Plastic Redemption

Recycling Miracle
29-Jun-2007 unknown country.com

Besides rubber tires, discarded plastic items are one of our worst sources of pollution because, so far, they have proved impossible to recycle. We also have an oil shortage. Now a company is solving both problems at once by turning plastics back into the fossil fuels they were created from.

Global Resource Corporation has invented a machine they call the Hawk-10, which can be adjusted to produce a wide range of microwave frequencies in order to achieve this transformation. In New Scientist, Catherine Brahic quotes GRC’s Jerry Meddick as saying, "Anything that has a hydrocarbon base will be affected by our process. We release those hydrocarbon molecules from the material and it then becomes gas and oil."

War Crimes Tribunal

INTERNATIONAL CITIZENS 9/11 WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL

9/11 Independent Prosecutor Act

« EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The SEPTEMBER 11 TREASON INDEPENDENT PROSECUTOR ACT | Main | The Citizen's 9/11 War Crimes Tribunal - GOOGLE VIDEO »

MEDIA ADVISORY: Independent Scientist Leuren Moret and International Lawyer Alfred Webre to call for International Citizen’s 9/11 War Crimes Tribunal

International Citizen’s 9/11 War Crimes Tribunal

VANCOUVER, B.C. - In order to prosecute the 9/11 perpetrators under the 9/11 Independent Prosecutors Act, Independent Scientist/DU Radiation Expert Leuren Moret and International Lawyer Alfred Webre will call for the establishment of an International Citizen's 9/11 War Crimes Tribunal, in a public announcement to be made at the Vancouver 9/11 Truth Conference on Sunday June 24, 2007.

According to Moret and Webre, 9/11 was a False Flag Operation by an international War Crimes Racketeering Organization, to provide a pretext to engage in Genocidal & Ecocidal Depleted Uranium (DU) bombing of Central Asia (Afghanistan and Iraq) in order to secure vast oil and uranium reserves; to roll out a Terror-based National Security state-system world-wide; and to implement the final stages of a world Depopulation policy. The International Citizen’s 9/11 War Crimes Tribunal would be convened under the jurisdiction of the Kuala Lumpur International War Crimes Tribunal, established in February 2007 as a permanent citizen’s Tribunal by The Perdana Global Peace Organization, chaired by Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia, who is the first prominent world leader to take up the DU radiation issue.

The purpose of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal is to criminalize war, and to enforce the prohibitions of Aggressive war and War Crimes, which since 1945 have been prohibited by the Nuremberg Principles, through a permanent citizen’s war crimes tribunal and through the principles of Natural law, restorative justice, and International law.

Lewis Black: Conservatives...

Lewis Black: Conservatives Come Up with Caveman Versions of YouTube and Wikipedia [VIDEO]

Posted by Adam Howard at 12:05 PM on June 29, 2007. -AlterNet

When conservatives perceive institutions as liberal, they make their own. The results are revealing -- and hysterical

As Lewis Black points out, conservatives like Rupert Murdoch have a disturbing tendency to either devour and destroy what they consider liberal institutions or to create their own bastardized versions of existing ones. For instance, conservatives have created their own version of Wikipedia complete with a viciously homophobic definition of homosexual. They also have their own utlra-conservative version of YouTube. What will these bastards think of next? Check out the video.

About Corporate Crime

Twenty Things You Should Know About Corporate Crime

By Russell Mokhiber, AlterNet. Posted June 16, 2007.

Did you know that corporate crime inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined? This and 19 more amazing facts about the state of corporations in America.

The following is text from a speech delivered by Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter to the Taming the Giant Corporation conference in Washington, D.C., June 9, 2007.

20. Corporate crime inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined.

Whether in bodies or injuries or dollars lost, corporate crime and violence wins by a landslide.

The FBI estimates, for example, that burglary and robbery -- street crimes -- costs the nation $3.8 billion a year.

The losses from a handful of major corporate frauds -- Tyco, Adelphia, Worldcom, Enron -- swamp the losses from all street robberies and burglaries combined.

Health care fraud alone costs Americans $100 billion to $400 billion a year.

The savings and loan fraud -- which former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh called "the biggest white collar swindle in history" -- cost us anywhere from $300 billion to $500 billion.

And then you have your lesser frauds: auto repair fraud, $40 billion a year, securities fraud, $15 billion a year -- and on down the list.

19. Corporate crime is often violent crime.

Recite this list of corporate frauds and people will immediately say to you: but you can’t compare street crime and corporate crime -- corporate crime is not violent crime.

Not true.

Corporate crime is often violent crime...

Trust No One

Henry Rollins| BIO

Teeing Off: Trust No One

Posted June 29, 2007 | 04:45 PM (EST) -HuffingtonPost

---

Courtesy of The Henry Rollins Show

• Email

I cannot tell you how hard it is for me NOT to trust people. If you say you can do it, I believe you and will leave you to it. You got it covered? That's great, one less thing for me to worry about. I thought I couldn't go through life in that Michael Corleone-Nixon-Stalin mindset . . . but now I see that I have to. Just when I thought I could lose a healthy amount of my cynicism, and give people the benefit of the doubt, they--pull--me--back--in. Long before I recently witnessed Dick Cheney remove Wolf Blitzer's balls and feed them to him, I had given up on cable news for its overall lack of balls. Newspapers? Two words: Judith Miller. Credit card companies want me to go broke, stay broke and make money off my debt, the pharmaceutical companies are spending a lot of their time making pills that cure ills you didn't even know you had and doing whatever they can to further weaken your immune system so you can get sicker quicker harder better long time. Look yourself up on Wikipedia and find all the misinformation inputted on your behalf, some injured veterans found out that it's safer to be in Iraq than in outpatient care at Walter Reed. Many breakthrough health and weight loss programs seem to contradict breakthroughs pitched the previous year, the internet is now the gateway for no warrant government surveillance, the Middle East now the cash siphon for no bid contracts, and election results--don't get me started. Lackeys, Lobbyists, Loyalists, Legislators, Priests, Pastors, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Proselytizers, Globalizers, Think Tankers, World Bankers, Electric Car Killers, Oil Drillers, Intelligent Designers, Climate Change Maligners, Blowhard Neocons and their dittoheaded minions to talk show hosts with their fucked up opinions--Folks, none of them are to be trusted.

-- Henry Rollins

Black Swans

Listen to The BBC Interview Updated weekly at 05:32 GMT on Saturday www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, philosopher of randomness and chance, financial investor and writer, talks to Owen Bennett-Jones on The Interview.

	Owen Bennett-Jones and Nassim Taleb

Nassim Taleb is a former Wall Street trader who made his fortune in the crash of 1987. Since then he's been an academic, researching the randomness of history, and in particular those inexplicable and unpredictable big events - like wars, tsunamis, terrorist attacks, the rise of the internet - which change our world forever, and which he calls Black Swans.

In a wide-ranging and open discussion with Owen Bennett-Jones, Nassim Taleb discusses his method of investing money for the best financial return, his likes and particular dislikes, including most financial experts whom he calls charlatans, and why he feels he can take more personal risks now that he's finished his life's work, his latest book called Black Swans.

Dim and Brutal Giants

Mcmansions, SUVs, Mega-Churches and the Baghdad Embassy: Life Among Dim and Brutal Giants

by Phil Rockstroh -Democratic Underground In microcosmic mimicry of the plight of the besieged middle and laboring classes, my parent's Atlanta neighborhood, as is the case with many others in the vicinity, is being destroyed, in reality -- disappeared -- by a blight of upper-class arrogance. The modest, post-war homes of the area are being "scraped" from the landscape as an infestation of bloated mcmansions rises from the tortured soil. These particleboard and Tyvek-choked monstrosities loom over the remaining smaller houses of the area, as oversized and ugly as mindless bullies, as banal as the dreams of petty tyrants. In the surrounding suburbs, in a similar manner as mcmansions eclipse sunlight, throwing the adjacent houses into half-light, mega-churches eclipse the light of reason, leaving their congregations in an ignorant half-light of dogma and superstition. Of course, these true believer lunatics are wrong about everything, except, perhaps, for their elliptical apprehension regarding the arrival of proliferate cataclysms in the years to come. Oddly: Although they promulgate dire warnings on the subject, they seem gleeful at the prospect of wide-spread suffering. How could they not be? They've seized upon a fantasy that allows them to escape from the tyranny of their own life-suffocating belief system. Attempting to subdue the suffocating dread of their corporately circumscribed lives, they wish for the destruction of the entire planet. Hence, their escapist fantasy, by the necessity of narrative, is huge, outrageous -- apocalyptic. The progenitor of their End Time tale is this: The believer's emotional inflexibility begets a form of ontological giantism -- a phenomenon that arises when one's worldview is too small to explain the larger world. Therefore, a story must be created that contains violence and terror on such a massive scale that its unfolding would kill off the entire, problematic world. "That's right world, there's not enough room on this planet for both you and my beliefs. One of us has to go." Upon the nation's roadways and interstate highways, the overgrown clown cars of the apocalypse, SUVs, Humvees, and oversized pickup trucks also evince hugeness to compensate for the feelings of those folks inside the grotesque vehicles of being crushed by alienation and isolation -- not only while on the road -- but by the realities of an existence within a hapless, oil-dependent empire which is itself powerless against the changing realities of the larger world.

Victory of Baghdad

Ben Sargent

Artificial Life

First artificial life 'within months'

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor -www.telegraph.co.uk

Last Updated: 6:42am BST 29/06/2007

From reading DNA to writing it Audio: Roger Highfield on the significance of the breakthrough Scientists could create the first new form of artificial life within months after a landmark breakthrough in which they turned one bacterium into another.
Craig Venter likened the process to 'changing a Macintosh computer into a PC by inserting a new piece of software'

In a development that has triggered unease and excitement in equal measure, scientists in the US took the whole genetic makeup - or genome - of a bacterial cell and transplanted it into a closely related species.

This then began to grow and multiply in the lab, turning into the first species in the process.

The team that carried out the first “species transplant” says it plans within months to do the same thing with a synthetic genome made from scratch in the laboratory.

If that experiment worked, it would mark the creation of a synthetic lifeform.

New FBI Restrictions

FBI to restrict student freedoms

Submitted by Canada IFP on Sun, 2007-06-24 06:58.Americas | United States | News

US university students will not be able to work late at the campus, travel abroad, show interest in their colleagues' work, have friends outside the United States, engage in independent research, or make extra money without the prior consent of the authorities, according to a set of guidelines given to administrators by the FBI.

Federal agents are visiting some of the New England's top universities, including MIT, Boston College, and the University of Massachusetts, to warn university heads about the dangers of foreign spies and terrorists stealing sensitive academic research.

FBI is offering to brief faculty, students and staff on what it calls "espionage indicators" aimed at identifying foreign agents.

Unexplained affluence, failing to report overseas travel, showing unusual interest in information outside the job scope, keeping unusual work hours, unreported contacts with foreign nationals, unreported contact with foreign government, military, or intelligence officials, attempting to gain new accesses without the need to know, and unexplained absences are all considered potential espionage indicators.

Worldwide Crack Up

The Worldwide Crack Up Boom, According to
Ludwig Von Mises

Posted by Bill Bonner on Jun 26th, 2007

A kiss is still a kiss. A sigh is still a sigh. And a bubble is still a bubble.

When a kiss is over, it’s over. When a bubble pops…well…that’s all she wrote! All kisses end - even the wettest “French” kisses. And so do all bubbles - even sloppy mega-bubbles of liquidity. This one will be no exception. But of course, it’s not the certainties that make life interesting…it’s the uncertainties - the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns, as Mr. Rumsfeld says. We are all born of woman and end up where all men born of women end up - dead. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun between baptism and last rites.

You’ll remember we said that this worldwide financial bubble is both worldlier, and more financial than any in history.

And, for the moment, it is very much alive. So much alive that the media can hardly keep up with it. Forbes magazine, for example, tries to estimate the wealth of the world’s richest people. But the rich don’t typically give out their balance sheets, telephone numbers and home addresses. So, there’s a fair amount of guesswork in the calculations.

But when it came to guesstimating the net worth of Stephen Schwarzman, founder of Blackstone, the Forbes crew wandered off into fiction. They put his wealth at about $2 billion. Recent filings in connection with the new Blackstone IPO show he earned that much in a single year!

In this phase of the bubble, it is as if your neighbors were throwing a wild party - and you weren’t invited. You detest them… envy them… and want to join them, all at once. A very small part of the population is having a ball; everyone else is getting restless and wondering when the noise will stop.

We wish we knew. And we’ve given up guessing.

The Lonely American

By Gaither Stewart -onlinejournal.com

Each day I watch the TV news images of American soldiers on the streets of Baghdad and wonder if the same images are shown in the United States. If they are shown, I wonder why the people do not rise up in revolt. Each day I feel a deep sympathy for the infinite loneliness of the American soldier in Iraq.

The soldier in dust-colored camouflage uniform and helmet, his bullet-proof vest (not really bullet- proof and certainly not bomb-proof, as I see each day: five of them died yesterday in Baghdad alone), brandishing his automatic weapon, standing alone at a Baghdad checkpoint, an empty look on his face (though he is terrified and wonders how he got into this chaos), surrounded by a world he does not understand, by people speaking a language he does not understand, in the middle of a war he does not understand, this bewildered American seems to be the loneliest man in the world.

Because I am an American, I watch this soldier sadly. I think that there stands the emblem of America’s isolation in the world. And I think also that something is dreadfully wrong in a country that still has a supply of volunteers to go to the deserts to kill strangers with super weapons and drop firebombs on cities from invisible planes in the stratosphere . . . and with a 10 percent chance of being killed themselves for the worst possible reasons.

Beyond politics, beyond the questions of war and peace, I wonder about Americans in general, so lonely in the universe. A whole people feeling the loneliness you feel behind locked doors. Behind walls. A kind of vacancy. What is it that other people have and we Americans do not? Or what do Americans have that others do not? Why are Americans different? I do not believe it was always that way. But it is today. And it is a mystery.

One of Six is BAD

US juries get verdict wrong in one of six cases: study

Jun 28 09:55 AM US/Eastern

So much for US justice: juries get the verdict wrong in one out of six criminal cases and judges don't do much better, a new study has found.

And when they make those mistakes, both judges and juries are far more likely to send an innocent person to jail than to let a guilty person go free, according to an upcoming study out of Northwestern University.

"Those are really shocking numbers," said Jack Heinz, a law professor at Northwestern who reviewed the research of his colleague Bruce Spencer, a professor in the statistics department.

Recent high-profile exonerations of scores of death row inmates have undermined faith in the infallibility of the justice system, Heinz said.

But these cases were considered relative rarities given how many checks and balances - like rules on the admissibility of evidence, the presumption of innocence and the appeals process - are built into the system.

"We assume as lawyers that the system has been created in such a way to minimize the chance we'll convict the innocent," he said in an interview.

"The standard of proof in a criminal case is beyond a reasonable doubt - it's supposed to be a high one. But judging by Bruce's data the problem is substantial."

Rubber Ducky Report

Plastic duck armada is heading for Britain after 15-year global voyage

Simon de Bruxelles -www.timesonline.co.uk

A flotilla of plastic ducks is heading for Britain’s beaches, according to an American oceanographer.

For the past 15 years Curtis Ebbesmeyer has been tracking nearly 30,000 plastic bath toys that were released into the Pacific Ocean when a container was washed off a cargo ship.

Some of the ducks, known as Friendly Floatees, are expected to reach Britain after a journey of nearly 17,000 miles, having crossed the Arctic Ocean frozen into pack ice, bobbed the length of Greenland and been carried down the eastern seaboard of the United States.

Mr Ebbesmeyer, who is based in Seattle, said yesterday that those that had not been trapped in circulating currents in the North Pacific, crushed by icebergs or blown ashore in Japan are bobbing across the Atlantic on the Gulf Stream.

Brain-Machine Interface

Brain Device Moves Objects by Thought

Hiroko Tabuchi, Associated Press -discovery.com

June 22, 2007 — Forget the clicker: A new technology in Japan could let you control electronic devices without lifting a finger simply by reading brain activity.

The "brain-machine interface" developed by Hitachi Inc. analyzes slight changes in the brain's blood flow and translates brain motion into electric signals.

Brain Waves, Activate!

A cap connects by optical fibers to a mapping device, which links, in turn, to a toy train set via a control computer and motor during one recent demonstration at Hitachi's Advanced Research Laboratory in Hatoyama, just outside Tokyo.

"Take a deep breath and relax," said Kei Utsugi, a researcher, while demonstrating the device on Wednesday.At his prompting, a reporter did simple calculations in her head, and the train sprang forward — apparently indicating activity in the brain's frontal cortex, which handles problem solving.

Activating that region of the brain — by doing sums or singing a song — is what makes the train run, according to Utsugi. When one stops the calculations, the train stops, too.

Floating Wind Farm

World's first floating wind farm to be built in North Sea

By Claire Soares

Published: 27 June 2007 -independent.co.uk

The world's first floating wind turbine could be up and running in under two years after the German engineering giant Siemens teamed up with a Norwegian energy group yesterday to try to generate electricity in the middle of the North Sea.

If successful, it could prove the perfect solution for environmental campaigners, confronted with a public that like the idea of wind power but think wind turbines are an eyesore.

And it is something the engineers behind the ground-breaking project are also keen to stress.

"It's attractive to have windmills out at sea. We can produce a lot of energy, out of sight," said Alexandra Bech Gjoerv, the head of the energy division at Norsk Hydro, the Norwegian firm spearheading the project.

Wind turbines at sea are nothing new, but until now they have had to be sited in shallow waters so the bases could be fixed to the seabed. This not only means complicated and costly construction but also visual pollution, as the rotating blades can be seen from the shore.

The demonstration turbine, set to cost 200m Norwegian kroner (£17m), will be eventually floating near the island of Karmoy, south-west of Norway.

"It's a logical step," Walt Patterson, an energy expert at the Chatham House think-tank in London, said. "Floating turbines will be easier to make because you can do most of the fabrication on land and then float it out to sea.

"The turbine will be much better placed. Further out to sea you have a much stronger and more reliable wind supply as you don't have trees, hills and buildings sticking up and getting in the way, although you do need to worry about stability and making sure the thing stays standing."

Tesla Saucers

'You must always work with Mother Nature. Force is never necessary. The laws of the physical universe are really very simple.'
Ralph Ring, interviewed by Kerry Cassidy, August 2006

'My flying machine will have neither wings nor propellers. You might see it on the ground and you would never guess that it was a flying machine. Yet it will be able to move at will through the air in any direction with perfect safety.'
Nikola Tesla, interviewed in The New York Herald Tribune, October 15, 1911

'The vehicle was simply an extension of their own bodies because it was tied into their neurological systems…'
Col. Philip J. Corso, The Day After Roswell

Otis T. Carr (1904-1980?) was a protégé of the great inventor Nikola Tesla. Carr and his team constructed a number of fully functional, flying saucers in the late 1950s. The flying disks worked and were demonstrated. Carr was serious about 'taking his craft to the Moon.' However, two weeks after a dramatic test flight, their laboratory was forcibly closed. Federal agents confiscated equipment as well as all documentation. Authorities told them Carr's project would 'destroy the monetary system of the United States.'

Ralph Ring, now aged 72, was aboard that incredible and successful test flight. He and Carr, with their 45-foot saucer, transported themselves 10 miles at the speed of light!
IMPORTANT: Click on the Project Camelot link and download Ralph Ring speak of Otis T. Carr, the events leading to the OTC crafts and the project's eventual shutdown by the feds:

http://www.projectcamelot.net/ralph_ring.html

'Fly is not the right word. It traversed distance. It seemed to take no time. I was with two other engineers when we piloted the 45-foot craft about ten miles. I thought it hadn't moved - I thought it had failed. I was completely astonished when we realized that we had returned with samples of rocks and plants from our destination. It was a dramatic success. It was more like a kind of teleportation.'

Nazi Holy Grail

The Mystery of the 'Nazi Holy Grail'

By Sven Röbel

A mysterious golden pot discovered in a Bavarian lake in 2001 has been the focus of interest for archaeologists, art dealers -- and now the German and Swiss police. Its convoluted history involves Nazi cults, treasure hunters and modern-day profiteers.

BR / DDP

The golden Chiemsee cauldron: an aura of mystery

So there it was, the legendary "Holy Grail" -- in a safe not far from the Zurich airport. Investor Svetlana K. from Kazahkstan had been prepared for almost anything on that day last March. But when she saw what had been described as "probably the most important art-historical discovery in the Western Hemisphere" in front of her, all the other superlatives used in the four-page prospectus faded into the background. "An object of such pre-eminence has probably never been introduced onto the open art market," the document stated, adding that, "Given the proper promotion, experts believe its value could

reach a sum of around €1 billion" ($1.4 billion).

Pyramid of The Apocalypse

The nephilim and the pyramid of the apocalypse

Paranormal Palace Radio Show host Royce Holleman interviews. "Irish Author Patrick Heron Has Solved the Riddle of the Pyramids," Interview Tuesday 6-26-07 8:00pm. For the first time ever in his sensational and controversial new book.

Houston, TX, June 24, 2007 --(PR.com)-- Scores of books have been written in an attempt to unravel the mysteries of the Pyramids and to identify their builders. But all these books have one thing in common; they have failed to inform us as to who these builders were and from whence they derived their knowledge and skills. Buried in ancient Hebrew texts, undiscovered and largely ignored by scholars, lies a wealth of information about a mysterious cabal of a little known race called the Nephilim.

In the first part of this volume, Patrick Heron has provided a detailed study of this unknown race showing:

• who they were
• where they came from
• where they acquired their mathematical and astronomical knowledge
• how they possessed the strength to construct these huge buildings
• why they chose the pyramid shape
• why they align with celestial bodies
• where they went

In the second part of this book, Patrick Heron has shown how these same age old pyramids portend a future event. Analysing again the ancient texts, Patrick Heron will provide an examination of the prophecies of the Book of Revelation and of the signs we are told would precede these imminent happenings. In doing so we shall garner the necessary details and information whereby the reader will be able to audition the future.

Finally, having travelled back to an epoch dating to before our world began, and having journeyed forward to espy what lies ahead, this volume will culminate and climax in a phenomenon never before proposed or explored - The Pyramid of The Apocalypse.

---

http://blogtalkradio.com/paranormalpalace

Archimedes Manuscript

REVOLUTIONARY? AUTHENTIC? STOLEN?

The Story of the Archimedes Manuscript

By Matthias Schulz

For 2,000 years, the document written by one of antiquity's greatest mathematicians was ill treated, torn apart and allowed to decay. Now, US historians have decoded the Archimedes book. But is it really new?

When the Romans advanced to Sicily in the Second Punic War and finally captured the proud city of Syracuse, one of their soldiers met an old man who, surrounded by the din of battle, was calmly drawing geometric figures in the sand. "Do not disturb my circles," the eccentric old man called out. The legionnaire killed him with his sword.

That, at least, is the legend.

PHOTO GALLERY: ARCHIMEDES REVISITED

Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (5 Photos)

The truth is a different story altogether. Placed in charge of King Hieron II's artillery equipment, Archimedes later played an important military role during the siege of Syracuse. He invented powerful catapults to defend his homeland, using cranes to hurl heavy boulders from the walls of the fortress at enemy ships. Mirrors were also used, it is said, to direct burning rays of sunlight at the Roman armada, setting the ships on fire. The Sicilians resisted the onslaught of the ambitious Roman republic for more than two years.

In short, had the legionnaire really speared the eccentric old man with his sword, he would have done the Romans a great service. In addition to being an oddball scholar, Archimedes was a skilled inventor of weapons.

How Many Grains of Sand...

Trash Power

Portable power from trash

AgriPower has developed a "virtual landfill" system that can produce electricity and heat by burning anything from nuts to old tires.

Photo: Energizing trash

By Martin LaMonica
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Solar energy isn't the only renewable resource: there's also garbage.

A company called AgriPower will begin production next year of a movable power generator fueled by a wide range of waste products, from walnut shells to discarded tires.

Although solar and wind energy are the best-known renewable energies, generating power from biomass is getting a closer look, as societies try to diversify their fuel sources.

AgriPower's combined heat and power system was originally envisioned for developing countries that could burn agricultural wastes to make electricity and heat.

The multi-piece unit includes a large feed hopper that holds 5 tons of material, and a high-temperature incinerator that vaporizes biomass as it comes in. The resulting heat can be used to turn a turbine to make 300 kilowatts of electricity. The heat can also be used to power other processes like heating.

Presidential Power Run Amok

Pushing the Envelope on Presidential Power

By Barton Gellman and Jo Becker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, June 25, 2007

Shortly after the first accused terrorists reached the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Jan. 11, 2002, a delegation from CIA headquarters arrived in the Situation Room. The agency presented a delicate problem to White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, a man with next to no experience on the subject. Vice President Cheney's lawyer, who had a great deal of experience, sat nearby. The meeting marked "the first time that the issue of interrogations comes up" among top-ranking White House officials, recalled John C. Yoo, who represented the Justice Department. "The CIA guys said, 'We're going to have some real difficulties getting actionable intelligence from detainees'" if interrogators confined themselves to humane techniques allowed by the Geneva Conventions.

From that moment, well before previous accounts have suggested, Cheney turned his attention to the practical business of crushing a captive's will to resist. The vice president's office played a central role in shattering limits on coercion in U.S. custody, commissioning and defending legal opinions that the Bush administration has since portrayed as the initiatives, months later, of lower-ranking officials.

Enlarge Photo

The vice president's office pushed a policy of robust interrogation that made its way to the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, above, and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
More Cheney photos...

Cheney and his allies, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, pioneered a novel distinction between forbidden "torture" and permitted use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" methods of questioning. They did not originate every idea to rewrite or reinterpret the law, but fresh accounts from participants show that they translated muscular theories, from Yoo and others, into the operational language of government.

A backlash beginning in 2004, after reports of abuse leaked out of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay, brought what appeared to be sharp reversals in courts and Congress -- for both Cheney's claims of executive supremacy and his unyielding defense of what he called "robust interrogation."

read the rest

The Only Man

The Quigmans

Food Fight

The fight for the world's food

Population is growing. Supply is falling. Prices are rising. What will be the cost to the planet's poorest?

By Daniel Howden

Published: 23 June 2007 -The Independent

Most people in Britain won't have noticed. On the supermarket shelves the signs are still subtle. But the onset of a major change will be sitting in front of many people this morning in their breakfast bowl. The price of cereals in this country has jumped by 12 per cent in the past year. And the cost of milk on the global market has leapt by nearly 60 per cent. In short we may be reaching the end of cheap food.

For those of us who have grown up in post-war Britain food prices have gone only one way, and that is down. Sixty years ago an average British family spent more than one-third of its income on food. Today, that figure has dropped to one-tenth. But for the first time in generations agricultural commodity prices are surging with what analysts warn will be unpredictable consequences.

Like any other self-respecting trend this one now has its own name: agflation. Beneath this harmless-sounding piece of jargon - the conflation of agriculture and inflation - lie two main drivers that suggest that cheap food is about to become a thing of the past. Agflation, to those that believe that it is really happening, is an increase in the price of food that occurs as a result of increased demand from human consumption and the diversion of crops into usage as an alternative energy resource.

On the one hand the growing affluence of millions of people in China and India is creating a surge in demand for food - the rising populations are not content with their parents' diet and demand more meat. On the other, is the use of food crops as a source of energy in place of oil, the so-called bio-fuels boom.

As these two forces combine they are setting off warning bells around the world

Judge Slams Wiretaps

Judge Criticizes Warrantless Wiretaps


Jun 23, 3:28 PM (ET)

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN

(AP) U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth is pictured in his office in this Nov. 23, 2005, file... Full Image

WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal judge who used to authorize wiretaps in terrorist and espionage cases criticized President Bush's decision to order warrantless surveillance after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Royce Lamberth, a district court judge in Washington, said Saturday it was proper for executive branch agencies to conduct such surveillance. "But what we have found in the history of our country is that you can't trust the executive," he said at the American Library Association's convention.

"We have to understand you can fight the war (on terrorism) and lose everything if you have no civil liberties left when you get through fighting the war," said Lamberth, who was appointed by President Reagan.

The judge disagreed with letting the executive branch alone decide which people to spy on in national security cases.

"The executive has to fight and win the war at all costs. But judges understand the war has to be fought, but it can't be at all costs," Lamberth said. "We still have to preserve our civil liberties. Judges are the kinds of people you want to entrust that kind of judgment to more than the executive."

Doctor Who & The End

DOCTOR WHO AND THE END OF THE UNIVERSE

Posted by anthonynorth on June 19th, 2007 @ Beyond the Blog

Utopia (BBC1 – 16 June) took Doctor Who to the end of the universe. It wasn’t quite clear whether this meant the end, meaning edge, or end, meaning finished, but I’ll assume the latter; although it was surprising to find a complete planet at the end, peopled by the remains of humanity. One would expect the ‘end’ to be different to this.
Never mind. Anything can be forgiven with Doctor Who. And there was a nice irony that they were building a rocket to save them. It was going to take then to Utopia; which does, of course, mean ‘nowhere.’ Even with the Doctor, there is oblivion in the end.

BIG BANG ONWARDS

The idea of the end of the universe is a natural continuation of it having a beginning in the Big Bang. Here, the universe was created in a moment of time by a sudden expansion of a ‘singularity.’
Most people consider the singularity to be a huge ball of matter. Infact, it is nothing more than a mathematical point of infinity. That’s the thing with Big Bang – it is all to do with math.
At the point of rapid expansion, basic particles were released into what became the universe. Over time, gravity condensed matter into stars, which exploded in supernova, having cooked heavier particles, which went on to form more stars and planets.

AT THE END OF THE ROAD...

Cosmic Theory of Human Origins

New Cosmic Theory of Human Origins empowers humanity

by David Jones -The Canadian

are we, where did we come from, and where are we going? The apparent cover-up of UFOs and Extraterrestrials illuminate a milieu in which Humanity is being apparently systematically lied to. So-called "official science" sponsors the claim that humanity evolved from primates. Institutionalized religion with an emphasis of Christianity claimed human beings were created by 'God'. However, it is likely that both representations on the origins of humanity are have been corrupted by a context of disinformation, which is designed to disempower humanity.

Knowing the true origins of humanity could very well liberate humanity from the prevailing context of short-sighted and self-destructed greed. According to many scholars, there has been a lot of Earth's history which has been "censored" from official accounts, in an effort to socially engineer humanity to complement a fascistic agenda.

The theory of Creation and the Charles Darwin inspired theory of Evolution at first, seems to provide radically different interpretations on the origins of humanity. Creation theory suggests 'God' as an external entity from the Heavens created humanity. The theory of Evolution focuses on a non-God associated context of "scientifically explained" Human evolution.

A Gnostic critical appreciation of cosmic God inspires an appreciation that institutionalized religion, with particular reference to Christianity proselytizes a "false God" linked to the execution of oppression and totalitarian agenda, supported by military expansionism. Creation theory was apparently developed by architects of a manipulative agenda. Evolution theory also further conveniently provides a "useful distraction" away from critical human understanding of scientifically verifiable cosmic God.

The Day America Died

The Day America Died

by Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D.

Regardless of what so many have come to believe, death is more than the simple fact of someone having died, the realization that a living breathing entity has ceased to function, that a lifeless form has become that of "just another cadaver," the stark realization that a human being's time on earth has finally come to an end. Even though one's body has been "laid to rest," something of much greater significance has occurred.

Much more to the point is the death of one's soul, the departure of the spirit from an individual's body; an acknowledgement that an imponderable, a vital living force having once empowered an individual through each and every step of life has vanished from the scene.. a shared understanding that something very special has been swept away. Indeed, the knowledge that something absolutely essential to the life of every related human being has been lost to the world. For this the world is less than it once was.

But what about the corporal and spiritual qualities of a more communal, national entity such as that of our own nation, the United States of America?

Corporally, the United States, as a religious body, seems to be doing quite well, no doubt willing to pit the validity of its own static dogma against that of any other nation. As a mere four percent of the world's population, it has established one of the highest standards of living in the world, at present consuming nearly 35% of the world's wealth. It has attained the rather fine distinction of becoming the foremost military power the world has ever known, so powerful that it has the capacity to destroy all life on earth several times over.

-more

Bolt from the Blue

Lightning kills man beneath cloudless sky

A Dade landscaper died after being struck by an unusual type of lightning that's stronger, hotter, lasts longer and strikes from clear skies.

By TERE FIGUERAS NEGRETE AND LUISA YANEZ

lyanez@MiamiHerald.com

COURTESY WFORCBS4

David Canales died after being struck by lightning.

• On the web | Learn more about lightning safety
• Video | Lightning strike kills man

With no rain or even clouds to warn him of the danger, death came literally out of the blue Thursday to a self-employed landscaper. The killer was a powerful bolt of lightning that cracked through perfectly clear skies.

David Canales, 41, of West Miami-Dade, was on the job at a Pinecrest home when the bolt hit. It first seared a tree, then traveled and struck Canales, standing nearby.

Experts said Canales was killed by a weather phenomenon fittingly called a ''bolt from the blue'' or ''dry lightning'' because it falls from clear, blue skies. He was pronounced dead at South Miami Hospital.

Decades of Dirty Laundry

CIA to air decades of its dirty laundry

Assassination attempts, domestic spying among the abuses

By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus

Updated: 10:52 p.m. CT June 21, 2007

The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.

The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs.

"Most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA's history," Hayden said in a speech to a conference of foreign policy historians. The documents have been sought for decades by historians, journalists and conspiracy theorists and have been the subject of many fruitless Freedom of Information Act requests.

Life Explained

Wacky Weapons

Pentagon Spends $78 Billion a Year on Wacky Weapons Research

By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES -abc News

June 21, 2007 —

Creating armor that renders a soldier invisible. Stimulating the brain to suppress sleep for days. Arming sharks with chemical implants and cameras to work as spies.

This year the Pentagon will spend $78 billion  about half of all government research and development dollars  on a variety of projects, according to the American Association for the Advancement for Science (AAAS).

The vast majority - about $68 billion - goes to traditional spending, like weapons development and space systems. But some fringe research mimics the best of science fiction.

There seems to be no failure of imagination in advancing warfare, but some experts fear these farfetched projects show a little too much imagination.

Just this month, the government confirmed that an Ohio Air Force laboratory had asked for $7.5 million to build a nonlethal "gay bomb," a weapon that would encourage enemies to make love, not war. The weapon would use strong aphrodisiacs to make enemy troops so sexually attracted to each other that they'd lose interest in fighting.

Last year, scientists at Boston University developed brain implants that could steer sharklike dog fish with a phantom odor.

Just three years ago, the military funded a specious study of psychic teleportation, according to the Federation of American Scientists. An 88-page report prepared by the Air Force Research Lab contended that moving through mind powers is "quite real and can be controlled."

"The military has a lot of crazy ideas," said Noah Shactman, editor of the Wired blog Danger Room. "But it's hard to turn these ideas into action."

In her book "Imaginary Weapons," military expert Sharon Weinberger writes that the federal government is spending taxpayer money on war technology at a pace of about $50,000 per second.

Gay Bombs, Invisibility,
Human-Commanded Sharks, Psychic Teleportation

-huffpo