Archive for March, 2010
New Brain Scans Read People’s Thoughts
From Yahoo News/AFP:
A scan of brain activity can effectively read a person’s mind, researchers said Thursday.
British scientists from University College London found they could differentiate brain activity linked to different memories and thereby identify thought patterns by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
The evidence suggests researchers can tell which memory of a past event a person is recalling from the pattern of their brain activity alone.
“We’ve been able to look at brain activity for a specific episodic memory — to look at actual memory traces,” said senior author of the study, Eleanor Maguire.
Scientists Discover New Way to Generate Electricity
This animation of a rotating carbon nanotube shows its 3D structure. By Schwarzm, made with C4D/Cartoonrenderer, GNU FDL
By Michelle Bryner for TechNewsDaily.com:
Researchers have found a way to produce large amounts of electricity from tiny cylinders made from carbon atoms.
The achievement could replace decades-old methods of generating electricity, such as combustion engines and turbines, the researchers say.
In the future, coated carbon nanotubes crafted from individual atoms could power everything from cell phones to hybrid-electric vehicles. The team envisions such nanotube-based power being available to consumers in the next five years.
Carbon nanotubes are thin sheets of carbon rolled up into teensy tubes each with a diameter about 30,000 times smaller than a strand of hair.
When carbon — one of the most abundant elements on Earth — is rolled up into tubes, it exhibits some extraordinary properties such as high heat conduction, which the team exploited in the new study….
[continues at TechNewsDaily.com]
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Food Security Threat: Goverment Set to Ban Public Fishing, Individual Food Production
By Mac Slavo for Deadline Live:
In yet another example of government overstepping its bounds, the Obama administration is preparing to ban fishing in coastal areas around the country, as well as the Great Lakes and other inland water resources.
This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is “fluid” and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force still hasn’t issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters.
That’s a disappointment, but not really a surprise for fishing industry insiders who have negotiated for months with officials at the Council on Environmental Quality and bureaucrats on the task force. These angling advocates have come to suspect that public input into the process was a charade from the beginning.
“When the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) completed their successful campaign to convince the Ontario government to end one of the best scientifically managed big game…
The 9/11 Hijackers Are Alive
The chief of Japan’s Democratic Party says that the 9/11 hijackers are alive and that 9/11 was a complete hoax. Dr. David Ray Griffin is a professor and author of the book The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé and he says that he agrees.
2008 Financial Collapse: The Greatest Calamity The World Has Ever Known
The year is 2010 and to anyone not in denial, the industrialized nations have entered the greatest calamity the world has ever known:
- 35 Million Americans on Food Stamps: 12 Percent of U.S. Population on Food Stamps Highest Since Records Kept in 1969, and that’s before the Obama administration announced a planned three-year budget freeze on government discretionary spending. (My Budget 360)
- 18 Million empty houses in the United States and 39 million Americans who are no longer working or looking for work, and that’s before Federal Reserve finishes rewriting the rules of American “capitalism” as US Housing, the Automobile Industry and the American Dream are dismantled. (The 31-Year-Old in Charge of Dismantling G.M., David E. Sanger)
“There are now well over 150 million Americans who feel stress over these things on a consistent basis. Over 60 percent of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck.” (The Economic Elite vs. People of the USA,…
Obama Supports DNA Sampling Upon Arrest
From Wired’s Threat Level:
Josh Gerstein over at Politico sent Threat Level his piece underscoring once again President Barack Obama is not the civil-liberties knight in shining armor many were expecting.Gerstein posts a televised interview of Obama and John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted. The nation’s chief executive extols the virtues of mandatory DNA testing of Americans upon arrest, even absent charges or a conviction. Obama said, “It’s the right thing to do” to “tighten the grip around folks” who commit crime.
When it comes to civil liberties, the Obama administration has come under fire for often mirroring his predecessor’s practices surrounding state secrets, the Patriot Act and domestic spying. There’s also Gitmo, Jay Bybee and John Yoo.
Now there’s DNA sampling. Obama told Walsh he supported the federal government, as well as the 18 states that have varying laws requiring compulsory DNA sampling of individuals upon an arrest for crimes ranging from misdemeanors to felonies.…
‘CIA Experiment’ Sends French Village Mad
From News.com.au:
A US writer has uncovered evidence suggesting the CIA spiked a French village’s food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD.
The Sun online reports journalist H P Albarelli Jr came across CIA documents while investigating the suspicious suicide of a biochemist who fell from a 13th floor window two years after a mystery illness that caused an entire French village to go temporarily mad 50 years ago.
Hundreds of residents in picturesque Pont-Saint-Esprit were suddenly struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations on August 16, 1951.
At least five people in the southern French village died and dozens were locked up in asylums after witnessing terrifying hallucinations of dragons and fire.
In the horror scenes an 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother. Another man shouted: “I am a plane”, before jumping out of a second-floor window, breaking his legs.
[Read more at News.com.au]
Mississippi School Prom Off After Lesbian’s Date Request
From Yahoo News:
Constance McMillen didn’t believe her Mississippi school district would really call off her senior prom rather than allow her to show up with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo. On Thursday, a day after the Itawamba County school board did just that, the 18-year-old lesbian high school senior reluctantly returned to campus to some unfriendly looks, she said.
“Somebody said, ‘Thanks for ruining my senior year.’” McMillen said.
The district announced Wednesday it wouldn’t host the April 2 prom. The decision came after the American Civil Liberties Union demanded that officials change a policy banning same-sex prom dates because it violated students’ rights. And the ACLU said the district not letting McMillen wear a tuxedo violated her free expression rights.
The ACLU filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Oxford to force the school district to sponsor the prom and allow McMillen to bring whom she chooses and wear what…
Iraq Snapshot – March 10, 2010
From www.uruknet.info:
Wednesday, March 10, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces deaths, counting ballots continues in Iraq, Iraqi widows face huge problems, the US Congress hears about issues facing the children of parents deployed in foreign countries, and more.
Starting with yesterday evening’s US House Armed Services subcommittee hearing. The Military Personnel Subcommittee held a hearing chaired by US House Rep Susan Davis on the issue of military children. At the start of the hearing, Chair Davis explained, “Given the limited legislative calendar available to the committee, today we are embarking on a different hearing structure. This hearing will focus on a specific topic: the effects of deployment on military children and will only last approximately one hour, prior to our votes at six-thirty [p.m.].”
It is an important topic. Hopefully, the topic will be addressed again in the future and, if so, we can see some real independence in…
The United States of Foreclosures
Foreclosures Are Rising And Not Just Homeowners Are Affected: A Haitian Family Loses Island Home In Earthquake, NY Home in “Bankquake”
The financial crisis started as a housing bubble with the financial industry convinced that home values never fall. How wrong they were even as they leveraged and securitized their investments to create a global crisis.
Now brace yourself, because not only isn’t it over until it’s over, but in some respects it’s only just begun. There will be more foreclosures this year than last and as a result more suffering for American families
Ed Harrison who monitors this industry for a website called Credit Write Downs sees a “second wave coming”—like a new tsunami in a industry that All of Obama’s horses and all of Obama’s men have not been able to do anything about. The idea of challenging fraud and deception with a debt relief plan goes a bit too far…
Are There Really ‘Continents’ of Floating Garbage?
Map of the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone (STCZ) within the North Pacific Gyre. Also the location of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Source: NOAA
From Daily Galaxy [Disinfo editor's note: This story dates from Dec. 31, 2007 but appears still to be relevant. See also this report from 2008.]:
Since stories have started surfacing more recently, many have wondered, if the rumors are true. Are there really ‘continents’, or massive floating garbage patches residing in the pacific ocean? Apparently, the rumors are true, and these unsightly patches are reportedly killing marine life and releasing poisons that enter the human food chain, as well. However, before you start imagining a plastic version of Maui, keep in mind that these plastic patches certainly aren’t solid surfaced islands that you could build a house on! Ocean currents have collected massive amounts of garbage into a sort of plastic “soup” where countless bits of discarded plastic float…
Japanese Fish Predicts Earthquakes?
If it’s well known that animals have a heightened perception of developing weather patterns, this would be no exception, via motherboard.tv:
Japan is bracing itself for bad times after scores of the usually rare, giant Oarfish have washed ashore and been caught in coastal fisherman’s nets.The sightings started after the ‘quake in Chile and the 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Taiwan. The rash of tectonic shifting around the Pacific “Ring of Fire” is causing concern that Japan is next, and these gigantor fish aren’t helping.
The Oarfish is traditionally known as a messenger fish from the sea gods, and it’s tidings are usually grim. The fish can grow up to five metres in length and usually found at depths of 1, 000 ft. Long and slender with a dorsal fin that runs the length of it’s body, the fish resembles a kind of steam-rolled snake.
According to folklore, the fish will come ashore and…
Forbes Billionaires List Shifts To China, India & Mexico
Carlos Slim Helú. Photo: José Cruz/ABr (CC)
A sure sign that the balance of power is shifting away from the United States and Europe towards developing nations is shown in the new Forbes list, with the Mexican Carlos Slim Helu beating out Bill Gates for the top spot and China claiming more billionaires than any country outside the US.
India’s billionaires, however, are richer, as reported in the Christian Science Monitor:
With the release of the latest Forbes rich list of billionaires, India is finding much to brag about – even as other fast-growing economies like China make their mark.
Eight Indians made Forbes magazine’s latest list of the top 100 billionaires, and two – energy tycoon Mukesh Ambani and steel mogul Lakshmi Mittal – sit in the top 5. Mr. Ambani is now the fourth richest person in the world, and the richest person in the Asia-Pacific region.
The highest-ranking Chinese person on the…
Don’t Cry For Mainstream Media
News dissector Danny Schechter (director of the upcoming disinformation® documentary Plunder: The Crime of our Time) discusses the demise of mainstream media.
Chief Exorcist Says Devil Is In The Vatican
Didn’t you just know it? From the Times:
Sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that “the Devil is at work inside the Vatican”, according to the Holy See’s chief exorcist.
Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican’s chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as “cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon”.
He added: “When one speaks of ‘the smoke of Satan’ [a phrase coined by Pope Paul VI in 1972] in the holy rooms, it is all true – including these latest stories of violence and paedophilia.”
He claimed that another example of satanic behaviour was the Vatican “cover-up” over the deaths in 1998 of Alois Estermann, the then commander of the Swiss Guard,…
Do You Want To Join The Zombies?
Would you join the zombies?
George Romero once said, if faced with a zombie apocalypse, he’d run out and join them. This article by former disinformation® writer Nick Mamatas traces the secret appeal of collaborating with world-conquering zombies, and suggests zombie-mania is becoming a real social force. “For many readers and viewers of zombie stuff, the zombies are what you practice on while preparing for the real uprisings to come.”
Besides zombie literature like “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” and George Romero’s new upcoming zombie movie, Marvel even launched a line of superhero comics called… “Marvel Zombies”. And people are staging zombie-themed flash mobs on two different continents…)
But zombie message boards inevitably turn to discussions about real-world survivalism tactics, which has its own appeal. “The iconic zombie horde isn’t just a stand-in for a terrifying undifferentiated Other, but a symbol of how we might shamble and shuffle toward liberation… Zombies will wear the…
9/11 Truth Goes Mainstream: Chris Wallace’s ABC News Report
Nightline profiles the 9/11 Truth Movement, needless to say with the requisite amount of skepticism necessary for a story like this to air on network television:
The Government Can Take Your House and Land, Then Sell Them to Private Corporations
Another chapter from my book, 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know, published in 2003, by Disinfo.
For more on me, please check out The Memory Hole.
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It’s not an issue that gets much attention, but the government has the right to seize your house, business, and/or land, forcing you into the street. This mighty power, called “eminent domain,” is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment: “… nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.” Every single state constitution also stipulates that a person whose property is taken must be justly compensated and that the property must be put to public use. This should mean that if your house is smack-dab in the middle of a proposed highway, the government can take it, pay you market value, and build the highway.
Whether or not this is a power the government should have is very much open to question, but…
Cartman of ‘South Park’ Signs for 500 AK-47s, Like Just Like Blackwater Did…
Art imitating life? Not quite … Spencer Ackerman reports on the Washington Independent:
On Feb. 23, I broke a story about how the Senate Armed Services Committee determined that Blackwater employees in Afghanistan signed for hundreds of AK-47s and pistols using the name “Eric Cartman,” evidently a reference to the popular South Park character.
On March 17 — which Dave Weigel tells me is the season premiere — South Park will show Eric Cartman signing for the guns.
