fri--kin' friday again

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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