Bill O’Reilly wants WikiLeaks put on trial for revealing US extrajudicial indiscretions, while Hannity and Beck look to 2012 Bill O’Reilly Bill O’Reilly was horrified that the secret files on Guantánamo detainees – which exposed the grim facts that many of the prisoners were held for years on little or no evidence, that many detainees attempted suicide or went on hunger strike and that the 172 detainees who are still captive may never receive a fair trial – are now on public record ( view clip ). He insisted to regular guest Bernard Goldberg that the person or organisation responsible for leaking the documents (which he has decided is WikiLeaks, despite the New York Times’s attribution to a third party source ) be tried for espionage immediately. Goldberg tried to make the case to O’Reilly that unless WikiLeaks colluded with or actively encouraged whoever actually downloaded the secret documents, they should not be prosecuted for publishing the information – any more than the New York Times should be prosecuted. He went further to suggest that, like any other news organisation, WikiLeaks has a right and even a responsibility to make the information public. O’Reilly argued that he would never stoop so low on his news programme as to make information about what the American government is up to a matter of public record, just because the information was made available to him, particularly if it was damaging. OK, this is an ongoing situation. The press, some of the press is seizing upon it. If I got leaked WikiLeaks documents, I wouldn’t put them on air. I would tell everybody flat out I wouldn’t do it. Especially if it put the USA in any kind of dangerous situation – which the Guantánamo Bay thing can whip up people easily around the world. It is true that people get upset when they hear stories about innocent people being held for years without charge and subjected to harsh interrogation methods (or in the case of Mohammed Qahtani, leashed like a dog, sexually humiliated and forced to urinate on himself) while in US custody. Perhaps it was out of deference to the public’s sensitivity about these issues that O’Reilly chose not to mention a single word about the documents contents and focused instead on punishing the leaker. With this in mind, he explained to Goldberg that he accepted his point about news organisations and free speech and what have you, but still thought there must be some way of bringing a charge against WikiLeaks. I know what you’re saying, but now you have, it’s almost like the Rico situation you know with organised crime where they charge people with a Rico ongoing organised crime thing. You say that yourself, this [WikiLeaks] is an anti-American organisation that’s looking, searching and encouraging people to come to them with stolen purloined top secret documents. I think you can get them under that Rico thing. And I think you could probably issue … Now, is Sweden going to extradite over here? I don’t know whether they will or not. I think you can make a strong case that these people are practising espionage against this country. Goldberg reiterated that he didn’t think any such charge would be feasible and so ended the discussion. Sean Hannity 2012 can’t come fast enough for Sean Hannity who is exhilarated by the prospect of ousting President Obama in favour of a more palatable candidate who will not keep threatening to raise his taxes and who will not secondguess America’s role as the world’s super power ( view clip ). He discussed the field of GOP hopefuls with regular guest Dick Morris, who was surprisingly upbeat about the current lineup and particularly jazzed by Donald Trump’s entry into the race. I think Trump has just energised the whole election cycle and I think what people like more than anything else is that he’s so hardhitting and so not politically correct. Now, there does seem to be, and you acknowledge this in your column … I think he’s going to have a little bit of a problem with the base in the Republican party – conservatives. I think he’s going to have to talk about protectionism. He’s going to have to talk about once supporting healthcare and tax increases and once pro-choice. Morris suggests that the base might want to consider waiving the purity test in Trump’s case, because he is a billionaire, after all, and you could not ask for a better defender of the “free enterprise, economic laissez faire win system” that Morris believes has made America the great country it is. Hannity asks Morris about the rest of his top tier of candidates, which includes Mike Huckabee (“warm and knowledgeable”), Newt Gingrich (“amazing”) and Michele Bachmann (“Refreshing, intelligent and savvy”). Sadly, neither men believe that Sarah Palin will be able to run because she has had so much baggage foisted on her by the “outrageous sexist liberal media”. But aside from that, Morris concludes that “it’s one heck of a field.” See, I agree with you, those that have been dismissing this field to me … really, they’re just all in Obama worship-land. I agree he’s a weakened president and if food prices continue to rise and gas prices are rising and the economy’s not getting better … Well, you never know what might happen. But at the moment, anyway, Hannity is starting to believe that the road to 2012 may not be so rocky, after all. Glenn Beck Glenn Beck decided to take the high road this week and to put an end to the recent spat of rightwing infighting that he has found himself at the centre of ( view clip ). There is just too much chaos going on in the world for conservatives and Republicans to be fighting among themselves , and Beck is certainly not going to be accused by anyone of damaging the conservative cause or providing entertainment to liberals. It’s about the right-on-right infighting that’s happening right now. For liberals, that’s like girl-on-girl porn. It is! And the media is going to cover that whenever they can, because they think “oh look, we can show the right’s falling apart”. Beck has had a war of words with fellow Fox News host and potential GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who got a little upset recently when Beck accused him of being a “progressive” for supporting Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity campaign. He has also been feuding with Huffington Post blogger Andrew Breitbart, who is being sued for his involvement in the Shirley Sherrod incident , and is now claiming that Beck stole his material and threw him “under a bus” . Beck does not feel that he has wronged either party, and if he has, he certainly didn’t mean to. He claims that his criticism regarding the edited version of the Shirley Sherrod NAACP speech (which falsely depicted her as a racist and got her fired from her job at the department of agriculture) was directed at the NAACP and not Breitbart. As for Mike Huckabee, who responded to Beck’s insults last week by telling him to “stick to conspiracies that can’t be so easily de-bunked by facts”, Beck claims that just because Huckabee has done some objectionable things while he was governor of Arkansas, such as supporting a sales tax on internet goods, this does not mean that Beck meant any insult when he called him out for being a “progressive” – although Beck has equated that term in the past to being a Nazi. But if offence was taken, Beck is sorry for that – even though he is the one who is really being wronged. It’s almost like anyone who poses a threat to the establishment, somebody that calls a progressive a progressive, Lindsay Graham, and all of a sudden you’re going to get a tire iron shoved into your wheels. Isn’t that weird?! You’re getting shot from the front and the back! Beck realises, however, that no matter how much his fellow conservatives upset him, what unites them – the need to defeat President Obama in 2012 – will always supersede what divides them. Fox News US television Fox Republicans Barack Obama Donald Trump Mike Huckabee Michele Bachmann US elections 2012 US politics United States WikiLeaks Guantánamo Bay The Guantánamo files Newt Gingrich Sarah Palin Sadhbh Walshe guardian.co.uk
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Brockholes nature reserve opens by M6, offering weary travellers a break among bird hides and a floating visitor centre A green service station has opened beside one of the UK’s busiest motorways, offering a bird hide and floating “eco village” alongside tea and cake. The £10m project is located in a nature reserve flanked by the M6 at Preston, Lancashire, and is making a pitch for travellers “who don’t know the difference between a reed bed and an unmade bed”, as well as nature lovers. Housed in flooded gravel pits at Brockholes, it features one of the few floating buildings in the UK, a cluster of shingled, high-roofed structures inspired by houses in south-east Asia and the wetlands of southern Iraq. Offerings not usually available on motorway stop-offs include lavatories flushed with lake water and the curious cry of the water rail. “It sounds like someone being strangled,” says a cheerful caption beside a press-button display which fills the reception area with the water rail’s squawks , the piping of sedge warblers or skylark song. “We think there’s real potential here to re-engage people with nature,” says Lindsey Poole of Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside Wildlife Trust , which raised an unprecedented £10m for the project. “Our research found that too many people are almost scared of nature reserves, thinking they’re only for specialists. “We had more than 5,000 people at our opening weekend over Easter and the message was: it doesn’t matter a jot if you don’t know your Canada goose from your whimbrel. This is a place to enjoy, have a break and have fun.” The floating island, essential for a flood plain regularly inundated by the nearby River Ribble, is at least half made-up of shopping and eating places, with floor-to-ceiling views over the former sand and gravel quarries. Budget forecasts estimate that the “village” will be self-sustaining, with architect Adam Khan drawing on high roof spaces and floods of natural light to cut down on power bills. Successfully floated just before Easter, when the quarry was reflooded, the 400-tonne concrete pontoons can rise by up to four metres. The island has two drawbridges which are raised at night and it will eventually be surrounded by a fringe of reeds, bulrushes and other water plants. Named after badger colonies historically associated with the soft, sandy soil, Brockholes is less than four miles from the centre of Preston, as well as drawing potentially on the streams of north-south traffic on the M6 and other nearby motorways to Blackpool and the mid-Lancashire towns. The site was spotted back in 1992 by the trust’s chief executive, Anne Selby, and chair, Ted Jackson, when it was a working quarry, providing aggregate for the motorway network from which the floating village now hopes to profit. “To start with, we were thinking in terms of a straightforward nature reserve to join the 45 or so which we administer,” says Poole. “But the fact that the motorway runs right past the site gave us the confidence to go for something much bigger. “Our whole purpose is to protect the natural world for the future, but to do that, we need to involve as many people as possible. Here they all were, but rushing past.” The trust has 18,500 members and 800 active volunteers, of whom 100 are being deployed to Brockholes. The centre is free but with a £1 charge for an hour’s parking and is working with the nearby Tickle Trout services which offer more conventional services, such as fuel. Both are just off the M6′s junction 31 with the A59 at Preston. Travel and transport Green building Wildlife Birds Road transport United Kingdom Martin Wainwright guardian.co.uk
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The Metropolitan police’s crackdown on student protesters seems part of a wider attempt to suppress legitimate dissent In what can only be described as a
Continue reading …Do You Know How Many Genetically Modified Foods You’re Eating? 8 to Pay Attention To
April 27, 2011 No Comment
By Lisa Gosselin, Editorial Director, EatingWell Magazine Do you have any idea how much of what you eat each day has been made from genetically modified organisms? Though I try to eat organic, like most Americans I’ve been consuming genetically engineered (GE) or genetically modified (GMO) foods for the past 15 years. It’s hard not to: 70 percent of our corn farmland and 93 percent of soy farmland are planted with crops genetically engineered to resist pests and herbicides and increase crop yields. And in the next few years new science may provide genetically modified apples that don’t turn brown, rice that helps build up vitamin A, even an “Enviropig” which produces less phosphorus in its manure. Find out more about the latest news on these and more common genetically modified foods including tomatoes, canola and sugar beets. And as early as 2012, you may be able to buy a GE super salmon that grows to maturity in just two years. As John McQuaid writes in his special report, “The Future of Food,” in the March/April issue of EatingWell Magazine, “As science. this is pretty cool.”
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US president says in TV statement he is puzzled at how questions over his place of birth have persisted The White House has released Barack Obama’s full birth certificate in an effort to finally put to rest what Obama called “carnival barkers” making the matter a distraction from the serious issues facing the US. In a televised statement, Obama said he had been “puzzled” at how questions over his place of birth had persisted since his election in 2008, declaring: “We do not have time for this kind of silliness.” “We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers,” Obama said. Donald Trump, the real estate dealer and television personality reportedly weighing a run for the Republican presidential nomination, immediately took credit for Obama’s announcement. “Today I’m very proud of myself because I’ve accomplished something that nobody else was able to accomplish,” Trump told journalists at an airport in New Hampshire, after repeatedly raising the subject in recent interviews. Trump has claimed to have investigators in Hawaii researching Obama’s birth, although he has not given any details and a CNN investigation failed to find evidence of anyone working on Trump’s behalf. Hawaii’s registrar certified the new photocopy of the document provided to the White House on Monday. It states that Barack Hussein Obama II was born at 7.24pm on 4 August 1961 at the Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu city. The certificate is signed by the delivery doctor, Obama’s mother and the district registrar. His mother, then 18, signed her name (Stanley) Ann Dunham Obama. The birth certificate records the president’s father as Barack Hussein Obama, age 25, born in Kenya, and lists his occupation as student and “race of father” as African. Obama’s mother is recorded as “Caucasian” under race, and as born in Wichita, Kansas. The White House also released a letter from the president requesting two certified copies of his original certificate of live birth. Also released was a letter from Loretta Fuddy, Hawaii’s director of health, approving the request. In a further statement, the White House said Obama had requested Hawaii’s state department of health to make an exception to allow the legal release of the certificate, and that it granted an exemption in part “because of the tremendous volume of requests they had been getting”. The decision to release the so-called long form certificate may end the convoluted conspiracy theories advanced by a small group who believed Obama was secretly born outside the United States – most likely in Kenya, his father’s home country – and smuggled back into the country. In an effort to quell the rumours the Obama campaign released a copy of his short-form birth certificate before the 2008 presidential election. But the rumours persisted, and a recent Gallup poll published by USA Today found that nearly one in four Americans think Obama was probably or definitely born in another country, while 20% said they didn’t know. Only 38% of Americans polled said Obama was definitely born in the US. Barack Obama Obama administration United States US politics Richard Adams guardian.co.uk
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Boys aged 14 to 17 arrested in London over fire that shut and damaged motorway Police have arrested five teenage boys in connection with a fire in a scrap metal yard beneath the M1 in north London which forced the closure of the motorway for several days. The boys, aged between 14 and 17, were arrested on Wednesday morning in Barnet and Harrow, London, the Metropolitan police said. They were being questioned about the fire that severely damaged the raised section of the M1 on 15 April and about two other fires at the nearby Moat Mount Open Space between 14 and 16 April. Detective Chief Inspector Mark Roycroft said: “Although we are pursuing a number of active leads into these fires we would still ask that anyone who has any information about these crimes contact Barnet police.” The fire at the Apex Metal Recycling yard, close to Scratchwood Services, closed a seven-mile section of the motorway throughout the following weekend. Engineers, who initially battled to prevent the entire elevated roadway from collapsing, propped up the section with 200 tonnes of steel. The motorway partly reopened in both directions the following Monday. It was another three days before that part of the M1, between junctions one and four, was fully open again. The road could be closed again for permanent repairs. Philip Hammond, the transport secretary, has asked the Highways Agency and Network Rail to assess the scale of the threat posed by businesses located near main rail routes and motorways. Crime Peter Walker guardian.co.uk
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Apple says it has never tracked the locations of iPhones and iPads, but admits a software fault means data is still sent to the company Apple has admitted that a bug in its software has allowed iPhones and iPads to collect data related to their location even when users turn off permission to collect it – but says it will soon remedy this oversight. The admission follows a storm of controversy after the Guardian’s exclusive revelation last week that the devices stored a file containing details from which a user’s movements could be reconstructed . In a statement on its website , the company says that: “Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no plans ever to do so.” It says that the file discovered by researchers and described in the Guardian is not used for tracking of the phone or its owner. “The location data that researchers are seeing on the iPhone is not the past or present location of the iPhone, but rather the locations of Wi-Fi hotspots and [mobile network] cell towers surrounding the iPhone’s location, which can be more than 100 miles away from the iPhone.” It adds: “We plan to cease backing up this cache in a software update coming soon.” That will cut the amount of data stored from as much as a year’s worth of location information to just seven days, the company says. That is likely to be roughly comparable with the store used on Android phones, which record the past 50 cell towers and 200 Wi-Fi networks that the phone has “seen”. That data is uploaded to Apple in an “encrypted and anonymous” form, it says. It admits that a software fault means that if users turn off Location Services – which should prevent the upload – the data is still sent. “It shouldn’t. This is a bug, which we plan to fix shortly,” the company says. Future versions of the file will be encrypted on the phone. That will allay fears that law enforcement and security services could copy the file and analyse it without a valid warrant. Apple accepts some of the blame for the concern over the revelations, which have seen it threatened with lawsuits and put under focus from US lawmakers and potentially by European governments . “Providing mobile users with fast and accurate location information while preserving their security and privacy has raised some very complex technical issues which are hard to communicate in a soundbite. Users are confused, partly because the creators of this new technology (including Apple) have not provided enough education about these issues to date,” the company says in its statement. The data is stored because it helps the iPhone to calculate its location, Apple says. “Calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite data can take up to several minutes. iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data when GPS is not available (such as indoors or in basements). These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data that is generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple.” Apple also insists that it cannot identify individuals from the data because the data about networks and Wi-Fi – which is reported to the company’s servers – is anonymised and encrypted. The Guardian approached Apple ahead of publication last week of its article detailing the findings by the researchers, but the company declined to comment at the time. Repeated requests for comment received no response until now. Since then Apple has found itself under fire, with the US Democratic senator Al Franken writing directly to Apple chief executive Steve Jobs demanding to know why the phones retained the data, and attempts to file a class action lawsuit against the company. Jobs himself was curtly emphatic in an email earlier this week in which he insisted “we don’t track anyone” and that “the info circulating around is false”. Apple iPhone iPad Data protection Wi-Fi Smartphones Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk
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Egyptian-brokered deal paves way towards resolution of four-year rift between West Bank and Gaza Palestinian officials from the rival Fatah and Hamas movements say they have reached an initial agreement on ending a four-year rift that has left them with rival governments in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The officials say the plan calls for the formation of a single caretaker government in the coming days, and preparations to hold presidential and legislative elections a year from now. The agreement was reached through Egyptian mediation, they say. They spoke on condition of anonymity before a formal announcement in Cairo. Despite the agreement, key questions remain about who will control the rival security forces. Disagreements over security control erupted into the June 2007 civil war, in which Hamas seized control of Gaza. Palestinian territories Hamas Fatah Gaza Egypt Israel Middle East guardian.co.uk
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Which version of the Norse mythical adventure wins out, Branagh’s star-studded epic or The Asylum’s cheapo effort? Kenneth Branagh’s Thor might have received some surprisingly positive early reviews, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s worth watching. Branagh might be able to live with Thor not being the best film of the year, but what if it isn’t even the best film about Thor this year? That might just be the case. By complete coincidence – and not, say, because it has a consistent policy of knocking out tawdry low-budget versions of almost every single big new film that’s ever released – The Asylum happens to be releasing a film called Almighty Thor next month. Only one of these Thor films can reign supreme, but which? It’s time for a head-to-head trailer face-off … Best Asgard Thor An otherworldly, shimmering citadel, surrounded by thousands of monuments to the uncontested might of the Norse gods, in a land where the weather is always perfect. Almighty Thor A sort of run-down 16-bit depiction of a minor National Trust property. In a pond. In a land where the weather is always controlled by the Microsoft Paint airbrush tool and the colour beige. Winner: Clearly, Almighty Thor comes out on top here. Shimmering citadels are all well and good, but this isn’t an episode of Cribs, you know. Best Loki Thor It’s Tom Hiddleston, most famous for playing Martinsson alongside Kenneth Branagh in the critically acclaimed Wallander remake. Almighty Thor It’s Richard Grieco, most famous for the terrible film from 20 years ago where he played a teenage superspy who could disable his enemies by shooting steam out of his nipples . Winner: Almighty Thor again. Which would you rather have – a baddie with quietly impressive acting credentials, or a baddie who can shoot steam out of his own nipples? Exactly. Best giant monster Thor This looks like it could be Fafnir, a super-intelligent Norse dragon, as big as a building, armed with remarkable strength and ferocity. As you can see from this image, the power and fury in its roar alone would be enough to strike terror deep in the heart of any opponent. Almighty Thor A couple of lizards, slightly bigger than a van, who go around peering through apartment windows and barking at the sky. Winner: Almighty Thor yet again. Although Fafnir’s size and strength will obviously work in his favour, at least he doesn’t peer through anybody’s windows. Casual voyeurism is not a joke. Best sequence of Thor landing on Earth Thor An elegant, heavenly sequence that captures the raw power and beauty of nature while invoking memories of the effects that Kubrick employed for the Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite portion of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Almighty Thor An orange stripe and some dodgy-looking lightning bolts that invoke memories of the bit from the start of The Terminator that really hasn’t aged very well at all. Oh, and a motorway bridge. Winner: Almighty Thor snatches it again. Kubrick? Elegance? This is a summer blockbuster we’re talking about here, you dummy. It’s supposed to be rubbish. Best weapon Thor Mjöllnir, the legendary mountain-destroying hammer made by dwarves Sindri and Brokkr. Perhaps the most formidable weapon in Norse mythology, it will never break, never miss its target and always return to Thor’s hand. It’s hard to conceive that Almighty Thor will feature a more potent symbol of godly destruction. Almighty Thor Oh, hang on a minute, he’s got an Uzi. Winner: Are you kidding? It’s an Uzi. An UZI. Almighty Thor wins this entire contest hands down. See that one instead. Science fiction and fantasy Stuart Heritage guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Radio personality and C&L friend Nicole Sandler attended Allen West’s town hall today and was led away in handcuffs. Palm Beach Post : Inside the meeting, West was less than a minute into his remarks tonight when two or three men began shouting from the audience. “How about our Medicare that you’re stealing?” shouted one. “How about allowing questions from the audience?” shouted another man, apparently dissatisfied with West’s decision to answer written questions submitted by audience members before the meeting. At West’s previous town halls, members of the public lined up to ask him questions in person, sometimes waiting 30 minutes or more to do so. “What you have seen happen previously is you get such a line of people and a lot of folks want to come up and proseletyze for six or seven minutes and you’re really not getting to the questions that people want to have answered,” West said after the meeting. West, who has gone back and forth with critics at his previous meetings, said the written format was not an effort to avoid tough questions. “I don’t duck,” West said. During the meeting, West had responded to a question about Medicare when Nicole Sandler of Coral Springs, a former radio host on the liberal Air America network, began shouting from the audience. Other audience members began shouting at her and a police officer led her out. “This is supposed to be a town hall meeting. That means back-and-forth,” Sandler said as she exited. Sandler argued with a Fort Lauderdale police officer in the lobby who told her to leave the building. After she yelled at the officer for placing his hand on her, she was arrested for “trespassing after warning” and led away in handcuffs. Funny. I don’t recall the 2009 town hall meetings as having the heavy police presence at every single one, or people being arrested for asking questions. And I certainly don’t view Nicole Sandler as someone who is threatening in the least, but evidently those policemen did. Nicole Sandler lives in Allen West’s district. She is entitled to receive answers to her questions even if he doesn’t like her politics. She is entitled to attend town hall meetings and ask those questions. She’s even entitled to record those meetings. Having her arrested for insisting on answers to her questions is just another indication of the totalitarian state people like Allen West, wingnut loony man, think of when they think of “liberty.” (ps – If you want a taste of what conservatives in Sandler’s district want our country to look like, read the comments on that Palm Beach Post article) Here’s the video of her being ejected:
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