This illustration appeared in a british wartime publication around the time of the Baedecker Blitz. A combination of high explosive and incendiary was the norm for the bombs, the former blasting open buildings, the latter then setting them ablaze. The two civilians appear to have been included for scale without any sense of irony.
MK-ULTRA Program Brainwashing Experiments Documentary (1979). Mind control (also known as brainwashing, coercive persuasion, mind abuse, thought control, or thought reform) refers to a process in which a group or individual "systematically uses unethically manipulative methods to persuade others to conform to the wishes of the manipulator(s), often to the detriment of the person being manipulated." The term has been applied to any tactic, psychological or otherwise, which can be seen as subverting an individual's sense of control over their own thinking, behavior, emotions or decision making.
It may not be long before we start mining the moon for its resources, particularly the rare Helium-3 for its use in nuclear fusion. 'When things cost us a lot of money to lift from the Earth it’s better that we get it in space’.
Billions of tonnes of resources, ranging from water to gases to metals, have been detected on the Moon and further out into space, and both governments and private companies are navigating the ambiguous legal parlance to determine how to reach, extract and distribute it all.
Vast quantities of the isotope Helium-3 are known to exist on the Moon, as well as in the atmospheres of planets like Jupiter, and could come into high demand as the essential fuel for the so-called 'golden dream' of nuclear fusion power.
While existing nuclear fission plants break apart atoms and harvest the excess energy, nuclear fusion combines atoms of hydrogen to create helium, a process that releases vast amounts of energy.
Just after midnight on May 16, 2010, a SWAT team threw a flash-bang grenade through the window of a 25-year-old man while his 7-year-old daughter slept on the couch as her grandmother watched television. The grenade landed so close to the child that it burned her blanket. The SWAT team leader then burst into the house and fired a single shot which struck the child in the throat, killing her. The police were there to apprehend a man suspected of murdering a teenage boy days earlier. The man they were after lived in the unit above the girl's family. The shooting death of Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley-Jones sounds like it happened in a war zone. But the tragic SWAT team raid took place in Detroit.
Shockingly, paramilitary raids that mirror the tactics of US soldiers in combat are not uncommon in America. According to an investigation carried out by the Huffington Post's Radley Balko, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement over the last 30 years, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units for routine police work. In fact, the most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.
Israel was bracing itself on Thursday for an expected attempt by hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists to fly into the country, as the latest flotilla of ships intended for Gaza appeared to have been largely stalled. Israeli media reported that hundreds of extra police would be deployed at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv to try to halt the influx of protesters, who are part of the Welcome to Palestine campaign.
Most are expected to arrive on an estimated 50 scheduled flights from across Europe, beginning at 1am on Friday. The campaign has denied that those participating intend to try to reach Gaza or provoke deliberate disruption at Ben Guirion airport.
"As stated … we invite international guests including families to visit us in Palestine," Welcome to Palestine said in a statement on Thursday. "We hope and expect the Israeli authorities to allow them safe passage in compliance with international law and normal diplomatic relations. We also reject the Israeli government threat of mass deportation of peace activists and the attempt to justify this unjustifiable action with rumours that have been spread."
Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has taken a personal interest in the "flytilla" threat, visiting airport officials before a trip to Romania and insisting that "every country has the right to prevent entry of disrupters and provocateurs at its borders".
Banksy is an pseudonymous England based graffiti artist, political activist, film director and painter. His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine irreverent dark humour with graffiti done in a distinctive stencilling technique. Such artistic works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world.
People looks at some of the surprise exhibits by the underground guerrilla artist, Banksy on June 12 2009 in Bristol, England. The exhibition called “Banksy versus Bristol Museum” is one of the largest single collections of the artist works and was organised under tight security and installed in just 36hrs with only a handful of museum staff aware it was even happening.
Israeli officials are allegedly boycotting a UN official in Lebanon after he wrote a report criticising the country's response to a border incursion by Palestinians protesters in May. Media in Israel reported on Wednesday that the government had cancelled a visit and cut ties with Michael Williams, UN special co-ordinator for Lebanon, in response to the report.
The Lebanese Armed Forces said seven people died and 111 were injured in the protest on the anniversary of what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba or "catastrophe", their term for the founding of the Israeli state in 1948. The incident took place near the border village of Maroun el-Rass and was the deadliest in the area since the Israeli-Hezbollah war in 2006.
The leaked confidential UN report criticises the Israeli army for using disproportionate force by firing on protesters. On Wednesday, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, accused Israeli soldiers of using excessive force during the May 15 incident by firing live ammunition at unarmed Lebanese demonstrators trying to breach a border fence.
"The firing of live ammunition by the Israeli Defence Forces across the Blue Line against the demonstrators, which resulted in the loss of civilian life and a significant number of casualties, constituted a violation of
resolution 1701 and was not commensurate to the threat to Israeli soldiers," Ban said.
A preliminary report by the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon also accused the demonstrators, who threw stones and petrol bombs and tried to bring down a fence, of carrying out "a provocative and violent act," Ban said.
The US government has warned airlines that terrorists are considering surgically implanting explosives into people in an attempt to circumvent screening procedures, according to U.S. officials.
There is no indication of an immediate plot, but the new information could lead to additional screening procedures at the nation’s airports. Existing scanners would not necessarily detect bombs implanted under a person’s skin, experts said.
The CIA and the Nazis reveals a CIA program known as Operation Paperclip, about how over 4,000 former Nazis went to work for the U.S. government, without the public's knowledge, to help fight the Soviet Union. Reinhard Gehlen, an intelligence officer for Hitler's General Staff, was tapped to head the U.S. intelligence program in West Germany to spy on the Russians. At the same time, former Nazi scientists and engineers were welcomed onto American soil. But the extent of these operations is only now becoming clear: In 1998, a law was passed mandating declassification of documents concerning recruitment of former Nazis. THE CIA AND THE NAZIS examines these files to see how far the U.S. went in recruiting its former enemy to fight its new one. More on YouTube
The British monarch currently receives £11.9 million a year from the public purse to maintain and repair her homes which include Windsor Castle and St James's Palace.
But because of a pay freeze she can only carry out emergency repairs to the buildings and says she will need more money to stop the royal households from falling into disrepair. The current budget means that while a £3.5 million repair to the crumbling facade of Buckingham Palace had gone ahead, other key projects had been forced to be put on hold. (telegraph.co.uk)
Queen 12th in Forbes list of richest royals
With an estimated fortune of £349 million, the monarch has even slipped one position to 12th place in the chart compiled by the US magazine Forbes. But despite an expensive schedule of official foreign trips and a widely publicised maintenance backlog at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, the Queen's position in the ranks of the super-rich remains secure. (telegraph.co.uk)
Queen tried to use state poverty fund to heat Buckingham Palace
The Queen asked ministers for a poverty handout to help heat her palaces but was rebuffed because they feared it would be a public relations disaster, documents disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act reveal. Royal aides were told that the £60m worth of energy-saving grants were aimed at families on low incomes and if the money was given to Buckingham Palace instead of housing associations or hospitals it could lead to "adverse publicity" for the Queen and the Government. (independent.co.uk)
The Syrian government's violent suppression of the revolt against its rule could amount to a systematic campaign of crimes against humanity, a human rights group has said.
London-based Amnesty International says it has gathered proof of such crimes by the government in the northern town of Tell Kalakh. The organisation called for the UN Security Council to refer the Syrian government's massive repression, which has come in response to continuing protests against President Bashar al-Assad's rule, to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, in a report released on Wednesday morning. "The willingness of the international community to take action on Libya in the name of human rights has highlighted its double standards on Syria," Philip Luther, Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa deputy director, said.
A British Royal Navy medic has been sentenced to seven months' detention for refusing rifle training prior to deployment in Afghanistan after developing moral objections, following revelations made by WikiLeaks.
Michael Lyons, 25, was found guilty of wilful disobedience of a lawful order at a military hearing on Tuesday. He had served since 2005 as a medical assistant submariner. He was demoted and dismissed from the navy. The court martial, at Portsmouth naval base, heard that on 20 September 2010, Lyons refused pre-deployment assault rifle training, repeatedly requesting to be assigned to a non-combat role.
Speaking in court, Lyons confirmed he had no physical or mental impairment preventing him following orders, but had chosen to disobey orders based on his personal convictions. "My initial objections started with Afghanistan and I wanted to investigate the reasons why we were at war. At the time WikiLeaks came along and mentioned Iraq and Afghanistan. The reports said there had been some civilian casualties that nobody knew about and they were being covered up," he said. "After a lot of deliberation I decided I was a conscientious objector."
AE Hotchner said he believed the FBI's monitoring of the Nobel Prize-winning author, over suspicions of his links to Cuba, "substantially contributed to his anguish and his suicide" 50 years ago.
Hotchner wrote in The New York Times that he had "regretfully misjudged" his friend's fears of federal investigators, which were dismissed as paranoid delusions for years after his death. In 1983 the FBI released a 127-page file it had kept on Hemingway since the 1940s, confirming he was watched by agents working for J. Edgar Hoover, who took a personal interest in his case.
Hotchner described being met off a train by Hemingway in Ketchum, Idaho, in November 1960, for a pheasant shoot with their friend Duke MacMullen. Hemingway, struggling to complete his last work, complained "the feds" had "tailed us all the way" and that agents were poring over his accounts in a local bank that they passed on their journey.
Few groups are as vilified as atheists. They tend to be viewed as party poopers bent on dismantling the cherished beliefs of "people of faith."
While that element of the atheist community does exist--as is verified by the endless websites and books dedicated solely to tackling the logical flaws in religious claims--the reality is that the growing movement of outspoken atheists have far more on offer than winning arguments with people who believe in a god. Atheism is also a burgeoning social justice movement that looks to tear down the social structures that have perpetuated injustice for millennia.
A week into his new job, Japan's disaster reconstruction minister has resigned. Ryu Matsumoto's resignation on Tuesday came after his conduct during a visit to the tsunami-devastated northeastern coast over the weekend angered local residents and political opponents.
During the visit, he had refused to shake a governor's hand, scolded him and threatened to withhold aid. He told the governor of Iwate, one of the hardest-hit prefectures, that the government would not help municipalities that did not have good ideas about rebuilding.
Matsumoto expressed irritation for being made to wait by Myagi Governor Yoshihiro Murai. Then Matsumoto refused to shake Murai's hand when he entered the room and scolded the visibly surprised governor. "When a guest comes to visit, do not call up the guest until you have arrived in the room," he told Murai. "Do you understand?"
He then warned journalists in the room not to report his words. They were widely reported in the media, and a video of the exchange was posted on the internet.
BBC bosses were condemned today for a gameshow-style reality series which offers jobs as prizes to the unemployed. The programme, Up For Hire, plans to quiz out-of-work youngsters before telling them if they have got a job live on air.
BBC3 is scheduled to give the series - branded 'inappropriate and cruel' - a prime time evening spot. The series, which was commissioned earlier this year, will film school, college and university leavers on four-week work placements at top British companies. The youngsters will start with menial tasks like making tea before graduating to executive decisions. Bosses will then question them ahead of making their 'You've hired' decision.
foxnewspolitics (foxnewspolitics) on Twitter
Fox News has apparently fallen victim to hacking, with its politics Twitter feed repeatedly announcing President Barack Obama had been shot dead. @foxnewspolitics began tweeting the information to its 33,000 followers at about 2am local time, with the posts rapidly being shared around the internet. The rogue tweets appeared to begin after the account sent a message saying Fox had just "regained full access to our Twitter account".
Germany has abandoned self-restraint in offering heavy weapons to autocratic regimes, choosing to sell scores of battle tanks to Saudi Arabia.
The decision for the sale of 200 Leopard tanks worth billions of dollars was revealed by the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel on Saturday. The plan was enabled by Berlin's removal of a decades-long ban on the sale of heavy weaponry to Riyadh.
The latest generation of the Leopard 2A7+ tank is the upgraded version of the German battle tank first presented in 2010. In a promotional video, the tank is described as being able to create fear in protesters and remove obstacles.
Der Spiegel wrote that the sales take place while Saudi King Abdullah has not had a peaceful presence in the region over the past several months and has suppressed the revolution in Bahrain, using his military forces.
For the first time in Greece a documentary produced by the audience. "Debtocracy" seeks the causes of the debt crisis and proposes solutions, hidden by the government and the dominant media.
David Cameron has been warned by one of his most trusted cabinet ministers that his welfare policies risk making 40,000 families homeless. The extraordinary claim, in a letter to the prime minister from the office of Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, exposes deep splits at the heart of government over plans to cap benefit at £500 a week per family.
The letter, leaked to the Observer, reveals Pickles's belief that the cap – announced with great fanfare at last year's Tory conference – will increase the burden on taxpayers, because thousands of families will be unable to pay their rent and will have to seek local government help. It blows apart the government's public insistence that a limit on benefit payments will have little impact on homelessness and child poverty.
British government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a co-ordinated public relations strategy to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and before the extent of the radiation leak was known.
Internal emails seen by the Guardian show how the business and energy departments worked closely behind the scenes with the multinational companies EDF Energy, Areva and Westinghouse to try to ensure the accident did not derail their plans for a new generation of nuclear stations in the UK.
Prosecutors have serious questions about the credibility of a hotel housekeeper who has accused former International Monetary Fund leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn of raping her, and they are taking the extraordinary step of seeking a substantial reduction in his pricey bail, a person familiar with the case said Thursday.
The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters not yet made public in court, told The Associated Press that prosecutors have raised issues about the accuser's credibility in the case against Strauss-Kahn, but would not elaborate on what those issues were.
A separate law enforcement official who is familiar with the case, but not authorized to speak about it publicly, told the AP that the issue was not necessarily about the rape accusation itself, but about troubling questions surrounding the alleged victim's background that could damage her credibility on the witness stand. The official refused to elaborate.