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Wedding Rings

'United Continent' travels to fight fascism: European volunteers fighting Kiev troops in Eastern Ukraine

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© RTFrench fighter Nikola
European volunteers are streaming into Ukraine to join the fighting on both sides. While Kiev's forces are beefed up with mercenaries from private military companies, Europeans have also come to defend the rebel Donbass region of their own free will.

One of the latest reinforcements of anti-Kiev troops in Eastern Ukraine are four French ex-serviceman who have come to fight this war, thousands of kilometers from home.

"It's our war. It's everybody's war, it's every European's war," Guillaume, a French fighter in Ukraine defending the Donbass region, told RT's Paula Slier.

Comment: As Europeans continue to unite in defense of Ukraine, hopefully their leaders are also learning just how dangerous the US is, and how terrible the consequences of its foreign policy will be for them. From the Donetsk People's Republic's press conference:
Unfortunately, dear journalists, the West tries to invade us with a regularity of 30-50 years. That is, every 30-50 years the Western civilization tries to impose on us their opinion and their way of life. The First World War, the Great Patriotic war, the Crimean war before that and so on well into the depths of history. As a result, the West traditionally gets the fall of Berlin, Paris, etc. There is Maidan every year In Kiev - "Those who don't jump are Moskals". The West comes every 30-50 years to get what it deserves. Now in 2014, they are slightly delayed.



V

6,500 protesters rally in Berlin to end government spying

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© AFP/DPAA demonstrator holds a placard depicting German chancellor's Angela Merkel and US President Barck Obama reading "That does not work" (Das geht gar nicht) during a demonstration against governmental surveillance on August 30, 2014 in Berlin.
The rally in Berlin against federal surveillance gathered thousands of people under the motto 'Freedom not fear,' who were calling for stricter control of German intelligence agencies.
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© Reuters/Thomas PeterA woman wearing a mask depicting German Chancellor Angela Merkel stands behind a mock telescope during a "Freiheit Statt Angst" (Freedom instead of Fear) protest calling for the protection of digital data privacy and the reigning in of digital surveillance practices, in Berlin August 30, 2014.
The organizers said about 6,500 demonstrators, a broad coalition of pro-transparency, anti-surveillance and civil rights groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reporters Without Borders, Digital Courage, and Amnesty International joined the rally as they marched from the Brandenburg Gate to the Federal Chancellery.

Family

Orthodox Jews expelled from Guatemalan refuge after being threatened 'with lynching'

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A controversial group of Orthodox Jews has been ordered out of a village in Guatemala after disputes with the local people.

A member of Lev Tahor, which was founded in the 1980s in Israel, said they had been threatened "with lynching" if they did not leave San Juan La Laguna. They started moving out on Friday after Mayan village elders voted to ask them to go.

Misael Santos, said: "We decided to leave because the Council of Elders does not want us. It's sad to leave, and there are people who like us here... when we left there were people who cried." Lev Tahor were "a people of peace", he said, and had decided to leave "to avoid an incident", according to the AFP news agency. "We have a right to be there, but they threatened us with lynching if we don't leave," he said.

Known for anti-Zionist views, the group created by Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans left Israel for the US in the 1990s, then went to Canada and Guatemala.

Arrow Down

The "new normal": More than 46 million Americans on foodstamps and no sign of letting up

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© UnknownMore than 45 million people on foodstamps for three years in a row, while Obama claims the economy is getting better
President Barack Obama and vulnerable Democrats facing tough midterm elections in 71 days are scrambling to prop up the moribund U.S. economy in the minds of disgruntled voters. However, one of the quickest shorthand economic measurements--food stamp enrollments--paints a startling portrait of the "new normal" in the Obama economy.

According to the Department of Agriculture's most recently released data, the number of individuals enrolled in the food stamp program (known officially as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) has remained above 45 million every single month for three years straight.

In May 2011, 45,410,683 individuals received food stamps. As of May 2014 (the most recent date for which data are available), 46,225,054 people were on food stamps. At no point between the two dates did the number of food stamp enrollments ever fall below the 45 million mark.


Comment: From the report Profits from Poverty: How Food Stamps Benefit Corporations:

"The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is an unusual entity in that, even though it was designed as a human welfare program, it exists administratively as a part of and is run by the Department of Agriculture. Recall that the program was originally conceived as a way to maintain high agricultural commodity prices."


Comment: For further information:

Poverty now rampant: Half of U.S. kids now on food stamps
One in seven Americans live on food stamps


Airplane

Weird! Aircraft crashes into Atlantic: U.S. says

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Waukesha County Regional Airport.
The North American Aerospace Defence Command says it has scrambled two F-16 fighter jets to aid an aircraft that appears to have crashed into the Atlantic.

The fighter jets tried to provide assistance to what NORAD in a statement called an "unresponsive general aviation aircraft".

The aircraft took off from Waukesha Airport, in Wisconsin, and was headed to Manassas Airport, in Virginia, when it crashed into the ocean, NORAD said on Saturday.

NORAD is the joint Canadian and American command in charge of maritime warning, aerospace warning and aerospace control for the neighbouring nations.

Comment: Hmm, so why dispatch two fighters to assist a plane in distress? A rescue helicopter or a cargo plane could drop rescue equipment, but what good are two fighter jets? What is going on here? The passenger manifest would be interesting. Or maybe it was a strike by a comet?


Bacon

Eat this, U.S.! Sanctions can give a major boost to reindeer meat industry in Siberia

As American beef disappears, venison can take a bigger slice of the market.
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© Alexander TyryshkinEstimates say some 70,000 reindeer will be slaughtered this year for venison.
The Russian government has targeted US and EU food imports with an embargo in a tit-for-tat move for sanctions imposed over the Ukraine crisis.

With US and European meat disappearing from supermarkets in Russia, there is an opportunity for domestic producers to fill gaps in the market.

Schools and hospitals in Chukota which nudges Alaska in the east of the country are to be supplied from local reindeer herds to replace American imports.

Roses

Five co-authors of latest Ebola study killed by virus before research was published

Study found funeral in Guinea may have caused outbreak in Sierra Leone

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© IndependentAcross Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone at least 660 people have died from the worst outbreak yet of the haemorrhagic fever, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said,
Five co-authors of the latest study on Ebola were killed by the virus before their research was published, highlighting the huge risks undertaken by those working to combat its spread.

The study, published on Thursday, discovered the virus has mutated many times during the outbreak in West Africa, making establishing a treatment more difficult.

Mbalu Fonnie, Alex Moigboi, Alice Kovoma, Mohamed Fullah and Sheik Umar Khan worked with lead researchers at Harvard University to examine the current outbreak.

Science Magazine said all five were experienced members of the Kenema Government Hospital's (KGH) Lassa fever team. Lassa fever infections have similar symptoms to Ebola.

Their work sequenced the virus genomes from 78 patients and traced the outbreak in Sierra Leone to a funeral of a healer, which a pregnant Kenema Government Hospital Ebola patient and other women who were also infected had attended.

Comment: Why would contagious Ebola patients be allowed to attend a funeral?


People

Russia opens its arms: 10,699.5 kilometres to a new life as refugees from Ukraine arrive in Magadan on the Pacific coast

'I cry and say thank you to the Russians that they welcomed us so warmly.'
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© Alexander Krylov, MagadanMedia189 refugees arrived in Magadan, 9 time zones east of their homes in Donetsk.
With a nine hour time difference to Donetsk, the remote city of Magadan - once a key transit point for political prisoners in the Stalin era - may not be the most likely location for those fleeing the blitzkrieg in Ukraine to find new homes. But this week 189 refugees arrived in this Pacific port some nine time zones east of their former region of war-torn Donetsk. Among the group were 35 children.

They were part of a large contingent of Russian-speakers who have chosen to resettle in Siberia having fled the appalling humanitarian crisis now afflicting eastern Ukraine. Many had escaped from Donetsk region into Crimea before their relocation further east.

For one woman, Lidia Solovieva, it was an unexpected homecoming. Back in the 1980s, she had come here to Kolyma, known to the world for gold and gulags, as she said, in search of romance.

Comment: Russia is rapidly becoming the most civilized country on Earth. Countries change with their governments; the USA changed for the worse, Russia changed for the better.


Bacon n Eggs

Small stockpiles drive butter prices to all-time high

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© Glutendoctors.blogspot.com
Butter futures reached an all-time high in Chicago as Americans' rising appetite for the fatty dairy spread and rising exports erode U.S. inventories.

Domestic consumption is projected to rise 0.8 percent to 788,000 metric tons in 2014, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That would be the second-highest ever in data going back to 1965. Shipments in the first six months of the year were up 42 percent from 2013. Demand is rising as milk production trailed analyst expectations, while fat content, used to make butter, is also dropping, according to Eric Meyer, the president of Chicago-based HighGround Dairy.

Consumers have increased purchases for five straight years, while margarine sales dropped, according to researcher Nielsen NV. The gains left U.S. stockpiles in July 42 percent lower than a year earlier, USDA data show. Tight butter supplies are contributing to higher costs for buyers including Panera Bread Co.

"Ultimately, there's good demand for cream-based products that's tightening up the market," Dave Kurzawski, a Chicago-based senior broker at INTL FCStone Inc., said in a telephone interview. "We haven't had a tremendous amount of milk to deal with either, and the quality of fat in milk has gone down."

Comment:
  • U.S. butter consumption reaches highest level in 40 years



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More versus Enough

This article explores what I think has become just about a mental illness-- the desire for "more" and the corollary "bigger." This is a disorder that has been stoked and encouraged by the media, even by political leaders. But is it really what we want, and is it at all healthy or normal?

There's a new Verizon commercial that claims that everyone wants MORE... like bigger wheels,
Wheels
© Verizon AdMore wheels.
more food, as in a huge cookie
Cookie
© Verizon AdMore-- as in bigger cookie.