School cancels reading program rather than promote “hacker culture” After the Booker T.
Washington Public High School in Pensacola, Florida, placed best-selling author and popular Boing Boing blog editor Cory Doctorow’s young adult novel Little Brother on its “One School/One Book” summer reading list, the school’s administration promptly cancelled the school-wide reading program. In a blog post on Friday, Doctorow argued that the school’s motivations for gutting the program included the administration's desire to shield students from his book’s politics and content. U.S. Government Launches Massive Surveillance Database.
3 Reasons to Kill the Dept. of Homeland Security. From Bug Drones to Disease Assassins, Super Weapons Rule US War Game. Sailors train for chemical and biological warfare.
Photo: U.S. Navy CARLISLE, Pennsylvania — A rogue state is on the verge of developing a deadly biological weapon against which the rest of the world has no defense. Through its connections to extremist groups and smugglers, the regime could be planning to launch bio attacks on U.S. allies and interests. With tensions mounting, a cabal of American military officers, intelligence agents, scientists, industry officials and theoreticians gather at a secure facility within the Defense Department’s oldest base. A quiet man wearing a dark suit stands and the room grows silent. Illinois Traffic Stop Of Star Trek Fans Raises Concerns About Drug Searches, Police Dogs, Bad Cops. Last December, filmmaker Terrance Huff and his friend Jon Seaton were returning to Ohio after attending a "Star Trek" convention in St.
Louis. As they passed through a small town in Illinois, a police officer, Michael Reichert, pulled Huff's red PT Cruiser over to the side of the road, allegedly for an unsafe lane change. Over the next hour, Reichert interrogated the two men, employing a variety of police tactics civil rights attorneys say were aimed at tricking them into giving up their Fourth Amendment rights. Reichert conducted a sweep of Huff's car with a K-9 dog, then searched Huff's car by hand. Spy Satellite Companies Form Space Monopoly. A satellite image of Washington D.C. during the inauguration of President Barack Obama on January 20, 2009.
Photo: DailyM/Flickr Earlier this year, the spy satellite industry was hit hard by defense budget cuts. For the top two commercial satellite companies, which survive largely by providing imagery to the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies, the cuts left only enough money for one to survive. Now budget austerity has forced the companies to merge together and create a new space monopoly with control over what we see from orbit. On Monday, Colorado-based satellite firm DigitalGlobe announced it’s merging with Virginia-based competitor GeoEye in a stock and cash deal worth $900 million. The company also has somewhat of a codependent relationship with the Pentagon. Earlier this year, the Pentagon announced it was pushing “significant reductions” for commercial satellite imagery for fiscal year 2013.
Then in late June, doubts emerged whether GeoEye’s funding would continue. Monsanto & the University. Here’s what happens when corporations begin to control education. “When I approached professors to discuss research projects addressing organic agriculture in farmer’s markets, the first one told me that ‘no one cares about people selling food in parking lots on the other side of the train tracks,’” said a PhD student at a large land-grant university who did not wish to be identified. “My academic adviser told me my best bet was to write a grant for Monsanto or the Department of Homeland Security to fund my research on why farmer’s markets were stocked with ‘black market vegetables’ that ‘are a bioterrorism threat waiting to happen.’ It was communicated to me on more than one occasion throughout my education that I should just study something Monsanto would fund rather than ideas to which I was deeply committed.
I ended up studying what I wanted, but received no financial support, and paid for my education out of pocket.” Seventy-Two Cops Were Shot and Killed in the Entire U.S. in 2011; LA County Cops Alone Shot and Killed 54 Suspects the Same Year. Police officers in Los Angeles County shot and killed 54 people in 2011, an increase of 70 percent over 2010. According to the Los Angeles Times, at least 12 of the 54—or 22 percent—were completely unarmed. "With 612 people killed in the county last year," reports the LAT*, "nearly 1 in every 10 such deaths occurred at the hands of law enforcement officers.
" LAPD Chief Charlie Beck told the paper, "By and large these are not shootings of misperception or overreaction. " Here’s what happened during one situation in which officers did not overreact: In October, Downey police responded to an intersection where an armed man had been seen by a 911 caller. A number cruncher with the LA County Office of Independent Review told the Times, "Until you really pull each of them apart, you don't know whether it was just a blip or if it is the start of an upward trend.” 4-Year-Old Gets TSA Pat-Down Following Hug From Grandma.