Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors
November 14th, 2011Via: Vimeo:
Lower Manhattan’s 60 Hudson Street is one of the world’s most concentrated hubs of Internet connectivity. This short documentary peeks inside, offering a glimpse of the massive material infrastructure that makes the Internet possible.
Why Is China Building These Gigantic Structures In the Middle of the Desert?
November 14th, 2011Via: Gizmodo:
New photos have appeared in Google Maps showing unidentified titanic structures in the middle of the Chinese desert. The first one is an intricate network of what appears to be huge metallic stripes. Is this a military experiment?
More: Wired: More Mammoth (and Mysterious) Structures Found in China’s Desert
Ustream Mobile Package
November 14th, 2011The cops are about to swarm Occupy Oakland. I was just watching the Occupy Oakland live stream and it’s a really clear stream. As I was wondering how the person was pulling it off, he started to talk about it. He’s using a system called the Ustream Mobile Package. It load balances the stream over six mobile broadband modems on three carriers.
It’s too bad that the police can have the mobile networks shut down at their whim.
Congress: Trading Stock on Inside Information
November 14th, 2011Via: CBS:
Washington, D.C. is a town that runs on inside information – but should our elected officials be able to use that information to pad their own pockets? As Steve Kroft reports, members of Congress and their aides have regular access to powerful political intelligence, and many have made well-timed stock market trades in the very industries they regulate.
Chairman of the European Branch of the Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg Member Becomes Leader of Italy
November 14th, 2011Via: Reuters:
Mario Monti, the economist who will head an emergency Italian government following the departure of Silvio Berlusconi, brings credentials earned in a decade of battles as a European Commissioner from the 1990s.
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He is chairman of the European branch of the Trilateral Commission, a body that brings together the power elites of the United States, Europe and Japan and is also a member of the secretive Bilderberg Group of business leaders and other “leading citizens”.
$433-Million Bogus Smallpox Drug Deal for Large Democratic Party Contributor
November 13th, 2011Via: Los Angeles Times:
Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work.
Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world’s richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor.
When Siga complained that contracting specialists at the Department of Health and Human Services were resisting the company’s financial demands, senior officials replaced the government’s lead negotiator for the deal, interviews and documents show.
When Siga was in danger of losing its grip on the contract a year ago, the officials blocked other firms from competing.
Siga was awarded the final contract in May through a “sole-source” procurement in which it was the only company asked to submit a proposal. The contract calls for Siga to deliver 1.7 million doses of the drug for the nation’s biodefense stockpile. The price of approximately $255 per dose is well above what the government’s specialists had earlier said was reasonable, according to internal documents and interviews.
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Siga’s drug, an antiviral pill called ST-246, would be used to treat people who were diagnosed with smallpox too late for the vaccine to help. Yet the new drug cannot be tested for effectiveness in people because of ethical constraints — and no one knows whether animal testing could prove it would work in humans.
The government’s pursuit of Siga’s product raises the question: Should the U.S. buy an unproven drug for such a nebulous threat?
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Dr. Thomas M. Mack, an epidemiologist at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, battled smallpox outbreaks in Pakistan and has advised the Food and Drug Administration on the virus. He called the plan to stockpile Siga’s drug “a waste of time and a waste of money.”
A New, Permanent Presence of U.S. Troops on Australian Soil
November 12th, 2011Via: ABC News:
Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has refused to give details of the extra military ties expected to be announced when US president Barack Obama visits Darwin next week.
Media reports suggest Mr Obama will announce the US will begin rotating Marines through a base in Darwin, with a new permanent presence on Australian soil.
Mr Rudd was asked today if he would confirm the report and he was very diplomatic in his response, but less so in comments directed at the Greens who have suggested any decision to boost US troop numbers should be put before Parliament.
Australia and the US have been working together for a year on ways to boost military cooperation.
They want to bring in more US troops to strategic areas including Darwin, as well as increase the number of joint exercises and the amount of training.
Mr Obama will announce the details during his visit. Defence Minister Stephen Smith has called it the biggest operational addition to the alliance since the 1980s.
Mystery Radiation Detected ‘Across Europe’
November 12th, 2011Via: ABC News:
The hunt is on for the source of low level radiation detected in the atmosphere “across Europe” over the past weeks, nuclear officials said today.
Trace amounts of iodine-131, a type of radiation created during the operation of nuclear reactors or in the detonation of a nuclear weapon, were detected as early as three weeks ago by Austrian authorities and then two weeks ago by the Czech Republic’s State Office for Nuclear Safety. Today the International Atomic Energy Agency released a statement revealing similar detections had been made “in other locations across Europe.”
The IAEA said the current levels of iodine-131 are far too low to warrant a public health risk, but the agency still does not know the origin of the apparent leak and an official with the agency would not say where else it has been detected. Considering iodine-131 has a radioactive decay half-life of about eight days, continued detection means the leak occurred over a period of several days at least and is possibly ongoing.
The IAEA said it does not believe the radiation was left over from the nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant in March and the Czech Republic’s State Office for Nuclear Safety said it was unlikely to have been caused by an incident at any nuclear plant’s core. A meltdown there, the Czech agency said, would have released several other radioactive isotopes in addition to iodine-131.
Gitmo Costs $800K/Year Per Detainee
November 11th, 2011Via: Mother Jones:
The Miami Herald’s Carol Rosenberg, returning to Gitmo for the arraignment of alleged USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, reports how much the island prison is costing American taxpayers these days.
The Pentagon detention center that started out in January 2002 as a collection of crude open-air cells guarded by Marines in a muddy tent city is today arguably the most expensive prison on earth, costing taxpayers $800,000 annually for each of the 171 captives by Obama administration reckoning.
That’s more than 30 times the cost of keeping a captive on U.S. soil.
U.S. Soldier Gets Life Sentence for ‘Thrill-Killings’ of Afghan Civilians
November 11th, 2011Via: AP:
A military jury sentenced an Afghan war veteran to life in prison after the Army staff sergeant was convicted of murder, conspiracy and other charges in the deaths of civilians, in one of the most gruesome cases to emerge from the conflict.
Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, of Billings, Mont., was accused of exhorting his bored underlings to slaughter three Afghan civilians for sport.
The jury for the court martial at Joint Base Lewis-McChord south of Seattle sentenced Gibbs Thursday to life in prison, but he will be eligible for parole in less than nine years.
