Settlers from Mitzpe Yair attack Palestinian shepherds grazing on Palestinian owned land during Purim
Operation Dove | March 16, 2014
At-Tuwani, Occupied Palestine – On Sunday March 16, during the Jewish holiday of Purim, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians and Internationals on Palestinian fields near Mitzpe Yair illegal outpost.
In the morning, four Palestinian shepherds from the village of Qawawis were grazing their flocks south of the Israeli outpost of Mitzpe Yair, when a settler arrived armed with an iron pipe to threaten them shouting. At 9:18 am two Internationals arrived together with two further Palestinian shepherds. The armed Israeli settler then left when he saw that they were filming the scene.
At 9:28 am eight settlers arrived from the illegal outpost – one was still armed with the iron pipe – and four of them violently chased away the flocks, pushing them toward the valley underlying the outpost. Palestinian shepherds followed the settlers in order not to lose their flocks accompanied by Internationals. The Palestinians immediately called the Israeli police.
At 9:48 am the settlers came back to the outpost. In the meantime, an additional International and two Palestinian members of the South Hebron Hills Popular Committee arrived at the scene. At 10:00 am one of the settlers tried to chase away one of the newly-arrived Palestinians, a member of the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. As this happened, an Israeli policeman and three Israeli soldiers arrived by foot. At 10:20 am, as the policeman began interrogating the attendants, a further three settlers arrived. Those interrogated were the Palestinian shepherd Nail Abuaram (who filmed everything with a B’Tselem camera) and one International.
At 10:45 am, the policeman lead Abuaram and one of the Internationals to Kiryat Arba police station to give testimony of the harassments. They arrived at the station at noon.
The International was asked for the camera footage of the incident, interrogated and finally released at around 2:50 pm. Abuaram was interrogated alone for a couple of hours and was threaten of arrest until he accepted to sign a paper stating that he will not get closer than 450 meters to the area where the harassment took place for a period of 15 days. He was later released around 6:00 pm after signing the paper. The Israeli police forced the settler who attacked the Palestinians with an iron pipe to stay 200 meters far from the spot where the harassment took place for a period of 15 days.
Palestinian communities of the South Hebron Hills area are strongly involved in using nonviolence as a way to resist the Israeli occupation.
Operation Dove has maintained an international presence in At-Tuwani and the South Hebron Hills since 2004.
[Note: According to the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Hague Regulations, the International Court of Justice, and several United Nations resolutions, all Israeli settlements and outposts in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal. Most settlement outposts, including Havat Ma’on (Hill 833), are considered illegal also under Israeli law.]
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Despite Obama Statements, Justice Dept. Ranked Mortgage Fraud as Low Priority
By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | March 17, 2014
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has treated mortgage fraud cases as a low priority, even though President Barack Obama promised to crack down on such crimes in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
DOJ also greatly exaggerated its success in prosecuting mortgage fraud, according to an investigation by the department’s Office of the Inspector General (IG).
Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. declared four years ago that mortgage fraud crimes had “reached crisis proportions,” and promised his agency would be “fighting back” in response.
But the IG’s report (pdf) shows the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) put mortgage fraud at the bottom of its criminal priority list—after receiving extra funding ($196 million from the 2009 to 2011) to address this problem. In some major cities, mortgage fraud wasn’t even on the FBI’s radar as any kind of a priority.
“Despite receiving significant additional funding from Congress to pursue mortgage fraud cases, the FBI in adding new staff did not always use these new positions to exclusively investigate mortgage fraud,” the report states.
A “significant backlog of unaddressed and pending mortgage fraud investigations” was disclosed by supervisors interviewed by IG investigators. In fact, important fraud cases were completely shut down by the FBI, not due to a lack of resources, but because the Bureau’s resources were diverted to other operations that were given higher priority, according to the report.
Just as disturbing was the fact that Justice inflated its numbers to make it appear prosecutors were doing more than they actually were.
In 2012, Holder announced his lawyers had charged 530 people during the previous year with mortgage fraud that had cost homeowners more than $1 billion.
In truth, the numbers were more like 107 people charged in cases totaling only $95 million, the IG found. Even after the figures were proven to be incorrect, the DOJ continued to cite the false statistics for nearly a year.
“The inspector general’s report sheds light on what looks like an attempt by the Justice Department to pull the wool over the public’s eyes with respect to its efforts to go after the wrongdoers involved in mortgage fraud,” Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. “According to the inspector general, the department wasted time cooking the numbers about the cases it pursued, when it should have been prosecuting cases.”
The IG offered numerous recommendations to the department, most of which involved fixes to DOJ’s recordkeeping system that had produced such inaccurate figures.
The Justice Department objected to the IG’s conclusions, citing prosecutors doubling the number of mortgage fraud indictments from 2009 to 2011.
“The facts regarding the department’s work on mortgage fraud tell a much different story than this report,” Ellen Canale, a department spokeswoman, told The New York Times. “As the report itself notes, even at a time of constrained budget resources, the department has dedicated significant manpower and funding to combating mortgage fraud.”
Mortgage fraud—through falsification of documents by lenders and brokers—was one of the catalysts of the 2008 financial collapse. Fraud involving mortgage-backed securities, said to be larger in scope and also a contributing factor to the collapse, is considered by the FBI to be securities fraud and was not addressed by the IG report.
To Learn More:
U.S. Criticized for Lack of Action on Mortgage Fraud (by Matt Apuzzo, New York Times)
Mortgage Fraud Efforts Fell Short, Justice Department Inspector General Concludes (by Jeffrey Benzing, Main Justice)
Audit of the Department of Justice’s Efforts to Address Mortgage Fraud (U.S. Department of Justice, Inspector General) (pdf)
Justice Dept. Sues Bank of America over Prime Mortgage Fraud (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
Big Banks Slither out of Mortgage Fraud Review with Minor Costs (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

New Ambassador Modernizes Canada’s Hidden Agenda in Venezuela
By Gerard Di Trolio | Venezuelanalysis | March 17, 2014
Amidst headlines dominated by the situation in Ukraine, this bit of news slipped by almost unnoticed at the end of February; Ben Rowswell replaced Paul Gibbard as Canadian ambassador to Venezuela, as mandated by Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird. But a quick look into the appointee’s background brings special significance to his promotion, especially as opposition protests escalate in Venezuela.
Described in 2010 as a “rising foreign service star” by the Toronto Star, Rowswell has served as Canada’s official diplomatic representative in a number of conspicuous places across the Middle East. From Kandahar, Afghanistan to Kabul and Iraq immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Rowswell has become an expert at representing Canada’s interests in the heat of conflict.
At the age of 22 he was baptized into the foreign service by fire, working in Mogadishu during the Somali Civil War of the early 1990s. He went on to work for the Canadian Embassy in Cairo from 1995-98.
A diplomat for the digital age, he held the title of “Director of Innovation” at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development.
While overseeing the “democratic transitions” of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Egypt, the fledgling attaché specialized in the harnessing of social media for diplomatic missions, in order to interact directly with non-state actors, in effect bypassing the target nation’s government.
In 2011, Rowswell gave a fascinating TEDx talk at Hayward University in California that outlined his views about the power of social media to shape democracy. He focused on post-Murbarak Egypt, before Mohammed Morsi’s election.
He detailed how notions of race, ethnicity and class may be pushed aside when organizing through social media platforms. He theorized that the internet allows for “opensource democracy,” allowing individuals to exchange their ideas as equals.
But let’s look at that idea in the context of Venezuela, where the middle and upper classes are more likely to have regular access to the internet. Twitter and Facebook have been the choice tools of the opposition in recent months, both to organize protests and to call upon international support.
The Bolivarian Revolution itself was born 15 years ago upon massive social movements and since has experimented with many revolutionary forms of democratic participation. But theirs is a different concept of democracy than what Rowswell and other Western powers have in mind.
After the 2002 coup attempt and the mass mobilizations that restored Chavez to power, the cause of socialism was taken up with greater enthusiasm. Since its commence the Bolivarian government has created institutions that, while not directly expropriating capital, have challenged its long term prospects.
Nowadays workers’ cooperatives and collective property exist alongside corporate conglomerates and private investments. There exists a form of dual power in Venezuela, and within that balance, a gulf of classes widened by the shift in authority.
The Canadian government has made it clear that its interests lie outside the decades of organization led by the Venezuelan masses.
A motion that received unanimous consent from all parties in the House of Commons and sponsored by NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar effectively condemned the Venezuelan government’s attempts at dealing with recent protests.
The statement was approved by Conservatives and Liberals alike, including MP Jim Karygiannis who has been extremely critical of the Venezuelan government.
Rowswell also argued that social media can create transparency yet Venezuela’s opposition has provided ample evidence to the contrary. Many photos from Turkey, Ukraine, Brazil, and even Syria have flown around social networks, meant to stir up indignation at the treatment of protestors in Venezuela. During the telecast of the Oscars, the opposition took to Twitter to claim the ceremony had been censored. The truth was that the Oscars was aired on TNT in Venezuela, a satellite channel.
Canada, too, knows how to wage internet campaigns and will not be left behind. Within hours of Rowswell’s appointment, a new Embassy account popped up on Twitter. (https://twitter.com/CanEmbVenezuela) Adam Goldenberg, liberal partisan and former speechwriter for Michael Ignatieff, tweeted in response: “Congratulations, Ben! Excellent choice, Minister, for all sorts of reasons.” As always, Canada’s imperial foreign policy is a bipartisan affair.
There’s no smoking gun, however. This appointment isn’t proof positive that the Canadian government and the Venezuelan opposition are conspiring an attack against president Nicolas Maduro.
While violent coups carried out by a minority are far from being a thing of the past, Canadian policy planners understand that the transformation of the opposition into a mass movement would be a much more efficient way to protect their interests, with less international backlash.
Rowswell is the best man to encourage such a “democratic” counterrevolution, given his pedigree. He certainly knows how to interact with the angry middle classes on Twitter.
As protests continue, it would be wise to keep a close watch on the Canadian Embassy in Caracas.
(http://www.international.gc.ca/media/aff/news-communiques/2014/02/28b.as…)
2. (http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2010/07/28/canadas_top_civilian_offic…)
3. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-zWJaXhHpI)
4. (http://www2.macleans.ca/2014/02/28/the-house-is-unanimously-concerned-ab…)
5. (http://www.karygiannis.net/venezuela)
6. (http://drdawgsblawg.ca/2014/02/constructing-venezuela-protests-a-photo-g…)
7. (http://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/many-venezuelans-miss-oscar-winner-l…)
8. (https://twitter.com/adamgoldenberg/status/439530569333211136)

Media Theories on Missing Flight MH370 Fail Analysis
Though One Plausible Scenario, Consistent with Known Facts, Might Explain Mystery
By Doug E. Steil | Aletho News | March 17, 2014
Even though, the recent disappearance of Malaysian Flight MH370 continues to be a mystery, numerous scenarios that have been circulating in the past week can essentially be discounted, in particular technical failure.
The on-board hijacker scenario that media came up with over the weekend is highly implausible for at least five reasons because a putative hijacker would have to have (a) swiftly incapacitated the pilots without forewarning, so as to prevent the triggering of a hijack alert, (b) at exactly the correct and narrow time window, of approximately two minutes, after the co-pilot’s last voice sign-off but before entering Vietnamese air space, (c) known precisely how to fly and (d) disable the communications systems, and (e) surviving heights above the aircraft’s suggested operating limit as well as rapid descents of 40,000 feet per minute, equivalent a vertical speed of 444 knots per hour.
It has already been shown and asserted years ago, in the context of the government “Home Run” program, that an airplane can be commandeered from afar, intended back then to “counteract hijacking” situations. Last year at a hacker conference in Amsterdam, it was demonstrated, as a proof of concept, that an outside intruder could also manipulate the cockpit data visible to the pilot and take control of multiple functions and insert a flight path, essentially flying the simulated aircraft by remote control. This is something that has recently been acknowledged, as a possibility, but the media prefer not to dwell on this aspect, for obvious reasons. By contrast, staging a tacit vilification campaign by simply blaming one of the experienced pilots for the aircraft’s elusive behavior, due to some previously unexpected suicidal bent or spur of the moment inclination (which entails committing mass murder), though highly unlikely, is easier to suggest because it cannot be technically dis-proven and diverts attention away from a more plausible scenario, namely that of a “false flag” operation that was aborted.
Repeatedly we have been bombarded by the high-pitched and vociferous demands by Israeli politicians pertaining to the ongoing high-level negotiations with Iran regarding its nuclear program, directed at European and US political leaders, to take on an uncompromising stance and keep up the pressure. The main points the Zionist propagandists make on this topic are:
* Iran must not be allowed to enrich uranium and has to dismantle its reactors;
* Uranium enriched to 20% is just a few steps away from making a nuclear bomb;
* Iran has an aggressive weapons program, and its missiles threaten Israel;
* Iran is a major sponsor of international terrorism in Gaza, Syria, and elsewhere;
* Iran is a threat to the Arab world in the Gulf, as well as other Muslim countries;
* The new leader’s “charm offensive” is dishonest and deceptive; don’t be fooled!
However, these ongoing messages have tended to fall on deaf ears. Israeli prime minister Netanyahu is widely seen as both semi-comical and fanatical, the proverbial boy who cried “wolf” too often and discredited himself. What better method, then, to reinforce these anti-Iranian propaganda points more compellingly and convince the leaders of the western world to fall in line with the Israeli agenda, than to stage another spectacular “false flag” event, amplified in its effects by a scripted media follow-up campaign?
In light of the evidence surrounding the Malaysian Flight MH370, it now appears that exactly such an event almost occurred a week ago, but was apparently aborted at the last moment. Using the now ingrained imagery of jets flying into the World Trade towers more than a dozen years ago as an example, an attack on the Petronas twin towers in Kuala Lumpur would provide the requisite symbolic significance. Occurring in the middle of the night, when most people wouldn’t be able to witness it live, such an attack wouldn’t have required a dual attack, featuring two aircraft, or even for at least one the towers to ultimately collapse through timed explosions of thermite, in order to have been effective in achieving the primary goal. It would have been sufficient for the Malaysian airliner to have been guided to hit the spire near the top of one of the towers and temporarily create a huge fireball of kerosene, lighting up the sky and captured on a few closed circuit cameras, and played back endlessly afterwards.
The key ingredient this time would have been some uranium-235 (enriched to 20%) on board, ideally stolen from assassinated nuclear scientists working in the Iranian nuclear research program (so as to be authentic), then placed in the luggage of two young Iranians (surely also “shy with women”) traveling together on one-way tickets along a circuitous route to Europe, using stolen passports to board the flight. In the aftermath of the attack the media would quickly have elevated them to the status of probable hijackers, who had somehow managed to commandeer the plane. By virtue of their having used stolen passports, it would be evident that they had made contact to the underworld of international criminals and terrorists, who must have somehow prepared them to carry out a mission to deliver a “dirty bomb”.
Even with the Petronas Towers remaining intact after an aircraft attack, the radioactivity from the enriched uranium would have been highly disruptive to the economy of Malaysia. The world would have seen how damaging and crippling a few kilograms of enriched uranium could be if it came into the “wrong hands”, and therefore Iran, which the media will have convinced the public was undoubtedly responsible — and was purportedly also responsible for the bombing of PanAm 103 — must not be allowed to maintain a nuclear program. If two experienced and outgoing pilots in good standing can be vilified and denigrated in just a few days, just image how easily these two Iranian kids and their alleged handlers behind the scenes would have been transformed into mass murderers. The supporting narrative would have been far different from what was announced this week.
The point where the masterminds of this “false flag” operation had to decide whether to proceed with, or abort, the attack was as the remote controlled Flight MH370 approached the island of Penang in the Strait of Malacca. For whatever reason the operators decided to call off the operation. Perhaps not all the technical aspects of such an endeavor were confirmed to be in place for the complex operation to withstand scrutiny.
Aborting a planned mission like this, assuming the radioactive material on board, necessitated getting rid of the aircraft, during the middle of a weekend night with no moon, in a very remote location, deep underneath the southern Indian Ocean, where it may not be found for years and subsequent recovery would ultimately be extremely difficult. Once the westbound jet had safely circumvented Indonesian air space near the northwestern tip of Sumatra it could fly south and needed only evade airport ground radar at the atolls of Diego Garcia and the Cocos Islands by flying at a lower altitude above the length of the underwater East Indian Ridge, in some areas of which the depth exceeds 6,000 meters, where the nearest inhabited island is Île Amsterdam.
Since this particular “false flag” operation was apparently abandoned, will the perpetrators be brazen enough to attempt a different one in the near future?
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Obama Declares Self-Determination to Be a Threat to US National Security
By Paul Craig Roberts | Dissident Voice | March 16, 2014
In his March 6 Executive Order, “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Ukraine,” Obama declares that support for Crimean self-determination constitutes “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.”
Obama and the lawyers who drafted his executive order did not notice that the way the order is drafted it applies to Obama, to the unelected coup government in Kiev, and to the Washington and EU regimes. The order says that any person “responsible for or complicit in, or to have engaged in, directly or indirectly … actions or policies that undermine democratic processes or institutions in Ukraine” is subject to having his assets frozen.
Washington and the EU are the only two governments whose personnel have undermined democratic processes and institutions in Ukraine by overthrowing the elected government and imposing an unelected one.
Obama worshippers–yes there are still people that stupid–object when I call Obama the White House Fool. Yet, here is Obama or his lawyers proving that he is a fool by issuing an executive order that requires the property of Obama, Victoria Nuland, Samantha Powers, Susan Rice, the UK prime minister, the German chancellor, the French president, the EU Commission and any number of associated persons to be frozen by the US government.
Of course, Obama’s executive order will not be applied to those to whom it is applicable. It will be applied to those to whom it is not applicable–authorities who permitted the Crimean population to exercise democratic processes in order to determine their own fate.
Washington has stood democracy on its head. Overthrowing Ukraine’s democratic government and installing a puppet regime does not undermine democratic processes or institutions in Ukraine, but anything that allows self-determination to go forward in Crimea does undermine democratic processes.
Clearly, the West can no longer be associated with democracy.

EU, US impose sanctions against Russian officials over Crimea referendum
RT | March 17, 2014
US President Barack Obama has ordered that sanctions be applied against 11 Russian and Ukrainian officials, the White House said. Earlier, the EU imposed sanctions against 21 officials after Crimea declared its independence.
The US has imposed sanctions against Russian and Ukrainian officials on Monday, with the White House stating that “the actions and policies” of the Russian government with respect to Ukraine “undermine democratic processes and institutions in Ukraine; threaten its peace, security, stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity; and contribute to the misappropriation of its assets.”
Obama’s executive order applies to seven top Russian officials, including presidential aide Vladislav Surkov, presidential adviser Sergey Glazyev, State Duma deputy Leonid Slutsky, member of the upper chamber of the Russian parliament (the Federation Council) Andrey Klishas, head of the upper chamber of the Russian parliament Valentina Matvienko, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and State Duma deputy Yelena Mizulina.
In addition, the US Treasury has imposed sanctions on four Ukrainian individuals “for their actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine and in undermining the Government of Ukraine” including the ousted President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovich, Crimean top officials Sergey Aksyonov and Vladimir Konstantinov, and former Ukrainian presidential chief of staff Viktor Medvedchuk.

China backs Russia on UNSC Ukraine vote
BRICS Post | March 16, 2014
After abstaining on the US-backed UN resolution vote that sought to brand the Crimea referendum as invalid, China on Sunday said it would not back a ‘confrontational route’ on the crisis.
Beijing said the Western-backed resolution does not conform to common interests of the people of Ukraine and that of the rest of the world.
“The vote on the draft resolution by the Security Council at this juncture will only result in confrontation and further complicate the situation, which is not in conformity with the common interests of both the people of Ukraine and those of the international community,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang in Beijing on Sunday.
Russia, a permanent member of the UNSC, has vetoed the UNSC resolution that declared that a planned referendum slated for Sunday on the status of Ukraine’s Crimea region “can have no validity” and urged nations and international organizations not to recognize it.
“China does not agree to a move of confrontation,” the Chinese Ministry spokesperson said on Sunday while asking all parties to “refrain from taking any action that may further escalate the situation”.
Authorities in Kiev and international leaders have condemned the referendum as illegitimate and threatened Moscow with sanctions over its apparent plan to annex the region.
Crimea is one of several Ukrainian regions that have rejected as illegitimate the government in Kiev that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych on February 22 after months of street protests following his step back from closer ties with the European Union.

Forests Around Chernobyl Aren’t Decaying Properly
It wasn’t just people, animals and trees that were affected by radiation exposure at Chernobyl, but also the decomposers: insects, microbes, and fungi
By Rachel Nuwer | Smithsonian Magazine | March 14, 2014
Nearly 30 years have passed since the Chernobyl plant exploded and caused an unprecedented nuclear disaster. The effects of that catastrophe, however, are still felt today. Although no people live in the extensive exclusion zones around the epicenter, animals and plants still show signs of radiation poisoning.
Birds around Chernobyl have significantly smaller brains that those living in non-radiation poisoned areas; trees there grow slower; and fewer spiders and insects—including bees, butterflies and grasshoppers—live there. Additionally, game animals such as wild boar caught outside of the exclusion zone—including some bagged as far away as Germany—continue to show abnormal and dangerous levels of radiation.
However, there are even more fundamental issues going on in the environment. According to a new study published in Oecologia, decomposers—organisms such as microbes, fungi and some types of insects that drive the process of decay—have also suffered from the contamination. These creatures are responsible for an essential component of any ecosystem: recycling organic matter back into the soil. Issues with such a basic-level process, the authors of the study think, could have compounding effects for the entire ecosystem.
The team decided to investigate this question in part because of a peculiar field observation. “We have conducted research in Chernobyl since 1991 and have noticed a significant accumulation of litter over time,” the write. Moreover, trees in the infamous Red Forest—an area where all of the pine trees turned a reddish color and then died shortly after the accident—did not seem to be decaying, even 15 to 20 years after the meltdown.
“Apart from a few ants, the dead tree trunks were largely unscathed when we first encountered them,” says Timothy Mousseau, a biologist at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, and lead author of the study. “It was striking, given that in the forests where I live, a fallen tree is mostly sawdust after a decade of lying on the ground.”
Wondering whether that seeming increase in dead leaves on the forest floor and those petrified-looking pine trees were indicative of something larger, Mousseau and his colleagues decided to run some field tests. When they measured leaf litter in different parts of the exclusion zones, they found that the litter layer itself was two to three times thicker in the “hottest” areas of Chernobyl, where radiation poisoning was most intense. But this wasn’t enough to prove that radiation was responsible for this difference.
To confirm their hunch, they created around 600 small mesh bags and stuffed them each with leaves, collected at an uncontaminated site, from one of four different tree species: oak, maple, birch or pine. They took care to ensure that no insects were in the bags at first, and then lined half of them with women’s pantyhose to keep insects from getting in from the outside, unlike the wider mesh-only versions.
Like a decomposer Easter egg hunt, they then scattered the bags in numerous locations throughout the exclusion zone, all of which experienced varying degrees of radiation contamination (including no contamination at all). They left the bags and waited for nearly a year—normally, an ample amount of time for microbes, fungi and insects to make short work of dead organic material, and the pantyhose-lined bags could help them assess whether insects or microbes were mainly responsible for breaking down the leaves.
The results were telling. In the areas with no radiation, 70 to 90 percent of the leaves were gone after a year. But in places where more radiation was present, the leaves retained around 60 percent of their original weight. By comparing the mesh with the panty hose-lined bags, they found that insects play a significant role in getting rid of the leaves, but that the microbes and fungi played a much more important role. Because they had so many bags placed in so many different locations, they were able to statistically control for outside factors such as humidity, temperature and forest and soil type to make sure that there wasn’t anything besides radiation levels impacting the leaves’ decomposition.
“The gist of our results was that the radiation inhibited microbial decomposition of the leaf litter on the top layer of the soil,” Mousseau says. This means that nutrients aren’t being efficiently returned to the soil, he adds, which could be one of the causes behind the slower rates of tree growth surrounding Chernobyl.
Other studies have found that the Chernobyl area is at risk of fire, and 27 years’ worth of leaf litter, Mousseau and his colleagues think, would likely make a good fuel source for such a forest fire. This poses a more worrying problem than just environmental destruction: Fires can potentially redistribute radioactive contaminants to places outside of the exclusion zone, Mousseau says. “There is growing concern that there could be a catastrophic fire in the coming years,” he says.
Unfortunately, there’s no obvious solution for the problem at hand, besides the need to keep a stringent eye on the exclusion zone to try to quickly snuff out potential fires that breaks out. The researchers are also collaborating with teams in Japan, to determine whether or not Fukushima is suffering from a similar microbial dead zone.
Rachel Nuwer writes for Smart News and is a contributing writer in science for Smithsonian.com. She is a freelance science writer based in Brooklyn.
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Manhunt leads to massive roadblock, warrantless car-to-car searches
Police State USA | March 15, 2014
ROCKVILLE, MD — Thousands of motorists were brought to a standstill when police conducted a massive roadblock to find three crime suspects. Twelve lanes of traffic were shut down and swarms of armed government agents combed through a giant traffic jam performing warrantless vehicle-to-vehicle searches.
The busy Tuesday morning commute was abruptly halted just after 10:00 a.m. on March 11th. One driver told ABC News that traffic stopped and he witnessed 30 police cars pass on the shoulders of I-270 near Rockville. “Then, when I saw a wall of police officers with automatic weapons approaching our cars, it was apparent that something serious was taking place.”
Police had received intelligence that a local bank had been robbed that morning and the vehicle carrying the 3 suspects had turned onto the interstate highway. A throng of officers from the Rockville, Montgomery County, and Maryland State Police Departments blockaded all lanes of traffic in both directions and began conducting an intense manhunt.
There was “a lot of yelling, a lot of orders being given, helicopters, dogs barking, sirens, police cars driving by,” said eyewitness Carlton Higdon to WJLA.
Miles of cars were stranded and motorists were confined to their vehicles, with no explanation, for over an hour. Confused people exiting their vehicles were met with hostility from the police. WTOP reported that one woman leaned out her door to vomit, she was shouted at by cops to close her door.
“It’s just awful,” motorist Carmel Desroche to WJLA, describing the traffic jam. “I’ve never seen both directions of 270 like this before. It was painful.”
While stuck in traffic, motorists were approached by armed agents and ordered at gunpoint to submit to warrantless searches of the interior of their vehicles. The Washington Post interviewed an innocent driver named Don Troop who experienced the ordeal.
A group of officers made its way to his car and other cars around him. “They were just walking along saying: ‘Pop the trunk! Pop the trunk!’”
He overheard a man in a truck next to him call out to another motorist: The police are looking for bank robbers. A short time later, about nine officers approached his car — including state police in tan uniforms, county police in dark uniforms and at least one plainclothes officer wearing a yellow tie.
Among their commands to motorists that Troop heard:
“Stay in your car.”
“Pop the trunk.”
“Get your hands on the steering wheel. Get you hands up where we can see them.”
(Source: Scott Ferrebee)
As described, these searches were in no way consensual and were performed with the motorists under duress. Nothing ordered at gunpoint can ever be considered voluntary. Not surprisingly, we have not seen a report of anyone brave enough to refuse the hostile violation of the 4th amendment.
The police ultimately located and arrested the suspects and took them into custody. They did not resist, and they were not located in anyone’s trunk.
The search was described later by Montgomery County Police Captain Paul Starks as an operation of “systematically checking the trunks and rear hatches” of the detained vehicles.
The bank’s $7,000 was ultimately safe and sound, although the same could not be said of the rights of many innocent commuters. The authorities simply explained that their oath to uphold the Constitution does not apply during “exigent circumstances.” Rockville Police Chief Tom Manger remained unapologetic even after getting angry emails about the tactics.
“For those folks that wondered how is that the police can just walk through traffic like that and get folks to show their hands, get folks to pop their trunks, between the exigency of the circumstances and the information that we had, it gave us the legal foundation to do what we did,” the chief said, according to WTOP.
Apologists argue that the ends justify the means in law enforcement; that as long as the bad guys were caught one way or another, the operation was a success. This position easily suits the purposes of the police state. The erosion of liberty is simple when the people applaud as their rights are violated.
The reality is that crisis situations are exactly the times when individual liberties are most vulnerable and needing to be defended. These are also the most challenging and unpopular times to defend civil rights, as swathes of fearful people clamor for the government to keep them safe. The folly of letting the government pick and choose when it must may follow the constitution should be obvious, however. To keep our rights intact we must refuse to accept these mass suspensions of the constitution for an increasingly wide variety of excuses.




