DUBLIN CITY COUNCILLORS passed a motion last night against the addition of fluoride to Ireland’s water supply.

The motion was passed by 22 votes.

It was proposed by Sinn Féin Cllr Anthony Connaughan. Following the meeting, he said on Facebook:



The motion called for fluoride or any derivative to be removed from the Irish water supply, and to make it a crime for anyone to put it into the water supply, said Connaughan."

Saying there are “conflicting reports” about the issue, he said that “even our own government should be looking into it more” and that for him, removing fluoride is “in the interest of safety and erring on the side of safety”.

http://www.thejournal.ie/dublin-city-council-vote-fluoride-1710194-Oct2014/

Representatives for Minnesota Vikings defensive tackle Tom Johnson are accusing off-duty police officers of using excessive force and violating Johnson's rights when he was apprehended early Sunday on two misdemeanor charges outside a Minneapolis nightspot.

Johnson's agent, Bardia Ghahremani, provided to USA TODAY Sports video from Johnson's cell phone as evidence it was "clearly not a hostile" situation before Johnson was tased and taken into custody for trespassing and disorderly conduct.

In the video, Johnson is heard refusing to give the off-duty officer his identification. Ghahremani said the end of the video shows the off-duty officer slapping Johnson's phone out of his hand, shattering the screen, and when Johnson bent down to pick it up, one of the officers tased him in the back."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/vikings/2014/10/07/video-vikings-dt-tom-johnson-claims-excessive-force-by-police/16870119/

CHICAGO (CBS) – A northwest Indiana family has sued Hammond police, claiming officers used excessive force when they broke a car window and used a stun gun on Jamal Jones during a traffic stop last month.

CBS 2’s Jeremy Ross reports Jones, his girlfriend Lisa Mahone, and Mahone’s two children were driving to John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County on Sept. 25, after Mahone got a call from doctors telling her that her mother was in grave condition."


Hammond police pulled their car over because Mahone was not wearing her seatbelt, according to the lawsuit.

Meantime, Mahone’s 14-year-old son Joseph was sitting in the back seat with his younger sister, and began recording the encounter with police on his cell phone."

Disturbing video at link: http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2014/10/07/hammond-family-sues-police-for-excessive-force-during-traffic-stop/

With the cost of tuition skyrocketing, you may be wondering why universities are getting mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles – or MRAPs ­– which are designed for the battlefield and cost $700,000.

The answer is simple: They don't pay for them. We do.

Through a federal program, Ohio State University received a 19-ton armored truck called a "MaxxPro" last year. It's built to withstand ballistic arms fire and mine fields. And, unfortunately, it isn't the only campus Uncle Sam is helping to militarize. The University of Central Florida got a modified grenade launcher. And the University of Michigan's campus police are attempting to use federal funds to buy military-grade body armor.

Like other police departments, campus security can purchase military equipment through grants from the Department of Homeland Security or Department of Justice, or they simply get the equipment for free straight from the Department of Defense. These federal agencies provide the wartime weaponry and equipment with no training and little oversight, while federal taxpayers pick up the tab worth billions of dollars."

*Not surprisingly, the results of this excessive militarization are both tragic and absurd: militarized police aiming rifles at peaceful protestors on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri; a paramilitary SWAT team raiding a house in the middle of the night just to search for drugs; campus police armed with M-14 rifles and full riot gear. Incidents such as these demonstrate that arming police like soldiers makes us less safe by encouraging a policing culture in which law enforcement treats people like the enemy – rather than like those they are supposed to serve and protect."

*Students across the country should contact their administrations and tell them they don't need a militarized police force. Getting MRAPs off our campuses would be a great start. But building a movement that gets them off our streets entirely would be better still."



https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform-national-security/spotted-campus-armored-mine-resistant-monster-trucks

Oct 6 (Reuters) - After nearly a week in hospital, the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States began to receive an experimental therapy initially developed to treat other viral diseases, according to the Dallas hospital where he lies in critical condition."

*On Monday, however, a spokeswoman for Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital said Duncan began receiving a drug called brincidofovir, made by Durham, North Carolina-based Chimerix Inc , on Saturday afternoon. The drug, which comes in tablet form, has never been tested on laboratory animals infected with Ebola let alone in human Ebola patients."

*Questions had been raised on social media about why Duncan had not received experimental treatments after he was admitted to the hospital on Sept. 28. Medical experts said the choice of the Chimerix drug may have been influenced both by the deterioration in Duncan's condition and the therapy's safety profile.

"When a patient becomes sick enough, there may be a feeling of, 'should we give it a shot?'," said bioethicist Dr. Kevin Donovan of Georgetown University Medical Center. "This alone may have tilted them toward using it, rather than having him die 'untreated.'"

At least three other Ebola patients flown to the United States from countries in West Africa where the virus has killed more than 3,400 people received experimental drugs.

The patients included two U.S. aid workers treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, who received Mapp Biopharmaceutical's ZMapp in July and August. A third U.S. aid worker treated Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, who received Tekmira Pharmaceutical's TKM-Ebola last month.

All three recovered, but it is scientifically impossible to say whether the drugs played a role in their recovery, something only rigorous clinical trials can determine."

http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/10/06/health-ebola-experimental-idINL2N0S11UT20141006

Albuquerque's poet laureate writes about dehumanization and killing of black people in the US."






The effect of lynching isn’t to execute a black man, poet and journalist Hakim Bellamy tells me. The effect of lynching is to make a hundred other people watch, to send a message of oppression and intimidation: “Be careful, this could be you.”

The same is true, Bellamy believes, of police shootings and other brutality against black Americans."

*Bellamy is a radio journalist, poet laureate of Albuquerque and national slam poetry champion. He said when he heard about Michael Brown’s death at the hands of a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri he knew he wanted to write something to capture the frustration, anger and hopelessness that had been building after the senseless killings of Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant and so many others."

*“If you look at a lot of my work and you’re like, man, we should all just end it tomorrow because it's not getting any better—If that's what you read, you’re reading it wrong,” he said, laughing. “Actually, the fact that people want to engage this work, that gives me hope. It shows the amazing capacity for the human heart to change and grow and feel. People are not running away from it, they’re running towards it—especially white, Anglo people here in New Mexico are like, 'I want to do this work, I want to hear stuff that challenges me because it reminds me that we have work to do.’ To me, that’s encouraging. That is the bigger part [of my work]. It’s not meant to make everybody go home and feel terrible, but it’s made to make people go, huh, that's right, that’s still happening and we have a lot of work to do."

http://www.alternet.org/culture/poetic-warning-about-police-brutality-ferguson-and-elsewhere-black-father-his-son?page=0%2C0

FREETOWN (Reuters) - The United Nations Ebola response mission will bring five helicopters, vehicles and motorcycles to transport patients and reach communities in West Africa in stepped up efforts to combat the epidemic, the head of the mission said on Friday.The governments of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia are struggling to contain the worst outbreak on record of the deadly haemorrhagic fever.The outbreak has crippled already poor healthcare systems in countries where Ebola patients are dying on the street and ambulances, medical staff, hospital beds and basic health kits are in short supply."

Nobody should be under the illusion that it will be easy (to stop)," Banbury told journalists in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, after meeting with the country's authorities. "Thousands have died and more will die tomorrow."

* Save the Children, said on Thursday that five people in Sierra Leone were contracting Ebola every hour and warned that could double by November if urgent actions were not taken. "

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/03/us-health-ebola-leone-idUSKCN0HS25A20141003?feedType=RSS

(Reuters) - People who contract Ebola in West Africa can get through airport screenings and onto a plane with a lie and a lot of ibuprofen, according to healthcare experts who believe more must be done to identify infected travelers."

"And people can take ibuprofen to reduce their fever enough to pass screening, and why wouldn't they? If it will get them on a plane so they can come to the United States and get effective treatment after they're exposed to Ebola, wouldn't you do that to save your life?"

*CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden cautioned on Thursday that a more restrictive approach to travel could make the Ebola outbreak harder to contain.

"The approach of isolating a country is going to make it harder to get help into that country," he said. "

http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/10/03/us-health-ebola-screening-idINKCN0HS09J20141003

Musician Ted Nugent took to the Internet on Wednesday to decry what he called "Ferguson thugs" and "a plague of black violence," demanding that blacks stop supporting liberals because of what he saw as biased media coverage of the recent Ferguson police shooting.

In a diatribe on World Net Daily, Nugent complained that "our national propaganda ministry reported ad nauseum the detailed description and race of Michael Brown and that of the police officer who killed him."

"Based on crime stats in Ferguson and elsewhere, it would be a safe bet to assume the two thugs the police are looking for are black males between the age of 15 and 25," Nugent added."

Nugent then turned to liberalism as the culprit behind the struggles that have "decimated and destroyed so many black families and their communities."

"It is deaf, dumb and blind liberalism that has shoveled over $20 trillion into Fedzilla’s welfare crack programs over the past 50 years," Nugent said.

The musician closed the column with: "The road to peace and prosperity in America is to reject the big liberal lie
and all those who endorse it. Liberalism is a lie. Liberalism is a scam. Liberalism is a killer."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/02/ted-nugent-thugs_n_5923204.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

This guy is a sick joke.

More than 3,000 people have registered to vote in Ferguson, Mo., since the death of Michael Brown — a surge in interest that may mean the city of 21,000 people is ready for a change.

Since a white police officer shot the unarmed black 18-year-old on Aug. 9, voter registration booths and cards have popped up alongside protests in the city and surrounding neighborhoods. The result: 4,839 people in St. Louis County have registered to vote since the shooting; 3,287 of them live in Ferguson.

The city's population is two-thirds African American; five of its six city council members are white, as is its mayor. The St. Louis County Election Board does not record the races of eligible voters, but many believe the increase is a sign that Brown's death has spurred renewed interest in politics and might mean more blacks will vote in the upcoming election.

"It's a great move when people come out and register in mass like that," said Anthony Bell, St. Louis 3rd Ward committeeman. "They are sending a signal that we want a change. It doesn't give justice to the Michael Brown family, but it will in the future give justice to how the administration is run in a local municipality like Ferguson."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/02/ferguson-vote-registration/16572305/