Archive for November, 2009

SHell Game

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Afghanistan

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Thirty financial groups on systemic risk list

Thirty global financial institutions make up a list that regulators are earmarking for cross-border supervision exercises, the Financial Times has learnt.

The list includes six insurance companies – Axa, Aegon, Allianz, Aviva, Zurich and Swiss Re – which sit alongside 24 banks from the UK, continental Europe, North America and Japan.

The list has been drawn up by regulators under the auspices of the Financial Stability Board, in an effort to pre-empt systemic risks from spreading around the world in any future financial crisis.

Full Story FT.com / Companies / Banks – Thirty financial groups on systemic risk list.

‘World’s strongest’ beer with 32% launched

A controversial Scottish brewery has launched what it described as the world’s strongest beer – with a 32% alcohol content.

Tactical Nuclear Penguin has been unveiled by BrewDog of Fraserburgh.

BrewDog was previously branded irresponsible for an 18.2% beer called Tokyo, which it then followed with a low alcohol beer called Nanny State.

Managing director James Watt said a limited supply of Tactical Nuclear Penguin would be sold for £30 each.

Full Story BBC News – ‘World’s strongest’ beer with 32% strength launched.

OPS: This oughta make their ‘football’ games even MORE interesting.

Get Out Now — By G. Pascal Zachary

– In These Times

The case for an immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan.

For all the talk of polarization and partisanship in U.S. politics, what’s remarkable is the extent to which President Obama has continued policies and practices of his predecessor, George Bush, in domestic economics and military affairs.

Economically, Obama has continued the bailout of Wall Street, maintained Bush-era tax cuts, pursued “stimulus” through large deficit spending and re-appointed Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman who was a Bush favorite.

In defense, Obama has broken with Bush on a few critical matters, notably by canceling expensive weapons systems and dropping (in September) an aggressive plan to impose a “missile shield” in Eastern Europe that Russia intensely opposed. Yet Obama has carried over Bush’s secretary of defense, Robert Gates; essentially stuck with Bush timetables on Iraq; and maintained historically record levels of Pentagon spending. The president has continued the war in Afghanistan, raising the number of American combat troops. In a speech on August 17, Obama even tried to construct a moral basis for the war, described it as “not a war of choice,” but “a war of necessity.” And as a necessary war, “a war worth fighting,” Obama has declared that only through the democratization of Afghanistan can the terrorist threat to the United States—in the form of al Qaeda—be eliminated from the country.

Full Story Get Out Now — In These Times.

CBO: Health Care Reform Will Lower Out-Of-Pocket Burden For Most Consumers

A new CBO report, requested by Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) contains some helpful, though not unexpected information about the impact of Senate health care legislation on insurance premiums, particularly in the individual market.

According to CBO, average premiums in the individual market would increase 10 to 13 percent because of provisions in the Senate health care bill, but, crucially, most people (about 57 percent) would actually find themselves paying significantly less money for insurance, thanks to federal subsidies for low- and middle-class consumers, than they would under current law.

Those are two separate findings, but it seems likely that Republicans will use the former finding to attack reform, claiming it will raise people's premiums, and leave people confused about the second finding, which is actually the one that impacts people’s pocket books.

The report finds that for the minority of consumers in the individual market who receive no federal assistance, premiums (and therefore out-of-pocket costs) will increase slightly–on the order of 10 percent–which could prove politically difficult in the years after health care reform takes effect.

Full Story CBO: Health Care Reform Will Lower Out-Of-Pocket Burden For Most Consumers | TPMDC.

OPS: Full CBO Report (PDF).

‘Sunsetting’ Provisions of Patriot Act Revives Privacy Debate

House Defies White House and Renews Two of Three Expiring Provisions

Rushed into law by Congress just weeks after Sept. 11, 2001 three controversial provisions of the Patriot Act granting officials far-reaching surveillance and seizure powers in the name of national security, are due to expire this New Year’s Eve.

Two differing bills passed by the House and Senate judiciary committees in recent weeks will have to be reconciled in Congress, but only when the Senate isn’t backlogged by health care, Democratic aides told ABC News.

“This critical legislation protects our national security, as well as our civil liberties, and the clock is ticking,” said Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., an author of President Bush’s 2001 Patriot Act and former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee under the Bush administration.

Sensenbrenner urged the House and Senate to act quickly in reauthorizing the provisions before they expire at the end of this year.

Full Story ‘Sunsetting’ Provisions of Patriot Act Revives Privacy Debate – ABC News.

Gibbs: Obama ‘Delivered The Orders’ On Afghanistan

President Barack Obama has issued orders for the implementation of his Afghanistan strategy to military officials and cabinet members, spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Monday.

“The commander in chief delivered the orders,” said Gibbs, adding that the calls went out from the Oval Office between 5 and 6 p.m on Sunday afternoon, communicating his strategy to allied world leaders. Obama is slated to meet with roughly 30 select members of Congress to discuss his plans on Tuesday. And the president is set to meet on Monday with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, in addition to hosting phone conversations with French President Nicholas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.

Obama’s strategy is believed to include an escalation of approximately 30,000 troops in the nine-year-long war. Gibbs added that in Obama’s Tuesday night speech detailing the Afghanistan strategy to the American public, the president will stress that America’s commitment to the war is not open-ended.

Full Story Gibbs: Obama ‘Delivered The Orders’ On Afghanistan.

Krugman: Deficit Hawks Trying To Scare People With Big, Out-Of-Context Numbers

On ABC This Week, host George Stephanopoulos asked Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist, about the argument that the nation’s rising debt level may lead to “a major weakening of American power.” Krugman responded: KRUGMAN: You know, first thing to say is people are putting their money where their mouth is, which is the bond market. Things were fine. You know, the U.S. government is able to borrow long-term at 3.3 percent interest rate. So, obviously, you know, the market is not convinced.

Now, the market has been wrong. But, then if you do the arithmetic, these numbers look huge. The American economy is huge. The debt burden, even after five years, is going to be well below as a share of GDP well below levels that lots of industrial countries have reached in the past, including ourselves after World War II, when we were able to handle that just fine. [...]

Full Story Krugman: Deficit Hawks Trying To Scare People With Big, Out-Of-Context Numbers.

Game over? Billionaire elites now blatantly rule American politics

What drives a man or a woman to spend millions of dollars — even tens of millions — of his or her own money to get a job that would place the words senator, representative, governor, or mayor in front of his or her name? For most of us unwashed heathens, the multiple millions of their own money these financial elites spend on their political campaigns represent seemingly staggering amounts.

But viewed in the rarified context of the very wealthy, the amounts are petty cash.

For example, former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman has put $19 million so far into her campaign for governor of California — but that’s barely 1.5 percent of her $1.3 billion fortune.

Whitman has “publicly floated the notion of a record-shattering $150-million campaign budget” — but even if she financed $100 million of that herself, that still would only be 7.7 percent of her billion-dollar-plus wallet.

She wants to be governor of what used to be one of the 10 largest economies in the world. But she takes a back seat to newly re-elected New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in spending your own money to be somebody big. No one in American history has spent so much of his own money to win an election.

Full Story Scholars and Rogues » Game over? Billionaire elites now blatantly rule American politics.

7 Ways to Prevent Heartburn

When Sandy Bush, 35, of Canyon Country, California, went to see his doctor complaining of extreme heartburn, it seemed like the least of his problems. His wife had just left him for another man, and he was trying to help their two young children through the messy divorce.

Yet heartburn, while not as catastrophic as the dissolution of a family, can be pretty miserable. It hurts like crazy, robs you of sleep, and can be terrifying when mistaken for a heart attack. And it’s exacerbated by stress (as in, divorce). One version, gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD–the result of chronic, untreated heartburn–has even been linked to cancer.

This irksome condition has become epidemic: Half of all Americans experience the occasional bout, and 15 percent–that’s 43 million people–get it frequently enough to consult a doctor. In fact, heartburn is so common that the leading medications, Prilosec and other proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), are among the world’s most frequently prescribed drugs. The New York Times reported that last year, Prilosec (a.k.a. “the purple pill”) racked up U.S. sales of $4.6 billion–more than the profits for McDonald’s, Wendy’s, KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut combined.

Full Story 7 Ways to Prevent Heartburn | Healthy and Green Living.

Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan

Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill talks about his bombshell story in The Nation about Blackwater’s involvement in targeted killings, drone attacks, and other covert operations in Pakistan.

GRITtv with Laura Flanders brings participatory democracy onto your computer screen and into your living room, bridging the gap between audience and advocates. Watch any show, at any time:

Full Story YouTube – GRITtv: Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan.

The Galula Doctrine

Although we already know what President Obama is going to be selling this Tuesday – a radical escalation of the Afghan war involving 30,000 or more troops – we don’t yet know what his sales pitch will be like. Can the peerless rhetorician apply his skills to the task of mobilizing a war-weary nation around yet another military conflict in the Middle East?

I have no doubt Obama is up to the task in a way his predecessor never was or could be. The language of “liberation” employed by George W. Bush’s speechwriters was too hard-edged and ideological for Americans to appreciate. This could be because those speeches were mostly written by neoconservatives, whose appeals on behalf of a U.S.-led “global democratic revolution” sounded as if they were addressed to a Russian audience, circa 1917, rather than to Americans of any era.

The Bush speechwriters had basically two tropes when it came to foreign policy: fear and hubris. Obama’s wordsmiths no doubt have a broader range of arguments and may prove more skillful at selling them to their restive base: e.g., the “you break it you own it” theory of altruistic imperialism, which contends that the evil Bush administration’s sins must be expiated in the task of nation-building because we owe that much to the Afghan people. This is the position, as I understand it, taken by Code Pink, the pro-Obama “antiwar” group that was dead set against the occupation of Iraq but is currently having second thoughts about opposing what is now Obama’s war in Afghanistan.

Full Story The Galula Doctrine by Justin Raimondo — Antiwar.com.

What Happens When Your Country Drowns?

The First Country In The World To Become Unlivable

Meet the people of Tuvalu, the world’s first climate refugees.

IT’S A BRIGHT, BALMY SUNDAY afternoon and I’m driving through the western outskirts of Auckland, New Zealand, the kind of place you never see on a postcard. No majestic mountains, no improbably green pastures—just a bland tangle of shopping malls and suburbia. I follow a dead-end street, past a rubber plant, a roofing company, a drainage service, and a plastics manufacturer, until I reach a white building behind a chain-link fence. Inside is a kernel of a nation within a nation—a sneak preview of what a climate change exodus looks like.

This is the Tuvalu Christian Church, the heart of a migrant community from what may be the first country to be rendered unlivable by global warming. Tuvalu is the fourth-smallest nation on Earth: six coral atolls and three reef islands flung across 500,000 square miles of ocean, about halfway between Australia and Hawaii. It has few natural resources to export and no economy to speak of; its gross domestic product relies heavily on the sale of its desirable Internet domain suffix, which is .tv, and a modest trade in collectible stamps. Tuvalu’s total land area is just 16 square miles, of which the highest point stands 16 feet above the waterline. Tuvaluans, who have a high per-capita incidence of good humor, refer to the spot as “Mount Howard,” after the former Australian prime minister who refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

Full Story What Happens When Your Country Drowns? | Mother Jones.

Minnesota Woman Gives Birth To 15-Pound Baby Boy (VIDEO)

A Minnesota woman gave birth to a 15-pound 6-oz. baby boy last Monday, Nov. 23.

Axel Laverne Dolton was born three weeks premature and still wieghed in at more than twice the average birthweight of babies born in Minnesota.

Axel's mother and father, Wendi and Michael Dolton of Rochester, Minn., told the TODAY Show this weekend that they knew their infant would be big, at least 12 pounds, but they weren't expecting the baby to weigh in at 15 lbs.

Wendi Dolton says she too was a big baby, and weighed more than 10 lbs. at birth. She said doctors had to break her shoulders to deliver her.

Axel is the Dolton's third child and their first boy.

In 1955, an Italian woman set a world record when gave birth to a 22lb. 8 oz. baby boy. More recently, a 19 lb. 2 oz. baby was delivered in Indonesia earlier this year.

Full Story Minnesota Woman Gives Birth To 15-Pound Baby Boy (VIDEO).

Following Bush-era argument, Obama attorneys push to weaken web search protections

Even though a Bush-era request to conduct blanket searches of computer files was rebuked by judges, the Obama administration is now pushing to have the decision reversed, according to court documents filed the week of Thanksgiving.

U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, and twenty other government attorneys submitted a brief to the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals, making a very extraordinary request.

Federal prosecutors went too far when they seized the drug test results of 104 pro baseball players, according to a 9-2 “en banc” panel decision in August by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling included guidelines for computer search conduct designed to protect Fourth Amendment privacy rights, in the style of Miranda rights.

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote at the time that the government “must maintain the privacy of materials that are intermingled with seizable materials, and … avoid turning a limited search for particular information into a general search of office file systems and computer databases.”

In 2006, the 9th Circuit initially sided with the Bush administration against the Major League Baseball Players Association in a 2-1 decision.

Full Story Following Bush-era argument, Obama attorneys push to weaken search protections | Raw Story.

CNN finds modern-day slaves in US

Thirty Thai men who were “tricked into a life of forced labor” after being promised lucrative jobs in the United States are just one symptom of the problem of modern-day slavery, CNN reported Monday.

According to the State Department, there are as many as 200,000 forced laborers in the US, with some 17,500 arriving every year.

“This is a hidden crime,” Louis C. de Baca, the State Department's ambassador for human trafficking, told CNN. “The very nature of this crime masks it from us.”

CNN reported on the case of 30 Thai men, who were promised jobs picking tobacco on North Carolina by a company called Million Express Manpower. The company required the men to pay the equivalent of $11,000 for the necessary visa and transportation.

Full Story CNN finds modern-day slaves in US | Raw Story.

Conservative Senators Embrace Putting Off Health Care For Americans In Favor Of Escalation In Afghanistan

The policy debate in Washington is currently focused on two topics: a possible escalation of the war in Afghanistan and health care legislation. Both a troop escalation and health care reform carry significant price tags — roughly $100 billion and $80-$100 billion a year respectively. (It should be noted that health care reform, unlike a troop surge, would cut the deficit.)

When it comes to these two debates, hawkish senators have laid out their priorities. They are more than willing to fund a risky troop surge that is increasingly opposed by both Americans and Afghans, yet remain stalwart opponents of health care reform that could save the lives of the 45,000 Americans who die every year because they lack access to health care.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) demonstrated this preference for war over health care and other essential domestic priorities during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” yesterday. He heartily endorsed “a new surge of forces” in Afghanistan while dismissing a war surtax proposed by Rep. David Obey (D-WI). Graham suggested that we “trim up” the health care bill to pay for the war, prompting Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to remark that Graham and other senate hawks have a “poor set of priorities”:

Full Story Think Progress » Conservative Senators Embrace Putting Off Health Care For Americans In Favor Of Escalation In Afghanistan.

Barack Obama: Manchurian Candidate Version 2.0

Dave Lindorff

I once wrote an article about former President George W. Bush saying that he was a perfect Manchurian candidate. That is, if his missing year when he was supposed to have been flying fighter jets with the Texas Air National Guard was actually spent in the former Soviet Union being reprogrammed as a covert KGB agent whose job it was to go back to America, win election to the White House, and proceed to destroy the US, he couldn’t have done a better job than he actually did.

Now I wonder whether President Obama might not be a perfect Manchurian Candidate of the Republican Party, or perhaps of some nefarious foreign entity—perhaps the China or the always-enigmatic Al Qaeda. How else to explain policies that have wreaked such destruction on the Democratic Party in Washington and on the nation at large.

Consider for a moment the history of this new president in whom so many invested so much hope and enthusiasm:

Almost immediately upon taking office President Obama announced that he was appointing Timothy Geithner, part of the Bush/Cheney financial team, to head up his Treasury Department. This is the same Timothy Geithner who, as head of the New York Federal Reserve, engineered the initial give-away of $85 billion to AIG, and the subsequent pass-through of tens of billions of dollars to a handful of the nation’s largest banks and investment banks—surely the largest theft of public assets by private billionaires in the history of mankind. Obama went on to name a whole gang of Wall Street crooks to run his economic policy, assuring that the recession would be not an opportunity to restore long neglected and undermined New Deal programs, but rather to crush workers and the middle class while shifting staggering sums to the wealthy.

Full Story Barack Obama: Manchurian Candidate Version 2.0 | This Can’t Be Happening!.

Monsanto’s control over seed market prompts antitrust inquiry

Patented seeds are go-to for farmers, who decry their fast-growing price

For plants designed in a lab a little more than a decade ago, they’ve come a long way: Today, the vast majority of the nation’s two primary crops grow from seeds genetically altered according to Monsanto company patents.

Ninety-three percent of soybeans. Eighty percent of corn.

The seeds represent “probably the most revolutionary event in grain crops over the last 30 years,” said Geno Lowe, a Salisbury, Md., soybean farmer.

But for farmers such as Lowe, prices of the Monsanto-patented seeds have steadily increased, roughly doubling during the past decade, to about $50 for a 50-pound bag of soybean seed, according to seed dealers.

Full Story Monsanto’s control over seed market prompts antitrust inquiry – washingtonpost.com.

Job Creation Agenda Must Include Low-Skill Workers

At one point during the Great Depression, 40,000 union members marched in the streets of Chicago demanding that the government give them jobs. They also wanted an end to Prohibition, but they managed to tie that to job creation, as well.

So far, there are no angry mobs gathering outside the White House. But across the country there is a growing consensus that President Obama must do something to generate jobs now that one in 10 workers are unemployed.

Obama’s job summit Thursday with business leaders and policymakers could help shape the approach he takes, be it tax credits, wage subsidies or even a federal jobs program. But beyond deciding what to do, out political leaders need to answer another critical question: Who should benefit?

Full Story Bob Giloth: Job Creation Agenda Must Include Low-Skill Workers.

Cap and Trade: A Fatal Distraction

Activists Engage in Direct Action in Numerous US Cities on Nov. 30

Humanity is facing a global emergency on a scale never before encountered. Scientists warn that climate de-stabilization is accelerating beyond worst case scenarios and approaching tipping points of no return. They predict water and food shortages, collapsing governments, regional wars, and chaotic dislocation of large populations. In the face of such transcendent danger, it is an unspeakable tragedy that the legislative process – which could mandate the needed changes – has instead become politicized and hijacked by the very forces responsible for the problem.

The protection of creation is an awesome – and some would say sacred – obligation shared by all. It is thus morally irresponsible to tie the fate of our planet to the whims of Wall Street speculators seeking profits on a trillion dollar market. But this is what is occurring with the decision to employ a cap and trade approach – the buying and selling of “pollution permits” – to address the climate crisis.

The vast complexity of the legislation, and the need to secure 60 votes in the US Senate, has become an invitation for powerful vested interests to flex political muscle, ensure profits, and insert escape routes to avoid regulation. The emission reduction targets have been drastically weakened compared to what science is demanding, as if the immutable laws of physics can somehow be re-arranged for the sake of political convenience.

Full Story Cap and Trade: A Fatal Distraction | CommonDreams.org.

GOP Wages Internal Debate Over Tax Increase For Afghan War

Two former advisers to George W. Bush had a spirited debate on Sunday morning over the possibility of a surtax to pay for a troop escalation in Afghanistan.

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Dan Senor, a neoconservative war hawk who served as Bush’s spokesman in Iraq, called proposals for taxing the rich to pay for the war a backdoor effort to derail any surge in forces. He was opposed by another Bush hand, former communications honcho Matthew Dowd — a GOP traditionalist — who said it was unfair to have an increase in troops without a shared social sacrifice.

The whole exchange is worthwhile, but the below portion was particularly illuminating:

Full Story GOP Wages Internal Debate Over Tax Increase For Afghan War.

An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new “war president”? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do — destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they’ve always heard is true — that all politicians are alike. I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn’t so.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That’s the way General Washington insisted it must be. That’s what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. “You’re fired!,” said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in’ hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea — “Let’s invade Afghanistan!” Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.

Full Story An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore | MichaelMoore.com.

41% of Democrats say they ‘probably won’t vote’ next year: poll

Forty percent of self-identified Democratic voters say they are “not likely” or “definitely” won’t vote in next year’s Congressional elections, according to a little-noticed poll released over the Thanksgiving weekend.

The poll, which surveyed 2,400 Americans nationwide between Nov. 22 and Nov. 25, found that self-identified Republicans were three times more likely to say they were going to vote next year. The results suggest perilous fights for Democrats in the midterm elections, where the president’s party typically lose seats.

Democratic leaders still have an almost 15-point edge in favorability ratings over their Republican counterparts: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has a 41 percent voter approval rating and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) clocks in at 31, whereas Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) draws just 15 percent support to House Minority Leader John Boehner’s (R-OH) 14 percent. President Obama’s favorability rating sits at 53 percent, according to the poll.

Full Story Forty percent of Democrats say they ‘probably won’t vote’ next year: poll | Raw Story.

Two-Thirds of Chicken Tested Harbor Dangerous Bacteria

Consumer Reports’ latest test of fresh, whole broilers bought in 22 states reveals that two-thirds of birds tested harbored salmonella and/or campylobacter, the leading bacterial causes of food-borne disease. The report reveals that organic “air-chilled” broilers were among the cleanest and that Perdue was found to be the cleanest of the brand-name chicken. Tyson and Foster Farms chickens were found to be the most contaminated. The report is available, free online (note, you have to click through the side bars to the left of the story) and in the January 2010 issue of the magazine.

Consumer Reports has been measuring contamination in store-bought chickens since 1998. The recent test shows a modest improvement since January 2007, when the magazine found these pathogens in 8 of 10 broilers, but the numbers are still far too high. The findings suggest that most companies’ safeguards are inadequate. The tests also found that most disease-causing bacteria sampled from the contaminated chicken were resistant to at least one antibiotic, potentially making any resulting illness more difficult to treat.

Each year, salmonella and campylobacter from chicken and other food sources infect at least 3.4 million Americans, send 25,500 to hospitals, and kill about 500, according to estimates by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While both salmonella and campylobacter are known to cause intestinal distress, campylobacter can lead to meningitis, arthritis, and Guillain-Barré syndrome, a severe neurological condition.

Full Story Naomi Starkman: Two-Thirds of Chicken Tested Harbor Dangerous Bacteria.

Tesla Electric Car Plant Could Have City Hoping For A Turnaround

This city that once helped send men rocketing into the space now wants to help earth-bound motorists to become more fuel efficient.

Downey’s City Council has approved an agreement aimed at luring Tesla Motors’ electric car manufacturing plant to the former site of a NASA plant that helped develop the Apollo program and the space shuttle fleet.

“Not only will it bring money to the city, it will establish us as a leader in electric car and green technology production,” Mayor Mario Guerra said of the unanimous approval Wednesday.

Full Story Downey, California: Tesla Electric Car Plant Could Have City Hoping For A Turnaround.

How Economic Weakness Endangers the U.S.

We won the cold war and weathered 9/11. But now economic weakness is endangering our global power.

Call it the fractal geometry of fiscal crisis. If you fly across the Atlantic on a clear day, you can look down and see the same phenomenon but on four entirely different scales. At one extreme there is tiny Iceland. Then there is little Ireland, followed by medium-size Britain. They’re all a good deal smaller than the mighty United States. But in each case the economic crisis has taken the same form: a massive banking crisis, followed by an equally massive fiscal crisis as the government stepped in to bail out the private financial system.

Size matters, of course. For the smaller countries, the financial losses arising from this crisis are a great deal larger in relation to their gross domestic product than they are for the United States. Yet the stakes are higher in the American case. In the great scheme of things—let’s be frank—it does not matter much if Iceland teeters on the brink of fiscal collapse, or Ireland, for that matter. The locals suffer, but the world goes on much as usual.

But if the United States succumbs to a fiscal crisis, as an increasing number of economic experts fear it may, then the entire balance of global economic power could shift. Military experts talk as if the president’s decision about whether to send an additional 40,000 troops to Afghanistan is a make-or-break moment. In reality, his indecision about the deficit could matter much more for the country’s long-term national security. Call the United States what you like—superpower, hegemon, or empire—but its ability to manage its finances is closely tied to its ability to remain the predominant global military power. Here’s why.

Full Story Ferguson: How Economic Weakness Endangers the U.S. | Newsweek National News | Newsweek.com.

Hadron Collider: ‘Big Bang Machine’ Smashes World Record

The world’s largest atom smasher on Monday broke the record for proton acceleration previously held by a U.S. lab, sending beams of the particles at 1.18 trillion electron volts around the massive machine.

The Large Hadron Collider eclipsed the previous high of 0.98 1 TeV held by Fermilab, outside Chicago, since 2001, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN, said.

The latest success, which came early in the morning, is part of the preparation to reach even higher levels of energy for significant experiments next year on the make-up of matter and the universe.

It comes on top of a rapid series of operating advances for the $10 billion machine, which underwent extensive repairs and improvements after it collapsed during the opening phase last year.

Full Story Hadron Collider: ‘Big Bang Machine’ Smashes World Record.

Kangaroos may hold skin cancer cure: study

Kangaroos may provide the key to a potential treatment to prevent skin cancer, Australian scientists said on Monday.

Researchers at Melbourne University are investigating whether a DNA repair enzyme found in the jumping marsupials could provide a model for preventing DNA damage linked to many skin cancers in humans.

“Other research teams have proposed a 'dream cream' containing the DNA repair enzyme which you could slap on your skin after a day in the sun,” scientist Linda Feketeova said.

“We are now examining whether this would be feasible by looking at the chemistry behind the DNA repair system.”

Full Story Kangaroos may hold skin cancer cure: study | Raw Story.

A new way to look at interactive storytelling

‘PhoneBook’ will blow you away –

It’s an open secret among my friends that I’m a total narrative nerd. The structure of stories fascinates me and lately my research into interactive storytelling methods has been fueling some serious creative fires behind the scenes.

In a recent volley of off-hour writing and research I came across a YouTube video that left my mouth open as I sat stunned at its simple brilliance.

A group in Japan called Mobile Art Lab came up with this concept and I couldn’t be more thrilled by it. The thought of combining interactive software with visual art and the written word in this way had never occurred to me. Seeing it in action — illustrated below with an iPhone and child’s picture book — was like holding a lighter to the fuse of my imagination.

Full Story Stephen C. Webster – Brave New Hooks – A new way to look at interactive storytelling – True/Slant.

The Faux Deficit Debate

Matt Taibbi -

“However, since taking office Mr. Obama pushed through a $787 billion stimulus, a $33 billion expansion of the child health program known as S-chip, a $410 billion omnibus appropriations spending bill, and an $80 billion car company bailout. He also pushed a $821 billion cap-and-trade bill through the House and is now urging Congress to pass a nearly $1 trillion health-care bill.”

Some of you may have read the above quote — from an editorial written by Karl Rove this past week in the Wall Street Journal – and thought to yourselves, “Karl Rove? Is he still alive?” A very natural question to ask, given the events of the past few years, which saw the Bush administration (and its accompanying historical legacy, or lack thereof) reduced to rubble thanks in large part to the horrific decision to put a purely political animal like Rove in charge of White House policy.

We’d also watched last fall as Rove acolyte Steve Schmidt entered the all-time Hall of Campaign Managerial Shame thanks to his ignominious bungling of the McCain run for the presidency, during which time Schmidt had pulled the trigger on two of the more nakedly cynical vote-getting ploys in our recent electoral history — the last-minute addition of dingbat bible-thumper Sarah Palin to the ticket in a transparent ploy to snatch up votes from the Limbaugh demographic McCain himself reviled, and the late-stage decision to use Palin to run a race-baiting campaign painting their black opponent as not “one of us.”

Not only did neither ploy work, but Schmidt may have ruined race-baiting/guilt-by-association campaign strategies at the national level for a whole generation of corrupt politicians, so badly did all his harping on Bill Ayers blow up in his face.

Full Story Matt Taibbi – Taibblog – The Faux Deficit Debate – True/Slant.

Mysterious ‘Saddam Channel’ appears on Iraqi televisions

Turning on their TVs during the long holiday weekend, Iraqis were greeted by a familiar if unexpected face from their brutal past: Saddam Hussein.

The late Iraqi dictator is lauded on a mysterious satellite channel that began broadcasting on the Islamic calendar’s anniversary of his 2006 execution.

No one seems to know who is bankrolling the so-called Saddam Channel, although the Iraqi government suspects it’s Baathists whose political party Saddam once led. The Associated Press tracked down a man in Damascus, Syria named Mohammed Jarboua, who claimed to be its chairman.

The Saddam channel, he said, “didn’t receive a penny from the Baathists” and is for Iraqis and other Arabs who “long for his rule.”

Full Story Mysterious ‘Saddam Channel’ appears on Iraqi televisions | Raw Story.

Washington Times ex-editor sues, wants paper sold

Richard Miniter, a former editor at The Washington Times, is suing the paper for forcing him to attend a church event when he was first hired last year and other stress-inducing conditions.

The paper has generated unprecedented headlines in recent weeks as three executives have been fired and its top editor has resigned.

In an interview on CNN, Miniter discussed the inner-workings of the paper, as revealed in his affidavit. He said the paper is losing about $40 million a year. “In fact the paper has lost money for more than 27 straight years,” he said.

Miniter believes the Unification Church, founded by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, is an unfit newspaper owner, bent on unethical control of the newspaper. “The church actually doles the money out in weekly amounts in order to keep complete control over the paper,” he said.

After months of attempts to reach a settlement, he says he is hoping to be paid the money he is owed and would like to see The Washington Times sold.

Full Story Washington Times ex-editor sues, wants paper sold | Raw Story.

10 Signs Vegetarianism Is Catching On

Martha Stewart promotes a vegetarian Thanksgiving? Recently, much attention has been lavished on the horrors of factory farming and the advantages of a meatless diet.

On Thanksgiving, I spent some time taking stock of my life and the world around me and, as we’re supposed to do over the holiday, giving thanks for all the joys — little and big — in my life. One of the larger joys for which I am giving thanks is all of the recent attention that has been lavished on a topic that is near and dear to my heart — the cruelty and environmental harm involved in raising animals for food.

I struggled to cohesively construct an article about some of the many recent and important developments on this topic, but there is just too much. Instead, I decided on a top ten list (a tip of the hat to David Letterman) — the 10 most interesting articles on the farmed animal welfare front.

So without further ado:

1. World Bank scientists conclude that eating meat causes more than half of global warming (conservatively).

Full Story 10 Signs Vegetarianism Is Catching On | Health and Wellness | AlterNet.

This Is George Bush’s Recession: Why Doesn’t Anybody Talk About That?

If the partisan tables were turned, the GOP would waste no time laying the blame on Democrats. We need to do the same to build political capital for key fights ahead.

In October, Barack Obama told a San Francisco audience about what it was like trying to deal with an economy he’d inherited in smoking ruins last January. “I’m busy … cleaning up somebody else’s mess,” he said. “We don’t want somebody sitting back saying, you’re not holding the mop the right way… That’s a socialist mop.” As the audience applauded the line, Obama challenged Republicans to “Grab a mop, let’s get to work.”

The image of cleaning up after his predecessor’s mess pleased pundits like Andrew Sullivan, who wrote that “get a mop” is “an inspired three-word challenge to the GOP. Devastating, actually — because it both reminds people of the damage the GOP did while not seeming to dwell on the past or to score partisan points (while actually doing both).”

It’s certainly punchy, but perhaps unnecessarily oblique. Given that even a recent Fox News poll found that almost six in 10 voters believe Bush bears the ultimate responsibility for the recession we’re staggering through, you have to wonder why Democrats aren’t simply referring to all of this as “the Bush recession.”

Full Story This Is George Bush’s Recession: Why Doesn’t Anybody Talk About That? | Politics | AlterNet.

The Feds Are Addicted to Pot — Even If You Aren’t

The government keeps pushing the BS that pot is addictive and has serious health consequences. And no wonder — lying about pot is a lucrative business.

Marijuana’s addiction potential may be no big deal, but it’s certainly big business.

According to a widely publicized 1999 Institute of Medicine report, fewer than 10 percent of those who try cannabis ever meet the clinical criteria for a diagnosis of “drug dependence” (based on DSM-III-R criteria). By contrast, 32 percent of tobacco users and 15 percent of alcohol users meet the criteria for “drug dependence.”

Nevertheless, it is pot — not booze or cigarettes — that has the federal government seeing red and clinical investigators seeing green. As I reported for AlterNet last year, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which overseas more than 85 percent of the world’s research on controlled substances, recently appropriated some $4 million in taxpayers’ dollars to establish the nation’s first-ever Center for Cannabis Addiction. Its mission: to “develop novel approaches to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of marijuana addiction.”

Full Story The Feds Are Addicted to Pot — Even If You Aren’t | DrugReporter | AlterNet.

How Free-Market Delusions Destroyed the Economy

The worship of free markets set off the economic meltdown.

The following is an excerpt from Raj Patel’s new book, The Value of Nothing (Picador, 2010).

If war is God’s way of teaching Americans geography, recession is His way of teaching everyone a little economics. The great unwinding of the financial sector showed that the smartest mathematical minds on the planet, backed by some of the deepest pockets, had not built a sleek engine of permanent prosperity but a clown car of trades, swaps and double dares that, inevitably, fell to bits. The recession has not come from a deficit of economic knowledge, but from too much of a particular kind, a surfeit of the spirit of capitalism. The dazzle of free markets has blinded us to other ways of seeing the world. As Oscar Wilde wrote over a century ago: “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Prices have revealed themselves as fickle guides: The 2008 financial collapse came in the same year as crises in food and oil, and yet we seem unable to see or value our world except through the faulty prism of markets.

One thing is clear: The thinking that got us into this mess is unlikely to rescue us. It might come as some consolation to know that even some of the most respected minds have been forced to puzzle over their faulty assumptions. Perhaps the most pained admission of ignorance happened in a crowded room in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform when, on October 23, 2008, Alan Greenspan described the failure of his worldview.

Greenspan was one of the acknowledged legislators of the world’s economy over the past nineteen years in his role as chairman of the Federal Reserve. A card-carrying member of the free market brigade, he used to sit at the feet of Ayn Rand who, although largely unknown outside the United States, remains influential long after her death in 1982. Her 1957 book Atlas Shrugged, in which heroic business moguls fight the scourge of government officials and union organizers, has once again scaled the bestseller lists. Regarding altruism as “moral cannibalism,” Rand was the cheerleader for an extreme free market libertarian school of thought, which she called “Objectivism.”

Full Story How Free-Market Delusions Destroyed the Economy | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet.

Bishop who barred Kennedy admits he doesnt understand the Constitution

Bishop Thomas Tobin, the bishop who barred Patrick Kennedy from receiving communion said in an interview with CNN that he did so because he just cant understand how a catholic, any catholic, even a legislator, can take the stand on abortion as a legal choice for women that Kennedy has taken.

That is a tacit admission on the part of bishop Tobin that he either doesn’t have any basic understanding of the establishment clause of the first amendment in the constitution or has no respect for it except when the Catholic church is using it to avoid paying taxes.

It is either arrogance or ignorance on the part of Tobin since he shows he has no understanding nor respect for the fact that its Kennedy’s obligation to serve, not Catholics or the church but the vast majority of his constituents regardless of their individual religious beliefs. And Tobin’s admission that he can’t understand how Kennedy can justify his position on abortion as a legislator just re-enforces the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson and the founders who wrote the establishment clause which was written to specifically deny the church from having any official influence on the affairs of state.

Full Story Bishop who barred Kennedy admits he doesnt understand the Constitution.

The Jobs Imperative

Paul Krugman –

If you’re looking for a job right now, your prospects are terrible. There are six times as many Americans seeking work as there are job openings, and the average duration of unemployment — the time the average job-seeker has spent looking for work — is more than six months, the highest level since the 1930s.

You might think, then, that doing something about the employment situation would be a top policy priority. But now that total financial collapse has been averted, all the urgency seems to have vanished from policy discussion, replaced by a strange passivity. There’s a pervasive sense in Washington that nothing more can or should be done, that we should just wait for the economic recovery to trickle down to workers.

This is wrong and unacceptable.

Yes, the recession is probably over in a technical sense, but that doesn’t mean that full employment is just around the corner. Historically, financial crises have typically been followed not just by severe recessions but by anemic recoveries; it’s usually years before unemployment declines to anything like normal levels. And all indications are that the aftermath of the latest financial crisis is following the usual script. The Federal Reserve, for example, expects unemployment, currently 10.2 percent, to stay above 8 percent — a number that would have been considered disastrous not long ago — until sometime in 2012.

Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – The Jobs Imperative – NYTimes.com.

Wall Street’s a casino, so maybe state gambling laws apply

Sen. Maria Cantwell wants to use state gambling laws to regulate parts of Wall Street, saying someone needs to police financial markets where “casino capitalism” involving highly speculative trades she likens to sophisticated betting continue unabated and threaten to create yet another financial crisis.

“She's going for their jugular,” Michael Greenberger, a University of Maryland law professor, said of the effort by Cantwell, a Washington state Democrat. Greenberger was a top official at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission during the Clinton administration who unsuccessfully fought to regulate such trading.

Cantwell wants to repeal parts of a 2000 law that barred states from using their gambling laws to help rein in the nearly $600 trillion derivatives market.

Full Story Wall Street’s a casino, so maybe state gambling laws apply | McClatchy.

Chavez threatens to nationalize Venezuelan banks

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday he could nationalize private banks unless they comply with the law, adding he had “no problem with that because the banks don’t want to extend credit to the poor.”

In a broadcast from nationalized farmland in central Venezuela, he said: “To all the country’s private bankers … (I’m saying) he who slips up loses; I’ll take over the bank, whatever its size.”

“You want me to nationalize the banks?” he said during the broadcast of his weekly TV show “Alo Presidente.”

“I have no problem with that because the banks don’t want to extend credit to the poor, they don’t comply, they don’t want to comply with the bank’s purpose for existence, and that is the law.”

Chavez said the purpose of banks was not to enrich a small group of people but “should be to collect funds and savings to help aid the country’s development by making loans, extending credits for housing.”

In power for a decade, Chavez has nationalized broad swathes of the economy.

Full Story Chavez threatens to nationalize Venezuelan banks – Yahoo! News.

Bernie Sanders On “This Week” with Stephanopoulos

Afghanistan Too Expensive To Support

YouTube – Bernie Sanders On This Week: Afghanistan Too Expensive To Support.

The Housing Crisis and Wall Street Shame

Robert Reich –

One out of four homeowners is now under water, owing more on their homes than the homes are worth. Why? The biggest single factor behind the housing crisis is rising unemployment. According to the latest ABC-Washington Post poll, one out of every three Americans has either lost their job or lives in a household with someone who has lost a job. Today it takes two and sometimes three incomes to buy the groceries and pay the mortgage or the rent. So if one of those incomes is gone, a homeowner can't make the payment.

The scourge of unemployment is splitting America into three groups: (1) the third just mentioned, whose households are in danger of losing their homes and whose kids are surviving on food stamps (that's up to one in four children in America today); (2) the vast majority of Americans who are managing but worried about keeping their jobs and homes; and (3) a small number who are taking home even more winnings than they did in the boom year 2007.

Prominent among category (3) are Wall Street bankers, many of whom are now concluding their most profitable year ever. Goldman Sachs is so flush it's preparing to give out bonuses in a few weeks totaling $17 billion. That will mean eight-figure compensation packages for lots of Goldman executives and traders. JPMorgan Chase is rumored to have a bonus pool of around $5 billion. The three other major Wall Street banks are ratcheting up their compensation packages so their “talent” won't be poached by Goldman or JPMorgan

Full Story Robert Reich’s Blog: The Housing Crisis and Wall Street Shame.

Max Keiser on ‘Tsunami alert’:

Dubai debt crisis awakes storm?

Fresh fears over the size of Dubai’s debt have sent shock waves through international markets, with major stocks and oil prices falling sharply. Dubai World, the country’s largest conglomerate, wants to suspend payment on its sixty billion dollar debts until next May at the earliest. RT’s financial contributor Max Keiser says the World is entering the Phase Two of the global economic crisis.

Full Story YouTube – Keiser on ‘Tsunami alert’: Dubai debt crisis awakes storm?.

Bioengineered implants, magnetic nanoparticles show amazing promise in cancer treatment

What if you could cure cancer by getting a small, circular disk implanted into your arm? Or perhaps instead of undergoing months of soul-wrenching chemotherapy, say one dose of magnetized nanoparticles were able to wipe out your tumors?

That’s what scientists are working on and according to two new studies published at the end of November, both methods are showing tremendous promise.

A report published in Sunday’s edition of Nature Materials detailed tiny, magnetized “nanodiscs”, around 60 billionths of a meter thick, that labratory tests found can be used to disrupt the membranes of cancer cells, causing them to self-destruct.

The discs are made from an iron-nickel alloy, which move when subjected to a magnetic field, damaging the cancer cells, the report said.

Full Story Bioengineered implants, magnetic nanoparticles show amazing promise in cancer treatment | Raw Story.

Harvard ignored warnings about investments

Advisers told Summers, others not to put so much cash in market; losses hit $1.8b

It happened at least once a year, every year. In a roomful of a dozen Harvard University financial officials, Jack Meyer, the hugely successful head of Harvard’s endowment, and Lawrence Summers, then the school’s president, would face off in a heated debate. The topic: cash and how the university was managing – or mismanaging – its basic operating funds.

Through the first half of this decade, Meyer repeatedly warned Summers and other Harvard officials that the school was being too aggressive with billions of dollars in cash, according to people present for the discussions, investing almost all of it with the endowment’s risky mix of stocks, bonds, hedge funds, and private equity. Meyer’s successor, Mohamed El-Erian, would later sound the same warnings to Summers, and to Harvard financial staff and board members.

Full Story Harvard ignored warnings about investments – The Boston Globe.

Mike Huckabee Granted Clemency To Man Wanted For Questioning In Parkland Ambush That Killed 4 Cops

A convicted felon granted clemency nine years ago by former Arkansas Governor and 2008 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, is wanted for questioning in the shooting deaths of four police officers in Washington state.

the man wanted for questioning, has been convicted of five felonies in Arkansas and has been charged with eight felonies in Washington state.

The Seattle Times spoke to the prosecuting attorney in Arkansas who opposed Huckabee’s clemency for Clemmons:

“This is the day I’ve been dreading for a long time,” Larry Jegley, prosecuting attorney for Arkansas’ Pulaski County said Sunday night when informed that Clemmons was being sought in connection to the killings…

Clemmons had been in jail in Pierce County for the past several months on a pending charge of second-degree rape of a child.

Full Story Mike Huckabee Granted Clemency To Maurice Clemmons, Man Wanted For Questioning In Parkland Ambush That Killed 4 Cops.

Understanding Our Hollow “Centrists”

Joe Conason

Why do “centrist” or “moderate” politicians sound like party-line right-wing Republicans?

The puzzling thing about politicians of either party who claim to be “centrist” or “moderate” is how much they sometimes sound like party-line right-wing Republicans. Distinguishing among these species of politicians can be almost impossible during the current struggle over health care reform, especially when a senator like Blanche Lambert Lincoln of Arkansas tries to explain herself.

Like so many of the Republicans they try to emulate, the conservative Democrats claim to worry about spending and deficits — except with respect to programs that benefit them, their favorite constituents or the lobbyists who pay their campaign expenses.

Facing re-election and plummeting poll numbers, Lincoln voted to commence debate last weekend. But then she turned around and warned that she would probably join a Republican filibuster against the Democratic health reform bill. Why? Because the Democratic legislation, favored by a clear majority, is likely to include a public option.

Full Story t r u t h o u t | Understanding Our Hollow “Centrists”.

Greg Palast busts the WTO — Audio

Palast busts the WTO

From Geneva, a special investigative Report for Air America Radio’s Ring of Fire on the 10th Anniversary of the Battle in Seattle.

Listen here

Full Story Greg Palast » Palast busts the WTO.

Official: 4 police officers shot dead in Wash.

TACOMA — Four police officers were shot and killed Sunday morning in what authorities called a targeted ambush at a coffee house in Washington state, a sheriff’s official said.

Pierce County Sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer told The News Tribune in Tacoma one or two gunmen burst into the Forza Coffee Co. and shot the four uniformed officers as they were working on their laptop computers, then fled the scene.

Troyer said investigators believe the officers were targeted, and it was not a robbery.

“It looks like a flat-out ambush,” Troyer told the newspaper.

The four officers were about to go to work, Troyer said. He said officers were looking for a male suspect who fled on foot, and “at this point we may be looking for another person.”

Full Story News from The Associated Press.

Senator Sanders opposes Fed chief Bernanke renomination

Senator Bernie Sanders said on Sunday he will not vote to reconfirm Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve, in a preview of the rough treatment Bernanke may get this week on Capitol Hill.

The central bank chief will testify on Thursday before the Senate Banking Committee at a hearing on his nomination to a second four-year term. The session could be difficult, with the Fed under fire from across the political spectrum.

The open opposition of Sanders, an independent outside the political mainstream, is unlikely alone to derail Bernanke’s renomination. But it reflects the Fed’s challenges.

“I absolutely will not vote for Mr. Bernanke. He is part of the problem,” Sanders said on ABC’s “This Week” TV program.

Full Story Senator opposes Fed chief Bernanke renomination | Politics | Reuters.

OPS:  Good for you Senator Sanders!

Rethink Afghanistan

Now available on DVD

Warming will ‘wipe out billions’

MOST of the world’s population will be wiped out if political leaders fail to agree a method of stopping current rates of global warming, one of the UK’s most senior climate scientists has warned.

Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, believes only around 10 per cent of the planet’s population – around half a billion people – will survive if global temperatures rise by 4C.

Anderson’s warning comes just eight days before global leaders meet in Copenhagen for the most crucial talks on climate change reversal since the Rio summit in 1992. Current Met Office projections reveal that the lack of action in the intervening 17 years – in which emissions of climate changing gases such as carbon dioxide have soared – has set the world on a path towards potential 4C rises as early as 2060, and 6C rises by the end of the century.

Anderson, who advises the government on climate change, said the consequences were “terrifying”.

“For humanity it’s a matter of life or death,” he said. “We will not make all human beings extinct as a few people with the right sort of resources may put themselves in the right parts of the world and survive.

Full Story Warming will ‘wipe out billions’ – Scotsman.com.

Twenty-five U.S. Military Officers Challenge Official Account of 9/11

Official Account of 9/11: “Impossible”, “A Bunch of Hogwash”, “Total B.S.”, “Ludicrous”, “A Well-Organized Cover-up”, “A White-Washed Farce”

January 14, 2008  Twenty-five former U.S. military officers have severely criticized the official account of 9/11 and called for a new investigation. They include former commander of U.S. Army Intelligence, Major General Albert Stubblebine, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Col. Ronald D. Ray, two former staff members of the Director of the National Security Agency; Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, PhD, and Major John M. Newman, PhD, and many others. They are among the rapidly growing number of military and intelligence service veterans, scientists, engineers, and architects challenging the government’s story. The officers’ statements appear below, listed alphabetically.

“A lot of these pieces of information, taken together, prove that the official story, the official conspiracy theory of 9/11 is a bunch of hogwash.  It’s impossible,” said Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, PhD, U.S. Air Force (ret). [1] With doctoral degrees in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering, Col. Bowman served as Director of Advanced Space Programs Development under Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

“There’s a second group of facts having to do with the cover up,” continued Col. Bowman.  “Taken together these things prove that high levels of our government don’t want us to know what happened and who’s responsible.  Who gained from 9/11?  Who covered up crucial information about 9/11?  And who put out the patently false stories about 9/11 in the first place?  When you take those three things together, I think the case is pretty clear that it’s highly placed individuals in the administration with all roads passing through Dick Cheney.”

Full Story OpEdNews – Article: Twenty-five U.S. Military Officers Challenge Official Account of 9/11.

OPS: This article was written in January 2008.  We are Posting it now because we just  now ran across it.

The truth of UK’s guilt over Iraq

Scott Ritter –

Until Chilcot hears UN weapons inspectors’ testimony, the fiction of Britain honestly seeking a WMD smoking gun prevails

With its troops no longer engaged in military operations inside Iraq, Great Britain has been liberated politically to conduct a postmortem of that conflict, including the sensitive issue of the primary justification used by then Prime Minister Tony Blair for going to war, namely Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, or WMD.

The failure to find any WMD in Iraq following the March 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of that country by US and British troops continues to haunt those who were involved in making the decision for war. The issue of Iraqi WMD, and the role it played in influencing the decision for war, is at the centre of the ongoing Iraq war inquiry being conducted by Sir John Chilcot.

Among the more compelling testimonies provided to date has been that of Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to the US, who served in that capacity during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Meyer convincingly portrayed an environment where the decision by the US to invade Iraq, backed by Blair, precluded any process (such as viable UN weapons inspections) that sought to compel Iraq to prove it had no WMD. Rather, Great Britain and the US were left “scrambling” to find evidence of a “smoking gun” to prove Iraq indeed possessed the WMD it was accused of having.

Full Story The truth of UK’s guilt over Iraq | Scott Ritter | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

Social status has measurable effect on Health

In recent years, a growing body of scientific research indicates that human health and longevity aren’t just matters of genes and habits. Rather, they seem to have a lot to do with our relative status or position in society.

The wonky term for this kind of thing is “the social determinants of health,” which was recently the topic of a presentation to the West Virginia Legislature by epidemiologist and physician Dr. Camara Jones of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. While the focus of Dr. Jones’ presentation was on racial disparities, she said that inequalities and inequities affect the health of all people, regardless of racial or ethnic backgrounds.

A pioneer in this field of research is the British epidemiologist Michael Marmot, who among other things studied English civil servants over a period of decades. Here’s the short version of his findings: people higher up the ladder lived longer and were less sick than those lower down, even when we take individual behavior into account.

This was true despite the fact that England has universal health care. Without it, the differences would no doubt have been even worse.

Full Story Rick Wilson: Social status has measurable effect o … – Op-Ed Commentaries – The Charleston Gazette – West Virginia News and Sports.

Western lifestyle unsustainable, says climate expert Rajendra Pachauri

Ahead of the Copenhagen summit, leading scientist and IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri warns of radical charges and regulation if global disaster is to be avoided

Hotel guests should have their electricity monitored; hefty aviation taxes should be introduced to deter people from flying; and iced water in restaurants should be curtailed, the world’s leading climate scientist has told the Observer.

Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warned that western society must undergo a radical value shift if the worst effects of climate change were to be avoided. A new value system of “sustainable consumption” was now urgently required, he said.

“Today we have reached the point where consumption and people’s desire to consume has grown out of proportion,” said Pachauri. “The reality is that our lifestyles are unsustainable.”

Full Story Western lifestyle unsustainable, says climate expert Rajendra Pachauri | Environment | The Observer.

The US Should Cut Military Spending in Half

click image for full graph

Benjamin H. Friedman | Cato Institute

Hawks depicted the cuts that Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently proposed for the Pentagon’s weapons programs as a savage assault on the military industrial complex. They insisted that Secretary Gates would leave us prostrate before future rivals.

Counterinsurgency enthusiasts, meanwhile cheered Mr. Gates’s willingness to swap high-tech platforms for capabilities suited to the unconventional conflicts we are fighting.

The truth is that the Gates proposal is both too cautious and inadequate. After all, Gates isn’t cutting non-war-related military spending; he’s raising it slightly, to a whopping $534 billion

Full Story The US Should Cut Military Spending in Half | Benjamin H. Friedman | Cato Institute: Commentary.

OPS: Here’s a Graph in the subject

• US  & Global Military Spending

Democrats in revolt over Barack Obama’s troop surge

Barack Obama’s much-vaunted eloquence faces the biggest test of his presidential career this week when he takes to the stage at West Point military academy to explain to a nation that thought it had elected an anti-war president why he is escalating the conflict in Afghanistan.

After almost three months of agonising, nine war councils and endless leaks, the president will finally make his views known on Tuesday when he is expected to announce that he is sending about 30,000 more troops. This will push up American forces to 100,000 and the total number of allied forces to almost 140,000, as many troops as the Soviet Union had in Afghanistan.

The carefully chosen backdrop cannot disguise Obama’s dilemma. Somehow he has to convince his own public that the United States has an exit strategy and will not become bogged down, as it did in Vietnam, while making clear to the Taliban and Pakistan that it has not lost its resolve and will stay as long as it takes.

Obama’s toughest challenge will be to win over his most loyal political supporters. He is facing a growing revolt in the Democratic party over why the US needs to be in Afghanistan at all when the real threat — Al-Qaeda — is in Pakistan, and over the spiralling cost in both lives and dollars.

Full Story Democrats in revolt over Barack Obama’s troop surge – Times Online.

Iran OKs 10 new enrichment plants

Announcement comes days after the U.N. nuclear watchdog rebuked Tehran

The Iranian government approved a plan Sunday to build 10 new uranium enrichment facilities, a dramatic expansion in defiance of U.N. demands it halt the program.

The decision comes only two days after the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency censured Iran, demanding it immediately stop building a newly revealed enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom and freeze all uranium enrichment activities. The rebuke infuriated Iran, with lawmakers threatening to consider pulling the country out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in retaliation.

The enrichment announcement is likely to stoke already high tensions between Iran and the West over its controversial nuclear activities. The U.S. and its allies have hinted of new U.N. sanctions if Tehran remains defiant.

Full Story Iran OKs 10 new enrichment plants – Iran- msnbc.com.

Fox News Dumbest Anti-Atheist Question of the Month?

The bias against atheists and atheism on Fox News is consistent, as I've documented in multiple videos, so much so that it almost seems like I could start a contest for the dumbest anti-atheist question of the month, as I show in this video.

The 3 clips from the Fox News story about the Pennsylvania town of Chambersburg and its decision not to allow any holiday displays in the town square this year come from the program “Fox and Friends” broadcast on November 27, 2009 (which I could not find available online), including the question from Fox News anchor Ainsley Earhardt.

Full Story YouTube – Fox News Dumbest Anti-Atheist Question of the Month?.

‘Permanent’ Arctic ice vanishing

file photo

Satellite images misled shocked scientists

–One of Canada’s top northern researchers says the permanent Arctic sea ice that is home to the world’s polar bears and usually survives the summer has all but disappeared.

Experts around the world believed the ice was recovering because satellite images showed it expanding. But David Barber says the thick, multi-year frozen sheets crucial to the northern ecosystem have been replaced by thin “rotten” ice that can’t support weight of the bears. “It caught us all by surprise because we were expecting there to be multi-year sea ice. The whole world thought it was multi-year sea ice,” said Barber, who just returned from an expedition to the Beaufort Sea.

“Unfortunately, what we found was that the multi-year (ice) has all but disappeared. What’s left is this remnant, rotten ice.”

Permanent ice, which is normally up to 10 metres thick, was easily pierced by the research ship, said Barber, who holds the Canada research chair in Arctic science at the University of Manitoba.

The team finally reached what it thought was stable ice, only to watch a crack appear just as researchers were preparing to descend onto the floe.

Full Story ‘Permanent’ Arctic ice vanishing – thestar.com.

Afghans Detail Detention in ‘Black Jail’ at U.S. Base

An American military detention camp in Afghanistan is still holding inmates, sometimes for weeks at a time, without access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to human rights researchers and former detainees held at the site on the Bagram Air Base.

The site, known to detainees as the black jail, consists of individual windowless concrete cells, each illuminated by a single light bulb glowing 24 hours a day. In interviews, former detainees said that their only human contact was at twice-daily interrogation sessions.

“The black jail was the most dangerous and fearful place,” said Hamidullah, a spare-parts dealer in Kandahar who said he was detained there in June. “They don’t let the I.C.R.C. officials or any other civilians see or communicate with the people they keep there. Because I did not know what time it was, I did not know when to pray.”

Full Story Afghans Detail Detention in ‘Black Jail’ at U.S. Base – NYTimes.com.

Get Ready for Half a Recovery

‘You Can’t Cut Costs Forever’ —

A ROBUST economic recovery in 2010 is certainly on most investors’ wish lists as this year draws to a close. A return to prosperity would not only mean an end to our long financial nightmare, but it would also buttress a rebounding stock market, one of 2009’s few bright spots.

The news out of Dubai late last week, however — that its investment company is struggling to meet repayments on some of its $59 billion in debt — reminds us that we are far from finished with a ferocious deleveraging process that began last year. And the weight of debt that still must be worked out is one reason that Ian Shepherdson, chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics, estimates that growth in the United States’ output for 2010 will be no better than 2 percent.

Mr. Shepherdson — whose economic forecasts have been more right than wrong throughout the credit crisis — says that while cost-cutting has produced enviable productivity figures and rising earnings at large companies, continued growth in corporate output will be much harder to come by.

Full Story Fair Game – Get Ready for Half a Recovery – NYTimes.com.

MIT analysis of Senate Health Care BIll backs Obama

A new analysis by a leading MIT economist provides new ammunition for Democrats as the Senate begins formally debating the historic health-reform bill being pushed by President Barack Obama.

The report concludes that under the Senate’s health-reform bill, Americans buying individual coverage will pay less than they do for today's typical individual market coverage, and would be protected from high out-of-pocket costs.

So Democrats will argue that under the Senate bill, Americans would pay less for more.

The new document arms Democrats with a response to the contention of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that the bill would mean “higher premiums, higher taxes, and massive cuts to Medicare.”

Full Story MIT analysis backs Obama – Mike Allen – POLITICO.com.

Flicking The Switch: The Phenomenal Circuit Board Of The Epigenetic Frontier

There are many myths that surround procreation. Perhaps the biggest one is that a baby will inherit its genetic blend from its parents and whatever winds up in this software code of life is to be endured for better or worse. Nothing can be done to change it. We were taught that we are stuck with our genes, so thank your parents and grandparents for your athletic prowess, musical ability, diabetes or pear-like profile. Stop any ten people on the street and ask them what they can do about their genes and I bet all ten throw up their hands in surrender.

But in recent years a medical concept called epigenetics is turning this paradigm on its head. It's the subject of my show on Tuesday and my new book with Dr. Michael Roizen “YOU: Having a Baby.” Epigenetics reveals how our ancestors developed tools to turn on or off our genes in order to give our species the ability to rapidly adapt to a changing environment. This means we have inherited the ability to control how our genes are used.

Let me explain. Located along our DNA, genes serve as the blueprints of our body. These control everything that make us “us” – from our height, frame and eye color to mental health, intelligence and countless other characteristics. “It's in his genes” is a casual expression to describe anything from love of baseball to a Type A personality. But identical twins who have identical DNA can have different characteristics, allergies, personalities and abilities. Their DNA is pre-ordained, yet their response to environmental factors in-utero is not. To prove this point, scientists studying populations exposed to different environmental stress have noticed startling differences. For example, during World War II thousands of fetuses were exposed to the 1944 winter famine in the Netherlands. By the time of their birth, the war had ended and the babies were provided adequate nutrition, but over their lifetime, many more than expected developed diabetes and hypertension, reflective of a “thrifty phenotype.” Even more surprisingly, the children of these famine babies also continued the trend of chronic illness even though the famine had long passed. Scientists point to this example as proof that genes can react to environmental factors, and for years we have tried to understand how we could extrapolate that thesis to practical everyday living tips.

Full Story Mehmet Oz, M.D.: Flicking The Switch: The Phenomenal Circuit Board Of The Epigenetic Frontier.

Lugar: Let’s Put Health Care On Hold To Deal With Afghanistan

One of President Barack Obama’s closest Republican allies in the Senate urged him to put health care reform on the backburner and focus on Afghanistan.

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), a trusted GOP voice on foreign policy matters, told CNN’s “State of the Union” that in light of a forthcoming increase in troops to Afghanistan, Democrats should turn their attention to matters of war and money.

“[W]e’re not going to do that debating health care and the Senate for three weeks through all sorts of strategies and so forth,” said the Indiana Republican. “The war is terribly important. Jobs and our economy are terribly important. So this may be an audacious suggestion, but I would suggest we put aside the health care debate until next year, the same way we put cap and trade and climate change and talk now about the essentials, the war and money.”

The remark seemed to fit in well with an overarching Republican strategy of delaying health care reform talks. And Lugar received immediate pushback from his co-panelist, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.).

Full Story Lugar: Let’s Put Health Care On Hold To Deal With Afghanistan.

Senate Opens Health Care Debate: Dem Coalition Fracturing Already

The 60 votes aren’t there any more. -

With the Senate set to begin debate Monday on health care overhaul, the all-hands-on-deck Democratic coalition that allowed the bill to advance is fracturing already. Yet majority Democrats will need 60 votes again to finish.

Some Democratic senators say they’ll jump ship from the bill without tighter restrictions on abortion coverage. Others say they’ll go unless a government plan to compete with private insurance companies gets tossed overboard. Such concessions would enrage liberals, the heart and soul of the party.

There’s no clear course for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to steer legislation through Congress to President Barack Obama. You can’t make history unless you reach 60 votes, and don’t count on Republicans helping him.

But Reid is determined to avoid being remembered as another Democrat who tried and failed to make health care access for the middle class a part of America’s social safety net.

Full Story Senate Opens Health Care Debate: Dem Coalition Fracturing Already.

Professor advises underwater homeowners to walk away from mortgages

Buttressing these emotions is a system that White labels “the social control of the housing crisis” — pressures and messages continually sent to consumers by the “social control agents,” namely banks, government and the media. The mantra that these agents — all the way up to President Obama — pound into owners’ heads, White said, is that “voluntarily defaulting on a mortgage is immoral.”

Yet there is an inherent imbalance in the borrower-lender relationship that makes this morality message unfair to consumers, White says: Banks set the rules during the housing boom, handing out home loans with no down payments, no income checks and inflated appraisals. Now that property values have dropped 20% to 50% in many areas, banks have been slow to modify troubled mortgages and reluctant to reduce principal debts.

Only when homeowners cut through the emotional fog and default strategically in large numbers, White argues, will this inequitable situation be seriously addressed.

Full Story Professor advises underwater homeowners to walk away from mortgages — latimes.com.

Food Stamp Use Soars and Stigma Fades

With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children.

It has grown so rapidly in places so diverse that it is becoming nearly as ordinary as the groceries it buys. More than 36 million people use inconspicuous plastic cards for staples like milk, bread and cheese, swiping them at counters in blighted cities and in suburbs pocked with foreclosure signs.

Virtually all have incomes near or below the federal poverty line, but their eclectic ranks testify to the range of people struggling with basic needs. They include single mothers and married couples, the newly jobless and the chronically poor, longtime recipients of welfare checks and workers whose reduced hours or slender wages leave pantries bare.

Full Story The Safety Net – Across U.S., Food Stamp Use Soars and Stigma Fades – Series – NYTimes.com.

The Culture of Food: A Radio Documentary on the Healthy Food Crisis

On this Thanksgiving Day, many families are sitting down to a dinner made with fresh foods from a local grocery store. Yet there are many communities where there is no local grocery. And you don’t have to look far. These places exist in cities all over the country. Even in our nation’s capital, there are huge sections of the city where fresh, nutrient-rich food is hard to find.

In this documentary, ten youth explore the culture of eating in a city where some of the most iconic foods are the half-smoke: an extra large sausage split down the middle and usually topped with chili, and something called mambo sauce, which looks like ketchup but more gelatinous. They also looked at the challenges of some communities’ access to healthy, affordable food in their neighborhood. Their search took them from the local carry-out, to their schools vending machines to the soil in their own backyards.

Click below to listen to the documentary which will be Aired on Free Speech Radio News and the Pacific Radio Network.

Full Story The Culture of Food: A Radio Documentary on the Healthy Food Crisis.

Fed chairman: Audit could impair financial stability of US

Fed chairman pens op-ed panning proposed audit

The head of the US central bank said Saturday he was “concerned” by some congressional proposals aimed at regulating the US financial system that infringe upon the powers of the Federal Reserve.

“I am concerned, however, that a number of the legislative proposals being circulated would significantly reduce the capacity of the Federal Reserve to perform its core functions,” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke wrote in an op-ed piece in The Washington Post.

He said some proposals considered by the US Senate as part of attempts to strengthen US government regulation of the financial sector would strip the Fed of all its bank regulatory powers.

He also noted that a House committee had recently voted to repeal a 1978 provision that was intended to protect monetary policy from short-term political influence.

“These measures are very much out of step with the global consensus on the appropriate role of central banks, and they would seriously impair the prospects for economic and financial stability in the United States,” Bernanke wrote.

Full Story Fed chairman pens op-ed panning proposed audit | Raw Story.

OPS:  Meaning….It’s SO BAD, SO CORRUPT  that if the American People knew the truth ( the rest of the world already does) our entire financial system would collapse over night.

Senate report: Bin Laden was ‘within our grasp’

Osama bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of U.S. troops in the mountains of Tora Bora when American military leaders made the crucial and costly decision not to pursue the terrorist leader with massive force, a Senate report says.

The report asserts that the failure to kill or capture bin Laden at his most vulnerable in December 2001 has had lasting consequences beyond the fate of one man. Bin Laden’s escape laid the foundation for today’s reinvigorated Afghan insurgency and inflamed the internal strife now endangering Pakistan, it says.

Staff members for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Democratic majority prepared the report at the request of the chairman, Sen. John Kerry, as President Barack Obama prepares to boost U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

The Massachusetts senator and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate has long argued the Bush administration missed a chance to get the al-Qaida leader and top deputies when they were holed up in the forbidding mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan only three months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Full Story Senate report: Bin Laden was ‘within our grasp’ – Yahoo! News.

OPS: And Tora Bora wasn’t the first time. Here, refresh your memory:

Bush rejects Taliban offer to hand Bin Laden over
Sunday 14 October 2001

Blair was told Iraq war ‘illegal’: report

The government’s chief legal advisor informed then British prime minister Tony Blair in 2002 that deposing Saddam Hussein would contravene international law, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

Peter Goldsmith, the Attorney General at the time, wrote to Blair eight months before the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, but the premier ignored the advice, the Mail on Sunday claimed.

The newspaper said a public inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the war was in possession of Goldsmith’s letter and he and Blair are likely to be questioned about it when they give evidence next year.

The inquiry heard in its first week that Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations at the time, Jeremy Greenstock, believed the invasion was “of questionable legitimacy”.

The Mail on Sunday reported that Goldsmith was “gagged” after he tried to dissuade Blair from lending Britain’s support to the war.

Goldsmith wrote the letter six days after a Cabinet meeting on July 23, 2002, at which ministers were secretly told that the United States and Britain were set on “regime change” in Iraq, the report said.

Full Story AFP: Blair was told Iraq war ‘illegal’: report.

OPS: If Blair knew – so did Bush and  EVERYONE in the Bush Crime Family

Cars burn in Geneva as police, protesters clash ahead of WTO conference

Swiss police fired tear gas and rubber bullets on Saturday at hooded protesters who broke windows and set cars alight during a demonstration ahead of a major WTO conference in Geneva.

Thousands marched in the protest ahead of the World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting beginning on Monday, with the vast majority of demonstrators not participating in the violence.

Organisers later decided to end the demonstration due to the violence and because police prevented the march from continuing to WTO headquarters, the Swiss ATS news agency reported.

Some 200 violent protesters infiltrated the march and “began to inflict damage right from the start of the demonstration,” police spokesman Patrick Puhl said. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to stop them.

Officers had moved in after protesters broke windows at a jewellers, banks and a hotel. Vehicles parked along the march route, particularly luxury cars, were damaged, with at least four set alight, Puhl said.

Full Story Cars burn in Geneva as police, protesters clash ahead of WTO conference | Raw Story.

OPS: The Rest of the World understands how evil and dangerous the WTO is and will continue to be.  Americans don’t seem to get it.

Inhofe Trashes Military Generals Who Advocate For Clean Energy Legislation: They Crave ‘The Limelight’

In testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, retired Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn articulated a national security argument for passing clean energy legislation. “Continued over reliance on fossil fuels, or small, incremental steps, simply will not create the kind of future security and prosperity that the American people and our great Nation deserve,” McGinn warned.

In an interview with the New York Times Magazine, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), the ranking member of the Senate environment committee, argued that McGinn and other generals who are advocating for clean energy reform (like Wesley Clark, Stephen Cheney, Brent Scowcroft, etc) are simply doing so because they crave “the limelight”:

NYT: Senator Boxer is chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee,on which you are the ranking Republican. She and her fellow Democrats have lately suggested that global warming could be a threat to national security by destabilizing developing countries.

Full Story Think Progress » Inhofe Trashes Military Generals Who Advocate For Clean Energy Legislation: They Crave ‘The Limelight’.

The U.S.-China Trade and Economic Relationship

China encourages foreign manufacturing to relocate to China and uses strict capital controls to keep the value of the RMB artificially low.

The following is an excerpt from the 2009 REPORT TO CONGRESS of the U.S.-CHINA ECONOMIC AND SECURITY REVIEW COMMISSION, which was delivered to Congress in November of 2009.

The current global economic crisis poses unique challenges for the United States and China. Starting in 2008 and continuing into 2009, global trade and investment flows have been severely impacted, and China, whose economy is very dependent on exports, seemed particularly vulnerable. However, in November 2008, China launched an ambitious stimulus package, 4 trillion renminbi (RMB) ($586 billion) over two years, to help its economy. The Chinese government is using the money to pursue specific policy initiatives, including infrastructure investment, strengthening of the social safety net, and increasing domestic consumption. The international community has welcomed China’s swift response, but doubts re- main about the eventual effect that China’s stimulus will have. The fact that the government in Beijing is still pursuing an export-led strategy based on a wide variety of subsidies to export industries, including an RMB that remains substantially undervalued, is a cause for concern. If China continues to pursue huge trade and in- vestment surpluses and to accumulate vast financial claims, it will hinder the necessary global economic adjustment, create excess manufacturing capacity, and lay the groundwork for the next crisis.

Despite international calls for more market reforms and greater market access, China continues to employ an industrial policy that risks expanding the trade imbalance. China encourages foreign manufacturing to relocate to China and uses strict capital controls to keep the value of the RMB artificially low. China’s industrial policy is also aimed at promoting the manufacture of higher-technology products, replacing lower valued-added and labor-intensive products. Indeed, Beijing’s industrial policy was a contributing factor to the imbalances that led to the global financial crisis that affected the economies of rich and poor nations alike. Pursuit of ex- port-promoting policies has contributed to China’s massive trade surplus and its accumulation of more than $2.27 trillion in foreign exchange reserves by September 2009, the world’s largest cache, most of which is in dollar-denominated bonds. The United States today no longer is the world’s biggest creditor; it is the world’s big- gest debtor, with China as the largest overseas holder of U.S. debt instruments.

Conclusions

Full Story Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

Reversing the Trend: Some Suggestions for Action

Our industries have been so disarmed and dismantled that we now lack the knowledge, capacity and investment capital to facilitate self-sustaining production. Dramatic new direction is required.

The United States is facing economic disaster on a scale few nations have ever experienced. Most people are unaware of the easily observable signs of this crisis. While we persist in our superpower mentality, we have quietly become a second-class country in many respects.

We no longer manufacture what we need to sustain ourselves, we import much more than we export, and we are selling offour assets and taking on massive debts to sustain a standard of living we can no longer afford. Not only is this not the way America became a superpower but it is a sure way to lose this status.

The game plan of our international competitors is to render us completely dependent on foreign production, innovation, and financing. In losing domestic self-sufficiency, national security and leverage in foreign affairs will suffer greatly.

Full Story Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.

Prosecuting American ‘War Crimes’

The International Criminal Court claims jurisdiction over U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

The Hague

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed “great regret” in August that the U.S. is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC). This has fueled speculation that the Obama administration may reverse another Bush policy and sign up for what could lead to the trial of Americans for war crimes in The Hague.

The ICC’s chief prosecutor, though, has no intention of waiting for Washington to submit to the court’s authority. Luis Moreno Ocampo says he already has jurisdiction—at least with respect to Afghanistan.

Because Kabul in 2003 ratified the Rome Statute—the ICC’s founding treaty—all soldiers on Afghan territory, even those from nontreaty countries, fall under the ICC’s oversight, Mr. Ocampo told me. And the chief prosecutor says he is already conducting a “preliminary examination” into whether NATO troops, including American soldiers, fighting the Taliban may have to be put in the dock.

Full Story Daniel Schwammenthal: Prosecuting American ‘War Crimes’ – WSJ.com.

OPS:  What about the largest Crime: Lying the several Nations into a war?

Denmark approves new police powers ahead of Copenhagen

Controversial legislation gives police sweeping powers of ‘pre-emptive’ arrest and extends custodial sentences for acts of civil disobedience

The Danish parliament today passed legislation which will give police sweeping powers of “pre-emptive” arrest and extend custodial sentences for acts of civil disobedience. The “deeply worrying” law comes ahead of the UN climate talks which start on 7 December and are expected to attract thousands of activists from next week.

Under the new powers, Danish police will be able to detain people for up to 12 hours whom they suspect might break the law in the near future. Protesters could also be jailed for 40 days under the hurriedly drafted legislation dubbed by activists as the “turmoil and riot” law. The law was first announced on 18 October.

The Danish ministry of justice said that the new powers of “pre-emptive” detention would increase from 6 to 12 hours and apply to international activists. If protesters are charged with hindering the police, the penalty will increase from a fine to 40 days in prison. Protesters can also be fined an increased amount of 5,000 krona (671 Euros) for breach of the peace, disorderly behaviour and remaining after the police have broken up a demonstration.

Full Story Denmark approves new police powers ahead of Copenhagen | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

Canada bill clears way to sue foreign torturers

An opposition lawmaker unveiled Thursday proposed legislation that would allow victims of torture to sue the perpetrators, including foreign states and officials, in Canadian courts.

“Our present legislation criminalizes torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide — the most heinous acts known to humankind,” said opposition Liberal MP and former justice minister Irwin Cotler.

“But Canadian law does not allow a civil remedy for the victims of such horrific acts.

“This legislation will: address the evil of such international crimes; target the impunity of those states and officials that perpetrate these crimes; remove the state immunity that operates to shield the perpetrators of such crimes; and finally allow Canadian victims to secure justice.”

Canada's right-wing government and three opposition parties have yet to state positions on the proposed law, but individual members of all four parties have vowed to support it.

Maher Arar, a dual Canadian-Syrian citizen, claimed he was tortured in Syria after US authorities arrested him in New York in 2002.

Full Story AFP: Canada bill clears way to sue foreign torturers.

Bargains Galore! But Who Pays the Price?

When is a bargain not a bargain? When someone else’s child pays for our kid’s gift.

This holiday season not every child will be free to play with new toys; an estimated 211 million child laborers exist worldwide, with no access to education and no option but grueling work. Traffickers lure many millions of the young away from their families, while millions more are born into debt bondage and forced to work as slaves. Who among us would deny that forced child labor should cease to exist in the 21st century? Though not many of us are capable of undermining the trafficking rings that exploit children, we can change the demand for the products these children make, in no small part fueled by pressure from global retailers and their price wars.

This past week the US business media treated the price war between two retail behemoths, Wal-Mart and Amazon.com, like it was no more than an exciting boxing match. Sure, we appreciate the terrific consumer choice and great bargains that these retailers make possible. What we don’t see, however, is that someone else is absorbing the cost that brings us these savings. The relentless downward pressure on suppliers to deliver products at ever lower costs means that producers in hidden corners of the world, from Brazil to Bangladesh, turn to extreme forms of exploitation to produce those goods. That’s something to consider as we stand in long lines fighting with other shoppers to grab a great bargain gift for our kids.

Independent investigations document without a doubt how slave labor is being used in the products we buy. A repressive government in China forces prisoners to make Christmas lights in their labor camps. The cocoa in our hot chocolate mix may be harvested by trafficked children in Ivory Coast. Even the cotton in our underwear likely is tainted with forced child labor since hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren in Central Asia are forced into the fields each year to pick cotton for global garment factories.

Full Story Bargains Galore! But Who Pays the Price? | CommonDreams.org.

Legal Marijuana: It’s Coming, Whether You Like it or Not

Paul Armentano has an exciting summary of various marijuana reform legislation, initiatives, etc. that are moving forward around the country. Meanwhile, The Washington Post had a report Monday entitled Support for legalizing marijuana grows rapidly around U.S., celebrating the issue’s forward momentum in terms of public opinion and political victories.

Looking around the room, it seems we’ve moved beyond the question of whether marijuana reform is possible, and everyone seems to be asking instead when the breakthrough will occur or what form it will take. And no, I don’t think there’s anything misplaced or unhealthy about this sudden sense of inevitability. Time has always been on our side and optimism is a very necessary virtue in the fight for social and political change.

A wise colleague (I think it was this guy) recently suggested to me that we should stop introducing our arguments with phrases like “if marijuana were legal…” and instead say, “when marijuana is legal…” and he’s exactly right. One of our greatest obstacles has always been a widespread lack of faith that our politicians and fellow citizens would ever stand with us in great enough numbers to create a mandate for reform. That simple assumption stops untold numbers of potentially great activists dead in their tracks before they ever sign up for an email list, send a letter to the editor, or make a small donation. It also helps explain why the press spent decades fueling anti-drug hysteria and investing in the drug war doctrine, even after the case for reform had begun to bubble beneath the surface.

Full Story Legal Marijuana: It’s Coming, Whether You Like it or Not | Stop the Drug War (DRCNet).

Obama is having the best first year of any president since Franklin Roosevelt.

About one thing, left and right seem to agree these days: Obama hasn’t done anything yet. Maureen Dowd and Dick Cheney have found common ground in scoffing at the president’s “dithering.” Newsweek recently ran a sympathetic cover story titled, “Yes He Can (But He Sure Hasn’t Yet).” The sarcasm brigade thinks it’s finally found an Achilles’ heel in his lack of accomplishments. “When you look at my record, it’s very clear what I’ve done so far and that is nothing. Nada. Almost one year and nothing to show for it,” Obama stand-in Fred Armisen recently riffed on Saturday Night Live. “It’s chow time,” Jon Stewart asserts, for a president who hasn’t followed through on his promises.

This conventional wisdom about Obama’s first year isn’t just premature—it’s sure to be flipped on its head by the anniversary of his inauguration on Jan. 20. If, as seems increasingly likely, Obama wins passage of a health care reform a bill by that date, he will deliver his first State of the Union address having accomplished more than any other postwar American president at a comparable point in his presidency. This isn’t an ideological point or one that depends on agreement with his policies. It’s a neutral assessment of his emerging record—how many big, transformational things Obama is likely to have made happen in his first 12 months in office.

Full Story Obama is having the best first year of any president since Franklin Roosevelt. – By Jacob Weisberg – Slate Magazine.

Glenn Beck: ‘Let’s Tear Down The Fictional Wall That Separates Church & State’

What a Lying Constitutional Propagandist!

Full Story YouTube – Glenn Beck: ‘Let’s Tear Down The Fictional Wall That Separates Church & State’.

OPS:  this is exactly the way the Nazis operated in pre-war Germany.  This IS how it begins

Number of US diabetics to double in 25 years: study

The number of Americans with diabetes will nearly double over the next 25 years, rising from 23.7 million in 2009 to 44.1 million in 2034, according to a study by the University of Chicago.

In the same period, medical costs associated with treating the disease will triple from 113 billion dollars to 336 billion dollars, even without a rise in the incidence of obesity, according to the study published in the December issue of Diabetes Care.

“If we don’t change our diet and exercise habits or find new, more effective and less expensive ways to prevent and treat diabetes, we will find ourselves in a lot of trouble as a population,” said lead author Elbert Huang.

The study said its projections, despite being significantly higher than other recent estimates, may be too conservative because they assume the rate of diabetes and obesity, a risk factor for the disease, will remain stable.

Full Story AFP: Number of US diabetics to double in 25 years: study.

The Great Marginalization: Planning for Poverty in America?

by Carl Ginsburg

The word from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg at last week’s community meeting in the Bronx was disappointing, to say the least. After promising “good jobs” during a recent campaign, how could a man with so many billions, and now fresh from a re-election victory, oppose a $10-an-hour wage? Did Hizzonor spend $200 per vote – in the neighborhood of $100 million all tolled – to win re-election, only to put forward a plan for poverty for his constituents?

That’s exactly what he did when Bronx residents asked him to commit to the following: that businesses at a city-owned mall development promise to pay the prospective work force a minimum of $10 an hour, plus benefits. Too much, crowed the vigilant mayor, ever fearful that business might be scared away by such an extravagant demand– a poverty wage.

Ten dollars an hour gets you very little in the Bronx, or anywhere in the country, as many can attest. Millions of Americans having been reduced to the status of working poor, or worse, competing for poverty wages in city after city. With the number of government jobs — a traditional source of better pay, especially for minorities — shrinking and the federal government banking on, well, banks to underpin a no-strings-attached market-driven recovery, a recovery that combines big pay-offs and low-wages, exploitation at the workplace is the order of the day. The Raid on the Treasury goes on, unabated, and poverty is growing by leaps and bounds. Adding jobs via tax credits, the liberal position, appears to be just another salvo in the longest Treasury raid in US history.

Baby boomers need to confront the reality that receiving 100 per cent of their social security is becoming more and more remote. Or, as the president might say, “Save more.” Except the country can’t “save more” because business needs those consumers and their wages now. There’s a bind.

Still, you would think the mayor of America’s largest metropolis might have some notion of what it takes to get by, or is that simply irrelevant to gaining elective office in America today?

Full Story The Great Marginalization: Planning for Poverty in America?.

Whose side is Obama on?

There is much to be thankful for this holiday, including the fact that we live in a country that has been remarkably good-natured, generous and pragmatic in the face of a nasty economic crisis. The rates of unemployment and under-employment have already hit a combined 17 percent. Household wealth has been significantly diminished. Reluctantly, we agreed to take on more public debt to finance a massive bailout of a financial sector that badly let us down. We stepped up our household savings and embraced the new frugality.

What really sticks in our craw, however, is that while most of the country is hunkered down, Wall Street continues to feast on a bounty of trading profits. You’d expect that a new liberal Democratic president would find a way to give voice to this populist outrage and constructively channel this public anger. But too often, the response from the administration has been to try to convince us that there’s little we can do, or should do, to ensure that the economic harvest is more equitably distributed. Now, the White House and congressional leaders find themselves scrambling to get ahead of a growing political backlash that threatens to upend their carefully calibrated agenda, not to mention their political fortunes.

Fairly or unfairly, the official who has come to personify this let-them-eat-stuffing attitude is Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who can’t seem to decide whose side of the buffet table he’s really on. It was Geithner who, at the height of the financial crisis last year, was able to best articulate the unpleasant truth that we could save the financial system or we could punish the banks but we couldn’t do both at the same time. But now that the system has been saved, he seems to have lost his appetite for retribution.

A telling moment came at the meeting of finance ministers in St. Andrews, Scotland, earlier this month, when Geithner gave a back-of-the-hand to the idea of a global tax on financial transactions as a way of raising money for economic stabilization while also discouraging high-volume, short-term speculation. In the past, the problem with this idea was that if any country imposed such a tax, trading would simply move somewhere else. But with most industrial countries now willing to act in concert, a transaction tax could have been a viable option — until, that is, Geithner dismissed it as a desperate political gambit by an unpopular British prime minister and vowed that the United States would never go along.

Full Story Whose side is Obama on?.

‘Cash for Clunkers,’ household edition

Program expected to boost appliance sales as economy drags

In U.S. history, there may have been no better time to own a junk car, a rattling old fridge and a leaking dishwasher.

On the heels of its ballyhooed “Cash for Clunkers” program for cars, the federal government is expected to finalize details in the coming weeks of another tax-supported shopping extravaganza, known as “Cash for Appliances.”

Supported by $300 million from the economic stimulus, the program will offer rebates to consumers who buy energy-efficient refrigerators, dishwashers, air conditioners and other appliances to replace their older models.

Full Story ‘Cash for Clunkers,’ household edition – washingtonpost.com.

Birkenfeld, Ex-UBS Banker, Seeks Billions as Whistle-Blower

Bradley C. Birkenfeld was sentenced to 40 months in prison for helping rich Americans dodge their taxes. Now he is hoping for a bit more — a few billion dollars more.

Mr. Birkenfeld, a former private banker at the Swiss bank UBS, won the enmity of his peers by violating the omerta of Swiss banking: He divulged the tax evasion secrets of UBS, the world’s largest bank by assets, and its well-heeled American clients. As part of a deal with federal prosecutors, he admitted to, among other things, helping to smuggle diamonds in a tube of toothpaste.

Now, as thousands of wealthy Americans seek amnesty for keeping illicit, offshore bank accounts, Mr. Birkenfeld and his lawyers hope to use a new federal whistle-blower law to claim a multibillion-dollar reward from the American government. If they succeed — and legal experts say the odds are pretty good — it would be the largest reward of its kind.

Full Story Birkenfeld, Ex-UBS Banker, Seeks Billions as Whistle-Blower – NYTimes.com.

Ben Bernanke – The right fix for the Fed

by Ben Bernanke –

Sunday, November 29, 2009 -

For many Americans, the financial crisis, and the recession it spawned, have been devastating — jobs, homes, savings lost. Understandably, many people are calling for change. Yet change needs to be about creating a system that works better, not just differently. As a nation, our challenge is to design a system of financial oversight that will embody the lessons of the past two years and provide a robust framework for preventing future crises and the economic damage they cause.

These matters are complex, and Congress is still in the midst of considering how best to reform financial regulation. I am concerned, however, that a number of the legislative proposals being circulated would significantly reduce the capacity of the Federal Reserve to perform its core functions. Notably, some leading proposals in the Senate would strip the Fed of all its bank regulatory powers. And a House committee recently voted to repeal a 1978 provision that was intended to protect monetary policy from short-term political influence. These measures are very much out of step with the global consensus on the appropriate role of central banks, and they would seriously impair the prospects for economic and financial stability in the United States. The Fed played a major part in arresting the crisis, and we should be seeking to preserve, not degrade, the institution's ability to foster financial stability and to promote economic recovery without inflation.

Full Story Ben Bernanke – The right fix for the Fed – washingtonpost.com.

Stacking the Deck Against Kids

Bob Herbert

Every year at Thanksgiving, parts of the Upper West Side of Manhattan become like a paradise for children. There’s the exciting preparation of the balloons and floats for the Thanksgiving Day parade, and then, on Thursday morning, the parade itself.

The weather isn’t always kind. I’ve seen the kids out there in snow, in freezing rain, in winds that threaten to send the balloons and their handlers soaring to distant venues. It doesn’t seem to matter. The children come into the neighborhood in waves, holding the hands of adults or riding atop their shoulders, smiling, laughing, playing hide-and-seek among the police barricades. Finally, inevitably, they end up staring in absolute open-mouthed, wide-eyed awe as the mammoth, colorful helium-filled creations of their favorite characters begin making their majestic way down Central Park West.

We have an obligation and an opportunity at this special moment in history to do right by these youngsters, and all the rest of America’s kids. It’s a special moment because we’ve seen so clearly the many things that have gone haywire in the society, and while it may not be easy to articulate, we have a sense of what needs to be done.

Full Story Op-Ed Columnist – Stacking the Deck Against Kids – NYTimes.com.

Medicare in Crisis: The Devastating Impacts of a Corporate Health Care Bill

Wading through the endless debate over health care has exhausted the patience of most Americans — the zigzags, obscure language, and long-winded discussion is inherently repulsive.

But now the dust is starting to settle, and the Congressional vision for health care in the U.S. is emerging. Instead of being “progressive,” it will amount to a massive, corporate-inspired attack on American workers, the elderly, and the poor.

After months of confusion and delay, Congress has shipwrecked the popular energy over health care onto the jagged rock of corporate interests. More spectacularly, health care “reform” is being used as an opportunity to greatly advance corporate influence over social spheres long-dedicated to the working-class — seemingly harmless provisions carry with them enormous implications.

These devils hide in the details of the competing health care bills in Congress; both contain debilitating right-wing policies hidden within a progressive shell. Obama is indeed acting as the agent of change, to the great benefit of the U.S. corporate elite.

And although the final bill has yet to be crafted, there exists general agreements as to what the end version will look like. Americans will be forced to buy shoddy corporate insurance with no limit to the cost, no guarantee of quality, with large premiums and other tricks to further gouge consumers. If a public option emerges in the final bill — by no means a guarantee — it will be shrunken enough to insure very few people (2 percent of the U.S. population).

But it gets worse. How this health care “reform” will be paid for has implications that dwarf the above atrocities.

Full Story Medicare in Crisis: The Devastating Impacts of a Corporate Health Care Bill.

US Navy Plots Arctic Push

This picture provided by the US Navy on March 24, 2009 shows Los Angeles-class submarine USS Annapolis on the surface of the Arctic Ocean after breaking through one metre of ice on March 21, 2009 during Ice Exercise (ICEX) 2009. (MC1 Tiffini, M. Jones, AFP/Getty Images)

The U.S. navy is planning a massive push into the Arctic to defend national security, potential undersea riches and other maritime interests.

An “Arctic roadmap” by the Department of the Navy details a five-year strategic plan to expand fleet operations into the North in anticipation that the frozen Arctic Ocean will be open water in summer by 2030.

While the plan talks diplomatically about “strong partnerships” with other Arctic nations, it is clear the U.S. is intent on seriously retooling its military presence and naval combat capabilities in a region increasingly seen as a potential flashpoint as receding polar ice allows easier access.

“This opening of the Arctic may lead to increased resource development, research, tourism, and could reshape the global transportation system. These developments offer opportunities for growth, but also are potential sources of competition and conflict for access and natural resources,” says the 33-page document, signed by Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert, vice-chief of Naval Operations.

Full Story US Navy Plots Arctic Push | CommonDreams.org.

House Oversight committee to probe Secret Service

The two aspiring reality TV stars who gatecrashed a state dinner this week met President Barack Obama at the event, a White House photograph showed.

The US Secret Service meanwhile issued an unusual mea culpa for the security lapse Tuesday at the White House State Dinner in honor of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, with director Mark Sullivan admitting the agency was “embarrassed” by the incident.

The photo released by the White House showed a smiling Obama greeting the allegedly uninvited couple, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, at a reception line at the event. Singh is seen standing next to Obama.

The president has ordered a full review of the incident, according to the Politico news website, citing an Obama aide.

Full Story Couple that crashed state dinner met, spoke with Obama | Raw Story.

OPS: Negligence or a practice run?

The Unofficial Story | CBC News: the fifth estate

On September 11, 2001 the world watched in shock and disbelief as planes flew in to New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, and Americans realized they were under attack. But by whom? What really happened? In The Unofficial Story, the fifth estate’s Bob McKeown introduces us to people who believe the real force behind the attacks was not Osama Bin Laden, but the U.S. government itself.

Emerging from the dust and debris that day was a movement, known these days as 9/11 Truth or “truthers” – people who believe that 9/11 was part of a vast conspiracy and cover-up by a criminal faction within the U.S. government. As the fifth estate reports, public opinion polls now show that the majority of Americans believe the Bush Administration had advance knowledge of those attacks and somehow allowed them to happen and that one-third of Canadians share the same belief.

In The Unofficial Story, Bob McKeown explores why these questions and theories are growing in popularity.

You’ll meet some of the leading proponents of “truther” theories: Richard Gage, an American architect, explains how the WTC twin towers and the lesser known ‘Tower #7’ could only have crumbled as they did due to explosive charges placed inside the buildings. Others, including Canadian professor Kee Dewdney, insist that the story of the brave fight by the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 must have been a hoax. But, you’ll also hear from others who dispel “truther” theories and try to understand why, from JFK’s assassination to the moon landing to 9/11, a culture of conspiracy springs up around certain historic events.

Despite the difference of opinion between those who blame the hijackers and those who blame their own government, the real importance of the fight over 9/11 truth is that it may have less to do with the past than the future.

Full Story The Unofficial Story | CBC News: the fifth estate.

OPS: Interesting that this video cannot be viewed by Americans

Russia ‘will’ deliver S-300 to Iran in 2 months

Russia has ensured that it will honor a deal providing Iran with the S-300 sophisticated anti-aircraft system, Tehran’s envoy to Moscow says.

Mohammad-Reza Sajjadi on Friday rejected reports that Russia had pulled out of the deal due to a delay in the delivery of the system to Iran.

“We had heard reports that Russia would not deliver these systems to Iran, but we asked the Russian side and they denied it,” he told reporters in Moscow.

“The delivery deadline has already passed, but the Russian side has cited technical problems which it said it was working on to fix,” Sajjadi added. “We feel that this question will be resolved within one to two months.”

Full Story Russia ‘will’ deliver S-300 to Iran in 2 months.

Limbaugh Commits Prosecutable Treason

Len Hart –

Rush Limbaugh has urged that a military coup overthrow the current government in Washington. That is a prosecutable crime called ’seditious treason’ and there is probable cause to indict Rush Limbaugh and put him on trial.

Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government;

or Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence;

or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof – Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction. If two or more persons conspire to commit any offense named in this section, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

As used in this section, the terms “organizes” and “organize”, with respect to any society, group, or assembly of persons, include

the recruiting of new members, the forming of new units, and the regrouping or expansion of existing clubs, classes, and other units

of such society, group, or assembly of persons.

–18 U.S.C. § 2385 : US Code – Section 2385: Advocating overthrow of Government

Full Story The Existentialist Cowboy: Limbaugh Commits Prosecutable Treason.

Britain failed to establish ‘legitimacy’ of Iraq invasion

Former ambassador to UN gives evidence

The US and UK launched a war to topple Saddam Hussein in spite of failing to “establish the legitimacy” of the invasion, according to Britain’s former ambassador to the United Nations.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock on Friday told the Iraq inquiry that while there was sufficient “legal cover” for war to topple Saddam Hussein it was of “questionable legitimacy”.

“If you do something internationally that the majority of UN member states think is wrong, illegitimate or politically unjustifiable, you are taking a risk in my view,” he added.

Full Story FT.com / UK – Britain failed to establish ‘legitimacy’ of Iraq invasion.