CLEAN AND GLEAN

Organic IS better

Organic IS better. The proof. For years, industrial-food enthusiasts such as Norman Borlaug have attacked organic farming on two grounds:

1) it produces essentially the same nutritional results as chemical-intensive farming, and
2) it's less productive. Both of those criticisms are crumbling.

This month, the Organic Center released a "state of science" analysis of peer-reviewed studies comparing the nutritional content of organically and conventionally grown veggies. Organic wins by a substantial margin.

NAZI BUSINESS

Motor sport boss on Nazi spanking sex video

THE head of world motor racing - the son of a notorious British fascist - has allegedly been caught on video with prostitutes in a Nazi role-play sex game.
Max Mosley - the son of British Union of Fascists party founder Oswald Mosley - was reported by the News of the World to have taken part in the sleazy scene at a London apartment.
But FIA - which oversees international car racing - today refused to comment on the matter, saying only that "this is a matter between Mr Mosley and the newspaper."

NAZI BUSINESS

Motor sport boss on Nazi spanking sex video

THE head of world motor racing - the son of a notorious British fascist - has allegedly been caught on video with prostitutes in a Nazi role-play sex game.
Max Mosley - the son of British Union of Fascists party founder Oswald Mosley - was reported by the News of the World to have taken part in the sleazy scene at a London apartment.
But FIA - which oversees international car racing - today refused to comment on the matter, saying only that "this is a matter between Mr Mosley and the newspaper."

ONLY IN AMERICA

Civilization in Decline

The Pentagon revealed that, yes, it did mistakenly send four fuses for nuclear missiles to Taiwan when it meant to send helicopter batteries, but, second, not to worry, because it caught the error, er, 18 months later, but still . . . . . So there’s a brain-damaged truck-crash victim who can’t even remember that her son was just killed in Iraq and who wins $1M from the trucker, and first the lawyers, etc., suck out $580k of that, leaving $417k, and then Wal-Mart stockholders suck that out, since she was covered under Wal-Mart’s health-insurance plan, whose fine print says she has to give up insurance payouts.

TIT WITS

Woman told to pull out nipple rings at airport

A WOMAN in the US says she was forced by airport security guards to remove her nipple rings with a pair of pliers before she could board a flight.
The passenger's celebrity Los Angeles lawyer, Gloria Allred, has made the allegation in a statement.
"The woman was given a pair of pliers in order to remove the rings in her nipples," Ms Allred said.
"The rings had been in her nipples for many years."

LOATHE THY NEIGHBOUR

Police seek volunteers to spy for them

POLICE are seeking hundreds of volunteers to spy on crime hot spots and trawl through surveillance tapes to help catch criminals.
Each police local service area will organise and equip the volunteers to undertake the often time-consuming task of crime surveillance.In some cases, the volunteers will use binoculars to monitor areas and pass on details of suspicious activities to police.

CHINA SYNDROME

Weeping monks disrupt Lhasa media tour

About 30 Tibetan monks have burst into a rare news briefing at a key temple in Lhasa, claiming authorities were lying about the situation after more than two weeks of unrest in the Himalayan region.

"About 30 young monks burst into the official briefing, shouting, 'Don't believe them, they are tricking you, they are telling lies'," USA Today reporter Callum MacLeod said by telephone from Lhasa.

FLASHBACK

Elements 115 and 113 discovered in Dubna

A team of Russian and American physicists that discovered elements 114 and 116 in 1998 and 2000 now believe they may have created two other superheavy elements – 113 and 115.
If confirmed, these results would lend even more weight to the idea of an “island of stability” at the edge of the periodic table (Y Oganessian et al. 2003 Phys. Rev. C 69 021601)
Yuri Oganessian and colleagues at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia - collaborating with a team from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US - have collided calcium-48 with americium-243 nuclei to produce element 115.

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

Kristy loves her 63-year-old billionaire boyfriend for his brain

AUSTRALIAN model Kristy Hinze says she was instantly attracted to her 63-year-old billionaire boyfriend by his brains.
The 27-year-old granddaughter of the late Queensland politician Russ Hinze has been dating Texan billionaire Jim Clark, the founder of Netscape, for two-and-a-half years.

DENSE IS SMART

'Superdense' coding gets denser

The record for the most amount of information sent by a single photon has been broken by researchers at the University of Illinois. Using the direction of “wiggling” and “twisting” of a pair of hyper-entangled photons, they have beaten a fundamental limit on the channel capacity for dense coding with linear optics.

“Dense coding is arguably the protocol that launched the field of quantum communication,” said Paul Kwiat, a John Bardeen Professor of Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering.

In classical coding, a single photon will convey only one of two messages, or one bit of information. In dense coding, a single photon can convey one of four messages, or two bits of information.

“Dense coding is possible because the properties of photons can be linked to one another through a peculiar process called quantum entanglement,” Kwiat said. “This bizarre coupling can link two photons, even if they are located on opposite sides of the galaxy.”

DISSEMBLING MENDACITY

Clinton caught out over sniper claims

Democrat Hillary Clinton may have "misspoke" when, in a bid to flag her foreign policy experience, she claimed to have come under sniper fire on a 1996 visit to Bosnia, aides said.

Responding to a slew of mocking reports and television footage that showed no danger during her arrival at Tuzla, the presidential contender's campaign insisted that Senator Clinton had gone into a "potential combat zone."

"Now it is possible in the most recent instance in which she discussed this that she misspoke with regard to the exit from the plane," Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson told reporters on a conference call.

[Our noble leaders are accused of mendacity, dissembling and misspeaking ... the rest of us just lie.]

LIGHT A FLAME

Tibet protesters disrupt torch lighting

PROTESTERS have disrupted the lighting of the Olympic Torch as the Tibetan crisis increasingly threatens to stain Beijing's Olympic Games.
The torch was lit in Greece as protesters used the event to draw attention to the plight of the captive region of Tibet, which China has controversially controlled for decades .Three demonstrators breached security around the site of Ancient Olympia to unfurl a flag demanding a boycott of the Olympics and shout slogans denouncing China's human rights record.

MIND OVER MATTER

'Hypnotist' thief hunted in Italy

Police in Italy have issued footage of a man who is suspected of hypnotising supermarket checkout staff to hand over money from their cash registers.
In every case, the last thing staff reportedly remember is the thief leaning over and saying: "Look into my eyes", before finding the till empty.

WATER BORE

Bore warnings extended

No rain and now we find the ground water has been rendered unfit to drink or grow food thanks to pollution, namely carcinogenic de-greasing solvent trichloroethylene.

The SA Health Department has extended a bore water warning in the western suburbs, taking the number of homes affected to nearly 2000.
Bore water in Beverley was found to be contaminated with the cancer-causing chemical trichloroethylene, or TCE, in January. Residents are being warned not to drink or use their bore water for watering gardens or filling pools.

Bore water tainted with industrial chemical

Poisonous bore water has been found under two Adelaide suburbs. Authorities say the underground water at Beverley and Woodville South is tainted with an industrial chemical and warn there may be a cancer risk from any long-term exposure.

GRAVE CONCERNS

SA should foster nuclear industry, says geologist Ian Plimer

"I think it is an absolute no-brainer that we should look at a cradle to grave uranium industry," Professor of Mining Geology at Adelaide University, Ian Plimer, said at a uranium conference in Adelaide.
"We take the fuel rods back, we clean them up and we dispose of the waste. That would make South Australia the Saudi Arabia of the energy world.

[Doesn't that imply that the Saudis sequester all the carbon emitted by their burned oil?]

CHINA SYNDROME

China denies using lethal force during Tibetan unrest

China says Tibetan rioters killed 13 "innocent civilians" during violent protests against Chinese rule in Lhasa, and it has denied using lethal force to quell the unrest.

"They either burned or hacked to death 13 innocent civilians," the chairman of Tibet's Government, Qiangba Puncog, told reporters.

Tibet's government-in-exile said on the weekend that 80 Tibetans had been confirmed killed, and that possibly more than 100 had died.

Mr Qiangba insisted Chinese security forces had not used lethal force or fired any gunshots, contradicting the eyewitness accounts of foreign tourists who were in the city at the time.

CHINA SYNDROME

Chinese troops were out in force in Lhasa on Sunday

'Eighty killed' in Tibetan unrest

At least 80 people have been killed in unrest following protests by Tibetans against Chinese rule, the Tibetan government in exile says.

Indian-based officials said the figure was confirmed by several sources, even though China put the death toll at 10.

The Dalai Lama condemned China's "rule of terror" in Tibet and accused it of "cultural genocide".

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | 'Eighty killed' in Tibetan unrest

Chinese troops were out in force in Lhasa on Sunday

'Eighty killed' in Tibetan unrest

At least 80 people have been killed in unrest following protests by Tibetans against Chinese rule, the Tibetan government in exile says.

Indian-based officials said the figure was confirmed by several sources, even though China put the death toll at 10.

The Dalai Lama condemned China's "rule of terror" in Tibet and accused it of "cultural genocide".

THE QUICKENING

Thaw of world's glaciers reaches record high: UN


A thaw of the world's glaciers has accelerated to a new record, with some of the biggest losses within Europe in a worrying sign of climate change, the UN Environment Program (UNEP) said.

"Meltdown in the mountains," UNEP said in a statement, saying that a retreat of glaciers from the Andes to the Arctic should add urgency to UN negotiations on working out a new treaty by the end of 2009 to combat global warming.

SEEDS OF DOUBT

Experts send letter to PM over GM canola fears

It is now legal to plant genetically modified (GM) canola in much of Australia, but a large group of concerned scientists, nutritionists and doctors is trying to convince the Federal Government to stop the seeds from ever being sown.

About 700 people have signed a letter to the Prime Minister, reminding him of Labor's election statement that safe and beneficial standards for GM products must be established beyond reasonable doubt.

FALLON HERO

Admiral William "Fox" Fallon: intelligent military.

Demise of a man who spoke his mind

Why would America's most senior military commander in the most volatile part of the world suddenly resign - well before his tour was over?

• In an Esquire article, titled The Man Between War and Peace, Admiral William "Fox" Fallon hardly comes across as a cheerleader of the Bush administration's policies in the region.
• In comments to Al-Jazeera (not the White House's favourite television station) last autumn, he said: "This constant drumbeat of conflict... is not helpful and not useful."
• Last September, the Washington Post reported sources saying that Adm Fallon believed the surge in Iraq "was not working".
• This February, the New York Times reported that Adm Fallon had spoken in favour of a "resumption" of US troop withdrawals in Iraq

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates claimed that their "differences" were more about "misperception" than reality or substance but was probably being more frank when he dismissed as "ridiculous" the suggestion in Esquire that Fallon's early departure would signal the build-up to war in Iran.

President George W Bush is a man who values loyalty above all else.
Admiral William "Fox" Fallon is a military man, apt to speak his mind.

Profile: William Fallon

As head of the US Central Command (CentCom), Adm Fallon oversaw US strategy in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. The 63-year-old admiral, known as Fox - his call sign when he was a Navy fighter pilot - is highly regarded as an astute commander.

COPYRIGHT WRONG

DRM Foils iTunes Movie Rentals for Some Apple TV Owners

When I sat down to watch it, however, the Apple TV wouldn't let me, due to the way I have the device set up. You see, I don't own an HDTV, which is required for the Apple TV.

When I attempted to watch the movie, however, the Apple TV displayed an error message: "This content requires HDCP for playback."
HDCP (High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection) is a form of digital rights management (DRM) that prevents you from playing video over DVI and HDMI connections (in my case) if you don't own compatible hardware that can decode the signal properly.
(In other words, HDCP is more DRM crap that does nothing but irritate legitimate customers.)
 Although I had downloaded the movie legally, my monitor apparently was too old to include HDCP and thus wouldn't display my movie.

BEST FRIEND

72-carat diamond set for auction

A pear-shaped 72.22-carat diamond is expected to bring up to $US13 million at auction.

CRIKEY!

Stop me if any of this sounds familiar

A small group of bearded young men commit an outrageous multiple murder. The youths belong to an immigrant community that perceives itself under siege from the police; they practice a minority religion regarded with suspicion by much of the population. In self-justification, they talk about the persecution inflicted on their co-religionists overseas; eventually, they commit themselves to the creation of a homeland here in Australia.

In the midst of a full-blown panic, the Victorian parliament passes draconian laws drastically curtailing civil liberties, and the police launch indiscriminate raids on ethnic minorities. The bearded men make a suicidal final stand; most of them are killed, without a chance to surrender, by a special police squad, and the leader is taken into custody and executed after a dubious trial.

Ned Kelly has been a Rorschach test for so many generations that, with the news that his bones may (or may not) have been located at Pentridge, it seems appropriate to remix his story for the Age of Terror.

Kelly, of course, identified as Irish and Catholic rather than, say, Arab and Muslim but the relationship of those identities to the mainstream was not so dissimilar. Rather than an inner city posse, Ned belonged to the "Greta Mob", a gang of flash youths who stole horses rather than cars and signalled their identity by wearing their hat straps under their noses in a nineteenth century equivalent of the reversed baseball cap.


His outlawry might have been sparked by clashes between police and his family but he also saw himself as fighting for something much bigger. Ian Jones, the pre-eminent Kelly historian, claims that the gang planned, after the Glenrowan confrontation, to declare a Republic of North-Eastern Victoria. Not quite the Caliphate but not so very different, either.

"It will pay the government," Kelly explained in his Jerilderie Letter, "to give those people who are suffering innocence justice and liberty if not I will be compelled to show some colonial stratagem which will open the eyes of not only the Victorian Police and inhabitants but also the whole British army."

It’s the kind of message that these days features on Al Jazeera.

The government response sounds equally familiar. New laws allowed the Kellys to be shot on sight, and gave the police the power raid houses without warrants and prosecute anyone withholding information. In January 1879, some twenty men went to jail for "having given information to an outlaw and his accomplices, contrary to the fifth section of the Outlawry Act" and for "withholding information relative to the Kelly gang".

As for Kelly’s trial, it might not have been a military commission but nor was it full and fair: Kelly’s barrister lacked experience; key witnesses were never presented; Redmond Barry was clearly biased.

Of course, historical parallels are never identical. Kelly was neither Osama bin Laden nor Che Guevara nor Chopper Read; his story needs, ultimately, to be understood on its own terms. But the comparison still bears thinking about.

In the wake of 9/11, we were told the world had changed for ever, that this was a situation with no antecedents, and thus we couldn’t even debate the extraordinary measures put in place.

It rather changes matters to consider an Australian icon as a terrorist of the 1870s.

Jeff Sparrow is the editor of Overland.

PRISON PLANET

Crime pays for US prison firms

Financiers, real estate agents and car salesmen might be suffering from America's economic malaise, but bulging jails have triggered a profit boom for corrections companies.

The United States leads the world in the number of people it incarcerates and government figures show the country's prison population grew by 3 per cent to a record 2.3 million inmates in 2006.

Harsher sentencing policies have put more criminals behind bars and prison management firms such as the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and The GEO Group are racing to build new jails or expand existing facilities to house more convicted felons.

GEO Group
Privatized correctional and detention management, home detention, residential treatment and mental health facilities.

The GEO Group Australia manages four correctional facilities - at Fulham in Victoria, Junee in New South Wales and Wacol in Queensland. The company also manages a custody centre in Melbourne and is the primary healthcare provider to nine public prisons in Victoria through Pacific Shores Healthcare.


Corrections Corp of America:
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) designs, builds and manages prisons, jails and detention facilities and provides inmate residential and prisoner transportation services in partnership with government.

20-year history of a corporation that, contrary to its celebratory public relations campaign, has been fraught with malfeasance, mismanagement, and abuse.
The report's findings include CCA's:

• failure to provide adequate medical care to prisoners;
• failure to control violence in its prisons;
• substandard conditions that have resulted in prisoner protests and uprisings;
• criminal activity on the part of some CCA employees, including the sale of illegal drugs to prisoners; and
• escapes, which in the case of at least two facilities include inadvertent releases of prisoners who were supposed to remain in custody.

Other areas of CCA's legacy covered in the report include the firm's:

• financial instability;
• self-defeating labor practices;
• attempts to influence public policy;
• use of campaign contributions and soft money; and
• use of questionable research by biased academics.

Corrections Corporation Of America: A Critical Look At Its First Twenty Years

FAIR COP

Aggressive policing turns Muslims to terrorism: study

A study from the Global Terrorism Research Centre at Monash University suggests that Australia's approach to stopping terrorism might actually be encouraging it.

Waleed Aly from the centre says the aggressive police approach is alienating young Muslim men, who may be more likely to turn to radical groups as a result.

He says a community-based approach may be more effective than a hardline approach.

"The problem is that as we repeat that [hardline] approach, what we actually end up doing is exacerbating the problem," he told tonight's Four Corners program.

TRUTH BE TOLD

Intelligent extraterrestrial life: The other inconvenient truth?

The existence of off-the-planet intelligence could change what most people believe about almost everything.

Yet in some ways an even more significant story, perhaps even more significant than the discovery of extraterrestrial life itself, would be the revelation that certain elements of the U.S. government may have known about - and covered up - that discovery (even from elected officials without a "need to know") for more than 50 years.

Now, that story, a deliberate half-century of deception to cover an inconvenient truth, likely would shake this nation to its very political foundations. That outrageous disclosure could change almost everything, too.

Yet outrageous as it may seem, many who have studied the UFO phenomenon now conclude that starting with Roswell in July 1947, elements of the U.S. government may have systematically lied to the American people (and to elected officials) concerning the actual nature of the UFO phenomenon.

The evidence for that deception is substantial and is to be found in thoroughly documented books, dozens of declassified “top secret” documents, and many sworn testimonials from key military-intelligence community insiders. They may have lied to study and exploit the technology for commercial or military purposes.

Decades of reports from competent observers, many confirmed by radar, establish that some UFOs can fly soundlessly, stop on a dime, accelerate at breathtaking speeds and outdistance jets or missiles sent to intercept them. Moreover, there are disturbing reports of UFOs that may have interfered with the electronics of automobiles, airplanes, power stations, and even with the launch readiness of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Why Cato Institute dumped me

Dom Armentano, professor emeritus in economics at the University of Hartford, was also - until just one day after the publication of his report - an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute in Washington. He has followed the UFO controversy for more than 40 years.

"On Jan. 10, just one day after my article on UFO secrecy appeared “Intelligent Extraterrestrial life: The Other Inconvenient truth?” on January 9, I was unceremoniously dropped as a Cato Institute adjunct scholar, a position I’d held for more than 20 years.

"I really didn’t believe that calling for more disclosure was all that controversial. After all, John Podesta, former chief of staff under Bill Clinton, has called for more government disclosure on the UFO subject.
Former astronaut Ed Mitchell has repeatedly called for more disclosure, as has Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M. Former Canadian Minister of Defense Paul Hellyer has stated that our government knows that UFOs are interplanetary machines and that the secrecy should end. Given these bold assertions by “insiders,” I thought that I was in safe company; apparently I was wrong.
"Actually the most classic call for disclosure came 48 years ago from former CIA Director Vice Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkotter. As reported in The New York Times of Feb. 28, 1960, Hillenkotter (in a letter to Congress) argued that “it is time that the truth (about UFOs) be brought out in open Congressional Hearings.”
He went on to say that “through official SECRECY and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense ...” and, further, that the Air Force “has silenced its personnel” in order “to hide the facts".
"If a former CIA director could say that, why couldn’t I?

MIXED MESSAGES

Russia harks back to Cold War

Taking part in exercises off South Korea, the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz was approached by a Russian military plane which got close enough for US fighter jets to respond by escorting the plane away from the area.
Last month, a Russian bomber flew very low over the Nimitz and other US warships when they were in international waters near Japan.

According to Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer, what Moscow is doing is sending a message.

"The message that we're back again, that we're still a kind of something, a chip off the Soviet Union, we have the capabilities, we have those heavy bombers that can carry nuclear weapons, which other nations do not have, and that we should be taken seriously," he told



Tanked crew crashes into house

A Russian tank crashed through a villager's house after the crew stopped to buy more vodka at a nearby shop.
Video from a mobile phone camera showed the tank hitting a corner of the house and a laughing, and apparently drunk, driver awkwardly trying to clamber aboard with two bottles of vodka.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Adelaide bakes in 75-year heatwave

It has been 75 years since Adelaide has seen such an extraordinary heat wave in Autumn and the weather bureau says there is no relief in sight.
Adelaide is bracing itself for another week of searing heat in the mid to high thirties Celsius.
If Tuesday's temperature reaches one degree more than the expected top of 34 degrees Celsius it will make nine consecutive days of more than 35C.

MENDA CITY

Licence to lie for Italian women

Italy's highest appeal court has ruled that married Italian women who commit adultery are entitled to lie about it to protect their honour.
The court gave its landmark ruling after hearing the case of a 48-year-old woman, convicted of giving false testimony to police by denying she had lent her mobile phone to her lover.The appeal court did not agree that she had broken the law.
It said bending the truth was justified to conceal extra-marital relationships.

DYING DAY

Near-death experiences are real and we have the proof, say scientists

For decades near-death experiences like Jeanette’s have been written off as delusions by scientists. They are dismissed as no more than the last twitches of a dying brain.
Modern science has no place for mysticism and the paranormal. But now a group of British researchers are challenging the scientific establishment by launching a major study into near-death experiences.
They hope to settle once and for all the question of whether there truly is life after death. “We now have the technology and scientific knowledge to begin exploring the ultimate question,” says Dr Sam Parnia, leader of the research team at London’s Hammersmith Hospital.
“To be honest, I started off as a sceptic but having weighed up all the evidence I now think that there is something going on.