Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
OWEN JARUS, Contributor - LiveScience
Stephan: Like the Dead Sea Scrolls this find attests to astrology being an ancient craft.
A research team has discovered what may be the oldest astrologer’s board, engraved with zodiac signs and used to determine a person’s horoscope.
Dating back more than 2,000 years, the board was discovered in Croatia, in a cave overlooking the Adriatic Sea. The surviving portion of the board consists of 30 ivory fragments engraved with signs of the zodiac. Researchers spent years digging them up and putting them back together. Inscribed in a Greco-Roman style, they include images of Cancer, Gemini and Pisces.
The board fragments were discovered next to a phallic-shaped stalagmite amid thousands of pieces of ancient Hellenistic (Greek style) drinking vessels.
An ancient astrologer, trying to determine a person’s horoscope, could have used the board to show the position of the planets, sun and moon at the time the person was born.
‘What he would show the client would be where each planet is, where the sun is, where the moon is and what are the points on the zodiac that were rising and setting on the horizon at the moment of birth,’ said Alexander Jones, a professor at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. [See Photos of Astrologer’s Board]
‘This is probably […]
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Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
SUSANNE AMMAN and MICHAELA SCHIESSL, Interviewers - Der Spiegel (Germany)
Stephan: The great social transformation that is coming I am increasingly convinced is the one that make wellness a national and planetary goal. The food crisis, like the financial crisis of 2008 arises from placing profit above all other priorities.
In a SPIEGEL interview, José Graziano da Silva, 62, the new head of the United Nations aid organization FAO, discusses his plans to combat hunger as well as his efforts to limit speculation and the impact it has on dramatically fluctuating food prices.
SPIEGEL: Mr. da Silva, as the new head of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), you have made it your chief goal to eradicate hunger in the world. Isn’t this an extremely ambitious objective, in light of skyrocketing food prices, a continually growing world population and ongoing economic crises?
Da Silva: My plan is ambitious. But you can only motivate people with big objectives. This is precisely what we have to achieve — to mobilize all parts of society and the international community in the fight against hunger. The FAO or a government alone cannot eradicate hunger on earth.
SPIEGEL: Declarations of intent have been around for a while. In 2000, the United Nations announced its intention to cut the percentage of hungry people in half by 2015. But in reality their numbers have actually increased, from 826 million to more than 925 million.
Da Silva: We have also made some progress. In my native Brazil, in […]
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Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
, - Agence France-Presse (France)
Stephan: We are literally killing ourselves with stress. I think much of this obesity traces to two sources: First, the relentless but profitable promotion of unhealthy food; and, second, because stress makes many people reach for the oral gratification of food. We don't provide adequate pre-natal care as a national commitment, or post-natal support, or sufficient nursing time, all because it might reduce profits. As a result large numbers of us have a range of oral issues.
One in three American adults is obese, a national level that has stayed the same in recent years, said US data released on Tuesday.
About one in six children and teenagers are also obese, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association report which showed that obesity remains a significant problem in US society despite efforts to combat it.
‘Obesity prevalence shows little change over the past 12 years, although the data are consistent with the possibility of slight increases,
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Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
, - KRGV-ABC (Rio Grande Valley, Texas)
Stephan: This is what we have created and imported into our country thanks to our War on Drugs -- perhaps the most damaging and ill-conceived social program in the nation's history. This report recounts not just individuals deaths, but a national self-mutilation wound.
Three beheadings in two different states and they happened here in the United States, not Mexico.
Former DEA supervisor Phil Jordan says all three beheadings have cartel written all over them. They happened in Arizona and Oklahoma in the past year.
A murder mystery is now unraveling on a stretch of North Reservation Road in Tucson, Ariz. County workers found a headless man lying on the side of the road Jan. 6. The man’s hands and feet were reportedly missing, too.
‘It would lead me to believe the message wanted to be sent. This is one of the ways they do it in Mexico, Colombia and other places,’ says Jordan.
Jordan says the cartels are getting bolder in carrying out their beheadings across the border. He says we only used to see these crimes in Mexico.
‘They don’t have any borders,’ says Jordan.
More than 600 miles from the border, a 19-year-old human trafficking victim was found beheaded in Oklahoma. Carina Saunders was stuffed into a bag and left in a grocery store parking lot.
‘People know if they get on the wrong side of the fence, they’ll be dealt with,’ says Jordan.
The police chief in the area says two men running the trafficking ring killed Saunders […]
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Tuesday, January 17th, 2012
Stephan: This is one aspect of the new American slavery. We now have 2.3 million Americans in prison. With a little over 4 per cent of the world's population we have 25 per cent of the world prison population. With the rise of the Right's drive to privatize prisons this all takes on an even darker dimension. Land of the Free... get real.
‘Every man in my family has been locked up. Most days I feel like it doesn’t matter what I do, how hard I try – that’s my fate, too.
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