All Entries in the "Fascism, Police State, Authoritarianism" Category

California Storing DNA of Innocent People

Reports from Great Britain suggest police make arrests without cause simply to obtain a DNA sample to put in the country’s database.

Forcing people to provide a DNA sample without any judicial oversight, just because a single police officer has arrested them, violates the Constitution. That’s why California’s law mandating that DNA samples be taken from all felony arrestees is facing a legal challenge from the ACLU of Northern California (ACLU-NC).

At issue is Proposition 69, a voter-enacted law which mandates that anyone arrested on suspicion of a felony in California has to hand over a DNA sample, regardless of whether or not they are ever charged or convicted. As a result, tens of thousands of innocent Californians will be subject to a lifetime of genetic surveillance because a single police officer suspected them of a crime.

Full Story: California Storing DNA of Innocent People | Civil Liberties | AlterNet.

White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of Internet activity

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual’s Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

The administration wants to add just four words — “electronic communication transactional records” — to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge’s approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user’s browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the “content” of e-mail or other Internet communication.

But what officials portray as a technical clarification designed to remedy a legal ambiguity strikes industry lawyers and privacy advocates as an expansion of the power the government wields through so-called national security letters. These missives, which can be issued by an FBI field office on its own authority, require the recipient to provide the requested information and to keep the request secret. They are the mechanism the government would use to obtain the electronic records.

Full Story: White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of Internet activity.

Republicans Block Measure to Ban Foreign Meddling in U.S. Elections

Previously, foreign corporations could legally spending on American elections only through their political action committees. Now, however, U.S. subsidiaries of multinational corporations can spend directly on advertising for and against candidates and issues, although foreign individuals are barred from being involved in the spending decisions.

Despite the near certainty of its defeat because of unanimous Republican opposition, Senate Democrats forged ahead yesterday with a piece of legislation that would enact spending limits on the U.S. subsidiaries of foreign corporations in American elections.

The Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections, or DISCLOSE Act, is a response to the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year in Citizens United V. Federal Election Commission. In that case the door was opened for foreign corporations to engage in electioneering through independent expenditures funneled through U.S. subsidiaries.

Previously, foreign corporations could legally spend money on American elections only through their political action committees. Now, however, U.S. subsidiaries of multinational corporations can spend directly on advertising for and against candidates and issues, although foreign individuals are barred from being involved in the spending decisions.

Full Story: Republicans Block Measure to Ban Foreign Meddling in U.S. Elections | Economy In Crisis.

Taking Advantage Of Citizens United, Dirty Coal Groups Form 527 To Elect Industry-Friendly Republicans

Yesterday, ThinkProgress reported on coal baron Don Blankenship’s foray into the 2010 congressional elections in West Virginia, where he has contributed thousands of dollars to help elect coal-friendly Republicans. One of the candidates, Spike Maynard, previously served as chief justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals and vacationed with Blankenship on the French Riviera while his company, Massey Energy, had millions of dollars in cases pending before Maynard’s court.

But Blankenship isn’t the only one with chips in the game. The Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky reports that several coal executives, including Blankenship, are pooling their money to take advantage of the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision loosening corporate campaign finance laws by forming a 527 group to help elect coal-friendly Republicans. Why a 527? Because according to the IRS, they can hide their activities until “next year, long after the Nov. 2 election.” From the report:

“With the recent Supreme Court ruling, we are in a position to be able to take corporate positions that were not previously available in allowing our voices to be heard,” wrote Roger Nicholson, senior vice president and general counsel at International Coal Group of Scott Depot, W.Va., in an undated letter he sent to other coal companies. [...]

Full Story: Think Progress » Taking Advantage Of Citizens United, Dirty Coal Groups Form 527 To Elect Industry-Friendly Republicans.

Sen. Franken: Stop the Corporate Takeover of the Media

Sen. Al Franken (D.-Minn.) told more than 2,000 bloggers and organizers attending the Netroots Nation conference in Las Vegas on July 24, 2010, that our media system is at risk everywhere we turn – from our free speech online to the growing power of companies who own a massive number of media outlets.

Join the fight at: www.SavetheInternet.com and www.FreePress.net/comcast.

Target Donates $150K To Group Supporting Candidate Who Wants To Cut Waiters’ Minimum Wage

Earlier this year, Republicans were overjoyed when the Supreme Court overturned “a 63-year-old law designed to restrain the influence of big business and unions on elections.” As Common Cause noted, January’s Citizens United decision enhanced “the ability of the deepest-pocketed special interests to influence elections and the U.S. Congress.”

Thanks to Citizens United, Target is now a major Republican donor, giving $150,000 to MN Forward, a “Republican-friendly political fund staffed by insiders from departing GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s administration.” The AP reports on the retail chain’s new activism:

A Target spokeswoman said the company supports causes and candidates “based strictly on issues that affect our retail and business objectives.” Spokeswoman Lena Michaud said Target has a history of giving in state and local races where allowed, but wouldn’t provide detail on those donations.

Full Story: Think Progress » Target Donates $150K To Group Supporting Candidate Who Wants To Cut Waiters’ Minimum Wage.

Federal Government, American Constitutional Crisis

“Let the eye of vigilance never be closed.”

-Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1821.

Daniel Ellsberg is a former U.S. Marine and military analyst who precipitated a constitutional crisis in 1971 when he released the “Pentagon Papers.” The papers comprised the U.S. military’s account of theater activities during the Vietnam War. Ellsberg released top secret documents to The New York Times. His release of the Pentagon Papers succeeded in substantially eroding public support for the Vietnam War. A succession of related events, including Watergate, eventually led to President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation.

The Pentagon Papers were mostly an indictment of the Democratic administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, but they fed the Nixon administration’s preoccupation with finding information and document leakers. They eventually led to the secret White House “Plumbers” group and then to Watergate. In its turn, Watergate led to the first resignation of an American president, Richard M. Nixon. The Pentagon Papers contained plans to invade Vietnam, even though President Johnson had told the public that he had no intention to stage an invasion.

Ellsberg, born April 7, 1931, grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and attended Cranbrook School, followed by Harvard University. He graduated with a Ph.D. in economics in 1959, in which he described a paradox in decision theory now known as the “Ellsberg Paradox.” He served as a company commander in the Marine Corps for two years and then became an analyst at the Rand Corporation. A committed Cold War warrior, he served in the Pentagon in 1964 under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. He then served for two years in Vietnam as a civilian in the State Department, and became convinced that the Vietnam War was unwinnable.

Ellsberg believed there was a consensus in the Defense and State departments that the United States had no realistic chance of victory in Vietnam, but that political considerations prevented them from saying so publicly. McNamara and others continued to state in press interviews that victory was “just around the corner.” As the war continued to worsen, Ellsberg became deeply disillusioned.

Full Story: Pentagon Papers.

BP fails to put money in promised escrow account.

In a deal negotiated last month, President Obama and BP officials agreed the company would pay $5 billion annually over the next four years into an escrow account for damage its oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico caused. Ken Feinberg, who was appointed to administer oil spill claims out of the escrow fund, has said he “hasn’t been able to start writing claims checks” because BP PLC has failed to deposit any money into the $20 billion fund it promised to create:

Feinberg, who was appointed to administer oil spill claims out of the fund, said he doesn’t have the authority to force BP to deposit the money, but his hands are tied until it does. “I don’t want the checks to bounce,” he said.

Full Story: Think Progress » BP fails to put money in promised escrow account..

No to Oligarchy

Senator Bernie Sanders:

The American people are hurting. As a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, millions of Americans have lost their jobs, homes, life savings and their ability to get a higher education. Today, some 22 percent of our children live in poverty, and millions more have become dependent on food stamps for their food.

And while the Great Wall Street Recession has devastated the middle class, the truth is that working families have been experiencing a decline for decades. During the Bush years alone, from 2000-2008, median family income dropped by nearly $2,200 and millions lost their health insurance. Today, because of stagnating wages and higher costs for basic necessities, the average two-wage-earner family has less disposable income than a one-wage-earner family did a generation ago. The average American today is underpaid, overworked and stressed out as to what the future will bring for his or her children. For many, the American dream has become a nightmare.

But, not everybody is hurting. While the middle class disappears and poverty increases the wealthiest people in our country are not only doing extremely well, they are using their wealth and political power to protect and expand their very privileged status at the expense of everyone else. This upper-crust of extremely wealthy families are hell-bent on destroying the democratic vision of a strong middle-class which has made the United States the envy of the world. In its place they are determined to create an oligarchy in which a small number of families control the economic and political life of our country.

Full Story: No to Oligarchy | CommonDreams.org.

The Silent Killing of America’s Workforce

An Interview with Patrice Woeppel on the Deadly Inadequacies of the Workers’ Compensation System

Frank Joseph Smecker: You begin your book “Depraved Indifference: the Workers’ Compensation System” with a staggering fact: “Every eight minutes in the US, someone dies from an occupational illness or injury.” That’s incredible, in a really disconcerting sense — that’s more than 60,000 deaths per year … Can you explain how this nightmare has become a reality for so many?

Patrice Woeppel: Worker deaths from toxic exposures and other work illnesses are conservatively estimated by NIOSH, Markowitz, Steenland and other researchers to be 50,000 to 60,000 deaths each year, or 10 times the number of fatalities recorded by the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics).1 It is a disaster of monumental proportions that goes largely unrecorded and unnoticed. The United States has no comprehensive occupational health data collection system.

Occupational illness and injury deaths are now considered the eighth leading cause of death in the US.

It’s important to understand how these figures came about; BLS reported that 5,214 worker deaths occurred in 2008. OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and the Bureau of Labor only log deaths that occur at the work site or promptly thereafter. Diseases such as cancers and asbestosis may not show up until decades after exposure. The long latency period, combined with the lack of sufficient disease data is a continuing problem. That number, 5,214, is not correct for workplace-related deaths because OSHA’s and the Bureau of Labor’s worker fatality data is not likely to include those who died from disease, primarily as a result of chemical exposure at the workplace.

Full Story: t r u t h o u t | Frank Joseph Smecker | The Silent Killing of America’s Workforce.

Why has the Post series created so little reaction?

- Glenn Greenwald -

Remember how The Washington Post spent three days documenting on its front page that we basically live under a vast Secret Government — composed of military and intelligence agencies and the largest corporations — so sprawling and unaccountable that nobody even knows what it does? This public/private Secret Government spies, detains, interrogates, and even wages wars in the dark, while sucking up untold hundreds of billions of dollars every year for the private corporations which run it. Has any investigative series ever caused less of a ripple than this one? After a one-day spate of television appearances for Dana Priest and William Arkin — most of which predictably focused on the bureaucratic waste they raised along with whether the Post had Endangered the Nation by writing about all of this — the story faded blissfully into the ether, never to be heard from again, easily subsumed by the Andrew Breitbart and Journolist sagas.

Any doubt about whether there’d be any meaningful (or even cosmetic) changes as a result of the Post exposé (it was really more a compilation of already known facts) was quickly dispelled by the reaction of the political class: not just one of indifference, but outright contempt for the concerns raised by this story. On Tuesday — 24 hours after the first installment appeared — the Senate’s Homeland Security Intelligence Committee removed a provision from the Intelligence Authorization Act which would have provided some marginally greater oversight over the Government’s secret intelligence programs, because Obama was threatening to veto any bill providing for such oversight. Then, Obama’s nominee to be the next Director of National Intelligence, Ret. Lt. Gen. James Clapper, all but laughed at the Post’s work, dismissing it during his Senate confirmation hearing as “sensationalism,” praising the bureaucratic redundancies as “competitive analysis,” and insisting that the National Security and Surveillance State are perfectly “under control.” The Post’s Jeff Stein today documents how Congressional Democrats can barely rouse themselves to the pretense that they intend to do anything to impose any restraints or accountability on Top Secret America. And it was revealed this week by McClatchy that our vaunted “withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq” will be accomplished only by assembling a privatized militia that will serve as the State Department’s “army in Iraq” long after our actual army “withdraws.”

Full Story: Why has the Post series created so little reaction? – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.

BP accused of trying to silence science on spill

The head of the American Association of Professors accused BP Friday of trying to buy the silence of scientists and academics to protect itself after the Gulf oil spill, in a BBC interview.

“This is really one huge corporation trying to buy faculty silence in a comprehensive way,” said Cary Nelson.

BP is facing lawsuits after the oil spill, which has destroyed the livelihoods of many people along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

Full Story: BP accused of trying to silence science on spill | Raw Story.

Corporate Media Discover Private Spies. In Other News, No WMD in Iraq

Jeremy Scahill:

Stop the presses and call the government spokespeople back from Martha’s Vineyard.

The corporate media have discovered that the United States is radically outsourcing national security and sensitive intelligence operations. Cable news channels breathlessly report on the “groundbreaking,” “exclusive” Washington Post series, Top Secret America, a two-year investigation by Dana Priest and William Arkin. No doubt there is some important stuff in this series. Both Arkin and Priest have done outstanding work for many years on sensitive, life-or-death subjects. And that is one of the main reasons why this series has, thus far, been incredibly disappointing. Its greatest accomplishment is forcing a discussion onto corporate TV years after it would have had an actual impact.

The misplaced hype surrounding the Post series speaks volumes to the ahistorical nature of US media culture. Next week, if the New York Times published a story on how there were no WMDs in Iraq, there would no doubt be cable news shows that would act like it was an earth-moving revelation delivered by Moses on the stone tablet of exclusive, groundbreaking journalism.

The Post does a fine job of exploring the scope of the privatization and providing some new or updated statistics. It also produces a few zingers from senior officials like Defense Secretary Robert Gates. “This is a terrible confession,” Gates said in Tuesday’s installment. “I can’t get a number on how many contractors work for the Office of the Secretary of Defense.” It was also hilarious to read CIA director Leon Panetta—who just gave Blackwater a brand new $100 million global CIA contract—act like he is anything other than a contractor addict. “For too long, we’ve depended on contractors to do the operational work that ought to be done” by CIA employees, Panetta told the Post. But replacing them “doesn’t happen overnight. When you’ve been dependent on contractors for so long, you have to build that expertise over time.” Panetta told the Post he was concerned about contracting with corporations, whose responsibility “is to their shareholders, and that does present an inherent conflict.” I wonder if the Blackwater guys working for Panetta can contain their laughter reading those statements. I imagine them taping a post-it note that says “Kick me” on Panetta’s back and then chuckling about it with the Lockheed contractors.

Full Story: Corporate Media Discover Private Spies. In Other News, No WMD in Iraq | The Nation.

Paper: CIA now pretending contractors are CIA officers

The Washington Post’s Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Dana Priest drove another stake into the heart of the US military industrial complex in today’s Post:

In June, a stone carver from Manassas chiseled another perfect star into a marble wall at CIA headquarters, one of 22 for agency workers killed in the global war initiated by the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The intent of the memorial is to publicly honor the courage of those who died in the line of duty, but it also conceals a deeper story about government in the post-9/11 era: Eight of the 22 were not CIA officers at all. They were private contractors.

Priest’s full story (and the Post’s entire excellent series) is available here.

The Associated Press’ writeup of the Post story follows.

Full Story: Paper: CIA now pretending contractors are CIA officers | Raw Story.

“Top Secret America”: A hidden world, growing beyond control

A Washington Post Investigation: :

“Top Secret America” is a project nearly two years in the making that describes the huge national security buildup in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks

National Security Inc.

The intent of the memorial is to publicly honor the courage of those who died in the line of duty, but it also conceals a deeper story about government in the post-9/11 era: Eight of the 22 were not CIA officers at all. They were private contractors.

To ensure that the country’s most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation’s interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called “inherently government functions.” But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post.

What started as a temporary fix in response to the terrorist attacks has turned into a dependency that calls into question whether the federal workforce includes too many people obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest — and whether the government is still in control of its most sensitive activities. In interviews last week, both Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and CIA Director Leon Panetta said they agreed with such concerns.

Full Story: National Security Inc. | washingtonpost.com.

Obey: White House Suggested Cutting Food Stamps to Pay for Education Program

This entire interview with Rep. Dave Obey (D-Wis.), the head of the House Appropriations Committee and a powerful veteran member of Congress, who is retiring this year, is worth a read. But one passage is particularly striking. Obey is discussing his proposal to divert funds from the Obama administration’s Race to the Top education program to save teachers’ jobs. Due to the states’ fiscal crises, as many as 200,000 local government employees, many of them teachers, might lose their jobs in the coming year.

The proposal made it in to the House war-funding bill, which needs a Senate vote. The White House has threatened to veto the war-funding bill if it contains Obey’s change. Here is the quote, from an interview with The Fiscal Times:

Full Story: Obey: White House Suggested Cutting Food Stamps to Pay for Education Program « The Washington Independent.

Iranian Scientist Would Not Play Curveball

Ray McGovern:

Useful insights often must be seen through a glass darkly. But some can be pulled through the smoke and mirrors shrouding the wanderings of Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri, who is now back home in Iran after 14 months in the U.S. as guest of the CIA.

The confusing/amusing spin applied by both countries to L’ Affaire Amiri can detract from the real issues. The facts beneath the competing narratives permit a key conclusion; namely, that U.S. intelligence has learned nothing to change its assessment that Iran halted work on the nuclear-weapons related part of its nuclear development program in the fall of 2003 and has not restarted that work.

That twin judgment leaped out of a formal National Intelligence Estimate, “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities,” approved unanimously by all 16 U.S intelligence agencies in November 2007.

Full Story: Iranian Scientist Would Not Play Curveball | CommonDreams.org.

Safety a big target in letting unmanned aircraft in national airspace

FAA exec. testifies on unmanned aircraft safety concerns

There is a push by a variety of proponents to give unmanned aircraft more free reign in the nation’s airspace but safety is a  major hitch in that effort.

The Federal Aviation Administration said this week that data from the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, which flies unmanned systems on border patrols shows a total of 5,688 flight hours from Fiscal Year 2006 to July 13, 2010. The CBP accident rate is 52.7 accidents per 100,000 flight hours. This accident rate is more than seven times the general aviation accident rate (7.11 accidents/100,000 flight hours) and 353 times the commercial aviation accident rate (0.149 accidents/100,000 flight hours).

Those kinds of numbers – while a small batch indeed – are guaranteed to keep unmanned aircraft out of the general airspace for a long time.

12 mad science projects that could shake the world

Full Story: Safety a big target in letting unmanned aircraft in national airspace | NetworkWorld.com Community.

Papantonio: the Truth About BP’s Escrow Fund

BP has finally managed to successfully seal the oil well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Over the next few days, we’ll find out if their new cap is working or not. At the same time, the company is shopping around for buyers across the globe to help raise money to pay the thousands of claims they are facing from Gulf residents. Mike Papantonio appears on MSNBC’s The Ed Show to talk about these issues, as well as other late developments in the BP oil spill disaster.

DC’s spy establishment in panic mode over Washington Post expose

Washington’s intelligence establishment appears to be in panic mode over an upcoming Washington Post series about runaway growth in defense and intelligence spending.

A State Department email has accused the Post of planning to make public “top secret” information about defense and intelligence contractors working for the US, despite an admission in the same email that the Post’s information came from “open sources.”

The series, by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Dana Priest, will include a TV partnership with PBS’s Frontline and is expected to consist of three articles and an online database of military and intelligence contractors and their projects.

It’s that database of contractors that seems to be worrying Washington the most. Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy reports that the State Department sent out an email Thursday warning all 14,574 Washington-area employees of the upcoming reports.

Full Story: DC’s spy establishment in panic mode over Washington Post expose | Raw Story.

Obama Adm. Defends Hiring Of Ex-Health Insurance Exec To Oversee Reform

The Obama administration is defending its hiring of a high-ranking Capitol Hill aide and former private health insurance vice president to oversee the implementation of health care reform after good government groups complained it violated the spirit of the president’s own ethics rules.

This week, the White House hired Liz Fowler to serve as deputy director of the Office of Consumer Information and Oversight at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The post gives Fowler broad power to implement the recently-passed health care law, a piece of legislation with which she is intimately familiar since she helped write it in her previous post as chief health counsel for the Senate Finance Committee.

But her appointment was greeted with jeers in some circles of the progressive community. Fowler’s former boss, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), oversaw the Gang-of-Six negotiating process that scaled back the reform bill without securing Republican support. More to the point, however, is the job Fowler held before she worked for Baucus.

Full Story: Obama Adm. Defends Hiring Of Ex-Health Insurance Exec To Oversee Reform.

OPS: This is no different than Bush making Bolton the UN  ‘Ambassador’

BP Launches Effort To Control Scientific Research Of Oil Disaster

Foreign oil giant BP is on a spending spree, buying Gulf Coast scientists for its private contractor army. Scientists from Louisiana State University, Mississippi State University and Texas A&M have “signed contracts with BP to work on their behalf in the Natural Resources Damage Assessment (NRDA) process” that determines how much ecological damage the Gulf of Mexico region is suffering from BP’s toxic black tide. The contract, the Mobile Press-Register has learned, “prohibits the scientists from publishing their research, sharing it with other scientists or speaking about the data that they collect for at least the next three years.” Bob Shipp, head of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama — whose entire department BP wished to hire — refused to sign over their integrity to the corporate criminal:

We told them there was no way we would agree to any kind of restrictions on the data we collect. It was pretty clear we wouldn’t be hearing from them again after that. We didn’t like the perception of the university representing BP in any fashion.

The lucrative $250-an-hour deal “buys silence,” said Robert Wiygul, an Ocean Springs environmental lawyer who analyzed the contract. “It makes me feel like they were more interested in making sure we couldn’t testify against them than in having us testify for them,” said George Crozier, head of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, who was approached by BP.

Full Story: Think Progress » BP Launches Effort To Control Scientific Research Of Oil Disaster.

HOW BROKERS BECAME BOOKIES: THE INSIDIOUS TRANSFORMATION OF MARKETS INTO CASINOS

“You all are the house, you’re the bookie. [Your clients] are booking their bets with you. I don’t know why we need to dress it up. It’s a bet.”

- Senator Claire McCaskill, Senate Subcommittee investigating Goldman Sachs (Washington Post, April 27, 2010)

Ellen Brown:

Ever since December 2008, the Federal Reserve has held short-term interest rates near zero. This was not only to try to stimulate the housing and credit markets but also to allow the federal government to increase its debt levels without increasing the interest tab picked up by the taxpayers. The total public U.S. debt increased by nearly 50% from 2006 to the end of 2009 (from about $8.5 trillion to $12.3 trillion), but the interest bill on the debt actually dropped (from $406 billion to $383 billion), because of this reduction in interest rates.

One of the dire unintended consequences of that maneuver, however, was that municipal governments across the country have been saddled with very costly bad derivatives bets. They were persuaded by their Wall Street advisers to buy credit default swaps to protect their loans against interest rates shooting up. Instead, rates proceeded to drop through the floor, a wholly unforeseeable and unnatural market condition caused by rate manipulations by the Fed. Instead of the banks bearing the losses in return for premiums paid by municipal governments, the governments have had to pay massive sums to the banks – to the point of bankrupting at least one city (Montgomery, Alabama).

Another unintended consequence of the plunge in interest rates has been that “savers” have been forced to become “speculators” or gamblers. When interest rates on safe corporate bonds were around 8%, a couple could aim for saving half a million dollars in their working careers and count on reaping $40,000 yearly in investment income, a sum that, along with social security, could make for a comfortable retirement. But very low interest rates on bonds have forced these once-prudent savers into the riskier and less predictable stock market, and the collapse of the stock market has forced them into even more speculative ventures in the form of derivatives, a glorified form of gambling. Pension funds, which have binding pension contracts entered into when interest was at much higher levels, need an 8% investment return to meet their commitments. In today’s market, they cannot make that sort of return without taking on higher risk, which means taking major losses when the risks materialize.

Full Story: HOW BROKERS BECAME BOOKIES: THE INSIDIOUS TRANSFORMATION OF MARKETS INTO CASINOS.

Henry Paulson Buys Aspen Lakes Ranch For $24.5 Million (PHOTOS)

Bush Treasury Secretary Who Presided Over Financial Meltdown Drops $25 MILLION On Aspen Ranch

In early July, the sale of the Aspen Lakes Ranch for $24.5 million deal made headlines in the Colorado High Country for being the most expensive single-family real estate transaction in Aspen since the summer of 2009. Just weeks later, the sale is back in the news. This time, the home is drawing attention after reports surfaced that its buyer is none other than former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry “Hank” Paulson.

Real Aspen reports that Paulson was represented through Brian Hazen of Mason Morse Real Estate, though Hazen would neither confirm nor deny the identity of the ranch’s buyer.

Paulson faced criticism in late 2008 for skiing in Aspen and conducting business over the phone as Wall Street and the economy crumbled.

The ranch, which sits on 8.9 acres, has seven bedrooms, 81⁄2 baths and a 35-foot glass wall with panoramic views.

Full Story: Henry Paulson Buys Aspen Lakes Ranch For $24.5 Million (PHOTOS).

Miami Herald Invents a “Consensus Among Economists” to Push Social Security Cuts

Dean Baker: CEPR

The Miami Herald took first place in the contest to have the most inaccurate article on Social Security when it printed without challenge an assertion that: “For awhile, there’s been a consensus among economists that raising the retirement age makes a lot of sense.” This is obviously not true, since there is no shortage of economists who do not agree with this view and it is quite possible that a majority of economists do not agree with this position. Any reporter who had researched this topic at all would know that the assertion is not true and would not present it to readers as being true.

Instead the article presented almost exclusively the views of people calling for cuts in Social Security. Remarkably, the article included no discussion at all of the likely financial situation of the retirees who would see their benefits cuts as a result of an increase in the retirement age. These workers have seen most of their savings wiped out by the collapse of the housing bubble and the plunge in the stock market. No “adult discussion” [a term used in the article] of Social Security can occur with assessing the situation of the people who would be affected by proposed benefit cuts.

The article also never once mentions the possibility of addressing the projected long-term shortfalls in Social Security by raising the cap on income subject to the Social Security tax or by raising the tax rate. Polls consistently show that these positions are far more popular than the raising the retirement age.

Full Story: Miami Herald Invents a “Consensus Among Economists” to Push Social Security Cuts | Beat the Press.

Torture Non-Accountability: Obama and Congress Choose to Leave U.S. Constitution in Bush’s Wastebasket

I am going to share some quotes from a book I just began reading entitled Getting Away with Torture by Christopher Pyle. It was published in 2009. Pyle teaches constitutional law and civil liberties at Mount Holyoke College. In 1970 as a former captain in army intelligence he helped Senators Sam Ervin and Frank Church with evidence to support constitutional protections of citizens and rein in Intelligence breaches of law.

I will do a series of these blogs as I make my way through this enlightening and horrifying book. The U.S. has participated in war criminality and human rights atrocities at certain periods during its life. The torture issue looms for us as citizens today. If it is not dealt with, if our citizenry and leadership do not restore the rule of humane law and prosecute those who engineered the torture atrocities committed during the Bush regime and those still being carried out by the Obama regime, which regime continues to use state secrecy and executive privilege to avoid its own future accountability, then our democracy is truly dead. We are a rogue nation without respect for law, honor, and the sanctity of human life.

This is not to be swept under the rug no matter how much President Obama wants it to be. The “looking forward” whitewash makes me question if this president has a “moral will” at all. If he does not, like obviously so many in our Congress, we are as a society at the mercy of more and more human and civil violations against ourselves, our fellow citizens and citizens of other nations at the hands of these unworthy and untrustworthy sociopathic leaders. We are being led by a violence-generating, power and control-addicted patriarchy. We as citizens must rally to call forth a paradigm shift to partnership and cooperation, globally, to save ourselves and our planet.

Full Story: Torture Non-Accountability: Obama and Congress Choose to Leave U.S. Constitution in Bush’s Wastebasket, Intro. Part 1 | Corrente.

George Carlin -”Who Really Controls America”

Majority Of Judges Hearing Drilling Moratorium Appeal Attended Oil-Funded Junkets

Last month, Judge Martin Feldman, a federal trial judge in Louisiana, handed down a poorly-reasoned opinion lifting the Obama Administration’s temportary moratorium on new oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Judge Feldman’s most recent financial disclosure form indicates that he is heavily invested in oil companies.

Today in New Orleans, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will consider whether to stay Feldman’s decision. According to a new report by the Alliance for Justice, however, it is unlikely that these Fifth Circuit judges will approach the case without the perception of bias.

Judges Jerry Smith and Eugene Davis, both of whom are assigned to today’s panel, attended expense-paid “junkets for judges” sponsored by an oil-industry front group:

Full Story: Think Progress » Majority Of Judges Hearing Drilling Moratorium Appeal Attended Oil-Funded Junkets.

When the Police Control the Press

The Serbian soldier blocking the bridge cradled his AK-47 assault rifle as he delivered a ruling that brooked no argument: You cannot cross the river. Not today.

We implored him to reconsider. We are journalists. We’ve driven all the way from Belgrade. Here are our credentials.

No. This road is closed.

Zashto? (Why?)

Ne! (No.)

We never made it to Zvornik, the Bosnian town just across the river. When it came to press access, the final word belonged to the men with guns. As we later learned, the Serbs had plenty to hide that spring day about their activities in eastern Bosnia.

I was reminded of that instant — admittedly a very different set of circumstances — when we received a call last week at ProPublica from Lance Rosenfield, a freelance photographer we had hired to work in Texas City, Texas, on stories about BP’s refinery there.

Full Story: On The Hill: When the Police Control the Press.

Hidden Truths BP and The White House are Hiding from the American Public

When Aldous Huxley put a spin on a Gospel quote and wrote, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad,” he could not have better had in mind the Obama administration, British Petroleum and our elected officials in their handling the oil catastrophe in the Gulf. There is plenty for Americans and the global citizenry to be fuming about, incensed at the trails of deception, lies and erroneous propaganda and rhetoric issuing from our corporate and government leadership.

Investigative journalist and author Michael Ruppert knows this story all too well. For the past decade he has been researching and writing on peak oil and its contribution to the future collapse of the nation’s economy and the American of life. In 1998, he founded From The Wilderness, a newsletter and website devoted to disseminating reports and analyses about government corruption and cover-ups, the CIA’s narcotics operations–which he brought to light in the mid-1970s during his stint as a narcotics investigator for the LAPD–and the politics and science of peak oil and the energy industry. Among Michael’s most recent books are The Presidential Energy Policy and Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World, both released in 2009.

Last week on a live radio broadcast over the Progressive Radio Network, Ruppert presented his overview of the Deep Water Horizon oil spill crisis, with some new insights gleaned from his investigations that are deeply disturbing.

Full Story: OpEdNews – Article: Hidden Truths BP and The White House are Hiding from the American Public.

Protecting Oil Companies? BP Investigation Blocked

Video:

Before the 4th of July weekend, there was unreported maneuver in the Senate designed to protect BP and the federal government from liability in the Gulf disaster.

Senate Democrats asked unanimous consent to pass legislation that would give the BP Oil Spill Commission the subpoena power it needs to do its job.

The US House of Representatives voted 420 to 1 to give the presidential commission investigating the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico full subpoena power. The Senate blocked it.

Full Story: Protecting Oil Companies? BP Investigation Blocked | Global Research TV.

Big Oil Starts Running TV Ads In 10 States Attacking ‘Taxes’ On Petroleum In Energy Bill

The big Washington trade group representing BP and the major oil companies says it has begun paying for TV ads in 10 states that attack the introduction of “new taxes” on the petroleum industry as part of comprehensive energy legislation.

The problem: the energy and climate bill currently before the Senate increases no taxes, and in fact, will save Americans money on their energy bills, according to a spokeswoman for one of the lawmakers who authored the legislation.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) announced Tuesday that it has begun running a series of 15- and 30-second television spots in 10 states during the month of July. They are running in Colorado, Michigan, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maine, Missouri, Ohio and West Virginia, API says.

Full Story: On The Hill: Big Oil Starts Running TV Ads In 10 States Attacking ‘Taxes’ On Petroleum In Energy Bill.

Censorship and cover-up in the Gulf oil disaster

The Obama administration has intensified its cover-up of the BP oil disaster.

On July 1 it issued an order barring the public and the news media from coming within 65 feet of clean-up operations without permission from the Coast Guard. The transparent aim of the order, which purports to protect the safety of clean-up workers, is to prevent the population from viewing the devastation wrought by the BP oil blowout.

The gag order states that that anyone not authorized by the Coast Guard “must not come within 20 meters [65 feet] of booming operations, boom, or oil spill response operations under penalty of law.” The wording—“oil spill response operations”—could be construed as covering the entire affected region, which stretches from the Mississippi Delta to the Florida Panhandle.

Journalists who “willfully” defy the White House order could be prosecuted as Class D felons and face up to five years in prison and a $40,000 fine. Exceptions to the ban will be considered on a case-by-case basis by the Coast Guard captain of the Port of New Orleans.

Full Story: Censorship and cover-up in the Gulf oil disaster.

BP Media Clampdown: Journalists Now Face Possibility of Fines, Prison Time

A month ago, National Incident Commander Thad Allen issued an order granting the media “uninhibited access” to the areas affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It was routinely and often brazenly ignored.

Thirty days later, it should be said that the order essentially has no real-world meaning at all. Here’s Daniel Tencer at Raw Story:

Journalists who come too close to oil spill clean-up efforts without permission could find themselves facing a $40,000 fine and even one to five years in prison under a new rule instituted by the Coast Guard late last week.

It’s a move that outraged observers have decried as an attack on First Amendment rights. And CNN’s Anderson Cooper describes the new rules as making it “very easy to hide incompetence or failure.”

The Coast Guard order states that “vessels must not come within 20 meters [65 feet] of booming operations, boom, or oil spill response operations under penalty of law.”

Full Story: BP Media Clampdown: Journalists Now Face Possibility of Fines, Prison Time.

Rove Admits His ‘Shadow RNC’ Attack Group Functions Largely Because Of The Citizens United Decision

Given the weak leadership of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, former Bush White House adviser Karl Rove launched a “shadow RNC” in April called American Crossroads, vowing to spend $50 million to influence this Fall’s election. After an embarrassing first month of fundraising, Crossroads raised $8.5 million in June, “from an even split of individuals and corporations.”

On Fox News today, Rove directly credited his group’s success to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which overturned the decades-old ban on corporate money in politics:

HOST: Some suggest that the money that goes to American Crossroads might otherwise go to an organization like the RNC.

ROVE: Well that’s not correct, because American Crossroads is collecting money in excess of the individual contribution limits the RNC has allowed to give. What we’ve essentially said, is if you’ve maxed out the to senatorial committee, the congressional committee or the RNC and would like to do more, under the Citizens United decisions, you can give money to the American Crossroads 527, or Crossroads GPS, so we’re not tapping the people who — if you’ve giving to American Crossroads, you’re fully capable, in all likelihood, of giving the maximum to one of the national committee organizations.

Watch it (beginning 2:00):

Full Story: Think Progress » Rove Admits His ‘Shadow RNC’ Attack Group Functions Largely Because Of The Citizens United Decision.

Spy tech that ‘monitors conversations’ being launched in Europe: report

Privacy rights advocates and civil liberties campaigners in Europe are raising the alarm about a new surveillance system that monitors conversations in public.

The surveillance system, dubbed Sigard, has been installed in Dutch city centers, government offices and prisons, and a recent test-run of the technology in Coventry, England, has British civil rights experts worried that the right to privacy will disappear in efforts to fight street crime.

The system’s manufacturer, Sound Intelligence, says it works by detecting aggression in speech patterns.

“Ninety percent of all incidents involving physical aggression are preceded by verbal aggression,” the Sound Intelligence Web site says. “The ability to spot verbal aggression before it turns into a violent outbreak delivers valuable time to security personnel and enables speedy intervention.”

Full Story: Spy tech that ‘monitors conversations’ being launched in Europe: report | Raw Story.

Thomas Jefferson Feared an Aristocracy of Corporations

John Nichols:

Thomas Jefferson’s name gets thrown around quite a bit these days by the Tea Partisans, which is a good thing.

A populist movement of the right or the left that neglected Jefferson, the most radical of the first presidents, would be a sorry affair indeed.

Jefferson’s distrust of concentrated and consolidated power was such that he left a legacy for any and every dissenter against the state.

But Jefferson did not stop there.

He was, as well, a relentless critic of the monopolizing of economic power by banks, corporations and those who put their faith in what the third president referred to as “the selfish spirit of commerce (that) knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.

Full Story: Thomas Jefferson Feared an Aristocracy of Corporations | The Nation.

Oh, Look: The Fed Sold Us Junk Bonds!

Hmm. You know, Alex, I think I’ll go with Door No. 2: The Fed knew it was buying weak assets and tried to hide it! Now, what do I win?

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and then-New York Fed President Timothy Geithner told senators on April 3, 2008, that the tens of billions of dollars in “assets” the government agreed to purchase in the rescue of Bear Stearns Cos. were “investment-grade.” They didn’t share everything the Fed knew about the money.

The so-called assets included collateralized debt obligations and mortgage-backed bonds with names like HG-Coll Ltd. 2007-1A that were so distressed, more than $40 million already had been reduced to less than investment-grade by the time the central bankers testified. The government also became the owner of $16 billion of credit-default swaps, and taxpayers wound up guaranteeing high-yield, high-risk junk bonds.

Full Story: Oh, Look: The Fed Sold Us Junk Bonds! | Crooks and Liars.

First Amendment Has been Suspended

As BP makes its latest attempt to plug its gushing oil well, news photographers are complaining that their efforts to document the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being thwarted by local and federal officials—working with BP—who are blocking access to the sites where the effects of the spill are most visible.

Clinton: Activists Being Crushed By ‘Steel Vise’ Around The World

Intolerant governments across the globe are “slowly crushing” activist and advocacy groups that play an essential role in the development of democracy, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday.

She cited a broad range of countries where “the walls are closing in” on civic organizations such as unions, religious groups, rights advocates and other nongovernmental organizations that press for social change and shine a light on governments’ shortcomings.

Among those she named were Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Venezuela, China and Russia.

Full Story: Clinton: Activists Being Crushed By ‘Steel Vise’ Around The World.

OPS: she doesn’t mention the US or Canada. Hmmmm….

For now, government and BP working together to assess oil spill damage

Lawmakers, Environmentalists Call For Independent Assessment

In recent weeks, the Obama administration has sought to distance itself from BP in handling the Gulf of Mexico oil spill — with one notable exception: When it comes to assessing how badly the spill has harmed the gulf, the two sides are working hand in hand.

Their shared goal? To calculate the incalculable: how much it will cost to restore the gulf to its pre-spill state.

But this close collaboration between federal and state authorities and BP — which is routine procedure under a legal process known as the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) — has begun to spark concerns among lawmakers and some environmentalists.

“I want this to be independent, for the credibility of the information,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), who as chair of the Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife will hold hearings this month on the issue.

Full Story: For now, government and BP working together to assess oil spill damage.

OPS: BO is making ‘deals’. Anyone beleive that the American People will break even on this?

US: Felony charges, big fines for reporting within Gulf oil spill zone

US: Felony charges, big fines for reporting within Gulf oil spill zone 03 Jul 2010 Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees – The Spill and Transparency – Aired July 1, 2010 (Transcript) COOPER: We’re talking about the government, a new a rule announced today backed by the force of law and the threat of fines and felony charges, a rule that will prevent reporters and photographers and anyone else from getting anywhere close to booms and oil-soaked wildlife and just about any place we need to be. By now, you’re probably familiar with cleanup crews stiff-arming the media, private security blocking cameras, ordinary workers clamming up, some not even saying who they’re working for because they’re afraid of losing their jobs… Well, the Coast Guard today announced new rules keeping photographers and reporters and anyone else from coming within 65 feet of any response vessel or booms out on the water or on beaches — 65 feet… Violators could face a fine of $40,000 and Class D felony charges. [Boy, George W. Bush has got to be the most frustrated individual on God's green Earth! Can you *imagine* the outrage -- and protests -- if Bush threatened reporters and photographers with felony charges and fines, as Barack Obama is doing in the Gulf of Mexico? It makes my head *spin* to think of how fast the left would be up in arms. But when Obama lays down and dies for his corporaterrorist paymasters day after day and suspends the First Amendment, the so-called 'left' remains silent. Oh. Not to mention, his thriving assassination squads, busy little CIA bees hunting down US citizens who allegedly support 'terrorism.' --LRP]

Full Story: US: Felony charges, big fines for reporting within Gulf oil spill zone | Citizens for Legitimate Government.

Army drops ‘psy ops’ name for influence operations

The Army has dropped the Vietnam-era name “psychological operations” for its branch in charge of trying to change minds behind enemy lines, acknowledging the term can sound ominous.

The Defense Department picked a more neutral moniker: “Military Information Support Operations,” or MISO.

U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Ken McGraw said Thursday the new name, adopted last month, more accurately reflects the unit’s job of producing leaflets, radio broadcasts and loudspeaker messages to influence enemy soldiers and civilians.

“One of the catalysts for the transition is foreign and domestic sensitivities to the term ‘psychological operations’ that often lead to a misunderstanding of the mission,” McGraw said.

Fort Bragg is home to the 4th Psychological Operations Group, the Army’s only active duty psychological operations unit. Psychological operations soldiers are trained at the post.

Full Story: Army drops ‘psy ops’ name for influence operations – Yahoo! News.

The administration defends its assassination program

- Glenn Greenwald -

In the wake of Leon Panetta’s public defense of the targeting of American citizens suspected (but never charged or convicted) of Terrorism, Obama officials are now apparently going around the country and, with chest-beating rhetoric, overtly defending their right to target Americans for assassination with no due process of any kind:

“If someone like Anwar al-Awlaki is responsible” for part of a plot “to kill more than 300 people over the city of Detroit,” [director of the National Counterterrorism Center Michael] Leiter said, “I think it would be wholly irresponsible for citizens like me, Leon Panetta, Defense Secretary (Robert) Gates, and ultimately the president, not to at least think about and potentially direct all the elements of national power to try to defend the American people” . . .

A woman in the crowd who identified herself as an American Civil Liberties Union member asked why there was no judicial review of such kill orders, citing the standard warrant requirements facing a policeman before entering a citizen’s home.

Leiter explained that while “a police officer does need a court order to go after a house,” the lawman “has a right of self-defense if someone pulls out a gun.” The U.S. government, Leiter insisted, has the same right. He added that there is congressional oversight of such actions.

For several reasons, this is misleading in the extreme

Full Story: The administration defends its assassination program – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.

Financial Crisis Commission Turns Up Heat On Goldman Sachs: ‘Nobody Here Believes You’

The panel created to investigate the roots of the financial crisis escalated the government’s assault on Goldman Sachs on Thursday, criticizing the Wall Street firm for failing to turn over basic documents and accusing it nearly lying under oath.

For a second consecutive day, the bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission reiterated its request for additional data from Goldman, namely figures regarding the firm’s derivatives activities. And for a second consecutive day, Goldman’s top executives demurred.

“We generally do not have a derivatives business,” David Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, told the panel Thursday under oath.

Full Story: Financial Crisis Commission Turns Up Heat On Goldman Sachs: ‘Nobody Here Believes You’.

Rethinking Iran-Contra

By Robert Parry:

there appears to have been a single Iran-Contra narrative spanning the entire 12 years of the Reagan and Bush-41 administration, and representing a much darker story.

The conventional view of the Iran-Contra scandal is that it covered the period 1985-86, when President Ronald Reagan became concerned about the fate of American hostages in Lebanon and agreed to secretly sell weapons to Iran’s Islamist government to gain its help in freeing the captives.

Supposedly, the scheme went awry when White House aide Oliver North and other participants got carried away, including North’s decision to divert profits from the arms sales to another one of Reagan’s priorities, the Nicaraguan contra rebels whose CIA assistance had been cut off by Congress.

The Iran-Contra scandal was exposed in fall of 1986 after the shooting down of a North supply plane over Nicaragua and revelations in Lebanon of Reagan’s arms sales to Iran. A White House staff shake-up, including North’s firing, and some wrist-slaps from Congress for Reagan’s alleged inattention to details resolved the scandal, at least that was how Official Washington saw it.

The few dissenters who wouldn’t accept that tidy conclusion – such as Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh – were mocked and marginalized by the news media, including the Washington Post (which ran an article concluding that Walsh’s consistency in pursuing the scandal was “so un-Washington” and that he would depart as “a perceived loser”

Full Story: Consortiumnews.com.

Wall Street Congratulates Washington: A Job Well Done

Dean Baker :

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is well known for pretentious columns that consist of letters that he suggests some prominent person write. I licensed Friedman’s literary tool in order to present the following letter from the Wall Street CEOs to the political leadership in Washington.

Dear Friends:

We want you know how much we value the support of the leadership of both political parties in your efforts to ensure that we did not suffer from the crisis that we ourselves created. As you recall, back in the fall of 2008, our banks were flat on their backs. If you had not rushed to our rescue with trillions of dollars in loans and guarantees from the Fed and the Treasury at a time where no sane investor would talk to us, most of us would be among the unemployed today. Instead, our banks are hugely profitable and we’re happy to say that bonuses are again hitting record highs.

While this is the sort of support that we expect in exchange for our generous campaign contributions, we are especially impressed how you have managed to so effectively blunt any backlash from the public. After all, with the unemployment rate still near double-digit levels, millions of people facing the loss of their homes and tens of millions seeing their savings wiped out, there is naturally considerable anger. However, you have managed to deftly deal with this problem by diverting their attention elsewhere.

Full Story: t r u t h o u t | Dean Baker | Wall Street Congratulates Washington: A Job Well Done.

Dis-United States – Toxic Talk is Destroying the U.S.

All Obama-Nazi/Hitler comparisons aside, the answer is still a resounding no. Even stripping away the most-hateful of rhetoric and examining their basic governing philosophy (if it can be described as such), both espouse a libertarian view, that, if followed, would lead to more economic degradation.

It is in these times of great economic peril that America most needs government intervention into the economy. To restore the nation’s manufacturing base, the country needs a national industrial policy overseen at the top levels of government, a more protectionist trade policy to protect American businesses from the mercantilist practices of others and a tax system that encourages domestic innovation and production rather than outsourcing.

Full Story: Dis-United States – Toxic Talk is Destroying the U.S. | Economy In Crisis.

Dis-United States – Toxic Talk is Destroying the U.S.

They command enormous audiences of loyal followers, set the agenda for some in the Republican Party and have made fortunes through their media empires, but are Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck good for America?

All Obama-Nazi/Hitler comparisons aside, the answer is still a resounding no. Even stripping away the most-hateful of rhetoric and examining their basic governing philosophy (if it can be described as such), both espouse a libertarian view, that, if followed, would lead to more economic degradation.

It is in these times of great economic peril that America most needs government intervention into the economy. To restore the nation’s manufacturing base, the country needs a national industrial policy overseen at the top levels of government, a more protectionist trade policy to protect American businesses from the mercantilist practices of others and a tax system that encourages domestic innovation and production rather than outsourcing.

Full Story: Dis-United States – Toxic Talk is Destroying the U.S. | Economy In Crisis.

Once America Started Waterboarding, Major Newspapers Stopped Referring To It As Torture, Says Study

If you’ve ever had the funny feeling that the media has largely bent over backwards to normalize and legitimize the practice of waterboarding once the United States started doing it, guess what? You’ve had good reason! It’s all laid out in a new study from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, highlighted today by Glenn Greenwald over at Salon.

There are two key findings worth highlighting. First, did it seem like around 2004, major newspapers just stopped referring to waterboarding as torture, after decades of properly categorizing it as such? Why yes, they did!

The current debate over waterboarding has spawned hundreds of newspaper articles in the last two years alone. However, waterboarding has been the subject of press attention for over a century. Examining the four newspapers with the highest daily circulation in the country, we found a significant and sudden shift in how newspapers characterized waterboarding. From the early 1930′s until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was torture: The New York Times characterized it thus in 81.5% (44 of 54) of articles on the subject and The Los Angeles Times did so in 96.3% of articles (26 of 27). By contrast, from 2002-2008, the studied newspapers almost never referred to waterboarding as torture. The New York Times called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles (1.4%). The Los Angeles Times did so in 4.8% of articles (3 of 63). The Wall Street Journal characterized the practice as torture in just 1 of 63 articles (1.6%). USA Today never called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture.

Full Story: Once America Started Waterboarding, Major Newspapers Stopped Referring To It As Torture, Says Study.

Obama: ‘Civilian expeditionary force’ can aid wearied troops | Raw Story

US soldiers in combat could use an assist from a civilian workforce while trying to rebuild war-torn nations, President Barack Obama said Wednesday.

Speaking at a town hall in Racine, Wisconsin, Obama called for sending a “civilian expeditionary force” to Afghanistan and Iraq to help overburdened military troops build infrastructure. His remarks were first reported by The Associated Press.

“So what I’m trying to say is, don’t put all the burden on the military. Make sure that we’ve got a civilian expeditionary force,” said the president, adding that the civilian force would build schools, bridges and roads in regions cleared by the military as safe.

Full Story: Obama: ‘Civilian expeditionary force’ can aid wearied troops | Raw Story.

OPS: A new euphemism for Blackwater - way to go champ

Blackwater’s New Sugar Daddy: The Obama Administration

Jeremy Scahill:

Blackwater has spent heavily on Democratic lobbyists in 2010 and clearly it has paid off. Despite the investigations, the indictments, the trail of dead bodies, George W Bush’s favorite mercenary company is thriving under the Obama Administration. After its original sugar daddy left town, Blackwater has happily remarried. Over the past two weeks, the Administration has awarded nearly a quarter billion dollars in new US government contracts to Blackwater to work for the State Department and CIA in Afghanistan and other hot zones globally

In an interview Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” CIA Director Leon Panetta made it clear that the Agency is dependent upon private security companies to operate globally. But, not just any private security companies. Specifically, Panetta said, the CIA needs Blackwater.

“I have to tell you that in the war zone, we continue to have needs for security. You’ve got a lot of forward bases. We’ve got a lot of attacks on some of these bases. We’ve got to have security. Unfortunately, there are a few companies that provide that kind of security,” Panetta told Jake Tapper. “So we bid out some of those contracts. [Blackwater] provided a bid that was underbid everyone else by about $26 million. And a panel that we had said that they can do the job, that they have shaped up their act. So there really was not much choice but to accept that contract.” While Tapper specifically asked Panetta about Blackwater’s work in Afghanistan, the CIA contract is not limited to Afghanistan–it is a global contract.

Full Story: Blackwater’s New Sugar Daddy: The Obama Administration | The Nation.

US banks off the hook until 2022

Political reality has forced compromise into the final version of the financial regulation reform bill in the US

It was billed by Barack Obama as the toughest crackdown on Wall Street since the great depression. But top US banks could be given until 2022 to comply with the so-called Volcker rule, which is supposed to restrict financial institutions’ risker trading activities.

A string of delays and extension periods written into a final version of Congress’s financial regulation reform bill means that firms such as Citigroup and Goldman Sachs could exploit loopholes until 2022 before withdrawing from “illiquid” funds such as private equity. The long gestation period is an example of the degree of compromise inserted into the package following months of lobbying on Capitol Hill by powerful banks.

“You can’t just say ‘stop’, you can’t just say ‘unwind,’” said Lawrence Kaplan, a lawyer at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker in Washington, who said the delay was a dose of political reality. “These things have contracts and detailed legal frameworks. You can’t undo them without doing considerable harm.”

Full Story: US banks off the hook until 2022 | Business | The Guardian.

GAO Study Finds Improper Burrowing During Bush Years

A study by the Government Accountability Office has found seven instances of improper burrowing — political appointees shifting to career civil servant positions in a given agency — during the Bush Administration, though none of the seven occurred close to the 2008 presidential election.

Regular TPMmuckraker readers will remember our reporting on burrowing back in late 2008 when several Bush Administration officials made eyebrow-raising shifts to career positions.

The GAO did an exhaustive study of these so-called “conversions” from political to career positions between May 2005 and May 2009. It found 139 conversions in that period, with the most — 32 — occurring at the Justice Department, and the second-most, 17, occurring at the Department of Homeland Security. The GAO found the vast majority, 117, followed “fair and open competition” and proper procedures to ensure that the conversions were justified.

Full Story: GAO Study Finds Improper Burrowing During Bush Years | TPMMuckraker.

Sticking the Public With the Bill for the Bankers’ Crisis

Naomi Klein

My city feels like a crime scene and the criminals are all melting into the night, fleeing the scene. No, I’m not talking about the kids in black who smashed windows and burned cop cars on Saturday.

I’m talking about the heads of state who, on Sunday night, smashed social safety nets and burned good jobs in the middle of a recession. Faced with the effects of a crisis created by the world’s wealthiest and most privileged strata, they decided to stick the poorest and most vulnerable people in their countries with the bill.

How else can we interpret the G20’s final communiqué, which includes not even a measly tax on banks or financial transactions, yet instructs governments to slash their deficits in half by 2013. This is a huge and shocking cut, and we should be very clear who will pay the price: students who will see their public educations further deteriorate as their fees go up; pensioners who will lose hard earned benefits; public sector workers whose jobs will be eliminated. And the list goes on. These types of cuts have already begun in many G20 countries including Canada, and they are about to get a lot worse. For instance, reducing the projected 2010 deficit in the U.S. by half, in the absence of a sizeable tax increase, would mean a whopping $780-billion cut.

Full Story: Sticking the Public With the Bill for the Bankers’ Crisis | CommonDreams.org.

‘Dozens’ of US citizens on assassination list, White House adviser hints

When it was confirmed last winter by then-Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair that the Obama administration had authorized the assassination of American citizens working with terrorist groups overseas, it appeared that no more than three Americans were being targeted in this manner.

In an interview last week with the Washington Times, however, Deputy White House National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John O. Brennan suggested that the number might actually amount to “dozens.”

“There are, in my mind, dozens of U.S. persons who are in different parts of the world, and they are very concerning to us,” Brennan stated, “not just because of the passport they hold, but because they understand our operational environment here, they bring with them certain skills, whether it be language skills or familiarity with potential targets, and they are very worrisome, and we are determined to take away their ability to assist with terrorist attacks,”

Full Story: ‘Dozens’ of US citizens on assassination list, White House adviser hints | Raw Story.

The Powers-That-Be Are Terrified of the Mass Awakening Taking Place Worldwide

Our situation is admittedly dire.

Oligarchs are seizing more overt control in most countries in the world, the worldwide economy is on course for another – even bigger – train wreck, countries are cracking down on freedom and becoming more tyrannical, we are in a permanent state of war (and see this), and companies like BP are destroying our natural resources without any checks and balances.

But as Andrew Gavin Marshall points out, the elites are actually terrified of the mass political awakening which is occurring worldwide.

Marshall collects quotes from flexian Zbigniew Brzezinski – Obama’s former foreign affairs adviser, National Security Adviser to President Carter, creator of America’s strategy to lure Russia into Afghanistan, and creator of America’s plans for Eurasia in general - to make his point.

Listen to Brzezinski’s own words (consolidated from various writings and speeches, and edited as if they were a single passage):

For the first time in history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. Global activism is generating a surge in the quest for cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world scarred by memories of colonial or imperial domination.

Washington’s Blog.

Report: Toronto police rough up journalists, arrest peaceful protesters at G20

Reporters covering the G20 summit in Toronto say they were the target of police violence overnight, as riots blamed on anarchist groups left four police cars burning in the financial district and resulted in the arrests of some 150 people.

“A newspaper photographer was shot with a plastic bullet in the backside, while another had an officer point a gun in his face despite identifying himself as a member of the media,” reported the Canadian Press news agency. The agency did not say if it was its own reporters who were targeted.

Previously: Toronto gets ‘secret’ arrest powers ahead of G20 protests

In a remarkable series of Tweets early Sunday morning, journalist Steve Paikin of public broadcaster TV Ontario said he witnessed “police brutality” against a reporter and the arrests of peaceful demonstrators.

Full Story: Report: Toronto police rough up journalists, arrest peaceful protesters at G20 | Raw Story.

Wall Street Front Group Celebrates Record Success Electing Radical Pro-Corporate, Pro-BP Candidates

Roll Call’s John McArdle reported this week that the radical Wall Street front group “Club for Growth” is “celebrating” a near perfect winning streak this election cycle so far, especially given the results in run-off elections last Tuesday. The Club is known for running hard-hitting attack ads, especially in Republican primaries, against candidates who would consider raising any form of taxes on the rich or have done anything to hold powerful corporations accountable. Noting the Club’s historic role of purging moderates from the GOP, Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH) is quoted in the article calling it the “Spanish Inquisition.”

Chaired by prominent Wall Street investors like Thomas Rhodes and Richard Gilder, as well as the wealthy and reclusive Howie Rich, the Club collects funds from employees of J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, while being buoyed by large donations like a $1.4 million contribution from investor Stephen Jacksons of Stephens Groups Inc. The hand-picked candidates of the Club claim to lead the tea party movement, even though polls show that 70% of self identified tea partiers want the government to help create jobs, and nearly half want government to rein in executive bonuses.

Despite this contradiction, the Club-endorsed primary winners are already tacking to the extreme, pro-corporate right. For example, with BP’s oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Club candidates are rushing to defend the rights of corporations over the rights of the American victims of the catastrophe:

Full Story: Think Progress » Wall Street Front Group Celebrates Record Success Electing Radical Pro-Corporate, Pro-BP Candidates.

The speech JFK [delivered] that got him murdered – video

JFK telling of the corrupt organization controlling our government (FED) whose intentions are to deceive, lie and manipulate our liberties away from us.

This of course is only a fraction of the bigger scheme to prepare regions of the world and the minds of the masses to a one world government.

“For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” – David Rockefeller, Memoirs , 2002

How many Americans are targeted for assassination?

Glenn Greenwald

When The Washington Post’s Dana Priest first revealed (in passing) back in January that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens targeted for assassination, she wrote that “as of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens.” In April, both the Post and the NYT confirmed that the administration had specifically authorized the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki. Today, The Washington Times’ Eli Lake has an interview with Obama’s top Terrorism adviser John Brennan in which Brennan strongly suggests that the number of U.S. citizens targeted for assassination could actually be “dozens”:

Dozens of Americans have joined terrorist groups and are posing a threat to the United States and its interests abroad, the president’s most senior adviser on counterterrorism and homeland security said Thursday. . . . “There are, in my mind, dozens of U.S. persons who are in different parts of the world, and they are very concerning to us,” said John O. Brennan, deputy White House national security adviser for homeland security and counterterrorism. . . .

“If a person is a U.S. citizen, and he is on the battlefield in Afghanistan or Iraq trying to attack our troops, he will face the full brunt of the U.S. military response,” Mr. Brennan said. “If an American person or citizen is in a Yemen or in a Pakistan or in Somalia or another place, and they are trying to carry out attacks against U.S. interests, they also will face the full brunt of a U.S. response. And it can take many forms.”

Full Story: How many Americans are targeted for assassination? – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.

Internet ‘Kill Switch’ Approved By Senate Homeland Security Committee

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has approved a cybersecurity bill, Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act (PCNAA), that would give the president far-reaching authority over the Internet in the case of emergency.

As The Hill explains, the bill, sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman, Susan Collins, and Tom Carper, would give the president “emergency authority to shut down private sector or government networks in the event of a cyber attack capable of causing massive damage or loss of life.” The original bill granted the president the authority to “indefinitely” shut down networks, but an amendment to the PCNAA, approved yesterday, mandates that the president “get Congressional approval after controlling a network for 120 days.”

The authority granted to the government in the bill has been likened to an Internet “kill switch.”

Collins noted that she takes issue with the “kill switch” term. The Hill writes,

Full Story: Internet ‘Kill Switch’ Approved By Senate Homeland Security Committee.

Officers taser 86-year-old disabled woman in her bed: lawsuit

Officer ‘s rationale: Bed-ridden grandmother ‘took more aggressive stance’ in her bed

When Lonnie Tinsley of El Reno, Oklahoma, called 911 to ask for medical assistance for his disabled, bed-ridden grandmother, he couldn’t have dreamed it would end with police tasering the 86-year-old woman twice, stepping on her oxygen hose until she couldn’t breathe, and sending her to a psychiatric hospital for six days.

Yet that’s what a lawsuit (PDF) filed in a federal court in Oklahoma this week alleges.

According to the lawsuit, in December, 2009, Tinsley came by his grandmother’s apartment to see if she was doing alright in the midst of a winter storm. When she wasn’t able to tell him if she had taken her medication, Tinsley called 911 and asked responders to send medical technicians over to evaluate her.

Full Story: Officers taser 86-year-old disabled woman in her bed: lawsuit | Raw Story.

Toronto gets ‘secret’ arrest powers ahead of G20 protests

A government changes a law to allow police to arrest people without probable cause. It does so without any legislative debate. Then it keeps the change a virtual secret, until someone is arrested under those new powers.

The Soviet Union circa 1950? Nope. Try Canada, June 2010.

Civil liberties advocates and political activists are up in arms after it emerged Friday that police in Toronto have been given special powers to arrest anyone near the site of the G20 summit if they fail to identify themselves.

What’s more, the government of the province of Ontario, which green-lit the new powers, didn’t tell anyone about it until after someone was arrested under the new powers.

Full Story: Toronto gets ‘secret’ arrest powers ahead of G20 protests | Raw Story.

Analysis: What’s in the financial reform agreement?

Early this morning, the conference committee reconciling the House and Senate versions of financial regulatory reform approved final language for the legislation on a party-line vote following a marathon 20-hour negotiating session. A flurry of changes were made to the legislation last night, including the addition of an exemption to the Volcker rule and a weakening of Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s (D-AR) provision requiring banks to spin-off their derivatives trading desks. Below is a comparison of the House and Senate versions of the bill, as well as what ultimately ended up in the conference report:

Full Story: Think Progress » Analysis: What’s in the financial reform agreement?.

DEMS SIDE WITH WALL STREET… AGAIN

Final Derivatives Showdown Thursday: Read The House Offer

The long-awaited showdown between banks and Sen. Blanche Lincoln over her derivatives reform section of the Wall Street bill begins Thursday. The conference committee will consider an offer made by the House to amend Senate legislation that forces banks to spin off their swaps desk and separately capitalize that operation, while also bringing the business out into the open, requiring derivatives to be cleared and traded on exchanges.

However, one analyst identified an end-run the House may be attempting. Section 754 of the offer advanced by House Financial Services chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) says that “the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 is amended by striking ‘commodities activities’ each place it appears and inserting ‘commodities and swap activities,’ which would make the swaps desks a ‘functionally regulated subsidiary.’”

That would mean that a bank getting taxpayer assistance through the Federal Reserve window would still be required to spin off its swaps desk, but it could maintain it within a separate section of the bank holding company that isn’t getting government assistance. “This is not as strong as a complete spinoff, but it still will have positive implications for the derivatives markets in the medium to long term,” Adam White, director of research at White Knight Research & Trading, told HuffPost. White is a backer of Lincoln’s original language.

Full Story: Final Derivatives Showdown Thursday: Read The House Offer.

Supreme Court Weakens Key Anti-Corruption Law

Washington….The Supreme Court weakened a key anticorruption law Thursday, ruling that the law against “honest services” fraud is too vague to constitute a crime unless a bribe or kickback was involved.

The decision is likely to have a wide impact and could affect recent convictions of public figures and corporate executives.

They include former Enron chief executive Jeff Skilling and former Chicago newspaper magnate Conrad Black, both of whom had appealed to the Supreme Court. They were convicted on other charges as well, however, and those convictions still stand.

Full Story: Supreme Court Weakens Key Anti-Corruption Law – latimes.com.

Exclusive: Proposal to water down climate bill would favor Obama aides’ former employer

We are ‘proud to be the president’s utility,’ company’s lobbyist says

Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff to President Barack Obama, said in little-noticed remarks Friday that his administration will consider a climate change bill that only includes carbon caps on electric utilities.

“The idea of a ‘utilities only’ [approach] will also be welcomed,” he said, while “a wide range of ideas will be discussed.”

The proposal would be a boon to the oil and steel industries, as well as US manufacturers, who have argued that capping their carbon emissions would reduce their competitiveness overseas. President Obama has taken heat from liberals after a primetime speech on the BP oil spill failed to include aggressive proposals for climate change laws.

A watered-down, utilities-only climate change bill would greatly leverage the profitability of US nuclear power generator Exelon, an Illinois-based company that provides the largest share of power from nuclear reactors of any company in the United States. Exelon operates six active nuclear reactors in Obama’s home state.

Full Story: Exclusive: Proposal to water down climate bill would favor Obama aides’ former employer | Raw Story.

Kindra Arnesan – Quoted on PBS Newshour 6/23/2010

Confirmation of the local overview Venice LA – 6/19/10.. Quoted on PBS today in one sentence. Hear the horrors of the front lines and behind scenes workings of the BP Gulf Oil Spill Catastrophe. This Venice LA local has been granted security clearance to see it all.

Economic Crises Rooted in Fraud

James K Galbraith:

If fraud or even the perception of fraud comes to dominate the system, then there is no foundation for a market in the securities. They become trash. And more deeply, so do the institutions responsible for creating, rating and selling them.

Chairman Specter, Ranking Member Graham, Members of the Subcommittee, as a former member of the congressional staff it is a pleasure to submit this statement for your record.

I write to you from a disgraced profession. Economic theory, as widely taught since the 1980s, failed miserably to understand the forces behind the financial crisis. Concepts including “rational expectations,” “market discipline,” and the “efficient markets hypothesis” led economists to argue that speculation would stabilize prices, that sellers would act to protect their reputations, that caveat emptor could be relied on, and that widespread fraud therefore could not occur. Not all economists believed this but most did.

Thus the study of financial fraud received little attention. Practically no research institutes exist; collaboration between economists and criminologists is rare; in the leading departments there are few specialists and very few students. Economists have soft- pedaled the role of fraud in every crisis they examined, including the Savings & Loan debacle, the Russian transition, the Asian meltdown and the dot.com bubble. They continue to do so now. At a conference sponsored by the Levy Economics Institute in New York on April 17, the closest a former Under Secretary of the Treasury, Peter Fisher, got to this question was to use the word “naughtiness.” This was on the day that the SEC charged Goldman Sachs with fraud.

Full Story: Economic Crises Rooted in Fraud | Economy In Crisis.

Homeland Security to deploy more drones on Mexico border

The United States plans to deploy two drone aircraft along the Texas-Mexico border as part of a new effort to stem organized crime and illegal immigration, Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano said Wednesday.

The two Predator drones will be used to patrol the border and in nearby areas in the Gulf of Mexico, once Congress approves the 500 million dollars President Barack Obama has requested, Napolitano said in a Washington speech.

“These types of flights aren’t necessary everywhere,” she said in comments to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But this is the case in the Texas border.”

Full Story: Homeland Security to deploy more drones on Mexico border | Raw Story.

March to Oligarchy: Wealth of World Millionaires Rose 19% During First Year of Bush Recession

The “small people” — middle-class and low-income people in the United States and abroad — who saw their income and the value of their assets slashed during 2009, the first full year of the Bush Recession, may have wondered where all that money went.

Here is a clue from the annual Capegemini and Merrill Lynch Word Wealth Report. Read it and weep, fellow serfs:

State of the World’s Wealth: The world’s population of high net worth individuals (HNWIs) grew 17.1 percent to 10.0 million in 2009. HNWI financial wealth increased 18.9 percent from 2008 levels to $39 trillion. After losing 24.0 percent in 2008, Ultra-HNWIs saw wealth rebound 21.5 percent in 2009.

Steve Bertoni at Forbes.com provides analysis:

* The rich got richer: The combined wealth of the world’s rich rose 18.9% to $39.0 trillion in 2009.

* For the first time in the survey’s history, red hot Asia is home to as many rich people as stodgy Europe: 3 million each, and as a group, Asia’s millionaires are richer (see next point).

* The rich in North America control $10.7 trillion in wealth; Asia $9.7 trillion; Europe $9.5 trillion; Latin America $6.7 trillion, Middle East $1.5 trillion; Africa $ 1 trillion.

The New York Times focused on statistics for the United States:

Full Story: Pensito Review » March to Oligarchy: Wealth of World Millionaires Rose 19% During First Year of Bush Recession.

The Fate of the Internet — Decided in a Back Room

The Wall Street Journal just reported that the Federal Communications Commission is holding “closed-door meetings” with industry to broker a deal on Net Neutrality — the rule that lets users determine their own Internet experience.

Given that the corporations at the table all profit from gaining control over information, the outcome won’t be pretty.

The meetings include a small group of industry lobbyists representing the likes of AT&T, Verizon, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, and Google. They reportedly met for two-and-a-half hours on Monday morning and will convene another meeting today. The goal according to insiders is to “reach consensus” on rules of the road for the Internet.

This is what a failed democracy looks like: After years of avid public support for Net Neutrality – involving millions of people from across the political spectrum – the federal regulator quietly huddles with industry lobbyists to eliminate basic protections and serve Wall Street’s bottom line.

Full Story: Timothy Karr: The Fate of the Internet — Decided in a Back Room.

Insurance Industry Poised To Tear Loophole In Wall Street Reform

The insurance industry is poised to rip a gaping loophole in financial reform’s investor protections, working to insert a provision in the conference committee report that was passed by neither the House nor the Senate.

The measure would exempt securities products created by insurance companies from regulation, leaving the job instead to state insurance commissioners. Insurance companies do a lucrative business in selling annuities that guarantee a return to investors but limit the upside and often come with exorbitant commissions and high surrender fees that make access to the money difficult in times of financial need.

The insertion is being pushed by Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, a state with a heavily-concentrated insurance industry. His House ally is Rep. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.), who often represents corporate interests despite having a heavy trade union presence in his district.

Full Story: Insurance Industry Poised To Tear Loophole In Wall Street Reform.

Apple now collecting, sharing precise location of iPhone users

The world’s largest technology company by market capitalization may soon rival the National Security Agency in its ability to track Americans using their cell phones.

Apple Inc. is now tracking the “precise,” “real-time geographic location” of iPhones, iPads and Macintosh computers — and has unwittingly gotten its customers to sign off on their being tracked by making a little-noticed modification to the language in its apps store.

The company’s “partners and licensees” will now be able to collect and store data about your location.

Full Story: Apple now collecting, sharing precise location of iPhone users | Raw Story.

Judge who ruled against offshore drilling moratorium invests in oil industry.

Today, Judge Martin Feldman, a U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, sided with a drilling company which had argued that the Obama administration’s blanket, 6-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico was illegal. The drilling company, Hornbeck Offshore Services of Covington, LA, claimed financial distress from the imposition of the moratorium. In the ruling handed down this afternoon, Judge Feldman agreed, writing that the administration made an “arbitrary and capricious” decision that would have an “immeasurable effect on the plaintiffs, the local economy, the Gulf region, and the critical present-day aspect of the availability of domestic energy in this country.” Like many judges presiding in the Gulf region, Feldman owns lots of energy stocks, including Transocean, Halliburton, and two of BP’s largest U.S. private shareholders — BlackRock (7.1%) and JP Morgan Chase (28.3%). Here’s a list of Feldman’s income in 2008 (amounts listed unless under $1,000):

list of investments follows

Full Story: Think Progress » Judge who ruled against offshore drilling moratorium invests in oil industry..

Chicago Violence: At Least 40 Shot, Seven Dead Over The Weekend

At least 40 people were shot over the weekend in Chicago–seven of them fatally. Police are blaming gangs for most of the widespread incidents.

The Chicago Tribune reports that after Friday’s severe storms through Monday at 6:30 a.m., violence erupted throughout the city.

Saturday night and early Sunday, at least six people were shot near the annual Puerto Rican festival in Humboldt Park. A 15-year-old girl was among the injured.

A Shakespeare District lieutenant told the Sun-Times Media Wire that the girl was not seriously injured. “She’ll be fine,” the lieutenant said. “She just got caught in crossfire, unfortunately.”

Full Story: Chicago Violence: At Least 40 Shot, Seven Dead Over The Weekend.

Pentagon revives Rumsfeld-era domestic spying unit

The Pentagon’s spy unit has quietly begun to rebuild a database for tracking potential terrorist threats that was shut down after it emerged that it had been collecting information on American anti-war activists.

The Defense Intelligence Agency filed notice this week that it plans to create a new section called Foreign Intelligence and Counterintelligence Operation Records, whose purpose will be to “document intelligence, counterintelligence, counterterrorism and counternarcotic operations relating to the protection of national security.”

But while the unit’s name refers to “foreign intelligence,” civil liberties advocates and the Pentagon’s own description of the program suggest that Americans will likely be included in the new database.

Full Story: Pentagon revives Rumsfeld-era domestic spying unit | Raw Story.

U.S. Testing Pain Ray in Afghanistan

The U.S. mission in Afghanistan centers around swaying locals to its side. And there’s no better persuasion tool than an invisible pain ray that makes people feel like they’re on fire.

OK, OK. Maybe that isn’t precisely the logic being employed by those segments of the American military who would like to deploy the Active Denial System to Afghanistan. I’m sure they’re telling themselves that the generally non-lethal microwave weapon is a better, safer crowd control alternative than an M-16. But those ray-gun advocates better think long and hard about the Taliban’s propaganda bonanza when news leaks of the Americans zapping Afghans until they feel roasted alive.

Because, apparently, the Active Denial System is “in Afghanistan for testing.”

An Air Force military officer and a civilian employee at the Air Force Research Laboratory are just two of the people telling Danger Room co-founder Sharon Weinberger that the vehicle-mounted “block 2″ version of the pain ray is in the warzone, but hasn’t been used in combat.

Full Story: U.S. Testing Pain Ray in Afghanistan (Updated) | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Blackwater Firm Gets $120M U.S. Gov’t Contract – CBS News Investigates – CBS News

CBS News has learned in an exclusive report that the State Department has awarded a part of what was formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide a contract worth more than $120 million for providing security services in Afghanistan.

Private security firm U.S. Training Center, a business unit of the Moyock, N.C.-based Blackwater, now called Xe Services, was awarded the contract Friday, a State Department spokeswoman said Friday night.

Under the contract, U.S. Training Center will provide “protective security services” at the new U.S. consulates in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, the spokeswoman said. The firm can begin work “immediately” and has to start within two months. The contract lasts a year but can be extended twice for three months at a time to last a maximum of 18 months.

Should the firm fulfill all 18 months available in the contract, it will be paid a total of $120,123,293, the spokeswoman said.

Full Story: Blackwater Firm Gets $120M U.S. Gov’t Contract – CBS News Investigates – CBS News.

World’s Mining Companies Covet Afghan Riches

Mining companies around the world are eager to exploit Afghanistan’s newly discovered mineral wealth, but executives of Western firms caution that war, corruption and lack of roads and other infrastructure are likely to delay exploration for years.

A few high-risk investors are sufficiently intrigued by the country’s potential to take an early look. JP Morgan, for instance, has just sent a team of mining experts to Afghanistan to examine possible projects to develop.

“Afghanistan could be one of the leading producers of copper, gold, lithium and iron ore in the world,” said Ian Hannam, a London-based banker and mining expert with JP Morgan. “I believe this has the potential to be transforming for Afghanistan.”

Full Story: World’s Mining Companies Covet Afghan Riches – NYTimes.com.

GOP aims to hobble FCC regulatory power

FCC Broadband Plan Prompts GOP, Industry Backlash

Thursday’s broadband proceeding at the Federal Communications Commission has prompted another congressional challenge.

Shortly after the commission announced a public comment period on its “third way” to regulate broadband, Rep. Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican, said he would soon introduce a bill that would reform the FCC and guard against unnecessary taxation and regulation of the Internet and other media services.

DeMint’s “Consumer Choice Act” is based on a bill he introduced in 2005, which would “reform the FCC into a market-based, antitrust-style framework, using an ‘unfair competition’ standard” similar to the model at the Federal Trade Commission. It would also require timelines for FCC regulatory decisions and put a five-year expiration date on any regulations, unless the FCC chooses to renew them.

Full Story: FCC Broadband Plan Prompts GOP, Industry Backlash | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.

Disaster capitalists: Halliburton to make money off oil spill

Does a company that both builds oil rigs and cleans up oil spills have any motivation to prevent oil rig disasters?

That’s the question some people in business and politics are asking themselves after Halliburton’s purchase of an oil clean-up company 10 days before the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 workers and launched the worst oil spill in US history.

Some observers see a conspiracy in the actions of the company once headed by Dick Cheney. Halliburton, which built the cement casing for the Deepwater Horizon’s drill, announced its purchase of Houston-based oilfield services company Boots and Coots for $240 million on April 9, just 11 days before the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

Full Story: Disaster capitalists: Halliburton to make money off oil spill | Raw Story.

EXCLUSIVE: BP Funds Front Group Claiming Oil Spill Jobs Are Better Than ‘Normal’ Ones, Storm Will Clean Up Oil

Shortly after BP’s catastrophic oil spill in the gulf, the New York Times spoke to Quenton Dokken, the executive director of the Gulf of Mexico Foundation, about the environmental impact. “The sky is not falling,” Dokken told the paper, adding “it isn’t the end of the Gulf of Mexico.” ProPublica dug into the Gulf of Mexico Foundation, and reported that the Times had failed to disclose that Dokken and his group are funded by a consortium of oil companies with business in the gulf, including companies involved in the Deepwater Horizon rig, Transocean and Anadarko. Today, the Times reported that the Foundation has been downplaying effects of the spill, possibly because of its funding from oil companies.

ThinkProgress has obtained more documents and evidence that the Gulf of Mexico Foundation has operated as a front for the oil companies involved in the spill. In addition to Transocean and Anadarko, this 2008 “Guardians of the Gulf” award ceremony hosted by the Foundation shows that BP is also a “CEO council member” of the nonprofit. View a screenshot here:

Full Story: Think Progress » EXCLUSIVE: BP Funds Front Group Claiming Oil Spill Jobs Are Better Than ‘Normal’ Ones, Storm Will Clean Up Oil.

Behind Closed Doors Four Key Democrats Maneuver To Weaken Financial Reform

Several House Democrats with close ties to the financial industry, including four members of the conference committee hashing out the final bill, are pushing to weaken the Wall Street reform legislation in the conference committee.

The 68-member New Democrat Coalition has been circulating drafts of a letter outlining their position on financial regulatory reform, proposing to significantly scale back regulations on derivative trading, and open up exceptions to the so-called Volcker rule, which limits financial firms’ ability to speculate with their profits.

One draft of that letter, obtained by TPM, can be read here. Their position on derivatives provoked the ire of Americans for Financial Reform, the largest pro-regulation coalition in the country, which responded yesterday with a letter of their own.

Full Story: Behind Closed Doors Four Key Democrats Maneuver To Weaken Financial Reform | TPMDC.

White House Flip Flops On Reining In CEO Pay

The White House is intervening at the last minute to come to the defense of multinational corporations in the unfolding conference committee negotiations over Wall Street reform.

A measure that had been generally agreed to by both the House and Senate, which would have affirmed the SEC's authority to allow investors to have proxy access to the corporate decision-making process, was stripped by the Senate in conference committee votes on Wednesday and Thursday. Five sources with knowledge of the situation said the White House pushed for the measure to be stripped at the behest of the Business Roundtable. The sources — congressional aides as well as outside advocates — requested anonymity for fear of White House reprisal.

The White House move pits the administration against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who told Barney Frank (D-Mass.) to stand strong against the effort.

Full Story: White House Flip Flops On Reining In CEO Pay.

BP Executive To Gulf Residents: You Need Us, So Don’t ‘Shoot The Dog Who Is Trying To Bring Home The Bone’

Last night during an interview with BP executive Bob Dudley on Fox News, host Greta Van Susteren noted that the oil giant has been taking some heat because of its Gulf oil spill. “Your company has taken quite a beating,” she said. Dudley agreed but said his company’s critics should be careful because Gulf coast residents are dependent on BP:

DUDLEY: Well, Greta, I know that oil companies are not popular. It has been that way for sometime in the U.S. It’s a company made up of people, many of which live along the Gulf coast, that are integrated into the fabric of the communities there.

We have 23,000 people in the U.S., many of which are around the Gulf coast. I think — and everyone is devastated by what has happened today. I think I would look at some of the process today as just making sure that through that sentiment we don’t actually shoot the dog who is trying to bring home the bone and meet its obligations all across the Gulf, and we are going to be there a long time.

Watch it:

Full Story: Think Progress » BP Executive To Gulf Residents: You Need Us, So Don’t ‘Shoot The Dog Who Is Trying To Bring Home The Bone’.

Capitalism, the Absurd System

Monthly Review:

What is society actually like when the veil of money is removed, and the real face of power is seen?

A few years ago, in a class one of us taught, a discussion arose about how capitalism works as a system in which the need for the few to maximize profit drives the entire political-economic structure. The students appeared to grasp how the capital accumulation process has a strong effect, often negative, on the course of a society’s development. The discussion then turned to Salvador Allende’s Chile of the early 1970s, where the goal was to develop a socialist political economy. “Knowing what you do about how capitalism functions,” the students were asked, “what would a socialist system look like?” They were unusually quiet. Finally, one of them blurted out: “I don’t know how it could work. I guess the government would have to kill everybody.”

The question of how a socialist society would operate raised a horrible, dystopian image in this student’s mind. Such libertarian fears of a totalitarian state imposing socialism by force, even to the point of annihilation, on an unwilling people, who are presumed to be capitalist by nature, are all too common. This brings to mind Fredric Jameson’s comment: “Someone once said that it is easier [for most people in today’s society] to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.”2

Perhaps nothing points so clearly to the alienated nature of politics in the present day United States as the fact that capitalism, the economic system that drives the society, is effectively off-limits to critical review or discussion. To the extent that capitalism is mentioned by politicians or pundits, it is regarded in hushed tones of reverence for the genius of the market, its unquestioned efficiency, and its providential authority. One might quibble with a corrupt and greedy CEO or a regrettable loss of jobs, but the superiority and necessity of capitalism—or, more likely, its euphemism, the so-called “free market system”—is simply beyond debate or even consideration. There are, of course, those who believe that the system needs more regulation and that there is room for all sorts of fine-tuning. Nevertheless, there is no questioning of the basics.

Full Story: Capitalism, the Absurd System – Monthly Review.

Internet ‘kill switch’ proposed for US

A new US Senate Bill would grant the President far-reaching emergency powers to seize control of, or even shut down, portions of the internet.

The legislation says that companies such as broadband providers, search engines or software firms that the US Government selects “shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed” by the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone failing to comply would be fined.

That emergency authority would allow the Federal Government to “preserve those networks and assets and our country and protect our people,” Joe Lieberman, the primary sponsor of the measure and the chairman of the Homeland Security committee, told reporters on Thursday. Lieberman is an independent senator from Connecticut who meets with the Democrats.

Due to there being few limits on the US President’s emergency power, which can be renewed indefinitely, the densely worded 197-page Bill (PDF) is likely to encounter stiff opposition.

Full Story: Internet ‘kill switch’ proposed for US – Security – News.

License To Drill

Mother Jones:

Why did the Obama administration just approve more than 400 new leases for oil companies to operate in the Gulf of Mexico?

At his long-awaited press conference on the Gulf oil disaster last month, President Obama announced a moratorium on new oil drilling and exploration for six months. “We can’t do this stuff if we don’t have confidence that we can prevent crises like this from happening again,” he declared. But while existing rigs may be out of commission for the near future, the administration hasn’t exactly put the brakes on new oil and gas drilling ventures. In recent weeks, the government has quietly approved the sale of more than 400 new leases for vast swaths of the Gulf of Mexico. And these contracts—which mark the first step in the drilling process—were subjected to the same slapdash environmental oversight that failed to prevent the BP catastrophe.

The region was included in a plan created by the Bush administration’s Department of the Interior to lease new areas of the Gulf to the oil and gas industries. But it was Obama’s Interior secretary, Ken Salazar, who gave the go-ahead for the sale of Lease 213—6,800 tracts covering 36 million acres off the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama in November 2009. The sale—which was held on March 17 this year in the New Orleans Superdome—attracted $1.3 billion in bids. Since then, the Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) has approved the sale of 448 of those tracts, 198 of them in deepwater, which is defined as more than 656 feet below the sea. BP is the proud new leaser of 13 of those tracts.

Full Story: License To Drill | Mother Jones.

BP Claims It Has No Authority Over Its Contractors Blocking Media Access

As we’ve noted repeatedly, one of the aspects of the Gulf Oil cleanup operation that BP has really applied itself to with great success is the ongoing effort to prevent the media from covering the story.

Long after it was made crystal clear by both National Incident Commander Thad Allen and BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles, reporters continue to find themselves being denied access to sites and to clean-up workers. This all reached a farcical apotheosis when WDSU reporter Scott Walker had this perplexing conversation with a pair of private contractors, tasked by BP with the job of “keeping the beach safe.”

Full Story: BP Claims It Has No Authority Over Its Contractors Blocking Media Access.

Bernanke: Financial Reform Could Limit Megabank Growth, But Won’t End Too Big To Fail

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday that the pending financial reform legislation before Congress could have the effect of simplifying the nation’s largest banks and limiting their ability to grow even larger, adding that while the bills could help end Too Big To Fail, key challenges remain.

He did not, however, say that the legislation could or should force the nation’s financial behemoths to shrink — a point advocated by his colleagues in regional Federal Reserve banks across the country.

Stressing the Fed’s ongoing improvements in how it regulates banks and supervises the financial system, Bernanke told a crowd of bankers, regulators and economists in New York that the Fed’s efforts and the bills pending in Congress will go a long way toward addressing the problems associated with Too Big To Fail and the weaknesses in the current financial regulatory system.

Full Story: Bernanke: Financial Reform Could Limit Megabank Growth, But Won’t End Too Big To Fail.

Stewart: Obama, like Frodo, won’t give up Bush powers | VIDEO

John Stewart Nails it!

President Barack Obama promised to end the “fever of fear” created by the Bush administration and relinquish unreasonable executive powers. But after becoming president, Obama didn’t end many of the practices he campaigned against.

Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart likened the president Tuesday to a character in “The Lord of the Rings” who falls under the sway of Sauron’s Ring of Power and is unable to complete his mission to destroy it.

Stewart took a step back from the current BP oil spill catastrophe to look at the bigger picture of Obama’s presidency. “The Gulf crisis was an unforeseen catastrophe. Barack Obama’s real mission when running for president was to restore some of America’s moral high standing that we had lost in the turmoil of the war on terror,” said Stewart.

Full Story: Stewart: Obama, like Frodo, won’t give up Bush powers | Raw Story.

SEC: Government Destroyed Documents Regarding Pre-9/11 Put Options

Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market.

An extraordinary number of trades were betting that American Airlines stock price would fall.

The trades are called “puts” and they involved at least 450,000 shares of American. But what raised the red flag is more than 80 percent of the orders were “puts”, far outnumbering “call” options, those betting the stock would rise.

Sources say they have never seen that kind of imbalance before, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. Normally the numbers are fairly even.

After the terrorist attacks, American Airline stock price did fall obviously by 39 percent, and according to sources, that translated into well over $5 million total profit for the person or persons who bet the stock would fall.

***

At least one Wall Street firm reported their suspicions about this activity to the SEC shortly after the attack.

Full Story: SEC: Government Destroyed Documents Regarding Pre-9/11 Put Options « Wake-up Call.

additional source: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/06/sec-government-destroyed-documents.html

Battle the Corporatocracy by Demanding Sustainability

John Perkins:

“As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.” (Thoreau)

Being a father has been one of the seminal events in my life and to have the joy of being a grandparent has just doubled the blessing. It has also made me even more aware of my responsibility to my grandson and his sisters and brothers around our precious planet.

All of us are anxiously waiting a fix to the devastating oil spill that BP created in one of our most environmentally fragile regions in North America. Let us also not forget the terrible destruction Chevron/Texaco caused in the Ecuadorian Amazon (as of this writing, more than 400 times the toxic wastes of the BP disaster), Shell in the Congo, Exxon in Alaska, and all the other tragedies that result from drilling, mining, cutting, and dredging. As I frequently discuss in media interviews and public speeches, it is our job to be in a true relationship with the environment. Just as a father guides his children toward maturation, we must do the same for the environment. If we want to save our lands, forests, air, and water, we must dream actively of this better world.

While we encourage organic farmers and many types of companies to turn toward green technology, we still are not doing nearly enough. Every one of us must alter our dream, must continually re-create ourselves and the societies we form. We must rescue our dreams of this sustainable and just world from the clutches of sociopathic CEOs, public relations con artists, greed-driven corporate policies, and the form of predatory capitalism all of these promote.

Full Story: John Perkins: Battle the Corporatocracy by Demanding Sustainability.

Obama’s Treasury Dept Working To Defeat Derivatives Proposal ‘Of Utmost Importance’ To Reforming Wall Street

A Senate proposal to force banks to shed their lucrative yet risk-laden derivatives units — which is vehemently opposed by Wall Street — is gaining steam, picking up the support of some regional Federal Reserve chiefs with more on the way.

Yet President Barack Obama’s Treasury Department, led by Timothy Geithner, continues to oppose the measure, Senate aides say, who add that Treasury is supporting Wall Street over Main Street by opposing the measure considered of “utmost importance” to financial stability.

“It shows the access of the major Wall Street banks in the Treasury Department in spades,” one Senate aide said on the condition of anonymity. Assistant Treasury Secretary for Financial Institutions Michael S. Barr is said to be leading Treasury’s efforts.

Senate aides say that more letters of support from other regional Fed presidents are on the way.

Treasury is joined in its opposition to the measure by the Federal Reserve’s Washington-based Board of Governors and the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Sheila Bair.

Full Story: Obama’s Treasury Dept Working To Defeat Derivatives Proposal ‘Of Utmost Importance’ To Reforming Wall Street.

FAA under pressure to open US skies to drones

Unmanned aircraft have proved their usefulness and reliability in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the pressure’s on to allow them in the skies over the United States.

The Obama Administration has stepped up the use of drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan, killing hundreds, but concern to date about their use in the United States has focused on their potential collision threat to civilian aircraft.

The Federal Aviation Administration has been asked to issue flying rights for a range of pilotless planes to carry out civilian and law-enforcement functions but has been hesitant to act. Officials are worried that they might plow into airliners, cargo planes and corporate jets that zoom around at high altitudes, or helicopters and hot air balloons that fly as low as a few hundred feet off the ground.

On top of that, these pilotless aircraft come in a variety of sizes. Some are as big as a small airliner, others the size of a backpack. The tiniest are small enough to fly through a house window.

Full Story: FAA under pressure to open US skies to drones | Raw Story.

BP: It’s Not a Contest Between the US and Britain; It’s a Contest Between Citizenship Interests and Shareholder Interests

Robert Reich :

This from today’s Wall Street Journal:

In a letter sent Sunday to U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral James Watson, BP said it expects to have the capacity to capture between 40,000 and 53,000 barrels of oil a day by the end of June. That compares with 15,000 barrels a day now, out of a flow of 20,000 to 40,000 barrels scientists estimate are coming from the well.

BP, which said further enhancements will increase the collection capacity to as high as 80,000 barrels a day by mid-July, submitted its latest plan after Mr. Watson, the federal government’s second-in-command for the spill response, told the company Friday its previous plan was insufficient and gave BP a 48-hour deadline to come up with a revised approach.

Mr. Watson said in a statement Monday that “BP is now stepping up its efforts to contain the leaking oil,” noting that the new plan’s call for collecting 50,000 barrels of oil by the end of June is two weeks earlier than the previous timeline.

But the Journal isn’t telling the truth. BP is not capable of writing a letter or “saying” anything, “submitting” anything, or “stepping up its efforts.”

You see, BP is not a person.

Full Story: Robert Reich (BP: It’s Not a Contest Between the US and Britain; It’s a Contest Between Citizenship Interests and Shareholder Interests).

Firm hired to handle BP claims boasts of “reducing payouts”

Publicly, BP has said it intends to be generous in compensating those affected by the Gulf oil spill: CEO Tony Hayward has pledged to pay all “legitimate” claims resulting from the disaster, even offering to waive the $75 million cap on liability for economic damages.

But to handle claims from the spill, BP has hired a risk-management company who advertises that a main benefit of its services is “reducing our clients’ loss dollar pay-outs” — a goal Gulf advocates say is in direct contradiction to Washington and BP’s promises to fully compensate coastal residents for mounting economic losses.

ESIS Inc. — part of the Swiss-based global insurance giant the ACE Group — is a risk-management firm whose mission is to “impact our clients’ business and reduce their total cost.”

One of ESIS’s many services for corporate clients is handling claims made against companies, which Darryl Willis, VP for Resources at BP America said in recent Congressional testimony [pdf] is the role they’re playing for BP in the wake of the spill:

Full Story: Daily Kos: State of the Nation.

How Blue Dog Boys kept Obama’s boot off neck of BP’s US partner

• 73 per cent of all Gulf incidents involve Transocean
• All bonuses banned after four died on firm’s oil rigs
• Obama desperate for support of politicians linked to Transocean lobbyist

The American owners of the drilling rig at the centre of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill have been involved in nearly three-quarters of all significant safety incidents on rigs in the region since 2008, according to new figures.

Transocean, the world’s largest rig operator, has so far avoided much of the fall-out from the environmental disaster heaped on BP by President Obama and members of Congress following the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

But an analysis of government data reveals it has a highly questionable safety record.

Full Story: Oil spill: How Blue Dog Boys kept Obama¿s boot off neck of BP¿s US partner | Mail Online.