Personalized Bioweapons
October 29th, 2012Via: The Atlantic:
As we write this, soldiers with bionic limbs are returning to active duty, and autonomous cars are driving down our streets. Yet most of these advances are small in comparison with the great leap forward currently under way in the biosciences—a leap with consequences we’ve only begun to imagine.
More to the point, consider that the DNA of world leaders is already a subject of intrigue. According to Ronald Kessler, the author of the 2009 book In the President’s Secret Service, Navy stewards gather bedsheets, drinking glasses, and other objects the president has touched—they are later sanitized or destroyed—in an effort to keep would?be malefactors from obtaining his genetic material. (The Secret Service would neither confirm nor deny this practice, nor would it comment on any other aspect of this article.) And according to a 2010 release of secret cables by WikiLeaks, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton directed our embassies to surreptitiously collect DNA samples from foreign heads of state and senior United Nations officials. Clearly, the U.S. sees strategic advantage in knowing the specific biology of world leaders; it would be surprising if other nations didn’t feel the same.
While no use of an advanced, genetically targeted bio-weapon has been reported, the authors of this piece—including an expert in genetics and microbiology (Andrew Hessel) and one in global security and law enforcement (Marc Goodman)—are convinced we are drawing close to this possibility. Most of the enabling technologies are in place, already serving the needs of academic R&D groups and commercial biotech organizations. And these technologies are becoming exponentially more powerful, particularly those that allow for the easy manipulation of DNA.
Hurricane Sandy Crisis Map
October 29th, 2012Specifically for New York City
Secret Service: Contact Your Nearest Field Office … To Report a Tweet
October 29th, 2012Via: U.S. Secret Service Twitter Feed:
Contact your nearest field office with time-sensitive or critical info or to report a tweet.
SANDY: NYSE AND NASDAQ SHUT DOWN POSSIBLY UNTIL WEDNESDAY
October 29th, 2012Via: Los Angeles Times:
As Hurricane Sandy barrels down on the East Coast, Wall Street is shutting down.
The nation’s two biggest trading platforms — the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Stock Market — have both closed for business. They said trading might not get back to normal until Wednesday.
This would be the first time trading has been halted in all U.S. stocks since a four-day stretch after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
New Yorkers hunkered down amid threats of 70-mph winds and an 11-foot storm surge swiping over lower parts of the city. Although some effects were being felt across Manhattan late Sunday, the full extent may not be known for the next few days, when the storm is expected to make landfall.
Doctors Call Tobacco Industry Terrorist Movement
October 29th, 2012This is interesting, coming from a group of people who think that cancer causing radiation is a viable way of treating cancer…
While I find smoking to be a disgusting habit that I have personally seen ruin many lives, I wonder what other behaviors will be linked with “The Terrorists”?
How about consuming raw dairy products or homekilled meat? Are you also with “The Terrorists” for doing these things? Alcohol. Sugar. TV. Video games. What else?
For me, whether you want to smoke old shoe laces, worship a head of lettuce or run around your garden naked howling at the moon, I believe that it, Ain’t Nobody’s Business if You Do.
Speaking of business…
Interestingly, the New Zealand Treasury found that smoking saves the government money because smokers tend to die sooner than non-smokers, and the high taxes that they pay on tobacco products more than covers the medical costs associated with the habit. (I want to weep, however, when I see the dole recipients in town smoking in their minivans full of kids with the windows mostly rolled up. And that’s before I see what these people are buying at the super market…)
Now, there’s an entire genre of woowoo about homegrown tobacco supposedly being much less deadly than industrial tobacco because it doesn’t contain the additives that are present in industrial tobacco. (I’m sure someone is going to blow smoke in the comments about this.) It turns out that homegrown tobacco is, “Not even marginally less harmful,” than the commercial tobacco.
Via: Independent:
It is described as the biggest public health disaster in the history of the world, with its perpetrators linked to terrorists. Smoking will kill up to a billion people worldwide this century, unless governments across the world stamp down on the half-trillion-dollar tobacco industry.
These are the words of John Seffrin, chief executive of the American Cancer Society, who was speaking this weekend at a high-level forum of the world’s 100 leading cancer experts gathered in the Swiss resort of Lugano, who issued a stark warning to governments worldwide. They said governments must do far more than they have done to control the global tobacco industry, either by raising cigarette prices dramatically, outlawing tobacco marketing or by taxing the multinational profits of the big cigarette firms.
Smoking kills more than half of all smokers, mostly from cancer, and yet despite it being the single biggest avoidable risk of premature death, there are about 30 million new smokers a year, scientists have calculated.
If current trends continue, with cigarette companies targeting the non-smoking populations of the developing world, then hundreds of millions of people will be dying of cancer in the second half of this century, they said.
Some of the experts attending the World Oncology Forum went further by calling for an outright ban on cigarettes and for the tobacco industry to be treated as a terrorist movement for the way it targets new markets with a product that it knows to be deadly when used as intended.
“We have a major global industry producing a product that is lethal to at least half the people who use it. It will kill, if current trends continue, a billion people this century,” said Dr Seffrin, who leads the US national society dedicated to eliminating cancer.
“It killed 100 million in the last century and we thought that was outrageous, but this will be the biggest public health disaster in the history of the world, bar none. It all could be avoided if we could prevent the terroristic tactics of the tobacco industry in marketing its products to children,” Dr Seffrin told The Independent.
“There is a purposeful intent to market a product that they know full well will harm their customers and over time will kill more than half of them. The industry needs to be reined in and regulated,” he said.
The science showing that tobacco is the single biggest cause of cancer is now well established, following the publication of the earliest evidence in the 1950s by the late Sir Richard Doll, the Oxford epidemiologist who was born 100 years ago yesterday.
Worldwide, tobacco causes about 22 per cent of cancer deaths each year, killing some 1.7 million people, with almost 1 million of them dying from lung cancer. Yet the numbers of new smokers among the young is rising faster than the numbers giving up.
U.S. Navy Replaces Admiral Leading Mideast Strike Group
October 28th, 2012Via: ABC News:
In an unusual move, the Navy has replaced an admiral commanding an aircraft carrier strike group while it is deployed to the Middle East. The replacement was prompted by an Inspector General’s investigation of allegations of inappropriate leadership judgment.
Rear Adm. Charles M. Gaouette, the commander of the USS John C. Stennis strike group, is being returned to the United States for temporary reassignment.
In a statement the Navy said it had approved a request made by Vice Adm. John W. Miller, the Commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, to temporarily reassign Gaouette “pending the results of an investigation by the Navy Inspector General.”
The statement said Gaoutte would return to the carrier’s home port of Bremerton, Washington.
U.S. Navy Tests Armed Drone Boat
October 28th, 2012Via: Wired:
Killer robots have officially gone out to sea. For the first time, the Navy has fired missiles from a remote-controlled boat, as shown in the video above.
The firing came as part of a test off the Maryland coast on Wednesday. Six of Rafael’s anti-armor Spike missiles got fired off a moving inflatable hulled watercraft, aiming for a floating target about two miles away. The missile firings and the boat’s controls were all handled remotely by Navy personnel on shore at the Navy’s Patuxent River base.
…
Until this week’s tests at Pax River, the Navy didn’t have a robotic surface vessel capable of firing a weapon — the fulfillment of a goal the Navy set for itself in 2007.
The Navy’s been tricking out this 11-meter inflatable boat for the past several years at its base in Newport, Rhode Island, to do just that. Mounted on the boat is a dual-pod missile launcher and an Mk-49 mounting system, all made by Rafael and fully automated, which the Navy’s calling a “Precision Engagement Module.” The Navy sees the module as the sort of thing that could protect U.S. coastline without danger to sailors or coastguardsmen, or prevent pirates or Iranian sailors from maneuvering their small, fast boats between targets that Navy Destroyers can’t risk hitting.
Jimmy Savile… Doorman to the Cesspit
October 28th, 2012This is a long and stomach turning piece by David Icke.
Via: 21st Century Wire:
British police have said they are currently following 320 lines of inquiry into Savile’s abuse over decades all over the country, but if they are genuine and tenacious in their investigations and really want to know the truth they can multiply that by a very large number and still not be close to the totality.
If they do really want to uncover the truth they will have to be knocking on the door of Buckingham Palace eventually. If they don’t, it’s a cover up given the Windsors’ close relationship with Savile.
Research Credit: almaverdad2
Related:
Former Minister Says Thatcher Aide was Pedophile Who Preyed on Boys’ Home
Sandy Could Wreak Havoc Across 800 Miles of U.S.
October 28th, 2012Via: CBS:
Hurricane Sandy, the mammoth storm that has already claimed nearly five dozen lives in the Caribbean, could potentially affect some 60 million people in the Eastern United States, where it will meet with two other powerful winter storm systems, to create an even more threatening hybrid.
Sandy is expected to afflict a third of the country with sheets of rain, high winds and heavy snow, say officials who warned millions in coastal areas to get out of the way.
“We’re looking at impact of greater than 50 to 60 million people,” said Louis Uccellini, head of environmental prediction for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Experts said it didn’t matter how strong Sandy is when it hits land: The rare hybrid storm that follows will cause havoc over 800 miles, from the East Coast to the Great Lakes. States of Emergency have been declared from North Carolina up to New England.
‘Marines, Police Prep for Mock Zombie Invasion’
October 28th, 2012Maybe zombie invasion is supposed to sound better than civil war.
Via: AP:
Move over vampires, goblins and haunted houses, this kind of Halloween terror aims to shake up even the toughest warriors: An untold number of so-called zombies are coming to a counterterrorism summit attended by hundreds of Marines, Navy special ops, soldiers, police, firefighters and others to prepare them for their worst nightmares.
“This is a very real exercise, this is not some type of big costume party,” said Brad Barker, president of Halo Corp, a security firm hosting the Oct. 31 training demonstration during the summit at a 44-acre Paradise Point Resort island on a San Diego bay. “Everything that will be simulated at this event has already happened, it just hasn’t happened all at once on the same night. But the training is very real, it just happens to be the bad guys we’re having a little fun with.”
Hundreds of military, law enforcement and medical personnel will observe the Hollywood-style production of a zombie attack as part of their emergency response training.
