Archive for June, 2011
NSA Allies with Internet Carriers to Thwart Cyber Attacks Against Defense Firms
June 17th, 2011Oh sure. Via: Washington Post: The National Security Agency is working with Internet providers to deploy a new generation of tools to scan e-mail and other digital traffic with the goal of thwarting cyberattacks against defense firms by foreign adversaries, senior defense and industry officials say. The novel program, which began last month on a […]
‘Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind’
June 16th, 2011Via: Al Jazeera: Scientific experts believe Japan’s nuclear disaster to be far worse than governments are revealing to the public. “Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind,” Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera. Japan’s 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled […]
Pentagon in Search of ‘Secret’ Farmers for Afghanistan
June 16th, 2011Via: National Journal: The Department of Defense is looking to hire agriculture specialists to send to Afghanistan. That’s nothing especially new — Afghanistan’s economy is heavily agricultural, the health of the country’s economy is directly tied to the mission of rolling back Taliban influence, and the U.S. has been sending farming consultants there for years. […]
Airspace Over Flooded Nebraska Nuclear Power Plant Still Closed
June 16th, 2011Via: Business Insider: A fire in Nebraska’s Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant briefly knocked out the cooling process for spent nuclear fuel rods, ProPublica reports. The fire occurred on June 7th, and knocked out cooling for approximately 90 minutes. After 88 hours, the cooling pool would boil dry and highly radioactive materials would be exposed. […]
Why Your Money-Market Fund Could Be Hit by Greek Default
June 16th, 2011Via: CNBC: Some of the safest, plain-vanilla investment accounts in the U.S. could be challenged if Greece defaults on its sovereign debt. Forty-four percent of mutual fund assets in the U.S. are invested in the short-term debt of European banks, according to a report from Fitch. A separate report from Moody’s noted that 55 percent […]
Cop Who Executed Unarmed Man Released from Prison After One Year
June 16th, 2011People who protested are facing longer jail sentences. Via: San Francisco Bay Guardian: Johannes Mehserle, the former BART police officer who shot and killed Oscar Grant while he was lying face down on the Fruitvale station train platform on New Year’s Day 2009, was released from a Los Angeles jail June 13 after serving a […]
Ex-Spy Alleges Bush White House Sought to Discredit Critic
June 16th, 2011Via: New York Times: A former senior C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him. Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President […]
Ireland: Thatched Roof Tract Homes Sit Empty
June 16th, 2011You have to see the pictures of this. Via: Daily Mail: As the Irish economy lies in tatters, the so-called Celtic Tiger now kept alive by an 85billion euro bailout, residents across the country have one reminder of the good old times. Ghost estates have become a new feature of the Irish landscape – hundreds […]
Allied Irish Banks Defaults
June 16th, 2011Via: BBC: Allied Irish Banks (AIB) has been deemed to be effectively in default on its debts by the association of banks that trade in credit derivatives. The ruling means the writers of $500m (£306m) of the insurance-like contracts will now have to make cash payouts. On Thursday, the Irish lender stopped interest payments on […]
Operation Fast and Furious
June 16th, 2011Maybe it’s an effort to create so much chaos that people will beg for more gun control? Just a guess. Via: Reuters: U.S. firearms agents told lawmakers on Wednesday they were instructed to only watch as hundreds of guns were bought, illegally resold and sent to Mexico where drug-related violence has raged for years. Agents […]
