U.S. Judge Asks Vatican to Serve Court Paper to Pope
October 4th, 2010Via: AP:
A federal U.S. judge is asking the Vatican to cooperate in serving the pope and two other top officials with court papers that stem from decades-old allegations of sexual abuse by a priest in Wisconsin.
The request is an incremental step in a lawsuit that accuses the officials of conspiring to keep the allegations against the Milwaukee priest quiet. The Vatican is not obliged to comply with the request.
When faced with similar requests the Vatican has made service difficult, time-consuming and expensive by insisting, for example, that documentation be translated into Latin, one of the Vatican’s official languages.
Mike Finnegan, the attorney representing the Chicago-based plaintiff, said Friday he’s not holding out hope that the Vatican reverses course and begins to cooperate now.
“Based on what they’ve done in other cases, I don’t expect them to do the right thing,” he said. “I expect more delay and obstruction.”
Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican’s U.S.-based attorney, said he hadn’t seen the court request and couldn’t comment on whether the Vatican would comply with it.
The lawsuit, filed in April in U.S. federal court, names as defendants Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI; Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, and his predecessor, Cardinal Angelo Sodano.
It claims the three men knew about allegations of sexual abuse at a Milwaukee-area school for the deaf, and called off internal punishment of the accused priest. The Rev. Lawrence Murphy, who died in 1998, was accused of sexually abusing some 200 boys at the school from 1950 to 1974.
Research Credit: ltcolonelnemo
Beijing’s Billions Buy Up Resources
October 3rd, 2010Via: Independent:
While much of the developed world is baulking at its debts in the aftermath of the financial crisis, China has continued a global spending spree of unprecedented proportions, snapping up everything from oil and gas reserves to mining concessions to agricultural land, with vast reserves of US dollars.
This year alone, Chinese companies have laid out billions of dollars buying up stakes in Canada’s oil sands, a Guinean iron ore mine, oil fields in Angola and Uganda, an Argentinian oil company and a major Australian coal-bed methane gas company.
“China is rich in people but short of resources, and it wants to have stable supplies of its own rather than having to buy on the open market,” Jonathan Fenby, China expert and director of research group Trusted Resources, said.
But it is a strategy causing anxiety elsewhere in the world. Rumours in recent weeks that China’s Sinochem may make a bid for Canada’s Potash Corporation raised fears that the Middle Kingdom would corner the global market for fertiliser.
Similarly, when BP’s share price plummeted after Barack Obama’s criticisms in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, there was concern that the company would be driven into the hands of the Chinese.
More explicitly still, when the aluminium giant Chinalco was trying to buy Anglo-Australian Rio Tinto last year, television ads protesting against the scheme from no less than the Senate opposition leader bellowed “Keep Australia Australian”.
“Chinese acquisitions are increasingly on the political radar,” said Robin Geffen, the chief executive of Neptune Investment Management, which runs a leading China investment fund. “The pinch points come when people feel that supplies affecting national security could be threatened by China buying them all up.”
Contrary to the conspiracy theories, China is not looking for world domination. It has seen economic growth averaging a massive 10 per cent for the best part of three decades, and although it is expected to drop into the high single-digits in the coming years – in response to a dip in export demand – the natural resources required to support even slightly moderated growth are an overwhelming priority.
EU’s Technolife Project: Social Engineering for the Coming Technofascist World
October 3rd, 2010Via: Technofascism Blog:
In yet another attempt to gain public acceptance for the coming technological tyranny, the EU has recently funded the University of Bergen in Norway to create a website that collects people’s opinions on three emerging techno-fascist technologies: biometric id, human augmentation, and global tracking systems.
…
The TechnoLife project will present the objections of concerned citizens to EU policy makers so they can then spin the technology in a direction that is more acceptable to the general population.
Of course, nowhere on their website is there even the hint that these technologies could be prevented from being deployed. TechnoLife’s research is narrowly focused on how to gain public acceptance for the coming surveillance and control systems.
ISGP Taken Down Again
October 2nd, 2010Here’s the isgp.eu backup file that Joël van der Reijden had posted previously.
Via: isgp.eu:
ISGP has been up from September 2004 to September 2010. After the millionth page load it was taken down. A book may some day replace the website, but this is not a certainty at this point.
Research Credit: dt
Big Picture Gallery: Human Landscapes in South West Florida
October 2nd, 2010Via: Boston Globe / Big Picture:
A couple weeks ago, I was listening to a story by NPR’s Planet Money team about “Toxie” a toxic asset they had purchased to follow and help tell the story of the recent financial meltdown. One of the mortgages in Toxie was on a home bought for investment in Bradenton, Florida, and the team took a look at housing in the area. Many homes there are empty and have been for years. Huge developments sit partially completed among densely built up neighborhoods and swampland. A guest stated that there were “enough housing lots in Charlotte County to last for more than 100 years”. Boom and bust residential development has drastically affected parts of southwest Florida for decades now, and I spent some time (with the help of Google Earth), looking around the area. With permission from the fine folks at Google, here are a few glimpses at development in southwest Florida.
Research Credit: valix
U.S. Government Medical Researchers Deliberately Infected Guatemalan Prison Inmates with Syphilis
October 1st, 2010Via: Reuters:
The United States apologized on Friday for an experiment conducted in the 1940s in which U.S. government medical researchers deliberately infected Guatemalan prison inmates with syphilis.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and other top officials issued a statement about the experiment, which echoed the infamous 1960s Tuskegee study in which black American men were deliberately left untreated for syphilis.
“The sexually transmitted disease inoculation study conducted from 1946-1948 in Guatemala was clearly unethical,” the statement reads.
“Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health. We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices.”
The experiments, aimed at testing whether penicillin could prevent syphilis, were discovered by Susan Reverby, professor of women’s studies at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.
More: ‘Crime Against Humanity’
Has There Ever Been This Much “Alien” Entertainment at Once?
October 1st, 2010Update: Falling Skies Trailer
—End Update—
Update: More
—End Update—
The Event is on NBC now.
V starts up on ABC again in November.
That’s two prime time series on different networks about human looking aliens that infiltrate society.
Skyline will be released in November.
Battle: Los Angeles will be released in March 2011.
If I know about these, there are probably more.
More: In Development
Thanks to threefiveo125go for this.
Two Alien prequels and Earth Defense Force are planned.
And More…
More: C-Realm Podcast Interview with Larry Lowe: Viral Disclosure
AN sent this in. The main section with Larry Lowe is very good.
Via: Podomatic:
Do factions within the US government direct the depiction of UFOs and alien visitors in mainstream entertainment in order to manage the worldview of a credulous public? KMO welcomes Rational Ufologist, Larry Lowe, to the C-Realm to discus the possibility that the new NBC series, The Event, serves as a sort of ‘predictive programming’ meant to prepare the public consciousness for revelations about the on-going relationship between humans and ‘advanced beings’ of some kind. Later, Marty, co-host of the Flickers From the Cave Podcast, shares his impressions of the pilot episode of The Event.
The U.S. Government has Deployed Mobile X-Ray Technology to Scan Cars and Trucks at Internal Checkpoints
October 1st, 2010Via: Christian Science Monitor:
As an antiterror measure, the US government has deployed mobile X-ray technology to randomly scan cars and trucks. But the measure is riling privacy proponents.
For many living in a terror-spooked country, it might seem like a great government innovation: Use vans equipped with mobile X-ray units to scan vehicles at major sporting events, or even randomly, for bombs or contraband.
But news that the US is buying custom-made vans packed with something called backscatter X-ray capacity has riled privacy advocates and sparked internet worries about “feds radiating Americans.”
“This really trips up the creep factor because it’s one of those things that you sort of intrinsically think the government shouldn’t be doing,” says Vermont-based privacy expert Frederick Lane, author of “American Privacy.” “But, legally, the issue is the boundary between the government’s legitimate security interest and privacy expectations we enjoy in our cars.”
American Science & Engineering, a Billerica, Mass.-company, tells Forbes it’s sold more than 500 ZBVs, or Z Backscatter Vans, to US and foreign governments. The Department of Defense has bought the most for war zone use, but US law enforcement has also deployed the vans to search for bombs inside the US, according to Joe Reiss, a company spokesman, as quoted by Forbes.
On Tuesday, a counterterror operation snarled truck traffic on I-20 near Atlanta, where Department of Homeland Security teams used mobile X-ray technology to check the contents of truck trailers. Authorities said the inspections weren’t prompted by any specific threat.
1010: No Pressure
October 1st, 2010Update: They Tried to Take It Down
How’s that working out for you, 1010global?
—End Update—
Via: 1010Global:
Whippersnapping climate campaign 10:10 teams up with legendary comic screenwriter Richard Curtis – you know, Blackadder, Four Weddings, Notting Hill, co-founded Comic Relief – and Age of Stupid director Franny Armstrong to proudly present their explosive new mini-movie “No Pressure”. The film stars X-Files’ Gillian Anderson, together with Spurs players past and present – including Peter Crouch, Ledley King and David Ginola – with music donated by Radiohead. Shot on 35mm by a 40-strong professional film crew led by director Dougal Wilson, “No Pressure” celebrates everybody who is actively tackling climate change… by blowing up those are aren’t.
More:
Pentti Linkola, Finnish Environmentalist: “Kill Defectives”
Research Credit: dt
Dozens of NATO Oil Tankers Attacked in Pakistan
October 1st, 2010Via: MSNBC:
Suspected militants in southern Pakistan set ablaze more than two dozen tankers carrying fuel for foreign troops in Afghanistan on Friday, highlighting the vulnerability of the U.S.-led mission a day after Pakistan closed a major border crossing.
The Pakistani government shut the Torkham border in the northwest in apparent protest at a NATO helicopter incursion that killed three of its soldiers on the border. The events raised tensions between Pakistan and the United States, which have a close but often troubled alliance in the fight against militants.
The convoy of tankers attacked Friday was likely headed to a second crossing in southwest Pakistan that was not closed. It was not clear if the vehicles had been rerouted because of the closure at Torkham.
Around 80 percent of the fuel, spare parts, clothing and other non-lethal supplies for foreign forces in landlocked Afghanistan travels through Pakistan after arriving in the southern Arabian sea port of Karachi. The alliance has other supply routes to Afghanistan, but the Pakistani ones are the cheapest and most convenient.
