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Explosion during rescue effort brings Russian mine disaster death toll to 36

Tim Hume, Tina Burnside and Radina Gigova
CNN
Sun, 28 Feb 2016 17:30 UTC
Severnaya coal mine

A train drives through a tunnel at the Severnaya coal mine in Russia's icy north.
Russian authorities say the death toll from a mine disaster has risen to 36 after an explosion during an attempt to rescue trapped miners Sunday, according to state-run news agency RIA Novosti.

Sunday's blast killed six people, including five rescue personnel.

In its wake, Russia's Emergency Situations Minister Vladimir Puchkov told reporters that there was virtually no chance of survival for any of the 26 miners who had been trapped since Thursday in the Severnaya coal mine in the city of Vorkuta.

Three days of mourning have been declared in Komi Republic, the icy region of Russia's polar north where the mine is located, Russia state media reported.
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Pistol

Salt Lake City: Clashes erupt after cop shoots teenager


RT
Sun, 28 Feb 2016 17:11 UTC
Salt lake city police
© Brett Neilson / Wikipedia
Riot police were trying to disperse angry crowds throwing glass and rocks following an officer-involved shooting in downtown Salt Lake City. A 16 year-old was shot four times by intervening police after an altercation with another man. Witnesses say excessive force was used.

Shots were fired in the Rio Grande St. area of Salt Lake city on Saturday night, police said. According to reports, the shooting involved two police officers. The current condition of the teenager is unknown. He has been taken to a local hospital.

Salt Lake Police detective Greg Wilking told KSL: "There was an altercation taking place, and our officers intervened into that altercation.
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Quenelle

Crimean official laughs off Kiev's 'braggart' threats to regain Crimea

Matthew Allen
Russia Insider
Sun, 28 Feb 2016 16:48 UTC
Sergei Menyailo Putin
© Kremlin.ru
Sergei Menyailo (left) in meeting with Russian President Putin
What have the glue-huffers in Kiev been up to lately? Oh, you know, the usual:
"We have nothing. We need a new army, a new National Guard, a new police force. This is what the government of Ukraine is working on right now. We must restore all of this, and then, with enough will, Crimea will be ours," Arsen Avakov, Ukraine's Interior Minister, told the Ukrainian 1+1 TV Channel, asserting, "I have no doubt of that."

In fact, the Ukrainian minister said that Kiev is presently training a special force, separate within the National Guard. "We are training some guys with the help of Mustafa Dzhemilev and Refat Chubarov (Crimean Tatar activists in Ukraine)," he said, while giving no details, adding, "We are working on a project that will prepare us to regain Crimea."

Comment: There may not be a more incompetent, corrupt, and pathological leadership on the face of this planet than the one the US put in power in Ukraine. Their utter depravity, combined with their hubris, makes them a very dangerous neighbor indeed.

Also see:
  • Ukraine war update: Kiev breaks Minsk agreement with mercenaries, sabotage, & heavy shelling of civilian areas

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Bad Guys

Shameful: Alabama, second poorest US state bans increases in minimum wage


RT
Sun, 28 Feb 2016 16:09 UTC
minimum wage protests
© Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
Alabama, the second poorest state in the US, has effectively banned local governments from increasing the minimum wage. The governor and legislature approved legislation that retroactively prevents Birmingham from setting a minimum wage of $10.10 an hour.

On Thursday, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley signed a bill that blocked Alabama cities from setting their own minimum wage or require employers to provide leave or health benefits.

The bill, AL HB174, not only prevents local governments from setting a higher minimum wage than federally required, but also bars them from mandating benefits and leave, solidifying Alabama's reputation as a right-to-work state. Right-to-work laws prohibit union security agreements and abolish requirements forcing workers in certain occupations to join unions. As a result, jobs that are frequently unionized are no longer protected.

Comment: The elites in the US have no concept of the struggles of the working poor, and it's becoming clear that they couldn't care less.

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Cow

Get lost: French farmers boo Hollande over devastating farm policies, Russian sanctions


RT
Sat, 27 Feb 2016 21:27 UTC
paris agriculture fair
Livestock farmers have given President Francois Hollande, along with Agricultural Minister Stephane Le Foll, a raucous, but not so heart-warming welcome at an annual agricultural fair in Paris. They also tore down a government stand.

Farmers frustrated with the "worst crisis ever" met the officials with cries of "Resign!" and "Get lost!" as the officials were trying to make their way through the exhibition center at Porte de Versailles on Saturday, according to AFP. The video shows the crowd whistling and screaming: "Shame on you, you are lazy" as the President addressed the farmers.

Hollande then chatted with one young farmer for some 20 minutes, to whom he noted, "If youngsters are not getting into agriculture, there will be no renewal, no investments."

The youngster quickly retorted by saying, "But it is hard for young farmers to start. We should stop buying meat from abroad."

Comment: The European people have been paying the price for policies enacted by their gutless politicians who are simply following the dictates of their US masters, and it appears they have clearly had enough!

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Newspaper

Denied the right to assemble, South Korean protesters resort to using holograms

Haeryun Kang
NPR
Wed, 24 Feb 2016 15:09 UTC
ghost protest
© Lee Jin-man/AP
Holograms of human figures are displayed during a "ghost protest" against South Korea's president in front of the Gyeongbok Palace in Seoul on Wednesday. Amnesty International in Korea said it decided to use the holograms after protesters were denied permission to march.
On the eve of South Korean President Park Geun-hye's third anniversary in office, protesters gathered in Seoul on Wednesday to condemn the administration's increasing crackdown on free speech. These protesters were unlike any others Seoul has seen. They were holograms.

The life-size hologram "ghosts" marched across a transparent screen facing an old palace gate at Gwanghwamun Square, a historic center in Seoul.

"Promise us democracy! Promise us freedom of assembly!" the holographic figures chanted for 30 minutes, as a real crowd of more than 100 — mostly journalists and organizers — watched.
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Dollars

Why you should prepare for a cashless society

Joshua Krause
Ready Nutrition
Sat, 27 Feb 2016 15:00 UTC
no cash symbol
Earlier this month, the European Central Bank suggested that the 500 Euro note needs to be eliminated. Not long after, academics and policy makers in the US started to call for the elimination of the $100 bill. This isn't something that the average person really thinks about on a regular basis, or even cares about. The vast majority of our purchases are done through digital channels these days. Unless you're about to buy a used car on Craigslist, you probably won't be needing the hundred-dollar bill. For most people, eliminating it would be an inconvenience at best.

So what gives? Why is anyone even considering the elimination of these bills? It seems like there is simply no need for it.

The truth is there are a lot of reasons why governments and banks want to eliminate these high denomination notes, and none of them are good. It should go without saying that the people who are pushing this are not going to give you a straight answer. You're going to hear them give the same excuse over and over again for the foreseeable future: Large denominations are indispensable for black market transactions. They enable drug dealers, tax evaders, corruption, and terrorism.

Comment: Why are the powers that be pushing for a cashless society?
The central banks are ... planning drastic restrictions on cash itself. They see moving to electronic money will first eliminate the underground economy, but secondly, they believe it will even prevent a banking crisis. This idea of eliminating cash was first floated as the normal trial balloon to see how the people take it. It was first launched by Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University and Willem Buiter, the chief economist at Citigroup. Their claims have been widely hailed and their papers are now the foundation for the new age of Economic Totalitarianism that confronts us. Rogoff and Buiter have laid the ground work for the end of much of our freedom and will one day will be considered the new Marx with hindsight. They sit in their lofty offices but do not have real world practical experience beyond theory. Considerations of their arguments have shown how governments can seize all economic power are destroy cash in the process eliminating all rights. Physical paper money provides the check against negative interest rates for if they become too great, people will simply withdraw their funds and hoard cash. Furthermore, paper currency allows for bank runs. Eliminate paper currency and what you end up with is the elimination of the ability to demand to withdraw funds from a bank.


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Blue Planet

National Parks, for the people, or maybe not?

Stephen Correy
CounterPunch
Fri, 26 Feb 2016 00:00 UTC
yosemite national park sign
As we warm up for the 2016 centenary of the National Park Service it's interesting to search "national park" in the ubiquitous, though flawed, Wikipedia. It claims there is a single common thread underpinning the definition, "the conservation of wild nature." But it's wrong: In fact, there are two entirely contradictory approaches to national parks and protected areas, and one version has nothing to do with "wild."

Sadly, the other one has. It is based on a flawed concept of "wilderness" and was developed in the United States starting 150 years ago in Yosemite. Since its inception, this model has required the removal of those who live on and from the land. It was this version that was applied in the Belgian Congo in 1925 creating the first national park in Africa, now called Virunga, and that has been the blueprint for many protected areas throughout Africa and Asia. At least five million people have seen their land and livelihoods stolen as a result (upper estimates are in excess of 14 million), entire peoples have been destroyed, and innumerable human rights abuses have been perpetrated in its name. This remains the model widely exported around the world, perhaps because the most powerful conservation organizations are American. The results are both tragic and criminal.

Comment: Also see:


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TV

Electoral dysfunction and media destraction


Dan Sanchez
Tue, 23 Feb 2016 00:00 UTC
Electoral dysfunction

The Regularly Scheduled Dumbing Down of American Discourse

America's moral compass was performing surprisingly well until a few months ago. Citizen journalism and social media were driving the news cycle and framing the narratives. The mainstream media can try to spin atrocity, but they can't completely control the stories that emerge from war zones and urban occupations, much less how the public conscience responds to those stories. This is especially true now that every individual with a smartphone is potential photojournalist, and any affecting image or alternative news story can go viral through social media.

The recent movement against predatory police was not part of the program. The general public was not supposed to see Eric Garner choked out by NYPD cops while pleading "I can't breathe," Michael Brown's corpse left for hours to bake on the hot asphalt in Ferguson, or a platoon of militarized cops besieging an American community.

Also not part of the program was the turn of American public opinion against Israel following the 51 Day War on Gaza. The general public was not supposed to see the shattered bodies of little boys sprawled out in the sand after they were bombed by the IDF while playing soccer on a beach in Gaza. They were not supposed to see a video of a little girl under siege begging the viewer to believe that she is not a terrorist and that she just wants to live.
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Alarm Clock

Disgraceful! High school students chant 'Trump' to racially-diverse basketball team

Amanda Girard
U.S. Uncut
Thu, 25 Feb 2016 00:00 UTC
Trump make America great again
Black and Latino high school basketball players in Iowa had to endure white crowds chanting Donald Trump's name at them as a form of taunting.

Unlike the rest of Iowa, Perry High School's student population is 48 percent people of color, and its boys basketball team consists of African American, Latino, and Native American players. During a recent game against conference opponent Dallas Center-Grimes, those players walked into a gymnasium filled with white faces chanting, "TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP!" in an effort to psych them out.

"It's honestly disrespectful. That's how I take it. I hear it during the game, on and off the court. Everywhere I go," senior Shammond Ivory told WHO-TV.

Perry High student section leader Kevin Lopez called the Dallas Center-Grimes crowd out for its racist behavior. "We are all aware of racism, it's alive and well in small portions but it's alive and well, and it's just hurtful to see that's what they resort to," Lopez said.

Comment: This is flat out disgraceful! When a public figure such as Trump who it is looking to be the Republican candidate for President says what he does and it is not shunned outright by major portions of the media and a major section of the American people is it any wonder that it would spread and be given expression by the populace?

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