Egypt Imports 21 Tons Of Tear Gas From U.S., Port Staff Refuses To Sign For It
November 30th, 2011Via: Bikyamasr:
CAIRO: The arrival of 7 and half tons of tear gas to Egypt’s Suez port created conflict after the responsible officials at the port refused to sign and accept it for fear it would be used to crackdown on Egyptian protesters.
The shipment has been moved by the ministry of interior to its Cairo storage facility, amidst strick and secretive security measures. Local reports say the staff, initially under investigation, have been spared investigation after having a discussion over the matter with their superiors.
Local news sites published documents regarding the shipment shows that the cargo that arrived in 479 barrels from the United States was scheduled to be delivered to the ministry of interior.
The reports also mentioned in the documents that a second shipment of 14 tons of tear gas was expected, making the total 21 tons, in one week.
The importing of tear gas comes after thousands of tear gas canisters were fired at Egyptian protesters last week as clashes raged in downtown Cairo, just off from the iconic Tahrir Square, where thousands of protesters had gathered.
More: Ahram Online: Suez Port Employees Reveal 21-Ton U.S. Tear Gas Order for Interior Ministry
Research Credit: Zuma
The One About Growing Food Becoming Illegal in New Zealand
November 30th, 2011Lots of people are submitting NZ Food Security, a site that focuses on fascist elements of the Food Bill.
I’m posting this mainly to let people know that, yes, I know about this and to ask others to please stop submitting it.
A couple of comments:
First, there are so many insane laws in New Zealand that nobody pays any attention to that I don’t see how the Food Bill would be any different. Anyone who thinks that people are going to stop buying/selling/trading seeds here, regardless of whatever bogus laws are passed, is nuts.
A little anecdote about where we live:
One night, a drunk driver rolled her car a few times. The totaled car was in the middle of the road and the driver was bleeding from an injury to her head.
My neighbor called for paramedics.
It took an hour for a police car to show up.
So, tell me another one about how the filth are going to arrest me for saving seeds. Get real, man. They can’t even keep the electricity on out here.
Second, the sovereign man on the land thing: I personally know people in the U.S. and New Zealand who have had their lives ruined by believing that their secret handshakes and crackpot gibberish trumped the actions of states. It doesn’t. These regimes sit atop mountains of skulls. They’re not interested in your ideas about how their laws don’t apply to you.
I’m not kidding when I say that I have been hearing about this “sovereignty” thing for longer than some of you reading this have been alive. I warned someone here who started heading down that path that he and his family were in for the shock of their lives for believing in this nonsense. What happened in the end? Sure enough, this family has fled New Zealand and the husband is now an international fugitive. No amount of 1834 flags and arguments in court about common law were going to keep this guy from becoming a guest of Her Majesty at the Ngawha hinaki (Northland Region Corrections Facility).
The bottom line is that anyone who is selling you on the idea that the state doesn’t have authority over you because you don’t write your name in all capital letters (etc., etc.) is just as nuts as a state that thinks it’s going to bust people for growing carrots.
In activist circles, over painful decades of observation, I’ve noticed that people will buy into just about anything that isn’t the state, the enemy, the corporation, etc. Just keep the following in mind: The state doesn’t have a monopoly on madness. In fringe circles, I’ve seen egos and mental illness that rival anything you would see in a government or corporate setting. We all know that questioning authority is important. Unfortunately, people generally aren’t discerning when it comes to questioning the alleged solutions.
Yoshimasa Sakurai: Sustainable Way of Living
November 30th, 2011This is an astonishing resource, especially for people in New Zealand. Save locally and consider printing hard copies.
Via: ecohouse.co.nz
Merck Pays a Pittance for Mass Deaths
November 30th, 2011Via: Counterpunch:
One of the most downplayed stories of our time ended with a whimper this week. “Merck has agreed to pay $950 million and has pleaded guilty to a criminal charge over the marketing and sales of the painkiller Vioxx,” the New York Times reported Nov. 23 (in the business section, where important medical news is usually found). The pharmaceutical giant copped to a misdemeanor: urging MDs to prescribe Vioxx for Rheumatoid Arthritis prior to 2002, when the Food & Drug Administration approved its use for that disorder.
The FDA had initially approved Vioxx (after a hasty “priority review”) in May, 1999 to treat osteoarthritis, acute pain, and menstrual cramps. By September 30, 2004, when Merck announced its “voluntary recall,” some 25 million Americans had been prescribed the widely hyped drug. Evidence that using Vioxx doubled a patient’s risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke —based on a review of 1.4 million patients’ records— was about to be published in Lancet by David Graham, MD, an FDA investigator. The FDA director’s office, devoted valet of Big PhRMA, had contacted the Lancet in a futile effort to stop publication of their own scientist’s findings.
Graham’s data indicate that 140,000 Americans suffered Vioxx-induced heart attacks and strokes; 55,000 died, and many more were permanently disabled. The Merck executives’ real crime was conspiracy to commit murder.
Research Credit: noncompliant
‘On a scale of China’s food safety issues, pollution-tainted rice might just be the biggest problem of all.’
November 30th, 2011Via: Global Post:
Rice is responsible for feeding half the world, or more than 3.5 billion people. In other words, rice is important. A tweak to how the grain is grown, sold or eaten can send ripples through the world economy. Take Thailand, which supplies 30 percent of the world’s rice. Government subsidies there threaten to raise the price of putting dinner on the table in Mexico. GlobalPost takes a closer look at a tiny grain with a giant footprint.
…
Xu Limin goes out of her way to make sure the rice she buys wasn’t grown in southern China.
“I’m not too picky about every single food item, but rice is the most important thing, so I want the cleanest,” said Xu, a 28-year-old office worker in Beijing, chatting as she shopped for groceries in an organic supermarket.
“Everyone knows rice from the south might be contaminated so I want rice from the north, or even something imported.”
Research Credit: noncompliant
Iranian Students Storm British Embassy in Tehran
November 29th, 2011Via: AP:
Dozens of hard-line Iranian students stormed the British Embassy in Tehran on Tuesday, bringing down the Union Jack flag and throwing documents from windows in scenes reminiscent of the anger against Western powers after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The mob moved into the diplomatic compound two days after Iran’s parliament approved a bill that reduces diplomatic relations with Britain following London’s support of recently upgraded Western sanctions on Tehran over its disputed nuclear program.
The protesters broke through after clashing with anti-riot police and chanting for its takeover. “Death to England,” some cried in the first significant assault of a foreign diplomatic area in Iran in years.
There was no immediate word on casualties or how many embassy employees were inside at the time of the assault, although it occurred after business hours had ended. More protesters poured into the compound as police tried to clear the site.
Smoke rose from some areas of the embassy grounds and the British flag was replaced with a banner in the name of 7th century Shiite saint, Imam Hussein.
The occupier called for the closure of the embassy calling it a “spy den” — the same phrase used after militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 hostages for 444 days. Washington and Tehran have no diplomatic relations since then.
The rally outside the British Embassy — on a main street in Tehran downtown — included protesters carrying photographs of nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari, who was killed last year in an attack that Iran blamed on Israeli and British spy services.
Outside the embassy, students from some universities and seminaries burned British flags on fire as clashing with police.
State TV reported that another group of hard-line students gathered at the gate of British ambassador’s residence in northern Tehran, at the same time.
American Airlines Bankrupt
November 29th, 2011Via: AP:
American Airlines’ parent company is seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it seeks to unload massive debt built up by years of accelerating jet fuel prices and labor struggles.
The nation’s third largest airline also said its CEO Gerard Arpey will step down. He’s being replaced by Thomas Horton, currently the company’s president.
Fort Worth, Texas-based AMR Corp., along with its regional affiliate AMR Eagle Holding Corp. said Tuesday that they filed voluntary petitions to reorganize.
American says it sought protection to reduce its costs and debt to remain competitive.
The airline says it will continue normal flight operations during the reorganization.
American was the only major U.S. airline that didn’t file for bankruptcy protection after the 2001 terrorist attacks. The last major airline to file for bankruptcy protection was Delta in 2005.
Comfortably Numb
November 29th, 2011Fill it to the rim with grim!
Via: The Burning Platform:
The system has been captured by an oligarchy of moneyed interests from the financial industry, mega-corporations, and military industrial complex, protected by their captured puppets in Washington DC and sustained by the propaganda peddling corporate media. The differences in political parties are meaningless as they each advocate big government solutions to all social, economic, foreign relations, and monetary issues.
Research Credit: Pookie, HB
YaCy: Free Software Activists to Take on Google with New Free Search Engine
November 29th, 2011This looks fantastic. It’s too bad that I don’t have bandwidth to share with the swarm.
Via: Network World:
Free software activists have released a peer-to-peer search engine to take on Google, Yahoo, Bing and others.
The free, distributed search engine, YaCy, takes a new approach to search. Rather than using a central server, its search results come from a network of independent “peers,” users who have downloaded the YaCy software. The aim is that no single entity gets to decide what gets listed, or in which order results appear.
More: yacy.net
Sirhan Sirhan Lawyers: ‘Hypno Programming and Memory Implantation Techniques’
November 28th, 2011Via: CNN:
Sirhan Sirhan, convicted of the 1968 assassination of presidential candidate Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, should be freed from prison or granted a new trial based on “formidable evidence” asserting his innocence and “horrendous violations” of his rights, defense attorneys said in federal court papers filed this week.
In a U.S. District Court brief, Sirhan’s lawyers also say that an expert analysis of recently uncovered evidence shows two guns were fired in the assassination and that Sirhan’s revolver was not the gun that shot Kennedy.
Attorneys William F. Pepper and Laurie D. Dusek also allege that fraud was committed in Sirhan’s 1969 trial when the court allowed a substitute bullet to be admitted as evidence for a real bullet removed from Kennedy’s neck.
The attorneys further assert that Sirhan was hypno-programmed to be a diversion for the real assassin and allege that Sirhan would be easily blamed for the assassination because he is an Arab. Sirhan, 67, is a Christian Palestinian born in Jerusalem whose parents brought him and his siblings to America in the 1950s.
Sirhan “was an involuntary participant in the crimes being committed because he was subjected to sophisticated hypno programming and memory implantation techniques which rendered him unable to consciously control his thoughts and actions at the time the crimes were being committed,” court papers said.
