Written by January 26, 2010 BBC World
Monthly archives for January, 2010
U.S. still unprepared for major biological terrorist attack, report says
More than eight years after the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks, the United States is still unprepared to respond to a major biological terror attack, a congressionally appointed commission said Tuesday in a report that gave the federal government mixed grades overall for protecting Americans from the threat of weapons of mass destruction.
The report, which measured government’s performance in 17 areas, gave the White House and Congress “F” grades for failing to build a rapid-response capability for dealing with bioterror threats, or providing adequate oversight over security and intelligence agencies.
The bipartisan panel cited the government’s faltering response to the swine-flu epidemic as evidence of a lack of preparedness for a large-scale crisis, adding that the blame for the failures is shared across administrations and branches of government.
“Each of the last three administrations has been slow to recognize and respond to the biothreat,” said former senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who co-chaired the panel along with former senator Jim Talent (R-Mo.). “But we no longer have the luxury of a slow learning curve, when we know al-Qaeda is interested in bioweapons.”
Doctors may see Kelly post-mortem report, says Hutton
Details of the post-mortem examination of government weapons inspector David Kelly should be seen by doctors seeking an inquest, Lord Hutton has said.
The peer confirmed he had requested a 70-year gagging order on the material at the conclusion of his inquiry into Dr Kelly’s 2003 death.
But he said on Tuesday the purpose of the secrecy order had been to avoid causing distress to Dr Kelly’s family.
He has written to ministers saying the report may be seen by the doctors.
Dr Kelly’s body was found in woods close to his Oxfordshire home in 2003, shortly after it was revealed that he was the source of a BBC report casting doubt on the government’s claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction capable of being fired within 45 minutes.
Ron Paul vs Robert Reich On Larry King
Ron Paul on Larry King Live with Robert Reich who is an unapologetic Keynesian. Sorry for the video stuttering during the first segment. King gave Reich the last word who used it to continue to spread the fallacy that Hoover was the cause of the Great Depression and FDR and the War got us out. It’s really too bad Ron Paul had no time to counter that falsehood, but I suppose Reich played the media game perfectly by making these points when he knew Paul had no more time.
Should the lessons of the Holocaust apply to Palestinians?
The US Memorial Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. urges visitors to learn from the lessons of the holocaust, in an effort to stop hatred and injustice, and other crimes against humanity worldwide. Outside the museum, a group of American activists urges visitors to include Palestinians in Gaza today when they think about current injustices. These protesters argue a humanitarian crisis is taking place in the region that the United States is ignoring.
SC Lt. Gov. compares poor children to stray animals
If the parents of poor children wont come to parent-teacher conferences then the children should be left to starve, according to a South Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate. Lt. Gov. Andrea Bauer told a town hall, Youre facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that dont think too much further than that. And so what youve got to do is youve got to curtail that type of behavior. They dont know any better.
Peace Activists Turns Backs on Gen. Petraeus at Georgia Tech
(APN) ATLANTA — On January 19, 2010, thirteen Atlanta activists from Veterans for Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition (GPJC), and Atlanta Grandmothers for Peace stood in silence and turned their backs on US General David Petraeus before being removed from the 1,100-person Ferst Theater on the Georgia Tech campus.
The activists wore t-shirts with messages like War is Not the Answer, Money for Jobs Not War, No to Endless War and Occupation, Veterans for Peace, and End the War – Yes We Can!
The activists included Randy Aronov; Bernice Bass; Doris Benit; Mike Burke; Pamela Chubbuck; David Epstein; Reid Jenkins; Ann Mauney; Betsy Miklethun; Dot Shaw; George Sossenko; and the present writer–Gloria Tatum.
Mauney, of GPJC, contradicted Petraeus’s public relations message that the US is winning in the occupations of Iraq or Afghanistan.
“There is no military solution to the Afghanistan conflict, and… Gen. Petraeus, as a chief strategist for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and occupations, carries responsibilities for bankrupt US war policies,” Mauney said during the protest.
“General Petraeus, the man from CENTCOM at MacDill AFB in St. Petersburg, definitely had the glint of a fifth star in his eyes and he reinforced that by telling a giant whopper about how the invasion of Afghanistan was launched after 9/11 because that’s where the terrorists were from,” Burke, a veteran of the US Invasion of Vietnam, wrote in an email obtained by Atlanta Progressive News.
In fact, the US government’s own investigation into 9/11 contradicts Petraeus’s assertion by concluding that the majority of terrorists who attacked the US were from Saudi Arabia, not Afghanistan.
Petraeus then began his question and answer session with the rows of clean-cut Tech students and academics who were far more interested in the economics of occupation than a pull-out date.
American Troops On Canadian Soil, If Asked
Stephen Harper and George Bush signed this agreement in 2008. Harper decided it was not the people’s decision to intergate security and military. As a matter of fact Stephen Harper did not think Canadians should even be aware of this. Now before all you liberal fans get all excited, the SPP (Security and Prosperity Partnership) was first signed by Paul Martin. Also without public opinion and with virtually no public knowledge.
CCTV in the sky: police plan to use military-style spy drones
Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the ”routine” monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.
The arms manufacturer BAE Systems, which produces a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is adapting the military-style planes for a consortium of government agencies led by Kent police.
Documents from the South Coast Partnership, a Home Office-backed project in which Kent police and others are developing a national drone plan with BAE, have been obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act.
They reveal the partnership intends to begin using the drones in time for the 2012 Olympics. They also indicate that police claims that the technology will be used for maritime surveillance fall well short of their intended use – which could span a range of police activity – and that officers have talked about selling the surveillance data to private companies. A prototype drone equipped with high-powered cameras and sensors is set to take to the skies for test flights later this year.
Scott Brown, Establishment Clown
2010 Leave a Comment
Well, Scott Brown, Republican, beat out Martha Coakley, Democrat, in a race that was never supposed to be even close. Now the mainstream media acts surprised and some in the alternative media are crowing about how much of a difference this is going to make and how the people have spoken. Well, I’m not buying it. Scott Brown’s election has not made one whit of difference. Oh, maybe, just maybe, it might slow up the push toward nationalized health care. Perhaps it slowed up the agenda to completely socialize the United States of America and destroy the last vestiges of a truly free market and the last hope of a peaceful, voluntary society in this world, but it has not derailed that effort. There is still an agenda at work here. Freedom is still dying. Scott Brown is still as much a control freak social engineer as his political colleagues and he as much as said so the day after he was elected. He is not an advocate of liberty and smaller, limited constitutional government. READ MORE »