent.”

In policy recommendations published today in the journal Science, eighteen researchers, including two Nobel Prize winners, say scientists should accept a self-imposed moratorium on any attempt to create genetically altered children until the safety and medical reasons for such a step can be better understood.

The concern is over a rapidly advancing gene-editing technology, called CRISPR-Cas9, which is giving scientists the ability to easily alter the genome of living cells and animals (see “Genome Surgery”). The same technology could let scientists correct DNA letters in a human embryo or egg cell, for instance to create children free of certain disease-causing genes, or perhaps with improved genetics.

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Greece Prepares To Leave

The Automatic Earth

Speculation and expert comments are thrown around once more – or still – like candy on Halloween. Let me therefore retrace what I’ve said before. Because I think it’s really awfully simple, once you got the underlying factors in place.

But first, if one thing has become obvious after Syriza was elected to form a Greek government on January 25, it’s that the party is not ‘radical’ or ‘extremist’. Those monikers can now be swept off all editorial desks across the world, and whoever keeps using them risks looking like an awful fool.

All Syriza has done to date, when you look from an objective point of view, is to throw out feelers, trying to figure out what the rest of the eurozone would do. And to make sure that whatever responses it got are well documented.

Because of course Greece (through Syriza) is preparing to leave the eurozone. Of course the effects and consequences of such a step are being discussed, non-stop. They would be fools if they didn’t have these discussions. And of course there will be a referendum at some point.

There’s just that one big caveat: Syriza insists on needing a mandate from its voters for everything it does, whether that may be kowtowing to Greece’s EU overlords or walking away from them. At present, however, it doesn’t have a mandate for either of these actions.

The best it can do is to drag out negotiations as much as it can, and let Europe openly assert its perceived superior power over the Greek population as much as it wants to, complete with more iron-fisted demands for austerity, more budget cuts, more asset sales. Tsipras and his people will let this go on until the Greeks are even more fed up with Brussels than they already were when they elected Syriza in the first place.

It’s a subtle game, but it’s the only one open to Tsipras and his crew. Even if they’ve long concluded that trying to negotiate a deal with Germany et al was a lost cause way before talks started, Syriza has to go through the motions until it is confident the people of Greece are ready to vote in a referendum on eurozone membership. 

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1 in 20 students in UK worked in sex trade to fund living cost

Times of India

LONDON: One in 20 students in the UK have worked in the sex industry while studying at the university to make ends meet, according to a new survey that shows more number of them are secretly turning to the profession.

Men were more likely to be involved than women, and the sex work ranged from prostitution and escorting to stripping and internet work, the Student Sex Work Project report said.

One in 20 students had worked in the sex industry while they pursued a degree, researchers from Wales- based Swansea University's Centre for Criminal Justice and Criminology who carried out the online study said.

Tracey Sagar, who led the study, said: "We now have firm evidence that students are engaged in the sex industry across the UK. The majority of these students keep their occupations secret and this is because of social stigma and fears of being judged by family and friends.

"And we have to keep in mind that not all students engaged in the industry are safe or feel safe. It is vital now that universities arm themselves with knowledge to better understand student sex work issues and that university services are able to support students where support is needed."

The recent study involved 6,750 students, of which 5 per cent of men and 3.5 per cent of women said they had worked in the sex industry, while nearly 22 per cent overall said they had considered doing so.

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Major coup for AE9/11Truth – American Institute of Architects green lights Building 7 vote

Craig McKee
Truth and Shadows

Sometimes it really pays to be persistent. 

That’s what Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth found out this week when the organization achieved something truly remarkable. It succeeded in getting a commitment from the largest association of architects in the U.S. to debate and vote on a resolution supporting an investigation into the destruction of World Trade Center Building 7 on Sept. 11, 2001.

The vote will take place at the annual convention of the American Institute of Architects, May 14-16, in Atlanta, GA. (If you’re not sure how much of a big deal this convention is, the keynote speaker is former president Bill Clinton.)

After several failed attempts to get the AIA to even consider looking into Building 7, AE tried a different approach in early 2015. Instead of simply appealing to the AIA leadership, they used the organization’s own rules to create a resolution that, pending approval by the AIA resolution committee, would come to the floor of the convention where it would be debated and voted on by delegates.

That approval came this week. The committee made only minor changes to the resolution so that it conformed to AIA style. The substance remained unchanged.

“We’re ecstatic about this,” says AE9/11Truth founder Richard Gage, who will be attending the convention with a team from the organization.

For any resolution to be considered by convention delegates, it must be sponsored by the AIA’s board of directors or strategic council; a regional, state or local AIA chapter; or 50 AIA members. In this case, the sponsor was AE board member Dan Barnum, who holds the prestigious title of Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Another 54 AIA members are listed as co-sponsors – all of whom are signatories of the AE9/11Truth petition.

WHAT THEY’LL VOTE ON

Here is the text of the resolution that was just approved by the AIA resolution committee:

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NATO's Creepy New Plan to Infiltrate Twitter and Facebook

Adam Johnson
Alternet

On Sunday, NATO commander General Philip Breedlove said in an interview with the Associated Press that NATO must do more to “counter Russian propaganda online”:

NATO's supreme commander says the West must do more to counter Russia by employing a rapid-reaction approach to internet communications that counteracts Russia's "false narratives" spread on social media.

Gen. Philip Breedlove said Sunday that Vladimir Putin's Russia has been waging information warfare as part of its actions against Ukraine.

Breedlove said: "We need as a western group of nations or as an alliance to engage in this informational warfare. The way to attack the false narrative is to drag the false narrative into the light and expose it."

While details of such a plan remain vague, this mindset is part of a broader trend of social media psychological warfare that has been emerging largely unnoticed over the past five years. The first question that is rarely asked by our media is the most important one: what constitutes a “false narrative,” and who decides what constitutes one? Recent attempts by UK authorities to stifle the speech of the Russian-backed, English-language TV station RT show that false narratives are whatever Western governments determine they are.

According to the Guardian, "Russia Today is to be investigated by media regulator Ofcom over anti-western comments in a late-night discussion on Ukraine—its sixth ongoing inquiry into the Kremlin-backed news channel following complaints by viewers."

That Western officials would extend this crackdown on Russian-backed narratives from traditional to social media is not surprising. What is worth noting is that the media routinely downplays or under-reports what such a plan would entail—namely, the use of sockpuppet or fake social media accounts that would be used to counter these so-called false narratives. As the Guardian revealed in 2011, the Defense Department has been developing such technology for some time:

The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda…
The Centcom contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations "without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries".
The multiple persona contract is thought to have been awarded as part of a programme called Operation Earnest Voice (OEV), which was first developed in Iraq as a psychological warfare weapon against the online presence of al-Qaida supporters and others ranged against coalition forces. Since then, OEV is reported to have expanded into a $200m programme and is thought to have been used against jihadists across Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

These sockpuppet accounts, according to the Guardian report and separate revelations by Anonymous, are not your run-of-the-mill spambot accounts. They are not easily spotted, like Twitter accounts with egg avatars and 15 followers. They are formatted like the accounts of real people and are often operated by real military personnel (who run dozens at a time) to give the appearance of total legitimacy. We also know, as NBC reported in October, that the FBI has been using similar technology over the past few years to lure wannabe online jihadists:

[A review of Federal Court cases by NBC] shows that undercover FBI agents or informants first identified or connected with the suspects via social media in at least four cases, using fake social media identities to engage them and, in Sheikh's case, possibly engaging in "catfishing" by luring him into a personal relationship with a phony online persona. Agents also created a "false-flag" or "honeypot" Facebook page to help snare him.

The actual court transcript describes in further detail the fake “al Nusra” Facebook page and fake “al-Nusra nurse” the FBI set up to lure Mr. Sheikh: As the FBI would testify under cross examination:

Yes. The CHS (Confidential Human Source) had a Facebook page as well set at the direction of the FBI. Similar types of posts, the Islamic extremism point of view are on this Facebook page….

This type of social media infiltration, marked by increasingly sophisticated sockpuppeting software and mood analysis, is quickly becoming the preferred battleground for MISO (formerly known as “PsyOps or “psychological warfare”). While this may sound benign when targeting the evil “terrorists," in an age of global, real-time information sharing, compartmentalizing these types of militarized information campaigns is all but impossible. If NATO is countering “false” Russian narratives” on Twitter by using sockpuppets and other forms of modern psychological warfare, these efforts will undoubtedly bleed over into the average American’s social media experience. This fact should creep out even the most committed anti-Putin partisans.

Adam Johnson is a freelance journalist; formerly he was a founder of the hardware startup Brightbox. Follow him on Twitter at @adamjohnsonnyc.

Google "Bill Clinton rape"

CONFIRMED: ‘US planes have been airdropping weapons and foodstuff for ISIL’

Iraqi Commander: Tapped Communications Confirms US Aids to ISIL 

Millennium Report via FARS News Agency

TEHRAN (FNA)- A commander of Iraq’s popular forces disclosed that wiretapping of ISIL’s communications has confirmed the reports that the US planes have been airdropping food and arms supplies for the Takfiri terrorists.

“The wiretapped ISIL communications by Iraqi popular forces have revealed that the US planes have been dropping weapons and foodstuff for the Takfiri terrorist group,” Commander of Iraq’s Ali Akbar Battalion told FNA on Wednesday.

He noted that tapping on ISIL disclosed the terrorist group’s regular contacts with the US army, and said, “They exchanged sentences like if they would have a share of the ammunition dropped near (Spiker Military Base) or responses such as ‘you will also receive your share’.”

“The US forces by dropping weapons and ammunition for ISIL, specially in Yassreb, Al-Ramadi and near Spiker Base in Hay al-Qadessiya have provided a lot of help to the ISIL,” he added.

Many similar reports by Iraqi officials and forces have surfaced in the last few months. 

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Surveillance is Security: Big Brother unleashes the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act

John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute

Nothing you write, say, text, tweet or share via phone or computer is private anymore.

This is the new normal in America today.

A process which started shortly after 9/11 has grown into a full-fledged campaign of warrantless surveillance, electronic tracking and data mining, carried out by federal agents who have been given carte blanche access to the vast majority of electronic communications in America. Their methods completely undermine constitution safeguards, and yet no federal agency, president, court or legislature has stepped up to halt this assault on our rights.

In fact, Congress, the courts, and the president (starting with George W. Bush and expanding exponentially under Barack Obama) have actively helped to erect this electronic concentration camp in which we are now imprisoned.

A good case in point is the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), formerly known as CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act). Sold to the public as necessary for protecting us against cyber attacks or internet threats such as hacking, this Orwellian exercise in tyranny-masquerading-as-security actually makes it easier for the government to spy on Americans, while officially turning Big Business into a government snitch.

Be warned: this cybersecurity bill is little more than a wolf in sheep's clothing or, as longtime critic Senator Ron Wyden labeled it, "a surveillance bill by another name."  

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France Moves to Make ‘Conspiracy Theories’ Illegal by Government Decree

21st Century Wire

Political elites and super-bureaucrats are worried. It's becoming harder to control consensus reality.

A history stitched together by lies and cover-ups, political assassinations, slight-of-hand false flag deceptions, secret societies, dual loyalties and stolen fortunes - this have been the privilege of ruling elites for centuries.

Putting aside history's 'big ticket' items though, the real reason for this authoritarian trend is much more fundamental. By knocking out their intellectual competition, political elites and their media moguls hope to minimalize, and thus eliminate any alternative analysis and opinion by applying the completely open-ended and arbitrary label of "extremist" to speech. They want to wind back the clock, where a pre-internet, monolithic corporate media cartel held a monopoly on ideas.

Although France has taken the lead in this inter-governmental effort (see below), the preliminary assault began this past fall with British Prime Minster David Cameron publicly announcing on two separate occasions, that all of these so-called 'conspiracy theories' (anything which challenges the official orthodoxy) should be deemed as "extremist" and equivalent to "terrorist" and should be purged from society on the grounds of 'national security'. The first came with Cameron's warped speech at the UN, and afterwards, a similar charge was made by the UK leader against anyone who dares press the issue of institutional paedophilia and child abuse.  

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Interview: The Saker speaks with Gilad Atzmon

The Saker

It has been already 6 years since I interviewed Gilad for the first time and when a friend recently suggested that it was time for a new conversation, I immediately agreed, as did Gilad who, in spite of his over-booked and hectic lifestyle took the time to reply to my questions. Gilad is, in my opinion, not only the most original and talented jazz musician currently composing and playing (make sure to get his latest CD "The Whistle Blower"), he is also an extremely profound philosopher who has the amazing courage not only to ask the key questions, but to also answer them. His book "The Wandering Who" is, I strongly believe, a must read for anybody wanting to see through the "fog" of modern "Jewish anti-Zionism". As somebody who has gotten his share of hate mail, I can only begin to imagine the kind of hate-filled poison which Gilad has had to put up with for his courage and even though he will not speak about it, I will say that it takes exceptional courage and moral strength to do what Gilad did and is still doing. So, with no hyperbole at all, but quite literally, I will say that Gilad Atzmon is a modern hero whose courage and phenomenal intellect will, I am sure, eventually be recognized as one of the most brilliant ones of our time. I am deeply honored that he considers me to be a friend. 

The Saker

Q&A with Gilad Atzmon

The Saker: Since our last interview in 2009 the world has changed a lot and in many ways. In your opinion, has the global resistance to the Empire grown stronger or weaker over these years and why? What about the current regime in Israel, do you see it weakening or not? 

Gilad Atzmon: It all depends on how you define the 'Empire.' Is the empire the market forces that drive global capitalism? Is it the Neocons who push us into Zionist wars, one after the other? Or maybe it is the tyranny of correctness that suppresses our ability to think authentically? Is it possible that these three are mere symptoms of an obscure impetus we are yet to be able to define or even grasp?

In my recent writing I argue that Jewish power is the ability to silence criticism of Jewish power. This observation helps us to adopt a transcendental take on issues of the 'empire' and the negative powers that dominate our lives. Instead of talking about the empire, we must first identify the forces that prevent us from talking about the empire. We are getting very close to that bone now.

A growing number of commentators are now willing openly to challenge Jewish power. I assume that the rapidly growing Jewish fear of 'anti Semitism' relates to the fact that many Jews are also fearful of the extent of the power that is held by other Jews and is closely related to the 'empire'.

This leads us to Israel and its Jewish Lobby. I think that in the last two years we have witnessed a clear transformation. Western leadership says no to Zionist warmongering. I guess they have had enough of these disastrous futile wars.
 
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The Rise of Russia and the 'End of the World'

Joe Quinn
Sott.net

"What the darkness cannot possess, it seeks to destroy"

You've probably read all sorts of theories that seek to explain the causes of the 'new cold war' in which we find ourselves. From the embarrassingly simplistic "Putin's a Hitler" offered by the Western press to the more nuanced idea of an 'energy war' between US-Europe-Russia. The truth about why we are where we are right now, as a species, however, is actually fairly simple. But to understand it you'll have to ditch the idea of a 'new cold war' and replace it with 'the 120-year-old war that never ended'.

Over 100 years ago, in 1904, one of the founding fathers of both geopolitics and geostrategy, Oxford University graduate and co-founder of the London School of Economics, Sir Halford Mackinder, proposed a theory that expanded geopolitical analysis from the local or regional level to a global level. Geopolitics is the study (by people in positions of power) of the effects of geography (human and physical) on international politics and international relations. In layman's terms, this means the study of how best to control as much of the world - its resources, human and natural - as possible. When you or I think about the world, we think of a big, complicated place with billions of people. When the 'elite' think of the world, they think of a globe, or a map, with nation states on it that can, and should, according to them, be shaped and changed en masse.

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Too ‘dramatic’: Monsanto shuns WHO verdict that Roundup ‘probably’ causes cancer

RT

The active ingredient in the world’s most widely-used Roundup herbicide has been classified as “probably” carcinogenic to humans by a branch of the World Health Organization. The agrochemical giant Monsanto, has immediately rejected the new conclusions.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), in their latest study said that there was “convincing evidence” that glyphosate in Roundup can cause cancer in lab animals.
 
St. Louis-based Monsanto was not pleased with WHO conclusions, claiming that scientific data does not support their assumptions and urging the health watchdog to hold a meeting to explain the findings. 

“We don't know how IARC could reach a conclusion that is such a dramatic departure from the conclusion reached by all regulatory agencies around the globe,” Philip Miller, Monsanto’s vice-president of global regulatory affairs, said in a brief statement released soon after the report was published. 

Read more
 

Finland schools: Subjects are out and ‘topics’ are in as country reforms its education system

Comment: sounds like a refreshing change geared towards real learning. 

------------------------

"... education to  promote character, resilience and communication skills, rather than just pushing children through “exam factories”.

The Independent

For years, Finland has been the by-word for a successful education system, perched at the top of international league tables for literacy and numeracy.

Only far eastern countries such as Singapore and China outperform the Nordic nation in the influential Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings. Politicians and education experts from around the world – including the UK – have made pilgrimages to Helsinki in the hope of identifying and replicating the secret of its success.

Which makes it all the more remarkable that Finland is about to embark on one of the most radical education reform programmes ever undertaken by a nation state – scrapping traditional “teaching by subject” in favour of “teaching by topic”.

“This is going to be a big change in education in Finland that we’re just beginning,” said Liisa Pohjolainen, who is in charge of youth and adult education in Helsinki – the capital city at the forefront of the reform programme.

Pasi Silander, the city’s development manager, explained: “What we need now is a different kind of education to prepare people for working life.

“Young people use quite advanced computers. In the past the banks had lots of bank clerks totting up figures but now that has totally changed.

“We therefore have to make the changes in education that are necessary for industry and modern society.”

Subject-specific lessons – an hour of history in the morning, an hour of geography in the afternoon – are already being phased out for 16-year-olds in the city’s upper schools. They are being replaced by what the Finns call “phenomenon” teaching – or teaching by topic. For instance, a teenager studying a vocational course might take “cafeteria services” lessons, which would include elements of maths, languages (to help serve foreign customers), writing skills and communication skills.

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Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité – French Government Begins Blocking Websites it Doesn’t Like

Michael Krieger
Liberty Blitzkrieg

There’s no better way to show terrorists you mean business than by preemptively ending freedom before the infidels have a chance to.

Ever since the tragic Charlie Hebdo terror attacks, France has responded by turning its back on decency, freedom and civilization itself. While the counterproductive authoritarian government response to terror attacks throughout the Western world has been long noted by myself and countless others, no country has demonstrated a more enthusiastic embrace of fascism and irrationality than France.

The writing was on the wall shortly after the attacks. I noted it in the post, French Authorities Demonstrate Defense of Free Speech by Arresting 54 People for Free Speech. Here’s an excerpt:

While I’m sure many of the millions of French citizens who marched in solidarity with the victims of the recent senseless violence and in the name of free speech came with genuine intentions, the corps of professional authoritarians, I mean politicians, who tagged along in order to pose for a staged photo op, clearly had less than noble intentions. Indeed, they likely spent the entire time scheming as to how the tragedy might be used to strip more rights away from their citizens, and it didn’t take long for the apparent hypocrisy to manifest itself in real life.

Authorities said 54 people had been arrested for hate speech and defending terrorism in the last week. The crackdown came as Charlie Hebdo’s defiant new issue sold out before dawn around Paris, with scuffles at kiosks over dwindling copies of the satirical weekly that fronted the Prophet Muhammad anew on its cover.

France has been tightening security and searching for accomplices since the terror attacks began, but none of the 54 people mentioned Wednesday have been linked to the attacks. That’s raising questions about whether Hollande’s Socialist government is impinging on the very freedom of speech that it so vigorously defends when it comes to Charlie Hebdo.

In that post, I mentioned the case of a controversial comedian, Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, who was arrested for Facebook comments. Yesterday, we discovered he was found guilty. I shared my sentiments on Twitter:

Just take a moment to think about how completely idiotic this is: pic.twitter.com/qw3cWERML0
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) March 18, 2015

Yes, you read that right. He was found guilty of a joke.
Not to be outdone, French authorities are hard at work censoring the internet generally. TechDirt reported the following:

We had been noting, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France, how the country that then held a giant “free speech” rally appeared to be, instead, focusing on cracking down on free speech at every opportunity. And target number one: the internet. Earlier this week, the Interior Minister of France — with no court review or adversarial process — ordered five websites to not only be blocked in France, but that anyone who visits any of the sites get redirected to a scary looking government website, saying:

You are being redirected to this official website since your computer was about to connect with a page that provokes terrorist acts or condones terrorism publicly.

Except… it already appears that France is really just censoring websites with messages it doesn’t like. In that first batch was a site called “islamic-news.info.” The owner of that site not only notes that he was never first contacted to “remove” whatever material was deemed terrorist supporting (as required by the law), but that nothing in what he had posted was supporting terrorism.

But, with no judicial review, no due process at all, the French government declared the site to be a terrorist supporter and now it’s gone.

On the positive side, France, if “they” really do hate you for your freedoms, pretty soon you won’t have anything to worry about.