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Showing posts from 2012

Which Obama should we believe?

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As the news of the Connecticut school massacre sinks in, it would take a hard-hearted person not to feel for the parents, families and friends of the victims. It is the sort of event which most of us will not experience first-hand, but some of us may know someone who has gone through a similar tragedy. In fact, a good friend of mine lost one nephew in a bomb attack in 2008 and last month another nephew was seriously wounded in almost identical circumstances. On the second occasion, President Barack Obama gave the people who wounded the young man - one leg was blown off, as was half of an arm - the green light to continue with their maiming and slaughter of innocents "in self-defence". My friend, as you might have guessed, is a Palestinian from Gaza; his nephews' attackers were Israelis. There was no sign of any grief from Obama, the newly-elected US president on either occasion. No wiping of a tear, nor heartfelt words to try to comfort those left behind to cope

Computers - next target

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~ Aircraft manufacturer Boeing have created a weapon that can knock out computers ~ The missile is thought to be able to penetrate bunkers and caves ~ Experts warn, in the wrong hands, could bring Western cities to their knees Down the years and across the universe, the heroes of science-fiction classics from Dan Dare to Star Wars and The Matrix have fought intergalactic battles with weapons that wipe out enemy electronics at the touch of a button. Now scientists have turned fantasy into reality by developing a missile that targets buildings with microwaves that disable computers but don’t harm people. Aircraft manufacturer Boeing successfully tested the weapon on a one-hour flight during which it knocked out the computers of an entire military compound in the Utah desert. Pre-programmed filghtpath: Aircraft manufacturer Boeing has successfully tested a missile which knocked out an entire military compound in the Utah desert It is thought the missile could penetrate t

Inhumane control

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In a country where women are denied the right to vote, are not allowed to drive, and are basically treated like children, Saudi Arabia has taken its next giant leap backwards by rolling out an SMS electronic tracking system that alerts male "guardians" by text message whenever women under their protection leave the country. The development has been met with outrage by reformers, who have turned to Twitter to voice their concern. Saudi Arabia is a complete mess as far as women's rights is concerned. It  ranks 130th out of 134 countries for gender equality   — a nation where only 16.5% of women make up the workforce. As devout followers of Sharia Law, all women, regardless of age, require a male guardian and cannot leave the country without written consent. And now, judging by a flurry of incoming accounts, it's clear that the country has covertly implemented a new system that will further serve to strengthen its control over women. It all started last week

Who Benefits From the Organized Violence of War?

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A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny. - Alexander Solzhenitsyn The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has nothing to gain and all to lose - especially their lives. -Eugene Victor Debs Few nations have such extensive borders or coasts as the United States. Few have borders as blessedly uncontested and unthreatened. Why, then, is the US so contemptuous of international law? Why does the US intervene in and invade other lands, often far from our shores, with such alarming frequency? Why does this nation squander trillions of dollars on "security" and "defense"? Why does this nation maintain fleets and hundreds of costly military bases all over the globe? Why does this nation dissipate its treasure deploying the world's most massive killing machine? We may never solve these riddles unless we

The end of the New World Order

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The upheavals of the early 21st century have changed our world. Now, in the aftermath of failed wars and economic disasters, pressure for a social alternative can only grow In the late summer of 2008, two events in quick succession signalled the end of the New World Order. In August, the US client state of Georgia was crushed in a brief but bloody war after it attacked Russian troops in the contested territory of South Ossetia. The former Soviet republic was a favourite of Washington's neoconservatives. Its authoritarian president had been lobbying hard for Georgia to join Nato's eastward expansion. In an unblinking inversion of reality, US vice-president Dick Cheney denounced Russia's response as an act of "aggression" that "must not go unanswered". Fresh from unleashing a catastrophic war on Iraq, George Bush declared Russia's "invasion of a sovereign state" to be "unacceptable in the 21st century". Culture shock... t

Provoking Russia

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{ Matthew Spears, the first US air force specialist, has arrived in Poland. He is going to work at a military air base near Lodz. According to the Polish TVN24 channel, his colleagues are due to arrive there before the end of this month. There will probably be almost two hundred specialists: pilots, aircraft mechanics, and service staff. } Poland’s recently expressed interest in acquiring an independent capability to counter theater-level missile attacks has much to do with insecurities over whether the United States, with all of its competing priorities, can reliably be counted on to defend Polish interests, according to issue experts and former diplomats. Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski earlier this month said the desired antimissile system should be separate from the next-generation U.S. missile interceptors his country is slated to receive around 2018 under the Obama administration’s “phased adaptive approach” for European missile defense. Polish President Bronis

Marilyn Monroe Mystery

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A half century has not dimmed skeptics' suspicions about the death of Marilyn Monroe at age 36, but the intervening decades have seen technological leaps that could alter the investigation were it to occur today. DNA, more sophisticated electronic record-keeping, drug databases and other advances would give investigators more information than they were able to glean after Monroe's Aug. 5, 1962, death – 50 years ago. Whether any of the tools would lead to a different conclusion – that Monroe's death from acute barbiturate poisoning was a probable suicide – remains a historical "What If?" "The good news is we're very advanced from 50 years ago," said Max Houck, a forensic consultant and co-author of "The Science of Crime Scenes." "The bad news is, we're still trying to put it in context," he said. Monroe's death stunned the world and quickly ignited speculation that she died from a more nefarious plot than the

How Dangerous Is Childhood?

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Although I did not ask Ms. Nicole Neal to permit the publication of this text, I hope that Ms. will not have anything against it. Indeed, I am proud of her work, because the world must know what danger lurks our children, the most innocent and vulnerable members of this, more dangerous world in which we live! Thank you Ms. Neal you write about things that everyone should know! How Dangerous Is Chilhood   (pdf) Copyright © 2006, The Palm Beach Post. All rights reserved. This article is reprinted with the permission of the author, Nicole Neal, The Palm Beach Post.  By NICOLE NEAL Palm Beach Post August 13. 2006 Adam Walsh's childhood wasn't the only one that ended 25 years ago. Childhood - and parenthood - would never be the same. On Aug. 10, 1981, the severed head of the South Florida boy was found in a canal in Vero Beach. If a 6-year-old could be taken from a mall after being out of his mother's sight for just minutes; if he could be murdered and decapit

A Manifesto for Psychopaths

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Objectivism  is a philosophy created by Russian-American philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand (1905–1982). Objectivism's central tenets are that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic, that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness (or rational self-interest), that the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism, and that the role of art in human life is to transform humans' metaphysical ideas by selective reproduction of reality into a physical form—a work of art—that one can comprehend and to which one can respond emotionally.                                                                     Ayn Rand Ayn Rand’s ideas have become the Marxism of the n