American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.
There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.
Secret panel can put Americans on "kill list"
Body suit may soon enable the paralyzed to walk
In a busy lab at Duke University, Dr. Miguel Nicolelis is merging brain science with engineering in a bid to create something fantastical: a full-body prosthetic device that would allow those immobilized by injury to walk again.
On Wednesday, Nicolelis and an international group of collaborators declared that they had cleared a key hurdle on the path toward that goal, demonstrating they could bypass the body's complex network of nerve endings and supply the sensation of touch directly to the brains of monkeys.
The New York Times: Distorting and Suppressing Truth for Power
Imagine winning 106 Pulizer Prizes awarded for excellence in journalism, more than any other broadsheet, for delivering managed, not real news, information and opinion.
Imagine doing it since 1851. Imagine being called the "newspaper of record," producing "All the News That's Fit to Print."
Imagine an establishment publication representing wealth and power, backing corporate interests, cheerleading imperial wars, ducking uncomfortable issues too sensitive to report, and functioning as an unofficial ministry of information and propaganda.
The Fleeting Comfort of Familiar Lies
Familiar lies. We all live with them. These are the lies that we were brought up with. The ones that we rely on to be true in our corner of the universe. The ones that comfort us with their familiarity and social acceptance. That is, until that moment when we learn that just one of those “truths” was indeed, a lie.
Then we begin to question… everything. And that is not comforting in the least. In fact, it is the loneliest place in the world, because every comfort is fleeting – remaining only until the light of truth shines on it. Until the mere knowledge of the truth becomes the only real comfort. Until the love of truth outweighs any dalliance from reality and fleeting comfort generated from the bed of lies that encircle us and attempt to ensnare. These are the lies generated by the media machine that intend to mold us into perfect little consumer and social batteries fueling the ever-increasing beast that is our current government system.
You know the ones…
NYPD spied on city's Muslim partners
The New York Police Department's intelligence squad secretly assigned an undercover officer to monitor a prominent Muslim leader even as he decried terrorism, cooperated with the police, dined with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and was the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning series by The New York Times about Muslims in America.
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Sheikh Reda Shata was among those singled out for surveillance because of his "threat potential" and what the NYPD considered links to organizations associated with terrorism, despite having never been charged with any crime, according to secret police documents obtained by The Associated Press.
TV News Outlets Ignore Keystone XL Email Release
The environmental group Friends of the Earth released e-mails this week revealing a cozy and collaborative relationship between TransCanada Corporation lobbyist Paul Elliott and an employee at the U.S. State Department, the agency currently weighing approval of TransCanada's permit application for the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
A New York Times report notes that the emails show the State Department official providing "subtle coaching and cheerleading" for TransCanada:
Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan not worth the cost, many US veterans say
Like much of the rest of the country, a substantial number of American veterans of war in Iraq and Afghanistan don’t think the 10-year effort has been worth the cost.
While those who entered military service after 9/11 generally have a more positive attitude toward the US role in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pew Research Center reported Wednesday, “only one-third (34%) of these recent veterans say that both wars have been worth fighting.” The report also says, “Nearly as many (33%) say neither conflict has been worth the costs.”
How foreign doctors save lives in rural America
Many rural areas in the US suffer from a shortage of doctors. Unable to attract Americans, they have turned to foreign-born physicians.
The city of Logan in West Virginia has just 1,779 citizens. The nearest large city, Charleston, is an hour away, via winding roads through the Appalachian mountains. Logan is surrounded by rural land, and is in an area which has lost half its population since the 1950s.
First person arrested under new Alabama law was in US legally
A man from Yemen was the first person arrested for being an undocumented immigrant in Alabama. The police raided a house and encountered the man, Mohamed Ali Muflahi, According to the police, he identified himself as being in the country illegally.
Immediately, the authors of Alabama’s anti-immigrant law issued a press statement hailing the arrest and implying that Muflahi was an illegal alien somehow connected with terrorism. Except that it turns out he was not in the country illegally.
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