LA Officers Use New “Laser” Weapon On Prisoners
August 23, 2010
NBC
By: John Adams
Guards at the Los Angeles County jail complex in Castaic will start using a newfangled weapon that produces a deep burning sensation — which is not to be confused with a “warm fuzzy feeling” — in whomever it is aimed at.
The 7 1/2-foot-tall “Assault Intervention Device,” which sheriff’s deputies demonstrated Friday at the Pitchess Detention Center, emits an invisible beam that causes an unbearable sensation, reported the Daily News.
The device will be mounted near the ceiling in a unit housing about 65 inmates, sheriff’s Cmdr. Bob Osborne of the sheriff’ Technology Exploration Program told the newspaper.
“We hope that this type of technology will either cause an inmate to stop an assault or lessen the severity of an assault by them being distracted by the pain as a result of the beam,” said Osborne. “So that we have fewer injuries, fewer assaults, those kinds of things.”
Deputies have tested the device on themselves and say the invisible beam is painful — especially when it’s not expected.
“I equate it to opening an oven door and feeling that blast of hot air, except instead of being all over me, it’s more focused,” said Osborne.
The pain stops when you move out of the beam’s path, which people do instinctively.
The device, developed by Raytheon, is controlled by a joystick and computer monitor and emits a beam about the size of a CD up to distances of about 100 feet.
The energy traveling at the speed of light penetrates the skin up to 1/64 of an inch deep. No one can stand being in the beam’s path for more than about three seconds, Mike Booen of Raytheon told the Daily News.
The device is being evaluated for a period of six months by the National Institute of Justice for use in jails nationwide.
Sheriff’s deputies are getting to try it out for free.
About 3,700 inmates are housed at Pitchess, where 257 inmate-on-inmate assaults occurred in the first half of the year.
WikiLeaks Founder Believes Pentagon Behind Rape Charges
August 23, 2010
Yahoo News
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said in an interview published on Sunday that he believes the Pentagon could be behind a rape accusation against him that was later dropped by Swedish prosecutors.
The country’s prosecution service meanwhile justified the chaotic situation when authorities first issued an arrest warrant for the Australian whistleblower late on Friday night but then withdrew it the following day.
The Aftonbladet newspaper quoted Assange, 39, as saying he did not know who was “hiding behind” the claims, which came amid a stand-off with Washington over the website’s publication of secret Afghan war documents.
Assange said he was shocked by the allegations against him and that he had never had sexual relations with anybody in a way that was not consensual, the tabloid said.
But he said that he had been warned previously that groups such as the Pentagon “could use dirty tricks” to destroy Wikileaks — adding that he had been particularly warned against being entrapped by sexual scandals.
Assange told Aftonbladet that despite the lifting of the warrant, his enemies would still use the claims to damage Wikileaks, which is set to publish thousands more secret papers about the war in Afghanistan in coming weeks.
He refused to give more details about the two women whose claims sparked the furore, saying that it would impinge on their privacy.
Prosecutors said Saturday that Assange was now “not suspected of rape” and was no longer wanted for questioning on the charge, but added that an investigation into a separate molestation charge remained open.
Assange, Wikileaks website and his aides have strongly denied all the claims.
He had been in Sweden earlier this month giving a press conference on the upcoming release of the last batch of Afghanistan documents, but he generally remains on the move around the world staying with supporters.
The Swedish prosecutor’s office issued a statement on Sunday defending its actions.
It said that chief prosecutor Eva Finne, who was responsible for withdrawing the arrest warrant, had “more information available to decide on Saturday than the duty prosecutor on Friday evening.”
“A decision regarding restrictive measures, such as this, must always be reevaluated in a preliminary inquiry,” the statement added.
The spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office, Karin Rosander, told AFP late Saturday that the procedure followed was normal and would have been launched automatically by the duty prosecutor in serious cases such as rape.
In an interview in the Expressen newspaper, which broke the story, duty prosecutor Maria Haljebo Kjellstrand said that she “did not regret her decision”.
The two women who originally made the claims did not make an official complaint and it was the police who took the decision to inform the prosecutors office, she said.
“I received a report from the police which seemed to me to be sufficient to arrest him. On Friday evening I got a call from the police describing what the women said. The information I received was convincing enough for me to take my decision,” Hljebo Kjellstrand was quoted as saying.
WikiLeaks has already released nearly 77,000 secret papers about the war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, sparking charges that it had endangered the lives of informants and others named therein.
The website says it had repeatedly asked the Pentagon for help analysing the remaining documents, and Assange has said he wants to avoid publishing the “names of innocent parties that are under reasonable threat”.
Iran Unveils Drone Craft To Counter “Aggressors”
August 23, 2010
Yahoo News
By: Robin Pomeroy
Iran unveiled a prototype long-range unmanned bomber on Sunday, the latest in a stream of announcements of new Iranian-made military hardware as tension mounts over its nuclear program.
On a stage in front of military officials, President MahmoudAhmadinejad pulled a sheet away from the aircraft, called the Karrar, which Iran says is its first long-range drone.
With the United States and Israel saying they do not rule out a military strike to stop Iran getting a nuclear bomb, the Islamic Republic has showed off new mini-submarines, and a surface-to-surface missile and announced plans to launch high-altitude satellites over the next three years.
The presentation of the drone came a day after Iranian and Russian technicians began loading fuel into Iran’s first nuclear power station,something Israel called “totally unacceptable.”
In a speech at the unveiling ceremony, Ahmadinejad said Iran should seek the ability to make pre-emptive strikes against a perceived threat, although he said it would never strike first.
“If there is an ignorant person or an egoist or a tyrant who just wanted to make an aggression then our Defense Ministry should reach a point where it could cut off the hand of the aggressor before it decided to make an aggression,” he said.
“We should reach a point when Iran would serve as a defense umbrella for all freedom-loving nations in the face of world aggressors. We don’t want to attack anywhere, Iran will never decide to attack anywhere, but our revolution cannot sit idle in the face of tyranny, we can’t remain indifferent.”
State television said the drone had a range of 1,000 km (620 miles) and a speed of 900 km per hour (560 miles per hour), and could be armed with four cruise missiles or a payload of either two 250-pound (113-kg) bombs or one of 500 pounds.
It could also be used for reconnaissance and for testing Iran’s missile defenses, the station said.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is entirely peaceful, has warned that any strike against its nuclear sites would be countered by measures not restricted to the Middle East. Ahmadinejad said on Saturday an attack on Iran would be “suicidal.”
Iran has said it is prepared to return to talks with major world powers but the exact nature of such negotiations has yet to be defined. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said last week Iran would not talk to the United States unless sanctions and military threats were lifted.
WikiLeaks Founder Charged With Rape
August 23, 2010
Reuters
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose whistle-blowing website caused uproar last month with a leak of secret U.S. military files on Afghanistan, has been charged in Sweden with rape and molestation, the National Prosecutor’s Office said on Saturday.
Assange was quoted by a Swedish daily as denying the allegations.
Assange, an Australian, was in Sweden last week to discuss his work and defend his intent to publish further documents on the war in Afghanistan. He has close ties with the Nordic country, where WikiLeaks has said it keeps some of its servers.
“We can confirm that he’s wanted. He was charged last night — the allegation is suspected rape,” said Karin Rosander, Director of Communications at the National Prosecutor’s office.
“One is rape and one is molestation,” she said, without giving details.
Assange, whose whereabouts is unclear, told Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter via email he had not been contacted by police.
“Why these accusations are popping up right now is an interesting question. I have not been contacted by police. These allegations are false,” he said.
WikiLeaks was not available by telephone when contacted by Reuters.
U.S. officials have called the leak, including more than 70,000 documents detailing the war in Afghanistan, one of the biggest security breaches in U.S. military history.
WikiLeaks promotes the leaking of information to fight government and corporate corruption. Earlier this year, it leaked a classified video showing a 2007 helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in Iraq, including two Reuters journalists.
The Pentagon said this month it would be the “height of irresponsibility” if WikiLeaks went through with a new threat to publish outstanding documents it had on the Afghan war.
It wants the site to expunge all classified material from the Internet and return the material it had to the U.S. government.
Brandy Risks Her Job to Give You the Truth
August 20, 2010 by Brandy
Filed under Kevin's Blog
As I told you on Tuesday, I spent several weeks working for Kevin around the clock in Europe. I got to know Kevin and live the luxurious lifestyle he does on a daily basis. If you haven’t read my last blog, definitely go back and read that before reading on…
The first week I was in Germany, Kevin introduced me to one of his billionaire friends, who came all the way to Germany just spend a week with him. One of those nights, we all went out and had a luxurious meal that consisted of fresh Bavarian Ox meat, fresh vegetables and strawberries that were picked that day with real whipped cream for dessert. Kevin’s friend revealed information to us about the state of the market and what he is hearing from insiders about where the economy is headed. This was stuff you aren’t going to hear from Glenn Beck or Jim Cramer. This was real information without the censorship. The best part and I don’t think Kevin even wants me to tell you about this, so I won’t drop any names, but Kevin’s friend actually left the table to take a call from a very famous billionaire! He came back to the table and I can’t even begin to tell you what he told us. My jaw was on the floor. I mean, these are the type of people I met on my trip. These are the type of people Kevin surrounds himself with and gets information from. This is what the government doesn’t want you to know about and Kevin is sharing with you on the show.
While Kevin was spending time with his friend, Natalie and I would go out to five star restaurants and hotels and pig out on the most delicious foods you could imagine. One of the restaurants was on top of one of the Alps! The view was out of this world beautiful! We ate exotic appetizers, hardy main courses and sampled every one of the house desserts without having to look at the price of each item. I still can’t believe how much we ate!
The guest at the GIN Munich event was even more impressive. I don’t want to give anything away, but let’s just say there’s some royalty in his blood. The GIN members know who I’m talking about. Where else are you going to meet these types of people? I sat down and spoke with a couple people from the Munich event and they couldn’t believe the information they received that weekend and even more so, the accommodations. This hotel was off the charts. I mean, there were speakers in the bathroom and the TV swiveled around to face you, so if you need to watch your favorite sport or television program while showering, you could without any hassle! The bed felt like a cloud. You sank in and never wanted to get out. That was the hardest part of the whole trip, leaving that bed.
However, I got over that feeling real quick after flying first class from Munich to Paris. I was stunned and forgot all about the bed when our limo pulled up to the palace-like apartment we were staying in RIGHT next to the Eiffel Tower. It was absolutely unbelievable. I never thought in my life I would experience this type of lifestyle. Trust me. Kevin does not need to do this radio show OR even deal with the government’s harassment. His life is just fine without all that hassle. We sat up late into the night researching information that he knew you wouldn’t hear anywhere else. He made phone calls to people around the world to get the real information behind the news articles he read. He doesn’t need to put up with any of this, but he does just for you and that’s why he needs to know you are standing behind him. He needs to know that YOU want this information and that YOU support him.
During my stay in Paris, we dined in first class restaurants and had VIP seating at every show we went to. My favorite dining experience was at this five star restaurant you wouldn’t have even known was there if the driver didn’t point out the door. The food was nothing I’ve ever tasted in my whole life. The flavors of the freshly picked vegetables exploded in your mouth and the fish practically melted in your mouth. The lamb slid off the bone and was from just one town over. It wasn’t shipped across the country in a freezer. This restaurant was so first class that Woody Allen and his colleagues dined only two tables over from us. After about two hours of eavesdropping, his new movie sounds pretty amazing. I can’t wait until it’s done! The next night we went to Le Lido, where we were sitting in the best table in the house, drank the best champagne and didn’t have to look for a waiter once because they were just waiting patiently to fill up our champagne or take a dirty plate.
I just don’t even know what else to say without having you hate me by the end! All I can say is that the hardest part about getting a taste of this lifestyle is leaving it. Kevin has the life. He doesn’t need the government after him or the radio show to distract him from this life that people only dream about. You have to know that he doesn’t do this for fun, he does it for YOU. Period.
Don’t let him leave this all behind. Do your part and show that you really do appreciate what he sacrifices for you. It’s not even about the money. It’s about the quantity, so take that $5 burning a hole in your pocket and show Kevin you support him instead of putting it toward a pack of cigarettes or a latte. Plus, if you end up donating $70, you’ll get all of his books… FREE! If you already have them, give them out as gifts. Who wouldn’t want to spread that kind of information to their friends or family? AND if you donate $1000, you’ll get to experience one of those first class dinners with Kevin I was telling you about. Trust me. He’s a blast. It will be well worth the price and you’ll have those memories for the rest of your life. Everyone has questions for Kevin. Be the one of the first to get the answer you want. So let’s get Kevin back on the air and show him your support!
Traditional Chinese Medicine Could Boost Cancer Treatment
August 20th, 2010
Telegraph
By: Richard Alleyne
Known as Huang Qin Tang, the mix of plant extracts, roots and fruit has been used for hundreds of years to treat stomach upsets and nausea.
But now researchers have found that it not only does the same for patients on chemotherapy, it also increases the effectiveness of the treatment.
The strong drugs used in chemotherapy cause a number of toxic side effects because it kills healthy cells as well as cancerous ones.
This is particularly true in the digestive tract or intestines.
The team from Yale University found that in mice the use of the Huang Qin Tang mixture helped protect the intestine lining and helped it recover more quickly.
It also reduced inflammation and boosted the effectiveness of the chemotherapy to kill tumours.
The formula used in the experiment consists of four herbs – extract of peonies, a pretty purple flower called skullcap, together with liquorice and fruit from a buckthorn tree.
The researchers treated mice with colon and rectal cancer with chemotherapy, which shrank tumours but also caused massive destruction in the intestinal lining of the animals.
After a few days of treatment with PHY906, the medicine restored the damaged intestinal linings in the mice.
The patients lost less weight and saw more cancer cells killed.
“Chemotherapy causes great distress for millions of patients, but PHY-906 has multiple biologically active compounds which can act on multiple sources of discomfort,” said Professor Yung-Chi Cheng, lead author of the study published in Science Translational Medicine.
“This combination of chemotherapy and herbs represents a marriage of Western and Eastern approaches to the treatment of cancer.
“We will continue to refine these processes to better study and understand the sophisticated nature of herbal medicines. Revisiting history may lead us to discovering future medicines.”
Ben & Jerry’s ‘Natural’ Ice Cream Filled With Unnatural Ingredients
August 20th, 2010
Natural News
By: Ethan A. Huff
Consumer watchdog group Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is calling out popular ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s for using artificial and chemically-altered ingredients in its “All Natural” premium ice creams. According to CSPI at least 90 percent of the flavors used in “All Natural” Ben & Jerry’s ice cream are not actually natural.
Some of these ingredients include corn syrup, alkalized cocoa, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, vanillin, maltodextrin and dextrose, all of which involve some type of chemical processing or are simply artificial. Alkalized cocoa, for instance, involves a chemical process that changes cocoa’s natural flavor, texture and chemical structure, as well as eliminates some of its acidity and healthy antioxidant content. And vanillin is just an artificial version of vanilla.
“Ben & Jerry’s sylvan labels notwithstanding, these ingredients come from the factory, not the farm. And slapping an ‘all natural’ label on the products certainly implies that the products are top quality and deserve to fetch a higher price,” said Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of CSPI. “It’s a stretch to call any of [these ingredients] ‘natural’.”
CSPI has been after Ben & Jerry’s, which is now part of the consumer product conglomerate Unilever, since 2002 over deceptive labeling. After bringing these problems to the attention of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) at that time, CSPI has watched the quality of Ben & Jerry’s products get even worse
So now the group is now urging Ben & Jerry’s to clean up its act and fix its deceptive labeling or else face legal charges to be brought before both the FDA and state attorneys general.
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Zinc Helps Prevent Pneumonia In Elderly
August 20th, 2010
Natural News
By: Ethan A. Huff
A new report published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has found that zinc plays a very important role in health maintenance. In a study of over 600 seniors from 33 different nursing homes in the Boston area, researchers found that seniors with healthy blood levels of zinc are 50 percent less likely to develop pneumonia than those with sub-par levels.
The study was a follow-up to a previous one which found that people given 200 international units (IU) of vitamin E every day for one year are 20 percent less likely to develop upper respiratory infections, including common colds. But after a follow-up, the trial also revealed that a majority of those same participants had low levels of zinc in their blood.
Subjects in the first trial were supplemented with only half the recommended daily intake of zinc and other essential vitamins, but those who had normal blood levels of the mineral overall experienced less infections and needed fewer antibiotics. Those with zinc deficiencies were far more prone to developing prolonged illness.
Zinc is a necessary mineral for maintaining health in many other areas as well. The eyes and prostate, for example, need zinc in order to function properly.
“[Zinc] is…important for the proper functioning of the immune system — which you definitely want in top working order! Zinc also aids in the regulation of blood pressure and the mineralization of bone,” explains Elaine Magee in her book Food Synergy: Unleash Hundreds of Powerful Healing Food Combinations to Fight Disease and Live Well.
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Sunlight Can Cure Psoriasis
August 20th, 2010
Natural News
By: S.L. Baker
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) about 7.5 million Americans suffer from the chronic, autoimmune skin disease called psoriasis that causes irritated, flaky and thick patches of red skin; some forms of psoriasis are also associated with joint pain. Most medical treatment for the often painful and quality-of-life robbing disease center around controlling symptoms with medications like cortisone. But now research just published in the August issue of the Archives of Dermatology indicates there’s a non-drug way to clear and maybe cure the disease naturally — exposure to vitamin D boosting UV-B light.
Comprising the “tanning rays” from the sun that are blocked by sunscreen and long feared for supposedly causing wrinkles and “age spots”, UV-B light, it turns out, actually promotes health by increasing levels of vitamin D. Now a team of scientists from St. Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, have found that treatment with narrow-band UV-B rays greatly increases serum levels of vitamin D in the wintertime. And they’ve shown how adequate exposure to UV-B light therapy can clear psoriasis. In fact, the new finding is powerful evidence that a lack of “sunshine” vitamin is involved in the development and worsening of this skin condition.
The researchers studied 30 consecutive patients with psoriasis who were treated with narrow-band UV-B light three times per week between October 2008 and February 2009. The research subjects’ psoriasis cleared and their serum vitamin D levels (which were measured before the study, after four weeks of treatment and after the treatment was finished) were compared with those of 30 control patients who also had psoriasis but did not have any UV-B therapy. The researchers also assessed the severity of the patients’ psoriasis symptoms and their skin disease-related quality of life before and after treatment.
The results showed that levels of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D, which is considered the most accurate measurement of vitamin D levels in the body, had increased significantly among individuals receiving UV-B therapy — rising from about 23 nanograms per milliliter to 59 nanograms per milliliter at the end of treatment. However, there was no change in the control group.
“At the end of the study, all patients in the treatment group were vitamin D sufficient, but 75 percent of the control group had vitamin D insufficiency,” the authors wrote in their paper. What’s more, the control group’s skin condition didn’t improve at all. And in the group treated with UV-B light exposure, their psoriasis severity scores decreased dramatically — from 7.1 at the beginning of the study to only 0.5 after light therapy.
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‘Obama Was Born A Muslim Under Muslim Law’
August 20, 2010 by Duffy
Filed under Government
August 20th, 2010
The New York Times
By: Edward N. Luttwack
Barack Obama has emerged as a classic example of charismatic leadership — a figure upon whom others project their own hopes and desires. The resulting emotional intensity adds greatly to the more conventional strengths of the well-organized Obama campaign, and it has certainly sufficed to overcome the formidable initial advantages of Senator Hillary Clinton.
One danger of such charisma, however, is that it can evoke unrealistic hopes of what a candidate could actually accomplish in office regardless of his own personal abilities. Case in point is the oft-made claim that an Obama presidency would be welcomed by the Muslim world.
This idea often goes hand in hand with the altogether more plausible argument that Mr. Obama’s election would raise America’s esteem in Africa — indeed, he already arouses much enthusiasm in his father’s native Kenya and to a degree elsewhere on the continent.
But it is a mistake to conflate his African identity with his Muslim heritage. Senator Obama is half African by birth and Africans can understandably identify with him. In Islam, however, there is no such thing as a half-Muslim. Like all monotheistic religions, Islam is an exclusive faith.
As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant.
Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him.
His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is “irtidad” or “ridda,” usually translated from the Arabic as “apostasy,” but with connotations of rebellion and treason. Indeed, it is the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder (which the victim’s family may choose to forgive).
With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings. (Some may point to cases in which lesser punishments were ordered — as with some Egyptian intellectuals who have been punished for writings that were construed as apostasy — but those were really instances of supposed heresy, not explicitly declared apostasy as in Senator Obama’s case.)
It is true that the criminal codes in most Muslim countries do not mandate execution for apostasy (although a law doing exactly that is pending before Iran’s Parliament and in two Malaysian states). But as a practical matter, in very few Islamic countries do the governments have sufficient authority to resist demands for the punishment of apostates at the hands of religious authorities.
For example, in Iran in 1994 the intervention of Pope John Paul II and others won a Christian convert a last-minute reprieve, but the man was abducted and killed shortly after his release. Likewise, in 2006 in Afghanistan, a Christian convert had to be declared insane to prevent his execution, and he was still forced to flee to Italy.
Because no government is likely to allow the prosecution of a President Obama — not even those of Iran and Saudi Arabia, the only two countries where Islamic religious courts dominate over secular law — another provision of Muslim law is perhaps more relevant: it prohibits punishment for any Muslim who kills any apostate, and effectively prohibits interference with such a killing.
At the very least, that would complicate the security planning of state visits by President Obama to Muslim countries, because the very act of protecting him would be sinful for Islamic security guards. More broadly, most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of Senator Obama’s conversion to Christianity once it became widely known — as it would, no doubt, should he win the White House. This would compromise the ability of governments in Muslim nations to cooperate with the United States in the fight against terrorism, as well as American efforts to export democracy and human rights abroad.
That an Obama presidency would cause such complications in our dealings with the Islamic world is not likely to be a major factor with American voters, and the implication is not that it should be. But of all the well-meaning desires projected on Senator Obama, the hope that he would decisively improve relations with the world’s Muslims is the least realistic.
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