The Attempted Militarization of the JetsonsA lesser known episode of "The Jetsons" speaks directly to our current plight: the relentless but eternally floundering attempt to militarize a bourgeois society that is more interested in consumption and leisure than serving a mythical national ethos.
Let's first review the setting. The Jetsons is a cartoon made by Hanna-Barbera from 1962–1963 (the newer ones aren't as good but they aren't terrible either). It is distinguished in science-fiction lore by the fact that it is ... (more)
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Straw apology on Israeli arrestForeign Secretary Jack Straw has apologised to his Israeli counterpart over the attempted arrest of a general accused of war crimes.
Major General Doron Almog, ex-head of Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, faced private prosecution charges.
The Foreign Office says Mr Straw apologised to Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom "as a courtesy".
"He was saying he was sorry if the incident had embarrassed the Israelis," said a Foreign Office spokesman.
... (more)
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Shell Oil workers flee Nigeria after rebels seize platform which pumps all of Nigeria's 2.4 million barrels per dayOil company Royal Dutch Shell is preparing to evacuate some workers from the Niger Delta after ethnic militants threatened violence over the arrest of their leader.
The company made plans to withdraw non-essential staff from at least one oil production platform as a judge ordered militia leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari to be detained for two week pending treason charges.
Soldiers and riot police set up checkpoints across the delta's largest city, Port Harcourt, and armo... (more)
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U.S. Economy: Leading Indicators Fall, Claims Jump
Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. economy softened in August even before Hurricane Katrina struck and the storm sent first- time unemployment claims to a two-year high, separate reports showed.
The index of leading indicators slid 0.2 percent after a revised 0.1 percent decline in July, the first back-to-back drops since 2001, the New York-based Conference Board said. Initial applications for unemployment benefits rose to 432,000 last week, the most since July 2003,... (more)
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Guilty as sinA grand jury found the Archdiocese of Philadelphia hid at least 63 cases of sexual abuse at the hands of local priests.
The cover up was so successful that the statute of limitations has run out and now the monsters responsible are unindictable.
But wait, it gets worse! Under Penn... (more)
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Frist Stock Sale Raises Questions on TimingSenate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has maintained for years that his stock holdings in the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain posed no conflict of interest for a policymaker deeply involved in health care matters. He even received two rulings in the 1990s from the Senate ethics committee that blessed the holding of the stock in blind trusts.
So when Frist decided in June to dump all the stock, and later cited as the reason his desire to avoid the appearance of a c... (more)
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Senators Accuse Pentagon of Obstructing Inquiry on Sept. 11 Plot WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 - Senators from both parties accused the Defense Department on Wednesday of obstructing an investigation into whether a highly classified intelligence program known as Able Danger did indeed identify Mohamed Atta and other future hijackers as potential threats well before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The complaints came after the Pentagon blocked several witnesses from testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee at a public hearing on Wednesd... (more)
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Students Prepare to Launch Home-made SatelliteA microsatellite built largely from donated parts in university workshops across Europe is just over one week from launch. It is the first in a trio of student-built spacecraft that will ultimately reach for the Moon.
It took only 18 months for more than 400 students – spread across 23 universities and 12 countries – to design and build the SSETI Express spacecraft. Set to launch from Russia’s Plesetsk Cosmodrome on Sept. 30, the project is part an education effo... (more)
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British Bombers: The Most Outrageous Iraq War Story Since Abu GhraibThe last remaining public justification for the U.S./U.K. occupation of Iraq is terrorism: The foreign forces cannot leave until Iraq is somewhat peaceful and the terrorists have been defeated.
That threadbare reasoning was ripped apart on Monday as the world -- other than the United States, where broadcast media avoided the story -- was shown two agents provocateurs employed by the British government. Their exact mission will never be proven. The evidence, however, is damning... (more)
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British "Undercover Soldiers" Caught driving Booby Trapped Car: "They refused to say what their mission was."The following Reuters report raises some disturbing questions.
Why were undercover British "soldiers" wearing traditional Arab headscarves firing at Iraqi police?
The incident took place just prior to a major religious event in Basra.
The report suggests that the police thought the British soldiers looked "suspicious". What was the nature of their mission?
Occupation forces are supposesd to be collaborating with Iraqi authorities. Wh... (more)
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EU moves to log all Internet, phone communicationThe European Commission has adopted proposals to log details of all telephone, Internet, and e-mail traffic, to combat terrorism and serious crime.
The push for EU-wide data storage came after the Madrid bomb attacks last year, and intensified after the London bomb attacks in July, when Britain took over the rotating EU presidency.
The Commission proposes storing data related to mobile and fixed telephone traffic for a year, to allow the police to trace the time, pl... (more)
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Mental Health Bill 'to cause thousands to be detained'NINE times as many people as first thought will be forced to undergo compulsory mental health treatment under planned reforms in England and Wales, a new study claims.
The draft Mental Health Bill proposes allowing patients to be made to take medication and detained if necessary. The King's Fund study said that in 15 years as many as 13,000 could be placed under such orders, rather than the Government's 1450 figure. But the Government said the "flawed" study produced incorrect est... (more)
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Hospitals Track More Patients With RFIDHospitals in Connecticut, Alabama and Pennsylvania are using Randianse Inc.'s RFID products to improve equipment management and patient and staff movement.
Randianse, of Lawrence, Mass., announced that it has installed its active RFID indoor positioning solution at Yale-New Haven Hospital to increase efficiency, enhance safety and reduce costs. It will cover nearly 1,000 pieces of medical equipment and managers, allowing convenient tracking with web-based searches. Later this year... (more)
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