Finland Finds 69 Patriot Missiles, Declared as ‘Fireworks’, on China-Bound Ship
December 23rd, 2011Unnamed German government source claims: Nothing to see here.
Via: Washington Post / AP:
A shipment of 69 surface-to-air missiles impounded by Finnish authorities was a legitimate delivery from Germany to South Korea, a German official said Thursday.
The announcement came after Finnish authorities seized the Patriot missiles and 160 tons of explosives on a British-registered cargo ship and detained two Ukrainian crew members on suspicion of violating weapons export laws.
Police said the missiles didn’t have the right transit documents and the explosive picric acid wasn’t properly stored on the M/S Thor Liberty, which docked in Kotka, southern Finland, on Dec. 15.
A spokesman for Germany’s Defense Ministry said the missiles were an official shipment that was fully declared and had all necessary clearings from German authorities.
“Those patriot guided missiles are from the Bundeswehr’s stocks and have been shipped to South Korea” according to an intergovernmental treaty, he said, declining to be named in line with government policy.
He said no explosives were part of the shipment and he didn’t have any information on that part of the impounded cargo.
Finnish officials said the explosives were destined for China. Markku Koskinen, the director of traffic operations at the port of Kotka, said they were deficiently packed in wooden boxes on open pallets and would be moved to metal containers in line with rules on the maritime transport of explosives.
“We will do that as soon as the customs inspectors allow us to,” Koskinen told The Associated Press. “Otherwise, the shipment of explosives was legitimate and can continue on its way to China as soon as it’s safely packed.”
The ship sailed from the north German port of Emden on Dec. 13 and was en route to China, Finnish officials said. It docked in Kotka to pick up a cargo of anchor chains and an old paper machine.
Finnish officials impounded the cargo Wednesday and launched an investigation. Detective Superintendent Timo Virtanen said the ship’s captain and first mate were detained.
“The missiles did not have the appropriate transit papers,” Virtanen said. “We are questioning all the other 11 crew members who are also Ukrainians.”
Klaus Kaartinen, spokesman for the National Bureau of Investigation, said Finnish police and customs would continue their investigation into the cargo.
“Even if the missile cargo is a legitimate shipment, from a Finnish point of view the law has probably been broken because it was not properly declared,” Kaartinen said. “Also, the explosives were stored improperly.”
U.S. Formally Declares End of Iraq War; Baghdad Explosions Kill at Least 63
December 22nd, 2011Panetta declared the war over. And then…
Via: Washington Post:
More than a dozen explosions in Baghdad on Thursday killed at least 63 people — the first major violence in Iraq since the U.S. completed its troop pullout.
At least 194 people were reported injured in the two-hour spate of bombings, said officials at the Ministry of Interior, who were speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The violence comes just days after the end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq, and in the midst of an ongoing governmental emergency in which sectarian rifts and ethnic tension threaten to rip apart the country’s fragile ruling coalition.
Local Cops Ready for War With Homeland Security-Funded Military Weapons
December 22nd, 2011Via: Daily Beast:
Like Fargo, thousands of other local police departments nationwide have been amassing stockpiles of military-style equipment in the name of homeland security, aided by more than $34 billion in federal grants since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a Daily Beast investigation conducted by the Center for Investigative Reporting has found.
The buying spree has transformed local police departments into small, army-like forces, and put intimidating equipment into the hands of civilian officers. And that is raising questions about whether the strategy has gone too far, creating a culture and capability that jeopardizes public safety and civil rights while creating an expensive false sense of security.
BlueHost: $2.95 Per Month [???]
December 22nd, 2011Update: The $2.95 Special Is Over
Well, that didn’t take long.
—End Update—
I have no idea what’s happening over at BlueHost right now, but the site is saying $2.95 per month for the hosting package that includes unlimited storage, bandwidth, domains, etc. This is the same plan that I use to host Cryptogon and my other sites.
$2.95, really?
Even if you don’t know anything about websites, or have any desire to run one (or several), if you sign up for a year of hosting, BlueHost will pay me $90. You read that right, believe it or not. You pay about $35 for a year of hosting, BlueHost pays me a $90 commission.
Chances are, you don’t believe this, but here’s what I think is happening: To survive in the webhosting business, companies need to get blood on their knuckles. The competition is just savage. I think that’s what’s happening here. Anyway, you win by getting a ridiculously good hosting package for $2.95 per month, and I get $90.
Click this link to sign up for hosting with BlueHost and earn Cryptogon $90.
If you’re wondering if shared hosting is suitable for your small business or your clients’ small businesses, check out Cryptogon’s traffic and keep in mind that this site is dynamic (making continuous use of mysql and loading off site content). In other words, BlueHost likely offers plenty of hosting power for your small business at a fraction of what you’re paying now.
Here’s Cryptogon’s uptime (widget is live) on the same hosting package that you can get for $2.95 right now:
It’s hard to believe, but there it is.
TSA Screenings Aren’t Just for Airports Anymore
December 21st, 2011Via: Los Angeles Times:
The Transportation Security Administration isn’t just in airports anymore. TSA teams are increasingly conducting searches and screenings at train stations, subways, ferry terminals and other mass transit locations around the country.
“We are not the Airport Security Administration,” said Ray Dineen, the air marshal in charge of the TSA office in Charlotte. “We take that transportation part seriously.”
FBI Says Activists Who Investigate Factory Farms Can Be Prosecuted as Terrorists
December 21st, 2011Via: Green Is The New Red:
The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force has kept files on activists who expose animal welfare abuses on factory farms and recommended prosecuting them as terrorists, according to a new document uncovered through the Freedom of Information Act.
14,000 U.S. Deaths Tied to Fukushima Reactor Disaster Fallout [???]
December 21st, 2011Update: Editor at Scientific American Claims This Research Is Flawed
—End Update—
Via: Press Release / International Journal of Health Services:
An estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the United States are linked to the radioactive fallout from the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan, according to a major new article in the December 2011 edition of the International Journal of Health Services. This is the first peer-reviewed study published in a medical journal documenting the health hazards of Fukushima.Authors Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman note that their estimate of 14,000 excess U.S. deaths in the 14 weeks after the Fukushima meltdowns is comparable to the 16,500 excess deaths in the 17 weeks after the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. The rise in reported deaths after Fukushima was largest among U.S. infants under age one. The 2010-2011 increase for infant deaths in the spring was 1.8 percent, compared to a decrease of 8.37 percent in the preceding 14 weeks.The IJHS article will be published Tuesday and will be available online as of 11 a.m. EST at http://www.radiation.org .
Research Credit: roaches
Russian Space Agency Bans Employees from Traveling Abroad
December 21st, 2011The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
—William Faulkner
Coming up next: Consequences for the families of those who leave anyway.
Via: AFP:
They may be working to reach the final frontier, but employees of Russian space agency Roscosmos face going no further than Russia for their holidays.
Roscosmos’ new chief Vladimir Popovkin has imposed a formal ban on managers and staff employed by its rocket-making subsidiaries taking holidays abroad, the Izvestia daily said, quoting an internal directive.
The Soviet-style edict applies to workers who are judged to have knowledge of particularly important or secret information connected to Russia’s rocket industry.
It applies not only to subsidiaries of Roscosmos but also companies with which it has concluded contracts for work deemed to be of a sensitive nature, Izvestia said.
The only exception, it said, is if an employee can prove that they are in need of medical treatment abroad that is unavailable in Russia.
“This is an official document and it is part of other official rules about questions of ensuring security,” the head of public relations at Roscosmos Alexei Kuznetsov told the newspaper.
…
Their foreign travel passports will be kept by their company and only given out after a number of bureaucratic formalities are fulfilled.
University Prepares to Publish Details of How it Created Flu That Could Kill Millions
December 20th, 2011Is this laying the groundwork for the release of the real one that .mil has probably had sitting around for years???
Flashback: U.S. Researchers Trying to Create Pandemic Avian Flu.
Via: Independent:
A deadly strain of bird flu with the potential to infect and kill millions of people has been created in a laboratory by European scientists – who now want to publish full details of how they did it.
The discovery has prompted fears within the US Government that the knowledge will fall into the hands of terrorists wanting to use it as a bio-weapon of mass destruction.
Some scientists are questioning whether the research should ever have been undertaken in a university laboratory, instead of at a military facility.
The US Government is now taking advice on whether the information is too dangerous to be published.
To see the graphic: The last outbreak – A deadly virus even before the latest twist
“The fear is that if you create something this deadly and it goes into a global pandemic, the mortality and cost to the world could be massive,” a senior scientific adviser to the US Government told The Independent, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“The worst-case scenario here is worse than anything you can imagine.”
For the first time the researchers have been able to mutate the H5N1 strain of avian influenza so that it can be transmitted easily through the air in coughs and sneezes. Until now, it was thought that H5N1 bird flu could only be transmitted between humans via very close physical contact.
Dutch scientists carried out the controversial research to discover how easy it was to genetically mutate H5N1 into a highly infectious “airborne” strain of human flu. They believe that the knowledge gained will be vital for the development of new vaccines and drugs.
But critics say the scientists have endangered the world by creating a highly dangerous form of flu which could escape from the laboratory – as well as opening a Pandora’s box for fanatical terrorists wishing to make a bio-weapon.
Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy — Martin Lindstrom
December 20th, 2011This looks like a good one. (As I link to it using my Amazon affiliate code. *chuckle*)
Via: Amazon:
From the bestselling author of Buyology comes a shocking insider’s look at how today’s global giants conspire to obscure the truth and manipulate our minds, all in service of persuading us to buy.
