Author: Millard

Daily Mail – by RACHEL REILLY

Brain scans can be used to identify children who may be potential psychopaths, new research has shown.

Scientists have found that certain areas of a psychopath’s brain showed a reduced activity in response to images of others in pain.

The regions affected are those known to play a role in empathy, the ability to relate to other people’s feelings.

Scientists say the patterns could act as a marker to single out children at a risk of becoming adult psychopaths.   Continue reading “Brain scans can identify psychopaths even in childhood because they have no empathy when seeing people in pain”

Citizen Lab – by Morgan Marquis-Boire,  Bill Marczak, Claudio Guarnieri & John Scott-Railton

Citizen Lab is pleased to announce the release of “For Their Eyes Only: The Commercialization of Digital Spying.”

Read the Report [PDF]

The report features new findings, as well as consolidating a year of our research on the commercial market for offensive computer network intrusion capabilities developed by Western companies.   Continue reading “For Their Eyes Only: The Commercialization of Digital Spying”

Veterans Today – by Kevin Barrett

A speaker of Russian, he traveled to Russia and back on ultra-sensitive missions – supposedly without any spy services noticing. Yet it turns out that he was followed for years by the FBI! Framed for a murderous crime on a crowded street, exonerated by crime scene photographs, declared innocent by loved ones and by all who knew him, caught by police after being framed for “murdering a police officer,” gunned down by agents of the National Security State after his arrest to prevent him from proclaiming his innocence in court…haven’t we heard this story before? Are we talking about Lee Harvey Oswald – or the Brothers Tsarnaev?   Continue reading “The Brothers Tsarnaev: The Lee Harvey Oswalds of the Boston bombings?”

Truth Dig – by David Sirota

“The stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”—Reverend Jeremiah Wright

In 2008, the hysterical backlash to the above comment by Barack Obama’s minister became a high-profile example of one of the most insidious rules in American politics: You are not allowed to honestly discuss the Central Intelligence Agency’s concept of “blowback” without putting yourself at risk of being deemed a traitor to country.    Continue reading “A Cronkite Moment for the Blowback Era”

Common Dreams – Jon Queally

George W. Bush Presidential Center opens on the campus of the Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Responding to the fawning morning coverage of the opening of the George W. Bush presidential library in Texas Thursday, independent journalist Jeremy Scahill mocked the cable news outlet MSNBC by tweeting:   Continue reading “Celebration in Texas Opens New Library for “War Criminal””

Global Research – by Craig Murray

Will Eric Holder and the US Department of Justice pay attention?

There are gaping holes in the official story of the Boston bombings.   Continue reading “The Boston Bombings and the FBI: “Official Tsarnaev Story Makes No Sense””

Common Dreams – by Norman Solomon

After the bombings that killed and maimed so horribly at the Boston Marathon, our country’s politics and mass media are awash in heartfelt compassion — and reflexive “doublethink,” which George Orwell described as willingness “to forget any fact that has become inconvenient.”

In sync with media outlets across the country, the New York Times put a chilling headline on Wednesday’s front page: “Boston Bombs Were Loaded to Maim, Officials Say.” The story reported that nails and ball bearings were stuffed into pressure cookers, “rigged to shoot sharp bits of shrapnel into anyone within reach of their blast.”   Continue reading “The Orwellian Warfare State of Carnage and Doublethink”

Common Dreams – by Glenn Greenwald

There’s not much to say about Monday’s Boston Marathon attack because there is virtually no known evidence regarding who did it or why. There are, however, several points to be made about some of the widespread reactions to this incident. Much of that reaction is all-too-familiar and quite revealing in important ways:   Continue reading “The Boston Bombing Produces Familiar and Revealing Reactions”

Guardian – by Karen McVeigh

Life had not been easy for Landris Hawkins, who struggled with several health problems, mental and physical. But his close-knit family in Little Rock, Arkansas, were loving, and looked after him as best they could.

His sisters, Deshuna and Levonne, called him their “gentle giant”, a reference to a 6ft 7in stature caused by Marfan syndrome, a genetic growth disorder. His grandmother, Neomia, with whom he had lived since he was six, called him “Twiki”, after the robot in the Buck Rogers television series they watched together when he was small.   Continue reading “Death in Little Rock: ‘They hollered a couple of times and it was all over’”

HS Today – by Anthony Kimery

The proposed expansion of the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), better known today as drones, by federal, state and local law enforcement, first responders and other agencies, “raises far-reaching issues concerning the extent of government surveillance authority, the value of privacy in the digital age and the role of Congress in reconciling these issues,” a new policy report for congressional lawmakers stated.

The introduction of drones into American airspace raises many legal and policy questions. For instance, how far can the government go in its attempts to maintain security and ensure that laws are enforced? What level of privacy should Americans expect in an age where technology facilitating the acquisition of personal information expands at a phenomenal pace?   Continue reading “Legal Aspects Of Using Drones For Domestic Surveillance Explored In Congressional Report”

HS Today – by Anthony Kimery

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is testing a wide variety of Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (SUAS) sensor platforms, including one that can determine whether individuals are armed or unarmed, for use by first responders and frontline homeland security professionals.

The testing is taking place at the Oklahoma Training Center for Unmanned Systems (OTC-UC), a unit of University Multispectral Laboratories (UML), a not-for-profit scientific institution operated for Oklahoma State University (OSU) by Anchor Dynamics, Inc. UML is a “Trusted Agent” for the federal government, technology developers and operators.   Continue reading “DHS Small Drone Test Plan Calls For Evaluating Sensors For ‘First Responder, HS Operational Communities’”

Express – by Emily Fox

The two leaders, who were meeting in Hanover in Germany to further foreign trade between their two countries were given an eye-opener as they were confronted with topless female demonstrators.

The protestors, who had written messages on their backs like ‘partners in crime’ and ‘f*** dictator’ entered the Hanover Fair and stormed the booth of Volkswagen to demonstrate against the Russian president and his German counterpart.   Continue reading “Eye-popping: Putin and Merkel confronted with topless protestors”

Continue reading “The U.S. Government Believes that the Founding Father Were Terrorists”

SF Gate – by Paul Foy

MANTI, Utah (AP) — Authorities captured an elusive survivalist on Tuesday who is suspected of burglarizing Utah cabins and leaving some covered with threats and bullet holes — ending a saga that began six years ago and grabbed the attention of police and residents around the state.

Troy James Knapp, 45, dubbed the “Mountain Man” by cabin owners, was taken into custody in the snowy mountains outside of Ferron in central Utah after firing several shots at officers and a helicopter, authorities said.   Continue reading “Authorities: Nobody hurt in arrest of survivalist”

The Guardian – by Ed Pilkington in New York

The National Rifle Association has unveiled its recommendations for placing at least one armed guard inside every school campus in the country in proposals that were immediately denounced by gun control advocates as radical and dangerous.

America’s most activist gun rights lobby group presented in Washington what it claimed was an “independent” review of school safety standards headed by a former Republican congressman from Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson. The core recommendation of the 225-page report is that school personnel carrying firearms should be placed not only within every school but within every campus in every school.   Continue reading “NRA reveals ‘school shield’ plan: armed guards on every campus ‘will save lives’”

Common Dreams – by Glenn Greenwald

The use of drones by domestic US law enforcement agencies is growing rapidly, both in terms of numbers and types of usage. As a result, civil liberties and privacy groups led by the ACLU – while accepting that domestic drones are inevitable – have been devoting increasing efforts to publicizing their unique dangers and agitating for statutory limits. These efforts are being impeded by those who mock the idea that domestic drones pose unique dangers (often the same people who mock concern over their usage on foreign soil). This dismissive posture is grounded not only in soft authoritarianism (a religious-type faith in the Goodness of US political leaders and state power generally) but also ignorance over current drone capabilities, the ways drones are now being developed and marketed for domestic use, and the activities of the increasingly powerful domestic drone lobby. So it’s quite worthwhile to lay out the key under-discussed facts shaping this issue.   Continue reading “Domestic Drones and Their Unique Dangers”

Common Dreams – by Abby Zimet

After inexplicably failing to bring any prosecutions of Wall Street executives who crashed the economy in his alleged job heading the criminal division at the Justice Department, Lanny Breuer is returning to his old firm Covington & Burling, where he will defend the same large corporations he worked so hard to protect at the DOJ. He will reportedly make $4 million in his first year in a vice-chairmanship created especially for him at the huge corporate firm, which, now that he’s effortlessly glided through the ever-lucrative public-to- private-sector revolving door, he hopes to help “move forward in dynamic and important ways.”   Continue reading “Cashing In At $4 Million: Lanny Breuer Goes Home After A Job Badly Done”

Common Dreams – by Norman Solomon

If your daily routine took you from one homegrown organic garden to another, bypassing vast fields choked with pesticides, you might feel pretty good about the current state of agriculture.

If your daily routine takes you from one noncommercial progressive website to another, you might feel pretty good about the current state of the Internet.

But while mass media have supplied endless raptures about a digital revolution, corporate power has seized the Internet — and the anti-democratic grip is tightening every day.   Continue reading “Digital Grab: Corporate Power Has Seized the Internet”

Black Agenda Report – by Glen Ford

“Either we liquidate the banksters, or Wall Street will liquidate us.”

From Nicosia, Cyprus, to Detroit, Michigan, the global financial octopus is squeezing the life out of society, stripping away public and individual assets in a vain attempt to fend off its own, inevitable collapse. The bankers “troika” that effectively rules Europe prepares to reach into the individual accounts of ordinary depositors on the island nation of Cyprus to fund the bailout of their local banking brethren. Across the Atlantic, a corporate henchman makes arrangements to seize the assets and abolish the political rights of a Black metropolis. The local colorations may vary, but the crisis is the same: massed capital is devouring its social and natural environment. Either we liquidate the banksters, or Wall Street will liquidate us.   Continue reading “From Detroit to Cyprus, Banksters in Search of Prey”