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Tens of thousands of Bahraini protesters have been holding peaceful anti-government rallies throughout the Middle Eastern country since February, demanding an end to the rule of the Al Khalifa family.
Scores of people have been killed and many more arrested and tortured in prisons in a government-sanctioned crackdown on protests since the beginning of the demonstrations.
Sanctions exacerbate this dependence on the government. By raising the costs of doing business in Iran, sanctions slow economic development and decrease employment options for the middle class. When fewer companies invest in Iran, there are fewer jobs for skilled middle-class workers; fewer opportunities to develop professional skills; and less socially-conscious investments while the government prioritises differently to combat foreign pressure. Alternative options for Iran's middle class are increasingly narrow: unemployment, emigration, or becoming state employees. As a result, many middle-class Iranians not employed by the government live on unsustainable sources of income such as second jobs and remittances from family abroad. Survival for the middle class is at best unstable, and the conservative factions in power prefer to keep it that way - a struggling middle class focused on making ends meet is easier to control.
Nature News reports: Early results seem to indicate that cosmic rays do cause a change. The high-energy protons seemed to enhance the production of nanometre-sized particles from the gaseous atmosphere by more than a factor of ten. But, Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step,” he says.
I’m rather tentative about posting this, as it is information gleaned from surfing political science. Indeed, I was looking specifically for an explanation of systematic, repeated and ongoing international promotion of what I could only conclude was politically motivated misrepresentation linked to furthering an agenda. The case in point was actually related to the ‘Axis of Evil’ where nations without nuclear arms are promoted as the nuclear menace ! In the case of Iraq ‘Beyond Downing Street’ generated much of the British opposition to government policy. Finally a movie was posted online for free viewing outlining the lies the public were fed to ‘justify’ this action. Less well known generally is the activity in Dick Cheney’s office not only savaging environmental protections ( the Deepwater Horizon fiasco – itself an under-reported calamity – would not have happened without financial incentives via tax relief for resource depletion ) but also misrepresenting the facts to the world. One politically ‘hot’ story was the ‘outing’ of the head of the CIA’s nuclear threat desk NOC Valerie Plame/Wilson. Not only was the intelligence network of Brewster Jennings ‘blown’ and the network of subversive informants put at risk ( likely quietly killed in many cases ) but the blame was put squarely at Cheney’s office with the jailing of ‘Scooter’ Libby. That was a capital offense for which a pardon was issued after 2 years ! And of course, when the White House came up with a cock and bull story about Iraqi WMD fears partly based on the premise of the acquisition of yellowcake from Nigeria, it was pure political theatre to send her husband Ambassador Joe Wilson to make the investigation. Meanwhile yellowcake was being made into fertilizer, which should give you a hint of its lack of utility as weapons grade feedstock – something torn apart by the Arms Control Wonk further down the line….a mineral deposit that was plentiful in Iraq at the time and shipped to Canada afterwords ! Iran has had a much longer history of being vilified – despite being a partner in the Contra arms scandal. CASMII has countless articles outlining the lies levied against it spanning decades and all in support of economic warfare against a state which had rebelled against its status as a puppet under the Shah : the U.S.-installed tyrant famous by his secret police the Savik – as Egypt became and now has the head of torture and repression as its new ruler, supplanting Muburarak. So the execution of policies affecting signatories to the NPT Treaty by tearing away the protections of the Third Pillar of the NPT for countries promoting peaceful use of nuclear power generating technology ( which is focused on piles which do NOT go bang ) is guided by – I think it’s a RAND Corp Think Tank psyops model – the NPT TRAP. None of which is your usual interest. But a Search result popped up which I thought startling. The source was almost immediately pilloried at Scholars and Rogues but I thought the coincidence impossible to ignore. I am referring to a post made at opitslinkfest.blogspot.com outlining my finds Dec. 4 2009 and linked to under my Climate files ( see the Topical Index for ‘Climate in Contention’ ) as the Anthropogenic Global Warming Hoax. Dec 20 2009 I posted Afghanistan,etc. which dealt with the geopolitical side of the scam.
If Henrik Svensmark is right, then we are going down the wrong path of taking all these expensive measures to cut carbon emissions; if he is right, we could carry on with carbon emissions as normal.–Terry Sloan, BBC News 3 April 2008
Henrik Svensmark welcomes the new results, claiming that they confirm research carried out by his own group, including a study published earlier this year showing how an electron beam enhanced production of clusters inside a cloud chamber. He acknowledges that the link between cosmic rays and cloud formation will not be proved until aerosols that are large enough to act as condensation surfaces are studied in the lab, but believes that his group has already found strong evidence for the link in the form of significant negative correlations between cloud cover and solar storms. Physics World, 24 August 2011
I have asked the CERN colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them. That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate. One has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters.–Rolf-Dieter Heuer, Director General of CERN, Welt Online 15 July 2011
Jasper Kirkby is a superb scientist, but he has been a lousy politician. In 1998, anticipating he’d be leading a path-breaking experiment into the sun’s role in global warming, he made the mistake of stating that the sun and cosmic rays “will probably be able to account for somewhere between a half and the whole of the increase in the Earth’s temperature that we have seen in the last century.” Global warming, he theorized, may be part of a natural cycle in the Earth’s temperature.Dr. Kirkby was immediately condemned by climate scientists for minimizing the role of human beings in global warming. Stories in the media disparaged Dr. Kirkby by citing scientists who feared oil-industry lobbyists would use his statements to discredit the greenhouse effect. And the funding approval for Dr. Kirkby’s path-breaking experiment — seemingly a sure thing when he first announced his proposal– was put on ice. –Lawrence Solomon, National Post, 23 Feb 2007
"Companies across the economy are holding off on hiring even as the profit outlook improves, amid economic uncertainty and their own success at raising productivity in rough waters.
"Hiring always lags behind in economic recoveries, but the outlook this time is worse, many economists say. Most forecasters now expect a prolonged period of high unemployment, even though the government is expected to report next week that the economy grew in the third quarter, after four quarters of contraction."
Secret files reveal covert network run by nuclear police http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/20/nuclear-police-run-covert-network
The nuclear industry funds the special armed police force which guards its installations across the UK, and secret documents, seen by the Guardian, show the 750-strong force is authorised to carry out covert intelligence operations against anti-nuclear protesters, one of its main targets.
The nuclear industry will pay £57m this year to finance the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC). The funding comes from the companies which run 17 nuclear plants, including Dounreay in Caithness, Sellafield in Cumbria and Dungeness in Kent.
Around a third is paid by the private consortium managing Sellafield, which is largely owned by American and French firms. Nearly a fifth of the funding is provided by British Energy, the privatised company owned by French firm EDF.
Ben Ayliffe, head of Greenpeace's anti-nuclear campaign, said: "There are very obvious worries about an armed police force that is accountable to an industry desperate to build nuclear reactors in the UK. This industry will probably be very keen for their police force to use all the powers available to them to prevent peaceful protests against nuclear power."
The force keeps secret the extent of its clandestine surveillance operations on protesters and others. It has been collecting more intelligence in recent years.
University of Alaska Scientist Rick Steiner Loses Federal Grant Funding After Criticizing Oil Industry http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/22/university_of_alaska_scientist_rick_steiner
University of Alaska professor Rick Steiner says he’s lost his federal grant funding for being an outspoken critic of the oil industry. For years, Steiner has criticized what he considered irresponsible actions by the oil industry, beginning with the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Last week, a university lawyer rejected a claim to overturn a decision to pull Steiner’s $10,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, known as NOAA. In its decision, a university lawyer wrote if a recipient of grant funding “uses his position and his time to, for example, advocate for or against a particular development project, the funding agency may have a legitimate concern.
Amy GoodmanA social worker from New York City was arrested last week while in Pittsburgh for the G-20 protests, then subjected to an FBI raid this week at home -- all for using Twitter. Elliot Madison faces charges of hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime. He was posting to a Twitter feed (or tweeting, as it is called) publicly available information about police activities around the G-20 protests, including information about where police had issued orders to disperse.
While alerting people to public information may not seem to be an arrestable offense, be forewarned: Many people have been arrested for the same "crime" -- in Iran, that is.
Sri Lanka releases 4,300 from detention camps http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-10-22-Sri-Lanka_N.htm?csp=34
Hundreds of thousands of minority Tamil civilians were forced into the camps after fleeing the final months of the government's decades-long war with the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels, which ended in May.
Rights groups have condemned the detention as an illegal form of collective punishment for the ethnic group. Aid groups say the camps are overcrowded and prone to disease, and fear imminent monsoons will create a public health crisis.
Sri Lanka has said that it can't release the Tamils until they are screened for rebel ties. The government also says that their villages must still be de-mined.
The at least 4,300 Tamils released Thursday piled on tractors and into buses to head home.
Some Choice Words for "The Select Few" http://www.truthout.org/071209A
12 July 2009
If you want to know what really matters in Washington, don't go to Capitol Hill for one of those hearings, or pay attention to those staged White House "town meetings." They're just for show. What really happens - the serious business of Washington - happens in the shadows, out of sight, off the record. Only occasionally - and usually only because someone high up stumbles - do we get a glimpse of just how pervasive the corruption has become.
Case in point: Katharine Weymouth, the publisher of The Washington Post - one of the most powerful people in DC - invited top officials from the White House, the Cabinet and Congress to her home for an intimate, off-the-record dinner to discuss health care reform with some of her reporters and editors covering the story.
But CEOs and lobbyists from the health care industry were invited, too, provided they forked over $25,000 a head - or up to a quarter of a million if they want to sponsor a whole series of these cozy get-togethers. And what is the inducement offered? Nothing less, the invitation read, than "an exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will get it done."
The invitation reminds the CEO's and lobbyists that they will be buying access to "those powerful few in business and policy making who are forwarding, legislating and reporting on the issues …
"Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No." The invitation promises this private, intimate and off-the-record dinner is an extension "of The Washington Post brand of journalistic inquiry into the issues, a unique opportunity for stakeholders to hear and be heard."
Toxic Waters: Regulatory Absence Allows Chemical, Coal and Farm Industries to Pollute US Water Supplies http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/22/toxic_waters_regulatory_absence_allows_chemical
We speak to New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg about the latest in his investigative series “Toxic Waters,” which examines the worsening pollution in the nation’s water systems. Duhigg joined us last month to discuss how chemical companies have violated the Clean Water Act more than 500,000 times in the last five years, most without punishment. Since then he has written articles focusing on how coal-fired power plants and large farms are threatening the nation’s drinking water.
The provincial governments have identified manufacturing companies, which are currently importing the entire material but hope to achieve a deletion target of 80 per cent once the volume of scale is achieved, and have engaged Nespak as consultant.
These companies would prepare design and system layout, subject to approval of Nespak, and prepare the system on a turnkey basis and provide training support to farmers.
The project is seen as revolutionary move, which can turn the agriculture sector around and make it globally competitive.
With current levels of yields, they believe, Pakistan can never create a niche in the world market for its agriculture, especially horticulture, exports. The only way to get to the point is enhancing per acre yield, cut water consumption– an increasingly rare and expensive commodity – and reduce cost of production. The pressurised irrigation, they say, provides the answer – all three factors roll in one – because it irrigates the plant not the soil.
Quoting figures from other countries, especially the Gobi Desert in China where temperature fluctuates between -30 degree Centigrade in winter and over 50C in summer, it is claimed that both water and inputs could be cut by half through this system and enhanced yield by 50 per cent for different crops.
Being more specific, the companies say that world studies have proven that cotton production could increase up to 60 per cent with 38 per cent of current water consumption. Similarly, sugarcane production, a water guzzler, could go up by 167 per cent with only 53 per cent of water
Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, Aptma Punjab chairman Ejaz Gohar said that the suspension would not only affect exports of the sector but also put jobs of 2.4 million workers at stake.
He said that gas supplies to textile industry had been suspended because the shortage was almost equal to gas consumed by the industry. The federal cabinet had assigned second priority to the industry for the supply of gas and electricity but the decision had not been implemented.
He said that the planners need to review their priorities for gas and power supply. They suspended gas and power supplies to the industry on the pretext of protecting the domestic consumers forgetting that they would lose their jobs as a result of closure of the industry.
In a war for democracy, why worry about public opinion?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/14/afghanistan-nato-troops-democracy
Whoever is in charge, it seems, the war on terror has truly become a war without end. Eight years after George Bush and Tony Blair launched it, with an attack on Afghanistan under the preposterous title of "operation enduring freedom" and without any explicit UN mandate, Gordon Brown has agreed to send yet more British troops to die for a cause neither they nor the public any longer believe in.
Granted we are only talking about an extra 500 troops on top of the 9,000 already there, and the decision is hedged with qualifications. Brown has nevertheless bowed to pressure from the US administration, the British military establishment and the warmongering wing of the media, anxious to exploit the government's Afghan failures in the runup to the general election.
But if any more proof were needed that foreign wars are not regarded as any business of the voters, this is surely it. Yesterday's batch of polls confirm public opposition to the Afghan imbroglio is becoming ever more entrenched. There has been a 7% increase since last month in support for immediate withdrawal, according to a Populus poll for the Times, with 68% wanting troops out within the year and strongest backing for a pullout among Labour voters.
That is feeding the growing disaffection among serving soldiers towards what many see as a futile sacrifice, supposedly on behalf of a hostile population in Helmand province. The public opposition of Lance Corporal Joe Glenton, scheduled to face a court martial next month after refusing to fight what he regards as an illegal war in Afghanistan, clearly reflects a wider sentiment in the army. Stop the War Coalition activists drumming up support for next week's national demonstration have reported sympathetic approaches from off-duty squaddies and their families across the country. It's the kind of climate that saw parents of soldiers killed in Iraq tell the official inquiry on Tuesday they want to see Blair indicted as a war criminal.
Reports are multiplying of a similar mood among American soldiers in Afghanistan, as US opposition to the war has also hardened. As in Britain, the rampant rigging in August's presidential election was a tipping point: dying for Afghans' right to take part in a fraudulent sham is scarcely the noble cause for which Nato forces were assured they were the standard-bearers.
But the signs are that Barack Obama is once again preparing to send more troops – even if not the 40,000 demanded by his senior commander in Afghanistan, General McChrystal. Last week, the US president explicitly ruled out any significant reduction in troop numbers or switch from a "counter-insurgency" to "counter-terrorist" remit (targeting al-Qaida, rather than the Taliban), let alone military withdrawal.
Instead, the hints are of schemes to buy off Taliban footsoldiers in an attempt to repeat the trick that created US-sponsored Sunni militias out of elements of the Iraqi resistance during the 2007 US surge. The Iraq analogy is not a happy one, however. Those Iraqi "awakening councils" are already falling apart, notably in what was supposed to be their showcase of Anbar province, where a string of deadly attacks has taken place in recent days.
Torture watchlist 'wrongly' names Canadian allies: Bernier http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/01/19/torture-manual.html?ref=rss
Jan 19, 2008
Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier has issued a statement in an effort to pacify allies angry over a training manual for Canadian diplomats that lists the U.S. and Israel as countries where prisoners risk torture and abuse.
They call us to patriotism, values, religion, family (theirs not ours, we are asked to attend at their illnesses – while single payer is verboten, by THEM ALL). Respect, civility, obedience even, they use all of that to call us to VOTE.
For them.
This was part of a commencement speech Mark Danner gave recently to the Dept of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley:
“We were asked to send the next of kin to whom the remains of my nephew, killed on Monday in a horrific explosion downtown, can be handed over…”So we went, his mum, his other aunt and I…
“When we got there, we were given his remains. And remains they were. From the waist down was all they could give us. ‘We identified him by the cell phone in his pants’ pocket. If you want the rest, you will just have to look for yourselves. We don’t know what he looks like.’
“…We were led away, and before long a foul stench clogged my nose and I retched. With no more warning we came to a clearing that was probably an inside garden at one time; all round it were patios and rooms with large-pane windows to catch the evening breeze Baghdad is renowned for. But now it had become a slaughterhouse, only instead of cattle, all around were human bodies. On this side; complete bodies; on that side halves; and everywhere body parts.
“We were asked what we were looking for; ‘upper half’ replied my companion, for I was rendered speechless. ‘Over there.’ We looked for our boy’s broken body between tens of other boys’ remains; with our bare hands sifting them and turning them.
“Millennia later we found him, took both parts home, and began the mourning ceremony.”
Some of the churches involved are renegade local branches of international franchises. Their parishioners take literally the Biblical exhortation, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."
Fishermen in jails http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/14-fishermen-in-jails-zj-03
According to a report, 394 Indian fishermen are languishing in Pakistani prisons even after having served their sentences. To aggravate this miscarriage of justice their deportation in the near future appears unlikely given the present tense ties between India and Pakistan. The maritime security agencies of both countries routinely pick up unarmed Indian and Pakistani fishermen straying into the exclusive economic zone of the other country. The maritime borders are not visibly demarcated and the boats the fishermen use are primitive with no modern instruments to provide them with any guidance with regard to geographical distances.
Under these circumstances it is not surprising that over 4,600 fishermen have been picked up by the coastal authorities on both sides in the last 20 years. Their release has become a tit-for-tat game. This is ridiculous. In most cases it is an error of judgement when the fishermen enter foreign waters. Their ‘crime’ is hardly of a grave nature and the punishment that is generally handed down is light — a one-year term in prison. It is inhumane of the authorities to detain the fishermen
indefinitely.
Last year the India-Pakistan Judicial Committee on Prisoners that was formed in 2007 recommended that prisoners who had completed their term be released immediately. But Islamabad and Delhi have failed to implement this humane suggestion for reasons best known to them. Mercifully they have observed the consular access agreement and allowed their diplomats to visit each other’s prisoners in jails. But that is not enough. Why should the judicial process be held ransom to politics? The two sides try to extract mileage from every small gesture of compassion they make. Periodically fishermen prisoners were exchanged between India and Pakistan. But since the Mumbai attacks, even this practice has been discontinued.
The Big Takeover http://www.truthout.org/032309M
19 March 2009
It's over - we're officially, royally fucked. no empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline - a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.
The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history - some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That's $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG's 2008 losses).
So called short selling is a method to make money even on stocks that are heading down. Most people think of the stock market as working basically like this: You have hunch a company is going to do well, so you simply buy the stock, hold it for a while, and hope to sell it at a later date for more than you spent to buy it. This is called "going long". Of course this only works for firms that are actually going up.
But there is a way to make money even on companies you believe will fall in value. Basically what you do is go to someone, a fund or broker, who sits on a cache of the stock in question. You then ask to borrow the stock for a while, for some fee, and sell it right away. Now, if you were right, and the stock really falls in value, you can then buy back the stock at some later date, at a lower price, and give it back, while pocketing the difference. This is usually reffered to as "going short".
Yesterday the US regulators stepped in and put some curbs on how short selling is done, nixing so called "naked" short selling, where you sell stock you don't really have on hand.
But the British Financial Services Authority (FSA) today went beyond that, and into what can only be called blatant market manipulation. They simply outright banned short selling of financial sector stocks alltogether. These stocks are now only allowed to go up.
Hector Sants, the chief executive of the FSA, said: "While we still regard short-selling as a legitimate investment technique in normal market conditions, the current extreme circumstances have given rise to disorderly markets.
"As a result, we have taken this decisive action, after careful consideration, to protect the fundamental integrity and quality of markets and to guard against further instability in the financial sector."
It is quite a spectacle to watch these self proclaimed "Masters of the Universe", staunch defenders of the unrestrained Free Market when times are good, go sobbing to the authorities to protect them against the awful market when things are headed south. It also, in the long run, puts a real dent in the credibility of The City of London as a fair and free nexus of global finance.
Congress Considers Revoking Health Insurance Industry’s Exemption from Antitrust Laws http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/20/congress_considers_revoking_health_insurance_industrys
Democrats say the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945 has granted the insurance industry a captive market with no curbs on price fixing and other anti-competitive practices. Last week the Justice Department’s top antitrust regulator, Christine Varney, voiced support for a repeal. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are also backing a repeal, and New York Senator Charles Schumer has called for including it as part of the healthcare reform bill. The House Judiciary Committee plans to vote on the issue on Wednesday.
A series of Freedom of Information Act requests will be filed Thursday in conjunction with this week's "Close Gitmo Now" national campaign, said Trevor Fitzgibbons, a campaign spokesman. Don't Miss
* High court accepts Guantanamo Uyghur case * Ex-Guantanamo detainees sent to Kuwait, Belgium
The FOIA requests and the campaign have been endorsed by numerous artists, including REM, Pearl Jam and Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, he said.
The FOIA requests stem from testimony of former Guantanamo prisoners that heavy metal, rock, and rap music -- even children's tunes -- were part of interrogation techniques.
Although the organic movement has certainly started to influence how Americans think about their food, it is still no match for the American fast food industry, which continuously finds creative new ways of piling sugar, salt and fat on a plate and charging customers $4.99 for the privilege of eating it.
In recent years, in fact, some of America's favorite chains have gone above and beyond the call of duty and concocted thoroughly repellent dishes that make the Double Quarter Pounder look like a celery stick. These companies have offered Americans these revolting meals despite the fact that roughly one-third of the country is now obese, a deplorable state of affairs that accounting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers estimates costs the U.S. health-care system $200 billion a year in wasted spending.
In this article, we'll name and shame the very worst offenders, whether they're 1,400-calorie hamburgers or 550-calorie cups of coffee.
FCC Takes First Step Toward Net Neutrality Rules http://www.pcworld.com/article/174143/fcc_takes_first_step_toward_net_neutrality_rules.html
The FCC is still months away from voting on the final regulations, but the rules, as proposed, would allow Web users to run the legal applications and access the legal Web sites of their choice, while prohibiting broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing Web content. Providers could use "reasonable" network management to reduce congestion and maintain quality of service, but the rules would require them to be transparent with consumers about their efforts.
Department of Homeland Security Expands Controversial 287(g) Program Empowering Local Police to Enforce Immigration Laws http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/19/department_of_homeland_security_expands_controversial
The Department of Homeland Security said Friday it plans to enter into new agreements with sixty-seven state and local law enforcement agencies. These agreements expand the existing 287(g) program, which delegates some federal immigration enforcement authority to certain state and local agencies. The 287(g) program has come under intense criticism in recent months, with over 500 organizations, including the ACLU and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, calling on the government to end the program. Many of the agencies involved have been accused of racial profiling, and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Phoenix, Arizona is being investigated by the Justice Department.
Security blunder http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/19-security-blunder-hh-62
At a time when militants are using all means at their disposal to attack state institutions, there is no room for security lapses. Hence the recent report that police and army uniforms and paraphernalia are being sold in Kohat despite a ban is distressing to say the least. The laxity of the law-enforcement agencies in preventing the sale of these uniforms is confounding. After the attack on GHQ in Rawalpindi, the sale of such items was proscribed. Yet the ban is being taken lightly by the authorities. Private tailors continue to sell uniforms and badges associated with the armed forces and police, while those that have stopped the open sale of these items have started selling them out of their homes instead.
Sad to have had to hear this story on Democracy Now!
Maine TV Stations Stops Covering Global Warming
In media news, journalists at two TV stations in Maine have been ordered not to cover stories related to global warming. The policy affects both the ABC and Fox affiliates in Bangor Maine. Michael Palmer, the general manager of the stations said in a memo when “Bar Harbor is underwater, then we can do global warming stories… Until then no more.” Palmer said that he placed global warming stories in the same category as ‘the killer African bee scare’ from the 1970s or, the Y2K scare.
The original story seems to have come from Monday’s New York Times Media & Advertising section. The reporter did an excellent job in receiving comments from a real climate scientist:
Dr. James Hansen, the director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration̢۪s Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University, said in an interview yesterday that the station̢۪s policy on coverage was irresponsible.
UWO, London Ontario Police Violently Assault Student http://bastardlogic.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/london-uwo-beating
Oct 15,2009
Over at the Law is Cool blog, former police officer Ryan Venables provides his take on whether the officers in question went too far in their brutal efforts to “restrain” 22 year old Western student Irnes Zelijkovic:
After having viewed the video, and from my experiences and past training, I see NO REASON why one of the officers applied force to the middle and upper portions of Mr. Zeljkovic’s back and neck with his asp baton. Officers are trained to specifically NOT to use this hard impact weapon on areas where significant damage could be caused (i.e. neck, forearms, and head) because of the risk to the suspect. While an actively resisting suspect is a very dynamic situation, in my humble opinion this exceeded the appropriate options available to this officer.
Electric Supercharger Boosts Torque 50% and Reduces CO2 by 20% http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/electric-supercharger-hybrid-boosts-torque-better-mpg.php Making Gasoline Engines as Efficient as Diesel
The most common type of hybrid car uses electricity stored in batteries to power an electric motor. But what if instead of going to a motor, that electricity was used to power an electric supercharger? That's exactly what UK firm Controlled Power Technologies (CPT) is doing, and the results are promising. Tests on various engine types have shown that a gasoline engine equipped with this tech can compete with a diesel, and torque has been increased by 40-50% and CO2 emissions have been reduced by around 20%.
Rising unemployment and higher energy prices are likely to push hundreds of thousands more homes into fuel poverty..........about 4m households in England are already in fuel poverty, spending more than 10% of their income on energy.
The government says it has spent £20bn on cutting fuel poverty since 2000.
The Low Carbon Transition Plan, which will be unveiled by the environment secretary Ed Miliband on Wednesday, will set out how the government intends to meet legally binding targets on reducing greenhouse gas emissions put in place last year.
A central plank of the plan will be a large increase in the use of renewable energy, such as wind, solar and wave power.
There will also be extra incentives to speed the construction of offshore wind farms and grants for homeowners to invest in energy-saving technology such as insulation.
The Confederation of British Industry has attacked the government's energy policy as disjointed, claiming that investment is skewed towards wind power at the expense of nuclear and clean coal, and that this is deterring private investment. The business leaders are urging a reduction in the proportion of wind power expected by 2020 to provide a balance between low-carbon sources, including nuclear and fossil fuel, with carbon capture and storage alongside renewables.
This lobbying comes hard on the heels of a commitment by G8 leaders in L'Aquila that rich nations should cut emissions by 80% by 2050, with a global reduction of 50% by 2050 with the aim of limiting global warming to 2C above pre-industrial levels.
“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play,” Joseph Goebbels once declared. In the case of the American media, it is hardly necessary for the government to play. The keyboard plays itself.
This is certainly true of the media’s treatment of the recent elections in Iran.
No sooner was the election over than the media settled on the desired interpretation of events: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was carrying out a “coup d’etat” through a “rigged” election. The opposition candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, enjoyed overwhelming support and was leading a “green revolution” for freedom and democracy.
This analysis has been presented without even the pretense of objectivity. The possibility that there might be different sides to the story, other interpretations of the election results, is completely ignored. Facts that contradict or call into question the desired conclusion are ignored.
The scale of Iranian state violence is inflated, while virtually nothing is said about US drone attacks on civilians in neighboring Pakistan that this week alone killed more than 80 people.
Nowhere in the mass media has there been a serious analysis of Iranian history (let alone the reactionary role of the US in that history) or the class dynamics of Iranian society. The actual program of Mousavi and his chief backer, the multimillionaire veteran of the regime, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, remains a blank page, as does Mousavi’s role in repressing left-wing opposition in the 1980s.
Propaganda in the guise of news and analysis has not been confined to the mainstream media. The major “left” publications—the Nation, Huffington Post, Democracy Now!, and many others—have fallen in line as well.
"I look at people’s skin tones all day long and try to decide the best coloring for their hair, and I can tell you this: gray is not a normal human skin tone. Get out of here right now and go see your doctor."
Later that day, at the oncologist/hematologist office, this new strange doctor takes blood, orders up an outpatient transfusion, tells you that you no doubt have acute myelogenous leukemia, could keel over dead at any moment as long as you are untreated, and should now go home and call him the very minute the HMO calls you and tells you to check into some local hospital or the other – but should on no account whatsoever check into that local hospital.
You are visited by a social worker, who surprises you by demanding to know not the details of your home life, or about your state of mind on being diagnosed with a more-lethal-than-not form of cancer, but simply: "Who is carrying your insurance, you or your husband?"
If you worked for a company that offered insurance, if you carried your family’s insurance, next year your insurer would slap a million dollar surcharge on the company policy for carrying a leukemia patient. The company would get the bill and someone in accounting would question "what is this extra million dollars we are being billed?"
The insurance company would explain to them that the million is for you, and it is yearly, but is, ahem, "fixable." They will say "as long as she is on your insurance (wink, wink) this charge will be there. So what you have to ask yourself (more wink, wink) is whether this employee is worth a million dollar a year salary on top of what you are already paying her."
Social worker said she had seen small business owners go almost broke trying to cover this charge, and had even heard of one who defiantly did go broke, throwing all of the employees out of work. But more usually, she said, they just fire you.
"Wait, wait!" say you, "Isn’t it illegal to fire someone for their health history? Suppose I’m all well and working?"
She looks at you with more pity, says yes, so of course they will have to find "cause" to fire you, which any employer can always do.
"But I am a very, very good employee!" you protest.
"Yes," she says, "but they can always find some cause." The real problem she goes on to explain, is that you will find a new job, that company’s insurer will slap them with the surcharge, they will take their turn at firing you, until you’ve been through six or seven jobs in a year, fired "for cause" from all of them, which of course looks very, very bad to a prospective employer.
"So in a year or so of this, you will not just be uninsurable, you will also be unemployable." You ask her what you are supposed to do for health care and she says sooner or later the insurance companies would force you onto Medicaid – either by means of making you unemployable and broke, or by means of you being uninsured and going through any and all assets you have paying medical bills until you are broke and sick enough that you can’t work, and end up on Medicaid.
The IG Report is more notable for what it fails to address than for what it discloses, but that’s the nature of IG Reports. Most of the key players who authorized the illegal domestic spying — David Addington, John Yoo, Dick Cheney, Andrew Card, John Ashcroft, George Tenet — simply refused to talk to the IGs or, in many cases, didn’t even bother responding to their request. The IG’s have no power at all to compel them to do so; it’s entirely optional.
It turns out that from 2001 to 2003, Yoo was the only person at the OLC who was “read in” to the program. His boss, Jay Bybee, had no idea what Yoo was doing and first learned of the NSA program from media reports.
Cheney and Addington knew that Yoo was a hardened ideologue who would authorize anything they wanted.
Gonzales called Goldsmith to inform him that the President, in issuing the Authorization, had made an interpretation of law concerning his authorities and that DOJ should not act in contradiction of the President’s determinations.”
‘The President had made an interpretation of law’. Think about that.
If it is the case that the president can designate an Office of Legal Counsel functionary to immunize government officials and employees against criminal behavior, then it is true, to all intents and purposes that “if the president does it it’s not illegal.”
Why are Britain and the US engaged in military operations in Afghanistan? Why are British and US soldiers dying there? With the British losses over the last two weeks, some of the key leaders in prosecuting the Afghan campaign have addressed themselves to these questions, and it's interesting to note what they say.
When obliged to speak in earnest rather than merely playing with forms of rhetoric, they speak in plain terms. Whatever else it is, it's a war against terrorism
“This report leaves no doubt that the warrantless wiretapping program was blatantly illegal and an unconstitutional assertion of executive power. I once again call on the Obama administration and its Justice Department to withdraw the flawed legal memoranda that justified the program and that remain in effect today.”
Even though most PSP leads were determined not to have any connection to terrorism, many of the FBI witnesses believed the mere possibility of the leads producing useful information made investigating the leads worthwhile.
However, the DOJ [inspector general] also found that the exceptionally compartmented nature of the program created some frustration for FBI personnel. Some agents and analysts criticized the PSP-derived information they received for providing insufficient details, and the agents who managed counterterrorism programs at the FBI field offices the DOJ [inspector general] visited said the FBI’s process for disseminating PSP-derived information failed to adquately prioritize the information for investigation.
A long-awaited filing Thursday in the al-Haramain v. Bush terrorism case before a San Francisco federal judge presents a dare to the Obama administration: embrace the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance claims, invoke a secrecy doctrine that Attorney General Eric Holder has pledged to overhaul, or allow a case challenging the merits of warrantless surveillance to win. “Warrantless surveillance of American citizens, in defiance of FISA, is unlawful and unconstitutional,” the motion quotes then-Senator Obama telling the Boston Globe in December 2007. Similar statements recounted in the motion come from Holder; Solicitor General Elana Kagan; Kagan’s deputy Neal Katyal; Assistant Attorney General David Kris; and Associate Deputy Attorney General Donald Verrilli.
"God told me to. I have to treat women as lesser beings, because it is inscribed in my Holy Book.” "What would otherwise look like stark bullying is very often made respectable and holy by a putative religious law or aphorism or scriptural quotation . . . They worship a God who is a male who gangs up with other males against women. They worship a thug."
Since its origins, the IPCC has been open and explicit about seeking to generate a ‘scientific consensus’ around climate change and especially about the role of humans in climate change
I've been 'around' for a few years now, pursuing the shifting goal of a sharable home-made surfers resource site focused on ease of use and variety of mostly adult ( whoa : I didn't say prurient ) content.
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The case in point was actually related to the ‘Axis of Evil’ where nations without nuclear arms are promoted as the nuclear menace ! In the case of Iraq ‘Beyond Downing Street’ generated much of the British opposition to government policy. Finally a movie was posted online for free viewing outlining the lies the public were fed to ‘justify’ this action.
Less well known generally is the activity in Dick Cheney’s office not only savaging environmental protections ( the Deepwater Horizon fiasco – itself an under-reported calamity – would not have happened without financial incentives via tax relief for resource depletion ) but also misrepresenting the facts to the world.
One politically ‘hot’ story was the ‘outing’ of the head of the CIA’s nuclear threat desk NOC Valerie Plame/Wilson. Not only was the intelligence network of Brewster Jennings ‘blown’ and the network of subversive informants put at risk ( likely quietly killed in many cases ) but the blame was put squarely at Cheney’s office with the jailing of ‘Scooter’ Libby.
That was a capital offense for which a pardon was issued after 2 years ! And of course, when the White House came up with a cock and bull story about Iraqi WMD fears partly based on the premise of the acquisition of yellowcake from Nigeria, it was pure political theatre to send her husband Ambassador Joe Wilson to make the investigation. Meanwhile yellowcake was being made into fertilizer, which should give you a hint of its lack of utility as weapons grade feedstock – something torn apart by the Arms Control Wonk further down the line….a mineral deposit that was plentiful in Iraq at the time and shipped to Canada afterwords !
Iran has had a much longer history of being vilified – despite being a partner in the Contra arms scandal. CASMII has countless articles outlining the lies levied against it spanning decades and all in support of economic warfare against a state which had rebelled against its status as a puppet under the Shah : the U.S.-installed tyrant famous by his secret police the Savik – as Egypt became and now has the head of torture and repression as its new ruler, supplanting Muburarak.
So the execution of policies affecting signatories to the NPT Treaty by tearing away the protections of the Third Pillar of the NPT for countries promoting peaceful use of nuclear power generating technology ( which is focused on piles which do NOT go bang ) is guided by – I think it’s a RAND Corp Think Tank psyops model – the NPT TRAP.
None of which is your usual interest. But a Search result popped up which I thought startling. The source was almost immediately pilloried at Scholars and Rogues but I thought the coincidence impossible to ignore.
I am referring to a post made at opitslinkfest.blogspot.com outlining my finds Dec. 4 2009 and linked to under my Climate files ( see the Topical Index for ‘Climate in Contention’ ) as the Anthropogenic Global Warming Hoax.
Dec 20 2009 I posted Afghanistan,etc. which dealt with the geopolitical side of the scam.