The Postwar Photographs that British Authorities Tried to Keep Hidden
January 24th, 2007Via: Guardian:
For almost 60 years, the evidence of Britain’s clandestine torture programme in postwar Germany has lain hidden in the government’s files. Harrowing photographs of young men who had survived being systematically starved, as well as beaten, deprived of sleep and exposed to extreme cold, were considered too shocking to be seen.
As one minister of the day wrote, as few people as possible should be aware that British authorities had treated prisoners “in a manner reminiscent of the German concentration camps”.
Many other photographs known to have been taken have vanished from the archives, and even this year some government officials were arguing that none should be published.
The pictures show suspected communists who were tortured in an attempt to gather information about Soviet military intentions and intelligence methods at a time when some British officials were convinced that a third world war was only months away.
Others interrogated at the same prison, at Bad Nenndorf, near Hanover, included Nazis, prominent German industrialists of the Hitler era, and former members of the SS.
At least two men suspected of being communists were starved to death, at least one was beaten to death, others suffered serious illness or injuries, and many lost toes to frostbite.
Microsoft Offers Cash for Wikipedia Edit
January 24th, 2007Can’t bribe em’? Just get the crappy browser to declare them a phishing site!
Via: Yahoo/AP:
Microsoft Corp. landed in the Wikipedia doghouse Tuesday after it offered to pay a blogger to change technical articles on the community-produced Web encyclopedia site.
While Wikipedia is known as the encyclopedia that anyone can tweak, founder Jimmy Wales and his cadre of volunteer editors, writers and moderators have blocked public-relations firms, campaign workers and anyone else perceived as having a conflict of interest from posting fluff or slanting entries. So paying for Wikipedia copy is considered a definite no-no.
“We were very disappointed to hear that Microsoft was taking that approach,” Wales said.
Military Builds Robotic Insects
January 24th, 2007Explosive payloads coming soon.
Via: Wired:
If you feel something crawling on your neck, it might be a wasp or a bee. Or it might be something much more dangerous.
Israel is developing a robot the size of a hornet to attack terrorists. And although the prototype will not fly for three years, killer Micro Air Vehicles, or MAVs, are much closer than that.
British Special Forces already use 6-inch MAV aircraft called WASPs for reconnaissance in Afghanistan. The $3,000 WASP is operated with a Gameboy-style controller and is nearly silent, so it can get very close without being detected. A new development will reportedly see the WASP fitted with a C4 explosive warhead for kamikaze attacks on snipers. One newspaper dubbed it “The Talibanator.”
U.S. Sends Second Carrier Group to Persian Gulf, Warns Iran About Trying to Dominate Region
January 24th, 2007I’d like to believe that a group of admirals and generals will say, “Enough. We’re not doing this,” buying the world a bit more time.
But time for what?
Maybe humanity just needs to learn this lesson the hard way. Again.
Via: AP/MyWay:
A second U.S. aircraft carrier strike group now steaming toward the Middle East is Washington’s way of warning Iran to back down in its attempts to dominate the region, a top U.S. diplomat said here Tuesday.
Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, ruled out direct negotiations with Iran and said a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran was “not possible” until Iran halts uranium enrichment.
“The Middle East isn’t a region to be dominated by Iran. The Gulf isn’t a body of water to be controlled by Iran. That’s why we’ve seen the United States station two carrier battle groups in the region,” Burns said in an address to the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, an influential think-tank.
“Iran is going to have to understand that the United States will protect its interests if Iran seeks to confront us,” Burns continued.
DID THE U.S. JUST FORCE IRAN TO STOP ACCEPTING DOLLARS FOR OIL?
January 24th, 2007Remember all the endless talk about the Iranian Oil Bourse and the shift to the eruo?
It appears that the U.S. just forced the issue and sent Iran down that road!
It’s hard to know if the White House has completely lost it, or if there is actually a forward looking plan. Because, right now, Bush seems determined to deliver a kill shot to the U.S. dollar.
Maybe that’s what they want: National Debt? Here you go. Here’s what we owe you. Print N number of dollars, hand them over. Thanks for doin’ bidness with us!
Meanwhile, it will cost you $500 to fill your moped.
Is it time for the Amero?
I don’t know. I’m at a loss on this one, guys. Help me out here…
Via: Iran Focus/AFP:
TEHRAN, Jan 23, 2007 (AFP) – Iran’s major banks said Tuesday they have halted the transfer of dollars abroad as a result of US financial sanctions and fears the money may be seized by the US authorities.
“On Monday, we received a directive asking us not to make any dollar transfers abroad,” an official in the Export Development Bank of Iran told AFP on condition of anonymity.
“Our customers can have accounts opened up in dollars and receive transfers in dollars. But we do not make any more transfers abroad in dollars,” he added.
The halt on transfers was confirmed by an official in one of the branches of Mellat Bank, one of the largest in the country.
Iran announced in December it would replace the dollar with the euro in foreign transactions and state-held foreign assets, in an apparent response to mounting US pressure on its banks.
The United States has blacklisted at least two Iranian banks amid a mounting standoff between the West and Tehran over its controversial nuclear programme that led to the imposition of UN sanctions last month.
U.S. TO DOUBLE SIZE OF STRATEGIC PETROLEUM RESERVE
January 23rd, 2007Well, well, well…
And this is the energy plan for the future…
Via: Bloomberg:
Crude oil surged the most since hurricanes devastated the Gulf of Mexico coast in September 2005 after the U.S. said it will double the size of the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The reserve will increase from its current capacity of 727 million barrels of oil to 1.5 billion barrels over the next two decades, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said today. Bodman said the U.S. will start buying 100,000 barrels of oil a day this spring to expand the stockpile. Prices rose earlier because cooler U.S. weather will increase fuel use.
“Doubling the size of the SPR would add significant upward pressure on oil prices,” said Jason Schenker, an economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina. “It would remove a significant amount of supply from the market. Refiners will have to spend more to get the available barrels.”
Crude oil for March delivery rose $2.46, or 4.7 percent, to $55.04 a barrel, on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest close since Jan. 9. It was the biggest one-day gain since Sept. 19, 2005. Prices are 19 percent lower than a year ago.
The U.S. reserve and similar stockpiles in Europe and Asia are held to make up for disruptions of global oil supplies. The U.S. tapped reserves in 1991 after Iraq invaded Kuwait and in 2005 after hurricanes disrupted pipelines, refineries and Gulf of Mexico production.
“We will have to fill the reserve at the rate of 100,000 barrels a day for the next 20 years,” said Robert Ebel, chairman of the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
China Will Use Cash Reserves to Buy “Strategic Resources”
January 23rd, 2007Via: Bloomberg:
China, the world’s biggest consumer of coal and metals, will use its foreign exchange reserves to buy “strategic” resources, Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan said.
The government will increase the nation’s purchases of resources for strategic stockpiling when there are “plentiful” reserves, Zeng said in a speech carried on the Ministry of Land and Resources Web site today.
China is seeking to boost returns on its $1 trillion of reserves by buying higher yielding assets and diversifying its investment. Premier Wen Jiabao said last week that regulators will consider more ways of using the cash pile. The nation is building an emergency supply of crude oil and plans to expand that to metals to shield the world’s fastest-growing major economy from supply disruptions.
Think Your Doctor Knows Best? Think Medical Science is on Your Side? Think again!
January 23rd, 2007Via: Avanoo:
The average life expectancy in the United States is 77.85 years, which ranks forty-sixth highest in the world. Among the countries with higher life expectancies are Guam and Puerto Rico, both of which are under U.S. control, but don’t have nearly the same “quality†of health care that is provided in U.S. states.
Per capita, more centenarians (people 100 or over) live in Dominica, a small third-world Caribbean island, than anywhere else. Most of them live active, rural lifestyles and have little or no access to Western medicine or health care.
How is it that the United States, which spends more money on health care than any other country, isn’t able to compete with third world countries and territories that don’t have nearly the same access to modern conveniences, modern medicines, or modern treatments?
Perhaps my own life experience can help us to better understand what’s going on here.
Corruption: Police in Tijuana Issued Sling Shots
January 23rd, 2007Uhhhh…
Via: Yahoo/AP:
TIJUANA, Mexico – The police department has issued about 60 slingshots to officers in the violent border city of Tijuana, where soldiers confiscated police weapons two weeks ago on allegations of collusion with drug traffickers.
Municipal police spokesman Fernando Bojorquez said Monday that the slingshots, along with bags of ballbearings, were given to officers patrolling areas of the city visited by tourists.
Tijuana’s police force of 2,000 officers has been without guns since Jan. 5, but some patrol alongside armed state police.
President Felipe Calderon sent 3,300 soldiers and federal police to Tijuana at the beginning of January to hunt down drug gangs. The soldiers swept police stations and took officers’ guns for inspection amid allegations by federal investigators that a corrupt network of officers supports smugglers who traffic drugs into the U.S. The weapons are still being checked.
EEstor: More Clues Emerge
January 23rd, 2007In Pay No Attention to the General as “Liberals” Launch Green Energy Fund, I attempted to show that EEstor is a “connected” front for the release of military technology into the private sector. Now, in the following MIT Technology Review article, we learn that EEstor’s CEO previously worked for TRW. Although TRW has been sold off into several companies, for decades TRW served as one of the main vectors for delivering military technology to the private sector (automotive, electronics, telecom); that is, privatizing innovations that had been developed in secret, with public funds.
To sum up: We have a company developing the “holy grail” of energy storage devices, with a CEO who formerly worked for TRW, with the financial backing of a venture capital firm that has Colin Powell, a former four star U.S. Army general and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on its board. In Texas.
Richard Weir, EEStor’s cofounder and chief executive, says he would prefer to keep a low profile and let the results of his company’s innovation speak for themselves.
No shit.
Indeed, people might be so dazzled by the black box that they won’t bother to look into the black bag ops that got the thing built.
And why now? So you and I can drive our electric cars around? Right?
Let’s look at couple of quotes from the article. You’ll love this:
“It’s really tuned to the electronics we attach to it,” explains Weir. “We can go all the way down from pacemakers to locomotives and direct-energy weapons.”
and…
“I have no doubt you can develop that kind of [ceramic] material, and the mechanism that gives you the energy storage is clear, but the first question is whether it’s truly applicable to vehicle applications,” Burke says, pointing out that the technology seems more appropriate for utility-scale storage and military “ray guns,” for which high voltage is an advantage.
Well, well, well… We already know that Americans will soon be saying hello to the goodbye weapon, and who wouldn’t enjoy a missile punch at bullet prices?
In other words, the touchy-feely, clean green electric Hummers of the future are going to be spunoff from Pentagon death ray and super cannon projects. (Same as it ever was.) The military needs the energy density that this EEstor thing provides for weapon systems. Weirdly, there was no mention of the autonomous hunter/killer robots. Oh yes, those projects need power too…
What else is there to learn about EEstor? (Yep, that’s the right page. They just don’t have a site up.)
Via: MIT Technology Review:
A secretive Texas startup developing what some are calling a “game changing” energy-storage technology broke its silence this week. It announced that it has reached two production milestones and is on track to ship systems this year for use in electric vehicles.
EEStor’s ambitious goal, according to patent documents, is to “replace the electrochemical battery” in almost every application, from hybrid-electric and pure-electric vehicles to laptop computers to utility-scale electricity storage.
The company boldly claims that its system, a kind of battery-ultracapacitor hybrid based on barium-titanate powders, will dramatically outperform the best lithium-ion batteries on the market in terms of energy density, price, charge time, and safety. Pound for pound, it will also pack 10 times the punch of lead-acid batteries at half the cost and without the need for toxic materials or chemicals, according to the company.
The implications are enormous and, for many, unbelievable. Such a breakthrough has the potential to radically transform a transportation sector already flirting with an electric renaissance, improve the performance of intermittent energy sources such as wind and sun, and increase the efficiency and stability of power grids–all while fulfilling an oil-addicted America’s quest for energy security.
The breakthrough could also pose a threat to next-generation lithium-ion makers such as Watertown, MA-based A123Systems, which is working on a plug-in hybrid storage system for General Motors, and Reno, NV-based Altair Nanotechnologies, a supplier to all-electric vehicle maker Phoenix Motorcars.
“I get a little skeptical when somebody thinks they’ve got a silver bullet for every application, because that’s just not consistent with reality,” says Andrew Burke, an expert on energy systems for transportation at University of California at Davis.
That said, Burke hopes to be proved wrong. “If [the] technology turns out to be better than I think, that doesn’t make me sad: it makes me happy.”
Richard Weir, EEStor’s cofounder and chief executive, says he would prefer to keep a low profile and let the results of his company’s innovation speak for themselves. “We’re well on our way to doing everything we said,” Weir told Technology Review in a rare interview. He has also worked as an electrical engineer at computing giant IBM and at Michigan-based automotive-systems leader TRW.
