view from the grassy knoll

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Dr. Benjamin Carson, an American pediatric neurosurgeon told a crowd how political correctness is killing honest and open debate in the world today. He gave a heartwarming and bold defense of free speech to a group of people including the President at the National Prayer Breakfast meeting in Washington this week. In the video below, Dr. Carson express how disgusted he is by people who take offense at everything for whatever reason. He covers a wide range of topics as well including poverty and wealth redistribution.

One giant leap for mankind: £13bn Iter project makes breakthrough in the quest for nuclear fusion, a solution to climate change and an age of clean, cheap energyIt may be the most ambitious scientific venture ever: a global collaboration to create an unlimited supply of clean, cheap energy. And this week it took a crucial step forward. Steve Connor reports

An idyllic hilltop setting in the Cadarache forest of Provence in the south of France has become the site of an ambitious attempt to harness the nuclear power of the sun and stars.

It is the place where 34 nations representing more than half the world’s population have joined forces in the biggest scientific collaboration on the planet – only the International Space Station is bigger.

The international nuclear fusion project – known as Iter, meaning “the way” in Latin – is designed to demonstrate a new kind of nuclear reactor capable of producing unlimited supplies of cheap, clean, safe and sustainable electricity from atomic fusion.

If Iter demonstrates that it is possible to build commercially-viable fusion reactors then it could become the experiment that saved the world in a century threatened by climate change and an expected three-fold increase in global energy demand.

This week the project gained final approval for the design of the most technically challenging component – the fusion reactor’s “blanket” that will handle the super-heated nuclear fuel.

The building site in Cadarache has also passed the crucial stage where some 493 seismic bearings – giant concrete and rubber plinths – have been set into the reactor’s deep foundations to protect against possible earthquakes.

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Bananas – We like to add frozen bananas to our smoothies, because in their frozen form they add a rich creaminess as well as a thickness to smoothies that room temperature bananas do not. To freeze your bananas, all you do is wait until they are ripe (no green left in the peel, with a few brown spots), then peel them, and store them in a glass or other freezer safe container. Transfer to the freezer and allow to freeze all the way through before use. If you do not have a high speed blender, it is often best to chop up your frozen bananas a little before adding them to your smoothie to be blended

Mango - Mangoes can both be used fresh or frozen. There are two schools of thought on how to prepare your mango for use. The method we use is this – stand your mango up tall. It can be easier to place it stem side down, because that can give you a wider base. From here, make a cut straight down, but not directly through the center, as there is a large pit. Find the pit with your knife, and cut along it, removing as much fruit as you can. Repeat on the other side. You will be left with two mango “cheeks” From here, you can cut away the remaining fruit from the pit by following the pit with your knife from top to bottom on the sides. From here you can slice your cheeks into long strips and remove the peel from them. From here you can either use your fresh fruit as is in your smoothies or you can freeze your mango. To freeze your mango, follow through with the peeling and pitting described above. Then, cut your mango into cubes or diced shape. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and transfer to your freezer. Allow to freeze. Once frozen, you can take your mango chunks and move the move them to a freezer safe container. Allowing your mangoes to freeze on trays will help you to avoid having one huge, frozen mango mass that is tricky to deal with. You can also just use ice cube trays!

Pineapple - Like mango, pineapple can be used fresh or frozen. To use pineapple fresh, simply cut off the top and bottom. Then, place on of the flat surfaces down on your cutting board, and cut the peel away from the flesh from top to bottom, all the way around. Do not worry if there are a few “eyes” left, they will get blended. From here, you can choose to leave the core in (as it has lots of nutrients, and will get blended in a high speed blender) or remove it. Either way, cut your pineapple in half down the core line from top to bottom (cutting it into two sections left to right, not top and bottom), then cut both of those sections into 2, so you end up with 4 long spears. To remove the core, take one of your four sections, and leave it standing up. You will be able to see where the core is. Take your knife and just cut down, to remove the core from the pineapple. Next you can chop your pineapple into pieces, and use it fresh, or follow the same process that you would to freeze mango to use it frozen.

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The percentage of Americans that are unable to take care of themselves is going to continue to rise, and the suffering that we are witnessing right now is going to get much, much worse.

Not that things aren’t really, really bad already.  Here are some signs that child hunger in America has already started to explode…

#1 Today, approximately 17 million children in the United States are facing food insecurity.  In other words, that means that “one in four children in the country is living without consistent access to enough nutritious food to live a healthy life.”

#2 We are told that we live in the “wealthiest nation” on the planet, and yet more than one out of every four children in the United States is enrolled in the food stamp program.

#3 The average food stamp benefit breaks down to approximately $4 per person per day.

#4 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps before they reach the age of 18.

#5 It may be hard to believe, but approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are currently living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.

#6 The number of children living on $2.00 a day or less in the United States has grown to 2.8 million.  That number has increased by 130 percent since 1996.

#7 According to Feeding America, “households with children reported food insecurity at a significantly higher rate than those without children, 20.6 percent compared to 12.2 percent”.

#8 According to a Feeding America hunger study, more than 37 million Americans are now being served by food pantries and soup kitchens.

#9 For the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless.  That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.

#10 Approximately 20 million U.S. children rely on school meal programs to keep from going hungry.

#11 One university study estimates that child poverty costs the U.S. economy 500 billion dollars each year.

#12 In Miami, 45 percent of all children are living in poverty.

#13 In Cleveland, more than 50 percent of all children are living in poverty.

#14 According to a recently released report, 60 percent of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.

For many more facts about the dramatic explosion of poverty in this country, please see my previous article entitled “21 Statistics About The Explosive Growth Of Poverty In America That Everyone Should Know“.

I have no personal experience in the business of false flag terrorism, but I imagine that engineering a successfully staged terror attack to be blamed on innocent or semi-innocent parties with the goal of psychologically manipulating a population requires that one also be an accomplished storyteller. It demands an avid imagination and an organized sense of foresight. And, most of all, it requires a consistency of narrative. Without consistency, the audience’s ability to suspend its disbelief is damaged, and they become disconnected from the fantasy being portrayed.

If I were the “writer” behind the “story” of the Boston Marathon Bombing, I would consider my efforts an abject failure.

The narrative of the event has changed multiple times in only a few days, following a hailstorm of conflicting observations from the government and the establishment-run media. The “villain” of the original plotline was clearly meant to be “rightwing extremism” as numerous mainstream talking heads, led by federal agency inferences, began repeating the “homegrown right wing terrorist” meme everywhere. This meme was partly abandoned after the alternative media and the Liberty Movement began its own investigation, revealing a large federal presence on the scene, including military Civil Support Teams often tied to the DHS and Northcom, as well as the witnesses who observed what on-scene officials called “training exercises” during the marathon. I have no doubt that these citizen investigations forced the establishment to change the direction of their crime tale, and use Plan B patsies instead. This, however, complicated the momentum of the fiction, and created even more questions.

The Chechen brothers now implicated in the attack have been revealed as long time FBI contacts. This is a bit awkward for the FBI considering they asked the American public to help them “identify the suspects in on-scene photos” while they failed to mention that they knew EXACTLY who the two young men were already (this is what we might call a contrived story arch). Today, the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, is conveniently dead. The younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, had his throat conveniently shot out. The feds are now supplying the media with “written confessions” from Dzhokhar to which there is no proof of legitimacy. For all we know the boy hasn’t written a word.

The new “villains” get no voice in this drama, and thus become two dimensional characters. They exist so that we can hate them. Understanding them, or hearing their side of events from their own lips, is certainly out of the question. Poorly fleshed out antagonists are a sure sign of a poorly constructed story.

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Eurogroup Head Jeroen Dijsselbloem said that 80% to 90% of banking union can be completed without treaty change on Saturday.
Reuters

The Spanish government will unveil its revised budget plans for the next few years, Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said (waving his arm airily?)
Wall Street Journal