TSA Got Everything It Wanted for Christmas
December 30th, 2011Via: Slashdot:
“It looks like Congress’ recent jabs at TSA were just posturing after all. Last Friday, President Obama signed a spending act passed by both houses of Congress. The act gives TSA a $7.85 billion budget increase for 2012 and includes funding for 12 additional multi-modal Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) teams and 140 new behavior detection officers. It even includes funding for 250 shiny new body scanners, which was originally cut from the funding bill last May.”
Cutting Edge Medical Procedures Used on Grievously Ill Buys “Misery We Would Not Inflict on a Terrorist”
December 30th, 2011Dr. Terry Wahls didn’t, “Go gently.”
Via: Zocalo Public Square:
It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.
Of course, doctors don’t want to die; they want to live. But they know enough about modern medicine to know its limits. And they know enough about death to know what all people fear most: dying in pain, and dying alone. They’ve talked about this with their families. They want to be sure, when the time comes, that no heroic measures will happen—that they will never experience, during their last moments on earth, someone breaking their ribs in an attempt to resuscitate them with CPR (that’s what happens if CPR is done right).
Almost all medical professionals have seen what we call “futile care” being performed on people. That’s when doctors bring the cutting edge of technology to bear on a grievously ill person near the end of life. The patient will get cut open, perforated with tubes, hooked up to machines, and assaulted with drugs. All of this occurs in the Intensive Care Unit at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars a day. What it buys is misery we would not inflict on a terrorist. I cannot count the number of times fellow physicians have told me, in words that vary only slightly, “Promise me if you find me like this that you’ll kill me.” They mean it. Some medical personnel wear medallions stamped “NO CODE” to tell physicians not to perform CPR on them. I have even seen it as a tattoo.
Mexican Drug Cartels Have Their Own Radio Communications Networks
December 29th, 2011Via: AP:
When convoys of soldiers or federal police move through the scrubland of northern Mexico, the Zetas drug cartel knows they are coming.
The alert goes out from a taxi driver or a street vendor, equipped with a high-end handheld radio and paid to work as a lookout known as a “halcon,” or hawk.
The radio signal travels deep into the arid countryside, hours by foot from the nearest road. There, the 8-foot-tall (2-meter-tall) dark-green branches of the rockrose bush conceal a radio tower painted to match. A cable buried in the dirt draws power from a solar panel. A signal-boosting repeater relays the message along a network of powerful antennas and other repeaters that stretch hundreds of miles (kilometers) across Mexico, a shadow communications system allowing the cartel to coordinate drug deliveries, kidnapping, extortion and other crimes with the immediacy and precision of a modern military or law-enforcement agency.
Related:
DEA Launders Mexican Profits of Drug Cartels
The Technology Secrets of Cocaine Inc.
China Wins $700 Million Afghan Oil and Gas Deal — Why Didn’t the U.S. Bid?
December 29th, 2011The article below states that, “China has not participated in the war effort,” but it fails to mention that China financed the war by purchasing hundreds of billions of dollars worth of U.S. debt.
Just a guess: Maybe some of those debt purchases came with strings attached. U.S. elites got their nonsense war, a bunch of opium and wealth transfer to the mercenary industrial complex, and China will wind up with what’s in the dirt.
Via: Christian Science Monitor:
In a deal finalized on Wednesday, China’s National Petroleum Corporation became the first foreign company to tap into Afghanistan’s oil and gas reserves. Chinese officials have estimated that the deal could be worth at least $700 million, but some say China could earn up to 10 times that.
China has not participated in the war effort, but it has managed to gain the biggest stake in Afghan minerals. In 2007, China inked a $3 billion deal securing access to copper mines in Mes Aynak, south of Kabul.
The latest Sino-Afghan agreement strengthens the Asian nation’s foothold here and could benefit the economic development of Afghanistan. With few viable industries in Afghanistan, Western forces here looking for a way to restore economic independence and stability have long touted the country’s mineral resources.
Rootworms Becoming Resistant to Monsanto’s Genetically Modified Corn
December 29th, 2011Via: AP:
One of the nation’s most widely planted crops — a genetically engineered corn plant that makes its own insecticide — may be losing its effectiveness because a major pest appears to be developing resistance more quickly than scientists expected.
US$25 Raspberry Pi Personal Computer Nears Launch Date
December 29th, 2011Via: Gizmag:
Budding computer hackers/scientists are about to get a welcome gift, albeit a bit late for Christmas 2011. The non-profit Raspberry Pi Foundation (RPF) is nearing the release date of its surprisingly powerful and remarkably affordable Raspberry Pi line of bare-bones machines that have been developed in an effort to broaden kids’ access to computers in the UK and abroad. How affordable? The figure above was no typo. Read on to learn just what US$25 will get you when these nifty, fully-assembled, credit-card sized computers go on sale next month (sorry, case, monitor, keyboard and mouse not included … we did say bare bones).
More: Raspberry Pi: An ARM GNU/Linux Box for $25
Los Angeles: From Planes To Trains: TSA Expands Spot Searches To Union Station
December 29th, 2011Via: CBS:
An all-too-familiar sight at LAX and the rest of the nation’s airports will soon be coming to the city’s busiest train station.
KNX 1070?s Pete Demetriou reports rail passengers have started seeing Transportation Security Administration on patrol at Union Station on a more frequent basis.
As many as 25 VIPR (Visible Intermodal Prevention & Response) teams began patrolling train stations nationwide last summer conducting an estimated 9,300 “suspicionless” spot searches of travelers.
Department of Homeland Security Using Fake Facebook and Twitter Accounts to Monitor Posts Containing Certain Keywords
December 28th, 2011Via: Electronic Privacy Information Center:
EPIC has filed a Freedom of information Act lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security to force disclosure of the details of the agency’s social network monitoring program. In news reports and a Federal Register notice, the DHS has stated that it will routinely monitor the public postings of users on Twitter and Facebook. The agency plans to create fictitious user accounts and scan posts of users for key terms. User data will be stored for five years and shared with other government agencies.The legal authority for the DHS program remains unclear. EPIC filed the lawsuit after the DHS failed to reply to an April 2011 FOIA request.
More: Courthouse New Service: Your ‘Human-to-Animal’ Tweets Aren’t Safe, Privacy Watchdog Says
The Leading Cause of Breast Cancer: Medical Radiation
December 28th, 2011But keep getting those scans, the New York Times reminds you:
The most consistent data suggest that women can reduce their risk by avoiding unnecessary medical radiation, forgoing hormone treatments for menopause that combine estrogen and progestin, limiting alcohol intake and minimizing weight gain, the report found. (Controlling weight appears helpful only in preventing postmenopausal breast cancers, not those in younger women.) Overuse of CT scans, which deliver a relatively high dose of radiation, was a particular concern, but the report stated that women should not be deterred from having routine mammograms, which use a much smaller dose.
Via: CounterPunch:
Profiteers in the medical CT scan business took a big hit last week from a major new government report on the causes of breast cancer.
Published by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, the exhaustive analysis found that medical radiation, particularly the large radiation dose delivered by CT scans, is the foremost identifiable cause of breast cancer.
Research Credit: roaches
Taiwanese Rice Headed to Japan
December 28th, 2011Via: Taipei Times:
A shipment of Taiwanese rice bound for Tokyo departed central Taiwan yesterday, the second in a series of three deliveries of the biggest rice order received from Japan in eight years.
A ceremony was held in Changhua County’s Pitou Township , where the rice supplier, Union Rice Co, is based, to mark the shipment and the success of Changhua rice in entering Japan’s market.
The rice is being delivered to major Japanese rice importer Kitoku Shinryo Co, which ordered 360 tonnes earlier this year, the largest purchase of rice since exports to Japan were resumed in October 2004.
The rice will be distributed directly to Japanese retailers, the first time Taiwanese rice will be sold to Japanese consumers. In the past, it was mostly sold to wholesalers supplying restaurants or food processors.
Agriculture and Food Agency Director Li Tsang-lang said rice exports have long been constrained by high costs of production, which make Taiwanese rice more expensive than that grown in the US, Thailand and Australia.
Kitoku Shinryo decided to place an order due to the high quality of Taiwan’s rice, he said.
“After the rice passed all tests, they placed an order with us. The success represents positive recognition of the quality of Taiwanese rice and the technology used to process it,” Li said.
The Council of Agriculture said rice exported to Japan must pass 591 pesticide residue tests before being given the green light.
Makoto Hirayama, president of Kitoku Shinryo Co, visited Taiwan last month to inspect paddy fields, barns and processing plants and tasted the rice himself before placing the order.
The order has been partly motivated by the food shortages faced in Japan recently. Radiation contamination of farms from the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant and flooding in Niigata, a famous rice production district, have combined to limit Japan’s food output, the council said.
