| Source: Guardian Human trafficking has become a major issue in the Midwest heartland of America, causing some campaigners to dub it a modern form of slavery. Figures from the State Department reveal that 17,500 people are trafficked into the US every year against their will or under false pretences, mainly to be used for sex or forced labour. Experts believe that, when cases of internal trafficking are added, the total number of victims could be up to five times larger. And increasing numbers of trafficked individuals are being transported thousands of miles from America's coasts and into heartland states such as Ohio and Michigan. "It is not only a crime. It is an abomination," said Professor Mark Ensalaco, a political scientist at the University of Dayton, Ohio, who organised a recent conference on the issue. In Ohio a human trafficking commission has just been set up to study the problem, while in the northern Ohio city of Toledo a special FBI task force is tackling the issue. For many local law enforcement officials, it is a bewildering new world. | |
| Source: Alternet Vegetarians aren't the only ones who should be concerned; there's soy in just about everything you eat these days -- including hamburgers, mac 'n cheese and salad dressing... And some groups are waging an all-out war, warning that soy can lead to certain kinds of cancers, lowered testosterone levels, and early-onset puberty in girls. Adding to all these environmental problems with soy is the fact that much of the world's soy (and 85 percent of the U.S crop) is genetically engineered. Since the early '90s farmers in the United States (and now across the world) have been using Monsanto's Roundup Ready soy that is genetically engineered to be resistant to the herbicide Roundup, which is liberally sprayed on the crop to kill weeds. | |
| As millions of Americans struggle to hold on to their homes, Wall Street has found a way to make money from the mortgage mess. | |
| From the Caribbean to Brazil, political opposition to US plans for 'full-spectrum operations' is escalating rapidly Source: IndependentThe United States is massively building up its potential for nuclear and non-nuclear strikes in Latin America and the Caribbean by acquiring unprecedented freedom of action in seven new military, naval and air bases in Colombia. The development – and the reaction of Latin American leaders to it – is further exacerbating America's already fractured relationship with much of the continent. The new US push is part of an effort to counter the loss of influence it has suffered recently at the hands of a new generation of Latin American leaders no longer willing to accept Washington's political and economic tutelage. President Rafael Correa, for instance, has refused to prolong the US armed presence in Ecuador, and US forces have to quit their base at the port of Manta by the end of next month. So Washington turned to Colombia, which has not gone down well in the region. The country has received military aid worth $4.6bn (£2.8bn) from the US since 2000, despite its poor human rights record. Colombian forces regularly kill the country's indigenous people and other civilians, and last year raided the territory of its southern neighbour, Ecuador, causing at least 17 deaths. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who has not forgotten that US officers were present in government offices in Caracas in 2002 when he was briefly overthrown in a military putsch, warned this month that the bases agreement could mean the possibility of war with Colombia. In August, President Evo Morales of Bolivia called for the outlawing of foreign military bases in the region. President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, overthrown in a military coup d'état in June and initially exiled, has complained that US forces stationed at the Honduran base of Palmerola collaborated with Roberto Micheletti, the leader of the plotters and the man who claims to be president. And, this being US foreign policy, a tell-tale trail of oil is evident. Brazil had already expressed its unhappiness at the presence of US naval vessels in its massive new offshore oilfields off Rio de Janeiro, destined soon to make Brazil a giant oil producer eligible for membership in Opec. The fact that the US gets half its oil from Latin America was one of the reasons the US Fourth Fleet was re-established in the region's waters in 2008. The fleet's vessels can include Polaris nuclear-armed submarines – a deployment seen by some experts as a .... | |
Special Air Service (SAS) and Special Boat Service (SBS). set to lift veil of secrecy over elite operations The incredible heroics of the Special Forces could be revealed for the first time under plans to lift their veil of secrecy. | |
| COLOMBIA warned overnight that its forces were on "maximum alert'' and were prepared to defend against any attack, amid rising tensions with neighbouring Venezuela. | |
| VeriChip (CHIP), the company that markets a microchip implant that links to your online health records, has acquired Steel Vault (SVUL), a credit monitoring and anti-identity theft company. The combined company will operate under a new name: PositiveID. The all-stock transaction will leave PositiveID in charge of a burgeoning empire of identity, health and microchip implant businesses that will only encourage its critics. BNET previously noted that some regard the company as part of a prophecy in the Book of Revelation (because the HealthLink chip carries an RFID number that can be used as both money and proof of ID) or as part of President Obama’s secret Nazi plan to enslave America. The most obvious criticism to be made of the deal is that it potentially allows PositiveID to link or cross-check patient health records (from the HealthLink chip) to people’s credit scores. One assumes that the company will put up firewalls to prevent that. PositiveID CEO Scott Silverman said:
Unless, of course, consumers don’t actually want to be implanted with chips, have their health records available over the internet, or have their medical records linked to their credit scores. | |
| A MAN lies comatose on an operating table. The enormous spider that hangs above him has plunged four appendages into his belly. The spider, made of white steel, probes around inside the man's abdomen then withdraws one of its arms. Held in the machine's claw is a neatly sealed bag containing a scrap of bloody tissue. | |
| Source: Daily Mail Scientists have created a Star Trek style phaser that can be used to both stun and revive creatures. However so far the weapon, which uses a special form of light, has only been used on tiny worms, not menacing Klingons..... At present doctors use light-sensitive materials and photo-reactions in medicine to treat certain forms of cancer and the study authors hope their research can contribute. Dr Branda said: 'We aren't trying to pretend that it's important that we can turn on and off paralysis in worms. But it opens new opportunities for the use of light in medicine.' The study has been published in the latest edition of Journal of the American Chemical Society. | |
Blackmail, cover-ups of child abuse, labour camps, embezzlement and coerced abortions are spelled out among the 53 pages of allegations by seven former Scientologists - some of whom had climbed high in the church hierarchy - tabled in the Senate.... But the senator dismisses the religious-freedom argument as "twisted logic". "Religious freedom did not mean the Catholic or Anglican churches were not held accountable for crimes and abuses committed by their priests, nuns and officials, albeit belatedly," he told the Senate. "In Australia there are not limits on what you can believe but there are limits on how you can behave. It's called the law, and no one is above it." | |
| Beginning 1 year after enactment of the Cap and Trade Act, you won't be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with the energy and water efficiency standards of this Act. H.R. 2454, the "Cap & Trade" bill passed by the House of Representatives, if also passed by the Senate, will be the largest tax increase any of us has ever experienced. This is a long excerpt, but you should read the entire post by Frank Carrio at http://www.nachi.org/forum/f14/cap-and-trade-license-required-your-home-44750/ The Congressional Budget Office (supposedly non-partisan) estimates that in just a few years the average cost to every family of four will be $6,800 per year. | |
A recently declassified US Army report on the biological effects of non-lethal weapons reveals outlandish plans for "ray gun" devices, which would cause artificial fevers or beam voices into people's heads. The report titled "Bioeffects Of Selected Nonlethal Weapons" was released under the US Freedom of Information Act and is available on this website (pdf). The DoD has confirmed to New Scientist that it released the documents, which detail five different "maturing non-lethal technologies" using microwaves, lasers and sound. Released by US Army Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Meade, Maryland, US, the 1998 report gives an overview of what was then the state of the art in directed energy weapons for crowd control and other applications. | |
Monday, November 23, 2009
BlacklistedNews.com | Headlines - November 23, 2009
