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Christmas truce still stirs Europe 90 years later
2005-11-24, Yahoo/Reuters
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:SV_nwSXUZL0J:news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051124/...

Even 91 years after peace interrupted the war, French generals still can't fathom why their soldiers disobeyed orders and joined the German enemy in the silenced battlefields for a forbidden Christmas truce. But Christian Carion, director of a stirring new film about the spontaneous 1914 ceasefire in World War One, said he was moved all the more when the British military asked to send copies of his decidedly anti-war film to their troops overseas. French generals said: 'You go ahead and make your movie but without us, we don't want to be partners to this rebellion.' I said: 'Rebellion? It was 90 years ago? Is that still a 'rebellion'? They said 'Yes'. The heart-warming film of the real-life story about enemies who left the trenches in northern France, east of Paris, to sing carols together, swap chocolate, drink toasts and bury their dead for a few days in 1914 has nevertheless been seen by a lot of French people. "Joyeux Noel" ["Merry Christmas" in English] rose to the top of the French box office after its November 9 premiere at home with 600,000 tickets sold the first week. Carion said the box office count hit the 1 million mark on Thursday -- a record for a film with subtitles in France.

Note: It is most interesting that an Internet search reveals the Yahoo News was the only media outlet to pick up this engaging Reuters story. There is a clear trend in the media to avoid stories that paint war in a negative light. For the full, inspiring Christmas truce story: http://www.WantToKnow.info/christmastruce

Bush team sought to snuff CIA doubts
2005-10-26, San Francisco ChronicleCongressional Quarterly
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/26/MNG62FDUGL1.DTL

In the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon's policy of détente was under attack by some former military officials and conservative policy intellectuals, Ford administration officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were among those challenging as too soft the CIA's estimate of Moscow's military power. Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted to create a "Team B." CIA Director William Colby rejected the Team B idea and was fired. Colby's successor as head of the spy agency, George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, accepted it. Rumsfeld was reprising Team B by creating his own intelligence shop. The Chalabi organization's alarmist reports on Hussein's nuclear weapons, which later proved to be false, bypassed the CIA and went directly to the White House. "In retrospect, and with the Team B report and records now largely declassified, it is possible to see that virtually all of Team B's criticisms ... proved to be wrong," Raymond Garthoff, a former U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria, wrote in a paper for the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence three years ago. "On several important specific points it wrongly criticized and 'corrected' the official estimates, always in the direction of enlarging the impression of danger and threat." When Reagan's Secretary of State George Schultz wanted to secretly back Saddam Hussein against the Iranians, Schultz bypassed the CIA and sent Rumsfeld, then a businessman, to Baghdad to seal the deal.

Navy Shows Off Anti-Terror Dolphins
2007-04-13, USA Today/Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-04-13-anti-terror-dolphins_N.htm

About 75 dolphins and 25 sea lions are housed at Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego Harbor as part of a Navy program to teach them to detect terrorists and mines underwater. The base briefly opened its doors to the media Thursday for the first time since the start of the war in Iraq. The display came a few weeks after the Navy announced plans to send up to 30 dolphins and sea lions to patrol the waters of Washington state's Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, which is home to nuclear submarines, ships and laboratories. Both species can find mines and spot swimmers in murky waters. Working in unison, the dolphins can drop a flashing light near a mine or a swimmer. The sea lions carry in their mouths a cable and a handcuff-like device that clamps onto a terrorist's leg. Sailors can then use the cable to reel in the terrorist. The Navy's sea mammal program started in the late 1950s and grew to comprise 140 animals during the Cold War.

Note: Yet the navy's sophisticated new sonar systems are killing dolphins and whales around the globe. For more on this, click here. And what if the dolphins and sea lions go on strike for better wages? ;o)

New Device Will Sense Through Concrete Walls
2006-01-04, Defense Link (Website of U.S. Department of Defense)
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2006/20060103_3822.html

Troops conducting urban operations soon will have the capabilities of superheroes, being able to sense through 12 inches of concrete to determine if someone is inside a building. The new "Radar Scope" will give warfighters searching a building the ability to tell within seconds if someone is in the next room. By simply holding the portable, handheld device up to a wall, users will be able to detect movements as small as breathing. The Radar Scope, developed by DARPA, is expected to be fielded to troops in Iraq as soon as this spring. Weighing just a pound and a half, the Radar Scope will be about the size of a telephone handset and cost just about $1,000, making it light enough for a soldier to carry and inexpensive enough to be fielded widely. The Radar Scope will be waterproof and rugged, and will run on AA batteries.

CNN tours Gitmo prison camp
2005-07-07, CNN News
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/07/06/gitmo.tour/index.html

Military rules prevent crew from getting full picture. President Bush himself challenged reporters to visit the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay amid allegations that American troops mistreated suspected Islamic terrorists held there, so CNN took him up on the offer. "These people are being treated humanely. Very few prison systems around the world have seen such scrutiny as this one," Bush said Wednesday. "And for those of you who are here and have doubt, I suggest buying an airplane ticket and going down and look -- take a look for yourself." But military ground rules -- including censoring video shot at the facility -- made it nearly impossible for a CNN crew that visited the prison the same day to get a full picture of the prison. A lawyer for some of the detainees called press tours of the camp "one big charade." CNN employees who visited the prison were not allowed to speak to the prisoners.

How the leaked documents questioning war emerged from 'Britain's Deep Throat'
2005-06-27, London Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1669292_2,00.html

Ministry of Defence figures for the number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq in 2002 show that virtually none were used in March and April; but between May and August an average of 10 tons were dropped each month, with the RAF taking just as big a role in the “spikes of activity” as their US colleagues. Then in September the figure shot up again, with allied aircraft dropping 54.6 tons. If this was a covert air war, both Bush and Blair may face searching questions. In America only Congress can declare war, and it did not give the US president permission to take military action against Iraq until October 11, 2002. Blair’s legal justification is said to come from UN Resolution 1441, which was not passed until November 8, 2002.

Gitmo detainees denied witnesses: Lawyer calls legal proceedings ‘shams’
2006-11-16, MSNBC/Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15759610

The U.S. military called no witnesses, withheld evidence from detainees and usually reached a decision within a day as it determined that hundreds of men detained at Guantanamo Bay were “enemy combatants,” according to a new report. The analysis of transcripts and records...found that hearings that determined whether a prisoner should remain in custody gave the accused little opportunity to contest allegations against him. “These were not hearings. These were shams,” said Mark Denbeaux, an attorney and Seton Hall University law professor who along with his son, Joshua, is the author of the report. The military held Combatant Status Review Tribunals for 558 detainees...between July 2004 and January 2005 and found all but 38 were enemy combatants. Handcuffed detainees appeared before a panel of three officers with no defense attorney, only a military “personal representative.” Representatives said nothing in the hearings 14 percent of the time and made no “substantive” comments in 30 percent. In 74 percent of the cases, the government denied requests to call witnesses who were detained at the prison. The report is based on transcripts...released earlier this year in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit... The Military Commissions Act, which President Bush signed on Oct. 17, strips all non-U.S. citizens held under suspicion of being an enemy combatant of their right to challenge their detention in civilian courts with petitions of habeas corpus.

Beam weapons almost ready for battle
2006-01-11, MSNBC
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10805240/

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. - There is a new breed of weaponry fast approaching. They are labeled "directed-energy weapons," and they may well signal a revolution in military hardware -- perhaps more so than the atomic bomb. Directed-energy weapons take the form of lasers, high-powered microwaves and particle beams. Their adoption for ground, air, sea, and space warfare depends not only on using the electromagnetic spectrum, but also upon favorable political and budgetary wavelengths too. After more than two decades of research, the United States is on the verge of deploying a new generation of weapons that discharge beams of energy, such as the Airborne Laser and the Active Denial System, as well as the Tactical High Energy Laser, or THEL. Then there’s Active Denial Technology -- a non-lethal way to use millimeter-wave electromagnetic energy to stop, deter and turn back an advancing adversary. This technology, supported by the U.S. Marines, uses a beam of millimeter waves to heat a foe’s skin, causing severe pain without damage, and making the adversary flee the scene. By tuning the resonance of a laser onto Earth’s ionosphere, you can create audible frequencies. Like some boom box in the sky, the laser-produced voice could bellow from above down to the target below: "Put down your weapons."

New Unit of DIA Will Take the Offensive On Counterintelligence
2008-08-12, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/17/AR20080817022...

The Defense Intelligence Agency's newly created Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center is going to have an office authorized for the first time to carry out "strategic offensive counterintelligence operations," according to Mike Pick, who will direct the program. Such covert offensive operations are carried out at home and abroad against people known or suspected to be foreign intelligence officers or connected to foreign intelligence or international terrorist activities. The investigative branches of the three services -- the Army's Counterintelligence Corps, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service -- have done secret offensive counterintelligence operations for years, and now DIA has been given the authority. Two years ago, the DIA asked then-Undersecretary of Defense Stephen A. Cambone for authority to run offensive operations along with a newer Pentagon intelligence agency, the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA). Cambone agreed to a two-year trial. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates recently approved the merger of CIFA into the new DIA center. Senior Defense Department officials and the combat commanders overseas will now decide what to do with the DIA's new offensive operational authority.

Note: For penetrating reports on the realities of the "war on terror" from major media sources, click here.

Contaminated sand slated for Idaho dump site
2008-05-02, Seattle Times/Associated Press
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004387018_apidtoxicsand1stld...

Nearly 80 rail cars loaded with contaminated sand from Kuwait are headed toward a dump in southwestern Idaho. American Ecology Corp. is shipping about 6,700 tons of sand containing traces of depleted uranium and lead to a hazardous waste disposal site 70 miles southeast of Boise. The company has previously disposed of low-level radioactive waste and hazardous materials from U.S. military bases overseas at facilities in Idaho, Nevada and Texas, said American Ecology spokesman Chad Hyslop, who is based in Boise. "As you can imagine, the host countries of those bases don't want the waste in their country," Hyslop said. Neither do leaders of the Snake River Alliance, a nuclear watchdog group, who have vowed to monitor the site. "Depleted uranium is both a toxic metal and a radioactive substance," said Andrea Shipley, the group's executive director. "That is a concern." The sand coming to Idaho from Camp Doha, a U.S. Army Base in Kuwait, was contaminated with uranium after military vehicles and munitions caught fire during the first Iraq war in 1991. Depleted uranium, twice as dense as lead, has been used as a component in armor plating to protect tanks and for armor-piercing projectiles. American Ecology operates the only commercial hazardous waste disposal site in Idaho on 1,100 acres of land in the Owyhee desert. Disposal operations cover 100 acres in the middle of the property, Hyslop said, and about a third of the material disposed at the Idaho site is from the U.S. military. The company disposed of uranium-contaminated Bradley fighting vehicles there in 2006.

Note: If Kuwait is rejecting this contaminated sand, why is the U.S. taking it?

Patriot missiles: Iraq Veterans Against the War
2008-03-02, The Telegraph (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3444835.ece

Some of them will be okay. They will live with the secrets. They can dissociate from what happened in combat because it was part of the job. They will keep the secrets out of duty – the silence is part of a code, and they honour that code above all else. But for others, the secrets they keep are like a poison, slowly releasing toxins of shame and remorse. Who can they tell anyway? They talk to each other – other veterans who have seen what they’ve seen, done what they’ve done, and who can relate to the burden of carrying these secrets for the rest of their lives. In 1971, the protest group Vietnam Veterans Against the War gathered at a hotel in Detroit. More than 100 veterans talked about the atrocities they had witnessed in southeast Asia. The event lasted for three days and was named Winter Soldier after Thomas Paine’s famous article. “These are the times that try men’s souls,” he wrote of the terrible winter of 1776. This month, for four days in Washington, DC, beginning on March 13, there will be a second Winter Soldier gathering – 37 years after the first. Organised by the protest group Iraq Veterans Against the War, US veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan since the 9/11 attack on New York will testify about their experiences. They will present photographs and videos, recorded with mobile phones and digital cameras, to back up their allegations – of brutality, torture and murder. The veterans ... seek to shine a light on the bigger picture: that the Abu Ghraib prison regime and the Haditha massacre of innocent Iraqis are not isolated incidents perpetrated by “bad seeds” as the military suggests, but evidence of an endemic problem. They will say they were tasked to do terrible things and point the finger up the chain of command.

Note: For many revelations of the realities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, click here.

'Doomsday' Vault Opens to Protect Seeds
2008-02-26, Associated Press
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jRw_99fcIqca5u6uzuVRuiogts2gD8V1HNK80

It's been dubbed a Noah's Ark for plant life and built to withstand an earthquake or a nuclear attack. Dug deep into the permafrost of a remote Arctic mountain, the "doomsday" vault is designed by Norway to protect the world's seeds from global catastrophe. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a backup to the world's 1,400 other seed banks, was to be officially inaugurated in a ceremony Tuesday on the northern rim of civilization attended by about 150 guests from 33 countries. The frozen vault has the capacity to store 4.5 million seed samples from around the globe, shielding them from climate change, war, natural disasters and other threats. Norway's government owns the vault in Svalbard, a frigid archipelago 620 miles from the North Pole. The Nordic country paid $9.1 million for construction, which took less than a year. Other countries can deposit seeds for free and reserve the right to withdraw them upon need. Giant air conditioning units have chilled the vault to just below zero, a temperature at which experts say many seeds could survive for 1,000 years. Inside the concrete entrance ... a roughly 400-foot-long tunnel of steel and concrete leads to three separate 32-by-88-foot chambers where the seeds will be stored. The first 600 boxes with 12 tons of seeds already have arrived from 20 seed banks around the world, Norwegian Agriculture Minister Terje Riis-Johansen said. Each chamber can hold 1.5 million packets holding all types of crop seeds, from carrots to wheat.

The Army's $200 Billion Makeover
2007-12-07, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/06/AR20071206028...

In the [U.S.] Army's vision, the war of the future is increasingly combat by mouse clicks. It's as networked as the Internet, as mobile as a cellphone, as intuitive as a video game. The Army has a name for this vision: Future Combat Systems, or FCS. The project involves creating a family of 14 weapons, drones, robots, sensors and hybrid-electric combat vehicles connected by a wireless network. It has turned into the most ambitious modernization of the Army since World War II and the most expensive Army weapons program ever, military officials say. It's also one of the most controversial. Even as some early versions of these weapons make their way onto the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, members of Congress, government investigators and military observers question whether the Defense Department has set the stage for one of its biggest and costliest failures. At risk, they say, are billions of taxpayer dollars spent on exotic technology that may never come to fruition. Future Combat Systems "has some serious problems," said Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), chairman of the House air and land forces subcommittee. "Since its inception, costs have gone up dramatically while promised capability has steadily diminished." Today, the Army program involves more than 550 contractors and subcontractors in 41 states and 220 congressional districts. "When a program gets to a certain size, in the billions, it employs so many people in so many districts you can't kill it. It's kind of like the Titanic. How do you move it five degrees?" said a congressional staffer and former Army officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the ongoing review of the program. The GAO said the cost has increased 79 percent, to $163.7 billion, from $91.4 billion, its original estimate in 2003.

Note: For highly revealing reports from major media sources on corruption in government contracting, click here.

US college rejects Jewish professor over anti-Israel stance
2007-06-11, The Guardian (one of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2100590,00.html

One of the most rancorous disputes in American academia has ended with a prominent political scientist ... being denied tenure at one of the country's top-10 private universities. Norman Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry, [is a professor at] the political sciences department of DePaul University in Chicago. Mr Finkelstein has argued in his books that claims of anti-semitism are used to dampen down criticism of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians and that the Holocaust is exploited by some Jewish institutions for their own gain. His outspoken position as a Jewish intellectual critical of Israel and of some elites within the Jewish community has prompted passionate debate. Prominent intellectuals such as [Noam Chomsky] have spoken out in Mr Finkelstein's favour, but others have decried him. His most bitter opponent is Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor, who campaigned heavily to prevent tenure being granted. Soon after Mr Finkelstein applied for it, Mr Dershowitz sent DePaul faculty members a dossier of what he categorised as the "most egregious academic sins, outright lies, misquotations, and distortions" of the political scientist. The dispute has roots that go deeper still, with Mr Finkelstein devoting much of his most recent book, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, to an attack on Mr Dershowitz's own work. Mr Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors, has responded to the decision ... by condemning the vote as an act of political aggression. "I met the standards of tenure DePaul required, but it wasn't enough to overcome the political opposition to my speaking out on the Israel-Palestine conflict."

I blame myself for our downfall in Iraq
2007-06-06, The Telegraph (one of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/10/wirq110.xml

A former American army torturer has laid bare the traumatic effects of American interrogation techniques in Iraq - on their victims and on the perpetrators themselves. Tony Lagouranis conducted mock executions, forced men and boys into agonising stress positions, kept suspects awake for weeks on end, used dogs to terrify detainees and subjected others to hypothermia. But he confesses that he was deeply scarred by the realisation that what he did has contributed to the downfall of American forces in Iraq. Mr Lagouranis, 37, suffered nightmares and anxiety attacks on his return to Chicago. Between January 2004 and January 2005, he tortured suspects, most of whom he says turned out to be innocent. He says that he realised he had entered a moral dungeon when he found himself reading a Holocaust memoir, hoping to pick up torture tips from the Nazis. "When I first got back I had a lot of anxiety. I had a personal crisis because I felt I had done immoral things and I didn't see a way to cope with that. I saw a psychologist. I had a lot to work through." He says that helped prevent him becoming "a totally broken human being". Mr Lagouranis has written a recently published book about his experiences, Fear Up Harsh, a term for intimidating a detainee by shouting at him. He makes clear that torture has cost America its moral authority in Iraq by detaining innocent people and treating them badly. He writes: "My actions, combined with the actions of the arresting infantry who left bruises on their prisoners, and the actions of the officers who wanted to get promotions, repeated in microcosm all over this country, had a cumulative effect. I could blame Bush and Rumsfeld, but I would always have to also blame myself."

Note: For a top US general's comments on the psychological abuse soldiers suffer as a result of war, click here.

House rejects bills to limit war power
2007-05-18, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/05/18/...

Even as the congressional Democratic leadership fights with President Bush over changing his Iraq war policy, the House rejected two measures that would have barred the Bush administration from military operations against Iran without congressional approval. The votes in the Democratic-controlled House received little press attention because they came late Wednesday night amid a crush of amendments to the $646 billion fiscal year 2008 military authorization bill. The bill includes $142 billion for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I thought it was pathetic that members would not stand up for their constitutional prerogatives,'' Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said Thursday. DeFazio had proposed a measure that said no military operations could be undertaken against Iran without specific congressional approval, barring an Iranian attack against the United States or its military. "It shouldn't matter where members stand on the issue'' of possible military action against Iran, DeFazio said. "You should stand up for your constitutional prerogative.'' Rep. Barbara Lee [commented] "The president's saber rattling against Iran is only increasing and is eerily similar to the march to war with Iraq. We must act to prevent another war of pre-emption." DeFazio's amendment lost handily, 136-288. The second measure [which] barred the Defense Department from using any money authorized for 2007-2008 under the bill to plan a "major contingency operation'' in Iran ... also lost.

Note: The lopsided defeat of Rep. DeFazio's amendment described in this article clearly indicates that a majority in both parties are clearly committed to supporting the war machine. Click here for a highly decorated U.S. general's take on this. Another San Francisco Chronicle article from the same day reveals the two-party consensus against any new Congressional ethics legislation.

Soldiers Tell True Stories of Their War
2006-11-12, San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/12/INGTTM4TKU1.DTL

Justin LeHew, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment...Recipient of Navy Cross: There was black smoke billowing out...and I went to pull a Marine out of the back. As I was pulling him, his upper torso separated from his bottom torso, and all I had in my hands was his upper body. I handed Doc half of a Marine and said, "Put this in the back of the Humvee because Marines don't leave our dead and wounded on the battlefield." Jeff Englehart, 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division: The body parts ... I don't know. It's not a video game. It's very real. But you think about -- this was a little girl. She was obviously innocent. No way you could accuse a child that young of being guilty. Her life was snuffed out in a second just from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There's no way to get emotional about it. You're just numb to it. A lot of soldiers joke about it. Look at that little foot and the bastard child that got blown up, but I guarantee that soldier thinks about it a little bit more deeper than that. Daniel B. Cotnoir, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force...Marine Corps Times "Marine of the Year": We recovered bodies out of a burnt helicopter that literally were just cremated. The only reason we knew we had two was because we counted the vertebrae and there were too many vertebrae to be one. The sad part is it's someone's son and that's all you've got left. Garett Reppenhagen, cavalry scout/snipe, 2-63 Armored Battalion, 1st Infantry Division: Some of the guys were laughing about it. It was their first time in combat and they were excited about it because they felt like they went through some rite of passage. I'm just thinking, You guys are f -- idiots. We just killed a bunch of f -- dudes who were on our side! I asked one of them, "Would you be so happy if they were Americans?"

Note: For a top general's revealing description of how soldiers suffer more than all others, click here.

Can the ‘20th hijacker’ of Sept. 11 stand trial?
2006-10-24, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15361462/

Mohammed al-Qahtani, detainee No. 063, was forced to wear a bra. He had a thong placed on his head. He was massaged by a female interrogator who straddled him like a lap dancer. He was told that his mother and sisters were whores. He was told that other detainees knew he was gay. He was forced to dance with a male interrogator. He was strip-searched in front of women. He was led on a leash and forced to perform dog tricks. That much is known. These details were among the findings of the U.S. Army’s investigation of al-Qahtani's aggressive interrogation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But only now is a picture emerging of how the interrogation policy developed, and the battle that law enforcement agents waged, inside Guantanamo and in the offices of the Pentagon, against harsh treatment of al-Qahtani and other detainees by military intelligence interrogators. In interviews with MSNBC.com — the first time they have spoken publicly — former senior law enforcement agents described their attempts to stop the abusive interrogations. The agents of the Pentagon's Criminal Investigation Task Force, working to build legal cases against suspected terrorists, said they objected to coercive tactics used...after Guantanamo's prison camp opened in early 2002. They ultimately carried their battle up to the office of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who approved the more aggressive techniques. And they described their disappointment when military prosecutors told them not to worry about making a criminal case against al-Qahtani, the suspected "20th hijacker" of Sept. 11, because what had been done to him would prevent him from ever being put on trial.

US 'plans stealth shark spies'
2006-03-02, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4767428.stm

Pentagon scientists are planning to turn sharks into "stealth spies" capable of tracking vessels undetected, a British magazine has reported. They want to remotely control the sharks by implanting electrodes in their brains, The New Scientist says. It says the aim is "to exploit sharks' natural ability to glide through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails". The research is being funded by the Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It aims to build on latest developments in brain implant technology which has already seen scientists controlling the movements of fish, rats and monkeys. Such devices are already being used by scientists at Boston University to "steer" a spiny dogfish in a fish tank. The next step for the Pentagon scientists will be the release of blue sharks with similar devices into the ocean off the coast of Florida. Remote-controlled sharks...have advantages that robotic underwater surveillance vehicles just cannot match: they are silent, and they power themselves.

Note: This article fails to mention that electronic implants we used over 40 years ago to control the behavior of bulls, as reported on the front page of the New York Times on May 17, 1965. To see the Times article, go to http://www.WantToKnow.info/delgadobullnytimes.pdf. For lots more reliable information on government mind control programs: http://www.WantToKnow.info/mindcontrol

Explosive Controversy Heats Up
2006-12-14, CBS News, Sacramento Affiliate
http://cbs13.com/topstories/local_story_348215850.html

There's an explosion planned at [a] test site in the Central Valley, and residents fear it could launch radioactive material into their air. Now there's a fight to stop those planned tests at Site 300, just outside of Tracy near the Lawrence Livermore Lab. The Lawrence Livermore Lab has been setting off 60 to 80 blasts a year; most have been small, but next year two larger 300-pound explosions are planned using depleted uranium. For Tracy shoe shop owner Bob Sarvey, that means the potential of a radioactive release. Sarvey showed CBS13 the risk assessment from the local government and says someone must be worried to have added a cancer risk footnote, and that's before any review of potential radioactivity.

Note: For an ABC report on the dangers of depleted uranium, click here. For a CBC (One of Canada's top TV stations) report which goes much deeper, click here. Why are they exploding this dangerous, radioactive material into the air just outside of the San Francisco area?

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