Archive for March, 2010

MSG: Is This Silent Killer Lurking in Your Kitchen Cabinets?

A widespread and silent killer that’s worse for your health than alcohol, nicotine and many drugs is likely lurking in your kitchen cabinets right now.[1] “It” is monosodium glutamate (MSG), a flavor enhancer that’s known widely as an addition to Chinese food, but that’s actually added to thousands of the foods you and your family regularly eat, especially if you are like most Americans and eat the majority of your food as processed foods or in restaurants.

MSG is one of the worst food additives on the market and is used in canned soups, crackers, meats, salad dressings, frozen dinners and much more. It’s found in your local supermarket and restaurants, in your child’s school cafeteria and, amazingly, even in baby food and infant formula.

MSG is more than just a seasoning like salt and pepper, it actually enhances the flavor of foods, making processed meats and frozen dinners taste fresher and smell better, salad dressings more tasty, and canned foods less tinny.

Full Story: Dr. Joseph Mercola: MSG: Is This Silent Killer Lurking in Your Kitchen Cabinets?.

Rep. King Calls For Velvet Revolution Against The Government

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) urged a smaller-than-expected crowd of Tea Party protesters on Tuesday to launch a Velvet Revolution-style uprising against the federal government, saying the parallels are striking between America’s current government and Eastern European communist rule.

Speaking to the Huffington Post shortly after his speech, King declared that a peaceful uprising, a la the successful overthrowing of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia on the streets of Prague in 1989 “would be fine with me.”

“Fill this city up, fill this city, jam this place full so that they can’t get in, they can’t get out and they will have to capitulate to the will of the American people,” he said.

Full Story: Rep. King Calls For Velvet Revolution Against The Government.

Obama’s Reported Picks For Federal Reserve Praised By Economists

Economists are cheering the Obama administration’s rumored picks for the Federal Reserve, noting that the two economists and the bank regulator reportedly selected to serve on the central bank’s board will be more inclined to stick up for families.

Janet L. Yellen, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, is reported to be the administration’s choice for the soon-to-be-vacated vice chairman role on the Fed’s Board of Governors; Peter A. Diamond, an MIT economist who’s written extensively about Social Security and pensions is said to fill one existing vacancy; and Sarah Bloom Raskin, the state of Maryland’s top bank regulator, is said to fill the other.

“I think these are all great choices, and ones that will move Fed policy in the needed direction — responsive to the needs of middle-class and working families,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute.

Full Story: Obama’s Reported Picks For Federal Reserve Praised By Economists.

Le Whif Breathable Coffee Lets You Inhale Your Caffeine (VIDEO)

Why drink your coffee when you can inhale it?

Thanks to creative engineering by Harvard professor David Edwards, coffee addicts can now breathe their morning cup of joe (and get their caffeine fix) using a product called Le Whif.

Le Whif ‘gives us the kick of coffee without the cup,’ says Edwards.

How does it work? Users place one end of the stick, which is about the size of a lipstick tube, to their lips, then inhale gently (see diagram below).

Full Story: Le Whif Breathable Coffee Lets You Inhale Your Caffeine (VIDEO).

OPS: Huffing Caffeine?  This will be the next fade among the kids.  This is probably not a good idea.

Is California Becoming a Third World Nation?

A new day, a new sign that California is sinking into a metaphorical, if not literal, ocean. True/Slant colleague David Knowles points out a new UCLA study that shows 1 in 4 Californians are uninsured. The day before, Michael Roston took a look at the state’s spectacularly bad unemployment numbers and saw nothing short of a Dust Bowl migration in reverse. The number of people unemployed is now equivalent to the total populations of Nevada, New Hampshire and Vermont combined.

Let’s not forget that nearly 22,000 of the state’s teachers were handed pink slips yesterday. Let’s not even start on the usual steady march of fires, mudslides and early-morning earthquakes. Is it any shock that even immigrants are choosing places like Detroit or Minneapolis to live, instead of California?

So, California’s doomed, right? Maybe. Fans of schadenfreude should think again, though, because if California goes under, so does the U.S. Here’s why California is the state that’s too big to fail.

Full Story: Is California Becoming a Third World Nation? – Japhy Grant – California Stars – True/Slant.

Glenn Beck: Your Rights Come From God

Last night we pointed out that Glenn Beck appeared to have a rather loose grip on the role of Congress when it came to the nation’s unalienable rights. Here’s what he said yesterday that had us scratching our heads in puzzlement.

I don’t know if you’ve read the Declaration of Independence but you don’t have the power to grant people rights. You don’t create them, you don’t enhance them. They are not yours…In case you missed it “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Who the hell do you think you are Congress? You are not God.

Tonight (I think the show was actually taped earlier today) Beck took a moment to respond.

“I’m getting hammered cause last night I said ‘who do you think you are Congress? You do not create rights, rights come from God, they are given to the people, and you are to protect them.”

Full Story: Glenn Beck Confirms That Your Rights Come From God | Mediaite.

CNN Taps Unhinged Conservative Blogger Erick Erickson As Regular Political Commentator

CNN announced today that conservative blogger Erick Erickson will join the network next week as a paid political commentator, primarily paired with John King on his new 7 p.m. show. Erickson, editor of the leading conservative blog RedState, also announced the selection on his blog. CNN’s decision is not surprising, as the network in recent months has increasingly turned to Erickson for political commentary. In a statement posted on CNN, the network praised Erickson’s “exceptional knowledge of politics, as well as his role as a conservative opinion leader.”

The selection of Erickson as a regular commentator raises the question of whether CNN is willing to sanction his record of offensive comments. In just the past year, Erickson has made several racial and violent statements that cast a poor light on his role as a “conservative opinion leader”:

Full Story: Think Progress » CNN Taps Unhinged Conservative Blogger Erick Erickson As Regular Political Commentator.

Alexander Admits Senate GOP Will Obstruct Fixes To Improve Health Care Bill Simply For Partisan Gain

Yesterday, while discussing the Democrats procedural options for finishing health care reform, the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein discussed how the political dynamics would change if the House passes the Senate bill and then a reconciliation bill with some substantive fixes is considered:

If the Senate bill is passed and Democrats are just getting rid of the Nebraska deal and easing the bite of the excise tax, Republicans will have a lot of trouble standing in the way and becoming defenders of the Nebraska deal and the excise tax. At that point, they’re not opposing health-care reform and instead opposing small, popular changes that make the bill better. They’re literally obstructing good government that fits with their recent rhetoric. After all, having spent the last few months hammering the Nelson deal, it doesn’t look very bipartisan to keep Democrats from taking your advice and reneging on it.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) is one of those Republicans who has spent months “hammering the Nelson deal,” which he refers to as the “Cornhusker Kickback.” On Bill Bennett’s radio show today, Alexander — who admitted that health care reform would already be law if and when the Senate takes up reconciliation legislation — was pressed to explain why he would obstruct changes that would be positive in his view:

Full Story: Think Progress » Alexander Admits Senate GOP Will Obstruct Fixes To Improve Health Care Bill Simply For Partisan Gain.

OPS: Proving yet again that the Republicans are just Sociopathic whores

Lawmakers introduce legislation outlawing Florida’s ban on gay adoptions.

This afternoon, two Florida lawmakers introduced legislation to overturn the state’s ban on gay adoptions, something the legislature hasn’t debated in the law’s 33-year history. Rep. Scott Randolph’s measure, which amended a bill about gun ownership and adoptions, would have prevented “adoption agencies from inquiring about a person’s sexual orientation as a requisite for adoption.” Randolph was forced to withdraw his amendment after the Speaker ruled that it was not germane to the bill. Sen. Charlie Justice withdrew a similar bill in the Senate. “This amendment points out that government should not ask irrelevant questions in the adoption process which tell us nothing about a person’s ability to provide a permanent and loving home. Rather, it’s lawful and responsible gun ownership or a person’s sexual orientation,” Randolph announced on the House floor. He also explained how lifting the ban would benefit children:

RANDOLPH: Three thousand children are in need of adoption and are waiting for us to do the right thing. But Florida’s current adoption ban does not allow gay and lesbians to adopt in this state. In an era of very tight budgets, this cost of inaction on this issue is $2.5 million a year. It’s time to let family judges and child welfare advocates do their job by making the best standard for each child to be the only standard for deciding adoption cases. The legislature has the power to stop that right now today.

Watch it:

Full Story: Think Progress » Lawmakers introduce legislation outlawing Florida’s ban on gay adoptions..

POLL: More Than 70% Of Iraq And Afghanistan Veterans Comfortable Serving Alongside Openly Gay Troops

As the Pentagon prepares to survey soldiers about President Obama’s decision to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a new poll of military personnel who served in the Afghanistan or Iraq wars has finds that sexual orientation is “not a burning issue that overwhelms veterans’ lives.”

The new poll, commissioned by The Vet Voice Foundation and conducted jointly by Republican and Democratic pollsters, finds that most veterans are “comfortable around gay and lesbian people, believe that being gay or lesbian has no bearing on a service member’s ability to perform their duties, and would find it acceptable if gay and lesbian people were allowed to serve openly in the military.” Fifty-eight percent of veterans said they served alongside gays or lesbians, and only 22 percent thought they had not:

– 60% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans believe that being gay or lesbian “has no bearing on a service member’s ability to perform their duties.” Only 29% disagree.

Full Story: Think Progress » POLL: More Than 70% Of Iraq And Afghanistan Veterans Comfortable Serving Alongside Openly Gay Troops.

The Filibuster Flim Flam

Ralph Nader -

The U.S. Senate has become the graveyard of Congress! Dozens of bills passed by the House of Representatives-to improve the health, safety and economic well-being of Americans-are locked up in the Senate month after month. This was not always the case. In the sixties and seventies, legislation affecting consumers, workers and the environment often started in the Senate and was sent to the House in the hope that that body would not weaken or defeat these bills.

Committee chairs like Senators Warren Magnuson, Gaylord Nelson, and Walter Mondale would move legislation after great public hearings open to the citizenry. Auto safety, product safety, meat and poultry inspection, gas pipeline safety in the late sixties, followed by the sweeping air and water pollution control bills in the early seventies, were examples of Senatorial initiatives.

Today, the Senate lies paralyzed even as it is controlled by 59 Democrats-usually enough for comfortable passage of legislation sought by a majority party that also controls the presidency.

Full Story: The Filibuster Flim Flam | CommonDreams.org.

The Hidden Role of the CIA at Popular Mechanics

A brutal purge of the senior staff at Popular Mechanics preceded the publication of last month’s scandalous propaganda piece about 9-11. Pulling the strings is the grand dame of Hearst Magazines and behind the scene is her obscure husband – a veteran propaganda expert and former special assistant to the director of the C.I.A.

The Reichstag fire, a key event in German history, and the steps that followed en suite leading to the Nazi dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, provide remarkable precedents for what occurred in the United States on 9-11 – and since. The fire that consumed the German parliament building on the night of February 27, 1933, is “widely believed,” according to Encyclopedia Britannica, to have been contrived by the newly formed Nazi government to turn public opinion against its opponents and allow it to assume emergency powers. The day after the burning of the Reichstag, the government headed by Adolf Hitler enacted a decree “for the Protection of the People and the State.” Hitler’s emergency decree dispensed with all constitutional protection of political, personal, and property rights. Within a month of the Reichstag fire, on March 23, 1933, the parliament passed the Enabling Act, whereby its legislative powers were transferred to Hitler’s Reich Cabinet. This act, passed by a vote of 444 to 94, legally sanctioned the Nazi dictatorship.

Likewise, a month after 9-11 the U.S. Congress passed, without even reading, similar emergency legislation: the Bush administration’s USA PATRIOT Act of 2001. The pre-prepared massive security act’s unabbreviated title is “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.”

Full Story: The Hidden Role of the CIA at Popular Mechanics.

NY Times Reporter Confirms Obama Made Deal to Kill Public Option

For months I’ve been reporting in The Huffington Post that President Obama made a backroom deal last summer with the for-profit hospital lobby that he would make sure there would be no national public option in the final health reform legislation. (See here, here and here). I’ve been increasingly frustrated that except for an initial story last August in the New York Times, no major media outlet has picked up this important story and investigated further.

Hopefully, that’s changing. On Monday, Ed Shultz interviewed New York Times Washington reporter David Kirkpatrick on his MSNBC TV show, and Kirkpatrick confirmed the existence of the deal. Shultz quoted Chip Kahn, chief lobbyist for the for-profit hospital industry on Kahn’s confidence that the White House would honor the no public option deal, and Kirkpatrick responded:

“That’s a lobbyist for the hospital industry and he’s talking about the hospital industry’s specific deal with the White House and the Senate Finance Committee and, yeah, I think the hospital industry’s got a deal here. There really were only two deals, meaning quid pro quo handshake deals on both sides, one with the hospitals and the other with the drug industry. And I think what you’re interested in is that in the background of these deals was the presumption, shared on behalf of the lobbyists on the one side and the White House on the other, that the public option was not going to be in the final product.”

Full Story: Miles Mogulescu: NY Times Reporter Confirms Obama Made Deal to Kill Public Option.

America’s Premiere Wave Power Farm Sets Sail

Wave energy is among the impressive list of renewable energy resources that is being developed in the United States. New Jersey-based developer, Ocean Power Technologies has launched a project that features the nation’s first commercial wave power farm off the coast of Reedsport, Oregon. Once the project is completed, wave energy will generate power for several hundred homes in Oregon. The wave power farm operates on the wave energy that is created when a float on a buoy flows with the natural up and down movement of the waves.

This action subsequently causes an attached plunger to follow the same kind of ebb and flow movement. The plunger is attached to a hydraulic pump that changes the vertical movement to a circular motion, which drives an electric generator to produce electricity that is sent to shore through submerged cables.

When the initial project is finished, the first $4 million dollar buoy will measure 150 feet tall by 40 feet wide, weighing 200 tons. Nine more of these crafts will be set in motion by the year 2012 for a total cost of $60 million dollars. About four hundred homes will receive electricity from Oregon’s wave power farm by the completion of the project.

Full Story: America’s Premiere Wave Power Farm Sets Sail.

Scientists use Visible Light to Break Down Carbon Dioxide

We all are familiar with the effects of carbon dioxide on our environment. Carbon dioxide is responsible for causing the greenhouse effect. If scientists can breakdown this gas into other form it would lead us to reduce the concentration of this gas into environment substantially. It would mean dealing with the root cause of the problem. Now scientists are trying out to get hold of an organism which could help in the breakdown of carbon dioxide.

Steve Ragsdale who is a biological chemist from University of Michigan; he and his research assistants Elizabeth Pierce and Fraser Armstrong along with his team from the University of Oxford in the U.K. are working towards breaking down carbon dioxide into benevolent form. It is being said that they have devised means to efficiently turn carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide with the help of visible light, such as sunlight. In this collaboration between Ann Arbor and Oxford they have divided their work. Ragsdale’s laboratory at the University of Michigan Medical School is performing the biochemistry and microbiology experiments. Armstrong’s lab is looking after the physical- and photochemical applications. Ragsdale’s lab received funding from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the National Institutes of Health. They have published their findings in the online edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

If scientists can successfully convert carbon dioxide into some useful compound commercially using little energy then we can effectively deal with the ill effects of greenhouse. Some organisms are engaged in this work. Ragsdale tries to explain this phenomenon, “This is a first step in showing it’s possible, and imagine microbes doing something similar. I don’t know of any organism that uses light energy to activate carbon dioxide and reduce it to carbon monoxide, but I can imagine either finding an organism that can do it, or genetically engineering one to channel light energy to coax it to do that.”

Full Story: Scientists use Visible Light to Break Down Carbon Dioxide.

What’s Killing the Great Forests of the American West?

Across western North America, huge tracts of forest are dying off at an extraordinary rate, mostly because of outbreaks of insects. Scientists are now seeing such forest die-offs around the world and are linking them to changes in climate.

For many years, Diana Six, an entomologist at the University of Montana, planned her field season for the same two to three weeks in July. That’s when her quarry — tiny, black, mountain pine beetles — hatched from the tree they had just killed and swarmed to a new one to start their life cycle again.

Now, says Six, the field rules have changed. Instead of just two weeks, the beetles fly continually from May until October, attacking trees, burrowing in, and laying their eggs for half the year. And that’s not all. The beetles rarely attacked immature trees; now they do so all the time. What’s more, colder temperatures once kept the beetles away from high altitudes, yet now they swarm and kill trees on mountaintops. And in some high places where the beetles had a two-year life cycle because of cold temperatures, it’s decreased to one year.

Such shifts make it an exciting — and unsettling — time to be an entomologist. The growing swath of dead lodgepole and ponderosa pine forest is a grim omen, leaving Six — and many other scientists and residents in the West — concerned that as the climate continues to warm, these destructive changes will intensify.

Full Story: What’s Killing the Great Forests of the American West? by Jim Robbins: Yale Environment 360.

The Biggest Dump in the World

As large as the USA, the Great Pacific Waste Patch is the biggest dump in the world. Ed Cumming discovers that it keeps getting bigger, and could be poisoning us all The world’s biggest rubbish dump keeps growing. The Great Pacific
Garbage Patch – or the Pacific Trash Vortex – is a floating monument to our  culture of waste, the final resting place of every forgotten carrier bag, every discarded bottle and every piece of packaging blown away in the wind.  Opinions about the exact size of this great, soupy mix vary, but some claim it has doubled over the past decade, making it now six times the size of the UK.

Dr Simon Boxall, a physical oceanographer at the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, goes even further: “It’s the size of North America. But although the patch itself is extremely large, it’s only one
very clear representation of the much bigger worldwide problem.”

This global problem is the motive behind the Plastiki, a 60ft, 12-ton catamaran built from 12,500 recycled plastic bottles, which embarks on  its maiden voyage from San Francisco this week. The brainchild of David de Rothschild, the flamboyant British banking heir and environmentalist,  the Plastiki will sail right through the middle of the Garbage Patch as part of  a campaign to help make more people aware of the Pacific’s threatened communities and of the damage our waste is doing to our oceans.

Full Story: The Biggest Dump in the World – Telegraph.

The Biggest Dump in the World

As large as the USA, the Great Pacific Waste Patch is the biggest dump in the world. Ed Cumming discovers that it keeps getting bigger, and could be poisoning us all

The world’s biggest rubbish dump keeps growing. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch – or the Pacific Trash Vortex – is a floating monument to our culture of waste, the final resting place of every forgotten carrier bag, every discarded bottle and every piece of packaging blown away in the wind. Opinions about the exact size of this great, soupy mix vary, but some claim it has doubled over the past decade, making it now six times the size of the UK.

Dr Simon Boxall, a physical oceanographer at the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, goes even further: “It’s the size of North America. But although the patch itself is extremely large, it’s only one very clear representation of the much bigger worldwide problem.”

This global problem is the motive behind the Plastiki, a 60ft, 12-ton catamaran built from 12,500 recycled plastic bottles, which embarks on its maiden voyage from San Francisco this week. The brainchild of David de Rothschild, the flamboyant British banking heir and environmentalist, the Plastiki will sail right through the middle of the Garbage Patch as part of a campaign to help make more people aware of the Pacific’s threatened communities and of the damage our waste is doing to our oceans.

Full Story: The Biggest Dump in the World – Telegraph.

Study Highlights Forest Protected Areas as a Critical Strategy for Slowing Climate Change

A new study involving scientists from 13 different organizations, universities and research institutions states that forest protection offers one of the most effective, practical, and immediate strategies to combat climate change. The study, “Indigenous Lands, Protected Areas, and Slowing Climate Change,” was published in PLoS Biology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and makes specific recommendations for incorporating protected areas into overall strategies to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses from deforestation and degradation (nicknamed REDD).

“Deforestation leads to about 15 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, more than all the cars, trucks, trains, ships, and planes on earth. If we fail to reduce it, we’ll fail to stabilize our climate,” said Taylor Ricketts, director of World Wildlife Fund’s science program and lead author of the study. “Our paper emphasizes that creating and strengthening indigenous lands and other protected areas can offer an effective means to cut emissions while garnering numerous additional benefits for local people and wildlife.”

Full Story: WWF – Press Release – Study Highlights Forest Protected Areas as a Critical Strategy for Slowing Climate Change.

Monsanto admits their technology doesn’t work!

Reyes, one of our agriculture campaigners in India, shares her immediate thoughts on this ‘first-of-its-kind’ admission by Monsanto

Greenpeace

This was my Saturday’s lyrics to breakfast in sunny Bangalore: Monsanto has decided to tell the truth about something: its technology doesn’t work!, reports The Hindu. I’m going to need a second cup of chai to digest this, Monsanto speaking honest!? Indian farmers and scientist have been seeing this in their Bt cotton fields for a few years: pests become resistant to Monsanto’s genetically engineered toxins and thus farmers apply huge amounts of pesticides. Monsanto has always denied this, has the recent massive rejection of its Bt brinjal in India woken up its senses?

For years Monsanto has been shouting that the main – read only – benefit of Bt cotton in India (the only genetically engineered crop planted here) was the reduction in pesticide use. Well, it seems they have just admitted this is not true. Pink bollworm, a serious pest for cotton farmers in India, is now resistant to the toxin in Bt cotton. Meaning that this bug is now sort of a super-pest that farmers will have to work harder and harder to avoid.

What is Monsanto’s solution to this? Maybe you have guessed it: use Monsanto’s next weapon – same technology – Bt cotton 2.0. With double the amount of toxins (and almost double the price of non-Bt seeds). Hmmm? I need another cup of chai! This is looking too much like an arms-race, which due to rapid pest evolution of resistance could reach a battle of infinite proportions… followed closely by Monsanto’s profits, of course. Indigestible! -my stomach shouts-, because along with Monsanto’s profits from selling their special seeds I see also the struggle of debt and the threats to the livelihoods of the many farmers I’ve met.

Full Story: Monsanto admits their technology doesn’t work! « Wake-up Call.

Reconciling Reconciliation

Matt Taibbi -

Reconciliation has been used with increasing frequency. That was bad enough. But at least for the Bush tax cuts or the prescription drug bill, there was significant bipartisan support. Now we have pure reconciliation mixed with pure partisanship.

via Op-Ed Columnist – The Spirit of Sympathy – NYTimes.com.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t one of the Bush tax cuts only passed when Dick Cheney broke a tie in the Senate?

We’re going to hear an awful lot of hand-wringing in the next few weeks if the health care bill sneaks through the House and ends up passing in the Senate via reconciliation — as though using reconciliation were somehow immoral, or cheating.

I’m not sure I get what the issue is here. No Republican Senator is ever going to vote for the health care bill under any circumstances. It could have a rider in it mandating biblical readings up through the junior college level and you still couldn’t get even a very God-fearing Republican like Tom Coburn to vote for an Obama health care bill. Chuck Grassley wouldn’t vote for it if you moved the U.S. Naval Shipyard to an Iowa cornfield. They’ve locked arms on this bitch like soccer players on a free kick.

Full Story: Reconciling Reconciliation – Matt Taibbi – Taibblog – True/Slant.

HR 645 / U.S. Preparing For Civil Unrest

In their quest for the truth ~ over 60,000 infuriated Greek citizens take to the streets in central Athens because the cash strapped government faces a financial reckoning. The Obama administration has prepared itself for eventually the same demands for the truth with HR 645 which is, in essence, militarized FEMA internment camps: Allen L Roland

Recently, street clashes broke out on March11th between rioting youths and police in central Athens as tens of thousands demonstrated during a nationwide strike against the cash-strapped government. Hundreds of masked and hooded youths punched and kicked motorcycle police, knocking several off their bikes, as police responded with volleys of tear gas and stun grenades.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1257243/Greek-riots-Up-60-000-people-streets-protest-government.html

It’s only a matter of time before the American people take to the streets particularly when they realize the full extent of cash strapped America’s indebtedness as well as the financial backlash of Wall Street’s ponzi scheme of offshore derivatives which has also brought Greece to its knees. We are talking trillions of dollars here. Meanwhile the U.S. Defense budget for 2011 will go up 7.1% .

Full Story: Allen L Roland’s Weblog.

GAO blocks contract to firm formerly known as Blackwater to train Afghan police

Federal auditors on Monday put a stop to Army plans to award a $1 billion training program for Afghan police officers to the company formerly known as Blackwater, concluding that other companies were unfairly excluded from bidding on the job.

The decision by the Government Accountability Office leaves unclear who will oversee training of the struggling Afghan National Police, a poorly equipped, 90,000-strong paramilitary force that will inherit the task of preserving order in the country after NATO troops depart.

GAO officials upheld a protest by DynCorp International Inc., which currently conducts training for Afghan police under a State Department contract. DynCorp lawyers argued that the company should have been allowed to submit bids when management of the training program passed from State to the Army. Instead, Pentagon officials allowed the training program to be attached to an existing Defense contract that supports counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan.

Full Story: GAO blocks contract to firm formerly known as Blackwater to train Afghan police – washingtonpost.com.

Yoo Besmirches Legacy of Jefferson

Ray McGovern -

Initially I was shocked at the thought of the University of Virginia welcoming former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo to the “Academical Village” founded by Thomas Jefferson.

There was something very wrong about that picture. Was it not Mr. Jefferson who condemned tyrannical acts-including ones that fell far short of waterboarding-in the Declaration of Independence?

But I have come around to the view that Yoo’s visit on Friday could present a rich teaching moment for those of us Virginians who believe passionately in the highest ideals that Mr. Jefferson articulated so eloquently.

Yoo’s visit presents a unique opportunity for my own children – four of them UVA alumni – to convey the essence of The University to those of our eight grandchildren who already aspire to study there.

Full Story: Yoo Besmirches Legacy of Jefferson | CommonDreams.org.

Beyond Orwell: The Electronic Police State, 2010

A truism perhaps, but before resorting to brute force and open repression to halt the “barbarians at the gates,” that would be us, the masters of declining empires (and the chattering classes who polish their boots) regale us with tales of “democracy on the march,” “hope” and other banalities before the mailed fist comes crashing down.

Putting it another way, as the late, great Situationist malcontent, Guy Debord did decades ago in his relentless call for revolt, The Society of the Spectacle:

“The reigning economic system is a vicious circle of isolation. Its technologies are based on isolation, and they contribute to that same isolation. From automobiles to television, the goods that the spectacular system chooses to produce also serve it as weapons for constantly reinforcing the conditions that engender ‘lonely crowds.’ With ever-increasing concreteness the spectacle recreates its own presuppositions.”

Full Story: Antifascist Calling…: Beyond Orwell: The Electronic Police State, 2010.

Hoyer defends deeming the Senate healthcare bill passed without vote

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on Tuesday defended a tactic that would allow the House to “deem” the Senate healthcare bill passed without actually voting on the bill.

Hoyer (D-Md.) said at his weekly news conference that a rule deeming the Senate bill passed is consistent with procedures and practices used by Republicans and Democrats alike, and that it’s appropriate for a bill that will be moments away from being amended anyway.

[mosads}Use of such a maneuver is under harsh attack from Republicans, who say it’s at best an avoidance of accountability and at worst a violation of the House rules and an affront to the Constitution.

Full Story: Hoyer defends deeming the Senate healthcare bill passed without vote – TheHill.com.

Scandal Widens: Pope Remains Silent as Abuse Allegations Hit Close to Home

Allegations of sexual abuse in the German Catholic Church continue to surface. Questions have been raised about what Pope Benedict XVI may have known about specific incidents of abuse and his brother, Georg Ratzinger, is also under fire. The pope, however, has so far remained silent.

Georg Ratzinger came clean about his transgressions. Indeed, it seemed to be the end of the matter — one which placed him squarely in the center of Germany’s ever expanding Church abuse scandal.

“In the beginning, I slapped (the boys) in the face on a number of occasions,” said Ratzinger, who, for decades, was the director of the Regensburger Domspatzen, one of the most renowned boys’ choirs in Germany. But he stopped the practice back in 1980, he says, because the state had banned corporal punishment. He says that he “strictly” observed the new law.

Full Story: Scandal Widens: Pope Remains Silent as Abuse Allegations Hit Close to Home – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International.

New York Times urged to issue correction for David Brooks’ column.

In his New York Times column today, David Brooks complains that the use of the budget reconciliation process to finish health care reform with a “simple majority” vote will ruin “the remnants of person-to-person relationships” that are left in the Senate. Though he acknowledges that reconciliation has been used plenty in the past, Brooks asserts that the Democrats would be using it in an unprecedented manner:

Full Story: Think Progress » New York Times urged to issue correction for David Brooks’ column..

Jim Bunning’s Back: Blocking Nominees Over Canadian Smoking Law

Jim Bunning, far from being cowed by the national exposure of his recent effort to hold up unemployment benefits for millions of laid-off workers, is back at it in the Senate.

The Kentucky Republican battled Democrats on the Senate floor Tuesday to block two nominations to relatively backbench positions — because he is opposed to a tobacco-related law passed by the Canadian Parliament (that’s right, the Canadian Parliament). The use of such delaying tactics is not unprecedented in Senate history, but holding up such minor business stretches the purpose of the Senate’s open debate rules to the breaking point.

“This is a perversion of the filibuster and a perversion of the role of the Senate. It used to be that the filibuster was reserved for matters of great principle,” said Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) from the well of the Senate. “Some of my colleagues seem more interested in using every procedural method possible to keep the Senate from doing anything than they are in creating jobs or helping Americans struggling in a difficult economy.”

Full Story: Jim Bunning’s Back: Blocking Nominees Over Canadian Smoking Law.

U.S. Warns EU That A Derivatives Ban Won’t Work

Europe’s threat to ban the sort of financial derivatives trading that some blame for worsening Greece’s debt crisis wouldn’t work, a senior U.S. official told EU lawmakers Tuesday.

German, French and Greek leaders have called on the EU’s executive to crack down on so-called naked credit default swaps, where an investor can profit by taking out insurance on a product he doesn’t own. Their call is a swipe at traders taking bets on a falling euro and a Greek default.

Greece’s prime minister George Papandreou has blamed financial markets for intensifying his country’s debt crisis by hiking borrowing costs. He described the swaps as buying insurance on a neighbor’s house and then burning it down to collect.

Full Story: U.S. Warns EU That A Derivatives Ban Won’t Work.

Toyota Recall: How Much Will It End Up Costing The Automaker?

OMOKO A. HOSAKA, AP) A massive global recall, mounting legal bills and a battered reputation add up to a very expensive problem for Toyota.

How expensive? Depends who you ask.

With new developments emerging almost daily, predicting a final pricetag for the Japanese automaker is a daunting calculation that only some analysts have attempted.

The sole figure from Toyota itself came on Feb. 4 along with the company’s October-December earnings results. It estimated that the worldwide recall, now involving some 8.5 million cars, could cost up to 180 billion yen ($2 billion), with 100 billion yen for repairs and 80 billion yen in lost sales. It said the recalls may dent global demand for Toyota models by 100,000 vehicles.

Analysts with their own estimates say the total is bound to climb higher.

Full Story: Toyota Recall: How Much Will It End Up Costing The Automaker?.

Congress letter urges action on renminbi

130 members of the US Congress on Monday called on the Obama administration to label China a currency manipulator

More than 100 members of the US Congress on Monday called on the Obama administration to label China a currency manipulator, in a move that highlighted the pressure on Washington to take a more confrontational stance towards Beijing.

In a letter to Timothy Geithner, Treasury secretary, and Gary Locke, commerce secretary, the 130 Congressmen demanded the administration designate China a manipulator when it issues its regular report on currency manipulation next month. They called for countervailing duties to be imposed on Chinese imports.

“I have not really seen this level of enthusiasm among members of Congress before,” said Tim Ryan, one of the Congressmen organising the bipartisan letter. “There is a heck of a coalition behind this and the time is right.”

Full Story: FT.com / US / Politics & Foreign policy – Congress letter urges action on renminbi.

The Big Short Is a Bit Short in Missing the Reasons for the Crisis

Danny Schecter,  -

The Big Short Is A Bit Short In Missing The Reasons for The Crisis: Michael Lewis’s Delusion Thesis vs Senator Kaufman’s Case for Crime

It’s the number one book in the county. Every day, Michael Lewis’s The Big Short is getting B I G G E R, no doubt because he is so mediagenic, conversational and likes to laugh with the hosts who interview him about his findings.

On Sunday, he laughed with Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes when the two bantered on about how about stupid it all was and why so many smart people drank the Kool Aid. The story he tells has no hard edges really…it’s about “delusion,” Wall Street deluding us all and then each other.

The idea of delusions feeds a psychological and cultural analysis of bankers cut off from the world, focused on their own pocket books and believing their own hype. It is in this sense Shakespearian—the stuff of drama, not calculation. What a web we weave when first we practice to deceive, to quote Sir Walter Scott.

Full Story: The Big Short Is a Bit Short in Missing the Reasons for the Crisis | BuzzFlash.org.

Goldman Is to Greece What Merrill Was to Enron

Did big banks break the law during our recent global debt-fuelled boom? The usual answer is: no – they just took advantage of loopholes and captured regulators. The world’s biggest banks are widely supposed to be too sophisticated to be tripped up by the legal system.

But is this really true? The new Valukas report on Lehman suggests there are grounds for civil action, i.e., people can sue for damages. News reports give no indication of potential criminal charges, but this may change soon. The hiding of Lehman’s true debt levels – through the so-called “Repo 105″ structure – is strikingly reminiscent of how Enron’s balance sheet was disguised through fake asset “sales” (as Senator Kaufman now points out).

And, of course, the people who ended up facing criminal charges and – in some prominent cases – going to jail, included not only Enron executives, but also responsible bankers from Merrill Lynch (see The Smartest Guys in the Room, Chapter 13). Arthur Anderson, Enron’s accountant, was also effectively broken by the scandal. It is a serious crime for professional advisers and financiers to assist in securities fraud.

Full Story: Simon Johnson: Goldman Is to Greece What Merrill Was to Enron.

Junk bonds to set off new crisis?

Payback Time – Avalanche of Maturing Junk Bonds Looms for Markets

When the Mayans envisioned the world coming to an end in 2012 — at least in the Hollywood telling — they didn’t count junk bonds among the perils that would lead to worldwide disaster.

Maybe they should have, because 2012 also is the beginning of a three-year period in which more than $700 billion in risky, high-yield corporate debt begins to come due, an extraordinary surge that some analysts fear could overload the debt markets.

With huge bills about to hit corporations and the federal government around the same time, the worry is that some companies will have trouble getting new loans, spurring defaults and a wave of bankruptcies.

Full Story: Payback Time – Avalanche of Maturing Junk Bonds Looms for Markets – NYTimes.com.

D.C. home to most cyber-criminals

Here’s a factoid you might not know — D.C. has the most cyber-criminals per capita: 116 for every 100,000 people.

The Internet Crime Complaint Center’s 2009 Internet Crime Report ranks Maryland 19th (29.72 perpetrators per 100,000) and Virginia 28th (24.12 perpetrators per 100,000).

IC3, a joint effort of the National White Collar Crime Center and FBI, says Nevada and Washington hold the No. 2 and No. 3 spots.

Cyber-crimes are so common victims often neglect to report them. But the number of complaints to IC3 jumped more than 22 percent last year to 336,655. The amount of money victims lost more than doubled to nearly $560,000 from $265,000 in 2008.

Full Story: D.C. home to most cyber-criminals – wtop.com.

OPS: Isn’t DC where most of the Rightwing think-tanks are located? Just askin.

House may try to pass Senate health-care bill without voting on it

After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate’s health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it.

Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers “deem” the health-care bill to be passed.

The tactic — known as a “self-executing rule” or a “deem and pass” — has been commonly used, although never to pass legislation as momentous as the $875 billion health-care bill. It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure.

Full Story: House may try to pass Senate health-care bill without voting on it.

OPS: making things worse, and less democratic. Idiots

Glenn Beck ‘has teared up’ during rehearsals, staffers say

Glenn Beck received a mix of mockery and intrigue last year after crying several times on camera during his Fox News program. Now, the conservative lightning rod’s assistants reportedly say he sheds the occasional tear even while rehearsing for the show.

In a Post feature story about the controversial Fox host, Howard Kurtz writes, “Some staffers say they have watched rehearsals, on internal monitors, in which Beck has teared up or paused at the same moments as he later did during the show.”

Observers have speculated that his crying may simply be an act to boost ratings. But according to the Chris Balfe, president of Beck’s production company Mercury Radio Arts, the fact that Beck does it both on and off camera is a mark of his sincerity.

Full Story: Glenn Beck ‘has teared up’ during rehearsals, staffers say | Raw Story.

Protecting agencies from oversight, Obama threatens to veto intelligence funding

The White House is threatening to veto a key intelligence funding bill over what it considers to be a dangerous amount of oversight on covert agencies, according to published reports.

The 2010 Intelligence Budget has gone through a number of key changes over the past few months, with House Democrats and the Obama administration butting heads over a number of provisions. Key among them for the latest White House veto threat is a provision that would allow the Government Accountability Office to investigate intelligence agencies.

“Current law exempts intelligence and counterintelligence activities from GAO review, leaving oversight to the inspectors general at the various intelligence community agencies,” Politico reported.

Full Story: Protecting agencies from oversight, Obama threatens to veto intelligence funding | Raw Story.

Obama agencies invoking secrecy provision more often than under Bush

One day after being sworn into office, President Barack Obama instructed federal agencies to ensure government transparency by complying with the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act law.

“All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government,” Obama wrote in a memo to federal agencies Jan. 21, 2009. “The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.”

“The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public,” the newly-installed president continued. “They should not wait for specific requests from the public. All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and down by their Government. Disclosure should be timely.”

Full Story: Obama agencies invoking secrecy provision more often than under Bush | Raw Story.

Republican AG Orchestrating Fight To Invalidate Health, Energy Reform Floats Support For Birther Lawsuit

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA) has positioned himself as the leader of a state-based movement on the right to invalidate key progressive reforms. Announcing a lawsuit to undermine the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate carbon emissions, Cuccinelli recently filed a petition claiming that global warming is “unverifiable and doctored” science. Cuccinelli has also promised to use the state’s recently passed “state sovereignty” law — crafted with the help of health insurance lobbyists and a right-wing front group Cuccinelli claimed membership to while in the legislature — to file a lawsuit against implementing health reform in Virginia.

Now, according to audio uncovered by blogger Not Larry Sabato, Cuccinelli is floating his support for yet another fringe conservative idea: the “birther” movement. In an audio clip allegedly recorded during the transition period after his election last year, Cuccinelli is asked how he could legally challenge President Obama’s citizenship. Cuccinelli lays out the legal framework, then adds that such a suit could occur because the “speculation” that Obama is from Kenya “doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility”:

Full Story: Think Progress » Republican AG Orchestrating Fight To Invalidate Health, Energy Reform Floats Support For Birther Lawsuit.

REPORT: A Closer Look At Consumer Protections In Dodd’s Financial Reform Bill

After months of intractable negotiations with Republicans that went nowhere, and growing impatience from Americans irate that regulatory reforms for Wall Street still had not been completed, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) today introduced his latest financial reform bill. Consumer advocates are approaching the bill with caution, as the proposal lacks a stand-alone Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), such as was proposed by the Obama administration and passed by the House of Representatives.

The Dodd bill instead creates a Bureau of Consumer Protection inside of the Federal Reserve, which has been heavily criticized for its past regulatory failures and for a culture that is seen as apathetic or even antagonistic to the concerns of consumer protection. Much like West Berlin during the Cold War, the Dodd Bureau would be surrounded by a hostile culture, and the loss of even one element of its independence could cause its downfall.

So the key is whether the new Bureau will it be sufficiently empowered and isolated from that hostile culture to be effective. Longtime consumer protection advocate Elizabeth Warren has listed four criteria for an effective consumer financial protection regulator: 1) an independent director appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate; 2) independent budget authority so it is not prone to the whims of the appropriation process; 3) independent rule-making authority; and 4) independent enforcement powers.

Full Story: Think Progress » REPORT: A Closer Look At Consumer Protections In Dodd’s Financial Reform Bill.

U.S. Mortgage Fraud Remains at Epidemic Levels

The FBI will not have the additional necessary assets to investigate much more of this fraud because the Obama administration has requested of Congress only enough additional funds to hire 50 new special agents and 91 professional support staff.

Despite the Wall Street crash and bailout, U.S. mortgage fraud remains at epidemic levels.

The U.S. Treasury Department, under the authority of the Bank Security Act, collects “suspicious activity reports” (SARs), which the financial industry is required to file. In 2000, the Treasury received 3,500 of these reports of fraudulent mortgages. It received 18,000 SARs in 2004, 21,000 in 2006, 46,000 in 2007 and more than 63,000 in 2008.

On May 21, 2009, Robert S. Mueller III, director of the FBI, testified before the House Judiciary Committee that the mortgage industry had filed more than 33,000 SARS in the first 7 months of fiscal year 2009, representing about $22 billion of potential mortgage fraud. When the final numbers for fiscal year 2009 are released, the total will be at least as high as during the pre-crash period.

Full Story: U.S. Mortgage Fraud Remains at Epidemic Levels | Economy In Crisis.

Brewing up a Deadly, Toxic Recipe for Economic Disaster

Recipe for economic disaster: mix millions of outsourced jobs with millions of unemployed workers, pour in hundreds of billions of dollars for needless foreign wars, throw in a large dose of governmental failure to enact financial reforms to prevent abusive, unethical practices; combine these ingredients into a very large economic crisis and, presto, you have created a deadly, toxic recipe for economic disaster.

The current state of America is extremely tenuous; numerous states with massive budget deficits have been forced to lay off hundreds of teachers, police and firefighters. Education and the peoples' safety are being adversely affected. Kansas City school districts have just announced that they will have to close 29 out of 61 schools. And this negative trend is far from over; in fact, many more of these cutbacks are coming all over America.

Our nation’s governors have indicated that they will need nearly $1 trillion in federal aid to stave off bankruptcies; they need to be bailed out. But no bailout will be forthcoming from Uncle Sam because all available funds have been used to bailout the banking industry and financial sector and to fund our raging foreign wars.

Full Story: OpEdNews – Article: Brewing up a Deadly, Toxic Recipe for Economic Disaster.

Maddow Wipes Floor with AZ Senate Candidate J.D. ‘Man on Horse’ Hayworth

The Take-down

Full Story: Pensito Review.

How Can America Restore Its Industrial Self-sufficiency?

The wealth that the U.S. achieved in the early 20th century has been eroded by encouraging other countries to build their industrial base while not taking care to ensure a domestic industrial future in this country.

This has been extensively documented and is evidenced by 30 years of trade deficits and a most recent deficit of $817 billion last year – the U.S. simply does not produce what it needs to sustain itself.

What can we do to correct this?

Coming to terms with reality

U.S. consumers of many products including capital equipment now find that foreign imports or foreign-owned domestic producers provide a better value or quality than domestic counterparts, if they even exist. Without some incentive, current policies are simply failing to stimulate competitive domestic industry.

Full Story: How Can America Restore Its Industrial Self-sufficiency? | Economy In Crisis.

China Using Trade Loopholes at Expense of Others

China has recently stepped up its activity at the World Trade Organization, challenging the trading practices of other nations.  At the same time, China has refused to even acknowledge that its currency is highly undervalued, much less take action to remedy the problem.

China is increasingly exploiting loopholes in international trading rules to its advantage, according to The New York Times.

“Evidence is mounting that Beijing is skillfully using inconsistencies in international trade rules to spur its own economy at the expense of others, including the United States,” the report read.

China has recently stepped up its activity at the World Trade Organization, challenging the trading practices of other nations. At the same time, China has refused to even acknowledge that its currency is highly undervalued, much less take action to remedy the problem.

Full Story: China Using Trade Loopholes at Expense of Others | Economy In Crisis.

Wallach Says Export Data Shows `Wobbly’ Global Economy

Lori Wallach, president of Global Trade Watch, talks with Bloomberg’s Mark Crumpton and Julie Hyman about the U.S. trade data and policies. The trade gap decreased 6.6 percent to $37.3 billion in January from a revised $39.9 billion in December as Americans imported the fewest barrels of crude oil in a decade, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. (Source: Bloomberg)

Sarkozy to Take Tanker Fight to Obama

The U.S. government is not obligated to open contracts to foreign companies, or even to domestic private companies. Our government could easily do what every other nation in the world does by on

The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) had been at odds with American industrial giant Boeing over a lucrative Defense Department contract for nearly five years. The United States military was offering a contract valued at nearly $40 billion to the best available aerial refueling tanker for the next generation of airborne warfare.

In 2008 EADS, and its subsidiary Airbus, won the bidding process and was granted the contract. However, Boeing called for a government audit of the process and upon further investigation it was found that EADS, Airbus, and Northrup Grumman (their American partner) had given improper benefits and kickbacks to several United States Air Force personnel during the bidding.

Even if the EADS-Airbus tanker was a better project, a more capable aircraft, or a cheaper alternative, the fact that their staff muddied the waters with questionable contacts was enough to restart the process. The Government Accountability Office was called in, then Senator Barack Obama went on the record expressing his own disapproval, and the Defense Department was forced to reevaluate all potential bids.

Full Story: Sarkozy to Take Tanker Fight to Obama | Economy In Crisis.

Is Goat the New Cow? Why American Foodies and Environmentalists Are Reviving the Old-World Staple

Goat is a great way for people to eat locally grown, humanely raised, tasty foods. And unlike the cattle industries, there aren’t any massive, industrialized goat farms.

It’s a Thursday evening and I am just leaving my little farmers’ market, which occupies a dog-leg corner of a typical Southern California strip mall. It is bounded by a wide boulevard filled with thousands of commuters whose red brake lights and white headlights transform the street into a candy-cane ribbon inching along at rush hour toward the nearby freeway. A man selling gourmet cheese from the side of his refrigerated truck has plenty of goat cheese, some herbed and others plain. All look freshly made and delicious. I’m preparing a meal for Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath. The meal will follow Jewish dietary guidelines, known as kashrut.

The foundation of Jewish dietary laws is written in the Torah. It starts with goats, as it is written that one should not boil a baby goat (a kid) in its mother’s milk. From this statement, a complex and extensive food system evolved that prescribes how observant Jews eat. Although I continue to follow these dietary laws, I didn’t think about goats much until recently. A couple of thousand years after my ancestors initiated a goat-inspired religious food diet, I have joined with millions of other people worldwide, to prepare a meal with a goat product.

Full Story: Is Goat the New Cow? Why American Foodies and Environmentalists Are Reviving the Old-World Staple | Food | AlterNet.

Goldman’s Great Greek Swindle and the American Blowback

Goldman’s epic swindle may topple Greece and even the European Union. Wall Street’s stranglehold on the U.S. is equally dangerous.

You’ve heard this crappy joke before. Financial vampire squid Goldman Sachs games billions on the books for a prestigious client, hiding its lack of real value, while both continue to lucratively trade on false data. Time passes, Goldman retracts its feeding tube, the prestigious client implodes, and the collateral damage escalates. Cue the cruel laugh track.

The client this time? Greece, where Goldman executed a currency swap worth billions, without reporting it of course. The collateral damage? The euro, and perhaps the entire European Union, depending on how the house of cards falls. But to be fair, Goldman couldn’t have done it alone.

“The European Union bureaucrats that are driving the system wanted their own empire,” economist Paul Craig Roberts, one-time assistant U.S. Treasury secretary in the Reagan administration, told AlterNet. “So the European Union was expanded into financially weaker states, which can no longer print money to cover their debts as they all use the euro. What Goldman Sachs did for the Greek government was to help hide the size of the Greek debt, since European Union membership requires maintaining a fairly low deficit-to-GDP ratio.”

Full Story: Goldman’s Great Greek Swindle and the American Blowback | Economy | AlterNet.

Our Obsession With Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities and Our Health

A new book questioning our consumerism says we spend more on shoes and jewelry than higher education; more on ocean cruises than providing drinking water for all.

Consumption

So here we are. All sorts of stuff is lining the real or virtual shelves of stores, ready to slip into our shopping carts or be assembled and shipped according to our desires. Enter the consumer. Stage left, stage right, storming stores and online shopping portals, armed with credit cards and freshly cashed paychecks. This stage of the game is What It’s All For — at least that’s what we’re told. For a moment, as the almighty consumer makes her selection from a long menu of choices, the entire world revolves around her. She experiences a surge of power as she trades her hard-earned money for a piece of stuff and becomes its owner, either meeting a need, indulging a whim, shifting a bad mood — or maybe all three at once. “When things get tough, the tough go shopping,” as the bumper stickers used to say.

Lots of our favorite characters and cultural icons surround themselves with signature cool Stuff. Where would 007 be without his latest gadget, his perfectly tailored suit, or his (insert your favorite model of future car here)? What would the Oscars be without the gowns? How could we love Carrie Bradshaw without her outrageous brimmed hats and designer shades and glossy shopping bags full of ruffled dresses and sky-high heels? Would we recognize Holly Golightly without her infatuation with Tiffany’s? We’re attached to these characters’ possessions and obsessions as much as to their personalities; it’s all part of our national mythology. It only makes sense that we’d get attached to our own Stuff.

Full Story: Our Obsession With Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities and Our Health | Environment | AlterNet.

Israel Crackdown Puts Liberal Jews on the Spot

Chris Hedges -

The Israeli government, its brutal war crimes in Gaza exposed in detail in the U.N. report by Justice Richard Goldstone, has implemented a series of draconian measures to silence and discredit dissidents, leading intellectuals and human rights organizations inside and outside Israel that are accused—often falsely—of assisting Goldstone’s U.N. investigators. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is attempting to shut down Israel’s premier human rights organizations, including B’Tselem, the New Israel Fund (NIF) and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. It is busy expelling or excluding peace activists and foreign nationals from the Palestinian territories. The campaign, if left unchecked, will be as catastrophic for Palestinians as it will be for Israel.

The Goldstone report, which is over 500 pages, investigated Israel’s 22-day air and ground assault on Gaza that took place from Dec. 27, 2008, to Jan. 18, 2009. The United Nations and the European Parliament have endorsed the report. The report found that Israel used disproportionate military force against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip while failing to take adequate precautions to protect the civilian population against the military assault. The Israeli attack killed 1,434 people, including 960 civilians, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. More than 6,000 homes were destroyed or damaged, leaving behind some $3 billion in destruction in one of the poorest areas on Earth. No Israelis were killed by Hamas rockets fired into Israel during the assault. The report did not limit itself to the 22-day attack; rather, it went on to indict the occupation itself. It examines the beginning of the occupation and condemns Israel for the border closures, the blockade and for the wall or security barrier in the West Bank. It has two references to the right of return, investigates Israeli torture and criticizes the willful destruction of the Palestinian economy.

Full Story: Chris Hedges: Israel Crackdown Puts Liberal Jews on the Spot – Chris Hedges’ Columns – Truthdig.

Anti-Choice Doc Aims to Link Reproductive Rights to ‘Black Genocide’

Anti-abortion activists are screening an expertly-made documentary to black audiences across the country. Maafa 21 creates a highly selective, distorted history of the reproductive rights movement and frames abortion as a tool of eugenics and genocide.

or several years now, the religious right has been trying to appropriate the moral authority of the Civil Rights Movement. It’s an audacious strategy, given that Christian conservative politics were forged in the white Southern backlash to school integration. But it’s had some successes, particularly in rousing black churches against the gay rights movement. Now, the anti-abortion movement is making a push to enlist African Americans in their cause by framing abortion as a tool of eugenics and genocide.

The campaign is already having an impact. As the New York Times reported late last month, the overwhelmingly white Georgia Right to Life has spent more than $20,000 erecting 80 billboards around Atlanta that proclaim, “Black children are an endangered species.” The group has created a Web site, Too Many Aborted, with excellent production values, designed to portray legal abortion as a plot against the black community. Meanwhile, according to the Times, the new documentary Maafa 21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America, which purports to “trace connections among slavery, Nazi-style eugenics, birth control and abortion,” is finding an audience among black organizations nationwide. The Times quoted Markita Eddy, a sophomore at the historically black Morris Brown College, who had turned against abortion rights after seeing the film.

Full Story: Anti-Choice Doc Aims to Link Reproductive Rights to ‘Black Genocide’ | ReligionDispatches.

Workers in California Crushed by Toyota

Bob Herbert -

California has been very, very good to Toyota. It is one of the largest markets in the world for the popular Prius hybrid. Nearly 18 percent of all Toyotas sold in the U.S. are sold in California. The state has showered the company with benefits, including large-scale infrastructure improvements for its operations and millions of dollars for worker training. California is one of the key reasons that Toyota is the wealthiest carmaker on the planet.

Toyota is paying the state back with the foulest form of ingratitude.

The company is planning to shut down the assembly plant in Fremont, Calif., that makes Corollas and the Tacoma compact pickup. The plant closure will throw 4,700 experienced, highly skilled and dedicated employees onto the street during the worst job market since the Depression, and it will jeopardize nearly 20,000 other jobs around the state.

It is a cold and irresponsible act on Toyota’s part, a decision that was not necessary from a business standpoint and that completely disregards the wave of human misery it is setting in motion.

Full Story: Op-Ed Columnist – Workers in California Crushed by Toyota – NYTimes.com.

Paul Raushenbush: It Took Pat Robertson and Glenn Beck to Remind Sane Christians of Who We Are and Who We Do Not Want to Be

When we launched the Religion section of the Huffington Post one month ago, I wrote a letter addressed to “Religious (and Sane) America.” Since that time, we have had extraordinary contributions from across the religious landscape including Evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Main Line Protestants, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhist, and Atheists as well as those who defy easy definition. The conversation has been enlightening, honest and, of course, impassioned. But perhaps most promising – it has been sane. Our discourse has been has healthy and productive and the language has been intelligible across religious divisions and beyond simple the categories of religious vs. non-religious.

HuffPost Religion's beginning has been bookended by what I would call: insane religion. Pat Robertson and Glenn Beck provided us with a disturbing reminder of what is unhealthy religious rhetoric and it has reminded us of the desperate need for a sane Christian witness in the world. I don't mean to say that Robertson and Beck are mentally unbalanced – I don't think they are. And I don't think that they mean to do American and Christianity harm, I think they are making these pronouncements out of their own worldview, which they have every right to do. However, I do not think that the way they spoke about the Christian faith was 'sane' in its original meaning of health. Their pronouncements were unhealthy and not within the range of what I would like to promote as a productive, intelligible and redemptive Christian discourse for the 21st century.

Full Story: Paul Raushenbush: It Took Pat Robertson and Glenn Beck to Remind Sane Christians of Who We Are and Who We Do Not Want to Be.

J.D. Hayworth Doubles Down On Men-Marrying-Horses Claim (VIDEO)

Former Congressman J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.) is not backing off his claim that a six-and-a-half-year-old same-sex marriage ruling in Massachusetts could conceivably pave the way for men marrying horses.

The Arizona Republican primary challenger to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) issued a statement on Monday afternoon defending the comments he had made the day before and pledging not to be intimidated by “the liberal media” attacking him for it.

“[S]adly, the liberal media, intent on defending the ultra-leftist, progressive politicians in Massachusetts, are attacking me for standing up once again for family values and for rejecting this absurd court ruling,” read Hayworth’s statement. “But they don’t intimidate me at all. I know right from wrong and as a staunch defender of the institution of marriage, I know I can count on millions of supporters across America to stand with me when our values are under attack — and when I am under attack for standing up to defend those values.”

Full Story: J.D. Hayworth Doubles Down On Men-Marrying-Horses Claim (VIDEO).

John Paul Stevens Speculates On Supreme Court Retirement: ‘Within The Next Three Years,’ Maybe Earlier

John Paul Stevens, the longest serving Supreme Court justice speculated about his own retirement from the high court in an interview with Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker.

“You can say I will retire within the next three years,” Stevens said, adding that he would likely make up him mind about leaving the Supreme Court within a month.

Stevens, who will turn 90 in April, has only hired one law clerk — instead of the usual four — for next year, leading to speculation that the justice may be eying an exit.

Full Story: John Paul Stevens Speculates On Supreme Court Retirement: ‘Within The Next Three Years,’ Maybe Earlier.

Senator Kaufman: GOLDMAN MAY HAVE COMMITTED SECURITIES FRAUD

Senator Kaufman: Fraud Still at the Heart of Wall Street

Last week, Senator Ted Kaufman (D., DE) gave a devastating speech in the Senate on “too big to fail” and all it entails. A long public silence from our political class was broken — and to great effect. Today’s Dodd reform proposals stand in pale comparison to the principles outlined by Senator Kaufman. And yes, DE stands for Delaware — corporate America has finally decided that its largest financial offspring are way out of line and must be reined in.

Now, the Senator has gone one better, putting many private criticisms of the financial sector — the kind you hear whispered with conviction on the Upper East Side and in Midtown — firmly and articulately on the public record in a Senate floor speech to be delivered tomorrow (this is a direct link to speech). He pulls no punches:

“fraud and potential criminal conduct were at the heart of the financial crisis”

He goes after Lehman — with its infamous Repo 105 — as well as the other entities potentially implicated in those transactions, including Ernst and Young (Lehman’s auditors). This is the low hanging fruit — but have you heard even a squeak from the White House or anyone else in the country’s putative leadership on this issue?

Full Story: Simon Johnson: Senator Kaufman: Fraud Still at the Heart of Wall Street.

SENATE BURGLARY: CIA DOMESTIC BLACK-OP TEAM ARRESTED

ALL 4 INVOLVED IN SENATE HOMELAND SECURITY BREAKIN CIA “N-O-C” AGENTS

CIA PROGRAM MAY HAVE TRAINED DOMESTIC “DEATH SQUADS”

Last week’s breakin at Senator Mary Landrieu’s office in the New Orleans Federal Building was more than it seemed, much more. All of the 4 arrested had been trained by the CIA and, possibly, Israel. One arrested, Stan Dai, is listed as an Operations Officer of the Department of Defense Irregular Warfare Program and a known expert and lecturer on, not only surveillance but explosives training, assassinations and “false flag operations.” If you wanted a plane to crash, an enemy to get sick and die or a building to blow up, Dai would be the man to know how to make it happen. Problem is, his skills were being used as part of a criminal conspiracy inside the United States against members of our own government.

Original reports on the “break-in” were also wrong. One of those arrested was found blocks away with a covert receiver, managing the office bugs. The man in the car is identified as Stan Dai, Operations Officer for the Department of Defense Irregular Warfare Program:

“one of the four was arrested with a listening device in a car blocks from the senator’s offices.” The FBI’s affidavit noted that Flanagan and Basel were in the building with O’Keefe, and a federal law enforcement official confirmed to AP that Dai was the one in the car.”

Full Story: SENATE BURGLARY: CIA DOMESTIC BLACK-OP TEAM ARRESTED : Veterans Today.

Pelosi Under Pressure From Progressives on Public Option

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insists that the public option is dead, but progressive organizations are mounting an aggressive campaign to resurrect it as Democratic lawmakers gear up to pass a final health care bill this week via a budgetary process known as reconciliation.

Democracy for America, Credo Action, and the Progressive Campaign Change Committee (PCCC) raised $75,000 for a 60-second spot that will air on MSNBC, CNN and a local station in Pelosi’s home district of San Francisco. The ad challenges assertions she made last week that the public option does not have enough support from Democratic lawmakers in the Senate to be included as one of the amendments in the reconciliation bill.

Full Story: t r u t h o u t | Pelosi Under Pressure From Progressives on Public Option.

Former bank president arrested, charged with stealing bailout funds

The former president of a small Manhattan community bank on Monday became the first person accused of trying to defraud the federal bailout program.

Prosecutors also contend that Charles Antonucci Sr., stole so he could live a lavish lifestyle that included a Super Bowl junket.

He was arrested Monday.

Antonucci, 59, of Fishkill, was charged with self-dealing, bank bribery, embezzlement and fraud. The criminal complaint was filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. If convicted, he could face up to 260 years in federal prison.

Full Story: Former bank president arrested, charged with stealing bailout funds | Raw Story.

Scientists crack opium poppy’s genetic code

Researchers have discovered the genes that allow the opium poppy to make codeine and morphine, according to a new study.

The findings could lead to engineered plants and micro-organisms that efficiently make codeine, one of the most widely prescribed painkillers in the world, the researchers said.

Unlike morphine, codeine cannot be easily converted to heroin.

“The enzymes encoded by these two genes have eluded plant biochemists for a half-century,” said Peter Facchini, a professor at the University of Calgary in Canada and co-author of the paper.

“In finding not only the enzymes but also the genes, we've make a major step forward,” he said in a press release.

Full Story: AFP: Scientists crack opium poppy’s genetic code.

Think Tank Adds Firepower To Democrats’ Emerging Plan To Reform ‘Abused’ Filibuster

A liberal Washington think tank is throwing its weight behind a nascent plan among Democrats to reform the escalating use of the filibuster to block an ever-increasing amount of legislation in the Senate.

Top Senate Democrats last week began to lay groundwork to change the way the filibuster works after Senate Republicans turned what was once a rarely used maneuver into a routine tool to block Democrats at nearly every turn. GOP senators have used a threat of filibuster to obstruct lawmaking, and also hold up President Obama’s nominees both for his administration and the federal bench. It has created a situation where a simple majority no longer rules – but rather a supermajority of 60 senators is required to take most action.

For instance, Senate Democrats this week are preparing to give final approval to comprehensive healthcare reform under a set of rules known as “reconciliation” specifically because it prevents a GOP filibuster. Not surprisingly, Republicans complain loudly about the use of reconciliation in this manner.

Full Story: On The Hill: Think Tank Adds Firepower To Democrats’ Emerging Plan To Reform ‘Abused’ Filibuster.

Health Care 2010 and 1994, and the Political Lessons of History

Robert Reich -

Health care reform is necessary, and House Democrats should vote for it because it’s best for the nation.

They should also remember the political lessons of history. To paraphrase Mark Twain, history doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme. As the White House and the House Democratic leadership try to line up 216 votes to pass health care reform — and as Republicans, aided by the National Association of Manufacturers and abetted by fierce partisans like Newt Gingrich, try to kill it – I can’t help thinking back to 1994 when the lineup was much the same.

I was serving in the Clinton administration at the time. In the first months of 1993 it looked as if Clinton’s health care proposal would sail through Congress. But the process dragged on and by 1994 it bogged down. We knew health care was imperiled but none of us knew that failure to pass health care would doom much of the rest of Clinton’s agenda and wrest control of Congress out of the hands of the Democrats. In retrospect, it’s clear Republicans did know.

Full Story: Robert Reich (Health Care 2010 and 1994, and the Political Lessons of History).

The Obesity-Hunger Paradox

The South Bronx, Plagued by Obesity, Tops a Hunger Survey

WHEN most people think of hunger in America, the images that leap to mind are of ragged toddlers in Appalachia or rail-thin children in dingy apartments reaching for empty bottles of milk.

Once, maybe.

But a recent survey found that the most severe hunger-related problems in the nation are in the South Bronx, long one of the country’s capitals of obesity. Experts say these are not parallel problems persisting in side-by-side neighborhoods, but plagues often seen in the same households, even the same person: the hungriest people in America today, statistically speaking, may well be not sickly skinny, but excessively fat.

Call it the Bronx Paradox.

“Hunger and obesity are often flip sides to the same malnutrition coin,” said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. “Hunger is certainly almost an exclusive symptom of poverty. And extra obesity is one of the symptoms of poverty.”

Full Story: The South Bronx, Plagued by Obesity, Tops a Hunger Survey – NYTimes.com.

Cracks found in critical reactor parts at Davis-Besse power plant

OAK HARBOR, Ohio — Inspectors working at FirstEnergy Corp.’s Davis-Besse power plant near Toledo have uncovered the same kind of cracking in critical reactor lid parts that were the cause of massive corrosion found at the plant eight years ago.

In a routine report filed early today with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the company said inspectors using sophisticated ultrasonic instruments had found indications of cracking in 12 of the 69 metal tubes that carry control rods through the reactor lid.

Davis-Besse has been down since Feb. 28 for regular refueling and plant-wide inspections and maintenance. Workers late last week began instrument-assisted inspections of all 69 of the corrosion-resistant tubes, known as “nozzles” in the industry because they protrude from the reactor lid several feet and resemble nozzles.

Full Story: Cracks found in critical reactor parts at Davis-Besse power plant | cleveland.com.

Kucinich: ‘A firm no’

With President Obama today campaigning for health reform in Dennis Kucinich’s congressional district, Kucinich’s office reiterated to First Read that “he is a firm no,” according to spokesman Nathan White.

The health bill isn’t progressive enough for Kucinich, who voted against even the House-passed bill, which included a public option.

Kucinich wrote an op-ed in Sunday’s Cleveland Plain-Dealer, outlining his position. He said, in part:

“President Barack Obama is in northern Ohio on Monday to campaign for his health care plan, and I will be here to welcome him. I have met with the president three times to discuss how we can work together to address the serious deficiencies in our health care system. Even at this late date, I am hopeful that the White House will be able to reinstate key reforms that passed the Education and Labor Committee on which I serve.

Full Story: Kucinich: ‘A firm no’ – First Read – msnbc.com.

Lehman Brothers Scandal Rocks the Fed

By MIKE WHITNEY

Geithner and Bernanke’s Possibly Criminal Roles

After a year-long investigation, court-appointed bank examiner Anton Valukas has produced a deadly 2,200 page report which details the activities that led to the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. The report is a keg of dynamite. The question now is whether anyone in government has the nerve to light the fuse. Valukas provides powerful evidence that Lehman executives were involved in “balance sheet manipulation” by implementing an arcane accounting procedure called “Repo 105” which masked the bank's true financial condition from investors and regulators.

According to Valukas, Lehman was “Unable to find a United States law firm that would provide it with an opinion letter permitting the true sale accounting treatment” using Repo 105. So, Lehman executives went outside of the country in an effort to enlist the support of a London law firm that would approve the procedure.

It is impossible to overstate the significance of Valugas's findings. The report exposes the opaque but central role of the repo market which provides essential short-term loans for financial institutions. (Lehman used repos to conceal the full extent of its collapse, by dint of the amount of leverage it was using, meaning the pitiful asset anchor tethered to a vast zeppelin of debt) More importantly, it shows the cozy and, very probably criminal relationship between the country's main regulatory bodies and the Wall Street behemoths. The activities of the New York Fed (NYFRB), which at the time was headed by Timothy Geithner, is particularly suspect in this regard. The report should trigger an immediate Congressional investigation, probing the whole affair and most importantly the role of the Fed.

Full Story: CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.

When the US Becomes Greece: Drivel From the Deficit Hawks

Dean Baker -

The headlines about Greece’s financial problems have provided a great backdrop to renewed attacks from the deficit hawks on Social Security and Medicare. Never mind that none of it really makes any sense. Not making sense is virtually a prerequisite for being taken seriously in Washington policy debates. This is the reason that the characters who could not see an $8 trillion housing bubble dominated debate in the years leading up to the crisis, and still do today.

The deficit hawks tell us that Greece today is where the US will be in ten years. Yeah, the US and Greek economies are virtually spitting images. In fact, they are so similar people often get them mixed up in discussions.

If we get serious, we see that the US and Greece have almost nothing in common. Greece has a small economy that is still largely dependent on tourism and agriculture. It also has a horribly corrupt government. The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development estimates that more than 30 percent of its GDP consists of gray market activity that escapes taxation. Even if this figure is exaggerated, the size of the underground economy is certainly much larger in Greece than in the United States.

Full Story: t r u t h o u t | When the US Becomes Greece: Drivel From the Deficit Hawks.

Obama Supports DNA Sampling Upon Arrest

Josh Gerstein over at Politico sent Threat Level his piece underscoring once again President Barack Obama is not the civil-liberties knight in shining armor many were expecting.

Gerstein posts a televised interview of Obama and John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted. The nation’s chief executive extols the virtues of mandatory DNA testing of Americans upon arrest, even absent charges or a conviction. Obama said, “It’s the right thing to do” to “tighten the grip around folks” who commit crime.

When it comes to civil liberties, the Obama administration has come under fire for often mirroring his predecessor’s practices surrounding state secrets, the Patriot Act and domestic spying. There’s also Gitmo, Jay Bybee and John Yoo.

Now there’s DNA sampling. Obama told Walsh he supported the federal government, as well as the 18 states that have varying laws requiring compulsory DNA sampling of individuals upon an arrest for crimes ranging from misdemeanors to felonies. The data is lodged in state and federal databases, and has fostered as many as 200 arrests nationwide, Walsh said.

Full Story: Obama Supports DNA Sampling Upon Arrest | Threat Level | Wired.com.

OPS: For this Obama can be considered a Fascist

Lieberman Criticizes Administration For Publicly Clashing With Israel: ‘Sometimes Silence Is Really Golden’

Last week, the Israeli government announced that it had approved settlement expansion in East Jerusalem and the West Bank just as Vice President Biden arrived in the country to propel Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Biden quickly condemned the move, saying that “the substance and the timing” of the announcement “undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions.” Later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the Israeli move “insulting” and “a very unfortunate and difficult moment.” Israel’s U.S. ambassador reportedly described U.S.-Israeli relations as in a state of “crisis.”

Now, conservative Israel supporters are pinning the blame on the Obama administration for the spat for daring to publicly air its differences with the Israeli government. Making reference to Clinton’s remarks, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who enjoys public grandstanding on other issues, urged the White House to be quiet on this one:

“It was a dust-up, a misunderstanding. (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu has apologized, and the timing was unfortunate. But the second round of criticism is unproductive. I make one appeal — sometimes silence really is golden.”

Full Story: Think Progress » Lieberman Criticizes Administration For Publicly Clashing With Israel: ‘Sometimes Silence Is Really Golden’.

U.S., U.K. Move Closer to Losing Rating, Moody’s Says

The U.S. and the U.K. have moved “substantially” closer to losing their AAA credit ratings as the cost of servicing their debt rose, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

The governments of the two economies must balance bringing down their debt burdens without damaging growth by removing fiscal stimulus too quickly, Pierre Cailleteau, managing director of sovereign risk at Moody’s in London, said in a telephone interview.

Under the ratings company’s so-called baseline scenario, the U.S. will spend more on debt service as a percentage of revenue this year than any other top-rated country except the U.K., and will be the biggest spender from 2011 to 2013, Moody’s said today in a report.

Full Story: U.S., U.K. Move Closer to Losing Rating, Moody’s Says (Update1) – Bloomberg.com.

Brazil to Break Patents on U.S. Films, Books, Drugs

Brazil will seek to break intellectual property rights on U.S.-made prescription drugs, music, books, software and movies in a bid to force the U.S. government to end cotton subsidies that violate global trade rules.

Brazil’s government submitted a list of products that may have royalties, copyrights and patents suspended as part of $829 million in retaliatory sanctions authorized by the World Trade Organization, according to a statement published today in the country’s official gazette.

The Geneva-based WTO in August ruled that Brazil may impose annual sanctions on U.S. imports because the cotton subsidies violate trade regulations. Of the amount awarded, Brazil will adopt penalties on intellectual property rights totaling $239 million this year.

Full Story: Brazil to Break Patents on U.S. Films, Books, Drugs (Update1) – Bloomberg.com.

Beck Warns of Economic “Holocaust”

TYT Cenk Explains The Real Danger Behind Beck’s BS

The 1,000 Day Siege of Gaza

This week marked 1,000 days of an Israeli and international siege on Gaza – 1,000 days of an open air prison where “inmates,” the civilian Palestinian population of 1.5 million, cannot leave or enter at will – by land, sea or air, the tiny area known as the Gaza Strip.

60 years after the World War II Nazi military siege of Leningrad that lasted for 900 days and caused the greatest destruction and largest loss of life ever known in a modern city, the Israeli military has imprisoned Gaza for 1,000 days. The blockade has caused incredible physical and emotional suffering those crowded into an incredibly small space-25 miles long and 5 miles wide-one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

The siege means that the Israeli government controls the entry of food, medicines, and gasoline and construction materials for the Palestinians. The purpose of the blockade is to force by blatantly violating international law, a change in the government represented by Hamas, the political organization the people elected. The siege began in June, 2007, following Hamas’ takeover of governmental functions in Gaza.

Full Story: The 1,000 Day Siege of Gaza | CommonDreams.org.

Is Ethical Capitalism Possible?

In response to the current ecological and financial crises, the call for a more sustainable and fairer globalization is gaining momentum. Building this alternative must begin with a spiritual, moral and ethical understanding of our society and economy, says Kamran Mofid.

15th March 2010 – Published by Share The World’s Resources

We live in a time of transition, a time when all is changing and being challenged – weather systems, ecosystems, our interaction with nature, our understanding of other beings. We now understand that we are all interconnected and interdependent. Somewhere along the line, our actions as human beings have created enormous instability to the planet and the millions of species who reside here.

Much of which is familiar to us and deemed the ‘norm’ is no longer working and is being challenged. Sometimes change brings with it destruction. Sometimes destruction is beneficial. It can alert us to practices that do not work. With destruction also comes new birth, and new avenues open wide to be explored. There are many choices as to which route to take; the issue is which route is the one that will provide life for all. The golden opportunity presented by the current ongoing crises is to make the right choices that will affect the long term future for us, our descendants and our planet.

There is no denying the fact that we are in a serious state of crises, a crises of our own making, all of us and not the bankers alone. They responded to what we wanted: cheap, available, unregulated money and loads of it.

Full Story: Is Ethical Capitalism Possible? – STWR – Share The World’s Resources.

Private Spies: DOD Investigating Use Of Contractors To Track, Kill Militants

A Defense Department official is under investigation for allegedly hiring private contractors to gather intelligence on suspected insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a U.S. official said Monday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the case, told The Associated Press that Michael D. Furlong directed a defense contract to gather information about the region that could be shared with military units. After military officials suspected that he was using Defense Department money for an off-the-books spy operation, defense officials shut down that part of the contract, the official said.

The story was first reported by The New York Times in Monday’s editions, quoting unnamed military and business sources as saying that Furlong, now a senior civilian employee at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, hired subcontractors who had former U.S. intelligence and special forces operatives on their payrolls. The newspaper said some of the information collected by the contractors was used to track down and attack militants.

Full Story: Private Spies: DOD Investigating Use Of Contractors To Track, Kill Militants.

OPS: Anyone really think that this hasn’t happen within US

J.D. Hayworth: Gay Marriage Law Could Produce Man-Horse Nuptials

Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) primary challenger, former Arizona congressman J.D. Hayworth, warned this past weekend that the same-sex marriage decision handed down by the Massachusetts Supreme Court is so loose in its logic and wording that it could lead to a man marrying his horse.

Appearing on Orlando, Fla. radio station WORL on Sunday, the Arizona conservative had what could be described as a Rick Santorum “man on dog” moment.

“You see, the Massachusetts Supreme Court, when it started this move toward same-sex marriage, actually defined marriage — now get this — it defined marriage as simply, ‘the establishment of intimacy,’” Hayworth said. “Now how dangerous is that? I mean, I don’t mean to be absurd about it, but I guess I can make the point of absurdity with an absurd point — I guess that would mean if you really had affection for your horse, I guess you could marry your horse. It’s just the wrong way to go, and the only way to protect the institution of marriage is with that federal marriage amendment that I support.”

Full Story: J.D. Hayworth: Gay Marriage Law Could Produce Man-Horse Nuptials.

AIPAC Lashes Out At Obama Administration Over Israel Statements

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobbying group, released a statement over the weekend lacing into President Obama for what it calls “escalated rhetoric” on the part of the administration in response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s push for new housing units in East Jerusalem.

“The Obama Administration’s recent statements regarding the U.S. relationship with Israel are a matter of serious concern. AIPAC calls on the Administration to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish State,” according to the statement. “The Administration should make a conscious effort to move away from public demands and unilateral deadlines directed at Israel, with whom the United States shares basic, fundamental, and strategic interests.”

The Israeli plan to add additional housing units in East Jerusalem came during Vice President Joe Biden’s recent trip to the region to help jumpstart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Even Netanyahu acknowledged the timing of the announcement was “unfortunate.”

Full Story: AIPAC Lashes Out At Obama Administration Over Israel Statements.

Wall Street Collapse A Story Of ‘Mass Delusion’ (VIDEO)

It may be tempting to think Wall Street is full of criminals who got off easy during the financial crisis.

But bestselling author Michael Lewis cautions against such an easy conclusion.

“I think the story is much more interesting than that,” he said during an interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes. “I think it’s a story of mass delusion.”

The former bond trader is releasing a book this week called The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. According to CBS, the result of his 18-month investigation attempts to explain, “how some of Wall Street’s finest minds managed to destroy $1.75 trillion of wealth in the subprime mortgage markets.”

Full Story: Michael Lewis: Wall Street Collapse A Story Of ‘Mass Delusion’ (VIDEO).

OPS:  This guy is just trying to keep the peasants from grabbing their pitchforks and torches.  This is a propaganda campaign to make the people on Wall Street NOT appear to be as evil as they are.

Panic in Georgia After a Mock News Broadcast

Some people placed emergency calls reporting heart attacks, others rushed in a panic to buy bread and residents of one border village staggered from their homes and dashed for safety — all after a television station in Georgia broadcast a mock newscast on Saturday night that pretended to report on a Russian invasion of the country.

The program was evidently intended as political satire, but the depiction was sufficiently realistic — and memories of the brief war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008 still sufficiently vivid — that viewers headed for the doors before they could absorb the point.

Producers at the Imedi television station taped the episode in the studio normally used for the evening news broadcast, using an anchor familiar to the audience, and then broadcast the show at 8 p.m. Saturday with an initial disclaimer that many viewers apparently missed.

Full Story: Panic in Georgia After a Mock News Broadcast – NYTimes.com.

ABC World News Poll on the U.S. Middle Class and Its Concerns

Four in 10 Middle-Class Americans Say They’re Struggling in Tough Economy

Watch “ABC World News With Diane Sawyer” this week for our series “The Comeback: Saving America’s Middle Class”

A big factor: educational attainment. Among middle-class Americans with college degrees, 75 percent say they’re “comfortably” middle class or even moving up; 25 percent are struggling. But among those without a college degree, this poll for “ABC World News With Diane Sawyer” finds that about twice as many, 49 percent, are fighting to hold their place. (Education relates to income, and it’s less well-off people in the middle class who are more likely to be struggling to

Full Story: ABC World News Poll on the U.S. Middle Class and Its Concerns – ABC News.

Website spotlights misdeeds of the rich and powerful

The swindling saga of legendary Wall Street conman Bernard Madoff has inspired the creation of The Vile Plutocrat, a website devoted to the notion that “rich people suck.”

The Vile Plutocrat gathers news about the misdeeds of “the entitled class,” mixes in scathing editorial commentary and then links stories to biographies of the purported villains.

“The idea was born out of the Bernie Madoff scandal,” Paul Burton of 16 Toads Design told AFP late Saturday at a South By South West Interactive gathering here.

“In a nutshell, we are looking for any kind of news that revolves around people in the upper echelons of society that are doing something that takes money away from the middle class.”

Full Story: AFP: Website spotlights misdeeds of the rich and powerful.

Paper: Defense official ran private spy operation

A US official identified as Michael Furlong organized a network of private contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan with the purpose of finding and killing suspected Islamic militants, The New York Times reported Monday.

Citing unnamed military officials and businessmen in Afghanistan and the United States, the newspaper said Furlong, who works for the Defense Department, hired contractors from private security companies that employed former CIA and Special Forces members.

These people gathered intelligence on the whereabouts of suspected Islamic militants and the location of insurgent camps, the report said.

Full Story: Paper: Defense official ran private spy operation | Raw Story.

Palin resurrects bogus ‘death panel and ‘rationing’ claims

Sarah Palin infected the health care debate with damaging misinformation last year when she claimed the package includes “death panels.” And as Democrats make their final push to enact the bill, she has reiterated it again.

Palin coined the term in a Facebook entry last August, leading to heated controversies about the reform effort. Republican lawmaker Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) echoed the former Alaskan governor, telling constituents that they “have every right to fear” such a bill.

But the notion that the concept exists in any form in the legislation has been debunked by The Associated Press and FactCheck.org, among other organizations. The nonpartisan PolitiFact awarded it “Lie of the Year” in 2009, a testament to its inaccuracy and far-reaching impact.

Full Story: Palin resurrects bogus ‘death panel and ‘rationing’ claims | Raw Story.

Grayson goes for the jugular: ‘Alaskan chillbilly’ smartest GOP leader since W.

In a piquant fundraising email to supporters Sunday — hard-edged even for the Democrats’ newest quote machine — Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) went all out on former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

His remarks, which came after Palin criticized him during a trip to Florida, are perhaps the sharpest attack made on the former vice presidential candidate by a member of Congress.

Speaking in Orlando on Friday, Palin said she “got to meet quite a few candidates who are lining up in a contested primary who want to take out Alan Grayson.”

Full Story: Grayson goes for the jugular: ‘Alaskan chillbilly’ smartest GOP leader since W. | Raw Story.

Graham: ‘No Way In The World’ Is Massachusetts’ Health Care Plan Similar To The Democratic Proposal

Giving this week’s GOP address, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) bashed Democratic efforts to reform health care as a “bitter, destructive, and endless drive to completely transform America’s healthcare system.” Saying Democrats should scrap their plan and start over, Brown said, “This, above all, was the message that the people of my state sent to the president and the Congress in the election over a month ago.”

Senior White House adviser David Axelrod responded to Brown’s comments on ABC’s This Week, noting that that Brown’s state has a health care plan that is very similar “to the one we’re trying to enact here,” and Brown “voted for it”:

…snip…

In fact, the plan implemented by former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney in Massachusetts is very similar to the Democratic proposal. Both plans require people to purchase coverage and both provide affordability credits to those who can’t afford insurance. Both create insurance exchanges, both establish minimum creditable coverage standards for insurers, and both require employers to contribute towards reform. The Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky created a chart outlining the similarities between Romney’s plan and the Senate bill that passed in December and will become the foundation of national health care reform.

Graham cites only two issues to support his claim: Medicare cuts and tax raises “on the American people.” But of course, no state has the authority to either change Medicare or raises taxes on all Americans.

Full Story: Think Progress » Graham: ‘No Way In The World’ Is Massachusetts’ Health Care Plan Similar To The Democratic Proposal.

Apple and other advertisers have ‘abandoned’ Fox News because of Glenn Beck.

Since Glenn Beck called President Obama a “racist” with “a deep-seated hatred for white people, or white culture” in July 2009, a campaign initiated by Color of Change has compelled “more than 200 companies” to join a boycott of Beck’s Fox News show. In August, when just 33 companies had left the program, Fox News spokeswoman Irena Briganti told the AP that the network wasn’t losing any revenue from the boycott because the companies had “simply requested the ads be moved elsewhere.” But the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz reports today that Apple, along with a “handful” of other advertisers, have “abandoned” the entire network:

More than 200 companies have joined a boycott of Beck’s program, making it difficult for Fox to sell ads. The time has instead been sold to smaller firms offering such products as Kaopectate, Carbonite, 1-800-PetMeds and Goldline International. A handful of advertisers, such as Apple, have abandoned Fox altogether. Network executives say they believe they could charge higher rates if the host were more widely acceptable to advertisers.

Full Story: Think Progress » Apple and other advertisers have ‘abandoned’ Fox News because of Glenn Beck..

GM Dealers in Limbo

Over 600 General Motors dealerships scheduled to lose their business with the beleaguered automaker are getting a second lease on life, however, some are not so sure that they want it.

The company announced amid its bankruptcy filing last year that it would be cutting ties with nearly 2,000 dealerships. Refusing to go quietly into the night, those dealership owners, many of whom felt that they were being haphazardly punished because of GM’s mistakes, fought back and won reprieve from Congress.

Lawmakers ordered the automaking giant to enter into arbitration with dealerships that did not want to be forced out of business. Nearly 1,200 dealerships signed up for the process.

Full Story: GM Dealers in Limbo | Economy In Crisis.

Restoring Leadership in U.S. Solar Manufacturing

The U.S. has done little to maintain its place of prominence in manufacturing as the rest of the world caught up and eventually surpassed us. Now, we may add solar manufacturing to our growing list of losses.

After the end of the Second World War virtually anything produced anywhere in the world could and would be produced in the United States. American corporations founded many industries that are ubiquitous around the world today. We not only created the nuclear weapon, but its peaceful counterpart nuclear energy.

We created the first telephone systems, and then the first mobile phone systems.

We created the automobile and were once major champions of passenger rail.

We created the personal computer as well as the Internet, which has perhaps done more to integrate the world than any other product or system in existence today.

Full Story: Restoring Leadership in U.S. Solar Manufacturing | Economy In Crisis.

U.S. Lawmakers Begin Effort to Repeal NAFTA

A bipartisan group of legislators representing a wide array of states, has introduced legislation in the House that would repeal the failed North American Free Trade Agreement.

Publisher’s Note: It’s about time! In 1993 Ross Perot warned implementing NAFTA would result in a “giant sucking sound,” which would lead to American jobs vanishing across the border. Thanks to NAFTA, our manufacturing base is being sucked from the U.S. Why would anyone want to manufacture in the U.S.? It is fiscally impossible to compete with Mexico’s lax labor and environmental standards.

A bipartisan group of legislators representing a wide array of states, has introduced legislation in the House that would repeal the failed North American Free Trade Agreement.

The effort, led by Democratic Rep. Gene Taylor of Mississippi, would require providing Canada and Mexico with a six-month notification of America’s intent to drop out of the trade pact.  After that, the U.S. would be free to leave the tri-lateral agreement.

“Timing is everything in life and it’s the right time to pass this legislation. Proponents have had more than enough time to make this work – It didn’t,” Taylor said in a statement.

Full Story: U.S. Lawmakers Begin Effort to Repeal NAFTA | Economy In Crisis.

Stakes Getting Higher For Obama, Latino Voters, and Immigration Reform

The President had a series of meetings on immigration reform that reflect the pressure he is feeling to act.

Maybe there’s a game on. The President had three meetings on immigration reform at the White House today.  He is increasingly under pressure to act on promises he made as a candidate to enact immigration reform in his first year in office and, now in his second year, the patience of pro-reform advocates – and Latino and immigrant voters – is wearing thin.

The power of the Latino vote is a big reason the Democrats won the White House and control of both houses of Congress in 2008.  If the Democrats fail to address the immigration issue – an issue to which Latino voters are particularly sensitive and which helped drive their increased turnout in 2008 – the Democrats face even longer odds with voters in 2010.

Full Story: Stakes Getting Higher For Obama, Latino Voters, and Immigration Reform | Immigration | AlterNet.

Big Oil Wreaks Havoc in the Amazon, But Communities Are Fighting Back

This time it’s not Chevron in Ecuador but Occidental Petroleum in Peru. And the local community has had enough of giveaways to corporate polluters.

On Wednesday the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco heard oral arguments in Tomas Maynas Carijano v. Occidental Petroleum, a case in which the defendant resides just miles from the courthouse in a plush office building and the plaintiff in a wooden hut in the Peruvian Amazon.

At issue before the court is whether a U.S. district court was right to send the pollution and public health lawsuit against the California-based oil company to Peru rather than keep it in the U.S. where it was filed. But, considering the unprecedented oil boom in the Peruvian Amazon, there is more at stake right now than just this lawsuit.

I’ve never crashed at Oxy’s headquarters but I have slept in the hut of the plaintiff, known as Apu Tomas, and many like them in the Peruvian Amazon. I drank ayahuasca with him. He fed me a tiny fire-roasted bird I watched him kill with a blowgun. By boatplane, pick-up, cargo boat and canoe I traveled through what Peru’s oil maps know as Block 1A, where Occidental in the 1970s built a network of pipes and pumping stations. In 2000, Oxy sold the dwindling oil field to the Argentine company Pluspetrol. But its massive infrastructure remains, especially giant wastewater pipes that engineers for years used to dump billions of gallons of toxic wastewater directly into rivers and streams without warning natives who play, drink and swim in the water.

Full Story: Big Oil Wreaks Havoc in the Amazon, But Communities Are Fighting Back | Environment | AlterNet.

Elinor Ostrom Might Save the Planet and Our Pocketbooks

What if our economy was not built on competition? Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom talks about her work on cooperation in economics.

Elinor Ostrom was an unusual choice for the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

For one thing, she is the first woman to receive the prize. Her Ph.D. is in political science, not economics (though she minored in economics, collaborates with many economists, and considers herself a political economist). But what makes this award particularly special is that her work is about cooperation, while standard economics focuses on competition.

Ostrom’s seminal book, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, was published in 1990. But her research on common property goes back to the early 1960s, when she wrote her dissertation on groundwater in California. In 1973 she and her husband, Vincent Ostrom, founded the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University. In the intervening years, the Workshop has produced hundreds of studies of the conditions in which communities self-organize to solve common problems. Ostrom currently serves as professor of political science at Indiana University and senior research director of the Workshop.

Fran Korten, YES! Magazine’s publisher, spent 20 years with the Ford Foundation making grants to support community management of water and forests in Southeast Asia and the United States. She and Ostrom drew on one another’s work as this field of knowledge developed. Fran interviewed her friend and colleague Lin Ostrom shortly after Ostrom received the Nobel Prize.

Full Story: Elinor Ostrom Wins Nobel for Common(s) Sense by Fran Korten — YES! Magazine.

Taking On China and Its Currency

Paul Krugman -

Tensions are rising over Chinese economic policy, and rightly so: China’s policy of keeping its currency, the renminbi, undervalued has become a significant drag on global economic recovery. Something must be done.

To give you a sense of the problem: Widespread complaints that China was manipulating its currency — selling renminbi and buying foreign currencies, so as to keep the renminbi weak and China’s exports artificially competitive — began around 2003. At that point China was adding about $10 billion a month to its reserves, and in 2003 it ran an overall surplus on its current account — a broad measure of the trade balance — of $46 billion.

Today, China is adding more than $30 billion a month to its $2.4 trillion hoard of reserves. The International Monetary Fund expects China to have a 2010 current surplus of more than $450 billion — 10 times the 2003 figure. This is the most distortionary exchange rate policy any major nation has ever followed.

Full Story: Op-Ed Columnist – Taking On China and Its Currency – NYTimes.com.

Jesse Ventura’s piece on 9/11–KILLED BY HUFFPOST!

Huffington Post/Jesse Ventura – Article #2 (“American Conspiracies”)

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED ON SEPTEMBER 11TH?

You didn’t see anything about it in the mainstream media, but two weeks ago at a conference in San Francisco, more than one thousand architects and engineers signed a petition demanding that Congress begin a new investigation into the destruction of the three World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11.

That’s right, these people put their reputations in potential jeopardy – because they don’t buy the government’s version of events. They want to know how 200,000 tons of steel disintegrated and fell to the ground in 11 seconds. They question whether the hijacked planes were responsible – or whether it could have been a controlled demolition from inside that brought down the Twin Towers and Building 7.

Richard Gage, a member of the American Institute of Architects and the founder of Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth, put it like this: “The official Federal Emergency Management [Agency] and National Institute of Standards and Technology reports provide insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers’ destruction.” He’s especially disturbed by Building 7, whose 47 stories came down in “pure free-fall acceleration” that afternoon – even though it was never hit by an aircraft.

Full Story: Jesse Ventura’s piece on 9/11–KILLED BY HUFFPOST! « News From Underground.

OPS NOTE:  Ventura is scheduled to be on the Thom Hartmann Show Monday 3.15.10. Check your local listings or http://www.thomhartmann.com/

According To The 9th Circuit Court Of Appeals, God Is “Patriotic” And No Longer “Religious”

Oh, I’m sure He will be so pleased to know that He’s not really a religious symbol:

The San Francisco Appeals court has ruled that “Under God” is not a prayer when used in the Pledge of Allegiance. In 2002, the court declared that the phrase was unconstitutional. The new 2-1 ruling from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals states it is a “recognition of our founders’ political philosophy that a power greater than the government gives the people their inalienable rights [...] Thus, the pledge is an endorsement of our form of government, not of religion or any particular sect.”

In a separate 3-0 ruling, the “In God We Trust” was also found to be non-religious; the motto is patriotic and ceremonial.

The ruling itself is not so much an issue with me; I don’t have a problem with saying “under God”. But I do have an issue with Judge Carlos Bea’s reasoning in his decision:

Bea wrote that the pledge is indeed a patriotic exercise, and the words “under God” must be viewed in that context.

Full Story: According To The 9th Circuit Court Of Appeals, God Is “Patriotic” And No Longer “Religious” | Crooks and Liars.

Fed gets new oversight powers under Dodd bill

The Federal Reserve would win sweeping new powers over nonbank financial firms and keep much of its authority over banks, under revised legislation to be unveiled on Monday by the chief architect of financial reform in the Senate.

Barack Obama

In a remarkable recovery by the U.S. central bank after a steep drop in its political popularity, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd was poised to release a bill that leans heavily on the Fed, sources said on Sunday.

Not only would a new government watchdog for financial consumers be housed within the Fed, but it would also retain much of its present authority over large bank holding companies and gain new authority over selected nonbank financial firms.

Dodd's bill would give the Fed authority to supervise bank holding companies with more than $50 billion in assets, down from an earlier threshold of $100 billion, sources said.

Full Story: Fed gets new oversight powers under Dodd bill | Reuters.

Rove Falsely Claims Bush Administration Never Said Iraqi Oil Revenue Would Help Pay For War

Rove’s claim is simply not true.

In his new book and in recent media appearances promoting it, former top Bush aide Karl Rove has been revising the history of the Iraq war, particularly regarding the issue of Saddam Hussien’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Today on NBC’s Meet the Press, Rove continued with his Iraq war history revision campaign. Noting that the Bush administration had mishandled the management of the war, host Tom Brokaw mentioned that “the cost of the war skyrocketed almost from the beginning. There was not a sharing of the oil revenue that a lot of people had promised.” But Rove flatly denied that the Bush administration said Iraqi oil revenues would help pay for the war:

ROVE: No, no. Tom with all due respect that was not the policy of our government that we were going to go into Iraq and take their resources in order to pay for the cost of the war. … [T]he suggestion that somehow or another the administration had as its policy, “We’re going to go in to Iraq and take their resource and pay for the war” is not accurate.

Watch it:

Rove’s claim is simply not true. In fact, days after the U.S. invasion, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a congressional panel that Iraqi oil revenues would help pay for reconstructing the country, i.e. a cost of the war. “The oil revenue of that country could bring between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the course of the next two or three years. We’re dealing with a country that could really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon,” he said.

Full Story: Think Progress » Rove Falsely Claims Bush Administration Never Said Iraqi Oil Revenue Would Help Pay For War.