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Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

9 Dec - News Picks and Information Access Articles

Rally in Stockholm, Sweden, in support of file...Image via Wikipedia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Spying begins on UK web users

We reported last week on plans to enforce copyright law by forcing internet service providers to spy on consumers to detect and reportevery piece of copied music, movies, e-books, games and software.

Now one UK ISP, Virgin Media, is trialling some of the technology needed to do that on about 1.6 million of its customers.

Provided by Detica, a subsidiary of defence firm BAE Systems, the system is being used to try and gauge the size of the alleged piracy problem. CView, as the system is known, will take a snapshot of the scale of peer-to-peer music transfers over a few months.
It will do so by copying every packet of data that passes by, and looking for the digital signatures of data transferred using the popular bittorrent, gnutella, and edonkey file sharing protocols.

TSA places employees on leave over online posting

Stephen Wolfram: 'I'm an information pack rat'

"I started subscribing to your magazine when I was 8 years old," he says, disarming me immediately. The flattery doesn't last long. "I noticed that a few years back you guys went through a bad patch," he says. "My main conclusion was that if there was a story about something in New Scientist then it had to be nonsense." I laugh nervously.    :)

Five ways to revolutionise computer memory


Scahill: Prince Is Conducting Graymail

Sotomayor Refuses to Give Government Privilege for Me But Not for Thee  emptywheel

 I’m interested in the Obama Administration’s unsuccessful attempt to get the Court to bail them out of troubles they’re having on national security cases like al-Haramain and Jeppesen.
The case, Mohawk v. Carpenter, concerned whether a District Court’s order allowing discovery that threatened the attorney-client privilege merited an immediate appeal. The Government submitted an amicus brief in the case, basically arguing that it did not. But at the same time, the Government tried to write an exception for itself, arguing that attorney-client privilege should not get to bypass the normal appeals process, but state secrets and presidential communications privileges should.


Dirty babies get healthier hearts

Eat protein to heal a damaged brain

Oilsands more toxic than government and industry claim

In the midst of global warming talks and environmental promises from all three levels of government, it has been reported that pollution levels fromAlberta's oilsands are nearly five times greater than officials estimated.

University of Alberta biological sciences professor David Schindler directed the study that found levels of contamination increasing when moving towards the oilsands developments, and found that it actually reached a point where the airborne particles left an oily slick on top of melted snow. Researchers say the toxic emissions are the equivalent of a major oil spill repeated every year.
Following years of exposure, polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs), a group of (usually) organic contaminants containing carcinogens, may cause several health issues including, most notably, cancer, reproductive problems and development complications for unborn babies. Organs such as lungs, liver, skin and kidneys can be damaged by exposure.

StatsCan says surface sources like lakes and rivers provide most drinking water

The Phrase That’s Screwing Up the Afghan Air War






Escalation in Afghanistan: It’s All About the Neighbors

Military Humanitarianism in the Twilight of Empire

Ramping up Afghanistan War to Control Caspian Oil and Gas

“Why” Obama pitched so hard for the US to stay and surge through Afghanistan and Pakistan. The reasons given were that the Afghanistan Taliban and Al Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden were the people that attacked us on 9/11, which was an iteration of George W. Bush’s reasons for the War on Terror. They are as phony now as the day Bush promised to smoke out Bin Laden.




Gitcheegumee December 9th, 2009 at 9:11 am
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Last week, EW did a thread about Scahill’s “take ” on Erik Prince’s damage control in the recent Vanity Fair article.
Starting at comment #150, there are several posts about the Caspian Guard Initiative. Here’s one of them:
(For the record,the US invaded Afghanistan October 7,2001)
When the Bush administration took power a few years ago, the Cheney Energy Commission in 2001 did a study, and they found that there were 20 billion barrels of oil in the Caspian Sea, and its supplies rivaled that of the United States, slightly less than the United States. And so, the Bush administration put it on the fast track to try to open up a pipeline running from Azerbaijan, the port city of Baku, westward, and the resources of the Caspian were intended to go to Western European markets.
Well, a story that’s gotten almost no attention is that, as the Bush administration began to tap the resources of the Caspian Sea, it realized that it needed to have security forces in the region, but they didn’t want to have an overt US military presence, especially with the occupation of Iraq impending and the occupation of Afghanistan. So what they began doing was a program called Caspian Guard, where they started building up the military forces in Georgia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan. And this was a program that got very little media attention.
And so, beginning in July of 2004, the Bush administration sends Blackwater into the most strategic part of this operation, into the port city of Baku, which juts out from Azerbaijan’s coast into the Caspian Sea. And Blackwater quietly went in there on a $2.5 million original contract, and they set up a ninety-man special forces unit of the Azerbaijani military, modeled after the US Navy Seals. So they were exporting training for the most elite forces in the US.
And what this mission did was allow the Bush administration to send in loyalist forces from the private sector, have plausible deniability that there was an active US military presence and build up not only defense for the pipeline project, which is now open and flowing, but also some have suggested that it could be used, that facility that Blackwater built up, as one of several forward operating bases for a potential attack against Iran.
Scahill,Part II “Blackwater-Rise of the World’s Most Powerful…”March,07, Democracy Now……………….linky to follow
Gitcheegumee December 9th, 2009 at 9:17 am
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=Security&loid...
AZERBAIJAN: U.S. FINANCING RADAR STATION NEAR IRANIAN BORDER SAY REPORTS
Tehran,2005, 26 Sept. (AKI) – The Iranian media has reported a decision by the United States to finance radar stations in the central Asian republic of Azerbaijan, that the government in Tehran says are part of a military strategy by Washington to encircle the Islamic Republic. One of the stations is reported to be 20 kilometres from the Iranian town of Astara, while another is situated in Khizi, 50 kilometres from the border with Russia.
The construction of the two stations is part of the Caspian Guard Initiative, an American project which aims to guarantee the security of the 3.6 billion dollar, 1,600 kilometre-long Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline that runs from Baku in Azerbaijan to the Turkish port city of Ceyhan.
According to the US embassy officials in the Azerbaijan capital Azera, the Caspian Guard Initiative will cost about 135 million US dollars.
The government in Tehran considers the project a cover for a larger project that will target the Iran militarily. It would also include other initiatives such as an air base that the Americans are constructing near Herat in Afghanistan, a naval base in Bahrain and various military structures in the south and north of Iraq
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Gitcheegumee December 9th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Part II – Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful …Mar 21, 2007 … Scahill discusses Blackwater’s role in the Caspian Sea region in Central … So what they began doing was a program called Caspian Guard, …
http://www.democracynow.org/…/part_ii_blackwater_the_rise_of – Cached – Similar
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View this users Facebook profile Nathan Aschbacher December 9th, 2009 at 11:17 am
In response to Gitcheegumee @ 12 (show text)
Excepting that the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline doesn’t have anything to do with the Trans-Caspian pipeline, which itself has nothing to do with Afghanistan. What side of Turkmenistan do you think Afghanistan is on anyway?
Unless you are claiming that occupying Afghanistan is the staging area for taking over Turkmenistan, this whole line of reasoning is incredibly specious. If we wanted secure access to natural gas fields, and a high-capacity pipeline out of the region then we should have invaded Turkmenistan.


bluebutterfly December 9th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
“But, confronted with Taliban’s refusal to accept US conditions, “this rationale of energy security changed into a military one”, the authors claim.
“At one moment during the negotiations, the US representatives told the Taliban, ‘either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs,’” Brisard said in an interview in Paris.
The US government informed other nations of it’s plan
to invade Afghanistan months before the 9/11 attacks
9 September 2001: Bush given Afghanistan invasion plan
7 October 2001: Bush announces opening of Afghanistan attacks
13 June 2002: Hamid Karzai Elected as New Afghan Leader
(Former Unocal Consultant)
27 December 2002: Afghanistan Pipeline Deal signed ”
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/dyinginafghanistan.php
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Kucinich calls on Congress to end wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan through War Powers Resolution

*hyperlinks and video live at source*
The Founders of the US Constitution intended that the power to wage war reside directly under the authority of the peoples’ representatives in Congress. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 (also known as the War Powers Act) has several provisions, but we’ll focus on this part in the section on Congressional Action:
"…at any time that United States Armed Forces are engaged in hostilities outside the territory of the United States, its possessions and territories without a declaration of war or specific statutory authorization, such forces shall be removed by the President if the Congress so directs by concurrent resolution."
A concurrent resolution of Congress requires a majority vote of the members of the Senate and the House.

Copenhagen and Global Warming: Ten Facts and Ten Myths on Climate Change

1. Climate has always changed, and it always will. The assumption that prior to the industrial revolution the Earth had a “stable” climate is simply wrong. The only sensible thing to do about climate change is to prepare for it.
2. Accurate temperature measurements made from weather balloons and satellites since the late 1950s show no atmospheric warming since 1958. In contrast, averaged ground-based thermometers record a warming of about 0.40 C over the same time period. Many scientists believe that the thermometer record is biased by the Urban Heat Island effect and other artefacts.






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