Amplify’d from www.reuters.com

Fire throws Rio Carnival preparation into chaos

By Stuart Grudgings

RIO DE JANEIRO

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - A large fire swept through Rio de Janeiro's Carnival center on Monday, destroying thousands of costumes and floats and throwing preparations for Brazil's annual festival of hedonism into chaos.

Television images showed thick plumes of smoke rising over central Rio early in the morning from a blackened section of the City of Samba complex, where the city's best Carnival groups spend months preparing their spectacular annual parades.

At least three of the 12 top samba groups, or "schools," were hit badly by the fire, media said, just weeks before their scheduled parades through Rio's Sambadrome for Carnival, which gets under way on March 4.

Workers were shown entering the complex trying to salvage some of the elaborate floats as 80 firefighters battled the blaze, which had been brought under control by mid-morning. It was unclear how the fire started.

A tearful Helinho de Oliveira, the president of the Grande Rio samba school, said the fire destroyed more than 3,000 costumes that his group had spent months making.

"The only thing that didn't burn was our desire to parade," he told Globo television.

Some workers arrived at the center only to break down in tears when they saw their months of passionate work destroyed. No one was reported killed in the fire, which started early on Monday morning, although at least one person was treated for smoke inhalation.

The costumes and floats used in the Carnival parades are made from highly flammable materials such as foam and paper. The sprawling City of Samba complex was completed in 2005 at a cost of millions of dollars partly aimed at avoiding the fires that had hit Carnival preparations in the past.

Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes held an emergency meeting with Carnival officials and said he was confident that all of the top samba schools would parade, although those badly hit by the fire might not be ready to compete for the annual prizes.

"Unfortunately it's going to be difficult to restore the work of a whole year in 30 days," Paes said outside the smoldering buildings. "But these schools have the hallmark of Rio Carnival -- lots of passion and lots of people involved. Carnival will go on."

As well as a spectacular party that draws hundreds of thousands of tourists to beachside Rio, the Carnival parades are a deadly serious competition for bragging rights among mostly poor communities.

"Carnival is over for the schools that burned," said Jorge Marques, a resident of a slum overlooking the burning City of Samba.

(Additional reporting by Sergio Queiroz; Editing by Doina Chiacu) Read more at www.reuters.com

 

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Scientist Gives Human Extinction Warning

SAVE OUR PLANET - Scientist gives human extinction warning http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2liZNsyyZ0k&feature=player_embedded

Amplify’d from ohlundonline.blogspot.com

Scientist Gives Human Extinction Warning

Spiritus autem manifeste dicit, quia in novissimis temporibus discedent quidam a fide, attendentes spiritibus seductoribus et doctrinis daemoniorum. (1 Timothy 4:1) UPI.com reports professor Frank Fenner, respected Australian scientist, says a population explosion and unbridled consumption will drive the human race to extinction in 100 years. Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University, predicts "homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years". Fenner says: "It's an irreversible situation. I think it's too late. I try not to express that because people are trying to do something, but they keep putting it off". Since the era of industrialization, Fenner said, humans have had an effect on the planet rivaling any ice age or comet impact. Fenner, 95, says climate change will be the main factor in the demise of humanity. Fenner says: "We'll undergo the same fate as the people on Easter Island". Fenner says: "Climate change is just at the very beginning. But we're seeing remarkable changes in the weather already". What Fenner says is very interesting and serious. From my Biblical point of view, I believe the world is forever and that Christ is coming to reign first for 1.000 years, and then forever. So our planet will undoubtedly be populated by humans also in a distant future. Professor Stephen Hawking has nevertheless a similar view as Fenner, and said earlier that man must spread out into space or face extinction. I am afraid Fenner's warning is needed, because even if humanity not will be extinct, the world population will probably decrease significantly, and that is also what the Bible predicts. "Sic enim dilexit Deus mundum, ut Filium suum unigenitum daret, ut omnis, qui credit in eum, non pereat, sed habeat vitam aeternam", John 3:16. Read more at ohlundonline.blogspot.com

 

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Police: Suspicious toilet with phone left in Towson, Md.

Amplify’d from www.ydr.com

Police: Suspicious toilet with phone left in Towson, Md., not dangerous

The Associated Press

TOWSON, Md.—Police say a suspicious toilet bearing a cell phone and a radio or TV transmitter were left outside a local government building in Towson, but authorities say it proved harmless and didn't contain an explosive device. A Baltimore County police spokesman, Lt. Robert McCullough, said they have a lead to a possible suspect after the toilet was discovered Monday morning on a sidewalk outside the offices of the county executive and county council. McCullough says the toilet was decorated with images and notes, but he didn't elaborate on the content of the notes. He says the toilet and materials were arranged in a way that raised suspicion. McCullough says a hazardous device team, a bomb sniffing dog and crime lab personnel were summoned to investigate. Read more at www.ydr.com

 

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Pennsylvania House bill targets health coverage requirement

By MARC LEVY Associated Press

HARRISBURG, Pa.—Pennsylvania on Monday became the latest state to consider a bill to shield itself from a key portion of the new federal health care law that will require most Americans to buy health insurance or face potential fines starting in 2014. The Republican-sponsored bill passed the House Health Committee on a party line vote, 14-9. Democrats criticized the bill as a violation of the U.S. Constitution that will do nothing to help more people afford health insurance, but committee Chairman Matt Baker, R-Tioga, said the bill, if it becomes law, will give Pennsylvania more legal avenues to challenge the federal law in court. "It gets singularly to the mandate issue of forcing people to buy insurance that they may not want, they may not need and they don't even have a choice," Baker told reporters after the vote. The legal impact of any state measure is questionable, since courts generally have held that federal laws trump those in states. And while Baker said the state arguably could enforce such a law, he also acknowledged that the matter is likely to be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court before the insurance requirement in the federal law takes effect in three years. The federal law was passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress and was signed by President Barack Obama last March. Spokesmen for Republican majority leaders in the state House and Senate said Monday they could not predict whether or when the bill will reach a floor vote, although Baker said House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny, had encouraged him to move it out of his committee. A separate bill in the Senate also would seek to block the requirement through a constitutional amendment, although it remains in committee. Pennsylvania already is party to a states' lawsuit that challenges the federal insurance requirement. The law's core requirement is that Americans carry health insurance except in cases of financial hardship. Starting in 2014, those who cannot show they are covered by an employer, government program or their own policy would face fines by the Internal Revenue Service. Defenders of the law say a system of health insurance doesn't work if people are allowed to avoid paying for it until they need medical attention because premiums collected from the healthy pay the cost of care for the sick. A number of states are taking up challenges. The one advanced by Baker is based on a model version written by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group that promotes limited government. Six states—Virginia, Idaho, Arizona, Georgia, Missouri and Louisiana—already have enacted laws similar to the one Baker advocates, according to the council's tally, while Oklahoma and Arizona each have enacted constitutional amendments. The Health Committee did not hold a hearing on the bill, which Baker entitled the "Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act," and Republicans rejected a Democratic effort to table the bill in favor of holding hearings on it. Democrats attacked Republicans for not using the first Health Committee meeting of 2011 to look for ways to extend adultBasic, the state's low-cost health insurance for working adults, which is running out of money for its 42,000 enrollees at the end of February. "Could you please tell me how you explain to your constituents that, right out of the box, the first thing that we push is House Bill 42 and not worry about insuring those Pennsylvanians who will be losing their health care as of March 1?" Rep. Vanessa Lowery Brown, D-Philadelphia, asked Baker during the hearing. Baker said he was sympathetic to Brown's concerns. "However, this is about a mandate, it's not about the debate concerning adultBasic or any other venue of health insurance," Baker responded. Before being elected Pennsylvania governor in November, then-Attorney Tom Corbett, a Republican, hauled the state into the fray against the federal insurance requirement by joining a states' lawsuit in a Florida federal court. The judge last week agreed with the challenge, and the U.S. Department of Justice said it would appeal. Read more at www.ydr.com

 

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World-wide Wildlife Die-offs a Sign of the Times?

Amplify’d from www.ktfministry.org

World-wide Wildlife Die-offs a Sign of the Times? · February 07, 2011

Over 100 dead birds along California highway 101, thousands of dead fish on Chicago’s lakefront, thirty dead birds in Missouri are all part of a strange world-wide mass die-off of wildlife. Even more abnormal was the sight of Canada geese and mallards munching on the dead fish near Chicago, something not ordinarily a part of their diet.

Thousands of dead birds and fish were reported in Arkansas, Louisiana, Maryland, and Kentucky in the USA, while thousands of dead birds and fish also turned up in Italy, Sweden, Brazil, and New Zealand. 40,000 dead crabs turned up on England’s beaches.

Researchers and scientists try to calm fears by saying that these events are not related and not uncommon. But they are largely speculating.

Could it be that the Holy Spirit is being withdrawn from the earth? Is this only the beginning of a larger eco-collapse involving all of nature and creation as we near the end of time?

Huffington Post Read more at www.ktfministry.org

 

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Amplify’d from www.infowars.com

Alex Jones Calls DHS to Report Real Terrorists LIVE on Air

Infowars.com February 7, 2011

The White House has publicly responded to the controversy surrounding the Obama administration’s agenda to bankrupt the coal industry.

See the rest on The Alex Jones Channel Read more at www.infowars.com

 

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Forget Super Bowl Pat Downs, Big Sis Wants Interrogations And Behavioral Tests

Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com February 7, 2011

Even as Christina Aguilera butchered the words to the American national anthem before the start of last night’s Super Bowl, the hard-fought freedoms recognized in that song were being eviscerated as hired goons conducted 4th Amendment busting pat downs on people entering the stadium.

But if you think that was too invasive, you ain’t seen nothing yet. As part of Homeland Security’s complete takeover of society, at future Super Bowls, TSA agents will get to interrogate you at special checkpoints which will use “physiological” and “behavioral” tests to determine if you’re a terrorist or a criminal.

“Everyone entering the stadium must pass through a magnetometer, such as those used at airports, and get a pat down as part of the screening process. The majority of fans will enter through checkpoints on the east side of Cowboys Stadium,” reported the Dallas Star-Telegram on Friday.

Big Sis seized upon the spectacle of the Super Bowl to saturate the public with the inherently fascist public-private partnership which has given birth to the “See Something, Say Something” monstrosity, the citizen snitch program that has wiped away any doubt that America is now a rotting banana republic.

But this only marks the beginning of the role DHS sees itself in assuming as part of its occupation of the country.

Homeland Security is also developing technology to be used at “security events” which purports to monitor “malintent” on behalf of an individual who passes through a checkpoint. The video below explains how “Future Attribute Screening Technology” (FAST) checkpoints will conduct “physiological” and “behavioral” tests in order to weed out suspected terrorists and criminals.

The clip shows individuals who attend “security events” being led into trailers before they are interrogated as to whether they are terrorists while lie detector-style computer programs analyze their physiological responses. The subjects are asked about their whereabouts, and if they are attempting to smuggle bombs or recording devices into the “expo,” proving that the technology is intended to be used at public events and not just airports. Individuals who do not satisfy the first lie detector-style test are then asked “additional questions”.

The fact that Homeland Security’s own internal reports list supporting political candidates like Ron Paul, flying US flags, owning gold, displaying political bumper stickers, or owning firearms as signs of behavioral malintent that could be linked to terrorism or extremism tells you all you need to know about how FAST checkpoints could be used to snag political dissidents who commit the thought crime of believing they still had any rights under the US Constitution that Janet Napolitano is gleefully ripping to shreds.

In the coming years, staying away from airports won’t be enough to avoid a run-in with TSA goons. Homeland Security has embarked on a massive gestapo-like occupation of America where “security” checkpoints will litter highways and roads, transport hubs, as well as public events and anywhere crowds gather.

This in turn will be reinforced by an army of citizen tattle tales being trained to be the eyes of the state under the See Something, Say Something campaign, which was heavily promoted ahead of the Super Bowl.

Homeland Security has already announced that TSA agents and VIPR teams will be expanding their mobile radiation-scanning checkpoints from rest stops to highways and roads in general, as Big Sis accelerates Soviet-style levels of control over the population.

Only by standing up in unison and sending a forceful and clear message that they will resist the DHS occupation of the country can Americans hope to continue to live in a nation that does not come to be characterized as a decaying militarized police state littered with internal checkpoints manned by state jackboots demanding to see their papers, radiation-scan their bodies and conduct “behavioral tests” to prove they are well-behaved slaves.

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show. Read more at www.infowars.com

 

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DHS Seizes Websites for Merely LINKING to Copyrighted Material

Eric Blair Infowars.com February 7, 2011

Apparently the Department of Homeland Security is now authorized to rewrite and enforce copyright infringement laws.  In a stunning precedent, the recent round of domain seizures to shut down websites that allowed illegal streaming of the Super Bowl, also included a few other websites that were seized simply for linking to infringing content.

Mike Masnick of TechDirt, who received and published a DHS seizure affidavit, had this to say in a must-read article:

…the affidavit itself is chock full of legal and technical errors, compounded by assertions-as-facts that seem to have little basis in reality. This is immensely troubling, especially given that the specific legal issues here are hardly settled law, and Homeland Security seems to be acting as if these cases are no brainers, allowing them to flat out seize domains, even when those websites have been declared perfectly legal in their home countries.

The biggest problem is that Homeland Security seems to suggest — without a hint of doubt — that merely linking to infringing content is criminal copyright infringement. That is a huge stretch. The affidavit appears to make it clear that it believes that these sites are guilty of direct criminal copyright infringement, rather than any sort of contributory copyright infringement.As we’ve discussed in the past, the courts have tended to say that embedding and linking can be contributory infringement, but not direct infringement. Homeland Security and ICE may be in for a bit of legal trouble trying to prove that embedding is direct infringement.

Until these unprecedented seizures, online copyright infringement was dealt with by simply asking infringing websites to remove the material and replace it with a link to the source.  Previous cases have normally been battled out in civil court.  Alternative news giant, Matt Drudge, is currently fighting a seemingly ridiculous civil lawsuit over linking to news stories.

These new actions by the DHS and the courts seem to be motivated more by private corporate profits than by actual copyright law. Nonetheless, the agenda seems to be to make nearly every website that links to copyrighted material guilty of criminal infringement, thus justifying arbitrarily blacklisting domains deemed to be in violation of such a broad precedent.  This is yet another Napoleonic guilty-until-proven-innocent action, apparently displaying the corporate state’s lack of concern for the rights of individuals and small businesses.  What’s more, it is also another tyrannical tool being used to control the flow of information.

Additionally, this type of precedent would same to massively change the Internet as we know it.  What’s next, seizing websites that link to those affiliate sites, like Facebook, Google, or Twitter?  Well, that’s the exact question Masnick investigated in his follow-up article, “Homeland Security Tries And Fails To Explain Why Seized Domains Are Different From Google.” Masnick reports on an interview with a DHS agent in charge of the domain seizures, James Hayes:

In the interview, John Moe asked Agent Hayes a very simple question: given that these domains were all seized based solely on the fact that they link to infringing content hosted elsewhere, and all of the same content is also linked from Google, will the Feds seize Google’s domain name? Well, more specifically, Moe asks if ICE could seize Google’s domain name. Amusingly, right after being asked, Hayes conveniently gets cut off, but he does call back and the question is asked again.

However, once he gets back, he tries to tap dance around this issue. Hayes says “no” that ICE will not seize Google’s domain name and that’s because it’s only targeting sites that “don’t do due diligence” to make sure that the content they’re linking to isn’t infringing. There’s a pretty serious problem with this claim in that it’s wrong on both sides of the equation. First off, Google, as a search engine, does no due diligence to check that links only go to non-infringing content. Second, in at least some of the cases (specifically in the case of dajaz1), we know that it was actually Homeland Security and folks like Special Agent Hayes who “failed to do their due diligence,” so the songs named in the ICE affidavit were, in fact, provided by the labels or representatives of the musicians. In other words, according to Special Agent Hayes’ own criteria, Google is more of a criminal operation that Dajaz1.

Despite the DHS’s obvious distortion of the law, we are rapidly approaching a day where information can no longer flow freely on the Internet.  We better wake up and share these stories with everyone we know, because tyranny is fast approaching.  These words written above belong to nobody but the open-source, free Internet.  Share and re-post at will.

For additional information about online copyright laws and guidelines, please visit the Citizen Media Law Project.

Eric Blair writes for Activist Post.com Read more at www.infowars.com

 

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Evidence of weather being used as a weapon? pdf file CL02 FEDERAL REGISTER COMMENT FILE: 08-004

Amplify’d from www.cftc.gov

FEDERAL REGISTER COMMENT FILE: 08-004

Comment File for Federal Register Release 73 FR 25669 Concept Release on the Appropriate Regulatory Treatment of Event Contracts Comments Open Date: 05/07/2008 Comments Closing Date: 07/07/2008

05/05/2008 CL02 Psoras, Andrea 35 Read more at www.cftc.gov

 

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Pole Shift Threatens To Cause Weather Chaos

Will paying billions of dollars in carbon taxes to Al Gore and his cronies solve the problem?

Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com Monday, February 7, 2011

According to some experts, the world’s weather is about to get even more chaotic as a result of natural climate change that we can do absolutely nothing to prevent – and even though global warming alarmists may exploit the consequences to advance their own political agenda, paying a carbon tax to Al Gore will not lessen the impact of a potentially catastrophic magnetic polar shift.

In layman’s terms, the most apocalyptic outcome of a polar shift would come as a result of the the poles flipping, with the south pole becoming the north pole and vice versa. The good news is that on average this only happens every half a million years, but the bad news is that it hasn’t happened in roughly 780,000 years, with some experts warning that the planet is overdue. Pole flips have been known to happen only 50,00 years apart.

If it happened, a complete pole shift would cause “superstorms in the future with winds as high as 300 to 400mph…which “would totally destroy anything they came into contact with on land,” writes Terrence Aym for Salem-News.com.

“In between these flips, the magnetic field can become quite weak and chaotic, causing “turbulence” in the field, which can effectively cause weaker gaps in the magnetosphere,” writes Mike Adams.

“These magnetic gaps or weaknesses can allow outside influences that normally would not penetrate the magnetosphere to reach deep into that magnetosphere, theoretically all the way down to where birds fly at very low altitude,” adds Adams, making a case that pole shifts are to blame for recent mass bird die-offs.

However, it’s important to note that the process of reversal in the earth’s magnetic field can take around 5,000 years to be completed. This isn’t going to happen overnight, which is why frenetic claims that it is part of some pre-ordained 2012 Mayan apocalypse are in the same league as hysteria about Planet X.

The more likely scenario is that the ever-changing tug of war between the sun and the earth’s electromagnetic fields will continue to cause significant, but not apocalyptic storms like those recently witnessed in Australia and the United States, and that alarmists will continue to exploit such events to push their completely discredited global warming dogma.

The fact that the planet’s northern magnetic pole is drifting slowly but steadily towards Russia is causing airports to adjust the coordinates of their runways so they match up with sensitive airplane instruments.

The consequences of geomagnetic movement in the poles is undoubtedly an important issue and will have a direct impact on our lives. However, given the level of coverage, and in some quarters outright hysteria, being afforded to a complete pole reversal event that is less probable than a cataclysmic asteroid strike, we’re more worried about the threats to the environment that are already unfolding on the planet, and not by some unknown outside threat that we cannot even do anything to prevent anyway.

The impact of chemtrails, the poisoning of our water supply with sodium fluoride, heavy metals, drugs and other harmful chemicals, along with the threat posed by the industrial rollout of genetically modified crops should be of far greater and more immediate concern.

However, since the planet is so sensitive to the behavior of the sun and how it affects the poles, don’t be surprised when global warming alarmists hastily exploit extreme weather events that are attributable to natural causes and blame them on human CO2 emissions while assuring that the only solution is to pay Al Gore and his globalist cronies billions of dollars in carbon taxes.

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show. Read more at www.infowars.com

 

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