cryptogon.com

Milk rations were halved for years at residential schools across the country.

Essential vitamins were kept from people who needed them.

Dental services were withheld because gum health was a measuring tool for scientists and dental care would distort research.

For over a decade, aboriginal children and adults were unknowingly subjected to nutritional experiments by Canadian government bureaucrats.

This disturbing look into government policy toward aboriginals after World War II comes to light in recently published historical research.

When Canadian researchers went to a number of northern Manitoba reserves in 1942 they found rampant malnourishment. But instead of recommending increased federal support to improve the health of hundreds of aboriginals suffering from a collapsing fur trade and already limited government aid, they decided against it. Nutritionally deprived aboriginals would be the perfect test subjects, researchers thought.

The details come from Ian Mosby, a post-doctorate at the University of Guelph, whose research focused on one of the most horrific aspects of government policy toward aboriginals during a time when rules for research on humans were just being adopted by the scientific community.

Researching the development of health policy for a different research project, Mosby uncovered “vague references to studies conducted on ‘Indians’ ” and began to investigate.

Government documents eventually revealed a long-standing, government-run experiment that came to span the entire country and involved at least 1,300 aboriginals, most of them children.

These experiments aren’t surprising to Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The commission became aware of the experiments during their collection of documents relating to the treatment and abuse of native children at residential schools across Canada from the 1870s to the 1990s.

It’s a disturbing piece of research, he said, and the experiments are entrenched with the racism of the time.

“This discovery, it’s indicative of the attitude toward aboriginals,” Sinclair said. “They thought aboriginals shouldn’t be consulted and their consent shouldn’t be asked for. They looked at it as a right to do what they wanted then.”

In the research paper, published in May, Mosby wrote, “the experiment seems to have been driven, at least in part, by the nutrition experts’ desire to test their theories on a ready-made ‘laboratory’ populated with already malnourished human experimental subjects.”

Researchers visited The Pas and Norway House in northern Manitoba in 1942 and found a demoralized population marked by, in their words, “shiftlessness, indolence, improvidence and inertia.”

They decided that isolated, dependent, hungry people would be ideal subjects for tests on the effects of different diets.

“In the 1940s, there were a lot of questions about what are human requirements for vitamins,” Mosby said. “Malnourished aboriginal people became viewed as possible means of testing these theories.”

Instead of a metal license plate, the digital plate would be a computer screen, slightly larger than an iPad. Registering the plates could be done wirelessly.

…

State Senate Bill 806 would create a three-year pilot program to test up to 160,000 cars with electronic license plates produced by San Francisco-based startup Smart Plate.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles said the plates would save $20 million a year, since renewal tags would not be issued.

Supporters of the measure said the digital plate would look similar to the current plate, but it would also be able to register Fastrak tolls and display Amber Alerts to other drivers.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based digital privacy group, opposes the idea saying it doesn’t protect a driver’s location and personal information.

“Law enforcement needs a warrant to be able to put a tracking device on your car. It’s a possibility the way this program could be implemented, these smart plates could be that tracking device,” said staff attorney Nate Cardozo.

Chris Inglis, the agency’s deputy director, was one of several government representatives—including from the FBI and the office of the Director of National Intelligence—testifying before the House Judiciary Committee this morning. Most of the testimony largely echoed previous testimony by the agencies on the topic of the government’s surveillance, including a retread of the same offered examples for how the Patriot Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act had stopped terror events.

But Inglis’ statement was new. Analysts look “two or three hops” from terror suspects when evaluating terror activity, Inglis revealed. Previously, the limit of how surveillance was extended had been described as two hops. This meant that if the NSA were following a phone metadata or web trail from a terror suspect, it could also look at the calls from the people that suspect has spoken with—one hop. And then, the calls that second person had also spoken with—two hops. Terror suspect to person two to person three. Two hops. And now: A third hop.

Think of it this way. Let’s say the government suspects you are a terrorist and it has access to your Facebook account. If you’re an American citizen, it can’t do that currently (with certain exceptions)—but for the sake of argument. So all of your friends, that’s one hop. Your friends’ friends, whether you know them or not—two hops. Your friends’ friends’ friends, whoever they happen to be, are that third hop. That’s a massive group of people that the NSA apparently considers fair game.

Herlinda Garcia said she became “a whole different person” after she was diagnosed with Stage IV terminal Breast Cancer.

That diagnosis came after Garcia had a benign tumor removed from her left breast.

“When you’re told you have stage four terminal cancer, that’s it,” Garcia said. “I put trust in the doctor.”

Garcia underwent eight rounds of chemotherapy for seven months. She recalls her physical health deteriorating and her mental health crumbling.

“Everything was swollen. I lost my eyebrows, my eyelashes,” Garcia said. “It’s really hard. I can’t explain how I felt. It’s like I was in a dream.”

The 54-year-old part time civil process worker found herself falling into a depression. She said she was so sure her life was going to end, she gave away most of her belongings and made a bucket list.

“I wanted to give up on everything,” Garcia said.

Garcia sought treatment for anxiety at Citizens Medical Center. Doctors performed some scans, and suddenly, there was a glimmer of hope.

Doctors suspected Garcia never had cancer.

Using automated scanners, law enforcement agencies across the country have amassed millions of digital records on the location and movement of every vehicle with a license plate, according to a study published Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union. Affixed to police cars, bridges or buildings, the scanners capture images of passing or parked vehicles and note their location, uploading that information into police databases. Departments keep the records for weeks or years, sometimes indefinitely.

It was not immediately clear how chemicals ended up in the food in a school in the eastern state of Bihar. One official said the food may not have been properly washed before it was cooked.

The children, between the ages of 5 and 12, fell ill Tuesday soon after eating lunch in Gandamal village in Masrakh block, 80 kilometres north of the state capital of Patna. School authorities immediately stopped serving the meal of rice, lentils, soybeans and potatoes as the children started vomiting.

Savita, a 12-year-old student who uses only one name, said she had a stomach ache after eating soybeans and potatoes and started vomiting.

The legislation is Fatca, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. To appreciate its breathtaking scope along with America’s unique “citizen-based” tax practices, imagine this: You were born in California, moved to New York for education or work, fell in love, married and had children. Even though you have faithfully paid taxes in New York and haven’t lived in California for 25 years, suppose California law required that you also file your taxes there because you were born there. Though you may never have held a bank account in California, you must report all of your financial holdings to the State of California. Are you a signatory on your spouse’s account? Then you must declare his bank accounts too. Your children, now adults, have never been west of the Mississippi but they too must file their taxes in both California and New York and report any bank accounts they or their spouses may have because they are considered Californians by virtue of one parent’s birthplace.

Extrapolate that example to the six million U.S. citizens living around the globe. Many, if not most, don’t know about these requirements. Yet they face fines, penalties and interest for not complying—even if they owe no U.S. taxes, own no U.S. property, have no U.S. bank account and haven’t lived there in years—if ever.

A particularly alarming aspect of Fatca is that it seeks to co-opt foreign banks as long-arm enforcement agencies of the Internal Revenue Service—even when it might contravene that country’s own privacy or data-protection laws. If financial institutions don’t report U.S. citizens holding accounts with them, these institutions face a 30% withholding tax on securities transactions that originate in the U.S.

Something Fishy @Rambobiggs @peterjludlow: So Hastings’ body is cremated without the family’s consent. wow.just wow. http://www.sandiego6.com/story/hastings-investigation-20130714 …”
Details

SSG Joe Biggs ?@Rambobiggs

@colleenmenzies @peterjludlow nope. Not true. Never said that

NomNomDePlume ‘Agent’ Lamo JT aka. Kûšh Må?t?r 13 12 1 /\ 1\1

5:10 AM – 17 Jul 13
Tweet text
Reply to @Rambobiggs @colleenmenzies @peterjludlow

colleen menzies ?@colleenmenzies 17 Jul

@Rambobiggs @peterjludlow So that online interview Is incorrect ?
Details
SSG Joe Biggs ?@Rambobiggs 17 Jul

@colleenmenzies @peterjludlow I said it was weird being at a funeral and the body is missing. You know. Not there. Because it was in LA
Details
SSG Joe Biggs ?@Rambobiggs 17 Jul

@colleenmenzies @peterjludlow and that the remains were cremated. I also said I wasn’t sure if that’s what Michael wanted or the family.
Details
colleen menzies ?@colleenmenzies 17 Jul

@Rambobiggs @peterjludlow Yes – Not good. This should all be left – so u and family Friends can grieve in private. ?
Details
Peter Ludlow ?@peterjludlow 17 Jul

@Rambobiggs @colleenmenzies so she misquoted you? deliberately do you think?
Details
SSG Joe Biggs ?@Rambobiggs 17 Jul

@peterjludlow @colleenmenzies I don’t know. But I’m not happy
Details
Peter Ludlow ?@peterjludlow 17 Jul

@Rambobiggs @colleenmenzies well if she deliberately misrepresented you that pretty much makes the rest of her reporting on this worthless.
Details
colleen menzies ?@colleenmenzies 17 Jul

@peterjludlow @Rambobiggs and its something a grieving wife family& friends dont need at this point in time.What about a code of ethics. 🙂
Details
SSG Joe Biggs ?@Rambobiggs 17 Jul

@peterjludlow @colleenmenzies well let’s hope it’s a misunderstanding
Details
SSG Joe Biggs ?@Rambobiggs 17 Jul

Hastings’ friend and confidant SSgt. Joe Biggs disclosed a macabre twist in the award-winning journalist’s death in a suspicious single-car accident. According to SSgt. Biggs, “Michael Hastings’ body was returned to Vermont in an urn.” He further alleged, “Family members did not want Michael’s body cremated.”

This revelation provides another wrinkle in the Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD) handling of a case they labeled “no foul play” only hours after the writer’s death.

The sweeping subpoena was one of three issued to Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, demanding IP usage records and identity information for the holders of more than 100 email accounts, including environmental activists, journalists and attorneys. Chevron’s subpoena sought personal information about every account holder and the IP addresses associated with every login to each account over a nine-year period.