77 As hope of Change fades, Castro fears Obama's life at risk from Far Right groups

Although I too have lost faith in Obama's "Change", I would be horrified if "Patriots" attacked him.

(1) Surveillance Helicopter fits on palm of your hand, weighs less then an ounce
(2) Federal Police used spy plane to find lost MP
(3) LA bushfires: environmental rules limited Prescribed Burns
(4) As hope of Change fades, Castro fears Obama's life at risk from Far Right groups
(5) Ted Kennedy blocked Nixon's Health bill
(6) New Science Exams Show Further `Dumbing Down' of British Youth

(1) Surveillance Helicopter fits on palm of your hand, weighs less then an ounce

http://www.coated.com/surveillance-helicopter-pd-100-black-hornet/

Surveillance Helicopter – PD-100 Black Hornet

by Mike on May 6, 2009

Although this remote control helicopter may look like the latest kid’s toy, it’s actually the PD-100 Black Hornet, a surveillance helicopter designed for government agencies, either military or civilian.

The nanocopter carries a spy video camera, weighs less then an ounce and has a top speed of 20 miles per hour.

The Black Hornet is a design of Prox Dynamics and although pricing for this r/c helicopter has not been announced, we do know that it will come in packs of three and will also include a charger and remote control unit.

It’s to bad this gadget will only be sold to government agencies, I can see many flying enthusiasts clamoring to buy this small helicopter if a civilian version came on the market.

(2) Federal Police used spy plane to find lost MP

http://www.theage.com.au/national/spy-plane-saved-minister-20090901-f6xy.html

Spy plane saved minister

BRENDAN NICHOLSON AND KATE LAHEYSeptember 2, 2009

The aircraft that found state Water Minister Tim Holding in the Victorian alps on Monday night was fitted with secret experimental night surveillance equipment being developed for the Australian Federal Police.

Advanced thermal imaging technology, designed to track fugitives by detecting body heat, is believed to have helped locate Mr Holding on the slopes of Mount Feathertop and hasten his dramatic rescue yesterday, ending a two-day ordeal.

Mr Holding, 37, is expected to leave hospital this morning and hold a press conference later today.
His spokesman, Luke Enright, said he was in reasonable health and spent the night in The Alfred "just for observation".

Amid the relief at Mr Holding's rescue, police and the State Government went to extraordinary lengths yesterday to withhold information about the plane that found him.

A Government spokesman said questions about the plane should be directed to the Victoria Police, adding: ''Decisions on the use of emergency resources are operational decisions for emergency agencies.''

The Victoria Police, after referring to ''an AFP plane'' in a media release earlier in the day, later withdrew the statement and amended it to remove all references to the AFP.

''For security reasons police will not confirm whose plane it is,'' spokeswoman Nicole McKechnie said. ''It was offered to us and we accepted that offer.''

The AFP, meanwhile, denied that it had any planes.

But last night The Age learnt that the plane that pinpointed Mr Holding on Monday was carrying surveillance technology secretly developed for the AFP, principally to track terrorists.

It also emerged that Mr Holding had been carrying a headlamp given to him for his birthday recently by his partner, Sunday Herald Sun journalist Ellen Whinnett, and that the light may have been detected by aerial searchers.

Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walsh confirmed that information received from a plane on Monday night had given police confidence that the minister would be found yesterday morning.

''We did have some information that came to us overnight that we had been working on this morning and we had search teams heading into the location,'' Mr Walsh said.

Mr Holding was finally spotted just before 10am yesterday by news helicopters,

An experienced hiker, Mr Holding still had water but had run out of food and was said to be saturated and dehydrated.

He told rescuers he had become disoriented after falling about 100 metres down one of Feathertop's icy slopes. ...

However, Mr Grove said there was a lesson for hikers in the minister's experience: hikers should carry EPIRB emergency beacons. ''If he had have had an EPIRB, and they are probably a $550 to $600 item, he would have been retrieved on Sunday afternoon,'' he said. ...

With JASON DOWLING, DAVID ROOD, LORNA EDWARDS, AAP

(3) LA bushfires: environmental rules limited Prescribed Burns

From: Andrew <ama18870@bigpond.net.au> Date: 03.09.2009 01:43 AM

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32664068/ns/us_news-life

Efforts to clear brush before L.A. fire fell short

Forest Service wasn't able to do as many pre-emptive burns as planned

updated 6:42 p.m. ET Sept. 2, 2009

LOS ANGELES - Federal authorities failed to follow through on plans earlier this year to burn away highly flammable brush in a forest on the edge of Los Angeles to avoid the very kind of wildfire now raging there, The Associated Press has learned.

The U.S. Forest Service said that months before the huge blaze erupted, it obtained permits to burn away the undergrowth on more than 1,700 acres of the Angeles National Forest. But just 193 acres had been cleared by the time the fire broke out, the agency said.

The agency defended its efforts, saying weather, wind and environmental rules tightly limit how often these "prescribed burns" can be conducted.

Also, Forest Service resource officer Steve Bear said crews using machinery and hand tools managed to trim 5,000 acres in the forest this year before the money ran out.

Could more have been done to clear tinder-dry hillsides and canyons?

"We don't necessarily disagree with that," Bear said. "We weren't able to complete what we wanted to do."

Lawmaker blasts environmentalists
Some critics suggested that protests from environmentalists contributed to the disaster, which came after the brush was allowed to build up for as much as 40 years.

"This brush was ready to explode," said Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, whose district overlaps the forest. "The environmentalists have gone to the extreme to prevent controlled burns, and as a result we have this catastrophe today."

Prescribed burns are intended to protect homes and lives by eliminating fuel that can cause explosive wildfires. The wildfire that has blackened 140,000 acres — or nearly 219 square miles — in the forest over the past week has been fed by the kind of tinder-dry vegetation that prescribed burns are designed to safely devour.

The blaze has destroyed more than five dozen buildings, killed two firefighters and forced thousands of people to flee. Firefighters reported modest progress Wednesday as investigators said the blaze was human-caused, though it was not clear exactly how the fire started or whether it was accidental or arson.

Figures from the California's South Coast Air Quality Management District suggested even less was protectively burned. The agency said it granted seven permits sought by the Forest Service to conduct prescribed burns on 2,748 acres in the forest this year. The agency reviews such requests to ensure air quality in the often-smoggy Los Angeles area will not be worsened by smoke from intentional fires. But records show only 12.8 acres burned.

Four of the permits, totaling 1,257 acres, were granted in areas involved in the wildfire, according to the air quality agency.

But the Forest Service disputed those figures. Bear said the plan was to burn 1,748 acres, and 193 were cleared.

Government firefighters set thousands of blazes each year to reduce the wildfire risk in overgrown forests and grasslands around the nation. Prescribed burns can also improve overall forest health and increase forage for wildlife.

Obtaining the necessary permits is a complicated process, and such efforts often draw protests from environmentalists.

Calls to the Sierra Club for comment were not immediately returned.

(4) As hope of Change fades, Castro fears Obama's life at risk from Far Right groups

From: Israel Shamir <adam@israelshamir.net>   Date: 02.09.2009 07:46 AM

Reflections by Comrade Fidel

I WISH I WERE WRONG!

http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2009/ing/f240809i.html

I was amazed to read the wire services issued during the weekend about the US domestic policy, evidencing a systematic decline in President Barack Obama’s influence.  His surprising electoral victory had not been possible in the absence of the deep political and economic crisis affecting that country.  The American soldiers killed or wounded in Iraq, the scandal about tortures and secret prisons, and the loss of jobs and housing had shaken the American society.  The economic crisis was spreading throughout the planet, thus increasing poverty and hunger in the Third World countries.

Such circumstances made it possible for Obama to run for office and be elected in a traditionally racist society.  No less than 90 per cent of the poor and discriminated against black people, most of the voters of Latin descent and a broad working and middle class white minority, especially the youth, voted for him.

It was only logical for those Americans who supported him to entertain lots of hopes.  After eight years of adventurism, demagogy and lies, which led to the death of thousands of American soldiers and almost one million Iraqis in a conquest war over the oil of that Muslim country -which had nothing to do whatsoever with the atrocious attack on the Twin Towers-, the American people felt tired and ashamed?

Not only a few people in Africa and elsewhere got excited about the idea that the US foreign policy would change.

However, an elemental knowledge about reality would have been enough in order not to raise hopes about a possible political change in the United States after the election of a new president.

Obama had certainly opposed the war launched by Bush against Iraq long before many others in the US Congress.  Since he was a teenager he knew about the humiliations of racial discrimination, and just as many other Americans, he admired Martin Luther King, the outstanding civil rights fighter.

Obama was born, educated, went into politics and managed to be successful within the United States’ imperial capitalist system. He neither wished nor could change the system.  Curiously enough, despite that, the extreme right hates him for being an Afro-American and opposes anything the President does to improve that country’s deteriorated image.

He has come to understand that the United States, with hardly 14 per cent of the world’s population, consumes about 25 per cent of the fossil energy, and is the biggest source of emissions of pollutant gases in the world.

Bush, in his ravings, did not even sign the Kyoto Protocol.

Obama, for his part, intends to implement stricter rules against tax evasion.  For example, reportedly, the Swiss banks would supply data about approximately 4 500 financial accounts of a total of 52 000 owned by US citizens under suspicion of tax evasion.

A few weeks ago in Europe, Obama committed himself before the G-8 countries, especially France and Germany, to put an end to the use of fiscal heavens by his country in order to inject huge amounts of American dollars into the world’s economy.

He offered health care to almost 50 million citizens who had no medical insurance.

He promised to the US people that he would grease the wheels of the production apparatus machinery, stop increasing unemployment and resume growth

He promised the 12 million Hispanic illegal immigrants he would put an end to the cruel raids and the inhumane treatment they receive.

He made other promises that I will not list, but none of them questions the system of imperial capitalist domination.

The powerful extreme right will not tolerate any single measure that could in the least mean a reduction of its prerogatives.

I will just limit myself to refer to some reports published in recent days by US news and press agencies.

August 21:

-     According to a poll published that day by The Washington Post, the confidence of American citizens on Presidents Barack Obama’s leadership has substantially decreased.

-     In the midst of an increasing opposition against he health system’s reform, the telephone poll made by that newspaper and the ABC TV network among 1 001 adults from August 13 to 17 revealed that … 49 per cent of respondents believe that Obama would be able to significantly improve the US health care system.  This results accounts for 20 percentage points less as compared to the period before Obama started his presidential mandate.

-     Fifty five per cent of the respondents believe that the US general situation is not going well, as compared to 48 per cent in April.

-     The fierce debate over the health reform in the US evidences an extremism that has become a source of concern for experts; they are alarmed about the presence of armed men in popular gatherings, the drawing of swastikas and the images of Hitler.

-     The experts in hatred crimes have recommended watching these extremists closely.  While many Democrats have felt overwhelmed by the protests, others have decided to directly confront their fellow countrymen.

-     The young woman who carried a manipulated picture of Obama, wearing a Hitler’s style moustache, nurtured the theory that the President would create ‘death panels’ that would support euthanasia among senior citizens with no hope of recovery.

-     According to reports, there are those who pretend to be deaf and resort to convey messages of hatred and extremism, which Brad Garrett, the former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), deems as alarming.

-     Last week Garret said to the ABC network that we were certainly living through scary times, and added that the secret services are afraid that something may happen to Obama.

-     According to reports, just on Monday last about twelve people were proud to show their weapons outside the Phoenix Convention Center in Arizona, where the President was delivering a speech before the war veterans in which, among other things, he defended his medical reform.

-     It was said that another man was carrying a gun bearing the following inscription: the time has come to refresh the tree of liberty, which evoked the phrase pronounced by President Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) when he said that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed … by the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

-     Some messages have been even more explicit; they have wished for the death of Obama, Michelle and their two daughters.

-     Those incidents show that hatred has penetrated America’s politics more strongly than ever before.

-     Larry Berman, from the University of California, who has written 12 books about the US presidency, said to EFE that right now we are talking about people who shout, who carry Obama’s pictures in which he appears characterized as a Nazi (…), and refer to the term ‘socialist’ with contempt.  He believes that part of what is going on is due to the racism legacy that still lives on.

-     Reportedly, after The New York Times published the day before that the CIA had hired Blackwater back in 2004 to perform the tasks of planning, training and surveillance, this day’s newspaper revealed further details about the activities entrusted to that controversial private security company whose current name is ‘Xe’.

-     The newspaper revealed that the United States Central Intelligence Agency recruited several Blackwater agents to install bombs on board of drones in order to kill Al Qaeda leaders.

-     According to the information revealed by government officials to The New York Times, those operations were carried out in bases located in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the private company equipped the planes with Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs.

-     It was reported that the current director of the Agency, Leon Panetta, decided at some point in time to cancel the program and reveal before Congress in June the type of collaboration that existed between Blackwater and the CIA.

-     According to the news, Blackwater’s collaboration ended a few years before Panetta was appointed as CIA chief, because the agency officials themselves questioned the convenience of having external agents participating in programs of selective assassinations.

-     Blackwater is said to be the main private security company in charge of protecting the US staff in Iraq during the George W. Bush administration.

-     Reportedly, its aggressive tactics were criticized on different occasions.  The most serious case occurred on September, 2007, when some agents from the company killed 17 Iraqi civilians.

-     After considering the record figures of suicides and the wave of depression spreading among its soldiers, the US army is said to be, little by little, creating some special groups whose task will be to enhance its troops’ resistance against the war-related emotional stress.

August 22:

-     This day the US President Barack Obama is said to have harshly criticized those who oppose his plan to reform the health system in his country, and accused them of disseminating false and distorted information.

-     According to reports, as he himself has pointed out in his speeches, the objective of the reform of the health care system is to put a halt to its rapidly increasing cost and ensure health coverage for almost 50 million Americans who have no health insurance.

-     According to the news, this should have been an honest debate, not dominated by the deliberately false and distorted reports that have been disseminated by those who would benefit the most if things continue to be the way they are.

-     According to what was published by The New York Times this day, the US State Department has continued funding Blackwater, the private company of mercenaries who were involved in the assassination of Al Qaeda leaders which is now called Xe Services.

-     It was reported that the Governor of the State of New York, David Paterson, expressed on Friday last that the media had resorted to the use of racial stereotypes in its coverage of black officials like him, President Obama and the Governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick.

-     It is said that the White House has estimated that the budget deficit during the next decade will amount to 2 trillion dollars more than the figure recently estimated, which would be a storming blow for President Barack Obama and his plans to create a public health system largely financed by the State.

-     Forecasts within 10 years time are said to be very volatile and could vary with time.  However, the new red figures in public funding will reportedly pose serious problems for Obama in Congress, and will cause a huge anxiety among the foreigners who are financing America’s public debt, especially China.  Almost all economists consider them to be unsustainable even if there were a mass devaluation of the American dollar.

August 23:

-     The top ranking military who commands the American army is said to have expressed on Sunday last his concern about the loss of popular support in his country to the war in Afghanistan, while indicating that the country continued to be vulnerable to the attacks of the extremists.

-     Mike Muller, the chief of the military joint command said that the situation in Afghanistan was serious and deteriorating, and added that in the last two years, the Taliban insurrection has improved and become more specialized.

-     In an interview aired by the NBC TV network, Mullen did not specify whether or not it would be necessary to send more troops.

-     According to reports, a little bit more than 50 per cent of the respondents in the poll made by The Washington Post and the ABC TV network, whose results were recently published, expressed that the war in Afghanistan was not worth it.

-     Reportedly, by the end of 2009 the United States will have three times more soldiers than the 20 000 who were deployed in Afghanistan three years ago.

Confusion is rampant within the American society.

September 11 will mark the eighth year since the fateful 9/11.  On that same day, at Havana’s Sports Coliseum, we advised that the war was not the way to put an end to terrorism.

The strategy of withdrawing troops from Iraq and sending them to the Afghan war to fight the Taliban is wrong.  The Soviet Union was trapped in a quagmire there.  The US European allies will be ever more reluctant to see the blood of their soldiers shed in that country.

Mullen’s concern over the popularity of that war is not far-fetched.  Those who perpetrated the attack on September 11, 2001, against the Twin Towers were trained by the United States.

The Taliban is an Afghan nationalist movement that had nothing to do with that event.  Al Qaeda, an organization that has been financed by the CIA since 1979 and was used against the USSR during the years of the Cold War, was the one that masterminded that attack 22 years later.

There are still some dark events that require further clarification before the international public opinion.

Obama has inherited those problems from Bush.

I do not have the slightest doubt that the racist right will do its best to try to wear him out by hindering his program and leaving him out of play, one way or the other, at the lowest possible political cost.

I wish I were wrong!

Fidel Castro Ruz

August 24, 2009

5:15 p.m.

(5) Ted Kennedy blocked Nixon's Health bill

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn08282009.html

Teddy Kennedy the Hollow Champion

August 28-30, 2009

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Teddy Kennedy's disasters were vivid. ...

Though the obituarists have glowingly evoked Kennedy's 46-year stint in the US Senate and, as 'the last liberal', his mastery of the legislative process, they miss the all-important fact that it was out of Kennedy's Senate office that came two momentous slabs of legislation that signalled the onset of the neo-liberal era: deregulation of trucking and aviation. They were a disaster for organized labor and the working conditions and pay of people in those industries. ...

After reelection, Nixon did promote a health plan in his 1974 State of the Union speech, with a call for universal access to health insurance. He followed up with his Comprehensive Health Insurance Act on February 6, 1974. Nixon said his plan would build on existing employer-sponsored insurance plans and would provide government subsidies to the self-employed and small businesses to ensure universal access to health insurance. Kennedy went through the motions of cooperation, but in the end the AFL-CIO, with a covert nudge from Kennedy, killed the bill because Nixon was vanishing under the Watergate scandal and the Democrats did not want to hand the President and the Republicans one of their signature issues. Now the Republicans scream “socialism” at exactly what Nixon proposed and Kennedy killed off 38 years ago, in 1971. ...

(6) New Science Exams Show Further `Dumbing Down' of British Youth

From: IHR News <news@ihr.org> Date: 29.08.2009 06:20 PM

Daily Mail (Britain)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208560/GCSE-pupils-asked-illegal-drug-new-dumbing-row-years-exams.html

GCSE pupils asked to name illegal drug: New dumbing-down row over this year's exams

By LAURA CLARK

Last updated at 6:09 PM on 24th August 2009

Pupils taking this year's GCSE science exams were awarded marks for simply being able to name an illegal drug.

And those taking languages were allowed to take a cue card to prompt them in their oral tests.

The latest revelations are sure to intensify the debate over the 'dumbing down' of the exam system.

Watchdog Ofqual revealed in March that rigorous science standards had been compromised by reforms to the exams in

But it warned improvements towards a more acceptable standard will be gradual and that this year's results will still be tainted.

Science exams were changed to make the subject more 'relevant' to teenagers, but Ofqual said some questions were no longer challenging enough.

Now an analysis of this year's papers has renewed criticism that some questions are not a sufficient test of pupils' knowledge, particularly in the sciences.

One chemistry question asked candidates, for two marks, to give an example of 'a legal recreational drug' and 'an illegal recreational drug'.

Meanwhile, a physics question asked what uses there were for microwave energy, other than in mobile phones

It comes just days before more than 500,000 teenagers across the country discover their GCSE results.

The Conservative schools spokesman Michael Gove said: 'Since the last curriculum changed, experts have warned that science GCSE is no longer as rigorous as it should be.

'We have seen questions that are not a proper test of scientific reasoning crop up in exam paper after exam paper.

'It's important we keep up with other nations that are pulling ahead in maths and science and making sure that our students sit exams that properly stretch and test them.'

The Mail revealed last month that eminent scientific bodies which investigated science GCSEs had found there are questions that have 'no relation to science' and that vital maths is 'woefully represented' in question papers.

The questions emerged in an analysis by the Tories as they announced plans to create an online library of exam papers from past years.

Their findings also reveal how pupils are not required to commit key scientific formulae to memory. This year's GCSE physics paper supplied a list of basic equations to help pupils with calculations, whereas those taking the International GCSE were expected to have learned the formulae by heart.

Elsewhere, candidates were allowed to take a cue card with up to five headings into modern language oral examinations.

There was no literature or extensive translation in modern language GCSEs to test the extent of their fluency. The archive also shows that the 2009 biology exam contains papers as short as 45 minutes.

By contrast, the IGCSEs, which are increasingly offered by private schools, are typically one hour and 15 minutes long.

Multiple choice questions appear in the physics GCSE, but not in the IGCSE.

Only one in four students passes 'core subjects'

Almost half a million 16-year-olds a year fail to achieve five GCSE passes that include the core subjects of English, maths, science and a language, it has emerged.

Fewer than a quarter finish compulsory schooling with the basic set of qualifications - down from nearly a third in 2001.

Tory spokesman Nick Gibb said: 'These are the core academic subjects that are highly valued by universities and employers. The fact that the number of children-attaining these GCSEs has fallen year on year since 2001 is a terrible indictment of the Government's record.'

The figures, obtained by the Conservatives, showed the proportion with five passes fell from 30.4 per cent in 2001 to 23.7 per cent last year.

GCSE results released on Thursday are expected to show yet another set of record-breaking performances. Pupils are predicted to pass one in five exams at A* or A.