JTF2 Command ‘Encouraged’ War crimes, Soldier Alleges
January 19th, 2011Via: CBC:
A member of Canada’s elite special forces unit says he felt his peers were being “encouraged” by the Canadian Forces chain of command to commit war crimes in Afghanistan, according to new documents obtained by CBC News.
The documents from the military ombudsman’s office show the member of the covert unit Joint Task Force 2, or JTF2, approached the watchdog in June 2008 to report the allegations of wrongdoing he had first made to his superior officers in 2006.
The soldier told the ombudsman’s office “that although he reported what he witnessed to his chain of command, he does not believe they are investigating, and are being ‘very nice to him,’ ” according to the documents, which CBC News obtained through access to information.
As such, the soldier alleged, the chain of command helped create an atmosphere that tolerated war crimes.
The ombudsman’s documents state the soldier was subsequently directed to the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, CFNIS, which in turn launched its own investigation.
The CFNIS told the ombudsman the investigation was “now their No. 1 priority.”
What Is Plan B if China Dumps Its U.S. Debt? Try to Get Americans to Buy More
January 19th, 2011Your what hurts?
Via: Reuters:
When borrowing money it’s always good to have a Plan B in case a big creditor pulls the plug. That should be true whether the sum is a few thousand dollars or about a trillion, the size of the United States government’s debt to China.
With Chinese President Hu Jintao due to arrive in Washington on Tuesday, it is worth asking about U.S. officials’ Plan B just in case one day relations take a surprise turn for the worse and Beijing dumps its holdings of U.S. treasuries.
China is officially the United States’ biggest foreign creditor, with roughly $900 billion in Treasury holdings — or over $1 trillion with Hong Kong’s holdings included.
That means it could do severe damage to U.S. debt markets if it suddenly started selling large amounts.
Most experts say if there were signs of this happening, the U.S. government would go for a combination of persuading Americans to buy more U.S. debt, the same way they did in World War II, and finding friendly foreign governments to make additional purchases.
Banks could be called on to increase their holdings of treasuries, and as a last resort, the Federal Reserve could also be called on to fill the gap, though this could risk turning any dollar weakness into a slump.
“The U.S. government should have and maybe still could call on the people of the U.S. to invest in U.S. debt,” said David Walker, a former U.S. comptroller general who heads an advocacy group calling on the government to curb the U.S. budget deficit and borrowings.
What Killed 40,000 Acres of Oregon Wheat Last November?
January 19th, 2011This is from, Capital Press, December 02, 2010: Investigators Baffled as Wheat Fields Wither:
The Oregon Department of Agriculture and Oregon State University are investigating the yellowing of upward of 40,000 acres of wheat in Umatilla and Morrow counties.
So far, the cause is a mystery, and researchers do not know if the problems in the two counties are related.
In early November, Umatilla County growers noticed wheat fields turning yellow and dying, OSU Extension soil scientist Don Wysocki said.
Sixteen fields from three to 10 miles northwest of Pendleton were affected, Wysocki said. They are “more or less but not completely contiguous,” he said. Not every field in the area was affected.
The area was predominately planted to soft white Clearfield variety ORCF-102, but other varieties were also affected, Wysocki said.
“There’s probably more than one thing going on in these particular fields, like in any field,” he said.
OSU Morrow County Extension associate professor Larry Lutcher said 30,000 to 40,000 acres of wheat in his county have plants with yellow or purple tips. The discoloration spreads inward and downward on the leaf. In some cases, plants are completely desiccated and will not recover.
The symptoms have been observed in many fields in the county, Lutcher said, but do not appear tied to any particular location.
“Most of the symptoms in Morrow County are unlike anything I have ever seen,” Lutcher said.
Lutcher said he doesn’t believe the problem will spread to other fields, but he can’t be certain.
“This does appear to be a new problem — a problem that no one seems to have experience with,” he said.
The last mention that I was able to find about this situation was from Capital Press, January 6, 2011: Growers Seek Update on Withered Wheat:
Wysocki said there is still debate about the cause, although samples tested positive for some herbicides. Based on some of the patterns in the fields, he said there was probably some chemical trespass issues.
Wysocki declined to comment on which chemicals may have drifted. That depends on the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s investigation, he said.
In a letter to growers Dec. 28, Oregon Agriculture Director Katy Coba said the department has initiated 19 pesticide use follow-up investigations to determine compliance with the Oregon Pesticide Control Law. The department collected about 70 plant tissue samples for testing in its regulatory lab, specifically for glyphosate residues.
Because the department routinely uses a minimum detectable level of 0.01 parts per million, testing wheat foliage for glyphosate residue is challenging. The department is consulting with glyphosate manufacturer Monsanto and other state regulatory laboratories, Coba said in the letter. She expects to have analytical results by Jan. 21.
The department is also reviewing application records from 51 commercial pesticide operators that worked in the area between Oct. 1 and 30.
The department is planning a follow-up status conference call and meeting the week of Jan. 24.
Other items on the Morrow County meeting agenda include ammonia volatilization in the field, manure applications on dryland wheat and the possible combination of Oregon Wheat Growers League and Oregon Wheat Commission administrative positions.
Lutcher said his discussion will be limited to what he knows at the time.
“This spring, we will need to keep a close eye on the crop,” he said.
Possibly Related: Monsanto’s Roundup Triggers Over 40 Plant Diseases and Endangers Human and Animal Health [Sent in by Matt]
Mom Accused of Playing Game on Facebook While Baby Drowned
January 19th, 2011Via: Reuters:
A Colorado mother who told police her 13-month-old son drowned in the bathtub while she was playing a game on Facebook was charged on Friday with child abuse resulting in death.
Shannon Johnson, 34, was advised of the charge against her via a video hookup from the jail where she is being held on a $100,000 bond, said Jennifer Finch, spokeswoman for the Weld County District Attorney’s Office.
Johnson requested a public defender during the brief hearing and another hearing was set for later in the month, Finch said.
Under questioning by police after the boy died at a Denver-area hospital last September, Johnson admitted she placed the baby in the bathtub and went into another room to play the Facebook game “Cafe World.”
Related:
Woman Kills Baby Because He Cried While She Played Farmville (A Game on Facebook)
Woman Neglected Children, Let Dogs Die of Starvation As She Played Video Game
Baby Dies as Parents Raise Virtual Child Online
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U.S. Biotech Company Has ‘Library’ of Genetically Engineered Organisms That Excrete a Variety of Hydrocarbon Fuels; Inputs Are CO2, Sunshine and Water
January 18th, 2011Here’s part of a comment from Globe and Mail reader, Laid Back:
According to the article, the space required to supply current American consumption is an area the size of the state of Indiana. There are lots of areas in the American West with vast empty areas of desert and abundant sunlight (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona) albeit with little water. Here is the math:
(1) 800 barrels per year per acre is 2.2 barrels per acre per day.
(2) The US consumes 20 million barrels per day.
(3) This will require 9 million acres [ (2) divided by (1) ]
(4) One square kilometer is 247 acres
(4) 9 million acres is 36,800 square kilometers [ (3) divided by (4) ]This is about the size of the state of Indiana.
However…
How can an organism exist with only carbon dioxide as a physical input ? Isn’t it made of proteins ? Proteins have more than carbon as constituents. Doesn’t it have DNA ? Doesn’t it grow ? Wouldn’t it need other types of nutrients as inputs ? Does it reproduce ? If it doesn’t reproduce, where does it come from ? How do you make more of them to boost production and replace dead ones ? If it does reproduce, and escapes into the environment, what keeps it from spreading all over the surface of the planet and converting all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and coating the entire surface of the planet in stinking toxic hydro-carbons, killing off all other life forms ? (not to mention that removing all carbon dioxide from the atmosphere would cause all plant life to die which would kill everything higher up in the food chain).
Still, this is interesting.
Via: Globe and Mail:
In September, a privately held and highly secretive U.S. biotech company named Joule Unlimited received a patent for “a proprietary organism” – a genetically adapted E. coli bacterium – that feeds solely on carbon dioxide and excretes liquid hydrocarbons: diesel fuel, jet fuel and gasoline. This breakthrough technology, the company says, will deliver renewable supplies of liquid fossil fuel almost anywhere on Earth, in essentially unlimited quantity and at an energy-cost equivalent of $30 (U.S.) a barrel of crude oil. It will deliver, the company says, “fossil fuels on demand.”
We’re not talking “biofuels” – not, at any rate, in the usual sense of the word. The Joule technology requires no “feedstock,” no corn, no wood, no garbage, no algae. Aside from hungry, gene-altered micro-organisms, it requires only carbon dioxide and sunshine to manufacture crude. And water: whether fresh, brackish or salt. With these “inputs,” it mimics photosynthesis, the process by which green leaves use solar energy to convert carbon dioxide into organic compounds. Indeed, the company describes its manufacture of fossil fuels as “artificial photosynthesis.”
Joule says it now has “a library” of fossil-fuel organisms at work in its Massachusetts labs, each engineered to produce a different fuel. It has “proven the process,” has produced ethanol (for example) at a rate equivalent to 10,000 U.S. gallons an acre a year. It anticipates that this yield could hit 25,000 gallons an acre a year when scaled for commercial production, equivalent to roughly 800 barrels of crude an acre a year.
By way of comparison, Cornell University’s David Pimentel, an authority on ethanol, says that one acre of corn produces less than half as much energy, equivalent to only 328 barrels. If a few hundred barrels of crude sounds modest, recall that millions of acres of prime U.S. farmland are now used to make corn ethanol.
Joule says its “solar converter” technology makes the manufacture of liquid fossil fuels 50 times as efficient as conventional biofuel production – and eliminates as much as 90 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions. “Requiring only sunlight and waste C0{-2},” it says, “[this] technology can produce virtually unlimited quantities of fossil fuels with zero dependence on raw materials, agricultural land, crops or fresh water. It ends the hazards of oil exploration and oil production. It takes us to the unthinkable: liquid hydrocarbons on demand.”
The company name honours James Prescott Joule, the 19th-century British scientist. Founded only four years ago, it has begun pilot-project production in Leander, Tex. Using modular solar panels (imagine an array of conventional panels in a one-acre field), it says it will quickly ramp up production this year toward small-scale commercial production in 2012.
Joule acknowledges its reluctance to fully explain its “solar converter.” CEO Bill Sims told Biofuels Digest, an online biofuels news service, that secrecy has been essential for competitive reasons. “Some time soon,” he said, “what we are doing will become clear.” Although astonishing in its assertions, Joule gains credibility from its co-founder: George Church, the Harvard Medical School geneticist who helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984.
Hersh: Many Within Joint Special Operations Command Are, “Members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta.”
January 18th, 2011Via: Foreign Policy:
“What I’m really talking about is how eight or nine neoconservative, radicals if you will, overthrew the American government. Took it over,” he said of his forthcoming book. “It’s not only that the neocons took it over but how easily they did it — how Congress disappeared, how the press became part of it, how the public acquiesced.”
Hersh then brought up the widespread looting that took place in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. “In the Cheney shop, the attitude was, ‘What’s this? What are they all worried about, the politicians and the press, they’re all worried about some looting? … Don’t they get it? We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. And when we get all the oil, nobody’s gonna give a damn.'”
“That’s the attitude,” he continued. “We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That’s an attitude that pervades, I’m here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command.”
He then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, “are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta.”
Hersh may have been referring to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic organization commited to “defence of the Faith and assistance to the poor and the suffering,” according to its website.
“Many of them are members of Opus Dei,” Hersh continued. “They do see what they’re doing — and this is not an atypical attitude among some military — it’s a crusade, literally. They seem themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They’re protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function.”
“They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins,” he continued. “They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community.”
Vatican Warned Irish Bishops Not to Report Abuse
January 18th, 2011Via: AP:
A newly revealed 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland’s Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police — a disclosure with the potential to fuel more lawsuits worldwide against the Vatican, which has long denied any involvement in cover-ups.
The letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican’s rejection of an Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests.
The letter’s message undermines persistent Vatican claims that the church never instructed bishops to withhold evidence or suspicion of crimes from police. It instead emphasizes the church’s right to handle all child-abuse allegations, and determine punishments, in house rather than hand that power to civil authorities.
