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“Now it is the Other Way Around” — The Moral Revolution in Full View

This decision serves as yet another sign of how swiftly the moral revolution is happening all around us.

The breathtaking pace of the moral revolution now transforming Western cultures staggers belief. In the course of a single generation, the sexual morality that has survived for thousands of years is giving way to a radically different moral understanding. Just consider the couple in the United Kingdom who were recently found guilty of discrimination because they allowed only married couples to share a bed at their small hotel.

Peter and Hazelmary Bull own a bed and breakfast hotel in Cornwall. In September of 2008, a homosexual couple requested a single bed and was denied that accommodation by the Bulls. The couple sued, and this week a judge found the Bulls guilty of discrimination under Britain’s Equality Act of 2007.

What makes this case particularly troubling is the nature of the judge’s decision.

Judge Andrew Rutherford ruled that the Bulls would have to sacrifice their Christian convictions if they intend to own and manage their hotel. Mrs. Bull told the court, “We accept that the Bible is the holy living word of God and we endeavor to follow it as far as we are able.” In this specific case, it meant that the Bulls would restrict rooms with a double bed to married couples. They enforced this policy regardless of sexual orientation — a point acknowledged by the judge.

Nevertheless, Judge Rutherford stated: “It is inevitable that such laws will from time to time cut across deeply held beliefs of individuals and sections of society for they reflect the social attitudes and morals prevailing at the time that they are made.”

Affirming the swift reversal of public morality on the issue of homosexuality, the judge commented: “These laws have come into being because of changes in social attitudes. The standards and principles governing our behavior which were unquestioningly accepted in one generation may not be so accepted in the next.”

Further, “It is a very clear example of how social attitudes have changed over the years for it is not so very long ago that these beliefs of the defendants would have been those accepted as normal by society at large. Now it is the other way around.”

The judge, who is himself an influential member of the Church of England, accepted that the stance of the Bulls concerning marriage was “a perfectly orthodox Christian belief in the sanctity of marriage and the sinfulness of homosexuality.”

But, those beliefs will have to give way to the new cultural mandate of non-discrimination. This is the legal logic that has driven Christian charities in both the United States and Britain out of adoption and foster care work. Now, the Bulls are likely to close their hotel or get out of the business by some means.

The Telegraph [London] warned: “The right to hold religious beliefs, and to act in keeping with one’s faith, is being set against the right not to be offended — and is losing. This is a dispiriting trend in a free society.” Andrew Brown, a columnist at The Guardian {London], warned conservative Christians that the world has changed, both legally and morally.

The real bomb embedded within Judge Rutherford’s ruling is this sentence: “Whatever may have been the position in past centuries it is no longer the case that our laws must, or should automatically reflect the Judaeo-Christian position.”

There can be no doubt that this logic is fast taking hold in legal circles, pointing to a severe constriction of the rights of Christians to live by their own convictions. At the same time, this decision serves as yet another sign of how swiftly the moral revolution is happening all around us. When Judge Rutherford said that the moral consensus is now “the other way around,” he wrote that revolution into law.

The late Maurice Cowling, one of Britain’s most significant intellectuals of the twentieth century, argued that when the public influence of Christianity wanes, the space is not then filled with anything truly secular. Instead, some new religion takes the place of Christianity. In this case, the new religion is the religion of sexual anarchy.

The judge explicitly acknowledged the fact that the Bulls would be forced to act against conscience in order to comply with the ruling, and that the convictions held by the Bulls were the norm in British society, even in recent times. Fueled by this decision, the moral revolution marches on. Read more at www.albertmohler.com

 

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Petraeus Team: Taliban Made Us Wipe Village Out [Updated]

By Spencer Ackerman

Expect more Afghan villages to be destroyed by American rockets and bombs — if, that is, the Taliban “saturate” them with homemade explosives and kick out the villagers. But the U.S.-led coalition isn’t going to destroy populated areas, says a spokesman for Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the Afghanistan war.

Paula Broadwell reported for Tom Ricks’ blog last week that coalition forces used 25 tons of munitions to demolish the ostensibly depopulated village of Tarok Kolache in October. The place was a Taliban stronghold, according to the commander of Combined Joint Task Force 1-320th: packed with homemade bombs, and devoid of civilians. So the 1-320th wiped it off the map.

“These are whole neighborhoods that are empty of people and are booby-trapped. it’s whole neighborhoods, it’s not the one odd house,” Petraeus spokesman Col. Erik Gunhus tells Danger Room. U.S. troops are finding more of these explosive-laden areas as they fight through southern Afghanistan, he adds — meaning that their destruction is ultimately the Taliban’s fault.

“We’re being forced into these things,” he says. “We’re not the ones rigging houses or kicking families out of their homes in the middle of winter.”

Danger Room raised questions yesterday about how the 1-320th knew for sure that it didn’t kill any civilians, as it didn’t clear the village ahead of the bombardment. Gunhus declined to talk about Tarok Kolache in significant detail. But he said generically that when troops encounter villages filled with improvised explosive devices, they’ll have “stacked” information from surveillance eyes overhead and local villagers on the ground convincing them that civilians aren’t present before they “reduce” an area.

“We had to reduce the city because it was rigged,” Gunhus says. “It was saturated with IEDs meant to harm [NATO] forces. There were no citizens in the town.” Gunhus adds that meetings with Afghan villagers and leaders after “reducing” bomb-rigged villages allows civilians to receive compensation — as well as inform U.S. troops if their relatives have been injured. As far as he’s aware, that didn’t happen in Tarok Kolache.

The expansion of U.S. surge troops into southern areas where they didn’t fight before has led to more discoveries of bomb-”saturated” and depopulated villages, and to a choice by commanders to blast them away. But Petraeus explicitly warned his troops against heavy-handed tactics in August. “Hunt the enemy aggressively, but use only the firepower needed to win a fight,” he wrote in a memo on counterinsurgency guidelines:

[I]f we kill civilians or damage their property in the course of our operations, we will create more enemies than our operations eliminate. That’s exactly what the Taliban want…. Treat the Afghan people and their property with respect.

Tarok Kolache might be an extreme example. But throughout the fall and winter — after the village’s destruction — reports surfaced that in the bloody fight for Kandahar, the U.S. military began destroying homes it believed to be riddled with Taliban bombs. In the Arghandab village of Khosrow, The New York Times reported, “every one” of the 40 homes was “flattened” by missiles, part of what the district governor estimated to be 120 to 130 Arghandab home demolitions.

But the governor, appointed by Hamid Karzai, defended the destruction, saying, “There was no other way; we knew people wanted us to get rid of all these deadly [homemade bombs].” The houses were reported to be empty, and funds have been established to compensate their owners.

In an apparent reference to the Tarok Kolache bombardment, The Washington Post recently reported that “U.S. aircraft dropped about two dozen 2,000-pound bombs” near Kandahar City in October, prompting a resident to ask a NATO general, “Why do you have to blow up so many of our fields and homes?” That same piece described the decision to send tanks to southern Afghanistan, part of what one military officer described as a display of “awe, shock and firepower.”

Some human rights researchers are of two minds about the demolitions. “On the one hand, it’s horrifying to see this level of property destruction, but on the other hand, from a civilian-protection standpoint, it’s not great to leave these booby-trapped towns in the state that the Taliban left them,” e-mails Erica Gaston, an Afghanistan-based researcher for the Open Society Institute. “Given the way in which the IEDs and other explosives have been planted (often wired into the walls of houses), defusing them by other means would likely be incredibly risky and not feasible for a very long time. There’s no easy answer.”

Clearing the houses of their explosive riggings without bombing them would likely mean U.S. or allied casualties — prompting the choice that the 1-320th made, Gunhus says. “It comes down to, intellectually, do you level a town where no one’s living that would take you probably days and you’d probably lose some people, or do you level it and then rebuild it? Intellectually, I think it makes sense.”

On Ricks’ blog — where the original Tarok Kolache report appeared — 1-320th commander Lt. Col. David Flynn responds to some of the criticism he’s received about Tarok Kolache. His response mainly addresses claims of impunity for his Afghan security counterparts after Joshua Foust called them into question, and not his actual operations in the village.

The U.S.-based “orator” Foust, Flynn writes, “lacks the context to editorialize in a way that enables his readers to ascertain an objective view.” (You can also read an exchange between Foust and Andrew Exum about the tactics Flynn employed.)

Update, 2:20 p.m.: Mea culpa for not seeing this earlier, but Stars & Stripes’ Megan McCloskey wrote a great piece on Tarok Kolache in December. She witnessed Petraeus, without body armor, speak to an assembly of displaced village farmers — several of whom used to be “extremely angry” at the destruction, according to a fire-support officer she quoted — and pledge ISAF support for reconstruction. Among Petraeus’ interlocutors was the village elder, who approached the general “with a broad smile.”

Also, Broadwell posts on her Facebook wall that she met with the village elder (presumably the same one who talked to Petraeus in December) to get “the scoop on the village razing…. Story to follow.”

Update, 2:50 p.m.: Thanks to Alex Strick van Linschoten for pointing out that the Daily Mail’s Richard Pendlebury reported on Flynn’s “ultimatum” to Arghandab River Valley villagers to turn in homemade bombs; and that Inter Press Service’s Gareth Porter analyzed village destruction in the area in December.

Photo: ISAF

See Also:

25 Tons of Bombs Wipe Afghan Town Off Map

New U.S. Plan in Afghanistan: ‘Awe and Shock’

Petraeus: Here’s My Afghan Redeployment Strategy

Petraeus Tells Troops: We’ll Kill Insurgents and Protect Afghans, Too

Drones Surge, Special Ops Strike in Petraeus Campaign Plan

Afghan Ultraviolence: Petraeus Triples Air War Read more at www.wired.com

 

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Scientists Warn Iran Could Produce Enough Nuclear Material for Warhead in 5 Months

Amplify’d from www.foxnews.com

Scientists Warn Iran Could Produce Enough Nuclear Material for Warhead in 5 Months

| Associated Press

Iran International Photo Agency, via AFP Aug 21: The first fuel is loaded into the reactor building at the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran.

ISTANBUL -- The U.S. is joining five other world powers for talks with Iran this week publicly confident that international efforts have slowed Tehran's capacity to make nuclear arms and created more time to press Tehran to accept curbs on its atomic activities.

But while diplomats and officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency -- the U.N. nuclear monitor -- agree that Iran's enrichment program has struggled over past years, the Federation of American Scientists warns against complacency.

It notes impressive improvements in the performance of the Iranian machines that enrich uranium -- an activity that has provoked U.N. sanctions because it could be used to make nuclear weapons.

Washington's message is essentially this: Iran is struggling with uranium enrichment, a process that can create both nuclear fuel and fissile warhead material. Significantly, that view is backed by Israel, Iran's implacable foe and considered to have the Mideast's best intelligence on Iran's nuclear strivings.

If true, that leaves more time to negotiate in hopes Iran will come around and give up enrichment -- thereby removing the threat of an Israeli or U.S. military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

But in a study shared ahead of publication with The Associated Press the Washington-based FAS argues that Iran last year appears to have increased efficiency of the machines that produce enriched uranium by 60 percent, giving it the technical capacity to produce enough material for a simple nuclear warhead in 5 months.

Iran insists it is enriching only to make nuclear fuel and study author Ivanka Barzashka emphasizes Tehran is unlikely to provoke the world -- and increase the likelihood of attack -- by kicking out IAEA inspectors and re-calibrate their centrifuges from making low-enriched to weapons grade uranium.

Olli Heinonen, who retired late last year as the IAEA deputy director general in charge of the agency's Iran file, described the likelihood of such a "breakout scenario" as a "suicidal mission" and noted that manufacturing nuclear warhead material is only one step in making a weapon.

An aerial view of Iran's nuclear facility in Natanz.

At the same time, he said he cannot "dispute the correctness of the figures" in the study.

With the two sides coming to the table at Istanbul as far apart as they were at the end of their first round in Geneva last month, Barzashka says that efforts to bridge the divide between the two sides must be increased.

"The biggest issue with recent statements that Iran's nuclear drive has been slowed down is that we are getting a false sense of security that we have bought more time," Barzashka said in an e-mail. "That takes away from the urgency ... (of) a diplomatic breakthrough."

Barzashka based her conclusions on data of nuclear material fed into enriching centrifuges and the output of these machines collected by the International Atomic Energy Agency -- the U.N. monitor of Iran's nuclear program.

An IAEA official who read Barzashka's 14-page study described her conclusion of impressive progress in output of enriched uranium as "very solid," and "based on the best possible data." But that official and a senior diplomat based in Vienna and familiar with Iran's enrichment strivings said that -- overall -- the centrifuges continued to perform substantially below capacity.

The two asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to comment to the media.

The FAS study says the increased output by thousands of centrifuges at Iran's centrally located underground facility at Natanz could be either due to better recovery of previously wasted feedstock or increased efficiency of the centrifuges that spin gas into enriched uranium.

"Contrary to statements by U.S. officials and many experts, Iran does not appear to be slowing down its nuclear drive," it says.

Such views contrast with the public optimism expressed by Washington ahead of the Istanbul talks convened by the EU and grouping Iran on one side of the table and the U.S. Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany on the other.

Israeli officials now talk of a three-year window -- 2014 -- before Iran can make a bomb. That compares with projections of 2011 just three years ago, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told NBC's Today show on Wednesday that the new Israeli estimates are "very significant."

The delay, she said "gives us more of a breathing space to try to work to prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon."

Two outside forces would account for any Iranian problems in enriching uranium -- the increasing weight of U.N. sanctions, meant to choke off raw materials needed to make and maintain the program; and the apparent havoc caused by the mysterious Stuxnet computer malware.

Iran has acknowledged that Stuxnet hit "a limited number of centrifuges", saying its scientists discovered and neutralized the malware before it could cause any serious damage. The worm is assumed to have caused disruption of enrichment in November that temporarily crippled thousands of centrifuges at Natanz.

Barzashka said that -- while the sanctions might have slowed Iran's ability to develop, new, and more efficient centrifuges -- they do not seem to have slowed improvements in the output of the present generation of machines used at Natanz.

Ahead of the talks, Iran is trying to take the diplomatic offensive. It is pushing an agenda that covers just about everything except its nuclear program: global disarmament, Israel's suspected nuclear arsenal and Tehran's concerns about U.S. military bases in Iraq and elsewhere in the region.

"Let them issue 100,000 resolutions," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday referring to U.N. Security Council sanctions and other efforts to curb Iran's nuclear program. "It's not important. Let them say what they want to."

Such statements appear to leave scant maneuvering room for the six nations and their ultimate goal: to get Iran to halt uranium enrichment.

The U.S. and others fear Iran's enrichment program could eventually to lead nuclear weapons. Iranian officials say they only want reactors for energy and research -- and that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty gives Iran the legal right to enrich uranium and produce nuclear fuel.

On Monday, chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said "common points" shared by both sides have to be discussed in Istanbul if any progress is expected, not unilateral demands from the U.S. and its allies.

Iran's U.N. ambassador, Mohammad Khazaee, repeated that Iran will "never negotiate on our inalienable right to use nuclear energy for ... peaceful purposes."

"It doesn't mean that Iranians are looking for confrontation," he told reporters in New York Tuesday. "But at the same time ... it's not going to work to put a knife in the neck of somebody, or your sword, and at the same time asking him to negotiate with you."

Uranium enrichment lies at the heart of the dispute. Low-enriched uranium -- at around 3.5 percent -- can be used to fuel a reactor to generate electricity, which Iran says is the intention of its program. But if uranium is further enriched to around 90 percent purity, it can be used to develop a nuclear warhead.

Iran's ambassador to the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, says the Istanbul talks are a "window for an honorable path for the West to get out of the present impasse."

But Christopher Hill, a former US assistant secretary of state for east Asia, says sanctions should be a tool of diplomacy.

"Just as the US adopted a 'bomb and talk' approach with the Serbs during the denouement of the Bosnian war, America must be willing to 'sanction and talk' when it comes to Iran, thereby creating greater space for an eventual diplomatic strategy," he said. Read more at www.foxnews.com

 

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Amplify’d from news.yahoo.com

Feds checking post-vaccine seizures in young kids

By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe, Ap Medical Writer

ATLANTA – Government officials are investigating an apparent increase in fever-related seizures in young children after they got a flu shot.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday said there have been 36 confirmed reports of seizures this flu season in children ages 6 months through 2 years. The seizures occurred within one day after they were vaccinated with Fluzone, the only flu shot recommended in the United States for infants and very young children. Ten of the children were hospitalized, but all recovered.

The FDA said it is investigating to see if there is any connection between the vaccine and the seizures, or if something else caused the convulsions. The agency said recommendations for using the vaccine have not changed, nor has there been any change in flu vaccine guidance.

In the U.S., vaccination is recommended for everyone except infants under 6 months.

The vaccine's manufacturer, Sanofi Pasteur, issued a statement emphasizing that no clear link has been established between the flu shot and the seizures and that the cases may be coincidental.

Thursday's announcement comes at a time when the FDA has been working on disclosing more information about potential safety problems with drugs and devices after they've been approved.

The government uses a national reporting system to monitor possible side effects following vaccination. Doctors, nurses, parents and vaccine manufacturers all can file reports.

"It's meant to cast a wide net" to look for problems, but is only regarded as preliminary information that must be checked out, said Shelly Burgess, an FDA spokeswoman.

FDA officials said they've been paying special attention to seizure reports because of an unexplained higher rate of fevers and seizures in young children in Australia and New Zealand who got a specific flu vaccine earlier this year.

In August, a U.S. vaccines advisory panel said doctors should avoid using that vaccine, made by CSL Biotherapies, in children ages 6 months through 8 years.

It's possible the Australia cases sparked increased reports this fall, said Dr. Andrea Sutherland, an official in the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.

The fever-related seizures — called febrile seizures — are convulsions brought on by a fever in infants or small children. A child often loses consciousness and shakes. Most seizures last a minute or two, and often children quickly recover.

Such seizures may occur with any common childhood illnesses that may cause fever, such as ear infections, colds, influenza and other viral infections.

Online:

FDA notice: http://tinyurl.com/FDAnotice Read more at news.yahoo.com

 

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Welfare Tab for Children of Illegal Immigrants Estimated at $600M in L.A. County

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Welfare Tab for Children of Illegal Immigrants Estimated at $600M in L.A. County

AP

July 29: Los Angeles workers from 32 different unions joined local faith and community leaders at Dodger Stadium boarding 11 buses bound for Arizona to protest Arizona immigration law SB 1070.

Welfare benefits for the children of illegal immigrants cost America's largest county more than $600 million last year, according to a local official keeping tabs on the cost.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich released new statistics this week showing social spending for those families in his county rose to $53 million in November, putting the county government on track to spend more than $600 million on related costs for the year -- up from $570 million in 2009.

Antonovich arrived at the estimate by factoring in the cost of food stamps and welfare-style benefits through a state program known as CalWORKS. Combined with public safety costs and health care costs, the official claimed the "total cost for illegal immigrants to county taxpayers" was more than $1.6 billion in 2010.

"Not including the hundreds of millions of dollars for education," he said in a statement.

Antonovich's figures, though, center on costs generated by American-born children of illegal immigrants. Isabel Alegria, communications director at the California Immigrant Policy Center, said it's "unfair" to roll together costs associated with both illegal immigrants and U.S.-born citizens.

"Those children are U.S. citizens, children eligible for those programs," Alegria said.

She also questioned the authenticity of Antonovich's numbers regarding health care and public safety -- though for the welfare program statistics, Antonovich cited numbers from the county's Department of Public Social Services.

Antonovich acknowledges that the children whose benefits he's focusing on are U.S.-born. But he argues that the money is collected by the illegal immigrant parents, putting a painful burden on taxpayers, including those who are legal immigrants.

"The problem is illegal immigration. ... Their parents evidently immigrated here in order to get on social services," Antonovich spokesman Tony Bell said. "We can no longer afford to be HMO to the world."

He said the state should cut back on these social benefits. According to the November statistics, that cost accounted for 22 percent of all food stamp and CalWORKS spending in the county.

Over the summer, the Federation for American Immigration Reform also looked at these kinds of costs nationwide to get an idea of the burden to local governments at a time when many are grappling with budget deficits.

The organization reported that the cost of illegal immigration stands at about $113 billion a year. Nearly half of that amount went toward education costs, according to the study. Costs were naturally higher in states with large illegal immigrant populations -- in California, the total annual cost was pegged at $21.8 billion. Read more at www.foxnews.com

 

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Bill Gates: Cell phones can track newborns for shots

Microsoft mogul Bill Gates says cell-phone technology could be used to register every birth around the globe and track children to make sure they have been vaccinated as government advisers urge.



The massive effort was discussed by Gates at a recent mHealth Summit, which delved into the issues of technology and health.

According to a report today from Natural News, Gates told a conference late last year that the goal is a lower population, and using vaccines to improve early childhood health is a step in that direction.

"That sounds paradoxical," he said. "The fact is that within a decade of improving health outcomes, parents decide to have [fewer] children."

The SmartPlanet blog earlier documented the comments, explaining Gates said that if every worldwide birth could be registered on a cell phone, authorities could ensure that children get the correct vaccinations.The conference has posted a video of the presentation by Gates, who previously has touted the use of vaccines as a way to bring down the world's population. His comments regarding cell phones and vaccinations are at about the 14-minute mark of the linked video.



He said the cell-phone technology now available should be put to use for health purposes, when and where it can.



"If you could register every birth on the cell phone, get fingerprints, get a location, then you could take the systems where you go around and make sure the immunizations happen," he said. "Run them in a more effective way."



He said the vaccines that are available today – if they just would be delivered and administered to those who are in need – could make a significant difference in the world's health and population.



He said there are about 8.5 million annual deaths among children from birth to age 5, down from 20 million in 1960. He said a third of the improvement has come from better food and housing conditions, but the majority of the improvement is from vaccinations.



Gates said tracking systems also could allow phone messages to parents so they bring their children in for vaccinations on a timely basis. He also said the goal of reducing the population is imperative, as problems with the environment, schools, nutrition and societal unrest "are insoluable at a growth rate of 3 percent per year."



"There will be no trees, animals, schools, jobs … nobody can handle that type of situation," he said.



According to Natural News, Gates' plan is to use cell phones to record each birth and send data, including biometric identifiers, to authorities. Then they would send reminders to parents' phones when vaccinations are due.



He said Nigeria or northern India would be good places to start, since vaccination rates there are around 50 percent.



The report said such plans conceivably could involve using GPS devices inside the phones to track parents who do not bring their children in for vaccinations.



According to the Smart Planet report, Gates also believes there cannot be a healthy, high-population growth civilization.



"If you're healthy," he said, "You're low-population growth."



"Gates' messianic control complex keeps getting scarier and scarier. Vaccines are toxic to the human body and in particular SUPPRESS immune function, proven by studies that the vaccine 'benefit' is nonexistent. Shouldn't Mr. Gates … spend his vast wealth on actually providing people with real clean uncontaminated food and water?" said one participant on the Smart Planet's forum page.



WND previously reported when Gates commented at the Technology, Entertainment and Design 2010 Conference in Long Beach, Calif., on the world's population.

He said, "Let's take a look. First we got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That's headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent" [Emphasis added]

WND reported in May 2009 when Gates joined some of the richest men and women in the world meeting secretly in New York to conspire on using their vast wealth to bring the world's population growth under control.In addition to Gates, the meeting included some of the biggest names in the "billionaires club," according to the London Times – David Rockefeller, Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffett, George Soros and Michael Bloomberg.



In February 2009, Gates also discussed population control.



"Official projections say the world's population will peak at 9.3 billion [up from 6.6 billion today] but with charitable initiatives, such as better reproductive health care, we think we can cap that at 8.3 billion," he said.

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D.C. expanding public surveillance camera net

By: Freeman Klopott

Examiner Staff Writer

Cameras from private businesses and Metro will soon be added to the network of more than 4,500 electronic eyes that the District's homeland security agency already monitors.-Photos.com

Big Brother may already be watching you in the District, and he will soon have a lot more eyes trained in your direction.

The city's homeland security agency is planning to add thousands of security cameras from private businesses around the nation's capital and the Metro system to the thousands of electronic eyes that authorities are already monitoring 24/7.

D.C.'s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency has already centralized the feeds from more than 4,500 cameras operated by the District's department of transportation and school system. Those feeds are watched around the clock by officials from those departments who sit together in homeland security's Joint All-Hazards Operation Center.

By bringing feeds from thousands more cameras to the central watching room through links to cameras at businesses such as banks, corner stores and gas stations, the District is joining other big cities like London, New York and Baltimore that in recent years have turned to cameras to fight crime and terrorism. But critics worry the District's government might be going too far.

"The D.C. effort to link public and private watching capabilities might be viewed as excessive," said Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University who studies the balance between security and civil liberties. "It would make it hard to find a place in the city where people aren't being watched by cameras."

"It sounds like Big Brother to me," Maryland resident James Dewitt said Wednesday on the streets of downtown Washington, referencing George Orwell's novel foreseeing a society oppressed by a government that tracks everyone. "We're heading to '1984.' It's 2011, but we're heading to 1984."

Robyn Johnson, a spokeswoman from HSEMA, told

The Washington Examiner that "the program has not expanded to include private businesses." But, "We continue to explore this in a deliberative way." A plan for 2011 submitted to the city administrator by HSEMA says the agency plans to centralize cameras at private businesses and those run by Metro and the D.C. Housing Authority. The plan doesn't have a timeline, and Johnson said there isn't one. Homeland security says the centralized camera system is designed to be used to raise "situational awareness" during "developing significant events" like the shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2009 or the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. When it was started in spring 2008, the program immediately met resistance from the D.C. Council. Some council members worried that the closed-circuit television system was put together too quickly and without consideration of how effective it would be in reducing crime or preventing terrorism. At-large Councilman Phil Mendelson, who oversees the homeland security agency, still has those concerns. "My concern about these cameras has always been that there's no evidence they reduce crime," Mendelson said. "If HSEMA intends to put more staff on to monitor these cameras, it would not be a good use of resources." Mendelson added that "although one doesn't have much of a right of privacy on a Metro platform ... it could change when you're inside a bank, and if HSEMA were looking at a bank statement." Johnson said the agency is developing regulations to protect civil liberties. Homeland security currently operates under the same series of regulations the D.C. Council adopted for the cameras used by the police department, which are run separately from HSEMA's cameras. Those regulations make it illegal for a camera to be focused on literature being carried by someone in a protest. They also prevent footage from being stored for more than 10 days, unless it captured a crime being committed or questionable police action. fklopott@washingtonexaminer.com

SHARPER VISION

The long-term plan is to feed the thousands of cameras being monitored into a single system called Video Interoperability for Public Safety. When the nearly $1 million system is activated, its capabilities will include:

> Bringing up images from security cameras near where the police department's "Shot Spotter" system detects gunfire.

> Detecting whether a vehicle is traveling the wrong way down a one-way street.

> Identifying objects (bags, for example) that are left behind.

Source: D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency Read more at washingtonexaminer.com

 

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Seymour Hersh unleashed

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Seymour Hersh unleashed

Seymour Hersh unleashed  (Seymour (Sy) Myron Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is a United States Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, D.C. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters.)

By Blake Hounshell

DOHA, Qatar—David Remnick, call your office. In a speech billed as a discussion of the Bush and Obama eras, New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh delivered a rambling, conspiracy-laden diatribe here Monday expressing his disappointment with President Barack Obama and his dissatisfaction with the direction of U.S. foreign policy. "Just when we needed an angry black man," he began, his arm perched jauntily on the podium, "we didn't get one." It quickly went downhill from there. Hersh, whose exposés of gross abuses by members of the U.S. military in Vietnam and Iraq have earned him worldwide fame and high journalistic honors, said he was writing a book on what he called the "Cheney-Bush years" and saw little difference between that period and the Obama administration. He said that he was keeping a "checklist" of aggressive U.S. policies that remained in place, including torture and "rendition" of terrorist suspects to allied countries, which he alleged was ongoing. He also charged that U.S. foreign policy had been hijacked by a cabal of neoconservative "crusaders" in the former vice president's office and now in the special operations community. "What I'm really talking about is how eight or nine neoconservative, radicals if you will, overthrew the American government. Took it over," he said of his forthcoming book. "It's not only that the neocons took it over but how easily they did it -- how Congress disappeared, how the press became part of it, how the public acquiesced." Hersh then brought up the widespread looting that took place in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. "In the Cheney shop, the attitude was, ‘What's this? What are they all worried about, the politicians and the press, they're all worried about some looting? ... Don't they get it? We're gonna change mosques into cathedrals. And when we get all the oil, nobody's gonna give a damn.'" "That's the attitude," he continued. "We're gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That's an attitude that pervades, I'm here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command." He then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, "are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta." Hersh may have been referring to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic organization commited to "defence of the Faith and assistance to the poor and the suffering," according to its website. "Many of them are members of Opus Dei," Hersh continued. "They do see what they're doing -- and this is not an atypical attitude among some military -- it's a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They're protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function." "They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins," he continued. "They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community.”" Hersh relayed that he had recently spoken with "a man in the intelligence community... somebody in the joint special operations business" about the downfall of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia. "He said, ‘Oh my God, he was such a good ally.'" "Tunisia's going to change the game," Hersh added later. "It's going to scare the hell out of a lot of people." Moving to Pakistan, where Hersh noted he had been friendly with Benazir Bhutto, the journalist told of a dinner meeting with Asif Ali Zardari, the late prime minister’s husband, in which Hersh said the Pakistani president was brutally disdainful of his own people. Hersh described a trip he made to Swat, where the Pakistani military had just dislodged Taliban insurgents who had taken over the scenic valley, a traditional vacation area for the urban middle class. Hersh said he asked Zardari about the tent cities he saw along the road, where people were living in harsh, unsanitary conditions. “Well, those people there in Swat, that’s what they deserve,” the Pakistani president replied, according to Hersh. Asked why, Hersh said Zardari responded, “Because they supported the Taliban.” (Note: Hersh's conversation is not recounted in his 2009 New Yorker article on Pakistan's nuclear weapons, presumably because it couldn't be verified.) The veteran journalist also alleged that the CIA station chief in Islamabad, who was recently recalled after his name surfaced in Pakistani court documents and in the lively Pakistani press, had actually been fired for disputing the plans of Gen. David Petraeus, who took over the Afghan war last summer after General McChrystal was summarily dismissed. "When Petraeus issued a very optimistic report about the war in December that he gave to the president," Hersh said, the station chief "just declared it was bankrupt... internally. He just said ‘This is completely wrongheaded. The policy's wrongheaded.' Off he goes. Out he goes." "I've given up being disillusioned about the CIA," Hersh said. "They're trained to lie, period. They will lie to their president, they will lie certainly to the Congress, and they will lie to the American people. That's all there is to it." Hersh was speaking on the invitation of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, which operates a branch campus in Qatar. Read more at spirituallysmart.blogspot.com

 

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Glowing cosmic cloud may point to quasar

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- A cosmic blob of glowing hydrogen gas discovered by a Dutch schoolteacher and named in her honor points to a nearly invisible quenched quasar, astronomers say.

Astronomers say Hanny van Arkel discovered the gas blob 3 1/2 years ago as part of a citizen-science program called Galaxy Zoo and have dubbed it Hanny's Voorwerp (Hanny's Object), the Christian Science Monitor reported Wednesday.

Voorwerpjes is an informal name astronomers have given odd blobs of glowing gas that appear to be floating free of any nearby galaxy in locations where no gas should glow, at least at visible wavelengths, the newspaper said.

Cold hydrogen gas needs a source of radiation to ionize it and make it glow. Young, hot stars are a typical source of such radiation, but early observations showed that Hanny's Voorwerp hosted no stars.

The only other source of enough radiation would be a quasar, a supermassive black hole consuming cosmic dust and gas at a prodigious rate.

X-ray observations found a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy close to the glowing cloud, but one whose radiation was 10,000 times less than the level needed to light it up.

Astronomers say they believe Hanny's Voorwerp is an afterglow from the now-quiet quasar, whose supermassive black hole is estimated to have 1 billion times the sun's mass.

Related Stories Merging galaxies create a binary quasar Scientists see flow of gas from a quasar Dutch teacher discovers new space object Read more at www.upi.com

 

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