Controversial MS treatment works for Island woman

Posted on September 15, 2010 by Stephen Pate

Despite lack of support from Health Canada and medical establishment Donna Farrell feels better

Donna Farrell feels better after Zamboni treatments (photo Eastern Graphic)

A Peters Road woman traveled to Poland to get the controversial treatment for MS and says she feels better. The trip and treatment cost her more than $9,000 but she doesn’t regret it.

The MS Society, Health Canada and Health PEI did not support her operation.

“I just know I feel great. I’m a lot happier.” Mrs Farrell told the Eastern Graphic

Donna Farrell contracted MS in 1997 and the disease made her fatigued, often in pain and created a walking disability.

She now feels energized a month after the treatment, walks without a cane and has less pain. She is taking physiotherapy to make her leg muscles and tendons more flexible after years of little use.

“I could feel the blood pumping through my body,” Mrs Farrell said about the operation’s effects.
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Economist Predicts G20 Austerity will deepen third depression

Posted on June 29, 2010 by Stephen Pate

Plan to cut deficits in half in three years means austerity or higher taxes which will drive the economy into a depression

Irish housing project abandoned when real estate market colllapsed image: Eoin O'Conaill for the International Herald Tribune.

The ink is barely dry on the last minute agreement of President Obama to reduce the US deficit by $750 billion dollars in three years. Driven by the desperation of the European Union and Canada’s posturing on fiscal restraint, Obama is already backtracking on the promise with good reason.

The US is still in a depression from the bank collapse of 2008 and things are only marginally better. Unemployment is a historic highs. Housing sales tanked after the Federal grants ended. Other than high-profile iPhones and gadgets, consumption of consumer goods is not improving.

The New York Times is carrying an op-ed piece by economist Paul Krugman who believes we are already slipping into a “third depression.”

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Billionaire murderess wants out of jail

Posted on June 24, 2010 by Stephen Pate

She murdered her billionaire lover then said he abused her the jury agreed in halves

Cecile Brossard shot ultra rich banker Edouard Stern during rough sex

A year ago, the jury accepted Cecile’s story that she had been abused and humiliated her. While convicted, she was given a lesser sentence of 8 years, and could be out of jail in 18 months. See Lover admits to kinky sex killing.

Edouard Stern was one of the richest bankers in Europe, a billionaire friend of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. He hobnobbed around the rich and powerful until his lover shot him in a Swiss hotel room. Bound and wearing a latex suit, she sat at the trial he had humiliated her by calling her a “whore” and paying $1 million for her love.

On June 18th, 2010, Brossard’s lawyers were back in court arguing her health was suffering in jail and she should be released.
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Stock traders and strippers

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Stephen Pate

Why panic spreads through the stock market

Lunch at the strip club

The sleep deprived, drug and adrenalin fueled stock market is about to turn from greed to fear over the Greek and EU debt crisis. Things could get ugly very quickly. Yesterday the Dow Jones dropped 900 points before recovering.

When I was living in Toronto in the 1990s, the Financial Post profiled stock brokers and traders during the dot.com boom. The report said many of them used drugs like cocaine to keep up their energy level.

Stock market types from Bay Street would descend on the Zanzibar strip club just up the street from the stock exchange. Lunch with naked dancers got their adrenalin pumped up to make it through the afternoon.

Stock traders also worked long exhausting hours, many drinking their evenings away in bars searching for market rumors and relief from the stress.

Having met traders in Toronto, it made sense. They were a sleep deprived, nervous bunch constantly switching from greed to fear. The story in the paper made sense and several brokers confirmed it was true.

The attention span of a stock broker or trader is today, this afternoon, now. Stocks are up stocks are down. Buy! Sell!

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Helium Balloon amazing space photo

Posted on March 26, 2010 by Byline

Cheapest satellite launch costs $50 million but he only spent £4000

Pictures from space with a digital camera worth a few hundred quid

A father-of-three from Huddersfield has captured images of earth from space using a weather balloon.

Starting in October 2008, 38-year-old Robert Harrison filled 12 High Altitude Balloons with helium and launched them 35 kilometres into the atmosphere.

Having wrapped a digital camera and Global Positioning System device in loft insulation and linked it to computer software on the ground, he was able to track the balloons’ progress.

He said: “The first time I saw the pictures, I couldn’t believe it.”

The rare images caught the attention of experts in the field and it wasn’t long before Harrison received a telephone call from NASA. Continue reading →

Autumn 1939 Hitler enlists doctors in disabled euthanasia

Posted on March 20, 2010 by Byline

Phase 2 of Hitler’s euthanasia attacked adults with disabilities with secret gassing and cremation

This photo originates from a film produced by the Reich Propaganda Ministry. It shows two doctors in a ward in an unidentified asylum. The existence of the patients in the ward is described as "life only as a burden." Such propaganda images were intended to develop public sympathy for the Euthanasia Program.

Part 2 in a series of 4 articles previously Hitler’s euthanasia program murdered disabled first

Euthanasia planners quickly envisioned extending the killing program to adult disabled patients living in institutional settings. In the autumn of 1939, Adolf Hitler signed a secret authorization in order to protect participating physicians, medical staff, and administrators from prosecution; this authorization was backdated to September 1, 1939, to suggest that the effort was related to wartime measures.

Because the Führer Chancellery was insular, compact, and separate from state, government, or Nazi Party apparatuses, Hitler chose this, his private chancellery, to serve as the engine for the “euthanasia” campaign. Its functionaries called their secret enterprise “T4.” The operation took its code-name from the street address of the program’s coordinating office in Berlin: Tiergartenstrasse 4.
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Google Street View gets EU warning

Posted on February 26, 2010 by Stephen Pate

Sober second thought says Street View can be privacy disaster

EU privacy concerns have Google on the defensive over Street View. The new feature of Google Maps provides street level views of people, houses and buildings with photographs linked to Google Maps.

The EU wants people warned when Google is in town taking photographs, faces and license plates blurred, and the photographs destroyed in 6 months.

In Germany, house numbers are blurred and people can have their houses opted out.

A local realtor thought the service would be helpful to people planning to move to an area. Did he consider the photographs are dated and may not show the property at its best? What if it was garbage day or the yard needed landscaping. Warts and all real estate selling doesn’t sound like a value enhancing proposition.

With story from the Washington Post

Is Goldman Sachs profiting from financial crisis in Greece

Posted on February 26, 2010 by Stephen Pate

Even worse, are they and other US banks the cause of Greece’s financial dire straits?

SEC Ben Bernanke made the comments while testifying on the US economy photo: BBC

Testifying yesterday before the Senate Banking Committee, SEC Chairman Ben Bernanke said the Goldman Sachs and other US banks are being investigated for potentially setting up the current crisis in Greece. To top it off, Goldman is suspected of shorting the finances of Greece, betting that the economy will fail.

Bernanke told the Senate Committee that Goldman, over a ten year period, set up sophisticated credit arrangements that disguised the true nature and amount of Greece’s debt.

“We are looking into a number of questions related to Goldman Sachs and other companies and their derivatives arrangements with Greece,” Bernanke said, testifying before the Senate banking committee.”

“Addressing concerns that financial firms have been engaging in trades to bet on a Greek default, Bernanke said that “using these instruments in a way that intentionally destabilizes a company or a country is counterproductive, and I’m sure the SEC will be looking into that.” Washington Post
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Tragödie im Eiskanal: IOC fordert Blogger auf Video zu entfernen

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Byline

Der Todessturz des georgischen Rodlers Nodar Kumaritashvili im Netz – Urheberrecht versus Aufklärung?

Trauerminute für den georgischen Rodlers Nodar Kumaritashvili am Eiskanal in Vancouver - Grief minute for the Georgian tobogganers Nodar Kumaritashvili on ice track in Vancouver

Editor – the IOC luge video story is spreading around the world. For English translation see below.

Der Standard.at – Das Internationale Olympische Komitee (IOC) hat eine sogenannte “Take Down Notice” – also eine Aufforderung zur Entfernung von Inhalten auf Webseiten – an den kanadischen Betreiber des Blogs NJN Network gestellt.

Es geht dabei um ein Video des tödlich verunglückten georgischen Rodlers Nodar Kumaritashvili. Das IOC beruft sich dabei auf seine Urheberrechte, der betroffene Blogger Stephen Pate ortet hingegen den Versuch kritische Berichte, die eine Aufklärung der Todesursache und Verantwortlichkeiten fordern, abzustellen.

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Readers Choice top World stories 2009

Posted on January 5, 2010 by Stephen Pate

10. Cheap Adobe software scam from China

9. China will censor every computer for pornography and banned content

8. Air France jet disappears over 228 on board – flight path

7. Tehran On fire – Basij Headquarter blown up by protesters, basijies Killed

6. Airline pilot explains flight problems with Air France flight

5. Neda Agha-Soltan, a young girl is killed by plainclothes in Tehran

4. Air France crash – debris spotted on Atlantic Ocean

3. Air France 447: The computer crash

2. Neda Agha-Soltan’s fiancée sadly remembers her tragic death

1. Neda Agha-Soltan’s sister speaks for her murdered sister

Jehovah’s Witnesses arrested in $116 billion seizure of fake US Bonds

Posted on September 25, 2009 by Stephen Pate

Two Philippine nationals who claim to be Jehovah’s Witnesses were arrested by Italian police with $116 billion US Bonds

A woman and her brother were arrested in August at the Milan airport. Police confirmed the arrest and seizure of counterfeit bonds September 24, 2009.

The phony U.S. securities were sent to Italy from the Philippines and confiscated on Aug. 19 at Milan’s Malpensa airport, prosecutor Francesco Dettori said in an interview today. In June, police seized $134 billion of fake U.S. securities at the border with Switzerland. Prosecutors don’t have evidence to link the two batches of bonds, both dated from 1934 and of $500 million denominations, he said. Bloomberg

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