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US tells court bin Laden photos must stay secret
WASHINGTON (AP) — Public disclosure of graphic photos and video taken of Osama bin Laden after he was killed in May by U.S. commandos would damage national security and lead to attacks on American property and personnel, the Obama administration contends in a court documents.
In a response late Monday to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group seeking the imagery, Justice Department attorneys said the CIA has located 52 photographs and video recordings. But they argued the images of the deceased bin Laden are classified and are being withheld from the public to avoid inciting violence against Americans overseas and compromising secret systems and techniques used by the CIA and the military.
The Justice Department has asked the court to dismiss Judicial Watch’s lawsuit because the records the group wants are “wholly exempt from disclosure,” according to the filing.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, accused the Obama administration of making a “political decision” to keep the bin Laden imagery secret. “We shouldn’t throw out our transparency laws because complying with them might offend terrorists,” Fitton said in a statement. “The historical record of Osama bin Laden’s death should be released to the American people as the law requires.”
The Associated Press has filed Freedom of Information Act requests to review a range of materials, such as contingency plans for bin Laden’s capture, reports on the performance of equipment during the May 1 assault on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and copies of DNA tests confirming the al-Qaida leader’s identity. The AP also has asked for video and photographs taken from the mission, including photos made of bin Laden after he was killed.
The Obama administration refused AP’s request to quickly consider its request for the records. AP appealed the decision, arguing that unnecessary bureaucratic delays harm the public interest and allow anonymous U.S. officials to selectively leak details of the mission. Without expedited processing, requests for sensitive materials can be delayed for months and even years. The AP submitted its request to the Pentagon less than one day after bin Laden’s death.
In a declaration included in the documents, John Bennett, director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, said many of the photos and video recordings are “quite graphic, as they depict the fatal bullet wound to (bin Laden) and other similarly gruesome images of his corpse.” Images were taken of bin Laden’s body at the Abbottabad compound, where he was killed by a Navy SEAL team, and during his burial at sea from the USS Carl Vinson, Bennett said.
“The public release of the responsive records would provide terrorist groups and other entities hostile to the United States with information to create propaganda which, in turn, could be used to recruit, raise funds, inflame tensions, or rally support for causes and actions that reasonably could be expected to result in exceptionally grave damage to both the national defense and foreign relations of the United States,” Bennett wrote.
Navy Adm. William McRaven, the top officer at U.S. Special Operations Command, said in a separate declaration that releasing the imagery could put the special operations team that carried out the assault on bin Laden’s compound at risk by making them “more readily identifiable in the future.” Before his current assignment, McRaven led the Joint Special Operations Command, the organization in charge of the military specialized counterterrorism units.
http://news.yahoo.com/us-tells-court-bin-laden-photos-must-stay-221620289.html
India Files Biopiracy Lawsuit Against Monsanto, says Biotech Giant is Stealing Nature for Corporate Gain
Wednesday, 28 September 2011 07:38
‘Representing one of the most agriculturally bio-diverse nations in the world, India has become a primary target for biotechnology companies like Monsanto and Cargill to spread their genetically-modified (GM) crops into new markets. However, a recent France 24 report explains that the Indian government has decided to take an offensive approach against this attempted agricultural takeover by suing Monsanto for “biopiracy,” accusing the company of stealing India’s indigenous plants in order to re-engineer them into patented varieties.
Brinjal, also known in Western nations as eggplant, is a native Indian crop for which there are roughly 2,500 different unique varieties. Millions of Indian farmers grow brinjal, which is used in a variety of Indian food dishes, and the country grows more than a quarter of the world’s overall supply of the vegetable.’
Facebook Tracks Your Every Move, Even After Logging Out
Wednesday, 28 September 2011 07:42
‘The social media empire Facebook has unveiled some new “features” on its platform in recent days that many allege are a total and compete privacy-breaching nightmare. But one hidden feature, discovered by Nik Cubrilovic, an Australian entrepreneur and writer, that few people are aware of is the fact that Facebook now monitors your online activity, even when you are not logged in to the service.
With each new change Facebook makes, users’ privacy becomes a little less … nonexistent, if you will. The most recent “News Feed” modifications, for example, display everything you say and do on the site to all of your “friends,” and even to the public. And now, even after logging out of Facebook, permanent “cookies” track all your movements on websites that contain Facebook buttons or widgets.’
Read more: Facebook Tracks Your Every Move, Even After Logging Out
CDC now Calling U.S. Households and Demanding Child Immunization Records as Part of Vaccine Surveillance and Tracking Program
Thursday, 29 September 2011 05:51
‘The U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which has been comprehensively exposed as a vaccine propaganda organization promoting the interests of drug companies, is now engaged in a household surveillance program that involves calling U.S. households and intimidating parents into producing child immunization records. As part of what it deems a National Immunization Survey (NIS), the CDC is sending letters to U.S. households, alerting them that they will be called by “NORC at the University of Chicago” and that households should “have your child’s immunization records handy when answering our questions.”
This NIS vaccine compliance program is revealed in a letter being sent to U.S. households by Edward J. Sondik, PhD, the director of the National Center for Health Statistics at the CDC. The CDC, you may recall, was instrumental in pushing the false swine flu pandemic scare and encouraging governments to order billions of dollars worth of vaccines from drug companies. Following this marketing fraud, the former head of the CDC, Dr. Julie Gerberding, went on to accept the lucrative job as the president of Merck’s global vaccine division.’
The Next Phase of Internet Censorship Has Begun: Man the Battle Stations!
Sunday, 25 September 2011 08:17
‘Reports pertaining to the censorship and takedown of personal websites continue to flood in.
First, YouTube meddled with the view counts of folks like Alex Jones over at Info Wars and Prison Planet. Then Flickr, MySpace and Facebook began censoring comments and material. Now an increasing number of independent online media is beginning to feel the sharp edge of the blade.’
Read more: The Next Phase of Internet Censorship Has Begun: Man the Battle Stations!
Obama Administration to Ban Asthma Inhalers Over Environmental Concerns
Sunday, 25 September 2011 09:44
‘Remember how Obama recently waived new ozone regulations at the EPA because they were too costly? Well, it seems that the Obama administration is would rather make people with Asthma cough up money than let them make a surely inconsequential contribution to depleting the ozone layer.’
Read more: Obama Administration to Ban Asthma Inhalers Over Environmental Concerns
Speed-of-light experiments give baffling result at Cern
Puzzling results from Cern, home of the LHC, have confounded physicists – because it appears subatomic particles have exceeded the speed of light.
Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second early.
The result – which threatens to upend a century of physics – will be put online for scrutiny by other scientists.
In the meantime, the group says it is being very cautious about its claims.
“We tried to find all possible explanations for this,” said report author Antonio Ereditato of the Opera collaboration.
“We wanted to find a mistake – trivial mistakes, more complicated mistakes, or nasty effects – and we didn’t,” he told BBC News.
“When you don’t find anything, then you say ‘Well, now I’m forced to go out and ask the community to scrutinise this.'”
Caught speeding?
The speed of light is the Universe’s ultimate speed limit, and much of modern physics – as laid out in part by Albert Einstein in his special theory of relativity – depends on the idea that nothing can exceed it.
Much of modern physics depends on the idea that nothing can exceed the speed of lightThousands of experiments have been undertaken to measure it ever more precisely, and no result has ever spotted a particle breaking the limit.
But Dr Ereditato and his colleagues have been carrying out an experiment for the last three years that seems to suggest neutrinos have done just that.
Neutrinos come in a number of types, and have recently been seen to switch spontaneously from one type to another.
The team prepares a beam of just one type, muon neutrinos, sending them from Cern to an underground laboratory at Gran Sasso in Italy to see how many show up as a different type, tau neutrinos.
In the course of doing the experiments, the researchers noticed that the particles showed up a few billionths of a second sooner than light would over the same distance.
The team measured the travel times of neutrino bunches some 15,000 times, and have reached a level of statistical significance that in scientific circles would count as a formal discovery.
But the group understands that what are known as “systematic errors” could easily make an erroneous result look like a breaking of the ultimate speed limit, and that has motivated them to publish their measurements.
“My dream would be that another, independent experiment finds the same thing – then I would be relieved,” Dr Ereditato said.
But for now, he explained, “we are not claiming things, we want just to be helped by the community in understanding our crazy result – because it is crazy”.
“And of course the consequences can be very serious.”
Massive Tokyo Anti-Nuke Rally Mocked By Japanese Main Stream Media
Wednesday, 21 September 2011 06:26
‘Many participants in Japan are indignant that their demonstration was called a “parade”, as if this was some festival attraction. Well, give the media time to learn. To me, it’s amazing that the MSMs like Yomiuri and Asahi covered the event at all, and even had photographs. Asahi and Mainichi sent in their own photographers for the event. I would take it as a sign that the anti-nuke movement may be crossing the threshold in Japan in terms of the number of people, and the MSMs cannot simply ignore anymore.’
Read more: Massive Tokyo Anti-Nuke Rally Mocked By Japanese Main Stream Media
Vaccine Lobby Launches Gardasil Safety Hoax
Wednesday, 21 September 2011 07:08
‘In the aftermath of Rep. Michele Bachmann’s comments about the Gardasil shot causing mental retardation, vaccine lobbyists and the pharmaceutical-friendly establishment media have launched a new hoax claiming the vaccine is completely safe, despite the CDC’s own figures confirming over 18,000 cases of adverse reactions.
The HPV vaccine has become a presidential campaign talking point, after Ron Paul slammed rival Rick Perry when he pointed out that the Texas Governor’s former chief of staff was a lobbyist for Merck at the same time Perry mandated all girls in Texas receive the shot with an executive order.’
Read more: Vaccine Lobby Launches Gardasil Safety Hoax
http://www.davidicke.com/headlines/53703-vaccine-lobby-launches-gardasil-safety-hoax
Believe nothing 