U.S. War Number Six: Somalia
June 30th, 2011Via: Guardian:
The US has conducted its first drone strike on Islamist militants in Somalia, marking the expansion of the pilotless war campaign to a sixth country.
The missile strike on a vehicle in the southern town of Kismayo, reported last week as a helicopter assault, wounded two senior militants with al-Shabab and several foreign fighters according to the Washington Post.
Armed Predator and Reaper drones already operate in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and Libya, where they are controlled by the US military or the CIA.
The CIA-run programmes are controversial. Although they provide the Obama administration with a low-risk weapon against Islamist militants, they stir intense anti-American hostility among the local population.
U.S. Monthly Combat Deaths in Iraq at 3-Year High
June 30th, 2011Via: New York Times:
Fifteen American soldiers have been killed in June, 14 of them in hostile incidents. According to icasualties.org, an online database, this was the highest number of combat fatalities since June 2008, when 23 soldiers and Marines were killed.
The Obama Administration’s Whistleblower Problem
June 30th, 2011Via: The Atlantic:
Somewhere in the federal bureaucracy, there is a middle-aged woman sitting in a cubicle wearing business casual clothing, eating a turkey sandwich from a brown paper bag, and trying to decide whether the government misconduct she’s privy to should be exposed. Perhaps her agency is infringing on the constitutional rights of American citizens, or violating statutory law, or merely wasting millions of taxpayer dollars. Or it could be that the particular failure threatens national security, or public health, or the robustness of the international or national economy.
Our dutiful bureaucrat doesn’t have to ponder the matter for long. She knows what she ought to do: inhale, put cool steel to pursed lips, and blow the whistle. Inside the bathroom stall at work, in her Hyundai sedan during the evening commute, and worst of all in bed at night, she weighs her duty to the American public against the consequences that will befall her husband, kids, and shelter-adopted mutt if her superiors fire her for making them look bad. Somewhere in the federal bureaucracy, this woman or someone like her hasn’t decided what she’ll do — and she is less likely to come forward now than she was when the Obama Administration took office because, for reasons big and small, fair and possibly unfair, it has acquired a reputation for retaliating against whistleblowers.
The most recent example is practically breaking news. In A Fox News interview, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent claimed Tuesday that he was fired for helping to expose the now infamous “Fast and Furious” operation. That was the code name given when ATF agents permitted criminals to illegally smuggle guns into Mexico in hopes of tracing them to big time drug traffickers. As the Houston Chronicle reports: “The weapons purchased in gun stores in and around Phoenix, as many as 2,500, got away from ATF surveillance and eventually reached the cartels in Mexico.”
Launch Code for U.S. Strategic Nuclear Missiles Was Twelve Zeros Until 1977
June 30th, 2011“But I don’t understand what would be such a big deal if there were a nuclear exchange, only about 500 million people would die…”
Via: Countdown to Zero:
Research Credit: bretwalda
Britain: Council to Force Family Living On Their Own Land and Growing Their Own Food to Live in State Housing and Become Dole Recipients
June 30th, 2011Madness.
Via: This is Devon:
A COUPLE living an “off-grid” lifestyle say they face prison unless they move from their own land in Willand and return to an existence in the benefits trap.
Stig and Dinah Mason bought Muxbeare Orchard after a sudden windfall allowed them to quit their impoverished lives on a Hertfordshire council estate two years ago.
The Masons have transformed what they described as a derelict four-acre plot into a haven of self-sufficiency boasting a 400 sq m allotment, a polytunnel and greenhouses to grow fruit and vegetables, chickens for egg production and an orchard they have regenerated by planting around 14 new apple trees of various species.
The couple, who have two boys, aged eight and nine, say because they moved onto the site in order to work the land, Mid Devon District Council is turfing them off as officers do not consider them to be conserving an agricultural area.
They faced magistrates on March 31 when they were served with an injunction to leave within 28 days from June 1.
Research Credit: tochigi
Cryptogon Readers Sign Up for Hosting with Bluehost
June 29th, 2011Thanks to the owners of spiritofthesunpublications.com and fetalearth.net for signing up for hosting with BlueHost. Cryptogon received $180 as a result.
Methane Contamination of Drinking Water Accompanying Gas-Well Drilling and Hydraulic Fracturing
June 29th, 2011Via: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:
Directional drilling and hydraulic-fracturing technologies are dramatically increasing natural-gas extraction. In aquifers overlying the Marcellus and Utica shale formations of northeastern Pennsylvania and upstate New York, we document systematic evidence for methane contamination of drinking water associated with shale-gas extraction. In active gas-extraction areas (one or more gas wells within 1 km), average and maximum methane concentrations in drinking-water wells increased with proximity to the nearest gas well and were 19.2 and 64 mg CH4 L-1 (n = 26), a potential explosion hazard…
Research Credit: MakhnosGhost
Florida: Condominium Association Requires DNA Database for Dogs
June 29th, 2011Via: AP:
A Florida condominium association hopes dog DNA samples will help them determine which pet owners aren’t picking up after their pooches.
…
Starting Aug. 1, residents in the Jupiter community must each pay a $200 fee to keep the dogs’ genetic information on file at the DNA Pet World Registry. Dog droppings found in common areas will be collected and mailed to the Tennessee-based company for comparison.
The association’s property manager says any owner whose dog matches the poop sample will be fined up to $1,000 or a lien could be placed on their homes. A dog that’s a persistent problem could be confiscated.
Greece Approve Austerity Measures as Protesters Clash with Police
June 29th, 2011This stream was showing some pretty hairy rioting as I posted this:
Via: Telegraph:
The vote taken amid violent protests and a sense of growing social conflict, will this weekend unlock a £10.7 billion transfer to Greece, the fifth instalment in a £98billion EU-IMF bailout agreed 13 months ago.
At the highest levels anxiety remains behind the warm words of relief that Greece could yet plunge the euro into crisis or crash by going bankrupt on 15 July and defaulting on £3.6 million in debt repayments.
Despite the immediate breathing place given by the vote, EU officials and governments are keenly aware that the battle to save Greece and the euro is not over and that victory is far from being assured.
Visions of Teen Angst, Then and Now
June 29th, 2011When I was a kid, films like Better Off Dead, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and many others, told stories about the seemingly infinite number of ways that being a teenager could suck..
I know these types of films are still made, and while I have no idea what the modern versions are like, my guess is that many of the same stories and stereotypes are being rehashed again and again. Different clothes. Different hair. Different music.
Now, speaking of music, I happen to listen to The Arcade Fire on occasion, and I noticed that they made a short film called, Scenes from the Suburbs, that is based on their album, The Suburbs.
In Scenes from the Suburbs, you might think that it’s going to run along some theme that you’ve seen a dozen times before, and it does, but it’s what’s going on around the characters in the suburbs that will get you to do a double take.
These aren’t the suburbs of the Lane Meyer and Ferris Bueller days. These suburbs are Snowcrash style corporate burbclaves, complete with mercenary armies, shakedowns and worse:
