theDrahos

It was churlish for western leaders to boycott this week’s Victory Parade in Moscow that commemorated the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany 70 years ago. Historic events are facts that should not be manipulated according to the latest political fashions. Being angry at Moscow for mucking about in Ukraine does not in any way lessen the glory, admiration and thanks owed to the Russian people for their heroism during World War II. Americans and Canadians like to believe they won the war in Europe and give insufficient recognition to the decisive Soviet role. Most Europeans would rather not think … Continue reading →

By the time Lt. Frank Powell hurled a satchel bomb onto the roof of a three-story row house on Philadelphia’s Osage Avenue, the siege had gone on for nearly twelve hours. Powell was a member of the Philadelphia PD’s bomb squad, and like the “firemen” in Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novelette, he was performing a function assumed to be the opposite of his expected role: Rather than disposing of a military-grade bomb, he was using it as a weapon of mass destruction. The building targeted by Powell was occupied by members of a militant group called The MOVE.  Aerial photographs taken … Continue reading →

One-in-five murder victims around the world is Brazilian, Colombian or Venezuelan, a study has shown, despite the three countries containing less than four per cent of the world’s total population. The Homicide Monitor data project compiled by the Brazil-based Instituto Igarape reveals the high rates of homicide around Latin America and the Caribbean, where a third of all of the world’s homicides occur. The region contains only eight per cent of the world’s total population. Honduras (85.5 murders per 100,000 inhabitants), Venezuela (53.7) and the US Virgin Islands (46.9) have the highest murder rates per population in the world. By contrast, … Continue reading →

Government is evil and government money corrupts. The federal government say Times Square’s iconic billboards must come down or New York will lose highway money, reports NyPo. Supposedly, a 2012 law puts the Time Square area of glitz and excitement under the restrictions of the 1965 Highway “Beautification” Act — which limits signs to 1,200 square feet. Now Washington is pushing the city Department of Transportation to comply. This anti-billboard craze, btw, started with Lady Bird Johnson. She was no match for her husband when it came to evil, but she was a nutcake national busybody. George Reisman explained the … Continue reading →

Do you ever wonder if a major emergency situation occurred what would disappear first?  Due to the overwhelming nature of prepping for a emergency situation, many do not know where to even begin, let alone think of emergency situations they would need to prepare for.  Having a ready supply of food, water and batteries are a good start, but not enough.  There are many more items to have on hand besides beans, band aids and bullets. When planning for an emergency, especially a sudden and long-term emergency, think about the worst situation imaginable.  For those that need some help – think of mass chaos of people running … Continue reading →

Perhaps New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady did conspire with two locker room attendants to deflate footballs below the minimum permissible levels in a big game, but the report by NFL investigator Ted Wells reads more like a prosecutor’s brief than a balanced presentation of the facts as he obscures the collapse of one principal argument for believing in Brady’s guilt. A key assertion by people accusing Brady was that it made no sense that the footballs used by the Patriots in the AFC championship game last January – when tested at halftime – would have lost significantly more air pressure than … Continue reading →

CLEANSING the body periodically is one of the tenets of natural health. The purpose of cleansing is to assist the body in eliminating harmful toxins which helps the body run more effectively and efficiently which translates to better health. As adults, 80% of our ENERGY goes towards eliminating byproducts of normal metabolism from our bodies. Our bodies are actually very good at eliminating things that we don’t need; however, our modern diets with lots of refined and processed foods tend overwhelm our bodies and clog not just our arteries, but our livers, colons, lymph system and kidneys as well. From … Continue reading →

Over the past decade or so, “transparency” has become one of the buzzwords that has guided the Federal Reserve’s culture. The word was meant to convey the belief that central banking was best done for all to see in the full light of day, not in the murky back rooms of Washington and New York. The Fed seems to be on a mission to prove that its operations are benevolent, fair, predictable, and equitable. Part of that transparency movement took shape in 2007 when the Fed began publicizing its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) forecasts, which previously (to the frustration of … Continue reading →

When something goes wrong with your car or if a feature you should know about gets activated, a signal funnels through the electrical system and into the dashboard. This illuminates a hieroglyphic, and these cover a wide range of issues—some of which may be serious. Here are the meanings behind 15 of these curious-looking markers (and what they look like, in case you need a mnemonic device to help your memory). Your dashboard may be different and the symbols may have altered designs or indicate slightly different things, so be sure to consult your owner’s manual. Some of these lights … Continue reading →

Senate Republicans have conceded they may have to temporarily suspend plans for a long-term reauthorisation of the Patriot Act after a court ruling against its use by the National Security Agency dramatically turned around the prospects for surveillance reform in Washington. Three US appeal court judges threw the existing plan – to extend the NSA’s power to collect bulk metadata from American phone records for five years – into chaos on Thursday when they ruled that it was unlawful even under the old legislation. Now, with the relevant section of the Patriot Act due to expire at the end of … Continue reading →

NEW YORK, N.Y. — Describing the National Security Agency’s (NSA) domestic spying program that collects data about virtually all telephone calls made in the United States as “staggering” in its scope and unauthorized by the Patriot Act, a federal appeals court has struck down the agency’s surveillance program, ruling that the program violates a federal law authorizing more limited investigations in support of national security. The unanimous decision in ACLU v. Clapper vacated a ruling upholding the NSA’s bulk collection of telephone metadata, which has continued since 2006, and instructed the lower court to consider whether to order the government to … Continue reading →