Daily Archives: 13 May 2012
Vote for Mitt if Ron . . . ?
UK’s largest mutual Co-op boycotts exports from Israel’s West Bank settlements
The Co-operative Group has become the first major European supermarket group to end trade with companies that export produce from illegal Israeli settlements.
The UK’s fifth biggest food retailer and its largest mutual business, the Co-op took the step as an extension of its existing policy which had been not to source produce from illegal settlements that have been built on Palestinian territories in the West bank.
Now the retail and insurance giant has taken it one step further by “no longer engaging with any supplier of produce known to be sourcing from the Israeli settlements”.
(Read more)
Israel backtracks on demolition of illegal West Bank settlement
Imagine my complete lack of surprise…
The Israeli government is seeking to renege on a pledge to demolish a West Bank outpost built on privately owned Palestinian land.
The move comes amid a wave of international condemnation over its retrospective authorisation this week of three other illegal outposts, strengthening Israel’s hold on the West Bank and bolstering pro-settler groups, whose influence on government policy is growing.
The attorney general, Yehuda Weinstein, will ask the supreme court to delay an order to evacuate and demolish five apartment buildings at Ulpana, on the edge of the Beit El settlement. The case is due to be heard before Tuesday’s deadline for evacuation. (Read more)
Blogging About the Paleo Diet Can Get You Shut Down in North Carolina
The state of North Carolina has its own “Board of Dietetics and Nutrition”–of course it does–and it has decided that one bloggers right to free speech ends where the North Carolina Board of Dietetics and Nutrition’s officious overbearingness begins, as I think Oliver Wendell Holmes (or was it Oliver Wendell Douglas?) once wrote.
Here’s the naughty bits, as reported in Carolina Journal:
[When] Steve Cooksey…was hospitalized with diabetes in February 2009, he decided to avoid the fate of his grandmother, who eventually died of the disease. He embraced the low-carb, high-protein Paleo diet, also known as the “caveman” or “hunter-gatherer” diet. The diet, he said, made him drug- and insulin-free within 30 days. By May of that year, he had lost 45 pounds and decided to start a blog about his success.
But this past January the state diatetics and nutrition board decided Cooksey’s blog — Diabetes-Warrior.net — violated state law. The nutritional advice Cooksey provides on the site amounts to “practicing nutrition,” the board’s director says, and in North Carolina that’s something you need a license to do.
Unless Cooksey completely rewrites his 3-year-old blog, he could be sued by the licensing board. If he loses the lawsuit and refuses to take down the blog, he could face up to 120 days in jail.
The board’s director says Cooksey has a First Amendment right to blog about his diet, but he can’t encourage others to adopt it unless the state has certified him as a dietitian or nutritionist.
Seems he came to their attention after contradicting a local hospital’s director of diabetes services at a local meeting, and handing out cards about his site. What did the Board find objectionable about Cooksey’s site? (Read more)
Drones to soar over US and Canada sooner than thought?
Non-military agencies have been gearing up to get unmanned drones in the sky across America, and now it looks like those controversial aircraft will soon be heading north, as well.
rt.com/news/iran-usa-drone-decode-755/Not only are surveillance drones expected to soar in droves across American airspace in the not-so-distant future, but now it has been confirmed that authorities in Canada have successfully followed through with test flights of the unmanned aircraft for their own use.
A spokesperson for CAE, Inc., which is located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, has confirmed that a series of test flights have occurred in recent weeks as the country looks towards purchasing drones for domestic use. According to CAE’s vice president, Pietro D’Ulisse, the capabilities of the craft will be a great asset for law enforcement across Canada. (Read more)