Sections on today's Signs Page:
SOTT Focus
Connecting the Dots: Welcome to the House of Fun and Games, where Family Heads Shoot to Kill and Hide the Decline of their Mask of Sanity
SOTT Editors
SOTT.net
2009-12-03 15:04:00
The First Global Revolution, A Report by the Council of the Club of Rome (King, Schneider 1991):
"The need for enemies seems to be a common historical factor. Some states have striven to overcome domestic failure and internal contradictions by blaming external enemies. The ploy of finding a scapegoat is as old as mankind itself - when things become too difficult at home, divert attention to adventure abroad. Bring the divided nation together to face an outside enemy, either a real one, or else one invented for the purpose." (p.71)
The common enemy of humanity is Man
"In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself." (p.75)
Against The Tide - A Critical Review by Scientists of How Physics and Astronomy Get Done, W. Kundt, 2008:
The term 'Gold Effect' was coined by Raymond Lyttleton in [1981], after a conversation with [Austrian astrophysicist Thomas Gold] during which Gold had explained how a mere unqualified belief can occasionally be converted into a generally accepted scientific theory - a dogma - through the screening action of refereed literature, of meetings planned by scientific organizing committees, and through the distribution of funds controlled by 'club opinions'.
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Best of the Web
Ukrainian Kids, New Victims of Israeli "Organ Theft"
Press TV
2009-12-03 13:54:00
An international Israeli conspiracy to kidnap children and harvest their organs is gathering momentum as another shocking story divulges Tel Aviv's plot to import Ukrainian children and harvest their organs.
The story brings to light the fact that Israel has brought some 25,000 Ukrainian children into the occupied entity over the past two years in order to harvest their organs. It cites a Ukrainian man's fruitless search for 15 children who had been adopted in Israel. The children had clearly been taken by Israeli medical centers, where they were used for 'spare parts'.
The account was unveiled five days ago by a Ukrainian philosophy professor and author, Vyacheslav Gudin, at a pseudo-academic conference in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. Gudin told an estimated 300 attendees of the Kiev conference that it was essential that all Ukrainians be made aware of the genocide Israel was perpetrating.
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Climategate: Science Is Dying
Daniel Henninger
The Wall Street Journal
2009-12-03 09:31:00
Surely there must have been serious men and women in the hard sciences who at some point worried that their colleagues in the global warming movement were putting at risk the credibility of everyone in science. The nature of that risk has been twofold: First, that the claims of the climate scientists might buckle beneath the weight of their breathtaking complexity. Second, that the crudeness of modern politics, once in motion, would trample the traditions and culture of science to achieve its own policy goals. With the scandal at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, both have happened at once.
I don't think most scientists appreciate what has hit them. This isn't only about the credibility of global warming. For years, global warming and its advocates have been the public face of hard science. Most people could not name three other subjects they would associate with the work of serious scientists. This was it. The public was told repeatedly that something called "the scientific community" had affirmed the science beneath this inquiry. A Nobel Prize was bestowed (on a politician).
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Earth could plunge into sudden ice age
Charles Q. Choi
Live Science
2009-12-03 09:10:00
In the film, The Day After Tomorrow, the world gets gripped in ice within the span of just a few weeks. Now research now suggests an eerily similar event might indeed have occurred in the past.
Looking ahead to the future, there is no reason why such a freeze shouldn't happen again - and in ironic fashion it could be precipitated if ongoing changes in climate force the Greenland ice sheet to suddenly melt, scientists say.
Starting roughly 12,800 years ago, the Northern Hemisphere was gripped by a chill that lasted some 1,300 years. Known by scientists as the Younger Dryas and nicknamed the"Big Freeze," geological evidence suggests it was brought on when a vast pulse of fresh water - a greater volume than all of North America's Great Lakes combined - poured into the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.
This abrupt influx, caused when the glacial Lake Agassiz in North America burst its banks, diluted the circulation of warmer water in the North Atlantic, bringing this "conveyer belt" to a halt. Without this warming influence, evidence shows that temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere plummeted.
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U.S. News
They Don't Check Facts Like They Used To
Ellen Goodman
TruthDig
2009-12-02 10:00:00
If you ever wondered why God invented the delete button, let me pass along the e-mail that arrived on the wings of various listservs directed at the mainstream media.
"How much do we love you?" the author asked the MSM. "Let me count the ways: You lie, omit, distort and skew what otherwise should be unbiased accounts of ALL news, not just what furthers the interests of the 'fringe left.' "
As my finger hovered over "block sender," I scanned the list of wrongs. No. 1 was the charge that we, the MSM, had hidden the fact that Bill Ayers was the real author of Dreams From My Father.
This myth had been careening around the Internet for some time, but came back to life after a conservative blogger confronted Ayers at an airport. In a fit of snark, Ayers "confessed." "Michelle asked me to. ... I wrote it," he said, adding, "And if you can prove it we can split the royalties." GOTCHA!
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Robert Scheer: Here We Go Again
Robert Scheer
TruthDig
2009-12-02 10:38:00
It is already a 30-year war begun by one Democratic president, and thanks to the political opportunism of the current commander in chief the Afghanistan war is still without end or logical purpose. President Barack Obama's own top national security adviser has stated that there are fewer than 100 al-Qaida members in Afghanistan and that they are not capable of launching attacks. What superheroes they must be, then, to require 100,000 U.S. troops to contain them.
The president handled that absurdity by conflating al-Qaida, which he admitted is holed up in Pakistan, with the Taliban and denying the McChrystal report's basic assumption that the enemy in Afghanistan is local in both origin and focus. Obama stated Tuesday in a speech announcing a major escalation of the war, "It's important to recall why America and our allies were compelled to fight a war in Afghanistan in the first place." But he then cut off any serious consideration of that question with the bald assertion that "we did not ask for this fight."
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Senior Officials Predict Troops will be in Afghanistan for Decades
Leigh Ann Caldwell
News Junkie Post
2009-12-02 17:00:00
One day after President Obama laid out his plan to expand the war in Afghanistan, members of his Cabinet were dispatched to Capitol Hill to sell the war to lawmakers. Congress was assured that the proposed time-line to begin a troop withdraw - July of 2011 - will be not be a quick retreat and an American presence could remain for years to come.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Senate Armed Services Committee that US troops and economic assistance programs have been stationed overseas for 50 to 60 years. Clinton said she thinks "that's a likely outcome in both Afghanistan and Pakistan"
Though, Defense Secretary Robert Gates assured lawmakers that nation building is not a goal of the escalated war. He said the US will not "occupy" Afghanistan. He said the time-line to withdraw troops in 18 months is to let the Afghan government know the troop escalation is "not an open-ended commitment."
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Senator Berni Sanders Blocks Bernanke Confirmation... With Bi-Partisan Support
OpEd News
2009-12-02 07:41:00
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today placed a hold on the nomination of Ben Bernanke for a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve.
"The American people overwhelmingly voted last year for a change in our national priorities to put the interests of ordinary people ahead of the greed of Wall Street and the wealthy few," Sanders said. "What the American people did not bargain for was another four years for one of the key architects of the Bush economy."
As head of the central bank since 2006, Bernanke could have demanded that Wall Street provide adequate credit to small and medium-sized businesses to create decent-paying jobs in a productive economy, but he did not.
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Book Could Embarrass Christian Right with Stories of Sex, Scandal
Daniel Tencer
Raw Story
2009-12-02 15:24:00
If excerpts from Lisa Baron's upcoming book are anything to go on, it's sure to be a scandalous read.
My Burning Bush, Baron's memoir of her days as the spokeswoman for Ralph Reed -- the former Christian Coalition leader and the man Time called "The Right Hand of God" -- is being shopped around the New York publishing houses. And it promises to embarrass more than one figure in America's conservative movement.
In one excerpt, Baron addresses the claims that Reed was behind a smear campaign against Sen. John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries that implied the Arizona senator had had a love-child with a black woman.
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UK & Euro-Asian News
Ireland: Catholic order Sisters of Mercy offers 128m euros in sex abuse payout
BBC News
2009-12-03 18:14:00
The Irish Sisters of Mercy is to supply a 128m euros (£116m) package as reparation for decades of child abuse in its schools and orphanages.
In May, the Ryan report laid out a picture of systematic abuse. The order of nuns ran five schools named in the damning report, including the notorious Goldenbridge.
The order said it was "deeply saddened at the findings" of the report and "wholeheartedly regrets" the suffering experienced by children in their care.
"It is the sincere hope and desire of the congregation that this contribution will help towards the enhancement of the lives of former residents", it added.
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Feeding the Meat Grinder: 20 NATO Countries to Send More Troops to Afghanistan
Lisa Bryant
VOA News
2009-12-03 17:58:00
NATO says at least 20 countries plan to increase their troop levels in Afghanistan, following U.S. President Barack Obama's announcement of a 30,000-troop boost to the war-torn nation.
NATO spokesman James Appathurai told reporters NATO members had shown a clear determination to support President Barack Obama's strategy in Afghanistan - not just through rhetoric, but by dispatching more troops.
"I can confirm we have now well over 20 countries that are indicating or have already indicated they intend to increase the amounts of forces they have in the country - in Afghanistan. This is on top of the 38,000 (troops from other NATO members and allies) that are already there, taking into account a doubling over the past two years," he said.
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Four die in China after taking H1N1 vaccine
Saibal Dasgupta
The Times of India
2009-12-02 22:03:00
The Chinese ministry of health has reported four deaths that came to persons who had been inoculated with A/H1N1 flu vaccine made in the country. The confirmation of these deaths comes after 26 million people were vaccinated within weeks of formulating the vaccines in record time after the swine flu outbreak.
The ministry hastened to say that three of the four deaths were not related the vaccines and it was a coincidence that these persons died after taking the inoculation shots. The cause of the fourth death is yet to be determined, Liang Wannian, director of the ministry's emergency response.
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Around the World
Senior UK commander says roads in Afghanistan were safer under the Taliban
The Canadian Press
2009-12-03 18:49:00
A senior British military commander says roads in Afghanistan were safer when the Taliban ran the country.
Maj. Gen. Nick Carter told the BBC on Thursday that before the 2001 invasion, women could travel alone in the southern part of Afghanistan. He says "you could put your daughter on a bus in Kabul sure in the knowledge that she would get in one piece to Kandahar."
Carter, who controls NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, says this isn't the case now. He says British forces need to change that.
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America's puppets in Honduras vote against Manuel Zelaya reinstatement
Times Online
2009-12-03 18:06:00
MPs in Honduras have voted overwhelmingly against reinstating President Manuel Zelaya, shrugging off international pressure four months after a coup that has isolated one of the poorest countries in the Americas.
As the vote continued, more than two-thirds of members of Congress had voted not to return the deposed president to power for the remainder of his term, which ends on January 27, as Washington and many Latin American governments had urged.
Honduran media put the ongoing vote at 98-12, well in excess of the simple majority needed in the 128-member, single-chamber Congress for the vote against restoring Mr Zelaya to succeed.
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Somalia: Explosion at graduation ceremony kills as many as 15, including 3 top officials
Lutfi Sheriff Mohammed and Jeffrey Fleishman
Los Angeles Times
2009-12-03 17:53:00
In a stunning attack on Somalia's shaky government, a suicide bombing at a graduation ceremony in the lawless capital of Mogadishu killed three Cabinet ministers and as many as 12 others, according to government officials.
The bomber sneaked in amid hundreds of guests and graduating medical students at the Hotel Shamo. Government forces control only a sliver of the city, and the attack was another indication of the reach and brazenness of Islamist militants and Al Qaeda operatives.
Media reports said the number of dead, including students, doctors and journalists, was between 10 and 15.
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Afghanistan: Trigger-happy security contractors complicate convoys
Sean D. Naylor
Army Times
2009-12-02 17:43:00
Ill-disciplined private security guards escorting supply convoys to coalition bases are wreaking havoc as they pass through western Kandahar province, undermining the coalition's counterinsurgency strategy here and leading to at least one confrontation with U.S. forces, say U.S. Army officers and Afghan government officials.
The security guards are responsible for killing and wounding more than 30 innocent civilians during the past four years in Maywand district alone, said Mohammad Zareef, the senior representative in the district for Afghanistan's intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security.
Highway 1, the country's main east-west artery, runs through Maywand and is the route taken by logistics convoys moving west from Kabul and Kandahar to coalition bases in Helmand province. The Afghan government's district chief for Maywand says the men hired to protect the convoys are heroin addicts armed with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles.
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How Many Private Contractors Are There In Afghanistan? Military Gives Us 104,100
Justin Elliott
TPMMuckraker
2009-12-02 17:37:00
Private contractors employed by the Defense Department in Afghanistan will continue to outnumber the size of the American troop presence, even after President Obama sends 30,000 more soldiers to fight in the war, according to the military's most recent contractor count.
The latest figure on DOD contractors in the country is a whopping 104,100, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command tells TPM. That number, which is expected to grow, is already greater than the 98,000 U.S. troops that will be in the country after the new deployments.
We told you yesterday about the little-noticed but giant shadow army of contractors that allows the United States to prosecute the war by providing food, transport, construction, security, and other services. Many believe the size of the contracting force presents security and transparency concerns.
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Remembering Bhopal a Quarter-Century Later
Chris Bedford
Grist
2009-12-03 16:46:00
Today is the 25th anniversary of the Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India. The number of people affected, injured, and killed has been the subject of debate. But it seems clear that a half a million were exposed to some degree to MIC and other chemicals released and approximately 40,000 people died either immediately or from injuries directly related to the accident. MIC was a key ingredient in India's petrochemical Green Revolution - an intermediate chemical in the production of a number of insecticides, some still in use today.
Union Carbide still claims the MIC release was an act of deliberate sabotage and that "it" was the victim at Bhopal. This giant-chemical-corporation-as-victim delusion is symptomatic of our time; the end-of-free-market capitalism in which corporations have become too big to fail, too powerful to be held accountable.
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Big Brother
US Deputies Shock 10-Year-Old With Taser
cbs4denver.com
2009-12-03 14:22:00
Colorado - Authorities say an "out of control" 10-year-old child was shocked with a Taser and arrested by sheriff's deputies in Pueblo West.
Capt. Jeff Teschner says that the deputies involved were justified in their use of force.
He said Wednesday that the boy was not hurt when deputies took action Monday after arriving at his foster home where he was reportedly destroying property.
Authorities say the youth threatened a deputies with a pipe and a stick, and threw a piece of wood at them.
The boy was booked into Pueblo Youth Center on suspicion of menacing with a deadly weapon.
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UK: Gov confirms plans for Sky box in charge of your house
Lewis Page
The Register
2009-12-03 10:57:00
Smart 'meters' - remote-control spy boxes by 2020
The government has announced the results of its consultation with the public and other interested parties on plans for "smart" energy meters to be installed in all British homes and businesses. The most controversial aspects of the devices - the fact that they will effectively allow remote control of a home by energy companies and/or the grid authority - have apparently passed unchallenged.
Many of the proposed capabilities of smart meters, to be universally installed by 2020, are relatively uncontroversial. The devices are to be networked back to grid authorities and supplier companies, allowing an end to visits for meter readings and much simpler billing operations for energy firms. They will also be able to join a home network, allowing separate displays elsewhere in a house and/or the monitoring of energy use on other devices such as home computers, phones etc. The machines will be run like Sky or TiVo boxes, under remote control from outside the home - users will have no control over them.
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UK: Critics Attack New "Big Brother" Quiz Aimed at Identifying Young Criminals
Andrew Hough
The Daily Telegraph
2009-11-30 11:02:00
Troubled children as young as five are to be tracked by authorities under "Big Brother" government plans to identify the criminals of the future.
Critics attack new 'big brother' quiz aimed at identifying young criminals
The questionnaire asks parents whether their children lie, bully or steal how often they eat red meat, takeaway meals or drink fizzy drinks.
Parents of children starting school are being asked to complete the 83 point questionnaire, which asks a series of personal and intimate questions about their lifestyle.
Critics attacked the questionnaire, being trialled by Lincolnshire Community Health Services, as an unprecedented intrusion into family life.
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Microsoft: 'Piracy no longer poses a threat to us'
Freakbits.com
2009-12-02 11:02:00
In a recent interview, managing director of Microsoft Philippines Inc., John Bessey, has claimed that piracy no longer poses a threat to the software giant.
In the interview, which was part of Microsoft's launch of Windows 7 in the Philippines, Bessey warns users that by using a pirated version of their new OS, they open themselves up to "viruses".
Elaborating on that, Philstar.com is reporting that online banking may be the biggest danger for those using pirated Operating Systems. Without the protection that Microsoft offers with legit copies of Windows 7, a user could be sharing his banking details with "the world."
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UK: Boy, two, is snatched by social workers after mother refused doctor's advice to feed him junk food
Chris Brooke
The Mail Online
2009-12-03 10:47:00
Like many toddlers, Zak Hessey was a fussy eater who refused his mother's healthy home cooking.
Concerned about his falling weight, his parents sought the advice of doctors. That simple act triggered a shocking chain of events that led to the youngster being put into foster care for four months.
Paul and Lisa Hessey believe in the long-term benefits of healthy eating and rejected advice to feed their two-year-old son high-calorie snack food such as chocolate, crisps and cakes.
To their horror, social workers put Zak into foster care 'to assess his needs' and allegedly threatened the couple with the loss of their parental rights if they fought the decision in court.
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Lawsuit Demands Answers About Social-networking Surveillance
infoZine
2009-12-02 20:36:00
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), working with the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Samuelson Clinic), filed suit today against a half-dozen government agencies for refusing to disclose their policies for using social networking sites for investigations, data-collection, and surveillance.
Recent news reports have publicized the government's use of social networking data as evidence in various investigations, and Congress is currently considering several pieces of legislation that may increase protections for consumers who use social-networking websites and other online tools. In response, the Samuelson Clinic made over a dozen Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on behalf of EFF to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies, asking for information about how the government collects and uses this sensitive information.
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Axis of Evil
Obamathink on Afghanistan: Escalate to Exit
Stephen Lendman
SJLendman Blog
2009-12-03 18:33:00
Ahead of his address to the nation on December 1, The New York Times broke the news in an Eric Schmitt article titled, "Obama Issues Order for More Troops in Afghanistan," saying:
During a late November 29 Oval Office meeting with top Pentagon brass, "Obama issued orders to send about 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan (over the next six months in) what may be one of the most defining decisions of his presidency." Compounding months of public betrayal, it's perhaps another outrage that will make him a one-term president, the way Vietnam ended Lyndon Johnson's hope for a second term.
An additional 30,000+ will raise US forces to about 100,000 plus whatever additional numbers NATO countries provide that at best will be small and come grudgingly for a war no one believes can be won, and some feel never should have been waged.
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Thomas Friedman's gallimaufry of lies
Khalid Amayreh
Palestine Think Tank
2009-12-03 18:26:00
In a recent article in the New York Times, the American Jewish journalist Thomas Friedman blamed the so-called Arab-Islamic "Narrative" for all the troubles surrounding US-Muslim relations-from the 9-11 terrorist events in 2001 to the recent killing of 13 American soldiers in Texas by American-born and American-bred Nidal Malik Hasan.
Friedman suggested that Muslims all over the world ought to show gratitude to the US for helping them in places like Kosovo, Bosnia, Darfur, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake Pakistan, post-Tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan. True to his style, he carefully ignored the killing of hundreds of thousands of mostly innocent people in the context of American intervention in these countries.
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Victory at Last! Monty Python in Afghanistan
Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch
2009-12-03 10:01:00
Let others deal with the details of President Obama's Afghan speech, with the on-ramps and off-ramps, those 30,000 U.S. troops going in and just where they will be deployed, the benchmarks for what's called "good governance" in Afghanistan, the corruption of the Karzai regime, the viability of counterinsurgency warfare, the reliability of NATO allies, and so on. Let's just skip to the most essential point which, in a nutshell, is this: Victory at Last!
It's been a long time coming, but finally American war commanders have effectively marshaled their forces, netcentrically outmaneuvering and outflanking the enemy. They have shocked-and-awed their opponents, won the necessary hearts-and-minds, and so, for the first time in at least two decades, stand at the heights of success, triumphant at last.
And no, I'm not talking about post-surge Iraq and certainly not about devolving Afghanistan. I'm talking about what's happening in Washington.
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The Crushing Legacy of Bush and Cheney
Jon Conason
TruthDig
2009-12-02 00:00:00
From now on, the headlines about Afghanistan will be slugged "Obama's War," and perhaps that is fair enough given the president's many endorsements of what he has called a war of necessity. It would be much less fair, however, to ignore the events that led us to this moment, when any choice offers no great guarantee of progress and no small prospect of trouble.
Those events began with the inexplicable decision by officials of the previous administration to allow Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other ranking leaders of al-Qaida to escape from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001. At the time, as a new Senate report on the battle of Tora Bora recalls, Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, and Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of American forces in Afghanistan, decided not to augment the tiny contingent of special operations troops on the ground with sufficient force to capture or kill b in Laden and his deputies. They later claimed to be worried that "too many American troops in Afghanistan would create an anti-American backlash and fuel a widespread insurgency," a rationale that can only evoke bitter laughter now.
None of the reasons offered back then for inaction at Tora Bora made sense after the outrage of Sept. 11, when the entire world, including the Afghan people, were cheering the U.S. invasion. The pattern of deception that later led to war in Iraq began with expressions of doubt by both Franks and Vice President Dick Cheney about bin Laden's presence in Tora Bora - a doubt that none of the commanders on the ground shared and that always sounded more like an excuse than an explanation. If there was any chance that the perpetrators of Sept. 11 could be found in those mountains, then maximum force should have been deployed as rapidly as possible.
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Netanyahu: Israel is world's 'most threatened country'
Amos Harel, Ora Coren
Haaretz
2009-11-18 17:15:00
Israel is "the most threatened country in the world," and the rocket attacks its civilian population has suffered are "attacks not experienced by any other state since Britain in World War II," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday.
Netanyahu was giving the closing remarks at the Israel Annual Conference on Aviation and Astronautics. Much of the discussion at the conference centered on missile defense.
"We are faced with enemies who do not conceal their intentions, and who arm themselves accordingly," the prime minister said. "They first attack us physically, and then attack our right to self-defense."
He noted that despite the financial success of Israel's military industries, much money will be needed over the next decade to meet the state's defense needs. These funds can only be secured by faster growth, which in turn can only be achieved by cutting taxes, he argued.
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Middle East Madness
Mystery surrounds poisoning of doctor who exposed torture
Lee Keath
The Independent
2009-12-03 10:31:00
Iranian medic 'was given fatal overdose in a portion of salad'
A doctor who exposed the torture of jailed protesters in Iran died of poisoning from an overdose of a blood pressure drug in a salad, prosecutors have said. The findings fuelled opposition fears he was killed because of what he knew.
Investigators are still trying to determine whether Ramin Pourandarjani's death was a suicide or murder, said Tehran's public prosecutor Abbas Dowlatabadi, according to the state news agency IRNA. The 26-year-old doctor died on 10 November in mysterious circumstances - with authorities initially saying he was in a car accident, had a heart attack or committed suicide.
Dr Pourandarjani worked at Kahrizak, a prison on Tehran's outskirts where hundreds of opposition protesters were taken after being arrested in the crackdown following June's disputed presidential elections. The facility became so notorious that it was ordered shut down by Iran's Supreme Leader as reports of abuse and torture became an embarrassment to the clerical rulers and security forces.
Dr Pourandarjani later testified to a parliamentary committee and reportedly told them that one young protester he treated had died after heavy torture.
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Busted Iranian Arms Agent Conveniently Tells of Iran War Preparations
Jason Ryan
ABC News
2009-12-03 10:00:00
.S. Secretly Arrested Iranian Agent Two Years Ago After Sting and Extradited to U.S.
An Iranian government agent, who was secretly arrested two years ago and extradited to the U.S. for trying to export high tech American military equipment to Iran, told U.S. undercover agents he was helping his country prepare for a war with the United States that Iran was convinced was coming.
The agent, Amir Hossein Ardebili, was secretly arrested overseas in Central Asia in October 2007 and pleaded guilty to charges that he violated the Arms Export Control Act, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, smuggling conspiracy and money laundering. The arrest and guilty plea were announced Wednesday by the U.S. attorney for Delaware, David C. Weiss.
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Grand Theft Economics
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The Living Planet
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Health & Wellness
BPA Babies and Cash Registers
Anna Fahey
Grist
2009-11-30 17:21:00
We've known for a long time that bisphenol-A (BPA) is bad for us. Study after study shows the ill-effects of this widely-used industrial chemical on our bodies - and in particular, on developing babies' bodies. The list is pretty sobering: BPA's been linked to breast cancer in women, brain damage in children, obesity, heart disease, diabetes...
Two new studies add to the litany:
One study suggests that BPA, may cause sexual dysfunction in men. Another study, reported in Science News, links BPA exposures in early pregnancy to more aggressive behavior in 2-year old girls and more anxious and withdrawn 2-year old boys.
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Amino Acid Recipe Could Be Right for Long Life
Tina Hesman Saey
Science News
2009-12-02 01:00:00
In fruit flies, a low-calorie diet with extra amounts of methionine extends lifespan without harming fertility
Long life may stem from a proper imbalance of dietary nutrients.
A new study in fruit flies suggests that the life-extending properties of caloric restriction may be due not only to fewer calories in the diet, but also to just the right mix of protein building blocks, called amino acids. The study, published online December 2 in Nature, may help explain some of the health benefits of restricted-calorie diets.
Coupled with other data, the new study should prompt researchers to reevaluate whether it is calorie count or the nutrient composition of a diet that is most important for regulating lifespan and health, comments Luigi Fontana of Washington University in St. Louis.
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Bullying At School Linked To Bullying At Home
Medical News Today
2009-12-03 03:00:00
Children who bully at school are likely to also bully their siblings at home. This is the finding of a study published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.
Dr Ersilia Menesini and colleagues at the Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Italy, designed the study to investigate whether the age and gender of a child's siblings predicted whether children were likely to bully, or to become victims of bullying. They also looked for links between sibling bullying and school bullying
A total of 195 children aged between 10 and 12 took part in the study. All of the children had a sibling no more than four years older or younger than them. Children were given questionnaires that asked whether they were a victim of bullying, or bullied their peers at school, and whether they were a victim of bullying by a sibling or bullied a sibling at home.
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Remember the Dangers of Refined Sugar
Fleur Hupston
Natural News
2009-12-03 09:17:00
In Western societies, the consumption of refined sugar is a daily addiction. From pouring syrup or sugar over pancakes and cereals at breakfast, to heaping it into coffee and tea, the habit continues during the day, resulting in obesity and health problems. Sugar content is often hidden from the unwary consumer and this raises questions such as: Is sugar really so bad? What exactly does it do to the human body? Can the definition of poison really be applied to sugar?
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RealAge Scheme Exposed by New York Times
E. Huff
NaturalNews
2009-12-03 03:00:00
A popular online age quiz, RealAge, has gained notoriety among many Americans for its claims to pinpoint a person's true biological age and make corresponding recommendations for staying healthy and young. Research into the company reveals, however, that while the site itself promotes non-medical solutions to staying young, the company generates revenue by marketing drugs to its members via email.
The quiz is designed to assign a biological age to a person through a series of questions that assess lifestyle preferences, eating habits, and family history. Once compiled, the survey will offer advice on which vitamins to take, what to eat for meals, and how to improve youthfulness. Over 27 million people have taken the quiz and roughly nine million have signed up to become members.
Once a member, a person receives custom-tailored emails that use that person's quiz answers to make drug recommendations based on current symptoms and potential disease propensities. Drug companies pay RealAge to send marketing emails directly to members without any formal diagnosis from the members' doctors.
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Hospital Sees Increase in Eye Condition After Knock "Visions"
Pamela Duncan
Irish Times
2009-12-02 06:00:00
A Galway eye surgeon has described as "unprecedented" the rise in the number of cases of an eye condition which he says can be directly attributed to people staring at the sun during recent events at the Knock shrine.
Dr Eamonn O'Donoghue, a consultant ophthalmologist surgeon in University Hospital Galway, says the hospital would usually see one case of solar retinopathy "at most" per year.
However, this year there have been five such cases, all of which have been linked to events at Knock.
Dr O'Donoghue said people needed to be warned of the condition as it was "potentially very, very dangerous" and could cause long-term damage to the most vulnerable part of the eye.
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Science & Technology
Contested Signs of Mass Cannibalism
Bruce Bower
Science News
2009-12-03 14:52:00
At a settlement in what is now southern Germany, the menu turned gruesome 7,000 years ago. Over a period of perhaps a few decades, hundreds of people were butchered and eaten before parts of their bodies were thrown into oval pits, a new study suggests.
Cannibalism at the village, now called Herxheim, may have occurred during ceremonies in which people from near and far brought slaves, war prisoners or other dependents for ritual sacrifice, propose anthropologist Bruno Boulestin of the University of Bordeaux in France and his colleagues. A social and political crisis in central Europe at that time triggered various forms of violence, the researchers suspect.
"Human sacrifice at Herxheim is a hypothesis that's difficult to prove right now, but we have evidence that several hundred people were eaten over a brief period," Boulestin says. Skeletal markings indicate that human bodies were butchered in the same way as animals.
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Da Vinci's 'Last Supper' goes digital
Discovery News
2009-11-30 08:31:00
Da Vinci's 'Last Supper' in Vivid Detail
More than 500 years after Leonardo da Vinci painted The Last Supper, Leonardo3, a media company based out of Milan, has digitally reconstructed da Vinci's masterpiece.
The team assembled the image based on hundreds of high-definition photographs of the original mural. They also looked at contemporary copies of The Last Supper, such as the one by Giampietrino, a painter influenced by da Vinci.
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ClimateGate: Head of Embattled UK Climate Center Steps Down
Michael Andrews
DailyTech.com
2009-12-03 01:44:00
Director admits emails about apparent warming deception "do not read well"
The University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit is one of the world's primary sources for climate data analysis and a close partner to the UN's International Panel on Climate Change. Its researchers have published much of the work that has helped the theory of anthropogenic causation to global warming to gain acceptance in much of research community.
Last week the CRU was the subject of a cyberattack. Hackers released a 160 MB archive of stolen information from the center, including a number of emails from the center's director, Professor Phil Jones.
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Hair Reveals Ancient Peruvians Were Stressed
Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
2009-12-02 03:48:00
High levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, are found in the hair of ancient human remains.
People in the past were very stressed out, suggests a new study that found high amounts of a stress hormone in the hair of Peruvian individuals who lived between 550 A.D. and 1532.
The study, accepted for publication in the Journal of Archaeological Science, is the first to detect the stress hormone cortisol in ancient hair. Cortisol is produced in response to real and perceived threats. After its release, the hormone travels to nearly every part of the body, including to blood, saliva, urine and hair.
It now may be possible to determine not only how ancient people behaved, but also how they felt.
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China had bronze early on
Science Alert
2009-12-02 19:56:00
ANSTO (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation) research has shown that an area of desert in north-western China was once a thriving Bronze Age manufacturing and agricultural site. The new findings may help shed light on the origins and development of the earliest applications of Bronze Age technology.
Dating, using ANSTO's precision techniques, was used to identify the age of seeds, slag, copper ore and charcoal at two sites. The findings show the material is up to 3700 years old, but that smelting was still being carried out as recently as 1300 years ago.
The research indicates bronze production may have begun as early as 2135 BC and that the modern mine location - Baishantang at Dingxin - was possibly the historical source of copper ore for manufacturing.
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'Smell of old books' offers clues to help preserve them
Michael Bernstein
American Chemical Society
2009-12-02 19:45:00
Scientists may not be able to tell a good book by its cover, but they now can tell the condition of an old book by its smell. In a report in ACS' Analytical Chemistry, a semi-monthly journal, they describe development of a new test that can measure the degradation of old books and precious historical documents based on their smell. The nondestructive "sniff" test could help libraries and museums preserve a range of prized paper-based objects, some of which are degrading rapidly due to advancing age, the scientists say.
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Our Haunted Planet
England: Massive triangle-shaped object seen hovering in West Midlands
UK UFO Sightings
2009-12-03 18:33:00
Posted: December 2, 2009
Location of Sighting: Above Merry Hill, Dudley, West Midlands
Date of Sighting: Friday 4th Nov & Wednesday 2nd Dec 2009
Time: Friday - 6.10PM/ Wednesday 5.24pm
Witness Statement: On Friday 4th Nov i was picking up my partner as usual around 6pm. As we drove off a massive object appeared above the Merry Hill area. It had 4 lights with an additional single light off to the left. The single light flew back and forth then disappeared as the larger object which was hovering stationary, turned 90 degrees. We are on an elevated viewing point so drove following this object. It was massive, triangle shaped with 5 lights which changed colours. It banked west at approx 30 degrees then followed a straight course going very very slow.
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Scotland: Massive lighted object seen in clouds
UK UFO Sightings
2009-12-03 18:33:00
Posted: December 2, 2009
Location of Sighting: Ayr, Scotland
Date of Sighting: 27 November 2009
Time: TBA
Witness Statement: Hi this is regarding a report in Ayr Scotland on 27th nov 09:-
I was walking home from Prestwick and noticed what looked like projections or light rippling through the clouds. It was very hard to miss the cloud was low that night and the effect was visible even when next to the street lights, it was as if there were a massive object just above the cloud base. There was definitely a circular pattern to whatever it was as the bands of light looked to move around a central point and were slightly curved at the ends.
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England: Witness sees disc-shaped object with different colored lights and a dark circle in middle
UK UFO Sightings
2009-12-03 18:33:00
Posted: December 2, 2009
Location of Sighting: Grinshill, nr Shrewsbury, Shropshire
Date of Sighting: 30/11/2009
Time: approx 8pm
Witness Statement: I was driving back towards Shrewsbury at about 8pm and as i past the turning for the village of Clive i noticed a very bright light just to the left of Grinshill hill. I pulled over into a gateway of a field with a full and clear view of the hill.
To the left of the hill as you look to the north there was a large disc shaped object that had what looked like a bite taken out of it. I reckon it was about 40-50ft across i couldn't judge its height because of the light it gave off. It emitted red, yellow, orange and blue lights and had a dark circle in its centre. I couldn't hear any noise or engines of any kind this thing just sort of hung there for at least 2 minutes. It then suddenly flipped over and shot off with a red flash to the west.
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England: Cigar-shaped object with lights on ends and in middle spotted over Gloucestershire
UK UFO Sightings
2009-12-03 17:41:00
Posted: December 2, 2009
Location of Sighting: Quedgeley, Gloucestershire
Date of Sighting: 30 November 2009
Time: 10:30pm
Witness Statement: I was traveling home this evening when I saw a cigar shaped object traveling very low across the sky. It was lower than the surrounding hills and was so low that I thought it was a plane that was going to crash.
The object had two, bright permanent white lights on each end, with a continuous flashing white one in the middle. the object seemed to be traveling at a 45 degree angle, i.e the right hand edge was up in the air. As I was driving I couldn't quite make out what had happened to the object, but it wasn't traveling very fast.
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China: Secret Pilot UFO file released
Michael Cohen
All News Web
2009-12-03 17:41:00
A detailed UFO report of an incident involving a commercial pilot that includes radar images and recordings of the conversation between the pilot and the airport tower has just been made public in China. The report was released at a scientific forum held in Shanghai.
The event occurred on March 18 in the morning in Shanghai. Later that day hundreds of readers rang a local newspaper The 'Xinmin Evening Times to report a strange object they had seen in the sky. One of these callers was the Tower Manager at Hongqiao Airport, Mr Jin Xin. He mentioned that a UFO had been spotted by tower staff and picked up by radar and that he had the recording.
Mr Jin Xin added that he requested that a pilot due to take off at exactly the same time chase the object and the pilot, who agreed, had reported that the UFO, seemingly made of two parts, was circling around his plane. A transcript of the conversation between the pilot and tower control has also been preserved.
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US: San Antonio, Texas Bigfoot Reports Updated
Loren Coleman
Cryptomundo
2009-12-02 17:41:00
Last night ~ November 30th, police on the west side of San Antonio received a 911 call from multiple eyewitnesses who claimed that they saw a hairy, hominid standing over six feet tall, run out of the woods and kill a deer. The incident was reported to the local media and broadcast earlier today. The witnesses were apparently homeless and responding officers who interviewed them found them to be completely sober and rational, though understandably scared. The police chose not to search for the creature.
I have just returned from a stake out of the area, which is located at the intersection of Loop 1604 and highway 151, about ten miles from where I live. The area is somewhat developed, although fairly wooded and located near several creeks. Most of the area is private property and is fenced with barbed wire.
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