Rights Groups Say Some U.S. Drone Strikes May Be War Crimes
October 23rd, 2013Via: Wired:
Two prominent human rights groups today blasted America’s drone wars in Pakistan and Yemen, painting a grim picture of massive civilian deaths and potentially grave violations of international law.
One report by Amnesty International (“Will I Be Next?“) focuses on recent drone strikes in Pakistan while the other, by Human Rights Watch (“Between a Drone and al-Qaeda“), centers on Yemen.
Obama’s Staged / Fake Fainting Antics
October 23rd, 2013Via: YouTube:
Not Round Up Ready: El Salvador Votes to Ban Glyphostate
October 23rd, 2013Via: GM Watch:
El Salvador has voted to ban glyphosate, the pesticide that most GM crops are designed to be grown with, along with 52 other chemicals.
Nuclear Officers Napped With Blast Door Left Open
October 23rd, 2013
WOPR will get results
Via: AP:
Air Force officers entrusted with the launch keys to long-range nuclear missiles have been caught twice this year leaving open a blast door that is intended to help prevent a terrorist or other intruder from entering their underground command post, Air Force officials said.
The blast doors are never to be left open if one of the crew members inside is asleep — as was the case in both these instances — out of concern for the trouble an intruder could cause, including the compromising of secret launch codes.
Saudi Arabia Set for Diplomatic Shift Away from U.S.
October 23rd, 2013Via: Guardian:
Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief has said the kingdom will make a “major shift” in dealings with the US in protest at perceived American inaction over the Syria war and its overtures to Iran, a source close to Saudi policy said on Tuesday.
The source said that Prince Bandar bin Sultan had told European diplomats that Washington had failed to act effectively on the Syria crisis and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was growing closer to Tehran and had failed to back Saudi support for Bahrain when it crushed a 2011 anti-government revolt.
It was not immediately clear whether Prince Bandar’s reported statements had the full backing of King Abdullah.
In an unprecedented move last week, Saudi Arabia rejected its first offer of a seat on the UN security council and denounced the UN for failing to resolve world conflicts. The move appeared largely directed at the US.
“The shift away from the US is a major one,” the source said on Tuesday. “Saudi doesn’t want to find itself any longer in a situation where it is dependent.
“Prince Bandar told diplomats that he plans to limit interaction with the US. This happened after the US failed to take any effective action on Syria and Palestine.
“Relations with the US have been deteriorating for a while, as Saudi feels that the US is growing closer with Iran and the US also failed to support Saudi during the Bahrain uprising.”
The source declined to provide more details of Bandar’s talks with the diplomats, which took place in the past few days. But he suggested that the planned change in relations would have wide-ranging consequences, including on arms purchases and oil sales.
Many US economic interests in Saudi Arabia involve government contracts in defence, other security sectors, healthcare, education, information technology and construction.
Research Credit: cgroove69
Meet CGI Federal, the Company Behind the Botched Launch of HealthCare.gov
October 23rd, 2013Via: Washington Post:
Over the past few weeks, if you’ve been paying attention at all to the unfolding disaster of people trying and failing to sign up for Obamacare online, one name keeps coming up: CGI Federal, the IT contractor that has orchestrated most of the Healthcare.gov Web site. By most accounts, it’s been a complete train wreck, for reasons both technical and bureaucratic.
Research Credit: ottilie
The Sixth Stage of Collapse
October 23rd, 2013Dmitry We’re-Fucked-No-Matter-What Orlov outlines how the light at the end of the civilization tunnel is the train.
Via: Club Orlov:
A solution for avoiding the sixth stage must be found, but I don’t know what that solution would look like. I do find it unsafe to blithely assume that collapse will simply take care of the problem for us. Some people may find this subject matter so depressing that it makes them want to lie down (in a comfortable position, on something warm and soft) and die.
Research Credit: cgroove69
U.S. Dollar Tanks
October 22nd, 2013Via: Reuters:
The dollar slid to a two-year low against the euro and a measure of global equity markets rose for a fifth session in a row on Tuesday after weak U.S. jobs data reinforced expectations the Federal Reserve will keep its easy-money policy intact into 2014.
The Rise of Geoengineering
October 22nd, 2013Via: Independent:
Geoengineering technologies are the stuff of Hollywood disaster movies. Researchers have suggested sending a giant glass sunshade into space to reflect light; the eruption of artificial volcanoes, or spraying of sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere; dissolving mountains and putting remains in the sea; and, least dramatically, perhaps, filing the ocean with iron filings to stimulate algae blooms.
Fructose: The Poison Index
October 21st, 2013Via: Guardian:
The battle over the compound fructose now reaches new levels of obfuscation. The food industry is a strong – and loud, and rich – proponent, hard to ignore. The European Food and Safety Agency has just weighed in, in favour of the substitution of sucrose (table sugar: a disaccharide composed of the monosaccharides glucose and fructose) with fructose alone, the sweeter of the two – even to the point of allowing health claims for fructose on the packaging of processed foods.
And yet the scientific data on fructose says it is one of the most egregious components of the western diet, directly contributing to heart disease and diabetes, and associated with cancer and dementia. Nature magazine has just published a scathing indictment of fructose by Dr Lewis Cantley, one of the US’s leading cancer researchers. But the EFSA says it sees no harm, justifying its stance on the basis that fructose has a lower glycaemic index than glucose.
