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Stormtrooper

Latvian mayor complains about NATO sailors: They behave like occupiers


RT
Sat, 17 May 2014 02:20 UTC
NATO warship
© Reuters/Fabian Bimmer
Dutch mine hunter "Makkum" (R), departs as part of the Standing NATO Mine Counter-Measures Group ONE (SNMGMG1) in the harbour of Kiel, April 22, 2014.
Crewmembers of NATO warships deployed to the Latvian port city of Ventspils are behaving like occupying forces, who don't consider local laws apply to them, the mayor of the city charged. This discredits the alliance in the eyes of Latvians, he added.

"NATO sailors in Ventspils were behaving like pigs, ignored Latvian laws and municipal rules," Aivars Lembergs told LETA news agency. "Drunk, they urinated in public, right on shop windows, vomited, drank in public, which is not allowed. They picked flowers from flowerbeds and gave them to prostitutes."

Lembergs, a vocal critic of Latvia's cooperation with NATO, added that the foreign military personnel "behaved like occupiers, who do not recognize Latvia's sovereignty."

The unflattering description comes as the mayor was commenting on an incident in Ventspils, in which several NATO sailors clashed with locals at a night club last weekend. One of the sailors, a 21-year-old Dutch national, sustained serious injuries and had to be taken to hospital with several broken face bones and a concussion.
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Airplane Paper

Military plane with top officials and defence minister aboard crashes in Laos


Voice of Russia
Sat, 17 May 2014 01:28 UTC
Laos plane crash
© RIA Novosti
Military plane with 18 people aboard including the defence minister and other government officials crashed today in northeastern Laos, a Thai diplomat said. According to the diplomat in Vientiane, the aircraft left the capital early Saturday heading to Xiangkhouang Province for an official ceremony but crashed before landing.

The 18 people include Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Douangchay Phichit, his wife and Vientiane governor Sukan Mahalad, according to the diplomat.

The Lao government has not confirmed casualties, but local media reported some people survived the crash, the diplomat said.
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Pistol

Texas family releases shocking video of fatal deputy-involved shooting

Joe Kemp
NYDailynews.com
Fri, 09 May 2014 20:08 UTC
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT. Relatives of Michael Blair, 26, released the shocking video to argue officers did not have to shoot during an encounter with a mentally ill man inside his Houston home last year. But the officers have been cleared of any wrongdoing after an internal investigation and, later, when the case was presented in front of a grand jury.

Image
© KABC
Quanell X, a community activist, and Blair’s family speak to the press about wanting an investigation into the police-shooting that left the mentally ill man dead.
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Alarm Clock

Galapagos threat 'could unleash a disaster' Ecuador declares emergency over stranded freighter

Arden Dier
Newser
Fri, 16 May 2014 08:30 UTC
Galapagos
© AP Photo/Google
In this May 2013 photo, Daniel Orellana of the Charles Darwin Foundation is shown crossing a field of ferns to reach some naturally? occurring sulfur mines in the Galapagos Islands.
A new threat to the Galapagos Islands "could unleash a disaster," say officials: a cargo ship. At Galapagos officials' urging, Ecuador (which owns the islands) yesterday declared an environmental emergency there after a ship ran aground last Friday. The 19,000 gallons of cargo fuel the Galapaface 1 had been transporting have been removed from it, but dangers persist in the form of nasty pollutants like motor oil and cleaning products still aboard the ship; the Wall Street Journal puts the amount of pollutants aboard at about 1,100 tons. The ship is stranded off San Cristobal island, where it's blocked by sand and rocks that cracked its hull, reports the AFP; the vessel may sink.

In declaring an emergency, "the Risk Management Secretariat will be able to directly carry out the purchase of goods, the procurement of services, and the work that are required to overcome this emergency," Ecuador said in a statement, though it gave no indication of how long it would take to remove the ship. And as the BBC notes, authorities have reason to worry: An oil tanker that spilled fuel while stranded off the coast of one of the islands in 2001 essentially destroyed the marine iguana population. (In more positive Galapagos news, scientists have managed to save Darwin's finches using cotton balls.)
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Stormtrooper

Teen in Baltimore hospital dies after being tased by police


RT
Fri, 16 May 2014 19:43 UTC
taser
© Reuters / Sebastien Nogier

An altercation between a young patient and hospital security staff last week turned deadly when Baltimore police arrived at the scene and used a Taser on the teenager, sparking an investigation into the incident.

The confrontation began on Wednesday, May 7, the day after a 19-year-old patient was admitted into Baltimore's Good Samaritan Hospital for medical treatment. The teenager's name remains unknown, and was described by police only as a "ward of the state."

According to CBS Baltimore, Lt. Eric Kowalczyk said that when the hospital called law enforcement for help, the patient was locked in a physical struggle with "at least five security guards" and was suffering from an "emotional crisis."

When two officers arrived, one of them used a Taser on the 19-year-old, ultimately sinking the teenager into a coma. Police said the patient had been given unknown amounts of medication before law enforcement arrived and while they were at the scene.

The young man died on Wednesday, though police stated they did not learn about the coma until days after their involvement was requested.

"The person was breathing when the officers left the hospital," deputy commissioner Jerry Rodriguez told the Baltimore Sun. "It was not learned that the individual was in a coma and was possibly brain dead until several days after this incident."
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2 + 2 = 4

Florida town threatening volunteers who feed homeless


RT.com
Thu, 15 May 2014 17:29 UTC
Image
© Agency France Presse Photo / Saul Loeb
Volunteers hand out food to the homeless and needy at McPherson Square in Washington.
Authorities in Daytona Beach, Florida have increased efforts to dissuade unofficial organizations from feeding the city's homeless, threatening trespassing fines to longtime Good Samaritans should they counter the city's official social services plan.

A group of volunteers who have prepared food for the Daytona Beach homeless population - or anyone who is hungry, the organizers say - for the past year were given citations and trespass warnings by law enforcement this week.
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Health

Mother launches online campaign to defend 3-year-old son from genital mutilation, i.e. circumcision


RT
Fri, 16 May 2014 16:52 UTC
circumcision
© AFP Photo / noel Celis
Circumcision: modern barbarism whose time has come.
A Florida woman has successfully convinced a state appeals court to stop the father of her three-year-old son from having their child circumcised.

The Court of Appeals for Florida's fourth district this week granted a request made by the boy's mother, Heather Hironimus of Boynton Beach, in which she asked for justices to stay an earlier ruling ordering her son to be circumcised.

Hironimus and the boy's father, Dennis Nebus of Boca Raton, had the child in October 2010 and more than a year later entered into a legally-binding parenting agreement; Hironimus and Nebus never married.

A provision included in that contract referenced in recent court proceedings affirmed that Nebus was responsible for scheduling and taking their son to be circumcised, and would pay for any and all costs associated with the procedure. Hironimus, the contract continued, agreed to "timely execute any and all documents reasonably necessary to effectuate the circumcision" of the child.

According to a court order issued earlier this month, Hironimus claimed in recent testimony that she believes the procedure is not medically necessary and that her son risks dying as a result of the general anesthesia used. The court said, however, that the mother "expressed no other reason for now objecting to the procedure to which she'd already agreed," and on May 9 ruled "there is no reason why the parties should not be held to the terms of their Agreed Parenting Plan." Hironimus was in turn told that she could be held in contempt for not allowing Nebus to arrange for the procedure.

Comment: Only in a litigious culture like the States would such a 'legal document' be valued over plain common sense. Of course many people are brainwashed to think circumcision is just normal; when they learn the truth, they should have the freedom to change their minds. Plain and simple. Especially when it comes to a practice that is essentially child abuse.

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Megaphone

Columbia university students publicize rapist list when school fails to protect the victims

Kayla Ruble
Vice News
Fri, 16 May 2014 14:45 UTC
rapists list
© bwog.com
One of the lists that have been appearing on bathroom walls at Columbia University since last week
The spring semester is winding down at colleges across the country, but at Columbia University debate over the mishandling of sexual assault cases is gaining momentum - most recently making its way onto the walls of campus bathrooms.

Last week a list of alleged "sexual assault violators on campus" written in marker pen popped up in a women's bathroom at the university's main campus in Manhattan. Campus facilities reportedly removed the text, which it qualified as graffiti, within 24 hours.

Columbia's student-run blog, the Lion, published a photo of the list with the names blacked out. The Lion's editor, Sean Augustine, told VICE News that staff had determined that at least three of the individuals had been punished through university judicial proceedings for sexual misconduct and were back on campus.

Comment: What's incredible is that most people don't make the obvious association: that the government itself is setting the example. Because if the U.S. can go across the oceans to rape and destroy other countries without any consequences for their reprehensible actions, then the message to all deviants in the society is "you can do it too".

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Alarm Clock

Food prices skyrocket: "We're going to have a major problem coming into the fall"

Mac Slavo
shtfplan.com
Thu, 15 May 2014 11:01 UTC
Image
© Shutterstock
While government statisticians claim robust growth, recent data points suggest otherwise. Consumers are quickly running out of money, home sales have collapsed and hit their biggest drop in three years, there are more Americans out of the labor force than ever before, and one third of adults under the age of 35 are living with their parents because they can no longer afford to pay their own mortgage.

By all accounts, the reality is that we are now factually in a recession, a point further emphasized by the recent revelation that American companies are experiencing near zero percent earnings growth.

But that's just the beginning. As we warned earlier this year, food prices would see a steady rise through 2014 because of increased global demand, drought and continued degradation of the U.S. dollar.
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Info

On Nakba day commemorating the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians, Israelis forced to confront a guilty secret

Jonathan Cook
Global Research
Thu, 15 May 2014 08:02 UTC
Nakba day
© Unknown
For 66 years Israel's founding generation has lived with a guilty secret, one it successfully concealed from the generations that followed. Forests were planted to hide war crimes. School textbooks mythologised the events surrounding Israel's creation. The army was blindly venerated as the most moral in the world.

Once, "Nakba" - Arabic for "Catastrophe", referring to the dispossession of the Palestinian homeland in 1948 - would have failed to register with any but a small number of Israeli Jews. Today, only those who never watch television or read a newspaper can plead ignorance.

As marches and festivals are held today by Palestinians across the region to mark Nakba Day - commemorating the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and the erasure of more than 500 villages - Israelis will be watching.

In fact, the Israeli media have been filled with references to the Nakba for the past 10 days, since Israel celebrated its Independence Day last week. The two anniversaries do not quite coincide because Israel marks its founding according to the Hebrew calendar.

While Israeli Jews were trying to enjoy guilt-free street parties last week, news reports focused on the activities of their compatriots - the Palestinians who remained inside the new state of Israel and now comprise a fifth of the population. Estimates are that one in four of these 1.5 million Palestinian citizens is from a family internally displaced by the 1948 war.
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