From ths at psalience.org  Mon Sep 19 00:00:57 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2011 00:00:57 +0200
Subject: [THS] Iranian leader warns Arab nations: Never trust America, Nato,
 and...
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110919000023.05acfae0@mail.messagingengine.com>

Iranian leader warns Arab nations: 

"Never trust America, Nato, and the criminal regimes like Britain, France and Italy who for a long time divided and plundered your lands," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told an international Islamic conference in Tehran on Saturday. "Hold suspicion of them and don't believe their smiles. Behind those smiles and promises lie conspiracy and treason," he added.
http://bit.ly/rh2KQF


From ths at psalience.org  Mon Sep 19 15:18:29 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:18:29 +0200
Subject: [THS] Obama's Arc of Instability: Destabilizing the World One
 Region at a Time
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110919151743.06b8e8e0@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.alternet.org/story/152458/obama%27s_arc_of_instability%3A_destabilizing_the_world_one_region_at_a_time?page=entire

AlterNet and TomDispatch / By Nick Turse

Obama's Arc of Instability: Destabilizing the World One Region at a Time
The "arc of instability" includes 97 countries. A startling number of these nations are in turmoil, and in every single one of them, Washington is militarily involved.

September 18, 2011  |  
 

It?s a story that should take your breath away: the destabilization of what, in the Bush years, used to be called ?the arc of instability.?  It involves at least 97 countries, across the bulk of the global south, much of it coinciding with the oil heartlands of the planet.  A startling number of these nations are now in turmoil, and in every single one of them -- from Afghanistan and Algeria to Yemen and Zambia -- Washington is militarily involved, overtly or covertly, in outright war or what passes for peace. 

Garrisoning the planet is just part of it.  The Pentagon and U.S. intelligence services are also running covert special forces and spy operations, launching drone attacks, building bases and secret prisons, training, arming, and funding local security forces, and engaging in a host of other militarized activities right up to full-scale war.  But while you consider this, keep one fact in mind: the odds are that there is no longer a single nation in the arc of instability in which the United States is in no way militarily involved.  

Covenant of the Arc

?Freedom is on the march in the broader Middle East,? the president said in his speech.  ?The hope of liberty now reaches from Kabul to Baghdad to Beirut and beyond. Slowly but surely, we're helping to transform the broader Middle East from an arc of instability into an arc of freedom.?

An arc of freedom.  You could be forgiven if you thought that this was an excerpt from President Barack Obama?s Arab Spring speech, where he said ?[I]t will be the policy of the United States to
 support transitions to democracy.?  Those were, however, the words of his predecessor George W. Bush.  The giveaway is that phrase ?arc of instability,? a core rhetorical concept of the former president?s global vision and that of his neoconservative supporters.

The dream of the Bush years was to militarily dominate that arc, which largely coincided with the area from North Africa to the Chinese border, also known as the Greater Middle East, but sometimes was said to stretch from Latin America to Southeast Asia.  While the phrase has been dropped in the Obama years, when it comes to projecting military power President Obama is in the process of trumping his predecessor. 

In addition to waging more wars in ?arc? nations, Obama has overseen the deployment of greater numbers of special operations forces to the region, has transferred or brokered the sale of substantial quantities of weapons there, while continuing to build and expand military bases at a torrid rate, as well as training and supplying large numbers of indigenous forces.  Pentagon documents and open source information indicate that there is not a single country in that arc in which U.S. military and intelligence agencies are not now active.  This raises questions about just how crucial the American role has been in the region?s increasing volatility and destabilization.

Flooding the Arc

Given the centrality of the arc of instability to Bush administration thinking, it was hardly surprising that it launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and carried out limited strikes in three other arc states -- Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia.  Nor should anyone have been shocked that it also deployed elite military forcesand special operators from the Central Intelligence Agency elsewhere within the arc.

In his book The One Percent Doctrine, journalist Ron Suskind reported on CIA plans, unveiled in September 2001 and known as the ?Worldwide Attack Matrix,? for ?detailed operations against terrorists in 80 countries.?  At about the same time, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld proclaimed that the nation had embarked on "a large multi-headed effort that probably spans 60 countries.?  By the end of the Bush years, the Pentagon would indeed have special operations forces deployed in 60 countries around the world. 

It has been the Obama administration, however, that has embraced the concept far more fully and engaged the region even more broadly.  Last year, the Washington Post reported that U.S. had deployed special operations forces in 75 countries, from South America to Central Asia.  Recently, however, U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me that on any given day, America?s elite troops are working in about 70 countries, and that its country total by year?s end would be around 120.  These forces are engaged in a host of missions, from Army Rangers involved in conventional combat in Afghanistan to the team of Navy SEALs who assassinated Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, to trainers from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines within U.S. Special Operations Command working globally from the Dominican Republic to Yemen. 

The United States is now involved in wars in six arc-of-instability nations: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.  It has military personnel deployed in other arc states, including Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates.  Of these countries,Afghanistan, Bahrain, Djibouti, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates all host U.S. military bases, while the CIA is reportedly building a secret base somewhere in the region for use in its expanded drone wars in Yemen and Somalia.  It is also using already existing facilities in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates for the same purposes, and operating a clandestine base in Somalia where it runs indigenous agents and carries out counterterrorism training for local partners. 

In addition to its own military efforts, the Obama administration has also arranged for the sale of weaponry to regimes in arc states across the Middle East, including Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.  It has been indoctrinating and schooling indigenous military partners through the State Department?s and Pentagon?s International Military Education and Training program.  Last year, it provided training to more than 7,000 students from 130 countries.  ?The emphasis is on the Middle East and Africa because we know that terrorism will grow, and we know that vulnerable countries are the most targeted,? Kay Judkins, the program?s policy manager, recently told the American Forces Press Service.

According to Pentagon documents released earlier this year, the U.S. has personnel -- some in token numbers, some in more sizeable contingents -- deployed in 76 other nations sometimes counted in the arc of instability: Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, Syria, Antigua, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, Venezuela, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

While arrests of 30 members of an alleged CIA spy ring in Iran earlier this year may be, like earlier incarcerations of supposed American ?spies?, pure theaterfor internal consumption or international bargaining, there is little doubt that the U.S. is conducting covert operations there, too.  Last year, reports surfaced that U.S. black ops teams had been authorized to run missions inside that country, and spies and local proxies are almost certainly at work there as well.  Just recently, the Wall Street Journal revealed a series of ?secret operations on the Iran-Iraq border? by the U.S. military and a coming CIA campaign of covert operations aimed at halting the smuggling of Iranian arms into Iraq.

All of this suggests that there may, in fact, not be a single nation within the arc of instability, however defined, in which the United States is without a base or military or intelligence personnel, or where it is not running agents, sending weapons, conducting covert operations -- or at war.

The Arc of History

Just after President Obama came into office in 2009, then-Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair briefed the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.  Drawing special attention to the arc of instability, he summed up the global situation this way: ?The large region from the Middle East to South Asia is the locus for many of the challenges facing the United States in the twenty-first century.?  Since then, as with the Bush-identified phrase ?global war on terror,? the Obama administration and the U.S. military have largely avoided using ?arc of instability,? preferring to refer to it using far vaguer formulations.

During a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association's annual Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict Symposium earlier this year, for example, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, then the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command, pointed toward a composite satellite image of the world at night.  Before September 11, 2001, said Olson, the lit portion of the planet -- the industrialized nations of the global north -- were considered the key areas.  Since then, he told the audience, 51 countries, almost all of them in the arc of instability, have taken precedence.  "Our strategic focus,? he said, ?has shifted largely to the south... certainly within the special operations community, as we deal with the emerging threats from the places where the lights aren't."

More recently, in remarks at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., John O. Brennan, the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, outlined the president?s new National Strategy for Counterterrorism, which highlighted carrying out missions in the ?Pakistan-Afghanistan region? and ?a focus on specific regions, including what we might call the periphery -- places like Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and the Maghreb [northern Africa].?

?This does not,? Brennan insisted, ?require a ?global? war? -- and indeed, despite the Bush-era terminology, it never has.  While, for instance, planning for the 9/11 attacks took place in Germany and would-be shoe-bomber Richard Reid hailed from the United Kingdom, advanced, majority-white Western nations have never been American targets.  The ?arc? has never arced out of the global south, whose countries are assumed to be fundamentally unstable by nature and their problems fixable through military intervention.

Building Instability 

A decade?s evidence has made it clear that U.S. operations in the arc of instability are destabilizing.  For years, to take one example, Washington has wielded military aid, military actions, and diplomatic pressure in such a way as to undermine the government of Pakistan, promote factionalism within its military and intelligence services, and stoke anti-American sentiment to remarkable levels among the country?s population.  (According to a recent survey, just 12% of Pakistanis have a positive view of the United States.)

A semi-secret drone war in that nation?s tribal borderlands, involving hundreds of missile strikes and significant, if unknown levels, of civilian casualties, has been only the most polarizing of Washington?s many ham-handed efforts.  When it comes to that CIA-run effort, a recent Pew survey of Pakistanis found that 97% of respondents viewed it negatively, a figure almost impossible to achieve in any sort of polling.

In Yemen, long-time support -- in the form of aid, military training, and weapons, as well as periodic air or drone strikes -- for dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh led to a special relationship between the U.S. and elite Yemeni forces led by Saleh?s relatives.  This year, those units have been instrumental in cracking down on the freedom struggle there, killing protesters and arresting dissenting officers who refused orders to open fire on civilians.  It?s hardly surprising that, even before Yemen slid into a leaderless void (after Saleh was wounded in an assassination attempt), a survey of Yemenis found -- again a jaw-dropping polling figure -- 99% of respondents viewed the U.S. government?s relations with the Islamic world unfavorably, while just 4% ?somewhat? or ?strongly approved? of Saleh?s cooperation with Washington.

Instead of pulling back from operations in Yemen, however, the U.S. has doubled down. The CIA, with support from Saudi Arabia?s intelligence service, has been running local agents as well as a lethal drone campaign aimed at Islamic militants.  The U.S. military has been carrying out its own air strikes, as well as sending in more trainers to work with indigenous forces, while American black ops teams launch lethal missions, often alongside Yemeni allies.

These efforts have set the stage for further ill-will, political instability, and possible blowback.  Just last year, a U.S. drone strike accidentally killed Jabr al-Shabwani, the son of strongman Sheikh Ali al-Shabwani.  In an act of revenge, Ali repeatedly attacked of one of Yemen's largest oil pipelines, resulting in billions of dollars in lost revenue for the Yemeni government, and demanded Saleh stop cooperating with the U.S. strikes.

Earlier this year, in Egypt and Tunisia, long-time U.S. efforts to promote what it liked to call ?regional stability? -- through military alliances, aid, training, and weaponry -- collapsed in the face of popular movements against the U.S.-supported dictators ruling those nations.   Similarly, in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan,Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, popular protests erupted against authoritarian regimes partnered with and armed courtesy of the U.S. military.  It?s hardly surprising that, when asked in a recent survey whether President Obama had met the expectations created by his 2009 speech in Cairo, where he called for ?a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,? only 4% of Egyptians answered yes.  (The same poll found only 6% of Jordanians thought so and just 1% of Lebanese.)

A recent Zogby poll of respondents in six Arab countries -- Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates -- found that, taking over from a president who had propelled anti-Americanism in the Muslim world to an all-time high, Obama managed to drive such attitudes even higher.  Substantial majorities of Arabs in every country now view the U.S. as not contributing ?to peace and stability in the Arab World.?

Increasing Instability Across the Globe

U.S. interference in the arc of instability is certainly nothing new.  Leaving aside current wars, over the last century, the United States has engaged in military interventions in the global south in Cambodia, Congo, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Egypt, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Panama, the Philippines, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Somalia, Thailand, and Vietnam, among other places.  The CIA has waged covert campaigns in many of the same countries, as well as Afghanistan, Algeria, Chile, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, and Syria, to name just a few.

Like George W. Bush before him, Barack Obama evidently looks out on the ?unlit world? and sees a source of global volatility and danger for the United States.  His answer has been to deploy U.S. military might to blunt instability, shore up allies, and protect American lives. 

Despite the salient lesson of 9/11-- interventions abroad beget blowback at home -- he has waged wars in response to blowback that have, in turn, generated more of the same.  A recent Rasmussen poll indicates that most Americans differ with the president when it comes to his idea of how the U.S. should be involved abroad.  Seventy-five percent of voters, for example,agreed with this proposition in a recent poll: ?The United States should not commit its forces to military action overseas unless the cause is vital to our national interest.?  In addition, clear majorities of Americans are against defending Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and a host of other arc of instability countries, even if they are attacked by outside powers.

After decades of overt and covert U.S. interventions in arc states, including the last 10 years of constant warfare, most are still poor, underdeveloped, and seemingly even more unstable.  This year, in their annual failed state index -- a ranking of the most volatile nations on the planet -- Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace placed the two arc nations that have seen the largest military interventions by the U.S. -- Iraq and Afghanistan -- in their top ten. Pakistan and Yemen ranked 12th and 13th, respectively, while Somalia -- the site of U.S. interventions under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, during the Bush presidency in the 2000s, and again under Obama -- had the dubious honor of being number one.

For all the discussions here about (armed) ?nation-building efforts? in the region, what we?ve clearly witnessed is a decade of nation unbuilding that ended only when the peoples of various Arab lands took their futures into their own hands and their bodies out into the streets.  As recent polling in arc nations indicates, people of the global south see the United States as promoting or sustaining, not preventing, instability, and objective measures bear out their claims.  The fact that numerous popular uprisings opposing authoritarian rulers allied with the U.S. have proliferated this year provides the strongest evidence yet of that. 

With Americans balking at defending arc-of-instability nations, with clear indications that military interventions don?t promote stability, and with a budget crisis of epic proportions at home, it remains to be seen what pretexts the Obama administration will rely on to continue a failed policy -- one that seems certain to make the world more volatile and put American citizens at greater risk.

 
Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com and a senior editor at AlterNet. His latest book is The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso). 


From ths at psalience.org  Mon Sep 19 15:25:18 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:25:18 +0200
Subject: [THS] Middle Class Death Watch -- 33 Frightening Economic
 Developments
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110919152246.0454a638@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.alternet.org/story/152457/middle_class_death_watch_--_33_frightening_economic_developments?page=entire

   
Amped Status / By David DeGraw

Middle Class Death Watch -- 33 Frightening Economic Developments
Downward mobility, homelessness spreading to the middle class, 200,000 public employees laid off? Here are some frightening trends to keep an eye on.
September 18, 2011  |  
 

 Middle-Class Americans Often Fall Down Economic Ladder: Study ? nearly a third of Americans who were part of the middle class have fallen out of it

    ?The promise of the American dream has given many hope that they themselves could one day rise up the economic ladder. But according to a study released those already in financially-stable circumstances should fear falling down a few rungs too. The study
  found that nearly a third of Americans who were part of the middle class as teenagers in the 1970s have fallen out of it as adults
  its findings suggest the relative ease with which people in the U.S. can end up in low-income, low-opportunity lifestyles ? even if they started out with a number of advantages. Though the American middle class has been repeatedly invoked as a key factor in any economic turnaround, numerous reports have suggested that the middle class enjoys less existential security than it did a generation ago, thanks to stagnating incomes and the decline of the industrial sector.?

Downward Mobility from the Middle Class: Waking Up from the American Dream

    ?The idea that children will grow up to be better off than their parents is a central component of the American Dream, and sustains American optimism. However, Downward Mobility from the Middle Class: Waking up from the American Dream finds that a middle-class upbringing does not guarantee the same status over the course of a lifetime. A third of Americans raised in the middle class?defined here as those between the 30th and 70th percentiles of the income distribution?fall out of the middle as adults.?

Housing Crisis

More Americans ?double up? and share homes in tough economy

    ?This spring, there were 21.8 million ?doubled-up? households across the nation, a 10.7 percent increase from the 19.7 million households in the spring of 2007, the Census Bureau said. That means 18.3 percent of all households were combined households.?

The millions of Americans living in long-stay motels

    ?They are known as the last resort. Millions of Americans are staying in budget long-stay motels as the country?s economic problems get worse. The grisly rooms are seen as the lowest of the U.S. housing ladder, only just above a cardboard box. In tiny rooms with paper-thin walls and nylon sheets, vulnerable Americans are making their homes for a few hundred bucks a month.?

Homelessness could spread to middle class, Crisis study warns

    ?The economic downturn and the government?s deep cuts to welfare will drive up homelessness over the next few years, raising the spectre of middle class people living on the streets, a major study warns. The report by the homelessness charity Crisis says there is a direct link between the downturn and rising homelessness as cuts to services and draconian changes to benefits shred the traditional welfare safety net.?

In L.A., Homelessness Spreads to Middle-Class Families, As Underemployment Rate Hits 24%

    ?More than two years into the economic recovery, there isn?t yet a light at the end of the tunnel for California?s economy and stubborn unemployment. The number of job losses in the state is still much higher than the worst moments of the 2001 and 1990 recessions
. The state?s jobless rate hit 12% last month, the second worst in the nation. A broader measure of unemployment ? which also includes part-time workers and people outside the labor force who have been looking for a job ? is 22% in California and 24% in Los Angeles, while the national average is only 16.5%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The impact on children has been brutal: since 2007, 7% of the state?s children have had a foreclosure process started on their homes, the fourth-highest level in the nation, according to a study released this month by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. And families can rely less on welfare because state and federal budget crises have cut social services.?

US Taxpayers Own 248,000 Foreclosed Homes

    ?For sale or rent by distressed owner: 248,000 homes. That?s how many residential properties the U.S. government now has in its possession, the result of record numbers of people defaulting on government-backed mortgages. Washington is sitting on nearly a third of the nation?s 800,000 repossessed houses, making the U.S. taxpayer the largest owner of foreclosed properties. With even more homes moving toward default, Fannie Mae (FNMA), Freddie Mac (FMCC), and the Federal Housing Administration are looking for a way to unload them without swamping the already depressed real estate market. Trouble is, they haven?t figured out how to do that. ?They?re stuck,? says Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner of Federal Financial Analytics, a Washington-based consultant that advises banks and other clients on government policy. ?They don?t know what to do.??

Foreclosures: Are the rich the biggest strategic defaulters?

    ?It would seem so from the statistics compiled by the New York Times. The article leads in by suggesting the rich are ?losing their home but given the talk about strategic default earlier in the year, you should wonder whether these are defaults due to distress or out of sheer financial calculation. This statistic jumped out at me: More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars is seriously delinquent
. By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender. About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent. Why would there be this differential given the stress on budgets felt by homebuyers below the million dollar mark? It looks very much like strategic defaults at play.?

There?s No Bottom In Sight For Plummeting Home Prices

    ?At the end of June 2011, macromarkets.com released the results of a poll in which 108 leading economists and housing market analysts were asked to predict the direction of home prices from now until 2015. All except four of them predicted that housing markets around the country would hit bottom no later than the end of 2012 before climbing again. Only one of them thought that home prices would not hit bottom until the end of 2013. By way of contrast, a survey of consumers released in May by trulia.com and realtytrac.com found that 54% thought that a housing market recovery would not occur until ?2014 or later.??

American Dream, downsized: Homeownership not a given

    ?For decades, Americans have aspired to own homes, and everyone from bankers to government officials has worked to make the dream accessible. But around the country, particularly in places hit hardest by the real estate bust, that?s changing. Legions of homeowners remain underwater on their mortgages or unable to move because they can?t sell their house. Plenty who want homes can?t buy them because credit remains tight.?

Unemployment

Initial Unemployment Claims Surge Again, Far Worse Than Consensus As Prior Revised Higher As Usual

    ?The BLS playbook in full force today: miss expectations of 405K ? check, by printing at 414K; another weekly print over 400K ? check (21 out of 22 weeks over 400K), revise prior week?s higher ? check (from 409K to 412K). Unfortunately, unlike two weeks ago when another blowout miss was reported, this time there is no striking phone carrier to blame it to. And as usual, those coming off their extended claims cliff keeps increasing, with 78K people dropping off EUCs and Extended claims: nearly 2 million people have been cut off from any extended government benefits in the past year. Overall, another weekly data set that confirms that next month?s NFP number will most certainly not be positive
 or zero. ?

Unemployed face tough competition: underemployed

    ?The job market is even worse than the 9.1 percent unemployment rate suggests. America?s 14 million unemployed aren?t competing just with each other. They must also contend with 8.8 million other people not counted as unemployed ? part-timers who want full-time work. When consumer demand picks up, companies will likely boost the hours of their part-timers before they add jobs, economists say. It means they have room to expand without hiring. And the unemployed will face another source of competition once the economy improves: Roughly 2.6 million people who aren?t counted as unemployed because they?ve stopped looking for work. Once they start looking again, they?ll be classified as unemployed. And the unemployment rate could rise.?

A smaller share of men have jobs today than at any time since World War II

    ?Employers are increasingly giving up on the American man. Men who do have jobs are getting paid less. After accounting for inflation, median wages for men between 30 and 50 dropped 27 percent?to $33,000 a year? from 1969 to 2009, according to an analysis by Michael Greenstone, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor who was chief economist for Obama?s Council of Economic Advisers. ?That takes men and puts them back at their earnings capacity of the 1950s,? Greenstone says. ?That has staggering implications.?

More than 200,000 public employees laid off in 2010

    ?Local and state governments axed more than 200,000 jobs in 2010, according to U.S. Census data that showed the growing threat of public employee layoffs to the economic recovery. According to the Census, local and state governments had 203,321 fewer full-time equivalent employees in 2010 than in 2009 and 27,567 fewer part-time employees. ?

Uncle Sam Does(n?t) Want You ? America?s Reserve Army of Labor Marches Through Time

    ?Today, the question is: As the new unemployment ?norm? rises, will the ?99ers? remain just a number, or will anger and systemic dysfunction lead to the rebirth of movements of the unemployed, perhaps allied, as in the past, with others suffering from the economy?s relentless downward arc? Keep in mind that the extent of organized protest by the unemployed in the past should not be exaggerated. Not even the Great Depression evoked their sustained mass mobilization. That?s hardly surprising. By its nature, unemployment demoralizes and isolates people. It makes of them a transient and chronically fluctuating population with no readily discernable common enemy and no obvious place to coalesce. Another question might be: In the coming years, might we see the return of a basic American horror at the phenomenon of joblessness? And might it drive Americans to begin to ask deeper questions about the system that lives and feeds on it? After all, we now exist in an under-developing economy.

    What new jobs it is creating are poor paying, low skill, and often temporary, nor are there enough of them to significantly reduce the numbers of those out of work. The 99ers are stark evidence that we may be witnessing the birth of a new permanent class of the marginalized. (The percentage of the unemployed who have been out of work for more than six months has grown from 8.6% in 1979 to 19.6% today.) Moreover, our mode of ?flexible capitalism? has made work itself increasingly transient and precarious. Until now, ideologues of the new order have had remarkable success in dressing this up as a new form of freedom. But our ancestors, who experienced frequent and distressing interruptions in their work lives, who migrated thousands of miles to find jobs which they kept or lost at the whim of employers, and who, in solitary search for work, tramped the roads and hopped the freight cars (even if they could not yet roam Internet chat rooms), were not so delusional.

    We have a choice: Americans can continue to accept large-scale unemployment as ?natural? and permanent, even ? a truly grotesque development ? as a basic feature on a bipartisan road to ?recovery? via austerity. Or we can follow the lead of the jobless young in the Arab Spring and of protestors beginning to demonstrate en masse in Europe. Even the newly minted proletarians of Ventura, California, sleeping in their cars, may decide that they have had enough of a political and economic order of things so bankrupt it can find no use for them at any price.?

The false promise of Obama?s trade deals ? won?t help American workers ? and will hurt foreign ones

    ?It is bad enough that President Obama is reversing his campaign pledge and supporting Bush-era trade deals with Korea, Colombia and Panama. Starting this week in Chicago, the US will be hosting the first major trade negotiations since the ?Battle in Seattle? World Trade Organisation talks came here in 1999. This occasion is for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with a wide range of industrialised and developing Pacific Rim countries. As part of his plan to revive the US economy and create jobs, Obama claims he will be unveiling ?a trade agreement for the 21st century?.

    Ironically, though, he will be pushing the same ?Nafta-style? trade pacts he campaigned against, and to howls of protest from his own electoral base. Let us not forget what he said: ?I voted against Cafta, never supported Nafta, and will not support Nafta-style trade agreements in the future,? Obama told Ohio voters in 2008. ?While Nafta gave broad rights to investors, it paid only lip service to the rights of labor and the importance of environmental protection.?"

In U.S., Worries About Job Cutbacks Return to Record Highs | Gallup

    ?American workers? concerns about various job-related cutbacks have returned to the record highs seen in 2009
. In terms of the most significant employment risk measured, 3 in 10 workers currently say they are worried they could soon be laid off, similar to the 31% seen in August 2009 but double the level recorded in August 2008 and for several years prior.?

Unemployed and Taking on Debt to Stay Afloat? Don?t Expect to get a Job

    ?Anyone can lose their job and fall behind on bills in this economy. But now that may keep them from finding new employment. This week?s credit check: Six out of 10 employers use credit reports to vet job applicants. More than 20 million Americans may have material errors on their credit reports
. Where should they turn when they?ve lost a steady paycheck, but still have to keep up with bills such as mortgage payments, student loans, and the basics like rent and food? With no money coming in, many understandably have to turn to debt. But taking on debt ? and being unable to pay it back, or pay back any of the debt they may have took on when things looked better and they had a job ? could be the exact thing that keeps the unemployed from becoming re-employed. In a massive Catch-22, many employers are looking to credit reports when they do background checks on prospective employees, and a bad mark due to an unpaid medical bill or lapsed student loan payment could make the difference in getting the job
. Marketplace recently told the story of Sarah Sholar, just one of those employees with bad credit who has been turned down by prospective employers. ?I can?t pay my student loans because I don?t have a job,? she told them. ?I can?t get a job because I can?t pay my student loans.??

Debt

U.S. Consumers? Credit Card Debt Rapidly Increasing

    ?According to a new study from CardHub.com, we?re on track to increase our collective credit card debt by $54 billion in 2011. We added only $9 billion in new credit card debt in 2010, and actually reduced our credit card debt in 2009 ? so this is a significant reversal. All told, Americans now have roughly $772 billion in outstanding credit card balances. ?For millions, they were living in a bubble,? says Odysseas Papadimitriou, CEO of CardHub, referring to Americans living on home equity and credit card debt five years ago. ?If we end up overleveraging ourselves again, it?s going to be the same thing repeated in a few years.??

Student Loan Default Rates Rise Sharply in Past Year

    ?The share of federal student loan defaults rose sharply last year, especially at for-profit colleges and universities, where 15 percent of borrowers defaulted in the first two years of repayment, up from 11.6 percent the previous year. According to Department of Education data released Monday, 8.8 percent of borrowers over all defaulted in the fiscal year that ended last Sept. 30, the latest figures available, up from 7 percent the previous year. At public institutions, the rate was 7.2 percent, up from 6 percent, and at not-for-profit private institutions, it was 4.6 percent, up from 4 percent. ?Borrowers are struggling in this economy,? said James Kvaal, deputy under secretary of education. ?We see a strong relationship between student default rates and unemployment rates.?

Majoring In Debt: College Students Struggle Under The Weight Of Loans

    ?Take Aleesha Nash, a graduate of New York University. ?Logging into the Federal Student Aid website,? she writes
  ?I see that today my balance is $104,104.63 for a percentage of the information in my head.? And there?s Jaclyn Cabral, too. Jaclyn chose to attend Elon University in North Carolina because it?s ?regarded as one of the most affordable private educations.? Still, she graduated $90,000 in debt. For many of these students, paying off their loans is a nearly unsurmountable challenge. Brandon Woods, a Hampton University alum, finds himself working two jobs ? and hardly making a dent in his $58,000 deficit. ?

Cash-strapped lawyer ?Carla? turns to exotic dancing to pay her debts

    ?A lawyer has told how she turned to stripping to pay bills after struggling to find a legal job in recession-weary America. The attorney, giving her name only as Carla, graduated from law school ten years ago. But after being made redundant in 2009, she had to take drastic action to avoid drowning in a sea of student loans and other debts. After working as a waitress and a cashier in a gas station, she became so desperate she took a job as an exotic dancer.?

Debt Slavery: If Aristotle Were Around Today, He?d Probably Conclude That Most Americans Were, For All Intents And Purposes, Slaves

    ?Instead of creating some sort of overarching institution to protect debtors, they create these grandiose, world-scale institutions like the IMF or S&P to protect creditors. They essentially declare (in defiance of all traditional economic logic) that no debtor should ever be allowed to default. Needless to say the result is catastrophic. We are experiencing something that to me, at least, looks exactly like what the ancients were most afraid of: a population of debtors skating at the edge of disaster. ?

Inflation

Food prices stay near record high

    ?Global food prices remain near a record high, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The index reached 231 points in August, up 26% from the same period last year. The index hit an all-time record of 238 points in February. Cereal prices rose on anticipation of a shortfall in production this year, which is expected to be 6 million tonnes less than predicted in July. The FAO?s measure looks at a range of essential foods. Those include cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar.?

Savers stumped as inflation bites

    ?Rising inflation means there are now just a handful of accounts that will prevent savers? capital being eroded by the increasing cost of living. The Office for National Statistics said the cost of living, as measured by CPI, rose from 4.4% in July to 4.5% in August, meaning a basic rate taxpayer now needs to find a savings account paying 5.63% a year to beat inflation and tax, while a higher rate taxpayer needs to find an account paying at least 7.5%.?

Deflation

Median Male Worker Makes Less Now Than 43 Years Ago ? Women Make 65% of what Median Male Makes

    ?While the fact that a record number of Americans are living in poverty should not surprise anyone at this point, what should surprise many is that according to Table P-5 of the Census report on (Lack of) Income, the median male is now worse on a gross, inflation adjusted basis, than he was in
 1968! While back then, the median income of male workers was $32,844, it has since declined to $32,137 as of 2010. And there is your lesson in inflation 101 (which we assume is driven by the CPI, which likely means that the actual inflation adjusted income decline is far worse than what is even reported). The only winner: women, whose median inflation adjusted income over the same period has increased by 188%. That said, it is still at 65% of what the median male makes. So injustice all around.?

Pension Time Bombs

California teachers? pension system labeled ?high-risk issue? by state auditors

    ?The California state auditor issued a report last month branding the defined benefit program of the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) a ?high-risk issue.? The pension fund is the eighth largest in the world and the largest teachers? pension fund in the US. Teachers and administrators contribute a portion of their wages to the fund each year so as to collect pension benefits when they retire. To be considered fully funded, the defined benefit program of CalSTRS must be funded by at least 80 percent. The current funding level is 71 percent. According to financial projections, in 30 years CalSTRS will be depleted of funds.?

Analysis: $35 trillion pension funds in new crisis as deficit hole grows

    ?This year has been a nightmare for many in the industry ? which controls $35 trillion, or a third of global financial assets ? and funding deficits are posting double-digit rises. ?We had a credit crisis and government bond crisis, and the third one we have is the pension crisis. This is the one where everything is going wrong and there?s no obvious way out,? said Kevin Wesbroom, UK head of global risk services at consultancy Aon Hewitt. The sharp retreat in stocks through the summer has hurt them again by weakening their asset positions and threatening to erode stock market recoveries seen since the equity collapse surrounding the 2007-2009 credit crisis. Recent data on pension deficits highlight the plight of many pension funds. In the United States, funding deficits of the 100 largest DB plans rose $68 billion to $254 billion in July, according to the Milliman Pension Fund Index. July marked the 10th largest deficit rise in the index?s 11 year history. Even if these companies were to achieve an optimistic annual return of as much as 8 percent and keep the current benchmark yield of 5.12 percent, their funding status is not estimated to improve beyond 93 percent by end-2013 from the current 83 percent.?

Healthcare

Number of uninsured climbs to highest figure since passage of Medicare, Medicaid

    ?Official estimates by the Census Bureau showing an increase of about 1 million in the number of Americans without health insurance in 2010 ? to a 45-year high of 49.9 million persons, or 16.3 percent of the population, under the bureau?s revised calculation method
. Employment-based coverage continued to decline. The bureau said 55.3 percent of Americans were covered by employment-based plans in 2010, down from 56.1 percent in 2009. It was the eleventh consecutive year of decline, from 64.2 percent in 2000.?

Healthcare law could leave families with even higher insurance costs

    ?It?s going to be a massive problem if it comes out that families have to buy really expensive employer-based coverage,? said Jocelyn Guyer, deputy executive director at Georgetown University?s Center for Children and Families. ?If they don?t fix this and by ?they? I mean either the administration or Congress, we?re going to have middle-class families extremely unhappy with [healthcare] reform in 2014, because they?ll basically be facing financial penalties for not buying coverage when they don?t have access to any affordable options.?

Employer-Provided Health Insurance Costs Skyrocket

    ?Newly published numbers from the Department of Health and Human Services show that American workers in 2010 paid average premiums of $4,940 for employer-provided health insurance to cover just themselves. That figure increased from $1,992 in 1996. Last year, the average family paid $13,871 for health insurance under employer-provided plans. For the average American household ? whose median income is now about $50,000 ? the rising price of health insurance is consuming a substantial part of paychecks.?

Employers Look Towards Ending Health Coverage, Survey

    ?Nearly one of every 10 midsized or big employers expects to stop offering health coverage to workers after insurance exchanges begin operating in 2014 as part of President Barack Obama?s health care overhaul, according to a survey by a major benefits consultant.  Towers Watson also found in its July survey that another one in five companies are unsure about what they will do after 2014. Another big benefits consultant, Mercer, found in a June survey of large and smaller employers that 8 percent are either ?likely? or ?very likely? to end health benefits after the exchanges start. The surveys, which involved more than 1,200 companies, suggest that some businesses feel they will be better off dropping health insurance coverage once the exchanges start, even though they could face fines and tax headaches. The percentage of companies that are already saying they expect to do this surprised some experts, and if they follow through, it could start a trend that chips away at employer-sponsored health coverage, a long-standing pillar of the nation?s health system.?

Consumer advocates fear health law will favor business

    ?Publicly, consumer and patient advocates continue to cheer wildly for last year?s health care law. Behind the scenes, however, some worry that they?re losing a few key battles to the insurance and business communities. They point to a long-sought provision in the law that entitles patients to external reviews if insurers won?t pay for a medical service, and they charge that recent regulations limit its effectiveness. One of their biggest gripes? It allows insurers to choose their own ?external? reviewers. ?Advocates who have dealt with the external review process believe that it?s pretty clear that if (a reviewer) is being chosen by an employer (or insurer) it?s not i

[seems to be cut off at the website]


From ths at psalience.org  Mon Sep 19 15:30:01 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:30:01 +0200
Subject: [THS] American Idiocy: Binge Drinking A-OK, Zero Tolerance on Pot
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110919152805.0454a320@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.alternet.org/story/152454/american_idiocy%3A_binge_drinking_a-ok%2C_zero_tolerance_on_pot?page=entire

   
AlterNet / By David Sirota

American Idiocy: Binge Drinking A-OK, Zero Tolerance on Pot
We sell college students a destructive ethos that encourages them to party hard?but only with alcohol, a substance that is far more toxic than marijuana.
September 18, 2011  |  
 
 
In the firmament of celebrated Americana, there is Mom, apple pie, football and beer?but there most certainly is not marijuana. As it relates to drugs, this bizarre culture has us implicitly accepting that people will inevitably use mind-altering substances. But through our statutes, we allow law-abiding citizens to use only one recreational substance?alcohol?that just happens to be way more hazardous than pot.

Such idiocy is the product of many variables. There?s been interest-group maneuvering and temperance-movement hypocrisy. There?s been hippie-hating rage and reefer-madness paranoia. And, most invisibly, there?s been college.

Though little noticed for its role in America?s selective War on Drugs, the university system has now become a key player shotgunning the oxymoronic ?alcohol is acceptable but pot is evil? mentality down the beer-bong-primed throats of America?s youth. To see how it all works, consider the University of Colorado (CU).

Both figuratively and literally immersed in alcohol, CU is the higher education gem of a state whose governor famously made his millions on beer breweries. Today, the school?s catering service sells alcohol, and university officials license CU?s logo for use on beer-drinking merchandise. Meanwhile, every school year, CU forces kids to sit through a convocation in a beer-themed arena?the Coors Events Center?to learn about the ?meaning and responsibilities? of student life.

Unsurprisingly, CU now has a binge-drinking problem, as evidenced by last week?s news that another CU student died after a night of heavy imbibing.

This headline-grabbing tragedy?CU?s second such fatality in less than a decade?is but one of the 600,000 alcohol-related student injuries each year, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. But because, like other schools, CU is intertwined with alcohol culture, the university has danced around the issue, simultaneously acknowledging the problem and not doing much about it.

Alcohol ?is the cause or primary factor in [a majority] of suicides, unintentional deaths, physical injuries, distressed personal relationships, legal problems, sexual assault, property damage and academic failure,? admitted Donald Misch, CU?s assistant vice chancellor for health and wellness, in 2010. Yet Misch refrained from an abstinence message, imploring students to ?drink responsibly.?

This libertarian attitude seems laudable for acknowledging the fact that kids will party regardless of prohibitionist rules. However, it is counterproductive in the context of the school?s no-tolerance posture toward marijuana?a substance that has been connected to far fewer injuries and no overdoses.

In recent years, the Boulder Daily Camera newspaper reports, university regents have been looking to ?crack down? on students? unsanctioned ?4/20? pro-pot protest because officials say it gives the school a ?party image??as if CU?s beer-soaked tailgating festivities don?t do that already. While students over 21 may possess alcohol in university residences, according to the Camera, ?CU bans marijuana in its dorms, even if students have medical licenses.? And whereas underage drinking typically results in soft punishments from university officials, CU campus police have been increasing citations for marijuana possession, which can result in students losing financial aid.

CU, of course, embodies the norm in our universities, almost all of which issue harsher penalties for marijuana possession than alcohol use. Though students at more than a dozen schools across the country recently voted for referendums demanding administrators equalize punishments, the initiatives have been ignored. Instead, school officials are fighting to instill America?s destructive drug-war mentality in the next generation.

The result is the perpetuation of a destructive ethos that encourages us to party hard?but only with a substance that is far more toxic than marijuana.

David Sirota is the best-selling author of the new book ?Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now.? He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. Email him at ds at davidsirota.com


From ths at psalience.org  Mon Sep 19 15:43:51 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:43:51 +0200
Subject: [THS] Half of Dutch teenagers regularly have a mild psychotic
 experience: study
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110919154339.046eb048@mail.messagingengine.com>

Half of Dutch teenagers regularly have a mild psychotic experience: study

September 16th, 2011 in Psychology & Psychiatry 

Mild psychotic experiences, such as delusive ideas or moderate feelings of paranoia, regularly occur among adolescents. Of the almost 7700 Dutch young people aged 12 to 16 years who were investigated by NWO researcher Hanneke Wigman during her doctoral research, about 40% reported that they often had such an experience. Wigman will defend her doctorate on Friday 16 September at Utrecht University.

There are five types of 'mild psychotic experiences' according to the researcher: hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, megalomania and paranormal convictions. Examples are hearing voices, the feeling that thoughts are being taken out of your head or the feeling that people are acting differently from what they are. These experiences are milder in nature than those of a psychosis, one of the most severe psychiatric disorders.

Using self-reports, Hanneke Wigman compared the prevalence of such psychotic experiences in teenagers (12-16 years) and adult women (18-45 years). This revealed that about 40% of the teenagers regularly have at least one of the five forms of psychotic experience, compared to just 2% of the adult women. The researcher also noticed the differences between teenage boys and teenage girls. For example, megalomania was reported more often by boys than girls. Hallucinations, delusions, paranoia and paranormal convictions occurred more among girls.

Typical for adolescence

The research results suggest that mild psychotic experiences are typical for adolescence. 'Adolescence is a period in which feelings of uncertainty play a role. Young people become more aware of themselves and are often sensitive for their changing social environment. That makes them more susceptible to paranoid thoughts and observations, for example,' explains Hanneke Wigman.

Adolescents find it harder than adults to distinguish between important and unimportant internal and external stimuli. This means, for example, that they are more susceptible to hallucinations. Wigman has also shown that the mild psychotic experiences undergone can change during adolescence. 'Some young people have many such experiences at the start of adolescence that decrease later in adolescence, but there are also young people who experience it the other way round,' says the researcher.

Persistent

For most young people, mild psychotic experiences are transient in nature. If young people experience something like that then they do not need to panic according to the researcher. 'But,' says Wigman, 'if the symptoms persist or other symptoms develop in conjunction with these then help should be sought.' This is because the researcher discovered that under certain conditions, such as cannabis use, the bottling up of problems, genetic susceptibility or a traumatic event, psychotic experiences can persist. Such persistent experiences in young people increase the risk of a psychosis or depression at a later age.

New group in view

With her research, Wigman has gained a better understanding of the group of adolescents who have persistent mild psychotic experiences but nevertheless belong to the normal population (they have not been admitted to a clinic, for example). This group did not receive sufficient attention during previous research into psychosis. That is because to date, the researchers mainly focused on people with a ?particularly high risk? of developing a psychosis or people who had already experienced one or more psychoses. A greater focus on intervention in the group of people with persistent psychotic experiences could lead to the postponement, alleviation or even prevention of a psychosis at a later age.

Provided by Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)

"Half of Dutch teenagers regularly have a mild psychotic experience: study." September 16th, 2011. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-dutch-teenagers-regularly-mild-psychotic.html


From ths at psalience.org  Tue Sep 20 11:20:55 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2011 11:20:55 +0200
Subject: [THS] Organized Crime
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110920111938.06462448@mail.messagingengine.com>

attached file: cartoon!
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From ths at psalience.org  Fri Sep 23 00:56:22 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:56:22 +0200
Subject: [THS] Dr. James Fadiman on radio show Coast to Coast AM
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110923005445.06fe4248@mail.messagingengine.com>

Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:32:43 -0700
Subject: very exciting, 520 stations. Can you pass it on?
From: Jim Fadiman

 this is the #1 AM radio show in the US during their time period.


On Saturday night September 24 from 11 p.m. - 2 a.m.(Pacific), Dr. James Fadiman will be the guest on the radio show Coast to Coast AM with Ian Punnett. In the San Francisco Bay Area the show broadcasts on KSCO-AM 1080AM (Santa Cruz) and KSFO-AM 560AM (San Francisco). The show will be archived, and I'll post the to download or listen to the mp3 afterwards. You may click the link below and choose your state to find out which AM stations in which cities will broadcast the interview. His new book, The Psychedelic Explorer?s Guide, Safe, Therapeutic and Sacred Journeys,  will be the focus.

Radio Stations - Coast to Coast AM

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/stations


From ths at psalience.org  Fri Sep 23 11:52:25 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:52:25 +0200
Subject: [THS] World Bank: ditch fossil fuel subsidies to address climate
 change
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110923115136.04caaa70@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/21/world-bank-fossil-fuel-subsidies?CMP=EMCENVEML1631

World Bank: ditch fossil fuel subsidies to address climate change

Leaked documents seen by Guardian say rich countries should use money to help poorer countries adapt to climate change

    * John Vidal
    * guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 September 2011 13.28 BST
    * Article history

A worker takes a nap during sea water tidal flooding in Semarang, Indonesia
A worker takes a nap following tidal flooding in Semarang, Indonesia. The sea level in the area rose by 3.7cm a year from 2002-8 due to climate change. Photograph: Beawiharta/Reuters

Leaked World Bank documents propose that rich countries should eliminate the $50bn a year they give in fossil fuel subsidies, in order to financially help poor countries address climate change.

The documents, due to be presented to the G20 finance ministers in November, also suggest that countries redirect "climate aid" money already pledged, towards the propping up ailing carbon markets.

The Mobilizing Climate Finance paper, seen in draft form by the Guardian, has been prepared at the request of the world's leading economies. It is likely to provide a template for action in the UN climate talks that resume in Panama next week, in preparation for a major meeting of 194 countries in Durban in November.

According to the confidential paper, there is little likelihood that in the current economic climate, public money will be available for raising the $30bn rich countries have pledged for the 2010-2012 period, and the $100bn a year that must be found by 2020. Instead, says the paper, "the large financial flows required for climate stabilization and adaptation will, in the long run, be mainly private in composition".

It says: "A starting point should be the removal of subsidies on fossil fuel use. New OECD estimates indicate that reported fossil fuel production and consumption supports in Annex II countries [24 OECD countries] amounted to about $40-$60bn per year in 2005-2010 ... if reforms resulted in 20% of the current level of support being redirected to public climate finance, this could yield $10bn per year.

"Reform of fossil fuel subsidies in developed countries is a promising near-term option because of its potential to improve economic efficiency and raise revenue in addition to environmental benefits."

New analysis, says the paper, suggests that half the $50bn-a-year fossil fuel subsidies go to the oil industry, and around a quarter to coal and natural gas. It says: "About two-thirds of total fossil fuel support in 2010 was estimated to be for consumer support, with a little over 20% being producer support."

Developing countries are increasingly frustrated by the refusal of rich countries to meet their climate finance pledges. But they are unlikely to approve of the bank's innovative proposal that some of the money pledged to them should be used to prop up struggling carbon markets.

The report proposes: "Governments could make innovative uses of climate finance to sustain momentum in the market while new initiatives are being developed. They could, for example, dedicate a fraction of their international climate finance pledges to procure carbon credits for testing and showcasing new approaches, such as country programme concepts, new methodologies, CDM reforms and new mechanisms.

"This would be a cost-efficient use of climate finance as it would target least cost-options and would be performance-based. It would also help build up a supply pipeline for a future scaled-up market, preventing future supply shortages and price pressures."

It also appears to back a levy on aviation and maritime fuels. "Increasing from zero a tax on an activity that causes environmental damage is likely to be a more efficient way to raise revenue than would be increasing a tax that already causes significant distortion."

"A globally implemented carbon charge of $25/tonne CO2 on fuel used could raise around $13bn from international aviation and around $26bn from international maritime transport in 2020, while reducing CO2 emissions from each industry by around 5 to 10%. Compensating developing countries for the economic harm they might suffer from such charges ... seems unlikely to require more than 40% of global revenues. This would leave about $24bn or more for climate finance or other uses," says the paper.

Murray Worthy, policy officer with the World Development Movement in London, said: "Rich nations cannot try and pass the buck to private companies who will be more interested in delivering high returns than meeting the needs of some of the world's poorest people.

"Limited public finance must not be used to prop up failed carbon markets. These markets only exist to pass the burden of cutting emissions back on to poorer countries, which are not responsible for causing climate change," he said.

"But it's welcome to see rich countries finally heeding the call from campaigners that a carbon tax on aviation and shipping can both help cut emissions and raise money for climate finance, but more still needs to be done."

Last month, the UK shipping industry's trade body roundly rejected calls to be brought into the EU's carbon trading scheme, saying that any solution to reducing the industry's emissions must be global.


From ths at psalience.org  Fri Sep 23 11:55:02 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:55:02 +0200
Subject: [THS] Scottish nuclear fuel leak 'will never be completely cleaned
 up'
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110923115400.04caa758@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/21/scottish-nuclear-leak-clean-up?CMP=EMCENVEML1631

Scottish nuclear fuel leak 'will never be completely cleaned up'

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has abandoned its aim to remove all traces of contamination from the north coast seabed


    * Rob Edwards
    * guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 September 2011 12.48 BST
    * Article history

Dounreay nuclear reactor
Dounreay was shut in 1993 but radioactive contamination will 'never be completely cleaned up'. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Radioactive contamination that leaked for more than two decades from the Dounreay nuclear plant on the north coast of Scotland will never be completely cleaned up, a Scottish government agency has admitted.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has decided to give up on its aim of returning the seabed near the plant to a "pristine condition". To do so, it said, could cause "more harm than good".

At a board meeting in Stirling on Tuesday, the Scottish government's environmental watchdog opted to encourage remediation "as far as is practically achievable" but to abandon any hope of removing all the radioactive pollution from the seabed.

Tens of thousands of radioactive fuel fragments escaped from the Dounreay plant between 1963 and 1984, polluting local beaches, the coastline and the seabed. Fishing has been banned within a two-kilometre radius of the plant since 1997.

[Right - those fish never swim further than that]

The most radioactive of the particles are regarded by experts as potentially lethal if ingested. Similar in size to grains of sand, they contain caesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years, but they can also incorporate traces of plutonium-239, which has a half-life of over 24,000 years ? meaning that is the time period for half of the material to break down.

The particles are milled shards from the reprocessing of irradiated uranium and plutonium fuel from two long-defunct reactors. They are thought to have drained into the sea with discharges from cooling ponds.

In 2007, Dounreay, which is now being decommissioned, pleaded guilty at Wick sheriff court to a "failure to prevent fragments of irradiated nuclear fuel being discharged into the environment". The plant's operator at the time, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, was fined ?140,000.

Since 2008, over 2,300 radioactive particles have been recovered from the seabed, with 351 removed by a remotely operated underwater vehicle this summer. Since 1983, over 480 particles have also been found on three local beaches and the Dounreay foreshore.

Sepa recommended in 1998 that the seabed around Dounreay should be returned to a "pristine condition". Since then, it pointed out, the contamination had been extensively investigated and new regulations on radioactively contaminated land had come into force.

"It is now widely accepted that a literal return to a pristine condition is a far from simple or even achievable concept," a Sepa spokeswoman told the Guardian.

"Trying to achieve it might also cause more harm than good. There is the potential that ecosystems may be destroyed on trying to get to something which does not pose a significant hazard."

An expert committee set up by Sepa warned in 2006 that disturbing the seabed could cause particles to escape and be swept ashore, putting members of the public at risk. The most radioactive particle found "could have had life-threatening consequences if it had been ingested", the committee said.

Sepa's board agreed to change its policy to encourage further remediation "provided that this achieves more good than harm and accepting that at some sites it will not be practical to return the land to a pristine condition".

Dounreay, which is now managed by a consortium including the UK engineering firm Babcock, welcomed Sepa's new policy. It was still aiming to remove "the majority of the most hazardous particles, together with the removal of any other particles encountered," said the site's senior project manager, Phil Cartwright.

"The best practicable environmental option, which was welcomed by the government agencies, is focused on doing more good than harm and was publicly discussed on the basis that it would never be possible to retrieve every particle."

Friends of the Earth Scotland, however, attacked the development. "Once again, we see the nuclear industry causing a problem it can't solve, and dumping the cost and consequence on the rest of us," said the environmental group's chief executive, Stan Blackley.

"Nuclear power is neither safe, clean, cheap nor low-carbon and it continues to cause problems and cost the taxpayer a hidden and open-ended fortune. Let's learn from our past mistakes and consign it to a lead-lined dustbin."
Nuclear leaks in the UK

Windscale, Cumbria, 1957: Fire at a military plutonium reactor spread radioactive contamination over large parts of England and Europe

Dounreay, Caithness, 1963-84: Tens of thousands of radioactive particles from old reactors contaminated the shoreline and the seabed

Sellafield, Cumbria, 1983: The government advised people not to swim or use beaches along 10 miles of coastline after a radioactive leak from a reprocessing plant

Chapelcross, Dumfriesshire, 2000-05: 126 radioactive particles from defunct reactors found on the shore of the Solway Firth

Sellafield, Cumbria, 2006-11: 1,233 radioactive particles and pebbles contaminated by historic leaks found and removed from nearby beaches

Dalgety Bay, Fife, 1990-2011: Hundreds of radioactive remnants from the luminous dials of second world war aircraft removed from foreshore


From ths at psalience.org  Fri Sep 23 11:56:53 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:56:53 +0200
Subject: [THS] Traffic fumes can trigger heart attacks, say researchers
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110923115554.04caa4c8@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/20/traffic-fumes-trigger-heart-attacks?CMP=EMCENVEML1631

Traffic fumes can trigger heart attacks, say researchers

Study published in the British Medical Journal identifies pollutant particles and nitrogen dioxide as main culprits

     * Denis Campbell, health correspondent
    * guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 September 2011 23.30 BST
    * Article history

Researchers say traffic fumes can increase the risk of a heart attack for up to six hours after exposure. Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian

Breathing in large amounts of traffic fumes can trigger a heart attack up to six hours after exposure, according to research which reaffirms the health risks associated with pollution.

The study, in the British Medical Journal, found that high levels of pollution can increase the risk of suffering a heart attack. It identifies exposure to pollutant particles and nitrogen dioxide expelled by cars, which are both markers of contaminated urban atmospheres, as the main culprits.

The authors quantify the risk as small ? up to 1.3% higher risk of a heart attack up to six hours after exposure to those substances. But they say that getting enough of those two substances into the lungs can bring forward by a few hours a heart attack that would have happened anyway. This is called short-term displacement or the "harvesting" effect of pollution.

Krishnan Bhaskaran and six colleagues at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine examined 79,288 heart attacks that occurred in 15 urban areas of England and Wales in 2003-06, from the Myocardial Ischaemia National Audit Project. They then examined how much pollution occurred in those areas at the time those patients suffered their heart attack, using data from UK National Air Quality Archive.

They studied levels of carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and ozone as well as pollutant particles, known as PM10, and nitrogen dioxide or NO2.

"We estimated that higher ambient levels of the traffic-associated pollutants, PM10 and NO2, were followed by a transiently increased risk of myocardial infarction up to six hours later," the authors write.

The study emerges as the government is facing legal action from the environmental group Client Earth for not protecting the health of people in towns and cities from pollution's damaging effects. Caroline Spelman, the environment secretary, is likely to face a judicial review before Christmas.

Pollution is estimated to cause 29,000 premature deaths a year in the UK, including 4,200 in London alone, said Jenny Bates, an air pollution campaigner at Friends of the Earth.

"This study adds to the urgent need for bold action to cut air pollution in order to comply with EU limits'" she said.

"It's outrageous that we're continuing to breathe this dirty air and that ministers haven't done enough to clean up our air."

Professor Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director of the British Heart Foundation, which co-funded the study, said: "This large-scale study shows conclusively that your risk of having a heart attack goes up temporarily, for around six hours, after breathing in higher levels of vehicle exhaust.

"We know that pollution can have a major effect on your heart health, possibly because it can 'thicken' the blood to make it more likely to clot, putting you at higher risk of a heart attack.

"Our advice to patients remains the same ? if you've been diagnosed with heart disease, try to avoid spending long periods outside in areas where there are likely to be high traffic pollution levels, such as on or near busy roads."

A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokesman said: "We want to keep improving air quality and reduce the impact it can have on human health and the environment. Our air quality has improved significantly in recent decades and almost all of the UK meets EU air quality limits for all pollutants."

"There are some limited areas where air pollution remains an issue but that's being dealt with by the air quality plans, which set out all the important work being done at national, regional and local levels to make sure we meet EU limits as soon as we can."

? This article was amended on 21 September 2011. The original said that Chris Huhne, energy and climate secretary, is likely to face a judicial review before Christmas. This has been corrected.


From ths at psalience.org  Fri Sep 23 13:54:58 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2011 13:54:58 +0200
Subject: [THS] !!!!!! John Pilger: War and Shopping: The Extremism That
 Never Speaks Its Name
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110923134918.054f2bb0@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.truth-out.org/war-and-shopping-extremism-never-speak-its-name/1316698177

War and Shopping: The Extremism That Never Speaks Its Name
Thursday 22 September 2011
by: John Pilger, Truthout | Op-Ed

Looking for a bookshop that was no longer there, I walked instead into a labyrinth designed as a trap. Leaving became an illusion, rather like Alice once she had stepped through the looking glass. Walls of glass curved into concentric circles as one "store" merged into another: Armani Exchange with Dinki Di Pies. Exits led to gauntlets of more "offers" and "exciting options." Seeking a guide, I bought a lousy pair of sunglasses: anything to get out. It was a vision of hell. It was a Westfield mega mall.

This happened in Sydney - where the Westfield empire began - in a "mall" not half as mega as the one that opened in Stratford, East London, on 13 September. "Everything" is here, reported the architectural critic Jonathan Glancey: from Apple to Primark, McDonalds's to KFC and Krispy Kreme. There is a cinema with 17 screens and "luxurious VIP seats," and a mega "luxury" bowling alley. Tracey Emin and Mary Portas lead the Westfield "cultural team." The biggest casino in the land will overlook a "24-hour lifestyle street" called The Arcade. This will be the only way into the 2012 Olympic Games for ten million people attending the athletics. The simple, grotesque message of "buy me, buy me" will be London's welcome to the world.

"If you've seen the Disney film Wall-E," wrote Glancey in 2008, "you'll certainly recognise Westfield and malls like it. In the film, humans who long ago abandoned the Earth they messed up through greed, live a supremely sedentary life shopping and eating. They are very tubby and have lost the use of their legs. Is this how we'll end up? Or will we plunge into the depths of some mammoth recession ... with nothing and nowhere to spend?" In the less apocalyptic short term, Westfield is "a step towards our collective desire to undermine the life and culture of the traditional city, along with its architecture, and to shop and shop some more."

The original development plan for Stratford City evoked Barcelona: a grid of defined streets of shops and places to live. Modern, civilized. Then, the Olympics loomed and so did Westfield, a major corporate sponsor. The mega mall, the biggest in Europe, is built in the midst of gray tower blocks not far from where the recent riots occurred, its "designer" products, made mostly with cheap, regimented labor, beckon the indebted. That it stands on a site where London workers made trains - thousands of locomotives, carriages and goods wagons - in what was once called manufacturing is of melancholy interest. The mega mall's jobs produce nothing and are mostly low paid. It is an emblem of extreme times.

The co-founder of Westfield is Frank Lowy, an Australian-Israeli billionaire who is to shopping what Rupert Murdoch is to media. Westfield owns or has an interest in more than 120 malls worldwide. The Sydney Tower, the city's most visible structure, is emblazoned "Westfield." Lowy, a former Israeli commando, gives millions to Israel, and in 2003, set up the "independent" Lowy Institute for International Affairs which promotes Israel and US foreign policy.

On the day after the Stratford mega mall opened, UNICEF researchers reported that British children were caught in a "materialistic trap" in which they were bought off with "branded goods." Low-income parents felt "tremendous pressure from society" to buy "branded clothes, trainers, technology" for their children. TV advertising and other seductions of the "consumer culture," together with low pay and long working hours, were responsible. Children told the researchers they preferred to spend time with their families and to have "plenty to do outdoors," but this was often no longer possible. As "welfare" has become a dirty word, basic facilities for the young such as youth clubs are being eliminated by local authorities.

Four years ago, UNICEF published a league table of children's well-being across 21 industrialized nations. The UK was bottom. A fifth of British children live in poverty: a figure forecast to rise in the Olympic year. The priority of Britain's political class, regardless of party, is the repayment by ordinary people of "the deficit," a specious and cynical term for the epic handouts to crooked banks, and the simultaneous waging of squalid colonial wars for the theft of other countries' resources. This is extremism that never speaks its name.

It is an extremism that has emasculated the social democracies that were Europe's redemption following the Second World War. The forced impoverishment of Greece with exorbitant returns demanded by German and French central bankers is likely to produce another fascist military coup. The forced impoverishment of millions of Britons by the ancien regime of David Cameron, with its growing police state and compliant bourgeoisie, especially in the media, will produce more riots: nothing is surer. One can count upon the extremism of apartheid in any form to trigger such a result, no matter its consumerist gloss hermetically sealed in a mega mall. The prospect is democracy for the rich and totalitarianism not only for the poor; and "liberal intervention," as The Guardian UK calls it approvingly, for those useful foreign parts too weak to resist our "precision" Brimstone missiles.

I went to Parliament Square the other day. The graphic display of state crimes mounted by peace and justice campaigner Brian Haw had been finally removed by the Metropolitan Police, knowing that Brian could no longer stand up to them, bodily and in the courts, as he did for a decade. Brian died in June. Visiting him one freezing Christmas, I was moved by the way he persuaded so many passers by and the power of his courage. We now need millions like him. Urgently.

Creative Commons License

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

John Pilger

John Pilger, Australian-born, London-based journalist, film-maker and author. For his foreign and war reporting, ranging from Vietnam and Cambodia to the Middle East, he has twice won Britain's highest award for journalism. For his documentary films, he won a British Academy Award and an American Emmy. In 2009, he was awarded Australia's human rights prize, the Sydney Peace Prize. His latest film is "The War on Democracy."


From ths at psalience.org  Fri Sep 23 14:02:52 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:02:52 +0200
Subject: [THS] Evidence: Denver and DC Quakes Caused by Nukes
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110923135936.044ad8c0@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://pesn.com/2011/09/18/9501916_Evidence_Denver_and_DC_Quakes_Caused_by_Nukes/

[see original at url above for illustrations]

Evidence: Denver and DC Quakes Caused by Nukes

The sudden spike shown in both the very unusual DC and Denver earthquakes on August 23 are consistent with an explosion from a sub-surface nuclear bomb. A recent interview of Benjamin Fulford by David Wilcock gives some intriguing possibilities about a counter coup, and hope for release of suppressed energy technologies.

by Sterling D. Allan
Pure Energy Systems News

 
Today I've received a phone call and a number of emails from people referring to an interview that David Wilcock conducted recently with Benjamin Fulford, who asserts that the recent DC and Denver Quakes were spurred by underground nukes wiping out two of the New World Order bunkers by "white hat" elements in the U.S. Pentagon, signaling the end of days for the dark cabal that have been running the planet for millennia. The interview concludes with a discussion about how with this victory over the dark elements of the former powers-that-be, that many hitherto suppressed energy technologies will soon be released.

It's all a bit difficult to believe, and I probably wouldn't be mentioning it to you were it not for some hard facts that support the key points about the earthquakes not being natural. They have the same seismological signature as what accompanies a nuclear blast detonated a few miles below the Earth's surface.

Here is a government website that gives a comparison of a nuclear test and an earthquake on seismograph. Here is a comparison they show between the May 11, 1998 Indian Nuclear Test, and the April 4, 1995 earthquake in Pakistan.

It explains:

    Livermore seismologist Bill Walter explains that the differences in seismic P- and S-wave energy provide one method of discriminating explosions from earthquakes. Seismic P waves are compressional waves, similar to sound waves in the air. Shear (S) waves are transverse waves, like those that propagate along a rope when one end is shaken. Because underground explosions are spherically symmetric disturbances, they radiate seismic P waves efficiently. In contrast, earthquakes result from sliding or rupture along a buried fault surface and strongly excite the transverse motions of S waves. Thus, we expect that explosions will show strong P waves and weak S waves and that earthquakes will show weak P waves and strong S waves, as seen in Figure 2.

With that in mind, now look at this image of the seismic signature of the DC quake as shown at NBC17:

    seismograph
    Readings from a seismograph at Washington and Lee University, about 85 miles southwest of the earthquake's epicenter in Mineral.

Does that seismograph depict a natural quake or a nuke or explosion-induced quake?

Could it be any more blatant?

Its as obvious as Building 7 being brought down by pre-placed demolition charges on 9/11.

Here's the seismograph from the August 23 Denver quake that same day, as published by the Denver Post.


A seismogram of the Trinidad earthquake as recorded on the Kent Denver School seismograph.

Again, the immediate onset of the large quake at the bottom right is indicative of an explosion-induced quake, not a natural quake.

In poking around a little bit, I found an August 24 story from the Canadian PressCore, titled: Seismic evidence reveals underground nuclear detonation south of Washington DC.  The author says that he was put onto this possibility by an unusual email he received from someone who apparently was a whistleblower.

    I was pointed to this overlooked piece of evidence by someone who claimed to be with the United States Air Force. The story submission appeared to be sent by mistake as nothing was visible in the body of the submission. Instead of sending it to the trash I thought I would apply an old intelligence trick I was taught back in 1989. I right clicked my mouse on the body of the submission and selected all, then copy. I then opened up the notepad and selected paste from the menu. You would expect nothing to be pasted as there was nothing in the body of the submission but, just as I thought, a paragraph was pasted into the notepad. What was revealed was 1 paragraph whereby who ever sent it stated he was a member of the United States Air Force. He stated that the Virginia 5.8 magnitude earth "wasn't a natural earthquake and not a HAARP earthquake". He told me to find a seismograph of the Washington DC area earthquake and compare it to a past earthquake. Then he stated that I should Google DUMB or Deep Underground Military Bases. He ended by stating "the ABC warnings are real". I tried to trace the IP of the submission but they don't exists.


Air Force tunnel boring machine links deep underground military bases across U.S.

In the introduction to his interview with Fulford about the Denver and D.C. earthquakes not only being nuke-induced, but that they were used to destroy two underground New World Order bunker cities (of possibly 30,000 people each), Wilcock says:

    I started to contact my own sources, which have been built up over being a public figure on the Internet since 1999 ? and gaining the trust of many people in various classified programs. I was absolutely astonished when I started to ask around and found out that everyone I know, with one exception who probably wasn't on a need-to-know basis, confirmed that this attack did happen.

I'm familiar with the underground bunkers and cities that the black ops have been building.  The best documentary I know on this was done by Jesse Ventura in his "Conspiracy Theory" series.  I built a feature page on the 2012 episode in which the last half of the program was devoted to the underground bunkers that have quietly been built by dark elements in the U.S. Government looking out for their own survival with no thought for informing or preparing the population at large.

Here is some material that my awakened friend, Fred Burks compiled, who was formerly a translator for two U.S. Presidents:
Comparisons of seismograph readings for earthquakes with nuclear tests

https://www.llnl.gov/str/Walter.html - Comparison of a nuclear test and an earthquake on seismograph on a government website
http://www.iris.edu/hq/programs/education_and_outreach/animations/17 - Comparison of seismograph signatures for various events

Washington, DC, 5.8 earthquake on Aug 23, 2011, 1:51 PM local time

http://www2.nbc17.com/news/2011/aug/23/13/59-earthquake-rocks-virginia-ar-1324668 - Most striking seismograph of DC quake on NBC affiliate
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Aug11/SneeEarthquake.html - Cornell University seismograph quite definitive
http://www.geol.vt.edu/outreach/vtso/2011/0823-louisa - Multiple seismographs of DC quake
http://www.iris.edu/cgi-bin/wilberII/wilberII_EnO_page4.pl?evname=20110823_175103.5.spyder - Access to hundreds more

Denver, 5.3 earthquake on Aug 22, 2011, 11:43 PM local time (roughly 12 hours before the DC quake)

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_18737351 - Denver Post seismograph showing clearly nuclear explosion signature
http://www.iris.edu/cgi-bin/wilberII/wilberII_EnO_page4.pl?evname=20110822_233020.4.spyder - Hundreds of seismograph readings

To see what seismographs look like for more normal earthquakes, click below:
http://www.iris.edu/cgi-bin/wilberII/wilberII_EnO_page4.pl?evname=20110818_153740.0.spyder - 4.6 scale Aug 18, 2011 Off the coast of British Columbia
http://www.iris.edu/cgi-bin/wilberII/wilberII_EnO_page4.pl?evname=20110902_110325.7.spyder - 4.7 scale Sep 2, 2011 Utah

Both the Denver and DC earthquakes were quite shallow, with official reports giving 3.7 miles depth for the DC quake (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/se082311a.php) and 2.5 miles for Denver (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/2011/usc0005idz). That is well within even conventional drilling technologies these days (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole). According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake), earthquakes under 70 km (43 miles) are considered "shallow focus" earthquakes.

The Virginia quake was the largest there in 117 years, while the Denver quake was the largest in Colorado in 41 years. These two rare quakes happened only 12 hours apart. (Washington Post; Denver Post; Aug. 23, 2011)

So I find the evidence fairly solid that both of these quakes were not natural.

I agree with Fred that there is definitely enough evidence to consider the two very unusual quakes on August 23 as probably being spurred by nukes.  The question that is intriguing is why, who, and how.  Though it's hard to believe all the stuff covered in the Wilcock-Fulford interview, I do think it's worth a perusal, to give you something to think about and a working hypothesis to start from.  It's definitely worth our attention, especially if the release of hitherto suppressed free energy patents is one of the upshots of this recent counter coup.

What is alleged by Fulford and Wilcock is that the nukes were done by good elements in the Pentagon who are fed up with the New World Order conspirators using the US Military to enforce the spread of the police state tyranny, whose plan is to reduce the world population by 90% down to a "manageable" 500,000,000.

I personally am greatly encouraged by the possibility that there is that high a level of resistance from within the ranks of what used to be nearly totally controlled by the conspirators. It's a rebellion from within what used to be something they controlled.

The two underground cities were probably two key bunkers where the New World Order conspirators thought they could go run and hide while they bring destruction to the inhabitants on the surface. But now they have been sent a message: "We're all in this together here on planet Earth; what you do to others you do to yourself, so stop the destruction."

Hanks Mills comments....

On September 17, 2011 11:43 PM, my associate Hank Mills added:

Elected government officials are not the only individuals who control the course of human events. There exists powerful individuals from the realms of banking, finance, secretive extra-government agencies, and the military-industrial complex, who manipulate the strings that make the puppets in official elected offices do their bidding. This tangled web of the ultra elite power barons is not easy to sort through. I do not think anyone fully understands the true structure of these organizations, and their true motivations. What we do know, is that these institutes and families of power have suppressed exotic technologies and the truth about extraterrestrial activity on our planet. This suppression has been on going since before the crash of an extraterrestrial space craft near Roswell, NM in the year 1947. 

If a nuclear attack did take place on one or more underground bases, this would be a clear indication of dissension in the ranks of the "powers that be." This whole situation reminds me -- to a certain extent --of the situation in the fictional series Stargate SG1. In that fictional series, a highly secret, ultra black-budget military organization exists called, "Stargate Command." The leadership of this organization have the task of trying to protect our planet from extraterrestrial threats, exploring the galaxy by traveling through "stargates" which allow near instantaneous travel to other worlds, and maintaining the secrecy of their program. Those working for Stargate Command are portrayed as being the "good guys", despite the fact they suppress exotic technologies, withhold fundamental information about the universe from the public, and often take it upon themselves to make decisions that impact the entire human race -- mostly with little supervision from elected authorities. 

In this same fictional series, there are rouge groups, agencies, and organizations that compete with the Stargate program. Some of these entities claim to be opposed to Stargate Command's secrecy and track record of sometimes putting humanity at risk, but in reality have their selfish motivations. Of course there are groups of extraterrestrials in this fictional series that have their own desires and interests. Some of these groups of extraterrestrials are benevolent, others are opportunistic, and still others are hostile. Although communicating with these species have often benefited Stargate Command's efforts to protect humanity, interaction with them have often created troublesome situations or threats to Earth.

The simple fact is that in the fictional series of Stargate and in our reality, it is not always easy to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. Even the attack on the underground bases may (or may not) have prevented some sinister plot, this does not mean those who launched the attack were "good." They may not be heroes, or on the side of the billions of people on this planet. Their motivation for the attack may not be as simple and pure as we may hope. 

If these apparent earthquakes were actually attacks on underground bunkers, thousands of people may have died. Many of these people probably were not evil, sinister individuals plotting for the eradication of 90% of the population, but could have simply been engineers and scientists working jobs, to earn a paycheck. The majority of those employed by these bases may have had no political agenda at all, and simply were thrilled to work on exotic technologies -- or needed to find a way to pay their mortgage! 

For example, NASA has naysayed alternative energy and alternative propulsion technologies for decades. The space agency has also belittled and mocked the incontrovertible evidence that unknown craft are visiting our planet. Regardless what we think of those who have actively participated in suppression, we cannot forget that the majority of people at NASA have had nothing to do with it. To think that everyone at NASA is in a plot to suppress information that could change our world is simply implausible beyond measure. Most of those individuals working at NASA truly believe they are working for the agency with the most advanced space technology in existence, or are simply there to get a paycheck.

Any nuclear attack that has taken place is a total and complete tragedy. If those who perpetuated the attack desired to do the right thing, they should have organized a way to come forward to the public, and share what they knew. Instead, these individuals -- many of which have probably been actively participating in suppression of various topics -- may have taken another path that limits their personal risk while ending the lives of others. Standing up and releasing highly classified information about extraterrestrial life, exotic technologies that could benefit all of humanity, or the operations of ultra secretive organizations, can be risky. In fact, it can be very dangerous, but fear of persecution is not an excuse for a nuclear attack. 

I would urge the individuals and organizations that want to do the "right thing" to avoid conflicts with other entities, and simply speak up. Despite their rank, position, or situation they should organize the information they have, and share it with the world. We live in an age where communication is easier than ever before. If someone really wants to tell a story, in a matter of hours or less they can upload videos of their testimony to YouTube, send the video to thousands of people via email, post the information on countless message boards, drop a few hundred DVDs in the mailbox, create a Facebook profile with the information, and transmit the information in so many ways NO ONE will be able to stop it. 

The more aspiring "good guys" who are willing to come forward and distribute their story at the same time the better it is for everyone involved. 

There is no excuse for violence. Even when it comes protecting ones self, the best defense is honesty and full disclosure. I think the motivations and sincerity of any group that would perpetuate an act of violence should be questioned. 

Let's hope if a nuclear attack did happen on one or more top secret bases, that these will be last such attacks. 

What the world needs is the truth, the full truth, and nothing but the truth. 

Sterling Adds...

The fact that the President and Congress have such low approval ratings has a lot to do with how unbelievable they have become. Who can trust the government when they say: "This is how and why 9/11 happened, and this is what we should do about it;" when a common sense look at what actually happened screams so loudly to the contrary." Some truth from the government would be nice, but it will take some time before people start believing again because they have been lied to for so long.

# # #

This story is also published at BeforeItsNews.
Links

    * http://www.divinecosmos.com/start-here/davids-blog/975-undergroundbases - David Wilcock's interview with Benjamin Fulford
    * Seismic evidence reveals underground nuclear detonation south of Washington DC. (PressCore; Aug. 24, 2011)
    * 5.8-magnitude quake shakes central Va., East Coast (NBC17; Aug. 23, 2011)
    * Minor damage from magnitude-5.3 Colorado quake (Denver Post; Aug. 23, 2011)
    * http://www.whale.to/b/underground_h.html  
    * Obama Ordered To Denver Bunker By US Military "General Maslov states in his report, though, his concern over this drill is "heightened" due to last months nuclear attack on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) branch of the intercontinental military tunnel complex between Washington D.C. and Denver, and which we reported on in our 24 August report Russia Reports Nuclear Explosions Hit Vast US Military Tunnel Network." (EU Times; Sept. 14, 2011)
          o Strange Sound Before Virginia Quake ! felt like the ground was shaking! (YouTube; Aug. 24, 2011)
    * Were NORAD And Shadow Gov't Bases The Nuke/Quake Targets? (BeforeItsNews; Sept. 20, 2011)

What You Can Do

   1. Pass this on to your friends and favorite news sources.
   2. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay abreast of the latest, greatest developments in the free energy sector.

See also

Resources at PESWiki.com

    * Directory:Conspiracy
    * Directory:Suppression
    * Directory:35_U.S.C._181:Secrecy_of_certain_inventions_and_withholding_of_patent 
    * Review:Jesse_Ventura:2012_Apocalypse_Conspiracy_Theory 
    * Directory:Fred_Burks 
    * Directory:Weather_Control 
    * Directory:HAARP_--_High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program 
    * More stories by Sterling D. Allan
    *

      More stories by Hank Mills 

    * PESN (Pure Energy Systems News) - Feature stories on cutting-edge, clean energy technology.
    * Free Energy News (.com) - Daily cutting-edge, clean energy technology news from around the world
    * PESWiki Latest - Newest feature pages in the publicly-editable energy directory.
    * This Week in Free Energy? - Ten-minute recap each Sunday, 7:50 - 8:00 pm Mountain.
    * Free Energy Now (.net) - in-depth interviews

	


From ths at psalience.org  Fri Sep 23 16:13:43 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:13:43 +0100 (BST)
Subject: [THS] Re : THS Digest, Vol 77, Issue 3
In-Reply-To: <mailman.3.1316772001.475.ths@psalience.org>
References: <mailman.3.1316772001.475.ths@psalience.org>
Message-ID: <1316787223.10420.YahooMailNeo@web27508.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>

Hi,

Can you, please, unsuscribe me ?
I prefer to read the news on the website.
Thank you.
Best
Guillaume



________________________________
De?: "ths-request at psalience.org" <ths-request at psalience.org>
??: ths at psalience.org
Envoy? le : Vendredi 23 Septembre 2011 12h00
Objet?: THS Digest, Vol 77, Issue 3

Send THS mailing list submissions to
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Today's Topics:

?  1. Dr. James Fadiman on radio show Coast to Coast AM
? ? ? (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
?  2. World Bank: ditch fossil fuel subsidies to address climate
? ? ? change (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
?  3. Scottish nuclear fuel leak 'will never be completely cleaned
? ? ? up' (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
?  4. Traffic fumes can trigger heart attacks, say researchers
? ? ? (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:56:22 +0200
From: The Harder Stuff in news and commentary <ths at psalience.org>
Subject: [THS] Dr. James Fadiman on radio show Coast to Coast AM
To: ths at psalience.org
Message-ID:
??? <6.2.3.4.2.20110923005445.06fe4248 at mail.messagingengine.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:32:43 -0700
Subject: very exciting, 520 stations. Can you pass it on?
From: Jim Fadiman

this is the #1 AM radio show in the US during their time period.


On Saturday night September 24 from 11 p.m. - 2 a.m.(Pacific), Dr. James Fadiman will be the guest on the radio show Coast to Coast AM with Ian Punnett. In the San Francisco Bay Area the show broadcasts on KSCO-AM 1080AM (Santa Cruz) and KSFO-AM 560AM (San Francisco). The show will be archived, and I'll post the to download or listen to the mp3 afterwards. You may click the link below and choose your state to find out which AM stations in which cities will broadcast the interview. His new book, The Psychedelic Explorer?s Guide, Safe, Therapeutic and Sacred Journeys,? will be the focus.

Radio Stations - Coast to Coast AM

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/stations



------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:52:25 +0200
From: The Harder Stuff in news and commentary <ths at psalience.org>
Subject: [THS] World Bank: ditch fossil fuel subsidies to address
??? climate change
To: ths at psalience.org
Message-ID:
??? <6.2.3.4.2.20110923115136.04caaa70 at mail.messagingengine.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/21/world-bank-fossil-fuel-subsidies?CMP=EMCENVEML1631

World Bank: ditch fossil fuel subsidies to address climate change

Leaked documents seen by Guardian say rich countries should use money to help poorer countries adapt to climate change

? ? * John Vidal
? ? * guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 September 2011 13.28 BST
? ? * Article history

A worker takes a nap during sea water tidal flooding in Semarang, Indonesia
A worker takes a nap following tidal flooding in Semarang, Indonesia. The sea level in the area rose by 3.7cm a year from 2002-8 due to climate change. Photograph: Beawiharta/Reuters

Leaked World Bank documents propose that rich countries should eliminate the $50bn a year they give in fossil fuel subsidies, in order to financially help poor countries address climate change.

The documents, due to be presented to the G20 finance ministers in November, also suggest that countries redirect "climate aid" money already pledged, towards the propping up ailing carbon markets.

The Mobilizing Climate Finance paper, seen in draft form by the Guardian, has been prepared at the request of the world's leading economies. It is likely to provide a template for action in the UN climate talks that resume in Panama next week, in preparation for a major meeting of 194 countries in Durban in November.

According to the confidential paper, there is little likelihood that in the current economic climate, public money will be available for raising the $30bn rich countries have pledged for the 2010-2012 period, and the $100bn a year that must be found by 2020. Instead, says the paper, "the large financial flows required for climate stabilization and adaptation will, in the long run, be mainly private in composition".

It says: "A starting point should be the removal of subsidies on fossil fuel use. New OECD estimates indicate that reported fossil fuel production and consumption supports in Annex II countries [24 OECD countries] amounted to about $40-$60bn per year in 2005-2010 ... if reforms resulted in 20% of the current level of support being redirected to public climate finance, this could yield $10bn per year.

"Reform of fossil fuel subsidies in developed countries is a promising near-term option because of its potential to improve economic efficiency and raise revenue in addition to environmental benefits."

New analysis, says the paper, suggests that half the $50bn-a-year fossil fuel subsidies go to the oil industry, and around a quarter to coal and natural gas. It says: "About two-thirds of total fossil fuel support in 2010 was estimated to be for consumer support, with a little over 20% being producer support."

Developing countries are increasingly frustrated by the refusal of rich countries to meet their climate finance pledges. But they are unlikely to approve of the bank's innovative proposal that some of the money pledged to them should be used to prop up struggling carbon markets.

The report proposes: "Governments could make innovative uses of climate finance to sustain momentum in the market while new initiatives are being developed. They could, for example, dedicate a fraction of their international climate finance pledges to procure carbon credits for testing and showcasing new approaches, such as country programme concepts, new methodologies, CDM reforms and new mechanisms.

"This would be a cost-efficient use of climate finance as it would target least cost-options and would be performance-based. It would also help build up a supply pipeline for a future scaled-up market, preventing future supply shortages and price pressures."

It also appears to back a levy on aviation and maritime fuels. "Increasing from zero a tax on an activity that causes environmental damage is likely to be a more efficient way to raise revenue than would be increasing a tax that already causes significant distortion."

"A globally implemented carbon charge of $25/tonne CO2 on fuel used could raise around $13bn from international aviation and around $26bn from international maritime transport in 2020, while reducing CO2 emissions from each industry by around 5 to 10%. Compensating developing countries for the economic harm they might suffer from such charges ... seems unlikely to require more than 40% of global revenues. This would leave about $24bn or more for climate finance or other uses," says the paper.

Murray Worthy, policy officer with the World Development Movement in London, said: "Rich nations cannot try and pass the buck to private companies who will be more interested in delivering high returns than meeting the needs of some of the world's poorest people.

"Limited public finance must not be used to prop up failed carbon markets. These markets only exist to pass the burden of cutting emissions back on to poorer countries, which are not responsible for causing climate change," he said.

"But it's welcome to see rich countries finally heeding the call from campaigners that a carbon tax on aviation and shipping can both help cut emissions and raise money for climate finance, but more still needs to be done."

Last month, the UK shipping industry's trade body roundly rejected calls to be brought into the EU's carbon trading scheme, saying that any solution to reducing the industry's emissions must be global.



------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:55:02 +0200
From: The Harder Stuff in news and commentary <ths at psalience.org>
Subject: [THS] Scottish nuclear fuel leak 'will never be completely
??? cleaned up'
To: ths at psalience.org
Message-ID:
??? <6.2.3.4.2.20110923115400.04caa758 at mail.messagingengine.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/21/scottish-nuclear-leak-clean-up?CMP=EMCENVEML1631

Scottish nuclear fuel leak 'will never be completely cleaned up'

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has abandoned its aim to remove all traces of contamination from the north coast seabed


? ? * Rob Edwards
? ? * guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 September 2011 12.48 BST
? ? * Article history

Dounreay nuclear reactor
Dounreay was shut in 1993 but radioactive contamination will 'never be completely cleaned up'. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Radioactive contamination that leaked for more than two decades from the Dounreay nuclear plant on the north coast of Scotland will never be completely cleaned up, a Scottish government agency has admitted.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has decided to give up on its aim of returning the seabed near the plant to a "pristine condition". To do so, it said, could cause "more harm than good".

At a board meeting in Stirling on Tuesday, the Scottish government's environmental watchdog opted to encourage remediation "as far as is practically achievable" but to abandon any hope of removing all the radioactive pollution from the seabed.

Tens of thousands of radioactive fuel fragments escaped from the Dounreay plant between 1963 and 1984, polluting local beaches, the coastline and the seabed. Fishing has been banned within a two-kilometre radius of the plant since 1997.

[Right - those fish never swim further than that]

The most radioactive of the particles are regarded by experts as potentially lethal if ingested. Similar in size to grains of sand, they contain caesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years, but they can also incorporate traces of plutonium-239, which has a half-life of over 24,000 years ? meaning that is the time period for half of the material to break down.

The particles are milled shards from the reprocessing of irradiated uranium and plutonium fuel from two long-defunct reactors. They are thought to have drained into the sea with discharges from cooling ponds.

In 2007, Dounreay, which is now being decommissioned, pleaded guilty at Wick sheriff court to a "failure to prevent fragments of irradiated nuclear fuel being discharged into the environment". The plant's operator at the time, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, was fined ?140,000.

Since 2008, over 2,300 radioactive particles have been recovered from the seabed, with 351 removed by a remotely operated underwater vehicle this summer. Since 1983, over 480 particles have also been found on three local beaches and the Dounreay foreshore.

Sepa recommended in 1998 that the seabed around Dounreay should be returned to a "pristine condition". Since then, it pointed out, the contamination had been extensively investigated and new regulations on radioactively contaminated land had come into force.

"It is now widely accepted that a literal return to a pristine condition is a far from simple or even achievable concept," a Sepa spokeswoman told the Guardian.

"Trying to achieve it might also cause more harm than good. There is the potential that ecosystems may be destroyed on trying to get to something which does not pose a significant hazard."

An expert committee set up by Sepa warned in 2006 that disturbing the seabed could cause particles to escape and be swept ashore, putting members of the public at risk. The most radioactive particle found "could have had life-threatening consequences if it had been ingested", the committee said.

Sepa's board agreed to change its policy to encourage further remediation "provided that this achieves more good than harm and accepting that at some sites it will not be practical to return the land to a pristine condition".

Dounreay, which is now managed by a consortium including the UK engineering firm Babcock, welcomed Sepa's new policy. It was still aiming to remove "the majority of the most hazardous particles, together with the removal of any other particles encountered," said the site's senior project manager, Phil Cartwright.

"The best practicable environmental option, which was welcomed by the government agencies, is focused on doing more good than harm and was publicly discussed on the basis that it would never be possible to retrieve every particle."

Friends of the Earth Scotland, however, attacked the development. "Once again, we see the nuclear industry causing a problem it can't solve, and dumping the cost and consequence on the rest of us," said the environmental group's chief executive, Stan Blackley.

"Nuclear power is neither safe, clean, cheap nor low-carbon and it continues to cause problems and cost the taxpayer a hidden and open-ended fortune. Let's learn from our past mistakes and consign it to a lead-lined dustbin."
Nuclear leaks in the UK

Windscale, Cumbria, 1957: Fire at a military plutonium reactor spread radioactive contamination over large parts of England and Europe

Dounreay, Caithness, 1963-84: Tens of thousands of radioactive particles from old reactors contaminated the shoreline and the seabed

Sellafield, Cumbria, 1983: The government advised people not to swim or use beaches along 10 miles of coastline after a radioactive leak from a reprocessing plant

Chapelcross, Dumfriesshire, 2000-05: 126 radioactive particles from defunct reactors found on the shore of the Solway Firth

Sellafield, Cumbria, 2006-11: 1,233 radioactive particles and pebbles contaminated by historic leaks found and removed from nearby beaches

Dalgety Bay, Fife, 1990-2011: Hundreds of radioactive remnants from the luminous dials of second world war aircraft removed from foreshore



------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:56:53 +0200
From: The Harder Stuff in news and commentary <ths at psalience.org>
Subject: [THS] Traffic fumes can trigger heart attacks, say
??? researchers
To: ths at psalience.org
Message-ID:
??? <6.2.3.4.2.20110923115554.04caa4c8 at mail.messagingengine.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/20/traffic-fumes-trigger-heart-attacks?CMP=EMCENVEML1631

Traffic fumes can trigger heart attacks, say researchers

Study published in the British Medical Journal identifies pollutant particles and nitrogen dioxide as main culprits

? ?  * Denis Campbell, health correspondent
? ? * guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 September 2011 23.30 BST
? ? * Article history

Researchers say traffic fumes can increase the risk of a heart attack for up to six hours after exposure. Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian

Breathing in large amounts of traffic fumes can trigger a heart attack up to six hours after exposure, according to research which reaffirms the health risks associated with pollution.

The study, in the British Medical Journal, found that high levels of pollution can increase the risk of suffering a heart attack. It identifies exposure to pollutant particles and nitrogen dioxide expelled by cars, which are both markers of contaminated urban atmospheres, as the main culprits.

The authors quantify the risk as small ? up to 1.3% higher risk of a heart attack up to six hours after exposure to those substances. But they say that getting enough of those two substances into the lungs can bring forward by a few hours a heart attack that would have happened anyway. This is called short-term displacement or the "harvesting" effect of pollution.

Krishnan Bhaskaran and six colleagues at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine examined 79,288 heart attacks that occurred in 15 urban areas of England and Wales in 2003-06, from the Myocardial Ischaemia National Audit Project. They then examined how much pollution occurred in those areas at the time those patients suffered their heart attack, using data from UK National Air Quality Archive.

They studied levels of carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and ozone as well as pollutant particles, known as PM10, and nitrogen dioxide or NO2.

"We estimated that higher ambient levels of the traffic-associated pollutants, PM10 and NO2, were followed by a transiently increased risk of myocardial infarction up to six hours later," the authors write.

The study emerges as the government is facing legal action from the environmental group Client Earth for not protecting the health of people in towns and cities from pollution's damaging effects. Caroline Spelman, the environment secretary, is likely to face a judicial review before Christmas.

Pollution is estimated to cause 29,000 premature deaths a year in the UK, including 4,200 in London alone, said Jenny Bates, an air pollution campaigner at Friends of the Earth.

"This study adds to the urgent need for bold action to cut air pollution in order to comply with EU limits'" she said.

"It's outrageous that we're continuing to breathe this dirty air and that ministers haven't done enough to clean up our air."

Professor Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director of the British Heart Foundation, which co-funded the study, said: "This large-scale study shows conclusively that your risk of having a heart attack goes up temporarily, for around six hours, after breathing in higher levels of vehicle exhaust.

"We know that pollution can have a major effect on your heart health, possibly because it can 'thicken' the blood to make it more likely to clot, putting you at higher risk of a heart attack.

"Our advice to patients remains the same ? if you've been diagnosed with heart disease, try to avoid spending long periods outside in areas where there are likely to be high traffic pollution levels, such as on or near busy roads."

A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokesman said: "We want to keep improving air quality and reduce the impact it can have on human health and the environment. Our air quality has improved significantly in recent decades and almost all of the UK meets EU air quality limits for all pollutants."

"There are some limited areas where air pollution remains an issue but that's being dealt with by the air quality plans, which set out all the important work being done at national, regional and local levels to make sure we meet EU limits as soon as we can."

? This article was amended on 21 September 2011. The original said that Chris Huhne, energy and climate secretary, is likely to face a judicial review before Christmas. This has been corrected.



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From ths at psalience.org  Fri Sep 23 23:43:41 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2011 23:43:41 +0200
Subject: [THS] Rumsfeld has been stripped of legal immunity
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110923233959.03fa3408@mail.messagingengine.com>


http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26690


    

Welcome to Boston, Mr. Rumsfeld. You Are Under Arrest

by Ralph Lopez



Global Research, September 20, 2011

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been stripped of legal immunity for acts of torture against US citizens authorized while he was in office. 

The 7th Circuit made the ruling in the case of two American contractors who were tortured by the US military in Iraq after uncovering a smuggling ring within an Iraqi security company.  The company was under contract to the Department of Defense.   The company was assisting Iraqi insurgent groups in the ?mass acquisition? of American weapons.  The ruling comes as Rumsfeld begins his book tour with a visit to Boston on Monday, September 26, and as new, uncensored photos of Abu Ghraib spark fresh outrage across Internet.  Awareness is growing that Bush-era crimes went far beyond mere waterboarding.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters in 2004 of photos withheld by the Defense Department from Abu Ghraib, ?The American public needs to understand, we?re talking about rape and murder here
 We?re not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience. We?re talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges.?  And journalist Seymour Hersh says: ?boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has.?

Rumsfeld resigned days before a criminal complaint was filed in Germany in which the American general who commanded the military police battalion at Abu Ghraib had promised to testify.  General Janis Karpinski in an interview with Salon.com was asked: ?Do you feel like Rumsfeld is at the heart of all of this and should be held completely accountable for what happened [at Abu Ghraib]??

Karpinski answered: ?Yes, absolutely.?  In the criminal complaint filed in Germany against Rumsfeld, Karpinski submitted 17 pages of testimony and offered to appear before the German prosecutor as a witness.  Congressman Kendrick Meek of Florida, who participated in the hearings on Abu Ghraib, said of Rumsfeld: ?There was no way Rumsfeld didn?t know what was going on. He?s a guy who wants to know everything.?

And Major General Antonio Taguba, who led the official Army investigation into Abu Ghraib, said in his report:

?there is no longer any doubt as to whether the [Bush] administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.?

Amazingly, the two American contractors in the 7th Circuit decision were known by the military to be working undercover for the FBI, to whom they had reported witnessing the sale of U.S government munitions to Iraqi rebel groups.  The FBI in Iraq had vouched for Vance and Ertel numerous times before they nevertheless disappeared into military custody.  They were held at Camp Cropper in Iraq where the two were tortured, one for 97 days, and the other for six weeks.

In a puzzling and incriminating move, Camp Cropper base commander General John Gardner ordered Nathan Ertel released on May 17, 2006, while keeping Donald Vance in detention for another two months of torture.  By ordering the release of one man but not the other, Gardner revealed awareness of the situation but prolonged it at the same time.

It is unlikely that Gardner could act alone in a situation as sensitive as the illegal detention and torture of two Americans confirmed by the FBI to be working undercover in the national interest, to prevent American weapons and munitions from reaching the hands of insurgents, for the sole purpose of using them to kill American troops.  Vance and Ertel suggest he was acting on orders from the highest political level.

The forms of torture employed against the Americans included ?techniques? which crop up frequently in descriptions of Iraqi and Afghan prisoner abuse at Bagram, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib.  They included ?walling,? where the head is slammed repeatedly into a concrete wall, sleep deprivation to the point of psychosis by use of round-the-clock bright lights and harsh music at ear-splitting volume, in total isolation, for days, weeks or months at a time, and intolerable cold.

The 7th Circuit ruling is the latest in a growing number of legal actions involving hundreds of former prisoners and torture victims filed in courts around the world.  Criminal complaints have been filed against Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials in Germany, France, and Spain.  Former President Bush recently curbed travel to Switzerland due to fear of arrest following criminal complaints lodged in Geneva.  ?He?s avoiding the handcuffs,? Reed Brody, counsel for Human Rights Watch, told Reuters.

And the Mayor of London threatened Bush with arrest for war crimes earlier this year should he ever set foot in his city,saying that were he to land in London to ?flog his memoirs,? that ?the real trouble ? from the Bush point of view ? is that he might never see Texas again.?

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell?s Chief-of-Staff Col. Lawrence Wilkerson surmised on MSNBC earlier this year that soon, Saudi Arabia and Israel will be ?the only two countries Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest will travel to.?

What would seem to make Rumsfeld?s situation more precarious is the number of credible former officials and military officers who seem to be eager to testify against him, such as Col. Wilkerson and General Janis Karpinsky.

In a signed declaration in support of torture plaintiffs in a civil suit naming Rumsfeld in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Col. Wilkerson, one of Rumsfeld?s most vociferous critics,  stated: ?I am willing to testify in person regarding the  content of this declaration, should that be necessary.?  That declaration, among other things, affirmed that adocumentary on the chilling murder of a 22-year-old Afghan farmer and taxi driver in Afghanistan was ?accurate.?  Wilkerson said earlier this year that in that case, and in the case of another murder at Bagram at about the same time, ?authorization for the abuse went to the very top of the United States government.?

Dilawar

The young farmer?s name was Dilawar.  The New York Times reported on May 20, 2005:
?Four days before [his death,] on the eve of the Muslim holiday of Id al-Fitr, Mr. Dilawar set out from his tiny village of Yakubi in a prized new possession, a used Toyota sedan that his family bought for him a few weeks earlier to drive as a taxi.On the day that he disappeared, Mr. Dilawar?s mother had asked him to gather his three sisters from their nearby villages and bring them home for the holiday. However, he needed gas money and decided instead to drive to the provincial capital, Khost, about 45 minutes away, to look for fares.?

Dilawar?s misfortune was to drive past the gate of an American base which had been hit by a rocket attack that morning.  Dilawar and his fares were arrested at a checkpoint by a warlord, who was later suspected of mounting the rocket attack himself, and then turning over randam captures like Dilawar in order to win trust.

The UK Guardian reports:
?Guards at Bagram routinely kneed prisoners in their thighs ? a blow called a ?peroneal strike?
 Whenever a guard did this to Dilawar, he would cry out, ?Allah! Allah!? Some guards apparently found this amusing, and would strike him repeatedly to show off the behavior to buddies. One military policeman told investigators, ?Everybody heard him cry out and thought it was funny. 
 It went on over a 24-hour period, and I would think that it was over 100 strikes.??

Dilawar was shackled from the ceiling much of the time, with his feet barely able to touch the ground.  On the last day of his life, after 4 days at Bagram, an interpreter who was present said his legs were bouncing uncontrollably as he sat in a plastic chair. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.

The New York Times reported that on the last day of his life, four days after he was arrested:
?Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar?s face. ?Come on, drink!? the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. ?Drink!?

At the interrogators? behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

??Leave him up,? one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.?

The next time the prison medic saw Dilawar a few hours later, he was dead, his head lolled to one side and his body beginning to stiffen.  A coroner would testify that his legs ?had basically been pulpified.? The Army coroner, Maj. Elizabeth Rouse, said: ?I?ve seen similar injuries in an individual run over by a bus.? She testified that had he lived, Dilawar?s legs would have had to be amputated.

Despite the military?s false statement that Dilawar?s death was the result of ?natural causes,? Maj. Rouse marked the death certificate as a ?homicide? and arranged for the certificate to be delivered to the family.  The military was forced to retract the statement when a reporter for the New York Times, Carlotta Gall, tracked down Dilawar?s family in Afghanistan and was given a folded piece of paper by Dilawar?s brother.  It was the death certificate, which he couldn?t read, because it was in English.

The practice of forcing prisoners to stand for long periods of time, links Dilawar?s treatment to a memo which bears Rumsfeld?s own handwriting on that particular subject.  Obtained through a Freedom of Information Act Request, the memo may show how fairly benign-sounding authorizations for clear circumventions of the Geneva Conventions may have translated into gruesome practice on the battlefield.

The memo, which addresses keeping prisoners ?standing? for up to four hours, is annotated with a note initialed by Rumfeld reading: ?I stand for 8?10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours??  Not mentioned in writing anywhere is anything about accomplishing this by chaining prisoners to the ceiling.  There is evidence that, unable to support his weight on tiptoe for the days on end he was chained to the ceiling, Dilawars arms dislocated, and they flapped around uselessly when he was taken down for interrogation.  The National Catholic Reporter writes, ?They flapped like a bird?s broken wings.?

Contradicting, on the record, a February 2003 statement by Rumfeld?s top commander in Afghnanistan at the time, General Daniel McNeill, that ?we are not chaining people to the ceilings,? is Spc. Willie Brand, the only soldier disciplined in the death of Dilawar, with a reduction in rank.  Told of McNeill?s statement, Brand told Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes: ?Well, he?s lying.?  Brand said of his punishment: ?I didn?t understand how they could do this after they had trained you to do this stuff and they turn around and say you?ve been bad.?

Binyam, Genital-Slicing
Binyam Mohamed was seized by the Pakistani Forces in April 2002 and turned over to the Americans for a $5,000 bounty.  He was held for more than five years without charge or trial in Bagram Air Force Base, Guant?namo Bay, and third country ?black? sites.

In his diary he describes being flown by a US government plane to a prison in Morocco. He writes:
?They cut off my clothes with some kind of doctor?s scalpel. I was naked. I tried to put on a brave face. But maybe I was going to be raped. Maybe they?d electrocute me. Maybe castrate me
One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once, and they stood still for maybe a minute, watching my reaction. I was in agony. They must have done this 20 to 30 times, in maybe two hours. There was blood all over. ?I told you I was going to teach you who?s the man,? [one] eventually said.

?They cut all over my private parts. One of them said it would be better just to cut it off, as I would only breed terrorists. I asked for a doctor.

?I was in Morocco for 18 months. Once they began this, they would do it to me about once a month. One time I asked a guard: ?What?s the point of this? I?ve got nothing I can say to them. I?ve told them everything I possibly could.?

??As far as I know, it?s just to degrade you. So when you leave here, you?ll have these scars and you?ll never forget. So you?ll always fear doing anything but what the US wants.?

?Later, when a US airplane picked me up the following January, a female MP took pictures. She was one of the few Americans who ever showed me any sympathy. When she saw the injuries I had she gasped. They treated me and took more photos when I was in Kabul. Someone told me this was ?to show Washington it?s healing.??

The obvious question for any prosecutor in Binyam?s case is: Who does ?Washington? refer to?  Rumfeld?  Cheney?  Is it not in the national interest to uncover these most depraved of sadists at the highest level?  US Judge Gladys Kessler, in her findings on Binyam made in relation to a Guantanamo prisoner?s petition, found Binyam exceedingly credible.  She wrote:
?His genitals were mutilated. He was deprived of sleep and food. He was summarily transported from one foreign prison to another. Captors held him in stress positions for days at a time. He was forced to listen to piercingly loud music and the screams of other prisoners while locked in a pitch-black cell. All the while, he was forced to inculpate himself and others in plots to imperil Americans. The government does not dispute this evidence.?

Obama: Torturers? Last Defense

The prospect of Rumsfeld in a courtroom cannot possibly be relished by the Obama administration, which has now cast itself as the last and staunchest defender of the embattled former officials, including John Yoo, Alberto Gonzalez, Judge Jay Bybee, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and others.  The administration employed an unprecedented twisting of arms in order to keep evidence in a lawsuit which Binyam had filed in the UK suppressed, threatening an end of cooperation between the British MI5 and the CIA.  This even though the British judges whose hand was forced puzzled that the evidence contained ?no disclosure of sensitive intelligence matters.?  The judges suggested another reason for the secrecy requested by the Obama administration, that it might be ?politically embarrassing.?

The Obama Justice Department?s active involvement in seeking the dismissal of the cases is by choice, as the statutory obligation of the US Attorney General to defend cases against public officials ends the day they leave office.  Indeed, the real significance of recent court decisions, the one by the 7th Circuit and yet another against Rumsfeld in a DC federal court, may be the clarification the common misconception that high officials are forever immune for crimes committed while in office, in the name of the state.  The misconception persists despite just a moment of thought telling one that if this were true, Hermann Goering, Augusto Pinochet, and Charles Taylor would never have been arrested, for they were all in office at the time they ordered atrocities, and they all invoked national security.

Judge Kessler?s findings point to yet another even more alarming aspect of the Bush-era crimes for which Rumsfeld is now being pursued for his part.  And that is the emerging evidence that the tortures perpetrated were not designed to protect national security at all, but to obtain false confessions in order to score propaganda points for the War on terror.

Andy Worthington writes that:
?As it happens, one of the confessions that was tortured out of Binyam is so ludicrous that it was soon dropped
The US authorities insisted that Padilla and Binyam had dinner with various high-up members of al-Qaeda the night before Padilla was to fly off to America. According to their theory the dinner party had to have been on the evening of 3 April in Karachi 
 Binyam was  meant to have dined with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, Sheikh al-Libi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Jose Padilla. What made the scenario ?absurd,? as [Binyam's lawyer] pointed out, was that ?two of the conspirators were already in U.S. custody at the time ? Abu Zubaydah was seized six days before, on 28 March 2002, and al-Libi had been held since November 2001.??

The charges against Binyam were dropped, after the prosecutor, Lieutenant Colonel Darrel Vandeveld, resigned. He told the BBC later that he had concerns at the repeated suppression of evidence that could prove prisoners? innocence.
The litany of tortures alleged against Rumsfeld in the military prisons he ran could go on for some time.  The new photographic images from Abu Ghraib make it hard to conceive of how the methods of torture and dehumanization could have possibly served a national purpose.

The approved use of attack dogs, sexual humiliation, forced masturbation, and treatments which plumb the depths of human depravity are either documented in Rumsfeld?s own memos, or credibly reported on.

The UK Guardian writes:
?The sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not an invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of ill-treatment and degradation used by special forces soldiers that is now being disseminated among ordinary troops and contractors who do not know what they are doing, according to British military sources. The techniques devised in the system, called R2I ? resistance to interrogation ? match the crude exploitation and abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad.

?One former British special forces officer who returned last week from Iraq, said: ?It was clear from discussions with US private contractors in Iraq that the prison guards were using R2I techniques, but they didn?t know what they were doing.??

Torture Now Aimed at Americans, Programs Designed to Obtain False Confessions, Not Intelligence

The worst of the worst is that Rumsfeld?s logic strikes directly at the foundations of our democracy and the legitimacy of the War on Terror.  The torture methods studied and adopted by the Bush administration were not new, but adopted from the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape program (SERE) which is taught to elite military units.  The program was developed during the Cold War, in response to North Korean, Chinese, and Soviet Bloc torture methods.  But the aim of those methods was never to obtain intelligence, but to elicit false confessions.  The Bush administration asked the military to ?reverse engineer? the methods, i.e. figure out how to break down resistance to false confessions.

In the 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee report which indicted high-level Bush administration officials, including Rumsfeld, as bearing major responsibility for the torture at Abu Gharib, Guantanamo, and Bagram, the Committee said:
?SERE instructors explained ?Biderman?s Principles? ? which were based on coercive methods used by the Chinese Communist dictatorship to elicit false confessions from U.S. POWs during the Korean War ? and left with GTMO personnel a chart of those coercive techniques.?

The Biderman Principles were based on the work of Air Force Psychiatrist Albert Biderman, who wrote the landmark ?Communist Attempts to Elecit False Confessions from Air Force Prisoners of War,? on which SERE resistance was based.  Biderman wrote:
?The experiences of American Air Force prisoners of war in Korea who were pressured for false confessions, enabled us to compile an outline of methods of eliciting compliance, not much different, it turned out, from those reported by persons held by Communists of other nations.  I have prepared a chart showing a condensed version of this outline.?

The chart is a how-to for communist torturers interested only in false confessions for propaganda purposes, not intelligence.  It was the manual for, in Biderman?s words, ?brainwashing.?  In the reference for Principle Number 7, ?Degradation,? the chart explains:
?Makes Costs of Resistance Appear More Damaging to Self-Esteem than Capitulation; Reduces Prisoner to ?Animal Level
Personal Hygiene Prevented; Filthy, Infested Surroundings; Demeaning Punishments; Insults and Taunts; Denial of Privacy?

Appallingly, this could explain that even photos such as those of feces-smeared prisoners at Abu Ghraib might not, as we would hope, be only the individual work of particularly demented guards, but part of systematic degradation authorized at the highest levels.


This could go far toward explaining why the Bush administration seemed so tone-deaf to intelligence professionals, including legendary CIA Director William Colby, who essentially told them they were doing it all wrong.  A startling level of consensus existed within the intelligence community that the way to produce good intelligence was to gain the trust of prisoners and to prove everything they had been told by their recruiters, about the cruelty and degeneracy of America, to be wrong.

But why would the administration care about what worked to produce intelligence, if the goal was never intelligence in the first place?  What the Ponzi scheme of either innocent men or low-level operatives incriminating each other  DID accomplish, was produce a framework of rapid successes and trophies in the new War on Terror.

And now, American contractors Vance and Ertel show, unless there are prosecutions, the law has effectively changed and they can do it to Americans. Jane Mayer in the New Yorker describes a new regime for prisoners which has become coldly methodical, quoting a report issued by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, titled ?Secret Detentions and Illegal Transfers of Detainees.?  In the report on the CIA paramilitary Special Activities Division detainees were ?taken to their cells by strong people who wore black outfits, masks that covered their whole faces, and dark visors over their eyes.?
Mayer writes that a former member of a C.I.A. transport team has described the ?takeout? of prisoners as:
?a carefully choreographed twenty-minute routine, during which a suspect was hog-tied, stripped naked, photographed, hooded, sedated with anal suppositories, placed in diapers, and transported by plane to a secret location.?

A person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry, referring to cavity searches and the frequent use of suppositories, likened the treatment to ?sodomy.? He said, ?It was used to absolutely strip the detainee of any dignity. It breaks down someone?s sense of impenetrability.?

Of course we have seen these images before, in the trial balloon treatment of Jose Padilla, the first American citizen arrested and declared ?enemy combatant? in the first undeclared war without end.  The designation placed Padilla outside of his Bill of Rights as an American citizen even though he was arrested on American soil.  Padilla was kept in isolation and tortured for nearly 4 years before being released to a civilian trial, at which point according to his lawyer he was useless in his own defense, and exhibited fear and mistrust of everyone, complete docility, and a range of nervous facial tics.



He was convicted by a Miami jury and sentenced to 17 more years.  As of this writing, and meriting it?s own outrage, on Sept. 19, an appeals court threw out Padilla?s sentence as ?too lenient? and has sent it back for review.

Rumsfeld?s avuncular ?golly-gee, gee-whiz? performances in public are legendary.  Randall M. Schmidt, the Air Force Lieutenant General appointed by the Army to investigate abuses at Guantanamo, and who recommended holding Rumsfeld protege and close associate General Geoffrey Miller ?accountable? as the commander of Guantanamo, watched Rumfeld?s performance before a House Committee with some interest. ?He was going, ?My God! Did I authorize putting a bra and underwear on this guy?s head and telling him all his buddies knew he was a homosexual???

But General Taguba said of Rumsfeld: ?Rummy did what we called ?case law? policy ? verbal and not in writing. What he?s really saying is that if this decision comes back to haunt me I?ll deny it.?

Taguba went on: ?Rumsfeld is very perceptive and has a mind like a steel trap. There?s no way he?s suffering from C.R.S.?Can?t Remember Shit.?
Miller was the general deployed by Rumfeld to ?Gitmo-ize? Abu Ghraib in 2003 after Rumfeld had determined they were being too ?soft? on prisoners.  He said famously in one memo ?you have to treat them like dogs.?  General Karpinski questioned the fall of Charles Graner and Lyndie England as the main focus of low-level ?bad apple? abuse in the Abu Ghraib investigations.  ?Did Lyndie England deploy with a dog leash?? she asks.


Rumfeld?s worry now is the doctrine of Universal Jurisdiction, as well as ordinary common law.  The veil of immunity stripped in civil cases would seem to free the hand of any prosecutor who determines there is sufficient evidence that a crime has been committed based on available evidence.  A grand jury?s bar for opening a prosecution is minimal.  It has been said ?a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich.?  Rumsfeld, and the evidence against him, would certainly seem to pass this test.

The name Dilawar translates to English roughly as ?Braveheart.?  Let us pray he had one to endure the manner of his death.  But the more spiritual may believe that somehow it had a purpose, to shock the world and begin the toppling of unimaginable evil among us.  Dilawar represented the poorest of the poor and most powerless, wanting only to pick up his three sisters, as his mother had told him to, for the holiday.  The question now is whether Americans will finally draw a line, as the case against Rumsfeld falls into place and becomes legally bulletproof.  Andy Worthington noted that the case for prosecutors became rock solid when Susan Crawford, senior Pentagon official overseeing the Military Commissions at Guant?namo ? told Bob Woodward that the Bush administration had ?met the legal definition of torture.?

As Rumsfeld continues his book tour and people like Dilawar are remembered, it is not beyond the pale that an ambitious prosecutor, whether local, state, or federal, might sense the advantage.  It is perhaps unlikely, but not inconceivable, that upon landing at Logan International Airport on Wed., Sept. 21st, or similarly anywhere he travels thereafter, Rumsfeld could be greeted with the words such as: 

?Welcome to Boston, Mr. Secretary.  You are under arrest.?

Massachusetts District Attorneys Who Can Indict Rumsfeld, Please Email them this post and call them.SAMPLE INDICTMENT TEXT, BASED ON GERMAN CRIMINAL COMPLAINT

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley:
email:  ago at state.ma.us
One Ashburton Place
Boston, MA 02108 -1518
Phone: (617) 727-2200
Here is the contact info for members of the Boston City Council, which could pass a resolution directing the Police Commissioner to arrest Rumsfeld on sight (google Brattleboro Resolution, George W. Bush):
http://www.cityofboston.gov/


And Gov. Duval Patrick has an obligation to order the state police to do the same: CONTACT FORM
Local District Attorneys
Berkshire County: District Attorney David F. Capeless
Elected November 2006
OFFICE ADDRESS:     P.O. Box 973
888 Purchase Street
New Bedford, MA 02741
PHONE:     (508) 997-0711
FAX:     (508) 997-0396
INTERNET ADDRESS:     http://www.bristolda.com

Bristol County     District Attorney C. Samuel Sutter
Appointed March 2004
Elected November 2004
OFFICE ADDRESS:     7 North Street
P.O. Box 1969
Pittsfield, MA 01202-1969
PHONE:     (413) 443-5951
FAX:     (413) 499-6349
Internet Address:     http://www.mass.gov/


Cape & Islands     District Attorney Michael O?Keefe
Elected November 2002
OFFICE ADDRESS:     P.O.Box 455
3231 Main Street
Barnstable, MA 02630
PHONE:     (508) 362-8113
FAX:     (508) 362-8221
INTERNET ADDRESS:     http://www.mass.gov/


Essex County: District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett
Elected November 2002
OFFICE ADDRESS:     Ten Federal Street
Salem, MA 01970
PHONE:     (978) 745-6610
FAX:     (978) 741-4971
INTERNET ADDRESS:     http://www.mass.gov/


Hampden     District Attorney Mark Mastroianni
Elected 2010
OFFICE ADDRESS:     Hall of Justice
50 State Street
Springfield, MA 01103
PHONE:     (413) 747-1000
FAX:     (413) 781-4745

Middlesex County: District Attorney Gerard T. Leone, Jr.
Elected November 2006
OFFICE ADDRESS:     15 Commonwealth Avenue
Woburn, MA 01801
PHONE:     (781) 897-8300
FAX:     ((781) 897-8301
INTERNET ADDRESS:     http://www.middlesexda.com

Norfolk     District Attorney Michael Morrissey
Elected 2010
OFFICE ADDRESS:     45 Shawmut Ave.
Canton, MA 02021
PHONE:     (781) 830-4800
FAX:     (781) 830-4801
INTERNET ADDRESS:     http://www.mass.gov/


Northwestern     District Attorney David Sullivan
Elected 2010
HAMPSHIRE OFFICE ADDRESS:     One Gleason Plaza
Northampton, MA 01060
PHONE:     (413) 586-9225
FAX:     (413) 584-3635
FRANKLIN OFFICE ADDRESS:     13 Conway Street
Greenfield, MA 01301
PHONE:     (413) 774-3186
FAX:     (413) 773-3278
WEBSITE:
Northwestern     http://www.mass.gov/


Plymouth     District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz
Appointed November 2001
Elected November 2002
OFFICE ADDRESS:     32 Belmont Street
Brockton, MA 02303
PHONE:     (508) 584-8120
FAX:     (508) 586-3578
INTERNET ADDRESS:     http://www.mass.gov/


Suffolk County:     District Attorney Daniel F. Conley
Appointed January 2002
Elected November 2002
OFFICE ADDRESS:     One Bulfinch Place
Boston, MA 02114
PHONE:     (617) 619-4000
FAX:     (617) 619-4009
INTERNET ADDRESS:     http://www.mass.gov/


Worcester     District Attorney Joseph D. Early, Jr.
Elected November 2006
OFFICE ADDRESS:     Courthouse ? Room 220
2 Main Street
Worcester, MA 01608
PHONE:     (508) 755-8601
FAX:     (508) 831-9899
INTERNET ADDRESS:     http://www.worcesterda.com

  


From ths at psalience.org  Fri Sep 23 23:45:32 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2011 23:45:32 +0200
Subject: [THS] Scalia: Constitution Doesn't Prohibit Executing an Innocent
	Man
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110923234454.03fa3178@mail.messagingengine.com>

Scalia Ruled That the Constitution Doesn't Prohibit Executing an Innocent Man in Troy Davis Case

Submitted by mark karlin on Thu, 09/22/2011 - 7:52pm. 
EditorBlog 

MARK KARLIN, BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Beyond the emotional punch in the gut of Troy Davis' execution - and the echoing cheers of a GOP debate audience for Rick Perry killing so many people - it is worth remembering the role of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in the Davis affair.

Because it was during an appeal to the Supreme Court in 2009 on behalf of Davis that Scalia - and BuzzFlash is not making this up - actually wrote a dissenting opinion that there was nothing in the Constitution that prevented a state from executing an innocent man (or woman).

How does BuzzFlash at Truthout know this?

Because we did a commentary back then on Scalia's jaw-dropping constitutional assertion when the decision was rendered. (The Supreme Court ordered a Georgia court to allow Davis to present new evidence.)

In that 2009 commentary, we quoted from Scalia's dissent:

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is "actually" innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged "actual innocence" is constitutionally cognizable.

If the Constitution doesn't protect us from being executed even if we are innocent, then, Houston, we have a fundamental problem of human rights in America.

Scalia is considered by some to be a "brilliant legal mind," but there is nothing brilliant about authorizing the murder of innocent people.


From ths at psalience.org  Sat Sep 24 12:21:24 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2011 12:21:24 +0200
Subject: [THS] NYPD Commissioner Directs Police to Stop Improper Marijuana
 Arrests
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110924121901.04452090@mail.messagingengine.com>

Drug Policy Alliance

Institute for Juvenile Justice Reform and Alternatives

VOCAL New York
For Immediate Release:                                                          Contact: Tony Newman 646-335-5384

September 23, 2011                                                                               Kyung Ji Rhee 347-712-0259

   Jeremy Saunders 917-676-8041

                                                                                                                                                            
 

NYPD Commissioner Directs Police to Stop Improper Marijuana Arrests
Responding to Public Pressure, Police Ordered To Not Arrest People if Marijuana Not in Plain View
Advocates Applauds New Directive, Which Could End Tens of Thousands of Illegal Arrests
 

NYPD Commission Ray Kelly issued an internal order this week commanding officers to follow existing New York State law by ending arrests for possession of small amounts of marijuana ? as long as the marijuana was never in public view. The order does not change the law itself ? but simply instructs officers to comport with the law. This could result in tens of thousands fewer marijuana arrests annually in New York City.
The announcement comes on the heels of growing pressure on the NYPD. A campaign led by the Drug Policy Alliance, the Institute for Juvenile Justice Reform and Alternatives, and VOCAL has gained the support of City Council members and state legislators. DPA issued a series of reports prepared by the Marijuana Arrest Research Project that highlight the cost and scale of the arrests. Their latest report, released in March, found that arrests for marijuana possession cost New York City taxpayers approximately $75 million each year.
While advocates applauded the move by Commissioner Kelly, they also expressed caution:
?This represents a tremendous victory for the many New Yorkers who are fighting to end the NYPD?s notoriously wasteful, illegal and racially discriminatory marijuana arrest policies,? said Gabriel Sayegh. New York State Director for the Drug Policy Alliance. ?But, the devil remains in the details as to whether and how the NYPD implements this new directive. If followed, then the NYPD will at last comply with both the letter and spirit of the marijuana decriminalization law enacted in New York back in 1977.?
?We appreciate Commissioner Kelly?s internal clarification on marijuana possession offenses in New York City,? said Kyung Ji Rhee, director of  Institute for Juvenile Justice Reform and Alternatives . ?Kelly responded to mounting public pressure to change procedures that were racist, costly, and targeted young people of color by arresting them on spurious charges. This is only a first step to ensuring that police are accountable to the community, and it is unfortunate that it took 15 years for the police to follow 3 decade old decriminalization law.?
The arrest statistics say it all. Just 34,000 people were arrested for marijuana possession from 1981 to 1995 ? but in the last 15 years 540,000 people were arrested for marijuana possession. More than 50,000 people were arrested for marijuana possession in 2010 alone, far exceeding the total marijuana arrests from 1981-1995. The New York Police Department has provided no evidence that these massive numbers of arrests have done anything to reduce crime or to improve public safety and quality of life. There is also no evidence whatsoever that more people are smoking marijuana today than in the 1980s.
Most of these arrests are the result of illegal searches by the NYPD, as part of its controversial stop-and-frisk practices. Marijuana was decriminalized in New York State in 1977 ? and that law is still on the books. Smoking marijuana in public or having marijuana visible in public, however, remains a crime.  Most people arrested for marijuana possession are not smoking in public, but simply have a small amount in their pocket, purse or bag. Often when police stop and question a person, they say ?empty your pockets? or ?open your bag.? Many people comply, even though they?re not legally required to do so. If a person pulls mari?juana from their pocket or bag, it is then ?open to public view.? The police then arrest the person.
"It shouldn't be news when the police decide to follow the law, but it  is when we're talking about ending a practice that that led to illegal  marijuana arrests becoming the number one arrest in New York City," said Alfredo Carrasquillo, a community organizer for VOCAL-NY who has been arrested in the past for possessing small amounts of marijuana. "Getting arrested for having a small bag of marijuana on you can mean more than just spending a night in jail. It can put at risk everything you need to get by, like getting a job, keeping your housing, caring for your kids, and going to college.?
?We are pleased that the NYPD agrees that these marijuana arrests have not been proper and will begin to curtail them,? said Harry Levine of the Marijuana Arrest Research Project.  ?The arrests are the fruit of the 600,000 recorded stop and frisks, of the large number of unrecorded stop and frisks, and of the many illegal or improper searches. None of these are being curtailed. The NYPD will likely make up the loss of these marijuana arrests by charging even more people with disorderly conduct, trespassing, resisting arrest and other crimes that do not require evidence. The police will likely be writing even more summonses, which are not minor in  consequence. The NYPD requires major reform. This is a first step.?
 
WNYC
Police Commissioner Calls on NYPD to Stop Improper Marijuana Arrests
Friday, September 23, 2011
By Ailsa Chang
http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2011/sep/23/police-commissioner-calls-nypd-stop-improper-marijuana-arrests/
 

View a copy of the "NYPD Operations Order" @ http://project.wnyc.org/documents/dc.html?doc=252307-mj-order
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has issued an internal order to the New York City Police Department commanding officers to stop arresting people for small amounts of marijuana possession, if the marijuana was never in public view.  The directive comes at a time when the NYPD is taking increasing heat about alleged improper marijuana arrests.
Kelly's Operations Order landed on the desk of police supervisors this week, and a copy of it was provided to WNYC.
In the order, Kelly stated at the outset: "Questions have been raised about the processing of certain marihuana arrests.  At issue is whether the circumstances under which uniformed members of the service recover small amounts of marihuana ... from subjects in a public place support the charge of Criminal Possession of Marihuana in the Fifth Degree."
NYPD sources tell WNYC it's the first time Kelly internally addressed the issue of improper marijuana arrests to the entire department since a WNYC investigation in April found police officers may have been recovering marijuana on people through illegal searches.
In New York, possession of small amounts of marijuana is only a criminal offense if it is displayed in public. Kelly's order reminds officers that if marijuana comes into public view at the direction of an officer ??? either when an officer pulls the drug out of a person's clothes or a person is ordered by an officer to empty out his pockets ??? it's not a misdemeanor, and instead should only be treated as a violation, which is a ticketable offense.
More than 85 percent of those arrested for marijuana in New York City are blacks and Latinos in the poorest neighborhoods where the highest rates of stop-and-frisk occur.  National studies show young whites smoke pot more than blacks and Latinos of the same age.
Kelly's directive arrives just as City Council members and legislators in Albany are calling for an end to improper marijuana arrests.  A bipartisan bill has been introduced in the state legislature that would decriminalize small amounts of marijuana possession in public view.  Bill sponsors Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries and State Senator Mark Grisanti said they hope the proposed law will reduce incentives for police to improperly recover marijuana from people to make misdemeanor arrests.


From ths at psalience.org  Sat Sep 24 12:25:28 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2011 12:25:28 +0200
Subject: [THS] A man walks into a very high-tech bar...
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110924122423.049b7ff0@mail.messagingengine.com>

A Modern Fable...

A man walks into a very high-tech bar. As he sits down on a stool he notices that the bartender is a robot. The robot clicks to attention and asks, "Sir, what will you have?"

The man thinks a moment then replies, "A martini please."

The robot clicks a couple of times and mixes the best martini the man had ever had.

The robot then asks, "Sir, what is your IQ?" The man answers "Oh, about 164."

The robot then proceeds to discuss the theory of relativity, inter-stellar space travel, the latest medical breakthroughs, etc...

The man is very, very impressed. He leaves the bar but decides he would try a different tack. He returns and takes a seat. Again the robot clicks and asks what he would have? "A martini please."

Again it is superb. The robot again asks "What is your IQ sir?"

This time the man answers, "Oh about 100". So the robot starts discussing NASCAR racing, the latest basketball scores, and what to expect the Dodgers to do this week.

The guy has to try it one more time. So he leaves, returns and takes a stool.... Again he gets a martini, and the question, "What is your IQ?" This time the man drawls out: "Uh...... bout 50".

The robot clicks then leans close and very slowly asks,

"A-r-e...
y-o-u...
a-s-s-h-o-l-e-s....
r-e-a-l-l-y
g-o-i-n-g...
t-o...
n-o-m-i-n-a-t-e...
R-i-c-k...P-e-r-r-y?


From ths at psalience.org  Sun Sep 25 11:35:51 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 11:35:51 +0200
Subject: [THS] Mexican President Felipe Calderon Hints at Legalization
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110925113429.04391ba8@mail.messagingengine.com>

Foreign Policy Magazine


Calderon: Drug consumer countries 'morally obliged' to cut demand; consider 'market alternatives'


Posted By Joshua Keating  Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - 11:26 AM   Share

It turns out Mexican President Felipe Calderon's statements on U.S. television hinting at drug legalization this week were a preview of his UNGA speech, in which he suggested "market alternatives" to drug interdiction and singled out the United States specifically. A full text isn't posted yet so these quotes are all from my rushed transcription.

After discussing the Arab Spring, Calderon pivoted, saying, "We have to be aware that organized crime today is killing more people and more young people than all the dictatorial regimes in the world."  

He continued: 
"More than ever, consumer countries, where drugs are consumed, must take effective action to radically cut demand. I will be told that this is not possible. That the demand for drugs continues to rise, as indeed is the case here in the United States, where nearly 30 percent of young people consume drugs. What is the solution?[...]

Consumer countries are morally obliged to reduce the vast economic demand. If you can?t cut it, cut the economic profist. You have to find how to staunch this this demand. Seek out all possible options, including market alternatives, so that drugs trafficking ceases to be a source of violence in Latin America and the Carribean and several African countries.

As if noted before, Latin American heads of state including Calderon's predecessor Vicente Fox tend to become born-again legalizers after they leave office, perhaps since they're no longer feeling the pressure from up north. 

A sitting, center-right Mexican president making a speech in New York calling for "market alternatives" to combating drug trafficking would seem to be a pretty major development.


From ths at psalience.org  Sun Sep 25 11:36:57 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 11:36:57 +0200
Subject: [THS] Bill Clinton: Netanyahu killed the peace process
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110925113639.04386f30@mail.messagingengine.com>

Bill Clinton: Netanyahu killed the peace process


Posted By Josh Rogin  Thursday, September 22, 2011 - 2:22 PM   Share



Who's to blame for the continued failure of the Middle East peace process? Former President Bill Clinton said today that it is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- whose government moved the goalposts upon taking power, and whose rise represents a key reason there has been no Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

Clinton, in a roundtable with bloggers today on the sidelines of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, gave an extensive recounting of the deterioration in the Middle East peace process since he pressed both parties to agree to a final settlement at Camp David in 2000. He said there are two main reasons for the lack of a comprehensive peace today: the reluctance of the Netanyahu administration to accept the terms of the Camp David deal and a demographic shift in Israel that is making the Israeli public less amenable to peace.

"The two great tragedies in modern Middle Eastern politics, which make you wonder if God wants Middle East peace or not, were [Yitzhak] Rabin's assassination and [Ariel] Sharon's stroke," Clinton said.

Sharon had decided he needed to build a new centrist coalition, so he created the Kadima party and gained the support of leaders like Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert. He was working toward a consensus for a peace deal before he fell ill, Clinton said. But that effort was scuttled when the Likud party returned to power.

"The Israelis always wanted two things that once it turned out they had, it didn't seem so appealing to Mr. Netanyahu. They wanted to believe they had a partner for peace in a Palestinian government, and there's no question -- and the Netanyahu government has said -- that this is the finest Palestinian government they've ever had in the West Bank," Clinton said.

"[Palestinian leaders] have explicitly said on more than one occasion that if [Netanyahu] put up the deal that was offered to them before -- my deal -- that they would take it," Clinton said, referring to the 2000 Camp David deal that Yasser Arafat rejected.

But the Israeli government has drifted a long way from the Ehud Barak-led government that came so close to peace in 2000, Clinton said, and any new negotiations with the Netanyahu government are now on starkly different terms -- terms that the Palestinians are unlikely to accept.

"For reasons that even after all these years I still don't know for sure, Arafat turned down the deal I put together that Barak accepted," he said. "But they also had an Israeli government that was willing to give them East Jerusalem as the capital of the new state of Palestine."

Israel also wants a normalization of relations with its Arab neighbors to accompany a peace deal. Clinton said that the Saudi-inspired Arab Peace Initiative put forth in 2002 represented an answer to that Israeli demand.

"The King of Saudi Arabia started lining up all the Arab countries to say to the Israelis, ?if you work it out with the Palestinians ... we will give you immediately not only recognition but a political, economic, and security partnership,'" Clinton said. "This is huge.... It's a heck of a deal."

The Netanyahu government has received all of the assurances previous Israeli governments said they wanted but now won't accept those terms to make peace, Clinton said.

"Now that they have those things, they don't seem so important to this current Israeli government, partly because it's a different country," said Clinton. "In the interim, you've had all these immigrants coming in from the former Soviet Union, and they have no history in Israel proper, so the traditional claims of the Palestinians have less weight with them."

Clinton then repeated his assertions made at last year's conference that Israeli society can be divided into demographic groups that have various levels of enthusiasm for making peace.

"The most pro-peace Israelis are the Arabs; second the Sabras, the Jewish Israelis that were born there; third, the Ashkenazi of long-standing, the European Jews who came there around the time of Israel's founding," Clinton said. "The most anti-peace are the ultra-religious, who believe they're supposed to keep Judea and Samaria, and the settler groups, and what you might call the territorialists, the people who just showed up lately and they're not encumbered by the historical record."

Clinton affirmed that the United States should veto the Palestinian resolution at the U.N. Security Council for member-state status, because the Israelis need security guarantees before agreeing to the creation of a Palestinian state. But the Netanyahu government has moved away from the consensus for peace, making a final status agreement more difficult, Clinton said.

"That's what happened. Every American needs to know this. That's how we got to where we are," Clinton said. "The real cynics believe that the Netanyahu's government's continued call for negotiations over borders and such means that he's just not going to give up the West Bank."

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/09/22/bill_clinton_netanyahu_killed_the_peace_process#.TnuVojZ_qy4.twitter 


From ths at psalience.org  Sun Sep 25 13:04:15 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 13:04:15 +0200
Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?_=93This_is_Just_Practice=94_The_Story_of_Th?=
 =?iso-8859-1?q?e_Wall_Street__Occupation?=
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110925125448.06dd5bb8@mail.messagingengine.com>

http://www.nationofchange.org/just-practice-story-wall-street-occupation-1316877493

This is Just Practice - The Story of The Wall Street Occupation 

A lot of what you?ve probably seen or read about the #occupywallstreet action is wrong, especially if you?re getting it on the Internet. The action started as an idea posted online and word about it then spread and is still spreading, online. But what makes it really matter now is precisely that it is happening offline, in a physical, public space, live and in person. That?s where the occupiers are assembling the rudiments of a movement.

At the center of occupied Liberty Plaza, a dozen or so huddle around computers in the media area, managing a makeshift Internet hotspot, a humming generator and the (theoretically) 24-hour livestream. They can edit and post videos of arrests in no time flat, then bombard Twitter until they?re viral. But for those looking to understand even the basic facts about what is actually going on?before September 17 and since?the Internet has been as much a source of confusion as it is anything else.

For someone who has been following this movement in gestation as well as implementation, it?s painfully easy to see which news articles take their bearing entirely from a few Google searches. Some reporters come to Liberty Plaza looking for Adbusters staff, or US Day of Rage members, or conspiratorial Obama supporters, or hackers from Anonymous. They?re briefly disappointed to find none of the above. Instead, it?s a bunch of people?from round-the-clock revolutionaries, to curious tourists, to retirees, to zealous students?spending most of their time in long meetings about supplying food, conducting marches, dividing up the plaza?s limited space and what exactly they?re there to do and why. And that?s the point. More than demanding any particular policy proposal, the occupation is reminding Wall Street what real democracy looks like: a discussion among people, not a contest of money.

As is now well known, the anti-consumerist group Adbusters made a call on July 13 for an occupation of Wall Street. That and a bit of poster art were the extent of its involvement. Adbusters floated the meme and left the rest to others. The trouble was, though, that most of the others were meme floaters, too.

The occupywallst.?org web domain was registered anonymously on July 14, and it soon became the main clearinghouse for information about the movement?s progress. It remains so now and is getting, on average, about 50,000 unique visitors per day. It?s maintained mainly by a man and woman who met through the Anarchism section on the web site Reddit.

Soon came US Day of Rage, the project of Alexa O?Brien, an IT content management strategist. Since March, she has been trying to build a nationwide movement for radical campaign-finance reform??One citizen. One dollar. One vote.??and decided to peg her efforts to the September 17 action. While she has around 20 organizers working with her in cities around the country, as far as one leading #occupywallstreet organizer in New York could tell, it seems like her only colleagues might be coffee and cigarettes.

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Then, of course, there?s Anonymous. The most-wanted hacker-activist collective indicated that it would join #occupywallstreet in late August. Within days, the Anons? presence in the movement was being felt through Anonymous-branded viral videos, the bombardment of the movement?s Twitter hashtags (of which there is an ever-growing number) and rumors of scrutiny from Homeland Security.

Meanwhile, quietly, a group of several hundred mainly young activists, artists and students started gathering as a ?General Assembly? (GA)?a leaderless, consensus-based decision-making process. They met weekly in public parks, starting on August 2 and continuing until the occupation began, with the intention of building an  organizational and tactical framework for the action. It grew out of New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts, which had recently held a three-week occupation near City Hall called ?Bloombergville? to protest against austerity measures. They had learned a lot from that and were ready to try something bigger.

The GA formed an Internet Committee, which quickly became fraught with infighting about process, security concerns and editorial control. These problems consumed hours and hours of the whole Assembly?s time. Their site went up, then down and then finally up again just days before the occupation began. It is now online at nycga.?cc, but it receives only a small fraction of the traffic of occupywallst.?org. Only on Thursday afternoon did the two sites figure out how to formally coordinate their activities.

As a result of these hiccups, in the lead-up and early days of the occupation, media coverage almost always associated it with meme floaters like Adbusters, US Day of Rage and Anonymous. But none of them were especially responsible for what would be happening on the ground starting on September 17. That was the GA?s doing.

Others, it seems, have taken it upon themselves to fill the GA?s media vacuum of their own accord. One document being circulated and discussed online is ?Occupy Wall Street?Official Demands,? dated September 20 of 2013, which includes detailed proposals for reforming the financial system, none of which has been approved by the GA.

?This is definitely not ours,? says Marisa Holmes, a facilitator of the GA since the first planning meetings. ?All decisions made by the GA are made in this space.?

Worse, thanks to some imaginative theorizing by Aaron Kein of the right-wing online publication WorldNetDaily, the idea began circulating that the movement was ?closely tied? with ACORN, SEIU and that it took its inspiration from the Weather Underground; George Soros; and, ultimately, President Obama himself. Five minutes at a GA meeting would easily disabuse one of such associations. The GA had no official organizational ties and, besides a food fund that has been stuck in an inaccessible WePay account, almost no money. Many wish that they had the support of unions, but so far they still don?t.

What?s actually underway at Liberty Plaza is both simpler and more complicated: music making, sign drawing, talking, organizing, eating, marching, standoffs with police and (not enough) sleeping. It?s a movement in formation. As protesters sometimes like to chant, ?This Is Just Practice.? There are a handful of guys with Anonymous Guy Fawkes masks backward on their heads, but they?re just one affinity group among many. O?Brien didn?t appear on the plaza for a couple of days?she was ?running the back-end,? she says?and there has been almost no talk of ?One citizen. One dollar. One vote.? Adbusters sends the occasional package of posters in the mail and offers confusing advice to organizers on the ground. Nobody?s exactly sure yet who is doing what, but they?re learning.

For the most part, the occupation is riding the momentum started in the GA meetings that were going on for a month and a half beforehand. They built a community of people who trust each other, who have a sense for each other?s skills and who are in some basic agreement about ends and means.

In the revolutions and uprisings and occupations that have been taking place around the world since the beginning of this year, there has been a lot of talk about the mobilizing power of social media?of the Twitters and Facebooks and cell phones. But when the Egyptian government shut down the Internet and the cellular signals in January, the movement there carried on. One of the deciding factors that brought down Mubarak, in the end, was not some Twitter hashtag, but a general strike organized by traditional labor unions. The Internet can help (as well as hurt) a movement, but it?s no replacement for actual relationships among actual people, building actual trust through actually working together over a period of time.

?I could have a political discussion just on the Internet,? says web developer Drew Hornbein, who is on the GA?s Internet Committee, ?but it?s nice to get out like this.? When he started attending GA meetings in August, he got excited, thinking, ?This is something really real. This could really be something.?

So it has become. But everyone at Liberty Plaza knows the movement has to be bigger for it to have the effect they want to see. Whole swaths of Americans?from racial minorities to disgruntled Wall Streeters?are underrepresented among the occupiers. Not everyone, it seems, is quite so glued to Twitter as the young radical set. They?ve had to start scrambling to relearn how to make fliers, reach out to membership organizations and find people where they are to make the movement?s numbers grow.

On Thursday evening, a surprise march of hundreds mourning the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia set out for Liberty Plaza from Union Square, led by occupiers. Police made attempts to stop it with barricades and clubs and arrests, but they couldn?t; and when the marchers arrived, the numbers in the plaza swelled. There were a lot of new faces and new kinds of faces. It paid off to quit the Internet, go to where people actually are and bring them back.

In the GA that night, Ted Actie, who lives in Brooklyn and works for On the Spot, a minority-owned talk-show production company, called on the protesters to speak more directly to the communities around them. ?You do so much social networking,? he said, ?you forget how to socialize.?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Street Occupation
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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/24/1019886/-NYPD-is-Taking-Out-Live-Stream-Team-Luke-Richardson-Arrest?via=sidebar

Sat Sep 24, 2011 at 12:29 PM PDT

NYPD is Taking Out #OccupyWallStreet Live Stream Team - Luke Richardson Arrest

Here's video of Camera man, Luke Richardson being arrested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbH3YQ_6lks

An hour or so ago, the LIVE STREAM Coordinator Marissa Holmes was arrested.  Shame on NYPD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ovw1FAYppU

A Message From Occupied Wall Street (Day Seven) CLICK TO LEARN ABOUT #OCCUPYWALLSTREET.
As the curtain of delusion slowly sinks to the ground, the reality unfurls.  Shame on Bloomberg, Shame on NYPD, THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING!  

These arrests are NOT American Exceptionism.  That meme is being flushed down the toilet.  Those of us who have seen what is really happening in this country are saddened for those who have to wake up.  It's now or never.  Now is the time, before the fate of American families worsen.

THE WORLD IS WATCHING!

IF YOU KNOW HOW TO SCREEN RECORD and upload to YOUTUBE, do so.  We are the fracking MEDIA now!  And, btw, youtube blocked my vids with #occupywallstreet IN TITLE OR TAG.  So, the workaround is post video with a silly title.  I used Pumpkin Carving for the title and tag and the same two videos posted just fine!
To watch the Live Stream, go here.  http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution The NYPD might have arrested the team, but there is still something broadcast most of the time.  AND, you can watch recordings of this weeks Live Stream.   FIGHT BACK!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Apparently NYPD is arresting protesters throughout Manhattan. Aside from 
the c. 60 down on Wall Street, there have been people busted near Washington 
Square (my wife saw the cops handcuffing a woman who'd been demonstrating
peacefully), and, according to Twitter feeds, several others were arrested at
13th St. and Fifth Ave.

It's a little hard to track all this, since the press appears to be in blackout mode.

MCM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From John Wellington Ennis:

NYPD started cracking down 30-40 minutes ago.  60 arrested according to Twitter feeds.  Check out #OccupyWallSt on Twitter for developments.

http://twitpic.com/6pzcf6


From ths at psalience.org  Sun Sep 25 13:07:13 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 13:07:13 +0200
Subject: [THS] House Republicans Discover a Growing Bond With Netanyahu
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110925130646.04523cf0@mail.messagingengine.com>

[from MCM]
Now that the Likud Party and right-wing Israelis are openly backing, endorsing and financing Rick Perry, the longstanding collaboration between the Israeli right and Republicans in the US Congress is coming more sharply into focus.

Here is a comment from Haaretz:


Rich Perry Read Script by American Likud
Watching Rick Perry read, in an unusually disembodied fashion, his remarks about Israel in NYC today, couldn't help but think that he was reading a script written and handed to him by American Likud.


September 20, 2011
House Republicans Discover a Growing Bond With Netanyahu
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and STEVEN LEE MYERS

WASHINGTON ? When the Obama administration wanted to be certain that Congress would not block $50 million in new aid to the Palestinian Authority last month, it turned to a singularly influential lobbyist: Israel?s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

At the request of the American Embassy and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Netanyahu urged dozens of members of Congress visiting Israel last month not to object to the aid, according to Congressional and diplomatic officials. Mr. Netanyahu?s intervention with Congress underscored an extraordinary intersection of American diplomacy and domestic politics, the result of an ever-tightening relationship between the Israeli government and the Republican Party that now controls the House.

On Tuesday, one of President Obama?s potential rivals in 2012, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, delivered a speech in New York criticizing Mr. Obama?s stance toward Israel as ?na?ve, arrogant, misguided and dangerous.? Mr. Perry said that he would be a guest soon of Danny Danon, the hard-right deputy speaker of the Israeli Parliament.

The relationship between the Israeli government and the Republican Party has significantly complicated the administration?s diplomatic efforts to avert a confrontation at the United Nations this week over the Palestinian bid for full membership as a state, limiting President Obama?s ability to exert pressure on Mr. Netanyahu to make concessions that could restart negotiations with the Palestinians.

One of the members of Congress who attended the meeting with Mr. Netanyahu in August, Representative Michael G. Grimm of New York, a Republican, said that it was carefully explained to the delegation that the money would be used for training Palestinian police officers who work closely with the Israeli government.

Mr. Grimm said he felt more comfortable receiving the explanation from the prime minister than from Obama administration officials.

?I think the credibility is different,? he said, ?in the sense that this is his country and he certainly would not support something that would have negative effects within his country.?

For the Republicans, the relationship with the Israeli government has created what many see as an opportunity. Mindful of Mr. Obama?s strained relationship with Mr. Netanyahu and emboldened by a special election victory last week in a heavily Jewish Congressional district in New York, Republicans hope the tensions between Mr. Obama and Israel ? underscored by the latest developments at the United Nations ? will help propel future political victories for their party.

Even as Mrs. Clinton continued this week to pursue what she called ?extremely intensive ongoing diplomacy? to find a compromise between the Israelis and the Palestinians, Republicans sought to leverage support among Jewish voters here at home who traditionally have favored Democrats.

The National Republican Congressional Committee has drawn up a list of several Democrat-rich Congressional districts ? including one on Long Island now held by Representative Steve Israel, who leads a rival Democratic group ? where it believes Republicans have a fighting chance by appealing to Jewish voters.

The House speaker, John A. Boehner, addressed a Jewish group in his home state, Ohio, last weekend, contrasting his invitation to Mr. Netanyahu to address Congress in May with the Israeli leader?s more frosty relationship with the administration; Mr. Boehner plans another speech this week to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington.

Unbending support for Israel has long been a bipartisan fact of American politics, but Mr. Netanyahu?s popularity in Congress now runs deeper than ever. When he appeared before Congress in the spring, his speech rebutting Mr. Obama?s ambitious peace proposals was interrupted by nearly three dozen standing ovations.

Mr. Netanyahu?s standing has complicated American diplomatic and financial support for the Palestinians as Mr. Obama tries to reach a peace between the two sides that would establish a Palestinian state, the stated goal of the last two presidential administrations.

As the Palestinian bid for recognition at the United Nations gained momentum this summer, both Republicans and Democrats warned that Congress would sever the American financial assistance that began under President George W. Bush if the Palestinians proceeded in that effort.

?The U.S. Congress has generously supported Palestinian efforts to build infrastructure and build the capacity of institutions in the past,? Representative Kay Granger of Texas, the Republican chairwoman of the House subcommittee overseeing foreign aid, and her Democratic counterpart, Representative Nita M. Lowey of New York, wrote in a letter to the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas.

?However, American assistance has always been predicated upon Palestinian leaders? commitment to resolve all outstanding issues through direct negotiations.?

Since 2007, the United States has spent $600 million a year supporting the Palestinians, training its security forces, providing direct budget assistance to the Palestinian coffers for essential services and delivering humanitarian assistance through nongovernmental organizations working in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel views the money as helping to foster stability by supporting Palestinian government services and professionalizing security forces. American aid, however, has come with restrictions and requires White House waivers and notifications to Congress.

One provision forbids aid to any terrorist group, raising questions about the future of financing after the announcement in April of a unity government between the Palestinians in the West Bank and Hamas, which controls Gaza and remains a designated terrorist organization. That reconciliation has not been taken place, however, averting at least for now a cutoff in aid.

The notifications required to Congress before releasing the aid give committee leaders the power to put holds on delivery of the aid ? something the administration sought to avoid by urging Mr. Netanyahu to intervene to keep the money flowing last month. The $50 million was the last of $200 million this year in direct budget assistance to the Palestinians.

While the American aid to the Palestinians has been viewed with suspicion by some of Israel?s supporters, the Israeli government, especially through its security officials, has expressed support for it.

?Netanyahu made the pitch to members at the request of the secretary and embassy,? a Congressional official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private diplomatic discussions. That the financing request first had to pass muster with House Republicans ? many of them backbenchers who were among the 81 members of Congress to visit Israel ? demonstrates the power of that relationship.

Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the most powerful Jewish member of Congress, said the importance of the Israeli-American security connections was driven home during their August visit, during which a bus was bombed. ?We saw U.S. taxpayer dollars in cooperation between American interest and Israeli interests toward the same end,? Mr. Cantor said.

?We?re in it together.?

?What you have on the Hill is a bipartisan demonstration for the U.S./Israeli relationship, and frankly I think it?s in contrast to the signals being sent from the White House,? he said. Mr. Cantor has written an op-ed article, which has yet to be published, with Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the minority whip, expressing their support for the nation.

Mr. Cantor also recalled the conversation concerning the $50 million, and the prime minister?s support for it, and said that further monies from Congress would be ?colored greatly by the Palestinians? actions at the U.N.?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/21/world/middleeast/house-gop-finds-a-growing-bond-with-netanyahu.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss


From ths at psalience.org  Sun Sep 25 13:09:57 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 13:09:57 +0200
Subject: [THS] Excellent interview with Z Brzenzski
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110925130941.06dd5bb8@mail.messagingengine.com>

>From MSNBC's Morning Joe:  


Excellent interview with Z Brzenzski who claims that US foreign and Middle East policy is adrift without direction
 
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/44532986#44532986


From ths at psalience.org  Sun Sep 25 13:12:29 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 13:12:29 +0200
Subject: [THS] Greg Palast: The Theft of 2012
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110925131204.03ef7b78@mail.messagingengine.com>

The Theft of 2012 

by Greg Palast
September 21, 2011 

 

That was nuthin': In 2000, the Palast investigations team uncovered the purge of 58,000 legal Florida voters, most of them African-Americans, by Katherine Harris. 

In 2004, we uncovered the "caging lists" which 're-elected' George Bush. 

That was nuthin' too ... compared to the theft of 2012 that is now in the making. 

Major TV and print outlets are finally recognizing that the Palast team has the expertise, the cojones and the nose to sniff out mass vote bending. 

We are planning our strategy right now for the hard-core, dig deep, multi-state research that we need to get the details, the documents and the proof of the fix of 2012. 

So, for the first time in this entire year, I am asking?frankly, I'm pleading?for your financial support to get this investigation going right now. 

First, I'm looking for 24 donors to commit to provide $2,000 each, at minimum, to launch the Missing Ballot Investigation. It's tax deductible, it's non-partisan, it's hard-core journalism, "so relevant it threatens to alter history," says the Chicago Tribune. Donate and I'll proudly list you as a producer of our Election year prime-time broadcast. 

And I am counting on 200 generous souls to donate at least $150. You'll receive a signed hardbound copy of my new book, Vultures' Picnic, which will be sent to you the week of its release on November 15. In the meantime, I'll send you 5 signed copies of Steal Back Your Vote, the world's first investigative comic book, co-authored by Bobby Kennedy with full color ink work of genius cartoonists Ted Rall and Lloyd Dangle. 

Our work for BBC TV and the Guardian, once ignored by the US media, is now in demand. Unfortunately, "in demand" doesn't mean "in the money." PBS, The Washington Post, ABC-TV, The New York Times, LA Times are all taking our research, our film, our evidence ...but they don't pay for it. Well, we're not going to complain ... and we're not going to stop working. 

We already have hot, hot leads... What's planned for voters, especially voters of color is sick, is slick ... But we're on to them. My co-author for my 2008 Rolling Stone expos?, Bobby Kennedy and I figured 6 million votes and voters were "disappeared" in 2008. The 2012 race will get uglier. 

Our other work continues. Our Arctic to Amazon investigation took us on a hunt inside the dark blood vessels of Big Oil in FIVE continents. We have the exclusive discoveries on the real cause of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, on the coming disaster in the Arctic and out NEXT oil war ... in Central Asia. Our work is splashing all over the major media in Europe, and we will soon release it in the USA. But the cost of the investigation has left us totally busted. 

And that's the truth. Our work on elections has been lauded by the US Civil Rights Commission, by Senators Kerry and the late Ted Kennedy...and Katherine Harris, who calls me "twisted and maniacal" - I'll take that as a compliment. But that don't pay the phone bill. 

We rarely send requests for your donation?only when the need is real and the effort supremely difficult and important. 

You can't count the votes unless you find the ballots... And the voters who've gone "missing" from the voter roles. Our work created the entire journalistic field of elections investigations ... But the more tricks we uncover, the trickier they get. 

This is not about electing a candidate, it's about the soul of our democracy. Jim Crow elections are still with us ... But now they've gone to cyberspace. 

Help us hunt down the missing ballots. Make a donation RIGHT NOW. It's your vote for democracy. 

The Palast Investigative Fund has been a supremely successful experiment in citizen supported journalism. I can't thank you enough. 

And if you've got something hot for me ? a document, a lead...go to www.GregPalast.com/contact/ and we'll get on it. 

This is Greg Palast reporting ... for you. 

*** 

Greg Palast is a Nation/Puffin Foundation Fellow for Investigative Reporting and recipient of the George Orwell Courage in Journalism Prize for his BBC broadcast 'Bush Family Fortunes.' 

Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts. 
Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter. 

GregPalast.com 


From ths at psalience.org  Sun Sep 25 13:23:34 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 13:23:34 +0200
Subject: [THS] (no subject)
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110925132305.0437a810@mail.messagingengine.com>

From: "Canadian Harm Reduction" <noharm at canadianharmreduction.com>
Subject: International Drug Policy Reform Conference

Please share this announcement with friends & colleagues. 
 

International
Drug Policy Reform
Conference

November 2 - 5, 2011

Westin Bonaventure
Los Angeles, California

The International Drug Policy Reform Conference is a biennial event that brings together over 1,000 people from around the world, representing 30 different countries ... people who believe that the war on drugs is doing more harm than good. 

Conference attendees will have the opportunity to spend three days interacting with people committed to finding alternatives to the war on drugs and participating in outstanding sessions given by leading international experts. 

Full information on the conference website: http://www.reformconference.org/about-conference

Don't miss the opportunity to be a part of this important gathering.


 Please visit the Canadian Harm Reduction Network's Website and support us by becoming a member.
Check us out on Facebook ... and on Twitter  
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, please reply to this message, with the subject of your mail reading "Unsubscribe" (without the quotes).


From ths at psalience.org  Sun Sep 25 13:24:14 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 13:24:14 +0200
Subject: [THS] International Drug Policy Reform Conference
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110925132345.07208be0@mail.messagingengine.com>

From: "Canadian Harm Reduction" <noharm at canadianharmreduction.com>
Subject: International Drug Policy Reform Conference

Please share this announcement with friends & colleagues. 
 

International
Drug Policy Reform
Conference

November 2 - 5, 2011

Westin Bonaventure
Los Angeles, California

The International Drug Policy Reform Conference is a biennial event that brings together over 1,000 people from around the world, representing 30 different countries ... people who believe that the war on drugs is doing more harm than good. 

Conference attendees will have the opportunity to spend three days interacting with people committed to finding alternatives to the war on drugs and participating in outstanding sessions given by leading international experts. 

Full information on the conference website: http://www.reformconference.org/about-conference

Don't miss the opportunity to be a part of this important gathering.


 Please visit the Canadian Harm Reduction Network's Website and support us by becoming a member.
Check us out on Facebook ... and on Twitter  
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, please reply to this message, with the subject of your mail reading "Unsubscribe" (without the quotes).


From ths at psalience.org  Sun Sep 25 13:27:37 2011
From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary)
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 13:27:37 +0200
Subject: [THS] International Policy: Rep. Dennis Kucinich
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20110925132647.0437a810@mail.messagingengine.com>

From: Michael Carmichael 
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=20cf307c9cb081bf3404ac995003

Dennis nails it.

Strength through peace.

Financial reform.

Renew America.

Jobs.

Michael Carmichael




Rep. Dennis Kucinich

U.S. Representative from Ohio's 10th District
GET UPDATES FROM REP. DENNIS KUCINICH

International Policy: Its Relationship to the Domestic Economy

Tonight I wish to speak to this Congress and to my fellow Americans about international policy and its relation to the domestic economy. I will advocate a new direction America must take in the world so that we can meet the needs of our people here at home. 

For the past decade we have relied on the force of our arms to make America secure while our economy has rotted from within. America has lost its focus. America has spent more time concentrating on reshaping the world than on reshaping our economy.

We have created hundreds of thousands of jobs for military contractors all over the world, while we just learned that we created zero jobs here in the United States in the month of August as unemployment continues to stay above 9%.

Come home America. We must begin to focus on things here at home and stop roaming the world looking for dragons to slay. We have a right and an obligation to defend our nation. That includes working for peace abroad and seeking peaceful resolution of conflict, a capacity that, at our peril, we have not fully developed: I call it strength through peace. It involves the pursuit of what President Franklin Roosevelt called the "Science of Human Relations," actually engaging those with whom we disagree most to attempt to find a way to co-exist peacefully. As Dr. Martin Luther King said at a commencement address at Oberlin College in 1965:

We must find some alternative to war and bloodshed... I do not wish to minimize the complexity of the problems to be faced in achieving disarmament and peace. But we shall not have the courage, the insight, to deal with such matters unless we are prepared to undergo a mental and spiritual change. It is not enough to say we must not wage war. We must love peace and sacrifice for it. We must fix our visions not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but upon the positive affirmation of peace. We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, far superior to the discords of war.

I believe the American people have the capacity to 'undergo a mental and spiritual change' that Dr. King spoke about. People are about that work in their own private lives everyday. The question is, does our government and those who lead it have that capacity? Are we willing to look, recognize that the path we are on leads only to destruction and poverty and are we willing to embark courageously on a new path? To those who say that this is na?ve, I ask; has the strategy of military intervention, which took us and keeps us in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, made us any safer? The muscle-bound "with us or against us" mindset which passes for statecraft has placed us on a march of folly that in the past decade has left America with thousands of dead young soldiers, over a million dead innocents in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the surrounding region, a new generation of terrorists and trillions upon trillions of dollars in debt. As poverty and war are twins, so are peace and prosperity.

Mindful of the disaster of spreading war and being an eyewitness as to how easily our country seems to be drawn into conflict, I traveled to Syria this year, to personally urge their leader to stop the violence, respect human rights, and begin a transition toward a democratic state. 

I traveled to Lebanon afterwards to hear the concerns of leaders who also believe that the violence in Syria must stop and are concerned that if radical fundamentalism results in the overthrow of the government of Syria, the same fires will consume their own nation which developed a fragile political and social consensus after years of civil war. 

I opposed the war in Libya, not only because it was unconstitutional, but it was and is unconscionable for America to precipitate or take sides in a civil war, spending perhaps billions in an ongoing war while we have so many pressing needs here at home. We went in because we were told a massacre could occur, yet civilian casualties in Libya mounted after the U.S. and NATO attacked. In order to please the West, Libya cooperated with the CIA, got rid of its WMD program in 2004 and privatized its economy, resulting in massive unemployment. It was moving through to reform even as the West moved to bomb it and, inexplicably, the West moved to take up the cause of elements of Al Qaeda spurring the rebels. 

We learn today from CNN that the rebels and fighters aligned with them are looting weapons warehouses across Libya, where as many as 20,000 surface-to-air missiles had previously been kept under lock and key. Western officials, perhaps the same geniuses who knowingly helped Libyan rebels with ties to al Qaeda overthrow the Libyan government, are now worried the surface to air missiles and other weapons will get into the wrong hands.

This lawless interventionism spurred on by an unaccountable NATO which violates United Nations Security Council resolutions with impunity, this attempt to use force to bring others to subjection in the name of democracy, actually has become a device for control over the wealth of other nations, the squandering of our own wealth, and the spreading of poverty here at home. Did our government just wake up one day and discover that 14 million Americans are out of work and that we need a massive program to put them back to work? No. It has known that for some time. War has become our great distraction. It has given those who have little or no ability to construct a fair economy an opportunity to pretend to leader at the expense of those brave men and women who serve and at the expense of the American economy and the expense of the American taxpayers. We can no longer afford participating in this wargame of nations. 

I opposed the war in Afghanistan, and have brought Congress to confront it several times because the U.S. has spent one half a trillion dollars trying to democratize a tribal nation while failing to spend sufficient resources to protect our democracy here at home.

The latest report is that we may be in Afghanistan through 2024, at the request of the Afghanistan government. This will cost us hundreds of billions, even trillions more. Doesn't it make more sense for America to come home, at the request of and for the benefit of the American people?

I led opposition in this Congress to the war in Iraq. Nine years ago I warned this Congress that there was no reason to go to war against Iraq. I was asked at that time whose side I was on: America's or the murderous dictator Saddam Hussein? Opposing that intervention was seen by some as coddling a murderous dictator. No matter that Hussein had opposed Al Qaeda. No matter that there was no proof that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 or al Qaeda's role in 9/11; no matter that Iraq did not have the intention or capability of attacking the United States and that no one had been able to show that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. I wasn't "for" Saddam Hussein. I was for the truth. And for peace.

America pursued the war anyway. America put the lives of its sons and daughters on the line. America will spend over three trillion dollars for this war that was based on lies. And even today we find our government will not bring the troops home as promised, but instead will continue to spend billions on this stupid and corrupt war in Iraq while our own nation is falling apart. Money for war, but no money for jobs?

Am I advocating isolationism? Certainly not. We need to strengthen the United Nation's peacekeeping ability and blunt NATO's warmaking capability. We must stop NATO from going rogue. We need a counter-terrorism strategy which brings people to justice, not which dispenses justice from 10,000 ft., with the help of Predator Drones. It is the predatory interventionism which must stop. We must stop intervening for the benefit of oil companies or other corrupt corporate interests.

We cannot be the policeman of the world and lay off police and firemen in our own nation. We cannot continue to bomb bridges in other countries and say we do not have the money to build bridges here in America. We must stop pretending that America can solve all the problems in the world when we can't solve our own problems here at home. How can we bring democracy to other nations when we are losing it at home? We cannot tell other people how to live when we have people here at home who are having difficulty living. We should look to the wisdom of Proverbs where it was written: "He who troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind" (Proverbs 11:29) and we must work to set our own house in order. 

There were no weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. But there are weapons of mass destruction here in America. Unemployment is a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Poverty is a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Homelessness is a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Inadequate education is a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Lost pension benefits are Weapons of Mass Destruction. Poor health care is a Weapon of Mass Destruction. 

Yet despite the obvious needs domestically, the Pentagon budget now consumes over 50% of our discretionary spending. And the Pentagon budget has grown alongside the war budget. Just this year the wars and the Pentagon budget will consume close to $1 trillion in taxpayers' money. A trillion dollars! Do you have any idea how many jobs a trillion dollars can create? Stop the wars, trim the bloated Pentagon budget and use the savings to put America back to work. The American people want work not warfare.

Can we see any clearer example of the danger of endless war? We are supposed to be impressed with the strength of our leaders who, in the name of America wield awesome weapons against states a fraction of our size while when it comes to the economy and jobs, the same leaders lack the ability to confront Wall Street, which is destroying jobs on Main Street.

While spending trillions for unnecessary wars, the government bailed out the banks for $700 billion, refusing to link the bailout to mortgage modification which would have helped millions of Americans stay in their homes. 

The Fed, which infamously looked the other way as the financial crisis was building and failed to properly monitor the overexposure of top banks, created $1.2 trillion out of nothing and gave secret emergency loans to some of the largest banks who helped to cause the financial collapse through reckless investments. This secret money created out of nothing, but backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S., is going to fuel an international financial system which siphons wealth out of the U.S., avoids paying taxes, takes American jobs and moves them to low-wage climates.

According to Bloomberg News the "$1.2 trillion peak on December 5, 2008... was almost three times the size of the U.S. federal budget deficit that year and approximates the amount of money, $1.27 trillion that is due in unpaid principal on 6.5 million homes that are in or facing foreclosure."

Secret loans went to:

Morgan Stanley 107.3 Billion
Citigroup $99.5 billion
Bank of America $91.4 billion
Goldman Sachs $69 billion
and to Foreign Borrowers:
Banks of Scotland $84.5 billion
Zurich based UBS AG 77.2 billion

How is it possible that banks too big to fail still exist? We all know that the banks will fail again. The taxpayers will be asked bail them out again; to preserve the wealth of shareholders, bondholders and executives, again. The destruction of the middle class has been accelerated by the Wall Street manipulators who brought about the collapse of the housing market destroyed trillions of wealth built into American homes. Risk, like taxes, is a yoke unfairly placed upon the shoulders of the middle class.

As income and resulting wealth is being redistributed upward at a pace not seen since the 1920s, the purchasing power of the middle class has been seriously eroded. Americans have less equity in homes to fuel home equity loans to keep their consumer spending up. A third of all Americans owe more than their home is worth.

How is it possible that 120 million Americans literally have no wealth, just debts: How did it happen that 150 million Americans have less wealth than the top 400 individuals? How did it come to pass that the top 13,400 households, according to David Cay Johnston, have more yearly income than the bottom 96 million Americans? Who created this economy where welfare for the wealthy creates a system where a person earning $4 billion a year managing a hedge fund pays a lower tax rate on most of his income than a person who drives a truck?

In a report just released, the Pew Charitable Trust wrote: "The idea that children will grow up to be better off than their parents is a central component of the American Dream and sustains American optimism. However... a middle class upbringing does not guarantee the same status over the course of a lifetime. A third of Americans raised in the middle class... fall out of the middle as adults."

The implications are this report are chilling. America's middle class is being destroyed. America is headed toward a two class society. Just as America could not survive half free and half slave, America cannot survive half rich and half poor.

"What happens to a dream deferred?" wrote Langston Hughes.
"Does it dry up,
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore - -
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over
Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags 
Like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?"

It is democracy itself which at risk here. An economic democracy is a precondition of a political democracy. With endless wars, without solid jobs to sustain a middle class, a new national security state armed with the Patriot Act, will exist primarily to provide surveillance of a growing, bristling poverty class.

America knew this forty-four years ago, when on February 29, 1968, The Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders or Kerner Report pronounced: "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal." Then the inequalities were in lack of access to opportunities for jobs, housing, education and social services. In 1998, thirty years after the Kerner Report, Senator Fred Harris, said, "there is more poverty in America, it is deeper, blacker and browner than before, and it is more concentrated in the cities, which have become America's poorhouses." The inequalities exist today. Just since January of 2009, unemployment has skyrocketed among African Americans from 12.7% to 16.7%. Among, Hispanics the unemployment rate is currently 11.3%

While intensifying among people of color, poverty today is colorblind. Foreclosures have spread through all American neighborhoods as a wildfire, consuming with it the hopes and dreams of millions. We had a moral urgency to address unemployment in the inner cities, but we failed as a society to do that.

We have learned that writ large, the fate of people who live in our cities has been the fate of those who live in the suburbs, because the same massive economic machinery that for generations was crushing the hopes of millions of inner city Americans -- banks who disinvested, insurance companies who redlined, businesses which pulled out, this same plague is now visited throughout America. The official unemployment figure of 9.1% conceals a much larger, more devastating picture in America. According to arecent study by Youngstown State University: the de facto unemployment rate, as conceived and computed by their center for Working Class Studies, is 26.37% This figure includes individuals who are no longer looking for work (discouraged), underemployed and those who are marginally employed.

Corporations are sitting on trillions of dollars and not hiring because of "uncertainty," insinuating that small changes in federal regulations or tax policy are killing jobs. Yet we know that massive changes in federal tax policy and government regulations have taken place at periods of great economic growth in the United States. Our economy has not hit a rough spot in the road; it has hit a wall.

The greatest losers in today's economic system are the young. They have been fleeced. They were promised good jobs with good pay if they got a good education. Millions have done that only to discover that the jobs we promised were not there. Millions of young people have moved in with their family and friends, barely scraping by, dreading student loans that they have to repay. The dread when those loans come due.

The major fault in the domestic economy is the failure to provide well paying jobs for Americans. The reasons for the high unemployment and low paying jobs are many, but two major reasons stand out: lack of consumer demand and stagnant wages accompanying low union participation. There is a lack of consumer demand in an economy that is 70% dependent on consumer spending.

There are those who say we can spur demand with more tax cuts for businesses. This fails the test of experience. Business received tax cuts. We still have high unemployment. Business profits are greater than ever. Investment is less. We have learned from the past few years that businesses will not invest while economy is in bad shape.

Since World War II, America has come out of every recession in less than a year, but this time we have had a false recovery. The economic numbers improved briefly, while stimulus was injected. Today we are back in recession, a double dip recession that is destroying people's lives and setting back our nation. 

We did not have enough stimulus to begin with. As the stimulus runs out things are getting worse. The recession is feeding on itself. In 1937, a second round of depression surfaced as stimulus was withdrawn, requiring another effort by the government to stabilize the economy. The parallel between 1937 and 2011 is obvious. We need a second stimulus. It has to be strong enough to put millions of Americans back to work.

State and local governments are forced to lay off people by the hundreds of thousands. These layoffs are not introducing efficiency. They undermine service and reduce the necessary role of government in the life of a community. Massive aid is needed to all areas of government, not because governments have spent recklessly, but because revenues are down. Income tax revenue is down. Sales tax revenue is down. Property tax revenue is down due to foreclosures.

We can stimulate the economy by providing revenue to rehire state and local government employees. That is the easiest way to put hundreds of thousands back to work. This is an obvious way to stimulate the economy on a significant scale. State, local government, public schools, public and private college would all have an enhanced ability to restore service. Such a stimulus would create an economic climate where businesses will expand their investment, utilizing their own profit.

The same thing is true in the housing area. The government must immediately implement a new housing program. More and more properties are becoming vacant and vandalized, while people are doubling up. We need a full-scale program where economically troubled homeowners are given the right to rent, at a market rate, property in foreclosure. The government would provide a rent subsidy while the homeowners seek work.

The American people want work, not welfare. There should be work for those who are able to work. Government must become the employer of last resort. The private sector is not providing the jobs. When the private sector fails to provide the jobs, the government has a moral responsibility and a practical responsibility to step forward to put the country back to work.

As with FDR and the New Deal, the government must now put millions of Americans back to work rebuilding our infrastructure. The American Society of Civil Engineers issued a report that $2.2 trillion in infrastructure rebuilding must take place to move the commerce of America.

It is not enough to describe the situation and to make a few suggestions as to what could be done to take us in a new direction. There comes a time when we need to look at some dramatic change that needs to be done to restructure our economy. This month I am going to be introducing a bill which will be aimed at addressing our structural economic problems directly. It is called the National Employment Economic Defense act -- the NEED Act. America needs millions of jobs. How can we create millions of jobs in a time of annual deficits, long-term debt and contracting budgets? 

Here's how: The Federal Reserve creates money out of nothing and it has given it to banks. The Fed has assumed that power through an Act of Congress. The Federal Reserve has used all of its standard monetary policy tools. But the American economy is not getting better. Whatever the Fed is doing, it is not working. 

The reason why is perhaps best explained by the Fed itself: "The Fed can't control inflation or influence output and employment."

The Fed has been buying Treasury and other securities to put downward pressure on interest rates. The idea is to lower finance costs, encourage more borrowing and nudge investors into riskier investments. This provides breathing space but little else.

Consumers are already over their heads in debt and they aren't going to borrow more. Neither will producers, when sales are slack. Higher default rates are widening spreads. Many investors will still prefer to make a small gain on government securities rather than risk taking losses. 

Reality beats theory. The reality is that not enough people have enough money. Why is this? Where does our money come from? Why isn't it coming?

The Fed doesn't create money we use in our bank accounts. The banks do. Most of this money is created when banks make loans. This is why the Fed can't control inflation or influence output and employment. 

Output and employment depend on demand. Demand depends on how much money people have, or can borrow. Because banks create this money, they control demand. If banks aren't lending or borrowers aren't borrowing, new money isn't being created to replace the money removed when bank loans are paid, so the money supply shrinks.

The Fed can only put more money into the economy by buying assets from non-banks. No money goes into the economy when the Fed buys their assets. It's just a swap of one asset for another, called reserves. Banks can't lend reserves into the economy.

The non-bank sellers of assets are mainly large institutional investors. They don't spend much of the money they receive, they reinvest it in other assets -- that is their business. But this churning of assets up in the stratosphere doesn't "trickle down" to earth. The real economy of families, shops and small businesses of roads and schools is bypassed. We know this.

The money is not getting to where it is needed. Until it does, things can only get worse. None of the current policies work because of the way the current system is set up. 

Here is how we fix it. We have to reclaim our Constitutional power to issue money into the economy, unburdened by debt. Last Congress I introduced legislation to do just that, and I am reintroducing it next week. Here is what the legislation does:
It ends the Fed's unaccountability by putting it under Treasury.
It ends fractional reserve banking, ending banks' ability to control demand in our economy.
It empowers our nation to issue money directly into the economy to create jobs to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, unhindered by debt and interest payments - - creating millions of new, well-paying jobs. It gets the money to where it is needed the most. It gets the economy going and keeps it going. It avoids debt and deficits. It primes the pump of the economy. It enables us to regain control of our destiny as a nation. 
This plan would not create inflation because it would reduce infrastructure costs. Lower costs means prices can go down. Lower prices do not define inflation. Real wealth will be created with the new money. Infrastructure is enduring wealth, unlike the "financial wealth" of the stock market. If government borrows money created by banks for infrastructure it is an interest bearing debt, paid for over a long time. But if government creates money for infrastructure and spends it into circulation, there's no debt or interest costs. The same amount of money is created in either case, adding to the money supply by exactly the same amount. This is also a way to save the free enterprise system from self-destruction. The American people know what is going on in our economy. It is run by Wall Street for Wall Street. It is run by banks for banks. Unless we look at serious structural reforms we are headed for a two class society. The ability to coin or create money is an inherent power under Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution. The NEED Act would enable the government to invest in America.

This coming Sunday we will observe the 10th anniversary of a terrible blow to our nation's sense of security and confidence. We will never forget September 11, 2011. But we also need to remember the enduring capacity of our nation to bounce back from tragedy. We need to remember what this country is made of. America is made of vision and courage: the courage and vision of Washington, Jefferson and Adams to put lives, fortune, sacred honor on the line for the purpose of freedom and independence.

We are the country of FDR and the New Deal, of John F. Kennedy and the New Frontier, of LBJ and the Great Society. We are a nation of charismatic leaders like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, who, agree with them or not, inspired a sense of optimism and confidence in America. 

We need to remember who we are. And in the act of remembering we will regain our confidence, we will regain our economic strength, we will put people back to work, we will help millions save their homes, we will protect the retirement security of elderly Americans, we will ensure that our children will be able to obtain a college education and a job when they graduate. We will restore our public institutions and the services they provide.

We can do all of this and more. But we must ask that those who operate the engines of finance to abandon their recklessness, their selfishness and pledge allegiance to our nation and its people. We must demand that corporations pay a fair share of the taxes. We must end the off-shoring of jobs and profits.

While some our leaders, with trembling hands and nervous eyes have focused abroad, our country is falling apart from within. America was never meant for decline. America was always meant for an upward, uplit path. We now must correct our course. We must move away from trying to determine the fate of nations around the globe and focus on the fate on the one nation that must matter to us more than all others -- The United States of America!

This speech was delivered to Congress on September 7, 2011. See video of the address here.