From ths at psalience.org Mon Dec 19 13:01:08 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:01:08 +0100 Subject: [THS] THE IRAN-DRONEGATE SAGA Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111219125546.041a43c8@mail.messagingengine.com> IRAN-DRONEGATE: Washington's Acrimony over the Downed Top Secret Spy Drone By Dr. Ismail Salami URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28208 Global Research, December 14, 2011 Editor's Note: THE IRAN-DRONEGATE SAGA Welcome to what might be described as the "Iran-DronGate Saga", a diplomatic endgame directed against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Global Research will be providing detailed coverage of this important topic. Michel Chossudovsky, December 14, 2011 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The downing of the spy drone is a sign that Iran is militarily powerful and efficient. However, the secret mission of the drone, which is purported to have been the collection of secret data on the Iranian nuclear sites, consolidates the idea that Washington is more than ever bent on carrying out secret black operations inside Iran and that it is harboring a malicious plan to orchestrate an attack on the Iranian nuclear sites if not an Armageddon in the region. In what seems to be nothing but US-style barefaced arrogance, President Barack Obama has demanded the return of a spy drone which violated the airspace of the Islamic Republic but which was to the humiliation of the US officials downed by the Iranian army. The top-secret RQ-170 Sentinel drone, which was used by Washington as part of the covert operations the US officials have already vowed to conduct inside Iran, was hunted down by an electronic ambush and landed with a minimal degree of damage over the city of Kashmar about 140 miles inside Iran. Consciously blind to the realities of Washington's abysmal policies, the Western media treated the report with a predilection for suspicion and disbelief and used the somewhat innocuous-sounding term 'reconnaissance drone'. However, when Pentagon later acknowledged the ?mysterious loss of a surveillance drone?, they had no choice but to face the truth. What strikes as bizarrely ridiculous is the fact that Washington has demanded the return of the drone which they have confessed was sent on a secret mission for gathering information. ''We have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond,'' Mr. Obama has said. Nonetheless, Iran says that it has no intention of returning the drone and that Washington should compensate Tehran for violating the country's airspace. Brushing aside the possibility of returning the drone, Chairman of Iran's Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi said on Tuesday that the White House must face the consequences of violating Iran's airspace. Washington's insistence on having the drone returned springs from some secret concern over the nature of what the Iranians would glean technologically from the spy drone. Iranian military experts are reportedly in the final stage of extracting information from the drone. The extracted information will be used to sue the United States, an Iranian official says. When asked at a White House news conference if he was concerned that Iran could weaken US national security by obtaining intelligence from the downed drone, Obama said, ?I'm not going to comment on intelligence matters that are classified." Without directly referring to the spy drone, Obama had earlier repeated the same old threat that 'all options are on the table in dealing with Iran', saying, ?Today Iran is isolated, and the world is unified in applying the toughest sanctions that Iran has ever experienced. They can break that isolation by acting responsibly and forswearing the development of nuclear weapons . . . or they can continue to operate in a fashion that isolates them from the entire world.? Obama's threatening words against Iran evidently reek of the literature of his predecessor George W. Bush. In fact, he is following in the footsteps of Bush and has metaphorically metamorphosed into the belligerent personality of the latter. It is manifest that Washington has recently ramped up its espionage activities in Iran. On May 21, 2011, Iran's Intelligence Ministry arrested an espionage network comprising of 30 individuals who were working for the CIA and another 42 CIA operatives who had links with the network. The CIA-linked network deceived citizens into spying for the agency under the pretext of issuing visas, assisting with US permanent residency, and offering job and study opportunities in American universities. According to Iran's Intelligence Ministry, the disbanded network was chiefly focused on targeting the country's nuclear plants, energy fields, and sensitive oil and gas centers with the main purpose of sabotaging these areas. Iranian intelligence officials have learned that the CIA agents had gathered information from universities and scientific research centers in the field of aerospace, defense and biotechnology industries. Also, on November 24, 2011, Iran arrested another 12 CIA agents who were working with Israel's Mossad and targeted the country's military and nuclear program. Member of the Iranian Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Parviz Sorouri said that the CIA and Mossad espionage apparatuses were making efforts to damage Iran both from inside and outside and deal a heavy blow with the help of regional intelligence services. ?Fortunately, with the swift reaction of the Iranian intelligence department, their attempts proved abortive,? Sorouri said. If truth be told, the downing of the spy drone has surely delivered a heavy blow to the intelligence apparatus of the CIA and rustled many feathers in Washington. In an atrociously antagonistic manner, former US Vice President Dick Cheney unleashed his anger on President Barack Obama, saying that he should have doubled down on being caught spying with an overt attack on Iran. ?The right response would have been to go in immediately after it had gone down,? Cheney said. Confusing Iran with Iraq and Afghanistan, he suggested that this could have been done either with a land invasion to recover the lost drone or by bombing the area until the drone was destroyed. ?The right response to that would have been to go in immediately after it had gone down and destroy it. You can do that from the air. You can do that with a quick airstrike, and in effect make it impossible for them to benefit from having captured that drone. I was told that the president had three options on his desk. He rejected all of them. They all involved sending somebody in to try to recover it, or if you can't do that, admittedly that would be a difficult operation, you certainly could have gone in and destroyed it on the ground with an airstrike. But he didn't take any of the options. He asked for them to return it. And they aren't going to do that.? The fury of poor Mr. Cheney is quite perceptible and pathetic and the predicament of President Obama is not hard to imagine. However, it would be better if the US officials confessed to the military prowess of Iran instead of attributing the desperate loss of their drone to their President's ineptitude. The downing of the spy drone is a good sign that Iran is militarily powerful and efficient. However, the secret mission of the drone, which is purported to have been the collection of secret data on the Iranian nuclear sites, consolidates the idea that Washington is more than ever bent on carrying out secret black operations inside Iran and that it is harboring a malicious plan to orchestrate an attack on the Iranian nuclear sites if not an Armageddon in the region. Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian author and political analyst. A prolific writer, he has written numerous books and articles on the Middle East. His articles have been translated into a number of languages. Please support Global Research Global Research relies on the financial support of its readers. Your endorsement is greatly appreciated Subscribe to the Global Research e-newsletter Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article. To become a Member of Global Research The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor at yahoo.com www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner. For media inquiries: crgeditor at yahoo.com ? Copyright Ismail Salami, Global Research, 2011 The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28208 ? Copyright 2005-2007 GlobalResearch.ca Web site engine by Polygraphx Multimedia ? Copyright 2005-2007 From ths at psalience.org Tue Dec 20 12:34:06 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:34:06 +0100 Subject: [THS] !!!!! No Fear: Memory Adjustment Pills Get Pentagon Push Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111220123205.074d7ca0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30036.htm No Fear: Memory Adjustment Pills Get Pentagon Push By Katie Drummond December 19, 2011 "Wired" -- The Pentagon hasn?t come close to solving the PTSD crisis plaguing the current generation of troops. And the top brass looks like it?s ready to try anything ? like a major push into a cutting-edge, controversial realm of treatment. One that?d see military personnel popping a pill to wipe away the fear they associate with traumatic memories. The Pentagon this week announced an $11 million grant doled out to three research institutions, all of them long-time hubs for the military?s ongoing PTSD investigations. Experts at Emory University, the University of Southern California and New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center will study the effectiveness of D-Cycloserine (DCS). DCS is a pharmaceutical thought to help extinguish fearful memories. It?s usually taken right before exposure therapy, a process that involves recalling traumatic experiences in an effort to nullify the menacing associations that accompany them. ?We already know that exposure therapy is an effective [therapy] for PTSD, and we want to figure out how to optimize it,? Dr. Barbara Rothbaum, who will lead the Emory team?s research, told Danger Room. ?I really think that this study will move beyond the theoretical. We can rescue people.? Exposure therapy is thought to work by allowing patients to revisit traumas in safe settings. Every time the mind remembers an event, it ?rewrites? that recollection. By helping a patient rewrite traumatic memories to be less frightening, studies suggest that exposure therapy can significantly improve symptoms like nightmares and flashbacks. Adding DCS seems to hasten that process, targeting the precise brain pathways responsible for regulating fear responses. Researchers will look at two different kinds of exposure therapy: Virtual reality, where a patient is fully immersed in digital combat scenarios, and prolonged imaginal exposure therapy, which asks them to simply remember and recount fearful memories. A total of 300 patients, all of them veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, will partake. They?ll undergo seven individual weekly sessions of one of the therapies. Before each session, half will receive DCS, and the rest will get a placebo. Experts have already spent plenty of time figuring out how DCS works. It?s been around since the 1960s, when it was used to treat tuberculosis. Now, however, researchers are more excited about the drug?s potential ability to alleviate symptoms of depression, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and, of course, PTSD ? without a lifetime of pill-popping. ?Most drugs, you dose every day,? Rothbaum says. ?But DCS is only useful during exposure therapy, so you?re taking the drug right before the session. And when your series of sessions end, the medication ends too.? DCS seems to enhance the brain?s learning process. For PTSD treatment, the drug could, ostensibly, help patients more quickly internalize that, say, driving down a suburban American highway is far different ? and less dangerous ? than driving on a Baghdad street. The drug also binds to receptors in the amygdala, the region of the brain that governs fear response. So by blocking out fearful reactions while a patient revisits trauma, experts think DCS can, literally, ?extinguish? fear right at the source. Emory researchers have already tried using DCS and virtual reality in humans with PTSD, fear of heights and obsessive compulsive disorder. Since 2006, Rothbaum and a team of experts have been comparing exposure therapy, used along with DCS, Xanax or placebo, in patients. ?Results so far are positive,? Rothbaum says, though they haven?t finished analyzing the data. That said, results from other human studies on DCS aren?t encouraging. Just last year, several disappointing trials using DCS were presented by researchers assembled at the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies conference. ?The early results are not as positive as we [had] hoped,? noted Dr. Charles Marmar, head of the psychiatry department at NYU, of his team?s study that combined DCS with cognitive behavioral therapy. But even a glimmer of hope seems to be enough for the Pentagon. So far, what they?ve tried to treat PTSD ? which afflicts at least 250,000 of this generation?s soldiers ? isn?t working. Conventional approaches, like antidepressants and behavioral therapy, have been a massive failure. So it makes sense that military officials are increasingly open to out-there ideas: They?re already funding research into yoga and acupuncture, neck injections and ?digital dream? computer programs ? although promising approaches taking advantage of ?illicit? substances, like marijuana and ecstasy, have thus far been nixed. Of course, this latest study will be bigger and more thorough than its failed predecessors. It also builds on years of animal research suggesting that DCS has potential. And there?s no doubt the project is calling on some of the Pentagon?s top civilian scientists. Dr. Rothbaum has been evaluating PTSD treatments, including preliminary studies on DCS, for decades. And Dr. Albert ?Skip? Rizzo, from the University of Southern California, pioneered the use of virtual reality therapy to mitigate PTSD symptoms. Not to mention that this research team will also be conducting genetic tests on every patient. In particular, they?ll be looking at a gene dubbed ?BDNF.? Experts already know that a variant of the BDNF gene can make fear extinction tougher. By comparing patient results to genes, Rothbaum says they hope to ?figure out what?s the best treatment approach, and whether DCS can really rescue those patients, where maybe therapy alone can?t.? Of course, the idea of using drugs to tweak memories isn?t without controversy: An online debate flared last year among two camps of neurologists and neuroethicists, arguing over whether the existence of such drugs would ?alter something that makes us all human,? or open a Pandora?s Box of illicit use ?by people doing things they?d like to forget themselves, or that they would like others to forget.? Then again, those debates hinge on DCS, or some other memory extinguisher, actually working. DCS?s efficacy is far from proven. And earlier research efforts that tested supposed ?fear-extinguishing? drugs, most notably a series of much-touted, Pentagon-funded studies on Propanolol at Harvard, have all been disappointments. From ths at psalience.org Tue Dec 20 12:35:18 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:35:18 +0100 Subject: [THS] !!!!! Chris Floyd: War Without End, Amen Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111220122901.03f8c700@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30038.htm War Without End, Amen: The Reality of America's Aggression Against Iraq By Chris Floyd December 19, 2011 "Information Clearing House" - In March 2003, the United States of America launched an entirely unprovoked act of military aggression against a nation which had not attacked it and posed no threat to it. This act led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. It drove millions more from their homes, and plunged the entire conquered nation into suffering, fear, hatred and deprivation. This is the reality of what actually happened in Iraq: aggression, slaughter, atrocity, ruin. It is the only reality; there is no other. And it was done deliberately, knowingly, willingly. Indeed, the bipartisan American power structure spent more than $1 trillion to make it happen. It is a record of unspeakable savagery, an abomination, an outpouring of the most profound and filthy moral evil. Line up the bodies of the children, the thousands of children -- the infants, the toddlers, the schoolkids -- whose bodies were torn to pieces, burned alive or riddled with bullets during the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. Line them up in the desert sand, walk past them, mile after mile, all those twisted corpses, those scraps of torn flesh and seeping viscera, those blank faces, those staring eyes fixed forever on nothingness. This is the reality of what happened in Iraq; there is no other reality. These children -- these thousands of children -- are dead, and will always be dead, as a direct result of the unprovoked act of military aggression launched and sustained by the American power structure. Killing these children, creating and maintaining the conditions that led to the slaughter of these children, was precisely what the armed forces of the United States were doing in Iraq. Without the invasion, without the occupation, without the 1.5 million members of the American volunteer army who surrendered their moral agency to "just follow orders" and carry out their leaders' agenda of aggression, those children would not have died -- would not have been torn, eviscerated, shot, burned and destroyed. This is the reality of what happened in Iraq; you cannot make it otherwise. It has already happened; it always will have happened. You cannot undo it. But you can, of course, ignore it. This is the path chosen by the overwhelming majority of Americans, and by the entirety of the bipartisan elite. This involves a pathological degree of disassociation from reality. What is plainly there -- the evil, the depravity, the guilt -- cannot be accepted, and so it is converted into its opposite: goodness, triumph, righteousness. The moral structures of the psyche are eaten away by this malignant dynamic, as are the mind's powers of perception and judgment. Thus depravity and evil come to seem more and more normal; it becomes more and more difficult to focus on what is really in front of you, to perceive, judge and care about the actual consequences of what you've done or what is being done in your name. Unmoored from reality, you become lost in a savage nihilism that cloaks its unsifted rage and fear and chaos in the most threadbare pieties. And thus you drift deeper and deeper into evil and meaninglessness, singing hosannas to yourself as you go. And so Barack Obama, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, the self-proclaimed inheritor of the mantle of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, went to North Carolina this week to declare the act of aggression in Iraq "an extraordinary achievement." He lauded the soldiers gathered before him for their "commitment to fulfil your mission": the mission of carrying out an unprovoked war of aggression and imposing a society-destroying occupation that led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. These activities -- "everything that American troops have done in Iraq" -- led to "this moment of success," he proclaimed. He spoke of suffering, he spoke of sacrifice, he spoke of loss and enduring pain -- but only for the Americans involved in the unprovoked war of aggression, and their families. He did not say a single word -- not one -- about the thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of Iraqis killed by this "fulfilled mission," this "extraordinary achievement," this" success." These human beings -- these sons and daughters, fathers, mothers, kinfolk, lovers, friends -- cannot be acknowledged. They cannot be perceived. It must be as if they had never existed. It must be as if they are not dead now. The divorce from reality here is beyond description. It is only the all-pervasiveness of the disassociation that obscures its utter and obvious insanity. There is something intensely primitive and infantile in the reductive, navel-gazing, self-blinding monomania of the American psyche today. Think of the ancient Greeks, who constructed their psyches and their worldview around an epic poem, the Iliad, that depicted their enemies, the Trojans, with remarkable sympathy, understanding and insight -- while depicting their own leaders as a band of shallow, squabbling, murderous fools. Here was a moral sophistication, a cold-eyed grasp of reality -- and a level of empathy for one's fellow human beings -- far beyond the capacity of modern American society, and infinitely beyond the reach of the murderous fools who seek to lead it. The Iraq War has not ended. Not for the dead, not for their survivors, not for the displaced, the maimed, the lost, the suffering, not for all of us who live in the degraded, destabilised, impoverished world it has spawned, and not for the future generations who will live with the ever-widening, ever-deepening consequences of this irrevocable evil. Empire Burlesque www.chris-floyd.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ New Pictures of Iraq Atrocity, With Documents and Video By David Swanson The Iraqi was detained and questioned then with his hands tied behind his back, SGT Rogers skinned his face. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30034.htm The US is Blind to the Price of War That is Still Being Borne by the Iraqi People By Gary Younge Every effort must be made to thwart those who seek to embellish and distort America's lamentable legacy in Iraq. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30029.htm War Without End, Amen: The Reality of America's Aggression Against Iraq By Chris Floyd This is the reality of what actually happened in Iraq: aggression, slaughter, atrocity, ruin. It is the only reality. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30038.htm Killing Without Consequences No Fear: Memory Adjustment Pills Get Pentagon Push By Katie Drummond A cutting-edge, controversial realm of treatment. One that'd see military personnel popping a pill to wipe away the fear they associate with traumatic memories. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30036.htm From ths at psalience.org Tue Dec 20 12:37:27 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:37:27 +0100 Subject: [THS] Israel's Useful Idiots: Obama, Bachmann, Huntsman Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111220123618.074d7de8@mail.messagingengine.com> Israel's Useful Idiot Obama : My Commitment to the Security of Israel is Unshakeable By Natasha Mozgovaya U.S. President speaks before Union for Reform Judaism conference, stresses that U.S. support for Israel is 'unshakeable.' http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30031.htm Israel's Useful Idiot Bachmann: Iran Would Use Nuke Against United States, Israel By JOHN BRESNAHAN "Because they have stated unequivocally, once they gain a nuclear weapon, they will use that weapon to wipe Israel off of the map and they will use it against the United States." http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30032.htm Israel's Useful Idiot Huntsman Would Commit Ground Troops To Stop Iran Video Jon Huntsman would commit ground troops to stop Iran's nuclear program. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30033.htm From ths at psalience.org Tue Dec 20 12:38:59 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:38:59 +0100 Subject: [THS] Report: Iran 'Blinded' CIA Spy Satellite Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111220123810.074d78c8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30026.htm Report: Iran 'Blinded' CIA Spy Satellite European intelligence source claims Iran stuns West by 'aiming a laser burst quite accurately' at US satellite in never before reported incident. US official: If Russians provided Iran with sophisticated jamming equipment it means a lot else is at risk too By Dudi Cohen December 17, 2011 Ynetnews" -- Is Iran in possession of satellite jamming technology? A European intelligence source claimed Iran stunned Western intelligence agencies when it managed to "blind a CIA spy satellite by aiming a laser burst quite accurately," in a never before reported incident. According to an article in The Christian Science Monitor, this unreported incident might suggest that the Iranians have successively gained access to jamming technology, allowing them to track unmanned aerial vehicle navigation capabilities. Former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told Fox News on Sunday that such an option is possible. "Some reports have said Russia sold (Iran) a very sophisticated jamming system a short time ago. Now, our military says that is not true, it came down because of a malfunction. I certainly hope that's right because if the Russians have provided Iran with sophisticated jamming equipment it means a lot else is at risk too," said Bolton. He added that Congress should be quite concerned if Iran is in possession of jamming technology that can bring down missiles, planes and communications and guidance systems "for a whole range of our weapon systems." Drone's Achilles' heel An Iranian engineer, trying to decipher the secrets of the CIA drone that was flying over Iranian territory earlier this month, claimed Iranians managed to the craft's frequency, causing it to switch into autopilot mode and land on Iranian territory. The engineer maintained that the drone's Achilles' heel is its global positioning system (GPS). He explained that by jamming the communication the UAV is forced to switch to autopilot, causing it to lose control. According to the engineer, Iran was able to jam communication after accumulating data on other US drones which were shot down in Afganistan. Iranian experts were then able to reprogram the GPS data supposedly directing the US craft to land in Iran. Delaying announcement of capture Meanwhile, Iran's foreign minister said on Saturday that his country deliberately delayed its announcement of the capture of an American surveillance drone to test US reaction. Ali Akbar Salehi is quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying Saturday that Iran's armed forces intercepted and brought down the pilotless aircraft without any foreign assistance. On Friday US offcials said they believe the American stealth drone displayed in Iran had crashed and broke into pieces and was put back together by Iranians to make it seem it was not damaged by the crash, reported The Wall Street Journal. Iranian military officials were appeared surveying the unmanned aerial vehicle in video clips published last week, which Tehran claimed was shot down or remotely skyjacked before managing to land the drone intact. However US officials maintained the pilots of the UAV, which was developed by the Air Force but used by the Central Intelligence Agency at the time of the incident, lost control of the drone last week. The officials claimed the drone broke into three pieces, and added the UAV in question is one the most-sophisticated US spy planes available. Now the American intelligence officials are hard at work trying to asses how badly this incident hurt their capabilities in the region. 'Like a puzzle' American officials believe the Iranians have managed to reassemble the drone and display it, stirring up a heated discussion among Washington lawmakers who are outraged the sophisticated UAV cannot self destruct in the event that it falls into unwanted hands. Officials also maintained the drone was repainted by Iran in an attempt to hide the damage caused to the UAV. According to them, the actual color of the drone is charcoal-gray and not white, as it appears to be in the video. Tehran's claim that the pilot had lost control of the craft has raised suspicion among US officials. "They did not commandeer it and steer it to the ground," a Washington official stated. "It crashed, and they put it back together to make it look whole, like a puzzle being put back together." Meanwhile, Google CEO Eric Schmidt asserted that Iran has been developing cyber warfare which might endanger the US in the future. ?The Iranians are unusually talented in cyber war for some reason we don't fully understand,? Schmidt said in an interview with CNN on Thursday. European Sources: CIA Spy Satellite Blinded by Iran TEHRAN (FNA)- European intelligence sources disclosed that Iran has succeeded in blinding a CIA spy satellite through an indigenous laser technology. By Fars News Agency December 17, 2011 "FNA" - -According to a European intelligence source, Iran shocked Western intelligence agencies in an unreported incident that took place sometime in the past two years, when it managed to "blind a CIA spy satellite by aiming a laser burst quite accurately". The report surfaced in the Christian Science Monitor after Iran hacked the control system of the United States' most advanced drone RQ-170 Sentinel earlier this month. Iran first announced on December 4 that its defense forces had downed the aircraft through a sophisticated cyber attack. The drone is the first such loss by the US. US officials have described the loss of the aircraft in Iran as a setback and a fatal blow to the stealth drone program. The RQ-170 has special coatings and a batwing shape designed to help it penetrate other nations' air defenses undetected. The unmanned surveillance plane was a stealth aircraft being used for secret missions by the CIA, US officials admitted last week. The aircraft is among the highly sensitive surveillance platform in the CIA's fleet that was shaped and designed to evade enemy defenses. Iran's cyber attack eventually forced the US to replace its fleet of drones in the region. The US Air Force is sending a single copy of a brand-new stealth drone to Afghanistan after its more - or better to say most - advanced stealth aircraft, RQ-170, was downed by an Iranian cyber attack earlier this month to see if Tehran can down this drone as well. A former senior Iranian official who asked not to be named said, "There are a lot of human resources in Iran.... Iran is not like Pakistan." Also, Lieutenant Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps General Hossein Salami said this week, "Technologically, our distance from the Americans, the Zionists, and other advanced countries is not so far to make the downing of this plane seem like a dream for us but it could be amazing for others." From ths at psalience.org Tue Dec 20 12:40:28 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:40:28 +0100 Subject: [THS] John Pilger: Did You Have Any Idea? Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111220124011.074d7638@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30027.htm Did You Have Any Idea? John Pilger One of the things that almost has never come out of the generally appalling media coverage of Julian and Wikileaks, is the REASON for Wikileaks. It had a moral base. It was about Justice. He wrote it on the home page of the first Wikileaks. It wasn't necessarily finally defined, but to use that expression... he nailed his colours and the colours of Wikileaks to the mast. This was going to be about Justice. It was about seeking Justice through letting people KNOW what is going on. John Pilger, December 2011 From ths at psalience.org Tue Dec 20 12:50:11 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:50:11 +0100 Subject: [THS] Canada/USA: The Pretext for a North American Homeland Security Perimeter Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111220124948.0422cfa0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30037.htm Canada/USA The Pretext for a North American Homeland Security Perimeter By Dana Gabriel December 19, 2011 "Information Clearing House" - After months of negotiations, the U.S. and Canada have unveiled new trade, regulatory and security initiatives to speed up the flow of goods and people across the border. The joint action plans provide a framework that goes beyond NAFTA and continues where the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) left off. This will take U.S.-Canada integration to the next level and is the pretext for a North American Homeland Security perimeter. On December 7, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the Beyond the Border Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness Action Plan. The new deal focuses on addressing security threats early, facilitating trade, economic growth and jobs, integrating cross-border law enforcement, as well as improving infrastructure and cyber-security. It will act as a roadmap with different parts being phased in over the next several years. This includes the creation of various pilot projects. Many aspects of the agreement will also depend on the availability of funding from both governments. In addition, the two leaders issued a separate Regulatory Cooperation Council Action Plan that sets out initiatives whereby the U.S. and Canada will seek greater regulatory alignment in the areas of agriculture and food, transportation, environment, health, along with consumer products. At a Joint News Conference, President Obama declared that, ?Canada is key to achieving my goal of doubling American exports and putting folks back to work. And the two important initiatives that we agreed to today will help us do just that.? He went on to say, ?we?re agreeing to a series of concrete steps to bring our economies even closer and to improve the security of our citizens.? Obama also added, ?we?re going to improve our infrastructure, we?re going to introduce new technologies, we?re going to improve cargo security and screening.? Prime Minister Harper proclaimed that, ?These agreements create a new, modern order for a new century. Together, they represent the most significant steps forward in Canada-U.S. cooperation since the North American Free Trade Agreement.? He explained that, ?The first agreement merges U.S. and Canadian security concerns with our mutual interest in keeping our border as open as possible to legitimate commerce and travel.? Harper described how, ?The second joint initiative will reduce regulatory barriers to trade by streamlining and aligning standards.? Some of the measures found in the Beyond the Border action plan include conducting joint, integrated threat assessments; improving cooperative law enforcement capacity and national intelligence- and information-sharing; cooperating on research and best practices to prevent and counter homegrown violent extremism; working to jointly prepare for and respond to binational disasters and enhancing cross-border critical infrastructure protection and resilience. Other facets of the deal will work towards adopting an integrated cargo security strategy; implementing entry and exit verification; establishing and verifying the identity of foreign travellers to North America; better aligning Canadian and U.S. programs for low-risk travellers and installing radio frequency identification technology at key border crossings. As part of the agreement, both countries will, ?implement two Next-Generation pilot projects to create integrated teams in areas such as intelligence and criminal investigations, and an intelligence-led uniformed presence between ports of entry.? This will build on past joint law enforcement initiatives such as the Shiprider program and the Integrated Border Enforcement Teams. The Next-Generation pilot projects are scheduled to be deployed by the summer of 2012. In September, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder revealed plans that would allow law enforcement officers to operate on both sides of the border. He announced that, ?the creation of ?NextGen? teams of cross-designated officers would allow us to more effectively identify, assess, and interdict persons and organizations involved in transnational crime.? Holder also commented that, ?In conjunction with the other provisions included in the Beyond the Border Initiative, such a move would enhance our cross-border efforts and advance our information-sharing abilities.? In his article, How the U.S. blackmailed Canada, Gar Pardy stressed that as part of a North American security zone, ?Canadian security institutions will be more closely integrated with those of the United States.? While addressing the Beyond the Border declaration and the subsequent action plan, he highlighted the fact that, ?these are not formal treaties or even formal agreements, although there could be greater formality in the future.? Pardy also noted, ?Nowhere in the documentation resulting from the two meetings are there suggestions the people of Canada will be provided with detailed information on which judgments can be made on the wisdom of this consensual agreement negotiated in the backrooms of both capitals.? Instead he cautioned that, ?the troublesome details implicit in the agreement will be hidden behind the wall of national security.? Pardy argued that in the process, ?Canada sold its national security independence in exchange for hoped-for minor changes to American border restrictions.? He concluded that, ?It is not an overstatement to suggest the United States blackmailed the government of Canada into making this deal. It was the American way or no way.? The Council of Canadians have also strongly rejected the new border deal. They have challenged the notion that, ?proper privacy protections can be achieved between Canada and the U.S. without significantly diluting stronger Canadian laws and norms.? Citing privacy concerns associated with the U.S. Patriot Act, the organization emphasized that, ?the proposed new entry-exit system for travellers needs the greatest scrutiny by Canadian parliamentarians, security and privacy experts.? The Council of Canadians also criticized, ?the government for hiding behind a sham public consultation and implying that this should clear the way for implementation of the action plan.? In August, the Conservative government released two reports which summarized online public input received concerning regulatory cooperation, as well as perimeter security and economic competitiveness. While improving the movement of trade and travel was the priority for business groups, many individuals expressed concerns over the loss of sovereignty, along with the protection of personal information. When it comes to regulatory convergence, Maude Barlow, national chairperson of the Council of Canadians agreed that, ?Standardization can be a good thing when standards are high,? She conceded, ?The problem is standards aren?t higher in the U.S. in many cases.? Barlow also acknowledged that, ?Already Health Canada and other agencies consider harmonization with U.S. standards to be a more important consideration than the real safety of our food. This perimeter deal cements that skewed priority list.? There are fears that it could erode any independent Canadian regulatory capacity and weaken existing regulations. Part of the SPP agenda called for improving regulatory cooperation which resulted in Canada raising pesticide limits on fruits and vegetables. Regulatory integration threatens Canadian sovereignty and democracy. Further harmonization with the U.S. could result in Canada losing control over its ability to regulate food safety. This could also lead to a race to the bottom with respect to other regulatory standards. By all accounts, big business is the winner in the new trade and security perimeter deal. Maude Barlow explained that, ?this process has been set up to accommodate one sector of our community and that is big business.? In advance of the action plans being unveiled to the public, business stakeholders were briefed on the specifics. The Canadian Council of Chief Executives, an organization that lobbies the government on behalf of Canada?s largest corporations has given it their stamp of approval. The U.S. and Canadian Chambers of Commerce also applauded the new vision for border and regulatory cooperation. When it comes to negotiations on the border security agreement, Barlow confirmed that, ?the big business community was the only sector at the table with government and guided the process from the beginning.? This was also the case with the now defunct SPP. Big business was a driving force behind the initiative which led to the creation of the North American Competitiveness Council to ensure that corporate interests were being addressed. In her article, Maude Barlow also warned that when it comes to the perimeter deal, ?Canada is essentially giving up policy control in the key areas of privacy, security, immigration and surveillance in order to entice the U.S. to loosen controls at the border.? She stated, ?it is likely to lead to a wholesale replacement of Canadian privacy and security standards with American ones, set by Homeland Security.? When it comes to information being collected and stored, Barlow questioned whether it will be, ?used as a form of social control, to identify not terrorists, but activists and dissenters of government policy.? She insisted that, ?We must call on our government to create a full public and Parliamentary debate before this deal becomes operational.? From the beginning, the whole process has lacked transparency with no congressional or parliamentary oversight. This has drawn comparisons to the SPP which was shrouded in secrecy and fueled by fears over the loss of sovereignty that finally led to its downfall. We can only hope that this latest endeavour will meet the same fate. With the 2012 U.S. election cycle about to get into full swing, the new bilateral deal could get lost in the shuffle. While the perimeter agreement is being sold as vital to the safety and prosperity of Canadians and Americans alike, there is little doubt that it will mean a tradeoff between sovereignty and security. Any deal which gives the Department of Homeland Security more personal information poses a serious risk to privacy rights. As both countries move forward, perimeter security will be further defined and dominated by American interests. This could force Canada to comply with any new U.S. security measures, regardless of the dangers they may pose to civil liberties. A North Amea pretext for control over the continentrican Homeland Security perimeter goes well beyond keeping people safe from any perceived threats. It is a means to secure trade, resources, as well as corporate interests and is a pretext for control over the continent. Ultimately, the U.S. wants the final say on who is allowed to enter and who is allowed to leave. Dana Gabriel is an activist and independent researcher. He writes about trade, globalization, sovereignty, security, as well as other issues. Contact: beyourownleader at hotmail.com Visit his blog at beyourownleader.blogspot.com From ths at psalience.org Tue Dec 20 13:04:11 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:04:11 +0100 Subject: [THS] Will SOPA kill the Internet? Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111220125406.0422cd10@mail.messagingengine.com> http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=A4486D5D-75BD-4881-B404-80FF662F998F Will SOPA kill the Internet? By: Jennifer Martinez and Michelle Quinn December 17, 2011 03:54 PM EST Listen to Google, Facebook, PayPal and other Web companies, and you?ll hear that an online Armageddon is near: Bills now pending in Congress to thwart online piracy would violate free speech, destroy the technological underpinnings of the Web and hinder the user-generated innovation like the next YouTube or Twitter. Listen to Walt Disney, the NFL, Eli Lilly and a slew of entertainment and manufacturing companies, and you?ll hear that the Internet is a lawless Wild West: Congress is only trying to be the sheriff and save American jobs, make sure writers and artists are paid and protect the public from fake Viagra and Coach bags peddled online. So who is right? The truth, as is often the case in heated battles on Capitol Hill between deep-pocketed constituencies that eye each other suspiciously, comes down somewhere in the middle. ?The ?kill the Internet? argument is something the other side trots out every time,? said Michael O?Leary, senior vice president for global policy and external affairs for the Motion Picture Association of America. He called it nothing more than ?a delay tactic.? The bills ? Rep. Lamar Smith?s (R-Texas) Stop Online Piracy Act, the subject of a combative markup in the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday and Friday that will resume next Wednesday, and Sen. Patrick Leahy?s (D-Vt.) PROTECT IP Act, which is scheduled for a procedural vote on the Senate floor Jan. 24 ? are intended to give authorities tools to thwart the illegal pirating of movies, music and counterfeit luxury goods on foreign websites. Backers include a bipartisan array of lawmakers, unions and companies; they reject the comparison to Internet censorship tools the likes of which were used by repressive governments in China or during the Arab Spring. But, at the same time, critics argue that the legislation could be implemented in ways that fulfill their Doomsday prophesies, such as taking down legitimate websites and silencing free speech. Silicon Valley sees this as an effort to get tech companies to police copyrighted content as Hollywood has tried to do in the past. It also worries that the entertainment industry ? backed now by the Justice Department ? will pursue offenders abroad with the overly aggressive gusto they used against college students who illegally downloaded tunes through Napster and other sites. ?Anything that threatens other organizations beyond our borders is also a threat to us given how Wikipedia works,? said Jay Walsh, communications director for the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns and operates Wikipedia. Wikipedia members are discussing whether to go dark in protest of the bills. ?It could impact folks who are part of our effort to bring free information to the net.? Here is a look at the central claims: Congress would let the U.S. censor the Internet. SOPA and Protect IP Act aren?t designed to censor the average citizen?s rants against Wall Street or Beijing or Tehran. But opponents are using this argument because the bills advocate employing similar techniques to root out content theft that China uses to stifle dissent. The censorship argument has also worked in the past to stymie cyber bills on Capitol Hill. Some of the arguments foes are using ? Seth Godin, an author and blogger, said SOPA would create a ?master switch? that for the first time would create a choke point on the Internet ? have been made in the past to block cybersecurity legislation. Remember the ?kill switch? uproar? However, there are some real fears: Legislating new powers to law enforcement and rights holders could lead to the development of new, blunter Internet ?blocking? tools to use on foreign websites suspected of infringing copyright ? censoring what U.S. users can see and access online. ?U.S. citizens are going to get a different version of the Internet just like Chinese citizens do,? said Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, based in San Francisco. Earlier this year, a joint operation between Justice and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency mistakenly shut down 84,000 domestic websites while trying to target just a few purveyors of child pornography. ?When you don?t have enough procedural protections and adversary hearings that people can trust, you are bound to make mistakes and silence protected speech even accidently,? said Marvin Ammori, a First Amendment lawyer who represents advocacy groups and tech companies such as Google. During the two-day House Judiciary markup, members argued about whether legal checks and balances in the bill are sufficient to prevent the censorship of protected speech. Among the rejected amendments included one on limiting the ability of copyright holders to seek court orders compelling online ad services and payment providers to cut off business with foreign infringing sites. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) feared that parts of the bill would encourage Internet services to block an entire site even when just one part of it had infringing material, which would "bless overblocking." But Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) countered that nothing can be done to a site "without a court order" and said that a clause in the bill specifies that "nothing will be construed to impose a prior restraint on free speech or the press protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution." The bills may give authorities ways to address techniques for circumventing law enforcement online by routing around domain name blocking using encrypted communications ? techniques that are used by dissidents worldwide for political speech. ?At various times notable Google websites have been blocked in China, Iran, Libya (prior to their revolution), Tunisia (also prior to revolution) and others,? Google founder Sergey Brin wrote in a blog post Thursday. ?Thus, imagine my astonishment when the newest threat to free speech has come from none other but the United States.? Supporters of the bills say the proposals do nothing to censor the Web and say the idea of censorship is being used to try to kill the bill. ?Rogue site legislation is enforcing legally recognized property rights consistent with international law through a fair judicial process and is completely viewpoint neutral,? said Steve Tepp, chief intellectual property counsel at U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which backs the legislation. ?None of those things can be said about foreign political censorship.? Mitch Glazier, senior executive vice president at the Recording Industry Association of America, agrees. ?We feel the censorship buzzword is misapplied and probably purposely so.? SOPA takes great pains, especially in Smith?s manager?s amendment, to target copyright infringement without sweeping in other speech, Glazier said. ?This bill is to get foreign sites, where the whole operation is to steal content.? Congress would thwart innovation on the Internet. This week, a star lineup of tech industry bigwigs and billionaires went on the offensive on the innovation issue, launching an advertising campaign in newspapers from Silicon Valley to New York to Capitol Hill. Internet VIPs ? including Google?s Sergey Brin, eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar and Twitter?s co-founders Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams ? blasted the bills as having ?a chilling effect on innovation.? Their message: The two bills would ?require Web services, like the ones we helped found, to monitor what users link to or upload.? There is a risk that established Internet companies won?t want to develop new platforms for users to generate content ? like YouTube videos and Twitter feeds ? if the bills become law. But big name Web companies like Facebook and YouTube already have armies of lawyers who can help deal with law enforcement requests and rights holders? complaints. The greatest threat the bills pose is to startups and small businesses. Venture capitalists argue that young Web services hinged on user-generated content would be most threatened by SOPA and Protect IP. For an investor, it makes them second guess whether to fund a startup because they don?t know if ?it?s going to be around tomorrow? or be shut down, according to Brad Burnham, a partner at Union Square Ventures. In addition, the legal bills to fend off or monitor infringement could drive a startup out of business. One case in point was Veoh, a competitor to YouTube, which filed for bankruptcy last year, citing the economy and the ?distraction of the legal battles.? The company ? reportedly backed by Spark Capital, Intel?s VC arm, Michael Eisner, Goldman Sachs and Time Warner ? was in a fierce battle with Universal Music Group over copyright infringement and faced lawsuits from other recording labels, too. SOPA supporters take issue with the innovation argument, pointing out that the bill targets foreign websites among other issues. ?A law against shoplifting isn?t usually cast as disempowering shoplifters,? said Viacom General Counsel Michael Fricklas, who is helping lead Viacom?s copyright infringement suit against Google-owned YouTube. ?You have to draw lines online as well as offline as to what you?re free to do without hurting people." The Web bigwigs noted in their ad: ?We?ve all had the good fortune to found Internet companies and nonprofits in a regulatory climate that promotes entrepreneurship, innovation, the creation of content and free expression online.? House Judiciary Chairman Smith fired back in a blistering statement Wednesday, accusing the tech execs of not understanding the bill. He singled out Google?s opposition to the measure as ?self-serving? and pointed out that the company paid a $500 million settlement in a case involving the promotion of foreign rogue pharmacies online that sold counterfeit drugs. ?Companies like Google have made billions by working with and promoting foreign rogue websites so they have a vested interest in preventing Congress from stopping rogue websites,? Smith said. But foes say that smaller companies targeted by copyright holders ? either mistakenly or aggressively ? may be run out of business. Others may not be able to get off the ground. ?The whole ethic of the Internet is empowerment. It?s about empowering individuals and this bill is about control. It?s about controlling the behavior of individuals,? Burnham said. ?I think it?s the younger companies that won?t be created.? Congress will break the Internet?s architecture. Among the possible sanctions Justice and rights holders could seek under the bills are court orders that allow the blocking of Web addresses ? or Internet domain names ? of infringing sites. That?s what opponents say could disrupt the Internet?s underpinnings or ?break? the net. This is an extraordinarily complicated set of technical arguments between engineers, but the upshot is that no one really knows what will happen to the global computer network if Internet service providers start using the domain name system to redirect large numbers of users away from websites accused of infringement. It?s never happened before on a grand scale. The technique is now mostly used by online criminals and hackers trying to spoof real sites with fake ones, whether just for kicks or to convince unsuspecting users to turn over their bank account or credit card information. That raises cybersecurity questions. Smith?s manager?s amendment attempted to knock out some of the concerns that the bill would wreak havoc on the Internet domain name system, which have been raised by cyber liberties groups, Internet engineers and some of the Net?s architects ? such as Google?s chief Internet evangelist Vint Cerf. The manager?s amendment removed language that would have required ISPs like AT&T and Comcast to redirect users to another place on the Web when they tried to access a site accused of infringement. It also notes the amendment includes a clause that would not authorize a court to issue an order that would hurt the domain name system. But Internet engineers and advocacy groups still aren?t convinced. The bills are written, they say, so that domain name filtering will become the preferred method for ISPs when a court orders them to block access to a rogue site. Even though this method isn?t mandated anymore, opponents argue that it?s a cheaper and easier way for ISPs to stop their customers from accessing a pirate site. ?It clearly endorses domain name filtering as the way to do this,? said David Sohn, senior policy counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. SOPA gives an ISP that filters a domain name as a ?safe harbor? for sufficiently complying with a court order. Some critics argue that redirection would undermine an Internet security protocol called DNSSEC, which was largely developed by the Department of Homeland Security to make the Web more secure. For example, DNSSEC helps ensure people go to the authentic Bank of America website rather than an imposter one created by hackers. Redirecting confuses DNSSEC so it ?can?t differentiate a hacker removing stuff from a government directive to the ISP to remove the content,? said Internet engineer Dan Kaminsky, who?s advised such companies as Cisco, Avaya and Microsoft and is an authority on the domain name system. Stewart Baker, former DHS assistant policy secretary and partner at Steptoe & Johnson, noted that this could discourage companies from continuing to implement these security protocols across the Web. Supporters of the bill say that it doesn?t require redirection and won?t undermine these security protocols because there are other options. Dan Castro, a senior analyst at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, pointed out: ?One option is for ISPs using DNSSEC to simply not resolve the domain names of foreign infringing sites that have signed domain names. But the reality is that most infringing sites are not using signed domain names.? The MPAA?s O?Leary took issue with the claim that the bill would force ISPs to filter domain names, noting that Comcast ? which also owns NBC Universal ? came out in support of SOPA. ?By definition, it?s voluntary and if you don?t want to do it, you won?t do it,? O?Leary said. He also said the engineers? claims about impact on the domain name system is a case of critics rolling out ?hypothetical after hypothetical about why we can?t do this and why we can?t do that? to curb online piracy. The markup adjourned Friday after the House Judiciary Committee considered only half of the roughly 66 amendments ? mostly from foes ? in a move seen as a victory for opponents. But Smith quickly sent out a notice that the markup is to resume Wednesday, Dec. 21 at 9 a.m. In a statement, Smith added that said ?not one of the critics was able to point to any language in the bill that would in any way harm the Internet? and their ?accusations are simply not supported by any facts. This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 5:39 a.m. on December 16, 2011. From ths at psalience.org Tue Dec 20 13:09:26 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:09:26 +0100 Subject: [THS] Study: Eating less keeps the brain young Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111220130910.0751e6b0@mail.messagingengine.com> Study: Eating less keeps the brain young December 19th, 2011 in Research Overeating may cause brain aging while eating less turns on a molecule that helps the brain stay young. A team of Italian researchers at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Rome have discovered that this molecule, called CREB1, is triggered by "caloric restriction" (low caloric diet) in the brain of mice. They found that CREB1 activates many genes linked to longevity and to the proper functioning of the brain. This work was led by Giovambattista Pani, researcher at the Institute of General Pathology, Faculty of Medicine at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Rome, directed by Professor Achille Cittadini, in collaboration with Professor Claudio Grassi of the Institute of Human Physiology. The research appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). "Our hope is to find a way to activate CREB1, for example through new drugs, so to keep the brain young without the need of a strict diet," Dr Pani said. Caloric restriction means the animals can only eat up to 70 percent of the food they consume normally, and is a known experimental way to extend life, as seen in many experimental models. Typically, caloric-restricted mice do not become obese and don't develop diabetes; moreover they show greater cognitive performance and memory, are less aggressive. Furthermore they do not develop, if not much later, Alzheimer's disease and with less severe symptoms than in overfed animals. Many studies suggest that obesity is bad for our brain, slows it down, causes early brain aging, making it susceptible to diseases typical of older people as the Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. In contrast, caloric restriction keeps the brain young. Nevertheless, the precise molecular mechanism behind the positive effects of an hypocaloric diet on the brain remained unknown till now. The Italian team discovered that CREB1 is the molecule activated by caloric restriction and that it mediates the beneficial effects of the diet on the brain by turning on another group of molecules linked to longevity, the "sirtuins". This finding is consistent with the fact that CREB1 is known to regulate important brain functions as memory, learning and anxiety control, and its activity is reduced or physiologically compromised by aging. Moreover, Italian researchers have discovered that the action of CREB1 can be dramatically increased by simply reducing caloric intake, and have shown that CREB is absolutely essential to make caloric restriction work on the brain. In fact, if mice lack CREB1 the benefits of caloric restriction on the brain (improving memory, etc.) disappeear. So the animals without CREB1 show the same brain disabilities typical of overfed and/or old animals. "Thus, our findings identify for the first time an important mediator of the effects of diet on the brain," Dr. Pani said. "This discovery has important implications to develop future therapies to keep our brain young and prevent brain degeneration and the aging process. In addition, our study shed light on the correlation among metabolic diseases as diabetes and obesity and the decline in cognitive activities." Provided by Catholic University of Rome "Study: Eating less keeps the brain young." December 19th, 2011. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-brain-young.html From ths at psalience.org Tue Dec 20 19:02:54 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:02:54 +0100 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?It=92s_10_pm=2E__Do_you_know_where_your_dron?= =?iso-8859-1?q?e__is=3F?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111220185242.040baab8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175482/tomgram%3A_nick_tu Tomgram: Nick Turse, The Life and Death of American Drones Posted by Nick Turse at 9:40am, December 20, 2011. It?s 10 pm. Do you know where your drone is? Oh, the confusion of it all! The U.S. military now insists it was deeply befuddled when it claimed that a super-secret advanced RQ-170 Sentinel drone (aka "the beast of Kandahar") which fell into Iranian hands on December 4th -- evidently while surveying suspected nuclear sites -- was lost patrolling the Afghan border. The military, said a spokesman, "did not have a good understanding of what was going on because it was a CIA mission." Whatever happened, that lost drone story hit the headlines in a way that allowed everyone their Warholian 15 minutes of fame. Dick Cheney went on the air to insist that President Obama should have sent Air Force planes into Iran to blow the grounded Sentinel to bits. (Who cares about sparking off hostilities or sending global oil prices skyrocketing?) President Obama formally asked for the plane?s return, but somehow didn?t have high hopes that the Iranians would comply. (Check out Gary Powers and the downing of his U-2 spy plane over Russia in 1960 for a precedent.) Defense Secretary Leon Panetta swore we would never stop our Afghan-based drone surveillance of Iran. Afghan President Hamid Karzai asked that his country be kept out of any ?adversarial relations between Iran and the United States.? (Fat chance!) The Iranians, who displayed the plane, insisted proudly that they had hacked into it, ?spoofed? its navigational controls, and brought it in for a relatively soft landing. And Kim Kardashian... oops, wrong story. All in all, it was a little robotic circus. All three rings? worth. Meanwhile, drones weren?t having such a good time of it elsewhere either, even if no one was paying much attention. The half-hidden drone story of the week wasn?t on the Iranian side of the Afghan border, but on the Pakistani side. There, in that country?s tribal borderlands, the CIA had for years been conducting an escalating drone air campaign, hundreds of strikes, often several a week, against suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban militants. In the wake of an ?incident? in which U.S. air strikes killed 24 Pakistani troops at two border posts, however, the Pakistanis closed the border to U.S. supplies for the Afghan war (significantly increasing the cost of that conflict), kicked the U.S. out of Shamsi air base, the CIA?s main drone facility in the country, and threatened to shoot down any U.S. drones over its territory. In the process, they seem to have forced the Obama administration to shut down its covert drone air campaign. At this point, there have been no drone attacks for almost a month. When he was still CIA Director, Leon Panetta termed the Agency's drone campaign the ?only game in town.? Now it?s ?on hold.? ("There is concern that another hit [by the drones] will push US-Pakistan relations past the point of no return," one official told The Long War Journal. "We don't know how far we can push them [Pakistan], how much more they are willing to tolerate.") After those hundreds of strikes and significant civilian casualties, which have helped turn the Pakistani public against the U.S. -- according to a recent poll, a staggering 97% of Pakistanis oppose the attacks -- it?s a stunning reversal, however temporary and little noted. In other words, we?ve come a long way, baby, since the moment in 2001 when Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage reportedly stormed into the office of Pakistan?s intelligence director and told him to either ally with Washington in the fight against al-Qaeda or prepare to be bombed ?back to the Stone Age.? As the U.S. leaves Iraq with its tail between its legs, the setback in Pakistan (as in Iran) should be considered a gauge of just how little Washington?s massive high-tech military edge, drones and otherwise, has been able to alter the shifting power equation on the planet. In the latest piece in his new changing-face-of-empire series, TomDispatch Associate Editor Nick Turse explores why, despite its advocates' claims, America?s newest wonder weapon will never prove a game changer. Tom The Drone That Fell From the Sky What a Busted Robot Airplane Tells Us About the American Empire in 2012 and Beyond By Nick Turse The drone had been in the air for close to five hours before its mission crew realized that something was wrong. The oil temperature in the plane?s turbocharger, they noticed, had risen into the ?cautionary? range. An hour later, it was worse, and it just kept rising as the minutes wore on. While the crew desperately ran through its ?engine overheat? checklist trying to figure out the problem, the engine oil temperature, too, began skyrocketing. By now, they had a full-blown in-flight emergency on their hands. ?We still have control of the engine, but engine failure is imminent,? the pilot announced over the radio. Almost two hours after the first signs of distress, the engine indeed failed. Traveling at 712 feet per minute, the drone clipped a fence before crashing. Land of the Lost Drones The skies seem full of falling drones these days. The most publicized of them made headlines when Iran announced that its military had taken possession of an advanced American remotely piloted spy aircraft, thought to be an RQ-170 Sentinel. Questions about how the Iranians came to possess one of the U.S. military?s most sophisticated pieces of equipment abound. Iran first claimed that its forces shot the drone down after it "briefly violated" the country?s eastern airspace near the Afghan border. Later, the Islamic Republic insisted that the unmanned aerial vehicle had penetrated 150 miles before being felled by a sophisticated cyber-attack. And just days ago, an Iranian engineer offered a more detailed, but as yet unsubstantiated, explanation of how a hack-attack hijacked the aircraft. For its part, the United States initially claimed that its military had lost the drone while it was on a mission in western Afghanistan. Later, unnamed officials admitted that the CIA had, in fact, been conducting a covert spy operation over Iran. The drone crash that led this piece did occur in Afghanistan -- Kandahar, to be precise -- in May of this year. It went unreported at the time and involved not a sleek, bat-winged RQ-170 Sentinel, but the older, clunkier, if more famous, MQ-1 Predator, a workhorse hunter/killer machine of the Afghan war and the CIA?s drone assassination campaign in the Pakistani tribal borderlands. A document detailing a U.S. Air Force investigation of that Predator crash, examined by TomDispatch, sheds light on the lifecycle and flaws of drones -- just what can go wrong in unmanned air operations -- as well as the shadowy system of bases and units scattered across the globe that keep those drones constantly in the skies as the U.S. becomes ever more reliant on remote-controlled warfare. That report and striking new statistics obtained from the military offer insights into underexamined flaws in drone technology. They are also a reminder of the failure of journalists to move beyond awe when it comes to high-tech warfare and America?s latest wonder weapons -- their curious inability to examine the stark limitations of man and machine that can send even the most advanced military technology hurtling to Earth. Numbers Game According to statistics provided to TomDispatch by the Air Force, Predators have flown the lion?s share of hours in America?s drone wars. As of October 1st, MQ-1?s had spent more than 1 million hours in the air, 965,000 of those in ?combat,? since being introduced into military service. The newer, more heavily armed MQ-9 Reaper, by comparison, has flown 215,000 hours, 180,000 of them in combat. (The Air Force refuses to release information about the workload of the RQ-170 Sentinel.) And these numbers continue to rise. This year alone, Predators have logged 228,000 flight hours compared to 190,000 in 2010. An analysis of official Air Force data conducted by TomDispatch indicates that its drones crashed in spectacular fashion no less than 13 times in 2011, including that May 5th crash in Kandahar. About half of those mishaps, all resulting in the loss of an aircraft or property damage of $2 million or more, occurred in Afghanistan or in the tiny African nation of Djibouti, which serves as a base for drones involved in the U.S. secret wars in Somalia and Yemen. All but two of the incidents involved the MQ-1 model, and four of them took place in May. In 2010, there were seven major drone mishaps, all but one involving Predators; in 2009, there were 11. In other words, there have been 31 drone losses in three years, none apparently shot down, all diving into the planet of their own mechanical accord or thanks to human error. Other publicized drone crashes, like a remotely-operated Navy helicopter that went down in Libya in June and an unmanned aerial vehicle whose camera was reportedly taken by Afghan insurgents after a crash in August, as well as the December 4th loss of the RQ-180 in Iran and an even more recent crash of a MQ-9 in the Seychelles, are not included in the Air Force?s major accident statistics for the year. Group Effort The United States currently runs its drone war from 60 or more bases scattered across the globe. They range from sites in the American southwest with lines of trailers where drone pilots ?fly? such aircraft via computer to those far closer to the battlefield where other pilots -- seated before a similar set up, including multiple computer monitors, keyboards, a joystick, a throttle, a rollerball, a mouse, and various switches -- launch and land the drones. On other bases, aspiring drone pilots are trained on simulators and the planes themselves are tested before being sent to distant battlefields. The May 5th Predator crash about a half-mile short of a runway at Kandahar Air Field drives home just how diffuse drone operations have become, with multiple units and multiple bases playing a role in a single mission. That Predator drone, for example, was an asset of the 3rd Special Operations Squadron, which operates out of Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico, and ultimately is part of Air Force Special Operations Command, based at Hulbert Field in Florida. When it crashed, it was being flown by an in-country pilot from the 62nd Expeditionary Squadron at Kandahar Air Field, whose parent unit, the 18th Reconnaissance Squadron, makes its home at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, ground zero for the military?s drone operations. The crewman operating the sensors on the drone, on the other hand, was a member of the Texas Air National Guard based at Ellington Field in Texas. The final leg of the doomed mission -- in support of elite special operations forces -- was being carried out by a pilot who had been operating Predators for about 10 months and had flown drones for approximately 51 hours over the previous 90 days. With less than 400 total hours under his belt, he was considered ?inexperienced? by Air Force standards and, during his drone launch and recovery training, had failed two simulator sessions and one flying exercise. He had, however, excelled academically, passed his evaluations, and was considered a qualified MQ-1 pilot, cleared to fly without supervision. His sensor operator had been qualified by the Air Force for the better part of two years, with average or above average ratings in performance evaluations. Having ?flown? a total of 677 hours -- close to 50 of them in the 90 days before the crash -- he was considered ?experienced.? The fact that the duo were controlling a special operations drone highlights the increasingly strong and symbiotic relationship between America?s two recently ascendant forms of warfare: raids by small teams of elite forces and attacks by remote-controlled robots. The Life and Death of American Drones During the post-crash investigation, it was determined that the ground crew in Afghanistan had been regularly using an unauthorized method of draining engine coolant, though it was unclear whether this contributed to the crash. Investigation documents further indicate that the drone?s engine had 851 hours of flight time and so was nearing the end of the line. (The operational lifespan of a Predator drone engine is reportedly around 1,080 hours.) Following the crash, the engine was shipped to a California test facility, where technicians from General Atomics, the maker of the Predator, carried out a forensic investigation. Significant overheating had, it was discovered, warped and deformed the machinery. Eventually, the Air Force ruled that a cooling system malfunction had led to engine failure. An accident investigator also concluded that the pilot had not executed proper procedures after the engine failure, causing the craft to crash just short of the runway, slightly damaging the perimeter fence at Kandahar Air Field and destroying the drone. The clear conclusion reached by accident investigators in this crash stands in stark contrast to the murkiness of what happened to the advanced drone now in Iranian hands. Whether the latter crashed thanks to a malfunction, was shot down, felled by a cyber-attack, or ended up on the ground for some other reason entirely, its loss and that of the special ops drone are reminders of just how reliant the U.S. military has become on high-tech robot planes whose major accidents now exceed those of much more expensive fixed-wing aircraft. (There were 10 major airborne mishaps involving such Air Force aircraft in 2011.) Robot War: 2012 and Beyond The failure to achieve victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined with a perceived success in the Libyan war -- significantly fought with airpower including drones -- has convinced many in the military not to abandon foreign wars, but to change their approach. Long-term occupations involving tens of thousands of troops and the use of counterinsurgency tactics are to be traded in for drone and special forces operations. Remotely piloted aircraft have regularly been touted, in the press and the military, as wonder weapons, the way, not so long ago, counterinsurgency tactics were being promoted as an elixir for military failure. Like the airplane, the tank, and nuclear weapons before it, the drone has been touted as a game-changer, destined to alter the very essence of warfare. Instead, like the others, it has increasingly proven to be a non-game-changer of a weapon with ordinary vulnerabilities. Its technology is fallible and its efforts have often been counterproductive in these last years. For example, the inability of pilots watching computer monitors on the other side of the planet to discriminate between armed combatants and innocent civilians has proven a continuing problem for the military?s drone operations, while the CIA?s judge-jury-executioner assassination program is widely considered to have run afoul of international law -- and, in the case of Pakistan, to be alienating an entire population. The drone increasingly looks less like a winning weapon than a machine for generating opposition and enemies. In addition, as flight hours rise year after year, the vulnerabilities of remotely piloted missions are ever more regularly coming to light. These have included Iraqi insurgents hacking drone video feeds, a virulent computer virus infecting the Air Force?s unmanned fleet, large percentages of drone pilots suffering from "high operational stress," increasing numbers of crashes, and the possibility of Iranian drone-hijacking. While human and mechanical errors are inherent in the operation of any type of machinery, few commentators have focused significant attention on the full spectrum of drone flaws and limitations. For more than a decade, remotely piloted aircraft have been a mainstay of U.S. military operations and the tempo of drone operations continues to rise yearly, but relatively little has been written about drone defects or the limits and hazards of drone operations. Perhaps the Air Force is beginning to worry about when this will change. After years of regularly ushering reporters through drone operations at Creech Air Force Base and getting a flood of glowing, even awestruck, publicity about the glories of drones and drone pilots, this year, without explanation, it shut down press access to the program, moving robotic warfare deeper into the shadows. The recent losses of the Pentagon?s robot Sentinel in Iran, the Reaper in the Seychelles, and the Predator in Kandahar, however, offer a window into a future in which the global skies will be filled with drones that may prove far less wondrous than Americans have been led to believe. The United States could turn out to be relying on a fleet of robots with wings of clay. Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at TomDispatch. This article is the fourth in his new series on the changing face of American empire, which is being underwritten by Lannan Foundation. You can follow him on Twitter @NickTurse, on Tumblr, and on Facebook. Copyright 2011 Nick Turse From ths at psalience.org Wed Dec 21 00:04:19 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:04:19 +0100 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?_David_Malone=3A_Plan_B_=96_How_to_Loot_Nati?= =?iso-8859-1?q?ons_and_Their__Banks_Legally?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111220234344.046b3140@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30016.htm Plan B ? How to Loot Nations and Their Banks Legally By David Malone December 17, 20011 "Golem XIV" -- Is there a plan B? That question is usually asked of governments regarding their attempts to ?save? the banks domiciled in their country. But has anyone asked if the banks have a plan B? Does anyone think that if our governments fail to keep to their austerity targets and fail to keep bailing out the banking sector, that the banks will just shrug and say, ?Well, thanks for trying? and accept their fate? Or do you think the banks might have a Plan B of their own? First let?s be clear about Plan A. That plan is to enforce an era of long-term austerity cuts to public services, in part to cut public expenditure so as to free up money for spending on the banks, but perhaps more importantly to further atrophy public services so that private providers can take over. A privatization of services which will bring great profits and cash flow to the private sector and to the banks who finance them, and a further general victory for those who feel that private debts rather than public taxes should be what underpins our national life and social contract. Plan A therefore requires that governments convince their populace that private debts should be taken on to the public purse and that once taken on, the contracts signed by governments on behalf of the tax payers/citizens, are then sacrosanct and above any democratic change of mind. If governments can hold their peoples to this, then the banks are ?saved? with the added bonus that democracy and the ?Rights? it once guaranteed will all have been redefined as subordinate to finance and its contracts, and our citizenship will have become second to one?s contractual place in a web of private debts. Debts to the private lenders will become more important than taxes to the public exchequer. And as they do the State will wither away, leaving free-market believers and extreme libertarians exactly where they have always wanted to be ? in charge ? by dint of being rich. It is, in my view, a bleak future which I once described as A Toxic Debt Wasteland. BUT it does all depend on governments being able to suppress discontent and to outlaw opposition in the sense of saying to people you may disagree but we have now declared these debts and their repayment to be outside democratic control and immune to any attempt to rescind or repudiate the agreed debt contracts. As the severity of the austerity cuts to social services (health, education, pensions etc) becomes painfully clearer to people and the ?necessity? for them is ?regretfully? extended year after year, it will become harder and harder to justify, let alone impose, such suffering. We will enter an era of vicious sectarian blame. We are already in it, but it will get much darker. The banks and those whose wealth and power is tied to them, would obviously prefer Plan A to succeed. It makes governments do all the dirty work and it would profit the banks far more in the long run. If you want to bleed a man ? kill him and you get about 5 litres/quarts. But strap him to a gurney with a catheter in his arm and a drip feed in his nose, and he will bleed for you for as long as his system can stand it. That is Plan A. But what if it fails? I cannot believe the banks, with everything at stake, have not thought it prudent to have a plan B. So here are my thoughts on what that plan could be. Let me say now, I do not think this plan was a long term conspiracy. I do not think the end game was in mind when the first elements were put in place. It has, I think, been constructed opportunistically. But the end result is no less dark and threatening. What I offer from here on is thinking out loud. I obvioulsy have no proof at all that there is a plan B. All I can hope to do is show you the elements which I think could make a Plan B for the banks. Then my argument is that if the mechanism I describe could work, if I have not simply misunderstood something, then I think the banks will surely have thought of it before me. And so it either already exists or it will. I think there are scraps of information that suggest it does exist and the collapse of MF Global might even be the first example of Plan B in action. The MF Global case certainly contains all the clues. MF Global imploded when it could not get the short term funding it needed. There were two kinds of funding MF Global relied upon for its liquidity/cash flow: repo and hypothecation. For those not familiar, Repo is when a bank or brokerage ?sells? an asset for cash but with the agreement that it will re-purchase ? hence ?repo? ? the asset at an agreed date for an agreed price. It is not really a sale but a loan. Repo is the oxygen the financial world breathes. Repo is a $10 Trillion market. The other main source of the essential short term funding was Hypothecation. This is when a bank or brokerage pledges an asset to a ?lender? in return for cash but the asset remains in the possession of the borrower. What the ?lender? gets is hypothetical control of the asset. Although the asset never actually changes hands, the new ?owner?s? hypothetical control of the asset allows her to do what she wishes with the asset. Including re-hypothecating the asset to another bank or brokerage. If she does so then the hypothetical control passes to yet another ?owner?. Even though physically it remain where it started. Like repo ? hypothecation and re-hypothecation are truely massive parts of modern debt-based banking. So the first thing the MF Global case tells us is that what happened is not due to some peripheral, parochial rogue trader-esque, isolated problem. What happened was as a result of a mechanism right at the very heart of the financial system. In the MF Global collapse what ZeroHedge, and following them, I and others wrote about, was the way in which not only did MF Global go bankrupt, but so also did some of their clients when they found the money they thought MF Global was holding for them, went unaccountably missing. Client?s money went missing because it was ?mingled? with the brokerage?s money when it should not have been. Brokers should keep them separate. But it seems in the ?re-hypothecation? of assets it was mingled. Former CEO of MF Global, Mr Corzine has sworn under oath he knew nothing about his co-mingling nor the irregularities with his company?s re-hypothecation. It has been rumoured the client?s money may now be, possibly, in the hands of JP Morgan. This hint of illegality has grabbed everyone?s attention. But I think it is actually the legal part of the story not the possibly illegal part which is by far the more important. In my opinion the key to the bank?s Plan B is in understanding why any money/assets were taken from MF Global after it had gone bankrupt and how exactly it went under in the first place. We all know MF Global had huge holdings of dicey European sovereign debt. But those debts have not become worthless so what caused MF to collapse? . The answer to all these questions lie in a change to Bankruptcy laws that happened around the world between 2002 and 05. This might seem like a detour into nerd city but it is not. It is the key. When a company declares bankruptcy there is what the Americans call an ?automatic stay?, which means all the assets left in a company at the moment it goes bankrupt are protected from the rush of creditor?s demands until appointed auditors can sort out who should get what. The automatic stay prevents a first come first served disorderly looting where those with the most muscle getting everything and everyone else getting nothing. As we are all painfully aware now, there is a legal pecking order to who gets paid before who, with Senior bond holders at the top. But, in America culminating in 2005 with the passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA) the order was changed. And that change is the crucial event. At the time the law was being passed few were aware of this change and even fewer were aware of how important it would become. At the time the furore was all about changes to personal bankruptcy. The Credit Card industry (AKA Banks) had spent more than a decade and its rumoured as much as $100 million lobbying to make bankruptcy much harder and more punitive for ordinary debtors. An article from 2005 in the Boston Globe quoting a very senior Republican Senator, gives a flavour of what was then being said about ordinary people who fell into debt. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has said that millions of Americans are bankrupt or near-bankrupt because ?they run up huge bills and then expect society to pay for them.? After 4 years of bailing out banks who did exactly that the irony is enough to gag on. But what was not talked about was an amendment which was put into the bill and, as far as I know little debated. Don?t let the word ?amendment? mislead you. Amendments are generally not there as refinements and improvements on the original idea. Whenever a bill goes through Congress every lobby group and industry with something it wants done, gets their tamed/owned/ political friends to tack on the change in the law that suits them in return for supporting the original bill. The bill emerges from this process festooned with ?amendments? to other vaguely related laws. Amendments are the price of getting the original bill passed. They are often little understood, written by and for the benefit of the sponsoring lobby group and can be far more influential than the bill they are smuggled in on. This is certainly the case here. According to a scholarly article in the American Bankruptcy Law Review, ?the provisions [in the amendment] were derived from recommendations from the President?s Working Group and revisions espoused by the financial industry? The President at the time was Bush and one of the most vociferous sponsors of the amendment was none other than Senator Leach whose other claim to fame was the Gram-Leech-Bliley Act which repealed most of the Glass Steagal Act of 1933 whose repeal virtually assured that the present debt crisis would happen. When bankers play pocket billiards, Senator Leach is what they prod their balls with. Ribaldry aside Senator Leach can certainly be described as one of the principle architects of our present global misery. But I digress. What was this amendment? The amendment exempted repos (and hypothecated and re-hypothecated assets) and a whole range of derivatives from the automatic stay. It also allowed lower quality assets to qualify for the exemptions. Which means, The special bankruptcy treatment given repos and derivatives means that repo lenders and parties to derivative contracts can keep the collateral if their trading partner becomes insolvent. This exempts them from the ?automatic stay? rule in bankruptcy, which prohibits most creditors from trying to collect ahead of others. Or as the official report from the US Financial Crisis Inquirey Commission said, under a 2005 amendment to the bankruptcy laws, derivatives counterparties were given the advantage over other creditors of being able to immediately terminate their contracts and seize collateral at the time of bankruptcy. (p. 48) So when a bank goes bankrupt, BEFORE even the most senior bond holders, the repo lenders and derivatives traders can remove, or keep all the assets pledged to them. This amendment which was touted as necessary to reduce systemic risk in financial bankruptcies also allowed a whole range of far riskier assets to be used, making them too immune from the automatic stay in the event of bankruptcy. Which meant traders flocked to a market where risky assets would be traded and used as collateral without apparent risk to the lender. The size of the repo market hugely increased and riskier assets were gladly accepted as collateral because traders saw that if the person they had lent to went down they could get your money back before anyone else and no one could stop them. It also did one other thing. Because the repo and derivatives traders ran no risk ? they could get their money out of a failing bank before anyone else, it meant they had no reason at all to try to stop a bank from going under. Quite the opposite. All other creditors ? bond holders ? risk losing some of their money in a bankruptcy. So they have a reason to want to avoid bankruptcy of a trading partner. Not so the repo and derivatives partners. They would now be best served by looting the company ? perfectly legally ? as soon as trouble seemed likely. In fact the repo and derivatives traders could push a bank that owed them money over into bankruptcy when it most suited them as creditors. When, for example, they might be in need of a bit of cash themselves to meet a few pressing creditors of their own. The collapse of both Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and AIG were all directly because repo and derivatives partners of those instituions suddenly stoppped trading and ?looted? them instead. According to Enrico Perotti, professor of international finance at Amsterdam Business School speaking at the London Conference on The Future of Bank Funding, held in June of this year, 2011, The financial crisis happened when repo lenders and derivative parties lost confidence in the mortgage-backed securities they?d accepted as collateral for repo loans and credit default swaps. They demanded to be paid, forcing their troubled trading partners into fire sales of their holdings to raise cash. They were unconcerned that they might drive their trading partners into bankruptcy, because they were exempt from the automatic stay. Professor Perotti went on to say, As often in financial regulation, this leads to unintended consequences. As a default leads to repossession of collateral for all safe harbor claims, repossession accelerates fire sales, resulting in a disorderly resolution, with a rush to sell collateral ahead of others, creating a downward spiral in valuations. The timing of the jumps in risk spreads on Lehman, two days after the default, demonstrates this effect, as does AIG. Should the bankers and their political fluffers like Mr Leach have known? Well they were warned at the time. In 2005 a paper entitled ?Derivatives and the Bankruptcy Code: Why the Special Treatment?? by Franklin R. Edwards and Edward R. Morrison, in the Yale Journal of Regulation http://www1.gsb.columbia.edu/mygsb/faculty/research/pubfiles/1666/Morrison%20%26%20Edwards%20Yale%20Rev VI. Conclusion the Code?s special treatment of derivatives contracts cannot be justified by a fear of systemic risk . Indeed, exempting derivatives counterparties from the automatic stay may make matters worse by increasing systemic risk .Our analysis, however, should worry members of Congress and legislators in other countries. They have been lobbied heavily by special interest groups (such as ISDA) to expand the special treatment of derivatives on grounds that such legislation is necessary to prevent a systemic meltdown in OTC derivatives markets should a derivatives counterparty suffer financial distress. Our analysis casts serious doubt on this proposition. Systemic risk may be a real threat, but bankruptcy law has no role to play in addressing it.? The same changes to the bankruptcy laws were also adopted in the UK and throughout Europe. In fact they may well have preceded them. I simply have not done that research yet. And the changes in the UK and Europe were also lobbied for and sponsored by the banks via among others the ISDA (International Swaps and Derivatives Association). Most of the Big banks are ISDA members. OK, all of that was the back-ground to show you how we got here and that it is all ?legal?. On the basis of laws sponsored by the banks of course. Now let's come to the present. MF Global is where I started. There was something about its collapse which did not seem right to me. Mr Corzine?s claim that he ?didn?t know? where his clients? money had gone might be true, but I was and am still, left with the feeling that there is a deeper story here. When I wrote about MF Global and the renewed crisis of bank lending, I came across the fact that in the six months to June 2011 the global trade in Derivatives increased by 18% to an astonishing $707 trillion in nominal value (the face value of all the contracts). And remember the Repo market is $10 trillion. Somehow MF Global?s collapse and the huge increase in derivatives trading felt related. For me it was not the huge exposure to risky European bonds which MF Global had deliberately amassed, it was the nature of its demise, the trigger, and what happened to its assets afterwards, which were key. MF Global collapsed because it could not get short term funding. It could not get other financial institutions to accept its assets as collateral for Repo agreements nor hypothecate tham any longer. When MF Global went down it did so because its repo, derivaitve and hypothecation partners essentially foreclosed on it. And when they did so they then ?looted? the company. And because of the co-mingling of clients money in the hypothecation deals the ?looters? also seized clients money as well. The co-mingling story is what brought the whole thing into the light but also provided a wonderful distraction. The important point is that the change in the Bankruptcy laws. The change, as illustrated by Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and AIG has made the markets more, not less systemically unstable. Yet the banks have defeated all attempts to reform these unwise laws. The Dodd Frank financial reform act in the US did nothing to address them AT ALL. Mr Dodd was lobbied very hard to make sure of this. Why? Here, finally, is my answer. Let us say you are a bank or broker that has bought up a lot of European bank and sovereign bonds from Italy, Spain and Greece for example. You would be very exposed to great losses should those countries or their banks default. You are relying on the politicians forcing their tax payers to bail out you and the other banks you trade with. What if they don?t? One solution would be to sell as many of those bonds as you could, accepting the inevitable losses as being better than a much larger loss if the banks or nations or both, defaulted. The other solution, counter-intuitively, would be to do more business with them. But make sure it is repo lending and derivative trading. Specifically offer the banks in troubled nations CDS insurance on their own bad debts and currency swaps. How would this help? First, lets keep in mind that the trade in both these types of derivatives did increase by 18% in the first 6 months of 2011 precisely as the Euro crisis has worsened. If a bank or nation was to default on you as a mere bond holder, you would have to wait in a the queue of creditors to see what you were going to be given back. And some ?hair cut? would be likely. But if you had done rather a lot of derivatives trading (CDS insurance and currency swaps are both derivative trades) then you would not have to wait. You would seize all the collateral the bank had pledged to you for repo lending or derivative trading and walk away. Now you will say that if you had done CDS insurance then you might well have to pay back out the money you had seized. Except that possession is nine tenths of the law. While lawyers set about arguing about what you owe, the critical fact is that in the mean time, in the height of the crisis you HAVE the money. JP Morgan allegedly has MF Global money while other people?s lawyers can only argue about it. This will also be true if you have also rather wisely been on the right side of lots of re-hypothecation deals and repo deals with the collapsed bank. In both cases if the collapsed bank had pledged to you assets for Repo or hypothecation then you get to keep all those assets in the case of the bank going bankrupt. We have the clear proof of this already. As Zerohedge reported some days ago, ?HSBC Sues MF Global Over Disputed Ownership Of Physical Gold?. It seems HSBC?s gold may have been hypothecated or re-hypothecated. Someone else, some other bank, has their gold and all they have are lots of lawyers charging them fat fees. So what we have, courtesy of the change in the bankruptcy laws is the means for banks to loot each other. Simply become a major short term funder via repo or hypothecation or a major counterpary in derivatives deals with the ailing bank and in both cases should the bank you are lending to go bankrupt, you will keep all the assets it pledged to you before any other creditor get a chance. If I am right then MF Global was the first hint of Plan B in action. The bankruptcy laws allow a mechanism for banks to disembowel each other. The strongest lend to the weaker and loot them when the moment of crisis approaches. The plan allows the biggest banks, those who happen to be burdened with massive holdings of dodgy euro area bonds, to leap out of the bond crisis and instead profit from a bankruptcy which might otherwise have killed them. All that is required is to know the import of the bankruptcy law and do as much repo, hypothecation and derivative trading with the weaker banks as you can. To me, this gives a possible answer to why there has been such a surge in derivatives trading. If I am right about all this, I think this means that some of the biggest banks, themselves, have already constructed and greatly enlarged a now truly massive trip wired auto-destruct on the banking system. If they have and they have explained any of this to our politicians then it would explain why our governments have been so abjectly willing to bail out any and all of the biggest banks and sacrifice anything else in the process. Any hint of reluctance and the banks can make veiled reference to the extreme ?risk? of systemic ?panic? and forced liquidations. None of which is really a panic, since they have engineered it. Are the banks threatening us? No, no, good lord no! Just pointing out the reality of the state of the system. There just happens to be a gun pointed at our head and the banks just happen to find their finger on the trigger. All they ask is that we do nothing to make them feel that their best interests are served by pulling it. And all we have to do to avoid that is stick to plan A. Simple. But now I come to the really ugly part. For the last four years who has been putting money in to the banks? And who has become a massive bond holder in all the banks? We have. First via our national banks and now via the Fed, ECB and various tax payer funded bail out funds. We are the bond holders who would be shafted by the Plan B looting. We would be the people waiting in line for the money the banks would have already made off with. It is the money we have been putting in to bail out the biggest banks which they have then been using as collateral for offering weaker banks in weaker nations, repo loans or hypothecation. And the money or government bonds the weaker banks are using to pledge as assets and collateral for those loans or in derivative deals with the bigger banks is also from us. We have and are funding both sides of the deal. The result is that the assets which the big banks would be legally allowed to seize and keep in the event of the failing bank actually going under would be ours. To give a concrete example. Spain or Greece puts its tax payer money in to one of its insolvent banks.That bank then uses that money to get a short term repo or hypothecated it for loan. Or it uses it to hedge its currency problems via a currency swap or buys CDS insurance on assets it is deeply worried about. If the weak bank then goes down all those assets are seized by the big bank who was lending or was the counter-party to the derivative deals. The tax payer gets zero. And there is no redress. It was legally done. And the money the Big bank would have used to get themselves into this position would be the bail out money we had earlier given to the mega banks. They would have used that money against us ? again. The largest banks, those with the greatest exposure to bank and sovereign bonds from the most indebted euro nations, have the most to gain from doing derivative, repo and hypothecation deals with the troubled euro area banks and nations. The more assets the weak banks and nations have pledged in deals with the Big banks, the more the Big banks will walk away with in the event of a crash. I suggest this is why, even as this crisis has worsened, the Big banks have been increasing by 18% their trade in derivatives and why Repo and hypothecation is as large or larger than even before the crash. I am sorry this has been such a long piece but I wanted you to see exactly how I came to this because I hope you can show me how I am wrong. Please do so politely and I will go downstairs and celebrate my stupidity with a cup of tea, before apologizing to you all. I would very much like to be wrong. But if I am not wrong, then the banks have created a financial Armageddon looting machine. Their Plan B is a mechanism to loot not just the more vulnerable banks in weaker nations, but those nations themselves. And the looting will not take months not even days. It could happen in hours if not minutes. Our leaders would have only a few hours to decide who they would side with: the banks or us. The past four years give me no faith they would chose us. David Malone is author of the "The Debt Generation". David has a career spanning nearly twenty years producing and directing documentaries for both the BBC and Channel4. His series Testing God was shortlisted for the Royal Television Society best documentary series and was described by The Times as "moving and startling - as close to poetry as television gets." For the last three years David has focused considerable attention on the financial system. His BBC documentary High Anxieties- The Mathematics of Chaos, first broadcast in September 2008, was one of the first films to be made about the financial crisis accurately anticipating the problems that were to unfold in the economy. The Debt Generation was published in November 2010. David Malone on the Keiser Report From ths at psalience.org Wed Dec 21 13:07:39 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:07:39 +0100 Subject: [THS] Conspiracy Nuts Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111221130623.03e0f538@mail.messagingengine.com> David Ray Griffin's latest 9/11 tome, 'Debunking 9/11 Debunking - An Answer to the Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory' DOES NOT DISAPPOINT! In fact, it details the facts in ways no other effort has so far done - it is probably the best and most convincing book so far showing that 9/11 was surely an "inside job" orchestrated by people within the current U.S. federal government. Briefly, by 2006 the 9/11 'Truth Movement' had made so much progress convincing people around the world that 9/11 could hardly have been planned and brought off by some rat-pack of assorted arabs of little talent and even less conviction directed from a remote cave in central Asia, but only by the power and technology available to a clique within the U.S. federal government itself. To counter this growing awareness, several attempted rebuttals were rushed into print by the Bush loyalists: - Another volume by the authors of 'The 9/11 Commission Report', Kean and Hamilton's 'Without Precedent'. - The Release of the NORAD Tapes - The NIST report on the bring-down of the WTC towers - The POPULAR MECHANICS book, 'Debunking 9/11 Myths' - a followup to its original article on 9/11 David Ray Griffin, in his own patient, majestic, dragon-slaying way, picks apart these 'debunkings' into pieces finer than the WTC rubble, exposing along the way every flaw, stupidity, lie and coverup that the debunkers have attempted to use. No name-calling here, just the facts! It becomes clear just how many big-time plutocrats are involved in this coverup of the greatest crime since Eve distributed apples. This cadre of supporters of crimes against humanity, wars of conquest, torture, genocide, Constitution-shredding, to name but a few of their transgressions, will not for the most part see justice within their lifetimes. Hopefully, as 9/11 Truth continues to gain influence, some will jump ship, rats that they are, in hopes of redemption through some truth-telling. The core perpetrators, however, would insist on their rigtheousness in the face of God Himself even as they were being squashed flat by the Holy Steam-Roller and reduced to vapour by runaway newkular fission. Just how does the human genome produce such sub-humans as these? I've scanned two excerpts from the book for THS readers, and others who you will forward this messge to. Here is the first excerpt, which I have titled, "How to answer name-calling fools who think ad hominem is a bona fide debating technique": ...In September of 2006, the Nation published Alexander Cockburn's essay, "The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts," which was an abbreviated version of a essay that had appeared in Cockburn's own publication, Counterpunch.36 Having no doubt that it is the alternative, not the official, conspiracy theory that is nutty, Cockburn characterizes the members of the 9/11 truth movement as knowing no military history and having no grasp of "the real world." Moreover, he elsewhere quotes with approval a philosopher who, speaking of "the 9/11 conspiracy cult," says that its "main engine ... is ... the death of any conception of evidence," resulting in "the ascendancy of magic over common sense [and] reason."37 These are strong criticisms, which are easy to throw at the "movement" in the abstract. But do they apply to "the real world," that is, to the intellectual leaders of the 9/11 truth movement? For example, Cockburn refers to me as one of the movement's "high priests." Could anyone?if I may be defensive for a moment?really read my books in philosophy, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of science,38 all of which involve discussions of epistemology, and conclude that I am devoid of "any conception of evidence"? Could one, in fact, conclude that after reading my 9/11 books? Moreover, if my 9/11 books are nutty, as Cockburn suggests, then people who have endorsed them must also be nuts. The list of nuts would hence include economist Michel Chossudovsky, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, British Minister of Parliament Michael Meacher, former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing Catherine Austin Fitts, journalists Wayne Madsen and Barrie Zwicker, Institute for Policy Studies co-founder Marcus Raskin, former diplomat Peter Dale Scott, international law professors Richard Falk and Burns Weston, social philosopher John McMurtry, theologians John B. Cobb, Harvey Cox, Carter Heyward, Catherine Keller, and Rosemary Ruether, ethicists Joseph C. Hough and Douglas Sturm, writer A.L. Kennedy, media critic and professor of culture Mark Crispin Miller, attorney Gerry Spence, historians Richard Horsley and Howard Zinn, and the late Rev. William Sloane Coffin, who, after a stint in the CIA, became one of the country's leading preachers and civil rights, anti-war, and anti-nuclear activists. Furthermore, if everyone who believes the alternative conspiracy theory, rather than the official conspiracy theory, is by definition a nut, then Cockburn would have to sling that label at Philip J. Berg, former deputy attorney general of Pennsylvania;39 Colonel Robert Bowman, who flew over 100 combat missions in Vietnam and earned a Ph.D. in aeronautics and nuclear engineering before becoming head of the "Star Wars" program during the Ford and Carter administrations;40 Andreas von Biilow, formerly state secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Defense, minister of research and technology, and member of parliament, where he served on the intelligence committee;41 Lt. Col. Steve Butler, formerly vice chancellor for student affairs at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California;42 Giulietto Chiesa, an Italian member of the European parliament;43 Bill Christison, formerly a national intelligence officer in the CIA and director of its Office of Regional and Political Analysis;44 A. K. Dewdney, emeritus professor of mathematics and computer science and long-time columnist for Scientific American;45 General Leonid Ivashov, formerly chief of staff of the Russian armed forces;46 Captain Eric H. May, formerly an intelligence officer in the US Army;47 Colonel George Nelson, formerly an airplane accident investigation expert in the US Air Force;48 Colonel Ronald D. Ray, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran who became deputy assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration;49 Morgan Reynolds, former director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis and former chief economist at the Department of Labor;50 Robert David Steele, who had a 25-year career in intelligence, serving both as a CIA clandestine services case officer and as a US Marine Corps intelligence officer;51 Captain Russ Wittenberg, a former Air Force fighter pilot with over 100 combat missions, after which he was a commercial airlines pilot for 35 years;52 Captain Gregory M. Zeigler, former intelligence officer in the US Army;53 all the members of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, Veterans for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, and S.P.I.N.E.: the Scientific Panel Investigating Nine-Eleven;54 and most of the college and university professors listed under "Professors Question 9/11" on the Patriots Question 9/11 website.55 Would Cockburn really want to suggest that these people are "nuts" with "no conception of evidence," no awareness of "military history," and no grasp of "common sense" and "the real world"? Cockburn's absurd charges are valuable, however, because they illustrate just how far the labeling of people as "conspiracy theorists" can lead otherwise sensible people away from the real world, in which many very intelligent and experienced people, who cannot by the wildest stretch be called "nuts," have concluded, on the basis of evidence, that 9/11 was, at least in part, an inside job. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ens excerpt The second excerpt is a real "scoop" concerning Popular Mechanics magazine and its support for the Bush regime's crimes... Hitler curses in his grave for not being bolder and more decisive, and for not having a Dark Cheney to run the affair better than did his former henchmen. The Story Behind Popular Mechanic's Treatment of 9/11 This book, in one of its many self-congratulatory claims, says on its back cover: "With more than 100 years of expertise in science and technology, Popular Mechanics is ideally equipped to research the evidence behind [charges that the US government orchestrated the attacks of 9/11]." Readers previously familiar with Popular Mechanics (PM) were thereby led to believe that this book on 9/11 was put out by people whose expertise and trustworthiness had been demonstrated over the previous decades. This same impression was created by Guy Smith's BBC documentary, which said: "Popular Mechanics is an American institution, a no-nonsense, nuts-and-bolts magazine, writing about technology since the days of Henry Ford and the Wright Brothers." However, in the months just prior to the publication of the article on which this book is based, a radical change in PM's personnel was orchestrated by the president of Hearst Magazines, Cathleen P. Black. As reporter Christopher Bollyn pointed out, Black is married to Thomas E. Harvey, who has worked for the CIA, the Department of Defense, and the US Information Agency. Bollyn, describing this Black-orchestrated change at Popular Mechanics as "a brutal take-over," wrote: "In September 2004, Joe Oldham, the magazine's former editor-in-chief, was replaced by James B. Meigs. In October, a new creative director replaced PM's 21-year veteran who was given ninety minutes to clear out of his office." In each of the following six months, Bollyn further reported, three or four more people were similarly dismissed.19 Accordingly, the suggestion that this book about 9/11 reflects PM's long tradition of expertise is misleading. Bollyn also unearthed another fact relevant to the credibility of PM's writing about 9/11: that 25-year-old Benjamin Chertoff, who described himself as the "senior researcher" for the article, is a cousin of the new head of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff. Bollyn then wrote an essay entitled "9/11 and Chertoff: Cousin Wrote 9/11 Propaganda for PM." The Hearst Corporation, Bollyn charged, had hired young Chertoff to work on an article supporting the very interpretation of 9/11 that had led to the creation of the department now headed by his older cousin.20 As Bollyn learned, this familial relationship seemed to be something that neither Benjamin Chertoff nor PM wanted to advertise. When young Chertoff was asked by Bollyn if he was related to Michael Chertoff, he replied, "I don't know," then said that all further questions should be put to PM's publicist. Bollyn then called Benjamin Chertoff's mother. When asked whether her son was related to the new secretary of Homeland Security, she reportedly replied: "Yes, of course, he is a cousin." From editor-in-chief Meigs' "Afterword" to the book, however, a reader would assume that there was some doubt about this. After commenting about "the odd coincidence that Benjamin Chertoff, then the head of the magazine's research department, has the same last name as the then newly appointed head of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff," Meigs wrote: "Christopher Bollyn phoned Ben's mother, who volunteered that, yes, she thinks Michael Chertoff might be a distant cousin." Confidence in Meigs' reportorial honesty is hardly inspired by this transmutation?of "yes, of course" into "yes, she thinks" and of "he is a cousin" to "[he] might be a distant cousin." Besides mentioning the conversation between Bollyn and Benjamin Chertoff's mother, Meigs himself says: "it's possible that Ben and Michael Chertoff are distantly related."21 Meigs' expression of doubt is amazing. He is claiming that he and his crack staff were in a few months able to discover all the central truths about 9/11?why the planes were not intercepted, why the World Trade Center buildings came down, what really hit the Pentagon, and what really happened to UA Flight 93 ?and yet they were not able to find out for sure whether a member of their own team was related to the director of Homeland Security! Meigs does, however, say that there is one thing about the two men of which he is certain: "Ben and Michael Chertoff have never spoken."22 The point of this denial is, of course, to rule out the suspicion that Michael Chertoff had anything to do with PM's 9/11 article, perhaps encouraging his younger cousin to work on it and even giving advice. If true, this would have suggested, as Bollyn inferred, that PM was consciously serving as an agent of Bush administration propaganda. Whatever be the truth, it appears that PM took every possible step to avoid having this charge leveled against its book. Whereas Benjamin Chertoff had described himself as the magazine article's senior researcher and his name was prominently displayed at the head of the list of reporters who worked on it, his name is not on the book's cover as one of its editors. His name is not even listed under either "reporters/writers" or "researchers," or anywhere else on the book's technical page. Indeed, the only mention of his name, prior to the Afterword, occurs in the "Acknowledgments" section, where he is thanked?even though he had been head of the research department when the article was put out?only as one of many "members of the original reporting team." Probably no one, reading only this book, would think of it as being heavily indebted to a man related to the director of Homeland Security. In any case, whether the book was actually written at the behest of the government, it is clearly perceived by the government as a reliable exponent of the official story. A US State Department document entitled "The Top September 11 Conspiracy Theories," after having repeatedly recommended Popular Mechanics' article, says that PM's book "provides excellent additional material debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories."23 From ths at psalience.org Wed Dec 21 13:10:08 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:10:08 +0100 Subject: [THS] Some Democracy Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111221125830.0763ff28@mail.messagingengine.com> ". . . in America, we have achieved the Orwellian prediction - enslaved, the people have been programmed to love their bondage and are left to clutch only mirage-like images of freedom, its fables and fictions. The new slaves are linked together by vast electronic chains of television that imprison not their bodies but their minds. Their desires are programmed, their tastes manipulated, their values set for them. "No one knows better than children of the Holocaust how the lessons of history must never be forgotten. Yet Americans, whose battle cry was once, "Give me liberty or give me death," have sat placidly by as a new king was crowned. In America a new king was crowned by the shrug of our shoulders when our neighbors were wrongfully seized. "A new king was crowned when we capitulated to a regime that was no longer sensitive to people but to non-people -- to corporations, to money and to power. The new king was crowned when we turned our heads as the poor and the forgotten and the damned were rendered mute and defenseless, not because they were evil but because, in the scheme of our lives, they seemed unimportant, not because they were essentially dangerous but because they were essentially powerless. "The new king was crowned when we cheered the government on as it prosecuted the progeny of our ghettos and filled our prisons with black men whose first crime was that they were born in the ghettos. We cheered the new king on as it diluted our right to be secure in our homes against unlawful searches and secure in the courts against unlawful evidence. "We cheered the new king on because we were told that our sacred rights were but "loopholes" by which our enemies, the murderers and rapists and thieves and drug dealers, escaped. We were told that those who fought for our rights, the lawyers, were worse than the thieves who stole from us in the night, that our juries were irresponsible and ignorant and ought not be trusted. "We watched with barely more than a mumble as the legal system that once protected us became populated with judges who were appointed by the new king. At last the new king was crowned when we forgot the lessons of history, that when the rights of our enemies have been wrested from them, our own rights have been lost as well, for the same rights serve both citizen and criminal... "The ultimate enemy of any people is not the angry hate groups that fester within, but a government itself that has lost its respect for the individual. The ultimate enemy of democracy is not the drug dealer or the crooked politician or the crazed skinhead. The ultimate enemy is the New King that has become so powerful it can murder its own citizens with impunity. excerpt from: Gerry Spence, From Freedon to Slavery: The Rebirth of Tyranny in America, St. Martin's Press 1993 This book is a masterwork. Highly recommended ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16053.htm Spence: $2M settlement underscores loss of freedom Jackson attorney battles FBI, big government, Patriot Act. By Angus M. Thuermer Jr 01/03/07 "Jackson Hole News" -- -- Fresh from winning a $2 million settlement in a suit against the FBI for wrongly tying an Oregon lawyer to the Madrid bombing case, Jackson Hole attorney Gerry Spence warned Tuesday of growing fascism in America. Spence was the lead attorney in a case brought by Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield against the FBI for his arrest in the case that saw 191 people killed in Spain. The FBI began investigating Mayfield after computers said his fingerprints came close to matching a print found on a bag containing explosive detonators connected to the March 11, 2004, bombing. Mayfield announced the settlement last week in Portland, Ore., but the flamboyant Spence has been missing from many of the news reports of the incident. He spoke in a telephone interview from his home in Jackson Hole, cautioning against the government and corporations consolidating increasing power. ?It?s a very frightening time in our country,? said Spence, who has made a career championing the cases of the common man and underdogs. ?What happens is that the corporate king, or the government-corporate king, the two combined, [are] leading us into fascism.? As part of the settlement, Spence secured an apology from the FBI and will be able to continue a case challenging the Patriot Act. He said, however, that the mainstream media is shunning his warnings and that even a Congressional committee dis-invited him from testifying about the Patriot Act once majority members learned what he would say. Spence said the Mayfield story begins when the FBI received a copy of the print through Interpol, the international police agency, and used a computer to compare it to those it had on file. Among the prints in its database were Mayfield?s, on file since his service in the military. ?Out popped 20 potential matches that now need to be viewed individually by the expert,? Spence said of the computer?s work. Mayfield?s was the fourth-best match, but he shot to the top of the list, Spence said. ?What we have here is a Muslim card that was played,? Spence said. He characterized Mayfield as ?a Kansas farm boy who married an Egyptian woman.? Mayfield converted to Islam. ?In their papers for the arrest of Mayfield, they allege he had represented a known Muslim terrorist,? Spence said. ?In fact, his representation was only on a child custody matter. They arrested him primarily because he was a Muslim.? Before the arrest, however, the FBI investigated the lawyer secretly. ?They got a secret warrant and secretly came to Mayfield?s house and broke in like common burglars,? Spence said. Those famous FBI shoes were the giveaway. ?In this case they didn?t realize in the Mayfield family ? they take their shoes off before they go into the house,? Spence said. ?There were shoe prints in the carpet. Locks were locked that weren?t usually. ?They knew they were invaded but they didn?t know by whom,? Spence said of the Mayfield family, which includes three children. ?Under the Patriot Act they have the power to install secret microphones and to bug the telephones and to put microphones under the kitchen table and under the bed,? Spence said. ?One is never given the opportunity to determine what they have done, what they have taken and where they have disseminated this information. ?They went into his papers, copied his computers, took his DNA,? Spence said. On one occasion, Mayfield?s son was terrified when he saw a stranger trying to break into his home, Spence said. The FBI also suspected Mayfield because he went to a mosque and advertised in a Muslim Yellow Pages directory. Ford and GM use the same advertising venue, Spence said. ?And they claimed he must have had false papers because they couldn?t find any evidence he had left the U.S.? to take part in the bombings, Spence said. ?If you have stayed at home and minded your own business, you?re also a criminal because you have fooled the FBI.? FBI denies role of religion The FBI has rejected allegations religion played a role in the investigation. In a statement issued earlier this year, the agency noted that it had cooperated with the Justice Department?s Office of the Inspector General in a probe into the botched investigation. ?The OIG report concluded that religion played no improper role in the identification or investigation of Mr. Mayfield,? the FBI said. But once the investigation was under way, religion did weigh in, according to the probe. ?FBI fingerprint experts probably were more resistant to re-examining their conclusion that Brandon Mayfield?s fingerprint matched one on a bag containing detonators like those used in the attacks in Spain because of his religion, Inspector General Glenn Fine said in the executive summary of a 273-page report that otherwise remains classified,? the Associated Press reported earlier this year. Spence said that when it came time to arrest the lawyer, the media got a tip. ?The press was at hand when the FBI came in to arrest him, including a reporter from a national magazine,? Spence said. ?Which means that they had notice of the arrest and of the case and what the government was going to do some time prior to the arrest. And it was leaked by the government to the press so the press could be on hand, which may be in violation of federal criminal laws that deal with privacy.? Spence said the settlement precludes him from pursuing that potential violation. Being jailed hurt Mayfield, he said. ?He did suffer some injury ? some physical injury being handcuffed and shoved in cells,? Spence said. ?It was an experience that would be a nightmare for you and me as it was for him.? Mayfield spent approximately 11 days in jail. Spence said it also was upsetting that the investigation violated attorney-client privilege. ?They looked at his client?s papers,? Spence said. ?This is a horrible thing. ?If we give the attorney information, it is secret,? he said. ?It can?t be obtained by the court or anybody else. It?s as sacred as the parishioner-priest privilege.? Spence said arrogance of the FBI was key to its shortcomings. ?The thing that makes this thing so bad, so very bad, is that the FBI was instructed by the Spanish police that they had made a mistake ? even before they arrested Mayfield ? and that this was not Mayfield?s fingerprint,? he said. ?When you talk to the infallible FBI and tell them they?ve made a mistake ? that?s heresy.? Spence said the FBI flew a crew to Spain to convince investigators there that they were wrong, the FBI was right. The Europeans would not budge. The FBI characterized the excursion differently, saying in a statement that it sent two fingerprint examiners to Madrid to compare an image of the fingerprint to the original in possession of Spanish authorities. The incident is troubling because the charge Mayfield potentially faced carried the death penalty, Spence said. ?Consider what would have happened if the Spanish National Police had not remained solid in their position,? Spence said. ?You then go into court with the average jury who has been told by the FBI it doesn?t make mistakes and that fingerprints are an absolute science.? He criticized the FBI culture, and prosecutors in general. ?You have people in the organization, like in any government prosecutor?s office, who want to be able to put the big trophy on the wall and to be able to say, ?I solved the train in Spain case,?? Spence said. The FBI contested that its agents were power hungry. ?The OIG also found no evidence of misconduct on the part of any FBI employees involved in this investigation,? the agency said in a statement. The FBI?s most recent apology, published on Washingtonpost.com, said the agency was sorry ?for the suffering caused by the FBI?s misidentification of Mr. Mayfield?s fingerprint and the resulting investigation of Mr. Mayfield, including his arrest as a material witness in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings and the execution of search warrants and other court orders in the Mayfield home and in Mr. Mayfield?s law office. ?The United States acknowledges that the investigation and arrest were deeply upsetting to Mr. Mayfield, to Mrs. Mayfield, and to their three young children, and the United States regrets that it mistakenly linked Mr. Mayfield to this terrorist attack,? the statement said. ?The FBI has implemented a number of measures in an effort to ensure that what happened to Mr. Mayfield and the Mayfield family does not happen again.? Abusing authority Spence said the issue goes beyond a botched investigation or the misidentification of fingerprints. He said those in power are abusing events to gain more authority. ?Fear is a powerful motivation,? Spence said. ?Nobody has been better of making us afraid, of terrorizing us, than the power structure. By terrorizing us they can pass such acts as the Patriot Act.? The FBI said the act was not misused. ?The OIG report concludes that there was no evidence of misuse of the Patriot Act,? the FBI said in a statement. ?The report finds, ?contrary to public speculation,? the FBI did not use certain provisions of the Patriot Act and that the Act did not affect the scope of the FBI?s use of FISA surveillance or searches. Instead, the OIG report found that the effect of the Patriot Act on this investigation was to enable the FBI to share lawful information with other members of the law enforcement and intelligence communities.? Spence said the act is undemocratic and that he was stifled when asked to testify to Congress about it. ?The sad part of it is the American citizen doesn?t know, has no idea, what this Patriot Act permits the government to do,? Spence said. ?And so when the Patriot Act came up for renewal, a minority in Congress, then the Democrats, [U.S. Rep. John] Conyers asked me to come testify about the Mayfield case so the public could have some idea of what?s going on. ?He says, ?You have to write up a statement ? would you submit it and then we?ll have you testify??? Spence said about Conyers? request. ?So I sent the statement in. ?The day before I was to appear I got a call from the lawyer representing the minority,? Spence said. ??I?m sorry, Mr. Spence, but the Republican majority has read what you are going to testify to,? the lawyer told him. The message from Republicans was: ?If you testify, all communication between us [Republicans and Democrats] is forever lost ? we will never cooperate with you,? Spence said. ?When I got that response I prepared a press release and sent it out to every major news force in the country,? Spence said. ?There was not one that picked that news story up.? Spence said the loss of rights in this country inspired him to write his latest book, Bloodthirsty Bitches and Pious Pimps of Power. He said he can?t get on a talk show to promote it. ?And so we have a very precarious condition which can lead us into what I call the Fourth Reich,? Spence said. Mussolini predicted the Fourth Reich would occur when ?government and corporations became indistinguishable.? ?That?s what we really have today,? he said. ?Because we are afraid, we are angry. The average person feels helpless ? ?What can I do??? ?Freedom,? Spence said, ?requires a little bit of danger. You have to agree to a little bit of danger to be free.? First published Jackson Hole News 12/06/06 ? 2000-2007 Copyright Jackson Hole News ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From ths at psalience.org Wed Dec 21 13:19:44 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:19:44 +0100 Subject: [THS] Stephen Lendman: Banker Occupation and Europain Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111221131551.076d1de8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30007.htm Banker Occupation and Europain By Stephen Lendman December 16, 2011 "Information Clearing House" - - Bankers rule the world. A new Swiss Federal Institute of Technology study says so. Written by Stefania Vitali, James Glattfelder and Stefano Battiston, it's titled "The network of global corporate control," saying: "We find that transnational corporations from a giant bow-tie structure and that a large portion of control flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions. This core can be seen as an economic 'super-entity' that raises new important issues both for researches and policy makers." The study says 147 powerful companies control an inordinate amount of economic activity - about 40%. Among the top 50, 45 are financial firms. They include Barclays PLC (called most influential), JPMorgan Chase, UBS, and other familiar and less known names. Twenty-four companies are US-based, followed by eight in Britain, five in France, four in Japan, and Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands with two each. Canada has one. Moreover, "top ranked" companies "hold a control ten times bigger than what could be expected based on their wealth." As a result, they have enormous influence over political, financial, and economic activity. In his book titled, "When Corporations Rule the World," David Korten said they're able to transfer enormous amounts of power, wealth and resources from public to private hands with government complicity. Money power and concentrated wealth in few hands especially harm humanity. "These forces have transformed" financial institutions and other corporate predators "into instruments of a market tyranny that is extending its reach across the planet like a cancer, colonizing ever more of the planet's living spaces, destroying livelihoods, displacing people, rendering democratic institutions impotent, and feeding on life in an insatiable quest for money" and profits as a be and end all. Only bottom line priorities and market dominance matter, not human welfare, environmental sanity, peace, equity and justice. Transnational giants are the dominant institution of our time - especially financial ones with money power control of everything. They decide who governs and how, who serves on courts, what laws are enacted, and whether or not wars are waged. Corporate dominance, especially financial power, and democratic values are incompatible. They operate ruthlessly as private tyrannies. They're predators. We're prey, and every day we're eaten alive. They do it because they can, and in America by mandate. Publicly owned US corporations, including financial ones, must serve shareholders by maximizing equity value through higher profits. They do it by exploiting nations, people and resources ruthlessly. Social responsibility doesn't matter. Neither does being worker-friendly, a good citizen, or friend of the earth. Bottom line priorities alone matter. Failure to pursue fiduciary responsibilities means possible dismissal or shareholder lawsuits. Yet nothing in America's Constitution or statute laws endow corporations with their rights. They usurped them by co-opting Washington, the nation's courts, state capitals, and city halls. As a result, over half the world's largest economies are corporations. Financial ones controlling the power of money are most dominant. Corporate personhood enhanced their power, yet imagine. Although corporations aren't human, they can live forever, change their identity, reside in many places globally, can't be imprisoned for wrongdoing, and can transform themselves into new entities for any reason. They have the same rights and protections as people without the responsibilities. As a result, they operate freely unrestrained, especially financial giants controlling the power of money at the public's expense. Beginning in the late 1960s, financialization grew more dominant. Economic control began shifting from industry to finance. Corporations are now seen as bundles of assets, the more liquid the better. A new monopoly finance capitalism developed to exploit it. FIRE sector (finance, insurance, and real estate) predators capitalized. Casino capitalism gained prominence. Today it thrives. Major players took advantage, profiting hugely from speculation, chicanery and fraud. A burgeoning financial superstructure gained a life of its own. Today it's omnipotent, especially in America and Europe. Their business model involves grabbing everything that smells money, no matter what harm is caused. Money doesn't buy everything, but it buys enough influence to matter. The smartest guys in the room take advantage, buying politicians like toothpaste. Democracy's just a figure of speech. Only wealth and power matter. Enough of them turned financial giants into monsters. Whatever they want, they get, including the right to operate freely outside the law, manipulate markets, bilk investors, strip-mine nations and people for profit, and get bailed out at public expense if overreach. Under Obama and European leaders, the worst of bad practices flourish. Foxes guard the henhouse. Inmates run the asylum. Regulators don't regulate. Investigations aren't conducted. High-level criminal fraud gets wink and nod approval. Nothing is done to curb it. Nor do public considerations matter nor is sustained low inflation long-term growth pursued as long as bankers get paid. Today, it's issue one in America and troubled Eurozone countries. Wall Street dominance matters most in America. In Europe, "Troika" power is omnipotent - the IMF, EU and European Central Bank (ECB). Nations trapped under euro straightjacket rules can't devalue their currencies to be more competitive, monetize debt freely, or legislate fiscal policies to stimulate growth. Instead, they're entrapped by banker diktats demanding tribute. In other words, financial coup d'etat authority runs sovereign governments. They occupy them rapaciously, making rules, setting terms, issuing demands, and pressuring, bribing or otherwise forcing political leaders to acquiesce. If not, they're replaced. Working households bear the burden through layoffs, wage and benefit cuts, higher taxes, and other austerity measures to assure bankers are paid. According to Michael Hudson, the system: "shift(s) planning power into the hands of high finance on the claim that this is more efficient than public regulation. Government planning and taxation is accused of being 'the road to serfdom,' as if 'free markets' controlled by bankers given leeway to act recklessly is not planned by special interests in ways that are oligarchic, not democratic." "Governments are told to pay bailout debts taken on not to defend countries in military warfare as in times past, but to benefit the wealthiest layer of the population by shifting its losses onto taxpayers." As a result, social inequality proliferates. A new Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report discusses the damage over the last three decades among its 34 member states. They include America, Japan, Western Europe, and others. Titled "Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising," it discusses conditions from the early 1980s until the 2008 global economic crisis. Its impact alone left 200 million workers unemployed compounded by more imposed austerity. Among OECD countries, the top 10% is nine times better off than the bottom 10%. America, Israel and Turkey are the most unequal industrialized nations at 14 to 1. In Britain, Japan, Italy, and South Korea, the gap is 10 to 1. Rising inequality also affected "traditionally egalitarian countries" like Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. They went from 5 to 1 in the 1980s to 6 to 1 today. Mexico and Chile are worst off with gaps of 25 to one. In America, the top 1% controls 20% of all income plus a far greater percent of total assets. Concentrated wealth extremes also affect European countries, following America's pattern. The report says income inequality "first started to increase in the late 1970s and early 1980s in some English-speaking countries, notably the United Kingdom and the United States, but also in Israel." Since the late 1980s, it's grown more widespread. At the same time, labor rights were sacrificed to benefit corporate bottom line priorities. In addition, finance capital grew omnipotent. As a result, money power rules everything. Imposed austerity greatly impacted working households in troubled Eurozone countries and others facing economic hard times. Greece has been especially hammered by repeated layoffs, wage and benefit cuts, as well as higher taxes. In early December, unelected Prime Minister Lucas Papademos (a former Bank of Greece governor and ECB vice president) force-fed through parliament more austerity cuts. Receiving an eight billion euro loan was conditional on doing so. As a result, imposed measures include another five billion euros in spending cuts, 3.6 billion in new taxes, pensions cut 15%, and wages slashed more than already. In addition, more ahead is planned. Papademos said "(t)he financial crisis in our country is not a passing storm....It will take many years" of greater worker sacrifices to assure bankers are paid. In fact, the more wage, benefit, pension, and other cuts ordinary people bear, the weaker Greece's economy becomes from lost purchasing power with a working population heading toward serfdom in a nation no longer fit to live in. Millions of Greeks are now impoverished. Unemployment approaches 20%. For youths between 15 and 24, it's nearly 50%. Years more imposed pain is planned to assure bankers are paid. As a result, expect Greece sooner or later to explode. In addition, the more debt Greece assumes, the less it's able to service it, and faster it heads toward debt peonage. According to Michael Hudson, moreover, "(a) basic mathematical as well as political principle" explains that "(d)ebts that can't be paid, won't be." In early December, unelected Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti (former EU official installed by Goldman Sachs, known to some as "three-card Monte") introduced his own austerity package. To service Italy's $1.6 trillion debt, it includes attacking its social security pension system. In retirement, families depend on it. Nonetheless, retirement age eligibility will be raised to 66 from 58 by 2018, inflation-adjusted increases will end, and to qualify fully, workers must contribute from wages for 42 years. In addition, value-added taxes will increase by 2%, and firing workers will be easier than ever. As in Greece, more cuts are planned, targeting workers to benefit bankers, other corporate favorites, and Italy's super-rich. Portugal's new austerity cuts will see take-home pay down 27% since 2010. Its 2012 budget reduces spending by 4.4% of GDP by cutting healthcare and other benefits. It also raises value added and other taxes, extends working days by 30 minutes with no added pay, and eliminates bonuses equal to two months earnings. These measures follow earlier ones. They included cutting public sector wages 10%, eliminating four holidays, slashing overtime pay 50%, reducing pay for shift work, imposing "time banks" for greater employer flexibility over when employees must work, making firings simpler and cheaper, imposing shorter fixed-term contracts, ending rest breaks, and lowering unemployment benefits. A Final Comment Financial tyranny runs America and Europe. As a result, public anger grows. Can revolutionary sparks be far behind? Expect pain levels eventually to cross thresholds of no return. Anything after that is possible, good or bad. Hopefully a better world will emerge, free from banker occupation. It?s our only chance! Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen at sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/. From ths at psalience.org Wed Dec 21 13:24:29 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:24:29 +0100 Subject: [THS] 50 Economic Numbers From 2011 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111221132417.077b15b0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30013.htm 50 Economic Numbers From 2011 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe By Economic Collapse December 16, 2011 "Economic Collapse" -- Even though most Americans have become very frustrated with this economy, the reality is that the vast majority of them still have no idea just how bad our economic decline has been or how much trouble we are going to be in if we don't make dramatic changes immediately. If we do not educate the American people about how deathly ill the U.S. economy has become, then they will just keep falling for the same old lies that our politicians keep telling them. Just "tweaking" things here and there is not going to fix this economy. We truly do need a fundamental change in direction. America is consuming far more wealth than it is producing and our debt is absolutely exploding. If we stay on this current path, an economic collapse is inevitable. Hopefully the crazy economic numbers from 2011 that I have included in this article will be shocking enough to wake some people up. At this time of the year, a lot of families get together, and in most homes the conversation usually gets around to politics at some point. Hopefully many of you will use the list below as a tool to help you share the reality of the U.S. economic crisis with your family and friends. If we all work together, hopefully we can get millions of people to wake up and realize that "business as usual" will result in a national economic apocalypse. The following are 50 economic numbers from 2011 that are almost too crazy to believe.... #1 A staggering 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be "low income" or are living in poverty. #2 Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be "low income" or impoverished. #3 If the number of Americans that "wanted jobs" was the same today as it was back in 2007, the "official" unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent. #4 The average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed in the United States is now over 40 weeks. #5 One recent survey found that 77 percent of all U.S. small businesses do not plan to hire any more workers. #6 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then. #7 Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation. #8 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006. Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million. #9 A Gallup poll from earlier this year found that approximately one out of every five Americans that do have a job consider themselves to be underemployed. #10 According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages. #11 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs. #12 Back in 1969, 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job. In July, only 81.2 percent of men in that age group had a job. #13 One recent survey found that one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job. #14 The Federal Reserve recently announced that the total net worth of U.S. households declined by 4.1 percent in the 3rd quarter of 2011 alone. #15 According to a recent study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent. #16 As the economy has slowed down, so has the number of marriages. According to a Pew Research Center analysis, only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married. #17 The U.S. Postal Service has lost more than 5 billion dollars over the past year. #18 In Stockton, California home prices have declined 64 percent from where they were at when the housing market peaked. #19 Nevada has had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation for 59 months in a row. #20 If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000. #21 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida are sitting vacant. That figure is 63 percent larger than it was just ten years ago. #22 New home construction in the United States is on pace to set a brand new all-time record low in 2011. #23 As I have written about previously, 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 are now living with their parents. #24 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row. #25 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3%. #26 One study found that approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt. #27 If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards. #28 The United States spends about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States. #29 It is being projected that the U.S. trade deficit for 2011 will be 558.2 billion dollars. #30 The retirement crisis in the United States just continues to get worse. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement. #31 Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line. #32 According to a study that was just released, CEO pay at America's biggest companies rose by 36.5% in just one recent 12 month period. #33 Today, the "too big to fail" banks are larger than ever. The total assets of the six largest U.S. banks increased by 39 percent between September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2011. #34 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined. #35 According to an analysis of Census Bureau data done by the Pew Research Center, the median net worth for households led by someone 65 years of age or older is 47 times greater than the median net worth for households led by someone under the age of 35. #36 If you can believe it, 37 percent of all U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 35 have a net worth of zero or less than zero. #37 A higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty (6.7%) than has ever been measured before. #38 Child homelessness in the United States is now 33 percent higher than it was back in 2007. #39 Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent. #40 Sadly, child poverty is absolutely exploding all over America. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4% of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1% of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6% of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6% of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty. #41 Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps. #42 In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for more than 18 percent of all income. #43 A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent. #44 Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent. #45 For fiscal year 2011, the U.S. federal government had a budget deficit of nearly 1.3 trillion dollars. That was the third year in a row that our budget deficit has topped one trillion dollars. #46 If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days. #47 Amazingly, the U.S. government has now accumulated a total debt of 15 trillion dollars. When Barack Obama first took office the national debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars. #48 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt. #49 The U.S. national debt has been increasing by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day since the beginning of the Obama administration. #50 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office. Of course the heart of our economic problems is the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is a perpetual debt machine, it has almost completely destroyed the value of the U.S. dollar and it has an absolutely nightmarish track record of incompetence. If the Federal Reserve system had never been created, the U.S. economy would be in far better shape. The federal government needs to shut down the Federal Reserve and start issuing currency that is not debt-based. That would be a very significant step toward restoring prosperity to America. During 2011 we made a lot of progress in educating the American people about our economic problems, but we still have a long way to go. Hopefully next year more Americans than ever will wake up, because 2012 is going to represent a huge turning point for this country. From ths at psalience.org Wed Dec 21 13:27:08 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:27:08 +0100 Subject: [THS] Russian expert: Iran will be apparently attacked from Georgia's territory Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111221132649.078dcda8@mail.messagingengine.com> Russian expert: Iran will be apparently attacked from Georgia's territory: The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is a sign of future war against Iran, "Should the U.S. forces remain in Iraq, it would inevitably lead to unpredictable consequences, with Iran striking heavy blows on the U.S. bases," Maxim Shevchenko told vesti.az. http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/news/86722/ U.S. to leave Iraqi airspace clear for strategic Israeli route to Iran: The U.S. military's fast-approaching Dec. 31 exit from Iraq, which has no way to defend its airspace, puts Israel in a better place strategically to strike Iran's nuclear facilities. http://bit.ly/tWbGr9 Yes, Obama May Call Iran Strike: Dennis Ross, just retired as President Barack Obama's top adviser on the Middle East, warned yesterday that Obama means what he says when he declares that the White House isn't ruling out military action against Tehran http://the-diplomat.com/2011/12/15/yes-obama-may-call-iran-strike/ 'Iran will hunt any intruding US drone': Senior Iranian military official has lashed out at the United States over the recent US spy drone incident, stressing that Iran will hunt out any American recon aircraft that violates Iranian airspace. http://www.presstv.ir/detail/216000.html Iran to exhibit US and Israeli spy drones: Iran says it will put on display a series of foreign spy drones that it claims to have obtained, including four Israeli and three US unmanned aircraft, according to a state-run newspaper. http://bit.ly/tBOSiq US Fear And Loathing Over Spy Drone: In what seems to be nothing but US-style barefaced arrogance, President Barack Obama has demanded the return of a spy drone which violated the airspace of the Islamic Republic but which was to the humiliation of the US officials downed by the Iranian army. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30006.htm U.S. drones allowed in Iraqi skies: American troops are almost gone from Iraq, but that doesn't mean the U.S. military will cease its operations there entirely. http://wapo.st/vM1bIc Hundreds rally in Baghdad against Anti-Iranian exiles: Friday's demonstrators in Baghdad demanded the Iranians be evicted because their group - the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, which seeks to overthrow Tehran's clerical rulers - is considered by some to be a terrorist organization. http://yhoo.it/ujf2m8 From ths at psalience.org Wed Dec 21 13:27:57 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:27:57 +0100 Subject: [THS] Iraq Disaster Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111221132739.075d6150@mail.messagingengine.com> Craig Murray: Iraq Disaster: On the eve of the attack there were still over twice as many functioning healthcare clinics and hospitals as there are today, and nearly five times as many doctors working in them. http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2011/12/iraq-disaster/ From ths at psalience.org Wed Dec 21 18:55:27 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:55:27 +0100 Subject: [THS] Poissons sauce PCB Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111221185145.045d12d8@mail.messagingengine.com> Poissons sauce PCB Pour rester en bonne sant?, sachez vite reconna?tre un poisson d'eau douce sur l'?tal de votre poissonnier. Apr?s une enqu?te sur l'impr?gnation en PCB des consommateurs de poissons de rivi?re, l'Agence nationale de S?curit? sanitaire et l'Institut de Veille sanitaire renforcent en effet leurs mises en garde. Il est m?me fortement conseill? de limiter au maximum la consommation de poissons d'eau douce. Surtout les gras dits ? bio-accumulateurs ? de PCB. Mieux vaut donc s'en tenir ? un seul poisson de rivi?re, une fois tous les deux mois, pour ? les femmes en ?ge de procr?er, enceintes ou allaitantes, les fillettes et les adolescentes ?. Pour les autres, le quota est fix? ? deux ou trois par mois. Esp?ces vis?es : le brochet, l'anguille, la perche ou la truite. Nouvel Observateur Dec 15 2011 From ths at psalience.org Wed Dec 21 19:00:50 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 19:00:50 +0100 Subject: [THS] Mexique : Plus De 40 000 Morts En Cinq Ans... Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111221185741.045d1048@mail.messagingengine.com> Nouvel Observateur Dec 15 2011 Mexique : Plus De 40 000 Morts En Cinq Ans... Comment les "narcos" ont gagn? Lanc?e par le pr?sident Felipe Calderon au lendemain de son ?lection en 2006, la guerre contre la drogue est un d?sastre. Les cartels font toujours la loi. Ils se jouent d'une police, d'une justice et d'une classe politique impuissantes... ou complices DE NOTRE ENVOY? SP?CIAL Sc?ne 1: un QG de la police f?d?rale ? Mexico. Francisco Zea, un journaliste de radio connu, s'?merveille devant un tableau o? clignotent des petites lumi?res. Un officiel lui explique: ?Les lumi?res bleues, ce sont les vols domestiques; les rouges, les vols internationaux. -Et les ros?s ?- ?a, cesont les drones am?ricains.? Sc?ne 2: Los Arcos, un restaurant de fruits de mer de la ville de Guadalajara, il y a quelques mois. Jos? finit de d?jeuner et demande la cuenta (? l'addition ?). ? Pas la peine, senor, tout le monde est invit??, r?pond le serveur, en d?signant un groupe d'une quarantaine de personnes solidement arm?es. Le chef de la bande, qui r?gale la client?le et d?jeune longuement dans ce resto fameux d'une grande ville, n'est autre qu'? el Mayo ?, num?ro deux du cartel de Sinaloa - l'un des narcotrafiquants les plus recherch?s de tout le pays... Une police main dans la main avec les Am?ricains, une autre mouill?e jusqu'au cou avec les cartels : cinq ans apr?s le d?but de sa guerre contre la drogue, le Mexique n'en est plus ? une contradiction pr?s. Le 11 d?cembre 2006, dix jours apr?s avoir pr?t? serment, le pr?sident Felipe Calderon d?clarait officiellement la guerre aux ? narcos ? en envoyant 6 500 soldats dans son Etat natal du Michoac?n. Un mois plus tard, le chef de l'un des sept principaux cartels ?tait captur?. D?cembre 2011 : le Mexique ne pr?te plus attention au nombre de capos tu?s ou captur?s (15 chefs de cartels sur 24) mais comptabilise, effar?, les victimes de cette guerre: plus de 40000, dont pr?s d'un dixi?me sont des militaires, policiers ou officiels, et plusieurs milliers, des civils qui se sont trouv?s au mauvais endroit, au mauvais moment. En un mot, un d?sastre. ? Calderon est un homme d?cent, qui a compris que la viabilit? m?me de l'Etat mexicain ?tait enjeu. Malheureusement, il s'est lanc? dans l'aventure sans d?finir d'objectif clair?, souligne Luis Rubio, du think tank Cidac. Eradiquer les cartels? Ce fut le premier but annonc?, vite abandonn?. Les d?capiter? ?Le gouvernement a imagin? que c'?tait la solution : vous arr?tez le chef, et l'organisation s'?croule. En r?alit?, si vous d?capitez le cartel, les luttes internes redoublent. L'organisation survit et la violence s'accro?t pour contr?ler les routes de la drogue ?, explique l'ex-journaliste de t?l?vision Leonardo Kourchenko. Envoyer l'arm?e pour quelques mois? A condition de mettre sur pied une force de police locale cr?dible, ce qui n'a jamais ?t? fait. Les militaires En 2006, d?s son arriv?e au pouvoir, le pr?sident Felipe Calderon lance une offensive contre les cartels de la drogue, avec l'appui de 50000 soldats. Depuis, pr?s de 45000 personnes ont ?t? tu?es, 15000 pour l'ann?e 2010, selon des chiffres officiels et le recensement de la presse. Environ 230000 personnes sont d?tenues dans les prisons mexicaines, selon le gouvernement. ont d'abord ?t? bien accueillis, puis la population s'est vite m?fi?e de ces ? ?trangers ? (beaucoup viennent des Etats du sud du pays) et des violations des droits de l'homme de plus en plus fr?quentes, au point que Calderon a d? reconna?tre que la question des victimes civiles ?tait bien plus grave qu'un simple probl?me de d?g?ts collat?raux. Pour certains, le Mexique est d?j? un pays en faillite. Ian Grillo, un journaliste britannique qui suit les narcos depuis dix ans, pr?f?re parler d'?insurrection criminelle? d?passant les limites habituelles du crime organis? : en un seul massacre, rappelle-t-il, 72 personnes ont ?t? assassin?es. ?Le Mexique n'est pas un Etat en d?route, mais sa classe politique est en faillite?, estime le professeur Edgardo Buscaglia, l'un des experts mondiaux les plus ?cout?s sur le crime organis?. A l'en croire, la trag?die mexicaine n'a rien d'insoluble. ?Les hommes politiques mexicains savent ce qu'il faut faire pour contenir le crime organis?: 1) r?former le syst?me judiciaire et pas seulement les juges; 2)b?tir une justice civile qui permette, entre autres, de confisquer les biens des narcos; 3) s'attaquer ? la corruption politique; 4) mettre en place une v?ritable politique de pr?vention sociale, par exemple en d?finissant clairement ce qui pousse les gamins ? rejoindre les gangs, pour les dissuader de le faire. ? Le probl?me, poursuit-il, est que les politiciens ?sont incapables de prendre ces d?cisions. C'est tout le probl?me de Calder?n : il lui fallait un soutien massif pour prendre des mesures difficiles, mais il a ?t? ?lu sur le fil du rasoir. R?sultat, l'Etat est infiltr? par le crime organis?, qui capture l'?ducation, la sant?, le syst?mejudiciaire?. Impossible de faire un pas ? Mexico sans que l'on vous cite l'exemple colombien et la lutte victorieuse de l'ex-pr?sident Uribe contre les narcos. Parfois en soulignant les diff?rences. ?La Colombie n'est pas un Etat f?d?ral, elle a pu d?ployer une police nationale?, rappelle Jose-fina V?zquez Mota, candidate du parti de Calder?n ? la pr?sidence. ?Mais, ajoute-t-elle aussit?t, Uribe a prouv? que la loi pouvait s'appliquer ? tous: 80d?put?s ont ?t? poursuivis en justice. Et il a d?plac? son gouvernement dans les campagnes, il a tenu des r?unions de cabinet dans les r?gions contr?l?es par les narcos. ? ?LeMexique est incapable d?passer une loi digne de ce nom sur le lavage de l'argent sale, alors que les volumes de cash qui circulent sont vingt-cinq fois sup?rieurs ? la normale, se lamente Francisco Zea, le commentateur radio. Ce ne sont pas seulement quelques banques qui en profitent, mais des milliers d'entreprises. ? La Colombie, encore: ?L?-bas, note Buscaglia, ils ont confisqu? 14 milliards de dollars en six ans. ? La Colombie, toujours, et son intransigeance qui a pay?: ?La meilleure fa?on de perdre la prochaine ?lection, pour un candidat ? la pr?sidentielle, c'estdedire: "Jevais n?gocier avec les narcos"?, dit Luis de la Calle, ancien ministre du gouvernement de Vicente Fox. Dans la campagne, l'immense probl?me des cartels est une sorte de troisi?me rail que l'on se garde bien de toucher, sauf ? risquer l'?lectrocution. Pourquoi? ?Parce que personne n'a d'alternative magique?, reconna?t Luis Rubio. ? Le Mexique est un pays qui a beaucoup chang?, qui afait de grands progr?s, mais les mafias ont d?voy? sa faiblesse institutionnelle. Elles l'ont rendue apparente?, explique Luis de la Calle. Au moment m?me o? les narcos mexicains s'?mancipaient de leurs anciens patrons colombiens, ? lepays s'est lanc? dans la d?mocratie sans les institutions ad?quates, rench?rit Luis Rubio. L'?croulement du PRI [le Parti r?volutionnaire institutionnel, au pouvoir pendant soixante et onze ans, jusqu'en 2000] a laiss? la place ? une pr?sidence tr?s faible. Ily a vingt ans, le gouvernement ?tait tr?s centralis? et puissant; aujourd'hui, il est an?mique et d?centralis?. Mais on ne reviendra pas ? l'ancien Mexique?, avec sa corruption institutionnalis?e, sa soci?t? civile passive et son ?conomie d?labr?e. Pendant longtemps, les Etats-Unis ont servi d'excuse aux politiciens mexicains pour expliquer leurs ?checs. C'?tait largement justifi? : les acheteurs de drogue sont am?ricains, de m?me que les armes semi-automatiques qui passent la fronti?re. Et les Etats-Unis se sont longtemps accommod?s d'une guerre des cartels faisant 3 000 morts en un an dans une ville comme Ciudad Ju?rez tandis qu'El Paso, juste de l'autre c?t? de la fronti?re, n'enregistrait que S meurtres la m?me ann?e. Mais ce n'est plus vrai : l'escalade de la violence est telle qu'elle inqui?te aujourd'hui Washington. C?t? mexicain, l'heure est donc ? l'introspection. Jorge Castaneda, ancien ministre des Affaires ?trang?res de Vicente Fox, vient de publier un ouvrage sur les tares du ? caract?re national ? mexicain. On se demande, de plus en plus impatiemment, pourquoi l'?conomie ne cro?t qu'au tiers de son potentiel. On s'interroge sur l'inefficacit? de la justice, de la police et sur l'ineptie de la classe politique, que l'argent et la violence des narcos ne suffisent pas ? expliquer. On admire la rapidit? avec laquelle les Etats-Unis r?agissent quand les cartels s'en prennent ? eux. ?Lorsque l'un de leurs agents f?d?raux a ?t? assassin? dans l'Etat deZacatecas, les Am?ricains ont arr?t? 646personnes travaillant pour les Zetas [le cartel responsable de l'assassinat] dans les vingt-quatre heures?, affirme Luis Rubio. Le chiffre est peut-?tre exag?r?, mais les assassins de l'agent f?d?ral ont tous ?t? arr?t?s, de m?me que le num?ro trois des Zetas. En profondeur, le Mexique change. La soci?t? civile, en particulier, se mobilise chaque jour davantage contre la violence des cartels et les d?rapages de l'arm?e. La Colombie, encore et toujours: c'est dans ses heures les plus noires, au moment o? l'on avait l'impression que toute la population colombienne voulait ?migrer pour ?chapper ? l'enfer des cartels, que le pays a commenc? ? s'extraire du cauchemar. Luis de la Calle, l'ancien ministre, r?sume cet espoir d'une formule provocatrice: ?Les narcos vont peut-?tre obliger le Mexique ? devenir un pays moderne. ? PHILIPPE BOULET-GERCOURT From ths at psalience.org Thu Dec 22 17:29:45 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 17:29:45 +0100 Subject: [THS] Glenn Greenwald : Christopher Hitchens and the protocol for public figure deaths Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111222172921.06a8a4f8@mail.messagingengine.com> Christopher Hitchens and the protocol for public figure deaths BY Glenn Greenwald Christopher Hitchens (Credit: Associated Press) (updated below) One of the most intensely propagandistic weeks in the last several decades began on June 5, 2004, the day Ronald Reagan died at the age of 93 in Bel Air, California. For the next six days, his body was transported to, and his casket displayed in, multiple venues around the nation ? first to a funeral home in Santa Monica; then to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, where it remained for two full days as over 100,000 people paid their respects; then onto the U.S. Capitol, where his casket was taken by horse-drawn caisson along Constitution Avenue, and then lay in state under the dome for the next day-and-a-half; then to a state funeral at Washington?s National Cathedral presided over by President Bush and attended by dozens of past and present world leaders; and then back to the Presidential Library in California, where another service was held and his body finally interred. Few U.S. Presidents in history, if any, have received anything comparable upon their death; as CNN anchor Judy Woodruff observed the day Reagan?s body arrived in the capital: ?Washington has not seen the likes of this for more than 30 years.? Each one of those mournful events was nationally televised and drenched in somber, intense pageantry. At the center of it all was the prominently displayed grief of his second wife, Nancy, to whom he was married for 52 years. The iconic moment of the week-long national funeral occurred on the last day, at the internment, when she broke down for the first time and famously hugged and kissed her husband?s casket, while holding a folded American flag, seemingly unwilling to let him go immediately before his body was lowered into the ground. But the most notable aspect of that intense public ritual was the full-scale canonization of this deeply controversial, divisive and consequential political figure. Americans ? including millions too young to remember his presidency ? were bombarded with a full week of media discussions which completely whitewashed Reagan?s actions in office: that which made him an important enough historical figure to render his death worthy of such worldwide attention in the first place. There was a virtual media prohibition on expressing a single critical utterance about what he did as President and any harm that he caused. That?s not because the elegies to Reagan were apolitical ? they were aggressively political ? but because nothing undercutting his deification was permitted. Typifying the unbroken,week-long media tone of reverence was this from Woodruff at the start of CNN?s broadcast on the day Reagan?s casket arrived in Washington: We are witnessing a moment in history, a moment when this city, which is hustle-bustle personified, a city where people fiercely protect their interests and lobby for the issues that matter most to them, all that is put aside, politics is put aside, while we pay respects and deep honor to this president, who literally changed a generation, if not more, of American students of politics. I have talked to so many young people over the last few days who came up to me and said, I started paying attention to politics because of Ronald Reagan. Just a little while ago, I was talking with Tom DeLay, the majority leader of the House. He, I got into politics. He said, I ran to be chairman of the my precinct. He said, I was a businessman. I was running an insects ? he called it a bug business. It was insect removal. And he said, Ronald Reagan inspired me to get into politics. I?d been sitting around griping, and he was the one. He gave me reason to get involved and to think that we could make a difference.? So he changed, he inspired, and we now have a chance today and through this whole week to take note of him. The key claim there was that ?politics is put aside.? That?s precisely what did not happen. The entire spectacle was political to its core. Following Woodruff?s proclamation were funeral speeches, all broadcast by CNN, by then-House Speaker Denny Hastert and Vice President Dick Cheney hailing the former President for gifting the nation with peace and prosperity, rejuvenating national greatness, and winning the Cold War. This scene repeated itself over and over during that week: extremely politicized tributes to the greatness of Ronald Reagan continuously broadcast to the nation without challenge and endorsed by its ?neutral? media ? all shielded from refutation or balance by the grief of a widow and social mores that bar one from speaking ill of the dead. That week forever changed how Ronald Reagan ? and his conservative ideology ? were perceived. As Gallup put it in 2004: Reagan had, at best, ?routinely average ratings . . . while he served in office between 1981 and 1989.? Indeed, ?the two presidents who followed Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, each had higher average ratings than Reagan, as did three earlier presidents ? Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, and Dwight Eisenhower.? Though he became more popular after leaving office (like most Presidents), it was that week-long bombardment of hagiography that sealed Reagan?s status as Great and Cherished Leader. As media and political figures lavished him with politicized praise, there was virtually no mention of the brutal, civilian-extinguishing covert wars he waged in Central America, his funding of terrorists in Nicaragua, the pervasive illegality of the Iran-contra scandal perpetrated by his top aides and possibly himself, the explosion of wealth and income inequality ushered in by ?Reagonmics? which persists today, his escalation of the racially disparate Drug War, his slashing of domestic programs for the poor accompanied by a deficit-causing build-up in the military budget, the racially-tinged (at least) attacks on welfare-queens-in-Cadillacs, the Savings & Loan crisis resulting from deregulation, his refusal even to acknowledge AIDS as tens of thousands of the Wrong People died, the training of Muslim radicals in Afghanistan and arming of the Iranian regime, the attempt to appoint the radical Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, or virtually anything else that would undermine the canonization. The country was drowned by a full, uninterrupted week of pure, leader-reverent propaganda. This happened because of an unhealthy conflation of appropriate post-death etiquette for private persons and the etiquette governing deaths of public figures. They are not and should not be the same. We are all taught that it is impolite to speak ill of the dead, particularly in the immediate aftermath of someone?s death. For a private person, in a private setting, that makes perfect sense. Most human beings are complex and shaped by conflicting drives, defined by both good and bad acts. That?s more or less what it means to be human. And ? when it comes to private individuals ? it?s entirely appropriate to emphasize the positives of someone?s life and avoid criticisms upon their death: it comforts their grieving loved ones and honors their memory. In that context, there?s just no reason, no benefit, to highlight their flaws. But that is completely inapplicable to the death of a public person, especially one who is political. When someone dies who is a public figure by virtue of their political acts ? like Ronald Reagan ? discussions of them upon death will be inherently politicized. How they are remembered is not strictly a matter of the sensitivities of their loved ones, but has substantial impact on the culture which discusses their lives. To allow significant political figures to be heralded with purely one-sided requiems ? enforced by misguided (even if well-intentioned) notions of private etiquette that bar discussions of their bad acts ? is not a matter of politeness; it?s deceitful and propagandistic. To exploit the sentiments of sympathy produced by death to enshrine a political figure as Great and Noble is to sanction, or at best minimize, their sins. Misapplying private death etiquette to public figures creates false history and glorifies the ignoble. * * * * * All of this was triggered for me by the death this week of Christopher Hitchens and the remarkably undiluted, intense praise lavished on him by media discussions. Part of this is explained by the fact that Hitchens ? like other long-time media figures, such as Tim Russert ? had personal interactions with huge numbers of media figures who are shaping how he is remembered in death. That?s understandable: it?s difficult for any human being to ignore personal feelings, and it?s even more difficult in the face of the tragic death of a vibrant person at a much younger age than is normal. But for the public at large, at least those who knew of him, Hitchens was an extremely controversial, polarizing figure. And particularly over the last decade, he expressed views ? not ancillary to his writings but central to them ? that were nothing short of repellent. Corey Robin wrote that ?on the announcement of his death, I think it?s fair to allow Christopher Hitchens to do the things he loved to do most: speak for himself,? and then assembled two representative passages from Hitchens? post-9/11 writings. In the first, Hitchens celebrated the ability of cluster bombs to penetrate through a Koran that a Muslim may be carrying in his coat pocket (?those steel pellets will go straight through somebody and out the other side and through somebody else. So they won?t be able to say, ?Ah, I was bearing a Koran over my heart and guess what, the missile stopped halfway through.? No way, ?cause it?ll go straight through that as well. They?ll be dead, in other words?), and in the second, Hitchens explained that his reaction to the 9/11 attack was ?exhilaration? because it would unleash an exciting, sustained war against what he came addictively to call ?Islamofascism?: ?I realized that if the battle went on until the last day of my life, I would never get bored in prosecuting it to the utmost.? Hitchens, of course, never ?prosecuted? the ?exhilarating? war by actually fighting in it, but confined his ?prosecution? to cheering for it and persuading others to support it. As one of Hitchens? heroes, George Orwell, put it perfectly in Homage to Catalonia about the anti-fascist, tough-guy war writers of his time: As late as October 1937 the New Statesman was treating us to tales of Fascist barricades made of the bodies of living children (a most unhandy thing to make barricades with), and Mr Arthur Bryant was declaring that ?the sawing-off of a Conservative tradesman?s legs? was ?a commonplace? in Loyalist Spain. The people who write that kind of stuff never fight; possibly they believe that to write it is a substitute for fighting. It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda-tours. Sometimes it is a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is altering the conditions of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him. I rarely wrote about Hitchens because, at least for the time that I?ve been writing about politics (since late 2005), there was nothing particularly notable about him. When it came to the defining issues of the post-9/11 era, he was largely indistinguishable from the small army of neoconservative fanatics eager to unleash ever-greater violence against Muslims: driven by a toxic mix of barbarism, self-loving provincialism, a sense of personal inadequacy, and, most of all, a pity-inducing need to find glory and purpose in cheering on military adventures and vanquishing some foe of historically unprecedented evil even if it meant manufacturing them. As Robin put it: Hitchens had a reputation for being an internationalist. Yet someone who gets excited by mass murder?and then invokes that excitement, to a waiting audience, as an explanation of his support for mass murder?is not an internationalist. He is a narcissist, the most provincial spirit of all. Hitchens was obviously more urbane and well-written than the average neoconfaux-warrior, but he was also often more vindictive and barbaric about his war cheerleading. One of the only writers with the courage to provide the full picture of Hitchens upon his death was Gawker?s John Cook, who ? in an extremely well-written and poignant obituary ? detailed Hitchens? vehement, unapologetic passion for the attack on Iraq and his dismissive indifference to the mass human suffering it caused, accompanied by petty contempt for those who objected (he denounced the Dixie Chicks as being ?sluts? and ?fucking fat slags? for the crime of mildly disparaging the Commander-in-Chief). As Cook put it: ?it must not be forgotten in mourning him that he got the single most consequential decision in his life horrifically, petulantly wrong?; indeed: ?People make mistakes. What?s horrible about Hitchens? ardor for the invasion of Iraq is that he clung to it long after it became clear that a grotesque error had been made.? Subordinating his brave and intellectually rigorous defense of atheism, Hitchens? glee over violence, bloodshed, and perpetual war dominated the last decade of his life. Dennis Perrin, a friend and former prot?g?e of Hitchens, described all the way back in 2003 how Hitchens? virtues as a writer and thinker were fully swamped by his pulsating excitement over war and the Bush/Cheney imperial agenda: I can barely read him anymore. His pieces in the Brit tabloid The Mirror and in Slate are a mishmash of imperial justifications and plain bombast; the old elegant style is dead. His TV appearances show a smug, nasty scold with little tolerance for those who disagree with him. He looks more and more like a Ralph Steadman sketch. And in addition to all this, he?s now revising what he said during the buildup to the Iraq war. In several pieces, including an incredibly condescending blast against Nelson Mandela, Hitch went on and on about WMD, chided readers with ?Just you wait!? and other taunts, fully confident that once the U.S. took control of Iraq, tons of bio/chem weapons and labs would be all over the cable news nets?with him dancing a victory jig in the foreground. Now he says WMD were never a real concern, and that he?d always said so. It?s amazing that he?d dare state this while his earlier pieces can be read at his website. But then, when you side with massive state power and the cynical fucks who serve it, you can say pretty much anything and the People Who Matter won?t care. Currently, Hitch is pushing the line, in language that echoes the reactionary Paul Johnson, that the U.S. can be a ?superpower for democracy,? and that Toms Jefferson [sic] and Paine would approve. He?s also slammed the ?slut? Dixie Chicks as ?fucking fat slags? for their rather mild critique of our Dear Leader. He favors Bush over Kerry, and doesn?t like it that Kerry ?exploits? his Vietnam combat experience (as opposed to, say, re-election campaign stunts on aircraft carriers). Sweet Jesus. What next? I?m afraid my old mentor is not the truth-telling Orwell he fancies himself to be. He?s becoming a coarser version of Norman Podhoretz. One of the last political essays he wrote in his life, for Slate, celebrated the virtues of Endless War. * * * * * Nobody should have to silently watch someone with this history be converted into some sort of universally beloved literary saint. To enshrine him as worthy of unalloyed admiration is to insist that these actions were either themselves commendable or, at worst, insignificant. Nobody who writes about politics for decades will be entirely free of serious error, but how serious the error is, whether it reflects on their character, and whether they came to regret it, are all vital parts of honestly describing and assessing their work. To demand its exclusion is an act of dishonesty. Nor should anyone be deterred by the manipulative, somewhat tyrannical use of sympathy: designed to render any post-death criticisms gauche and forbidden. Those hailing Hitchens? greatness are engaged in a very public, affirmative,politically consequential effort to depict him as someone worthy of homage. That?s fine: Hitchens, like most people, did have admirable traits, impressive accomplishments, genuine talents and a periodic willingness to expose himself to danger to report on issues about which he was writing. But demanding in the name of politeness or civility that none of that be balanced or refuted by other facts is to demand a monopoly on how a consequential figure is remembered, to demand a license to propagandize ? exactly what was done when the awful, power-worshipping TV host, Tim Russert, died, and we were all supposed to pretend that we had lost some Great Journalist, a pretense that had the distorting effect of equating Russert?s attributes of mindless subservience to the powerful with Good Journalism (ironically, Hitchens was the last person who would honor the etiquette rules being invoked on his behalf: he savaged (perfectly appropriately) Mother Theresa and Princess Diana, among others, upon their death, even as millions mourned them). There?s one other aspect to the adulation of Hitchens that?s quite revealing. There seems to be this sense that his excellent facility with prose excuses his sins. Part of that is the by-product of America?s refusal to come to terms with just how heinous and destructive was the attack on Iraq. That act of aggression is still viewed as a mere run-of-the-mill ?mistake? ? hey, we all make them, so we shouldn?t hold it against Hitch ? rather than what it is: the generation?s worst political crime, one for which he remained fully unrepentant and even proud. But what these paeans to Hitchens reflect even more so is the warped values of our political and media culture: once someone is sufficiently embedded within that circle, they are intrinsically worthy of admiration and respect, no matter what it is that they actually do. As Aaron Bady put it to me by email yesterday: I go back to something Judith Butler?s been saying for years; some lives are grievable and some are not. And in that context, publicly mourning someone like Hitchens in the way we are supposed to do ? holding him up as someone who was ?one of us,? even if we disagree with him ? is also a way of quietly reinforcing the ?we? that never seems to extend to the un-grievable Arab casualties of Hitch?s favorite wars. It?s also a ?we? that has everything to do with being clever and literate and British (and nothing to do with a human universalism that stretches across the usual ?us? and ?them? categories). And when it is impolitic to mention that he was politically atrocious (in exactly the way of Kissinger, if not to the extent), we enshrine the same standard of human value as when the deaths of Iraqi children from cluster bombs are rendered politically meaningless by our lack of attention. That?s precisely true. The blood on his hands ? and on the hands of those who played an even greater, more direct role in all of this totally unjustified killing of innocents ? is supposed to be ignored because he was an accomplished member in good standing of our media and political class. It?s a way the political and media class protects and celebrates itself: our elite members are to be heralded and their victims forgotten. One is, of course, free to believe that. But what should not be tolerated are prohibitions on these types of discussions when highly misleading elegies are being publicly implanted, all in order to consecrate someone?s reputation for noble greatness even when their acts are squarely at odds with that effort. UPDATE: The day after Jerry Falwell died, Hitchens went on CNN and scorned what he called ?the empty life of this ugly little charlatan,? saying: ?I think it?s a pity there isn?t a hell for him to go to.? As I said, those demanding that Hitchens not be criticized in death are invoking a warped etiquette standard on his behalf that is not only irrational, but is one he himself vigorously rejected. Christopher Hitchens: The Most Provincial Spirit of All 16DEC On the announcement of his death, I think it?s fair to allow Christopher Hitchens to do the things he loved to do most. Speak for himself: [On the use of cluster bombs by the US in Afghanistan] If you?re actually certain that you?re hitting only a concentration of enemy troops then it?s pretty good because those steel pellets will go straight through somebody and out the other side and through somebody else. And if they?re bearing a Koran over their heart, it?ll go straight through that, too. So they won?t be able to say, ?Ah, I was bearing a Koran over my heart and guess what, the missile stopped halfway through.? No way, ?cause it?ll go straight through that as well. They?ll be dead, in other words. Speak about himself: I should perhaps confess that on September 11 last, once I had experienced all the usual mammalian gamut of emotions, from rage to nausea, I also discovered that another sensation was contending for mastery. On examination, and to my own surprise and pleasure, it turned out be exhilaration. Here was the most frightful enemy?theocratic barbarism?in plain view .I realized that if the battle went on until the last day of my life, I would never get bored in prosecuting it to the utmost. Hitchens had a reputation for being an internationalist. Yet someone who gets excited by mass murder?and then invokes that excitement, to a waiting audience, as an explanation of his support for mass murder?is not an internationalist. He is a narcissist, the most provincial spirit of all. Only a writer of Hitchens?s talents could do justice to the culture that now so shamefully mourns him. Update (11:45 am) Many seem to view Hitchens?s undeniable talent as a writer as a mitigating factor in their assessment of his legacy. Such arguments have a long history. On this question, I take my cues from one of our finest critics: The simple yet appalling fact is that we have very little solid evidence that literary studies do very much to enrich or stabilize moral perception, that they humanize. We have little proof that a tradition of literary studies in fact makes a man more humane. What is worse ? a certain body of evidence points the other way. When barbarism came to twentieth-century Europe, the arts faculties in more than one university offered very little moral resistance, and this is not a trivial or local accident. In a disturbing number of cases the literary imagination gave servile or ecstatic welcome to political bestiality. That bestiality was at times enforced and refined by individuals educated in the culture of traditional humanism. Knowledge of Goethe, a delight in the poetry of Rilke, seemed no bar to personal and institutionalized sadism. Literary values and the most utmost of hideous inhumanity could coexist in the same community, in the same individual sensibility . I find myself unable to assert confidently that the humanities humanize. Indeed, I would go further: it is at least conceivable that the focusing of consciousness on a written text which is the substance of our training and pursuit diminishes the sharpness and readiness of our actual moral response. Because we are trained to give psychological and moral credence to the imaginary, to the character in a play or a novel, to the condition of spirit we gather from a poem, we may find it more difficult to identify with the real world, to take the world of actual experience to heart The capacity for imaginative reflex, for moral risk in any human being is not limitless; on the contrary, it can be rapidly absorbed by fictions, and thus the cry in the poem may come to sound louder, more urgent, more real than the cry in the street outside. The death in the novel may move us more potently than the death in the next room. Thus there may be a covert, betraying link between the cultivation of aesthetic response and the potential of personal inhumanity. ?George Steiner, ?To Civilize Our Gentlemen,? in Language and Silence Update (December 18, 3:15 pm) I?ve written a follow-up post to this one [below?MCM]. Punchline: ?Last, that people can so quickly pivot from Hitchens?s position on the war to his other virtues tells us something about the culture he helped create and has left behind. It?s a culture that has developed far too easy a conscience about, that sleeps too soundly amid, the facts of war.? ?Yes, but?: More on Hitchens and Hagiography 18DEC Reading more of the commentary on Christopher Hitchens?s death?and the reaction to those of us disinclined to join the hagiography?I?m struck by a consistent line I hear from some of his admirers and followers: ?Yes, he was wrong on Iraq, but ? And then any one of a number of claims follow: he was a brilliant raconteur, a steadfast opponent of authoritarianism, a lovely stylist, a sensitive critic, a hilarious polemicist, a bon vivant, a loving and lovable mentor to younger journalists, a loving and lovable friend, and so on. I want to focus on that ?Yes, he was wrong on Iraq, but.? First, Hitchens wasn?t just wrong on Iraq; he was wrong on the war on terror. As soon as 9/11 happened, Hitchens saw in the limited counter-terrorism effort against Al Qaeda a civilizational war against ?Islamofascism.? The mere fact that I use the word ?effort? is the kind of thing that would have sent him?and for a time, a great many others?into a rage. But in the end, that?s all the war on terror is?increasingly, was?and it is to his (though not only his) lasting shame that he ever saw, and longed to see, more in it than that. Second, the problem isn?t just that Hitchens was wrong on Iraq and the war on terror; it?s how he was wrong. As I showed in my previous post, Hitchens?s words betrayed?actually, since he made no secret of it, displayed seems the more appropriate word?a cruelty and bloodlust, a thrill for violence and apocalyptic confrontation, an almost sociopathic indifference to the victims of that violence and confrontation, that are disturbing and frightening. What?s more, he included these feelings among his reasons for wanting to fight the war on terror. Some might consider such confessions honest and brave. They are not. What?s honest and brave is to acknowledge these feelings in oneself and to seek to curb their influence on one?s reasoning. Not celebrating them, in the vein of politicians and propagandists in 1914 who sent men to die in vain. Hitchens?s is not the voice of the Enlightenment; it?s the voice of the men who brought that dream to an end, when they welcomed the bloodbath of the First World War as a relief from the tedium and boredom they had evidently been suffering from throughout the long nineteenth century. Last, that people can so quickly pivot from Hitchens?s position on the war to his other virtues?and nothing in this or my previous post should be construed as a denial of at least some of those virtues?tells us something about the culture he helped create and has left behind. It?s a culture that has developed far too easy a conscience about, and sleeps too soundly amid, the facts of war. Had Hitchens been wrong about the Soviet Union, say, in the way he was wrong about Iraq, there?d be no forgiveness, no loving memories of late-night drinks and dinners. That?s not merely because the Soviet Union was the enemy of the United States or a murderous tyranny or because Iraq was an American war. It?s because we have come to a point in our culture where war is viewed as a neutral tool of state or an instrument of national salvation and human progress?and, in either case, as something that simply does not touch ?us? in its concrete facts of blood and death. Us being the people who are not the victims of our wars and the men and women who are not required to fight those wars. I said in my previous post that Hitchens was not an internationalist but a narcissist. Reading the commentary since his death, it?s become clear to me that he had plenty of company. Share this: T When Hitch was wrong - Salon.com When Hitch was wrong He was disastrously wrong By Alex Pareene Christopher Hitchens The late Christopher Hitchens had the professional contrarian?s fixation on attacking sacred cows, and rather soon after his cancer diagnosis, he became one himself. I think he would?ve been disgusted to see too much worshipful treacle being written about him upon his untimely death, so let?s remember that in addition to being a zingy writer and masterful debater, he was also a bellicose warmongering misogynist. Upon the death of the unlamented Earl Butz, Hitchens excoriated editors who published sanitized obituaries of a man remembered solely for a vulgar racist remark made in public. Hitchens leaves a rather more varied legacy, but it?s just as important not to whitewash his role in recent history. There was no more forceful intellectual voice in support of the Iraq War than Hitchens. There were others who were more prominent, more influential or more persuasive, but Hitchens was the perfect shill for an administration looking to cast its half-baked invasion plans as a morally righteous intervention, because only he could call upon a career of denunciations of totalitarianism and defenses of human rights. (The fact that the war was supposed to be justified by weapons Saddam was supposedly developing didn?t really matter to Hitchens.) And so we had the world?s self-appointed supreme defender of Orwell?s legacy happily joining an extended misinformation campaign designed to sell an incompetent right-wing government?s war of choice. The man who carefully laid out the case for arresting Henry Kissinger for war crimes was now palling around with Paul fucking Wolfowitz. Once he became an unpaid administration propagandist, Hitchens, formerly a creature of left-wing magazines whose largest mainstream exposure was in Vanity Fair and occasionally on Charlie Rose, was suddenly on TV rather a lot. The lesson there, I think, is that the popular American mass media will make room for even a booze-swilling atheist Trotskyite if he?s shilling for a the latest war. And to be honest, his post-9/11 conception of an epoch-defining clash of civilizations between the secular West and the jihadists is more than slightly ridiculous. The secular West faces any number of graver existential threats ? like unaccountable too-big-to-fail financial institutions and climate change, to name two that immediately come to mind ? than that posed by the less-than 1 percent of the world?s Muslim population that subscribes to Salafist jihadism. Hitchens, the old Orwell worshiper, clearly just wanted a great big generational threat to tackle fearlessly, with polemics attacking the sclerotic establishment liberals who failed to see that the world was at the brink of disaster. He was looking for his own Spanish Civil War. That?s why he insisted on arguing that ?Bin Ladenism? was equivalent to fascism. On other fronts: His Clinton hatred was something more hysterical than reasonable (his book on the subject has the Lifetime Television Movie-worthy title ?No One Left to Lie To?) and his grand campaign for atheism involved a good deal of silliness as well (Bertrand Russell did the case against God earlier and better). He had an unpleasantly boorish attitude toward women, best exemplified by his embarrassing ?why women aren?t funny? bullshit. (Hitchens, it should be noted, enjoyed puns rather a lot.) And let?s not forget his immortal review of Wanda Sykes? White House Correspondents? Association Dinner: ?The black dyke got it wrong.? Positively Butzian. To the end he refused to admit he was ?wrong? on the war, because his justifications for it shifted endlessly. The invasion was a humanitarian intervention ?on the right side and for the right reasons? in a 2008 piece, in which he found the space to note that ?the largest wetlands in the region, habitat of the historic Marsh Arabs, have been largely recuperated,? but did not mention the war?s more than 100,000 casualties. There was always something cartoonish about old ?Hitch? the rakish intellectual character, puffing away on cigarettes and slurring bon mots in interviews, penning furious denunciations of hypocritical public figures while hosting salons and drunken parties at his Washington, D.C., apartment that some of the most powerful and prominent people in the world of politics and media attended. But his most monumental public crusade had devastating consequences that he never fully grappled with. Alex Pareene Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene at salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareeneMore Alex Pareene From ths at psalience.org Thu Dec 22 17:31:20 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 17:31:20 +0100 Subject: [THS] Stray showers of mercury getting into food chain Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111222173101.06a8a268@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/dec/18/mercury-getting-into-food-chain?intcmp=122 Stray showers of mercury getting into food chain Poisonous metal released as a vapour by burning fuel, then falls back to Earth and gets absorbed by the aquatic ecosystem Press Association in Washington guardian.co.uk, Sunday 18 December 2011 23.41 GMT Study shows over time mercury is oxidised and gets deposited back on Earth, through rain or snow. Bacteria then transform the oxidised mercury into methyl mercury, which easily enters the food chain. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian Earth is being showered with mercury that can land anywhere and enter the food chain, a study has shown. The poisonous metal is released as a vapour by burning fuel then falls back to Earth and is easily absorbed by the aquatic ecosystem. Thousands of tonnes of mercury vapour are pumped into the air each year. Scientists discovered that in time mercury is oxidised it can then be deposited back on Earth, either in rain or snow. Bacteria transform the oxidised mercury into methyl mercury, which easily enters the food chain. US scientist Dr Seth Lyman, who led the research while at the University of Washington Bothell, said: "Much of the emitted mercury is deposited far from its original sources. "Mercury emitted on the other side of the globe could be deposited right at our back door, depending on where and how it is transported, chemically transformed and deposited." Mercury from coal burning in Asia, for example, could circle the globe several times before being oxidised and carried back to the Earth's surface. Some areas, including the south-west US, had specific climate conditions that allowed them to receive more oxidised mercury from the upper atmosphere than others. The findings are reported today in the journal Nature. Dr Lyman's team of scientists analysed data from research flights over North America and Europe in October and November last year. They used an instrument built at the University of Washington that can detect both elemental and oxidised mercury in the same air sample. The device recorded readings every 2.5 minutes at altitudes of 19,000 to 23,000 feet. On several occasions the aircraft encountered streams of air that had descended from the stratosphere, or just below it. The results showed that elemental mercury is turned into oxidised mercury in the upper atmosphere. How the oxidation process takes place is not clear. But scientist know that once it occurs the mercury can return to Earth through precipitation or air moving to the surface. "The upper atmosphere is acting as a chemical reactor to make the mercury more able to be deposited in ecosystems," said Dr Lyman.