North Korea Refusing to Answer Hotline
March 11th, 2013Via: CNN:
A new joint military exercise between South Korea and the United States began Monday amid heightened tensions across the region.
In a sign of crumbling relations, North Korea refused to answer its hotline with Seoul, South Korea’s unification ministry said Monday, according to the Yonhap news agency.
The ministry said the North did not answer two attempts to communicate by telephone at 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. local time.
New Anti Euro Party in Germany
March 11th, 2013Via: Telegraph:
A new party led by economists, jurists, and Christian Democrat rebels will kick off this week, calling for the break-up of monetary union before it can do any more damage.
“An end to this euro,” is the first line on the webpage of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). “The introduction of the euro has proved to be a fatal mistake, that threatens the welfare of us all. The old parties are used up. They stubbornly refuse to admit their mistakes.”
They propose German withdrawl from EMU and return to the D-Mark, or a breakaway currency with the Dutch, Austrians, Finns, and like-minded nations. The French are not among them. The borders run along the ancient line of cleavage dividing Latins from Germanic tribes.
The plans draw on work by Hans-Olaf Henkel, former head of Germany’s industry federation (BDI) and a chastened europhile — the “worst error of my professional life”, he told me.
The appeal of German exit is obvious. It is the least traumatic way to end the 20pc to 30pc misalignment between North and South, the cancer eating Europe. Club Med keeps the euro. It enjoys instant devaluation, while still able to uphold euro debt contracts. The spectre of sovereign defaults recedes.
Karzai Says Taliban ‘In Service to America’
March 10th, 2013My guess is that Karzai probably perceives that he’s not getting a big enough cut of the opium pie.
Via: Wall Street Journal:
Afghanistan’s fraying ties with the U.S. hit a new low on Sunday, as President Hamid Karzai said before meeting the new U.S. defense secretary that the Taliban kill Afghan civilians “in the service of America.”
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is visiting Kabul to discuss ways of ending America’s longest foreign war. On Saturday, Mr. Hagel’s first full day in Afghanistan, Taliban suicide bombers killed at least 18 people outside the Afghan Ministry of Defense in Kabul and in the eastern province of Khost.
In a televised speech Sunday, the Afghan president said the U.S. doesn’t really see the Taliban as an enemy, doesn’t want to leave the country after the coalition’s mandate ends at the end of 2014, and is engaged in negotiations with Taliban leaders behind his back.
“Taliban are every day in talks with America, but in Kabul and Khost they set off bombs to show strength to America,” Mr. Karzai said. “The bombs that went off in Kabul and Khost yesterday were not a show of power to America, but were in service to America… It was in the service of foreigners not withdrawing from Afghanistan.”
More Americans Giving Up on Saving for Retirement
March 9th, 2013Via: Time:
In the wake of the Great Recession, retirement-minded Americans are feeling an unprecedented amount of futility. They are undersaved and — worse — see little reason to do anything about it.
That’s the alarming conclusion in a new report from the Deloitte Center for Financial Services, which found that 60% of preretirees believe health care costs will consume their savings no matter how much they save. Similarly, 39% believe investment returns won’t be high enough to provide decent retirement income regardless of how much they manage to put away.
Deloitte found exasperation at every turn: 58% don’t have a retirement plan; nearly 40% don’t know what an annuity or mutual fund is; and 20% expect to rely purely on Social Security for their retirement needs. More than half don’t trust anyone’s advice.
Related: For the Middle Class, Expenses Grow Faster than Paychecks
New Mexico: County Will Pay $15.5 Million To Man Who Spent 22 Months In Solitary Confinement
March 9th, 2013Via: NPR:
When he was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol and other charges in 2005, Stephen Slevin had no way of knowing that an opinion about his mental state would put him on a path to spend more than 22 months of solitary confinement in a New Mexico county jail, despite never having his day in court. This week, he reached a $15.5 million settlement with Dona Ana County.
Greece: Rise of the Golden Dawn Nazis
March 9th, 2013Via: Independent:
On a recent Thursday night, seven teenage boys in the central Greek city of Larissa decided to have what they described as “fun”. Armed with rocks and wooden batons, the group of 15-year-olds attacked the shop of a Pakistani resident. His son was treated for head injuries.
Attacks by children are rare, but there are fears that they are on the rise as a harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric with undercurrents of violence takes root in the malleable minds of patriotic youths as they watch their country’s sovereignty being eroded by foreign creditors.
The potential to tap into this dissatisfaction and win over Greece’s future voters has not been lost on the controversial Golden Dawn party: an investigation by The Independent found the neo-fascist party gaining ground among the country’s youth, aggressively spreading their anti-immigrant, far-right message through social media, the internet, and youth clubs.
The vigilante, truculent and anti-establishment features of Golden Dawn offer a seductive alternative to the radical left or anarchist movements that have traditionally appealed to Greece’s teenagers. Over 50 teachers, parents and teenage students from schools across Athens interviewed by The Independent agree that the party is slowly becoming fashionable, when three years ago it was barely known.
“It’s the feature of vitality: a need to show they’re strong, young and fresh and are creating something new: be it a new party, a new country,” explains Vassiliki Georgiadou, professor at Panteion University and an expert of far-Right wing radicalism who has studied Golden Dawn for years. “They discard the label of Nazism and instead play up the nationalist card. They use ancient Greek history as a camouflage to hide their true identity: that they’re fans of Hitler, anti-Semitism.”
9th Circuit Appeals Court: 4th Amendment Applies At The Border; Also: Password Protected Files Shouldn’t Arouse Suspicion
March 9th, 2013Ok, now they’ll need to make up a reason to take your laptop and copy its contents.
Via: TechDirt:
Here’s a surprise ruling. For many years we’ve written about how troubling it is that Homeland Security agents are able to search the contents of electronic devices, such as computers and phones at the border, without any reason. The 4th Amendment only allows reasonable searches, usually with a warrant. But the general argument has long been that, when you’re at the border, you’re not in the country and the 4th Amendment doesn’t apply. This rule has been stretched at times, including the ability to take your computer and devices into the country and search it there, while still considering it a “border search,” for which the lower standards apply. Just about a month ago, we noted that Homeland Security saw no reason to change this policy.
Well, now they might have to.
In a somewhat surprising 9th Circuit ruling (en banc, or in front of the entire set of judges), the court ruled that the 4th Amendment does apply at the border, that agents do need to recognize there’s an expectation of privacy, and cannot do a search without reason. Furthermore, they noted that merely encrypting a file with a password is not enough to trigger suspicion. This is a huge ruling in favor of privacy rights.
U.S. Air Force Disappears Drone Strike Statistics
March 9th, 2013Via: Air Force Times:
As scrutiny and debate over the use of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) by the American military increased last month, the Air Force reversed a policy of sharing the number of airstrikes launched from RPAs in Afghanistan and quietly scrubbed those statistics from previous releases kept on their website.
Last October, Air Force Central Command started tallying weapons releases from RPAs, broken down into monthly updates. At the time, AFCENT spokeswoman Capt. Kim Bender said the numbers would be put out every month as part of a service effort to “provide more detailed information on RPA ops in Afghanistan.”
The Air Force maintained that policy for the statistics reports for November, December and January. But the February numbers, released March 7, contained empty space where the box of RPA statistics had previously been.
Additionally, monthly reports hosted on the Air Force website have had the RPA data removed — and recently.
Those files still contained the RPA data as of Feb. 16, according to archived web pages accessed via Archive.org. Metadata included in the new, RPA-less versions of the reports show the files were all created Feb. 22.
Defense Department spokesman Cmdr. Bill Speaks said the department was not involved in the decision to remove the statistics. AFCENT did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
The data removal coincided with increased scrutiny on RPA policy caused by President Barack Obama’s nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA. Brennan faced opposition in the Senate over the use of RPAs and his defense of their legality in his role as Obama’s deputy national security adviser.
Related: John Brennan Sworn in as CIA Director Using Constitution Lacking Bill of Rights
John Brennan Sworn in as CIA Director Using Constitution Lacking Bill of Rights
March 9th, 2013Via: Empty Wheel:
According to the White House, John Brennan was sworn in as CIA Director on a “first draft” of the Constitution including notations from George Washington, dating to 1787.
Vice President Joe Biden swears in CIA Director John Brennan in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, March 8, 2013. Members of Brennan’s family stand with him. Brennan was sworn in with his hand on an original draft of the Constitution, dating from 1787, which has George Washington’s personal handwriting and annotations on it.
That means, when Brennan vowed to protect and defend the Constitution, he was swearing on one that did not include the First, Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth Amendments — or any of the other Amendments now included in our Constitution. The Bill of Rights did not become part of our Constitution until 1791, 4 years after the Constitution that Brennan took his oath on.
I really don’t mean to be an asshole about this. But these vows always carry a great deal of symbolism. And whether he meant to invoke this symbolism or not, the moment at which Brennan took over the CIA happened to exclude (in symbolic form, though presumably not legally) the key limits on governmental power that protect American citizens.
Related: U.S. Air Force Disappears Drone Strike Statistics
Patient Has 75% of His Skull Replaced by 3D-Printed Implant
March 8th, 2013Via: News Limited:
A MAN has had 75 per cent of his skull replaced with a custom-made 3D-printed implant.
The un-named patient in the United States had his head imaged by a 3D scanner before the plastic prosthetic was crafted to suit his features.
Oxford Performance Materials in Connecticut then gained approval from US regulators before the printed bone replacement was inserted in his skull during a surgical procedure earlier this week.
More: Oxford Performance Materials: OsteoFab Medical Devices and Implants
