Monday, 29 November 2010
How 250,000 US embassy cables were leaked
An innocuous-looking memory stick, no longer than a couple of fingernails, came into the hands of a Guardian reporter earlier this year. The device is so small it will hang easily on a keyring. But its contents will send shockwaves through the world's chancelleries and deliver what one official described as "an epic blow" to US diplomacy.
Right-Wing Think Tank Praised Ireland's 'Economic Freedom' ... and Then Its Economy Crashed
It hasn't even been a year since the Heritage Foundation placed Ireland among the top ten countries on its Economic Freedom Index. I wasn't intending to write about Ireland at the time, but any time the Heritage Foundation holds up any country as an economic example attention must be paid. It's an invaluable opportunity to learn what not to do, in terms of economic policy.
Even way back then, in April of this year, Ireland's economic crisis was serious enough to make it a real head-scratcher that anyone would place it on top ten list, and hold it as an example of economic success, as the Heritage Foundation's Index is intended to do. Ireland is indeed an example. It's nearly a textbook example of the epic failure of conservative economics to grow an economy and austerity to spark a recovery.
At the time, Heritage glossed over Ireland's economic trouble with a short paragraph.
Despite the crisis, Ireland’s overall levels of economic freedom remain high, sustained by such institutional strengths as strong protection of property rights, a low level of corruption, efficient business regulations, and competitive tax rates. These strengths provide solid foundations on which to build recovery and curb long-term unemployment.
That short paragraph is actually loaded with irony. The very "institutional strengths" that Heritage highlights effectively neutered the "Celtic Tiger" that the Irish economy was suppose to be. Just a year before it was written, Ireland became the first Eurozone country to fall into a recession. A month after Heritage published its index, Ireland's recession evolved into a depression . As in the U.S., Ireland's economic boom was driven by a housing bubble that took the economy down with it when it burst, with shrinking economic output and spiraling unemployment following in its wake. The bursting of that bubble was made even more devastating by the effect of conservative policies on the Irish economy.
On top of the housing bubble, Ireland's economy largely relied on exports, 90% of which were made by foreign-owned multinationals, attracted by the corporate tax rate that was among the lowest in Europe. The tax rate was sweetened by more lucrative concessions designed to attract multinationals. Indeed, when tax-cutting advocate Charlie McCreevy became Labour Finance Minister in 1997, he soon implemented what some deemed were unnecessary property-tax incentives, along with a 20% cut in capital gains tax for property investment. Banking on permanent prosperity, essentially, led to tax cuts that have deprived the country of much-needed reserves, and left it stuck choosing between severe budget cuts in service of the national debt, or investing in programs to keep people working and stimulate the economy...
Sunday, 28 November 2010
Police radar guns could help identify suicide bombers
The radar guns police use to spot speeding motorists have inspired a version that aims to identify a would-be suicide bomber in a crowd.
A radar gun fires microwave pulses at a car and measures the Doppler shift of the reflected signal to calculate its velocity. However, the strength and polarisation of the reflected signal – the "radar cross section" – can provide additional information about the size and shape of the reflecting object and the material it is made from.
William Fox of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and John Vesecky of the University of California, Santa Cruz, wondered whether the wiring in a suicide vest would alter the radar cross section of a bomber enough to allow a radar gun to pick him or her out in a crowd.
To find out, the pair used software to simulate how radar signals at 1 gigahertz and 10 gigahertz would be reflected by the most common arrangements of looped wiring typically used by suicide bombers. They found that the clearest reflected signals were in the 10 gigahertz range...
Continue reading
Paul Marks @'New Scientist'
Remember...
The Real Threat to America
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
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