CASHLESSNESS

Consumers warned over tap-and-pay technology

 

Banks, financial institutions and now internet service providers are tapping into the market for contact-free payment systems. It is a time-saving temptation for busy people, but tech experts say consumers must be aware of the risks when opting for the technology.

Contactless credit cards and mobile phone chips connect to payment terminals via a short range radio frequency identification (RFID). Unlike traditional payment methods, they do not require a signature or PIN to verify the card holder's identity.

Rob Livingstone from the University of Technology says it is a win-win for banks and retailers because cash is expensive. "There's a number of benefits, some of which relate to increased customer service, a lower per-transaction cost and more importantly the potential elimination of cash," he said.

CORPOREAL CORPORATIONS

Repeal the farce of "Corporate Personhood"

 

 

A Kafkaesque fiction put forth by the power establishment is that corporations are "persons'. This is an absurd perversion of nature itself. A person, after all, has a navel. Where's the corporate navel – or its heart, brain, or soul?

Also, if a corporation is a person, shouldn't it be subject to front-line military duty, to jail for its criminal violations, and even to the death penalty?

MAIL MEMES

FLASHBACK: An email still doing the rounds, but a good time to recount it.

A front page story of the San Francisco Chronicle in early 2006 covered a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines.

She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, a line tugging in her mouth.
A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farallon Islands (outside the Golden Gate ) and radioed an environmental group for help.
Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her. They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her. When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles.
She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushed them gently around as she was thanking them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives.
The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth said her eyes were following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.

ZERO TOLERANCE

The US schools with their own police
"Zero tolerance started out as a term that was used in combating drug trafficking and it became a term that is now used widely when you're referring to some very punitive school discipline measures. Those two policy worlds became conflated with each other," said Fowler.
Each day, hundreds of schoolchildren appear before courts in Texas charged with offences such as swearing, misbehaving on the school bus or getting in to a punch-up in the playground.
Children have been arrested for possessing cigarettes, wearing "inappropriate" clothes and being late for school.
The US is the only developed country to lock up children as young as 13 for life without the possibility of parole, often as accomplices to murders committed by an adult.

PINK SLIME

Pink Slime... it's what's for dinner

Pink Slime is in the US School Lunch Program.

"Pink slime" (ammoniated boneless lean beef trimmings) is the nickname earned by a formerly inedible byproduct of the beef industry.

Once used in pet food, it's now a cheap additive in ground beef. Pink Slime is an additive that the federal government has approved to be mixed in with ground beef. To make "real" beef stretch further, manufacturers can use this ammonia-infused beef as up to 15 percent of the product.

Pink slime is now an additive in 70% of the ground beef in the U.S., which means that if you’re eating a burger, there’s a good chance you’re also eating Pink Slime.

According to a New York Times article, The "majority of hamburger" now sold in the U.S. now contains fatty slaughterhouse trimmings "the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil," "typically including most of the material from the outer surfaces of the carcass" that contains "larger microbiological populations."

For awards go to www.beefproducts.com for information, don't bother, the info tabs are "under  construction".

 

 

POISONOUS ADVERTISING

BUTTERFLY EFFECT

 

Did David Blair sink the Titanic?

A sailor called David Blair forgot to leave behind a key as the Titanic set off on its maiden voyage. Without it, his shipmates were unable to open a locker in the crow's nest containing a pair of binoculars for the designated lookout.

The binoculars were to look out for dangers in the distance including signs of bad weather - and icebergs.
Lookout Fred Fleet, who survived the disaster in which 1,522 people lost their lives, later told an official inquiry that if they had binoculars they would have seen the iceberg sooner.

A few days before the Titanic sailed Blair was bumped off the crew list, a decision which probably saved his life. When he left the Titanic he carried his key off in his pocket forgetting to hand it to his replacement, Charles Lightoller.

HERO OF HUMANITY

From a sweet-faced kid (above) to a product of US military torture.

Bradley Manning Now 'Catatonic'

Whistleblower Private Bradley Manning's friend David House says that more than eight months in isolation, with movement and sleep restrictions placed on him, had their intended effect. 

House has told MSNBC that by the end of January (2011) Manning appeared "catatonic"  and that he had "severe problems communicating," with it having taken House nearly 45 minutes on a recent visit to engage in any meaningful way. 

House said Manning's demeanor was as "if he had just woken up and didn't know what was going on around him".

Manning was "utterly exhausted physically and mentally...it was difficult to have any kind of social engagement".

Mannning has been held in a bare, windowless 6x12 foot cell for 23 hours a day, with no sound or personal effects, no radio or clock with which to distinguish night from day.

He is not allowed to exercise in his cell.  His only exercise is walking figure eights in another room, in shackles.

He is forced to strip naked to sleep and to stand at attention in the morning in this state.

Bradley Manning didn’t break the secrecy system It was already broken but the WikiLeaks suspect is the only person held accountable

WHISTLE STOP

Bradley Manning's bad dream
Private Manning was working as an army intelligence analyst at Forward Operating Base Hammer in Iraq when he apparently went rogue, allegedly funnelling to Wikileaks hundreds of thousands of diplomatic communications and battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, none more shocking than the video of an Apache helicopter crew gunning down a group of men in Bagdad - two of whom turned out to be a Reuters news photographer and his driver.
Supporters like Daniel Ellsberg, the former US military analyst who precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the top secret Pentagon Papers revealing US government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, see Bradley Manning as a hero who only wanted to reveal the truth. But the US military regard him as a traitor who endangered national security.

ENLIGHTENING THE YOUTH

Ron Paul Speech at Campaign Youth Rally at The University of Iowa (1 of 3) 10/21/2011Paul Speech at Campaign Youth Rally at The University of Iowa

THE QUICKENING

Vast methane 'plumes' seen in Arctic ocean as sea ice retreats
 Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane - a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide - have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.
The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

FAMILY TIES

Fishermen unravel family mystery after month at sea

 

Uein Buranibwe, 53, and Temaei Tontaake, 26, made headlines late last month when they washed ashore in the Marshall Islands after 33 days lost at sea.

They were more than 600 kilometres from home.

Audio: Pacific castaways discover lost relatives 

Their global satellite positioning system had run out of batteries after they left their island on what should have been an 80km trip to get gas.

Marshall Islands Journal editor Giff Johnson says the men found much-needed food and water on Namdrik Island.

But he also says that one of the men discovered that his uncle, feared drowned at sea 50 years earlier, had also wound up on the same atoll and married into the community.

SOL SURVIVOR

Could the desert sun power the world?
During the summer of 1913, in a field just south of Cairo on the eastern bank of the Nile, an American engineer called Frank Shuman stood before a gathering of Egypt's colonial elite, including the British consul-general Lord Kitchener, and switched on his new invention. Gallons of water soon spilled from a pump, saturating the soil by his feet. Behind him stood row upon row of curved mirrors held aloft on metal cradles, each directed towards the fierce sun overhead. As the sun's rays hit the mirrors, they were reflected towards a thin glass pipe containing water. The now super-heated water turned to steam, resulting in enough pressure to drive the pumps used to irrigate the surrounding fields where Egypt's lucrative cotton crop was grown. It was an invention, claimed Shuman, which could help Egypt become far less reliant on the coal being imported at great expense from Britain's mines.
"The human race must finally utilise direct sun power or revert to barbarism," wrote Shuman in a letter to Scientific American magazine the following year. But the outbreak of the first world war just a few months later abruptly ended his dream and his solar troughs were soon broken up for scrap, with the metal being used for the war effort. Barbarism, it seemed, had prevailed.

NO GMO

Hungary Destroys All Monsanto GMO Corn Fields

Hungary has taken a bold stand against biotech giant Monsanto and genetic modification by destroying 1000 acres of maize found to have been grown with genetically modified seeds, according to Hungary deputy state secretary of the Minstry of Rural Development Lajos Bognar. Unlike many European Union countries, genetically modified (GM) seeds are banned in Hungary. In a similar stance against GM ingredients, Peru has also passed a 10 year ban on GM foods.

SKY NET

Iran 'shoots down US drone'

 

Iran's military said it shot down a US military drone inside its territory near the Afghan and Pakistani borders, and threatened to retaliate for the violation, Iranian media reported.

In response to the reports, a statement from the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan said a surveillance drone flying over western Afghanistan had gone out of control late last week and may be the one Iran said it had shot down.

 

MISSION CRITICAL

The notebook with calculations from the aborted 1970 NASA mission to the Moon fetched $US388,375 at auction.

Apollo 13 notebook fetches $380k

Shortly after Apollo 13 astronauts reported, "Houston, we have had a problem", Commander James Lovell jotted down handwritten calculations in the hope of guiding his crew safely home.

Lovell's calculations in the notebook were critical to identifying the crew's position in space.

"We didn't have the technology back then that we have now," he said. "I didn't even have a calculator to do the arithmetic. I had to ask the people in Houston to double-check my numbers."

Lovell and astronauts Jack Swigert and Fred Haise aborted their mission to the Moon and manoeuvred quickly in space to survive after encountering a critical operating problem aboard the spacecraft's command module.

They had to shift to the lunar module to return home.

WAR FOR DRUGS

Afghanistan is, by far, the largest grower and exporter of opium in the world today, cultivating a 92 percent market share of the global opium trade.

But what may shock many is the fact that the US military has been specifically tasked with guarding Afghan poppy fields, from which opium is derived, in order to protect this multibillion dollar industry that enriches Wall Street, the CIA, MI6, and various other groups that profit big time from this illicit drug trade scheme.

Learn more

RED ALERT

Europe days away from 'apocalyptic' debt crisis

"If the European summit could reach a deal on December 9, its next scheduled meeting, the eurozone will survive. If not, it risks a violent collapse," writes Wolfgang Munchau of the Financial Times (www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d9a299a8-17...). Two years ago, such language would have been spat upon as "doom and gloom fear mongering." Today it is the mathematical reality across the European Union.

The Polish foreign minister said today that what Europe faces is "a crisis of apocalyptic proportions" (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d29da7fc-...) and urged what is essentially more useless debt bailout tactics to try to delay mathematical reality a little while longer.

After the coming debt implosion wreaks economic havoc across the globe, more than a few banksters and money-changers will find themselves objects of oprobium when the full realization of the unprecedented theft and criminality of the global banking elite hits the 99%.

GRASS GREENER

Sheep lawn mowers, and other go-getters

IN this verdant lawn-filled college town, most people keep their lawn mowers tuned up by oiling the motor and sharpening the blades. Eddie Miller keeps his in shape with salt licks and shearing scissors.

Mr. Miller, 23, is the founder of Heritage Lawn Mowing, a company that rents out sheep — yes, sheep — as a landscaping aid. For a small fee, Mr. Miller, whose official job title is “shepherd,” brings his ovine squad to the yards of area homeowners, where the sheep spend anywhere from three hours to several days grazing on grass, weeds and dandelions.
[Customers pay $1 per sheep per day, but Mr. Miller also accepts barter payments, which have so far included karate lessons, jugs of maple syrup and the use of one homeowner’s truck. He has done around 20 homes so far, and has so many requests he can’t keep up with them.

TRUE COLOURS

 
Published in The Australian,
Tuesday, November 29, 2011