Author: NW0.eu

Illustrating once again that the prison planet being built around us far outstrips anything Aldous Huxley or George Orwell ever imagined, a Wired News report details how police forces worldwide are preparing to unveil drone aircraft that can not only conduct surveillance of protesters, but also zap them into submission with non-lethal weapons.

In arguing against airport body scanners, I’ve been met with variations on an increasingly prevalent fallacy: “if it makes us a little safer, it’s worth it”; “if it saves one life, stops one crime…” What a specious argument that is.

Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John McCain (R-AZ) on Thursday introduced bipartisan legislation to slap new human rights sanctions on Iran’s leaders.

A member of an independent panel to investigate claims that climate scientists covered up flawed data on global warming has been forced to resign after sceptics questioned his impartiality.

This Week in SCIENCE, Volume 327, Issue 5967, Food Security dated February 12 2010.

A senior US official says the American military plans to expand new training centers inside Pakistan in a bid to boost its so-called war on terror.

A U.S. push to legally access data generated by Europe’s electronic banking activity has been rebuffed by EU lawmakers in a vote of parliament, according to published reports.

The attempted flight 253 terrorist attack on Christmas Day gave way to the immediate unveiling of full-body human x-ray machines that some alleged experts believe should be installed at every airport in order to ensure national security.

While the squabbling continues on MSNBC over whether the big Washington DC snow means anything, the venue of the argument is about to shift west. The argument may stop in Dallas, TX along the way west.

Full body scanners which the government has decided to roll-out to Australian airports are pose privacy and health risks, the chair of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties has said.

“And I’ll give you that again. And I’ll give you this if you want to go outside.”

Immediately after taking shots from some conservative voices for his Feb. 9 remarks that heavy snowfall in the Mid-Atlantic is “reportedly” a result of global warming, MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan fired back at his detractors on his Feb. 10 program.

There’s a new sheriff in town, and his name is John Doe.

“Contrary to the rumors you have heard, I was not born in a manger, I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father Jor-El to save the Planet Earth.” – President Barack Obama, speaking at Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, 2008.One o…

Dave Gilson writes on Mother Jones:

President Obama may be secretly plotting to declare martial law, but the Tea Partiers now face a more immediate threat: Captain America. Conservative blogger Warner Todd Huston has checked out issue 602 of the long-running series and concludes that Marvel Comics is “making patriotic Americans into [its] newest super villains.”

The offending storyline finds Captain America and his African-American sidekick the Falcon in Idaho, where they encounter a Tea Party rally. They then scheme to infiltrate the antitax protesters as a way to get to their real target, a militia group known as the Watchdogs. The Falcon is skeptical: “I don’t exactly see a black man from Harlem fitting in with a bunch of angry white folks.” It’s not the first time the Star Spangled Avenger…

Widely considered to be one of the worst American CEOs of all time Carly Fiorina thinks it’s a good idea to bring that business acumen to the U.S. Senate for the good people of California. From CNBC:

A consummate self-promoter, Fiorina was busy pontificating on the lecture circuit and posing for magazine covers while her company floundered. She paid herself handsome bonuses and perks while laying off thousands of employees to cut costs. The merger Fiorina orchestrated with Compaq in 2002 was widely seen as a failure. She was ousted in 2005.

THE STAT: HP stock lost half its value during Fiorina’s tenure.

Check out this campaign ad about “FCINO: Fiscal Conservative In Name Only” — the weirdness begins at around two and a half minutes into the video:

Via h+ magazine:

Stanford researchers just changed a skin cell into a nerve cell. “Only stem cells have been known to do this… The direct conversion of one terminally differentiated cell to another changes the facts, and shakes our understanding – implying that, just maybe, under the right conditions, all cells are pluripotent: with the proper tools, all types of cells may form all types of cells…

“There is much to hope for as we discover this great leap sideways…”

The team bathed skin cells in “delivery viruses” containing proteins to trigger a neuron-specific DNA sequence, and discovered the skin cells changed completely — growing rounder, extending axon-like processes and even forming functional synapses…

This article suggests ultimately research in this field “could lead to revolutionary progress in the fight against Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and neurodegenerative…

“When we say we do not manufacture the bomb, we mean it, and we do not believe in manufacturing a bomb,” he told the crowd. “If we wanted to manufacture a bomb we would announce it.”

Residents may be in for a shock for the dark-clad figure trying your car door may in fact be a police officer.

The U.S. military freed a Reuters photographer in Iraq on Wednesday, almost a year and a half after snatching him from his home in the middle of the night and placing him in military detention without charge.