| 16.Feb.2009 So maybe this isn't the biggest downturn since The Great Depression? Maybe it's bigger than that. Maybe this is a corner-turn for the human race, maybe last September was when it finally occurred to us, collectively, that we couldn't keep going as we were going, and we hit the brakes in the way the Invisible Hand does. Maybe the efforts to "jump start" the economy won't work, and maybe that's as it should be, and maybe that's a good thing? https://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/02/15/maybeThisIsTheBigSlowdown.html 16.Feb.2009 Sea Sponge Extract Conquers Resistant Bacteria - kdawson Science News has an article on research into a compound found in a particular kind of sea sponge that seems to have the ability to restore antibiotics' effectiveness against resistant bacteria. The hope is that, since the compound is not itself deadly or even harmful to bacteria, it may skew the antibiotic-bacteria arms race in our favor. "Chemical analyses of the sponge's chemical defense factory pointed to a compound called algeferin. Biofilms, communities of bacteria notoriously resistant to antibiotics, dissolved when treated with fragments of the algeferin molecule. And new biofilms did not form. So far, the algeferin offshoot has, in the lab, successfully treated bacteria that cause whooping cough, ear infections, septicemia and food poisoning. The compound also works on... [MRSA] infections, which wreak havoc in hospitals. 'We have yet to find one that doesn't work,' says [one of the researchers]." https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Ktu41_eFuQM/article.pl 16.Feb.2009 High Tech Misery In China - kdawson theodp writes "Think you've got a bad job? Think again. You could be making keyboards for IBM, Microsoft, Dell, Lenovo and HP at Meitai Plastic and Electronics, a Chinese hardware factory. Prompted by the release of High Tech Misery in China by a human-rights group, a self-regulating body set up by tech companies will conduct an audit of working conditions at the factory. In return for take-home pay of 41 cents per hour, workers reportedly sit on hard wooden stools for 12-hour shifts, seven days a week. Overtime is mandatory, with workers being given on average two days off per month. While on the production line, workers are not allowed to raise their hands or heads, are given 1.1 seconds to snap each key into place, and are encouraged to 'actively monitor each other' to see if any company rules are being transgressed. They are also monitored by guards. Workers are fined if they break the rules, locked in the factory for four days per week, and sleep in crowded dormitories. Okay, it's not all bad news — they're hiring." https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/OHOHj7HBQwc/article.pl 16.Feb.2009 Do We Need a New Internet? - kdawson Richard.Tao and a number of other readers sent in a NYTimes piece by John Markoff asking whether the Internet is so broken it needs to be replaced. "...[T]here is a growing belief among engineers and security experts that Internet security and privacy have become so maddeningly elusive that the only way to fix the problem is to start over. What a new Internet might look like is still widely debated, but one alternative would, in effect, create a 'gated community' where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety. Today that is already the case for many corporate and government Internet users. As a new and more secure network becomes widely adopted, the current Internet might end up as the bad neighborhood of cyberspace. You would enter at your own risk and keep an eye over your shoulder while you were there." A less alarmist reaction to the question was blogged by David Akin: "If you build a new Internet and you want me to get a license to drive on it, sorry. I'm hanging out here in v.1." https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/9YGpzCkcBYs/article.pl 16.Feb.2009 Collided Satellite Debris Coming Down? - kdawson Jamie found this Bad Astronomy blog on the many reports beginning about 7 of one or more fireballs in the sky across Texas. That blog's proprietor first doubted that the phenomena could be due to the satellites that collided in orbit last week, but later left the possibility open. The National Weather Service for Jackson, KY put out an announcement about possible explosions and earthquakes across the area and blamed the defunct satellites. "These pieces of debris have been causing sonic booms...resulting in the vibrations being felt by some residents...as well as flashes of light across the sky. The cloud of debris is likely the result of the recent in orbit collision of two satellites on Tuesday...February 10th when Kosmos 2251 crashed into Iridium 33." An Austin TV station has more reports. https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/w2jE5cMPs1U/article.pl 16.Feb.2009 Acquired Characteristics May Be Inheritable - kdawson A story from a week or so back in Technology Review describes research coming to the surprising conclusion that Jean-Baptiste Lamarck may have been right — that acquired characteristics can be passed on to offspring, at least in rodents. Lamarck's ideas have been controversial for 200 years, and dismissed in mainstream scientific thinking for nearly that long. "In Feig's study, mice genetically engineered to have memory problems were raised in an enriched environment — given toys, exercise, and social interaction — for two weeks during adolescence. The animals' memory improved... The mice were then returned to normal conditions, where they grew up and had offspring. This next generation of mice also had better memory, despite having the genetic defect and never having been exposed to the enriched environment." https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/EcMBccHEh0U/article.pl 16.Feb.2009 Earth May Harbor a Shadow Biosphere of Alien Life - kdawson An anonymous reader sends us to Cosmos Magazine for a speculative article arguing that a 'shadow biosphere' may exist on Earth, unrelated to life as we know it. If such non-carbon-based life were found here at home, it would alter the odds for how common life is elsewhere in the universe, astrobiologists say. "The tools and experiments researchers use to look for new forms of life — such as those on missions to Mars — would not detect biochemistries different from our own, making it easy for scientists to miss alien life, even if [it] was under their noses. ... Scientists are looking in places where life isn't expected — for example, in areas of extreme heat, cold, salt, radiation, dryness, or contaminated streams and rivers. [One researcher] is particularly interested in places that are heavily contaminated with arsenic, which, he suggests, might support forms of life that use arsenic the way life as we know it uses phosphorus." https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/MNQR-ap5leI/article.pl 16.Feb.2009 Drug Giant Pledges Cheap Medicine For World's Poor - kdawson bmsleight writes in with a Guardian piece on the decision of the world's second biggest pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline, to radically shift its attitude towards providing cheap drugs to millions of people in the developing world. "[The new CEO] said that GSK will... cut its prices for all drugs in the 50 least developed countries to no more than 25% of the levels in the UK and US — and less if possible — and make drugs more affordable in middle-income countries such as Brazil and India; put any chemicals or processes over which it has intellectual property rights that are relevant to finding drugs for neglected diseases into a 'patent pool,' so they can be explored by other researchers; and reinvest 20% of any profits it makes in the least developed countries in hospitals, clinics, and staff." https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/xQx8aRw2obI/article.pl 16.Feb.2009 Facebook's New Terms of Service - CmdrTaco An anonymous reader writes "Chris Walters writes about Facebook's new terms of service. 'Facebook's terms of service (TOS) used to say that when you closed an account on their network, any rights they claimed to the original content you uploaded would expire. Not anymore. Now, anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later. Want to close your account? Good for you, but Facebook still has the right to do whatever it wants with your old content. They can even sublicense it if they want.'" Oh no! Now they'll be able to license your super flair goblin poke 25 tag history! https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/tKdkl7odabY/article.pl 16.Feb.2009 Nuclear Subs 'Collide In Ocean' - CmdrTaco Jantastic noted a BBC report saying "A Royal Navy nuclear submarine was involved in a collision with a French nuclear sub in the middle of the Atlantic. It is understood HMS Vanguard and Le Triomphant were badly damaged in the crash earlier this month. Despite being equipped with sonar, it seems neither vessel spotted the other, the BBC's Caroline Wyatt said." https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/yquDD9nwm9A/article.pl 16.Feb.2009 Earth Under Threat From Dark Comets - CmdrTaco An anonymous reader writes "Comets could be the most significant impact hazard to Earth, with sky surveys underestimating the number that are potentially devastating by a factor of between 10 and 100, U.K. astrophysicists say." https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Y0Gaubj9hOM/article.pl 16.Feb.2009 New York Wants To Tax Internet Downloads - CmdrTaco An anonymous reader writes "NY is considering taxing 'video and music' downloads to offset a burdgeoning budget deficit." How long before we all have meters on our routers? This version is just a 4% tax on movies and songs downloaded from services like iTunes, but I'm sure if they could figure out a bit tax, they would. https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/pZuX8M0yzYE/article.pl 16.Feb.2009 Carbon Burial Research Grows as Huge Experiment Begins - Alexis Madrigal A new carbon sequestration project, sponsored by the Department of Energy, is underway in Illinois. It's a sign of the agency's continued support for the controversial climate-change tech. https://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/abbU44t9uIM/carbonstorage.html 16.Feb.2009 New Zimbabwe minister blames bank Zimbabwe's central bank is at the heart of the nation's economic decay, new Finance Minister Tendai Biti says. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7891761.stm 16.Feb.2009 Crash plane 'dropped in seconds' A plane that crashed onto a house in New York state killing 50 people dropped 800 feet in five seconds, officials say. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7891770.stm 16.Feb.2009 Japan's economy in quarterly dive Japan's economy contracted by 3.3% in the final quarter of 2008 - its worst showing since the oil crisis of the 1970s, figures show. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7891849.stm 16.Feb.2009 CBI warning over recession cash The government will have to borrow £100bn more than thought to stave off the worst of the recession, the CBI says. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7891514.stm 16.Feb.2009 Warning over metal detector crime Britain's heritage is under threat from illegal metal detector users, or "nighthawkers", who face little threat of being caught, a report says. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7891530.stm 16.Feb.2009 Russian output plummets further Russia's industrial output sank 16% in January from a year earlier after the sector was hit hard by the economic downturn. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7892528.stm 16.Feb.2009 Battle plan How UK's plans to tackle extremism are changing 16.Feb.2009 Chavez wins chance of fresh term Venezuelans vote to scrap term limits on elected posts, paving the way for President Hugo Chavez to seek re-election. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7891856.stm 16.Feb.2009 Anti-terror tactics 'weaken law' The UK and the US have 'actively undermined' international law in the way they fight terrorism, a jurists' group says. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7892387.stm 16.Feb.2009 China warns against protectionism China warns against protectionist measures by other countries, amid fears such action could aggravate the economic slump. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7892070.stm 16.Feb.2009 Ice oceans 'are not poles apart' A marine census finds that at least 235 species live in both polar regions, despite being 12,000km apart. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7888558.stm 16.Feb.2009 Alien life 'may exist among us' Alien life-forms may be thriving right here on Earth, a physicist tells a major science conference. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7893414.stm 16.Feb.2009 Smith to scrap police timesheet Home Secretary Jacqui Smith says a police survey in England and Wales is to be scrapped to free up time. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7892137.stm 16.Feb.2009 French Holocaust role recognised France's top court recognises the state's "responsibility" for deporting Jews in WWII, but says reparations have been made. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7893127.stm 16.Feb.2009 Changing times Is innovation creating a cashless society? https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7850945.stm 16.Feb.2009 No 10 rules out Lloyds bank move Gordon Brown says he does not regret allowing the merger between Lloyds TSB and HBOS, as shares continue to slide. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7892125.stm 16.Feb.2009 Job cuts at Mini spark angry rows Angry agency staff confront union officials at BMW's Mini Cowley plant, after the carmaker confirmed 850 job cuts. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7891913.stm 16.Feb.2009 Nuclear subs collide in Atlantic A Royal Navy nuclear submarine was involved in a collision with a French submarine in the middle of the Atlantic, the MoD says. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7892294.stm 16.Feb.2009 If price of crude oil is dropping, why is cost of gas rising? Source: www.chron.com - 5 On Thursday, crude oil closed just under $34 a barrel, its lowest point for 2009. But the national average price of a gallon of gas rose to $1.95 on the same day, its peak for the year. On Friday gas went a penny higher. https://www.rssmicro.com/article/If_price_of_crude_oil_is_dropping_why_is_cost_of.i241771644.html Colgan Air operates a fleet of 51 regional turboprops including Continental Connection, United Express and US Airways Express. Ch https://www.rssmicro.com/article/Plane_that_crashed_near_Buffalo_was_on_autopilot.i241779232.html 16.Feb.2009 Scientists: Pace of Climate Change Exceeds Estimates -Source: www.newscloud.com - 3 14.Feb.2009 -CHICAGO, - The pace of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions, because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased more quickly than expected + higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems, scientists said... https://www.rssmicro.com/article/Scientists_Pace_of_Climate_Change_Exceeds.i241851443.html Source: www.wjla.com https://www.rssmicro.com/article/Dairy_cows_head_for_slaughter_as_milk_prices_sour.i242039213.html 16.Feb.2009 Nuclear Subs Collide In Atlantic -Source: www.cbsnews.com - Nuclear-armed submarines from Britain + France collided deep under the Atlantic Ocean earlier this month, causing damage to both vessels but releasing no radioactivity, a British official said Monday. https://www.rssmicro.com/article/Nuclear_Subs_Collide_In_Atlantic.i242117026.html 16.Feb.2009 Nation's dairy cows headed for slaughter as milk prices sour -Source: MercedSunStar.com - Hundreds of thousands of America's dairy cows are being turned into hamburgers because milk prices have dropped so low that farmers can no longer afford to feed the animals. https://www.rssmicro.com/article/Nation's_dairy_cows_headed_for_slaughter_as_milk.i242085439.html 16.Feb.2009 "We don't have to go to Mars," Davies said. "No planet is more Earth-like than Earth itself, so if it's true that life emerges on Earth-like conditions, should it not happen many times here?" 16.Feb.2009 How to hunt for shadow life https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/02/how-to-hunt-for-shadow-life.html More than a quarter of young Iraqi men remain jobless, threatening stability. - Amanda Terkel A report released yesterday by the United Nations’s Information Analysis Unit finds that more than “a fourth of Iraq’s young men are out of work, a situation that is likely to worsen and threatens the country’s long-term stability. … Overall, the country’s unemployment rate is 18%, but an additional 10% of the labor force is employed part time and wanting to work more.” In a country still struggling to attract private investment, government jobs now make up 60 % of employment, a rate that will be unsustainable as oil prices drop. https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/16/iraq-jobless/ https://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq16-2009feb16,0,292115.story Perhaps there is a physical principal involved: information spreads at the speed of light, while ignorance is instantaneous at all points in the known universe. Except that it won’t be funny: what is crashing now is our life support system: all the systems and institutions that are keeping us alive. And so I don’t recommend passively standing around and watching the show – unless you happen to have a death wish. https://www.energybulletin.net/node/23259 https://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/15/foreign-office-guantanamo-torture/print The letter provoked uproar when the judges in the case said it amounted to a clear threat from the US government to Britain. Was nun kommen muss, ist etwas anderes: eine Phase der Solidarität. https://www.zeit.de/2009/08/01-Krise https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/0,1518,druck-607674,00.html Colgan From 911Encyclopedia: On 11.Sep.2001 Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari board a Colgan Air flight from Portland, Maine to Boston. They are filmed going through security in Portland. This is the only footage of the hijackers in airports on 9/11, and it's not even one of the suicide flights. the timestamp on the released photos shows 5:53. If the hotel manager is correct, Atta (and Alomari?) needed only 23 minutes until they checked in and passed this camera. After the plane departed, a man has an argument with five Middle Eastern men over a parking space in the parking lot of Boston's Logan Airport. Later in the day he reports the event, and the car is discovered to have been rented by Atta. https://www.cooperativeresearch.org/completetimeline/2001/newsoftheworld091601.html (Photos: Apparently, these photos show alleged "hijackers" Alomari and Atta go through security in Portland. Strangely, the photos show two time stamps, one showing 5:45, the other showing 5:53 ) The lost terror drill- Pt.11 B (cont. from A) The article furthermore reveals: 11.Sep.2001 - on the morning of- 11.Sep.2001 - on the morning of- three fire units in DC had been already involved in an exercise + 11.Sep.2001 - on the morning of- two more fire units had been sent to a hoax incident + 10.Sep.2001 -there was a terror meeting on, at the Johnstown airport in the Westmore County/Shanksville area Colgan Flight 5930 11.Sep.2001 - on the morning of- Officially only 8 passengers had been aboard Colgan Flight. If Atta + Alomari really had been on this flight, it must have been a different one, an unlisted flight. Colgan aka US Airways Express Flight 5930 wasn't listed at BTS. Colgan Air/US Express didn't even fly out of Portland Jetport directly to Boston on that day. But obviously one flight from Portland to Boston took place, for some particular reason. We can assume, that at least Alomari was represented by a "stand-in": 20.Sep 20th -As Guardian reported on- the real Abdulaziz Alomari came forward in Saudi Arabia + informed the authorities that 00.000.1995 his passport had been stolen while he studied electrical engineering at the University of Denver. He reported the identity theft at the time. "I am not the one who bombed the World Trade Centre..." Almost unknown, three of the other known "Colgan"-passengers, who "witnessed" the suspects, had U.S. Government connections...: Read More... | 72096 bytes more | 911 : New Report links 9/11 with Spanish 3/11 2004/11/28 19:53:20 Posted by admin on (559 reads) The Pilots and the Planes: Part 2= inn.globalfreepress.com But the problem that we consistently face is that CHARTERED flights are not listed. Neither are those of small airlines but all our flights were on large BTS reporting carriers. At present, I am embroiled in a debate over this at DU. I mainatain that Colgan does business as US Airways and even has its planes painted in US Airways colors and it flight attendants wear US Airways uniforms. Colgan's flight numbers are US Airways 5000-5999. Now if you go to the BTS database + check Portland + Boston for 11.Sep.2001 you soon determine that there was NO Colgan air service on that day. The Colgan/US Airways flight numbers range is given as 5000-5999 by Colgan's website, and as 4800- 4999 and 4950- 5099 by the US Airways website. This, to me, adds up to zero. Furthermore, it does not appear to me at present that Colgan flew directly from Portland Jetport to Boston. I think you have to connect at LaGuardia or Dulles (or maybe Philly or somewhere else. ) which makes it a five hour proposition. American Eagle appears, from BTS stats, to be the only airline that Atta/Buhkari/Alomari could have boarded. And since woody has a thing about gates, here is a schematic of the Portland Jetport. portlandjetport.org/inside-terminal.asp Note that Gate 11 is somewhat hidden from view. This could have saved our hijackers some time. portlandjetport.org/Shuttles.asp And here is a map of the Portland area. www.transportme.org/ Continental Plane on Autopilot for Part of Descent The FAA notified pilots on Saturday to be aware of possible debris after a collision Tuesday between U.S. and Russian communication satellites. The chief of Russia's Mission Control says clouds of debris from the collision will circle Earth and threaten numerous satellites.
16.Feb.2009 Luanda Under pressure 16.Feb.2009 Poland's Catholic Church blighted by consumerist society https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7884472.stm 16.Feb.2009 Think You'd Remember the Face of Your Torturer? Think Again - Alexis Madrigal Human memories can change when fed misinformation. A new study of prisoners in a mock prisoner-of-war camp showed they often didn't remember the people who interrogated them if they were shown a picture of someone else. https://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/GylUpR9Nkiw/falsememory.html 16.Feb.2009 "Liquid Wood" a Contender To Replace Plastic - kdawson Ostracus recommends a Christian Science Monitor piece on the 40-year quest to find a replacement for non-biodegradable plastic. One candidate, written off 20 years back but now developed to the point of practicality, is a formulation based on the lignin found in wood. And it turns out there is another strong environmental reason to put lignin to use in this way: burning it, which is its common fate today, releases the carbon dioxide that trees had sequestered. "Almost 40 years ago, American scientists took their first steps in a quest to break the world's dependence on plastics. But in those four decades, plastic products have become so cheap and durable that not even the forces of nature seem able to stop them. A soupy expanse of plastic waste — too tough for bacteria to break down — now covers an estimated 1 million square miles of the Pacific Ocean. ...[R]esearchers started hunting for a substitute for plastic's main ingredient, petroleum. They wanted something renewable, biodegradable, and abundant enough to be inexpensive." https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/1vl4mInHxTs/article.pl 16.Feb.2009 LinkedIn traffic grows With the economy in a tailspin, the business-networking site has seen a sharp jump in traffic in recent months, TechCrunch reports. https://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10164387-93.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5 16.Feb.2009 Russia Aims Towards Mars - kdawson Iddo Genuth writes "Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) has announced its intentions to build a low-orbit space station which, according to the agency, will support future exploration of the moon and Mars. There's also a suggestion to extend the operational lifespan of the International Space Station by five more years, resetting its retirement date to 2020. The project proposal is already on its way for review by the Russian government. Some Russian sources also reportedly proposed the (rather ludicrous) idea of converting the ISS into some kind of an interplanetary transport vehicle, which would serve as the 'ultimate mother ship' in manned planetary missions to the moon or even Mars." https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/FelLALd1Yg0/article.pl 16.Feb.2009 Cross Words: Talking About Bad Feelings Helps Control Them - Alexis Madrigal Talking about your feelings might not be a self-indulgent exercise. New psychological research suggests that the mere act of naming your negative feelings helps your brain control their impact on you. https://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/SeFzEsBCeic/talkitout.html 16.Feb.2009 There could be one hundred billion Earth-like planets in Milky Way - There could be one hundred billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, a US conference hears. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7891132.stm 16.Feb.2009 FSA boss admits watchdog's errors - Lord Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, admits it did not spot that the banking system was too risky. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7891142.stm 16.Feb.2009 Police accused over race equality - Police forces in England and Wales are still institutionally racist despite confronting the issue, a review says. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7891380.stm 16.Feb.2009 NRSRO Failings in Structured Ratings and Discreet Recommendations to Address Agency Conflicts Winter 2009 Volume14,Number 3 The Voices of Influence | iijournals.com https://www.iinews.com/site/pdfs/JSF_Winter_2009_Rosner.pdf 16.Feb.2009 Scottish ministers reject ID card plan - The Scottish Government tells Westminster it is "completely opposed" to plans to roll out identity cards across the UK. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7890180.stm 16.Feb.2009 Automation May Make Toll Roads More Common - Soulskill bfwebster writes "Here in Denver, we have E-470, a toll section of the 470 beltway, that uses the usual transponder attached to your windshield. Fair enough, and I make use of it, particularly in driving to the airport. But they've just implemented new technology on E-470 that allows anyone to drive through the automated toll gates. If you don't have a transponder, it takes a photo of your license plate and sends a monthly bill to your house. As a result, the company that runs E-470 plans to close all human-staffed toll booths by mid-summer. And as an article in this morning's Rocky Mountain News> notes, 'Such a system could be deployed on other roads, including some that motorists now use free. The result: a new source of money for highways and bridges badly in need of repair.' You can bet that legislators, mayors, and city councilpersons everywhere will see this as an even-better source of income than red-light cameras. You've been warned." https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/16CuXnGWHbw/article.pl 16.Feb.2009 Criminals in Italy make phonecalls online to avoid wiretaps - Investigators in Italy say more and more criminals are using the internet to make telephone calls to avoid wiretaps. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7890443.stm 16.Feb.2009 Paul Ekman, a psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who has authored an introduction to Expressions of the Emotions, said today at a AAAS press conference that these views are nearly identical to those of Tibetan Buddhists. "I am now calling myself a Darwininian," Ekman recalled the Dalai Lama saying, after Ekman read him some passages of Darwin's work. https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/02/darwin-the-buddhist.html
Keine Biografie vorhanden! > Forges, Alison Des: Kein Zeuge darf überleben < > Der Genozid in Ruanda < > Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3930908808, Gebunden, 947 Seiten, 40,00 EUR < Aus dem Amerikanischen von Jürgen Bauer, Fee Engemann, Renate Hardt, Edith Nerke, Carmen von Samson-Himmelstjerna und Gisela Schwarz. Über eine halbe Million Menschen wurden 1994 während des Völkermordes in Ruanda getötet. Obwohl die Täter ausschließlich zu den Hutu und die Opfer zum weitaus größten Teil ... Des Forges, Alison, 1999: Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda. New York, N.Y. et al.: Human Rights Watch; Paris: International Federation of Human Rights. Des Forges, Alison, 2000: Alas, We Knew, in: Foreign Affairs, Vol. 79 (May/June 2000) No. 3, S. 141-144. DES FORGES, Alison (dir. par, pour Human Rights Watch et FIDH), Aucun témoin ne doit survivre. Le Génocide au Rwanda, Karthala, 1999. Nous allons maintenant entendre à ce sujet le premier passage d'une interview d'Alison Des Forges, qui est considérée comme l'historienne de référence sur le génocide des Tutsi depuis son ouvrage de 1999, Aucun témoin ne doit survivre , publié chez Karthala par Human Rights Watch et la FIDH. Son livre fait près de 800 pages. Une centaine est consacrée à la complicité française. Ces pages n'ont pas vraiment été exploitées. Alison Des Forges était prête à venir témoigner devant notre Commission, mais elle était retenue cette semaine aux États-Unis pour une série de cours. Elle a donc accepté de nous recevoir à Bruxelles, à l'Antenne européenne de Human Rights Watch, pour que nous puissions l'interroger. La première question que je lui ai posée portait sur cet entraînement, par les militaires français, des assassins du génocide, mis à l'essai lors des prémices du génocide. Témoignage filmé d'Alison Des Forges ALISON DES FORGES Il y a eu, à un moment, des instructeurs militaires français chargés de l'entraînement dans ces camps. Je ne peux pas dire que les camps étaient dirigés ou gérés par les soldats français. C'étaient des camps de l'armée rwandaise, mais il y avait des militaires français qui s'occupaient de l'entraînement. FRANÇOIS-XAVIER VERSCHAVE C'était à quelle date ? ALISON DES FORGES Ces formations se situent à Gabiro. Les Français ont été actifs dans cette région assez tôt, probablement dès 1992, et jusqu'en 1994. FRANÇOIS-XAVIER VERSCHAVE Le rapport de la Mission parlementaire d'information explique qu'en 1993, c'était pratiquement la France qui commandait l'armée rwandaise, alors en décomposition. S'il y avait des instructeurs français dans ce camp, il est donc probable qu'ils y ont eu des responsabilités importantes. Vous dites avoir reçu des confidences de militaires et de miliciens, semblant indiquer qu'on ne faisait pas une grande différence cec_rapport.pdf Unter Berufung auf die Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO) berichtet Human Rights Watch allein von 00.000.1998-00.000.2002 mehr als 40.000 Vergewaltigungen während des militärischen Konflikts in der ostkongolesischen Region Ituri . "Sexuelle Gewalt hat Zehntausende Leben im Kongo zerstört", sagte Alison Des Forges von Human Rights Watch. Das sei auch möglich gewesen, weil die mehr als 10.000 Uno-Friedenssoldaten der Mission MONUC beim Schutz der Zivilisten versagt hätten. The first published account of the genocide by an independent Rwandan writer is Andre Sibomana, Hope for Rwanda (London: Pluto Press, 1999), based on conversations with Laure Guilert and Herve Deguine, translated, with a postscript, by Carina Tertsakian, and including a preface by Alison Des Forges. Papers from the archive of the former Rwanda Ministry of Defence found in eastern Zaire in November 1996 [referred to hereafter as ex-MOD papers]; Report of the French Parliamentary commission of inquiry into France's role before and during the Rwanda genocide, 15 December 1998, 1,500 pages; see especially testimony of James Gasana, former Minister in the Habyarimana regime, to the commission of inquiry, as reported by Le Monde , 12 June 1998; Human Rights Watch, 'Arming Rwanda: The Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses in the Rwandan War', New York, January 1994. A leggere i giornali, e non abbiamo motivo di dubitarne, le recenti elezioni presidenziali in Rwanda si sono svolte senza incidenti sì, ma in un evidente deficit di democrazia. Alison Des Forges, esponente di Human Rights Watch ha detto: "Per gli standard di ogni altro paese al mondo, questa non è democrazia." catastrophe_ A comprehensive study of the genocide published last week by Human Rights Watch and the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues showed that the US saw saving money as more important than saving lives both before + during the tragedy. In a visit to Rwanda last year [1998], President Clinton admitted he and his administration refused to heed cries for help from genocide victims. Alison Des Forges, author of the genocide study entitled Leave None to Tell the Story, said that Clinton's admission was not enough. US authorities must go beyond easy, generic apologies. Only if we really look at what went wrong can we learn the necessary lessons for the future. The US is the only major international actor in the genocide not to have agreed to investigate its role_ (The US and its shills love to ... "Burundians see this transition as a time of fear, not a time of hope," said Alison Des Forges of Human Rights Watch. "Civilians still have no faith that they won't become the targets of unpredictable violence, either from the government or the rebels." Nous allons maintenant entendre à ce sujet le premier passage d'une interview d'Alison Des Forges, qui est considérée comme l'historienne de référence sur le génocide des Tutsi depuis son ouvrage de 1999, Aucun témoin ne doit survivre, publié chez Karthala par Human Rights Watch et la FIDH. Son livre fait près de 800 pages. Une centaine est consacrée à la complicité française. Ces pages n'ont pas vraiment été exploitées. Alison Des Forges était prête à venir témoigner devant notre Commission, mais elle était retenue cette semaine aux États-Unis pour une série de cours. Elle a donc accepté de nous recevoir à Bruxelles, à l'Antenne européenne de Human Rights Watch, pour que nous puissions l'interroger. La première question que je lui ai posée portait sur cet entraînement, par les militaires français, des assassins du génocide, mis à l'essai lors des prémices du génocide. Témoignage filmé d'Alison Des Forges ALISON DES FORGES 16.Feb.2009 Global Shipping Industry Makes World Flat, Biologically - Alexis Madrigal The global shipping industry makes it so easy for organisms to trot the globe, it's destroying the geographic patterns that fuel evolution. The problem is acute in the Great Lakes region, which could be a major problem for the area's economy, according to scientists at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting. https://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/0Rgl130NdtM/homogecene.html 16.Feb.2009 Major reshuffle in Saudi Arabia King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia sacks two powerful religious figures in a wide ranging shake-up of his administration https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7890211.stm 16.Feb.2009 History lesson Soviet veterans see mistakes repeated in Afghan war https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7888566.stm 16.Feb.2009 Anger at advice to stop oil claim Nationalists hit out after documents from the 1970s reveal strategies to stop Scotland laying claim to North Sea oil. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7890226.stm 16.Feb.2009 Clarke attacks 'failed' bank plan Shadow business secretary Kenneth Clarke calls the Lloyds TSB-HBOS merger a "disaster", and says government initiatives to get banks lending have failed. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7890138.stm 16.Feb.2009 Key Human Rights Advocate Dies In U.S. Plane Crash Source: www.postchronicle.com Historian Alison Des Forges was one of the 50 people killed when the plane crashed into a house and burst into flames.... https://www.rssmicro.com/article/Key_Human_Rights_Advocate_Dies_In_U_S_Plane_Crash.i241293532.html Gore called scientists to join the front lines of this political debate and not to just stay in their labs and research stations. "Start getting involved in politics. Start getting involved in this historical debate. We need you," he said. The audience responded with a standing ovation -- even in the overflow room where I sat. But it remains to be seen whether scientists will take up his call to political engagement. Many, I feel, are more comfortable generating data for Gore to use in his talks. https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/02/mr-gore-comes-to-chicago.html 16.Feb.2009 Iraq attacks account for more than half of global suicide terrorism since 1981. - Think Progress In an analysis of trends in suicide attacks worldwide since 1981 (pdf), researcher Assaf Moghadam presents a pretty shocking statistic: Iraq accounts for 1,067 suicide attacks in the period under review — “a number that accounts for more than half (54.8%) of all suicide attacks since 1981. The sheer volume in which this tactic has struck Iraq is even more impressive since no suicide attacks were recorded in Iraq prior to the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. The Wonk Room’s Matt Duss comments: “Understand, this is what George W. Bush’s strategy of ‘fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here’ entails. Luring terrorists to Iraq to blow themselves up in markets and mosques wasn’t some tragic side-effect of Bush’s plan, it was in fact a component of Bush’s plan. Let’s not pretend to be confused when Iraqis fail to show appropriate gratitude.” https://ctc.usma.edu/sentinel/CTCSentinel-Vol2Iss1.pdf https://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/02/14/fighting-them-over-there/ 16.Feb.2009 IBM Files Patent For Bullet-Dodging Bionic Armor - Soulskill IBM has filed a patent for "Bionic body armor" that would protect a wearer from long-range gunfire by detecting the incoming bullets and administering small shocks to the appropriate muscles required for moving out of the way. Quoting the patent: "When a marksman (such as a sniper) is attempting to fire a projectile from a firearm, the marksman typically prefers to be as far away from the target as possible, thus giving him or her a head start for the escape after the firing. As an example, the longest reported sniper hit was from a distance of about 2500 meters, resulting in a time of flight of about 4 seconds for the projectile/bullet. Had the target been aware of the inbound projectile, avoiding it by simply walking away would have been possible." After detecting the projectile, the armor would calculate the trajectory and "stimulate the target to move in a predefined manner ... sufficient to avoid any contact with the approaching projectile." https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/9JnCwGsb0VQ/article.pl 16.Feb.2009 Dated this February 14th 2000, it was a mere month from the ultimate top: Time to celebrate. This month, the current economic expansion became the longest in U.S. history. The boom has done more than create millions of new jobholders and stock owners. It has also restored the public’s confidence and given more people than ever a shot at the American Dream. We tell the story -Sources: How Prosperity Is Reshaping the American Economy Rich Miller, Laura Cohn, Howard Gleckman, and Paula Dwyer FEBRUARY 14, 2000 BUSINESSWEEK: https://www.businessweek.com/archives/2000/b3668001.arc.htm#B3668002 The Risk That Boom Will Turn to Bust Michael J. Mandel FEBRUARY 14, 2000 BUSINESSWEEK: https://www.businessweek.com/archives/2000/b3668001.arc.htm#B3668019 FEBRUARY 14, 2000 The Boom - BUSINESSWEEK: https://www.businessweek.com/archives/2000/b3668001.arc.htm https://www.businessweek.com/archives/2000/b3668001.arc.htm#B3668002 https://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=218369&title=clusterf#@k-to-the-poor-house 16.Feb.2009 Ontario Court Wrong About IP Addresses, Too - kdawson Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton comments on a breaking news story out of the Canadian courts: "An Ontario Superior Court Justice has ruled that Canadian police can obtain the identities of Internet users without a warrant, writing that there is 'no reasonable expectation of privacy' for a user's online identity, and drawing the analogy that 'One's name and address or the name and address of your spouse are not biographical information one expects would be kept private from the state.' But why in the world is it valid to compare an IP address with a street address in the phone book?" Read on for Bennett's analysis. https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/rDquTqHsJcI/article.pl 16.Feb.2009 Terabit Ethernet Inches Closer To Reality - kdawson An anonymous reader writes "Researchers from Australia, Denmark, and China have combined efforts to show the feasibility of terabit-per-second Ethernet over fiber-optic cables. The solution involves a photonic chip that uses laser light for switching signals, and a form of the exotic material type, chalcogenide, or arsenic trisulfide." https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/5tHvT8Hk6J8/article.pl 16.Feb.2009 Twisted Radio Beams Could Untangle the Airwaves - ScuttleMonkey Urchin writes "The radio frequency spectrum available for wireless communication is becoming increasingly crowded thanks to new wireless technology. A solution to the shrinking space might be to put a spin on radio beams during their transmission, to produce a twisted beam, according to Swedish physicists. In theory, huge amounts of https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/MnQ3_2Ro3Sc/article.pl 16.Feb.2009 Nearly 70 computers missing from Los Alamos nuclear lab Energy Department rebukes nuclear lab for treating missing computers as property management issue and not cybersecurity risk, internal documents show. https://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10163715-83.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5 16.Feb.2009 Jargon Watch: Eco-Crunch, Pre-Pre-Pre-SAT, Space Invaders - Jonathon Keats Eco-crunch n. A natural-resource shortage caused by overconsumption. With humans now devouring a third more than the planet can replenish, environmentalists say the coming ecological recession will make our current economic crisis look like a golden age. https://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/bkLQZn2wNXk/st_jw 16.Feb.2009 Blackwater Takes Our Advice: Adopts Inscrutable, Opaque Name - Noah Schachtman They never picked up on our Hello Kitty-style logos. But after a godawful year and a half, the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide finally takes Danger Room's advice and changes its name to something opaque and hard-to-pronounce: Xe. https://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/TOrwHqbiaFE/blackwater-foll.html 16.Feb.2009 Obama Invokes State Secrets in Spy Case - David Kravets The Obama administration invoked the state secrets privilege in a closely watched spy case, making it the second time this week the new administration sought to dismiss lawsuits it inherited from the Bush administration in the name of national security. Civil rights groups had hoped President Barack Obama would have changed course from his predecessor. https://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/v2m3KjzR8U8/obama-invokes-s.html 16.Feb.2009 'All of a Sudden We Have No Response' From Flight 3407 - Dave Demerjian Streaming audio of the conversation between air traffic controllers and Flight 3407 suggests that whatever caused the plane to crash happened quickly and without warning. https://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/x62xQ7-ycRk/continental-com.html 16.Feb.2009 Frenchman 'to be named LSE boss' The London Stock Exchange is set to name Xavier Rolet to replace its chief executive Dame Clara Furse, according to the FT. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7887493.stm 16.Feb.2009 Britain banned Rappers, lifestyle gurus, extremists. Who can't come in? https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7886237.stm 16.Feb.2009 Rise in attacks on British Jews The number of attacks on Jews in the UK has risen sharply since Israeli attacks began on Gaza, a charity claims. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7887511.stm 16.Feb.2009 Bleak forecast on fishery stocks Changing ocean temperatures will force many fish species to migrate towards the poles, hitting fish stocks, scientists warn. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7887536.stm 16.Feb.2009 Missing kit wasting nursing time More than a third of nurses waste up to two hours per shift searching for missing medical equipment, a survey suggests. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7881807.stm 16.Feb.2009 Lloyds shares tumble after update Shares in Lloyds Banking Group fall sharply after it predicts that HBOS will report an annual loss of £10bn. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7888699.stm 16.Feb.2009 Europe hit by economic slowdown European economies contracted in the fourth quarter of 2008, with some countries registering the worst figures in decades. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7887659.stm 16.Feb.2009 US 'keen to strengthen Asia ties' US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tells the BBC the US is keen to deepen its Asia ties, ahead of a tour of the region. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7889657.stm 16.Feb.2009 Axelrod hits back at Andy Card: ‘We have to roll up our sleeves and clean up the mess.’ - Amanda Terkel In recent days, several of President Bush’s closest advisers have been attacking President Obama. Vice Preisdent Cheney, for example, said that there was “a high probability” of a WMD attack if Bush’s policies were reversed, and former chief of staff Andy Card said that Obama has turned the White House into a “locker room” because he isn’t requiring staff to wear jackets at all times. Axelrod sharply responds to the “tasteless” criticisms in a new interview with the Washington Post: I was disappointed in the Vice President’s comments, not because he said–stated the obvious which is that there are threats that are grave, but that he suggested that somehow the President’s decisions on torture in Guantanamo would increase the likelihood of that. […] You know, the last thing that I think we’re looking for at this juncture is advice on fiscal integrity or ethics from Karl Rove, anyone who’s read the newspapers for the last eight years would laugh at that. So, I appreciate that President Bush has been so classy during this period, and I’m disappointed that some of the folks who worked for him didn’t–don’t share that. […] I mentioned Andy Card saying that we were somehow denigrating the Presidency because people were wearing short sleeves in the Oval Office. We’re wearing short sleeves because we have to roll up our sleeves and clean up the mess that we inherited. https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/12/axelrod-card/ https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/washington/13intel.html 16.Feb.2009 Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair told Congress yesterday that America’s “primary near-term security concern” is no longer terrorism, but rather the global financial crisis and the turmoil it could ignite. “The longer it takes for the recovery to begin, the greater the likelihood of serious damage to U.S. strategic interests,” he said. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/12/AR2009021203832.html 16.Feb.2009 The compromise stimulus bill is too small, says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com. “At $789 billion, the final package ‘is just not going to pack the same jobs punch’ as some earlier versions.” Zandi estimates the compromise will create only about 2.2 million jobs by the end of 2010, “leaving unemployment hovering around 10 %” and possibly leading lawmakers to undertake another stimulus. The National Journal writes that two key Washington, D.C. think tanks are trading places. “The Center for American Progress is in ascendancy,” while the American Enterprise Institute — the home of neoconservatism — finds itself in the political wilderness. CAP has “become an unusual hybrid of scholarship and activism — and a political juggernaut.” https://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/nj_20090214_4207.php? 16.Feb.2009 Norquist: GOP is going to run against the stimulus for another five years. - Satyam Khanna Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R), who broke with his party to publicly endorse President Obama’s recovery package this week, is under attack from conservatives. Conservative icon Grover Norquist admonished Crist for supporting the stimulus, saying that Crist shouldn’t oppose a bill that the GOP will be using as a political tool for years to come: Grover Norquist, the influential conservative leader of Americans for Tax Reform, said Crist should have been wary about embracing an 800-page bill he probably had not read and stands to be loaded with unpopular spending provisions that will surface over coming weeks and months. https://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/article975544.ece https://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-02-11-investigation-poll_N.htm 16.Feb.2009 Yet despite their fearmongering on the consequences of investigations, the American public firmly supports such inquiries: Nearly two-thirds of Americans support examining potential crimes committed by the Bush administration, with 40 % supporting criminal investigations. 16.Feb.2009 Bush Aide: Leahy Truth Commission Is ‘Terribly Dangerous’ Idea, Possibly ‘Deadly’ - Ali Frick Last night on The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly showed a clip of a Fox News producer ambushing Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to accuse him of political hypocrisy for urging an investigation into Bush crimes after he had opposed the Clinton impeachment. “This Leahy thing — this is beyond the pale,” O’Reilly moaned. Marc Thiessen, Bush’s former chief speechwriter, agreed. Not only would the investigations be hypocritcal, he said, but worse, they would be “terribly dangerous” because they would expose the “facts” of the U.S.’s interrogation techniques to Osama bin Laden: THIESSEN: [T]he facts that they want to get out are the techniques we use to interrogate terrorists. The techniques that we used to intercept e-mails and communications and telephone calls. And when you get those facts out, it’s not just going out to the American people and to the viewers on television. It’s going out to Osama bin Laden. It’s going out to the terrorists who can use those information to get around our intelligence and plan the next attack. So it’s very deadly — this is very deadly serious stuff. … And it’s terribly dangerous. He also emphasized that the people Leahy might investigate “aren’t torturers, they’re heroes.” “They should be getting a parade on Pennsylvania Avenue,” he added. Watch it: Pushing for greater secrecy in the name of terrorism is the reflexive reaction for right-wing torture-lovers. Last year, former Cheney chief of staff David Addington refused to speak about waterboarding to Congress, saying that terrorists might be paying attention: “I can’t talk to you, al Qaeda may watch C-SPAN.” 00.000.2007 National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell said “Americans are going to die” if surveillance is discussed openly; Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman told Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) that “public discussion” of an Iraq withdrawal “reinforces enemy propaganda.” https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/13/bushie-deadly-torture-investigations/ https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/09/leahy-truth-commission/ 16.Feb.2009 Study: American famlies are poorer today than they were 00.000.2001. - Ali Frick Paul Krugman points out a finding from the latest Survey of Consumer Finances, showing that, adjusted for inflation, “families are poorer now than they were 00.000.2001.” The gains made in net worth between 2004 and 2007 have all been erased by collapsing stock and housing prices, the study finds. Krugman notes that it is just the latest proof of the disastrous effects of the housing bubble: It’s worth pointing out that with this release, yet another pillar of the what-me-worry school of economics has fallen. You may remember that a few years ago there was a lot of talk about how only bubbleheads paid attention to our low, low savings rate, because the truth was that Americans were getting steadily wealthier thanks to rising asset values. Not so much, it turns out. In 2007 dollars, the average family 00.000.2001 had $700 more dollars in net worth than the average family 00.000.2007. https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/13/families-poorer-than-2001/ https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2009/pdf/scf09.pdf https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/ownership-society-watch/ https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2009/pdf/scf09.pdf 16.Feb.2009 Obama’s Wasted Efforts At Bipartisanship https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/13/obamas-bipartisanship/ 16.Feb.2009 Religious Right rebrands itself as ’socially conservative evangelicals.’ - Guest Blogger Christianity Today reports that some “politically conservative evangelicals” no longer want to be referred to as the “religious right.” According to social conservative leaders like American Values President Gary Bauer, the term “religious right” and others like it have “become synonymous with extremism“: Gary Bauer said this week, “There is an ongoing battle for the vocabulary of our debate. It amazes me how often in public discourse really pejorative phrases are used, like the ‘American Taliban,’ ‘fundamentalists,’ ‘Christian fascists,’ and ‘extreme Religious Right.’” A Focus on the Family official added that the “religious right” label might generate negative impressions: “Terms like ‘Religious Right’ have been traditionally used in a pejorative way to suggest extremism. The phrase ’socially conservative evangelicals’ is not very exciting, but that’s certainly the way to do it.“ Steve Benen responds, “We’re not talking about a branding problem here. These clowns have become publicly reviled because they embrace a radical worldview, starkly at odd with American traditions, laws, and culture. The innocuous label isn’t the problem. The... dangerous and divisive agenda is.” https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/13/religious-right-rebrand/ https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/februaryweb-only/106-42.0.html https://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_02/016873.php 16.Feb.2009 Conspiracy of Optimism Posted by at 2:13 AM 16.Feb.2009 Haushaltsdefizit: EU will Strafverfahren gegen Frankreich einleiten (Wirtschaft) "Removing bad memories is not like removing a wart or a mole. It will change our personal identity since who we are is linked to our memories. It may perhaps be beneficial in some cases, but before eradicating memories, we must reflect on the knock-on effects that this will have on individuals, society and our sense of humanity." John Harris, Professor of Bioethics at the University of Manchester, said: "An interesting complexity is the possibility that victims, say of violence, might wish to erase the painful memory and with it their ability to give evidence against assailants." Experiments on animals has shown beta blockers can interfere with how the brain makes sense of frightening events. Memories erased The group that had taken beta blockers showed less fear than the group that had taken the placebo pill. This shift will be uncomfortable for the police - they do not police ideas or ideology unless they contravene the law. But it is right that they should be careful about who they back and who they fund. The flipside to this meant that those who denounced violence but who promoted intolerance and held offensive, anti-British views were tolerated. More than this, some radicals were even courted as part of our counter-terrorism strategy. The idea was that so long as they denounced terror, other views would be ignored. Nicky Reilly, the gentle giant as he was known, had never stepped abroad but had been infected by al-Qaeda's ideology in Britain. Existing policy Recent demonstrations in London against Israeli attacks in Gaza are causing concern. Die französische "Le Triomphant" war nach dem Unfall aus eigener Kraft nach Brest zurückgekehrt, heißt es nun. Die britische "HMS Vanguard" hingegen musste nach einem Bericht der Zeitung "The Sun" in ihren schottischen Heimathafen Faslane geschleppt werden. 16.Feb.2009 U-Boot-Kollision: "Knapp an der Katastrophe vorbei" (Panorama) 16.Feb.2009 Datenschutz für Arbeitnehmer: Schäuble vertagt Anti-Späh-Gesetz (Politik) Das Abkommen, das in Washington und Europa nicht gut ankommen wird, illustriert, wie bedroht die pakistanische Regierung mittlerweile im eigenen Land ist. Nach monatelangen Militäroperationen im Swat-Tal, einer unzugänglichen Bergregion im Nordwesten des Landes, kapituliert Islamabad endgültig. Anstatt die Taliban weiter zu bekämpfen, beugt sich der Staat um des Friedens Willen den Wünschen der Radikalen. Sie werden das Abkommen, aus ihrer Sicht zu Recht, als Sieg feiern. Die britische "Kampagne für Nukleare Abrüstung" warnte von einem "atomaren Alptraum größter Ordnung". "Der Zusammenstoß hätte eine große Menge an Strahlung freisetzen und die Atomsprengköpfe über den Meeresboden verstreuen können", sagte die Vorsitzende Kate Hudson. Die Dellen des britischen U-Boots zeigten, dass die beiden Boote kaum mehr als Sekunden von einer Katastrophe entfernt waren. Die französische Bewegung "Sortir du nucléaire" warf der Regierung vor, den Vorfall vertuschen zu wollen. "Sie haben es erst zugegeben, als es in der Zeitung stand", sagte Stéphane Lhomme. "Wir sind höchst besorgt, was die Sicherheit von Atomanlagen angeht", sagte Lhomme. Es sei zu befürchten, dass die Bevölkerung im Notfall zu spät informiert werde. 16.Feb.2009 Millionenschweres Projekt: Europäer wollen Weltraumschrott überwachen (Wissenschaft) 16.Feb.2009 Bankenkrise: Schiedsgericht verurteilt Credit Suisse zu Schadensersatz in Millionenhöhe (Wirtschaft) 16.Feb.2009 Blitzattacke: Pudel beißt Frauchen die Nase ab (Panorama) 16.Feb.2009 Clinton-Reise nach Asien: Nordkorea kündigt Raketenstart an (Politik) 16.Feb.2009 Neues Verfahren: Gehirnstammzellen in Hülle und Fülle (Wissenschaft) 16.Feb.2009 Angriff auf Demonstranten: Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund fordert NPD-Verbot (Politik) 16.Feb.2009 Fastfood-Kette: McDonald's will 2000 neue Jobs schaffen (Wirtschaft) 16.Feb.2009 Verurteilter Ex-Post-Chef: Zumwinkel kehrt Deutschland den Rücken (Wirtschaft) 16.Feb.2009 Tod an der Küste: Flüchtlinge ertrinken vor Lanzarote (Politik) 16.Feb.2009 Bonuszahlungen: Müntefering ruft Banker zur Selbstreinigung auf (Wirtschaft) 16.Feb.2009 Gefährliche Tauchfahrt: Atom-U-Boote im Atlantik zusammengestoßen (Panorama) 16.Feb.2009 Bankenkrise: Regierung will Enteignung bei Hypo Real Estate vermeiden (Wirtschaft) 16.Feb.2009 Italien: Minister fordert Kastration von Vergewaltigern (Politik) 16.Feb.2009 Interview mit Horst Seehofer: "Populist ist kein Schimpfwort" (Politik) 16.Feb.2009 https://www.spiegel.de/sport/fussball/0,1518,druck-607847,00.html Das französische Verteidigungsministerium hatte am 6. Februar mitgeteilt, dass sein Atom-U-Boot "Triomphant" auf einer Patrouille von einem "untergetauchten Objekt" getroffen worden sei. Dabei versuchte die Verwaltung lediglich, ihren prominentesten Gefangenen zu schützen. Im Januar 2000 gab es eine Bombendrohung gegen die Haftanstalt, in der Krenz saß, es gab Steinwürfe und eingeschmuggelte Kameras. Was die Piusbrüder für die katholische Kirche sind, das sind die Altkader für die Linke – ein gewaltiges Problem, vor allem im Jahr des Gedenkens an den Herbst 1989. Offiziell hat die Partei die Verbindungen zur alten SED gekappt, gleichzeitig ist sie auf die Unterstützung und die Stimmen der Altkader angewiesen. Ein derart massiver Rückgang wäre "bislang einmalig" in der deutschen Nachkriegsgeschichte. Die Bundesregierung rechnete für 2009 bislang mit einem Rückgang der Wirtschaftsleistung um 2,25 %. Die Tatsache, dass Ausländer weniger in China investieren, ist ein weiteres Indiz dafür, wie stark die weltweite Krise die chinesische Wirtschaft trifft. In der chinesischen Exportwirtschaft sind bereits Millionen von Arbeitsplätzen verloren gegangen. Schreckliche Erlebnisse brennen sich regelrecht in das Gedächtnis des Menschen ein. Ein großes Problem für Betroffene, denn mitunter genügt ein kleiner Reiz, um die Erinnerung an eine Bombenexplosion, den miterlebten Tod eines Freundes oder eine blutige Schießerei wachzurufen. Tausende Veteranen der Kriege im Irak und Afghanistan leiden unter der sogenannten posttraumatischen Belastungsstörung (PTBS) - die Behandlung ist aufwendig. Selbst Erlebnisse aus dem 2. Weltkrieg können bis in heutige Tage nachwirken. 16.Feb.2009 Konjunktur: Ökonomen rechnen mit Rekordminus von mehr als drei % (Wirtschaft) 16.Feb.2009 Raststätten-Überfall: Polizei fahndet nach schwedischen Nazi-Schlägern (Panorama) 16.Feb.2009 Familienreport: 660.000 Alleinerziehende leben von Hartz IV (Politik) 16.Feb.2009 Westjordanland: Israel will neue Siedlungen bauen (Politik) 16.Feb.2009 Scharia in Nordwestpakistan: Islamabad beugt sich den Taliban (Politik) 16.Feb.2009 Hirnforschung: Forscher löschen Erinnerungen aus dem Angstgedächtnis (Wissenschaft) 16.Feb.2009 https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,druck-607794,00.html DGB: Die Unternehmen dürfen nicht selbst Polizei spielen Der Telekom und der Deutschen Bahn warf Bsirske "Geheimpolizei"-Methoden vor. Beide Unternehmen hätten bei der Überwachung ihrer Mitarbeiter Praktiken angewendet, die selbst dem Bundeskriminalamt nicht erlaubt seien. Telekom-Skandal, Überwachung von Bahn-Mitarbeitern: Die Gewerkschaften sind empört - und wollen ein generelles Spitzelverbot durchboxen. Vertreter der Wirtschaft kündigen vor dem Datenschutzgipfel bei Innenminister Schäuble Widerstand an. Berlin - Zwei Lager und eine klare Front: Arbeitnehmer gegen Unternehmen. Nach den Datenskandalen bei Telekom und Deutscher Bahn wollen sich die Gewerkschaften Spitzelaktionen nicht mehr gefallen lassen. Sie drängen die Bundesregierung zu einem gesetzlichen Verbot. Innenminister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) hat deshalb an diesem Montag zu einem großen Datenschutzgipfel geladen. Um die Chancen abzuschätzen, ob außer auf der Erde noch anderswo im All das Leben blüht, ist eine Frage von entscheidender Bedeutung: War die Entstehung von Leben auf der Erde ein derart unwahrscheinlicher Zufall, dass im Universum trotz seiner unvorstellbaren Größe dieser Coup nur einmal gelangt? Oder entsteht Leben zwangsläufig, sobald eine lebensfreundliche Umgebung wie ein erdähnlicher Planet zur Verfügung steht? 16.Feb.2009 Republikaner-Kritik: "Obama redet doch nur über Wandel" (Politik) 16.Feb.2009 Appell an Handyfirmen: Menschenrechtler fordern Verzicht auf blutige Rohstoffe (Netzwelt) 16.Feb.2009 Wirtschaftseinbruch: Japan in schwerster Krise der Nachkriegszeit (Wirtschaft) Als im 11. Jahrhundert das Reich der Samaniden unterging und russische Fürsten die Macht übernahmen, hörte der Handel entlang der Wolga auf. Zur gleichen Zeit stellt auch die Ulfberht-Schmiede die Produktion ihrer Schwerter ein. An Tiegelstahl war nicht mehr zu kommen: "Die späteren Schwerter weisen alle eine komplett andere Mikrostruktur auf." 16.Feb.2009 Markenpiraterie im Mittelalter: Wikinger fielen auf billige Schwert-Kopien herein (Wissenschaft) 16.Feb.2009 https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7891142.stm?ad=1 "We didn't focus enough on that," Lord Turner said on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, referring to the fact that by 2004 "the whole system was risky". He stressed that other regulators around the world had also failed to notice the problem. Lord Turner took over as chairman of the City watchdog in September 2008. Clive Stafford Smith, director of the legal charity Reprieve, said: "With each twist and turn, it becomes obvious that the US and the UK have to release this information." The letter provoked uproar when the judges in the case said it amounted to a clear threat from the US government to Britain. Eine aktuelle Schätzung besagt laut Field, dass in den Permafrostböden der Welt rund eine Billion Tonnen Kohlenstoff gespeichert sind. Zum Vergleich: Die Menge an Kohlendioxid, die seit Beginn der Industrialisierung vom Menschen in die Luft geblasen wurde, liegt bei 350 Milliarden Tonnen. Das entspricht knapp 100 Milliarden Tonnen reinem Kohlenstoff - also weniger als einem Zehntel dessen, was in den Permafrostböden lagert. Seit dem Jahr 2000, referierte Field, seien die Kohlendioxid-Emissionen durch die Verbrennung fossiler Brennstoffe um durchschnittlich dreieinhalb % pro Jahr gestiegen - dreimal so schnell wie zwischen 1990 und 1999. "Inzwischen liegen die Prognosen des menschlichen CO2-Ausstoßes außerhalb dessen, was man bei der Erstellung des IPCC-Berichts von 2007 für möglich gehalten hätte", meint Field. "Wir haben es in der Zukunft mit einem Klima zu tun, das weit über alles hinausgeht, was wir auf Basis von Simulationen bisher ernsthaft erwogen haben." 15.Feb.2009 Finanzkrise: Aareal Bank stellt Antrag auf Staatshilfen (Wirtschaft) 15.Feb.2009 Angeschlagener Autokonzern: General Motors erwägt Gläubigerschutz (Wirtschaft) Alison Des Forges >>> Forges, Alison Des <<< Keine Biografie vorhanden! > Forges, Alison Des: Kein Zeuge darf überleben < > Der Genozid in Ruanda < > Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3930908808, Gebunden, 947 Seiten, 40,00 EUR < Aus dem Amerikanischen von Jürgen Bauer, Fee Engemann, Renate Hardt, Edith Nerke, Carmen von Samson-Himmelstjerna und Gisela Schwarz. Über eine halbe Million Menschen wurden 1994 während des Völkermordes in Ruanda getötet. Obwohl die Täter ausschließlich zu den Hutu und die Opfer zum weitaus größten Teil ... Des Forges, Alison, 1999: Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda. New York, N.Y. et al.: Human Rights Watch; Paris: International Federation of Human Rights. Des Forges, Alison, 2000: Alas, We Knew, in: Foreign Affairs, Vol. 79 (May/June 2000) No. 3, S. 141-144. DES FORGES, Alison (dir. par, pour Human Rights Watch et FIDH), Aucun témoin ne doit survivre. Le Génocide au Rwanda, Karthala, 1999. Nous allons maintenant entendre à ce sujet le premier passage d'une interview d'Alison Des Forges, qui est considérée comme l'historienne de référence sur le génocide des Tutsi depuis son ouvrage de 1999, Aucun témoin ne doit survivre , publié chez Karthala par Human Rights Watch et la FIDH. Son livre fait près de 800 pages. Une centaine est consacrée à la complicité française. Ces pages n'ont pas vraiment été exploitées. Alison Des Forges était prête à venir témoigner devant notre Commission, mais elle était retenue cette semaine aux États-Unis pour une série de cours. Elle a donc accepté de nous recevoir à Bruxelles, à l'Antenne européenne de Human Rights Watch, pour que nous puissions l'interroger. La première question que je lui ai posée portait sur cet entraînement, par les militaires français, des assassins du génocide, mis à l'essai lors des prémices du génocide. Témoignage filmé d'Alison Des Forges ALISON DES FORGES Il y a eu, à un moment, des instructeurs militaires français chargés de l'entraînement dans ces camps. Je ne peux pas dire que les camps étaient dirigés ou gérés par les soldats français. C'étaient des camps de l'armée rwandaise, mais il y avait des militaires français qui s'occupaient de l'entraînement. FRANÇOIS-XAVIER VERSCHAVE C'était à quelle date ? ALISON DES FORGES Ces formations se situent à Gabiro. Les Français ont été actifs dans cette région assez tôt, probablement dès 1992, et jusqu'en 1994. FRANÇOIS-XAVIER VERSCHAVE Le rapport de la Mission parlementaire d'information explique qu'en 1993, c'était pratiquement la France qui commandait l'armée rwandaise, alors en décomposition. S'il y avait des instructeurs français dans ce camp, il est donc probable qu'ils y ont eu des responsabilités importantes. Vous dites avoir reçu des confidences de militaires et de miliciens, semblant indiquer qu'on ne faisait pas une grande différence cec_rapport.pdf Unter Berufung auf die Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO) berichtet Human Rights Watch allein von mehr als 40.000 Vergewaltigungen während des militärischen Konflikts in der ostkongolesischen Region Ituri von 1998 bis 2002. "Sexuelle Gewalt hat Zehntausende Leben im Kongo zerstört", sagte Alison Des Forges von Human Rights Watch. Das sei auch möglich gewesen, weil die mehr als 10.000 Uno-Friedenssoldaten der Mission MONUC beim Schutz der Zivilisten versagt hätten. The first published account of the genocide by an independent Rwandan writer is Andre Sibomana, Hope for Rwanda (London: Pluto Press, 1999), based on conversations with Laure Guilert and Herve Deguine, translated, with a postscript, by Carina Tertsakian, and including a preface by Alison Des Forges. Papers from the archive of the former Rwanda Ministry of Defence found in eastern Zaire in November 1996 [referred to hereafter as ex-MOD papers]; Report of the French Parliamentary commission of inquiry into France's role before and during the Rwanda genocide, 15 December 1998, 1,500 pages; see especially testimony of James Gasana, former Minister in the Habyarimana regime, to the commission of inquiry, as reported by Le Monde , 12 June 1998; Human Rights Watch, 'Arming Rwanda: The Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses in the Rwandan War', New York, January 1994. A leggere i giornali, e non abbiamo motivo di dubitarne, le recenti elezioni presidenziali in Rwanda si sono svolte senza incidenti sì, ma in un evidente deficit di democrazia. Alison Des Forges, esponente di Human Rights Watch ha detto: "Per gli standard di ogni altro paese al mondo, questa non è democrazia." catastrophe_A comprehensive study of the genocide published last week by Human Rights Watch and the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues showed that the US saw saving money as more important than saving lives both before and during the tragedy. In a visit to Rwanda last year [1998], President Clinton admitted he and his administration refused to heed cries for help from genocide victims. Alison Des Forges, author of the genocide study entitled Leave None to Tell the Story, said that Clinton's admission was not enough. US authorities must go beyond easy, generic apologies. Only if we really look at what went wrong can we learn the necessary lessons for the future. The US is the only major international actor in the genocide not to have agreed to investigate its role_ (The US and its shills love to ... "Burundians see this transition as a time of fear, not a time of hope," said Alison Des Forges of Human Rights Watch. "Civilians still have no faith that they won't become the targets of unpredictable violence, either from the government or the rebels." Nous allons maintenant entendre à ce sujet le premier passage d'une interview d'Alison Des Forges, qui est considérée comme l'historienne de référence sur le génocide des Tutsi depuis son ouvrage de 1999, Aucun témoin ne doit survivre, publié chez Karthala par Human Rights Watch et la FIDH. Son livre fait près de 800 pages. Une centaine est consacrée à la complicité française. Ces pages n'ont pas vraiment été exploitées. Alison Des Forges était prête à venir témoigner devant notre Commission, mais elle était retenue cette semaine aux États-Unis pour une série de cours. Elle a donc accepté de nous recevoir à Bruxelles, à l'Antenne européenne de Human Rights Watch, pour que nous puissions l'interroger. La première question que je lui ai posée portait sur cet entraînement, par les militaires français, des assassins du génocide, mis à l'essai lors des prémices du génocide. Témoignage filmé d'Alison Des Forges ALISON DES FORGES 15.Feb.2009 Global Shipping Industry Makes World Flat, Biologically - Alexis Madrigal The global shipping industry makes it so easy for organisms to trot the globe, it's destroying the geographic patterns that fuel evolution. The problem is acute in the Great Lakes region, which could be a major problem for the area's economy, according to scientists at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting. https://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/0Rgl130NdtM/homogecene.html 15.Feb.2009 Major reshuffle in Saudi Arabia King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia sacks two powerful religious figures in a wide ranging shake-up of his administration https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7890211.stm 15.Feb.2009 History lesson Soviet veterans see mistakes repeated in Afghan war https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7888566.stm 15.Feb.2009 Anger at advice to stop oil claim Nationalists hit out after documents from the 1970s reveal strategies to stop Scotland laying claim to North Sea oil. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7890226.stm 15.Feb.2009 Clarke attacks 'failed' bank plan Shadow business secretary Kenneth Clarke calls the Lloyds TSB-HBOS merger a "disaster", and says government initiatives to get banks lending have failed. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7890138.stm 15.Feb.2009 Key Human Rights Advocate Dies In U.S. Plane Crash -Source: www.postchronicle.com - 45 Historian Alison Des Forges was one of the 50 people killed when the plane crashed into a house and burst into flames.... https://www.rssmicro.com/article/Key_Human_Rights_Advocate_Dies_In_U_S_Plane_Crash.i241293532.html 15.Feb.2009 Gore called scientists to join the front lines of this political debate and not to just stay in their labs and research stations. "Start getting involved in politics. Start getting involved in this historical debate. We need you," he said. The audience responded with a standing ovation -- even in the overflow room where I sat. But it remains to be seen whether scientists will take up his call to political engagement. Many, I feel, are more comfortable generating data for Gore to use in his talks. https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/02/mr-gore-comes-to-chicago.html 15.Feb.2009 Iraq attacks account for more than half of global suicide terrorism since 1981. - Think Progress In an analysis of trends in suicide attacks worldwide since 1981 (pdf), researcher Assaf Moghadam presents a pretty shocking statistic: Iraq accounts for 1,067 suicide attacks in the period under review — “a number that accounts for more than half (54.8%) of all suicide attacks since 1981. The sheer volume in which this tactic has struck Iraq is even more impressive since no suicide attacks were recorded in Iraq prior to the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. The Wonk Room’s Matt Duss comments: “Understand, this is what George W. Bush’s strategy of ‘fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here’ entails. Luring terrorists to Iraq to blow themselves up in markets and mosques wasn’t some tragic side-effect of Bush’s plan, it was in fact a component of Bush’s plan. Let’s not pretend to be confused when Iraqis fail to show appropriate gratitude.” https://ctc.usma.edu/sentinel/CTCSentinel-Vol2Iss1.pdf https://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/02/14/fighting-them-over-there/ 15.Feb.2009 IBM Files Patent For Bullet-Dodging Bionic Armor - Soulskill IBM has filed a patent for "Bionic body armor" that would protect a wearer from long-range gunfire by detecting the incoming bullets and administering small shocks to the appropriate muscles required for moving out of the way. Quoting the patent: "When a marksman (such as a sniper) is attempting to fire a projectile from a firearm, the marksman typically prefers to be as far away from the target as possible, thus giving him or her a head start for the escape after the firing. As an example, the longest reported sniper hit was from a distance of about 2500 meters, resulting in a time of flight of about 4 seconds for the projectile/bullet. Had the target been aware of the inbound projectile, avoiding it by simply walking away would have been possible." After detecting the projectile, the armor would calculate the trajectory and "stimulate the target to move in a predefined manner ... sufficient to avoid any contact with the approaching projectile." https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/9JnCwGsb0VQ/article.pl "Whilst we recognise that the short-term outlook is more challenging, Lloyds Banking Group has the largest UK financial services franchise, with excellent long-term earnings potential," Daniels said. "If we had not intervened, then we would have been having a very different conversation today, because the banking system would have gone down, taking with it millions of families and millions of businesses. "No responsible government could have done that and that's why across the world within days of that, just about every government did the same. We were all facing the same problem - the crisis of confidence in the banking system. "The alternative would have been too have let HBOS go down and if we had done that in the febrile conditions of last October, the damage wouldn't have stopped there. I honestly don't believe any government could have taken the action last October to run the risks of letting a major bank or banks fail." Shares in Lloyds, which is 43% owned by the taxpayer, closed 32% lower on the warning yesterday. Speaking from the G7 finance ministers summit in Rome, Darling defended the government decision to broker the merger of Lloyds and HBOS and offer financial backing, saying any failure to do so might have led to the collapse of the UK banking system. “These are professionals,” he said. Investigators will take data from the grids and create a computer model of the crash scene that they will be able to refer to as the investigation progresses. 14.Feb.2009 Lloyds nationalisation not ruled out 14.Feb.2009 G7 will in Finanzkrise alle Register ziehen 14.Feb.2009 Economic crisis 'top threat to US' : Several countries in South America, Africa and the former Soviet Union were unprepared for economic crises and risked "regime-threatening stability" if the situation were to persist. 14.Feb.2009 Eurozone economies slow sharply: This is the region's third quarterly contraction in a row and represents the Eurozone's sharpest slump since the euro was created in 1999. 14.Feb.2009 Crisis sends French new poor flocking to food banks: The world financial crisis is forcing more and more once relatively comfortable French workers to seek out charity food banks and soup kitchens to get a free hot meal. 14.Feb.2009 Hunger in Australia: 15% of Australian children live in jobless households and this figure has increased by 30% in the last 20 years - In Australia over a million children don't get enough to eat 14.Feb.2009 Food banks forced to partner with farms, fishermen: As traditional sources of donations dry up + demand rises amid a worsening recession, food banks + their volunteers are finding creative ways to make the best of a growing challenge--while the hungry try to make less food go further. 14.Feb.2009 Ailing Banks May Require More Aid to Keep Solvent: A sober assessment of the growing mountain of losses from bad bets, measured in today’s marketplace, would overwhelm the value of the banks’ assets, they say. The banks, in their view, are insolvent. 14.Feb.2009 U.S. 4th-quarter housing prices fall 12% from 2007: Home prices nationally dropped 12% in the fourth quarter, the most on record, amid foreclosures and a recession that pushed buyers out of the market. 14.Feb.2009 How Banks Are Worsening the Foreclosure Crisis: The bad mortgages that got the current financial crisis started have produced a terrifying wave of home foreclosures. Unless the foreclosure surge eases, even the most extravagant federal stimulus spending won't spur an economic recovery. 14.Feb.2009 Stimulus: How it may affect your wallet: Here's a look at some of the provisions that will have a direct effect on individuals in their paychecks, on their tax returns, and with regard to their unemployment benefits and health insurance if they've lost a job. 14.Feb.2009 Revealed: Pentagon's secret prisons, legal loopholes and CIA 'ghost' detainees: Three major human rights organizations have declared the Department of Defense was running secret prisons at Bagram and in Iraq, actively sought ways around the terms of the Geneva conventions and cooperated with the CIA's "ghost detention" program which saw prisoners hidden from Red Cross oversight. 14.Feb.2009 Binyam Mohamed torture evidence 'hidden from Obama': US defence officials are preventing Barack Obama from seeing evidence that a former British resident held in Guantánamo Bay has been tortured, the prisoner's lawyer said last night, as campaigners and the Foreign Office prepared for the man's release in as little as a week. 14.Feb.2009 Poll: Americans want Bush prosecuted: A USA Today/Gallup poll found Thursday that 41 % of Americans favor a criminal probe against the former president, 30 % back an examination by an independent panel and 25 % say neither should happen. 14.Feb.2009 Undermining Karzai: U.S. intelligence chief warns Taliban gaining under weak Karzai rule: The new director of national intelligence warned Thursday that Afghanistan's weak and corrupt government is failing to halt the spread of Taliban control and said that public support for the Taliban and local warlords was increasing 14.Feb.2009 US military loses 222,000 weapons sent to Afghanistan since 2001: The report shows that the US military failed to keep proper records of 87,000 rifles, pistols, mortars and other weapons sent to Afghanistan between December 2004 and June 2008. It also failed to track 135,000 weapons donated to Afghan security by 21 other countries. 14.Feb.2009 India, US turn up pressure on Pakistan: India and the United States urged Pakistan on Friday to dismantle radical groups and punish plotters of the Mumbai attacks after Islamabad admitted the assault was planned partly on its soil. 14.Feb.2009 Mumbai attack: US, western pressure worked? According to sources, Pakistan's admission had a lot to do with its precarious finances and a threat of aid cut-off by the US which is trying to undercut its dependence on Islamabad for the success of the fight against Taliban. 14.Feb.2009 Manufacturing Consent For An Attack On Iran? U.S. Now Sees Iran as Pursuing Nuclear Bomb -By- Greg Miller "From all the information I've seen," Panetta said, "I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability." Continue 14.Feb.2009 US Intel Confirms Iran Not Developing Nukes -By- Press TV 14.Feb.2009 Economic Crisis 'Top Threat to US' -By- Al Jazeera Worst Than The Great Depression? 14.Feb.2009 ' Worst Economic Collapse Ever' Must Watch 11 Minute Video 14.Feb.2009 Geithner's Debut: "Not Ready for Prime Time" -By- Mike Whitney Instead, they got 25 minutes of political posturing and blather. The markets went into freefall. By the end of the day, the Dow was down 382 points. It was a complete fiasco. Continue 14.Feb.2009 Who is Pulling Geithner’s Strings? -By- Cliff Kincaid It was not comprehensive in any way. It seemed so amateurish and shallow that the market dropped and commentators and senators were almost incredulous at the lack of detail. Continue 14.Feb.2009 Finanzkrise: Merkel kritisiert Millionen-Boni für Banker (Wirtschaft) SPIEGEL ONLINE: Bitte vervollständigen Sie: die nächste Autogeneration … Mankowsky: … muss authentisch sein. Das ist auch in anderen Bereichen so. Jeans kommen wieder aus den USA statt aus China. Und Luxus kommt aus Europa. https://blog.fefe.de/ Nach den Briten und den Franzosen wird auch die Bundeswehr gerade von dem Windows-Wurm "Conficker" herunter gefahren. Und DIE wollen eine Cyberwar-Abteilung aufmachen? BWAHAHAHAHAHA https://blog.fefe.de/ Erinnert ihr euch an den Brasilianer, den die Briten erschossen hatten? Nun, die Mühlen der Justiz mahlen langsam in England. Und dann verkündet der Staatsanwalt, dass keiner der Polizisten angeklagt wird. Warum auch. Die haben ja nur jemanden erschossen. Wieso würde man so eine Lappalie den Tätern nachtragen. US security firm mired in Iraq controversy changes its name. Same Mercenaries, but Now with More “Aviation Support”. Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton comments on a breaking news story out of the Canadian courts: "An Ontario Superior Court Justice has ruled that Canadian police can obtain the identities of Internet users without a warrant, writing that there is 'no reasonable expectation of privacy' for a user's online identity, and drawing the analogy that 'One's name and address or the name and address of your spouse are not biographical information one expects would be kept private from the state.' But why in the world is it valid to compare an IP address with a street address in the phone book?" Read on for Bennett's analysis. https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/rDquTqHsJcI/article.pl 13.Feb.2009 Terabit Ethernet Inches Closer To Reality - kdawson An anonymous reader writes "Researchers from Australia, Denmark, and China have combined efforts to show the feasibility of terabit-per-second Ethernet over fiber-optic cables. The solution involves a photonic chip that uses laser light for switching signals, and a form of the exotic material type, chalcogenide, or arsenic trisulfide." https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/5tHvT8Hk6J8/article.pl 13.Feb.2009 Twisted Radio Beams Could Untangle the Airwaves - ScuttleMonkey Urchin writes "The radio frequency spectrum available for wireless communication is becoming increasingly crowded thanks to new wireless technology. A solution to the shrinking space might be to put a spin on radio beams during their transmission, to produce a twisted beam, according to Swedish physicists. In theory, huge amounts of https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/MnQ3_2Ro3Sc/article.pl 13.Feb.2009 Nearly 70 computers missing from Los Alamos nuclear lab Energy Department rebukes nuclear lab for treating missing computers as property management issue and not cybersecurity risk, internal documents show. https://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10163715-83.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5 13.Feb.2009 Jargon Watch: Eco-Crunch, Pre-Pre-Pre-SAT, Space Invaders - Jonathon Keats Eco-crunch n. A natural-resource shortage caused by overconsumption. With humans now devouring a third more than the planet can replenish, environmentalists say the coming ecological recession will make our current economic crisis look like a golden age. https://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/bkLQZn2wNXk/st_jw 13.Feb.2009 Blackwater Takes Our Advice: Adopts Inscrutable, Opaque Name - Noah Schachtman They never picked up on our Hello Kitty-style logos. But after a godawful year and a half, the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide finally takes Danger Room's advice and changes its name to something opaque and hard-to-pronounce: Xe. https://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/TOrwHqbiaFE/blackwater-foll.html 13.Feb.2009 Obama Invokes State Secrets in Spy Case - David Kravets The Obama administration invoked the state secrets privilege in a closely watched spy case, making it the second time this week the new administration sought to dismiss lawsuits it inherited from the Bush administration in the name of national security. Civil rights groups had hoped President Barack Obama would have changed course from his predecessor. https://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/v2m3KjzR8U8/obama-invokes-s.html 13.Feb.2009 'All of a Sudden We Have No Response' From Flight 3407 - Dave Demerjian Streaming audio of the conversation between air traffic controllers and Flight 3407 suggests that whatever caused the plane to crash happened quickly and without warning. https://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/x62xQ7-ycRk/continental-com.html 13.Feb.2009 Frenchman 'to be named LSE boss' The London Stock Exchange is set to name Xavier Rolet to replace its chief executive Dame Clara Furse, according to the FT. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7887493.stm 13.Feb.2009 Britain banned Rappers, lifestyle gurus, extremists. Who can't come in? https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7886237.stm 13.Feb.2009 Rise in attacks on British Jews The number of attacks on Jews in the UK has risen sharply since Israeli attacks began on Gaza, a charity claims. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7887511.stm 13.Feb.2009 Bleak forecast on fishery stocks Changing ocean temperatures will force many fish species to migrate towards the poles, hitting fish stocks, scientists warn. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7887536.stm 13.Feb.2009 Missing kit wasting nursing time More than a third of nurses waste up to two hours per shift searching for missing medical equipment, a survey suggests. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7881807.stm 13.Feb.2009 Lloyds shares tumble after update Shares in Lloyds Banking Group fall sharply after it predicts that HBOS will report an annual loss of £10bn. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7888699.stm 13.Feb.2009 Europe hit by economic slowdown European economies contracted in the fourth quarter of 2008, with some countries registering the worst figures in decades. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7887659.stm 13.Feb.2009 US 'keen to strengthen Asia ties' US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tells the BBC the US is keen to deepen its Asia ties, ahead of a tour of the region. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7889657.stm 13.Feb.2009 Axelrod hits back at Andy Card: ‘We have to roll up our sleeves and clean up the mess.’ - Amanda Terkel In recent days, several of President Bush’s closest advisers have been attacking President Obama. Vice Preisdent Cheney, for example, said that there was “a high probability” of a WMD attack if Bush’s policies were reversed, and former chief of staff Andy Card said that Obama has turned the White House into a “locker room” because he isn’t requiring staff to wear jackets at all times. Axelrod sharply responds to the “tasteless” criticisms in a new interview with the Washington Post: I was disappointed in the Vice President’s comments, not because he said–stated the obvious which is that there are threats that are grave, but that he suggested that somehow the President’s decisions on torture in Guantanamo would increase the likelihood of that. […] You know, the last thing that I think we’re looking for at this juncture is advice on fiscal integrity or ethics from Karl Rove, anyone who’s read the newspapers for the last eight years would laugh at that. So, I appreciate that President Bush has been so classy during this period, and I’m disappointed that some of the folks who worked for him didn’t–don’t share that. […] I mentioned Andy Card saying that we were somehow denigrating the Presidency because people were wearing short sleeves in the Oval Office. We’re wearing short sleeves because we have to roll up our sleeves and clean up the mess that we inherited. https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/12/axelrod-card/ https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/washington/13intel.html 13.Feb.2009 Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair told Congress yesterday that America’s “primary near-term security concern” is no longer terrorism, but rather the global financial crisis and the turmoil it could ignite. “The longer it takes for the recovery to begin, the greater the likelihood of serious damage to U.S. strategic interests,” he said. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/12/AR2009021203832.html 13.Feb.2009 The compromise stimulus bill is too small, says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com. “At $789 billion, the final package ‘is just not going to pack the same jobs punch’ as some earlier versions.” Zandi estimates the compromise will create only about 2.2 million jobs by the end of 2010, “leaving unemployment hovering around 10 %” and possibly leading lawmakers to undertake another stimulus. The National Journal writes that two key Washington, D.C. think tanks are trading places. “The Center for American Progress is in ascendancy,” while the American Enterprise Institute — the home of neoconservatism — finds itself in the political wilderness. CAP has “become an unusual hybrid of scholarship and activism — and a political juggernaut.” https://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/nj_20090214_4207.php? 13.Feb.2009 Norquist: GOP is going to run against the stimulus for another five years. - Satyam Khanna Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R), who broke with his party to publicly endorse President Obama’s recovery package this week, is under attack from conservatives. Conservative icon Grover Norquist admonished Crist for supporting the stimulus, saying that Crist shouldn’t oppose a bill that the GOP will be using as a political tool for years to come: Grover Norquist, the influential conservative leader of Americans for Tax Reform, said Crist should have been wary about embracing an 800-page bill he probably had not read and stands to be loaded with unpopular spending provisions that will surface over coming weeks and months. https://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/article975544.ece https://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-02-11-investigation-poll_N.htm 13.Feb.2009 Yet despite their fearmongering on the consequences of investigations, the American public firmly supports such inquiries: Nearly two-thirds of Americans support examining potential crimes committed by the Bush administration, with 40 % supporting criminal investigations. Bush Aide: Leahy Truth Commission Is ‘Terribly Dangerous’ Idea, Possibly ‘Deadly’ - Ali Frick Last night on The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly showed a clip of a Fox News producer ambushing Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to accuse him of political hypocrisy for urging an investigation into Bush crimes after he had opposed the Clinton impeachment. “This Leahy thing — this is beyond the pale,” O’Reilly moaned. Marc Thiessen, Bush’s former chief speechwriter, agreed. Not only would the investigations be hypocritcal, he said, but worse, they would be “terribly dangerous” because they would expose the “facts” of the U.S.’s interrogation techniques to Osama bin Laden: THIESSEN: [T]he facts that they want to get out are the techniques we use to interrogate terrorists. The techniques that we used to intercept e-mails and communications and telephone calls. And when you get those facts out, it’s not just going out to the American people and to the viewers on television. It’s going out to Osama bin Laden. It’s going out to the terrorists who can use those information to get around our intelligence and plan the next attack. So it’s very deadly — this is very deadly serious stuff. … And it’s terribly dangerous. He also emphasized that the people Leahy might investigate “aren’t torturers, they’re heroes.” “They should be getting a parade on Pennsylvania Avenue,” he added. Watch it: Pushing for greater secrecy in the name of terrorism is the reflexive reaction for right-wing torture-lovers. Last year, former Cheney chief of staff David Addington refused to speak about waterboarding to Congress, saying that terrorists might be paying attention: “I can’t talk to you, al Qaeda may watch C-SPAN.” 00.000.2007, National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell said “Americans are going to die” if surveillance is discussed openly; Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman told Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) that “public discussion” of an Iraq withdrawal “reinforces enemy propaganda.” https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/13/bushie-deadly-torture-investigations/ https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/09/leahy-truth-commission/ 13.Feb.2009 Study: American famlies are poorer today than they were 00.000.2001. - Ali Frick Paul Krugman points out a finding from the latest Survey of Consumer Finances, showing that, adjusted for inflation, “families are poorer now than they were 00.000.2001.” The gains made in net worth between 2004 and 2007 have all been erased by collapsing stock and housing prices, the study finds. Krugman notes that it is just the latest proof of the disastrous effects of the housing bubble: It’s worth pointing out that with this release, yet another pillar of the what-me-worry school of economics has fallen. You may remember that a few years ago there was a lot of talk about how only bubbleheads paid attention to our low, low savings rate, because the truth was that Americans were getting steadily wealthier thanks to rising asset values. Not so much, it turns out. 00.000.2007 dollars, the average family 00.000.2001 had $700 more dollars in net worth than the average family 00.000.2007. https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/13/families-poorer-than-2001/ https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2009/pdf/scf09.pdf https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/ownership-society-watch/ https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2009/pdf/scf09.pdf 13.Feb.2009 Obama’s Wasted Efforts At Bipartisanship https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/13/obamas-bipartisanship/ 13.Feb.2009 Religious Right rebrands itself as ’socially conservative evangelicals.’ - Guest Blogger Christianity Today reports that some “politically conservative evangelicals” no longer want to be referred to as the “religious right.” According to social conservative leaders like American Values President Gary Bauer, the term “religious right” and others like it have “become synonymous with extremism“: Gary Bauer said this week, “There is an ongoing battle for the vocabulary of our debate. It amazes me how often in public discourse really pejorative phrases are used, like the ‘American Taliban,’ ‘fundamentalists,’ ‘Christian fascists,’ and ‘extreme Religious Right.’” A Focus on the Family official added that the “religious right” label might generate negative impressions: “Terms like ‘Religious Right’ have been traditionally used in a pejorative way to suggest extremism. The phrase ’socially conservative evangelicals’ is not very exciting, but that’s certainly the way to do it.“ Steve Benen responds, “We’re not talking about a branding problem here. These clowns have become publicly reviled because they embrace a radical worldview, starkly at odd with American traditions, laws, and culture. The innocuous label isn’t the problem. The dangerous and divisive agenda is.” https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/13/religious-right-rebrand/ https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/februaryweb-only/106-42.0.html https://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_02/016873.php Conspiracy of Optimism Posted by at 2:13 AM "Bankensystem der USA faktisch insolvent" Die Banken Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase und Morgan Stanley stoppten vorläufig alle Zwangsvollstreckungen. Damit solle der Regierung Zeit für ihren Hilfsplan gegeben werden, erklärten die Institute. 13.Feb.2009 Kampf gegen Immobilienkrise: US-Großbanken stoppen Zwangsvollstreckungen (Wirtschaft) Darin sind die knapp 800 Brocken ab einem Kilometer Größe aus dem Spaceguard Goal enthalten. Mit immer leistungsstärkeren Teleskopen werden die Forscher immer mehr Asteroiden aufspüren. Und selbst wenn diese zunächst als ungefährlich eingestuft werden, könnte in 200 Jahren doch ein Crash drohen - siehe 00.000.1999 RQ36. "Oft muss man danach die Bahn noch einmal neu bestimmen und erneut rechnen." Während der nahen Vorbeiflüge könne man die Objekte meist sehr gut beobachten, was die Orbitberechnung erleichtere. 2008 90 % aller Asteroiden mit einem Durchmesser größer als einem Kilometer finden, die eine potentielle Gefahr für unseren Planeten darstellen. Bereits in der Vergangenheit haben Studien gezeigt, dass der sozioökonomische Hintergrund Einfluss darauf hat, wie viele Wörter ein Kind verwendet. Bisher nahmen die Forscher an, dass Kinder, deren Eltern viel mit ihnen sprachen und ein komplexes Vokabular benutzten, später auch wortgewandter sind. Offenbar spielen Gesten aber ebenfalls eine Rolle. Die Aufnahme biometrischer Kennzeichen dient vor allem der Erfassung in vernetzten nationalen und internationalen Datenbanken. 11.Sep.2001 -in der Folge der Terroranschläge vom- Durchgesetzt wurde der Trend. "Terroristen und Kriminellen soll es nicht gelingen, mit gefälschten Reisedokumenten oder den echten Papieren einer Person, der sie besonders ähnlich sehen, einzureisen", begründet das Innenministerium die biometrischen Features des sogenannten ePass auf einer Info-Seite. "Der Chip im ePass ist eine zusätzliche Hürde für Fälscher. Die biometrischen Merkmale im Chip können zukünftig maschinell geprüft werden." Das Oberverwaltungsgericht verwies unter anderem auf die zur Linkspartei gehörende Kommunistische Plattform und das Marxistische Forum. Die Klage Ramelows gegen den Einsatz nachrichtendienstlicher Mittel bei der Beobachtung der Linken wies das Gericht deshalb als unzulässig ab. Ein so begründeter Verdacht verfassungsfeindlicher Bestrebungen lasse es "gleichwohl nicht zu, Ramelow in die Beobachtung durch den Verfassungsschutz einzubeziehen", heißt es in der Mitteilung des Gerichts. Eine Revision gegen das Urteil wurde nicht zugelassen. Zwei Millionen Menschen sind jährlich betroffen "Manche Länder informieren uns noch nicht einmal über das Problem in ihrer Mitte", sagt Costa. "Entweder sind sie zu unorganisiert, um die Informationen zu sammeln, oder sie wollen sie nicht mit uns teilen - vielleicht aus Scham." Daher existieren auch nur Schätzungen über das Ausmaß: Etwa zwei Millionen Menschen geraten jährlich in die moderne Form der Sklaverei, so die Internationale Arbeitsorganisation (ILO). Laut UNODC wird nur eines von hundert Opfern gerettet. Sexuelle Ausbeutung scheint der häufigste Grund für Menschenhandel zu sein (79 %), an zweiter Stelle steht Zwangsarbeit (18 %). Allerdings können die Zahlen täuschen, so die UNODC. Zwangsprostitution sei in Städten und an den Straßen sichtbarer und werde deshalb häufiger entdeckt: "Wir sehen nur die Spitze des Eisberges", sagt Costa. "Wie viele hunderttausend Opfer schuften in Ausbeuter-Betrieben, auf Feldern, in Mienen, Fabriken oder sind als Haussklaven gefangen?" 20 % der Opfer sind Kinder Weltweit seien etwa 20 % der Opfer von Menschenhandel Kinder. In manchen Gebieten Westafrikas liege die Quote sogar bei fast 100 %. Sie entwirren Fischernetze, nähen Luxusgüter, sammeln Kakao, müssen betteln oder sich prostituieren, werden als Kindbräute oder Kamel-Jockeys verkauft. In manchen Kriegsgebieten bekommen sie ein Gewehr in die Hand gedrückt. Obwohl das Uno-Protokoll gegen Menschenhandel 2003 in Kraft trat, fehlt es dem Bericht zufolge bei der Umsetzung noch in vielen Ländern an politischem Willen oder juristischen Instrumenten, vor allem in Afrika. Die UNODC appelliert an die Regierungen und den privaten Sektor, den Kampf gegen Menschenhandel zu verstärken: "Es ist krank, dass wir im 21. Jahrhundert überhaupt noch einen Bericht über Sklaverei schreiben müssen", sagt Costa. Die Wirtschaftskrise werde das Problem voraussichtlich verschärfen: Sie vergrößere die Zahl der potentiellen Opfer und steigere den Bedarf nach billigen Gütern und Dienstleistungen. Viele Menschen werden "noch gefährdeter sein", so die UNODC. Am Mittwoch bestätigte die irische Regierung, dass sie jeweils 3,5 Milliarden Euro in die beiden größten Banken des Landes pumpen will, um klaffende Löcher zu stopfen - internationale Investoren wollen nicht mehr helfen. Eben diese Investoren muss die Regierung jetzt davon überzeugen, dass der irische Staat selbst noch eine sichere Bank ist. Die Rettungskräfte standen vor meterhohen Flammen. "Der ganze Himmel war orange", sagte Bob Dworak, der rund einen Kilometer von der Unglücksstelle entfernt wohnt. "Es gab plötzlich einen riesigen Knall und das Haus wackelte." Dworak sagte, die Menschen in Clarence seien es zwar gewohnt, die nach Buffalo fliegenden Flugzeuge zu hören, aber dieses sei lauter gewesen als sonst üblich und habe auch merkwürdige Geräusche gemacht. "Donnernde Explosion" «?Jekami”, jeder kann mitmachen, so hießen die vielen Amateurshows, als es noch kein Internet gab und 200 Leute die Freiheit hatten, ihre Meinung zu verbreiten. - Waren das schöne Zeiten.» «Das WWW ist auch maßgeblich für die Infantilisierung und Idiotisierung der Öffentlichkeit verantwortlich.» Auf ihrer Reise legten die Tiere zeitweise 500 Kilometer in 24 Stunden zurück, machten aber in Mittelamerika auch wochenlange Ruhepausen. Eine der Schwalben war in 13 Nächten sogar 7500 Kilometer geflogen, das entspricht einer Tagesleistung von 577 Kilometern. Die Drosseln flogen tagsüber und blieben im Winter in Mittelamerika. Sie brachten es auf immerhin 233 bis 277 Kilometern pro Tag. Bei der Rückreise im Frühjahr legten beide Arten weniger Pausen ein und wanderten noch schneller. "Die Wanderleistung der kleinen Singvögel ist bisher weit unterschätzt worden", berichtet Stutchbury. "Man glaubte, dass sie nur etwa 150 Kilometer am Tag schaffen." Mit der neuen Technik könne jetzt erstmals auch der genaue Verlauf der Wanderungen kleiner Vögel verfolgt und damit ihre Gefährdung auf der Reise besser eingeschätzt werden, berichten die Forscher. 13.Feb.2009 Immobilienkrise: Obama plant Rettungsplan für Hausbesitzer (Wirtschaft) 13.Feb.2009 Gerichtsurteil: Verfassungsschutz darf Linken-Politiker Ramelow nicht mehr beobachten (Politik) 13.Feb.2009 US-Wirtschaftskrise: Repräsentantenhaus billigt Obamas Milliardenprogramm (Politik) 13.Feb.2009 Kampf gegen die Autokrise: Daimler erwägt radikales Sparprogramm (Wirtschaft) 13.Feb.2009 Uno-Bericht: Frauen mischen im Menschenhandel mit (Politik) 13.Feb.2009 Kampf gegen die Krise: Köhler warnt Europäer vor Protektionismus (Wirtschaft) 13.Feb.2009 Finanzkrise: HSH Nordbank verbucht Milliardenverlust (Wirtschaft) 13.Feb.2009 Finanzkonzern: Wie die Deutsche Bank in St. Moritz um Edelkunden buhlt (Wirtschaft) 13.Feb.2009 Jahreszahlen: HBOS schreibt elf Milliarden Euro Verlust (Wirtschaft) 13.Feb.2009 Aufschwungsprognosen: Rürup erhofft schnelle Wende, Sinn fürchtet Dauerkrise (Wirtschaft) 13.Feb.2009 Staatsverschuldung: Rezession stürzt EU-Staaten in Schuldenkrise (Wirtschaft) 13.Feb.2009 Russland: Zahl der Milliardäre hat sich 2008 halbiert (Wirtschaft) 13.Feb.2009 Schriftsteller Richard Yates: Die Tyrannei des amerikanischen Traums (Kultur) 13.Feb.2009 Kleinkinder: Gestikulieren kann Wortschatz vergrößern (Wissenschaft) 13.Feb.2009 Sieche Immobilienbank: Hypo Real Estate gibt Teile von Depfa ab (Wirtschaft) 13.Feb.2009 Beschlossene Sache: Bundesrat billigt elektronischen Personalausweis (Netzwelt) 13.Feb.2009 Absatzkrise: Europäischer Automarkt schrumpft um ein Viertel (Wirtschaft) 13.Feb.2009 Rezession: Europas Wirtschaft bricht unerwartet stark ein (Wirtschaft) 13.Feb.2009 Entsendegesetz: Bundesrat billigt Mindestlöhne für drei Millionen Arbeiter (Wirtschaft) 13.Feb.2009 50-Milliarden-Euro-Programm: Bundestag beschließt zweites Konjunkturpaket (Politik) 13.Feb.2009 500 Kilometer pro Tag: Singvögel sind Langstreckenflieger (Wissenschaft) 13.Feb.2009 Konflikte statt Überparteilichkeit: Republikaner frustrieren Obama (Politik) 13.Feb.2009 Conficker-Wurm: Microsoft setzt Kopfgeld auf Virenautor aus (Netzwelt) 13.Feb.2009 Industriekonzern: ThyssenKrupp erleidet Gewinneinbruch (Wirtschaft) 13.Feb.2009 Malnutrition affecting '3m in UK' The number of people at risk of malnutrition in the UK stands at three million, experts believe. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7879201.stm 13.Feb.2009 Balls stands by '100 years' claim Ed Balls denies talking down the economy after saying the global recession was the "most serious in 100 years". https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7881301.stm 13.Feb.2009 Taiwan's ex-first lady pleads guilty A former Taiwanese first lady pleads guilty to money-laundering and forgery charges. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7880656.stm 13.Feb.2009 £12bn military academy 'on track' There are new hopes for a £12bn defence academy after a new partner signs up to the project. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/7880956.stm 13.Feb.2009 Council advises ecstasy downgrade The body that advises the government on illegal drugs is to recommend ecstasy be downgraded to a Class B drug. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7882708.stm 13.Feb.2009 UK fraud probe begins at AIG arm The Serious Fraud Office launches a probe into the UK operations of a subsidiary of US company AIG. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7886512.stm 13.Feb.2009 Global slump 'US security threat' The top US intelligence official, Dennis Blair, says that the global economic crisis is the main threat facing America. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7887322.stm 13.Feb.2009 Another Obama cabinet pick quits Republican senator Judd Gregg withdraws as President Obama's nominee for commerce secretary, citing policy differences. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7887369.stm 13.Feb.2009 Cambridge, Mass. Moves To Nix Security Cameras - timothy An anonymous reader writes "Citing privacy concerns, the Cambridge, Mass. City Council has voted 9-0 to remove security cameras scattered throughout the city. 'Because of the slow erosion of our civil liberties since 9/11, it is important to raise questions regarding these cameras,' said Marjorie Decker, a Cambridge city councilor. Rather than citing privacy, WCBVTV is running the story under the headline 'City's Move To Nix Security Cams May Cost Thousands.'" https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/q9SgRhsA8iE/article.pl 13.Feb.2009 US Nuclear Weapons Lab Loses 67 Computers - timothy pnorth writes "Officials from New Mexico's Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory have confessed that 67 of its computers are missing, with no less than 13 of them having disappeared over the past year alone. A memo leaked by the Project on Government Oversight watchdog brought the lost nuclear laptops to the public's attention, but the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration dismissed fears the computers contained highly-sensitive or classified information, noting it was more likely to cause 'cybersecurity issues.' Three of the 13 computers which went missing in the past year were stolen from a scientist's home on January 16 and the memo also mentioned a BlackBerry belonging to another staff member had been lost 'in a sensitive foreign country.' The labs faced similar issues back 00.000.2003 when 22 laptops were designated as being 'unlocated.'" https://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/roN4ryInCFw/article.pl 13.Feb.2009 Google CEO advises right wing, too--in the U.K. Eric Schmidt is advising the U.K.'s Conservative Party on international business matters. https://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10159994-38.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5 13.Feb.2009 New Attorney General Orders Review of Bush-Era State Secrets - David Kravets U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is opening a Justice Department review of litigation inherited from the previous administration. At issue is the so-called state-secrets privilege, which George W. Bush invoked more times than any other president. https://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/FWpO-Fe2P1s/ag-holder-deman.html 13.Feb.2009 Call Off Drone War, Influential U.S. Adviser Says - Noah Schachtman Pakistani leaders have condemned American drone strikes on their territory that have killed hundreds. Now, an influential adviser to American policymakers is raising his voice against the unmanned attacks, too. https://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/T3C4rw1mI48/kilcullen-says.html reportedly ordered them executed. Their judgment came in the form of survival. 13.Feb.2009 CSI Scandinavia: Computer Dissects Cadavers With No Scalpel - Emily Stone Think of it as CSI: Scandinavia. At Linköpings University Hospital in Sweden, radiologist Anders Persson dissects cadavers without lifting a scalpel. Using magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography, he captures thousands of images of a body, from head to toe. A computer then assembles the pieces—layer upon layer of tissue and bone—into a stunning 3-D postmortem portrait in which structures are differentiated by hue and opacity: Bones appear white and opaque; organs, a translucent red. Pathologists can then easily strip away the layers—first skin, then a web of blood vessels, then a blanket of muscle—all the way down to the skeleton. Hunting for minuscule bone fractures once required intensive dissection; now it's just a matter of keystrokes. Virtual autopsies reveal evidence that ordinary examinations often miss, like gas trapped inside wounds, which can show the path of a bullet or knife blade. Swedish police have used the images in more than 300 murder cases. Bonus: They're easier for jurors to understand (and stomach). But Persson's technique isn't just for peeking inside dead people; it's great for premortem examinations, too. Doctors can identify the exact location of a lung tumor or study blood flow in 3-D to estimate the volume of a leak in a faulty heart valve. It can also provide an invaluable sneak preview before surgery, Persson says: "You can simulate an operation without touching the patient. https://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/WEcDBShqjKE/st_insidebody 12.Feb.1809 Darwin — Adapted There, Evolved That - Randy Alfred 12.Feb.1809 Charles Darwin is born. His work on how life forms evolve by natural selection will provide the organizing paradigm for biology and, increasingly, all of modern science. https://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/KOiQTMMNNs8/dayintech_0212 13.Feb.2009 Bill Would Limit Judges on State Secrets - David Kravets Legislation is pending that would make it harder for federal judges to dismiss lawsuits if the government says state secrets would be exposed. https://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/VMfIZyBdKQw/lawmakers-reini.html 13.Feb.2009 Privacy groups slam new rules US privacy groups criticise new rules to address online privacy and urge Congress to draw up legislation. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7887094.stm 13.Feb.2009 Hamas 'set for truce with Israel' A long-term truce between Hamas and Israel may be announced in days, Hamas officials say in Cairo. https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7887380.stm https://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/02/stopping-trucks.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mb5vw-FxEE 13.Feb.2009 Obama recognizes legitimacy of new media, grants HuffPost a question in his first press conference. - Faiz Shakir In an important gesture that recognized the growing legitimacy of blogs and online media, President Obama last night called on Huffington Post reporter Sam Stein to ask a question at the White House press conference. (We consider it the first time a legitimate new media reporter has been formally called on by the President.) Stein asked whether Obama would endorse Sen. Patrick Leahy’s proposal to establish “a truth and reconciliation committee” to investigate the misdeeds of the Bush administration. Obama declined to specifically endorse Leahy’s idea, but offered this perspective: My view is also that nobody’s above the law and, if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen. […] So I will take a look at Senator Leahy’s proposal, but my general orientation is to say let’s get it right moving forward. Watch it: Liberal blogger Joe Sudbay of AmericaBlog was credentialed to attend the press conference last night. And prominent liberal radio host Ed Schultz was rewarded with a front-row seat. Politico’s Michael Calderone reports which outlets got to ask a question (Politico was not one of them). Correspondents for The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, Time, and Newsweek also were not on the White House’s pre-selected list of reporters to be called on. https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/10/huffpost-wh-question/ 13.Feb.2009 Fleischer And O’Reilly: Bush Didn’t Call On ‘Dot Coms And Other Oddballs’ Like The Huffington Post https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/10/fleischer-obama-media/ 13.Feb.2009 Plame leaker Rove claims the Bush White House never leaked. - Matt Corley Speaking about the first amendment at Loyola Marymount University last week, former Bush adviser Karl Rove said that “secrecy and confidentiality are necessary for every government.” Rove then made the laughable claim that the Bush White House never leaked to the press: I love how the last eight years, this White House, the Bush White House, was criticized for being tight-lipped. We didn’t leak. I hope Barack Obama has a White House that doesn’t leak. As Christy Hardin Smith notes at FireDogLake, Rove appears to be forgetting the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity, for which he was Robert Novak’s confirming source. Joe Sudbay writes that “Rove’s speech was an assault on journalists” who frequently “printed what Rove leaked to them.” https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/10/rove-didnt-leak/ 13.Feb.2009 On Darwin’s 200th birthday, only 39 % of Americans believe in evolution. - Matt Corley Charles Darwin, who invented the theory of evolution, was born on Feb. 12, 1809. Marking the 200th anniversary of his Darwin’s birth, Gallup has a new poll out showing that “only 39 % of Americans say they ‘believe in the theory of evolution,’ while a quarter say they do not believe in the theory, and another 36 % don’t have an opinion either way”: https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/11/darwin-200/ 13.Feb.2009 Bailed-Out Wall Street CEOs Still Leasing Private Jets, Hoping To Keep Up To $1.5 Million In Salary This Year https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/11/private-jets-wall-street/ 13.Feb.2009 Domenici’s records subpoenaed in U.S. attorneys probe. - Matt Corley A federal grand jury has subpoenaed the records of former New Mexico senator Pete Domenici (R) as part of an investigation into whether “former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, other Bush administration officials or Republicans in Congress should face criminal charges” for the 2006 firings of nine U.S. attorneys. Prosecutors, led by acting Connecticut U.S. Attorney Nora R. Dannehy, are also preparing to interview Scott Jennings, a former aide to Karl Rove. https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/11/domenici-subpoena/ 13.Feb.2009 Think Progress Nearly to two-thirds of Americans believe “there should be investigations into allegations that the Bush team used torture to interrogate terrorism suspects and its program of wiretapping U.S. citizens without getting warrants,” a new USA Today/Gallup poll finds. While 40 % “favor criminal investigations,” about 25 % “want investigations without criminal charges.” The final compromise on the recovery bill agreement in Congress yesterday “was largely shaped by two forces” — GOP Sens. Olympia Snowe (ME), Susan Collins (ME), and Arlen Specter (PA); and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel was on the Hill “at each step of the process, cutting deals and holding hands to keep Democrats together and win enough Republican support.” John Yoo has found a new home as visiting professor at Chapman University School of Law, on “leave from his tenured post at UC Berkeley to teach foreign relations law.” Right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt also teaches at Chapman. Yoo said Berkeley is frequently home to “weird people dressed up in costumes.” Following a November raid of the PMA Group, a lobbying firm with close ties to Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Democratic leaders are “concerned” by a widening criminal probe that may involve Murtha. “Sources close to the leadership say there’s no move afoot to force him out” as chairman of the Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. The nation’s oldest civil rights group — the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) — celebrates its 100th birthday today. “President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous, 36, says the organization should no longer concentrate solely on equality between black and white people, but on human rights.” https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/12/thinkfast-february-12-2009/ 13.Feb.2009 Jack Reed: ‘I don’t think we should be afraid’ of investigating Bush crimes. - Ali Frick A new USA Today/Gallup poll released today shows that nearly two-thirds of Americans support investigations into Bush era crimes like torture. Asked about the findings on MSNBC this afternoon, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) added his name to a growing list of congressmen endorsing either congressional or Justice Department investigations into Bush administration wrongdoings: I think we have to seriously investigate allegations of torture. … I think our political system as well as our judicial system is strong enough to conduct these investigations fairly and then to bring those people the law to justice. I don’t think we should be afraid of that. Watch it: 13.Feb.2009 After Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) called for an independent commission to investigate Bush crimes earlier this week, Rachel Maddow noted that Leahy joins party leaders Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), and Sens. Russ Feingold (D-WI), Carl Levin (D-MI), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in calling for investigations. “I think that what we have stumbled into here is an unexpected but rather blatant emerging consensus among powerful Democrats in Washington that alleged Bush-era crimes should be investigated and if need be, prosecuted.” https://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/12/reed-endorses-torture-investigations/ 13.Feb.2009 For the longest time, the ratings agencies escaped blame. No more: 00.000.2008 , the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations opened a probe into the role of the bond-ratings agencies in the credit crisis. Ratings Agencies: Moodys, S&P, and Fitch (ORIGINAL) https://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheBigPicture/~3/yZwdTQwC95Q/ 13.Feb.2009 Rating Agencies: Moody’s, S&P, and Fitch (REVISED VERSION) - Barry Ritholtz Structured financial products, from RMBS to CDOs, lay at the heart of the global credit and financial meltdown. The process of creating, rating and selling this paper is complex. As we have learned after the fact, the rating agencies were not (as they claim) passive participants who just happened to misunderestimate the likelihood of future defaults. Rather, when they placed precious triple-A ratings on all sorts of mortgage-backed and related securities, they were active participants — collaborators, according to The Wall Street Journal: “Helping spur the boom was a less-recognized role of the rating companies: their collaboration, behind the scenes, with the underwriters that were putting those securities together. Underwriters don’t just assemble a security out of home loans and ship it off to the credit raters to see what grade it gets. Instead, they work with rating companies while designing a mortgage bond or other security, making sure it gets high-enough ratings to be marketable.” 1 https://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheBigPicture/~3/q-gMA9GTFTQ/ 13.Feb.2009 “I view the ratings agencies as one of the key culprits. They were the party that performed that alchemy that converted the securities from F-rated to A-rated. The banks could not have done what they did without the complicity of the ratings agencies.” 4 While it was the investment banks that sold the junk paper, it was the rating agencies that tarted up the bonds. It was the equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig: This paper could never have danced its way onto the laps of so many drooling buyers without the rating agencies’ imprimatur of triple-A respectability. Sources: 1. 15.Aug.2007 How Rating Firms’ Calls Fueled Subprime Mess AARON LUCCHETTI and SERENA NG WSJ, https://online.wsj.com/article/SB118714461352698015.html 2. 00.Sep.2007 Overrated Jesse Eisinger Portfolio, https://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2007/08/13/Moody-Ratings-Fiasco 3. How Rating Firms’ Calls Fueled Subprime Mess 4. 24.Sep.2008 Bringing Down Wall Street as Ratings Let Loose Subprime Scourge (PART I) Elliot Blair Smith Bloomberg, https://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=ah839IWTLP9s&# 5. 11.APR.2008 As Housing Boomed, Moody’s Opened Up AARON LUCCHETTI WSJ, https://online.wsj.com/article/SB120787287341306591.html 6. Bringing Down Wall Street as Ratings Let Loose Subprime Scourge (PART I) 7. 22.OCT.2008 TESTIMONY OF DEVEN SHARMA, PRESIDENT, STANDARD & POOR’S BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES https://oversight.house.gov/documents/20081022125052.pdf 27.Apr.2008 ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND Triple A Failure ROGER LOWENSTEIN NYT, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/magazine/27Credit-t.html 25.Sep.2008 ‘Race to Bottom’ at Moody’s, S&P Secured Subprime’s Boom, Bust (PART II) Elliot Blair Smith Bloomberg, https://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=ax3vfya_Vtdo& 22.Oct.2008 Ratings agencies ‘put system at risk,’ CEO says Testimony shows watchdogs were ‘Kool-Aid drinking’ lapdogs -Rex Nutting MarketWatch 5:19 p.m. EDT https://tinyurl.com/5fjkpp 22.Oct.2008 Credit Rating Agency Heads Grilled by Lawmakers GRETCHEN MORGENSON NYT, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/business/economy/23rating.html 00.Dec.2007 Berating the Raters Charles Gasparino Trader Daily, https://www.traderdaily.com/magazine/article/12150.html 12.Feb.2009 Laidoff Foreigners Flee as Dubai Spirals Down ROBERT F. WORTH New York Times; https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/world/middleeast/12dubai.html?hp 13.Feb.2009 As always, investors need to recognize that Billionaires have little worry about retirement and future cash flow. Those people who are concerned with these financial concerns should be cautious about imitating the ultra-rich . . . Source: 11.Feb.2009 Foreclosure ‘Tsunami’ Hits Mortgage-Servicing Firms CARRICK MOLLENKAMP WSJ, https://online.wsj.com/article/SB123431311043370779.html https://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheBigPicture/~3/r1WCIcmZ3qU/ 12.Feb.2009 07:50 am Mr. Greenspan also lays the blame on the ratings agencies and the people that trusted their judgment for the proliferation of the mortgage derivatives that were a major part of the current financial crisis. “What we have created in this world is an aura around the credit rating agencies about certification from them is the Good Housekeeping seal of approval, ” Mr. Greenspan said. “I will tell you the record of a lot of the forecasters of ratings have not been distinguished. They never were.” Greenspan Says He Was Mystified by Subprime Market Cyrus Sanati Dealbook, https://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/greenspan-says-he-was-mystified-by-subprime-market/ 13.Feb.2009 https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,druck-606956,00.html "I'm concerned with questioning official versions of history, which are not always true," says Czerepok. "I'm interested in asking which version is really true." A hallucinogenic compound found in a plant indigenous to South America and used in shamanic rituals regulates a mysterious protein that is abundant throughout the body, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have discovered. posted by Prof. Hex 11.Feb.2009 ... Durch das Bündnis würden alle ausgeschlossenen Länder gleichzeitig zu «Gegnern» erklärt, sagte Peter Strutynski vom Bundesausschuss ... www.ad-hoc-news.de/aktivisten-kuendigen-proteste-bei-nato-gipfel-an--/de/Politik/20040711 y Sicherheitsbericht: US-Geheimdienst fürchtet Rezession mehr als Bin Laden (Politik) Risk of instability "The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications," Mr Blair told a senate panel. "Economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one- to two-year period." Die Notenbank warnt gleich vor einer ganzen Phalanx von Problemen für die britische Wirtschaft. mehr Die Studie warnt weiter vor einem Zusammenbruch der Landwirtschaft insbesondere der ärmsten EU-Staaten und prognostiziert eine Halbierung der Aufträge für die Stahlindustrie. Well, researchers are reporting what could at least be a significant step in that direction: the genetic codes of the President Barack Obama, accompanied by, from left, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., House Minority Leader John Boehner and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sings the National Anthem at the ceremony. Cable operator Charter Communications, weighed down by huge debt for many years, said Thursday that it will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection by April 1 under the terms of an agreement ... Charter Communications to file for Chapter 11 Money.com The Dow, NYSE composite and S&P 500 lost 2.1% each. The Nasdaq fell a milder 1.2%, thanks to gains by Intuitive Surgical (ISRG), Genzyme (GENZ) and NetApp (NTAP ... Vertreter von Regierung und Finanzwirtschaft haben die Gründung eines Spezialkreditinstituts für faule Kredite diskutiert und offenbar vorerst verworfen. Dabei haben sich solche so genannten Bad Banks in Deutschland wie auch im Ausland bei der Sanierung angeschlagener Banken durchaus bewährt. 2005 hatte der damalige britische Premier Tony Blair eine Neuregelung durchgesetzt, wonach Extremisten, Neonazis und radikalen Tierschützern der Zutritt zu britischem Territorium verweigert werden darf. Der LeT-Kommandant Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi sei gefunden worden und werde überwacht, fuhr Malik fort. Die Identität 12.Feb.2009 Naturpark in Spanien: Greenpeace verhüllt illegal gebautes Hotel (Reise) Das Produktions-Minus auf Jahressicht ist doppelt so hoch wie die schlechteste Rate während der Rezession Anfang der Neunziger", sagte Ken Wattret von BNP Paribas. Die aktuelle Entwicklung werde zu einem massiven Stellenabbau führen, dies wiederum werde den wirtschaftlichen Abschwung aufrechterhalten, erklärte Wattret. "Die Industrie des Euroraums befindet sich damit in einer Rezession, die frühere Schwächephasen an Tiefe und Breite in den Schatten stellt", sagte Postbank-Volkswirt Heinrich Bayer. Zumindest für das erste Quartal sei mit weiteren Produktionseinschränkungen zu rechnen. EU warnt vor Industriekrise Chinalco war im Februar 2008 gemeinsam mit dem US-Konzern Alcoa für 14,2 Milliarden Dollar bei Rio Tinto eingestiegen. Schon damals handelte es sich um die bis dahin höchste chinesische Auslandsinvestition. In die Beteiligung an Aluminium-, Bauxit-, Kupfer- und Eisenerzbergwerken sollten 12,3 Milliarden Dollar fließen, teilte Chinalco am Donnerstag mit. Weitere 7,2 Milliarden Dollar seien für Anleihen vorgesehen, die zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt in Rio-Tinto-Aktien umgewandelt werden könnten. Die australische Regierung kündigte allerdings sofort an, schärfere Regeln für Auslandsinvestitionen zu prüfen. Sie könnte den Deal damit noch blockieren. Die Volksrepublik braucht Rohstoffe Wer in Ägypten die Regierung kritisiert und es so öffentlich tut wie Rizk, riskiert, dass hart gegen ihn vorgegangen wird. Von verhafteten Bloggern berichtete schon mehrfach die Organisation "Reporter ohne Grenzen", die auch einen "Pressefreiheitsindex" veröffentlicht. Auf dieser Staaten-Rangliste rangiert Ägypten weit hinten: auf Platz 146 von 173. Sie foltern ihn nicht, aber sie lassen ihn auch kaum schlafen Was er SPIEGEL ONLINE berichtet von der Gefangenschaft, zeigt, wie schnell man in einem Land wie Ägypten zum Staatsfeind wird. Es reicht schon, einen Blog zu betreiben und Schilder hochzuhalten, auf denen das Falsche steht. Rizk veröffentlichte in seinem Blog "tabulagaza", der mittlerweile gesperrt ist, Berichte über das Leid und Leben der Menschen im Gaza-Streifen. 12.Feb.2009 Rezession: Absturz der Industrie-Produktion schockiert Experten (Wirtschaft) 12.Feb.2009 Reaktion auf Israel-Wahl: Araber setzen letzte Hoffnung auf Obama (Politik) Die Rheinbacher Netzsoldaten der Bundeswehr haben derweil mit einem besonders tückischen Gegner zu kämpfen: dem deutschen Strafrecht, das eigentlich seit 2007 schon die Vorbereitung von Computersabotage verbietet. Sollten die deutschen Cyber-Krieger tatsächlich Versuchsangriffe auf fremde Netze starten, stünden sie strenggenommen mit einem Bein im Gefängnis. Auf schwere Computersabotage stehen bis zu zehn Jahren Haft. Trojaner, Botnetze, Gesetze - wie die Staatshacker für den Cyberkrieg aufrüsten: Estland war der erste Nato-Staat, der Opfer einer solchen Digital-Attacke wurde. Im Frühjahr 2007 gerieten Banken, Behörden und Parteien für drei Wochen unter massives elektronisches Sperrfeuer. Die Baltenrepublik war zeitweise so gut wie offline und galt damit als Austragungsort des ersten "Cyber-Kriegs", denn sie vermutete den Nachbarn Russland hinter dem Angriff, mit dem es damals gerade gravierende diplomatische Querelen gab. Kriesel ist an einem Frontabschnitt eingesetzt, der erst in jüngster Zeit ins Visier der Bundeswehr geraten ist. Der General soll den Krieg der Zukunft vorbereiten, und der könnte in Teilen im weltweiten Netz stattfinden. Kriesel scheint der richtige Mann für diese Aufgabe zu sein. Knapp 6000 Soldaten unterstehen seinem Kommando, sein Verband funktioniert schon jetzt wie ein Geheimdienst. Spanien rutscht in die Rezession Diese Daten helfen den Forschern zu verstehen, warum manche Menschen spielsüchtig werden: Ein knapp verlorenes Spiel wirkt ähnlich stimulierend wie ein gewonnenes. Tatsächlich wird dieser Umstand längst von realen Spielautomaten ausgenutzt: Bei vielen Geräten liegt man viel häufiger knapp daneben, als es nach dem Zufall eigentlich der Fall sein sollte, wie die Wissenschaftler schreiben. Für Lebensmittelherstellung und -sicherheit könne die Wirtschaftskrise verheerende Folgen haben, warnt die EU außerdem. Die Kombination aus fallenden Preisen für Agrarprodukte und erschwertem Zugang zu Krediten dürfte die Landwirtschaft der ärmsten Staaten beeinträchtigen und Preisschwankungen verschärfen. 12.Feb.2009 Armut: Knapp eine Million Jugendliche brauchen Hartz IV (Wirtschaft) 12.Feb.2009 ussischer Weltraumschrott zerstört US-Satellit (Wissenschaft) Despite Constitutional prohibitions, they are training for possible deployment in civilian situations. But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to 00.000.2002 -established- NorthCom, a joint command to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities. They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack. Civil unrest? Crowd control? What makes those problems so immediate? 30.Sep.2008 The Army Times story at the other end of the preceding link was published . Note the date: The training for civil unrest was underway just two weeks after the reported near-meltdown of the national economy. I have to admit that even I thought there was a great deal of hyperbole involved when Congress was last fall being prodded with scary talk of Armageddon into taking action to "rescue" the financial system. Now, though, as the Zero Hedge blog reveals in a post entitled "How The World Almost Came To An End At 2PM On September 18," it appears that those giving the warnings were deadly serious. At 2 minutes and 20 seconds in the video below, Democratic Representative Kanjorski explains how the Federal Reserve told Congress members about a "tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars." According to Kanjorski, this electronic transfer occurred over the period of an hour or two. And it gets worse. Kanjorski paraphrases the following disclosure by Bernanke and Paulson: 10.Oct.2008 , a similar "secret run" on the banks in Britain placed the U.K. in a similarly parlous position. Britain was just three hours away from going bust last year after a secret run on the banks, one of Gordon Brown's Ministers has revealed. A massive money market fund, the Reserve Primary Fund, admitted to its customers that they would lose money on every dollar invested. All of this was common knowledge: Only the near-instantaneous $550 billion draw-down was not. 03.Aug.2001 Nanoparticles "Tailor" Complex Fluids For Photonics, Ceramics Applications () — Researchers at the University of Illinois have discovered a fundamentally new approach for tailoring the stability of colloidal ... > read more 02.Aug.2001 Suspended In Space: Researchers Make Important Discovery About Materials () — A NASA-funded study in materials science has yielded a discovery that may significantly change the way electronics, paint, cosmetics + pharmaceutical industries develop products. ... > read more 17.Dec.2006 Colluding With Colloids: Scientists Make Liquid Crystal Discovery () — Findings of Kent State University scientists indicate that manipulating the size of colloids, micron-sized or nanometer-sized particles, can produce huge changes in the material properties of liquid ... > read more 17.May 2007 From Ink To Optics, Study Of Particle Mixtures Yields Fundamental Insights () 3,000 -over-years ago— Since the invention of ink, people have exploited the unique properties of colloids, in which particles of one substance are suspended in another. Now, chemical engineers have ... > read more COPYRIGHT 2001 Business Communications Company, Inc. Baikowski Acquires High Purity Powder Producer. 31.Jul.2001 -on-The assets of Malakoff Industries, Inc. (Malakoff, TX), a subsidiary of Alcoa since its acquisition of Reynolds Metals, were sold to Baikowski International Corp. (Charlotte, NC). Terms of the sale were not disclosed. Malakoff Industries manufactures and sells high... 00.000.1986 -In the fall of- Teller and Wood breakfasted with Gregory Canavan the Los Alamos physicist, who had defended the concept of Star Wars in the "science ... cryptome.org/nmd-ff.htm "Aber ich würde durchaus die Prognose wagen, dass es in ein paar Jahren nicht mehr so still sein wird und dass dann ein Funke genügt, um Unzufriedenheit auszulösen." Nachdrücklich sprach sich Hurrelmann für ein Schulfach "Finanzen" aus: "Wir haben Schulen, in denen Wirtschaft, Technik und rechtliche Fragen kaum vorkommen", kritisierte er. Es sei überhaupt nicht nachvollziehbar, dass diese Bereiche ausgeklammert würden. Man könne "mit Fug und Recht von einem ökonomischen Analphabetismus sprechen". Diese Idee ist so derartig abwegig, dass sie eigentlich nicht der Erwähnung würdig wäre, wenn die Contentmafia nicht bisher alle ihre grenzdebilen, abwegigen Forderungen durch gekriegt hätte. SPIEGEL ONLINE: Kann Israels Linke überhaupt wieder belebt werden? Segev: Die israelische Linke ist bedeutungslos geworden, es gibt sie einfach nicht mehr. Das ist schon erstaunlich: Dieses Land wurde praktisch von der Arbeits-Partei gegründet, sie hat die Politik von Jahrzehnten dominiert. Und jetzt ist sie auf einmal von der Bildfläche verschwunden. Dahinter steckt ein Wandel in der Mentalität der Israelis. Früher waren die Menschen solidarisch, sogar sozialistisch. Heute sind Konsum und Sicherheit die beherrschenden Themen. Geld müsste tatsächlich da sein. Denn allein in den vergangenen fünf Jahren haben die deutschen Bauern mehr als 450 Millionen Euro an den Absatzfonds zahlen müssen - das geht aus einer Anfrage der FDP vom Oktober an den zuständigen Staatssekretär Müller. Wo das ganze Geld genau geblieben ist, weiß die CMA aber wahrscheinlich auch nicht. Unterdessen warf der polnische Justizminister Pakistan vor, die Entführer hätten Unterstützung von Seiten Angehöriger pakistanischer Behörden erfahren. Die Kidnapper hätten "Freunde in pakistanischen Regierungsstrukturen." Vertreter Islamabads in Warschau wiesen die Vorwürfe zurück. Polens Senat sagte nach dem Mord einen geplanten Besuch von Parlamentariern aus Pakistan ab. Die Videoaufnahmen von der Hinrichtung Stanczaks waren von einer Gruppe namens Tehreek-e-Taliban in Umlauf gebracht und an polnische und internationale Medien verschickt worden. Anwalt Stevenson führt zudem internationales Recht an, etwa die Uno-Kinderrechtskonvention von 1990, die besagt: "Für Straftaten, die von Personen vor Vollendung des 18. Lebensjahres begangen wurden, darf weder die Todesstrafe noch lebenslange Freiheitsstrafe ohne die Möglichkeit vorzeitiger Entlassung verhängt werden." Nur zwei Staaten auf der Welt haben das nicht unterzeichnet - Somalia und die USA. 2300 Jugendliche lebenslänglich in US-Gefängnissen SPIEGEL ONLINE: Die beiden Volksparteien fast gleichauf, der Block der rechten Parteien stärker denn je: Das Ergebnis der israelischen Wahlen entspricht in etwa den Prognosen im Vorfeld. Trotzdem sagen die Kommentatoren, das Land sei heute morgen in einem neuen Zeitalter aufgewacht. Warum? Segev: Weil in der nächsten israelischen Regierung auch rechtsextreme Parteien mitregieren werden. Aus Sicherheitskreisen in Kairo verlautete am Dienstag, außer Rizk sei in den vergangenen Tagen noch ein weiterer Blogger festgenommen worden, der im Internet Solidarität mit den Palästinensern eingefordert und die ägyptische Nahost-Politik kritisiert hatte. Er heiße Dia al-Din Gad und sei bereits am Freitag in seiner Wohnung in der Provinz Gharbija, nordwestlich von Kairo, festgenommen worden. Offiziell gab es keine Anklage und keine Vorwürfe gegen Rizk. Doch mehreren Berichten zufolge bestätigten ägyptische Sicherheitskreise inoffiziell, dass Rizk wegen seines politischen Engagements festgehalten wurde. Die Nachrichtenagentur AFP beruft sich auf ägyptische Behörden; die "New York Times" zitiert einen General aus dem Innenministerium, der nicht namentlich genannt werden möchte: "Es geschah alles im Rahmen des ägyptischen Rechts. Wenden Sie sich an das Büro des Generalstaatsanwalts." Das harte Vorgehen der Sicherheitskräfte ist nicht ungewöhnlich. Bei den mitleidigen Mäusen handelte es sich um miteinander verwandte, besonders sozial aktive Tiere. Mäuse aus einer anderen genetischen Linie zeigten hingegen kein vergleichbares Verhalten. Daraus folgern die Forscher, dass das Mitleid eine direkte genetische Ursache hat. Künftige Studien könnten die genetischen Unterschiede zwischen mitleidigen Mäusen und Tieren, die dazu nicht in der Lage sind, bestimmen und ein genaueres Verständnis des Zusammenhangs ermöglichen, erklären die Wissenschaftler. 11.Feb.2009 Erfolg für Obama: Kongress einigt sich auf US-Konjunkturpaket (Politik) 11.Feb.2009 Mexiko: Drogenkrieg fordert erneut mehr als 20 Tote (Panorama) 11.Feb.2009 Fall Madoff: Ehefrau hob kurz vor Verhaftung 15 Millionen Dollar ab (Wirtschaft) 11.Feb.2009 Tempo 109 im Ort: NRW-Verkehrsminister tritt nach Führerscheinentzug zurück (Politik) 11.Feb.2009 Blutige Taliban-Anschläge: Kabul wird zum Kriegsgebiet (Politik) 11.Feb.2009 Wirtschaftsweiser Bofinger: "Die Schuldenbremse treibt die Sparer ins Ausland" (Wirtschaft) 11.Feb.2009 US-Justiz: Als Kind für immer in den Knast (Panorama) 11.Feb.2009 Grüne Zukunft: ICE nehmen Fahrräder frühestens 2020 mit (Reise) 11.Feb.2009 Erbgut und Geld: Bereitschaft zu riskanten Investitionen genetisch bedingt (Wissenschaft) 11.Feb.2009 Teilchenbeschleuniger: LHC startet erst im September (Wissenschaft) 11.Feb.2009 Historiker Segev: "Die Israelis haben das Vertrauen verloren" (Politik) 11.Feb.2009 Miese Stimmung in der Wirtschaft: Öl-Nachfrage fällt drastisch (Wirtschaft) 11.Feb.2009 Deutsche Bahn: Tiefensee gerät wegen Späh-Affäre unter Beschuss (Wirtschaft) 11.Feb.2009 Nach der Wahl: Israel rätselt über Zukunft (Politik) 11.Feb.2009 Drohender Jobabbau bei BASF: "Es sieht rabenschwarz aus" (Wirtschaft) 11.Feb.2009 Frankreich: Peugeot will mindestens 11.000 Mitarbeiter loswerden (Wirtschaft) 11.Feb.2009 Terror in Afghanistan: Taliban-Kämpfer blamieren Karzais machtlose Polizei (Politik) 11.Feb.2009 Finanzkrise: Pentagon-Chef Gates kündigt Sparkurs an (Politik) 11.Feb.2009 Quartalsverlust: Credit Suisse macht vier Milliarden Euro Miese (Wirtschaft) I recall how the US got on its high horse when Sadam Hussein couldn't account for all the WMDs that had been destroyed in the 1990's. It was taken as proof that he still had such weapons. Well, dear Americans, now the burden of proof is on you, and you will find that proving the non-existence of anything is virtually impossible. Actually the US troops did find a rusty heap of gas grenades in Iraq, all clearly marked "made in the USA". I wonder what the Geneva Accords say about making and storing the kinds of weapons that have now gone missing in Utah. My guess is that you have been in breach of your international commitments for decades. Is the Army missing some nerve gas? Pentagon auditors concede that is a remote possibility because of discrepancies in records between how much chemical weapons agent was initially stored and how much of it was later destroyed at Utah's Deseret Chemical Depot + other bases nationwide. https://blog.fefe.de/ Und noch einer von den Briten: Die Briten richten eine Geheimpolizei ein, die "inländische Extremisten" überwachen soll. Wie schön das immer klingt, bis einem klar wird, dass die jeden als Extremisten labeln können. The unit also aims to identify the ring-leaders behind violent demonstrations such as the recent anti-Israel protests in London, and to infiltrate neo-Nazi groups , animal liberation groups and organisations behind unlawful industrial action such as secondary picketing . Secondary Picketing heisst, dass man bei einem Streik auch Transparente bei einem nicht direkt involvierten Zulieferer aufstellt. Völlig klar, sowas würden nur fiese Terroristen machen. Das ist auf einer Linie mit Neonazis zu sehen. Und Tierschützer, ganz klar, da hilft nur Hubschraubereinsatz! Gut dass wir die Vorratsdatenspeicherung haben. Wie sonst würden wir so fiese Staatsfeinde identifizieren? https://blog.fefe.de/ Die Briten wollen CO2 senken, indem sie ihren Bürgern das Fliegen verbieten. https://blog.fefe.de/ Nach den Pestmäusen ist den Amis jetzt auch ein bisschen Nervengas verloren gegangen. In dem Artikel fällt auf, wie sehr sie da den Namen zu erwähnen vermeiden. Immerhin gibt es Angaben dazu, von was für Größenordnungen wir reden: For example, it said a random sample of such records found "20 CODs (certificates of destruction) were overstated by 4,026 pounds." Also, another "nine CODs were understated by 1,093 pounds." Das sind schon sportliche Größenordnungen. Damit könnte man eine Stadt töten. Oder ein paar Terrorlager. 21.Feb.2006 verabschiedete Richtlinie sei zu Recht auf der Grundlage des EG-Vertrags erlassen worden, da sie "in überwiegendem Maß das Funktionieren des Binnenmarkts betrifft" Der Nasdaq verlor um 4,20 % auf 1524 Punkte. Ganz oben auf der Verkaufsliste standen einmal mehr Finanztitel wie die Bank of America (minus 19 %), die Citigroup (minus 15 %) und JP Morgan Chase (minus 9,8 %). Dia al-Din Gad sei bereits am Freitag in seiner Wohnung in der Provinz Gharbija, nordwestlich von Kairo, festgenommen worden, hieß es. Das Auswärtige Amt in Berlin bestätigte bereits am vergangenem Samstag, dass der Fall bekannt sei und sich die Deutsche Botschaft um Klärung bemühe. Eine Sprecherin sagte SPIEGEL ONLINE am Dienstag, die Botschaft stehe in Kontakt mit der Familie und den ägyptischen Behörden. Man bemühe sich um konsularischen Zugang zu Philip Rizk. Eine Internet-Kampagne mobilisiert international Unterstützer Ungewöhnlich ist das Vorgehen der Behörden in Ägypten nicht. 00.000.1981 -Schon seit- herrscht der Ausnahmezustand. Das erlaubt es der Regierung von Präsident Husni Mubarak und dem Sicherheitsapparat, Verdächtige jederzeit und ohne konkrete Anschuldigung festzunehmen. Nach offiziellen Angaben sitzen deswegen 1800 Gefangene in Gefängnissen und Lagern, ohne dass ihnen der Prozess gemacht wurde. Menschenrechtsorganisationen schätzen die Zahl weitaus höher, auf etwa 10.000. Nächtliche Hausdurchsuchungen und Ablenkungsmaneuver Das Resümee der Forscher: Die Artenvielfalt unter Säugern ist größer als gedacht, ihre Ökosysteme sind stärker in Gefahr als man bislang annahm. Manche Vertreter neuer Arten waren wegen ihres Körperbaus eindeutig als solche erkennbar. Andere Tiere, die bisher bekannten ähnlich aussahen, wurden dagegen diesen Arten auch zugeordnet. Nur aufgrund genetischer Analysen konnten sie als Angehörige einer neuen Art identifiziert werden. Außerdem wurden manche ehemalige Unterarten ebenfalls aufgrund von Gen-Analysen als eigene Art neu klassifiziert. 10.Feb.2009 Finanzkrise: Isländisches Kommunikations-Chaos entsetzt deutsche Kaupthing-Kunden (Wirtschaft) 21.Sep.1946 „Jülich. Die Arbeiten am israelitischen Friedhof an der Aachener Straße, der auf Beschluß der Stadtvertretung durch ehemalige Nazi-Aktivisten wieder instandgesetzt werden mußte, sind soweit beendet. Die Anlage des Friedhofes und die Grabdenkmäler sind soweit als möglich in den früheren Zustand gebracht worden. Es bedarf lediglich noch der Wiederrichtung der Einfriedungsmauer.“ 23.Apr.1946 „Am 13.Feb.1946 sprach das Wohnungsamt einem politisch Geschädigten eine Wohnung zu, die Monate leer gestanden hatte. Gegen diese Entscheidung legte ein PG, der zugleich Blockwart war […] Einspruch ein […]. Der Einfluß der Nazis in den öffentlichen Ämtern wird immer anmaßender und frecher. Wie lange noch?“ An diesem Tag führten die Marktweiber in den Wirtshäusern am Alter Markt und den benachbarten Straßen des Regiment. Kein Mann durfte mit ihnen reden. Singend, johlend, tanzend und trinkend verweilten sie in den Wirtshäusern bis spät in die Nacht hinein“. Das Schöne an der Globalisierung ist, dass wir weltweit einkaufen können, hieß es letzte Woche an dieser Stelle. Den Amerikanern wurde ein deutsches Produkt namens Stabilitätskultur empfohlen. Hinzuzufügen wäre nun: Globalisierung funktioniert dann am besten, wenn Exporte und Importe halbwegs ausgeglichen sind, wenn jeder nimmt und auch gibt. Amerika hat da etwas im Programm, das für die Deutschen sehr interessant sein könnte: "Politik mit Volk", heißt das Konzept. Der demokratische Präsident Barack Obama hat es entwickelt und am Montag in einer Turnhalle vorgeführt. Es lässt sich in drei Punkten zusammenfassen. Ein Mitarbeiter des Verbandes sagt offen: Zwischen Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz und Emissionshandel gebe es "eine gewisse Widersprüchlichkeit". Aber warum muss das so sein? Lassen sich die beiden Klimaschutz-Instrumente wirklich nicht vereinen? Theoretisch schon. Dazu müsste aber die Gesamtmenge der zur Verfügung stehenden CO2-Rechte variabel angepasst werden. Das heißt: Sobald ein neues Windrad errichtet wird, müsste der Staat Zertifikate vom Markt nehmen. Nur so ließe sich ein echter Klimaeffekt erzielen. Politiker knicken vor Industrie ein Damit haben Bakterien mehr Zeit, das abgestorbene Plankton in den höheren Wasserschichten abzubauen - was dort den Sauerstoff verbraucht. Washington - Beide Länder sollten Verhandlungen über einen weiteren Abbau ihres nuklearen Waffenarsenals aufnehmen, sagte Barack Obama am Montagabend im Weißen Haus. "Es ist wichtig, dass die USA und Russland hier in Führung gehen." Dann wären beide Staaten in der Position, auch bei anderen Ländern auf die Einhaltung internationaler Vereinbarungen zur Nichtverbreitung zu drängen. 10.Feb.2009 Kredite: Russische Unternehmen bemühen sich offenbar um Zahlungsaufschub (Wirtschaft) 10.Feb.2009 10.Feb.2009 Rezession: Maschinenbau erwartet drastischen Produktionsrückgang (Wirtschaft) 10.Feb.2009 Trotz Verlusten: UBS-Banker erhalten Prämien in Milliardenhöhe (Wirtschaft) 10.Feb.2009 Buschfeuer in Australien: 100-köpfige Spezialeinheit jagt Brandstifter (Panorama) 10.Feb.2009 Bankenkrise: Schweizer UBS meldet Milliardenverlust (Wirtschaft) |