RT
November 17, 2013
Cars drive through a flooded street in northern Riyadh, on November 17, 2013, after heavy rains fell overnight in the Saudi capital, caused floods and traffic jams which forced the Saudi Eduction Ministry to suspend studies in schools and universities for one day (AFP Photo / Fayez Nureldine)
Severe flooding is being reported in Saudi Arabia, especially in the kingdom’s capital of Riyadh, with the government closing schools and urging people to stay indoors amid heavy rain. Flooding is rare in the country dominated by the Arabian Desert.
Witnesses in Riaydh, which is also the country’s largest city, are reporting flooded streets and shops. Pictures posted on Twitter show cars drowning in rainwater.
[READ THE FULL ARTICLE and see a video and more pictures]
November 17, 2013 | Categories: natural / "natural" disasters, news, Saudi Arabia, science, videos | Leave a comment
TIS
November 6, 2013
Marijuanadoctors.com
Over the past six months, researchers have conducted a survey encompassing hundreds of dispensary owners, medical cannabis retailers and industry moguls has successfully estimated that in 2013 alone, more than $1.43 billion worth of legal marijuana will be sold nationally. The report projects that marijuana sales will raise up to 64% within the next year, surpassing the global Smartphone market at just 46% from 2012 to 2013. For what is proving to become the fastest growing market in U.S. history, it seems a national debate may soon be in order for the long overdue rescheduling of marijuana as a schedule I substance.
In a Gallup poll conducted just last month, 58% of Americans were in favor of national legalization of marijuana. Without government given grants to researchers, solidifying knowledge into fact has been an incredibly challenging, if not daunting task. Several researchers have previously mentioned that earning government grants for furthering marijuana research is truly the most difficult part in gaining the necessary acceptance to continue conducting studies. However, If the research is posed by researchers as directed toward finding a positive correlation between the “gateway drug” theory and marijuana population increase, government grants are given without any qualms.
The conundrum is that debunking such theories and conducting scientific research regarding marijuana’s medical benefits would inevitably be a means for a national reform of the drug itself. Under its current draconian scheduling, marijuana is listed as having absolutely no accepted medical use. Not to mention it is in the same category with heroin, LSD and ecstasy.Schedule I drugs are, by definition, “the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules.” A national reform would acknowledge a governmental recognition of marijuana as medicine. And with a government particularly bent on keeping marijuana illegal under federal law – it is no wonder further research has not been conducted. We live in a nation of skeptics; swayed toward one way or another, by substantial documented evidence. So for the other 42% of the country, lack of documented research is swaying them toward the offense.
A psychiatrist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, Dr. J Michael Bostwick, said the rigid classification of marijuana was written as such for primarily political grounds, and has thus far ignored over 40 years of scientific research, which has shown that cellular receptors for marijuana’s active ingredients are indeed present throughout the body.
Steve Berg, the former managing director of Wells Fargo Bank and editor of the report, theSecond Edition of the State of Legal Marijuana Markets, said, “Cannabis is one of the fastest-growing industries. Domestically, we weren’t able to find any market that is growing so quickly.” He went on, “Entrepreneurs and private investors are flocking to cannabis markets.” When it comes to big business, Berg said, “Those who really understand market dynamics will reap large rewards.”
In 2014, both Washington and Colorado will implement laws permitting pot sales to all adults, which Berg has pointed out, will undoubtedly account for a significant growth in the marijuana market. Colorado is estimated to have an additional $359 million brought to its already booming market. Berg’s report predicts that 14 additional states will legalize marijuana for adult recreational use within the next five years, establishing a potential 10.2 billion dollar marijuana market by 2018.
Read More HERE
[h/t: MediaMonarchy.com]
November 16, 2013 | Categories: drug war, economy, marijuana, news, tyranny, US | 1 Comment
Activists move to establish a constitutional protection zone
by Ardy Ragian
City on a Hill Press
November 15, 2013
Dan Johnson, president of People Against the NDAA spoke at a meeting last Wednesday in Santa Cruz calling for support of PANDA and the repeal of the indefinite detention provisions (Sections 1021 and 1022) of the National Defense Authorization Act. Photo by Aimee Hare
The Romero institute, a non-profit law firm, is spearheading a mission to strengthen an anti-National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Santa Cruz resolution passed in April 2012 through its project, the Campaign to Make Santa Cruz a Constitution Protection Zone. Last Wednesday, the group organized an anti-NDAA event at the Resource Center for Nonviolence, with People Against the NDAA (PANDA) director Dan Johnson as the keynote speaker.
The NDAA has been in effect for 51 years and prior to 2012 has primarily existed to fund U.S. armed forces and aid military families. As a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the NDAA has transformed into a “haystack bill” that continues to grow with added provisions such as 1021 and 1022, which were signed into effect on Dec. 31, 2011 by President Obama.
“In a nutshell, [these provisions] authorize the application of the laws of war to American soil, making us a battlefield,” Johnson said. “They authorize the military to detain any person, including American citizens, without a charge and without a trial, essentially affording the military the authority to ship any person here on U.S. soil, or any American citizen abroad, to Guantanamo Bay.”
California passed AB351 in October to halt provisions 1021 and 1022 from being applicable, a bill Johnson said “doesn’t even attempt to enforce California’s oath.”
“The bill says, ‘the state can’t participate in detention, prosecution or investigation if the NDAA violates the constitution,’” Johnson said. “All you have to do is go in court and claim the NDAA didn’t violate the constitution. Problem solved, you’re not prosecuted and you’re not punished.”
Santa Cruz passed a resolution in April 2012 supporting the repeal of sections 1021 and 1022.
Communications director of the Campaign to Make Santa Cruz a Constitution Protection Zone Robert Moddelmog said like California’s AB351, Santa Cruz’s legislation had good intentions behind it, but fell short in solidifying a constitutional protection zone.
“The signed resolution states that the city of Santa Cruz ‘hereby supports the repeal of the NDAA’s detention provisions described above,’” Moddelmog said, “and directs the mayor to write letters to our congressman and senators ‘indicating the city’s support for legislation to repeal those detention provisions,’”
Moddelmog says while this is an admirable stance, Santa Cruz needs to go one step further and actively stop any violations of the constitution from occurring, rather than only asking for its repeal.
Johnson stressed the government doesn’t have to present any evidence in taking these actions, it merely has to allege you are “suspected” of being a danger or of aiding terrorism.
“Terrorism is a method, and terror is an emotional reaction,” Johnson said, “you can’t legislate either out of existence.”
Johnson expressed his concerns regarding the vagueness of what constitutes being a terrorist, citing numerous reports such as the Department of Homeland Security’s terrorism study and a Responses to Terrorism (START) report released 31 days after the NDAA was signed. START categorizes terrorist acts by ideological motivations, such as “extreme right-wing” or “single issue.”
For example, the START report describes “extreme right-wing” terrorist groups as “groups who are nationalistic, anti-global, suspicious of centralized federal authority, reverent of individual liberty and believe in conspiracy theories involving grave threats to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty.”
“Regardless of what words you put in here, the key is suspicion, reverence, and belief,” Johnson said. “All of those are thoughts, none of those are actions … Is thought a crime now?”
[READ THE FULL ARTICLE]
November 16, 2013 | Categories: news, police state, sovereignty, tyranny, US, war | 1 Comment
RT
November 13, 2013
Residents watch as others throw items taken from a warehouse after super typhoon Haiyan hit Guiuan town, eastern Samar province, central Philippines November 11, 2013. (Reuters)
Driven to despair, survivors of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines turned to looting in search for food, water and medicine amid reports of warehouses and shops attacked in the aftermath of one of the strongest storms ever recorded.
As essential supplies dwindled, tensions rose. Since the storm hit the islands five days ago, residents have broken into homes, shops and warehouses, where they have drained shelves of food, water and other vital goods.
In the latest incident, Philippines security forces exchanged fire with armed looters in the village of Abucay, part of the worst-hit Tacloban in Leyte province, local ANC television reported on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, eight people were crushed to death after thousands of typhoon survivors stormed a government rice warehouse. Police and soldiers were helpless when the looting took place, National Food Authority spokesman said. The looters in Alangalang municipality carted away over 100,000 sacks of rice.
Warehouses owned by food and drinks company Universal Robina Corp and drug company United Laboratories in the storm-hit town of Palo, along with a rice mill in Jaro, were also ransacked.
“We have restored order,” director of the Philippine National Police special action force, Carmelo Espina Valmoria, told AP. “There has been looting for the last three days, [but] the situation has stabilized.”
“The looting is not criminality. It is self-preservation,” Tacloban city administrator John Lim told Reuters. Tacloban, the principal city in Leyte province which has also become the main relief hub, currently lies in ruins, with communications and transport cut off in many areas.
[READ THE FULL ARTICLE]
November 14, 2013 | Categories: natural / "natural" disasters, news, Philippines, tyranny | Leave a comment
CounterPsyOps
November 7, 2013
Pakistan could be given the responsibility for training two militant brigades in Syria, with about 5,000-10,000 militants.
Saudi Arabia, one of the biggest spenders of the foreign-sponsored war in Syria is turning to Pakistan to train militants, repeating a partnership that once failed in Afghanistan, a new report says.
The Foreign Policy Magazine wrote in an article on Thursday that Saudi Arabia is embarking on a major new effort to train Syrian rebel forces.
The article cites three sources with knowledge of the program that say Riyadh has enlisted the help of Pakistani instructors to do it.
According to the sources Pakistan could be given the responsibility for training about 5,000-10,000 militants from two brigades.
The report says the main goal of the Saudi project is to unite the mainstream armed opposition in Syria, many of whom are extremist forces, under the banner of a unified army.
The decision came after signs of rift in relations between Washington and Riyadh became evident.
Saudi Arabia’s decision to move forward with training the Syria militants independent of the United States is the latest sign of a split between the two longtime allies.
In Syria, Saudi officials were aggrieved by Washington’s decision to cancel a strike on the Syrian government in reprisal for a chemical attack on the Damascus suburbs this summer.
A top Saudi official told the Washington Post that Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan was unaware of the cancelation of the strike. “We found about it from CNN,” he said.
As a result, Saudi Arabia has decided to follow its own plans which rely on a network of Saudi allies in addition to Pakistan, such as Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and France.
“As the Saudis expand their effort to topple Assad, analysts say the central challenge is not to inflict tactical losses on the Syrian army, but to organize a coherent force that can coordinate its actions across the country. In other words, if Riyadh hopes to succeed where others have failed, it needs to get the politics right — convincing the fragmented rebel groups, and their squabbling foreign patrons, to work together in pursuit of a shared goal,” the article writes.
“The biggest problem facing the Saudis now is the same one facing the US, France, and anyone else interested in helping the rebels: the fragmentation of the rebels into groups fighting each other for local and regional dominance rather than cooperating to overthrow Assad,” said David Ottaway, a scholar at the Wilson Center who wrote a biography of Prince Bandar.
Syria militants are facing with deep divisions and rivalries with every now and then several of them pledging alliance together to form independent armies.
On Thursday, al-Qaeda leader Aymen Zawahiri who has the strongest militant groups on the ground in Syria fighting alongside the US-backed opposition urged all armed groups to be united and overthrow the Syrian government and set up their own ruling system.
Source: Alalam
November 12, 2013 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, news, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, tyranny, war | Leave a comment
By Madison Ruppert
Editor of End the Lie
November 11, 2013
(Image credit: michperu/Flickr)
The Seattle Police Department purchased a network in February to be used by emergency responders, though it is also capable of tracking devices with Wi-Fi enabled, revealing past location data and more.
Tracking smartphones with Wi-Fi enabled has become somewhat common. One company tracked pedestrians around London via high-tech trashcans and the practice of tracking shoppers via Wi-Fi is now widespread.
However, the “mesh network” purchased by Seattle police goes beyond just tracking location. It can find what applications have been downloaded, what type of device it is, the device’s IP address and both current and past locations of the device.
[VIDEO]
The network, which police point out has not been turned on yet, can capture the information about the past 1,000 times a device attempted to connect to a Wi-Fi signal, according to Raw Story.
“They now own a piece of equipment that has tracking capabilities so we think that they should be going to City Council and presenting a protocol for the whole network that says they won’t be using it for surveillance purposes,” Jamela Debelak of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said to KIRO.
Currently, a draft policy for the use of the network is being reviewed by the Seattle city attorney’s office that will eventually make its way to the city council. There is currently no timeline for the review.
While the Seattle Police Department maintains that the network is not being used, KIRO notes that “the network appears to be online,” something which the department could not explain.
The mesh network is comprised of 160 wireless access point mounted on poles around Seattle. Every time a device’s Wi-Fi antennae searches for a Wi-Fi signal and one of the access points recognizes it, the system can store that data.
The network was purchased with a $2.6 million Department of Homeland Security grant.
“Once these kinds of tools are in place, they don’t go away,” Brendan Kiley of The Stranger said to KIRO. “Even if we assume that the mesh network was installed by good people for good reasons, there’s no reason to believe that the people controlling the network in the future will use it for the public good.”
Kiley called for a serious public conversation about the network, along with clear rules about how the technology can be used.
Earlier this year, it was noted that the Seattle Police Department was establishing a large network of surveillance cameras around the city.
“We believe that people should be free to move about without having the government track their movements unless there really is reason to believe they’re engaged in some criminal activity,” Debelak said.
However, city council member Bruce Harrell said that it is necessary for the police department to collect some of the information.
Harrell said that if something like the Boston bombing were to occur, the police would want to capture information about the people that were there.
He also said that the department has to go to the public before they hit the “on” button.
Yet KIRO noted that the “network shows up online in public places usually as intersections in the city such as, ‘4th&Pike,’ ‘4th&University’ and ‘3rd&Union.’”
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November 12, 2013 | Categories: news, surveillance, tyranny, US | Leave a comment
Friends of Syria
November 12, 2013
Syrian/Al-Qaeda rebels funded and armed by Obama did this. That makes Obama guilty of war crimes and mass murder.
The bodies of 30 Christian civilians, including women and children, killed by Islamist militias, have been found in two separate mass graves, in the city of Sadad. The number of Christian civilians confirmed dead in this small town halfway between Homs and Damascus has reached 45. Many are injured and several are missing.
According to eyewitnesses, many of the civilians were killed by militia gangs of ‘Al- Nusra Front’ and ‘Daash’. The city has been completely destroyed and looted. Some of the militants who invaded the city were holed up in the Syriac Orthodox Church of St Theodore, which was profaned. Sadad is an ancient Syriac village which dates back to 2000 BC located in the region of Qalamoon, north of Damascus. It had 14 churches, a monastery, temples, historic landmarks and archaeological sites.
Archbishop Selwanos Boutros Alnemeh said: “What happened in Sadad is the most serious and biggest massacre of Christians in Syria in the past two and a half years… 45 innocent civilians were martyred for no reason, and among them several women and children, many thrown into mass graves. Other civilians were threatened and terrorized. 30 were wounded and 10 are still missing.
G_K
Syria News
November 12, 2013 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, news, sovereignty, Syria, tyranny, US, war | Leave a comment
PN 