Wearing a mask at a riot is now a crime

A bill that bans the wearing of masks during a riot or unlawful assembly and carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence with a conviction of the offence became law today.

Bill C-309, a private member's bill introduced by Conservative MP Blake Richards in 2011, passed third reading in the Senate on May 23 and was proclaimed law during a royal assent ceremony in the Senate this afternoon.

Richards, MP for Wild Rose, Alta., said the bill is meant to give police an added tool to prevent lawful protests from becoming violent riots, and that it will help police identify people who engage in vandalism or other illegal acts. The bill is something that police, municipal authorities and businesses hit hard by riots in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and other cities in recent years, were asking for, according to Richards.

"The provisions of my bill are effective immediately, which means police officers across Canada now have access to these tools to protect the public from masked rioters," Richards said in a statement being released today.

The bill creates a new Criminal Code offence that makes it illegal to wear a mask or otherwise conceal your identity during a riot or unlawful assembly. Exceptions can be made if someone can prove they have a "lawful excuse" for covering their face such as religious or medical reasons.

The bill originally proposed a penalty of up to five years, but the House of Commons justice committee amended it and doubled the penalty to up to 10 years in prison for committing the offence.

Richards noted in his statement how rare it is for a private member's bill to become law and said that its final passage is the culmination of two years of work and a lot of consultation with police and business owners.

Bill comes into force immediately upon royal assent

"We can all rest easier tonight knowing our communities have been made safer with its passage," said Richards.

The bill didn't have unanimous support, and was opposed by some who are concerned about its effect on freedom of expression and privacy. Critics said the measures are unnecessary because the Criminal Code already includes a section about wearing disguises while committing a crime.

Civil liberties advocates argued the measures could create a chilling effect on free speech and that peaceful protesters can unintentionally find themselves involved in an unlawful assembly. They also noted that there are legitimate reasons for wearing masks at protests; some may be worried about reprisals at work, for example, if sighted at a political protest.

"Any law that infringes upon civil liberties needs to be held to a test of absolute necessity, and I don't think that test has been met in this instance," said Michael Byers, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia and a board member of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, in an interview. Byers testified at the Commons justice committee that studied the bill.

Byers said freedom of expression was not properly factored into the design of the bill and that its measures could deter acts of political expression.

Richards argues that his bill will actually help protect the legitimate right to protest because it will help prevent illegitimate protesters from infiltrating a peaceful event and causing trouble. He also said police told him the existing Criminal Code provision about disguises is more geared toward armed robbery offences and is difficult to apply in protest situations.

In a recent interview, Richards said there is a lot of misunderstanding about his bill and that there will always be people who disagree with it.

He said he is proud to have identified a problem and created a solution. The bill becomes law when it receives royal assent.

Top children's vitamin brand chock-full of GMOs, aspartame and other deadly ingredients

Do you know all the ingredients contained in the multivitamin you feed to your children? Thousands of American parents apparently do not, as one of the top selling multivitamins for children, Flintstones Vitamins, is loaded with genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), aspartame, aluminum, petroleum-derived artificial colors, and all sorts of other toxic additives that are literally poisonous to humans, and especially to children.

One would assume that because it is a "multivitamin," and one marketed specifically to children, that it contains only nutritious ingredients in the most appropriate doses and nothing more. To the contrary, the Flintstones Vitamins brand, which is manufactured by global drug giant Bayer, contains a host of synthetic additives that are actually banned in many countries due to their toxicity not only in humans but also in the environment.

A quick look at the Flintstones Complete Chewables page, for instance, reveals a laundry list of additives that serve absolutely no nutritional purpose whatsoever. Refined sugars, sorbitol, ferrous fumarate, hydrogenated soybean oil, GM corn starch, and artificial, aluminum-based food colorings top the list of questionable additives in this particular children's multivitamin. Also included in the mix is a host of synthetic compounds labeled as vitamins, all of which have minimal bioavailability.

"Bayer's Flintstones vitamin brand is far from a natural product, and the consumer should be aware of the unintended, adverse health effects that may occur as a result of using it," writes Sayer Ji on his health site GreenMedInfo.com about the issue. "It is important to hold accountable brands that refuse to label their products honestly, especially when they contain ingredients that have been produced through genetic modification."

You can view the full ingredients list for Flintstones Complete Chewables here:
http://www.flintstonesvitamins.com

The rest of the Flintstones vitamin line is not much better. Flintstones Complete Gummies, which are labeled on the company's site as having a "new formula," contain many of the same toxic additives. Artificial flavors, coal tar-based artificial coloring agents, and synthetic isolated vitamin compounds are all present in this particular vitamin formula as well.

Many of the 'vitamins' used in Flintstones are considered hazardous substances in Europe

Interestingly, many of the ingredients promoted in Flintstones vitamins as helping children get their daily intake of nutrients are actually listed as hazardous or outright banned in places like the European Union (EU), where additive safety is taken more seriously. Cupric oxide, for instance, which is listed as a supposedly nutritional source of copper in Flintstones vitamins, is actually classified as a "hazardous substance" in the EU's Dangerous Substance Directive.

Similarly, zinc oxide, which is often added to conventional sunscreen products, is listed as a substance that is "dangerous for the environment." Not only is zinc oxide a poor choice for a zinc supplement as the human body can hardly recognize or use it, but the EU Dangerous Substance Directive considers the substance to be an environmental hazard - how, then, can it be considered healthy for children to ingest?

Then there is the issue of the extreme neurotoxicity of aspartame, which has no place in the human food supply, let alone in children's multivitamins. And the same goes for artificial colors, which have been shown in scientific studies to trigger attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and various other behavioral disorders in children - why add these to vitamins in the first place?

Parents looking for an alternative to mainstream vitamins like Flintstones may want to take a look at whole food-based vitamin supplement brands like MegaFood, Garden of Life, and Pure Synergy. These brands use vitamins and nutrients derived from whole foods rather than laboratory concoctions, which means the body can assimilate them more effectively.

To learn more about the differences between whole food-based and synthetic vitamins, visit:
http://blog.healthkismet.com/whole-food-synthetic-vitamins

Source: Natural News

Google's deep CIA and NSA connections

The Western media is currently full of articles reporting Google's denial that it cooperated in a government program to massively spy on American and foreign citizens by accessing data from Googles servers and those of other U.S. software companies. 

The mainstream media has, however,  almost completely failed to report that Google's denial, and its  surface concern over 'human rights', is historically belied by its their deep involvement with some of the worst human rights abuses on the planet:  

Google is, in fact, is a key participant in U.S. military and CIA intelligence operations involving torture; subversion of foreign governments; illegal wars of aggression; and military occupations of  countries which have never attacked the U.S. and which have cost hundreds of thousands of lives in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and elsewhere. 

To begin with, as reported previously in the Washington Post and elsewhere, Google  is the supplier of the customized core search technology for 'Intellipedia, a highly-secured online system where 37,000 U.S. spies and related personnel share information and collaborate on their devious errands.   

Agencies such as the so-called 'National Security Agency', or NSA, which is implicated in the current 'spying on Americans' scandal,  have also purchased servers using Google-supplied search technology which processes information gathered by U.S. spies operating all over the planet. 

In addition, Google is linked to the U.S. spy and military systems through its Google Earth software venture.  The technology behind this software was originally developed by Keyhole Inc., a company funded by Q-Tel http://www.iqt.org/ , a venture capital firm which is in turn openly funded and operated on behalf of the CIA.

Google acquired Keyhole Inc. in 2004.  The same base technology is currently employed by U.S. military and intelligence systems in their quest, in their own words, for "full-spectrum dominance" of the planet. 

Moreover, Googles' connection with the CIA and its venture capital firm extends to sharing at least one key member of personnel.  In 2004, the Director of Technology Assessment at In-Q-Tel, Rob Painter, moved from his old job directly serving the CIA to become 'Senior Federal Manager' at Google. 

As Robert Steele, a former CIA case officer has put it:  Google is "in bed with" the CIA.

Googles Friends spy on millions of Internet Users 

Given Google's supposed concern with 'human rights' and with user-privacy, it's worth noting that Wired magazine reported some time ago that Google's friends at In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA, invested in Visible Technologies, a software firm specialized in 'monitoring social media'.  

The 'Visible' technology can automatically examine more than a million discussions and posts on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Amazon, and so forth each day.   The technology also 'scores' each online item, assigning it a positive, negative or mixed or neutral status, based on parameters and terms set by the technology operators.   The information, thus boiled down, can then be more effectively scanned and read by human operators. 

The CIA venture capitalists at In-Q-Tel previously said  they will use the technology to monitor social media operating in other countries and give U.S. spies ¡°early-warning detection on how issues are playing internationally,¡± according to spokesperson Donald Tighe.   There is every possibility that the technology can also be used by the U.S. intellligence operatives to spy on domestic social movements and individuals inside the U.S. 

Finally, Obama during his recent meeting with Chinese president Xi, again more-or-less accused China of cyber intrusions into U.S. government computers.  There has, however, been a curious absence from the statements emanating from Google, from U.S. government sources, and from U.S. media reports of truely substantive evidence linking the Chinese government with the alledged break-in attempts.  Words like 'sophisticated' and 'suspicion' have appeared in the media to suggest that the Chinese government is responsible for the break-ins.  That may be so.  But it is striking that the media has seemingly asked no tough questions as to what the evidence behind the 'suspicions' might be. 

It should be noted that the U.S. government and its intelligence agencies have a long history of rogue operations intended to discredit governments or social movements with whom they happen to disagree.  To see how far this can go, one need only recall the sordid history of disinformation, lies, and deceit used to frighten people into supporting the Iraq war. 

Whether the past attacks on U.S. government systems, Google email, et al  originated from the Chinese government, from the U.S. intelligence operatives, or from elsewhere, one thing is clear:  A company that supplies the CIA with key intelligence technology; supplies mapping software which can be used for barbarous wars of aggression and drone attacks which kill huge numbers of innocent civilians; and which in general is deeply intertwined with the CIA and the U.S. military machines, which spy on millions, the company cannot be motivated by real concern for the human rights and lives of the people in the U.S. and on the planet. 

Source: Pravda

GMO, Global Alert 2yr Scientific Study Certifies GMO Is Poison & Cancer Causing

Traces Of Prozac In Water Make Fish “Antisocial, Aggressive And Even Homicidal”

Good thing there aren’t traces of Prozac in the water we drin– oh, wait. ABC News reports:

Fish swimming in water with a trace of the anti-depressant Prozac became edgy, aggressive and some even killed their mates.

The fish were subjected to traces of the drug by a research group at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee that examined how environmental exposure to the medication altered the behavior of fathead minnows. Lead researcher Rebecca Klapper says that this experimental setup could actually be a reflection of the fishes’ reality.

The human body does not absorb medications 100 percent, so a trace amount is excreted in urine. Water treatment centers are unable to completely filter out all of those contaminant and can trickle down and affect the wildlife.

Klapper sees the minnows as a way to gauge the long-term effects of Prozac in humans. “It’s not just an environmental question but a human question as well,” she tells ABC News.

Changes in the minnows’ reproductive behavior were seen in as low concentrations as 1 microgram per liter, equal to a single dose of Prozac dissolved in over 5,000 gallons of water.

Source: Disinfo

Shocking Truths about Walmart

On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin goes over how Walmart is swallowing up the world, citing examples of sexual discrimination, environmental pollution, disregard for workers’ safety, and costing tax-payers millions of dollars.…

Lewis Black on the NSA and Creepy Technology