The police-corporate surveillance “complex” is being consolidated, drawing ever-closer corporate tracking and government surveillance.
Americans’ personal privacy is being crushed by the rise of a four-headed corporate-state surveillance system. The four “heads” are: federal government agencies; state and local law enforcement entities; telecoms, web sites & Internet “apps” companies; and private data aggregators (sometimes referred to as commercial data warehouses).
Conventional analysis treats these four domains of data gathering as separate and distinct; government agencies focus on security issues and corporate entities are concerned with commerce. Some overlap can be expected as, for example, in case of a terrorist attack or an online banking fraud. In both cases, an actual crime occurred.
But what happens when the boundary separating or restricting corporate-state collaboration, e.g., an exceptional crime-fighting incident, erodes and becomes the taken-for-granted operating environment, the new normal? Perhaps most troubling, what happens when the traditional safeguards offered by “watchdog” courts or regulatory organizations no longer seem to matter? What does it say that the entities designed to protect personal privacy rights seem to have either been effectively “captured” or become toothless tigers?
In President Eisenhower’s legendary 1960 farewell address, he warned of the potential power of the military-industrial complex. Ike’s 20th century formulation represented the intertwining of the U.S. military and private contractors to achieve two complementary goals. First, it sought to help corporations make guaranteed, cost-plus profits and to provide glide-path retirement programs for the military brass. Second, it sought to influence Congress and thus shape foreign policy, helping fulfill the then just-emerging global imperialist strategy.
Today’s corporate-state surveillance complex demonstrates a comparable intertwining of U.S. policing forces and private companies in the monitoring of domestic life. It is being implemented thanks to the technology fruits of a half-century of the military-industrial complex. The Defense Department created the Internet and what it can do in Yemen it can do in Oakland. The global war on terrorism is coming home!
In the wake of the Great Recession, we are living through a great economic and social restructuring. The global world order is shifting and, accordingly, America’s class and social relations are being reordered. Occupy Wall Street’s formulation of the social crisis, the 1% vs. the 99%, has become the shorthand descriptor of this restructuring of American economic relations. No time is better to impose high-tech social disciple then one marked by economic and social crisis. The unanswered question is obvious: Are we witnessing the formation of the high-tech police state?
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To reiterate, the four-headed corporate-state surveillance hydra consists of (i) federal agencies; (ii) state and local law enforcement entities; (iii) telecoms, web sites & Internet “apps” companies; and (iv) private data aggregators. The following overview sketches out the parameters of the ever-growing domestic spy state, how it’s being implemented and some of the more egregious examples of abuse of public trust if not the law.
#1 — Federal Surveillance
The attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent (and endless) “war on terror” continue to provide the rationale for an ever-expanding domestic security state. The leading agencies gathering data on Americans (and others) include the National Security Agency (NSA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Defense (DoD) as well as the FBI and IRS. In the wake of 9/11, the NSA took the lead in federal domestic cyber surveillance, but in 2010 the NSA ceded this authority to the DHS.
Personal information is gathered from a host of both public and private sources. One source is “public records” that can range from birth, marriage and death records; court filings, arrest records, driver’s license information, property ownership registrations (e.g., car or house), tax records, professional licenses and even Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Another source is “private” records from ChoicePoint and LexisNexis as well as credit reporting agencies such as Equifax, Experian Information Solutions and Trans Union LLC.
Is Privacy Dead? 4 Government and Private Entities Conspiring to Track Everything You Do Online and Off (page2)
united states currency eye- IMG_7364_web (Photo credit: kevindean)
The police-corporate surveillance “complex” is being consolidated, drawing ever-closer corporate tracking and government surveillance.
The most Kafkaesque example of federal tracking efforts has been the DHS Transportation and Safety Administration’s (TSA) No-Fly List. As of 2011, it was estimated to contain about 10,000 names. The list’s inherent absurdity was illustrated when, some years before his death, Ted Kennedy discovered he (as “T. Kennedy”) was on the list.
The No-Fly List is administered by the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) which cannot reveal whether a particular person is on the list, nor does it have the authority to remove someone from the list — that’s up to the FBI. The TSC also manages what is known as the Terrorist Watch List. Administered by the FBI, the list, according to an ACLU estimate, consists of 1 million names and is continually expanding.
DHS also maintains the Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT) that has the fingerprints, photographs and biographical information on 126 million people.
During the July 4, 2012, holiday weekend, Pres. Obama quietly released a new Executive Order, “Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions.” While ostensibly seeking to ensure the continuity of government communications during a national emergency, it grants new powers to the DHS over telecom. It permits the agency to collect public communications information and the authority to seize private facilities when necessary. The Executive Order is legislation through the back door, the Obama Administration’s effort to implement a law that Congress rejected in 2011.
Parallel to the DHS efforts, the FBI maintains a number of operations tracking Americans. The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) keeps fingerprint records of some 62 million people; it makes this resource available to 43 states and 5 other federal agencies. Soon, the agency will switch over to the NGI (Next Generation Initiative), which will contain face recognition searchable photos, iris scans, fingerprints, palm prints, and a record of scars and tatoos. The FBI coordinates the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) that has DNA evidence from blood and saliva sample on more than 10 million people. In addition, the FBI maintains the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative (SAR) that includes some 160,000 reports on people who allegedly acted suspiciously.
(These activities are separate from the recent revelation from AntiSec that found on a FBI agent laptop a database of 12 million Apple device owners’ users unique identify, including owner’s personal information.)
In 2004, Congress established the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) to serve as the “center for joint operational planning and joint intelligence, staffed by personnel from the various agencies.” It maintains the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) that includes records on an estimated 740,000 people. Federal authorities claim that less than 2 percent of the people on file are US citizens or legal permanent residents. Earlier this year, Att. Gen. Eric Holder extended the agency’s ability to maintain private information about U.S. citizens when there is no suspicion that they are involved in terrorism from 180 days to five years.
The NSA’s authority overrides 4th Amendment guarantees safeguarding a citizen’s right from unreasonable search and seizure through what is known as a National Security Letter (NSL). In 2008, Congress revised the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act freeing the NSA from the bothersome requirement of having to prove probable cause before intercepting a person’s phone calls, text messages or emails from someone in the U.S. suspected of involvement with terrorism. Between 2000 and 2010 (excluding 2001 and 2002 for which no records are available), the FBI was issued 273,122 NSLs; in 2010, 24,287 letters were issued pertaining to 14,000 U.S. residents.
In June 2011, the DoD originally launched a pilot program, the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) Cyber Pilot, with 20 private companies. It would allow intelligence agencies to share threat information with private military contractors. Among the companies who participated were Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon as well as telcos AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink. The telcos filter incoming email for malicious software. In May 2012, DoD and DHS announced plans to expand the program to 200 participants and the DoD estimates that approximately 8,000 firms could potentially participate.
Monsanto’s GMO Seeds Contributing to Farmer Suicides Every 30 Minutes
By Anthony Gucciardi
BlacklistedNews.com
In what has been called the single largest wave of recorded suicides in human history, Indian farmers are now killing themselves in record numbers. It has been extensively reported, even in mainstream news, but nothing has been done about the issue. The cause? Monsanto’s cost-inflated and ineffective seeds have been driving farmers to suicide, and is considered to be one of the largest — if not the largest — cause of the quarter of a million farmer suicides over the past 16 years.
According to the most recent figures (provided by the New York University School of Law), 17,638 Indian farmers committed suicide in 2009 — about one death every 30 minutes. In 2008, the Daily Mail labeled the continual and disturbing suicide spree as ‘The GM (genetically modified) Genocide’. Due to failing harvests and inflated prices that bankrupt the poor farmers, struggling Indian farmers began to kill themselves. Oftentimes, they would commit the act by drinking the very same insecticide that Monsanto supplied them with — a gruesome testament to the extent in which Monsanto has wrecked the lives of independent and traditional farmers.
SOPA, PIPA, CISPA, ACTA: 354 companies that Supported SOPA!
Uploaded by GetThisThingCrunk on Jan 20, 2012
National Football League (NFL)
World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)
Nike, Inc
National Basketball Association (NBA)
The Walt Disney Company
CBS Corporation
NBC Universal
Viacom
Adidas America
Wal-Mart
Juicy Couture
Burberry
Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC)
Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA)
Universal Music Group
Beachbody, LLC
Bose Corporation
Coach
Comcast Corporation
Country Music Association
Dolby Laboratories, Inc.
Dolce & Gabbana USA, INC.
Dollar General Corporation
Electronic Arts, Inc.
Fender Musical Instrument Company
Ford Motor Company
Gibson Guitar Corp.
Graphic Artists Guild
Greeting Card Association (GCA)
Harley-Davidson Motor Company
HarperCollins Publishers
Johnson & Johnson
kate spade
Linda Olsen Photography
Liz Claiborne, Inc
L’Oréal USA
New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc.
News Corporation
NHL Enterprises, L.P.
Nintendo of America Inc.
PGA of America
Philip Morris International
Ralph Lauren Corporation
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
Reebok International Ltd.
Revlon
Rite Aid
Rolex Watch USA Inc.
Rosetta Stone Inc.
Sony Electronics Inc.
Sony Music Entertainment
Sony Pictures Entertainment
Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association
The McGraw-Hill Companies
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)
The Timberland Company
Tiffany & Co.
Time Warner Inc.
Toshiba America Business Solutions, Inc.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Virtual Chip Exchange USA, Inc.
Warner Music Group
Winestem Company
Xerox Corporation
Zippo Manufacturing Company
Zumba Fitness, LLC
1-800 Contacts, Inc.
1-800-PetMeds
3M Company
American Mental Health Counselors Association
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)
Applied DNA Sciences
Association of American Publishers (AAP)
AstraZeneca plc
Australian Medical Council
Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI)
C. F. Martin & Co., Inc.
Caterpillar Inc.
Not a complete list, also look up ACTA
SOPA/PIPA, Internet 2 and The Trojan Horse of Control 1/3
Uploaded by TheAlexJonesChannel on Jan 18, 2012
SOPA/PIPA Battle Rages: Tell Congress We Will Not Accept Censorship
Kurt Nimmo
The underhanded effort to fundamentally alter the internet under the guise of protecting the copyrights of Hollywood and its transnational “entertainment” corporations was delivered a distinct set-back a few days ago when Congress retreated on its full-steam ahead effort to ram SOPA down our throats.
Faced with massive outrage and a political backlash, the Obama administration threatened a veto of the SOPA legislation and in response Congress shelved it.
Equally important is the battle to defeat PIPA, the Protect IP Act, which will soon be up for a vote. Congress needs to be told it must reject this legislation as well.
Even though the shelving of SOPA appears to be a victory, we cannot trust the government to not reintroduce the bill after sprucing it up as a kinder and gentler effort to rob of us our ability to freely disseminate information and speak our minds on the internet without fear of the censor’s truncheon crashing down. After all, in 2010 the government shut down 73,000 web sites under the cover of fighting copyright infringement.
We must continue to let our “representatives” in Congress know that in no uncertain terms will we accept any modification of the internet at the behest of large corporations and the globalists who intend by hook or by crook to neuter the only free communication medium left to the people.
Use the links below to contact Congress now and speak your mind:
CISPA, or the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protect Act, also known as HR 3523 is a cybersecurity House bill that’s already gained over 100 sponsors and is perhaps the worst of them all. It would allow companies to collect and monitor private communications and share them with the government, and anyone else. So is it really as scary as it sounds? EFF’s Trevor Timm explains.
How to hide emails from government snooping
Despite coalition proposals to monitor public email, there remain numerous free or low-cost methods to keep messages private
By Jack Schofield, The Guardian
You already know how to keep messages private: you just encrypt the contents using a password. But although this kind of technology has been freely available to PC users since Phil Zimmermann launched PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) in 1991, hardly anyone uses it. The benefits of email and online messaging are that they are fast and relatively frictionless – you don’t need to address an envelope, find a stamp, walk to a post box and so on – and encryption becomes an annoyance.
The problem with the latest government attempts at snooping is that they are not concerned with the content of messages, but their existence. If you have found some suspected criminals or terrorists, then you will want to know who their friends are: the people they email or message most frequently. Each of these people can probably be identified by their internet protocol (IP) address: the number assigned by their ISP (internet service provider). Even an encrypted email will usually include the addresses of the sender and the recipient in its headers.
The general solution to privacy concerns is to use a non-UK “proxy server” to relay web pages, messages, anonymous email accounts and other content anonymously. Hackers who really want to hide their origins will use several proxy servers, including ones that are acting as proxies without their owner’s knowledge. Many websites publish lists of free proxy servers, which are updated continuously.
Of course, these servers may offer less privacy than your ISP, and some may be traps or “honeypots”. However, there are some trusted anonymous servers available either free or for modest payments.
Examples include hidemyass.com, anonymouse.org, Guardster, Proxify, IDzap and Megaproxy. Such servers usually have terms of service to prevent abusive or criminal behaviour. They will probably record your IP address and may report you if you breach them, so they’re not completely beyond government reach. However, they’re probably beyond government fishing expeditions…..
Campus police pepper-sprayed as many as 30 demonstrators after Santa Monica College students angry over a plan to offer high-priced courses tried to push their way into a trustees meeting, authorities said.
Families to lose average £511 a year in tax credits cull, warns Labour
Ed Balls accuses George Osborne of giving with one hand and taking more away with the other in budget changes
Families with children stand to lose an average of £511 a year on what is being described as black Friday, according to figures compiled for Labour by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
In what is likely to be a key battleground in the local elections, the Treasury said the figures were partial and chose to highlight the impact of the lifting of the personal allowances for most basic rate taxpayers.
The Labour analysis follows George Osborne’s budget last month and is on top of tax increases already introduced, such as last year’s VAT rise which is costing a family with children an average of £450 a year. The figures include the impact of raising the personal allowance.
Labour said more than 850,000 families on modest and middle incomes would lose all their child tax credit, worth about £545 a year. Up to 212,000 working couples earning less than £17,000 a year will lose all of their working tax credit – worth up to £3,870 a year – if they cannot increase their working hours. It is the first time the IFS has put these calculations in cash terms.
According to Labour, a couple with two children on the minimum wage will be better off quitting their jobs if they cannot work at least 19 hours a week. Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, accused the government of giving with one hand and taking much more away with the other.
Balls said: “For all the government’s talk about increasing the personal allowance, these independent figures show that, while they may be giving one with one hand, they are taking much more away with the other hand. That is why families with children will be an average of £511 a year worse off from tomorrow.”
Even Congress Wants To Know What The NSA Is Doing With This $2 Billion Utah Spy Center
Robert Johnson
Maybe you’ve heard of it and maybe you haven’t, but in Bluffdale, Utah alongside one of the largest polygamist sects in America, the NSA is building a one-million-square-foot data collection center — five times the size of the U.S. capital.
Despite immense secrecy, and construction workers with Top Secret clearances, news of the project made it to the pages of Wired last month. Intelligence authority James Bamford wrote that the center is part of President Bush’s “total information awareness” program that was killed by Congress in 2003 in response to public outrage over its potential for invading Americans privacy.
One senior intelligence official formerly involved with the project told Bamford “this is more than just a data center,” that it’s a code breaking megalopolis the likes of which the world has never seen.
Several years ago the NSA made a major leap in breaking complex encryptions used in everything from “financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications.”
The official concluded by saying “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
The story caused such a stir that the NSA’s chief General Keith Alexander was called before Congress last week to testify about the project and categorically denied the facility will be used to spy on American citizens.
“The NSA does not have the ability to do that in the United States,” Alexander told Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson. “We’re not authorized to do that, nor do we have the equipment in the United States to collect that kind of information.”
NSA public information officer Vanee’ Vines backed up Alexander in an email saying: “What it will be is a state-of-the-art facility designed to support the Intelligence Community’s efforts to further strengthen and protect the nation.”
Update: The NSA does not spy on Americans, they hire it out to the Israelis…..
(Reuters) – Half a decade into the deepest U.S. housing crisis since the 1930s, many Americans are hoping the crisis is finally nearing its end. House sales are picking up across most of the country, the plunge in prices is slowing and attempts by lenders to claim back properties from struggling borrowers dropped by more than a third in 2011, hitting a four-year low.
But a painful part two of the slump looks set to unfold: Many more U.S. homeowners face the prospect of losing their homes this year as banks pick up the pace of foreclosures.
“We are right back where we were two years ago. I would put money on 2012 being a bigger year for foreclosures than 2010,” said Mark Seifert, executive director of Empowering & Strengthening Ohio’s People (ESOP), a counseling group with 10 offices in Ohio.
“Last year was an anomaly, and not in a good way,” he said.
In 2011, the “robo-signing” scandal, in which foreclosure documents were signed without properly reviewing individual cases, prompted banks to hold back on new foreclosures pending a settlement.
Five major banks eventually struck that settlement with 49 U.S. states in February. Signs are growing the pace of foreclosures is picking up again, something housing experts predict will again weigh on home prices before any sustained recovery can occur.
Mortgage servicing provider Lender Processing Services reported in early March that U.S. foreclosure starts jumped 28 percent in January.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
A recent article regarding the National Security Agency’s new secret eavesdropping facility in Bluffdale, Utah has caught the attention of members of the House.
The article which was published last week by Wired explains how the NSA “will be secretly capturing, storing, and analyzing vast quantities of words and images hurtling through the world’s telecommunications networks.”
The article goes on to explain how the “Utah Data Center” which is a project surrounded by “immense secrecy is the final piece of a complex puzzle assembled in the past decade.”
The heavily fortified $2 billion building is said to have the capabilities “to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks,” the article added.
On Wednesday Marine Sgt. Gary Stein was notified by the Marine Corps that he was in violation of the Pentagon’s policy for blatantly condemning President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
Stein’s actions could now lead to his dismissal and a possible downgrade in ranking.
The Marine who is based in Camp Pendleton, California, created a Facebook page called “Armed Forces Tea Party,” which currently has approximately 19,000 likes and has photos showcasing slogans such as “NObama” and “One Nation, under Obama, with poverty and unemployment for all,” has been under the microscope since 2010.
Stein was first warned by his superiors two years ago after he launched the social media page on Facebook critiquing Obama care. Stein offered to remove the page while he revised the rules at the bidding of his superiors.
According to Stein, after the revision of the rules he determined he was not in violation.
GOP leadership rankled by resolution calling for attorney general’s head
By Jordy Yager
More than 100 Republicans in the House are clamoring for Eric Holder’s head, but GOP leaders are reluctant to vote on a measure suggesting the ouster of the U.S. attorney general.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said Wednesday that she will not let new rounds of base closures pass her subcommittee this year, dealing a potentially fatal blow to the Pentagon’s plans for the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) in its 2013 budget.
The fight over President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul has featured nearly three years of name-calling and shouting matches. But don’t expect to hear supporters accused of creating “death panels,” or opponents of preferring the uninsured to “die quickly,” when the issue lands at the Supreme Court next week.
House approves the repeal of cost-cutting healthcare board
By Pete Kasperowicz
The House on Thursday afternoon approved legislation that would repeal a government board tasked with finding Medicare savings, and institute medical tort reform across the country.
Members approved H.R. 5, the Protecting Access to Healthcare (PATH) Act, by a 223-181 vote in which only seven Democrats supported the bill and 10 Republican opposed.
Senate passes bill on insider trading, sends measure to Obama
By Alexander Bolton
The Senate on Thursday passed legislation barring lawmakers from using insider information for personal profit, sending the bill to the White House.
The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act already approved by the House passed the upper chamber easily by a vote of 96-3.
The Senate action circumvents a thorny amendment sponsored by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) requiring political intelligence operatives to regularly report their activity. The Senate adopted the Grassley proposal by a vote of 60-39 in February, but the GOP-controlled House opposed the Grassley’s language and did not include it in its version.
On the News With Thom Hartmann:Obama Announces Fast-Track Approval of Keystone Pipeline Segment, and More
In today’s On the News segment: Only five banks control more than half of all the industry’s assets, President Obama announced the fast-track approval of the southern leg for the existing Keystone pipeline today in Oklahoma, Democrats try to curb influence of SuperPACs, and more.
“I’ve always viewed Spain, not Greece, as the quintessential euro crisis country. With Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government balking – rightly – at further austerity, the focus is now where it arguably should have been all along. And with Spain now front and center, the essential wrongness of the whole European policy focus becomes totally apparent. Spain did not get into this crisis by being fiscally irresponsible; see the little comparison on the chart on this page.”
After Bales’ Arrest, Military Tried to Delete Him From Web
David Goldstein and Matthew Schofield, McClatchy Newspapers:
“Besides waiting nearly a week before identifying the Army staff sergeant who’s accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers, the US military scrubbed its websites of references to his combat service. Gone were photographs of the suspect, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, as well as a recounting in his base’s newspaper of a 2007 battle in Iraq involving his unit that quoted him extensively. But not really.”
Bahrain Medics Show Trial: This Is Not Syria, Therefore No Western Outcry
by Finian Cunningham
Bahrain’s disgraceful show trial of medical staff is set to continue, with news this week that 20 doctors and nurses are to be retried in a civilian court on trumped-up charges of subversion against the US-backed regime.
The medics were already sentenced by a military tribunal (a military tribunal!) to up to 15 years in prison after months of being held in illegal detention, denied legal counsel and subjected to torture.
Moving their case to a civilian court is presumably meant to signal a concession by the regime. But what it illustrates is that the Al Khalifa royal rulers of Bahrain are unreconstructed despots who are implacably set against accepting any kind of democratic reform.
The persecution of the majority Shia population – 70 per cent of the island – by an unelected Sunni elite is business as usual as epitomized by the vindictive targeting of medics whose only “crime” was that they treated hundreds of people injured in the state’s brutal crackdown against the pro-democracy movement.
Recently, Washington has been doing its PR best to present the monarchy in the Persian Gulf kingdom as being belatedly open to reform – this after a year of unrelenting repression against a largely peaceful pro-democracy uprising.
US Mercenary “Took Part” in Gaddafi Killing; Sent to Assist Syrian opposition
US government officials requested that an American private security firm contact Syrian opposition figures in Turkey to see “how they can help in regime change,” the CEO of one of these firms told Stratfor in a company email obtained by WikiLeaks and Al-Akhbar.
James F. Smith, former director of Blackwater, is currently the Chief Executive of SCG International, a private security firm with experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. In what appears to be his first email to Stratfor, Smith stated that his “background is CIA” and his company is comprised of “former DOD [Department of Defense], CIA and former law enforcement personnel.”
“We provide services for those same groups in the form of training, security and information collection,” he explained to Stratfor. (doc-id 5441475)
In a 13 December 2011 email to Stratfor’s VP for counter-terrorism Fred Burton, which Burton shared with Stratfor’s briefers, Smith claimed that “[he] and Walid Phares were getting air cover from Congresswoman [Sue] Myrick to engage Syrian opposition in Turkey (non-MB and non-Qatari) on a fact finding mission for Congress.”
About That Dimock Fracking Study: Result Summaries Show Methane and Hazardous Chemicals
Christine Shearer, Truthout:
“Although the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 3 issued a statement last week that its preliminary tests of water samples near drilling and fracking sites in the Pennsylvania town of Dimock showed no health concerns, the group Water Defense and ‘Gasland’ director Josh Fox went to Dimock to look at the EPA summaries themselves, which they say do report high levels of explosive methane, heavy metals and hazardous chemicals.”
Bradley Manning Prosecution Incurably Infected by Government Misconduct
Kevin Zeese, Bradley Manning Support Network:
“Last week I spent two days in court for a pretrial motions hearing in the court martial of Bradley Manning, the private accused of leaking documents to WikiLeaks that showed widespread unethical and illegal behavior by the Department of Defense and State Department. Manning has suffered the fate the Queen put on Alice when she was in Wonderland, ‘Sentence first – verdict afterwards.’ By the time his court martial is actually held he will have been incarcerated for more than two years, one of those years was spent in solitary confinement. But, that is only one of many obvious injustices Manning is being subjected to.”
(NaturalNews) When I was a little kid growing up in Newark and going to Bergen Street elementary school, I remember a teacher reading something to us in class one day. It went something like this:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.
These words are from our Declaration of Independence, and unfortunately, not from our Constitution. And from these principles, we Americans, lay claim to a rather unique and somewhat revolutionary legacy. That being that every person can lay claim to his or her own sovereignty just by being born, and that these rights don’t come from any government or person.
One of the basic principles on which our country was founded is that individuals have all these rights. Unfortunately, we give away some of them to our government. This is done voluntarily as it is not the law.
Obama threatens rare earth trade war against China – but why?
By Jonathan Benson, March 22 2012
(NaturalNews) In the spirit of election season political posturing, the Obama White House has announced that it is filing a trade lawsuit against China for restricting exports on rare earth metals and other materials used in the production of touchscreen mobile phones, military weapons, laptop computers, and various other high-tech devices. The poster child administration of meaningless political rhetoric, Obama and Co. has taken a convenient interest in China’s misdealings with the U.S. and…
The Invisible Poverty of “The Other America” of the 1960s Is Far More Visible
Peter Dreier, Truthout:
“Fifty years ago (in March 1962) Michael Harrington wrote a book, ‘The Other America: Poverty in the United States’ – a haunting tour of deprivation in an affluent society – that inspired Presidents Kennedy and Johnson to wage a war on poverty. This slim, 186-page volume became a best-seller and became required reading for social scientists, elected officials, college students, members of study groups sponsored by churches and synagogues, reporters and intellectuals, the new wave of community organizers and the student activists who traveled to the South to join the civil rights crusade.”
The Hill: Republican bill would enroll seniors in same health plans as lawmakers
By Julian Pecquet
A group of Senate Republicans has introduced legislation that would end traditional Medicare and sign seniors up for the same private healthcare plans received by members of Congress.
Washington elites queue up to see nine justices on hot seat
By Janet Adamy and Jess Bravin
The hottest ticket in the capital is for a spot inside the Supreme Court to watch three days of arguments challenging the 2010 health-care law that begin here a week from Monday.
Well, now the news is that in Chicago the police will continue to
enforce, arrest, and prosecute citizens under this law as long as
it remains on the books.
Coming to Chicago in May is an upcoming NATO summit and it is
expected to bring with it huge numbers felonious camera carrying
members of the public, and you can bet the police will have their
own cameras trained on them.
Supreme Court rules out television cameras for healthcare arguments
By Sam Baker
The Supreme Court on Friday rejected calls to allow television cameras into its chambers during arguments over President Obama’s healthcare law.??
The court said it would release same-day audio recordings of the arguments, scheduled for March 26-28. It cited the “extraordinary public interest” in the case, which could lead to President Obama’s signature domestic achievement being struck down in the midst of the campaign season.
GOP Super PAC Men Seek to Overturn Donation Limits
Michael Beckel, News Report:
McCutcheon is a 44-year-old general contractor in Alabama. He’s the owner, founder and president of Coalmont Electrical Development. He’s a member of the Republican Party who admits he may have a bit of a libertarian streak. And he’s also the treasurer of a super PAC called the “Conservative Action Fund.” That’s a group that spent more than $43,000 opposing House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) in Tuesday’s GOP primary in Alabama, although it has mostly targeted Democrats with its attacks.
Democratic Senators Issue Strong Warning About Use of the Patriot Act
For more than two years, a handful of Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee have warned that the government is secretly interpreting its surveillance powers under the Patriot Act in a way that would be alarming if the public – or even others in Congress – knew about it. On Thursday, two of those senators – Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado – went further. They said a top-secret intelligence operation that is based on that secret legal theory is not as crucial to national security as executive branch officials have maintained. The senators, who also said that Americans would be “stunned” to know what the government thought the Patriot Act allowed it to do, made their remarks in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. after a Justice Department official last month told a judge that disclosing anything about the program “could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States.”
Britain’s hopes of retaining its prized triple-A credit rating were dealt a blow last night after Fitch said the country was more likely than not to be downgraded.
The Global Economy is Now More Vulnerable to Oil Prices than Ever
This paper examines the impact of oil price changes on global economic growth. Unlike some recent studies, this paper finds that oil price rises have had significant negative impacts on world economic growth. A time-series analysis of the data from 1971 to 2010 finds that an increase in real oil price by 10 dollars is associated with a reduction of world economic growth rate by between 0.4 and 1% in the following year. As oil prices approach historical highs, the global economy may be vulnerable to another oil price shock.
Gold “Vulnerable” as U.S. Treasury Bond Market Sell-Off Worsens
The WHOLESALE-MARKET gold price twice rose within a few cents of $1650 per ounce in London Thursday morning, adding 0.9% from yesterday’s fresh 8-week low as industrial commodities ticked lower again.
The price of silver bullion rallied 2.3% to $32.40 per ounce, but remained over 5% down for the week so far, being “very much influenced” by the gold price according to one Swiss precious-metals dealer.
Europe’s Economic Crisis: Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Belgium Following Greece
It isn’t over until it is over. Of course, we are referring to Europe and its version of 1984. We find it profound that the bankers, politicians and bureaucrats of Europe can do what they have done with a straight face. Investor had a haircut shoved down their throats and the ECB, the European Central Bank and the IMF were exempt.
Retail sales suggest consumers shrugging off gas prices
Dave Prokupek doesn’t like the high price of gasoline either. But business is good enough at Smashburger that the chain where Prokupek is CEO opened its 150th restaurant Wednesday, and plans to open up to 75 this year, even though eating out is theoretically the first thing gas-strapped consumers would trim.
S&P 500 ends best week since December with quiet day
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The S&P 500 closed out its best week in three months with a slim gain on Friday as investors continued to propel equities near four-year highs.
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Economic growth showed signs of becoming more self-sustaining as the number of Americans claiming new jobless benefits fell back to a four-year low last week and manufacturing activity in the Northeast picked up this month.
Secret “Occult Economy” Coming Out of the Shadows?
During December 2011 and January 2012, I wrote two articles dealing with the announcement of two different lawsuits being filed in U.S. District Courts regarding astronomical amounts of money in the forms of U.S. Bonds, Federal Reserve Notes, foreign government-issued bonds, and other financial instruments.
Appropriators warn legislative agencies of further funding cuts
By Debbie Siegelbaum
Members of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on The Legislative Branch are warning congressional agencies that the current atmosphere of economic austerity will likely not abate any time soon.
President Obama’s 2013 budget would add $3.5 trillion to annual deficits through 2022, according to a new estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.
It also would raise the deficit next year by $365 billion, according to the non-partisan office.
The CBO estimate is in sharp contrast to the White House claims last month that the Obama budget would reduce deficits by $3.2 trillion over the next decade.?
Foreign direct investment (FDI) shrank in February from a year earlier, the fourth straight fall, while investment from Europe witnessed a sharp decline, according to the Ministry of Commerce.
Experts were not optimistic about the inflow of foreign investment into China as the European debt crisis continues and domestic economic growth slows down.
Banks relentless search for profits has racked up immense “collateral damage”. Investment banks have injured individuals and institutions of every stripe. Institutions include the country Greece whose books Goldman cooked; Jefferson County, Alabama, and many European cities devastated by risky derivatives; colleges like the University of Virginia and Harvard who have held cut-rate sales on private equity; and pension funds and others who sued for fraudulent trades.
Four Whistleblowers Who Sounded the Alarm on Banks’ Mortgage Shenanigans
Cora Currier, News Analysis:
“Buried in the sweeping mortgage settlement with banks, for which final documents were filed this week, are five whistleblower cases that shed light on the litany of foreclosure abuses by the banks. According to one suit, Bank of America allegedly passed bad loans on to the Federal Housing Administration. According to another, the bank allegedly denied qualified homeowners access to HAMP, the government’s loan modification program.”
Azerbaijan arrests 22 of their own citizens for allegedly being Iranian spies
The Azerbaijani government has announced the arrest of 22 of their own citizens who they claim are Iranian spies.
The tensions between Iran and neighboring Azerbaijan have only increased over recent months and this latest announcement is, without a doubt, not going to make anything less heated.
GOP senator dismisses ‘CliffsNotes’ explanation for killing citizens abroad
By Jordy Yager
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Thursday demanded that the White House hand over documents that detail the administration’s legal case for killing U.S. citizens abroad who are believed to be terrorist threats.
U.K’s Cameron: No justification for Israeli attack on Iran
In interview to NBC’s Brian Williams, British Prime Minister says Iran could maintain a civilian nuclear project if it did away with the military aspects of its program.
US admits Israel is arming and training terrorist groups to create terrorism
Uploaded by 91177info on Feb 9, 2012
So much for this War on Terror! It is actually War OF Terror. This is proof THEY are creating terror directly and indirectly. This was shown live on US television !!
Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service, U.S. officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran’s leaders.
The group, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, has long been designated as a terrorist group by the United States, accused of killing American servicemen and contractors in the 1970s and supporting the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran before breaking with the Iranian mullahs in 1980.
The attacks, which have U.S. Embassy in Tehran since 2007 and may have destroyed a missile research and development site, have been carried out in dramatic fashion, with motorcycle-borne assailants often attaching small magnetic bombs to the exterior of the victims’ cars.
U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Obama administration is aware of the assassination campaign but has no direct involvement.
Currency Wars: Iran’s banks to be blocked from global banking system
Swift, the body that handles global banking transactions, says it will cut Iran’s banks out of the system on Saturday to enforce sanctions.
Proposed UN Environmental Constitution For The World Would Establish An Incredibly Repressive System Of Global Governance
Most people have no idea that the United Nations has been drafting an environmental constitution for the world that is intended to supersede all existing national laws. This document has a working title of “Draft International Covenant on Environment and Development” and you can read the entire thing right here. Work on this proposed world environmental constitution has been going on since 1995, and the fourth edition was issued to UN member states on September 22nd, 2010. This document is intended to become a permanent binding treaty and it would establish an incredibly repressive system of global governance.
Occupy-Monsanto to Wear Bio-Hazmat Suits as They Protest a Genetically Modified Congress
News Report: The GCU will arrive at the metro station wearing bio-hazmat suits to assess whether Members of Congress and their staff have been victims of genetic crimes. The GCU will hold a banner that reads, “Congress is Genetically Modified,” as they circulate on Capitol Hill sidewalks. This day of action is part of a larger international call to ‘Occupy Monsanto’ taking place all over the globe including Spain, Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and at least 28 cities throughout the US.
The weekend of March 31st and April 1st includes a two day “Bail Out America” direct action training organized by the Backbone Campaign which will provide information on strategies and tactics and developing creative actions that advance the causes of Occupy.
House Dems demand meeting with Apple over privacy policy for iPhone, iPad apps
By Brendan Sasso
Two prominent House Democrats demanded a briefing with Apple over its privacy policies for mobile device applications in a letter to CEO Tim Cook on Thursday.
The Chicago-based hacker who took credit for a devastating computer attack on intelligence company Stratfor made his first appearance in a New York federal courtroom, after his March 5 arrest. Hammond, 27, faces federal charges of conspiracy to commit computer hacking, computer hacking and access device fraud… Hammond chuckled when his attorney, Liz Fink, asked a prosecutor if today was the Ides of March and said, “Et tu Brutus?” a possible reference to the betrayal Hammond might have felt at learning he and other hackers were undone by LulzSec leader-turned government informant [traitor] Hector Xavier Monsegur, known online as “Sabu.” Monsegur’s FBI handler was present but declined to comment after the proceeding.
4 more steam tubes fail in tests at troubled San Onofre nuclear plant’s Unit 3 reactor
Four more tubes that carry radioactive water at a Southern California nuclear power plant failed pressure tests, prompting new safety concerns, officials disclosed Friday. The four tubes in a massive steam generator failed Thursday in the Unit 3 reactor at the San Onofre coastal plant in northern San Diego County, Southern California Edison said. Three other tubes failed earlier tests, the company said Wednesday, bringing the total to seven.
Forty-five days after a radioactive water leak prompted a Southern California utility to shut down a nuclear reactor, investigators Friday sought to pinpoint why tubing in the plant eroded at an alarming rate while the prospect of an extended repair job raised questions about summertime power supply. Tests on massive steam generators at the troubled Unit 3 reactor at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which was shut down as a precaution after the leak on Jan. 31, revealed seven alloy tubes that carry radioactive water are in danger of rupturing under high pressure. Traces of radiation escaped during the January leak.
UK nuclear sites at risk of flooding, report shows
As many as 12 of Britain’s 19 civil nuclear sites are at risk of flooding and coastal erosion because of climate change global warming, according to an unpublished government analysis obtained by the Guardian. Nine of the sites have been assessed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as being vulnerable now, while others are in danger from rising sea levels and storms in the future. The sites include all of the eight proposed for new nuclear power stations around the coast, as well as numerous radioactive waste stores, operating reactors and defunct nuclear facilities.
The Obama Flag: Who Decided That It Was Okay To Replace The Stars On The American Flag With The Face Of Barack Obama?
Democrat Party headquarters in Lake County, Florida has been flying an American flag with a face of Barack Obama on it. Yes, you read that correctly. The “Obama flag” features a huge picture of the face of Barack Obama in the area where the stars are usually located. To many Americans today, the American flag may be “just a piece of cloth”, but when I was young I was taught that one must never desecrate the American flag. The American flag is our highest national symbol. Millions of Americans have fought and died defending freedom and liberty under that banner. To see a photo of Barack Obama plastered on it is an absolute disgrace. Sadly, there are lots of these flags floating around. In fact, you can buy them online for $12.95. Down in Florida, the chairwoman of the Lake County Democratic Party took down the “Obama flag” after a group of veterans protested, but she also said that she is not promising that she will not put it back up and that she is going to consult an attorney about all of this.
Needless to say, a lot of veterans had steam coming out of their ears when they heard about the Obama flag. Korean war veteran Don Van Beck said that he was absolutely furious when he saw what they had done to the American flag….
It’s a dirty job: Police nationwide take on soaring Tide detergent theft
Law enforcement officials across the country are puzzled over a crime wave targeting an unlikely item: Tide laundry detergent.
Theft of Tide detergent has become so rampant that authorities from New York to Oregon are keeping tabs on the soap spree, and some cities are setting up special task forces to stop it. And retailers like CVS are taking special security precautions to lock down the liquid.
McCain sees another Solyndra in Navy biofuels spending
By Carlo Munoz
The Navy’s push to develop biofuels to run its fleet of planes and warships could devolve into a “Solyndra situation” for the Pentagon, a top Republican senator said today.
Department of Agriculture to offer beef without ‘pink slime’ to schools
By Mike Lillis
Facing increasing pressure over its embrace of “pink slime,” the Obama administration announced Thursday that it will offer schools ground beef absent the controversial product.
Norway Military Plane Lost During Exercise
C-130 presumed crashed; 5 missing
AP) – A Norwegian military transport plane with five people on board went missing today during an exercise and was feared to have crashed in northern Sweden, officials said. The C-130 was heading from Evenes in northern Norway to the Swedish city of Kiruna where it was supposed to pick up personnel. Air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane when it was about 50 miles west of Kiruna, a Norwegian military spokesman said.
A lawyer for an army private accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of pages of classified information has asked a military judge to dismiss the charges, arguing the government bungled the handover of documents to the defence. The request came during a pre-trial hearing for Private Bradley Manning at a military courtroom at Fort Meade, Maryland. Manning’s lawyer, David Coombs, asked that charges against his client be dismissed because the government has “hopelessly” messed up the document turnover in the nearly two years Manning has been held.
State Dept. moves to fire author of book critical of Iraq reconstruction effort
Peter Van Buren, a foreign service officer who wrote an unflattering book about his year leading two reconstruction [sic] teams in Iraq, was stripped of his security clearance, banned from State Department headquarters for a time and transferred to a telework job that consists of copying Internet addresses into a file. Now the State Department is moving to fire him based on eight charges, ranging from linking on his blog to documents on the whistleblowing site WikiLeaks to disclosing classified information. Van Buren called the termination notice he received Friday the coup de grace in a series of blows he received since his book, “We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People” was published last fall.
CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher
More and more personal and household devices are connecting to the internet, from your television to your car navigation systems to your light switches. CIA Director David Petraeus cannot wait to spy on you through them. Earlier this month, Petraeus mused about the emergence of an “Internet of Things” – that is, wired devices – at a summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm. “‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,” Petraeus enthused, “particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft.” All those new online devices are a treasure trove of data if you’re a “person of interest” to the spy community.
HAZMAT situation: ‘Non-emergency significant event’ declared at Los Alamos –DP Road open after HAZMAT situation on Los Alamos property
With sirens blaring, emergency management vehicles raced down DP Road Wednesday, responding to a Hazmat situation at Enclosure 12 in TA-21. For two hours, DP Road was closed as the LANL Hazmat team, Los Alamos Fire and Police Department and FEMA assessed the situation. Most of DP Road was reopened around 1:45 p.m. as LAPD decreased its perimeter. Capt. Randy Foster said the initial call came into dispatch at 11:53 a.m. The road was closed east of 272 DP Road until the all-clear from the LANL Hazmat teams came in Wednesday evening. The situation has been categorized as a “non-emergency significant event” by the laboratory… Police said a voluntary evacuation was taking place on DP Road. Police said for those who are working on DP Road to remain inside if they chose to stay. Businesses along DP Road still were waiting for an all-clear signal as of 7:30 p.m. An automated 911 call was received at the Los Alamos Monitor at 1:05 p.m. advising all people on DP Road to shelter in place until the all-clear signal is sounded.
Whistleblower details unreported mercury spill at Hill AFB
A whistleblower’s claim that a 2007 spill of more than 60 pounds of mercury was not properly reported or cleaned up at this military base, where more than 24,000 military personnel and civilians work and live, has prompted a federal criminal investigation. The Utah Department of Environmental Quality has backed that claim, concluding after an investigation in September and October that the base violated permits because it failed to report the spill and cleanup, improperly stored the cleaned-up material, improperly labeled storage containers that were also not in good condition and failed to inspect containers storing the hazardous waste.
The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
The spring air in the small, sand-dusted town has a soft haze to it, and clumps of green-gray sagebrush rustle in the breeze. Bluffdale sits in a bowl-shaped valley in the shadow of Utah’s Wasatch Range to the east and the Oquirrh Mountains to the west. It’s the heart of Mormon country, where religious pioneers first arrived more than 160 years ago. They came to escape the rest of the world, to understand the mysterious words sent down from their god as revealed on buried golden plates, and to practice what has become known as “the principle,” marriage to multiple wives.
Syria’s turmoil has been laid bare on our TV screens for more than a year, but some networks are being accused of affecting rather than reflecting the conflict. Maria Finoshina reports now, on how there’s more to the coverage on the Qatari-owned Al Jazeera TV channel, than meets the eye.
Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr., R-N.C., has introduced a resolution declaring that should the president use offensive military force without authorization of an act of Congress, “it is the sense of Congress” that such an act would…
Supreme Court Likely to Endorse Obama’s War on Whistle-Blowers
Chris Hedges, Truthdig Op-Ed:
“Obama, who serves the interests of the surveillance and security state with even more fervor than did George W. Bush, has used the Espionage Act to charge suspected leakers six times since he took office. The latest to be charged by the Obama administration under the act is John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer accused of disclosing classified information to journalists about the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaida suspect.”
Though 69 Percent Of Americans Want Super PAC Ban, Super PACs Dominate GOP Race
Josh Israel, News Report:
“Independent expenditure-only “super PAC” committees have accounted for a stunning 91 percent of the television campaign advertising over the past month in Alabama and Mississippi — the two states holding their Republican primaries today. But while the more than $75 million already spent nationally by these groups has undoubtedly altered the dynamics of the presidential race, it has also annoyed the vast majority of Americans.”
The Justice Department on Monday blocked a new Texas law that requires government-issued photo identification at the polls, further inflaming an intense and racially charged election-year debate over voting requirements.
The Hill: Dems targeted over support for healthcare law’s ‘rationing board
‘
By Julian Pecquet
The conservative seniors’ lobby 60 Plus launched a $3.5 million ad campaign on Monday targeting five vulnerable Senate Democrats over their support for the healthcare reform law’s cost-control board.
(Reuters) – Securities regulators charged two Ameriprise Financial advisers and three others with insider-trading, saying they made $1.8 million in illicit profits based on confidential merger information one of the advisers learned through an Alcoholics Anonymous relationship.
The Securities and Exchange Commission said Timothy McGee, one of the advisers, was tipped about a pending merger of insurer Philadelphia Consolidated Holding Corp and Tokio Marine Holdings.
“Today, our regulatory bodies are incapable, or simply don’t want to be bothered with, tracing money and returning it to the public customers to whom it belongs. The inability to independently examine MF Global’s books, without its executive involved, reveals the sorry state of our financial system. In this post-Glass-Steagall-repeal world, the mixing of customer money and speculative betting – whether at a super-market bank or broker-dealer, whether involving subprime loans packages or European Sovereign debt, poses too dangerous a level of complexity.”
As she travels from one European Union summit to the next, Angela Merkel’s constant mantra in recent months has been austerity, austerity, austerity. But apparently the German chancellor hasn’t been quite as strict when it comes to her own country’s budget.
Energy Secretary Chu disavows 2008 remark that he wants higher gas prices
By Andrew Restuccia
Energy Secretary Steven Chu disavowed Tuesday his 2008 comments about increasing gas prices to European levels, remarks that Republicans have pounced on in recent weeks.
“I no longer share that view,” Chu said during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, adding that he wants to lower gas prices.
Chu said higher gas prices could slow the economic recovery.
Oil prices fall as China data sparks fresh demand worries
London (AFP)
World oil prices dropped on Monday as investors fretted over the strength of worldwide energy demand following weak Chinese economic data. New York’s main contract, West Texas Intermediate crude for delivery in April, shed $1.06 to $106.34 a barrel. Brent North Sea crude for April was down 65 cents at $125.33 in late afternoon deals. “Crude oil fell sharply…
Oil price volatility in focus at world energy forum
Kuwait City (AFP)
The world’s largest energy forum began meetings on Monday over oil price fluctuations and safeguarding supplies amid heightened tensions over Iran’s nuclear programme and a softening in global growth. Oil ministers and delegates from the 88-member International Energy Forum (IEF) are holding their biennial three-day gathering in the Gulf emirate of Kuwait to discuss the role of the forum…
Just weeks after the opening of four Chery dealerships in Venezuela, dozens of people are lining up every day to buy the first Chinese cars being sold in the Latin American nation. Unlike competing Japanese and American cars, import preferences granted by the Venezuelan government mean the Chinese cars are cheaper, which has attracted a steady stream of interested customers. “I came to b …
Haynesville Shale Continues to Favour Louisiana over East Texas
London, UK (SPX)
Gas production from the US Haynesville Shale continues to favour the state of Louisiana over East Texas, with the former set to become a major gas producing state while pipeline development in East Texas continues to slow, a new report by business intelligence expert GlobalData has found. The new report found that several major gas companies are funding extensive infrastructure development …
Oil and Gas is One of the Fastest Growing Segments of the Energy Sector in China
Kolkata, India (SPX)
Netscribes has announced the launch of its report, Oil and Gas Market in China 2012. The Oil and Gas sector in China is expected to witness tremendous growth owing to the robust growth of the economy of China. The report begins with a detailed overview of the global oil and gas market that includes detailed coverage of global production, consumption and reserves for both oil and gas. This …
(Reuters) – Greece’s deep recession and unpredictable elections threaten to turn the biggest debt restructuring in history into yet another short-lived reprieve, although the existential threat posed to the euro zone is not what it was.
I am someone who has worked for one of the largest investment banks in the world RBS and I can tell you that the contagion of debt has run its course. We are already prepped for a Greek default this month especially since the recent downgrade by Fitch.
The way the latest unemployment numbers were reported by the mainstream media (MSM), you would think the Great Recession was over and the United States was solidly on the road to recovery. The Associated Press reported the numbers by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) with a story that said, “The United States added 227,000 jobs in February, the latest display of the breadth and strength of the economic recovery. The country has put together the most impressive three months of job growth since before the Great Recession. The unemployment rate stayed at 8.3 percent. It was the first time in six months it didn’t fall, and that was because a half-million Americans started looking for work.”….
Scattered diverse and almost uniformly unfavorable and dangerous events are unfolding, as the global economy and financial structure undergoes the equivalent of endless earthquakes and bombardment of solar emissions. Reporting is difficult, since information is distorted toward the sunny side. Events are moving fast, as quickly as the danger level is rising. As conditions worsen, the hype and spin has risen almost out of control. The political machine, tied at the hip to the banking apparatus, has ramped up the growth story even as the strain on the information spin has become more visible and subject to heavy criticism…..
‘MKO conducts assassinations for Mossad for funding’
An American political commentator says that the primary source of income for the terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) comes from assassinations it performs against Iranian nationals at the behest of Israel’s spy agency Mossad.
Yet another reason to leave: US soldier allegedly kills Afghan women and children
According to Afghan officials who visited the scene of the murders, some 16 people, nearly all of which were women and children, have been killed by a lone American soldier.
A SECRET squadron of Australian SAS soldiers has been operating at large in Africa, performing work normally done by spies, in an unannounced and possibly dangerous expansion of Australia’s foreign military engagement. The deployment of the SAS’s 4 Squadron – the existence of which has never been publicly confirmed – has put the special forces unit at the outer reaches of Australian and international law. A SECRET squadron of Australian SAS soldiers has been operating at large in Africa, performing work normally done by spies, in an unannounced and possibly dangerous expansion of Australia’s foreign military engagement.
Scientists Warn EPA Over Monsanto’s GMO Crop Failures, Dangers
By Anthony Gucciardi
BlacklistedNews
A group of scientists is calling for major federal action in order to deal with the threat posed by Monsanto’s GMO crops, now petitioning the EPA to address the issue head on. The group of 22 academic corn experts are drawing attention to the immense failure of Monsanto’s genetically modified corn, which is developing mutated and resistant insects as a result of its widespread usage.
Aircraft Carrier Enterprise Sets Off On Final Journey – Direction Iran
Today at noon Eastern, the storied aircraft carrier Enterprise, aka CVN-65, left its home port of Naval Station Norfolk one final time for its final voyage with a heading: Arabian Sea, aka Iran. There in a week it will join CVN 72 Lincoln and CVN 70 Vinson, as well as LHD 8 Makin Island, all of which are supporting any potential escalation of “hostilities” in the Persian Gulf region. As a reminder, back in January we learned that the Enterprise’s final voyage will be in proximity to Iran, and in the meantime, the aircraft carrier held extended drills off the Florida coast to attack a “faux theocracy” consisting of fundamentalist “Shahida” states. Why the Arabian Sea in about 7-10 days will be home to not two but three aircraft carriers and a big deck amphibious warfare ship is very much an open question, although we may have some thoughts.
“If a nuclear-armed Iran is indeed the greatest threat we as a nation face, that is indeed good news. Even better: Our latest intelligence estimate suggests that Iran still doesn’t have a nuclear weapon, nor is it clear whether its leaders have decided to build one. Iran also lacks a delivery system capable of striking the United States. Even if Iran decided to build a bomb and succeeded, any Iranian leader would be foolhardy in the extreme to threaten the United States, which still has thousands of nuclear warheads of its own — and plenty of delivery systems.”
Obama: US ‘heartbroken’ over Afghan civilians killed in attack
By Amie Parnes
President Obama said Tuesday that the U.S. is “heartbroken” over the Afghan civilians killed by a U.S. soldier and takes the deaths as “seriously” as if the victims were our own.
Obama spoke as violence in Afghanistan began to escalate two days after a U.S. soldier killed more than a dozen Afghan civilians in an apparent rogue attack.
“The United States takes this as seriously as if it was our own citizens and our own children who were murdered,” Obama said during brief remarks in the Rose Garden. “We are heartbroken over the loss of innocent life.”
The Hill: Report: Panetta says death penalty possible in Afghanistan shootings
By Jeremy Herb
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Monday that the death penalty is a possibility for the Army soldier who killed at least 16 Afghans Sunday, the Associated Press reported.
Feds Let BP Off Probation Despite Pending Safety Violations
Abrahm Lustgarten, News Report:
“BP’s refining subsidiary was released today from criminal probation related to a 2005 explosion in Texas City that killed 15 workers. The company has addressed the most serious safety deficiencies exposed by the accident and satisfied the terms of a felony plea agreement to settle charges that it failed to protect workers from known risks, a U.S. Justice Department spokesman said.”
Court Declares Newspaper Excerpt on Online Forum is a Non-Infringing Fair Use
Late Friday, the federal district court in Nevada issued a declaratory judgment that makes is harder for copyright holders to file lawsuits over excerpts of material and burden online forums and their users with nuisance lawsuits.
The judgment – part of the nuisance lawsuit avalanche started by copyright troll Righthaven – found that Democratic Underground did not infringe the copyright in a Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper article when a user of the online political forum posted a five-sentence excerpt, with a link back to the newspaper’s website.
Wind generation in the US increased by 27 percent in 2011 as compared with 2010, continuing a trend of rapid growth, the government said Monday. Tax credits and grants for electricity from certain renewable sources have encouraged capacity additions and increased generation from wind and other renewable sources, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said Monday. Wind energy is the largest source of non-hydroelectric renewable electricity in the US, contributing 61 percent of the nea …
In the eastern Chinese city of Wuxi, home to the world’s biggest maker of solar panels, labour is so cheap that workers carry out jobs by hand while machines designed to perform the same tasks sit idle.
The low cost of labour, coupled with the massive scale of production at its 14,000-person plant, have enabled China’s Suntech to become the global industry leader in just a decade.
Activists tap court to block Japan reactor restart
by Staff Writers Tokyo (AFP)
A group of Japanese citizens filed a lawsuit Monday to prevent the restart of a nuclear power plant, a day after the first anniversary of the tsunami that sparked the Fukushima atomic disaster.
The group of 259 citizens filed the suit in Osaka District Court seeking an injunction that would block the reopening of utility Kansai Electric’s nuclear power plants Oi Unit 3 and 4 in central Fukui prefecture.
Kolkata protest against PM comment on Kudankulam project
by Staff Writers Kolkata, India (IANS)
A group of Kolkata residents Monday held a 12-hour fast against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s comments on agitations centred around the Kudankulam nuclear power plant (KNPP) in Tamil Nadu and wrote to him demanding the scrapping of the project.
The prime minister, in an interview to Science magazine in February, reportedly blamed NGOs from the US and Scandinavia for fuelling protests against the nuclear plant.
As Japan marked the first anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that crippled the country’s Fukushima nuclear power plant, the governor of Fukushima prefecture called for terminating nuclear power and promoting renewable energy.
“We will call for all nuclear power stations in the prefecture to be shut down so that an accident like this never happens again,” Fukushima Gov. Yuhei Sato said Sunday of the worst nuclear crisis since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine.
by Lynn Yarris for Berkeley News
Berkeley CA (SPX)
Mass contamination from major radiation exposure events, such as the meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, require prompt treatment in the form of a pill, such as the treatment being developed at Berkeley Lab. File image courtesy AFP.
The New York Times recently reported that in the darkest moments of the triple meltdown last year of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japanese officials considered the evacuation of the nearly 36 million residents of the Tokyo metropolitan area.
NYPD officer thrown in psych ward by superiors after revealing systemic corruption
Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
Adrian Schoolcraft of the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) 81st precinct in Brooklyn noticed some disturbing trends within the department and in response to his brave move to step forward, his superiors had him thrown in a psychiatric ward.
Schoolcraft realized that there was a pattern of the victims of crimes being caught up in bureaucratic hurdles which he thinks were deliberately put in place in order to make it harder to report serious crimes.
He then did his job and reported multiple incidents to investigators in 2009.
DOJ Asks Court To Keep Secret Any Partnership Between Google, NSA
The Justice Department is defending the government’s refusal to discuss—or even acknowledge the existence of—any cooperative research and development agreement between Google and the National Security Agency.
You probably don’t know Regina Dugan’s name, but for the past three years, she’s been director of DARPA, the military’s R&D lab. In a few weeks, she’ll be moving into an executive position at Google, becoming one of the most senior military officials to cross over to the private sector.
Portable chargers, boosters to ease green car charging woes
Geneva (AFP)
Chevrolet Europe’s president Susan Doherty drives to work every day in an electric car, and thanks to a recharging station at work, she never worries about running out of power. For most other people, however, it remains a challenge to find electric charging stations to refuel. As a result sales of electric cars have lagged, with most consumers going for hybrid options that at least offe …
Virginia State Senate Passes Bill Forbidding Indefinite Detention of Americans
After Virginia legislators pass a law forbidding infinite detention of US Citizens, worries arise Governor McDonnell could try to sabotage the anti-NDAA law
CNN Reports On California’s Eugenics History & How They Assisted The Nazis Eugenics Program
Bill would create partnership between NSA and U.S. corporations
Speaking at a policy debate Wednesday at The Heritage Foundation, a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned that a bill currently being considered by the House Select Committee on Intelligence would intertwine the National Security Agency (NSA) with corporate America, exposing vast amounts of private civilian data to unprecedented levels of monitoring, all in the name of “cybersecurity.”
The Hill: ACLU warns of expanded spying powers in new GOP cybersecurity legislation
By Brendan Sasso
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is warning that a cybersecurity bill from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and other Republicans would give spy agencies unprecedented powers to snoop through people’s personal information.
Los Angeles Times: Labor unions rethinking their role in politics
By Matea Gold and Melanie Mason
The influential AFL-CIO almost certainly will endorse Obama for reelection, but many unions are increasingly financing their own efforts instead of writing large checks to the Democratic Party and its candidates.
20 Economic Statistics To Use To Wake Sheeple Up From Their Entertainment-Induced Comas
Just like during the Great Depression, Wall Street is having one of the greatest bull runs in history at the expense of the masses and here are the statistics to prove it.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that 227,000 new nonfarm payroll jobs were created by the economy during February. Is the government’s claim true?
“The banks and the governments are simply zombies only interested in survival.”
Source: Gold Seek
The government is preparing to package and sell foreclosed homes. We do not know what discount to the current market there will be but you can guess it will be 20% or more. This event will cause home prices to trend lower dependent on whether the houses are put up for sale or rented. These homes will only be available to big buyers such as hedge funds and others with enormous amounts of capital. It is expected that the homes will be sold in lots of 5,000 to 10,000 and the minimum bid would be $1 billion.
US state department – we have no intention of leaving Uganda
Posted by Phantom Report
US military interest in central Africa, much like US military interests in various areas around the world, is multi-faceted. Uganda, for example, has played an increasingly central role in US counter-terrorism efforts, particularly in the United States’ attempts to destroy the Somali militant group Al Shabab. In June of last year, the Pentagon approved plans to send $45m worth of military equipment to Uganda and Burundi.
On Wednesday, Angelo Izama, an award-winning Ugandan journalist who specializes in security issues in central Africa, said the US is running a “multi-country intervention with a small number of troops” with a mission that isn’t entirely humanitarian in nature.
By leading anti-war activist David Swanson, author of Day Break and War Is A Lie, who runs the websites DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org (formerly AfterDowningStreet.org)
When President George W. Bush was pretending to want to avoid a war on Iraq while constantly pushing laughably bad propaganda to get that war going, we had a feeling he was lying. After all, he was a Republican. But it was after the war was raging away that we came upon things like the Downing Street Minutes and the White House Memo.
Now President Barack Obama is pretending to want to avoid a war on Iran and to want Israel not to start one, while constantly pushing laughably bad propaganda to get that war going. We might suspect a lack of sincerity, given the insistence that Iran put an end to a program that the U.S. government simultaneously says there is no evidence exists, given the increase in free weapons for Israel to $3.1 billion next year, given the ongoing protection of Israel at the U.N. from any accountability for crimes, given the embrace of sanctions highly unlikely to lead to anything other than greater prospects of war, and given Obama’s refusal to take openly illegal war “off the table.” We might suspect that peace was not the ultimate goal, except of course that Obama is a Democrat.
The Hill: US soldier detained after shootings of Afghan civilians
By Meghashyam Mali
A U.S. soldier was detained in Afghanistan under suspicion of opening fire on Afghan civilians on Sunday, an incident that could inflame anti-American anger in the country.
Annan ‘optimistic’ after talks with Syrian president:
Annan says he remains optimistic following a second round of talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Mr Annan said the talks had resulted in “concrete proposals”.
Attack on Iran? ‘Doubts Israel capable of launching war’
RT talks to Iran’s deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian on whether Israel’s threats will turn into action and what could be the implications of it.
Uploaded by RussiaToday on Mar 11, 2012
With tensions between Iran and Israel intensifying RT talks to Iran’s deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian on whether Israel’s threats will turn into action and what could be the implications of it.
US, Allies Begin Talk of Potential Military Intervention in Syria
A move to intervene militarily has no legal basis and could potentially escalate the conflict
New Los Angeles radiation tests Highest Radiation Levels Since Fukushima Disaster Recorded in Los Angeles
By Alex Thomas
IntelHub
A March 6th test of a HEPA filter recorded radiation levels 668% or 6.68 times the normal background radiation levels. This test took place 43 days after initial tests and shows a 130% increase since January 22nd.
“The California Highway Patrol considers anything over three times background, 300% of background above, a trigger level to a hazardous materials situation,” reported the EnviroReporter.
Just four hours after a tsunami swept into the Fukushima nuclear power plant a year ago, Japan’s leaders knew the damage was so severe that the reactors could melt down, but they kept their knowledge secret for months.
We have all heard about several animal species becoming extinct, even in the modern world, humans have seen whole generations of some animals disappear. Will bees become one of them?
Some experts believe that the bees could be about to die and at least one third of our food depends on pollination of flowering plants. Einstein once said: “If the bees disappear, mankind would have only 4 more years of life”.
Over 3 million colonies of bees have died in the USA since 2006 and over a thousand millions of bees have died in this period in the world.
Why you should avoid filling up your gas tank with ethanol-laced fuel
By Jonathan Benson,
(NaturalNews) New guidelines recently put forth by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for automobile fuel could spell disaster for your car’s engine. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) reports that the EPA is set to approve E15 automobile fuel, or fuel that contains up to 15 percent ethanol, which is so damaging to car engines that many car manufacturers have put out warnings that using it will void car warranties. For many years now, the federal government has been incrementally…
FBI in the process of creating a system for monitoring all conversations on social networking sites
By J. D. Heyes,
(NaturalNews) If you’re a regular reader of NaturalNews, you’re already well aware of the fact that government, the courts and private industry have all essentially disregarded the intent and meaning of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment privacy protections in the age of information technology. It seems that you give up your right to be “secure” in your “persons, houses, papers, and effects” if you dare to use a social media network or virtually any other information exchange system. The…
65-year-old California ‘milk man’ subjected to extreme torture, hypothermia, raw sewage in LA County jail
By Mike Adams,
(NaturalNews) NaturalNews exclusive report, please credit with link. NaturalNews can now report that 65-year-old senior citizen James Stewart, a raw milk farmer with no criminal history, was nearly tortured to death in the LA County jail this past week. He survived a “week of torturous Hell” at the hands of LA County jail keepers who subjected him to starvation, sleep deprivation, hypothermia, loss of blood circulation to extremities, verbal intimidation, involuntary medical testing and even subjected…
There are more British troops being deployed to the 2012 Olympic Games than have been deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.
John Nichols | Tens of Thousands Rally in Wisconsin for Labor Rights and Democracy
John Nichols, Op-Ed:
As the state prepares for a recall election that could remove Walker from the governorship — along with his lieutenant governor and four Republican state senators — tens of thousands of union activists and their supporters rallied once more Saturday at the state Capitol in Madison. It was an epic turnout, estimated by Governor Walker’s Department of Administration at 35,000 and by organizers at closer to 60,000.
The War On WikiLeaks Is Now Trial By Media In Sweden
By John Pilger
Like the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, attacks on Iran and Syria require a steady drip-effect on readers’ and viewers’ consciousness. This is the essence of a propaganda that rarely speaks its name.
Two styles of US Marine Corps trucks are seen carrying the Active Denial System, March 9th, 2012, at the US Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia. The non-lethal weapon projects a strong electromagnetic beam up to 1000-meters. The beam creates heat so uncomfortable the natural response is to flee
A sensation of unbearable, sudden heat seems to come out of nowhere — this wave, a strong electromagnetic beam, is the latest non-lethal weapon unveiled by the US military this week.
RBS raises mortgage rates as Halifax prepares to follow suit
Millions of financially stretched households are likely to lose the lifeline of low interest rates keeping them afloat, mortgage experts warned after the Halifax prepared the ground for a rise in mortgage rates and RBS announced an increase.
Taxpayers’ ‘bad bank’ repossesses nearly 9,000 homes
Britain’s taxpayer-backed “bad bank” repossessed nearly 9,000 homes in 2011 as its profits more than doubled, allowing it to repay £2.1bn in loans to the government.
