dysnomia.us

random bits of news

• S.I. Man Gets Prison Term for Aid to Hezbollah TV

Mr. Iqbal’s lawyer, Joshua L. Dratel, had earlier argued that prosecution of his client for providing satellite TV services violated his First Amendment rights, but Judge Berman rejected that view, ruling that the prosecution was based not on the content of speech but on conduct — allegations that he provided material support to a foreign terrorist group.

I’ve read a few articles about this, and I can’t find any claim that his “material support” amounted to anything more than airing the TV station.

Thanks to Katie Monster for this one:

• Dow-sponsored Walleye Fest to donate contaminated fish to the poor

Despite advisories that warn people to avoid contact with river sediments and consuming locally caught fish, thousands are expected to participate this weekend in a Dow Chemical-sponsored walleye festival along the Tittabawassee and Saginaw rivers, where the watershed has been contaminated with harmful dioxin and other toxic substances.

And just as the Michigan Department of Community Health is warning that children and pre-menopausal women should mostly avoid eating river fish including walleye because of contamination from polychlorinated biphenyls and dioxin, organizers of the festival say they plan to donate walleye fillets to a local food bank.

Thanks to KM for this one too (maybe I should just let her post here herself):

• Whaling Ship Sunk Again by Agenda 21 in Norway

“APRIL 24, 2009
HENNINGSVAER, NORWAY

WHALING SHIP SUNK

ON THE EVENING OF THE 23RD OF APRIL WE SNUCK ONTO A NORWEGIAN WHALING SHIP MAKING REPAIRS IN THE LOFOTEN ISLANDS IN PREPARATION FOR THE 2009 WHALING SEASON. TO DELAY THE KILLING SEASON AND TO PROTEST THE CONTINUED ILLEGAL EXPORT OF WHALE MEAT TO JAPAN WE DISASSEMBLED A VALVE AND FLOODED THE ENGINE ROOM. UNFORTUNATELY LOCAL FIREFIGHTERS WERE ABLE TO RESPOND JUST MOMENTS BEFORE THE SHIP SETTLED ON THE BOTTOM BUT NOT BEFORE THE SHIP HAD ALREADY BEEN COMPLETELY FILLED WITH SEA WATER AND THE DAMAGE DONE. FOR BOTH FISHERIES INVESTORS IN TOKYO AND INSURANCE UNDERWRITERS IN OSLO INVESTING IN THE NORWEGIAN WHALING INDUSTRY CAN ONLY LEAD TO SUNKEN PROFITS. AS A DIRECT RESULT OF A GROWING INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN ENDANGERED SPECIES WE CAME TO HENNINGSVAER. WE SAW THE SKARBAKK. WE SANK THE BASTARD. -AGENDA 21″

it’s like a little piece of guantanamo, right here at home

• Secretive U.S. Prison Units Used to House Muslim, Animal Rights and Environmental Activists

The government is using secretive prison facilities on U.S. soil, called Communication Management Units, to house inmates accused of being tied to “terrorism” groups. They overwhelmingly include Muslim inmates, along with at least two animal rights and environmental activists.

Little information is available about the secretive facilities and the prisoners housed there. However, through interviews with attorneys, family members, and a current prisoner, it is clear that these units have been created not for violent and dangerous “terrorists,” but for political cases that the government would like to keep out of the public spotlight and out of the press.

mayhem

Pirates are having a hard time of it lately:

• German Navy hands over suspected pirates to Kenya
• One step forward

Still having repercussions, though:

• Sea piracy causes 50% decline in fish production

This bunch got away with it because they’re not off of Somalia:

• Pirates hijack trawler, kill 3 crewmen off Basilan Island

And now on to Animal Liberation Front action. If you don’t know about the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, you should check it out.

• 2 Animal Rights Activists Arrested as “Terrorists” for Freeing Mink in Utah
• Snitch Hunt

The critical step in this process is for law enforcement to use what little evidence they have to scare the living hell out of those arrested. They use threats of outlandish prison sentences and terrorism rhetoric in order to create government informants, or snitches. They then continue that pattern of threats and fear-mongering with each subsequent arrestee, until they have enough to move forward with a case. This snitch-based model of police work (as opposed to gathering evidence, witnesses and leads) is notoriously unreliable and often illegal.

Here’s another activist going to jail, this time for driving a nice old lady to her house:

• Bull Connor lives! TVA watchdogs arrested, harassed
• Activist arrested at coal ash site

And then there’s this:

• Fringe group of enviros vandalizing homes, cars

And finally, I don’t know why I’m so enamored of these animal attack stories lately. Probably because they’re awesome:

• Maine skiers warned about late-night owl attacks

crime and mayhem

Let’s get right to the crime and mayhem:

• Satanist inmate sues county
• China bus thief, 13, causes road chaos

• Taxing pot could become a political toking point

Buoyed by the widely held belief that cannabis is California’s biggest cash crop, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano contends it is time to reap some state revenue from that harvest while putting a damper on drug use by teens, cutting police costs and even helping Mother Nature.

• Steve Irwin raid sparked by Japanese complaint
• Any Sea Shepherd charge needs A-G’s nod

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said Japan’s complaint about the Steve Irwin reached his organisation last week by way of the Japanese embassy in Canberra, and through the Australian embassy in Tokyo.

The official complaint stemmed from the director-general of the Japanese fishing agency.

Police confiscated the ship’s logbook and video footage of dramatic whale-killing scenes.

• FBI Arrests 4 Activists as “Terrorists” for Chalking Slogans, Leafleting and Protesting
• Four arrested in string of animal rights attacks on UC scientists

I’ve posted about the big civil disobedience at the US Capitol’s power plant before, but here’s more about it. All the contact people on their website seems to have Greenpeace and Rainforest Action Network emails. It’d be nice if this was the beginning of Greenpeace USA getting serious again. This here is the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies:

• Civil Disobedience: Climate Change Edition

And finally:

• Geronimo’s heirs sue secret Yale society over his skull

Geronimo died a prisoner of war at Fort Sill, , in 1909. A longstanding tradition among members of Skull and Bones holds that Prescott Bush — father of President George Bush and grandfather of President George W. Bush — broke into the grave with some classmates during World War I and made off with the skull, two bones, a bridle and some stirrups, all of which were put on display at the group’s clubhouse in New Haven, known as the Tomb.

Here’s where he’s supposed to be buried at Fort Sill, OK:

newsnewsnewsnewsnewsnewsnews

Starting with News of the Stupid:

• NC campus cops arrest student in snowball melee

Junior Brandon Davis said “it all started in good nature, but then people were throwing them as hard as they could at each other.” Junior Matt Lunchick said an officer chased and arrested a student after being hit in the back with a snowball.

• Nigerian police detain goat over armed robbery

“The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them. However one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat,” Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed told Reuters by telephone.

“We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody. We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat,” he said.

• Baby’s phone call from indoor marijuana farm lands dad in jail

• ‘Virgin Mary’ Underpass Stain Defaced With Devil Graffiti

And on to News of the Grim:

• One last chance to save mankind

I’m an optimistic pessimist. I think it’s wrong to assume we’ll survive 2 °C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4 °C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happened before: between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2000 people left. It’s happening again.

And now this:

• Faced with rising piracy problem, Navy is taking fight to Africa
• US admiral: Pact near for Somali pirate trials
• Somalia piracy hits tuna fishing in Indian Ocean
• Call for ship riders to arrest Somali pirates
• Pirate fighters back home from Somali waters, relive drama

Nine pirates armed with rocket launchers and heavy machine guns boarded the ship at 12:43 pm (Beijing time) on Dec 17. The 30 sailors locked themselves in the cabins, using fire hydrants and self-made firebombs to keep the attackers at bay.

The beer bottles worked as real weapons, flying like missiles and exploding on impact. And the shards of broken glass made walking on the deck difficult for the pirates because most of them were barefoot.

A couple of these:

• Grenade blast in Kosovo day after new army formed
• Georgia Blocks Russian Inspection of Its Military Facilities

And bad news in space, too:

• Failed Telecommunications Satellite Drifts Out of Control

assorted news

• Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security

Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, dedicating 20,000 troops to domestic response — a nearly sevenfold increase in five years — “would have been extraordinary to the point of unbelievable,” Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, said in remarks last month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But the realization that civilian authorities may be overwhelmed in a catastrophe prompted “a fundamental change in military culture,” he said.

I posted an earlier development of this a couple of months ago. I warned people then not to be stupid- this didn’t mean martial law. The reason for that warning was that the paranoid left was going through one of its occasional panics about martial law, canceled elections, etc. that never seem to pan out. I think these panics are a symptom of ignorance, and more effort needs to be made to educate people on the practical matters of politics.

But this shouldn’t obscure the fact that we have a creeping authoritarianism in this country that has its roots before 9/11, and is unlikely to get turned around if we don’t take action against it.  I’m wary of terms like fascism,  martial law and police state, because they have specific meanings that don’t necessarily apply the way people use them, but I’m afraid that by shunning the terms, I lose the ability to talk about what’s happening in a way people understand. I suppose we need new ways to talk about these things that reflect today’s world, much like most of the rest of our political vocabulary.

And now, pirates!

• Somalia: Yemeni cargo ship set free
• Warships rescue merchant vessels in Gulf of Aden
• Pirates attack luxury cruise ship bound for Australia
• US cruise ship outruns Somali pirates’ guns

Several of these stories indicate pirates attacking in greater numbers than before, or going after new types of targets. I’d suggest this is a tactical response to the increased presence of foreign navies in the region. It may mean the pirates will be able to respond to changing conditions and will not be suppressed as easily as some people expect.

• Pollution Causing Arctic Ice To Darken And Melt Rapidly
• Is This The World’s First Global Warming Induced Mammal Extinction?

The rare white lemuroid possum hasn’t been sighted for the past three years. Scientists are concerned it might have the ignominious distinction of being the world’s first mammal sent to extinction by global warming.

• NASA Extends Contract with Russian Federal Space Agency

This contract is good news, in a sense. It means we’ll be using the Soyuz to send astronauts to the International Space Station, and I certainly wouldn’t argue that we stop going up there. But what’s up with having to rely on the Russians? Once the shuttle is retired, we’ll have no capability to put humans in space. Not until the new system is up and running, and who knows how NASA will fare over the next few years?

sea, space and stupid

Starting of course with the stupid. The one redeeming factor here? At least it wasn’t the Amurricans this time.

Students in ‘Weird Science’ Halloween party arrested under anti-terror laws

OK, on to the srs b. I’ve never posted anything like an ad before, but this is something I want to see. If I find a torrent, I’m going to make all my friends watch it. Unless it sucks. It is TV, after all.

Sea Shepherd Heads for Antarctic Battle With Japanese Whalers
Greenpeace lays off Japan
Greenpeace won’t chase whalers

Guarded shipping corridor limiting Somali piracy
European Union approves anti-piracy patrols off Somali coast

Icy Profile

The Cassini spacecraft looks toward Rhea’s cratered, icy landscape with the dark line of Saturn’s ringplane and the planet’s murky atmosphere as a background.

Chandrayaan-1 Successfully Enters Moon’s Orbit
Astronauts head for extreme home makeover in space
Mars Phoenix Lander completes its mission

According to NASA, the space agency is no longer receiving communications from Phoenix, its Mars lander, after more than five months of operation. The not unexpected event came after the lander moved into an area, NASA said in a release Monday, where “seasonal decline in sunshine at the robot’s arctic landing site is not providing enough sunlight for the solar arrays to collect the power necessary to charge batteries that operate the lander’s instruments.”

RIP, Phoenix. You almost convinced me to take the Twitter pill. Almost.

return of the news

I’m dipping my toes back in the water tonight, so just a quickie.

Starting with something local for my bike people:
Portland bike light enforcement starts soon

Portland Police have been giving out warnings and bike lights for the past week to those cyclists they catch without a front white light – but they’re about to run out, and when that happens, they’ll start giving out tickets instead.

Stone Age man took drugs, say scientists

They found ceramic bowls, as well as tubes for inhaling drug fumes or powders, which appear to have originated in South America between 100BC and 400BC and were then carried 400 miles to the islands.
…
They consider that drugs were being used to induce spiritual or trance-like states by people who had religious beliefs.

Britain releases UFO files, dispels some mysteries
U.S. pilot was ordered to shoot down UFO

And finally, it’s long been known that defending against zombies has been an essential element of homeland security. It’s good to see, then, that alert citizens are on the lookout:
Student Arrested For Terroristic Threatening Says Incident A Misunderstanding

“My story is based on fiction,” said Poole, who faces a second-degree felony terrorist threatening charge. “It’s a fake story. I made it up. I’ve been working on one of my short stories, (and) the short story they found was about zombies. Yes, it did say a high school. It was about a high school over ran by zombies.”

(by way of Green Is The New Red, thanks to Katie Monster)

homeland security news

In the category of “making it all look clean and tidy after the fact”:
St. Paul dropping all misdemeanor charges for journalists arrested during RNC

Charges will be dropped against journalists who were arrested and charged with misdemeanors for unlawful assembly during the Republican National Convention, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman said today.

Many reporters, photographers and bloggers were among the 818 people arrested during the Sept. 1-4 convention. Many were trapped on a bridge with protesters on the Thursday night, just before Sen. John McCain made his acceptance speech. Police had warned the large group to dissipate, then closed in from both sides of the bridge and made mass arrests.

Easy enough to drop the charges now. They’ve already made their point that journalists who stray from the official line will face serious consequences. This would be that “chilling effect” you hear about.

It makes me uncomfortable to use the “police state” tag very often. It’s one of those phrases that’s widely abused by people who lack perspective or proportion. But I think that any story related to the RNC in Minnesota utterly deserves it.

And here’s one that’s a couple of weeks old, but is only making the rounds today:
Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

And a slightly more recent piece from the horse’s mouth:
Top Army leader visits newly assigned consequence management force

I will say that if you read the Army Times article, they’re not exactly being kept on a high state of alert. Not very reassuring, I know. Isn’t this what the National Guard is supposed to do?

EDIT- Rumor Control: No, this doesn’t mean martial law. Don’t be a tool.

all your favorite news stories in one stylish package

Owners hire armed guards to secure ships against pirates
Kidnap ransoms a ‘toll’ to fund terrorist groups
EU mulling military action to tackle Somalia pirates
Tuna fishing vessels seek refuge in Seychelles after threats of piracy

Review: At the Edge of the World (Documentary)
Propaganda: At The Edge of the World Premieres at the Toronto Film Festival

A nonfiction pirate movie that tickles one’s inner eco-radical, “At the Edge of the World” spends a season in the frozen sea with Paul Watson and his militant-mariner Sea Shepherd crew as they try to save endangered mammals from the restaurant suppliers of the Japanese whaling fleet. Docu-cum-chase film may have limited theatrical appeal, but should make a dent in the specialty market and, certainly, the DVD racks.

Google search finds seafaring solution

RAF radar chief: I saw UFO fleet

Wing Commander Alan Turner, 64, said colleagues sat stunned when 35 super-fast vessels appeared on their screens.
…
Wing Cmdr Turner said six military radars, plus operators at Heathrow, spotted the UFOs east of Salisbury Plain and filed reports on the unexplained phenomenon in 1971.
…
Three days later, the Ministry of Defence visited the RAF and instructed staff to “never speak about the incident again”.

Hubble Finds a Mystery Object
China Broadcasts Greetings From The Moon
Japanese Beam-Down Solar Power System To Be Tested in Abu Dhabi

7 countries plan Black Sea naval exercises
U.S. warship enters Black Sea, Turkey rules out Montreux breach
Russia eyes Mediterranean as alternative to Sevastopol naval base

Georgia war sparks political battle in Ukraine

Arctic meeting calls for closer international cooperation

The right to assembly: The American Civil Liberties Union is representing dozens of protestors arrested at the RNC

When you’ve got a police presence that’s as strong and as aggressive as this, and where they use as much chemical irritant as these guys have been using—they have two million dollars’ worth of it; you might as well use it up; doesn’t last forever, you know—you’re going to get news people who will be gassed and, you know, who will be arrested. People are being swept up, including journalists, charged with a felony, thrown in jail, and then, you know, they’re sitting there for a day and a half, and then the prosecutors are looking at it and saying, “Oh, there’s no reason. We’ll let you go.”

Judge blocks Ore. logging project