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Obama Administration Claims Unchecked Authority to Kill Americans Outside Combat Zones | CommonDreams.org. WASHINGTON - The Obama administration today argued before a federal court that it should have unreviewable authority to kill Americans the executive branch has unilaterally determined to pose a threat. Government lawyers made that claim in response to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) charging that the administration's asserted targeted killing authority violates the Constitution and international law. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia heard arguments from both sides today. "If the Constitution means anything, it surely means that the president does not have unreviewable authority to summarily execute any American whom he concludes is an enemy of the state," said Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU, who presented arguments in the case.
The lawsuit was filed against CIA Director Leon Panetta, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and President Barrack Obama in the U.S. U.S. State Department Hilariously Announces ‘World Press Freedom Day’ LOL9:51 pm December 7, 2010 The United States, which is currently engaged in a complete war against some weird guy with a website, is going to host “World Press Freedom Day,” the Department of State announced today. They’re all especially excited about protecting the flow of digital news, which is why Washington is “concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information.” LOL. This is the same Department of State (and Justice Department and Pentagon and CIA and NATO and PayPal) trying everything to cut off WikiLeaks’ access to the Internet and its own money.
From the official announcement: The theme for next year’s commemoration will be 21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers. [U.S. Hola wonkerados. To improve site performance, we did a thing. Also, if you are a new commenter, your comment may never appear. Germany accuses US over 'missing' Afghan funds, WikiLeaks cables show | World news. The US military has been charging its allies a 15% handling fee on hundreds of millions of dollars being raised internationally to build up the Afghan army.
Germany has threatened to cancel contributions. According to a protest to the US from Germany's ambassador to Nato this year, Berlin raised questions about the fate of €50m (£42m) it dispensed last year as the biggest contribution to a "trust fund" for the Afghan national army. In protests in Berlin, Brussels, and Washington last February the German government demanded to know what was happening to the money, why earmarked projects were not going ahead and why the US military was taking 15%. A cable to Washington from the US mission to Nato sought instructions on how to respond to the protests from Ulrich Brandenburg, the German ambassador to the military alliance.
"He said that money for earmarked projects had not been disbursed, resulting in delayed projects. Julian Assange: "Geopolitics will be separated into pre and post 'Cablegate" Saturday the 4th of december. 6.41 pm. Julian Assange seats in front of his computer for a chat interview with EL PAÍS. Interpol is looking for him. His webite is under constant attacks. The 39 year old Australian, and Wikileaks founder, says he has a terrible headache. The last 24 hours were tough. Q. A. Q. A. Assange sends a document with a list of all the threats the organization has endured these days.
Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. Q. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. [The chat is over. How To Be Alone. Best of Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent | Documentary Heaven | Watch Free Documentaries Online. MyFarm Does the Work for You. Image source: MyFarm NPR reported this morning that a new group in San Francisco aims to take the work out of growing your own food in your own backyard with MyFarm. San Francisco is not known for having huge backyards, or much sun depending on what side of the city you're on. So how is Trevor Paque, owner of MyFarm, able to keep the greens growing? Well, he and his crew will come and install a garden in your backyard at cost.
Then four times a month the crew harvests a box of vegetables and homeowners pay between $25 and $35 a week for the service (probably what some people pay at the farmers market each week). The crews also now operate in Oakland and Berkeley. More MyFarm pics after the jump. Crew members get around on bike or public transportation and move the food from your backyard to your backdoor.
If you're wondering how well something like this might work, well let the numbers do the talking. Shocking: DoD Tortured Guantanamo Bay Prisoners With Neuropsychiatric Malaria Drug. An Army physician called it "pharmacologic waterboarding. " Guantanamo Bay prisoners were given violently high dosages of a controversial antimalarial drug, known to cause extreme side effects including suicidal thoughts, intense anxiety and hallucinations.
The drug, mefloquine, was administered to all Guantanamo detainees in 2002 in the highest dosage to treat malaria––before they were tested for the disease. Three prisoners who committed suicide in 2006 were all administered the drug. The discovery was found deep in public documents released as part of the Department of Defense investigation into the prisoners' suicides. According to the Army physician, Maj. Remington Nevin, the way mefloquine was used was,"at best, an egregious malpractice. " Mefloquine has been known for decades to have such extreme effects, but the Guantanamo detainees were administered the drug with no concern for their prior medical or psychological histories. Read the full story at Truth Out. ... imagine a puddle.
The Origin of America’s Intellectual Vacuum - Chris Hedges' Columns. The Origin of America’s Intellectual Vacuum Posted on Nov 15, 2010 By Chris Hedges The blacklisted mathematics instructor Chandler Davis, after serving six months in the Danbury federal penitentiary for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), warned the universities that ousted him and thousands of other professors that the purges would decimate the country’s intellectual life. “You must welcome dissent; you must welcome serious, systematic, proselytizing dissent—not only the playful, the fitful, or the eclectic; you must value it enough, not merely to refrain from expelling it yourselves, but to refuse to have it torn from you by outsiders,” he wrote in his 1959 essay “...From an Exile.”
“You must welcome dissent not in a whisper when alone, but publicly so potential dissenters can hear you. What potential dissenters see now is that you accept an academic world from which we are excluded for our thoughts. But they did not take Davis back. Soda Can Solar Panel. Passive solar is just so easy, it's a wonder we don't all do it. Right now, in my little basement office in Montana, I could use a little heating up. And, with a few 2x4s and a bunch of aluminum soda cans, it turns out I can have my own passive solar heater without much work. A clever DIYer, Daniel Strohl, painted some aluminum cans black, drilled some holes in the cans, stacked them, and then put them in a box and, voila, air coming out of the box was fifteen degrees warmer than air going into the box.
He then pumped the warm air directly into his garage. And with just a little bit more work, this exact same design could be a passive water heater. We tend to think of solar power as a high investment advanced technology, but when it comes to heat, that's something the sun does awfully well all on its own. ::Engadget. Vending Machine Grows 20,000 Heads of Lettuce a Year Without Sunlight. Photos: DentuThis is how we shall grow produce in the post-apocalyptic futureFinally -- a device that will guarantee we can still grow vegetables in the dark, after a nuclear holocaust has blocked out the sun or rampaging zombies have taken over our farmland. This Japanese lettuce-growing vending machine has been making the blog-rounds over the last few months, both because it doesn't require sunlight (it uses fluorescent bulbs) and because of the surprising yield it can churn out: 60 heads a day, or over 20,000 a year.
DVice explains: The machine, called the Chef's Farm, was developed by Dentsu and can produce 60 heads of lettuce per day (or 20,000 heads per year) grown under 40 watt fluorescent lighting housed in a chrome housing that can be stored conveniently in any restaurant. It can evidently grow other kinds of veggies as well. Chef's Farm comes with five nutri-culture beds, which are each installed on long and thin metal frames. Italian town's wind farm windfall. 3 December 2010Last updated at 00:30 By Duncan Kennedy BBC News, Tocco Da Casauria Tocco Da Casauria has embraced its wind turbines Ever wanted to have your rubbish collection bill reduced? Or have the cost of your children's school meals cut? Or live in a place where you get cheap visits to the local health spa? There is one town in Italy where all this is possible, thanks to wind. The town is Tocco Da Casauria and it is being held up as an example of what is possible with renewable energy.
Surplus power Tocco is in the mountainous Abruzzo region of central Italy. Profits from the wind turbines are going towards a local school Set on a hill, it is a place where small cafes sit alongside olive oil shops in narrow, cobbled streets. But as you peer between the houses coloured pink, yellow and green, out into the distance beyond, two impressive sights stand out: the rugged mountains, recently tipped off with the first snowfalls of winter, and four wind turbines. Tax cuts “Start Quote Not in Tocco. Senate Republicans to World: We're Not Paying for Climate. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. The Senate's leading climate change denier, James Inhofe (R-Okla.), isn't making an appearance in Cancun this year. He dropped in for a short visit to Copenhagen last year, where his presence mostly served to confuse and disturb reporters from other countries.
This year he decided to make a video presentation at a side event in Cancun organized by Americans for Prosperity, an astroturf group funded in part by fossil fuel interests, rather than show up. But he and three other Republican Senators on Thursday reminded the world that they intend to block funding for climate-related issues. In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Inhofe joined John Barrasso (Wy), David Vitter (La.), and George Voinovich (Ohio) in requesting that the US stop "wasting" money on programs to help developing countries reduce emissions and adapt to climate changes. The senators note that that their main concern is deficit spending. NASA Finds New Life. Smithsonian Gives in to the Far Right, Censors the Artist Who “Spoiled Christmas”
Incoming House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor called yesterday for the closing of an exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery that features work with sexual themes and a video about the AIDS epidemic in Latin American culture that includes 11 seconds of ants crawling on a Christ figure. Museum director Martin Sullivan has announced that the video has been removed from the exhibit because “people were leaping to a conclusion that we were intentionally trying to provoke Christians or spoil the Christmas season.” Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, who has a long history of far-right extremism, is the main force behind the move to censor the privately-funded exhibit.
Michael B. Keegan, President of People For the American Way, issued the following statement: “There is absolutely no reason for our government to be in the business of censoring art, or cave to pressure from extreme Religious Right organizations just because it’s Christmas. News - Technology & Science - Extinctions feared as ocean dead zones grow. Low oxygen levels, which have been found along southeastern Australia, are known to increase stress on fish. ((Ho New/Reuters)) Scientists fear the planet is on the brink of another mass extinction as ocean dead zones continue to grow in size and number. More than 400 ocean dead zones — areas so low in oxygen that sea life cannot survive — have been reported by oceanographers around the world between 2000 and 2008. That is compared with 300 in the 1990s and 120 in the 1980s. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a professor at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) and the University of Queensland in Australia, says there is growing evidence that declining oxygen levels in the ocean have played a major role in at least four of the planet's five mass extinctions.
"Until recently the best hypothesis for them was a meteor strike," he said. "So 65 million years ago they've got very good evidence ... all the dinosaurs died because of smoke and stuff in the atmosphere from a meteor strike. Amazing 3D immersion technology. Citizens United v FEC - The Results. A few months ago the United States Supreme Court made a terrible decision in a case called United Citizens v FEC.
They basically decided that money was equivalent to speech in a political campaign, and that Congress couldn't limit the amount of money an organization could spend to support their chosen candidate(s). It doesn't take a lot of intelligence to know that this decision violated any remaining concepts of equality in political campaigns. The decision meant that the rich have much more free speech than other Americans do.
The result was that enormous amounts of money were poured into the 2010 campaign by numerous groups -- mostly on the right. Here are the top 10 groups that spent the most in this recent election campaign. LIBERAL Service Employees International Union..........$15,737,456 A.F.S.C.M.E...........$12,362,885 TOTAL..........$28,100,341 CONSERVATIVE U.S. Both of the liberal groups are unions. Making matters even worse is the fact they are doing this in secret. State of the Nation. The full email: President Barack Obama said in Turkey : "We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.
" I found this very interesting. Do you know the Preamble for your state? . . (end of email) I've about had it. >From the treaty of Tripoli: Art. 11. (end my reply) Ok, maybe a bit terse. My aunt didn't. Here is her reply (and yes, she hit reply all...) I figured this would put you in an uproar, but to each his/her own opinion. As a friend of mine would say, Great Ooogly-Moogly! Do you think this was the last of it? I let this sit in my inbox for two full days before replying. GOOD: Trashy Novel. Spacetime invisibility cloaks can hide entire events inside temporal voids. Are You Ready for the 21st Century ? Elgan: Big Business is watching you. Tour of a house that's less than 100 square feet. Online : The iFixit Repair Manifesto. Holographic TV dreams in Japan 2022 World Cup bid. Constitution Needs A New Amendment.
Jazz. Minecraft users go wild building CPUs in their virtual world (video) Peoplehacking - ToorCon 2010. EFF Sues The Gov't, Demanding Proof That It Needs To Put Wiretap Backdoors Into All Communications. No terror arrests in 100,000 police counter-terror searches, figures show | Law. Verizon Goes Up & Down at 10 Gbps in Tests. Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence. Salinity Power Plants May be the Next Eco-Power Generating Tech. Japanese plan space-based solar power. What_if_solar_was_subsidized_like_fossil_fuels.
Self-assembling computer circuits, who needs God? Scientists can now erase unpleasant memories - Tucson Technology. Atheism and the Enlightenment: In the name of godlessness. Global extinction crisis looms, new study says.
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