Murder – Suicide In St. Louis County

On Thursday, a mother and her adult son were found dead in a home in Wildwood, St. Louis county, Missouri, after an apparent murder-suicide, said police.  According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, authorities believe Eric Scherrer, 23, shot and killed his mother, Janet Scherrer, 54, then killed himself.

Someone called a neighbor about 8 p.m. Thursday night, concerned about the Scherrers, according to police.  The neighbor checked the ranch-style home the Scherrers shared in the 4600 block of Fox Crest Drive and found Janet Scherrer unresponsive, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

 Authorities arrived and found both Scherrers dead inside.

Police did not know a motive in the murder-suicide.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/man-kills-mother-then-self-in-murder-suicide-at-wildwood/article_106cf6a9-1d7a-5d79-adee-c6a2027cd5d0.html

http://fox2now.com/2015/06/19/police-investigating-possible-murder-suicide-near-wildwood/

TPP & TTIP Are Sketchy When It Comes To Labor Unions And Sovereignty Rights

The TPP and TTIP conditions have not been released to the public, according to freespeechTV.  They have been (mis-)represented in America’s press as “trade” deals, but instead they’re actually about sovereignty, writes Eric Zuesse of The Huffington Post.

They’re about America and the other participating countries giving their democratic sovereignty – on regulation of consumer protection, worker protection, finance, and the environment – over to panels.  The panels’ members will be selected by the large international corporations that have been working with President Obama’s Trade Representative for years to create these “trade” treaties, writes Zuesse.

If some corporation “C” under these “trade deals” brings a case to one of those panels and says that country “X” has any regulations regarding the environment, consumer protection, worker protection, or finance, that are stricter than the ones that are set forth in TPP and TTIP, then country X will be assessed to pay a fine to corporation C, for “unfair trade practices” against that corporation.

So, laws in the TPP or TTIP supercede the laws of the U.S. in that regard.

These corporate panels will constitute a new international “government,” with the power to fine countries for exceeding the regulations that are set forth in these international ‘trade’ treaties, writes The Huffington Post.

President Obama’s Trade Representative, Michael Froman, has told the AFL-CIO and U.S. Senators that when countries such as Colombia systematically murder labor-union organizers, it’s not a  violation of workers’ rights, and it is nothing that is of concern to the U.S. regarding this country’s international trade policies or enforcement.

On April 22nd, Huffington Post, one of the few U.S. news media to report honestly on these treaties, wrote an article titled “AFL-CIO’s Trumka:  USTR Told Us Murder Isn’t A Violation,” and reported that, “Defenders of the White House push for sweeping trade deals argue they include tough enforcement of labor standards. But a top union leader disagreed with such claims Tuesday, revealing that administration officials have said privately that they don’t consider even the killings of labor organizers to be violations of those pacts.”

So, would the U.S. be helpless to change things if a country like Columbia murders union leaders?

This is and will be the low level playing-field that U.S. workers will be competing against in the TPP and TTIP, just as it is already, in the far-smaller NAFTA, according to The Huffington Post.

“Trumka (of the AFL-CIO labor union) said that even after the Obama administration crafted an agreement to tighten labor protections four years ago, some 105 labor organizers have been killed, and more than 1,300 have been threatened with death.”  And it looks like under the TPP, there is little that America could do about it.

(Updated article)

War In Afghanistan Not Really Over For U.S.

The United States and NATO formally ended their war in Afghanistan on Sunday, December 28th, with a ceremony at their military headquarters in Kabul,  according to the New York Post.

Most of the Marine Corps left Afghanistan months ago, but a small group of Marines stayed behind, continuing the fight in the country, according to The Marine Corps Times.

“Marine Expeditionary Brigade-Afghanistan exited Helmand Province in October, turning Camp Leatherneck over to local troops and departing for the States. The highly-publicized transition marked an end to the Corps’ major role in Afghanistan. Two months later, U.S. officials declared the end of combat operations in the 13-year-old conflict,” according to the Marine Corps Times.

The Marine Corps Times claims that “an unidentified number of Marines stayed on to help defend Bagram Airfield while remaining coalition troops train and assist Afghan troops and police officers.”

The Marines are part of the Georgian Deployment Program, and arrived with that nation’s 51st Light Infantry Battalion, said Marine Lt. Col. Peter Lang, the team’s officer in charge, in an email describing the rotation.

The Marines are embedded with soldiers from the ex-Soviet country of Georgia.

“In May, the Marines departed for Georgia where they embedded with the light infantry battalion, offering infantry advisers as well as experts in intelligence, communications, logistics, operations and medical aid,” states the Marine Corps Times.

The Marine liaison team was in Georgia until September.  They are reportedly now in Afghanistan.

“We are proud to be partnered with the Georgians,” wrote Lang, “there is a mutual respect and shared understanding that allows us to function as a cohesive team.”

More here

Twitter Hackers Declare Start Of WWIII

Secular Talk

According to the AFP, hackers took over Twitter accounts of the New York Post and United Press International on Friday, writing fake messages, including about hostilities breaking out between the United States and China.

One tweet posted under the UPI account quoted Pope Francis as saying, “World War III has begun.”

Another message delivered on the Post account said the USS George Washington, an aircraft carrier, was “engaged in active combat” against Chinese warships in the South China Sea.

The tweets were subsequently deleted.

A tweet from the News Corp-owned Post later noted that “Our Twitter account was briefly hacked and we are investigating.”

More:

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/hackers-announce-world-war-iii-twitter-205445848.html

Turkish President: Charlie Hebdo Guilty Of Provoking Muslims, Inciting Racial Hatred

The Turkish President Erdogan, continues to make waves with his public comments in the wake of the Paris terrorist atrocities last week.

Erdogan was quoted by the AFP news agency as telling a group of businessmen in Ankara that Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical newspaper whose cartoonists and writers were targeted by jihadist gunmen last week, was guilty of “wreaking terror by intervening in the freedom space of others.”

According to the Jerusalem Post, the first edition of Charlie Hebdo since the killing of 12 of its staff members at its central Paris offices last week aroused anger across the Muslim world, since it depicts the Prophet Mohammed shedding a tear while holding a sign that reads, “Je suis Charlie.”

“This magazine (is) notorious for its provocative publications about Muslims, about Christians, about everyone,” Erdogan is reported to have said.

The Turkish leader said that Charlie Hebdo abused its freedom of expression in order to insult an entire religious group.

“They may be atheists,” Erdogan said of the Charlie Hebdo journalists. “If they are, they will respect what is sacred to me. If they do not, it means provocation which is punishable by laws. What they do is to incite hatred, racism.”

Washington Post Seems To Endorse Torture

On January 5th, the Washington Post published an article titled “Democrats Lose The Torture Debate,” which was written by Marc A. Thiessen.

Thiessen writes, “As we begin 2015, we can take solace that the ‘torture’ debate is finally behind us. But before we close the book on six sordid years of Democratic demagoguery and investigations, let the record show that the opponents of the CIA interrogation program were completely and utterly defeated.

“Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, launched a six-year, 6,000-page, $40 million investigation into the CIA interrogation program, with the goal of convincing Americans that a) the program did not work and that b) enhanced interrogations were wrong and should never again be permitted.

Thiessen then claims: “She failed on all counts.”

The Post then justifies it’s stance on torture with its own internal poll.

He states that the poll shows that “The vast majority agree with the CIA that these techniques were necessary and justified. A majority think that Feinstein should never have released her report. And — most importantly — 76 percent said they would do it again to protect the country.”

Thiessen explains that Americans were asked, “Looking ahead, do you feel that torture of suspected terrorists can often be justified, sometimes justified, rarely justified or never justified?”

He then claims that the word “torture” is a “loaded word” and therefore claims that such techniques as waterboarding, “rectal feeding,” and “rectal rehydration” do not constitute torture. Thiessen would likely prefer the CIA-sanctioned term “EIT,” or “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.”

According to the WaPo poll, 17 percent replied they would support using the techniques “often,” 40 percent “sometimes” and 19 percent “rarely.” Only 20 percent said the techniques should “never” be justified.

Huff Post Poll Shows Most People Have No Idea What A House Benghazi Investigation Just Found

When the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee released a report on the Friday before Thanksgiving clearing U.S. officials of multiple accusations leveled after the 2012 Benghazi attacks, it didn’t seem to get the public’s attention.

Eighty-four percent of Americans said they had heard little or nothing about the report’s release, according to a HuffPost/YouGov poll.

Just 28 percent knew the investigation didn’t find evidence of intelligence failures before the attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, or wrongdoing in officials’ response to the attacks.

A nearly equal 25 percent thought the report found wrongdoing. The remaining 47 percent weren’t sure.

Partisanship (obviously) had a lot to do with people’s guesses as to what the report said.

Although Republicans were significantly more likely than others to say they had paid at least some attention to the results of the investigation, they were also the most likely to get it wrong, saying by a 10-point margin that it blamed, rather than absolved, U.S. officials.

Democrats, by a 20-point margin, said it vindicated the officials, while those independents who offered an opinion were about evenly split.

Opinions on how the Obama administration handled the Benghazi attacks two years ago also remain split along party lines. Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to say the administration deliberately misled the American people, by 79 percent to 19 percent.

The House committee found that early wrong statements by Obama administration officials were caused by conflicting information rather than purposeful deception.

As recently as this June, most Americans supported further investigation into Benghazi, and while the GOP’s interest has long outpaced that of other groups, overall focus on the story has been low for many months.

In 2013, a Gallup poll found that just 21 percent of Americans were paying very close attention to congressional hearings on the attacks. By June 2014, the number had moved down to 19 percent.