While exposing you to this risky radiation, the meters are also transmitting your personal information, and you have no way of controlling this or finding out who can see it.
According to Taranaki Daily News, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced an end to offshore oil exploration, with no new onshore permits outside Taranaki.
Ardern said the Government was “taking an important step to address climate change and create a clean, green and sustainable future for New Zealand”
As well as an immediate end to new offshore permits, some onshore will be offered to the industry for the next three years in onshore Taranaki, none of which will be on conservation land.
“This is a responsible step which provides certainty for businesses and communities that rely on fossil fuels. We’re striking the right balance for New Zealand – we’re protecting existing industry, and protecting future generations from climate change,” Ardern said.
The decision to continue to offer onshore permits was partly a concession to Labour’s coalition partners, New Zealand First, which expressly supports extractive sectors. The move is also designed to head off the risk of judicial review.
“All three of the parties in this Government are agreed that we must take this step as part of our package of measures to tackle climate change. I’m grateful for the support of New Zealand First in ensuring the transition away from fossil fuels protects jobs and helps regions equip themselves for the future. I also thank the Green Party for their continued advocacy for action on climate change.
ANDY JACKSON/STUFF – Oil rig between Stratford and Midhurst, in Taranaki.Less than a month ago, Ardern created huge expectation among environmental activists by declaring the Government was “actively considering” a call to end exploration.
Since taking office, Ardern has said the Government will move towards having 100 per cent of electricity generation coming from renewable sources by 2035, while the economy will be carbon neutral by 2050.
Greenpeace said announcement was an “historic moment, and a huge win for our climate and people power”. . .
Read more: Ardern to End Offshore Oil Exploration
This is an important win in a long, difficult battle. It’s disappointing to see that Taranaki (where I live) is still treated as a sacrifice zone. Taranaki Energy Watch has an ongoing case in Environment Court to stop fracking next to our homes and schools. See Fracking: When Fossil Fuel Companies Turn Your Community into a Sacrifice Zone
By Andrew Taggert
Martin Luther King Jr. once said that “We must create full employment or we must create [basic, guaranteed] incomes.” More than 40 years later, we talk a lot about the last half of that statement: Technology entrepreneurs like Y Combinator’s Sam Altman and Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes have campaigned for universal basic income (UBI)—the idea that everyone should receive a regular, unconditional, government-issued stipend that would be sufficient to cover one’s material needs—to the point at which it’s become a trendy topic.
There is much less talk about the philosophical underpinnings of King’s other idea—“full employment.”
This view that every able-bodied and able-minded adult should have—and, what’s more, should want to have—a job has become so widespread that it is almost invisible. In our work-obsessed society, most people would say that of course everyone should have a job.
But the claim, I believe, warrants just as much debate as UBI.
After we decouple the claim that “having a job” is an unalloyed good from the desires to survive, to leave some traces on the world, and to make a reasonable contribution to the lives of others, we might see that having a job is at least a sacrifice, if not a Faustian bargain.
The justification for full employment was a “right to work,” which was written into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948 and which some scholars have argued can be traced back to the 1848 French Revolution’s droit au travail.
What the “right to work” actually means remains a matter of debate. Article 23.1 in UDHR reads: “Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.” Some have interpreted the right to work as protecting the opportunity to be gainfully employed. Others see it much more as a guarantee of gainful employment: some other entity—the likeliest candidate is the state—has a corresponding duty to actually supply each citizen with gainful employment by availing itself of some means (such as the market) or other (state employment) to bring this about.
Notwithstanding good intentions behind the right to work, many scholars doubt whether the proposal is actually feasible. The late legal scholar Bob Hepple and the political theorist Jon Elster have both made arguments to the effect that it is not. . .
via The idea that everyone should have a job is so common we forget to question it — Quartz
Brits are sick and tired of anti-Russian propaganda on TV.
A Sea of Fire, Episode 8
The Vietnam War
Directed by Ken Burn and Lyn Novick
Film Review
This week Maori TV showed A Sea of Fire, Episode 8 of the Vietnam War series. It covers the period from April 4, 1969 to May 1970 and the massacre of four students at Kent State and two at Jackson State
By April 1969, there were 543,482 US troops fighting in Vietnam, with thousands more on nearby naval vessels and support bases. By that date, 40,794 GIs had died in Vietnam.
In October Nixon, who privately acknowledged the US couldn’t win, replaced a complicated draft deferment system with a more popular lottery based on draftees date of birth. In December, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announced the “Vietnamization” of the war (eg a transfer of responsibility to to South Vietnamese troops) and began drawing down US troop numbers (10,000 by the end of 1970).
The move led many serving GIs to become deeply demoralized about being sent to die in an unwinnable war. Accordingly, 1970 would see a big increase in “fragging,” the deliberate murder of officers by men under them. It would also see a big increase in draftees seeking asylum in Canada (30,000 in total).
I was disappointed this episode failed to cover the role of the CIA and South Vietnamese army setting up a thriving trade selling heroin to US GIs. My former partner served in Vietnam from 1967-1969 and returned to the US addicted to it.
The years 1969-70 would also see a big surge in the US peace movement. The October 15th Vietnam Moratorium was actually a general strike, with hundreds of university campuses closing down and tens of thousands of Americans staying off work in cities around the country. It would be the largest mass protest in US history.
In November, independent journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story of the My Lai Massacre, the brutal murder of 400 South Vietnamese civilians, which had occurred 20 months earlier. It would be only one of many civilians massacres in Vietnam.
In 1970, the peace movement, which had died down in response to Nixon’s gradual troop withdrawal, was reignited following the April 30, 1970 invasion of Cambodia by 30,000 US troops. Four million American students protested the invasion, 448 campuses were shut down and 16 states called out the National Guard.
At Kent State, the National Guard fired 67 rounds into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators, killing four, including an ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corp) scholarship student who was merely an onlooker.
On the same day, police shot two peaceful African American antiwar protestors at Jackson State University in Mississippi.
Syrian doctors in Douma have dismissed rumors they received patients suffering from chemical poisoning.
GW Pharmaceuticals also announced in November that it had begun human trials of a CBD-rich cannabis drug for the treatment of pediatric epilepsy.
Big Pharma company, GW Pharmaceuticals, has received approval on a patent giving them the exclusive rights to treat cancer patients with marijuana.
GW Pharmaceuticals has been issued a Notice of Allowance from the U.S. Patent Office for a patent applications involving the use of THC and CBD – the two main chemicals in marijuana.
Leafscience.com reports: Once a patent application is deemed a genuine invention, the Patent Office sends a Notice of Allowance that outlines the fees involved with final approval.
Specifically, the company provides this description of the patent:
“The subject patent specifically covers a method for treating glioma in a human using a combination of cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) wherein the cannabinoids are in a ratio of from 1:1 to 1:20 (THC:CBD) with the intent to reduce cell viability, inhibit cell growth or reduce tumor volume.”
Filed in 2009, GW’s patent application lists Otsuka Pharmaceutical as a collaborator and…
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According to Jones’ study, published in New York Academy of Science, people who refuse chemotherapy live on average 12 and a half years longer than those who undergo it.
Trump clearly wishes to end the US occupation of Syria – fabricating an atrocity would pressure him to maintain the US occupation indefinitely and possibly escalate US military intervention in Syria, much to the pleasure of Islamist insurgents, their White Helmet and Syrian American Medical Society allies, and US war planners.
April 8, 2018
By Stephen Gowans
There is much ambiguity surrounding the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, said to have taken place late Saturday, but there are a few matters that are clear.
First, the reports are “unverified”, according to The Wall Street Journal [1] and British Foreign Office [2] and are unconfirmed, according to the US State Department [3]. What’s more, The New York Times noted that it “was not possible to independently verify the reports,” [4] while The Associated Press added that “the reports could not be independently verified.” [5]
Second, according to The Wall Street Journal, it isn’t “clear who carried out the attack” [6] assuming even that one was carried out.
Third, the “unverified photos and videos” [7] which form the body of (unverified) evidence, were produced by two groups which have an interest in fabricating atrocities to draw the United States more deeply into…
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By Ricky Twisdale
Russia Insider & SOTT.net
A former French official who has had senior roles in internal security and terror fighting has come forward with a remarkable statement: that he has documentary evidence proving that Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian spy who died from polonium poisoning, was killed by US and UK special services.
In a lengthy interview which is soon to be published, he goes further, saying that Litvinenko’s murder was a special services operation designed to defame Russia and Vladimir Putin, that the notorious Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky was involved, and was himself killed by MI6 when he became a liability. He even says he knows the code name of the operation: “Beluga”.
From Oped News, Monday, March 27:
Operation Beluga: A US-UK Plot to Discredit Putin and Destabilize the Russian Federation
Renowned French security expert Paul Barril has let loose a bombshell: the existence of Operation Beluga, a covert Western intelligence scheme intended to undermine Russia and its leaders.
Is that what’s behind much of the threatening rhetoric now going back and forth between the US and Russia?
Barril exposed Operation Beluga in a recent interview with Swiss businessman Pascal Najadi on the 2006 Alexander Litvinenko death case. Litvinenko was a reputed former spy who many believe was murdered with radioactive polonium on orders of Vladimir Putin.
Najadi says the interview drew out the converse revelation that Litvinenko was actually killed by “an Italian who administered the deadly polonium 210.” What’s more, he astonishingly says, the operation was carried out under the auspices of the US and UK.
In my books The Phony Litvinenko Murder and Litvinenko Murder Case Solved I’ve written about an Italian connection. But I can’t confirm that Barril is talking about the same person.
Barril’s allegations should be taken seriously. He is a renowned French intelligence figure who is known in France as “Superflic”, which translates roughly as “Supercop.” In the French public eye he is a kind of combination of Eliot Ness, James Bond, and William Bratton.For many years he was the second in command of the ski-mask wearing GIGN, the legendary elite French special forces unit, who top the “badass” rankings of special forces anywhere, and had other high ranking internal security positions in the French government. . .
Source: French counter-terror boss says Putin didn’t kill Litvinenko, US and UK did – and he has proof
The Most Revolutionary Act 