Green Party Presidential Candidate Arrested Outside Debate Site
October 17th, 2012Via: Washington Post:
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and running mate Cheri Honkala were arrested outside Long Island’s Hofstra University ahead of tonight’s debate.
After being denied entrance to the campus because they lacked credentials, the two candidates sat down in the street in front of the university with an American flag on their laps, the Long Island Report explains. They were led away by police officers after refusing to move.
Stein and Honkala objected to being excluded from the debate, saying they are on 85 percent of state ballots and should be part of the national discussion.
Photos of U.S. and Afghan Troops Patrolling Poppy Fields June 2012
October 17th, 2012Photos of U.S. and Afghan Troops Patrolling Poppy Fields June 2012, and more Photos of US/NATO Troops Patrolling Opium Poppy Fields in Afghanistan. And more again.
U.S. Marine Corps Cpl. James K. Peters stands in an opium poppy field while performing a foot patrol at Sangin, Afghanistan, May 19, 2011. Peters and his fellow Marines assigned to Weapons Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 8, are familiarizing the battalion?s commander with their area of operation during the patrol. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Jeremy C. Harris/Released)
Related:
State Department Official: Negotiations to Extend U.S. Troop Presence in Afghanistan Starting Soon
Research Credit: LoneWolf
Belgium: Exxon-Mobil Manager Shot Dead
October 16th, 2012BBC, Finally: British Oil Executive Shot Dead in Belgium
Reader A noticed this.
Via: BBC:
A senior British oil executive has been shot dead in a suburb of the Belgian capital Brussels, it has emerged.
Father-of-three Nicholas Mockford, 60, who worked for Exxon Mobil, was attacked as he left a restaurant with his wife nearly two weeks ago.
It was initially thought police imposed a news blackout on the attack, on 14 October, but it was reported locally.
One eyewitness told Belgian television how he twice tried to resuscitate Mr Mockford before an ambulance arrived.
“I heard a noise, ‘tack tack’, I thought that was bizarre and went outside to look,” the man told Flemish television channel, VTM.
“There was a woman lying on the floor on the pavement on the other side of the road. She was crying ‘help, help’. There was also a man lying on the street, next to a car. [The] woman shouts out it was a white van.”
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Update: No Mainstream News Coverage in English
There still appears to be no English language mainstream media coverage of this murder.
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Update: Better Translation
Cryptogon reader D has submitted a better English translation of the story:
Sunday night a top executive of the petro-chemical company ExxonMobil was shot dead in the street in Neder-over-Heembeek, near Brussels. Nicholas Mockford was shot in the head twice, when he and his wife were leaving
an Italian restaurant around 22h. Witnesses saw two men running away carrying a motorcycle helmet.
The man died on the way to the hospital. His wife Mary was beaten and covered in blood. Police and DA’s office are saying that at this point they aren’t excluding any possibilities, from a hit to a carjacking gone wrong. Although the violence used appears to be disproportionate for a carjacking, especially knowing that the killers
left the Lexus ATV behind.
Investigators are doing everything they can to locate the perpetrators. They are going through his work at his firm in the hope of finding a clue. ExxonMobil is the company that owns Esso, Mobil and Exxon gas stations.
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There’s nothing in English on this yet. All I have is the badly machine translated article from hln.be linked below.
Searching around, I found a 2010 tradeshow reference to a Nicholas P. Mockford, Marketing Technical Support Manager, Intermediates Technology, ExxonMobil Chemical Europe Inc.
Via: hln.be-Google Translate (Original):
In the Brussels Neder-over-Heembeek is Sunday a top executive of the oil company Exxon Mobil shot dead on the street. Nicholas Mock Ford got two bullets in the head when he was around 22 hours with his wife, an Italian restaurant left. Witnesses saw two men running away with a motorcycle helmet.
The man died on the way to hospital. His wife Mary was beaten and was covered in blood.
Research Credit: V
Switzerland Prepares Army for Euro Zone Fallout
October 15th, 2012Via: CNBC:
With anti-austerity protests across Europe resulting in civil unrest on the streets of Athens and Madrid, the European country famed for its neutrality is taking unusual precautions.
Switzerland launched the military exercise “Stabilo Due” in September to respond to the current instability in Europe and to test the speed at which its army can be dispatched. The country is not a member of the union or among the 17 countries that share the euro.
Swiss newspaper Der Sonntag reported recently that the exercise centered around a risk map created in 2010, where army staff detailed the threat of internal unrest between warring factions as well as the possibility of refugees from Greece, Spain, Italy, France, and Portugal.
The Swiss defense ministry told CNBC that it does not rule out having to deploy troops in the coming years.
“It’s not excluded that the consequences of the financial crisis in Switzerland can lead to protests and violence,” a spokesperson told CNBC.com. “The army must be ready when the police in such cases requests for subsidiary help.”
The House I Live In
October 15th, 2012Via: The House I Live In:
Mystery Surrounds Graves at Boys’ Reform School
October 15th, 2012Via: CNN:
This Florida panhandle town is the home of a mystery that has been lost to time.
A small cemetery buried deep into the grounds of a now-defunct boys reform school dates back to the early 1900s. Rusting white steel crosses mark the graves of 31 unidentified former students.
Former students said the deaths were at the hands of abusive administrators, but a 2009 state investigation determined there was no evidence of criminal activity connected with any of the deaths or of abusive treatment.
But the investigation did not clear up the mystery over the fate of 50 other students who died at the school and whose bodies have not been accounted for.
In the wake of that investigation, more former students — who are now senior citizens — have come forward with stories of abuse at the school, including alleged beatings, killings and the disappearance of students, during the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.
Keep in Mind: International Tribunal Into Crimes of Church and State and UNREPENTANT: Kevin Annett and Canada’s Genocide
Turkish Air Blockade Against Syria?
October 15th, 2012Via: CNN:
For the second time in a week, Turkish officials are searching a civilian airplane headed to Syria, in what appears to be the enforcement of a new Turkish air blockade against the Syrian government.
Armenian and Turkish diplomats confirmed to CNN that an Armenian cargo plane destined for the battle-scarred Syrian city of Aleppo stopped first in the Turkish city of Erzurum for an inspection of its cargo Monday morning.
What Is Killing Sugar-Cane Workers Across Central America?
October 15th, 2012Via: Guardian:
It goes by many names, but around here they call it “the malady of the sugar cane”. It’s a quiet epidemic that has been preying on Central America for at least 20 years, killing impoverished landworkers in their tens of thousands across Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Guatemala. And it is becoming ever more deadly. Between 2005 and 2009, incidents in El Salvador rose by 26%. By 2011 the chronic kidney disease (CKD) that is killing Edilberto had become the country’s second-biggest killer of men.
That year the health minister, María Isabel Rodríguez, made a dramatic appeal to the international community for help, telling them: “It is wasting away our populations.” But nobody knows what to do about it, because nobody knows what exactly it is. In the wealthier west, CKD is largely caused by hypertension or diabetes, but most of the victims here have neither. And it attacks the kidneys in an unusual way. Rather than damaging the filtering system, as in ordinary CKD, this disease seems to have an impact on the tubules – the part of the kidney where the composition of the urine is determined. At the moment, the only scientific consensus is that it’s real, and unexplained.
Research Credit: luky
Australian Government Wants to Outlaw Inexpensive Alcoholic Beverages
October 13th, 2012Home brew.
Via: The Australian:
CHEAP wine will be banned under a federal health agency’s plan to make drinkers pay at least $8-$10 for a bottle of booze.
The Federal Government’s Australian National Preventative Health Agency will advise this week that a “floor price” and new taxes be calculated as a way to make alcohol dearer.
The prohibition plan to stop cheap drunks binging on discount drinks – including cask wine and cleanskins – has delighted health groups but sparked an alcohol industry revolt.
TEPCO Admits It Could Have Prevented Fukushima Disaster
October 13th, 2012Via: Epoch Times:
TEPCO, the Japanese utility in charge of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant that melted down last year, admitted on Friday that the disaster could have been averted. So why did it fail to act accordingly? Fear.
The utility said it could have done more to prevent the earthquake and tsunami-triggered disaster that became the world’s most severe nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown. TEPCO said it knew that it had to improve safety procedures at Fukushima before the 9.0-magnitude earthquake sent walls of water slamming into the facility on March 11, 2011.
The reasons TEPCO gives for not implementing certain safety procedures at the plant before the disaster include to a list of fears of what would happen if they admitted such measures were needed.
The report mentions the potential negative political and legal ramifications if the utility had admitted there were problems at the Fukushima plant that needed correcting.
“There was concern that if new severe accident measures were implemented, it could spread concern in the siting community that there is a problem with the safety of current plants,” the utility said in a report.
The report also said there was “concern of litigation risks” if there was an admission that “severe accident measures were necessary.”
