Airborne Terrorist Attack Study To Be Conducted In Subways By NYPD, Brookhaven Laboratory
April 25th, 2013Via: Huffington Post:
A multimillion-dollar airflow study will be conducted this summer to help authorities better understand the risks of airborne terrorist attacks on New York City and its subway system, including those posed by chemical, biological and radiological weapons.
The NYPD and experts from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory will conduct the tests in July. The Subway-Surface Air Flow Exchange study, or S-SAFE, is funded by a $3.4-million transit security grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The study, according to a statement released Wednesday by NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, is “the first of its scale to study airflow in a dense, complex urban environment both below and above-ground.” Researchers from the Argonne National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, along with other meteorologists and engineers, will assist scientists from BNL as they “track the movement of harmless tracer gases” through the urban atmosphere — monitoring that movement through about 200 air-sampling tracking devices placed both at street-level and in the subway system.
Expatriotism — The New American Dream
April 25th, 2013Via: Zen Gardener:
The U.S. is going down the police state tubes so fast it’s hard to follow. All the tricks, frauds, ploys and murderous maneuvers the desperate controllers are constantly working are hard to even keep up with. Never mind the continuous waging of wicked wars, overt and covert, in dozens of countries around the world, and all the while the government is passing more draconian laws, measures and executive decrees than you can shake a stick at to subdue its own populace..
Nice place to live, eh? I don’t think so. Not a bad time to get to higher ground. In fact, a perfect one.
Research Credit: emulsified
‘After Boston, Lawmakers See Case for Use of Drones to Kill Americans’
April 24th, 2013Via: U.S. News and World Report:
In the aftermath of the Boston bombing standoff that ended last Friday, lawmakers have changed their tune on whether a drone should ever be used to target an American citizen on U.S. soil.
The use of drones to kill American citizens is not “inherently illegal,” as long as that citizen is a “combatant,” a constitutional expert told a Senate panel considering the implications of targeted killings Tuesday.
“I think it’s not inherently illegal to target American citizens so long as American citizens are also combatants in a relevant war. Sometimes U.S. citizens can be classified as enemy combatants” Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University School of Law, told the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights.
“It’s not important [what technology we’re using], what matters is we’re choosing the right target,” he said. “If we’re choosing the right target then we should use the appropriate weapons, we’d be wrong to ban specific technology.”
That question has become increasingly important as senators such as Ted Cruz and Rand Paul consider the possibility of American citizens being targeted by drones on U.S. soil. In September, 2011, suspected Al-Qaeda operative and U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen.
Last month, Paul spent 13 hours filibustering the confirmation of CIA director John Brennan because he said he was concerned that the United States could eventually target citizens on U.S. soil. Tuesday, Paul changed his tune, telling Fox Business Network that he would have approved of a drone targeting Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
“I’ve never argued against any technology being used when you have an imminent threat, an active crime going on,” Paul said. “If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and fifty dollars in cash … I don’t care if a drone kills him or a policeman kills him.”
After Death Experiences: ‘The Data Suggests That Consciousness Is Not Annihilated’
April 24th, 2013Via:Wired:
Sam Parnia practices resuscitation medicine. In other words, he helps bring people back from the dead — and some return with stories. Their tales could help save lives, and even challenge traditional scientific ideas about the nature of consciousness.
“The evidence we have so far is that human consciousness does not become annihilated,” said Parnia, a doctor at Stony Brook University Hospital and director of the school’s resuscitation research program. “It continues for a few hours after death, albeit in a hibernated state we cannot see from the outside.”
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When Tiralosi woke up, he told nurses that he had a profound experience and wanted to talk about it. That’s how we met. He told me that he felt incredibly peaceful, and saw this perfect being, full of love and compassion. This is not uncommon.
People tend to interpret what they see based on their background: A Hindu describes a Hindu god, an atheist doesn’t see a Hindu god or a Christian god, but some being. Different cultures see the same thing, but their interpretation depends on what they believe.
U.S. Sues Novartis, Alleging Kickbacks to Pharmacies
April 24th, 2013Via: Reuters:
The U.S. government filed a civil fraud lawsuit against Novartis AG on Tuesday, accusing a unit of the Swiss drug maker of causing the Medicare and Medicaid programs to pay tens of millions of dollars in reimbursements based on fraudulent, kickback-tainted claims.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan said Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp had since 2005 induced at least 20 pharmacies to switch thousands of kidney transplant patients to its immunosuppressant drug Myfortic from competitors’ drugs, in exchange for kickbacks disguised as rebates and discounts.
He said Novartis tried to conceal the scheme by omitting the agreements from rebate and discount contracts with pharmacies.
Top French Lawyer Olivier Metzner’s Body Found Near Private Island
April 24th, 2013Via: Guardian:
One of the giants of the French legal system was found dead near his private island in Brittany on Sunday morning. A suicide note was discovered at his home nearby.
Olivier Metzner, 63, nicknamed the “gangsters’ lawyer”, was a larger-than-life figure known for his spirited defence of high-profile and controversial defendants including the Panamanian former dictator Manuel Noriega, the “rogue trader” Jérôme Kerviel and Continental Airlines, accused of causing the catastrophic Concorde crash in 2000.
In recent years, he had argued for the former prime minister Dominique de Villepin in the Clearstream scandal, represented rock star Bertrand Cantat when he was accused of killing his actor girlfriend, and argued the case of Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers who tried to have her ailing mother, the the L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, declared a ward of court.
Named France’s most powerful lawyer by GQ magazine last year, Metzner was often to be seen standing at the top of the Palais de Justice’s monumental steps, puffing away on his trademark cigar. Occasionally, he would ignore the no-smoking signs and light up inside, confident that no court official or police officer would dare challenge him.
Outside the courts, where he would pick holes in legal procedure to get his clients off the hook, often in the most blunt of terms and so successfully that Libération described him as the “criminal fraternity’s specialist”, Metzner was a discreet figure.
Research Credit: luky
The Secret Story Behind Obama’s Assassination of Two Americans in Yemen
April 24th, 2013Via: Democracy Now:
The Obama administration’s assassination of two U.S. citizens in 2011, Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old Denver-born son Abdulrahman, is a central part of Jeremy Scahill’s new book, “Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield.” The book is based on years of reporting on U.S. secret operations in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan. While the Obama administration has defended the killing of Anwar, it has never publicly explained why Abdulrahman was targeted in a separate drone strike two weeks later. Scahill reveals CIA Director John Brennan, Obama’s former senior adviser on counterterrorism and homeland security, suspected that the teenager had been killed “intentionally.” “The idea that you can simply have one branch of government unilaterally and in secret declare that an American citizen should be executed or assassinated without having to present any evidence whatsoever, to me, is a — we should view that with great sobriety about the implications for our country,” says Scahill, national security correspondent for The Nation magazine. Today the U.S. Senate is preparing to hold its first-ever hearing on the Obama administration’s drone and targeted killing program. However, the Obama administration is refusing to send a witness to answer questions about the program’s legality.
Research Credit: ottilie
Chambliss: Law Enforcement Agency May Have Known About Boston Bombing in Advance
April 24th, 2013Shocker.
Via: WSBTV:
Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss told Channel 2 Action News late Tuesday afternoon that a law enforcement agency may have had information in advance of the Boston bombings that wasn’t properly shared.
“There now appears that may have been some evidence that was obtained by one of the law enforcement agencies that did not get shared in a way that it could have been. If that turns out to be the case, then we have to determine whether or not that would have made a difference,” Chambliss said.
Though Chambliss would not get into specifics on the information or whether or not the bombing could have been prevented, he told Channel 2 Action News that they will find out if someone dropped the ball.
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Boston Bombing Suspect Put on Terrorist Watch List at CIA Request
Hackers Compromise AP Twitter Account
April 23rd, 2013Via: AP:
Hackers have compromised the main Twitter account of The Associated Press, sending out an erroneous tweet about an attack at the White House.
The tweet, which said that there had been two explosions at the White House and President Barack Obama was injured, came after hackers made repeated attempts to steal the passwords of AP journalists.
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The tweet put out by hackers briefly sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average sharply lower.
More: We Wanted Flying Cars, Instead We Got 140 Characters Crashing the Markets
After U.S. Troops Leave, Armed Drones Will Patrol Afghanistan’s Opium Poppy Farms Skies
April 23rd, 2013
Via: Wired:
One of the major elements of Afghanistan’s air war will remain after most U.S. troops have headed home, the U.S. military command confirmed today. Armed drones, operated by the U.S., will remain over Afghanistan after 2014.
“I come back to the remotely piloted aircraft,” Air Force Maj. Gen. H.D. Polumbo, the commander of the U.S./NATO air war over Afghanistan, told reporters at the Pentagon today. “They can collect intelligence, but they also are armed. And they’re armed to be able to provide force protection to our coalition forces and then when our coalition ground force commanders, when they deem it appropriate, they can control that air-delivered munition capability from the RPAs to be put in support of the Afghans.”
