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The US employment situation is far weaker than the Feburary jobs number suggests While February job growth was decent at +175,000, the overall US employment picture in the last few months has deteriorated substantially. Seven out of the 9 previous times that the YoY% change in aggregate hours was as low as it is now, the economy had entered a recession.

A Syrian rebel group claims that it has ambushed and killed a group of Russian mercenaries who may have been working for a Chinese security contractor. The jihadist fighters from an Al Qaeda affiliate “Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS)” claim to have killed the mercenaries in a battle near Homs. At least one of the mercenaries, however, has been videotaped alive and well, and living back in Russia. The large and well-respected St. Petersburg newspaper, Fontanka, has published an article, translation by The Interpreter, entitled “St. Petersburg Sends Contractors to Syria.” It details the investigation that uncovered...

Apparently not satisfied with just setting fire to the 4th Amendment, NSA boss Keith Alexander's next target is the 1st Amendment. In an interview with the Defense Department's "Armed With Science" blog , it appears that Alexander felt he'd have a friendly audience, so he let loose with some insane claims, including suggesting that the government needs to find a way to "stop" journalists from reporting on the Snowden leaks . As noted by Politco, General Alexander isn't a fan of journalists doing anything about these documents: "I think it’s wrong that that newspaper reporters have all these documents,...

While Wronged Homeowners Got $300 Apiece in Foreclosure Settlement, Consultants Who Helped Protect Banks Got $2 Billion The obscene greed-and-arrogance stories emanating from Wall Street are piling up so fast, it's getting hard to keep up. This one is from last week, but I missed it – it's about the foreclosure/robo-signing settlement that was concluded earlier this year. The upshot of this story is that in advance of that notorious settlement, the government ordered banks to hire "independent" consultants to examine their loan files to see just exactly how corrupt they were. Now it comes out that not only were...

Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jamaah Australia. http://www.aswj.com.au/ Long history of instigating violent Islamic violence in Australia. They appeared to have influenced the older brother substantially in the last year. http://qsproduction.wordpress.com/ http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/muslim-discussion-on-violent-protests-called-off-20120919-265rk.html http://www.youtube.com/user/QuranandSunnahYT?feature=watch

http://korrespondent.net/world/1550178-predpolagaemyj-ispolnitel-terakta-v-bostone-rodom-iz-kirgizstana-istochnik http://ria.ru/incidents/20130419/933527599.html MOSCOW, April 19 - RIA Novosti. agency Associated Press , citing unnamed sources, reported Friday that the suspects in the attack during the Boston International Marathon - natives of one of the Russian regions, which border with Chechnya. One suspect was killed and another is on the run. According to the agency, managed to escape 19-year-old Johar Tsarnaevu (Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev). According to the Associated Press, Tsarnaev lived in the neighboring city of Boston Cambridge at least a year. Nineteen-year-Tsarnaev Johar, who is known as the alleged perpetrator of the terrorist attack in Boston, at one time had...

This is an Excerpt... PNAS Study: Population Growth Will be Constrained by the Limits of Trading Virtual Water (Food) A new study has been released by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), which calls into question the unsustainable global food export system based upon unsustainable export volumes of virtual water.The first sentence sums it up: Population growth is in general constrained by food production, which in turn depends on the access to water resources. … Most of the water we use is to produce the food we eat. With the world’s population that has doubled every 40...

SO in the last few months, I was one of the victims of the GoDaddy hacking, and it has caused serious consternation in my business over the security of our email provider. GoDaddy hosts our email and domain, our website is just a front page with contact info. I am in search of a replacement, a host provider with a good track record for small businesses and able to provide daily backups of our files. Please help me out with personal recommendations and experiences with various email and website hosting providers. Thanks,

SO I ran into a situation where a friend of mine is finishing his term of military service in his home country, and he has his eyes set on moving to the USA and joining the US Army or US Marine Corps. He has applied to the standard visa lottery system, but with no success. He is applying again for next year. In the mean time, I thought I'd ask if there are any informed Army or Marine recruiters on FR who know if military veterans from Partners for Peace countries can get some sort of special visa to directly...

Selling out pays. If you’re a corporation or lobbyist, what’s the best way to “buy” a member of Congress? Secretly promise them a million dollars or more in pay if they come to work for you after they leave office. Once a public official makes a deal to go to work for a lobbying firm or corporation after leaving office, he or she becomes loyal to the future employer. And since those deals are done in secret, legislators are largely free to pass laws, special tax cuts, or earmarks that benefit their future employer with little or no accountability to...

The thing about admirable practitioners of civil disobedience is that they were entirely willing to serve their sentence for their offenses in furtherance of their cause. And the causes they adopted were carefully selected, pursued with calculated strategy, and winnable with the forces on hand. The thing about The Revolution and the English Civil War is that the anti-authoritarians won- no matter what the cost. Murderous thugs, for certain, but one never heard Cromwell whining about how unfair it all was. Neither Wikileaks nor Anonymous possess the admirable traits of these movements or the resolve of Cromwell or The Revolution....

Click on the Source for a downloadable PDF file. Analyst’s Desktop Binder Department of Homeland Security National Operations Center Media Monitoring Capability Desktop Reference Binder 2011 Contents 1 Media Monitoring Capability Mission & Reporting Parameters: ......................................................... 4 2 Items of Interest (IOI): Personally Identifiable Information (PII) Guidance:............................................................................ 24

How does the livestock industry talk about antibiotics? Well, it depends on who’s doing the talking, but they all say some version of the same thing. Take the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association; they say there is “no conclusive scientific evidence indicating the judicious use of antibiotics in cattle herds leads to antimicrobial resistance in humans [MRSA].” Or Ron Phillips of the Animal Health Institute (a drug-industry front group). In an interview on Grist last year, he said that before you can draw any conclusions: … You have to look at specific bug/drug combinations and figure out what are the potential...

From 1980 to 2007, the number of prisoners held in the United States quadrupled to 2.3 million, with an additional 5 million on probation or parole. What Ayn Rand once called the “freest, noblest country in the history of the world” is now the most incarcerated, and the second-most incarcerated country in history, just barely edged out by Stalin’s Soviet Union. We’re used to hearing about the widening chasm between the haves and have-nots; we’re less accustomed to contemplating a more fundamental gap: the abyss that separates the fortunate majority, who control their own bodies, from the luckless minority, whose...

This is a google translate translation: Ministers participating in the "great train robbery" First registration: Tuesday, February 7, 2012, 16:28 The legal use Katsios was perfectly clear, speaking Tuesday at noon in Makis Triantafyllopoulos and zougla Radio . In the circuit of corrupt government officials, tax collectors, managers and auditors of SDOE various institutions involved and politicians. The new element, however, that makes the difference is that between those policies, are ministers. The scam is repeated over time and after the introduction of Value Added Tax in 1987, namely how the circuits set up the "Great Theft of the Nation"...

Shock confession: "That Ladon" First registration: Monday, January 30, 2012, 20:26 Reporters: Peter Kousoulis The omertà broke. So the abscess with corrupt officials of the Ministry of Finance, the headquarters of employees of Financial Crime, the tax offices perjurer bosses and their political 'friends', accomplices in the great "feast" that occurred and occurs at the expense of the State. The man at the other end of the line sounds scared. "Since we ate all the pie and evenly," he says. Is Nick Kasimatis, number one debtor government according to the list recently published by the Ministry of Finance. He spoke...

Drudge versus history Posted by William A. Jacobson    Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 9:31am Politico’s homepage top headline is The right drops a bomb on Newt featuring photos of Ann Coulter, Tom DeLay, Elliot Abrams and Matt Drudge.Just like in December, the rise of Newt has caused panic in Republican circles.In December the charge was led by National Review, and now it’s being led by Matt Drudge, as reflected in this image from Marooned in Marin:  For several days Drudge has been running almost around-the-clock negative banners against Newt, hyping negatives and burying news which contradicts the Romney campaign narrative that Newt was anti-Reagan.Against...

Can Politico Sink Any Lower?26 Corporate Crime Reporter 4, January 20, 2012 Politico is out this morning with a glossy State of the Union edition with this cover story headline – “The Worst Ever? Extreme Fighting. Public Scorn. Can Congress Sink Any Lower?”That of course raises the question – Can Politico Sink Any Lower?The Politico cover story, written by Jonathan Allen, not once mentions the corrupting influence of big corporate money as a reason for Congress’ poor approval rating.But then again, guess who is paying for Politico?Splashed across pages 24 and 25 is an ad from military contractor Lockheed Martin...

Direct link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2FAbUZd3zoMSynopsis Excerpt: A Melbourne, Florida cop turned off his audio and video equipment before beating a 66-year-old man suffering from dementia "for no apparent reason," WFTV reports. The officer turned off his video and audio equipment before the beating. The department was able to extract the video from the hard drive, but not the audio. The only disciplinary record the officer received for the incident was a written reprimand for turning off the recording equipment. Flowers was charged with battery on a law enforcement officer. "It's ridiculous. Clearly from this video there was no assault on...

Data Visualizations on Internet Censorship