Obelisk damaged by air pollution getting more concern than people of New York breathing corrosive air
Egypt Threatens Removal of Ancient Central Park Obelisk
LiveScience.com Andrea Leontiou
“If the Central Park Conservancy and the City of New York cannot properly care for this obelisk, I will take the necessary steps to bring this precious artifact home and save it from ruin." So states a letter from Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities
Hawass wrote Mayor Bloomberg, "Recent photographs that I have received show the severe damage that has been done to the obelisk, particularly to the hieroglyphic text, which in places has been completely worn away….”
__________________________________________
Why do tax increases get laid on working people through decrease in benefits but wealthy keep decrease in their taxes
House Republicans challenge Obama on debt limit–
By DAVID ESPO and ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press – Thu Jan 6, 11:10 pm ET
WASHINGTON – In power scarcely a day, House Republicans bluntly told the White House on Thursday its request to raise the nation's $14.3 trillion debt limit will require federal spending cuts to win their approval, laying down an early marker in a new era of divided government.
Speaker John Boehner made the challenge as the new GOP majority voted to cut funding for House members' own offices and committee operations by $35 million. Rank and file Republicans described that vote as a mere down payment on a much more ambitious assault on record federal deficits.
_________________________________________________
Radical challenge to basic principle of insurance-spread the risk
Health Care Reform in Cross Hairs: Could it Survive Without Individual Mandate?
Lind Feldmann, The Christian Science Monitor: "Supporters of President Obama's health-care reform are holding their breath as legal challenges to the individual mandate - the requirement that by 2014 virtually every American purchase health insurance or face penalties - work their way up to the US Supreme Court. The mandate, they argue, is essential to creating a big enough pool of healthy individuals to cover the insurance industry's rising costs, because the law requires that insurers take all comers, regardless of preexisting conditions."
___________________________________________
Obama’s choice shows he’s no Truman
Signaling a desire to steer the West Wing in a new direction, President Obama announced today that he's tapped former Commerce Secretary Bill Daley as his next chief of staff.
Already, the Daley pick has won praise from one high-profile Obama foe during the 2010 campaign: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which previously worked with Daley on financial deregulation efforts. Tom Donohue, the chamber's president called Daley a "accomplished manager and a strong leader." "This is a strong appointment," he said.
____________________________________________
Owners may really have prior rights to lenders--show me the beef
Top Massachusetts court rules against foreclosing banks
On Friday January 7, 2011, 11:55 am
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Massachusetts' highest court voided foreclosures on two homes because the banks that tried to take title failed to show they held the mortgages at the time of foreclosure.
The ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court on Friday upheld a lower court ruling against U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo & Co.
It may cause other foreclosure sales to be invalidated, especially where lenders may not have all of the underlying documentation.
______________________________________________
Why not take fraction of U.S. money burned in Afghanistan and buy and burn poppy crop
Opium Production in Afghanistan: Strong and Corrupt as Ever
Nadia Prupis, Truthout: "Efforts by the United Nations (UN), the US military and the Indian government to curb opium production in Afghanistan since 2007 have been largely ineffective, due in large part to the ties between the drug trade and the Taliban. Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium, the raw material harvested from poppies to make heroin, as well as alkaloids like codeine and morphine. According to two cables released this month by WikiLeaks, Afghanistan's supply of opium exceeds the world's demand for heroin, with its unsold stock currently totaling 12,400 tons. Taliban-linked drug cartels emerging along the southern border of the country, where 99 percent of production takes place, influence the majority of poppy cultivation by coercing farmers into growing the crops for a strong and well-supplied insurgency."
________________________________________________
Ploy to drive off the challengers
DNC chair: Obama unlikely to face Democratic challenger
(CNN) – President Obama is not likely to face a primary challenge from within the Democratic Party in 2012, the chair of the Democratic National Committee said Sunday.
"It's possible, but I think the likelihood of any challenge to the president is virtually nil, and I think the president's strong performance, and especially the three major accomplishments at the end of the year make it even smaller," DNC chair Tim Kaine said on CNN's "State of the Union.
"...an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society - cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian." -Howard Zinn,
Friday, January 7, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
American Revolution finished
Battle Tested
I am a disabled veteran, so I have health care. However, a lot of the people we depend on for our everyday needs, cashiers, fast food workers, and many others cannot afford it. I know someone making about $12 an hour that was recently quoted $208 per month for just herself! Something needs to be done. I would hope everyone would at least have affordable access to at least basic care. Too many people in this country are concerned only about themselves. Is this really the world we as a people wish to live in? Where only the rich can afford to be healthy? Or is it time for revolution?
___________________________________________
The end of the hope of the Enlightenment and of the American revolution
Chris Hedges | Ralph Nader: "The Left Has Nowhere to Go"
Chris Hedges, Truthdig: "Ralph Nader in a CNN poll a few days before the 2008 presidential election had an estimated 3 percent of the electorate, or about 4 million people, behind his candidacy. But once the votes were counted, his support dwindled to a little over 700,000. Nader believes that many of his supporters entered the polling booth and could not bring themselves to challenge the Democrats and Barack Obama. I suspect Nader is right. And this retreat is another example of the lack of nerve we must overcome if we are going to battle back against the corporate state. A vote for Nader or Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney in 2008 was an act of defiance. A vote for Obama and the Democrats was an act of submission. We cannot afford to be submissive anymore."
_________________________________________
I think of the soldiers committed to eradicating some offensive idea like self determination while spreading terror and killing women and children
LAHORE, Pakistan – Lawyers showered rose petals over the suspected killer of a prominent Pakistani governor when he arrived at court Wednesday and an influential Muslim scholars group praised the assassination of the outspoken opponent of laws that order death for those who insult Islam.
___________________________________________
Can’t imagine a more contemptuous opportunist than King
In an interview with The Hill, New York Republican Rep. Peter King didn’t mince words about his feelings towards The New York Times.
“I have nothing but contempt for them,” King said. “They should be indicted under the Espionage Act. … The New York Times is just basically being a mouthpiece for political correctness.”
King’s comments come in response to a recent New York Times editorial that painted a rather negative portrait of his interactions with the Muslim community.
_____________________________________________
Maybe it’s time to eradicate the deprived and the depraved, people who climb fences. Make it clean and simple and swift
NOGALES, Mexico, Jan 5 – A U.S. Border Patrol agent was involved in a shooting on the Arizona border with Mexico on Wednesday that resulted in the death of a 17-year-old boy trying to illegally scale the border fence, Mexican police said.
Ramses Barron was found dead outside a hospital in Nogales, Sonora, in the early hours on Wednesday with a wound from a bullet fired by a U.S. Border Patrol agent, Sonora state police said citing witnesses. Three men left Barron's body at the hospital, hospital workers told police.
_______________________________________________
Defending ourselves against Defense may become latest new idea. Instead of cutting social security, what about raising taxes on the wealthy
U.S. Deficit Is a National Security Issue, Defense Expert Says: "We Can Defend the Country Better for Less"
Bottom line: "The deficit itself is a national security issue,“ Hartung says. “If you have an economy that is going downhill, you cannot have the strongest military in the world.”
_______________________________________________
DUH--the Israeli blockade of Gaza was not a humanitarian effort
JERUSALEM – A U.S. diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks says Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip was meant to push the area's economy "to the brink of collapse."
The March 3, 2008, document, published Wednesday by Norway's Aftenposten newspaper, clearly spells out one of Israel's chief objectives of the blockade: to cause widespread economic hardship in a bid to weaken the Hamas government.
________________________________________________
Better to be distracted by the Holocaust
Noam Chomsky | Breaking the Israel-Palestine Deadlock
Noam Chomsky: "While intensively engaged in illegal settlement expansion, the government of Israel is also seeking to deal with two problems: a global campaign of what it perceives as 'delegitimation' - that is, objections to its crimes and withdrawal of participation in them - and a parallel campaign of legitimation of Palestine."
_________________________________________________
Tentacles of U.S government turn it into legendary Giant squid
How Afghanistan Became a War for NATO
Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service: "The official line of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the NATO command in Afghanistan, is that the war against Afghan insurgents is vital to the security of all the countries providing troops there. In fact, however, NATO was given a central role in Afghanistan because of the influence of U.S. officials concerned with the alliance, according to a US military officer who was in a position to observe the decision-making process."
_________________________________________________
The Giant Squid of the post legal system. Instant justice
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration has ramped up its secret war on terror groups with a new military targeting center to oversee the growing use of special operations strikes against suspected militants in hot spots around the world, according to current and former U.S. officials
The White House has more than doubled the numbers of special operations forces in Afghanistan alone, as well as doubling the CIA's use of missile strikes from unmanned drones in Pakistan and expanding counterterror operations in Yemen.
The data also could be used at times to advise domestic law enforcement in dealing with suspected terrorists inside the U.S., the officials said. But the civilian authorities would have no role in "kill or capture" operations targeting militant suspects abroad.
At the heart of the new center's analysis is a cloud-computing network tied into all elements of U.S. national security, from the eavesdropping capabilities of the National Security Agency to Homeland Security's border-monitoring databases. The computer is designed to sift through masses of information to track militant suspects across the globe
and eliminate them, letting the terminator be judge, jury, and hangman for everybody including the accidental caste.
I am a disabled veteran, so I have health care. However, a lot of the people we depend on for our everyday needs, cashiers, fast food workers, and many others cannot afford it. I know someone making about $12 an hour that was recently quoted $208 per month for just herself! Something needs to be done. I would hope everyone would at least have affordable access to at least basic care. Too many people in this country are concerned only about themselves. Is this really the world we as a people wish to live in? Where only the rich can afford to be healthy? Or is it time for revolution?
___________________________________________
The end of the hope of the Enlightenment and of the American revolution
Chris Hedges | Ralph Nader: "The Left Has Nowhere to Go"
Chris Hedges, Truthdig: "Ralph Nader in a CNN poll a few days before the 2008 presidential election had an estimated 3 percent of the electorate, or about 4 million people, behind his candidacy. But once the votes were counted, his support dwindled to a little over 700,000. Nader believes that many of his supporters entered the polling booth and could not bring themselves to challenge the Democrats and Barack Obama. I suspect Nader is right. And this retreat is another example of the lack of nerve we must overcome if we are going to battle back against the corporate state. A vote for Nader or Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney in 2008 was an act of defiance. A vote for Obama and the Democrats was an act of submission. We cannot afford to be submissive anymore."
_________________________________________
I think of the soldiers committed to eradicating some offensive idea like self determination while spreading terror and killing women and children
LAHORE, Pakistan – Lawyers showered rose petals over the suspected killer of a prominent Pakistani governor when he arrived at court Wednesday and an influential Muslim scholars group praised the assassination of the outspoken opponent of laws that order death for those who insult Islam.
___________________________________________
Can’t imagine a more contemptuous opportunist than King
In an interview with The Hill, New York Republican Rep. Peter King didn’t mince words about his feelings towards The New York Times.
“I have nothing but contempt for them,” King said. “They should be indicted under the Espionage Act. … The New York Times is just basically being a mouthpiece for political correctness.”
King’s comments come in response to a recent New York Times editorial that painted a rather negative portrait of his interactions with the Muslim community.
_____________________________________________
Maybe it’s time to eradicate the deprived and the depraved, people who climb fences. Make it clean and simple and swift
NOGALES, Mexico, Jan 5 – A U.S. Border Patrol agent was involved in a shooting on the Arizona border with Mexico on Wednesday that resulted in the death of a 17-year-old boy trying to illegally scale the border fence, Mexican police said.
Ramses Barron was found dead outside a hospital in Nogales, Sonora, in the early hours on Wednesday with a wound from a bullet fired by a U.S. Border Patrol agent, Sonora state police said citing witnesses. Three men left Barron's body at the hospital, hospital workers told police.
_______________________________________________
Defending ourselves against Defense may become latest new idea. Instead of cutting social security, what about raising taxes on the wealthy
U.S. Deficit Is a National Security Issue, Defense Expert Says: "We Can Defend the Country Better for Less"
Bottom line: "The deficit itself is a national security issue,“ Hartung says. “If you have an economy that is going downhill, you cannot have the strongest military in the world.”
_______________________________________________
DUH--the Israeli blockade of Gaza was not a humanitarian effort
JERUSALEM – A U.S. diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks says Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip was meant to push the area's economy "to the brink of collapse."
The March 3, 2008, document, published Wednesday by Norway's Aftenposten newspaper, clearly spells out one of Israel's chief objectives of the blockade: to cause widespread economic hardship in a bid to weaken the Hamas government.
________________________________________________
Better to be distracted by the Holocaust
Noam Chomsky | Breaking the Israel-Palestine Deadlock
Noam Chomsky: "While intensively engaged in illegal settlement expansion, the government of Israel is also seeking to deal with two problems: a global campaign of what it perceives as 'delegitimation' - that is, objections to its crimes and withdrawal of participation in them - and a parallel campaign of legitimation of Palestine."
_________________________________________________
Tentacles of U.S government turn it into legendary Giant squid
How Afghanistan Became a War for NATO
Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service: "The official line of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the NATO command in Afghanistan, is that the war against Afghan insurgents is vital to the security of all the countries providing troops there. In fact, however, NATO was given a central role in Afghanistan because of the influence of U.S. officials concerned with the alliance, according to a US military officer who was in a position to observe the decision-making process."
_________________________________________________
The Giant Squid of the post legal system. Instant justice
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration has ramped up its secret war on terror groups with a new military targeting center to oversee the growing use of special operations strikes against suspected militants in hot spots around the world, according to current and former U.S. officials
The White House has more than doubled the numbers of special operations forces in Afghanistan alone, as well as doubling the CIA's use of missile strikes from unmanned drones in Pakistan and expanding counterterror operations in Yemen.
The data also could be used at times to advise domestic law enforcement in dealing with suspected terrorists inside the U.S., the officials said. But the civilian authorities would have no role in "kill or capture" operations targeting militant suspects abroad.
At the heart of the new center's analysis is a cloud-computing network tied into all elements of U.S. national security, from the eavesdropping capabilities of the National Security Agency to Homeland Security's border-monitoring databases. The computer is designed to sift through masses of information to track militant suspects across the globe
and eliminate them, letting the terminator be judge, jury, and hangman for everybody including the accidental caste.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Scalia reactionary; jail bankers; New Deal or Raw Deal; tea baggers left paying turition; military no place for gentlemen; assassinations catching up with us; Obama exposed to secrets; Too Big to Fail Lockheed; billions in slush money wasted on Pakistan
Scalia correct. Going back to the original document, women were not even legal--nor were slaves.
Justice Scalia: Women not Constitutionally protected from discrimination
By Liz Goodwin
"Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex," Scalia told California Lawyer. "The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws."
_______________________________________
Amnesty for drug offenders. Jail for bankers. Who have been biggest thieves, done most property damage?
Bill Black, new deal 2.0: "The role of the criminal justice system with regard to financial fraud by elite bankers in 2011 is likely to reprise its role last decade - de facto decriminalization The Galleon investigation of insider trading at hedge funds will take much of the FBI's and the Department of Justice's (DOJ) focus. The state attorneys general investigations of foreclosure fraud do focus on the major players such as the Bank of America (BoA), but they are unlikely to lead to criminal liability for any senior bank officials. It is most likely that they will lead to financial settlements that include new funding for loan modifications."
_________________________________________
A return to Survival of the Fittest or a re commitment to a vision of social justice--our choice
Henry A. Giroux, Truthout: "Responding in 1940 to the unfolding catastrophes perpetrated by the rise of fascism in Germany, Walter Benjamin, a German Jewish philosopher and literary critic, wrote his now famous 'Thesis on the Philosophy of History.' In the ninth thesis, Benjamin comments on Paul Klee's painting 'Angelus Novus.'… The meaning and significance of Benjamin's angel of history has been the subject of varied interpretations by philosophers, literary critics, and others. Yet, it still offers us a powerful lesson about a set of historical conditions marked by a 'catastrophe that keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage.'… We need to return to Benjamin's angel of history in order to reimagine what it means to reconstruct a social state that invests in people rather than in the rich, mega corporations, the prison-industrial complex and a permanent war economy. We need to imagine how the state can be refigured along with the very nature of politics and economics in order to eliminate structural inequality, racism and militarism."
______________________________________
After the New Deal, the Raw Deal
Facing daunting spending gaps, many states are looking to limit labor's political and bargaining power, the New York Times reports. The news comes just as Washington Republicans gear up for their own "war" against public-sector unions.
Perhaps the most aggressive attack on unions is being launched in Ohio, where the new Republican governor, John Kasich, is looking to take away the right of state-financed child-care and home-care workers to unionize, and to ban strikes by public-school teachers.
"If they want to strike, they should be fired," Kasich has said. "They've got good jobs, they've got high pay, they get good benefits, a great retirement. What are they striking for?"
______________________________________
Unintended consequences and no unions in AL to take the hit. Maybe the tea baggers will take care of the bill
( MONTGOMERY, Ala.) (AP) - A judge's ruling means all 42,000 participants remaining in Alabama's prepaid college tuition plan will be affected by the outcome of a lawsuit seeking to make sure tuition is paid under the financially precarious program.
Circuit Judge Johnny Hardwick ruled the suit will become class-action litigation covering all participants because they face similar legal issues with the Prepaid Affordable College Tuition plan.
___________________________________________
Remember the Tailhook scandal. Killing just not adapted to cleanliness
NORFOLK, Va. – Raunchy comedy videos made by a high-ranking Navy commander and shown to the crew of an aircraft carrier three or four years ago have suddenly proved an embarrassment to the Pentagon that could blight the officer's career…
______________________________________
Our own people no longer be invulnerable to assassination. Might free wheeling international murder come back to haunt us?
Randall Chase, Associated Press
DOVER, Del
The body of John Wheeler III, 66, a military expert who served three Republican presidents, was uncovered Friday when a garbage truck emptied its contents at the Cherry Island landfill in Wilmington.
Wheeler, as special assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force at the Pentagon during the George W. Bush administration, helped develop the Air Force Cyber Command.
__________________________________________
Obama hiding from his own secrets
Ray McGovern, Consortium News: "Perhaps President Barack Obama should give himself a waiver on the ban prohibiting U.S. government employees from downloading classified cables released by WikiLeaks, so he can better understand the futility of his Afghan War strategy. For instance, if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has hidden from him Ambassador Karl Eikenberry's cables from Kabul, he might wish to search out KABUL 001892 of July 13, 2009, in which Eikenberry reports that Afghan President Hamid Karzai is 'unable to grasp the most rudimentary principles of state building.'
_____________________________________
Sound familiar?
Too Big to Fail: Lockheed Martin's "Got Their Fingers Everywhere", Says Author
Posted Jan 04, 2011 09:05am EST by Stacy Curtin in Politics
With $40 billion in annual revenue, Lockheed Martin is the single largest recipient of U.S. tax dollars. The company receives about $36 billion in government contracts per year. In 2008, $29 billion of that was for U.S. military contracts – a dollar figure 25% higher than its competitors Boeing Co. and Northrop Grumman.
What does that mean for you, the U.S. taxpayer? According to Hartung, each taxpaying household contributes $260 to Lockheed’s coffers each year!
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/too-big-to-fail-lockheed-martin's-%22got-their-fingers-everywhere%22-says-author-535769.html?tickers=LMT,NOC,BA,RTN,XLF,ITA,PPA&sec=topStories&pos=8&asset=&ccode=
__________________________________________
Even promise of billions can’t buy favorable U.S. ally in honestly corrupt Pakistan
By SEBASTIAN ABBOT, Associated Press Sebastian Abbot, Associated Press – Mon Jan 3, 4:09 pm ET
ISLAMABAD – The collapse of Pakistan's ruling coalition after a key party's defection complicates efforts to tackle problems facing this nuclear-armed nation already grappling with widespread poverty and insurgent attacks.
The renewed political turmoil bodes ill for military action against Muslim extremists that the U.S. believes is key to success in neighboring Afghanistan, analysts said.
________________________________________
How interesting. How about attacks on Muslims? Don’t remember
State Department expressing worry about that.
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States said Tuesday it is "deeply concerned" about the rise in attacks against Christians in parts of the Middle East and Africa.
"We are certainly aware of a recent string of attacks against Christians from Iraq to Egypt to Nigeria," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said. "We are deeply concerned about what seems to be an increasing trend."
Justice Scalia: Women not Constitutionally protected from discrimination
By Liz Goodwin
"Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex," Scalia told California Lawyer. "The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws."
_______________________________________
Amnesty for drug offenders. Jail for bankers. Who have been biggest thieves, done most property damage?
Bill Black, new deal 2.0: "The role of the criminal justice system with regard to financial fraud by elite bankers in 2011 is likely to reprise its role last decade - de facto decriminalization The Galleon investigation of insider trading at hedge funds will take much of the FBI's and the Department of Justice's (DOJ) focus. The state attorneys general investigations of foreclosure fraud do focus on the major players such as the Bank of America (BoA), but they are unlikely to lead to criminal liability for any senior bank officials. It is most likely that they will lead to financial settlements that include new funding for loan modifications."
_________________________________________
A return to Survival of the Fittest or a re commitment to a vision of social justice--our choice
Henry A. Giroux, Truthout: "Responding in 1940 to the unfolding catastrophes perpetrated by the rise of fascism in Germany, Walter Benjamin, a German Jewish philosopher and literary critic, wrote his now famous 'Thesis on the Philosophy of History.' In the ninth thesis, Benjamin comments on Paul Klee's painting 'Angelus Novus.'… The meaning and significance of Benjamin's angel of history has been the subject of varied interpretations by philosophers, literary critics, and others. Yet, it still offers us a powerful lesson about a set of historical conditions marked by a 'catastrophe that keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage.'… We need to return to Benjamin's angel of history in order to reimagine what it means to reconstruct a social state that invests in people rather than in the rich, mega corporations, the prison-industrial complex and a permanent war economy. We need to imagine how the state can be refigured along with the very nature of politics and economics in order to eliminate structural inequality, racism and militarism."
______________________________________
After the New Deal, the Raw Deal
Facing daunting spending gaps, many states are looking to limit labor's political and bargaining power, the New York Times reports. The news comes just as Washington Republicans gear up for their own "war" against public-sector unions.
Perhaps the most aggressive attack on unions is being launched in Ohio, where the new Republican governor, John Kasich, is looking to take away the right of state-financed child-care and home-care workers to unionize, and to ban strikes by public-school teachers.
"If they want to strike, they should be fired," Kasich has said. "They've got good jobs, they've got high pay, they get good benefits, a great retirement. What are they striking for?"
______________________________________
Unintended consequences and no unions in AL to take the hit. Maybe the tea baggers will take care of the bill
( MONTGOMERY, Ala.) (AP) - A judge's ruling means all 42,000 participants remaining in Alabama's prepaid college tuition plan will be affected by the outcome of a lawsuit seeking to make sure tuition is paid under the financially precarious program.
Circuit Judge Johnny Hardwick ruled the suit will become class-action litigation covering all participants because they face similar legal issues with the Prepaid Affordable College Tuition plan.
___________________________________________
Remember the Tailhook scandal. Killing just not adapted to cleanliness
NORFOLK, Va. – Raunchy comedy videos made by a high-ranking Navy commander and shown to the crew of an aircraft carrier three or four years ago have suddenly proved an embarrassment to the Pentagon that could blight the officer's career…
______________________________________
Our own people no longer be invulnerable to assassination. Might free wheeling international murder come back to haunt us?
Randall Chase, Associated Press
DOVER, Del
The body of John Wheeler III, 66, a military expert who served three Republican presidents, was uncovered Friday when a garbage truck emptied its contents at the Cherry Island landfill in Wilmington.
Wheeler, as special assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force at the Pentagon during the George W. Bush administration, helped develop the Air Force Cyber Command.
__________________________________________
Obama hiding from his own secrets
Ray McGovern, Consortium News: "Perhaps President Barack Obama should give himself a waiver on the ban prohibiting U.S. government employees from downloading classified cables released by WikiLeaks, so he can better understand the futility of his Afghan War strategy. For instance, if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has hidden from him Ambassador Karl Eikenberry's cables from Kabul, he might wish to search out KABUL 001892 of July 13, 2009, in which Eikenberry reports that Afghan President Hamid Karzai is 'unable to grasp the most rudimentary principles of state building.'
_____________________________________
Sound familiar?
Too Big to Fail: Lockheed Martin's "Got Their Fingers Everywhere", Says Author
Posted Jan 04, 2011 09:05am EST by Stacy Curtin in Politics
With $40 billion in annual revenue, Lockheed Martin is the single largest recipient of U.S. tax dollars. The company receives about $36 billion in government contracts per year. In 2008, $29 billion of that was for U.S. military contracts – a dollar figure 25% higher than its competitors Boeing Co. and Northrop Grumman.
What does that mean for you, the U.S. taxpayer? According to Hartung, each taxpaying household contributes $260 to Lockheed’s coffers each year!
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/too-big-to-fail-lockheed-martin's-%22got-their-fingers-everywhere%22-says-author-535769.html?tickers=LMT,NOC,BA,RTN,XLF,ITA,PPA&sec=topStories&pos=8&asset=&ccode=
__________________________________________
Even promise of billions can’t buy favorable U.S. ally in honestly corrupt Pakistan
By SEBASTIAN ABBOT, Associated Press Sebastian Abbot, Associated Press – Mon Jan 3, 4:09 pm ET
ISLAMABAD – The collapse of Pakistan's ruling coalition after a key party's defection complicates efforts to tackle problems facing this nuclear-armed nation already grappling with widespread poverty and insurgent attacks.
The renewed political turmoil bodes ill for military action against Muslim extremists that the U.S. believes is key to success in neighboring Afghanistan, analysts said.
________________________________________
How interesting. How about attacks on Muslims? Don’t remember
State Department expressing worry about that.
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States said Tuesday it is "deeply concerned" about the rise in attacks against Christians in parts of the Middle East and Africa.
"We are certainly aware of a recent string of attacks against Christians from Iraq to Egypt to Nigeria," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said. "We are deeply concerned about what seems to be an increasing trend."
Monday, January 3, 2011
Poisoning PA rivers for profit; manufacturing the news; baggers will reap rewards; P in Obama stands for privatizing government; Bloomberg asks politician to be priest; power of example in college sports corrupts everything
When will we stop trading our well being for wealth and oil?
The natural gas boom gripping parts of the U.S. has a nasty byproduct: wastewater so salty, and so polluted with metals like barium and strontium, that most states require drillers to get rid of the stuff by injecting it down shafts thousands of feet deep.
Not in Pennsylvania, one of the states at the center of the gas rush.
There, the liquid that gushes from gas wells is only partially treated for substances that could be environmentally harmful, then dumped into rivers and streams from which communities get their drinking water.
________________________________________
How the news gets manufactured
How the media played up Saddam Hussein’s toppled statue
Mon Jan 3, 10:37 am ET
By Michael Calderone
On April 9, 2003, U.S. Marines helped bring down the monument to Saddam's regime in an image that Fox News and CNN replayed every 4.4 and 7.5 minutes during their broadcast day. Other networks also aired the clip repeatedly, with anchors gushing about the "historic" nature of the events unfolding in Baghdad. But the event wasn't without controversy: Critics argued that the military staged the moment in Firdos Square to generate positive news coverage while the war continued.
The U.S. media — with few notable exceptions — had already played a role in promoting the Bush administration's rationale for war, including bogus claims about weapons of mass destruction. Now, the media once again helped the Bush administration by focusing on a single event that, for some, could symbolize a people being liberated from a brutal dictator. One anchor likened the image to that of the Berlin Wall coming down
_________________________________________
We shall reap what we sew--and the baggers will rue the day they hooked up with the rich
Throwing Public Unions Under the Bus
Shamus Cooke, Truthout: "The stage is set and the main actors in Congress and in the corporate establishment are ready to perform after rehearsing behind closed doors for the coming assault on organized labor's most powerful sector: public workers. The final preparations were smoothed out in Obama's tax 'compromise' with the Republicans, which gave details of the drama's first act. The tax plan purposely did not include a critical element for state funding, called the Build America Bonds program (BAB), which allows recession-sunk states to easily borrow money from the federal government. In the face of enormous deficits, the states would be left to drown."
___________________________________________
Obama proving where his heart is and it ain’t with the people. It’s with the power brokers
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama is considering tapping J.P. Morgan Chase executive William Daley for a senior role in the White House, possibly chief of staff, a person familiar with the matter said on Monday.
Daley is also a former commerce secretary. If he were chosen, the move would help satisfy a clamor in the business community to have greater representation for private industry within the administration.
_________________________________________
What a subversive way to privatize government secret ops. Pretty soon we won’t have a private government just to run Treasury and Commerce and Education
WASHINGTON – The top Pentagon job overseeing the secret special operations war on terrorist groups has been offered to former U.S. counterterrorism ambassador Michael Sheehan, according to two senior U.S. officials.
Sheehan, a retired U.S. Army Green Beret, did not return calls to his New York-based consulting firm, the Lexington Security Group
Increasingly, the sensitive operations Sheehan would oversee are performed by personnel from a number of different agencies, including the U.S. military's elite Joint Special Operations Command, the CIA and other members of the defense, intelligence and law enforcement community. Special operations personnel assigned to JSOC include Navy SEALs, U.S. Army Rangers and Green Berets.
___________________________________________
Just what we need for an educational fix--another Five Minute Manager. Like asking a politician to be a priest
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former publisher Cathie Black, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's controversial choice to run the city's schools, began her new job on Monday visiting classrooms and defending her qualifications to run the nation's largest school system.
Praised by Bloomberg as a "superstar manager" from the private sector, Black faces a system of some 1.1 million students and nearly 1,700 schools suffering from declining performance test scores and devastating budget cuts.
_____________________________________________
College sports condones inflated grades and surrogate exam takers and thesis writers by example
Pryor’s acts expose charade of college athletics
By Dan Wetzel
Terrelle “The Truth” Pryor is my favorite college football player and it isn’t just the way the Ohio State quarterback can shred defenses.
Pryor is a godsend to anyone who believes the business of college athletics is little more than a smoke-and-mirror show of situational ethics, selective enforcement and tightly controlled public relations designed to dodge taxes and make millionaires out of administrators.
Then there’s the general cronyism that exists between bowl games and the college administrators who keep them financially alive. On Dec. 30, PlayoffPAC revealed that the Orange Bowl provided a free, five-day Caribbean cruise in 2010 to 40 athletic directors, conference officials and their wives, in violation, the group alleges, of IRS rules.
The natural gas boom gripping parts of the U.S. has a nasty byproduct: wastewater so salty, and so polluted with metals like barium and strontium, that most states require drillers to get rid of the stuff by injecting it down shafts thousands of feet deep.
Not in Pennsylvania, one of the states at the center of the gas rush.
There, the liquid that gushes from gas wells is only partially treated for substances that could be environmentally harmful, then dumped into rivers and streams from which communities get their drinking water.
________________________________________
How the news gets manufactured
How the media played up Saddam Hussein’s toppled statue
Mon Jan 3, 10:37 am ET
By Michael Calderone
On April 9, 2003, U.S. Marines helped bring down the monument to Saddam's regime in an image that Fox News and CNN replayed every 4.4 and 7.5 minutes during their broadcast day. Other networks also aired the clip repeatedly, with anchors gushing about the "historic" nature of the events unfolding in Baghdad. But the event wasn't without controversy: Critics argued that the military staged the moment in Firdos Square to generate positive news coverage while the war continued.
The U.S. media — with few notable exceptions — had already played a role in promoting the Bush administration's rationale for war, including bogus claims about weapons of mass destruction. Now, the media once again helped the Bush administration by focusing on a single event that, for some, could symbolize a people being liberated from a brutal dictator. One anchor likened the image to that of the Berlin Wall coming down
_________________________________________
We shall reap what we sew--and the baggers will rue the day they hooked up with the rich
Throwing Public Unions Under the Bus
Shamus Cooke, Truthout: "The stage is set and the main actors in Congress and in the corporate establishment are ready to perform after rehearsing behind closed doors for the coming assault on organized labor's most powerful sector: public workers. The final preparations were smoothed out in Obama's tax 'compromise' with the Republicans, which gave details of the drama's first act. The tax plan purposely did not include a critical element for state funding, called the Build America Bonds program (BAB), which allows recession-sunk states to easily borrow money from the federal government. In the face of enormous deficits, the states would be left to drown."
___________________________________________
Obama proving where his heart is and it ain’t with the people. It’s with the power brokers
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama is considering tapping J.P. Morgan Chase executive William Daley for a senior role in the White House, possibly chief of staff, a person familiar with the matter said on Monday.
Daley is also a former commerce secretary. If he were chosen, the move would help satisfy a clamor in the business community to have greater representation for private industry within the administration.
_________________________________________
What a subversive way to privatize government secret ops. Pretty soon we won’t have a private government just to run Treasury and Commerce and Education
WASHINGTON – The top Pentagon job overseeing the secret special operations war on terrorist groups has been offered to former U.S. counterterrorism ambassador Michael Sheehan, according to two senior U.S. officials.
Sheehan, a retired U.S. Army Green Beret, did not return calls to his New York-based consulting firm, the Lexington Security Group
Increasingly, the sensitive operations Sheehan would oversee are performed by personnel from a number of different agencies, including the U.S. military's elite Joint Special Operations Command, the CIA and other members of the defense, intelligence and law enforcement community. Special operations personnel assigned to JSOC include Navy SEALs, U.S. Army Rangers and Green Berets.
___________________________________________
Just what we need for an educational fix--another Five Minute Manager. Like asking a politician to be a priest
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former publisher Cathie Black, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's controversial choice to run the city's schools, began her new job on Monday visiting classrooms and defending her qualifications to run the nation's largest school system.
Praised by Bloomberg as a "superstar manager" from the private sector, Black faces a system of some 1.1 million students and nearly 1,700 schools suffering from declining performance test scores and devastating budget cuts.
_____________________________________________
College sports condones inflated grades and surrogate exam takers and thesis writers by example
Pryor’s acts expose charade of college athletics
By Dan Wetzel
Terrelle “The Truth” Pryor is my favorite college football player and it isn’t just the way the Ohio State quarterback can shred defenses.
Pryor is a godsend to anyone who believes the business of college athletics is little more than a smoke-and-mirror show of situational ethics, selective enforcement and tightly controlled public relations designed to dodge taxes and make millionaires out of administrators.
Then there’s the general cronyism that exists between bowl games and the college administrators who keep them financially alive. On Dec. 30, PlayoffPAC revealed that the Orange Bowl provided a free, five-day Caribbean cruise in 2010 to 40 athletic directors, conference officials and their wives, in violation, the group alleges, of IRS rules.
Justice for killers; State of the Union, 1945; permanent bases, Afghanistan; birds fall from sky; dishing the dirt; nicotine deaths
Miscarriage of justice
2,000,0000 and counting in prison for varied crimes. Crime fighting and media resources misallocated, misguided. All the big crimes committed by institutions, by armies, by corporations, by banks--not by individuals. Time to go after the collective criminals who leverage their capacity to kill.
Individual killer, 1/2/11
(MOBILE, Ala.) Mobile Police are investigating the death of a man found lying on Deer River Road.
The mass murderers
Cigarette Maker Manipulated Nicotine, Its Records Suggest
By BARRY MEIER, Published: February 23, 1998
Tobacco industry documents, including some released in recent weeks, strongly suggest that one of the nation's largest cigarette producers, the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, altered nicotine delivery to smokers, apparently believing that doing so would increase the ''kick'' of its popular Winston brand and make it more competitive.
WikiLeaks, Ideological Legitimacy and the Crisis of Empire
Francis Shor, Truthout: "Given the battered economic and military standing of the United States over the past several years, the hysterical reaction of the American political class over the recent release of State Department cables by WikiLeaks is not surprising.... The abuses heaped on Julian Assange and the threats against him, especially, but not exclusively, from politicians in the United States, reflects this hollowing out of democracy and a fear of the new virtual world of free speech."
___________________________________________________
State of the Union 65 years later. Nothing’s changed. Scenario for Obama bushwhack
Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse first staged their Pulitzer Prize–winning play, State of the Union, in 1945. Candidate Grant Matthews is a self-made businessman who is very popular with the public for his strong and controversial views. A politician, James Conover, and a host of other politically influential supporters convince a reluctant Grant to run for president, and he agrees, thinking that he can do so without compromising his plan to be an honest candidate. Unfortunately, as Grant makes more and more concessions, he—and his wife, Mary—realize that in order to be honest, he must risk alienating special interest political groups, which could cost him the election.
__________________________________________
The Ides of March
BEEBE, Ark. – Wildlife officials are trying to determine what caused more than 1,000 blackbirds to die and fall from the sky over an Arkansas town.
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said Saturday that it began receiving reports about the dead birds about 11:30 p.m. the previous night. The birds fell over a 1-mile area of Beebe, and an aerial survey indicated that no other dead birds were found outside of that area.
____________________________________
Permanent U.S. bases. How could an independent Afghanistan ask for anything more?
WASHINGTON – A leading GOP lawmaker on U.S. military policy says he wants American officials to consider establishing permanent military bases in Afghanistan.
Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina says that having a few U.S. air bases in Afghanistan would be a benefit to the region and would give Afghan security forces an edge against the Taliban.
_____________________________________
CIA sends out its Plumbers Unit to dig up, manufacture, dish out the dirt to discredit opposition. Assange gets Berlusconi/ Rather treatment
By Victor L. Simpson
-Associated Press
6:51 p.m., Sunday, November 7, 2010
ROME | Is this time different? Silvio Berlusconi has survived prostitution scandals, howling gaffes and seamy courtroom dramas only to bounce back with a billion-dollar grin on his face.
Italians have taken to shrugging off their leader's misbehavior as the foibles of a man accustomed to "la dolce vita" — the sweet life that they themselves aspire to.
______________________________________
WikiLeaks, Ideological Legitimacy and the Crisis of Empire
Francis Shor, Truthout: "Given the battered economic and military standing of the United States over the past several years, the hysterical reaction of the American political class over the recent release of State Department cables by WikiLeaks is not surprising.... The abuses heaped on Julian Assange and the threats against him, especially, but not exclusively, from politicians in the United States, reflects this hollowing out of democracy and a fear of the new virtual world of free speech."
______________________________________
Smoking Deaths Worldwide
International Smoking Death Totals · More International Smoking · Smoking Bans
· Addiction? · Smoking Stats ·
Around 5.4 million deaths a year are caused by tobacco.
* Smoking is set to kill 6.5 million people in 2015 and 8.3 million humans in 2030, with the biggest rise in low-and middle-income countries.
* Every 6.5 seconds a current or former smoker dies, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
* An estimated 1.3 billion people are smokers worldwide (WHO).
Over 443,000 Americans (over 18 percent of all deaths) die because of smoking each year. Secondhand smoke kills about 50,000 of them.
Surgeons General reports
1964: “Cigarette smoking is causally related to lung cancer in men; the magnitude of cigarette smoking far outweighs all other factors. The data for women, though less extensive,point in the same direction.”
“Cigarette smoking is the most important of the causes of chronic bronchitis in the United States, and increases the risk of dying from chronic bronchitis.”
“Male cigarette smokers have a higher death rate from coronary artery disease than non-smoking males….”.
“Cigarette smoking is a significant factor in the causation of cancer of the larynx [and]an association exists between cigarette smoking and cancer of the urinary bladder in
men.”1
Admissions of the Tobacco
Industry - Public vs Private Statements
http://www.ashaust.org.au/pdfs/fact10.pdf
2,000,0000 and counting in prison for varied crimes. Crime fighting and media resources misallocated, misguided. All the big crimes committed by institutions, by armies, by corporations, by banks--not by individuals. Time to go after the collective criminals who leverage their capacity to kill.
Individual killer, 1/2/11
(MOBILE, Ala.) Mobile Police are investigating the death of a man found lying on Deer River Road.
The mass murderers
Cigarette Maker Manipulated Nicotine, Its Records Suggest
By BARRY MEIER, Published: February 23, 1998
Tobacco industry documents, including some released in recent weeks, strongly suggest that one of the nation's largest cigarette producers, the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, altered nicotine delivery to smokers, apparently believing that doing so would increase the ''kick'' of its popular Winston brand and make it more competitive.
WikiLeaks, Ideological Legitimacy and the Crisis of Empire
Francis Shor, Truthout: "Given the battered economic and military standing of the United States over the past several years, the hysterical reaction of the American political class over the recent release of State Department cables by WikiLeaks is not surprising.... The abuses heaped on Julian Assange and the threats against him, especially, but not exclusively, from politicians in the United States, reflects this hollowing out of democracy and a fear of the new virtual world of free speech."
___________________________________________________
State of the Union 65 years later. Nothing’s changed. Scenario for Obama bushwhack
Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse first staged their Pulitzer Prize–winning play, State of the Union, in 1945. Candidate Grant Matthews is a self-made businessman who is very popular with the public for his strong and controversial views. A politician, James Conover, and a host of other politically influential supporters convince a reluctant Grant to run for president, and he agrees, thinking that he can do so without compromising his plan to be an honest candidate. Unfortunately, as Grant makes more and more concessions, he—and his wife, Mary—realize that in order to be honest, he must risk alienating special interest political groups, which could cost him the election.
__________________________________________
The Ides of March
BEEBE, Ark. – Wildlife officials are trying to determine what caused more than 1,000 blackbirds to die and fall from the sky over an Arkansas town.
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said Saturday that it began receiving reports about the dead birds about 11:30 p.m. the previous night. The birds fell over a 1-mile area of Beebe, and an aerial survey indicated that no other dead birds were found outside of that area.
____________________________________
Permanent U.S. bases. How could an independent Afghanistan ask for anything more?
WASHINGTON – A leading GOP lawmaker on U.S. military policy says he wants American officials to consider establishing permanent military bases in Afghanistan.
Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina says that having a few U.S. air bases in Afghanistan would be a benefit to the region and would give Afghan security forces an edge against the Taliban.
_____________________________________
CIA sends out its Plumbers Unit to dig up, manufacture, dish out the dirt to discredit opposition. Assange gets Berlusconi/ Rather treatment
By Victor L. Simpson
-Associated Press
6:51 p.m., Sunday, November 7, 2010
ROME | Is this time different? Silvio Berlusconi has survived prostitution scandals, howling gaffes and seamy courtroom dramas only to bounce back with a billion-dollar grin on his face.
Italians have taken to shrugging off their leader's misbehavior as the foibles of a man accustomed to "la dolce vita" — the sweet life that they themselves aspire to.
______________________________________
WikiLeaks, Ideological Legitimacy and the Crisis of Empire
Francis Shor, Truthout: "Given the battered economic and military standing of the United States over the past several years, the hysterical reaction of the American political class over the recent release of State Department cables by WikiLeaks is not surprising.... The abuses heaped on Julian Assange and the threats against him, especially, but not exclusively, from politicians in the United States, reflects this hollowing out of democracy and a fear of the new virtual world of free speech."
______________________________________
Smoking Deaths Worldwide
International Smoking Death Totals · More International Smoking · Smoking Bans
· Addiction? · Smoking Stats ·
Around 5.4 million deaths a year are caused by tobacco.
* Smoking is set to kill 6.5 million people in 2015 and 8.3 million humans in 2030, with the biggest rise in low-and middle-income countries.
* Every 6.5 seconds a current or former smoker dies, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
* An estimated 1.3 billion people are smokers worldwide (WHO).
Over 443,000 Americans (over 18 percent of all deaths) die because of smoking each year. Secondhand smoke kills about 50,000 of them.
Surgeons General reports
1964: “Cigarette smoking is causally related to lung cancer in men; the magnitude of cigarette smoking far outweighs all other factors. The data for women, though less extensive,point in the same direction.”
“Cigarette smoking is the most important of the causes of chronic bronchitis in the United States, and increases the risk of dying from chronic bronchitis.”
“Male cigarette smokers have a higher death rate from coronary artery disease than non-smoking males….”.
“Cigarette smoking is a significant factor in the causation of cancer of the larynx [and]an association exists between cigarette smoking and cancer of the urinary bladder in
men.”1
Admissions of the Tobacco
Industry - Public vs Private Statements
http://www.ashaust.org.au/pdfs/fact10.pdf
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Society for whom the bells toll, making a statement with our lives; Silent Spring; Prophets of War; Citizens United; reason for pessimism; perpetual war; toxic cities
An opportunity to take the time to make a statement about our lives and what matters rather than playing cards at a senior citizen center
Ellen Goodman: "In little over a century, Americans have gone from a life expectancy of 47 to one of 78. By 2025 there will be 66 million Americans over 65. The decisions that we make individually and collectively about how to spend this gift of time will reshape the country.... This narrative of older age redefines senior citizenship as less a list of entitlements than a worksheet of contributions. And it fits a popular image of our generation."
_____________________________________
Silent Spring would be buried by the doubting cable commentators and never get published today
Carson's survey of the research on pesticides opens in a most unscientific fashion with a tale about an American town that has suffered a series of plagues. At chapter's end, Carson acknowledges that the town is an imaginary one, but lest the tale be dismissed as mere fantasy, she hastens to add that each of the catastrophes it catalogs ‘‘has actually happened somewhere, and many real communities have already suffered a substantial number of them.’’
________________________________________
Corruption at the heart of democracy
"Bill Hartung’s Prophets of War is a searing indictment of the collusion between Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon, and Congress to boost the company’s profits at the expense of the American taxpayer, making the country on occasion less, rather than more, secure. He documents the company’s shameful corporate history at the apex of the military-industrial complex in meticulous detail. With dry humour he reveals the pork-barrel politics that have sustained Lockheed Martin but that undermine America’s democracy. A must-read for anyone concerned about the health of that democracy and the folly of so much of the national security discourse that underpins it."
—Andrew Feinstein, former ANC Member of Parliament and author of After the Party: Corruption, the ANC and South Africa's Uncertain Future
____________________________________________
The worlds of Aldus Huxley and George Orwell
Bob Burnett, Huffington Post: "There was one 2010 event that, in terms of its long-term impact, loomed above the others, the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court Decision.... We've entered a new phase of American history, the Corporatist period where multinational corporations have unbridled political influence. This movement started before the Citizens United decision, but the Roberts' Supreme Court has accelerated the pace and thereby profoundly weakened our democracy."
______________________________________
We’re drowning in optimism and our heads are stuck in the sand
Randall Amster, Foreign Policy in Focus: "For the coming year, rather than short-term resolutions, I'm issuing an ongoing challenge that is at once personal and political.... I believe that 2011 will be the year that the majority of people in the world demonstrably turn away from the brink of destruction and embrace a spirit of positive innovation and creative intervention in their communities.... The task of unearthing the positive news in our midst is truly a great challenge that will thoroughly engage our searching minds. In that spirit, I sincerely wish you all a very happy new year – and I look forward to creating it together."
_______________________________________________\
Perpetual war
Michael True, Truthout: "At the beginning of the new year, consequences of 'life at war' stare us in the face: the victimization of military and civilian populations and a huge national debt, including an annual military budget that is larger than all military budgets in the world combined and includes $5 billion that remains unaccounted for in Iraq, as well as aid to Pakistan that has wound up in the hands of the Taliban.... Any responsible citizen acknowledges this painful history in the hope of redirecting US foreign policy in the future. The purpose of reclaiming it is not to open old wounds, but to encourage legislative and direct action committed to peacemaking. It is a call to critique the policies and competence of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the national security apparatus responsible for these disasters."
_________________________________________________
Government, protecting the people or protecting the corporations. Sanjay Gupta about Toxic Towns on CNN
Since 1998, the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) – which is a division of the Centers for Disease Control – has conducted an Exposure Investigation of dioxins in Mossville, Louisiana, an historic African American community located next to the city of Lake Charles.
The Exposure Investigation, a collaborative effort involving the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),documents that Mossville residents have an average level of dioxins that is 3 times higher than the average level of dioxins in the general U.S. population. However, the Exposure Investigation entirely fails to identify the sources of the dioxins harming the health and environment of residents. Dioxins are the most toxic chemicals known to science, and scientists have determined that there is no safe level of dioxin compounds. Dioxins can cause cancer, reproductive damage, and extensive harm to fetal and child development. Dioxin compounds build up in the human body where they are stored in fatty tissues, such as breast milk, and can be passed on to the unborn during pregnancy and lactation.
Mossville residents are surrounded by 14 toxic industrial facilities, several of which routinely release dioxins into the air, water, and land. Residents have long complained about health problems that a university health study has linked to industrial pollution. However, governmental agencies continue to issue permits which allow the industrial facilities to increase the amount of toxic pollution, including dioxins, that they release into the Mossville community.
Notwithstanding ATSDR’s and EPA’s obligation to protect human health and the environment, and
Mossville residents’ repeated demands that these agencies identify and eliminate the sources of the dioxin exposures, ATSDR and EPA have never attempted to investigate any link between the local industrial dioxin emissions and the dioxins detected in the blood and environment of Mossville residents.
This report presents an analysis of the data collected by these very same agencies, which these agencies could have, but failed to analyze. As discussed in this report, the following local industrial facilities are the sources of the elevated dioxin levels in the Mossville community:
Conoco Phillips oil refi nery
Entergy Roy S. Nelson coal-fi red power plant
Georgia Gulf vinyl manufacturing facility
Lyondell chemical manufacturing facility
PPG Industries vinyl manufacturing facility
Sasol chemical manufacturing facility.
http://www.ehumanrights.org/docs/REVISED%20MOSSVILLE%20REPORT%20(PRESS,%20FULL).pdf
Ellen Goodman: "In little over a century, Americans have gone from a life expectancy of 47 to one of 78. By 2025 there will be 66 million Americans over 65. The decisions that we make individually and collectively about how to spend this gift of time will reshape the country.... This narrative of older age redefines senior citizenship as less a list of entitlements than a worksheet of contributions. And it fits a popular image of our generation."
_____________________________________
Silent Spring would be buried by the doubting cable commentators and never get published today
Carson's survey of the research on pesticides opens in a most unscientific fashion with a tale about an American town that has suffered a series of plagues. At chapter's end, Carson acknowledges that the town is an imaginary one, but lest the tale be dismissed as mere fantasy, she hastens to add that each of the catastrophes it catalogs ‘‘has actually happened somewhere, and many real communities have already suffered a substantial number of them.’’
________________________________________
Corruption at the heart of democracy
"Bill Hartung’s Prophets of War is a searing indictment of the collusion between Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon, and Congress to boost the company’s profits at the expense of the American taxpayer, making the country on occasion less, rather than more, secure. He documents the company’s shameful corporate history at the apex of the military-industrial complex in meticulous detail. With dry humour he reveals the pork-barrel politics that have sustained Lockheed Martin but that undermine America’s democracy. A must-read for anyone concerned about the health of that democracy and the folly of so much of the national security discourse that underpins it."
—Andrew Feinstein, former ANC Member of Parliament and author of After the Party: Corruption, the ANC and South Africa's Uncertain Future
____________________________________________
The worlds of Aldus Huxley and George Orwell
Bob Burnett, Huffington Post: "There was one 2010 event that, in terms of its long-term impact, loomed above the others, the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court Decision.... We've entered a new phase of American history, the Corporatist period where multinational corporations have unbridled political influence. This movement started before the Citizens United decision, but the Roberts' Supreme Court has accelerated the pace and thereby profoundly weakened our democracy."
______________________________________
We’re drowning in optimism and our heads are stuck in the sand
Randall Amster, Foreign Policy in Focus: "For the coming year, rather than short-term resolutions, I'm issuing an ongoing challenge that is at once personal and political.... I believe that 2011 will be the year that the majority of people in the world demonstrably turn away from the brink of destruction and embrace a spirit of positive innovation and creative intervention in their communities.... The task of unearthing the positive news in our midst is truly a great challenge that will thoroughly engage our searching minds. In that spirit, I sincerely wish you all a very happy new year – and I look forward to creating it together."
_______________________________________________\
Perpetual war
Michael True, Truthout: "At the beginning of the new year, consequences of 'life at war' stare us in the face: the victimization of military and civilian populations and a huge national debt, including an annual military budget that is larger than all military budgets in the world combined and includes $5 billion that remains unaccounted for in Iraq, as well as aid to Pakistan that has wound up in the hands of the Taliban.... Any responsible citizen acknowledges this painful history in the hope of redirecting US foreign policy in the future. The purpose of reclaiming it is not to open old wounds, but to encourage legislative and direct action committed to peacemaking. It is a call to critique the policies and competence of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the national security apparatus responsible for these disasters."
_________________________________________________
Government, protecting the people or protecting the corporations. Sanjay Gupta about Toxic Towns on CNN
Since 1998, the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) – which is a division of the Centers for Disease Control – has conducted an Exposure Investigation of dioxins in Mossville, Louisiana, an historic African American community located next to the city of Lake Charles.
The Exposure Investigation, a collaborative effort involving the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),documents that Mossville residents have an average level of dioxins that is 3 times higher than the average level of dioxins in the general U.S. population. However, the Exposure Investigation entirely fails to identify the sources of the dioxins harming the health and environment of residents. Dioxins are the most toxic chemicals known to science, and scientists have determined that there is no safe level of dioxin compounds. Dioxins can cause cancer, reproductive damage, and extensive harm to fetal and child development. Dioxin compounds build up in the human body where they are stored in fatty tissues, such as breast milk, and can be passed on to the unborn during pregnancy and lactation.
Mossville residents are surrounded by 14 toxic industrial facilities, several of which routinely release dioxins into the air, water, and land. Residents have long complained about health problems that a university health study has linked to industrial pollution. However, governmental agencies continue to issue permits which allow the industrial facilities to increase the amount of toxic pollution, including dioxins, that they release into the Mossville community.
Notwithstanding ATSDR’s and EPA’s obligation to protect human health and the environment, and
Mossville residents’ repeated demands that these agencies identify and eliminate the sources of the dioxin exposures, ATSDR and EPA have never attempted to investigate any link between the local industrial dioxin emissions and the dioxins detected in the blood and environment of Mossville residents.
This report presents an analysis of the data collected by these very same agencies, which these agencies could have, but failed to analyze. As discussed in this report, the following local industrial facilities are the sources of the elevated dioxin levels in the Mossville community:
Conoco Phillips oil refi nery
Entergy Roy S. Nelson coal-fi red power plant
Georgia Gulf vinyl manufacturing facility
Lyondell chemical manufacturing facility
PPG Industries vinyl manufacturing facility
Sasol chemical manufacturing facility.
http://www.ehumanrights.org/docs/REVISED%20MOSSVILLE%20REPORT%20(PRESS,%20FULL).pdf
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Shadow government; corporate government; military government;
Backroom government exposed
Alexander Cockburn, Truthout: "When it comes to journalistic achievements in 2010, the elephant in the room is WikiLeaks. I've seen many put-downs of the materials as containing 'no smoking guns', or as being essentially trivial communications to the State Department from U.S. diplomats and kindred government agents around the world. Now, it's true that the cables were legally available to well over 1.5 million Americans, who had adequate security clearance. But trivial? Don't believe it. The cables show the daily business of a mighty empire acting in manners diametrically opposite to public pretensions. The cables form one of the most extraordinary lessons in the cold realities of international diplomacy ever made public. Normally, scholars have to wait for 10, 20, even 50 years to gain access to such papers."
__________________________________________
Smoke signals turn to fire
As one review of "Unequal Protection" observes:
America has lost the legal structures that allowed for people to control corporate behavior.
As a result, the largest transnational corporations fill a role today that has historically been filled by kings. They control most of the world's wealth and exert power over the lives of most of the world's citizens. Their CEOs are unapproachable and live lives of nearly unimaginable wealth and luxury
_________________________________________________
Special Forces at work around globe clandestinely creating conditions for war
The Pentagon's 21st Century Counterinsurgency Wars: Latin America and South Asia
by Rick Rozoff
The qualitative escalations of counterinsurgency wars in Afghanistan and Colombia are, first of all, integrally related and, second, both part of far broader regional strategies. The current Obama administration has continued and accelerated the expansion of the Afghan war into neighboring Pakistan, with almost six times the population of its neighbor and nuclear weapons; and its enhanced role in Colombia, a nation that launched a military assault into Ecuador in March of last year and has been installing bases and deploying troops on its border with Venezuela, can also drag the entire Andean region into the vortex of armed confrontation and eventual war.
_____________________________________________
Remarkable in-depth comments of some of our intellectual luminaries on day one of a new year with high expectations for miraculous recovery from NAFTA, Patriot Act, Petraeus, Beck et al
Runner
7 Cities no decent white man would live in anyway !!!
CHUCK
mexico is invading america and our government isn't doing a thing about it. just letting them take our jobs.free health
care no car ins. two or three driver's license.being illegal in mexico u go to jail, in america u get a job? whats wrongwith that pic?
Dani Allen
Just another example of how Americans are giving up America.
larry
liberal economics

adc
with the epa controlling the carbon emission problem im sure green jobs will be so plentful everyone will find employment , a chicken in every pot, utopia found ....of course you might have to walk to work.
Uhgug Ihbb wow ,this is a great article !
. I am a 32-years old doctor, mature and beautiful.and now I am
seeking a young man who can give me real love , so i got a username
blondKY91 on -----AffluentMeet. ℃○M------ .where you have the opportunity dreaming about d'ating a millionaire and make it true! u don't have to be a millionaire .but u can meet one.I think everyone need to meet some miracle
What this article isn't saying about Flint is that it is being overrun by muslims,
______________________________________
Courts no longer about justice but which party controls the scales. Think Supreme Court selection of Bush, Supreme Court rejection of 100 year old position on corporate donations
WASHINGTON – Republicans and Democrats must find a long-term solution to selecting federal judges, Chief Justice John Roberts says, while blaming both sides for the political gridlock of judicial nominations in the Senate.
"Each political party has found it easy to turn on a dime from decrying to defending the blocking of judicial nominations, depending on their changing political fortunes," Roberts said Friday in his year-end report. "This has created acute difficulties for some judicial districts. Sitting judges in those districts have been burdened with extraordinary caseloads."
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Wonder how courts classify Special Forces murders in Columbia, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Italy et al. Probably not terrorist activities to bring down weak governments
RICHMOND, Va. – Attorneys for five Somali men convicted of attacking a U.S. Navy ship off Africa are asking a judge to reconsider the piracy conviction.
The attorneys in December asked a federal judge to look at defense claims that the men who attacked the USS Nicholas on April 1 did not commit piracy because they did not board or rob the frigate.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14599
Alexander Cockburn, Truthout: "When it comes to journalistic achievements in 2010, the elephant in the room is WikiLeaks. I've seen many put-downs of the materials as containing 'no smoking guns', or as being essentially trivial communications to the State Department from U.S. diplomats and kindred government agents around the world. Now, it's true that the cables were legally available to well over 1.5 million Americans, who had adequate security clearance. But trivial? Don't believe it. The cables show the daily business of a mighty empire acting in manners diametrically opposite to public pretensions. The cables form one of the most extraordinary lessons in the cold realities of international diplomacy ever made public. Normally, scholars have to wait for 10, 20, even 50 years to gain access to such papers."
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Smoke signals turn to fire
As one review of "Unequal Protection" observes:
America has lost the legal structures that allowed for people to control corporate behavior.
As a result, the largest transnational corporations fill a role today that has historically been filled by kings. They control most of the world's wealth and exert power over the lives of most of the world's citizens. Their CEOs are unapproachable and live lives of nearly unimaginable wealth and luxury
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Special Forces at work around globe clandestinely creating conditions for war
The Pentagon's 21st Century Counterinsurgency Wars: Latin America and South Asia
by Rick Rozoff
The qualitative escalations of counterinsurgency wars in Afghanistan and Colombia are, first of all, integrally related and, second, both part of far broader regional strategies. The current Obama administration has continued and accelerated the expansion of the Afghan war into neighboring Pakistan, with almost six times the population of its neighbor and nuclear weapons; and its enhanced role in Colombia, a nation that launched a military assault into Ecuador in March of last year and has been installing bases and deploying troops on its border with Venezuela, can also drag the entire Andean region into the vortex of armed confrontation and eventual war.
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Remarkable in-depth comments of some of our intellectual luminaries on day one of a new year with high expectations for miraculous recovery from NAFTA, Patriot Act, Petraeus, Beck et al
Runner
7 Cities no decent white man would live in anyway !!!
CHUCK
mexico is invading america and our government isn't doing a thing about it. just letting them take our jobs.free health
care no car ins. two or three driver's license.being illegal in mexico u go to jail, in america u get a job? whats wrongwith that pic?
Dani Allen
Just another example of how Americans are giving up America.
larry
liberal economics

adc
with the epa controlling the carbon emission problem im sure green jobs will be so plentful everyone will find employment , a chicken in every pot, utopia found ....of course you might have to walk to work.
Uhgug Ihbb wow ,this is a great article !
. I am a 32-years old doctor, mature and beautiful.and now I am
seeking a young man who can give me real love , so i got a username
blondKY91 on -----AffluentMeet. ℃○M------ .where you have the opportunity dreaming about d'ating a millionaire and make it true! u don't have to be a millionaire .but u can meet one.I think everyone need to meet some miracle
What this article isn't saying about Flint is that it is being overrun by muslims,
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Courts no longer about justice but which party controls the scales. Think Supreme Court selection of Bush, Supreme Court rejection of 100 year old position on corporate donations
WASHINGTON – Republicans and Democrats must find a long-term solution to selecting federal judges, Chief Justice John Roberts says, while blaming both sides for the political gridlock of judicial nominations in the Senate.
"Each political party has found it easy to turn on a dime from decrying to defending the blocking of judicial nominations, depending on their changing political fortunes," Roberts said Friday in his year-end report. "This has created acute difficulties for some judicial districts. Sitting judges in those districts have been burdened with extraordinary caseloads."
_______________________________________
Wonder how courts classify Special Forces murders in Columbia, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Italy et al. Probably not terrorist activities to bring down weak governments
RICHMOND, Va. – Attorneys for five Somali men convicted of attacking a U.S. Navy ship off Africa are asking a judge to reconsider the piracy conviction.
The attorneys in December asked a federal judge to look at defense claims that the men who attacked the USS Nicholas on April 1 did not commit piracy because they did not board or rob the frigate.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14599
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