Archive
Schools Ban Children Making Best Friends
Tuesday, 20 March 2012 09:49
‘Teachers are banning schoolkids from having best pals — so they don’t get upset by fall-outs. Instead, the primary pupils are being encouraged to play in large groups.
Educational psychologist Gaynor Sbuttoni said the policy has been used at schools in Kingston, South West London, and Surrey. She added: “I have noticed that teachers tell children they shouldn’t have a best friend and that everyone should play together.’
Body Scanners To Be Used At Events During Olympics
Tuesday, 20 March 2012 10:02
‘Radiation firing body scanners are set to be used by events organizers during the Olympics in London as part of a huge security lockdown from 27 July to 12 August.
Event Magazine reports that promotion company Live Nation, organizer of the London Live series of events scheduled during the games, will work in conjunction with police to conduct airport-style security checks that could take up to an hour.
The body scanners, along with bag scanners will be temporarily installed at the entrances to Hyde Park and Victoria Park, where organizers plan to broadcast the games on big screens and hold several music concerts.’
Read more: Body Scanners To Be Used At Events During Olympics
http://www.davidicke.com/headlines
The Obama Administration: All Your Privacy And All Your Stuff Belong To Us
Did you know that the federal government claims that it can take away your constitutional rights any time that it wants to? Over the past several decades, there have been an endless parade of laws and executive orders that have been slowly and methodically carving up our rights under the U.S. Constitution. Most Americans are not even aware of the “creeping totalitarianism” that is happening. Most Americans just trust the “authorities” when they tell us that certain things “must be done” in order to keep us all safe. But even if we gave up all of our privacy, even if we gave up all of our liberties and our freedoms, and even if we gave the government all of our stuff they still would not be able to keep us safe. It is inevitable that evil people are going to do evil things, and if you are counting on the Obama administration to keep you safe then you are being delusional. Obama is not going to save us from anything. But Obama will gladly take away our rights and our freedoms if the American people allow him to. The Obama administration seems to have an endless lust for more power. Sadly, if we do give away our rights it will have some very serious consequences. If we freely give away all of the rights that we have been given under the U.S. Constitution it will be incredibly difficult to ever get them back. Giving up liberty for security never works, and if we want to be worthy of being called Americans then we need to start standing up for the republic that our forefathers worked so hard to build.
An executive order that Barack Obama signed the other day is making headlines all over the nation. The title of the executive order is “National Defense Resources Preparedness” and it is actually an update of a series of previous executive orders.
The original “National Defense Resources Preparedness” executive order (EO 8248) was issued back in 1939. This latest version is very similar to EO 12919 that was signed by Bill Clinton in June 1994. However, several very important changes have been made in this new version.
For example, in Section 201(b) the words “under both emergency and non-emergency conditions” have been added.
So now the federal government can take control of all food, all energy, all health resources, all transportation resources and “all other materials, services, and facilities” in the country even if the United States is not experiencing emergency conditions.
Not that the Obama administration really needed to put that in there. After all, the U.S. government has been operating under a constant state of national emergency since September 14, 2001.
So the Obama administration did not really need to include a new excuse for taking control of everything. The existing “state of emergency” would probably work just fine.
If Barack Obama woke up one day and decided to exercise the powers in this executive order, he would be able to do pretty much anything that he wanted. This executive order would essentially allow Obama to declare a state of martial law in the United States even during a time when no emergency was happening.
Just check out what Section 201 of the executive order allows the federal government to take control of….
Sec. 201. Priorities and Allocations Authorities. (a) The authority of the President conferred by section 101 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2071, to require acceptance and priority performance of contracts or orders (other than contracts of employment) to promote the national defense over performance of any other contracts or orders, and to allocate materials, services, and facilities as deemed necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense, is delegated to the following agency heads:
(1) the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to food resources, food resource facilities, livestock resources, veterinary resources, plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment and commercial fertilizer;
(2) the Secretary of Energy with respect to all forms of energy;
(3) the Secretary of Health and Human Services with respect to health resources;
(4) the Secretary of Transportation with respect to all forms of civil transportation;
(5) the Secretary of Defense with respect to water resources; and
(6) the Secretary of Commerce with respect to all other materials, services, and facilities, including construction materials.
So should we be worried?
Bush and Clinton did not exercise these powers.
Perhaps Obama will not either.
Yes, perhaps he will not.
But they are there.
And someday they will be used.
The Obama administration also continues to make shocking claims regarding our privacy.
According to the 4th Amendment, our homes are not supposed to be searched unless there is probable cause….
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
But according to CIA director David Petraeus, the American people are willingly bugging their own homes by choosing to use modern gadgets, and the CIA plans to use these technologies to spy on you. Petraeus recently said the following about the “transformational” impact these new technologies will have on the ability of the CIA to spy on the American people…
“Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters — all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing”
The kind of chips that Petraeus was referring to will soon be in nearly all new appliances. As a recent Daily Mail article noted, we will soon see an “Internet of things” emerge where virtually every electronic device is connected to the Internet….
This week, one of the world’s biggest chip companies, ARM, has unveiled a new processor built to work inside ‘connected’ white goods.
The ARM chips are smaller, lower-powered and far cheaper than previous processors – and designed to add the internet to almost every kind of electrical appliance.
It’s a concept described as the ‘internet of things’.
Futurists think that one day ‘connected’ devices will tell the internet where they are and what they are doing at all times – and will be mapped by computers as precisely as Google Maps charts the physical landscape now.
But we are not going to have to wait for the future for the federal government to use the Internet to spy on us all.
As I have written about previously, the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. military and the Federal Reserve are all using Facebook and Twitter to monitor the American people.
If you post this article to Facebook and Twitter, multiple agencies of the federal government will have a record of it.
In fact, the truth is that every single phone call, every single email, every single Facebook post and pretty much every other kind of electronic communication that you can imagine is monitored by intelligence agencies. Don’t ever assume that anything you say on your phone or on the Internet is private.
And now, even your ISP will be spying on you to make sure that you are not downloading any copyrighted material.
Yes, that is right.
A clandestine deal coordinated by the Obama administration will go into effect on July 12th. The following is from a recent Raw Story article….
If you download potentially copyrighted software, videos or music, your Internet service provider (ISP) has been watching, and they’re coming for you.
Specifically, they’re coming for you on Thursday, July 12.
That’s the date when the nation’s largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials.
Word of the start date has been largely kept secret since ISPs announced their plans last June. The deal was brokered by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and coordinated by the Obama Administration.
So be careful what you are doing on the Internet.
Your ISP will be watching it all.
Even local police departments are “pushing the envelope” when it comes to surveillance technology. For example, the NYPD is working on technology that will be able to see a gun inside your clothes from a distance of 80 feet away….
The reason that the NYPD is so interested terahertz waves is that they pass through nonconductive materials like clothes, but can’t penetrate metal — like, say, the steel in a semi-automatic pistol. That means if you scan someone, you can look for spots where a person’s natural terahertz radiation is blocked, most likely by a metal object.
The benefits for police officers are obvious. They can essentially sit back in a specially-equipped van and scan anyone they suspect of carrying a gun from a safe distance. Right now it only works from three or four feet away, but department spokesman Paul J. Browne told the New York Times that the NYPD — in coordination with the Department of Defense — hopes to increase its range to 25 meters, or 82 feet.
Unfortunately, there are dozens of other new technologies like this. For 14 more examples of how the government is watching us, just check out this article.
Most Americans assume that these technologies will only be used against “terrorists”, but that simply is not the case.
For example, a man living in Burnsville, Minnesota was recently subjected to “electronic home monitoring” for not having the proper siding on his home….
A Burnsville man on his way to work was arrested and thrown in jail without bond, and then subjected to electronic home monitoring.
But it wasn’t for drugs or a DWI or some other major crime.
Burnsville city leaders say Mitch Faber’s dealings with the law all stem from his failure to properly put up siding on his house.
Yep, siding.
Sadly, the truth is that the United States is rapidly being turned into a high-tech Big Brother prison grid dominated by control freak bureaucrats who do not care about our liberties and freedoms.
This is not the way that America is supposed to work.
We are supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Has that dream been lost forever, or will we get it back someday?
Researchers reveal how a single gene mutation leads to uncontrolled obesity
Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center have revealed how a mutation in a single gene is responsible for the inability of neurons to effectively pass along appetite suppressing signals from the body to the right place in the brain. What results is obesity caused by a voracious appetite.
Their study, published March 18th on Nature Medicine‘s website, suggests there might be a way to stimulate expression of that gene to treat obesity caused by uncontrolled eating.
The research team specifically found that a mutation in the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (Bdnf) gene in mice does not allow brain neurons to effectively pass leptin and insulin chemical signals through the brain. In humans, these hormones, which are released in the body after a person eats, are designed to “tell” the body to stop eating. But if the signals fail to reach correct locations in the hypothalamus, the area in the brain that signals satiety, eating continues.
“This is the first time protein synthesis in dendrites, tree-like extensions of neurons, has been found to be critical for control of weight,” says the study’s senior investigator, Baoji Xu, Ph.D., an associate professor of pharmacology and physiology at Georgetown.
“This discovery may open up novel strategies to help the brain control body weight,” he says.
Xu has long investigated the Bdnf gene. He has found that the gene produces a growth factor that controls communication between neurons.
For example, he has shown that during development, BDNF is important to the formation and maturation of synapses, the structures that permit neurons to send chemical signals between them. The Bdnf gene generates one short transcript and one long transcript. He discovered that when the long-form Bdnf transcript is absent, the growth factor BDNF is only synthesized in the cell body of a neuron but not in its dendrites. The neuron then produces too many immature synapses, resulting in deficits in learning and memory in mice.
Xu also found that the mice with the same Bdnf mutation grew to be severely obese.
But, until this study, no one has been able to describe exactly how BDNF controls body weight.
Xu’s data shows that both leptin and insulin stimulate synthesis of BDNF in neuronal dendrites in order to move their chemical message from one neuron to another through synapses. The intent is to keep the leptin and insulin chemical signals moving along the neuronal highway to the correct brain locations, where the hormones will turn on a program that suppresses appetite.
“If there is a problem with the Bdnf gene, neurons can’t talk to each other, and the leptin and insulin signals are ineffective, and appetite is not modified,” Xu says.
Now that scientists know that BDNF regulates the movement of leptin and insulin signals through brain neurons, the question is whether a faulty transmission line can be repaired.
One possible strategy would be to produce additional long-form Bdnf transcript using adeno-associated virus-based gene therapy, Xu says. But although this kind of gene therapy has proven to be safe, it is difficult to deliver across the brain blood barrier, he adds.
“The better approach might be to find a drug that can stimulate Bdnf expression in the hypothalamus,” Xu says. “We have opened the door to both new avenues in basic research and clinical therapies, which is very exciting.”
Provided by Georgetown University Medical Center (news : web)
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-reveal-gene-mutation-uncontrolled-obesity.html
NASA Releases Atlas of the Entire Sky
Launched in 2009, NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer or WISE methodically snapped an infrared picture about once every 11 seconds for ten months — totaling around 2.7 million images — in an attempt to compile an atlas of the entire sky. This past Wednesday, NASA released the final version of their all-sky atlas and catalog of objects, which should keep scientists and astronomers busy for quite some time.
Comprising 15 trillion bytes of information, the individual pictures from the WISE probe were stitched together into a collection of 18,000 mosaic images with over 560 million individual stars and galaxies, many of which have never been seen before. The image above is one such mosaic image, showing the entire 360º view of the sky in a single shot.
The hope is that this collection of images and catalog of objects will spur further discoveries, as the head of the data processing and archiving effort for WISE Roc Cutri said:
“It will be exciting and rewarding to see the innovative ways the science and educational communities will use WISE in their studies now that they have the data at their fingertips.”
Though the all sky-atlas is only just now released, preliminary data from WISE has already turned up some startling discoveries. For instance, the first “trojan asteroid” — that is, an asteroid which has the same orbital path around the sun as the Earth — was found using information from the WISE survey. A new class of stars called “Y-dwarfs,” which are the darkest and coldest stars yet seen, were also discovered using WISE data. Information from WISE was also used in a survey of near Earth asteroids that comfortingly found that NASA has already tracked over 90% of space rocks close to our planet.
With so much valuable scientific work already made by the program, it’s no surprise that NASA has high hopes now that all the information has been released. Who knows what startling new finds will come next?
(via NASA, Wikipedia, image via NASA)
US Builds World’s Biggest Spy Centre
Tuesday, 20 March 2012 07:26
‘The United States National Security Agency (NSA) is building the biggest spy center for intercepting and storing electronic communications collected from all over the world and American citizens.
A new report published by the monthly magazine Wired, said that the centre located in Bluffdale, a remote valley in the state of Utah, can process yottabytes (a million billions of gigabytes) of data. The facility of USD 2 billion is designed to “intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications including the contents of telephone calls, private e-mails, mobile phone text messages and Internet searches.’
Read more: US Builds World’s Biggest Spy Centre
Cancer Industry Trying to Co-opt Most Recent Potential Natural Cure – Frankincense
Tuesday, 20 March 2012 08:07
‘”There is not one, but many cures for cancer available. But they are all being systematically suppressed by … the major oncology centers. They have too much of an interest in the status quo,” stated Dr Robert Atkins, MD, creator of the Atkins Diet, after licensure problems for curing cancer patients with ozone therapy during the 1960s.
Yet the cancer industry keeps doing exactly what Dr. Atkins described. It is amazing how many cures do exist while many suffer and die from “accepted” incredibly expensive toxic chemotherapy and radiation treatments. At least 100 natural cancer cures have been discovered and used successfully without side effects since 1920.’
Read more: Cancer Industry Trying to Co-opt Most Recent Potential Natural Cure – Frankincense
Belarus Executes Two Men Convicted of Subway Bombing
Monday, 19 March 2012 08:45
‘Two men convicted of carrying out a deadly subway bombing last year in Belarus’ capital have been executed, drawing strong condemnation from activists and the European Union.
The mother of one of the two 26 year olds said that she had received official notification of the execution of her son, Vladislav Kovalyov. State television reported late Saturday that both Kovalyov and Dmitry Konovalov had been put to death, which in Belarus is done with a shot to the back of the head.
Human rights activists condemned the hasty executions, saying they deprived society of the opportunity to learn the truth. “The government was in a rush to throw a white shroud over all the contradictions and discrepancies in the case,” activist Lyudmila Gryaznova said Sunday. “The execution of the so-called terrorists, whose guilt remains under suspicion, gives the appearance that the government is concealing the traces of the crime.”‘
Read more: Belarus Executes Two Men Convicted of Subway Bombing
Israel’s Netanyahu Pestered SWIFT to Stop Services to Iran: Israel Official
Monday, 19 March 2012 07:33
‘An Israeli official says the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) discontinued offering services to Iran upon the persisting demands by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
On March 15, SWIFT CEO Lazaro Campos said in a statement that the society has decided to discontinue offering services to Iranian banks which are subject to financial sanctions imposed by the European Union. This is while the Israeli official, whose name was not announced, indicated that, in meetings with US president Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Netanyahu had demanded Iran’s expulsion from the SWIFT, the Ha’aretz reported.’
Read more: Israel’s Netanyahu Pestered SWIFT to Stop Services to Iran: Israel Official
France Bans GM Corn Amid Mass US Protests against Monsanto
Sunday, 18 March 2012 07:37
“Due to the proximity of the planting season,” said Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire along with Francois Fillon, Minister for Ecology and Sustainable Development, in a press release on Friday, authorities “decided to take a precautionary measure to temporarily prohibit the cultivation of maize MON810 on the national territory to protect the environment.” All prior plantings of MON810, trade name YieldGard, become illegal on March 20.’
Read more: France Bans GM Corn Amid Mass US Protests against Monsanto
Believe nothing 