What the night sky would look like if you could see every asteroid

Eliza Sankar-Gorton
The Huffington Post

If you think asteroids are rare, it's only because they're so small and dark and hard to see. An eye-opening new video (above) shows what the night sky would look like if we could see the near-Earth asteroids astronomers have discovered -- it's quite a swarm.

"We're essentially flying around the sun through this population of asteroids with our eyes closed," Scott Manley, the astronomer who created the animation and posted it to YouTube, says in the video.

The interactive video lets you pan around the night sky as if you were standing in the darkness with a powerful telescope. Manley created it to spotlight the all-too-real danger that asteroids pose to humanity.

Thinking about the threat isn't much fun, but we have to say that watching the video is. Enjoy! 

Another great flood: time to build an ark?

Andrei Kislyakov
Sputnik

The world geological community is warning that today's seismic activity on our planet is nothing compared with what's to come.

Over the past three years, Pakistan, for example, has been hit by dozens of earthquakes. In March 2005, 80,000 people died under the rubble there. On October 30, the last time nature went on the rampage, there were hundreds of victims. Tens of thousands of people drowned during an overwhelming Asian tsunami at the end of 2004. China and Afghanistan have been rocked by quakes again more recently.

These natural disasters, which have swept our planet in recent years, indicate that the world has entered an era not only of a political, but also of climatic instability. Most scientists - biologists and environmentalists - tend to blame the human race for the catastrophic climate change on the Earth. No doubt, the greenhouse effect due to industrial activity plays a considerable role in global warming, but there are other reasons worth considering. The Earth is rotating around its own axis slower. The International Earth Rotation Service has regularly added a second or two to the length of a 24-hour day in recent years.

This is the main reason, according to Igor Kopylov, professor at Moscow Energy Institute, why the planet - a gigantic electrical machine - has had its energy balance upset. He expressed this viewpoint in 2004. Kopylov is convinced that the Earth has entered the first phase of a global change. A weakening of the Earth's magnetic field was first registered early in the 20th century, and a consistent drop in the speed of rotation, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It has been established that when the Earth's rotation slows by one second a year, it releases a tremendous amount of heat, hundreds of times the volume of energy released by human industrial activity.

If we accept that all processes on Earth run according to cosmic cycles, which, in turn, depend on the Solar System's position in our Galaxy, then humankind may be facing another Great Flood.

The Solar System, including the Earth, travels through the Galaxy in spiraling elliptic paths. The cycle time for the larger spiral is 200-210 million years, and for the smaller one, which determines minor galactic cycles, 26,000 years. Correspondingly, half a cycle lasts 130 centuries. This period almost exactly coincides with the date of the last Flood, the occurrence of which was real. The myths and legends of many peoples including that of the Bible recorded the event.

The Flood has been dated rather precisely: at 11,100 BC. If we accept that the civilized society on Earth has been developing for 400,000 years, then this period saw 30 great floods, and we are witnessing the beginnings of the thirty-first flood.

The cosmic cycles are so gigantically long by human standards that they have little impact on the life of people, but the active initial phase of the galactic cycle is of vital importance for the development of civilization. In the view of Russian scientists, the Earth currently finds itself at precisely this point in the cycle.

The transitional process in the electrical machine "planet Earth" can be divided into three phases. During the first - lasting 300 to 500 years - a relatively quick change in the direction of cross current (according to the law of electric machines) will alter the Earth's magnetic field, with the Northern magnetic pole shifting to the eastern part of the Arctic Ocean. 


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Bill allows government to revoke Americans’ passports without charges or trial

Police State USA

A bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives would allow the government to restrict Americans’ travel through the revocation of passports based upon mere suspicions of unscrupulous activity. This bill represents another dangerous step forward in the war on terror and the disintegration of American due process.

H.R. 237, the “FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organization) Passport Revocation Act of 2015,” will allow the U.S. Secretary of State the unchecked authority to prohibit individuals from traveling internationally. According to the bill, the Secretary may unilaterally revoke (or refuse to issue) a passport from “any individual whom the Secretary has determined has aided, assisted, abetted, or otherwise helped an organization the Secretary has designated as a foreign terrorist organization pursuant to section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1189).”

The bill did not bother to define what the terms “aided, assisted, abetted, or otherwise helped” actually mean, in legal terms. The power has been left open-ended so that it can mean whatever the secretary wants it to mean. Needless to say, a bill like this would be easily abused.

The travel restriction requires no presumption of innocence for the targeted individual; no explanation; no public presentation of evidence; no opportunity for a defense; no checks and balances on the power. The bill does not outline any appeals process for the targeted individual. The only stipulation is that the Secretary of State must issue a report to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs — “classified or unclassified.” The bill does not state that either committee can reverse the secretary’s decisions.

H.R. 237 passed the House on July 21, 2015, on a voice vote (meaning no accountability for its Congressional supporters). It is being sold as a necessary measure to stop “turned Americans,” as the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), calls them.

“The House has now acted to locate and contain these traitors,” Rep. Poe said in a press release. “These Benedict Arnold traitors who have turned against America and joined the ranks of foreign radical terrorist armies should lose all rights afforded to our citizens.”

Poe’s statement about “losing all rights” is rather startling, considering that about half of the Bill of Rights is explicitly written to protect people suspected of crimes from being abused by overzealous government! The dangers of a government wantonly revoking the rights of citizens just because the a bureaucrat puts them on a list would be severe indeed; fitting of a police state. Recall that these individuals can be targeted without even facing official charges of wrongdoing.

The FTO Passport Revocation Act must pass the U.S. Senate before it reaches the president. Readers are advised to contact their senators to oppose this overreaching executive power.

{ SUPPORT POLICE STATE USA } 

Fabrication in BBC Panorama “Saving Syria’s Children”: Substitution of “Napalm Bomb” Footage

BBC Upholds Complaint

 

Robert Stuart

Global Research, July 25, 2015

bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com

 

The below admission from the BBC that its substitution of Syria footage between two 2014 broadcasts breaches its own Editorial Guidelines on accuracy is a modest victory in the battle to attract scrutiny to the wider charges that one of the reports in question (at least) was largely, if not entirely, fabricated.  

For almost two years I have pursued the question of whether scenes of the aftermath of an alleged incendiary attack on an Aleppo school – filmed by BBC staff and first broadcast as UK legislators voted on military intervention in Syria – were staged for the purposes of propaganda.   

Many compelling evidence points have arisen: the widely contradictory accounts of precisely when the alleged attack occurred – including disagreement between the BBC reporter and cameraman concerned; the testimony of a former Free Syrian Army commander stationed in the vicinity denying that an attack occurred; a fortuitously-grabbed screencap of one of the alleged teenage victims grinning broadly into the camera; “victims” sharing the same “costume”, and, most astonishing of all, the self-identification of a “victim” seen in footage from the day (in reality a 52 year old Netherlands resident) who contacted me on Facebook, anxious that she may be recognised.

The backgrounds of the two doctors featured in the BBC’s report are of considerable interest: Dr Saleyha Ahsan, a former British army captain, has a personal connection with a military officer who runs large-scale medical simulation exercises, employing professional casualty make-up artists; Dr Ahsan’s colleague, Dr Rola Hallam, is the daughter of Dr Mousa al-Kurdi, who is “involved politically with the Syrian National Council”. The co-founder of Hand in Hand for Syria, the “humanitarian” charity for which the doctors are filmed volunteering, has expressed bloodthirsty promises to bring Assad to justice “NO MATTER WHAT LIVES IT TAKES, NO MATTER HOW MUCH CATASTROPHE IT MAKES”.  A Hand in Hand for Syria nurse seen working alongside Drs Ahsan and Hallam is pictured elsewhere tending to the wounds of a child opposition fighter.

Very many other discrepancies are noted on my blog. It is hard to escape the conclusion, voiced by former UK ambassador Craig Murray, that the BBC’s ‘Saving Syria’s Children’ “documentary” represents the fruit of a collaboration between BBC personnel and UK state security services and marks a unique and historic breach of trust between the corporation, its UK licence fee-payer funders and its millions of viewers and listeners worldwide.

Robert Stuart

bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com/
 

Global Derivatives: $1.5 Quadrillion Time Bomb

Stephen Lendman
Global Research

When investing becomes gambling, bad endings follow. The next credit crunch could make 2008-09 look mild by comparison. Bank of International Settlements(BIS) data show around $700 trillion in global derivatives.

Along with credit default swaps and other exotic instruments, the total notional derivatives value is about $1.5 quadrillion – about 20% more than in 2008, beyond what anyone can conceive, let alone control if unexpected turmoil strikes.

The late Bob Chapman predicted it. So does Paul Craig Roberts. It could “destroy Western civilization,” he believes. Financial deregulation turned Wall Street into a casino with no rules except unrestrained making money. Catastrophic failure awaits. It’s just a matter of time.

Ellen Brown calls the “derivatives casino…a last-ditch attempt to prop up a private pyramid scheme” – slowly crumbling under its own weight.

For years, Warren Buffett called derivatives “financial time bombs” – for economies and ordinary people.

Unless collateralized or guaranteed, their worth depends on the creditworthiness of counter-parties. Earnings on derivatives are “wildly overstated,” Buffett explains – because they’re “based on estimates whose inaccuracy may not be exposed for many years.”

When corporate bosses ask financial executives how profits look in any quarter, they, in turn, ask how much do you want, then manipulate things to oblige when told.

Since 2008, too-big-to-fail banks consolidated to much greater size than ever. They’re financial and political powerhouses controlling world economies to their own advantage.

Civilization’s only hope is smashing them – dismantling them into small, impotent pieces, or ideally putting money back in public hands where it belongs.

It’s too important to be privately controlled. Financial predators entrap small/weak nations into unrepayable debt peonage like Greece, bleed them dry, and thirdworldize developed ones into dystopian backwaters – while they grow richer and more powerful than ever ahead of the whole corrupt system going bust, decimating billions worldwide in greater human misery than already.

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3-Year-Old London Child Deemed "Extremist"; Placed In Government Reeducation Program

Mike Krieger
Liberty Blitzkrieg

The United Kingdom has gone batshit crazy. There’s simply no other way to put it. I warned about Britain’s “war on toddler terrorists” earlier this year in the post: The War on Toddler Terrorists – Britain Wants to Force Nursery School Teachers to Identify “Extremist” Children. Here’s an excerpt:

Nursery school staff and registered childminders must report toddlers at risk of becoming terrorists, under counter-terrorism measures proposed by the Government.

The directive is contained in a 39-page consultation document issued by the Home Office in a bid to bolster its Prevent anti-terrorism plan.

The document accompanies the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, currently before parliament. It identifies nurseries and early years childcare providers, along with schools and universities, as having a duty “to prevent people being drawn into terrorism”.

Never fear good citizens of Great Britain. While your government actively does everything in its power to protect criminal financial oligarchs and powerful pedophiles, her majesty draws the line at toddler thought crime. We learn from the Independent:

A three-year-old child from London is one of hundreds of young people in the capital who have been tipped as potential future radicals and extremists.

As reported by the Evening Standard, 1,069 people have been put in the government’s anti-extremism ‘Channel’ process, the de-radicalization program at the heart of the Government’s ‘Prevent’ strategy.

The three-year-old in the program is from the borough of Tower Hamlets, and was a member of a family group that had been showing suspect behavior.

Since September 2014, 400 under 18s, including teenagers and children, have been referred to the scheme.

The fact that this story broke on the same day that chairman of the UK’s Lords Privileges and Conduct Committee, Lord John Sewel, was caught on video snorting cocaine off the breast of a prostitute with a £5 note, is simply priceless. You just can’t make this stuff up.

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Poll: Overwhelming US Majority Says Israel Should Receive No Aid Boost due to US / Iran “Deal”

Robert Barsocchini
Washington's Blog

67.8% of respondents to a Google Consumer Survey said Israel should receive no compensation for the US finalizing a deal with Iran over its civilian nuclear program, which was begun at the behest of the US when Washington’s puppet, the Shah, one of the world’s worst human rights violators, ruled over Iran.

Obama is currently offering Israel increased aid to compensate for the agreement.  Israel is the biggest recipient of US aid at over $3 billion per year, and Obama has increased aid to Israel after each of Israel’s major massacres in the Gaza refugee camp since Obama assumed power.

The major study of the issue of citizen impact on US government policy, conducted in 2014 by research teams out of Princeton and Northwestern universities, looked at nearly 2,000 policies and found that average-income US citizens have “near zero, statistically non-significant” impact on them, while the most affluent citizens essentially dictate policy.  This dynamic has been illustrated by previous research, such as by Larry Bartels of Vanderbilt.

Another issue to watch for: the “world’s most influential” think tank, the Washington-based Brookings Institute, has suggested (among other options), as a way for the US to gain dominance over Iran, making it appear that Iran has rejected a “great” deal, then using Israel to attack Iran.  (Note the above poll asks if Israel should be given long-range bombers and “bunker-buster” explosives.)

The US and Israel have both continued to make threats of force, criminal acts under the UN charter adopted by both countries, against Iran since the agreement, and Obama’s anti-democratic offering of increased aid to Israel could possibly signal that the “leave it to Bibi” strategy is still being entertained, along with any number of other goals.

Author is a US-based researcher focusing on force dynamics, national and global.  @DirtyTruths

Musk, Wozniak and Hawking urge ban on warfare AI and autonomous weapons

Comment: Good luck with that guys ...

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

Samuel Gibbs
The Guardian

Over 1,000 high-profile artificial intelligence experts and leading researchers have signed an open letter warning of a “military artificial intelligence arms race” and calling for a ban on “offensive autonomous weapons”.

The letter, presented at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was signed by Tesla’s Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Google DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis and professor Stephen Hawking along with 1,000 AI and robotics researchers.

The letter states: “AI technology has reached a point where the deployment of [autonomous weapons] is – practically if not legally – feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms.”

The authors argue that AI can be used to make the battlefield a safer place for military personnel, but that offensive weapons that operate on their own would lower the threshold of going to battle and result in greater loss of human life.

Should one military power start developing systems capable of selecting targets and operating autonomously without direct human control, it would start an arms race similar to the one for the atom bomb, the authors argue. Unlike nuclear weapons, however, AI requires no specific hard-to-create materials and will be difficult to monitor.

“The endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow. The key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting,” said the authors.

Toby Walsh, professor of AI at the University of New South Wales said: “We need to make a decision today that will shape our future and determine whether we follow a path of good. We support the call by a number of different humanitarian organisations for a UN ban on offensive autonomous weapons, similar to the recent ban on blinding lasers.”

Musk and Hawking have warned that AI is “our biggest existential threat” and that the development of full AI could “spell the end of the human race”. But others, including Wozniak have recently changed their minds on AI, with the Apple co-founder saying that robots would be good for humans, making them like the “family pet and taken care of all the time”.

At a UN conference in Geneva in April discussing the future of weaponry, including so-called “killer robots”, the UK opposed a ban on the development of autonomous weapons, despite calls from various pressure groups, including the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.

UK Government Admits 250,000 Porn Websites Visited On Parliament PCs

Zero Hedge

Prime Minister David Cameron vowed in 2013 to block pornographic material from "the darkest corners of the internet."

Cameron announced in July that most households in the UK would have pornography blocked by their internet provider unless they chose to receive it.

Online pornography was "corroding childhood" and "distorting" children's understanding of sex and relationships, he argued.

The UK's biggest internet service providers have agreed to the filters scheme meaning it should cover 95% of homes.

But one of Mr Cameron's advisers, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, said the plans were "absolutely ridiculous".

It appears he better start at home... 

Thanks to a Freedom of Information request by the Daily Express, RT reports, over 247,000 attempts were made to visit X-rated websites from the UK Parliament’s computer network last year, with the numbers spiking during parliamentary recess in April...

Attempts to access more than 42,000 sites classed as pornographic were made during April alone last year, totaling more than 1,300 each day.

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Volcanoes in Japan, Colombia and Chile spew ash – Colombian airport closed

The Extinction Protocol

July 2015 – JAPAN – Ōwaku Valley, a part of Mount Hakone with high volcanic activity, has been showing more signs of an impending eruption recently. The smoke which regularly issues from its vents was mingled with ash, turning noticeably gray, for about ten seconds around noon on July 21. On June 30 and July 1, it had also erupted on a very small scale, ejecting material to a distance of over 100 meters (328 feet), which technically meets the qualifications for an “eruption.” (The distance material from the recent eruption was ejected has not yet been measured.) However, tremors associated with volcanic eruptions have not been recorded. According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, “it has the characteristics of an eruption, but that would have an effect on disaster prevention by inciting residents’ anxieties, so the term ‘eruption’ is not appropriate.” – Rocket News 24

Colombian Airport closed: Colombia’s Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted in an ash cloud on Sunday, prompting authorities to temporarily close two airports in the area. The civil aeronautics agency said it closed airports at Manizales and Pereira as a precaution after the 8:30 am (1330 GMT) eruption. This resulted in the cancellation of at least 16 flights on Sunday. A major eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz in 1985 melted the volcano’s snowcap, unleashing mudslides that wiped out the town of Armero, killing an estimated 23,000 people. The volcano, which has been active for an estimated 150,000 years, is 220 kilometers (137 miles) west of Bogota. - Yahoo News

Chile: The Cabulco volcano in southern Chile has erupted twice in the last 24 hours after being dormant for decades. And there may be more action on the way. CBSN’s Anne-Marie Green and David Begnaud discuss what geologists are monitoring. –Yahoo News

The Extinction Protocol

 

G4S, the controversial British outsourcing firm's for-profit juvenile detention facility 'a disgrace to Florida', says grand jury

The Guardian 

 

G4S, the controversial British outsourcing firm behind the disastrous security provision at the London Olympics, has been accused of running a “disgraceful” juvenile detention centre in Florida.

 

 The Highlands Youth Academy (HYA) in Avon Park, a facility for young men aged 16 to 19 that was the site of a riot involving more than 130 children two years ago, was described as “a disgrace to the state of Florida” by a grand jury report that called for it to be closed down.

 

 The excoriating 21-page report, unsealed last week, details a string of criticisms, including dilapidated buildings, unclean sanitary facilities, undertrained and poorly equipped staff and failure to report incidents of children escaping.  

 

“What we have discovered at the Highlands Youth Academy simply cannot be what our Legislature and state leaders have intended for our juvenile justice system,” the jurors wrote. “While the citizens are essentially being ripped off – the juveniles are being even more poorly served. The Highlands Youth Academy should cease to exist.” 

 

The grand jury called the Highlands Youth Academy’s conditions a ‘disgrace’. Photograph: State attorney's office of the 10th judicial circuit in Florida G4S, which is set to make a $4m profit from the facility over five years and runs 28 other juvenile detention centres in the state, said the grand jury’s report contained “multiple factual errors and misstatements”. 

 

Photos released to the Guardian by the state attorney’s office reveal living quarters described by the grand jury as “disgraceful”: bedrooms with exposed plywood walls where children slept on steel bunk beds, and bathrooms with unpainted plaster and more plywood with peeling and dilapidated fixtures and fittings. 

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Default Nears: UBS’s Puerto Rico Bond Funds Implode, “Collateral Value” Drops to Zero, Investors Screwed

Wolf Street 

 “We believe that the probability of default is approaching 100 percent, and that losses given default are substantial,” Moody’s wrote on Wednesday about Puerto Rico’s $72 billion in bonds that were stuffed into numerous conservative-sounding bond funds spread across America’s retirement portfolios. “Bondholder recoveries will be lowest on securities lacking explicit contractual or other legal protections,” the report went on, according to Bloomberg.About $26 billion in bonds fall into this category, issued by entities such as the Government Development Bank, Highways and Transportation Authority, Infrastructure Finance Authority, and Municipal Finance Authority.

Investors in these bonds might recover only 35 cents on the dollar.

Recovery rates for bonds with stronger investor protections, such as general obligation bonds, would likely range from 65% to 80%, Moody’s said.

But those recovery rates, as dire as they seem, only apply if you own the bonds outright. If you own those bonds in a bond fund, the scenario may look much, much worse, according to what UBS just did.

Turns out, some of these bonds were underwritten by UBS and stuffed with other Puerto Rico bonds into its own Puerto Rico closed-end bond funds and sold to its own unsuspecting clients. These funds aren’t traded; UBS sets the value.

And UBS, despite the well-known problems Puerto Rico has been having for years, wasn’t shy about loading up its clients up with these bonds, apparently, according to Reuters:

Many UBS brokers had misgivings about the funds even as UBS’ Puerto Rico chairman was pushing them to sell the bonds, according to a voice recording, reported by Reuters in February.

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Pre-Crime Is Upon Us - "Schools Assess Students' Threat Level" From Kindergarten Up

Marc Slavo
SHTFPlan.com

Minority Report, eat your heart out. The real system is worse than anyone could have imagined.

By now, everybody knows that the NSA and a host of other alphabet agencies are spying on Americans, collecting virtually every piece of communications data they exchange, regardless of whether or not they are “doing anything wrong.”

But what are they doing with it?

Apart from its value in consumer and marketing fields, the data is used to create “threat assessments” and put a black mark on the record of anyone who the authorities deem troublesome that will follow them throughout their career, and make it harder for individuals to get a job, qualify for a loan, travel, or enjoy the rights of a (now once) free society.

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Spies, Lords and Predators: Australian 60 minutes program exposes British political child rapists

60 minutes
via Sott.net

Australian investigative TV program 60 minutes recently aired a program that exposes the fact that high level British politicians, government ministers, intelligence, police and military chiefs have all been involved in decades-long, systematic sexual abuse, rape and murder of hundreds or perhaps thousands of children as young as 8 years old.

This is not a case of a 'few bad apples' but rather a pervasive culture among the British 'elite' where the bodies, hearts, minds and souls of young children are effectively 'consumed' by individuals in positions of almost absolute power. In addition, the crimes of these vicious predators have been deliberately covered up through the use of blackmail and death threats.

No one should be under any illusion that the alleged 'investigation' being conducted by the British government will reveal the real truth or see justice served, because this is merely a case of the guilty investigating themselves.

30 min video:

See also: Westminster Paedophile Ring

 

The murder of Sandra Bland and America's 'color revolution'

Joe Quinn
Sott.net

Sandra Bland. Remember the name, if you can. She's just the latest in a growing, publicly-known list of American citizens who have been either physically abused or murdered by US police for having the temerity to question their 'authority'.

On July 10th 2015, Sandra Bland had recently arrived in Prairie View, Waller County, Texas from Illinois to begin a new job at her alma mater, A&M University, a historically black school 40 miles northwest of Houston. Texas has been described as the most racist state in the USA, and Waller County the most racist county in Texas. Segregation there is a way of life, from the cradle to grave, literally; cemeteries in the county are divided between black and white, with significantly more money being spent on the upkeep of white cemeteries.

While driving in Prairie View that day, Waller County trooper Brian Encina, with nothing better to do than harass drivers for minor traffic "violations" that endanger no one, pulled Bland over for not signaling a lane change.

The police dash-cam video of the encounter shows that, from the get-go, Bland expressed her irritation at being stopped and fined for no good reason. She was, however, fully compliant with the officer to the extent she was required, giving him her license and registration when asked. Noticing her irritation, Encina disingenuously asked Bland "what's wrong?" This was Encina's first attempt to intimidate Bland, yet she wasn't in the mood to be cowed, and told him why she was irritated. The trooper made it clear that his question was not, in fact, sincere, by asking "are you done?" The defining moment in the encounter then occurred when Encina asked Bland to put out her cigarette. Bland refused, stating that it was her car and her right to smoke in it if she pleased and the trooper had no authority to demand otherwise. Two justified challenges to his power was all this jumped-up little authoritarian could take, and he demanded that Bland get out of her car. Bland continued to assert her rights by refusing and repeatedly asked why she was required to do so. 

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Earth 2.0: What we know about Kepler 452b, the most Earth-like planet ever discovered

The Independent 

Nasa scientists have announced the discovery of Kepler 452b, also known as 'Earth 2.0', an earth-like planet in our galaxy. 

Over the course of years of data-gathering by the Kepler space telescope and even more analysis and work here on Earth, scientists confirmed the existence of the distant exoplanet, which is the most earth-like planet ever discovered.

Although the planet is far too far away to photograph, advanced Nasa technology means we know a surprising amount about this 'New Earth'.

[...] 

It's the most similar planet to Earth that has ever been discovered

Beginning the conference, John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for Nasa's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said: "Today we're announcing the discovery of an exoplanet that as far as we can tell is a pretty close cousin of Earth. It's the closest so far. It's Earth 2.0." 

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Americans Are Fleeing These US Cities In Droves

Zero Hedge


What do El Paso, New York, and Chicago have in common? They are among the top 20 cities from which Americans are fleeing in droves...

The map below shows the 20 metropolitan areas that lost the greatest share of local people to other parts of the country between July 2013 and July 2014, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. The New York City area ranked 2nd, losing about a net 163,000 U.S. residents, closely followed by a couple surrounding suburbs in Connecticut. Honolulu ranked fourth and Los Angeles ranked 14th. The Bloomberg calculations looked at the 100 most populous U.S. metropolitan areas. 

So what's going on here? As Bloomberg notes, Michael Stoll, a professor of public policy and urban planning at the University of California Los Angeles, has an idea.

Soaring home prices are pushing local residents out and scaring away potential new ones from other parts of the country, he said. (Everyone knows how unaffordable the Manhattan area has become.)

And as Americans leave, people from abroad move in to these bustling cities to fill the vacant low-skilled jobs. They are able to do so by living in what Stoll calls "creative housing arrangements" in which they pack six to eight individuals, or two to four families, into one apartment or home. It's an arrangement that most Americans just aren't willing to pursue, and even many immigrants decide it's not for them as time goes by, he said.

El Paso, Texas, the city that residents fled from at the fastest pace, also saw a surprisingly small number of foreigners settling in given how close it is to Mexico.

"A lot of young, reasonably educated people are having a hard time finding work there," Stoll said. "They're not staying in town after they graduate," leaving for the faster-growing economies."

Source: Bloomberg

UK Establishment Closes Ranks on Anti-War Labour Leadership Front Runner

Michaela Whitton
AntiMedia

Anyone peeking behind the smokescreen of the British press this weekend (and not distracted by what the Queen did when she was five  or by David Cameron’s extremism rhetoric) may have noticed that despite the U.K. Parliament’s explicit rejection of military intervention, the U.K. has been involved in the bombing of Syria since September— and Cameron has known the whole time.

Those with eyes to see may have also noticed the establishment closing ranks on veteran left-winger, Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn. After emerging as a front-runner in the Labour leadership campaign, Corbyn appears to have become the victim of a murderous media and political attack, with first prize for slanderous onslaught going to Tory mouthpiece, The Telegraph, and a piece penned by Islam-obsessed Andrew Gilligan.

Sixteen million people chose not to vote in Britain’s general election in May. With many crippled by the thought of another five years of Tory rule, a buzz of hope is in the air at whether Corbyn’s radical spirit can rescue the people from the dark abyss of British politics.

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Jon Stewart Blew Last Chance to Ask Obama a Question

David Swanson
Washington's Blog

Jon Stewart interviewed President Obama for the last time and told jokes instead of asking questions.

If Stewart retires, where will we find someone willing to let Obama spew nonsense at such length unchallenged?

I discussed Obama’s interview on RT on Wednesday, and someone asked me to post the Youtube, but RT has to do that, not me. So here’s the gist of what I think.

Stewart said to Obama: you’ve tried bombing and overthrowing leaders and arming rebels and … what’s that new thing … oh yeah, diplomacy.

Everybody laughed.

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San Francisco could be hit by massive earthquake 'any day now', says USGS scientist

The Independent

The San Francisco Bay Area could be struck by a major earthquake "any day now", says a scientist with the US Geological Survey.

The Hayward fault historically causes a huge earthquake every 140 years and it has been 147 years since the last major quake on the fault.

Hayward caused a magnitude 4.0 earthquake on Tuesday that caused no major damage, but Tom Brocher of the USGS says it will not be long until the next massive quake, which would cause loss of life and economic damage on a large scale.

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Scale of child abuse images "shocking", many from predators in positions of power

RT

Authorities convict on average two people each day for child abuse image offences, a child support charity has revealed. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) demanded urgent action to halt the rise.

Analysis found there had been 1,000 court cases involving indecent images of children since Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to crack down on the issue in 2013. The charity further revealed that a total of 4.5 million child abuse images had been found. One in three offenders was in a position of power, which allowed them to gain access to children.

Nearly two years ago, Cameron said he would put stringent measures in place to catch individuals attempting to access indecent images of children, and promised to ensure internet companies would face legal repercussions if they didn't blacklist key search terms.

Among the offenders were doctors, teachers, police officers, scout leaders, and a magician. Only two of the convicted were women. Some 60 percent of offenders were jailed, the NSPCC said. One convict confessed to viewing indecent photos since the age of 12. More than 25 percent were prosecuted for other crimes of a sexual nature.

Head of child safety online for the NSPCC, Claire Lilley, said: "The scale of the problem is shocking and even more so because of the number of people who hold positions of trust in our communities. This is just a fragment of the hundreds of other similar convictions during the same time.

"It is a myth that there is no harm in just looking at these images. Defenseless babies and children are being molested to feed the appetite of offenders and that demand is just not going away.

"The prime minister made a bold attempt to tackle this problem, but it is clear that, two years after he called for a crackdown, the scale of the problem is proving to be massive. We need urgent action to prevent this horrendous abuse from appearing online," she added.

Karen Bradley, minister for preventing abuse and exploitation, said the government is clamping down on online child sex abuse.

She said Cameron's £10 million of extra funding was being directed towards specialist teams, which work within the National Crime Agency (NCA).

"Measures also include new collaboration between the NCA and GCHQ using the latest techniques to target online offenders, making it illegal to communicate sexually with a child, and technological developments to ensure victims of online abuse can be identified more quickly and offenders are subject to speedier justice," she said.

"The government has also prioritized child sexual abuse as a national threat and is due to make live streaming of abuse images punishable in the same way as recorded images, in order to ensure perpetrators face the toughest possible sentences,"she added.  

Did a US Naval Research Project Produce the 1st Self-Aware Robot?

Susan Posel 
Occupy Corporatism

The Rensselaer A.I. and Reasoning Lab (RAIR) have programed an artificial intelligence robot to be self-aware; meaning that the machine recognizes itself as an individual.

RAIR is funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in order to determine the moral reasoning abilities of robots being built right now. For the armed forces, robots that can enact moral reasoning “in real-world situations” could change the relationship between artificial intelligence and soldiers during deployment on a mission.

This program gives the robot the ability to recognize itself; however without the program, the robot cannot be self-aware in any understanding of the term.

Researchers used an NAO humanoid robot who already has the capability to independently move, recognize people, hear and distinguish conversations and “talk” back.

During the experiment, 3 NAO robots were programed to think 2 of them had been given a “dumbing pill”.

One NAO robot stands up of its own volition to explain that it does not know which of the other 2 robots has been dumbed. It is during this admission that the robot appears to recognize itself and corrects its previous statement; saying: “Sorry, I know now. I was able to prove that I was not given a dumbing pill.”

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Signs Of Change 2015

HawkkeyDavisChannel

MH17, one year on: What really happened, and why

Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire

 

This month marks the one year anniversary of the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 - an incident that took place against a backdrop of a brutal proxy war - pitting Kiev and its supporters in Washington DC, the EU and NATO - against rebel forces in eastern Ukraine and Russia. As with most 21^st century conflicts, truth has been the first casualty of war here.

On July 17, 2014, flight MH17 traveling east from Amsterdam, Netherlands to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - crashed near the village of Grabovo, and on the outskirts of the town of Torez just outside of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, approximately 40 km from the Ukrainian-Russian border.

To call this situation volatile would almost be an understatement. A pivotal event such as this could easily be used as a pretext for escalating not only a New Cold War between the West and Russia, but also a hot war. Only six months previously, the Ukraine found itself in the throes of a western-backed coup d'état in Kiev which tore the country apart. This was quickly followed by a snap referendum in Crimea, where voters opted for secession from the Ukraine and into the relatively secure arms of the Russian Federation. The west cried foul and so began a new grudge match. Arguably, tensions between the west and Moscow have been at their highest since the apex of the Cold War during the east-west Soviet era. Needless to say, with MH17 the stakes could not be any higher, and regarding the west, it was obvious who would be assigned the blame for this tragedy.

More than any other incident, this one was flushed out firstly through public relations channels, and then secondly through official government bodies. From the onset the West took its position by claiming it had "proof" that 'Russian-backed rebels' were responsible for shooting down the passenger airliner. Immediately after the incident took place, the western government-media complex insisted that the murder weapon was a Russian-made BUK Surface to Air Missile system.  

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Pope Francis, Alison Weir and the Sanhedrin

Gilad Atzmon
gilad.co.uk 

Alison Weir has recently joined the long list of Goyim who have been charged by the Palestinian Solidarity Movement's Sanhedrin Court. Alison, however, should cheer up, Pope Francis has also been charged in a Sanhedrin court in a different jurisdiction. This time it is the Jerusalem Sanhedrin, pretty much the same Jewish Judicial entity that charged Jesus before he was brought up in front of Roman Governor Pontius Pilate.

An Israeli media outlet reported last week that The Jerusalem Sanhedrin –a Jewish religious ‘High Court composed of 71 sages’, has declared that it is putting Pope Francis on trial unless he retracts his statement that the Jews have no right to the land of Israel or to Jerusalem.

Pope Francis’ crime is that he officially recognised the existence of the State of Palestine. The trial and judgment will be on September 20th, 2015. Fortunately, this leaves Pope Francis enough time to seek legal advice from Alan Dershowitz. However, if Pope Francis chooses to ignore the summons, he will be judged in absentia.

Like JVP’s Sanhedrin’s letter to Alison Weir, the Jerusalem Sanhedrin letter to Pope Francis conveys a clear, threatening and disrespectful Judeo-centric message. However, unlike Alison Weir, who had only to endure expulsion from the JVP synagogue, the Pope may have to face the Wrath of God and his chosen tribe.

“We require from you an apology for your recognizing as a nation those who stole the land, those who are known as the Palestinian Authority, and we are informing the Vatican that the sole God given right to the land of Israel is to the Nation of Israel. If His Honor the Pope, and the Vatican, do not apologize within two weeks of receiving this letter, and if he does not change his ways, we shall judge these actions in the Court of Mount Zion, in a court of 71 Jewish elders of Zion, and enact the prophecy of ‘The liberators will rise up upon Mount Zion, to judge the Mountain of Esau and the kingdom shall be God’s’ (Obadiah 1:21). The court shall judge the Vatican in its presence or in absentia, and it is possible that the Vatican will be found guilty of anti-Semitism, as has been known to be done several times throughout history, and to place responsibility upon the Vatican for all of the outcomes of its actions.”

The letter was signed by ‘The Secretariat of the Court of Mount Zion’. Representing the High Court are Rabbi Yoel Schwartz, Rabbi Dov Levanoni, Rabbi Israel Ariel, Rabbi Daniel Stavsky, Rabbi Yehuda Edri, and Rabbi Dov Meir Shtein. Breaking Israel News admitted that The Sanhedrin has no political or legal status, and clearly has no authority over the Vatican. However, it is comprised of some of the “greatest rabbis of the modern Jewish nation, men who have dedicated themselves to Torah, serving God and Israel.” Apparently one of the primary leaders behind the revival of the Sanhedrin is Rabbi Yoel Schwartz, well known for his advocacy of strengthening non-Jewish support for Israel. It is likely that if the Almighty listens to anyone, Rabbi Yoel Schwartz assumes that it is he.

I guess that the message to Alison Weir, Pope Francis and the rest of us is clear as well as urgent - with all these Sanhedrin courts pouring their wrath on the Goyim, the time to form a Goyim Defense League (GDL) is overdue.

gilad.co.uk 

The Science of Stress and How Our Emotions Affect Our Susceptibility to Burnout and Disease

Maria Popova
Brain Hacks

I had lived thirty good years before enduring my first food poisoning — odds quite fortunate in the grand scheme of things, but miserably unfortunate in the immediate experience of it. I found myself completely incapacitated to erect the pillars of my daily life — too cognitively foggy to read and write, too physically weak to work out or even meditate. The temporary disability soon elevated the assault on my mind and body to a new height of anguish: an intense experience of stress. Even as I consoled myself with Nabokov’s exceptionally florid account of food poisoning, I couldn’t shake the overwhelming malaise that had engulfed me — somehow, a physical illness had completely colored my psychoemotional reality.

This experience, of course, is far from uncommon. Long before scientists began shedding light on how our minds and bodies actually affect one another, an intuitive understanding of this dialogue between the body and the emotions, or feelings, emerged and permeated our very language: We use “feeling sick” as a grab-bag term for both the sensory symptoms — fever, fatigue, nausea — and the psychological malaise, woven of emotions like sadness and apathy.

Pre-modern medicine, in fact, has recognized this link between disease and emotion for millennia. Ancient Greek, Roman, and Indian Ayurvedic physicians all enlisted the theory of the four humors — blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm — in their healing practices, believing that imbalances in these four visible secretions of the body caused disease and were themselves often caused by the emotions. These beliefs are fossilized in our present language — melancholy comes from the Latin words for “black” (melan) and “bitter bile” (choler), and we think of a melancholic person as gloomy or embittered; a phlegmatic person is languid and impassive, for phlegm makes one lethargic.

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Authoritarians Like Twitter, Too

The Freeman / FEE

In May 2014, CNN aired footage of a Ukrainian helicopter being shot by pro-Russian militants. Taken with a cell phone camera and posted on social media, the video showed compelling evidence of the scale and technological sophistication of the Ukrainian conflict.

The video was also fake — it was actually over a year old, and from Syria. CNN retracted the footage and apologized, but the “incident” was still widely discussed on Russian and Ukrainian social media.

In the wake of the Arab Spring, enthusiasm for the power of social media ran high. Nothing else had shown the same power to mobilize protestors living under repressive regimes. With information democratized, the logic ran, dissidents could outflank the centralized media control and propaganda machines so crucial to authoritarian states.

But this logic is flawed, as the faked helicopter video demonstrates. Although social media may have given tech-savvy dissidents a temporary advantage over repressive governments that were unable to keep up, Twitter and its regional analogues are now a fully mature technology.

Just like radio and television, repressive regimes can and do use social media to solidify their grips on power. As a result, the net effects of social media on the possibility of democratic revolution are at best ambiguous. They may actually be negative.

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Federal Appeals Court Declares Air Fresheners Suspicious

The Newspaper

Driving a vehicle that has a couple air fresheners, rosaries and pro-police bumper stickers at 2 MPH over the speed limit is suspicious. That was the finding handed down last Thursday by the Fifth Circuit US Court of Appeals. A unanimous three-judge panel upheld the March 9, 2011 traffic stop that led to the conviction of Ruben Pena-Gonzalez in South Texas. 

On that day, Kingsville Police Officer Mike Tamez was patrolling on Highway 77 when he saw a Chevy Tahoe with a woman behind the wheel, Pena-Gonzalez in the passenger seat, and a young girl in the back seat. The family vehicle had rosaries hanging from the rear view mirror, a DARE bumper sticker on the back and a few air fresheners. Officer Tamez concluded from this that they were probably drug runners. He decided to stop them for driving barely above the speed limit. 

Officer Tamez ordered Nehmi Pena-Gonzalez, the driver, to step out of the vehicle after noticing her key chain had a St. Jude medal. She told the officer in Spanish that she was driving home to the city of Mission with her husband and daughter. Officer Tamez noted that this was an "inconsistent" answer, since her insurance card said she lived in Palmview, which is a suburb of Mission. She was also unclear about whether she spent one day or two in Houston. Officer Tamez said he would let her go with a warning, but then he decided to question her husband, Ruben Pena-Gonzalez, who agreed to a search of their vehicle.

At this point, the Court of Appeals stepped in to decide whether Officer Tamez exceeded his authority in detaining the family after he had finished writing the warning notice for the 2 MPH infraction. The court decided that the air fresheners provided "reasonable suspicion" that the family was involved in crime. 

"We do have concerns that classifying pro-law enforcement and anti-drug stickers

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Puerto Rico Says Services Come Before Agency Debt Payment

Bloomberg

Puerto Rico’s budget director ratcheted up the risk of a default on some agency securities, saying cash from the commonwealth’s operating budget won’t be redirected to make debt payments due next month.

The comments from Luis Cruz, director of the Office of Management and Budget, come as Standard & Poor’s slashed its rating on the Public Finance Corp.’s bonds to CC from CCC-, calling an Aug. 1 default on the securities a “virtual certainty.”

Puerto Rico said last week the agency failed to transfer $36.3 million to a trustee to cover the Aug. 1 debt payment because the legislature didn’t appropriate the funds. Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla last month directed island officials to create a debt-restructuring plan by Aug. 30, saying the commonwealth can’t sustain its $72 billion debt burden.

“We all know the difficult situation we are facing in terms of cash flow,” Cruz said during a press conference Monday in San Juan. “And we have to decide how we handle that cash flow and our priority is to provide services to citizens: health, safety, education.”

A $1 million block of Public Finance Corp. tax-exempt bonds maturing August 2024 traded Monday at 24.5 cents on the dollar, for a yield of 31.8 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

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