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Mon, 08 Nov 2021
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Florida airport shooting suspect mentally competent to stand trial - his lawyer

Fort Lauderdale, Florida shooting
© Joe Raedle / Getty Images / AFP
Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International airport. January 6, 2017, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The man accused of killing five people and injuring six in a shooting rampage at a Florida airport is competent to stand trial, his attorney has said. Esteban Santiago doesn't need a psychiatric evaluation, despite indications of mental illness, he added.

"We have met with him hours upon hours. We do not have a concern at this time," defense attorney Hector Dopico told US District Judge Beth Bloom on Thursday. "One can be profoundly mentally ill, including schizophrenic, and be competent."

Eye 2

Where's the U.S. press coverage of all the global pedophilia rings being exposed?

pedophilia rings
"Pizzagate" is a familiar pop culture buzzword and everyone probably knows what it means or that it is affiliated with sexual abuse of children, especially in Washington, DC. However, there has been breaking news about world-wide arrests regarding pedophilia, but the U.S. media and television—other than CBS journalist Ben Swann in Atlanta, Georgia—have not investigated the problem to expose it and its perpetrators.


Comment: Maybe Russian President Putin's description of contemporary Western culture and values - and what he calls the "propaganda of pedophilia" - may help explain why we aren't seeing more coverage of these horrific crimes and how they're being stopped:




Red Flag

North Dakota Governor orders emergency evacuation of DAPL protest camp

dapl camp
© Scott Olson / Getty Images / AFP
North Dakota's Republican Governor Doug Burgum has issued an emergency order for the Oceti Sakowin protest camp to evacuate the area immediately.

"Out of concern for the safety of people who are residing on US Army Corps of Engineers land in southern Morton County and to avoid an ecological disaster to the Missouri River," read a statement from the governor's office on Wednesday.

The camp has housed hundreds, sometimes thousands of Dakota Access Pipeline opponents who have spent several months protesting the pipeline.

Gov Burgum claimed he was issuing the order because of unseasonably warm temperatures that were accelerating the melt of heavy snowpack across the state. The other concern is the polluting of the Missouri River by months of accumulated debris, including human waste, generated by the activists which occupied the camp. The governor gave residents until the afternoon of February 22 to leave.

Comment: See also: Conditions in the Dakota Access Pipeline protest camps deteriorating, cleanup scheduled


Card - VISA

The Globalist's action plan for a cashless society

city on a grid
Their agenda may be on the rocks in the United States at the moment, but that doesn't mean that the globalists are giving up. In fact, a major push toward a cashless society is being made in the European Union right now. Last May we learned that the 500 euro note is being completely eliminated, and just a few weeks ago the European Commission released a new "Action Plan" which instructs member states to explore "potential upper limits to cash payments". In the name of "fighting terrorism", this "Action Plan" discusses the benefits of "prohibitions for cash payments above a specific threshold" and it says that those prohibitions should include "virtual currencies (such as BitCoin) and prepaid instruments (such as pre-paid credit cards) when they are used anonymously."

This new document does not mention what an appropriate threshold would be for member states, but we do know that Spain already bans certain cash transactions above 2,500 euros, and Italy and France already ban cash transactions above 1,000 euros.

This is a perfect way to transition to a cashless society without creating too much of an uproar. By setting a maximum legal level for cash transactions and slowly lowering it, in effect you can slowly but surely phase cash out without people understanding what is happening.

And there are many places in Europe where it is very difficult to even use cash at this point. In Sweden, many banks no longer take or give out cash, and approximately 95 percent of all retail transactions are entirely cashless. So even though Sweden has not officially banned cash, using cash is no longer practical in most situations. In fact, many tourists are shocked to find out that they cannot even pay bus fare with cash.

Comment: See also:


Muffin

Because global warming: Oakland school district cuts meat and cheese in school lunches to lower carbon footprint

Captain Picard facepalm
There's nothing wrong with believing in man-made global warming. However, its hard to ignore the fact that the people who are convinced that human activity is warming our planet, have a habit of forcing their lifestyle choices on everyone else. At a certain point they stopped trying to convince everyone that global warming is a man-made threat, and started dragging everyone into their low-carbon foot print world, regardless of what they believed.

The Oakland school district in California has provided a perfect example of this lefty presumptuousness in action. They've teamed up with an environmental group called Friends of the Earth (FOE), to concoct a new school menu that has a lower carbon foot print. They vastly reduced the amount of meat and cheese, and replaced it with vegan stir fry and tostadas, as well as reduced the portion sizes. What little meat and cheese is left comes from organic cows. By their own admission, this change only reduced the school's food budget by 1%.

Attention

Wikileaks releases 'CIA espionage orders' for 2012 French presidential election

WikiLeaks logo on smart phone
© Toru Hanai / Reuters
Wikileaks has released three classified CIA espionage orders revealing details of an alleged seven-month long spying campaign by the agency ahead of the 2012 French presidential election.

The documents disclose that all of France's major political parties were targeted for infiltration by the CIA's human ("HUMINT") and electronic ("SIGINT") spies.

The CIA assessed that President Nicholas Sarkozy's UMP party was not assured re-election and ordered officers to find out Sarkozy's private deliberations "on the other candidates" as well as how he interacted with his advisors, according to the documents.

Hardhat

Conditions in the Dakota Access Pipeline protest camps deteriorating, cleanup scheduled

DAPL cleanup
© KOTA
According to reports, so far 23 loads of garbage have been dumped at the Bismarck landfill.
The conditions where people are camping to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline are rapidly worsening, and activists could be facing a serious health crisis, according to the governor of North Dakota and the state health department.

A press release published by Governor Doug Burgum (R) said the US Army Corps of Engineers would be visiting the campsite that sits on federally owned lands "to assess the situation and determine what resources are needed to complete the environmental cleanup before potential major spring flooding arrives."

The crisis emerged when high temperatures led to melting snow on frozen ground, which could potentially submerge the camp because it rests on a floodplain. As a result, the governor called for federal assistance in cleaning up the campsite in the form of the Army Corps.

"Today's assessment by the Army Corps of Engineers is crucial to accelerating the cleanup process, so this land can be properly cleared of garbage, structures, vehicles and human waste before it washes into the rivers," Burgum said. "We cannot afford to wait any longer." A particular concern is of garbage and human waste flooding into the Cannonball River. "If you're really trying to protect the river, it is imperative we get that stuff cleaned up before we see a flood," the governor said.

Comment: Odd juxtaposition: Garbage cleanup in the protest campsite for health concerns and to prevent toxic substances washing into the Cannonball River, countered by the future pollution and poisoning of the water in Lake Oahe due to the pipeline route. The Tribe is partnering with a corporation to effect the campsite cleanup and save the river. What will the pipeline do to save the lake?


Cut

Changes to Obamacare: Trump administration revisions to include stricter rules

Obamacare ripped
© Twitter
"Rip Rip Hooray!"
The Trump administration on Wednesday proposed changes to the Obamacare individual insurance market that insurers welcomed as a good start but that raised the possibility of higher out-of-pocket cost for consumers.

President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have promised to scrap the 2010 healthcare law that is a key legacy of Democrat Barack Obama's presidency. But they are struggling to agree on a replacement for the law, which extended health insurance to 20 million Americans.

The proposed new rule, issued by a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, sets out changes that are meant to shore up the system developed by Obama, and comes after Humana Inc (HUM.N) on Tuesday said it would pull out of this market in 2018. It is unclear which elements of Obamacare could survive in the Republicans' replacement. The rule does not address changes that must be made by law, such as for Obamacare's income-based subsidies.

The changes would tighten enrollment processes and allow insurers to collect unpaid premium payments, making it tougher for people to move in and out of insurance plans. Insurers say "gaming the system" has created an unprofitable mix of healthy and sick customers.

Sheriff

Scammers fake ICE raids to rob immigrants

Scammers ICE raids
© Pix11
Victims of scammer ICE agents
The surge of raids by US immigration agents has given birth to a new breed of con artist: immigration scammers. People posing as law enforcement have reportedly been demanding money from immigrants, claiming failure to do so will result in deportation.

In the confusion and fear surrounding the recent spike in raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman warned immigrants to be on the lookout for scammers posing as ICE agents, demanding money in exchange for not being deported.

In a fraud alert published on Wednesday, Schneiderman wrote that his office "has received a number of reports of unsolicited calls or in-person inquiries from fake immigration officials." The statement said that a man living in Queens was approached by four men presenting themselves as ICE agents. The fake ICE agents told the man he would be deported unless he gave them all of his cash. The man handed over $250, according to Newsday. "It is unconscionable for scam artists to prey on heightened fear in our immigrant communities by pretending to be ICE officers and demanding that families pay up in order to avoid deportation," said Schneiderman. He also wrote that ICE agents cannot ask for money.

Comment: Double bind...illegally in the USA and blackmailed for being so.


Attention

After six years of meltdown Fukushima is getting worse, radiation now at unimaginable levels

Seiverts reading at Fukushima
© Kimimasa Mayama / Reuters
A radiation monitor from less than a year ago had a reading of 131.00 microsieverts per hour. Now it is at 650 sieverts per hour and climbing.
After a week of limited coverage of "unimaginable levels" of radiation inside the remains of collapsed Unit 2 at Fukushima (see below), Nuclear-News.net reported February 11 that radiation levels are actually significantly higher than "unimaginable." [650 sieverts]

Continuous, intense radiation, at 530 sieverts an hour (4 sieverts is a lethal level), was widely reported in early February 2017 - as if this were a new phenomenon. It's not. Three reactors at Fukushima melted down during the earthquake-tsunami disaster on March 3, 2011, and the meltdowns never stopped. Radiation levels have been out of control ever since.

As Fairewinds Energy Education noted in an email February 10:
Although this robotic measurement just occurred, this high radiation reading was anticipated and has existed inside the damaged Unit 2 atomic reactor since the disaster began nearly 6 years ago.... As Fairewinds has said for 6 years, there are no easy solutions because groundwater is in direct contact with the nuclear corium (melted fuel) at Fukushima Daiichi.
What's new (and not very new, at that) is the official acknowledgement of the highest radiation levels yet measured there, by a factor of seven (the previously measured high was 73 sieverts an hour in 2012). The highest radiation level measured at Chernobyl was 300 sieverts an hour. What this all means, as anyone paying attention well knows, is that the triple-meltdown Fukushima disaster is still out of control.

Comment: There are four potential ways radiation from Fukushima can get into the US and beyond - through air, water, marine debris and sea life. The radioactivity in the Pacific Ocean is churned up by a combination of storms and wave activity, increasing the levels of evaporation. Once airborne, it can be blown inland in the forms of fog, hail, mist, rain and snow, subsequently affecting surface dwellers and the food chain.