HOW SMARTPHONES DESTROY CHILDREN’S BRAIN (Source blacklistednews.com) Screen time wasn’t always a problem. Before the advent of smartphones and tablets, kids only had the chance to watch television. With outside time, outings, and school, it was uncommon for kids to spend more than a little bit of time with a screen at any given time. However, statistically, most kids spend hours in front of various screens every day! This is very harmful, particularly during the first three years of a child’s life. The American Association of Pediatricians does not recommend any screen time prior to the age of two, but by the age of two, 90% of kids watch television regularly. The screen time a child gets continues to increase as they age.
You can see the effects by looking at today’s teenagers, who often have difficulty communicating in real life. Look at a group of teenagers and you’ll see that most, if not all, are on their phones, rather than paying attention to each other. Let’s get one thing straight: educational TV and games are a hoax when you’re talking about babies and toddlers. Simply put, kids at this age do not get anything from educational material delivered electronically. They are better off learning from hands-on play and reading. Children should be interacting with caregivers or other people the vast majority of the time. Young children are designed to learn from human interaction, which is taken away from them when they learn from screens.

Heavily armed ‘Oath Keepers’ inject disquieting element in Ferguson (Source Reuters) Four white men carrying military-style rifles and side arms added a disquieting element to riot-torn Ferguson, Missouri, when they began patrolling the streets before dawn on Tuesday, which police quickly labeled “inflammatory.” The men said they were part of a group called “Oath Keepers,” which describes itself as a non-partisan association of current and former U.S. soldiers, police and first responders who aim to protect the U.S. Constitution. Many in the crowd questioned the wisdom of openly carrying such heavy weapons into an emotionally charged situation. The group, led by a man identified only as John, wore bulletproof vests and carried their rifles with barrels pointed downward. They said they were in Ferguson to protect a journalist from the conservative “Infowars.com” website.

Pope creates global prayer day for ‘Care of Creation’ (Source AFP) Pope Francis has established an annual day of global prayer “for the Care of Creation” to boost support for the environment, the Vatican said Monday. The first day of prayer next month coincides with the buildup to a worldwide conference to roll back the peril of climate change. “I wish to inform you that I have decided to institute in the Catholic Church the ‘World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation’ which, beginning this year, is to be celebrated on 1 September,” the pope said in a letter released by the Vatican. Francis said he had been inspired by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, who have been praying for the environment on that date since the late 1980s. “The celebration of this Day, on the same date as the Orthodox Church, will be a valuable opportunity to bear witness to our growing communion with our Orthodox brothers and sisters,” the Pope said. “We live at a time when all Christians are faced with the same decisive challenges, to which we must respond together, in order to be more credible and effective.” The prayer day “will offer individual believers and communities a fitting opportunity to reaffirm their personal vocation to be stewards of creation” and reflect upon “the adoption of appropriate lifestyles,” the letter said. Francis has become a leading defender of the environment, particularly in the fight against climate change. He published an environmental encyclical earlier this year which denounced exploitation of the poor and waste of the planet’s resources. He is due to address the UN Special Summit on Sustainable Development in September. That gathering comes amid efforts to forge a worldwide deal on climate change in Paris in December, with the aim of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels.

The US Economy Continues Its Collapse (Source globalresearch.ca) The false reality in which Americans live extends into economic life. Last Friday’s employment report was a continuation of a long string of bad news spun into good news. The media repeats two numbers as if they mean something—the monthly payroll jobs gains and the unemployment rate—and ignores the numbers that show the continuing multi-year decline in employment opportunities while the economy is allegedly recovering. The so-called recovery is based on the U.3 measure of the unemployment rate. This measure does not include any unemployed person who has become discouraged from the inability to find a job and has not looked for a job in four weeks. The U.3 measure of unemployment only includes the still hopeful who think they will find a job. The government has a second official measure of unemployment, U.6. This measure, seldom reported, includes among the unemployed those who have been discouraged for less than one year. This official measure is double the 5.3% U.3 measure. What does it mean that the unemployment rate is over 10% after six years of alleged economic recovery? In 1994 the Clinton regime stopped counting long-term discouraged workers as unemployed. Clinton wanted his economy to look better than Reagan’s, so he ceased counting the long-term discouraged workers that were part of Reagan’s unemployment rate. John Williams (shadowstats.com) continues to measure the long-term discouraged with the official methodology of that time, and when these unemployed are included, the US rate of unemployment as of July 2015 is 23%, several times higher than during the recession with which Fed chairman Paul Volcker greeted the Reagan presidency. An unemployment rate of 23% gives economic recovery a new meaning. It has been eighty-five years since the Great Depression, and the US economy is in economic recovery with an unemployment rate close to that of the Great Depression.

What China’s Devaluation Means to the U.S. Economy (Source wallstreetonparade.com)Markets received a seismic jolt from China on Tuesday as it devalued its currency, the Yuan, by the most in two decades, cutting its daily reference rate by 1.9 %. The move sparked instant selloffs in stocks, commodities, and emerging market currencies as well as a drop in the yield of the 10-year U.S. Treasury Note, which is trading early this morning at a yield of 2.16 %. The devaluation was interpreted in the markets as a sign of capitulation by China to forego a stable currency policy in a last-ditch effort to revitalize sluggish export growth. On Friday, China reported that its exports had plunged by 8.3 % overall in July with dramatic declines of 12.3 % to the European Union and 13% to Japan. Exports to the United States fell by 1.3%. While China announced that the currency devaluation was a one-off move, the prevailing fear in global markets is that it marks a new round in the raging currency wars where countries are now competing to debase their currencies in hopes of making their exports more competitively priced in global markets. The move spells trouble for the U.S. on a number of fronts. As of 8:39 a.m. in New York, stock futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average were in the red by 147 points. The U.S. imports more goods from China than any other country. Through June of this year, the U.S. had imported $226.7 billion in goods from China versus $150.4 billion from Canada and $145.1 billion from Mexico, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The Federal Reserve has been struggling to avoid importing deflation into the U.S.; this devaluation move now means that Chinese goods flowing into the U.S. just got cheaper and the ability of U.S. exporters to compete in global markets just got a lot harder. According to a Federal Reserve report released on July 17, the rising value of the U.S. Dollar is having a significant negative impact on large U.S. based multinationals. The report noted that “The dollar’s strength likely explains roughly a third of the recent decline in profits earned from foreign subsidiaries” and that “Firms with high foreign sales tend to be larger and account for almost 75% of S&P 500 nonfinancial earnings excluding oil and utilities.” As we have reported before, this global currency race to the bottom cannot be solved by central banks. The problem is directly rooted in the unprecedented levels of income and wealth inequality that plague this era. In the U.S., that problem springs directly from Wall Street’s institutionalized wealth transfer system.

California’s Drought Is So Bad That Thousands Are Living Without Running Water (Source Mother Jones) Most of us are feeling the effects of the California drought from a distance, if at all: Our produce is a little more expensive, our news feeds are filled with images of cracked earth. But thousands of people in California’s Central Valley are feeling the drought much more acutely, because water has literally ceased running from their taps. The drought in these communities resembles a never-ending natural disaster, says Andrew Lockman, manager of the county’s Office of Emergency Services. Most disasters are “sudden onset, they run their course over hours or days, and then you clean up the mess. This thing has been growing for 18 months and it’s not slowing down.” Here’s what you need to know about California’s most parched places: No water is coming through the pipes, so when residents turn on the tap or the shower, or try to flush the toilet or run the washing machine, water doesn’t come out.While a handful of communities across the state are dealing with municipal water contamination and shortages, the area that’s hardest hit—and routinely referred to as the “ground zero of the drought”—is Tulare County, a rural, agriculture-heavy region in the Central Valley that’s roughly the size of Connecticut. As of this week, 5,433 people in the county don’t have running water, according to Lockman. Most of those individuals live in East Porterville, a small farming community in the Sierra Foothills. East Porterville is one of the poorest communities in California: over a third of the population lives below the federal poverty line, and 56 percent of adults didn’t make it through high school. About three quarters of residents are Latino, and about a third say they don’t speak English “very well.”

Goliath gates: Entrance to famous biblical metropolis uncovered (Source foxnews.com) A massive gate unearthed in Israel may have marked the entrance to a biblical city that, at its heyday, was the biggest metropolis in the region. The town, called Gath, was occupied until the ninth century B.C. In biblical accounts, the Philistines — the mortal enemies of the Israelites — ruled the city. The Old Testament also describes Gath as the home of Goliath, the giant warrior whom the Israelite King David felled with a slingshot. The new findings reveal just how impressive the ancient Philistine city once was, said lead archaeologist of the current excavation, Aren Maeir, of Bar-Ilan University in Israel. “We knew that Philistine Gath in the 10th to ninth century [B.C.] was a large city, perhaps the largest in the land at that time,” Maeir told Live Science in an email. “These monumental fortifications stress how large and mighty this city was.” The gates were uncovered in Tell es-Safi, which was occupied almost continuously for nearly 5,000 years, until the Arab village at the site was left in 1948, Maeir said. Though archaeologists have been excavating at the site since 1899, it wasn’t until the past few decades that they realized how massive the Iron Age remains really were. Both the impressive settlement size and mentions in biblical accounts suggest to scholars that the site is the historic city of Gath, which was ruled by the Philistines, who lived next to the Jewish kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Most scholars think that Gath was besieged and laid to waste by Hazael, King of Aram Damascus, in 830 B.C., Maeir said.

Does the Greek Bailout Pave the Way for the United States Of Europe? (Source Mint Press News)

The big myth is that Greece overspent and the Greek government was reckless with its budgets, ultimately indebting Athens. It is true that Greek officials tried to gain influence and political support through spending. It’s also true that they signed lucrative contracts with local businesses. Athens, however, is no exception here; this type of conduct has been displayed by politicians throughout the European Union and around the world.

The fact is that this is not what created the economic crisis in Greece. What is really taking place in Greece and the eurozone is something altogether different. The Greek bailouts appear to be part of a rigid restructuring of the EU that is placing other members under the control of Germany. The Greek tragedy also has a strange twist. Where there is crisis for some, there is opportunity for others. France has proposed that the 19 EU members in the eurozone form their own federal government complete with a single budget, one treasury department/ministry, and a unified parliament as a means of tackling the economic crisis in Greece. French President François Hollande penned an article in the Journal du Dimanche last month, calling for the formation of what is essentially a “United States of Europe” that would effectively relegate all existing governments in the eurozone into provincial or state-level governments. Hollande’s proposal signals the consolidation of what appears to be German control over Greece and the other countries of the EU.

A Modern Jubilee: How to End The Recession According to Economist Steve Keen (Source cjstone.hubpages.com) Have you ever wondered where the word “Jubilee” comes from? Obviously it denotes a celebration, a time of jubilation. But the question is, what is it we are supposed to be celebrating exactly? Originally the word represented the ancient practice of debt forgiveness. In the Bible this took place at the end of seven times seven years, that is in the fiftieth year, when debt was cancelled, debt slavery was ended, and property returned to its original owners. As it says in Leviticus 25:10 “And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a Jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family”. Professor Steve Keen predicted the credit crunch as early as 2005 but was ignored. He was known as “the prophet of gloom” because of his consistent warnings that levels of debt were getting unsustainably high and that this would inevitably lead to depression. “Depression” note, not “recession”. Professor Keen argues that we are in a depression now, which is as great, if not greater, than the Great Depression of the 1930s. He also says that if current policies continue it will take at least fifteen years for us to get out of it again. The reason that conventional economists failed to predict the crisis was that their models of how the economy works are false. Specifically they have ignored the role of the banks. According to these economists, banks merely transfer the savings of one part of the population, which then become the borrowings of another. Thus savings become debts and cancel each other out. This is untrue. In fact the banks drive up debt, multiplying the amount they lend by many times the original savings. Now, here is the strange thing: Steve Keen wasn’t listened to when he predicted the financial crisis, and he isn’t being listened to now. The very same people who failed to predict the crisis are the one’s prescribing the solution, in the form of austerity. In fact austerity only serves the banks, as the economy shrinks and companies go out of business, allowing the banks to buy up their assets at rock-bottom prices. In case you haven’t noticed yet, the shift in wealth is all heading in the same direction. The rich are getting richer, while the rest of us are getting shafted. Currently the government is propping up the banks by creating money out of thin air – “quantitative easing” – and then handing it to the banks in the hope that they will lend it to us. In other words, the government wants us to take on even more debt. Debt is the fuel that feeds the banking system. Recent revelations have shown us just how corrupt and self-serving the banks are. We don’t want more debt, we want less. If the government can create money out of thin air to give to the banks, then it can create money to pay off people’s mortgages and to build affordable housing instead. This is Steve Keen’s solution, what he calls a modern Jubilee. He says that rather than government creating money and then giving it to the banks, it should be giving it directly to us, the people. We’ve tried conventional economics and they have failed us. Isn’t it time we tried unconventional economics instead?

Russians Hacked Joint Chiefs of Staff (Source thedailybeast.com) Investigators say they believe the same Russian hackers that carried out attacks on the White House and State Department last year and the attempted penetration of the Pentagon last month were responsible for a major cyberattack that shut down the Joint Chiefs of Staff email for the past 11 days, The Daily Beast has learned. In all of the attacks, hackers broke into unclassified email networks by sending legitimate-looking emails than turned out to be malware or “spear phishing” attempts. In April, President Obama’s unclassified emails were among those compromised, along with the State Department. Ten days before the July 27 hacking of the Joint Staff system, the Pentagon sent an email warning “at least five” DOD computer users had been targeted, which was first reported by The Daily Beast. The notice linked those attacks to penetrations of unclassified networks at the White House and State Department that began last year. The Joint Chiefs then suffered what one defense official called the “most sophisticated” attack on its unclassified network, one that has shut down communications ever since for the 4,000 employees on the Joint Staff unclassified server.