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Yet the reverberations from this half-baked enterprise quickly roiled the entire world. Within hours, a whole range of new, even more intrusive and draconian security procedures were imposed on travelers across the globe. Governments hastened to launch “security reviews,” and promise “tough new measures” not only to thwart terrorists but to root out nests of agitators and “radicalizers” clinging to the soft underbelly of our all-too-tolerant, too-nice-for-its-own-good Western world.

Perhaps most significantly, the non-igniting of the homemade device has “rejuvenated [the] debate … over the proper balance between security and privacy,” the New York Times informs us — while quoting several “experts” who let us know just which way this “balance” is now going to tilt. These “experts” include Bush retreads like ex-Homeland Security commissar Michael Chertoff, who now dabbles profitably in the “risk management and security consulting” industry — yet another of our great and good for whom every act of terror (real or imagined, successful or unsuccessful) means boffo box office.

The sudden insertion of Chertoff into the story gives us another example of a grim, enduring truth: the construction of “conventional wisdom” among our media and political elites is always driven, in large part or in whole, by raw, brutal self-interest. The new CW now being assembled before our eyes is a “rejuvenation” of one of the ruling tropes of the 21st century: “Liberty bad, security good.”

II.
Here is another story in the news: in an isolated rural province in Afghanistan, 10 people were killed in a raid by American-led forces. The Afghan government, installed and sustained in power by the United States, said the victims were all civilians — including eight schoolboys.

But there was no international outcry about this incident; it barely garnered a few mentions in the global press. And even these were quickly shunted aside after a NATO official denied the claims of the Afghan government, and affirmed that all those killed in the raid were evil-doers.

…

But the NATO official said the Afghans were lying. We will never know the whole truth, of course, for the story will ultimately be controlled by the very force that carried out the attack: the American-led military occupation.

But what an instructive contrast. In one story, an attack which did not happen and which killed no one shakes the entire world. In another story, ten human beings, including eight children, were slaughtered in a sneak attack by night — and the world can scarcely be bothered to notice.

The young Muslim men, who are from the Washington DC area, were arrested in Pakistan earlier this month. Pakistani police and government officials have made a series of escalating and, at times, seemingly contradictory claims about the men’s intentions. US officials have been far more cautious, but they, too, are looking at charging the men.

A Pakistani government official alleged on Saturday that the men had established contact with Taliban commanders and had planned to attack sites in Pakistan. Earlier, however, local police accused the five of intending to fight in Afghanistan after meeting militant leaders.

The men allegedly had a map of Chashma Barrage, a complex that along with nuclear power facilities houses a water reservoir and other structures, said Javed Islam, a senior police official in the Sargodha area of Punjab province where the men were arrested.

He stressed that they were not carrying a specific map of a nuclear power plant, but a map of the whole Chashma Barrage. The detained men had also exchanged emails about the area, Islam claimed. “We are also working to retrieve the deleted material in their computers,” he said.

Pakistan has an arsenal of nuclear weapons, but also has nuclear power plants for civilian purposes.

Any nuclear activity in Pakistan tends to come under US scrutiny after the main architect of its atomic weapons programme, Abdul Qadeer Khan, was accused of leaking sensitive nuclear secrets. But, as militancy has spread in Pakistan, officials have repeatedly insisted that the nuclear weapons programme is secure.

A Pakistani police official, Nazir Ahmad, told the Associated Press that the force would ask the courts to charge the five men with collecting and attempting to collect material to carry out terrorist activities in the country. If convicted, the charges carry a sentence of from seven years to life in prison, he said.

Officials in Pakistan and America say they expect the suspects eventually to be deported back to the US, but charging the men in Pakistan could delay that process. The country’s legal system can be slow and opaque.

In an interview with the Associated Press on Saturday, Punjab province’s law minister, Rana Sanaullah, claimed the men had established contact with Taliban commanders. He said they planned to meet the Pakistani Taliban chief, Hakimullah Mehsud, and his deputy, Qari Hussain, in the tribal region before going on to attack sites inside Pakistan. The nuclear power plant “might have been” one of the targets, Sanaullah alleged.

FBI agents have been granted some access to the men, who are being held in Lahore, capital of Punjab province, and are looking into what potential charges they could face in the US. Possibilities include conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist group.

monday december 28 2009 11:59

The 54 year old man that was found dead on thursday in his flat on the Mayor Elsenlane in Rijswijk ( near The Hague )
appears to be a renowed nuclear physicist. The Italian engineer Antonio Ferrigno was brutally murdered.

A spokesperson of the Hague PD confirmed Ferrigno’s identity on monday.

Pacemaker

According to the Italian media he was a researcher at the patent bureau that is located in Rijswijk .
He did groundbreaking work in the technological development of the pacemaker.
Ferrigno was found at noon on thursday the 24th by members of his family, with his hands
tied and lying in a big pool of blood, according to “De Telegraaf”

Ex-wife

At the moment the detectives are looking specifically for witnesses who walked past the house of the
victim that day between 04h00 and 06h00 in the morning and who may have seen something suspicious.

According to eye witnesses the Italian got very few visitors other than his daughter and from time to time
a woman of Antillian descent ( probably his ex-wife)

…

When the rotor is manually braked, the supply current in the toroidal coils remains constant,

The Obama administration’s new plan to give a boost to small businesses reflects continued trouble in that sector, which is facing new failures even as much of the nation’s economy is stabilizing.

As credit lines have shrunk and consumers have cut back on spending, thousands of small businesses have closed their doors over the last year. The plight of struggling firms has been aggravated by the reluctance of banks to lend money, said Brian Headd, an economist at the Small Business Administration’s office of advocacy.

“While bankruptcies are up, overall, small-business closures are up even more,” Headd said.

California has been particularly hard hit. The latest data show small-business bankruptcies up 81% in the state for the 12 months ended Sept. 30, compared with the previous year. Filings nationwide were up 44%, according to the credit analysis firm Equifax Inc.

The actual number of small businesses in trouble is probably higher, experts said, because many owners file for personal bankruptcy rather than seek protection for the business.

Dennis McGoldrick, a bankruptcy lawyer in Torrance, said his clients are all stuck in similar situations — capital is hard to come by, customers are tough to attract and debt is piling up.

Searches generally require warrants, but courts have carved out limited categories in which they are not needed. One of these is that police officers are allowed, when they arrest people, to search them and the area immediately surrounding them, as well as some kinds of containers in their possession.

When the police arrested Antwaun Smith on drug charges they seized his cellphone and searched it, examining his call records. The police did not have a warrant or the consent of Mr. Smith.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled this month, by a 4-to-3 vote, that the search violated the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure. Rather than seeing a cellphone as a simple closed container, the majority noted that modern cellphones — especially ones that permit Internet access — are “capable of storing a wealth of digitized information.”

On the city’s east side, where auto workers once assembled cars by the millions, nature is taking back the land.

Cottonwood trees grow through the collapsed roofs of homes stripped clean for scrap metal. Wild grasses carpet the rusty shells of empty factories, now home to pheasants and wild turkeys.

This green veil is proof of how far this city has fallen from its industrial heyday and, to a small group of investors, a clear sign. Detroit, they say, needs to get back to what it was before Henry Ford moved to town: farmland.

“There’s so much land available and it’s begging to be used,” said Michael Score, president of the Hantz Farms, which is buying up abandoned sections of the city’s 139-square-mile landscape and plans to transform them into a large-scale commercial farm enterprise.

“Farming is how Detroit started,” Score said, “and farming is how Detroit can be saved.”

The urban agricultural movement has grown nationwide in recent years, as recession-fueled worries prompted people to raise fruits and vegetables to feed their families and perhaps sell at local farmers’ markets.

Large gardens and small farms — usually 10 acres or less — have cropped up in thriving cities such as Berkeley, where land is tough to come by, and struggling Rust Belt communities such as Flint, Mich., which hopes to encourage green space development and residents to eat locally grown foods.

In Detroit, hundreds of backyard gardens and scores of community gardens have blossomed and helped feed students in at least 40 schools and hundreds of families.

It is the size and scope of Hantz Farms that makes the project unique. Although company officials declined to pinpoint how many acres they might use, they have been quoted as saying that they plan to farm up to 5,000 acres within the Motor City’s limits in the coming years, raising organic lettuces, trees for biofuel and a variety of other things.

The project was launched two years ago by Michigan native and financier John Hantz, who has invested an initial $30 million of his own money toward purchasing equipment and land.

It will start small. Next spring, the farm is expected to begin growing crops on about 30 acres of land, Score said.

Because it has been difficult for Hantz and his team to purchase large contiguous parcels, much of the acreage has been grouped into smaller “pods.” Each will grow different crops, depending on the condition of the soil and what buildings remain on the land, Score said.

Hantz executives envision a city where green fields and apple orchards flourish next to houses and factories, and forests thrive alongside interstates and highways. The team is still figuring out what will grow where: Tree groves could be planted where the soil is too contaminated to grow food, and empty factory buildings may be converted to house hydroponic fields to raise specialty vegetables, fruit and cooking herbs.

“People look at these abandoned houses and think, ‘No one could live there. Let’s tear it down,’ ” said Score, a former business development consultant for Michigan State University’s agricultural extension program.

“I look at it and think, maybe we could grow mushrooms inside there.”

The idea of turning this former American manufacturing capital into an agrarian paradise is not that far-fetched, at least not with history as a guide.

The city, one of the Midwest’s oldest, began as an agricultural settlement in the early 1700s with “ribbon” farms — long, narrow stretches of land — carved out along the edge of local rivers. And until its industrial boom of the early 20th century, this swath of southeastern Michigan was covered in apple and peach orchards and miles of grapevines.

In 1910, about 80% of the 396,800 acres of Wayne County was being farmed, according to research collected by Michigan State. By 1925, as the auto industry boomed, that figure fell to 47%.

Today, fewer than 21,000 acres are being farmed.

Local leaders say they are encouraged by the idea of farm jobs coming to Detroit, which could help ease the region’s grim economic situation: The Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn area had an unemployment rate of 17.7% in October, the highest in a region of 1 million residents or more, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But local officials put the number far higher: Mayor Dave Bing recently said that nearly half of the city’s workers are either unemployed or underemployed. These officials support the effort to redevelop the estimated one-third of Detroit’s 376,000 parcels that are either vacant or abandoned.

And in a city where there are no major grocery store chains, and more than three-fourths of the residents buy their food at convenience stores or gas stations, the idea of having easy access to fresh produce is appealing.

“There is real potential for this to work, because land prices in Detroit are low and there’s a demand for local food,” said Bill Knudson, an agricultural economist at Michigan State.

“The million-dollar question is whether that local-food trend is permanent,” Knudson said. “If it is, then this plan works because you have more than a million consumers in the city and nearby areas to sell to. If not, you’re going to have a hard time getting enough acreage put together to make the costs of running a commercial operation feasible.”

City officials also remain cautious about the project. They point out that commercial farming brings with it numerous hurdles that other commercial projects don’t.

Their concerns include figuring out who would pay for cleaning pollutants out of the soil and removing utility infrastructure, such as gas and sewer lines; how to rewrite the city’s zoning laws; and how to adjust property tax rates and property values to allow for commercial farming.

“Urban farming will be part of Detroit’s long-term redevelopment plan,” Bing said in a statement.