Archive for October, 2011
BP Gets Approval to Resume Drilling in Gulf of Mexico
October 22nd, 2011Via: BBC: BP has won approval to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, 18 months after a well blowout killed 11 workers and caused an environmental disaster. Regulators approved plans for drilling to depths of up to 6,000ft about 200 miles off the coast of New Orleans. US officials said in a statement: “Our […]
And Coming Up Next: Pakistan?
October 22nd, 2011Via: New York Times: An unusually powerful American delegation arrived here on Thursday to deliver the starkest warning yet to Pakistan, according to a senior American official: that the United States would act unilaterally if necessary to attack extremist groups that use the country as a haven to kill Americans. … “This is a time […]
U.S. Troops to Leave Iraq by Year’s End, Obama Says [wink]
October 22nd, 2011I was surprised that this New York Times piece actually contained the punchline, for those who kept reading long enough: There will also be 4,000 to 5,000 private State Department security contractors, as well as a significant C.I.A. presence. In Afghanistan, about 95,000 American troops remain. *chortle* Remember the Superbase? View Larger Map Anyway, this […]
U.S. Navy Discharging 49 Sailors from Aircraft Carrier that ‘Buried Osama Bin Laden at Sea” for Using or Distributing Drugs
October 21st, 2011Mmm hmm. Via: Reuters: The U.S. Navy said on Thursday it was discharging 64 sailors, 49 of them from the aircraft carrier that buried Osama bin Laden at sea, for using or distributing drugs. Most of the sailors, who were assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, nuclear submarine USS San Francisco and a […]
Qaddafi Was Captured Alive—Who Killed Him?
October 21st, 2011Via: The Atlantic: What did happen to Qaddafi after the video above cut away? No one can seem to say for sure. Libyan interim Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril admitted late on Thursday that Qaddafi had been found alive but insisted he had been killed accidentally. “There was cross-fire and he was shot while they were […]
The $1 Trillion Student Loan Rip-Off: How an Entire Generation Was Tricked into Taking on Crushing Debt That Just Enriches Banks
October 21st, 2011Via: AlterNet: The impossibility of escaping student loan debt is why an industry sprang upto foist useless, overpriced degrees on vulnerable people. It’s a scam, but a profitable one, and respectable enough for major establishment players to feel comfortable making a killing on it.
Britain: CIA Lobbies for Secret Courts
October 21st, 2011Via: Independent: Secret justice looks set to be a regular feature of British courts and tribunals when the intelligence services want to protect their sources of information. Civil courts, immigration panels and even coroner’s inquests would go into secret session if the Government rules that hearing evidence in public could be a threat to national […]
Duqu: Son of Stuxnet Hits European Computer Networks
October 21st, 2011Update: ‘Duqu’ Virus Likely Handiwork Of Sophisticated Government, Kaspersky Lab Says Via: Deutsche Welle: Wüest is one of the experts at Symantec, who is currently analyzing the source code behind Duqu. Symantec says it was alerted to the new threat on October 14 by a laboratory that has “international connections.” Since then, Symantec’s investigations suggest […]
Army Looks to ‘Counteract Nightmares’ With Digital Dreams
October 21st, 2011Via: Wired: A soldier tries to sleep. But he is not safe in his dreams. Jolted awake by a nightmare, the combat veteran fumbles in the dark for his 3-D glasses. He puts them on. Around him are the faces of people whom he trusts. They fight the darkness with him. The soldier’s re-lived this […]
Get Ready for a New Human Species
October 21st, 2011Via: MIT Technology Review: If you turned off the electricity in the United States, you would see millions of people die quickly, because they wouldn’t have asthma medications, respirators, insulin, a whole host of things we invented to prevent people from dying. Eventually, we get to the point where evolution is guided by what we’re […]
