blog-o-chu

2012-01-11T15:21:00.000-08:00

God-damned-the-Crap-Gene-Modif-A-microRNA !!!

New research shows that when we eat we're consuming more than just

vitamins and protein. Our bodies are absorbing information, or

microRNA. 01/09/12. (art: Greenpeace)

The Very Real Danger of Genetically Modified Foods

By Ari LeVaux, The Atlantic

10 January 12

hinese researchers have found small pieces of ribonucleic acid (RNA) in the blood and organs of humans who eat rice. The Nanjing University-based team showed that this genetic material will bind to proteins in human liver cells and influence the uptake of cholesterol from the blood.

The type of RNA in question is called microRNA, due to its small size. MicroRNAs have been studied extensively since their discovery ten years ago, and have been linked to human diseases including cancer, Alzheimer's, and diabetes. The Chinese research provides the first example of ingested plant microRNA surviving digestion and influencing human cell function.

Should the research survive scientific scrutiny, it could prove a game changer in many fields. It would mean that we're eating not just vitamins, protein, and fuel, but information as well

That knowledge could deepen our understanding of cross-species communication, co-evolution, and predator-prey relationships. It could illuminate new mechanisms for some metabolic disorders and perhaps explain how some herbal medicines function. And it reveals a pathway by which genetically modified (GM) foods might influence human health.

Monsanto's website states, "There is no need for, or value in testing the safety of GM foods in humans." This viewpoint, while good for business, is built on an understanding of genetics circa 1950. It follows what's called the "Central Dogma" (PDF) of genetics, which postulates a one-way chain of command between DNA and the cells DNA governs.

The Central Dogma resembles the process of ordering a pizza. The DNA knows what kind of pizza it wants, and orders it. The RNA is the order slip, which communicates the specifics of the pizza to the cook. The finished and delivered pizza is analogous to the protein that DNA codes for.

We've known for years that the Central Dogma, though basically correct, is overly simplistic. For example: Pieces of microRNA that don't code for anything, pizza or otherwise, can travel among cells and influence their activities in many other ways. So while the DNA is ordering pizza, it's also bombarding the pizzeria with unrelated RNA messages that can cancel a cheese delivery, pay the dishwasher nine million dollars, or email the secret sauce recipe to WikiLeaks.

Monsanto's claim that human toxicology tests are unwarranted is based on the doctrine of "substantial equivalence." This term is used around the world as the basis of regulations designed to facilitate the rapid commercialization of genetically engineered foods, by sparing them from extensive safety testing.

According to substantial equivalence, comparisons between GM and non-GM crops need only investigate the end products of DNA translation: the pizza, as it were. "There is no need to test the safety of DNA introduced into GM crops. DNA (and resulting RNA) is present in almost all foods," Monsanto's website reads. "DNA is non-toxic and the presence of DNA, in and of itself, presents no hazard."

The Chinese RNA study threatens to blast a major hole in that claim. It means that DNA can code for microRNA, which can, in fact, be hazardous.

"So long as the introduced protein is determined to be safe, food from GM crops determined to be substantially equivalent is not expected to pose any health risks," Monsanto's website goes on. In other words, as long as the pizza is OK, the introduced DNA doesn't pose a problem.

Chen-Yu Zhang, the lead researcher on the Chinese RNA study, has made no comment regarding the implications of his work for the debate over the safety of GM food. Nonetheless, his discoveries give shape to concerns about substantial equivalence that have been raised for years.

In 1999, a group of scientists wrote a now-landmark letter titled "Beyond Substantial Equivalence" to the prestigious journal Nature. In the letter, Erik Millstone et. al. called substantial equivalence "a pseudo-scientific concept" that is "inherently anti-scientific because it was created primarily to provide an excuse for not requiring biochemical or toxicological tests."

To these charges, Monsanto responded: "The concept of substantial equivalence was elaborated by international scientific and regulatory experts convened by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1991, well before any biotechnology products were ready for market.

This response is less a rebuttal than a testimonial to Monsanto's marketing prowess. Establishing the concept of substantial equivalence worldwide was a prerequisite to the global commercialization of GM crops. It created a legal framework for selling GM foods anywhere in the world that substantial equivalence was accepted. By the time substantial equivalence was adopted, Monsanto had already developed numerous GM crops and was actively grooming them for market.

The OECD's 34 member nations could be described as largely rich, white, developed, and sympathetic to big business. The group's current mission is to spread economic development to the rest of the world. And while that mission has yet to be accomplished, OECD has helped Monsanto spread substantial equivalence to the rest of the world, selling a lot of GM seed along the way.

The news that we're ingesting information as well as physical material should force the biotech industry to confront the possibility that new DNA can have dangerous implications far beyond the products it codes for. Can we count on the biotech industry to accept the notion that more testing is necessary? Not if such action is perceived as a threat to the bottom line.

Ari LeVaux writes Flash in the Pan, a syndicated weekly food column that has appeared in more than 50 newspapers in 21 states. Learn more at flashinthepan.net.

the eve of x'mas eve

2011-12-23T16:26:00.000-08:00

X'mas-Crap-Over-Grandma !!

Remy: Grandma Got Indefinitely Detained (A Very TSA Christmas)

Merry X'mas America - Hoe Hoe Hoe

chillier and chillier nights and days

2011-12-18T18:10:00.000-08:00

Crap-O-Shockin'-War-Crimes !!!

New Documents Released of 2007 Iraq Atrocity by Troops

Saturday 17 December 2011

by: David Swanson, War Is A Crime.org | Report

Every American should read this letter:

December 18, 2007
To:   Mr. Randy Waddle, Assistant Inspector General, Ft Carson, Colorado
CC: LTC John Shawkins, Inspector General, Ft Carson, Colorado
        Major General Mark Graham, Commanding Officer, Ft Carson, Colorado
        Major Haytham Faraj, USMC, Camp Pendleton, California
        Lt General Stanley Greene, US Army Inspector General
Subject: Formal Notification of War Atrocities and Crimes Committed by Personnel, B Company, 2-12, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division in Iraq
Dear Mr. Waddle,
My name is John Needham. I am a member of Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry division, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, (BCo,2-12INF,2BCT,2ID . I deployed with my unit to Iraq from October 2006 until October 2007 when I was medically evacuated for physical and mental injuries that I suffered during my deployment. The purpose of my letter is to report what I believe to be war crimes and violation of the laws of armed conflict that I personally witnesses while deployed in Iraq.
Upon arriving in Iraq in October of 2006 my unit was assigned to the ¼ Cavalry unit at Camp Prosperity. In March of 2007 I was sent back to my unit, B Company 2-12 at Camp Falcon. It was at Camp Falcon that I observed and was forced to participate in ugly and inhumane acts against the Iraqi citizens in our area of responsibilities. Below I list some of the incidents that took place.
In March of 2007, I witnessed SSG Platt shoot and wound an Iraqi national without cause of provocation. The Staff Sergeant said that he suspected the Iraqi be a “trigger” man. We had not been attacked and we found no evidence on the man to support the suspicion. As the Iraqi lay bleeding on the ground, PVT Smith requested to administer first aid to the Iraqi. SSgt Platt said no and “let him bleed out.” When SSG Platt walked away, Pvt Smith and PVT Mullins went to the Iraqi, dragged him to an alley, and applied first aid. They then drove him to the cache for further treatment.
In June of 2007 1SG Spry caused an Iraqi male to be stopped, questioned, detained, and killed. We had no evidence that the Iraqi was an insurgent or terrorist. In any event when we stopped he did not pose a threat. Although I did not personally witness the killing, I did observe 1sg Spry dismembering the body and parading of it while it was tied to the hood of a Humvee around the Muhalla neighborhood while the interpreter blared out warnings in Arabic over the loud speaker. I have a photo that shows 1SG Spry removing the victim’s brains.
On another occasion an Iraqi male was stopped by a team led by Sgt Rogers as he walked down an alleyway. The Iraqi was detained and questioned then with his hands tied behind his back, SGT Rogers skinned his face.
1ST Spry shot a young Iraqi teenager who was about 16 years old. The shooting was unprovoked and the Iraqi posed no threat to the unit. He was merely riding his bicycle past an ambush site. When I arrived on the scene I observed 1SGT Spry along with SSG Platt dismember the boy’s body.
In August of 2007, I responded to radio call from SGT Rogers reporting that he had just shot an Iraqi who was trying to enter through a hole that the platoon had blown in a wall to allow them observation of the area during a security patrol. When I arrived, I saw a one armed man who was still alive lying on a barricade. The man was about 30 years old. He had an old Ruger pistol hanging from his thumb. It was obvious to me that the pistol was placed there because of the way it hung from his thumb. The Iraqi was still alive when I arrived. I saw SGT Rogers shoot him twice in the back with hollow point bullets. The Iraqi was still moving. I was asking why they shot him again when I heard Sgt Hoskins say “he’s moving, he’s still alive.” SPEC Hoskins then moved to the Iraqi and shot him in the back of the head. SSG Platt and SGT Rogers were visibly excited about the kill. I saw them pull the Iraqi’s
brains out as they placed him in the body bag. CPT Kirsey must have learned something about this incident because he was very upset and admonished the NCOs involved.
I have seen and heard 1SGT Spry brag about killing dogs. He kept a running count. At last count I remember he was boasting of having killed 80 dogs.
On many occasions I observed SGT Temples, SSG Platt and SGT Rogers beat and abuse Iraqi teenagers, some as young as 14, without cause. They would walk into a house near areas where they suspected we had received sniper fire, then detain and beat the kids.
I have photos that support my allegations. I also have numerous other photos on a laptop PC that the unit illegally seized from me. I have requested its return but they have refused.
My experiences have taken a terrible toll on me. I suffer from PTSD and depression. I had no way to stop the ugly actions of my unit. When I refused to participate they began to abuse and harass me. I am still in treatment at the Balboa Naval hospital. I respectfully request that you investigate these matters, that you protect my safety by reassigning me to a different unit that is not located at Fort Carson, that you return my PC or, at least, seize it to protect the evidence on it, and that you issue a military protective order to prohibit the offending members of my unit from harassing, retaliating, or contacting me.
I have some photographs and some supporting documentation to these allegations.
Respectfully,
PFC John Needham
US Army

And every American should view these photographs (warning, extremely revolting).

And then watch this superb video to learn from John Needham's father what became of him:

On the Dark Side in Al Doura - A Soldier in the Shadows fromPulse TV & Maverick Media on Vimeo.

WARNING: Graphic and disturbing photos between 38:47 and 40:00.

VIDEO DESCRIPTION:

U.S. Army Ranger John Needham, who was awarded two purple hearts and three medals for heroism, wrote to military authorities in 2007 reporting war crimes that he witnessed being committed by his own command and fellow soldiers in Al Doura, Iraq. His charges were supported by atrocity photos which, in the public interest, are now released in this video. John paid a terrible price for his opposition to these acts. His story is tragic.

CBS reported obtaining an Army document from the Criminal Investigation Command suggestive of an investigation into these war crimes allegations. The Army's conclusion was that the "offense of War Crimes did not occur." However, CBS also stated that the report was “redacted and incomplete; 111 pages were withheld.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18559_162-57323277/war-damaged-vet-kills-girlfriend-ptsd-to-blame/?tag=currentVideoInfo;videoMetaInfo

Salon covered this story too:

http://www.salon.com/2009/02/12/coming_home_three/

Thanks to Cindy Piester for the excellent video and all of this information.

---------------

chilly and chillier days comin'

2011-12-18T17:41:00.000-08:00

Crap-A-baad-laaw !

Why a Constitutional Law Professor Should Not Sign an Unconstitutional Military Detention Bill

Thursday 15 December 2011

by: Ralph Lopez, War Is A Crime | News Analysis

President Barack Obama speaks at the White House Tribal Nations Conference at the U.S. Department of the Interior in Washington, Dec. 2, 2011. (Photo: Doug Mills / The New York Times)

There has never been a better time to take a close look at how we got here, with Obama, a former Constitutional law professor, about to sign a law which overnight turns the U.S. into a Third World country, where anyone can be swept off the streets by the military to rot forever, or even be killed.

Some people say wearily that the new powers for the indefinite military detention of Americans are not new at all. That this is nothing the government cannot, and has not, already done.

What this misses is that the new government powers seek to codify, "hard-wire" if you will, an area of law which is in flux, and far from settled in the courts. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) proclaimed in his momentous speech on the Senate floor that:

“1031, the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland.”

Graham goes on to say that the proposed law is simply based on the "law of the land" in the Fourth Circuit Court decision in the case of Jose Padilla, the first American arrested in the US and declared "enemy combatant" in the war on terror. Padilla was held for 3 1/2 years in isolation, tortured, and given, according to his lawyer, some kind of hallucinogenic drug such as LSD. His attorney Andrew Patel said that after a time, according to brig staff, “Mr. Padilla's temperament was so docile and inactive that his behavior was like that of a piece of furniture. ”

An examining psychiatrist before his eventual trial said that after the 3 1/2 years, Padilla exhibited "facial tics, unusual eye movements and contortions of his body.”

Mr. Graham, University of South Carolina School of Law, the man who at the moment occupies one of the US Senate seats for the Great State of South Carolina, got wrong what any eighth-grader would know from civics class were he no more than a "C" student. A higher authority than Graham, the Founding Fathers, declared in Article VI that not the Fourth Circuit, but the Constitution, was the "supreme law of the land":

"This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby..."

The Fourth Circuit decision to which Graham was referring, upholding the Bush administration's authority to hold Padilla indefinitely, without trial if it wished, was handed down by Judge Micheal Luttig. Luttig, University of Virginia School of Law, gave Bush the benefit of the doubt believing that the question would go before the US Supreme Court to be properly deliberated. Luttig in essence relied on the World War II precedent, Ex parte Quirin, in which a number of German-Americans were held as enemy combatants after being accused of spying for Germany during World War II.

Luttig must have known that, were the Padilla case to be properly deliberated, one of first questions to arise would be the applicability of a WWII precedent.

One of the most fundamental understandings of American-English jurisprudence is that precedents can only apply when a case has a similar set of operative facts. Black's Law Dictionary defines "precedent" as a "rule of law established for the first time by a court for a particular type of case and thereafter referred to in deciding similar cases." This is not to say precedents cannot apply to cases with very different circumstances: different times, different places. But the "operative" pieces, i.e. the major assumptions, must be substantially the same.

Since a war which lasts forever is substantially different from than one that does not, Luttig must have suspected that previous precedents on enemy combatants, cannot apply. The war on terror is the first war which by definition has no end, in which the "enemy" is an amorphous network rather than the kind of military hierarchy we have opposed in every previous war. This is the first war in which there is no one from whom to accept surrender.

George Bush clearly defined the war on terror as lasting forever when he said to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001, that it the war on terror was "a task that does not end."

Perhaps, then, this is why Luttig was livid when Bush released Jose Padilla to civilian trial before his case could come before the Supreme Court:

Judge Luttig Slams Bush Administration in Padilla Case
The appeals court opinion reflected a tone of anger that is rare for a federal court addressing the United States government, particularly in a matter of presidential authority.
Luttig said the government's actions created the appearance "that the government may be attempting to avoid" Supreme Court review in a matter of "especial national importance."

Why would Luttig be so angry? No one but Luttig knows. What we do know is that the Bush razzle-dazzle prevented his administration's declaration of permanent wartime powers from being struck down, and it made Luttig the man on whose written opinion Graham relied to abolish the Bill of Rights. This would be Luttig's place in American history.

The adjudicated wartime powers now being codified have never been put to the test in the Supreme Court. Yasar Hamdi in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld carried the crucial difference that Yasar Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan, arguably behind true "enemy lines."

You don't need to be a meteorologist to know if it's raining outside, and you don't need to be a constitutional scholar to know that permanent wartime powers amounts to the overthrow of the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution.

Common sense alone says you might have unlimited powers in a war of limited duration, or you might have limited powers in a war of unlimited duration, but the plain language of the Constitution tells us you cannot have both: unlimited powers in a war of unlimited duration.

This is the question which has been ignored since 9/11. Instead of addressing it, the Congress, and the Executive, are jumping on a flawed Appeals Court decision and rushing to codify it. But Appeals courts make bad rulings all the time, and there is no rush to codify the error. Judge Luttig may not be a bad man. But his place in history may be assured, and it is not an enviable one. Could it be that his anger was not misplaced?

-----------------

thru the darkness of saturn-sun-day

2011-11-27T03:50:00.000-08:00

A Must Read -- This is what a revolution is all about. Learn from the tiny island nation, America!

Why Iceland Should Be in the News, But Is Not

Monday 15 August 2011

by: Deena Stryker, The South Africa Civil Society Information Service | News Analysis

(Photo: Páll Hilmarsson / Flickr)

An Italian radio program's story about Iceland’s on-going revolution is a stunning example of how little our media tells us about the rest of the world. Americans may remember that at the start of the 2008 financial crisis, Iceland literally went bankrupt. The reasons were mentioned only in passing, and since then, this little-known member of the European Union fell back into oblivion.

As one European country after another fails or risks failing, imperiling the Euro, with repercussions for the entire world, the last thing the powers that be want is for Iceland to become an example. Here's why:

Five years of a pure neo-liberal regime had made Iceland, (population 320 thousand, no army), one of the richest countries in the world. In 2003 all the country’s banks were privatized, and in an effort to attract foreign investors, they offered on-line banking whose minimal costs allowed them to offer relatively high rates of return. The accounts, called IceSave, attracted many English and Dutch small investors. But as investments grew, so did the banks’ foreign debt. In 2003 Iceland’s debt was equal to 200 times its GNP, but in 2007, it was 900 percent. The 2008 world financial crisis was the coup de grace. The three main Icelandic banks, Landbanki, Kapthing and Glitnir, went belly up and were nationalized, while the Kroner lost 85% of its value with respect to the Euro. At the end of the year Iceland declared bankruptcy.

Contrary to what could be expected, the crisis resulted in Icelanders recovering their sovereign rights, through a process of direct participatory democracy that eventually led to a new Constitution. But only after much pain.

Geir Haarde, the Prime Minister of a Social Democratic coalition government, negotiated a two million one hundred thousand dollar loan, to which the Nordic countries added another two and a half million. But the foreign financial community pressured Iceland to impose drastic measures. The FMI and the European Union wanted to take over its debt, claiming this was the only way for the country to pay back Holland and Great Britain, who had promised to reimburse their citizens.

Protests and riots continued, eventually forcing the government to resign. Elections were brought forward to April 2009, resulting in a left-wing coalition which condemned the neoliberal economic system, but immediately gave in to its demands that Iceland pay off a total of three and a half million Euros. This required each Icelandic citizen to pay 100 Euros a month (or about $130) for fifteen years, at 5.5% interest, to pay off a debt incurred by private parties vis a vis other private parties. It was the straw that broke the reindeer’s back.

What happened next was extraordinary. The belief that citizens had to pay for the mistakes of a financial monopoly, that an entire nation must be taxed to pay off private debts was shattered, transforming the relationship between citizens and their political institutions and eventually driving Iceland’s leaders to the side of their constituents. The Head of State, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, refused to ratify the law that would have made Iceland’s citizens responsible for its bankers’ debts, and accepted calls for a referendum.

Of course the international community only increased the pressure on Iceland. Great Britain and Holland threatened dire reprisals that would isolate the country. As Icelanders went to vote, foreign bankers threatened to block any aid from the IMF. The British government threatened to freeze Icelander savings and checking accounts. As Grimsson said: “We were told that if we refused the international community’s conditions, we would become the Cuba of the North. But if we had accepted, we would have become the Haiti of the North.” (How many times have I written that when Cubans see the dire state of their neighbor, Haiti, they count themselves lucky.)

In the March 2010 referendum, 93% voted against repayment of the debt. The IMF immediately froze its loan. But the revolution (though not televised in the United States), would not be intimidated. With the support of a furious citizenry, the government launched civil and penal investigations into those responsible for the financial crisis. Interpol put out an international arrest warrant for the ex-president of Kaupthing, Sigurdur Einarsson, as the other bankers implicated in the crash fled the country.

But Icelanders didn't stop there: they decided to draft a new constitution that would free the country from the exaggerated power of international finance and virtual money. (The one in use had been written when Iceland gained its independence from Denmark, in 1918, the only difference with the Danish constitution being that the word ‘president’ replaced the word ‘king’.)

To write the new constitution, the people of Iceland elected twenty-five citizens from among 522 adults not belonging to any political party but recommended by at least thirty citizens. This document was not the work of a handful of politicians, but was written on the internet. The constituent’s meetings are streamed on-line, and citizens can send their comments and suggestions, witnessing the document as it takes shape. The constitution that eventually emerges from this participatory democratic process will be submitted to parliament for approval after the next elections.

Some readers will remember that Iceland’s ninth century agrarian collapse was featured in Jared Diamond’s book by the same name. Today, that country is recovering from its financial collapse in ways just the opposite of those generally considered unavoidable, as confirmed yesterday by the new head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde to Fareed Zakaria. The people of Greece have been told that the privatization of their public sector is the only solution. And those of Italy, Spain and Portugal are facing the same threat.

They should look to Iceland. Refusing to bow to foreign interests, that small country stated loud and clear that the people are sovereign.

That’s why it is not in the news anymore.

in the darkness of saturn-sun-day

2011-11-27T02:02:00.001-08:00

Crap-O-Christers !!

Would Jesus Join the Occupy Protests?

November 26, 2011

Consortium News

In the holiday season, many Christians take pride in helping the poor – by donating food and toys – but U.S. religious leaders have stayed in the background of challenges to an inequitable economic system, leaving that Jesus work to mostly secular young people of the Occupy movement, the Rev. Howard Bess observes.

By the Rev. Howard Bess

When the Martin Luther King Jr. monument was dedicated recently in Washington DC, I was reminded that the civil rights movement in America was led not by a politician fulfilling campaign promises, nor by a popular evangelist bent on saving souls, but by a highly trained theologian who put his religious teachings into practice with a demand for justice for those who had suffered at the hands of the rich and the powerful.

The Rev. King was a Baptist preacher who took his religion into the arena of racism, economics and social disparity. However, hatred caught up with him, and he was killed.

Martin Luther King Jr. monument in Washington DC

Now, nearly a half century later, there is another broad-based protest that is gaining momentum. The Occupy Wall Street protests echo some of King’s complaints about economic inequality and social injustice – and the message can no longer be ignored.

The significance of this latest public protest movement, erupting all over the country, may eventually rival the impact of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, yet when comparing the two movements, there is one glaring difference: priests, pastors and clergy of every stripe are rarely in the forefront of Occupy protests.

Instead, secular young people are doing the very work that Jesus from Nazareth would urge us to do. Just as Jesus condemned the injustices of his own day – and overturned the money-changing tables at the Temple – the Occupy protesters are challenging how Wall Street bankers and today’s rich and powerful are harming the masses of people.

This week, religious people have felt proud of giving turkeys to the poor, but they should be joining the protests against the haughty rich. I maintain that Jesus would be a part of the actions in Portland, Denver, New York and many other cities. For Christians, the crucial issue should be “what would Jesus do”?

Today, Christian theologians and Bible scholars agree that the Jesus trip to Jerusalem at the end of his life is essential to understand what Jesus was about. Yet, Christian tradition has brainwashed followers of Jesus about the realities of his trip south to Jerusalem. We have all been exposed to the worship services in which children march waving palm branches and singing “Hosanna.”

Traditionally we have called the event “the triumphal entry.” However, put into the political and social context of Jerusalem in the early first century BCE, Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey was probably more like a protest march that mocked every leader in the city.

Political and religious “leaders” of the day probably would have ridden into town on a prancing horse, certainly not a humble donkey. So, Jesus’s choice of transportation was more street theatre than triumphal entry. It triggered a week of confrontations and arguments with the leaders of state and Temple.

The key event of the week was the incident in the Temple. Once again church tradition has given us a special name for the incident, “the cleansing of the Temple.” But It was more likely another piece of street theatre that became a bit physical.

To better understand the Temple incident, we need to understand its context. The Temple had become a lot more than a religious temple. It had become a tax collection agency and a bank. The Temple held large sums of money accumulated by collecting tithes from the faithful.

In reality, the tithe was a tax, not a freely given gift to God. In addition, fees were charged for participation in the Temple’s religious exercises. So, the Temple collected lots of money.

With that fat treasury, the Temple had entered the banking business and regularly made loans, primarily to poor people. Poor people were the victims not only of a flat tax, but also high-interest loans. So, the gap between the haves and the have-nots was growing rapidly. The poor were getting poorer, and the rich were getting richer.

Yet, equity was a key concept in the Israelite tradition. Torah (the law) had very specific rules demanding systematic redistribution of wealth. But those who controlled the Temple operation completely ignored their own religious teachings. The banking operation that had developed was very good to those who controlled the system.

Christians believe that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the whole world. However, from the perspective of history, Jesus died because he challenged a banking system that passed itself off as being righteous.
Today, bank buildings are the temples of America and the financial industry is a key pillar of an increasingly inequitable economic system. Although banks and their controlling officers claim to be upholders of orderly American life, a growing number of people know better.

Recent surveys have asked people “who in the banking business do you trust?” Credit unions came out on top, followed by locally controlled banks. Then, came regional banks. Large national banks came in dead last.

Christians should thank the current Occupy Wall Street protesters for their message and their activism. They are doing our justice work for us. The current crop of national bank leaders are being shown to be just as corrupt as the Temple bankers were in Jesus’s day.

If Jesus were present among us today, he would be moving from Portland, to Los Angeles, to Kansas City, to Dallas, up to Chicago and on to Wall Street in New York City. He would join the protest in every city. He would be demanding an overhaul of our financial and banking system. He would be standing with the poor and their allies — and against the rich and their protectors.

When Jesus pursued the corruption of his own day, the representatives of the religious and political status quo killed him. And Jesus said to his followers “take up your cross and follow me.”

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer, Alaska. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.

Wednesday Clouds

2011-11-16T14:40:00.001-08:00

Crap-X-boDy-scaNNN!

The European Union now prohibits the use of X-ray body scanners

at airports. (photo: Michael Nagle/Getty Images)

Europe Bans X-Ray Body Scanners Used

at US Airports

By Michael Grabell, ProPublica

16 November 11

The European Union on Monday prohibited the use of X-ray body scanners in European airports, parting ways with the US Transportation Security Administration, which has deployed hundreds of the scanners as a way to screen millions of airline passengers for explosives hidden under clothing.

The European Commission, which enforces common policies of the EU's 27 member countries, adopted the rule "in order not to risk jeopardizing citizens" health and safety."

As a ProPublica/PBS NewsHour investigation detailed earlier this month, X-ray body scanners use ionizing radiation, a form of energy that has been shown to damage DNA and cause cancer. Although the amount of radiation is extremely low, equivalent to the radiation a person would receive in a few minutes of flying, several research studies have concluded that a small number of cancer cases would result from scanning hundreds of millions of passengers a year.

European countries will be allowed to use an alternative body scanner, on that relies on radio frequency waves, which have not been linked to cancer. The TSA has also deployed hundreds of those machines - known as millimeter-wave scanners - in US airports. But unlike Europe, it has decided to deploy both types of scanners.

The TSA would not comment specifically on the EU"s decision. But in a statement, TSA spokesman Mike McCarthy said, "As one of our many layers of security, TSA deploys the most advanced technology available to provide the best opportunity to detect dangerous items, such as explosives.

"We rigorously test our technology to ensure it meets our high detection and safety standards before it is placed in airports," he continued. "Since January 2010, advanced imaging technology has detected more than 300 dangerous or illegal items on passengers in US airports nationwide."

Body scanners have been controversial in the United States since they were first deployed in prisons in the late 1990s and then in airports for tests after 9/11. Most of the controversy has focused on privacy because the machines can produce graphic images. But the manufacturers have since installed privacy filters.

As the TSA began deploying hundreds of body scanners after the failed underwear bombing on Christmas Day 2009, several scientists began to raise concerns about the health risks of the X-ray scanner, noting that even low levels of radiation would increase the risk of cancer.

As part of our investigation, ProPublica surveyed foreign countries" security policies and found that only a few nations used the X-ray scanner. The United Kingdom uses them but only for secondary screening, such as when a passenger triggers the metal detector or raises suspicion.

Under the new European Commission policy, the U.K. will be allowed to complete a trial of the X-ray scanners but not to deploy them on a permanent basis when the trial ends, said Helen Kearns, spokeswoman for the European transport commissioner, Siim Kallas.

"These new rules ensure that where this technology is used it will be covered by EU-wide standards on detection capability as well as strict safeguards to protect health and fundamental rights," Kallas said.

Five-hundred body scanners, split about evenly between the two technologies, are deployed in US airports. The X-ray scanner, or backscatter, which looks like two large blue boxes, is used at major airports, including Los Angeles International Airport, John F. Kennedy in New York and Chicago's O"Hare. The millimeter-wave scanner, which looks like a round glass booth, is used in San Francisco, Atlanta and Dallas.

Within three years, the TSA plans to deploy 1,800 backscatter and millimeter-wave scanners, covering nearly every domestic airport security lane. The TSA has not yet released details on the exact breakdown.

check out how TSA backscatter x-ray works: http://www.tsa.gov/approach/tech/ait/how_it_works.shtm

high moon sunday eve.

2011-11-13T20:18:00.001-08:00

O-Crappy-Ol'-Cracka-Nick !!

Richard Nixon’s Darkest Secret

November 11, 2011

Exclusive: In just-released Watergate grand jury testimony from 1975, ex-President Richard Nixon complained that his 1968 campaign was bugged by the Johnson administration. But there was little curiosity then – or now – as to why that surveillance was justified, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Thirty-six years ago, as former President Richard M. Nixon dodged grand jury questions about his illegal wiretapping of political enemies, he briefly referenced a dark secret about his 1968 campaign’s sabotaging of Vietnam War peace talks, actions which President Lyndon Johnson at the time privately labeled “treason.”

Without providing that historical context, Nixon complained that he and his 1968 campaign had been victims of surveillance and wiretapping, too, as he tried to persuade Watergate prosecutors and the grand jury that bugging opponents was just part of hardball politics.

President Richard Nixon (Art work by Robbie Conal at Robbieconal.com)

“In 1968, for example, we learned that not only was … Vice President [-ial nominee Spiro] Agnew’s plane under surveillance, and he himself was under surveillance by the FBI, but that the FBI was at one point directed to bug my plane,” Nixon said, according to secret grand jury transcripts released by the National Archives on Thursday.

During that testimony on June 23, 1975, the prosecutors failed to follow up on his reference to the 1968 bugging, such as why it would be ordered. And after the transcripts were released this week, the major U.S. news media also missed the comment’s significance.
The evidence of Nixon’s sabotage of the 1968 Vietnam peace talks is now overwhelming – including diplomatic cable traffic and contemporaneous audiotapes of Johnson discussing the Republican promises to South Vietnamese President Nguyen van Thieu of a better deal if he boycotted negotiations in Paris.

But the American press corps has never given this shocking scandal much attention. So, when the newly released transcripts revealed Nixon veering off topic into his complaint that the FBI had been involved in bugging his 1968 campaign, the strange diversion was noted by the New York Times near the end of its article but not explained.
Yet, in citing the 1968 case during that 1975 testimony, Nixon was reviving a complaint he had raised in a White House meeting on July 1, 1972, just two weeks after his “plumbers” had been arrested bugging the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate building in Washington.
According to Nixon’s White House tapes, his aide Charles Colson touched off Nixon’s musings by noting that a newspaper column claimed that the Democrats had bugged the telephones of Anna Chennault, a right-wing Chinese-American activist who in 1968 had served as Nixon’s intermediary to Thieu.

“Oh,” Nixon responded, “in ’68, they bugged our phones too.”
Colson: “And that this was ordered by Johnson.”
Nixon: “That’s right”
Colson: “And done through the FBI. My God, if we ever did anything like that you’d have the …”
Nixon: “Yes. For example, why didn’t we bug [the Democrats’ 1972 presidential nominee George] McGovern, because after all he’s affecting the peace negotiations?”
Colson: “Sure.”
Nixon: “That would be exactly the same thing.”

A Dangerous Game

Nixon wanted to use his 1968 bugging complaint to create a backfire against the Watergate investigation, even though possible disclosure of the fact that Nixon’s campaign had blocked a peace settlement to the bloody Vietnam War would presumably have carried considerable political risk for him.

On Jan. 8, 1973, Nixon urged Haldeman to plant a story about the 1968 bugging in the Washington Star. “You don’t really have to have hard evidence, Bob,” Nixon told Haldeman. “You’re not trying to take this to court. All you have to do is to have it out, just put it out as authority, and the press will write the Goddamn story, and the Star will run it now.”
Haldeman, however, insisted on checking the facts. In The Haldeman Diaries, published in 1994, Haldeman included an entry dated Jan. 12, 1973, which contains his book’s only deletion for national security reasons.

“I talked to [former Attorney General John] Mitchell on the phone,” Haldeman wrote, “and he said [FBI official Cartha] DeLoach had told him he was up to date on the thing. … A Star reporter was making an inquiry in the last week or so, and LBJ got very hot and called Deke [DeLoach's nickname], and said to him that if the Nixon people are going to play with this, that he would release [deleted material -- national security], saying that our side was asking that certain things be done. …
“DeLoach took this as a direct threat from Johnson,” Haldeman wrote. “As he [DeLoach] recalls it, bugging was requested on the [Nixon campaign] planes, but was turned down, and all they did was check the phone calls, and put a tap on the Dragon Lady [Anna Chennault].”
In other words, Nixon’s threat to raise the 1968 bugging was countered by Johnson, who threatened to reveal that Nixon’s campaign had sabotaged a peace settlement to the Vietnam War when a half million U.S. soldiers were in the combat zone.

However, the two retaliatory disclosures never occurred. On Jan. 22, 1973, ten days after Haldeman’s diary entry, Johnson died of a heart attack. Haldeman also apparently thought better of publicizing Nixon’s 1968 bugging complaint. [For more details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

Turning a Blind Eye

Over the past several decades, the Nixon’s sabotage story has spilled out in bits and pieces, but the shocking story never was played up by the major U.S. news media, perhaps because it risked devastating public faith in the political system.
The news media’s pattern of looking the other way continued in December 2008 when the National Archives released audiotapes of President Johnson’s official phone conversations from 1968. Though the conversations revealed Johnson talking about Nixon’s Vietnam machinations, the American press corps again ignored this sordid story.

Beginning in late October 1968, as Nixon was running neck-and-neck with Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey and the Paris peace talks appeared on the verge of achieving a settlement of the Vietnam conflict, Johnson can be heard on the tapes complaining about the Republican gambit to sabotage negotiations.

Johnson’s frustration builds as he learns more from intercepts about the back-channel contacts between Nixon’s operatives and South Vietnamese officials who had tentatively agreed to take part in the Paris meetings. The apparent Republican goal was to sink Johnson’s peace deal and thus deny Humphrey a last-minute bump that could have cost Nixon the election.

On Nov. 2, 1968 – just three days before the election – Thieu recanted on meeting with the Viet Cong in Paris, pushing the peace talks toward collapse. On the same day, an angry Johnson telephoned Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen to lay out the evidence of sabotage and get Dirksen to intervene with Nixon.

“The agent [Chennault] says she’s just talked to the boss in New Mexico and that he said that you must hold out, just hold on until after the election,” Johnson said in an apparent reference to a Nixon campaign plane that carried some of his top aides, including Agnew, to New Mexico. “We know what Thieu is saying to them out there. We’re pretty well informed at both ends.”
Johnson then made a thinly veiled threat about going public with the information. “I don’t want to get this in the campaign,” Johnson said, adding: “They oughtn’t be doing this. This is treason.”
Dirksen responded, “I know.”

Johnson continued: “I think it would shock America if a principal candidate was playing with a source like this on a matter of this importance. I don’t want to do that [go public]. They ought to know that we know what they’re doing. I know who they’re talking to. I know what they’re saying.”

The President also stressed the stakes involved, noting that the movement toward negotiations in Paris had contributed to a lull in the violence.

“We’ve had 24 hours of relative peace,” Johnson said. “If Nixon keeps the South Vietnamese away from the [peace] conference, well, that’s going to be his responsibility. Up to this point, that’s why they’re not there. I had them signed onboard until this happened.”

Dirksen: “I better get in touch with him, I think.”

“They’re contacting a foreign power in the middle of a war,” Johnson said. “It’s a damn bad mistake. And I don’t want to say so. … You just tell them that their people are messing around in this thing, and if they don’t want it on the front pages, they better quit it.”

Nixon’s Denial

The next day, Nixon spoke directly to Johnson and professed his innocence.
“I didn’t say with your knowledge,” Johnson responded. “I hope it wasn’t.”
“Huh, no,” Nixon responded. “My God, I would never do anything to encourage … Saigon not to come to the table. … Good God, we want them over to Paris, we got to get them to Paris or you can’t have a peace.”

Nixon also insisted that he would do whatever President Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk wanted.

“I’m not trying to interfere with your conduct of it. I’ll only do what you and Rusk want me to do. We’ve got to get this goddamn war off the plate,” Nixon said, recognizing how tantalizingly close Johnson was to a peace deal.

“The war apparently now is about where it could be brought to an end,” Nixon said. “The quicker the better. To hell with the political credit, believe me.”

However, the South Vietnamese boycott continued, and Johnson concluded that Nixon was playing a double game. Johnson also became aware that Christian Science Monitor reporter Saville Davis had gotten wind of the story. The President was tempted to confirm it.

Before doing so, however, Johnson consulted with Rusk and Defense Secretary Clark Clifford on Nov. 4, 1968. Both these pillars of the Washington Establishment advised against going public out of fear that the scandalous information might reflect badly on the U.S. government.

“Some elements of the story are so shocking in their nature that I’m wondering whether it would be good for the country to disclose the story and then possibly have a certain individual [Nixon] elected,” Clifford said in a conference call. “It could cast his whole administration under such doubt that I think it would be inimical to our country’s interests.”

Instead of helping Davis confirm his information, Clifford and Rusk argued that the Johnson administration should make no comment, advice that Johnson accepted. He maintained his public silence on what Nixon was doing.

The next day, with Johnson unable to cite any clear progress toward ending the war, Nixon narrowly prevailed over Humphrey by about 500,000 votes or less than one percent of the ballots cast.

Johnson’s Pleadings

In the aftermath of the election, Johnson continued to privately confront Nixon with the evidence of Republican treachery, trying to get him to pressure the South Vietnamese leaders to reverse themselves and join the Paris peace talks.

On Nov. 8, Johnson recounted the evidence to Nixon and described the Republican motivation to disrupt the talks, speaking of himself in the third person.

“Johnson was going to have a bombing pause to try to elect Humphrey. They [the South Vietnamese] ought to hold out because Nixon will not sell you out like the Democrats sold out China,” Johnson said.
“I think they’ve been talking to [Vice President-elect Spiro] Agnew,” Johnson continued. “They’ve been quoting you [Nixon] indirectly, that the thing they ought to do is to just not show up at any [peace] conference and wait until you come into office.

“Now they’ve started that [boycott] and that’s bad. They’re killing Americans every day. I have that [story of the sabotage] documented. There’s not any question but that’s happening. … That’s the story, Dick, and it’s a sordid story. … I don’t want to say that to the country, because that’s not good.”
Faced with Johnson’s implied threat, Nixon promised to tell the South Vietnamese officials to reverse themselves and join the peace talks. However, the deal was done. There was no turning back because Thieu could then expose the secret arrangement with Nixon’s people. Nixon had to understand that it was more likely that Johnson would stay silent than that Thieu would.

Nixon bet right. Johnson failed to achieve the peace breakthrough he had hoped for before leaving office, but remained silent about Nixon’s treachery as he went into retirement.

The U.S. participation in the Vietnam War continued for more than four years at a horrendous cost to both the United States and the people of Vietnam. Nixon kept searching for violent new ways to get Thieu the better deal that had been promised, including the invasion of Cambodia and heavier bombing of targets in North Vietnam.

Before the conflict was finally brought to an end, a million more Vietnamese were estimated to have died along with an additional 20,763 U.S. dead and 111,230 wounded. The war also divided the United States, turning parents against their own children.

As the Democrats stayed mum, Nixon apparently concluded that they were more concerned about the information of his Vietnam War “treason” coming out than he was. So, after the “plumbers” got arrested in June 1972, he viewed the 1968 events as something of a blackmail card to play against Johnson to get help squelching the Watergate investigation.

Nixon discussed the 1968 bugging in his Oval Office meetings with his subordinates and even ordered Haldeman to leak at least that part of the story to the press – although one might reasonably expect that the press would finally start focusing on why the bugging was justified.

Given the horrors of the Vietnam War from 1969 to 1972, Nixon presumably would have more to lose by a full disclosure of his “treason” than the Democrats would by disclosure of their eavedropping to find out about it. But Nixon seems to have been confident that the Washington Establishment would always steer away from that precipice.

So, during his 1975 grand jury testimony, Nixon returned to his bugging complaint, telling prosecutors: “There are differing versions as to whether they did or did not do it. [FBI Director J. Edgar] Hoover once told me that they did. But others have indicated that this was not carried out. …

“I raised the problem of the bugging here because I knew that it was a common practice by the other side and they were experts at it, … even my plane possibly, at least ordered to be bugged this time by a government agency, not by a campaign committee in 1968.”

Nixon’s confidence in surfacing his bugging complaint without expecting that its full context would be exposed may have extended far beyond his death on April 22, 1994. In the just-released grand jury transcripts, there is a curious remark by the former president who suggests that the full story behind the tit-for-tat bugging is so shocking that it must never be made public.

Nixon said “only if there is an absolute guarantee that there will not be disclosure of what I say, I will reveal for the first time information with respect to why wiretaps were proposed, information which, if it is made public, will be terribly damaging to the United States.” Whatever that secret might be, it does not appear in the released transcripts.

However, Nixon’s brief reference to the 1968 bugging reminds us of this chilling reality – that for some politicians, acquisition of power in the United States is so alluring and so valuable that it trumps not only the democratic process, but the lives of American soldiers overseas.

[For more on related topics, see Robert Parry’s Lost History, Secrecy & Privilege and Neck Deep, now available in a three-book set for the discount price of only $29. For details, click here.]
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’ are also available there.

sunny chilly saturday afternoon

2011-11-12T15:20:00.001-08:00

Crap-A-Gitmo!

Guantanamo, the Most Expensive Prison on Earth, Hurts Taxpayers and Moral Ground

Thursday 10 November 2011

by: Alex Seitz-Wald, ThinkProgress | News Analysis

Spc. Emely Nieves from the Puerto Rico Army National Guard guards her post over the Joint Task Force Guantanamo detention facility at sunrise. (Photo: The National Guard / Flickr)

As lawmakers on Congress’ deficit reduction super committee look for places to cut the federal budget ahead of their upcoming deadline, they may want to look at the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The facility is “arguably the most expensive prison on earth,” according to a new report from the Miami Herald.

With a budget of $139 million last year to house just 171 detainees, it costs more than $800,000 to keep each prisoner for a year — more than 30 times the average cost of a traditional prison. The report is based on a “secret study” conducted by the camp’s former deputy commander, a money manager by training, who calls the facility “expensive” and “inefficient”:

“It’s a slow-motion Berlin Airlift — that’s been going on for 10 years,” says retired Army Brig. Gen. Greg Zanetti, a West Point graduate who in 2008 was deputy commander at the detention center.

Both its location and temporary nature drive up costs, says Zanetti. While there, he wrote a secret study that compared the operation to Alcatraz, noting that Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy had closed it in 1963 because it was too expensive.

At Guantánamo, everything comes in by barge or aircraft “from paper clips to bulldozers,” Zanetti says, as well as the revolving guard force. Also, more recently, a massage chair for stressed-out prison camp staff.

The camp enjoys fairly lavish facilities and services for both guards and prisoners alike, and employs 1,850 troops, linguists, intelligence analysts, federal agents, and contract laborers, many of whom receive combat pay, as if they were stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Unlike troops in Iraq or Afghanistan, however, commanders can also bring their families and kids, at extra expense to taxpayers. The Pentagon notes that extra costs are unavoidable dealing with a remote facility in a foreign country.

Thus, the Obama administration had made attempts to rein in costs of detaining prisoners by urging the closure of the facility. Zanetti’s report said that Attorney General Eric Holder and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta wrote a letter to GOP congressional leaders noting that while Guantánamo spends “more than $800,000 per detainee,” “our federal prisons spend a little over $25,000 per year, per prisoner, and federal courts and prosecutors routinely handle numerous terrorist case a year well within their operating budgets.” Nonetheless, Republicans — who claim to be concerned about the deficit about all else — have refused to even seriously consider shuttering the camp. A current GOP presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, even once said he wanted to “double Guantanamo.”

The McDonald's at Guantanamo Bay

Originally published on ThinkProgress

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sunny chills

2011-11-02T14:45:00.000-07:00

Crap-O-Tar-Pipe-O-Profits !!

Lakota Tribes "Refuse to Cooperate" With Tar Sands Proponents

Wednesday 02 November 2011

by: Jason Coppola, Truthout | Report

A protester against the Keystone XL pipeline is arrested outside the White House in this screengrab from "The Indigenous Call: Take Back Our Future." (Image: StopKeystoneXL)

The Keystone XL pipeline and a message from indigenous resistance.

As people gather to protest the greed and corruption of Wall Street in downtown Manhattan and throughout the world, the territories of indigenous peoples and nations have been the front lines of this conflict for a long, long, time.

Clayton Thomas-Muller, of the Pukatawagan Cree Nation, is an anti-tar sands campaigner with the Indigenous Environmental Network, and is responsible for coordinating an indigenous team which operates both in the United States and Canada supporting locally led tactics and strategies aimed at stopping the Canadian tar sands expansion and its encroachment into traditional and treaty territories of first nations in Alberta and British Columbia.

This intervention, says Thomas-Muller, also includes the United States and binational pipelines such as the existing Keystone pipeline as well as the currently proposed Keystone XL, which will travel over 1,500 miles from Alberta, Canada, to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast.

Explaining his job to Truthout, Thomas-Muller says, "Our approach to attacking critical issues of environmental racism like what the tar sands Keystone XL pipeline proposal and what US and Canadian energy policy in general represent, is aimed at the disproportionate targeting of our people, our way of life and of our homelands becoming the sites for the fossil fuel regime and becoming batteries, I guess you could say, for America's unsustainable energy consumption needs." (Read the Article)

Morning Fogs

2011-10-31T09:25:00.000-07:00

Crap-O-Pipe-Dreams !!!

A white Egret in the Gulf of Mexico stand in stark contrast to the

oil-blackened wetland reeds, 08/30/10.

(photo: Julie Dermansky/Corbis)

Anti-Keystone Pipeline Lawsuit Coming

By Ben Geman, The Hill

30 October 11

Four environmental groups are preparing a lawsuit that alleges the Obama administration has not adequately studied how the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline would affect several endangered species.

The lawsuit would add to the ongoing political and legal battle over TransCanada Corp.'s pipeline that would carry crude oil from Alberta's oil sands to Gulf Coast refineries.

The groups sent a formal notice of intent to sue Thursday to the State Department - which is heading the federal review of the project - and several other agencies.

"State and [the US Fish and Wildlife Service] have failed to conduct formal consultation to consider the effects of the Keystone XL Pipeline project (Project) to the Whooping Crane, Interior Least Tern, Piping Plover, Western Prairie Fringed Orchid, Pallid Sturgeon, and Arkansas River Shiner," states the Oct. 27 letter from the Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council and Nebraska Wildlife Federation.

The State Department issued a final environmental impact statement (EIS) in August that gave the project a largely favorable review, and hopes to make a final decision by the end of the year. The letter is designed to ensure the option to litigate if the permit is issued.

The groups, in the letter, allege the "biological assessment" prepared alongside the EIS and a subsequent "biological opinion" prepared by the US Fish and Wildlife Service were shoddy in their analysis of the pipeline's effect on the species.

For instance, the letter notes that "This unduly narrow analysis omits impacts such as the effects of habitat fragmentation from the Pipeline's pump sites, construction camps, and power lines."

It adds:

The [biological assessment] further fails to address numerous criticisms raised by FWS early on, including the need to adequately survey for the presence of listed species in the action area, quantify the total areas of habitat that would be lost to the Pipeline or the number of power lines that would be added, or catalog the locations where water depletions would come from and where water used for hydrostatic testing would be discharged, and how waterbodies and wetlands would be crossed.

The planned lawsuit comes in addition to separate, ongoing litigation by three other groups: the Center for Biological Diversity, the Western Nebraska Resources Council and Friends of the Earth.

That litigation, filed in a Nebraska federal court, was expanded through an amended complaint this week that alleges the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service "unreasonably and unlawfully concurred that the Pipeline is ‘not likely to adversely affect' endangered and threatened species."

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fry-day night fever

2011-10-28T22:18:00.000-07:00

Cr-A-ck-A-Press-Main-Street!!

Oakland, California, October 25, 2011. As police in para-military gear stop a

march to Oscar Grant Plaza the marchers react. (photo: Marc Ash/RSN)

Journalists Abandon the Fourth Estate
By Leslie Griffith, Reader Supported News
28 October 11

"Occupy Oakland" participants are taking a few rubber bullets to the butt at this very moment. One thing is clear, the people are mad and they are not going to take it anymore. This is not satire, this is real. And, when all is said and done…we are in this mini- revolution in no small part because there are precious few reporters allowed to do their jobs.

The forces of accountability have failed.

So what exactly do the people want? What are they mad about?

Well, ain't that just the beauty of it? No one is selling one-liners based on malarkey. These occupiers have been subject to propaganda for so long, swallowing phrases like "war on terror" they began to feel that, alongside the reporters mouthing war slogans, they too were recruiting for a way of life they do not want.

The Occupier's remember the Main Stream press they counted on as recently as ten years ago. That press warned and protected them. Today much of the Main Stream media corporations are owned by the entertainment industry or those who make weapons of war. In fact, making war, movies, and gossip is how these new media corporations came to be so rich. Firing the investigative reporters helped too…they were so expensive.

The forces of accountability have been replaced by media monopolies not that different from the financial monopolies of Wall Street.

If the "free press" was doing its job freely, it would have been nice to know which politicians were bought by whom, and how much more of the public's money the big wigs planned to take. Nice thought, but unlikely. The Fourth Estate is asleep and doesn't seem to be waking up…not until the corporations that own the reporters stop pushing their own agendas and start doing what is constitutionally directed of them. The media was part of the envisioned checks and balances. Its job was protecting the people and the planet from tyrants and thieves.

Clearly, we are witnessing that democracy does not work without a free press. The voiceless masses paid attention in elementary school when they were told they were the government…the people were the democracy. The occupiers know they haven't had much to do with anything, lately. Now, they are stepping back into their constitutional role as "the people."

Frankly, there has been so much dereliction of duty on the part of most Main Stream media---so much neglect---that there are more prisons than universities in this country. And few corporate owned reporters seem to be able to find their way to a school board meeting much less stumble upon a story of any value.

This speaks volumes. Does it not?

After years of neglect…the work now seems formidable. There is so much corruption collusion and pandering to one side or another…the public is finally taking to the streets. The "Occupy Wall Street" movement is fed up with the bait and switch that began in full force ten years ago. That's when it became unpatriotic to ask why. That's when it became "patriotic" to give up civil liberties. Unlike many in the Main Stream media, The People began to notice the more they gave up in the name of "national security", the less free they became. Just as Thomas Jefferson warned.

After ten long years of nodding and smiling under their belts, The People are not going along to get along anymore. Now, if only the press would follow.

The current corporate media is working for the least patriotic, most self-interested, callow, mean spirited, polluting, plundering corporations imaginable. These are the "corporate people" who parceled out the republic. The reporters cannot report on them…they are them.

Now, "Occupy Wall Street" has become "Occupy America." Protestors are saying one thing loudly and clearly. Not so fast Bubba. Get your greedy hands out of our pockets.

It's about time too. Even so, there are very few reporters out covering this "Occupy" movement with any respect.

As a consequence, those on the street are not being heard and likely to make their voices louder.

For old time reporters, used to putting boots on the ground and trying to tell all sides, the most dangerous places were the communities where people were used, treated like peasants, and thrown away.

What happens when the majority of a country in a so called democracy feels unrepresented? We should remember, America's revolutionaries of 1776 desired not much more than a monarch off their backs, and if they paid their taxes, a seat at the table of discussion. Certainly sounds familiar does it not?

America is waking up.

Many in these rallies have no jobs, little hope for the future, and see a government, political system and mass media in bed together.

It's a very unholy trifecta. People with nothing to lose are the most dangerous people on Earth.

fry-day chill

2011-10-28T15:16:00.000-07:00

Crap-O-CRACK-Down!!

Then They Fight You

Friday 28 October 2011

by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

Occupy Oakland protesters after their camp was destroyed by Oakland police along with ten neighboring police departments. Several hundred protesters regrouped at the intersection of 14th and Broadway where police tried dispersing the crowd with tear gas, flash bang rounds, rubber bullets and bean bag shots. (Photo: ekai)

The national standoff between authorities and protesters in the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement has reached a new and dangerous level of tension and violence.

At first glance, it looked like something out of Pink Floyd's film 'The Wall': menacing images ofcreatures in gas masksswarming toward the camera under a dark and forbidding sky. This was no dystopian fantasy, however; these were members of the Oakland police departmentcharging into a group of protesters behind a wall of tear gas, flash-bang bombs, rubber bullets and bean-bag projectiles. The police bull-rushed these unarmed protesters with the intention to do violence, and violence is exactly what they did.

As of this writing, one woman is known to have been seriously injured when a flash-bang grenade went off right by her head. She was seen being carried away unconscious from the scene of the police riot by other protesters. Anther known injured protester has a name, and a face, and a record of service to his country. Scott Olsen, a Marine veteran of two Iraq tours, was participating in the Occupy Oakland protest when he was shot in the head by a ‘less-than-lethal’ police projectile, suffered a fractured skull, and was taken to the hospital in critical condition. His condition has since been upgraded to fair.

Welcome home, Marine. Thank you for your service to your country, but since you dared to exercise your First Amendment right to peaceable assembly, here's a cracked head for your trouble. And you thought Iraq was dangerous.

According to Oakland officials, the justification for this eight-hour-long explosion of force was that the area being occupied by protesters had become unsanitary, and that people were being raped within the camp zone. This was news to those who had been peacefully occupying the space in front of Oakland's city hall. It sounded suspiciously familiar to some last-decade claims about weapons of mass destruction being justification for a different burst of violence, and smells just as bad. The extreme nature of this police action might have had more to do with the fact that the protester's camp was unofficially named Oscar Grant Plaza, after the unarmed citizen who was murdered in 2009 by BART transit police, an incident that was caught on camera and broadcast to the world. Maybe the Oakland police did not like the reminder, and so swung their truncheons with an excess of vigor.

This is not the first example of excessive violence being directed at protesters in the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement. A number of incidents directed at unarmed, non-resisting protesters in New York City have been documented in detail, and in one case, an official inquiry into one NYPD officer's use of pepper spray is ongoing. The scene that played out in Oakland could very well have taken place several days ago in New York, had Mayor Bloomberg not made the wise, last-minute decision to back down from his demand that Liberty Park be cleared of protesters so it could be "cleaned." A number of protesters were injured by police in San Francisco and Denver, as well.

What happened in Oakland in the hours between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, however, is a definite escalation of tensions between protesters and authorities, and seems to indicate those authorities are edging closer and closer towards unleashing the dogs of war on people who offer no violence and pose no threat to anyone other than the financial power-brokers who have so thoroughly ravaged this country's future.

It goes without saying that not every person participating in these national actions are docile lambs; every movement, no matter its political denomination, is going to have its share of idiots and adrenaline-junkies. Within the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement, however, these types of people make up so small a fraction of the main as to be negligible...but they do offer authorities a nice excuse to bulldoze the whole movement, and it makes you wonder how many of these so-called agitators are running around causing trouble with a badge in their back pocket. Beyond agitators, there is the simple fact that not everyone is going to react like Gandhi when they get gassed, pepper-sprayed, flash-bombed, clubbed and shot with projectiles for peacefully assembling to point out a grievous wrong.

'Occupy Wall Street' is about saying "No."

"No" to institutionalized greed of such vast width and breadth that it plunders our country even as it smiles around a mouthful of filet mignon.

"No" to the ocean of corporate cash that drowns our democracy.

"No" to rewarding the failure of frauds who proudly carry the banner of capitalism even as they enjoy the galloping socialism of the government bailout.

"No" to those who refuse to hire new employees because they want to screw over the economy and remove a president they don't like. But it is also about so much else.

The ‘Occupy’ movement is as diverse and multifaceted as the cities and towns where it has been happening. More often than not, local issues are at the forefront of the protester’s concerns; Wall Street is local for New York City, but in Oakland, the protest has been geared more toward halting austerity measures and the closures of schools and libraries…and, yes, police violence. Yet even as every ‘Occupy’ community has its own set of priorities, it is all part of a single continuum, as the issues being protested all stem from the same core concerns that crashed the economy, and created the movement, in the first place.

'Occupy Wall Street' is not about getting into a public crunch with cops over whether or not tents should be allowed in a public park. Rather than react with violence to people who are sacrificing themselves to point out what has gone so terribly wrong with the America we all love, these authorities should take a step back and encompass the awesome fact that such a movement has become so very necessary in the first place.

They should remember that violence is the last refuge of the desperate, that violence directed towards these protests will only make them stronger, and will put a big, bloody underscore beneath their efforts. Every punch thrown by a police officer, every protester clubbed or gassed or bombed or shot down with a riot-control projectile, only proves the point of that protester, and invigorates the entire movement.

They should remember that this is the year 2011, and every single person gathered at these protests has a phone with a camera that will make any unnecessary or egregious act of official violence an instant media sensation. These authorities are not working in the dark, not by a long chalk. One protester with a steady hand will make an over-the-top cop famous in all the wrong ways in exactly as much time it takes to read this sentence. Enough footage like that, and matters will escalate quickly indeed. The whole world is, in fact, watching.

Every police officer dealing with these 'Occupy' protests is not a frothing mad dog, any more than every 'Occupy' protester is a brick-throwing terrorist. Police in Albany recently refused an order to clear out a group of 'Occupy' protesters, a decision that was roundly praised. But if the Battle of Oakland shows us anything, it is how quickly this can get out of hand. The protesters are not going anywhere, and if they are met with violence on the order of what took place Tuesday night, there is no telling where we will find ourselves in the end.

---------------

2011-10-20T22:01:00.000-07:00

Crap-A-Fracker !!

Environmental activist

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

photo:

Santa Clara University

The Fracking Industry's War on the Truth

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Reader Supported News

20 October 11

The fracking industry's war on The New York Times - and the truth.

Superb investigative journalism by the New York Times has brought the paper under attack by the natural gas industry. That campaign of intimidation and obfuscation has been orchestrated by top-shelf players like Exxon and Chesapeake, aligned with the industry's worst bottom feeders. This coalition has launched an impressive propaganda effort carried by slick PR firms, industry-funded front groups and a predictable cabal of right-wing industry toadies from cable TV and talk radio. In pitting itself against public disclosure and reasonable regulation, the natural gas industry is once again proving that it is its own worst enemy.

I confess to being an early optimist on natural gas. In July of 2009, I wrote a widely circulated op-ed for the Financial Times predicting that newly accessible deposits of natural gas had the potential to rapidly relieve our country of its deadly addiction to Appalachian coal and end forever catastrophically destructive mountaintop-removal mining. At that time, government and industry geologists were predicting that new methods of fracturing gas-rich shale beds had provided access to an astounding 2,000-5,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the lower 48 - enough, they claimed - to power our country for a century.

These rich reserves might have allowed America to mothball or throttle back our 336 gigawatts of mainly antiquated and inefficient coal fired electric plants, replacing them with underutilized capacity from existing gas-generation plants. That transition could reduce US mercury emissions by 20%-25%, dramatically cut deadly particulate matter and the pollutants that cause acid rain, and slash America's grid-based CO2 by an astonishing 20% - literally overnight! Gas could have been a natural companion for wind and solar energy with its capacity to transform variable power into base load, and could have been a critical bridge fuel to the new energy economy rooted in America's abundant renewables.

(Read More)

2011-10-20T15:56:00.000-07:00

Crap-O-Shock-Shut !!

If the Greeks can shut their country down, why can’t we?

by Eric Stoner | October 19, 2011, 4:29 pm

In an effort to stop Greece’s parliament from voting for further austerity measures today and tomorrow, the Greek people have effectively shut the entire country down, as part of the 48-hour general strike. As Time reports:

The strikes have shuttered government offices, public services, shops and even bakeries. Taxi drivers walked off the job, as did air-traffic controllers (though they shortened their work stoppage from 48 hours to 12).

Unfortunately, as has been common in past demonstrations in Greece, some protesters broke windows of storefronts and clashed with the police, throwing rocks and molotov cocktails at them.
Despite the many images of such violence, Theodora Oikonomides, a Athens resident who was at the enormous rally today at Syntagma Square told theGuardian that:

A group of between 20 and 40 people, really no more, then started throwing stones. I recognised some of them from previous events. They never seem to get arrested.

From footage of the clashes, her estimate seems to be far too small, but most reports have said that the group engaging in violence was a small minority of what was an otherwise peaceful strike and rally.
The Associated Press is now reporting that the vote this evening went in favor of the further austerity measures, but the bill will not be passed until its articles are voted on tomorrow.
As I watch the Greeks give everything they’ve got to stop this legislation from going through, I couldn’t help but wonder why protests in the US haven’t attempted a general strike, which is one of the most powerful nonviolent tactics.
While there were citywide general strikes during the Great Depression, like the1934 general strike that shut down San Francisco for four days, a true nationwide general strike to my knowledge has never been either attempted or successful in this country.
Yes, the United States is a much larger country both geographically and numerically, which would make organizing such an action more challenging, but if Greece can pull it off, why can’t we?
If the Occupy Wall Street movement is eventually to put the kind of pressure on the government and corporate power to truly address the structural problems with our economic and political systems, a serious nationwide general strike that clearly demonstrates who actually makes this country tick may be called for.

San Fran Sat. PM Breeze

2011-10-15T15:58:00.000-07:00

CraP-a-worldly-Word !

Links Between Climate Change and Increased Social Unrest Unacknowledged
Friday 14 October 2011
by: Michael Busch, Truthout | Interview

The thundercloud-like effect of smoke from a wild fire. (Photo: Greg Seitz / Flickr) ==>>
In many respects, 2011 has been marked as much by the mayhem of nature as it has by the upheavals of men. Although challenges to political authority have captured the imaginations of millions and produced exciting tremors of revolution across the continents, Mother Nature's increasingly ferocious response to the heavy environmental footprint of industrial production will likely be judged the most profound source of social change around the world in the years to come….
(Read On)

-----------------------------------------

Crap-o-Drone-Kill-Zones!

Covert Drone War

http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/

Grim milestone as 300th CIA drone strike hits Pakistan

October 14th, 2011 | by Chris Woods | Published in All Stories, Covert Drone War

Over 2,000 mourners attended the funeral of Maulana Iftiqar,
the head of a local religious school

The United States ‘covert’ drone war in Pakistan reached a new milestone today with the 300th attack on alleged militants in the country’s tribal areas, according to research by the Bureau.

Just before dawn on Saturday, CIA drones struck a housing compound in Angor Adda, South Waziristan. Up to six alleged militants died in the attack with at least three injured. The casualties were linked to local militant commander Maulvi Nazir. He is viewed as hostile by the US because of militant attacks inside Afghanistan, despite his having a long-standing peace deal with Pakistan.

Analysis: Who killed Anwar al Awlaki – and why?

The CIA attack is the fourth in Waziristan in 48 hours. On Friday more than 2,000 mourners attended the funeral of Maulana Iftiqar, the head of a local religious school – and reported jihadist – killed in a strike the day before. A local politician told the assembled mourners that ‘America should realise that these attacks are causing hate against it, and see these thousands of people who are here to attend funeral of a martyr.’

CIA drone strikes on Pakistan are occurring at a frequency of one every four days

Three hundred strikesThe Bureau has now identified 300 drone strikes since June 17 2004. Of these, 248 have occurred during President Obama’s three years in office, rising to a frequency of one strike every four days.

According to a detailed analysis of the attacks, at least 2,318 people have been killed in the CIA campaign, the majority of them alleged militants.

Related article: Call for all casualties of conflict to be properly recorded

But among them at least 386 civilians – and as many as 775 – have reportedly died, the Bureau’s investigations show, including more than 170 children. And more than 1,100 people have been reported injured.

In Numbers: CIA drone strikes in Pakistan

Total reported killed : 2,318 – 2,912

Civilians reported killed : 386 – 775

Children reported killed : 173

Total reported injured : 1,141- 1,225

Total strikes : 300

Obama strikes : 248

Denial

The CIA itself recently admitted to killing 2,050 people with its drones – all but 50 of them combatants – after the Bureau published its database in August. Despite substantial evidence published by the Bureau of civilian deaths caused by its strikes, the US continues to claim that it has killed no ‘non-combatants’ in Pakistan since May 2010.

Related article: Over 160 children reported among drone deaths

The Bureau’s data is drawn from reputable sources such as AP, Reuters, the New York Times and credible Pakistani media. It is also cross-referenced where possible against leaked US intelligence documents and diplomatic cables; the writings of academics, politicians and former intelligence officials; pending legal cases; and some commissioned field work in Waziristan. The full methodology can be found here.

Iain Overton, the Bureau’s managing editor said: ‘With 300 strikes now recorded in Pakistan, the CIA’s drone strikes mark a major front in the US war in the region. Yet officially the US will not even acknowledge this programme. The need for scrutiny has never been higher.’

(go to the original site)

fri--kin' friday again

2011-10-14T16:09:00.000-07:00

Cra-PA-Wars!

US President Barack Obama speaks on the phone in the Oval Office, 10/09/09.

(photo: Samad/Getty)

Inside Obama's War Room

By Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone

14 October 11

On the afternoon of monday, March 14th, the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy stood nervously in the lounge of Le Bourget Airport on the outskirts of Paris, waiting for a private jet carrying a lone Libyan rebel to land. At 62, Lévy is one of France's most famous writers and provocateurs, a regular fixture in the tabloids, where he's known simply as BHL. He rarely goes a month without controversy - whether defending the reputations of accused sex offenders like Roman Polanski and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, or waging one-man foreign-policy campaigns that usually end in failure. In 1993, he tried unsuccessfully to persuade President François Mitterrand to intervene in the Balkans. In 2001, he personally arranged for Afghan leader Ahmed Shah Massoud to meet with President Jacques Chirac, only to have the French Foreign Ministry scuttle the trip for fear of angering the Taliban. Now, as he anxiously paced the airport lounge, he was embarking on what would turn out to be one of the most audacious and improbable feats of amateur diplomacy in modern history.

Wearing his trademark outfit - designer suit, no tie, white shirt unbuttoned to reveal a deeply tanned chest - Lévy was waiting for the arrival of Mahmoud Jibril, the leader of the Libyan rebels who had been fighting for three weeks to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi. Lévy had secretly helped arrange for a meeting in Paris later that day between Jibril and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Prodded by Lévy, France had granted formal recognition to the Libyan opposition, known as the National Transitional Council. But no other European country had followed France's lead, and the uprising now appeared in danger of being crushed by Qaddafi, who had just launched an all-out military counteroffensive. Both Lévy and Jibril believed that getting the support of the Americans was the rebels' last hope. "If he doesn't succeed with Clinton," Lévy thought, "all we achieved in France this past week will have been for nothing."

But the meeting with Clinton had already run into a serious snag. Jibril, a 58-year-old political scientist who once taught at the University of Pittsburgh, had been detained at customs. Though he had been received in the Élysée Palace only days before for a meeting Lévy had arranged with President Nicolas Sarkozy, Jibril did not have official clearance to re-enter France. As the hours ticked away, the 5 p.m. time slot for the meeting with Clinton came and went. Lévy scrambled to reschedule. "At six she had a meeting with Sarkozy, at eight was a dinner or something with the G8," he told me recently in St. Paul de Vence, his home in the south of France. "It was very complicated." The consequences of the delay, he feared, could be catastrophic.

(Read On)

Westerly Morning Moon&Venus in a file

2011-10-14T07:12:00.000-07:00

CraP-O-FraCkin'-cRime!

Louis Meeks' well water contains methane gas, hydrocarbons, lead and copper, according to the EPA's
test results. Three months before his water went bad, fracking began on a gas well about 500 feet from
Meeks' front door. (photo: Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica)

Criminalize Fracking

By Rusell Mokhiber, CounterPunch

13 October 11

Ativists in New York have drafted legislation that would criminalize the practice of hydraulic fracturing - also known as fracking.

The law was drafted by the Sovereign People Action Network (SPAN) of Ulster and Green counties.

"In early summer, seeing so many anti-fracking people across the state pouring their time, resources and hopes into the State's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), we began drafting a law to rip decision making from this illegitimate agency, and drive it into our state legislature," Richard Grossman, one of the members of SPAN, told Corporate Crime Reporter.

"Our law criminalizes fracking and fracking-related activities," Grossman said. "Corporate frackers would be Class C felons."

"In August, a bunch of anti-frackers from different parts of the state, representing various anti-fracking groups, participated in three sequential workshops I presented on at the New York Green Fest gathering in Western New York," Grossman said.

"Some decided to join SPAN on criminalization."

"Together we came up with the current draft of the law. We are now creating a new coalition group to concentrate on compelling the legislature to pass our law."

"This law is not a magic bullet, of course. We could never pass it unless we build a mass movement in New York."

The legislation has yet to be introduced into the New York State legislature.

"We met with a state Senator who wanted to learn more about it," Grossman said. "But he was pretty resistant. That's okay. This work will take time."

Grossman wouldn't identify the Senator.

"To his credit, he met with us twice," Grossman said. "He was patient and courteous, we had some healthy conversations."

"We have no illusions about the New York State Legislature. But theoretically at least, that is where laws are made. And that's where sovereign people go to instruct our representatives. Our approach to our legislators is: we wrote this law - now you pass it."

"But we know we can't do that until we build a formidable statewide movement that is not only talking about fracking as a destructive technology, but also about illegitimate rule by a very small corporate class."

"We're hoping to move the exciting struggle to prevent the fracking of New York State from the dead end, energy sink regulatory realm to the place where sovereign people make law, decide what is anti-social behavior."

"We have no illusions about our state legislature. Both houses are tyrannies. Most of the legislators are colonized. We understand that part of our task is to re-make our legislature, and our legislators. And that to do this, anti-frackers and others confronting diverse assaults of illegitimate private governance must build a powerful state-wide movement."

"Our new state-wide coalition is only now coming together. We haven't begun taking our message across the state. I can say that whenever any of us talks to folks, their response is - of course fracking should be criminalized, should be declared felonious."

"But we're still under the radar," Grossman said. "I don't think it will take long to emerge. Think back to the evolution of the anti-nuclear movement."

"The fracking struggle involves most of the giant corporations of the country, not just business and industrial corporations, but also law corporations and insurance corporations."

"The whole corporate class and its vast usurping structures of governance and propaganda are behind fracking."

"The reasons are clear: the corporate class is committed to endless more."

"The fuel for endless more is constantly expanding energy."

"So people opposing fracking for oil and gas and water are standing up not just to a few giant energy corporations, but to the entire corporate class, and to their vast corporate state, just like the anti-nukers of yore."

"In New York, people are already organized in hundreds of groups. We think this legislation will help unify anti-frackers, so that one day in the not too distant, the State of New York will declare fracking, corporate frackers, and fracking-related activities to be Class C felonies."

"We will be provoking conversation and discussion about the histories and realities of minority rule and usurpation that we've been talking about here. It's my hope that unlike the anti-nuclear movement - that magnificently stopped the construction of 850 nuclear radiation factories - New Yorkers will criminalize fracking in ways that begin to challenge the corporate state, that set new and liberating conversations in motion, that begin asserting we the people's authority to govern our communities and our state."

Rusell Mokhiber edits the Corporate Crime Reporter. For the complete transcript of the Interview with Richard Grossman, see 25 Corporate Crime Reporter 40, October 17, 2011, print edition only.

Sunny Afternoon in San Francisco - the Paradise

2011-10-13T13:57:00.000-07:00

Crap-O-De-Day-On-World-Protests !!!

Hurray! Go 99% !!!

Thousands of protesters gathered in the Puerta del Sol in Madrid as well as the main squares
in other cities to demand political reforms in Spain, 05/23/11. (photo: Emilio Morenatti/AP)

'Indignant' Protests to Sweep Across World

By Elodie Cuzin, Agence France-Presse

13 October 11

"Indignant" protesters, angered by a biting economic crisis they blame on politicians and bankers, vow to take to the streets worldwide Saturday in a protest spanning 71 nations.

It is the first global show of power by the protest, born May 15 when a rally in Madrid's central square of Puerta del Sol sparked a movement that spread nationwide, then to other countries.

As governments cut deep into welfare spending to try to trim huge sovereign debts, protests have grown and this weekend's demonstrations are being organised in Madrid, New York and around the world.

"United in one voice, we will let politicians, and the financial elites they serve, know it is up to us, the people, to decide our future," organisers said in a statement on http://15october.net/.

"We are not goods in the hands of politicians and bankers who do not represent us."

The organisers, relying heavily on Facebook and Twitter, say street protests will be held October 15 in 719 cities across 71 countries in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia and Africa.

The protests first took hold in Spain, with a jobless rate of 20.89 percent, rising to 46.1 percent for 16-24 year olds, where activists built ramshackle camps in city squares including Puerta del Sol.

Then they spread to Europe, finding strong backing in crisis-hit countries like Greece, and then worldwide -- last month reaching the centre of global capitalism in Wall Street.

In Madrid, Saturday's protest will end in Puerta del Sol, still the spiritual centre of the overwhelmingly peaceful protests even though the protest camp was dismantled in June.

Three marches will converge on the city's emblematic square of Cibeles at 6pm (1600 GMT) before proceeding to Puerta del Sol for assemblies lasting through the night.

The Occupy Wall Street protest, which started September 17 with a camp of several hundred people in a small square in the New York financial district, has also struck a powerful chord among US media and politicians.

Organisers called a rally in Times Square for 5 pm (2100 GMT), saying they would be at the centre of the international protests.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, predicted Wednesday the Wall Street demonstrations, which bring thousands of people together for marches, would one day spell the downfall of the West.

"This movement will soar to completely mark the downfall of the West and the capitalist regime," he said.

Anger over unemployment and opposition to the financial elite are common themes in the otherwise disparate movement.

But while Spain's protesters have specific demands such as attacking unemployment by cutting working hours and imposing complusory retirement at 65, others are focussed on protesting existing conditions.

The outlook for the "indignants" is not clear.

French economist Thomas Coutrot, co-head of the ATTAC movement seeking alternatives to market-ruled policies, said the indignant movement had a healthy "allergy" to being represented by any person or group.

"But it is true that it is not easy to build a movement without a representative," he added.

2011-10-12T22:01:00.000-07:00

Crap-O-PoP-Spy-Ware-Site !!

Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook are finding new ways

to track users. (photo: deathandtaxesmag.com)

Facebook Can Track Web Browsing Without Cookies

By DJ Pangburn, Death and Taxes Magazine

12 October 11

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, quoting various posts and papers by hackers and researchers, Facebook has two types of cookies for data collection and one method that works without cookies.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation cites a September 25th, 2011 blog post by hacker and writer Nik Cubrilovic that proved Facebook's session cookie was not being deleted upon log-out. Facebook responded with a "fix-it," but it raises serious concerns about whether one can effectively log-out of Facebook and whether or not Facebook can track users without the benefit of cookies.

According to Cubrilovic, he waited for a year to hear from Facebook on this privacy issue that he discovered, emailing them and reaching multiple dead-ends.

Two days later, on September 27th, Cubrilovic noted, "In summary, Facebook has made changes to the logout process and they have explained each part of the process and the cookies that the site uses in detail ... They want to retain the ability to track browsers after logout for safety and spam purposes, and they want to be able to log page requests for performance reasons etc."

EFF, however, is unequivocal in stating, "Facebook can track web browsing history without cookies."

"Facebook is able to collect data about your browser - including your IP address and a range of facts about your browser - without ever installing a cookie. They can use this data to build a record of every time you load a page with embedded Facebook content," added the EFF.

This ability to track users outside of Facebook is particularly troubling.

EFF states, "It's clear that Facebook does extensive cross-domain tracking, with two types of cookies and even without. With this data, Facebook could create a detailed portrait of how you use the Internet: what sites you visit, how frequently you load them, what time of day you like to access them. This could point to more than your shopping habits - it could provide a candid window into health concerns, political interests, reading habits, sexual preferences, religious affiliations, and much more."

That Facebook keeps this data on file for 90 days (before it's discarded or made anonymous) is a legitimate privacy concern and it could certainly be useful in the event U.S. intelligence services desires to build a profile of a particular user's web browsing.

This sort of ability has already raised concerns amongst lawmakers and privacy advocates.

Four days after Cubrilovic posted on the privacy concern, Reps. Edward Markey and Joe Bartonstated that they "remain concerned about the privacy implications for Facebook's 800 million subscribers," asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the issue.

In the meantime, what can Facebook users do to avoid the watchful eye of Facebook? EFF provides the following advice:

Install Firefox addons like Ghostery, ShareMeNot, Abine's Taco, and/or AdBlockPlus to limit online tracking. None of these is perfect and each works a little different; check out this guidefor a discussion. Also consider installing the Priv3 Firefox extension, which is still in beta.

Use private browsing mode.

Adjust the settings in your browser to delete all cookies upon closing. Clear your cookies when leaving a social networking site, and log out of Facebook before browsing the web. You should consider having one browser strictly for logging into your Facebook account and one browser for the rest of your web usage.

Send a quick complaint to the Federal Trade Commission via their online web complaint form. The FTC uses its complaint form to gauge what issues concern consumers and may launch investigations if there is sufficient user interest.

Support privacy legislation like the Rockefeller Do Not Track bill, which will give users a voice when it comes to online tracking.

grayed tuesday

2011-10-11T16:32:00.000-07:00

Guantanamo: A Cold Sore on the Face of America

Tuesday 11 October 2011

by: Lt. Col. Barry Wingard, Truthout | News Analysis

An Army spokesman in one of the detainee areas in Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on June 9, 2010. (Photo: Richard Perry / The New York Times)

Recently, the Kuwaiti Prime Minister, Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, traveled to the United States and, in a meeting with Vice President Biden, once again asserted Kuwait's interest in seeing its two remaining citizens (Fayiz Al-Kandari and Fawzi Al-Odah) returned from America's island prison in Guantanamo Bay (GTMO). While I applaud the prime minister addressing this issue, virtually identical appeals from Kuwait have fallen upon deaf ears for more than a decade.

And now, even more menacing obstacles to justice loom on the horizon in the form of indefinite detention and the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. As a result, time is a luxury Fayiz and Fawzi can no longer afford ... and patient diplomacy is no longer a viable option.

Of the 775 prisoners originally confined under inhumane conditions at GTMO, approximately 600 have been released without being charged with any crime or ever setting foot in a courtroom. Of the remaining 171, another 90 have been cleared for release without trial. This leaves approximately 81 prisoners whose fate remains undecided. Of those, the United States claims it will provide trials to approximately 30 individuals (less than 4 percent of those it saw fit to confine). The rest will continue to be imprisoned at GTMO, without trial, under President Obama's officially-authorized policy of "indefinite detention." Unfortunately, despite the prime minister's most recent appeal, Fayiz and Fawzi will likely fall into this final group and be detained without trial for the rest of their lives.

Moreover, the United States Congress is currently on the eve of passing the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which, in its present form, recognizes the war on terror as never ending and codifies President Obama's indefinite detention scheme. Perhaps more importantly, however, the proposed NDAA would prohibit the United States from returning any GTMO detainee (regardless of guilt or innocence) to any country that has previously had a former GTMO detainee re-engage in "terrorist" activity.

Consequently, even if Fayiz and Fawzi conclusively prove their innocence, they will nonetheless remain imprisoned at GTMO, because a single Kuwaiti, released without trial by President Bush in 2008, allegedly became a suicide bomber in Iraq. Thus, if the proposed NDAA passes, Fayiz and Fawzi will serve a life sentence for an offense committed by another man.

Confinement without trial ... and punishment for another man's offense. It is difficult to imagine a scenario less consistent with American ideals.

As a result, I implore the Kuwaiti government not to treat GTMO as just another issue to be resolved through patient diplomacy. The United States' detention policy has become so irrational that polite appeals cannot possibly succeed. Rather, Kuwait must view the United States as one might view a family member addicted to a powerful substance (in this case fear, paranoia and political pandering). Only immediate and consequential intervention can possibly resolve the problem. As America's strongest ally in the Middle East, Kuwait is the only partner capable of such intervention.

sat over the week & weekends 1

2011-10-08T12:36:00.000-07:00

Crap-A-Cracker-the-war-of-terror !

(Photo: isafmedia / Flickr)

A Citizens' Campaign for a New National Security Policy
Saturday 8 October 2011
by: Gareth Porter, Truthout | News Analysis

Winners and Losers in the US "War on Terror"

The starting point for a citizens' campaign for a new national security strategy should be to call attention to the reality that US wars - supposedly against terrorism - have produced clear winners and losers. The winners are the leaders of the military, the Pentagon, the CIA and their private sector and elected political allies. Aggressive US wars are not merely the result of mistaken policies, but of the national security institutions pursuing their own interests at the expense of the interests of the American people.

The "war on terror" is a means for those institutions to maintain the present allocation of national resources and power to the national security sector for the indefinite future.

READ ON

friday starry night

2011-10-07T21:37:00.000-07:00

Crap-By-Golly !

GMO Feed Disrupts Organs in Animals
By Jeffrey M. Smith, Natural News
07 October 11

While the findings may have serious ramifications for the human population, the authors demonstrate how a multitude of GMO-related health problems could easily pass undetected through the superficial and largely incompetent safety assessments that are used around the world.

Read On

-------------

sunny depressing crawlin' upstream day

2011-09-30T10:53:00.000-07:00

Don't Get Depressed. Fight Back.

the grand funk RxR

Im sitting here lonely like a broken man.
I serve my time doin the best I can.
Walls and bars they surround me.
But, I dont want no sympathy.

No baby, no baby,
All I need is some tender lovin.
To keep me sane in this burning oven.
And, when my time is up, youll be my reefer.

Life gets worse on gods green earth.
Be my reefer, got to keep smokin that thing.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I said now baby ... baby ..., let me smoke it ... smoke it ...
Makes me feel good ... feel good, yes, I feel good ... ahhhhh ...
Yes, I feel alright ... feel alright ..., yes, I feel alright ... feel alright ...
Yes, I feel alright ... ahhhhh ...
Ohhhhh ...

Ice cold water is runnin through my veins.
They try and drag me back to work again.
Pain and blisters on my mind and hands.
I work all day making up NICKEL (burlap) bags.

The oats theyre feeding me are driving me wild.
I feel unhappy like a new born child.
Now, when my time is up, you wait and see.
These walls and bars wont keep that stuff from me.

No, no, baby,
Wont keep that stuff from me.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I need you right now mama.
I need you right now baby.
Right by my side, honey.
All night long.

Make me feel alright ...
Yes, all ..., yes, all ..., yes, all ... alright.

You better come on up and get down with me.
Ill make you feel real good, just you wait and see.

Make me feel alright ..., yes, I feel alright ...
Yes, all ..., yes, all ..., yes, alright.

-------------

wha-deh-faak!

2011-09-28T11:10:00.000-07:00

Crap-O-Crapy-Peace-Officers !

the trouble makers are wearing tasers, guns, and badges:
police brutalities toward the peaceful demonstration crowds

Saturday De-Light

2011-09-17T21:51:00.000-07:00

September 16th, 2011 6:17 PM

It's a Long Way from Bunker Hill

By Michael Moore

Last night, on the 3rd anniversary of the start of the Wall Street Heist of 2008, I spoke at Bunker Hill Community College in the Charlestown section of Boston. It is not, to say the least, a wealthy neighborhood. It is roughscrabble and working class, a place where there are few magic doors that open to the Promised Land. (If you saw Ben Affleck's movie, "The Town," or the exceptional Broadway play this year, "Good People," then you have an idea of what the area is like.)

The college is, of course, named after one of the first battles of the American Revolution. And Charlestown looks like it could use a new Revolution these days. They, like so many millions in so many towns, have been sealed into a lockout of the American Dream. It is sad and scary to wander through it.

As I waited backstage for the college administrator to introduce me, he launched into something I, in all my years of speaking at hundreds of American colleges, have never witnessed. He began begging the crowd for money. Money for their student body's "Emergency Fund." The student body consists of many who are single parents and live below the poverty line. He didn't ask for tuition money or money for books. He begged the crowd for gas money. Babysitting money. Money to fix a car that's broken down, or for electricity that's been turned off. He listed all the things that cause a student to miss a class -- or drop out. Students (79% of them) who work near-minimum wage jobs AND try to be full time students at the same time. Community college is the only escape hatch they have, and even that is a crap shoot in this 21st century kleptocracy we live in.

He then told the crowd that he would hand out some envelopes and he asked them to put whatever they could in them.

Welcome to America! Where schools are turned into beggars as the rich on the other side of town post record profits and bonuses and the top corporations get away with paying no tax at all. I took the stage and began a 20 minute howl rejecting the America I just witnessed. A country that puts the education of its young dead last. DEAD LAST. A country that has purposefully abandoned the human right to an education in favor of sending millions of ignorant, uneducated, lost young people out into this world. This is no accident. Those in power cannot stay in power UNLESS the population they rule over are stupid and ignorant. To be smart is dangerous -- and they know that. If the ignorant were to know anything about civics (no longer taught in most schools), that could be nothing short of explosive. Because, if you are taught how to have a say, how to fight city hall, how to run for office and WIN -- well, look out, 'cause you will then have democratic change. The people who would make up a smart, educated majority would then start calling the shots. And we certainly don't want that because you know what those people from south Boston, from Toledo, from Pittsburgh, from Raleigh, from Flint are going to do? They're going to stop the wars. They're going to spend the money on their kids' schools, on their parents' health care, on laying down some railroad tracks so they can get from Chicago to Milwaukee in a half hour. That and dozens of other things that benefit the many, not the few.

(Continue Reading)

solar is still grey today

2011-09-15T14:31:00.000-07:00

The Phony Solyndra Solar Scandal

Thursday 15 September 2011

By Dave Johnson

Well here's a surprise: conservatives and oil interests are pushing deceptive and destructive stories about President Obama and clean energy. Imagine that! Their intent (as always) is to turn people against President Obama, clean energy, national energy policy, stimulus to help the economy, and government in general.It's what they do. Here is some information to help you push back on the latest whipped-up, anti-green, anti-government, anti-Obama "scandal."

Solyndra

Solyndra was a startup solar-power equipment manufacturer based in Fremont, California that went bankrupt at the end of August. The company's solar collectors used a special tubular internal design that let it collect light from all directions, and were made with a copper-indium-gallium-diselenide (CIGS) thin film that avoided using then-expensive silicon. It was one of several companies that received assistance from the government, in an attempt to push back on China's strategic targeting of green-energy manufacturing.

The company, partly backed by the conservative Walton family had received a loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. The loan, which was originally pushed by the Bush administration, was 1.3% of the DOE portfolio.

The economy tanked and cut demand, and at the same time Solyndra could not compete with subsidized companies located in China as they rapidly scaled up. So Solyndra ran out of money. Conservatives and oil interests are using the bankruptcy as a platform to attack green energy and the idea of green jobs in general, solar power in particular, President Obama as always, stimulus funding and the idea of developing a national strategic industrial policy to push back on China and others who have their own national policies to win this key industry of the future.

Conservative Attacks

Conservative are accusing the Obama administration of corruption in choosing Solyndra to receive a government loan guarantee. The typical conservative-outlet story follows a template of Glenn-Beckian accusations that someone "connected to" Obama has "ties" to something. When you hear the phrasing "has ties to" you should understand this as code-speak for "has nothing to do with but can be made to appear to have some sinister involvement if you twist the wording a certain way."

Example template story: Bankrupt solar company with fed backing has cozy ties to Obama admin ,

(Continue Reading)

grey tuesday… with blues

2011-09-13T17:29:00.000-07:00

The Cult of Death

Tuesday 13 September 2011

by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

Attendees clap during the CNN Tea Party Republican Debate at the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa, Fla., on Sept. 12, 2011. Eight Republican presidential candidates squared off with host Wolf Blitzer. (Photo: Chip Litherland / The New York Times)

Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

- Matthew 25:40 (King James)

Trying to figure out what this whole "Tea Party" phenomenon is all about is a lot like trying to peer into the bottom of a muddy pool. The "mainstream" news media has accepted them as a legitimate, powerful force in American politics, as evidenced by CNN's so-called "Tea Party Debate" for the Republican presidential candidates on Monday night. A group that did not exist three years ago suddenly has enough clout to rate a television banner and a chunk of prime-time coverage.

But who are these people, really?

Clearly, they are made up of what used to be quaintly called the "GOP base." In large part, they are the people who voted for George W. Bush twice, and would have happily pulled the lever for him a third time had he been on the ballot in 2008. They struggled mightily with John McCain's nomination in 2008, thanks to McCain's occasional political heresies against Mr. Bush, and their reticence to get behind McCain is a sizeable part of the explanation for why his campaign chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. No matter how galactically absurd the decision to tap Palin turned out to be, it was a calculated gamble because GOP base voters - now reborn as "Tea Party" voters - absolutely adore her. McCain needed those votes, and chose to roll the dice.

Ergo, these people have real muscle, at least within the party. Few voting blocs are as reliable as the GOP base, and they always turn out en masse for presidential primaries and caucuses. Thus, they are coddled and catered to, even by candidates who don't necessarily share their orthodoxy on far-right conservative issues.

After the 2008 election, that GOP base was transmogrified into the "Tea Party," thanks in large part to massive financial assistance from people like the Koch brothers, who have been using their vast financial resources to undercut the Obama administration and congressional Democrats at every opportunity. Their money helped to organize "Tea Party" rallies, as well as the much-documented bedlam that broke loose at a variety of health care town halls around the country. The "mainstream" news media fell in love with the spectacle, and all of a sudden, this new thing became all the rage (pardon the pun) on the nightly broadcasts.

There's more than a bit of sad irony in this. "Tea Party" people like to think of themselves as a grassroots "movement" born of, so they believe, a national sense of horror at the fact that Barack Obama is president. They peddled the farcical idea that Mr. Obama's birth certificate didn't exist, that he is a secret socialist fascist communist Muslim Islamist terrorist mole...but in the main, they are nothing more than useful idiots following the beat of drummers who couldn't care less about them at the end of the day.

And yes, "idiots" is the proper word. We've seen it often enough by now: the astonishingly poor spelling on protest signs carried by pear-shaped blivets wearing ill-fitting camouflage gear while packing rifles and pistols to public rallies, best personified by the brain donor who proudly held up a placard reading, "Keep Your Damned Government Hands Off My Medicare." It's like a zen koan. The dizzying stupidity represented therein literally stops the mind.

Whatever else these "Tea Party" people are, they are most definitely White Christians, with a strong strain of the evangelical, due in large part to the GOP-base DNA most of them share.

And that's where things get really interesting.

During the GOP debate last week, Rick Perry burnished his law-and-order credentials by bragging about the 234 executions - at least one of which took the life of an innocent man - he has presided over while governor of Texas. The GOP crowd at the debate went absolutely wild, cheering and hooting their approval of the taking of so much life.

On Monday night, candidate Ron Paul was given a hypothetical about providing health care to a dying man who lacked health insurance. Wolf Blitzer, who moderated the debate, asked Paul, "Are you saying society should just let him die?" Before Paul could cobble together an answer, the "Tea Party" audience again erupted, this time yelling "Yes!" in answer to Blitzer's question.

Hm.

These "Tea Party" people profess to be representatives of average Americans, despite being a complete creation of the 0.1% wealthy elite. They claim government is too big, even as many of them hail from states (think Texas) that would utterly collapse without federal funding. They bring guns to public rallies. They like Medicare, until they are reminded that Medicare is a government program.

And they are Christians, members of the faithful, who enjoy executions and who think uninsured people should be left to die.

Correction: they are "Christians," because it is impossible to build any kind of bridge between the teachings of Jesus and the beliefs these people espouse at the top of their lungs.

They are not Christians, but are in fact a death-worshipping cult. The best response to the vile display broadcast by CNN on Monday night was provided by former Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, who has had more than a few go-rounds with this particular breed of cat. "What you saw tonight," said Grayson, "is something much more sinister than not having a healthcare plan. It's sadism, pure and simple. It's the same impulse that led people in the Coliseum to cheer when the lions ate the Christians. And that seems to be where we are heading - bread and circuses, without the bread. The world that Hobbes wrote about - 'the war of all against all.'"

Thanks to the "mainstream" news media, to ardent yet covert supporters like the Koch brothers, and to the sweaty intensity of their own deranged ideals, these "Tea Party" people have emerged as a true force in American politics. What we saw last week, and on Monday night, is a glimpse of what the world would be like if these people achieve the supremacy they seek.

Jesus wept.

--------------

grey day golden gate

2011-09-04T16:30:00.000-07:00

The White House & Tar Sands

Sunday 4 September 2011

by: James E. Hansen, Climate Story Tellers | News Analysis

"If the Keystone XL pipeline is approved, can we make a citizen's arrest on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for violating the Energy Independence and Security Act? If they were put in the back of a hot paddy wagon in DC and held for at least several hours with their hands tied behind their backs, maybe they would have a chance to think over this matter more clearly."

We had a dream — that the new President would understand the intergenerational injustice of human–made climate change — that he would recognize our duty to be caretakers of creation, of the land, of the life on our planet — and that he would give these matters the priority that our young people deserve.

We had a dream — that the President would understand the commonality of solutions for energy security, national security and climate stability — and that he would exercise hands–on leadership, taking the matter to the public, avoiding backroom crippling deals with special interests.

We had a dream — that the President would stand as firm as Abraham Lincoln when he faced the great moral issue of slavery — and, like Franklin Roosevelt or Winston Churchill, he would speak with the public, enlisting their support and reassuring them.

Washington, DC - People gathered in front of the White House holding signs that urge the president to reject the keystone pipeline. 47 people participated in the civil disobedience action and arrested on August 25th, 2011. (Photo: Ben Powless / tarsandsaction)

Perhaps our dreams were unrealistic. It is not easy to find an Abraham Lincoln or a Winston Churchill. But we will not give up. There can be no law or regulation that stops us from acting on our dreams.

(Read the entire article)

2011-08-08T15:32:00.000-07:00

<-- (Image: JR / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Eddy Pula, SqueakyMarmot)

The Economic Illiterates Step Up the Attack on Social Security and Medicare
Monday 8 August 2011
by: Dean Baker, Truthout | Op-Ed

Rather than being a left-right split, this is a top-bottom split. There is a bipartisan consensus among the elites that these programs should be cut. The guiding philosophy of this drive is that public money that goes to programs for middle income and poor people is money that could be in the pockets of the wealthy.

…….

The remarkable part of this story is that elites are effectively using their incompetence in managing the economy as the core of their argument for cutting these social programs. After all, no one was talking about cutting these programs until the deficit exploded, and the reason the deficit exploded was that the collapse of the housing bubble wrecked the economy.

If these elites had a clue about the economy, they never would have allowed the bubble to grow to such dangerous levels. The economy would not have collapsed, the deficit would be manageable and no one would be discussing cuts to Social Security and the other programs.

In other lines of work, incompetence on the job gets you fired. In policymaking in Washington, incompetence means more responsibility and power.

(Read On)

sun saddened sunday

2011-08-07T13:59:00.000-07:00

The Shah (left), Brzezinski (right), Carter (second right)

Bosnia, Kosovo, and Now Libya: The Human Costs of Washington’s Ongoing Collusion With Terrorists

Sunday 7 August 2011

by: Peter Dale Scott, Japan Focus | Op-Ed

Twice in the last two decades, significant cuts in U.S. and western military spending were foreseen: first after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But both times military spending soon increased, and among the factors contributing to the increase were America’s interventions in new areas: the Balkans in the 1990s, and Libya today.¹ Hidden from public view in both cases was the extent to which al-Qaeda was a covert U.S. ally in both interventions, rather than its foe.

U.S. interventions in the Balkans and then Libya were presented by the compliant U.S. and allied mainstream media as humanitarian. Indeed, some Washington interventionists may have sincerely believed this. But deeper motivations – from oil to geostrategic priorities – were also at work in both instances.

(Read On)

On a tour led by Libyan government officials, two men survey the damage of building said to be a law school following an alleged air strike by NATO two days earlier in the western town of Zlitan, Libya, Aug. 4, 2011. (Photo: Moises Saman / The New York Times) --->

2011-08-02T15:26:00.000-07:00

<--- President Barack Obama during a news conference about debt ceiling negotiations, July 29, 2011. (Photo: Philip Scott Andrews / The New York Times)

A President in Reverse
Tuesday 2 August 2011
by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

The United States of America is different today, different in a fundamental and dramatic way, and is a better place now only for a few thousand people who are rich enough to remain above the effect of this transformation. For the rest of us, the 99% who stay up nights worrying about health care bills, retirement, finding a job, keeping a job, and aging parents who now dangle above a deliberately frayed safety net, it is a colder and more dangerous country we call home.

If I hear one more person try to tell me the deal cut between Congress and the White House was as good as we can expect, that it isn't all bad, I might vomit on them. This whole thing has been a disaster, and no amount of spin can alter the fact. Mr. Obama has taken to the habit of abject retreat with such gusto that he should be outfitted with one of those beeping devices they put on trucks to alert people when they go in reverse. At least that way, we will have some warning the next time this Democratic president backs away from the very policies and priorities he was elected to protect and defend.

We sure could have used such a signal during this debt-fight calamity.

I want a clean debt bill. Beep-beep-beep, never mind.

(Read On)

midday sun burns on down the bay

2011-08-01T16:07:00.000-07:00

Crap-A-Deal!!!

<-- President Barack Obama speaks about a debt deal at the White House on Sunday night in Washington, July 31, 2011. Obama announced that leaders of both parties in the House and Senate have reached an agreement with him to raise the government's debt ceiling. (Photo: Philip Scott Andrews / The New York Times)

Ransom Paid
Monday 1 August 2011
by: Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog | Op-Ed

Anyone who characterizes the deal between the President, Democratic, and Republican leaders as a victory for the American people over partisanship understands neither economics nor politics.

The deal does not raise taxes on America’s wealthy and most fortunate — who are now taking home a larger share of total income and wealth, and whose tax rates are already lower than they have been, in eighty years. Yet it puts the nation’s most important safety nets and public investments on the chopping block.

It also hobbles the capacity of the government to respond to the jobs and growth crisis. Added to the cuts already underway by state and local governments, the deal’s spending cuts increase the odds of a double-dip recession. And the deal strengthens the political hand of the radical right.

Yes, the deal is preferable to the unfolding economic catastrophe of a default on the debt of the U.S. government. The outrage and the shame is it has come to this choice.

More than a year ago, the President could have conditioned his agreement to extend the Bush tax cuts beyond 2010 on Republicans’ agreement not to link a vote on the debt ceiling to the budget deficit. But he did not.

Many months ago, when Republicans first demanded spending cuts and no tax increases as a condition for raising the debt ceiling, the President could have blown their cover. He could have shown the American people why this demand had nothing to do with deficit reduction but everything to do with the GOP’s ideological fixation on shrinking the size of the government — thereby imperiling Medicare, Social Security, education, infrastructure, and everything else Americans depend on. But he did not.

And through it all the President could have explained to Americans that the biggest economic challenge we face is restoring jobs and wages and economic growth, that spending cuts in the next few years will slow the economy even further, and therefore that the Republicans’ demands threaten us all. Again, he did not.

The radical right has now won a huge tactical and strategic victory. Democrats and the White House have proven they have little by way of tactics or strategy.

By putting Medicare and Social Security on the block, they have made it more difficult for Democrats in the upcoming 2012 election cycle to blame Republicans for doing so.

By embracing deficit reduction as their apparent goal – claiming only that they’d seek to do it differently than the GOP – Democrats and the White House now seemingly agree with the GOP that the budget deficit is the biggest obstacle to the nation’s future prosperity.

The budget deficit is not the biggest obstacle to our prosperity. Lack of jobs and growth is. And the largest threat to our democracy is the emergence of a radical right capable of getting most of the ransom it demands.

Friday Fogs on the hills

2011-07-29T15:25:00.000-07:00

Crap-O-Cuts!!!

<-- Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy speaks to the media. (Photo: Douglas Healey / The New York Times)

Time for Public Sector Unions to Fight Back
Friday 29 July 2011
by: Shamus Cooke, Truthout | Op-Ed

The media attack on public sector unions has reached a timely zenith, perfectly in sync with the politicians' anti-union deathblow. This coordinated campaign is happening nationwide, and includes Democratic and Republican marauders on a state-by-state basis. There are several state battlegrounds where this war is coming to completion, but no winner has been declared. If Democratic and Republican governors are able to force massive concessions on public sector unions - and the corresponding cuts to the services their members deliver to the public

- the labor movement and the social safety net will both be decimated, paving the way for even more brutal, future attacks.
…

(Read On)

a shameful day in american history

2011-07-20T15:35:00.000-07:00

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), released a statement on using the Chained Consumer Price Index to determine Social Security Cost of Living Adjustments, saying "This is a benefit cut that would hit current retirees, most of whom are not especially affluent."

Gang of Six Plan Gives Tax Breaks for Wealthy, Social Security Cuts for Ordinary Workers
Tuesday 19 July 2011
by: Dean Baker, The Center for Economic and Policy Research | News Analysis

"The budget plan produced by the Senate’s “Gang of Six” offers the promise of huge tax breaks for some of the wealthiest people in the country, while lowering Social Security benefits for retirees and the disabled. Despite claiming that they will "reform" Social Security on a "separate track, isolated from deficit reduction," the plan includes cuts to Social Security that would be felt in less than six months, as the plan calls for a new inflation formula that will reduce benefits by 0.3 percentage points a year compared with currently scheduled benefits. The plan also calls for a process that is likely to reduce benefits further for future retirees.

(Read it All)

midnight and dark morning

2011-07-18T00:21:00.000-07:00

Crap-O-Gaza-Seige!

<-- Demonstrators on the American boat, "The Audacity of Hope" at a port near Athens, Greece, June 30, 2011. (Photo: Nadia Shira Cohen / The New York Times)

Neocons Fume Over US Boat to Gaza

Exclusive: At the behest of Tel Aviv and Washington, Greek authorities stopped a small flotilla from sailing to Gaza in a challenge to Israel’s four-year blockade of the narrow strip of land and its 1.6 million people. Now, apologists for Israel’s right-wing Likud government are heaping scorn on the passengers, as Ray McGovern notes.

By Ray McGovern
July 16, 2011

The bottom line is this: Dershowitz’s Likud friends and their neocon chums in the Obama administration realize they have suffered a stinging - and unnecessary - PR defeat. They could easily have let our peaceful boat carrying passengers, media and letters of goodwill reach the isolated people of Gaza. What we boaters appear to have accomplished is to provoke the mighty diplomats of Israel and the United States into a full-court press that brought renewed attention to the plight of the Gazans.

(Read Article)

Crap-A-Chamber-o-Commerce !

Climate Regulations a Job Killer? Quit Crying Wolf

Sunday 17 July 2011

by: Donald Cohen, YES! Magazine | Op-Ed

There’s an old adage that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. That seems to be the unofficial motto of the United States Chamber of Commerce, which has spent the last forty years repeating (and repeating and repeating) the mantra that government regulations on businesses “kill jobs” and economic growth. But their predictions have been repeatedly wrong. The laws they warned would bring economic ruin have become the basic health, safety, and environmental safeguards we now take for granted.

(Read Article)

Happy the 4th of july: 00:30AM

2011-07-04T00:21:00.000-07:00

A supporter at a Sarah Palin/Tea Party rally, Boston Commons, Mass., 04/14/10. (photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters)

Fourth of July, 2011 - Running Against the Wind
By Leslie Griffith, Reader Supported News
03 July 11

"I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then."

We live in a nation born of a small group of revolutionaries determined not be slaves to any monarch. They were "young and strong and running against the wind." But, they were also building a nation on lies. While vowing to be no man's slave, America was built on the backs of the enslaved. And that is where the hypocrisy began … at the very beginning … and the hypocrisy lives on today.

Despite it all, we swore the good times "never would end." But, we know now what we didn't know then.

Could the founders have ever imagined the handful of unpatriotic monarchs currently ruling our lives and lining their gilded pockets with our money? With money accumulated from schemes that decimated the nation? And 235 years after the signing of a Constitution declaring all men equal and all religious beliefs tolerable, we must acknowledge that wondrous dream is still deferred. So, on this Fourth of July weekend…

(Read the Article)

--------------

As the Dark Clouds' Gathering at the SouthSide of the Sunset Beach

2011-06-29T20:37:00.000-07:00

This Land Is Our Land: Inheritors of Reservation Land Fight Back
Wednesday 29 June 2011
by: Alleen Brown, In These Times | Report

Alleen Brown, In These Times: "Indians cannot sell or lease their trust land without federal approval, and the government is supposed to distribute any revenues earned from the land (through leasing to farmers, railroads, mining companies and other private interests) to the individual landowners. As soon as the first allottees died, the government began dividing property among their descendents. But heirs did not inherit pieces of land with specific boundaries. Instead, they inherited fractions of the title - a title held in trust by the federal government. This system leaves most allotment heirs with tiny, in effect unusable, fractions of ownership."

(Read the Article)

fog's entering the setting sun

2011-06-21T20:19:00.000-07:00

Crap-O-Ryan-Plan !!!

Dr. Rachel Z. Chatters, a pediatrician, right, sees clients, Ana Smith and her son Aidan, two, who rely on Medicaid, in Lake Charles, Louisiana, March 24, 2011. Medicaid, which is paid for jointly by the federal and state governments, is the subject of an intense debate in Washington over how to make it more efficient as Congress addresses the budget deficit and the growing national debt. (Photo: Michael Stravato / The New York Times)

Blood on the Chopping Block
Tuesday 21 June 2011
by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

- Confucius

The Republican Party has spent the last several weeks receiving an education - by way of serial beatings delivered by constituents from sea to shining sea - on the awesome power of Medicare in America. When it became known that Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to turn the wildly popular program into a privatized disaster zone had been adopted as the battle standard for the GOP and its newly-muscular Tea Party bloc, seven different breeds of merry hell broke loose across the land. House member after House member climbed out of the DC bubble, went home to their districts, and were promptly set upon by furious people who deeply depend on Medicare.
(Full Story)

2011-05-26T20:43:00.000-07:00

Crap-Up-de-Mocrapt !!!

Richard Trumka at the Power Shift 2011 rally, April 19, 2011. In a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Trumka called for a labor movement focused on workers and families, not political candidates. (Photo: linh.m.do)

Can Unions Break From the Democrats? What a Real Declaration of Independence Would Mean
Thursday 26 May 2011
by: Amy Dean, Truthout

On May 20, American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) President Richard Trumka issued a warning to those Democratic candidates who rely on labor's resources when running for office but hold social movements at arm's length once in office: become champions for working families, he told them, or don't assume that unions will be there for you in the future.

(Read On)

blog-o-chu

the eve of x'mas eve

Remy: Grandma Got Indefinitely Detained (A Very TSA Christmas)

chillier and chillier nights and days

Crap-O-Shockin'-War-Crimes !!!

New Documents Released of 2007 Iraq Atrocity by Troops

chilly and chillier days comin'

Crap-A-baad-laaw !

Why a Constitutional Law Professor Should Not Sign an Unconstitutional Military Detention Bill

thru the darkness of saturn-sun-day

in the darkness of saturn-sun-day

Wednesday Clouds

Crap-X-boDy-scaNNN!

The European Union now prohibits the use of X-ray body scanners

at airports. (photo: Michael Nagle/Getty Images)

high moon sunday eve.

O-Crappy-Ol'-Cracka-Nick !!

Richard Nixon’s Darkest Secret

sunny chilly saturday afternoon

Guantanamo, the Most Expensive Prison on Earth, Hurts Taxpayers and Moral Ground

sunny chills

Crap-O-Tar-Pipe-O-Profits !!

Morning Fogs

Anti-Keystone Pipeline Lawsuit Coming

fry-day night fever

fry-day chill

Then They Fight You

Environmental activist

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

photo:

Santa Clara University

Crap-O-Shock-Shut !!

San Fran Sat. PM Breeze

CraP-a-worldly-Word !

-----------------------------------------

Crap-o-Drone-Kill-Zones!

Covert Drone War

http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/

http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/

fri--kin' friday again

Cra-PA-Wars!

Inside Obama's War Room

Westerly Morning Moon&Venus in a file

Sunny Afternoon in San Francisco - the Paradise

Thousands of protesters gathered in the Puerta del Sol in Madrid as well as the main squares in other cities to demand political reforms in Spain, 05/23/11. (photo: Emilio Morenatti/AP)

'Indignant' Protests to Sweep Across World

Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook are finding new ways

to track users. (photo: deathandtaxesmag.com)

Facebook Can Track Web Browsing Without Cookies

grayed tuesday

Guantanamo: A Cold Sore on the Face of America

sat over the week & weekends 1

friday starry night

sunny depressing crawlin' upstream day

wha-deh-faak!

Saturday De-Light

solar is still grey today

The Phony Solyndra Solar Scandal

grey tuesday… with blues

The Cult of Death

grey day golden gate

sun saddened sunday

midday sun burns on down the bay

Friday Fogs on the hills

a shameful day in american history

midnight and dark morning

Happy the 4th of july: 00:30AM

As the Dark Clouds' Gathering at the SouthSide of the Sunset Beach

fog's entering the setting sun

Thousands of protesters gathered in the Puerta del Sol in Madrid as well as the main squares
in other cities to demand political reforms in Spain, 05/23/11. (photo: Emilio Morenatti/AP)