Source: Janie Har

San Francisco supervisors voted to pass a surveillance oversight legislation Tuesday that includes a ban on the use of facial recognition technology by police and other city departments.

The city has become the first in the U.S. to outlaw the tech at a time when it is becoming a part of daily life, from international airports to home security cameras.

Departments will need to get board approval to continue using or acquiring technology […]

via San Francisco Becomes 1st US City to Ban Facial Recognition Technology — Nwo Report

Press TV – May 15, 2019

US media reports suggest that President Donald Trump is considering replacing his hawkish National Security Adviser John Bolton over his plans to push the United States towards a military conflict with Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.

Bolton “is headed for the exits, having flown too close to the sun on his regime change efforts for Iran, Venezuela and North Korea,” The National Interest magazine reported Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the matter.

“Hearing that Trump wants him out,” a former senior Trump administration official told the magazine.

There is speculation in Washington “that there’s now daylight between Trump and Bolton,” the report added.

The fighting has also expanded to include US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, officials say. A State Department official and a former White House official both report that Bolton and Pompeo are “fighting all the time.”

A former senior official in the State Department said Pompeo is enthusiastic about isolating Iran, but fearful of an actual war that might engulf much of the Middle East.

“John Bolton is the problem … Trump’s national security adviser is getting dangerous… particularly to the president’s ideals,” Douglas Macgregor, a Bolton rival and would-be successor, writes in Spectator USA.

Trump ran his election campaign on the promise to pull the US military out of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria — unwinnable post-9/11 wars that have consumed American lives and military budgets.

That partial retreat remains one of Trump’s strongest points in his pitch to be the so-called outsider president.

But Bolton is working in exactly the opposite direction.

The United States has been ratcheting up economic and military pressure on Iran, with Trump recently urging Tehran to talk to him.

“What I’d like to see with Iran, I’d like to see them call me,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday.

But then he said he would not rule out the possibility of military action in Iran amid escalating tensions before slamming former secretary of state John Kerry for his involvement in the issue.

His remarks came after Bolton said on Sunday that the United States was sending an aircraft carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East in a “clear and unmistakable” message to Iran.

The Pentagon announced on Friday that the US was deploying an amphibious assault ship and a Patriot missile battery to bolster an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers already sent to the Persian Gulf […]

via Trump considering replacing John Bolton: Report

Collective Evolution has been creating awareness about the potential dangers of sunscreen since the beginning of 2009. When we started to, despite presenting credible peer-reviewed scientific publications and interviews with doctors and scientists, many simply thought this wasn’t true. The idea that our federal health regulatory agencies are really looking out for our health and the idea that we can put absolute trust into these agencies as well as the products that they approve are no longer valid. Enormous amounts of corruption have been exposed over the past decade, which goes to show that we really need to rely on ourselves, utilize our critical thinking, and do our own research instead of allowing government authoritative bodies to do it for us.

Sunscreen, and the entire cosmetics industry for that matter, is a great example of how a lack of oversight exists when it comes to the approval of these products. How were they ever approved and marketed as safe?

A new study published Monday in the peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA found that several active ingredients in different sunscreens enter the bloodstream at levels that far exceed the FDA’s recommended threshold […]

via New Study Finds Chemicals In Sunscreen Break Through Your Skin & Seep Into Your Bloodstream — ― ஜ ۩ Whiskey Tango Texas ۩ ஜ ―

The be-Muellered, bothered, and bewildered American public may find US-China trade talks about as interesting as a rain delay in an Orioles-Chisox game, but the Friday collapse of negotiations may be marked by historians as the day that the global economy died. The Big Box blue-light-special orgy of bargain shopping ran about thirty years, with China exuberantly pumping out cheap consumer goods to feed the US beast-of-Mammon. Americans happily payed for it all with IOUs based on long daisy chains of previous IOUs. Tom Friedman of The New York Times said it would last forever. Alas….

The paradigm kicked off for one simple reason: energy flows dictated capital flows. By the mid-1980s, the non-OPEC world was once again swimming in oil from the last great bonanzas of the oil age: The Alaska North Slope and the North Sea. Twenty years later, they were running down. Meanwhile, the USA had fecklessly “offshored” its factories in the mistaken belief that we had entered a shimmering new digital economy of virtual business were nobody had to make real stuff. China became the world’s workshop and the USA became the world’s financial bucket-shop, churning out endless swindles and frauds. The predictable result was the financial crisis of 2008, which coincided with oil prices rising to over $140-a-barrel (and six months later they crashed, with the economy, to under $30-a-barrel).

The “recovery” from that was based on Wall Street’s premier swindle: the shale oil “miracle,” based on high-risk lending to companies that couldn’t make a red cent even while accomplishing the majestic stunt of exceeding America’s old 1970 oil production peak of around 10 million barrels-a-day (now at around 12 million). Notice, too, that the final push to 12-million barrels occurred during the last two years: thus, Mr. Trump’s miracle economy. All that, to paraphrase the immortal words of Mr. Dylan, balances like a mattress on a bottle of wine.

The China-US trade impasse, if it stands for even a few months, will crash the US economy again and it will also crash the price of shale oil back to levels that destroy oil companies. You understand, of course, that the rise of shale oil was amazingly swift, ten years, and that its fall will be similarly fast and furious. The feds may have to either bail it out or nationalize the whole shootin’ match — and that will end up as just another rat-hole we pound sand into, along with our long-running campaign to build failed states overseas. Translation: not so good for the value of the US dollar.

We’re moving into a summer of grave discontent. I don’t believe that China-US trade relationship can be repaired. The disturbances we have set in motion will surely unleash the wicked animus against the USA that has been building among other nations since before 9/11/01. Even the Europeans, our old pals, have soured on us. The war hawks are steering our ship-of-state into reefy waters. The dithering Federal Reserve (America’s central bank) has painted itself into a corner with years of interest rate suppression and market manipulations. Bad weather in the American breadbasket portends rising food prices for us, and less to export (or give away) to the really hungry corners of the world. Less food makes for belligerent nations.

There is already enough tension in the world as it faces not just the end of a global trade fiesta, but a world-wide synchronized economic depression. This is the one from which there will be no “recovery” but only adaptation to lower standards of living and new arrangements for getting by. In other words, the contraction will be permanent […]

via US-China Trade Scuffle Will Kick Off the Great Meltdown — © blogfactory

Coca-Cola spends millions of dollars funding scientific research, but if they don’t like the findings, the company can make sure the research never sees the light of day.

Analysts found clear conflicts of interest in Coca Cola’s private funding of public health research. Information for the report was obtained through Freedom of Information requests and the results were published in the Journal of Public Health Policy.

The report shows how Coca-Cola can use research contract agreements to influence the results of public health research. Coca-Cola uses these contracts to ensure the company gets early access to the research and the ability to terminate studies. Researchers say this gives the company the ability to eliminate unfavorable research findings, like studies that connect their products with a range of diseases.

The analysts found Coca-Cola research agreements with Louisiana State University, University of South Carolina, University of Toronto and the University of Washington.

In parsing the fine print of these contracts, analysts found that Coca-Cola has the right to terminate research projects at any time, without reason. The contracts also had provisions ensuring Coca-Cola maintained intellectual property rights on the research.

Researchers say that these types of contracts aren’t unique to Coca Cola in the world of corporate-sponsored research […]

via Coca-Cola’s Questionable Funding of Public Health Research — ANARCHIMEDIA

by Ralph Nader edited by O Society May 12, 2019

For all the rhetoric and all the charities regarding America’s children, the U.S. stands at the very bottom of western nations and some other countries as well, in terms of youth well-being. The U.S.’s exceptionalism is clearest in its cruelty to children. The U.S. has the highest infant mortality rate of comparable OECD countries. Not only that, but 2.5 million American children are homeless and 16.2 million children “lack the means to get enough nutritious food on a regular basis.”

The shamelessness continues as the youngsters increase in age. The Trump regime is cutting the SNAP food program for poor kids. In 2018, fewer children were enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP than in 2017. To see just how bad Trump’s war on poor American children is getting, go to the web sites of the Children’s Defense Fund and the Children’s Advocacy Center.

Trump brags about a robust economy—still, however, rooted in exploitation of the poor and reckless Wall Street speculation with people’s savings.

Trump’s pompous promises during his presidential campaign have proved to be a cowardly distraction. He claimed he would take on the drug companies and their price gouging. The hyper-profiteering pharmaceutical goliaths are quietly laughing at him. Worse, Trump continues their tax credits  and allows them to use new drugs developed with taxpayer money through the National Institute of Health free of charge—no royalties. Even though he talks tough, Trump lets these companies sell imported medicines manufactured in China and India with inadequate FDA inspections of foreign plants.

Torrents of Trump tweets somehow overlooked H.P. Acthar Gel, a drug produced by Mallinckrodt to treat a rare infant seizure disorder, which increased in price from $40 per vial to $39,000 per vial! Other drug prices are booming cruelly upward, while Trump blusters, but fails to deliver on his campaign promises.

For years our country’s political and corporate rulers have saddled college students with breathtaking debt and interest rates. Student debt is now at $1.5 trillion. Both corporations and the federal government are profiting off of America’s young. In no other western country is this allowed, with most nations offering tuition-free higher education.

On May 2, 2019, The New York Times featured an article titled, “Tuition or Dinner? Nearly Half of College Students Surveyed in a New Report Are Going Hungry.”

When you read the stories of impoverished students, squeezed in all directions, you’d think they came out of third-world favelas. At the City University of New York (CUNY), forty eight percent of students had been food insecure in the past 30 days.

Kassandra Montes, a senior at Lehman College, lives in a Harlem homeless shelter. Montes  “works two part-time jobs and budgets only $15 per week for food… [She] usually skips breakfast in order to make sure that her 4-year-old son is eating regularly” […]

via The Contented Classes: When Will They Rebel? — O Society

A Saudi vessel that was due to load weapons at a northern French port has set sail without them and headed towards Spain on Friday, a day after a rights group tried to block the cargo on humanitarian grounds.

The Christian Action for the Abolition of Torture (ACAT) sought to block the loading of weapons onto the ship through a legal filing on Thursday, arguing the cargo contravened an international arms treaty.

A French judge threw out their complaint but the Bahri-Yanbu moved off the coast of Le Havre shortly after.

It was not immediately clear what had caused the change of plan.

“The boat has left and without its cargo,” Laurence Greig, a lawyer representing ACAT told Reuters news agency.

“It is extremely embarrassing for the executive because we thought that we could stop this only with a legal recourse. But while we got a very terse decision against us, pressure from individuals and NGOs led to a positive result.”

The legal move by ACAT came weeks after an online investigative site published leaked French military intelligence that showed weapons sold to the kingdom, including tanks and laser-guided missile systems, were being used against civilians in Yemen’s war […]

via French Protesters Cause Saudi Ship To Leave France w/Out Weapons Purchased

In Australia, the current voting age is 18 years old. The same age required to drink and be considered an ‘adult’. However, recent political activism by youth, regarding the same-sex marriage debate and climate change has raised the question of whether the voting age should be lowered.

So should the voting age be lowered to 16?

Yes, but for 16 and 17-year old’s it should be voluntary.

As highlighted in the recent climate change rallies, it is young people who are most likely going to feel the long-term effects of today’s political decisions. By the age of 16, individuals can learn to drive, have a job and consent to sexual intercourse, so why shouldn’t they be able to vote too if they wish?

Furthermore, the opportunity to vote while individuals are still at school could assist in introducing political conversation within schools, allowing youth to understand politics and who they want to vote for. Greens Senator Jordan Steele-John, who set up a joint committee to address this topic, agrees with this perspective stating, “One of the things this reform gives the opportunity to do is to bring the democratic process into the classroom in a tangible way”. He went on to further state that “If such a proposal (reducing the voting age) were to be made legal, major political parties would focus more on policies targeting young people”. These statements highlight how not only lowering the voting age would make youth more politically involved, but also improve the responsiveness of the government to addressing issues faced by youth […]

via Should the voting age be lowered? — Levine Lowdown

This article was written by Brandon Smith and originally published at Birch Gold Group

Global stock markets and some treasury markets have become a rather spectacular farce over the past ten years, so much so that there are many people in the investment world that actually believe the long running bull market rally will “never end”. My view of stock markets has always been the same – they are an economic placebo; a psychological crutch that is exploited by central banks and governments to dupe the public into thinking our financial system is stable, even while the rest of the economy is in steep decline.

Stock markets are one false indicator, among a few (such as rigged GDP numbers, rigged inflation, as well as rigged unemployment stats), which keep the masses in the dark… at least, for a while.  I covered this issue in depth in my recent article ‘The Crash In Economic Fundamentals Is Accelerating’.  In every bubble in modern history, there comes a moment in time when central banks are either forced to let the fraud collapse, or, they deliberately allow the fraud to collapse. Banks and countries can only fake a recovery for so long, and very often, global elitists gain political and social advantages by simply letting the system crash for a time.

Central banks started out working in tandem in 2009 to bring about a reversal in the symptoms global debt and derivatives crisis. The calculated and close cooperation in policy initiatives between central banks that were supposed to be politically and economically opposed to each other proved what many of us had long suspected; that global economic management was indeed real, and that the likely source was the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). This fact had been exposed by journalists before, and even openly admitted to on occasion by banking moguls and globalists, but to see it in action was something else entirely.

After the Federal Reserve began the taper of QE, other central banks around the world started picking up some of the slack. Obviously, the Fed had the world reserve currency at its disposal, making it the premier market manipulator, but as it backed away from this role (and it IS backing away despite what some in the alternative media believe), the EU, Japanese and Chinese central banks have continued to stimulate and keep markets afloat.

This all came to an abrupt stop in December of last year. Markets were greeted with the unsettling prospect that the Fed was not going to back off of its policy tightening, and that interest rates were going to meet the Fed’s neutral rate of inflation. They were also greeted with the reality that the Fed was going to continue cutting its balance sheet at an accelerated pace well into 2019, thus removing liquidity from markets now addicted to artificial stimulus and dollar flow. This was going to eventually kill the primary source of the stock rally, which was corporate stock buybacks; a legal form of market manipulation fueled by easy debt from central banks.

The party was ending, and stocks began to tank.

But, as with every other market crash of the past century, massive bounces are inevitable. The farce was not quite over yet. While the Fed added a few calming words to its rhetoric, its tightening policies did not change. If there was a “plunge protection team”, the Fed was NOT a part of it. Plunge protection came from a rather surprising source the past four months, namely China.

The global stock plunge pulled a 180-degree turnaround starting at the end of December and into January of this year at the same moment China announced reinvigorated stimulus measures. This stimulus was also initiated at the same time as talk of a “trade deal” began to hit the mainstream media, giving hope that the long trade war was about to end instead of becoming worse. Global markets loved the move by China, and rallied around their QE measures, which have continued unabated into the second quarter of 2019 […]

via China Has Propped Up Global Markets Since December — Is This About To End? — © blogfactory

Chelsea Manning has been freed from jail. She was imprisoned since early March in an attempt to force her to testify to a grand jury about the 2010 release of a huge cache of government documents to WikiLeaks that exposed US war crimes.

Chelsea was released Thursday, after the grand jury’s term expired. According to a tweet from Chelsea Manning’s account, she has been subpoenaed to appear before a new grand jury panel. Her legal team says it is “conceivable that she will once again be held in contempt of court” and imprisoned once again.

The following statement is from Chelsea’s legal team:

“Today marked the expiration of the term of the grand jury, and so, after 62 days of confinement, Chelsea was released from the Alexandria Detention Center earlier today.

“Unfortunately, even prior to her release, Chelsea was served with another subpoena. This means she is expected to appear before a different grand jury, on Thursday, May 16, 2019, just one week from her release today.

“It is therefore conceivable that she will once again be held in contempt of court, and be returned to the custody of the Alexandria Detention Center, possibly as soon as next Thursday, May 16.

“Chelsea will continue to refuse to answer questions, and will use every available legal defense to prove to District Judge Trenga that she has just cause for her refusal to give testimony” […]

via Chelsea Manning Is Freed From Jail — ANARCHIMEDIA