Britain: Planning Underway for Immigration Controls if Euro Collapses
May 26th, 2012Via: Telegraph:
The Government is drawing up plans for emergency immigration controls to curb an influx of Greeks and other European Union residents if the euro collapses, the Home Secretary discloses today.
Texas: Students Will Be Tracked Via Chips in IDs
May 25th, 2012Via: My San Antonio:
Northside Independent School District plans to track students next year on two of its campuses using technology implanted in their student identification cards in a trial that could eventually include all 112 of its schools and all of its nearly 100,000 students.
District officials said the Radio Frequency Identification System (RFID) tags would improve safety by allowing them to locate students — and count them more accurately at the beginning of the school day to help offset cuts in state funding, which is partly based on attendance.
Defrocked Priest Now TSA Supervisor at Philadelphia International Airport
May 25th, 2012Via: CBS:
The CBS 3 I-Team has learned that a Catholic priest who was removed from the ministry over sex abuse allegations now holds a sensitive security post at Philadelphia International Airport.
The security checkpoint between Terminals D and E is a busy place where thousands of people – including lots of kids – pass through every day. But you might not believe who the I-Team observed working as a TSA supervisor at that checkpoint this week: Thomas Harkins.
Until 2002, Harkins was a Catholic priest working at churches across South Jersey. But the Diocese of Camden removed him from ministry because it found he sexually abused two young girls. Now, in a new lawsuit, a third woman is claiming she also is one of Harkins’ victims.
The I-Team asked Harkins about the suit as he was leaving his shift at the airport.
“I have nothing to say,” was Harkins’ reply.
Spain: Bankia Shares Suspended Ahead of Rescue Details
May 25th, 2012Via: Reuters:
Shares in Spain’s fourth-biggest lender Bankia SA were suspended on the Madrid stock exchange on Friday, ahead of an evening announcement when the bank is expected to ask the state for a rescue of more than 15 billion euros (12 billion pounds).
The government is in the process of nationalising Bankia, which holds some 10 percent of the country’s bank deposits, after it was unable to raise enough capital to cover heavy losses from loans to property developers during a building boom that crashed in 2007-2008.
Update: Bankia Group to Seek EU19 Billion From Government to Restructure
Real U.S. Deficit in 2011: $5 Trillion
May 24th, 2012Via: USA Today:
The typical American household would have paid nearly all of its income in taxes last year to balance the budget if the government used standard accounting rules to compute the deficit, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
Under those accounting practices, the government ran red ink last year equal to $42,054 per household — nearly four times the official number reported under unique rules set by Congress.
A U.S. household’s median income is $49,445, the Census reports.
The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.
John Brennan Manages The Obama Regime’s Assassination List
May 24th, 2012Via: The Atlantic:
“White House counterterror chief John Brennan has seized the lead in choosing which terrorists will be targeted for drone attacks or raids, establishing a new procedure for both military and CIA targets,” Kimberly Dozier of the Associated Press reports. “The effort concentrates power over the use of lethal U.S. force outside war zones within one small team at the White House … Under the new plan, Brennan’s staff compiles the potential target list and runs the names past agencies such as the State Department at a weekly White House meeting.”
…
So to sum up, Barack Obama insists while campaigning that “enhanced-interrogation techniques” are a euphemism for illegal, immoral torture that makes us less rather than more safe from terrorism, and insists that the Bush Administration was imprudent for using those tactics.
After being elected, Obama forbids those tactics from being used.
And he names as a top counterterrorism adviser someone who advocated the tactics he regards as imprudent and immoral — ultimately entrusting him with more power than anyone else to decide whether various figures should be assassinated by our classified flying robot army.
Nocera’s Artificial Leaf Not Viable for Now
May 24th, 2012Via: Nature:
Not all prototypes make it out of the laboratory, but the ‘artificial leaf’ is so elegant that its design seems to beg for commercial production. Described in Science last year1 by a team led by Dan Nocera at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the catalyst-coated wafer is a silicon version of a photosynthesizing leaf: it turns sunlight into storable fuel by splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen.
But Sun Catalytix, the company founded in Cambridge off the back of Nocera’s work, says that it won’t be scaling up the prototype for field tests. The device offers few savings over other ways to make hydrogen from sunlight, the company says.
“We have to be focused on what will be durably better than conventional ways to make renewable hydrogen,” explains chief technology officer Tom Jarvi. Hydrogen from a solar panel and electrolysis unit can currently be made for about US$7 per kilogram, the firm estimates; the artificial leaf would come in at $6.50. (It costs just $1–2 to make a kilogram of hydrogen from fossil fuels).
With the prices of solar cells dropping all the time, the firm is not going to make a heavy investment that’s unlikely to pay off. Instead, it is looking at cheaper designs — but these require yet-to-be-invented semiconductor materials. So for the moment, “the artificial leaf is in the fridge”, Sun Catalytix chemist Joep Pijpers says.
FBI Quietly Forms Secretive Net-Surveillance Unit
May 24th, 2012My guess is that this headline should read, “Sheepdipped NSA Sources and Methods Now Used for Domestic Law Enforcement.”
Via: Cnet:
CNET has learned that the FBI has formed a Domestic Communications Assistance Center, which is tasked with developing new electronic surveillance technologies, including intercepting Internet, wireless, and VoIP communications.
Research Credit: almaverdad2
H.R. 4133: The United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012
May 24th, 2012Via: Antiwar.com:
Go to Google and type in “H.R. 4133.” You will discover that, apart from a handful of blogs and alternative news sites, not a single mainstream medium has reported the story of a congressional bill that might well have major impact on the conduct of United States foreign policy. H.R. 4133, the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012, was introduced into the House of Representatives of the 112th Congress on March 5 “to express the sense of Congress regarding the United States-Israel strategic relationship, to direct the president to submit to Congress reports on United States actions to enhance this relationship and to assist in the defense of Israel, and for other purposes.” The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) reportedly helped draft the bill, and its co-sponsors include Republicans Eric Cantor and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Democrats Howard Berman and Steny Hoyer. Hoyer is the Democratic whip in the House of Representatives, where Cantor is majority leader. Ros-Lehtinen heads the Foreign Affairs Committee.
The House bill basically provides Israel with a blank check drawn on the U.S. taxpayer to maintain its “qualitative military edge” over all of its neighbors combined. It requires the White House to prepare an annual report on how that superiority is being maintained. The resolution passed on May 9 by a vote of 411–2 on a “suspension of the rules,” which is intended for non-controversial legislation requiring little debate and a quick vote.
Research Credit: anchoviesmegma
Former J.P. Morgan Lobbyist Manages Banking Committee Expected To Investigate J.P. Morgan’s Trading Loss
May 24th, 2012Via: Republic Report:
The Senate Banking Committee is responding to outrage over the news that J.P. Morgan lost some $3 billion in customer money because of a risky trading strategy. The committee is preparing for two hearings with regulators, and Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD), chair of the committee, is hoping that Jamie Dimon will testify in the near future. “Our due diligence has made it clear that the Banking Committee should hear directly from JPMorgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon,” Johnson said in a statement last week.
Luckily for Dimon, the professional staff in charge of managing the banking committee will be quite familiar to him and his team of lobbyists. That’s because the staff director for the Senate Banking Committee is none other than a former J.P. Morgan lobbyist, Dwight Fettig.
In 2009, Fettig was a registered lobbyist for J.P. Morgan. His disclosures show that he was hired to work on “financial services regulatory reform” and the “Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2009? on behalf of the investment bank. Now, as staff director for the Senate Banking Committee, he will be overseeing the hearings on J.P. Morgan’s risky proprietary trading.
Research Credit: anchoviesmegma
