French prosecutors on Tuesday requested access to new self-made videos showing Al-Qaeda-inspired gunman Mohamed Merah shortly before he was shot dead by police after his killing spree in southern France.

Prosecutors are requesting the videos as part of a probe into a murder suit filed by Merah's father, Mohamed Benalel Merah, over his son's death in March at the end of a 32-hour siege at his flat in the city of Toulouse.

The 23-year-old had shot dead three soldiers, and three children and a teacher at a Jewish school, in a series of killings that shocked the country.


The Paris prosecutors' office said it had made a formal request to the father's lawyers after discovering the existence of the videos when they were mentioned in court filings related to the suit.

In what the Atlantic magazine called 'one of Europe's dumbest moves yet', the euro-group finance ministers apparently let it be known via leaks what kind of contingency 'emergency measures' they are considering to implement in the event of a Greek exit from the euro area.

We are actually glad this has come out into the open, as this demonstrates the enormous price citizens are likely to pay in the end if the ongoing bailout charade fails. As always, a perceived emergency is getting to the point where it is ever more likely that it will be used as an opportunity to severely limit individual liberties and in this particular case interfere massively with peoples' property rights to boot - all 'for their own good' of course.

As Reuters reports:

"European finance officials have discussed limiting the size of withdrawals from ATM machines, imposing border checks and introducing euro zone capital controls as a worst-case scenario should Athens decide to leave the euro.

EU officials have told Reuters the ideas are part of a range of contingency plans. They emphasized that the discussions were merely about being prepared for any eventuality rather than planning for something they expect to happen - no one Reuters has spoken to expects Greece to leave the single currency area. [that almost guarantees it will, ed.]

But with increased political uncertainty in Greece following the inconclusive election on May 6 and ahead of a second election on June 17, there is now an increased need to have contingencies in place, the EU sources said.

The discussions have taken place in conference calls over the past six weeks, as concerns have grown that a radical-left coalition, SYRIZA, may win the second election, increasing the risk thatGreece could renege on its EU/IMF bailout and therefore move closer to abandoning the currency. No decisions have been taken on the calls, but members of the Eurogroup Working Group, which consists of euro zone deputy finance ministers and heads of treasury departments, have discussed the options in some detail, the sources said.

Belgium's finance minister, Steve Vanackere, said at the end of May that it was a function of each euro zone state to be prepared for problems. These discussions have been in that vein, with the specific aim of limiting a bank run or capital flight.

As well as limiting cash withdrawals and imposing capital controls, they have discussed the possibility of suspending the Schengen agreement, which allows for visa-free travel among 26 countries, including most of the European Union. "Contingency planning is underway for a scenario under which Greece leaves," one of the sources, who has been involved in the conference calls, said. "Limited cash withdrawals from ATMs and limited movement of capital have been considered and analyzed."

Another source confirmed the discussions, including that the suspension of Schengen was among theoptions raised.

"These are not political discussions, these are discussions among finance experts who need to be prepared for any eventuality," the second source said. "It is sensible planning, that is all, planning for the worst-case scenario."

The first official said it was still being examined whether there was a legal basis for such extreme measures." [thanks for the laugh, ed.]

(emphasis added)

A U.S. Navy drone crashed Monday in a marsh near Salisbury, Maryland.

The RQ-4A Global Hawk drone crashed during a routine training flight from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, according to Jamie Cosgrove, a spokeswoman for the Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons Program at the base.

There were no injuries to civilians and no property damage, said the Navy, which said it is investigating the cause.

Video from CNN affiliate WBOC showed smoke rising from brush fires in the unpopulated area.

European finance officials have discussed limiting the size of withdrawals from ATM machines, imposing border checks and introducing euro zone capital controls as a worst-case scenario should Athens decide to leave the euro.

EU officials said the ideas are part of a range of contingency plans. They emphasised that the discussions were merely about being prepared for any eventuality rather than planning for something they expect to happen.

But with increased political uncertainty in Greece following the inconclusive election on May 6th and ahead of a second election on June 17th, there is now an increased need to have contingencies in place, the EU sources said.

The European Commission said today it was helping with legal advice in discussions of contingency scenarios regarding Greece by the Eurogroup working group.

"I've not said that I'm not aware of any discussions, I've said I'm not aware about any plans, which is a slight difference," Commission spokesman Olivier Bailly told a regular news briefing, when asked about Commission involvement in discussions about the contingencies were Greece to leave the euro.

Each week there are reports of the TSA groping children and harassing the elderly, along with stories of internal corruption and theft. To divert attention from this continual bad publicity, the TSA likes to place stories trying to show that its employees sometimes do their job and find a weapon that a passenger forgot to remove from a carry-on bag. (Though how doing one's job is somehow newsworthy is puzzling. Imagine if Domino's issued a press release every time it delivered a pizza.)

Just last week three media outlets reported that the TSA found some pistols. One was in Tennessee, two in Florida, and yet another at Southwest Florida International Airport. In this same week screeners missed a large knife, allowed a parolee to make it aboard an aircraft, and a TSA Supervisor in Philadelphia was revealed to be a known pedophile.

Notably in all of these "good catches" that the TSA cites, the common thread is that virtually every item has been found using the lowly x-ray belt. The checkpoint belts, which pre-date the TSA by decades, are the only aspect of airport security that have performed reliably and professionally and aren't loathed by travelers.

To date, there have only been three "weapons catches" directly attributable to body scanners, and none found from groin-groping. These include a "Tactical Spike" (a martial arts weapon) that was found in the sock of a passenger in Pensacola after he was screened by a body scanner, a .380 Ruger that a Detroit passenger had in an ankle holster, and a plastic knife in the hem of a woman's shirt, again in Detroit.

The TSA claims that airport screeners found 1,306 guns in carry-on bags in 2011 and that passengers continue to try getting prohibited items onboard, by hiding them in their shoes or using hollowed-out books. (Never mind the fact that guns are metal and are therefore detected by - er - metal detectors.) Based on three weapons out of 1,306, the scanners account for a dismal 0.07% of gun finds.

The father of Mohamed Merah, the Islamist gunman killed by French police after shooting seven people, has formally sued over his son's "murder".

A lawyer for Mohamed Benalel Merah, who lives in Algeria, said the suit was against those "who gave the orders at the top of the police".

The gunman was shot dead at his flat in Toulouse after a 32-hour siege.

He had confessed to killing seven people, including Jewish children, in a rampage which shocked France.

Mohamed Benalel Merah said soon after his son's death on 22 March he intended to sue the French government.

Gordon Fulks sends this summary of the situation and asks that it be distributed. I'm happy to oblige. For some background on Dr. Drapela's skeptical views, this slideshow "Global Warming Cracked Open" might give some insight into OSU's booting him out. - Anthony

*******************************************************
From Gordon Fulks:

Hello Everyone,

In theory at least Oregon State University (OSU) seems to be a bastion of academic freedom, diversity, and tolerance. A wide range of ideas are openly discussed. The most viable rise to the top and the least viable fade away. But it is all a fairy tale, because OSU operates under a politically correct regimen that dictates what is acceptable to say and what is not. Transgressors who dare to be different are eventually weeded out so that the campus maintains its ideological purity.

OSU is not yet as swift or efficient as the Soviet system when Joseph Stalin was trying to quash dissent among biologists who refused to go along with Trofim Lysenko. If warnings to compromise their integrity were not followed, Stalin simply had biologists shot. That quickly thinned the ranks of all biologists and persuaded the remaining ones to comply with Stalin's wishes. Of course, it also destroyed Soviet biology, because Lysenko was pedaling nonsense. And Russian biology has never recovered.

We learned over the weekend that chemist Nickolas Drapela, PhD has been summarily fired from his position as a "Senior Instructor" in the Department of Chemistry. The department chairman Richard Carter told him that he was fired but would not provide any reason. Subsequent attempts to extract a reason from the OSU administration have been stonewalled. Drapela appears to have been highly competent and well-liked by his students. Some have even taken up the fight to have him reinstated.

What could possibly have provoked the OSU administration to take precipitous action against one of their academics who has been on their staff for ten years, just bought a house in Corvallis, and has four young children (one with severe medical problems)?

Dr. Drapela is an outspoken critic of the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming, the official religion of the State of Oregon, the Oregon Democratic Party, and Governor John Kitzhaber.

If you've ever wondered how Monsanto - a company that admits it wants to own the world's food supply through its patented genetically engineered seeds - gets away with not having to label its products, all you have to do is follow the trail of money leading from their coffers into the pockets and campaign funds of well-placed politicians and regulators.

According to OpenSecrets.orgⁱ, Monsanto basically lives at the doorsteps of legislators in Washington, where it spent $5.3 million last year lobbying the nation's lawmakers, and has already spent $1.4 million in the first three months of this year. Needless to say, they can afford it. According to OpenSecrets.org, Monsanto had an annual revenue of $11.8 billion last year, so a $5.3 million lobbying investment is far less than one percent of one percent of their revenues.

The influence they're trying to buy doesn't stop in Congress, though. Monsanto's legislative agenda also includes the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); all of which have a say in whether or not you get to know whether the food you're eating has been genetically engineered.

Twenty years ago this week Dan Quayle went against scientific consensus to publicly proclaim that genetically engineered foods were "substantially equivalent" to non-GE food, and that he would therefore work to ensure that GE food would not be "hampered by unnecessary regulation." In the pivotal 1992 FDA ruling that Quayle then proudly claimed as part of his "regulatory relief" agenda, the flood gates for GE were opened.


We've been living in that wake ever since because a small clutch of biotech "true believers," ideologically anti-regulatory government officials and industry lobbyists have kept that flood gate open against great odds.

Agricultural biotech has consistently failed to deliver on promises, inspired a global backlash and remained suspect to consumers for twenty years. Yet our regulatory agencies play a game of hot potato, each devising more creative ways than the last to avoid taking a hard look at the fact that GE corn, soy and now alfalfa are the backbone of the industrial food system, and cover hundreds of thousands of acres of countryside without having passed any meaningful scientific scrutiny as to their safety (in part because scientists can't get their hands on GE crops to study them). USDA actually has as a declared tenet of their strategic plan [PDF], the global proliferation of GE crop technologies.

The police State Cometh is Here: 10 Signs That The Highways Of America Are Being Transformed Into A High Tech Prison Grid
Once upon a time, the open highways of America were one of our greatest symbols of liberty and freedom. Anyone could hop in a car and set off for a new adventure at any time and even our music encouraged us to "get our kicks on route 66". But today everything has changed. Now the highways of America are being steadily transformed into a high tech prison grid. All over the country, thousands upon thousands of surveillance cameras watch our highways and automated license plate readers are actually being used to track vehicle movements in some of our largest cities. Many state and local governments have come to view our highways as money machines and our control freak politicians have established a vast network of toll booths, red light cameras and speed traps to keep cash endlessly pouring in. If all of that wasn't enough, TSA "VIPR teams" are now hitting the interstates and conducting thousands of "unannounced security screenings" each year. Driving on the highways of America used to be a great joy, but now "Big Brother" is rapidly sucking all of the fun out of it. Eventually, it may get to the point where Americans simply dread having to go out on the highway. The following are 10 signs that the highways of America are being transformed into a high tech prison grid....