RECYCLED NEWS

Arrests in Critical Mass bike ride near Olympic Park

Joel Benjamin, who has been on several Critical Mass bike rides previously, said: "Usually there is a light police presence.

"[On Friday, the day of the London Olympics opening ceremony,] there were far more police than I've seen before."

He and Mr White said police used a sound system to tell cyclists there were restrictions placed on the ride but not what it meant.

Mr Benjamin, who was not arrested, said: "Basically, they didn't want us to go north of the river. I saw several cases of the police being aggressive and physical, dragging people off their bikes to the ground.

"I guess there were people there who are against the Olympics, but Critical Mass is really a celebration of cycling, there was no need to get so heavy handed."

GUN LOVE

Mass shootings in the US since 1990

The recent massacre at a movie theatre in Colorado was the latest in a long series of mass shootings in the United States.

The map shows the locations of some of America's worst shooting attacks since 1990.

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

Capitalism's "Sacrifice Zones": Communities Destroyed for Profit

"It's the willingness on the part of people who seek personal enrichment to destroy other human beings... And because the mechanisms of governance can no longer control them, there is nothing now within the formal mechanisms of power to stop them from creating essentially a corporate oligarchic state."

THE QUICKENING

Greenland ice sheet melts at unprecedented rate

 

Scientists at Nasa admitted they thought satellite readings were a mistake after images showed 97% surface melt over four days

 

The Greenland ice sheet melted at a faster rate this month than at any other time in recorded history, with virtually the entire ice sheet showing signs of thaw.

 

The rapid melting over just four days was captured by three satellites. It has stunned and alarmed scientists, and deepened fears about the pace and future consequences of climate change.

SPEED OF LIGHT

Researchers were able to twist together eight different beams of visible light using OAM resulting in 320GB/s data transmission. Roughly seven Blu-ray movies per second.

Twisting light signals into a vortex for fast wireless connection

By twisting radio waves into a threaded vortex, an international team of researchers has beamed data through the air at 2.5 terabits per second, creating what has to be the fastest wireless network ever created. Moreover, the technique used to create this effect has no real theoretical ceiling, ExtremeTech reports. That means - in theory - that an infinite number of these vortex beams could be threaded together to add infinite capacity to conventional transmission protocols.

These new, high-capacity vortex beams tap a characteristic known as orbital angular momentum (OAM). Right now, conventional transmission protocols like Wi-Fi or LTE modulate the spin angular momentum (SAM) but not the OAM. You can think of SAM as the spin of a signal, like a bullet (or a tightly spiraling football) twisting as it carves a direct path through the air. So to borrow ExtremeTech's analogy, if SAM is the earth rotating on its axis, then OAM is its movement around the sun - not just rotation, but actual movement in space.

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Radioactive polonium found in Arafat's clothes

New radiation tests on the clothes and belongings of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat have led to speculation he died from poisoning by polonium.

Dr Francois Bochud, the head of the Institute of Radiation Physics at Lausanne in Switzerland says his team measured an unexplained, elevated level of unsupported polonium-210.

"The conclusion was that we did find some significant polonium that was present in these samples," he told Al Jazeera.

Mr Arafat's death at the age of 75 in a French hospital was surrounded by mystery and allegations he had been poisoned.

Litvinenko

Polonium was used to kill Russian former spy turned Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, who died in 2006 after drinking tea laced with the radioactive substance at a London hotel.

"If we take the scenario of Mr Litvinenko, one gigabecquerel at the beginning would come to about 10 millibecquerel," Dr Bochud told Al Jazeera. "What was astonishing in our case was that we found values in the samples of Mr Arafat that were in the same order of magnitude."

Al Jazeera's documentary claims unsupported polonium is the kind made in a nuclear reactor and even the tiniest amount, not even visible to the naked eye, is enough to kill.

EARTH IMPACTORS

Unusually large asteroid to race by Earth

An 'unusually large' asteroid - size of a city block - will zoom past Earth but poses no risk of a collision.

Once in awhile one will come out of nowhere like this one, which is actually pretty big.

FUTURIST

Vale Ray Bradbury
From BBC Radio 4's 'It is rocket science'.

Born	August 22, 1920
Died	June 5, 2012 (aged 91)	Wikipedia

NIBIRU APPROACHES

NASA Says There May Really be a Planet X

Planet X" may be real: A planet four times the size of Earth may be lurking at the outer edges of our solar system, too far away to be seen by Earth-based telescopes. Astronomers think it's there because they've noticed that something is tugging at small icy objects past Neptune, helping to explain the mystery of those objects' peculiar orbits.

Is 'Planet X 2.0' Lurking Beyond Pluto's Orbit?

Before the doomsayers hijacked "Planet X" and used it as a phantom (a.k.a. "Nibiru") to scare people into believing the 2012 doomsday hype, the hunt for Planet X was an exciting astronomical quest to find a hypothetical world in the outermost reaches of the solar system in the early 20th century.

STATE OF FEAR

7 Ways To Get Yourself Detained Indefinitely

Debate continued to rage over a short, loosely worded segment of the new 565-page 2012 National Defense Authorization Act that critics, lawmakers and now a federal judge say makes permanent a controversial, post-9/11 loophole that opened a dangerous door to approving the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without a trial.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest found Section 1021 unconstitutional in a lawsuit brought by a group of journalists and activists. The measure had a "chilling impact on first amendment rights," she wrote in her ruling, deconstructing arguments from the president's lawyers several times.

That didn't sway House lawmakers, however, who shortly thereafter voted against a bill to guarantee civilian trials for any terrorism suspect arrested in the United States.

THE CLEAN BEE

Mayan people join action to keep honey GE free

Recently members of the Mayan people living on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico joined Greenpeace activists and said no to genetically engineered crops. Using their own bodies to form the message ‘MA OGM’ or ‘No to GE’, 2000 activists gathered at eight different Mayan archaeological sites to draw attention to the risks of contamination of honey production by Monsanto’s genetically engineered (GE) soy.

 

STATE OF PARANOIA

Canadian security geek jailed for taunting G20 security theatre

Canadian judicial system's response is so insanely paranoid that it makes Sonne look extremely reasonable by comparison.

Sonne's story is the sad tale of a geek who lost everything -- his marriage, his home, his livelihood -- because he couldn't figure out how to contain or express his disgust with the state's increasing encroachment on personal liberty. If the authorities wanted to make an object lesson to scare activists into quietly accepting "security" measures, the response to the Toronto G20 (including the arrest and jailing of Sonne for almost a year) is absolutely fit for purpose.

CASHLESSNESS

Smartphone-based cash transfer system makes the card redundant at MasterCard

 

AUSTRALIAN consumers will soon be able to ditch their plastic and use their smartphone or tablet to pay for goods.

 

MasterCard's Head of Market Development and Innovation Matt Barr says the new PayPass Wallet will allow customers to make quicker, faster payments online and in-store.

 

``It will become a mainstream electronic wallet across multi channels...it's a very exciting step into a world beyond plastic,'' he says.

 

``You are not typing in 16-digit numbers, you are not typing in your home address, it's all being securely stored for you in the PayPass Wallet Service.

PayPass services will be phased in from the third quarter of 2012 in Australia, the UK, Canada and the US.

TRANSPARENT GOVERNMENT

Disclosure Military and Government
"In the councils of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwar-ranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military IndustrialComplex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and willpersist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our libertiesor democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert andknowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial andmilitary machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that secu-rity and liberty may prosper together."
- President Eisenhower - January 1961

ADVANCED COMPOSITES

Starlite, the nuclear blast-defying plastic that could change the world

Two decades ago amateur scientist Maurice Ward invented a material that could resist the force of 75 Hiroshimas. So why haven't we all heard about it?

WHAT THE FUCK?

Egypt plans 'farewell intercourse law' so husbands can have sex up to six hours after wife's death

Egyptian husbands could soon be legally allowed to have sex with their dead wives for up to six hours after their death, local media is claiming. The controversial new law is claimed to be part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament. It will also see the minimum age of marriage lowered to 14 and the ridding of women's rights of getting education and employment.

 

ONLY WOMEN BLEED

Why Do They Hate Us?

Just as her husband denies her an orgasm, the call to prayer interrupts his, and the man leaves. After washing up, she loses herself in prayer -- so much more satisfying that she can't wait until the next prayer -- and looks out onto the street from her balcony. She interrupts her reverie to make coffee dutifully for her husband to drink after his nap. Taking it to their bedroom to pour it in front of him as he prefers, she notices he is dead. She instructs their son to go and get a doctor. "She returned to the living room and poured out the coffee for herself. She was surprised at how calm she was,"

WATCH OUT

Roxon to face grilling on Assange lawyer

 

London-based human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson said on Thursday Heathrow airport authorities had informed her she was on an "inhibited travel list" and needed special permission to return to Australia.

She said on Twitter security guards had told her "you must have done something controversial" because we have to phone the embassy.

DRONE SICK

America's drone sickness

There are many evils in the world, but extinguishing people’s lives with targeted, extra-judicial killings, when you don’t even know their names, based on “patterns” of behavior judged from thousands of miles away, definitely ranks high on the list.

Although the Obama White House has not approved of this request from CIA Director David Petraeus, these so-called “signature strikes” that “allow the agency to hit targets based solely on intelligence indicating patterns of suspicious behavior” are already robustly used in Pakistan — having been started by George Bush in 2008 and aggressively escalated by Barack Obama.

There is much to say on this new report, but in order for me to focus on three discrete points, permit me to highly recommend two superb articles that highlight other vital aspects of this policy: (1) this article from my Salon colleague Jefferson Morley this morning on why this form of drone-targeting is pure American Terrorism, and (2) this essay from Chris Floyd about a recently published Rolling Stone article by Michael Hastings on Obama’s love of drones and secret wars and how the military’s slang for drone victims — “bug splat” — reflects the sociopathic mindset that drive them.

NAKED TRUTH

How the US uses sexual humiliation as a political tool to control the masses

By Naomi Wolf - Our surveillance state shown considerable determination to intrude on citizens sexually. There's the sexual abuse of prisoners at Bagram – der Spiegel reports that "former inmates report incidents of … various forms of sexual humiliation. In some cases, an interrogator would place his penis along the face of the detainee while he was being questioned. Other inmates were raped with sticks or threatened with anal sex". There was the stripping of Bradley Manning is solitary confinement. And there's the policy set up after the story of the "underwear bomber" to grope US travelers genitally or else force them to go through a machine – made by a company, Rapiscan, owned by terror profiteer and former DHA czar Michael Chertoff – with images so vivid that it has been called the "pornoscanner".