by Charlie Edwards | Apr 27, 2009 | UK
More trees than the Amazon rainforest are going to have to be chopped down in the next few months to keep up with the rash of reports set to be launched this summer on national security and related subjects. Below is an initial list:*
- IPPR’s final report on national security (interim paper here) (June 30th);
- UK Government’s National Security Strategy (Mark II) (Mark 1 here);
- Conservative Party green paper on national security (first effort here);
- UK Government organised crime strategy (which I think will be focusing on nexus between organised crime and terrorism). 2004 strategy here;
- Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS) Mark 2** (first attempt here);
- DFID White Paper on International Development (here’s one submission I found);
- Community Resilience Strategy (Cabinet Office – linked to NSS II).
*If you know of any other documents please let the team at GD know.
** Will update when news becomes public.
by Jules Evans | Apr 27, 2009 | Middle East and North Africa
More bad PR for the United Arab Emirates, which has attempted to paint itself as an oasis of cosmopolitanism and entrepreneurialism in the Arab world.
First, the Dubai debt bubble burst in the middle of last year, as investors started to realise that Dubai didn’t actually have any oil, and relied entirely on foreign leverage for its castles in the sand. Dubai had to be bailed out by the neighbouring province of Abu Dhabi.
Then, a good Panorama documentary earlier this month exposed how Dubai’s construction boom was built by Indian workers living in slave-like conditions.
The city is also teeming with prostitutes from around the world, particularly the former Soviet Union, many of whom are also, in effect, sex slaves – they have to hand their passports to their pimps until they earn enough money to buy them back.
Now, a video has emerged of Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, the brother of the emir of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammad, torturing an Afghan business partner in the desert for allegedly cheating him out of money.
He rather stupidly shot the video of the torture himself, presumably to enjoy later. It consists of 45 minutes of him and some police officers doing various really nasty things to the unfortunate businessman, setting fire to him, electrocuting him, pouring salt on his wounds (literally) and finally running him over in a Mercedes.
“Get closer”, shouts the excited Sheikh at one point. “Show the suffering on his face.”
Miraculously, the Afghan businesssman survived, which the government of the UAE has used as an excuse to avoid pressing any charges on the sadistic Sheikh, who is also brother of the minister of interior.
Ah, the UAE, what an oasis of tolerance is there.
by David Steven | Apr 26, 2009 | Global system
From 9/11 truther mission control, Infowars, comes stunning news: “deadly swine flu… was cooked up in a lab.”
Yes – the first swine flu conspiracy theories are hitting the Internets, providing a rare opportunity to view these numb skull paranoids as they struggle to assemble a few fragments of information into a suitably cunning plot.
Here’s how it goes:
Evidence: The flu virus is reported to combine “genetic material from pigs, birds and humans in a way researchers have not seen before.” Implication: the virus was probably deliberately released.
Evidence: “In all U.S. cases, the victims had no contact with any pigs.” Implication: Pigs are evil… er they caught it from other people… er pigs never had anything to do with it.
Evidence: A public health official says: “This strain of swine influenza that’s been cultured in a laboratory is something that’s not been seen anywhere [before].” Implication: The poor guy wasn’t referring to standard identification techniques, but letting slip vital details of a dastardly scheme. WE TOLD YOU IT WAS DELIBERATELY RELEASED.
Evidence: The world has huge stock piles of Tamiflu. “Top globalists and Bilderberg members like George Shultz, Lodewijk J.R. de Vink and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld” have a financial interest in Tamiflu. Implication: THEY’RE BEHIND THE ATTACK.
Evidence: The 1976 swine flu scare didn’t add up to much. Implication: RUMSFELD WAS BEHIND THAT TOO.
Now I am sure the story will become more polished as additional information is available to be distorted. But remember. This is how it started. And this is how little evidence these cretins need to start spinning their fantasies…
(more…)
by David Steven | Apr 25, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, North America
In the US, Republicans and independents are becoming steadily more sceptical about climate change.
by Richard Gowan | Apr 24, 2009 | Conflict and security, Off topic
No, really:
Llama blood may one day be able to help soldiers, scientists and city officials set up an early-warning system against the tiniest weapons of terror–biological agents like anthrax and smallpox. Authorities have long worried that, were these diseases to get loose, it would be difficult to know anything was wrong until innocent people started dying. Llama blood might provide a better detection method.
How? Antibodies, the tiny molecules that float around in the bloodstreams of people and almost all animals. Antibodies keep a sort of “memory” of all the diseases, allergens and other foreign invaders your body has come into contact with. If the same infiltrator shows up again, the antibodies can match it up with their stored records and immediately know how to fight it.
For a while now, scientists have used genetically altered antibodies to help ID and treat specific diseases. But these techniques always ran into a common problem: Antibodies were just too delicate to be of much use outside a lab or hospital setting. Enter the llama.
According to news stories about the research, llamas have extraordinarily tough and hardy antibodies, capable of sustaining exposure to temperatures as high as 200 degrees F. This discovery gave the researchers the idea to develop sensors, based on llama antibodies, that could be distributed to soldiers in a war, or around cities back home. Modified to be specifically on the lookout for likely-to-be-weaponized diseases, these sensors could pick up signs of a biochemical attack before victims started arriving at the hospital.
Hat tip: Boing Boing (and for the photo, Animals Who Need Big Kisses, which is weird).
