Yearly Archives: 2013

Dennis Rodman pleads with Kim Jong-Un to release American sentenced to 15 years

"Basketball hall-of-famer Dennis Rodman, who forged an unlikely friendship with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un on a recent trip, appealed Tuesday for the freedom of an American sentenced to 15 years. 'I’m calling on the Supreme Leader of North Korea or as I call him ‘Kim’, to do me a solid and cut Kenneth Bae loose,' Rodman tweeted. Bae, whose Korean name is Pae Jun-Ho, was sentenced last week to 15 years of hard labor on charges that he tried to topple the North Korean regime. The Korean-American had organized tours into the isolated state." Continue reading →

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Australia: Another Toll Road Goes Bankrupt

"The same phenomenon is common in Europe. In Spain last year, ten toll concessions, including the Madrid-Toledo highway, became insolvent. The Spanish government provided more than a billion euros in bailout money to the tolling firms Abertis, Acciona, ACS, Bankia, Cintra, OHL and Sacyr Vallehermoso. Failures are equally common in the United States, beginning with the toll lanes on the 91 freeway in Orange County, California which had to be bought out by county taxpayers in 2003 for more than the original cost of construction. San Diego's South Bay Expressway went bankrupt in 2010 and was also bought out by county government." Continue reading →

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How I Printed So Much Money in Zimbabwe That the Country Experienced Hyper-Inflation

"The former head of Zimbabwe's central bank, Gideon Gono, wrote a book in 2008, Zimbabwe's Casino Economy. The book is about his running of the bank during the country's period of hyper-inflation." Continue reading →

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Rasmussen Poll: Nullification Goes Mainstream

"Day after day, the media pounds out a relentless drumbeat against nullification. Pundits, commentators and so-called legal experts demonize it as unconstitutional, villainize it as racist and trivialize it with slurs like 'wacky' and 'kookie.' But while the political class continues to arrogantly ridicule Madison and Jefferson’s principles, everyday Americans embrace them in increasing numbers. A Rasmussen poll released Monday indicates that nullification is growing more and more popular in mainstream America. More people than not approve of nullification in general." Continue reading →

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Dale Brown of Detroit-based Threat Management Center is On-Point

"In February of 2012 a write-up to http://CopBlock.org titled, 'Frustrated, Detroit Residents Compete with Police' included a picture of Dale Brown, founder of the Threat Management Center. In early 2013 when Pete Eyre visited Detroit as part of the http://copblock.org/tour he reached-out to Brown, who graciously welcomed Eyre at his facility." Continue reading →

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The New Normal: Boston Bombing Suspect Interrogated Without Counsel

"According to lawyers Derege Demissie and Susan Church, Robel Phillipos, the teenager accused of lying to investigators after the Boston Marathon bombings, was interrogated without the benefit of a lawyer. 'This case is about a frightened and confused 19 year old who was subjected to intense questioning and interrogation, without the benefit of counsel, and in the context of one of the worst attacks against the nation,' the lawyers wrote. 'The weight of the federal government under such circumstances can have a devastatingly crushing effect on the ability of an adolescent to withstand the enormous pressure and respond rationally.'" Continue reading →

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With ‘Charity’ For All

"Readers of a certain age will remember tedious elementary-school experiences with Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or D.A.R.E. Founded in 1983, D.A.R.E. was, at its height in the 1990s, used in 75% of U.S. school districts and in 54 countries around the world. There was just one problem: D.A.R.E. didn't work. Long-term studies have shown overwhelmingly that the program produced no meaningful reduction in drug use and in some cases actually made kids more likely to use drugs. Yet the nonprofit survives, having consumed an estimated $10 billion to $15 billion in donor and taxpayer funds over the past decade." Continue reading →

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Revealed: Big Pharma tested dangerous new drugs on unknowing East Germans

"Western drug companies tested pharmaceuticals on more than 50,000 people in the former communist East Germany, often without the knowledge of patients, several of whom died. Some 600 clinical trials were carried out in more than 50 hospitals until the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, the report said, citing previously unpublished documents of the East German health ministry, pharmaceutical institute and Stasi secret police. Many major drug companies from Germany, Switzerland and the United States took part, offering up to 800,000 West German marks per study, a boost for East Germany’s underfunded health care system, Spiegel said." Continue reading →

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Anti-cocaine vaccine research edges closer to human trials

"Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College have successfully used a vaccine to produce a long-lasting anti-cocaine immunity in nonhuman primates. 'The vaccine eats up the cocaine in the blood like a little Pac-man before it can reach the brain,' the study’s lead investigator, Dr. Ronald G. Crystal, said in a news release. Using PET imaging, Crystal and his colleagues found the vaccine prevented cocaine from reaching the brain. The vaccine stimulated the immune system to produce specific antibodies that attached themselves to cocaine molecules in the bloodstream. This prevented the drug from passing through the blood-brain barrier." Continue reading →

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U.S. Government vs. DEFCAD 3D Printable Gun: You Can’t Fix Stupid

"They’re like the Society Matron who walks into the dining hall in a Three Stooges short and demands 'What is the meaning of this?!!' To them the Internet is just a big Series of Tubes, and all they have to do is shut off a valve somewhere to control the flow of information. Only the Internet doesn’t work that way. In John Gilmore's phrasing, it treats censorship as damage and routes around it. Their legal rationale — export control legislation — displays the same conceptual failure. They couldn’t quite grasp that the 'goods' that DEFCAD was 'exporting' arrived in their destination ports around the world the second the files were uploaded to the website." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingU.S. Government vs. DEFCAD 3D Printable Gun: You Can’t Fix Stupid