U.S. Military Purchasing Combat Equipment for Domestic Contingency Planning
July 19th, 2012Via: Public Intelligence:
For the last two years, the President’s Budget Submissions for the Department of Defense have included purchases of a significant amount of combat equipment, including armored vehicles, helicopters and even artillery, under an obscure section of the FY2008 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the purposes of “homeland defense missions, domestic emergency responses, and providing military support to civil authorities.” Items purchased under the section include combat vehicles, tanks, helicopters, artillery, mortar systems, missiles, small arms and communications equipment. Justifications for the budget items indicate that many of the purchases are part of routine resupply and maintenance, yet in each case the procurement is cited as being “necessary for use by the active and reserve components of the Armed Forces for homeland defense missions, domestic emergency responses, and providing military support to civil authorities” under section 1815 of the FY2008 NDAA.
Italian Investigators Looking Into Possible Vatican Money Laundering for Mafia Godfather
July 19th, 2012Via: Telegraph:
Anti Mafia prosecutors have asked the secretive Vatican Bank to disclose details of an account held by a priest in connection with a money laundering and fraud investigation, it emerged on Sunday.
The official request was made more than a month ago but so far the Vatican Bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works, has refused to disclose any records of the account held by father Ninni Treppiedi – who is currently suspended from serving as a priest.
Investigators want to know more about vast sums of money that are said to have passed through his account to establish if they were money laundering operations by on the run Mafia Godfather, Matteo Messina Denaro.
Japan to Probe Active Faults Under Nuclear Plants
July 19th, 2012Via: AFP:
Japan’s nuclear safety watchdog on Wednesday ordered a probe into claims the country’s only working nuclear power station sits on an active tectonic fault.
The order came as Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) readied to refire a second reactor at the Oi plant, western Japan, just weeks after the first unit was restarted, ending a brief nuclear-free period in earthquake-prone Japan.
A spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said KEPCO had to re-examine the Earth’s crust underneath Oi, while the operator of the Shika plant in nearby Ishikawa also had to carry out further studies.
The decision came after geological experts argued both plants are likely sitting on active faults and could be vulnerable to earthquakes if tectonic plates shift.
Japan’s entire stable of nuclear reactors was shut down in the months after the disaster at Fukushima when an earthquake-sparked tsunami knocked out cooling systems causing meltdowns that spread radiation over a large area.
‘It Was Just Beautiful’
July 19th, 2012Via: YouTube / Atom Central:
On July 19, 1957, five men stood at Ground Zero of an atomic test that was being conducted at the Nevada Test Site. This was the test of a 2KT (kiloton) MB-1 nuclear air-to-air rocket launched from an F-89 Scorpion interceptor. The nuclear missile detonated 10,000 ft above their heads.
A reel-to-reel tape recorder was present to record their experience. You can see and hear the men react to the shock wave moments after the detonation.
Adult Fiction Ebooks Outsold Hardcovers in 2011
July 19th, 2012Via: Reuters:
Electronic books more than doubled in popularity in 2011, with ebooks outselling hardcover books in adult fiction for the first time, according to a survey released on Wednesday.
Net sales of e-books jumped to 15 percent of the market in 2011 from 6 percent in 2010, according to a report by the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group. The groups compiled data provided by nearly 2,000 publishers.
Total overall U.S. book market sales declined 2.5 percent to $27.2 billion in 2011 from $27.9 billion in 2010, the report said.
While ebooks increased in strength, bringing in more than $2 billion in 2011, the majority of publishers’ revenue still came from print books, with $11.1 billion in 2011.
Syria: Assad Brother-in-Law, Syria Defense Minister Killed in Damascus Blast
July 18th, 2012Via: Wall Street Journal:
Three top military and security leaders in the Syrian regime including President Bashar al-Assad’s brother-in-law and the defense minister were killed in a bombing in Damascus on Wednesday in the biggest blow to the country’s rulers since the start of the uprising.
State television said Mr. Shawkat, Defense Minister Maj. Gen. Dawood Rajha and Hassan Turkmani, an assistant to the vice president and the former defense minister, had died in a bombing in Damascus.
The three were killed in an attack against the so-called national security building in the capital’s Rawda Square, while they and other senior security and defense leaders were meeting inside.
Pentagon, CIA Sued for Lethal Drone Attacks on U.S. Citizens
July 18th, 2012Via: Wired:
Survivors of three Americans killed by targeted drone attacks in Yemen last year sued top-ranking members of the United States government, alleging Wednesday they illegally killed the three, including a 16-year-old boy, in violation of international human rights law and the U.S. Constitution.
“The government has killed three Americans. It should account for its actions. This case gives us an opportunity to do that,” Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director with the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a press call.
The suit, (.pdf) being litigated by the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights, seeks unspecified damages and highlights the government’s so-called unmanned drone “targeted killing” program that the ACLU and the center maintain have killed thousands, including hundreds of innocent bystanders overseas.
The suit, the first of its kind, alleges the United States was not engaged in an armed conflict with or within Yemen, prohibiting the use of lethal force unless “at the time it is applied, lethal force is a last resort to protect against a concrete, specific, and imminent threat of death or serious physical injury.” The case directly challenges the government’s decision to kill Americans without judicial scrutiny.
At bottom, Jaffer said, “the question is whether the government is justified in killing without charging them or trying them for anything.”
Hard Times: Lost on Long Island
July 18th, 2012Via: Daily Ticker:
In the new HBO documentary, “Hard Times: Lost on Long Island,” award-winning producer and director Marc Levin takes a deeper look at how many average middle class Americans are still struggling from the fallout of the Great Recession. The film puts a human face on the ongoing U.S. unemployment problem, which has stumped policymakers and economists alike.
Starting in 2008, workers lost their jobs by the hundreds of thousands each month. In just two years the unemployment rate went from 5 percent to nearly 10 percent by the end of 2009.
While the jobs picture has been improving, U.S. unemployment still sits at a staggeringly high rate of 8.2 percent. Millions of Americans are looking for a job but just cannot find work. Last month 5.4 million people, or 42 percent of those who are unemployed, had been unemployed for more than 27 weeks and the underemployment rate — which includes those who have a part-time job but seek a full-time position and those who have just given up looking for work — rose to 14.9 percent.
“There has been coverage of the most impoverished areas and the deindustrialized areas in the Midwest,” notes Levin in the accompanying interview with The Daily Ticker’s Aaron Task. “But we hadn’t seen anything that really spoke to the kind of heart and soul of the suburban good life.”
“Hard Times” profiles four families living in the iconic Levittown, Long Island community — home to modern-day suburbia — who had been living the epitome of the American dream before the good times came to an end.
The starkest message of the documentary is that anyone can lose his or her job at any time regardless of race, age or level of education. The film showcases well-educated, hard-working people, laying to rest that those who do not have a job are lazy or freeloaders.
Michigan Governor Finalizing Plan to Raze Detroit Empty Homes
July 18th, 2012Via: Reuters:
As the next step in an April deal between financially strapped Detroit and the state of Michigan, Governor Rick Snyder is finalizing a plan to tear down thousands of abandoned houses in a bid to make the city safer.
Detroit has been hard-hit over the past four decades by a steep drop in population, a steadily eroding tax base and crippling budget deficits, resulting in countless barren streets punctuated by vacant lots and burned-out buildings.
The state plan, likely to be announced early next month, is part of a financial stability agreement reached in April that headed off the appointment of an emergency city manager, which Detroit had opposed.
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing’s administration already has demolished 4,500 “dangerous and abandoned buildings,” according to press secretary Naomi Patton, and plans to tear down another 1,500 vacant structures by the end of September — part of Bing’s pledge three years ago to demolish 10,000 derelict buildings by the end of his term in late 2013.
Related: Idea for Detroit Zombie Theme Park
People Who Are Constantly Online Can Develop Mental Disorders
July 18th, 2012Your what hurts?
Via: CBS:
Get off that computer. A new study finds that constantly being online can affect your mental health.
Researchers at the University of Gothenburg recently studied more than 4,100 Swedish men and women between the ages of 20 and 24 for a year and found that a majority of them who constantly use a computer and mobile phones can develop stress, sleeping disorders and depression.
Sara Thomee, lead author of the study, said there was a “central link” between computers and mental disorders.
“High quantitative use was a central link between computer use and stress, sleep disturbances, and depression, described by the young adults,” Thomee said in the study. “It was easy to spend more time than planned at the computer (e.g., working, gaming, or chatting), and this tended to lead to time pressure, neglect of other activities and personal needs (such as social interaction, sleep, physical activity), as well as bad ergonomics, and mental overload.”
