Morally Bankrupt

Harry Shearer is on Countdown tonight (Friday) talking about his movie about Katrina.

The Big Uneasy

In theaters on August 30. Maybe only August 30.

*

Tea Time ;) Cheers

btw
Thursday, August 19, 2010
WTF ... Oh Woe Tis Me...
I do not even want to have patience with most of the jerks still believing President Obama is not even Christian... {eye-roll}

I am not even Christian yet even I knew that. I am worried about the mental development of the Children of those IDIOT TWITS as those type of mentally deranged "folks".

More To Be Soon...
Posted by Druid Morrigan Conway at 6:22 AM

...or by the legislative branch to overcome, you know, the questions that have been raised,..."

Bust out the champagne our occupation is over. Party in the stretts.

US urges Colombia to sustain ties

The United States has asked Colombia to take "appropriate steps" to sustain relations a day after a key bilateral military accord was declared unconstitutional.

A Colombian constitutional court on Tuesday ruled the accord was unconstitutional because it had not received approval from the Colombian congress.

The agreement gives US military access to seven Colombian bases, a move that does not sit well with neighbouring Venezuela which has firmly opposed the 2009 accord as a threat to its government.

On Wednesday Philip Crowley, a US state department spokesman, said the US looks "to the Santos government to take appropriate steps to make sure that we can sustain our bilateral relationship".

"There can be, you know, actions taken by the executive or by the legislative branch to overcome, you know, the questions that have been raised," Crowley said.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/08/2010818221730363506.h...

...Originally posted on last thread but so appropriate for this one as well.

David Stockman bombshell: How my Republican Party destroyed the American economy.
The "debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts."

August 1, 2010

Cue the FoxNews denunciations.

David Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, has dared to call out his own party for creating our current economic problems. His NYT op-ed, “Four Deformations of the Apocalypse,” begins:

IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing.

Given our long-term deficit problem, Stockman said it is “unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.”

UPDATE: Huffpost reports that in an interview today on NBC’s Meet the Press, “Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said that the push by congressional Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts without offsetting the costs elsewhere could end up being ‘disastrous’ for the economy.”
Continue reading here:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/08/01/david-stockman-how-gop-destroyed-t...

Four Deformations of the Apocalypse
By DAVID STOCKMAN
Published: July 31, 2010

IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.

More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.

This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one.

The first of these started when the Nixon administration defaulted on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world. Now, since we have lived beyond our means as a nation for nearly 40 years, our cumulative current-account deficit — the combined shortfall on our trade in goods, services and income — has reached nearly $8 trillion. That’s borrowed prosperity on an epic scale.

It is also an outcome that Milton Friedman said could never happen when, in 1971, he persuaded President Nixon to unleash on the world paper dollars no longer redeemable in gold or other fixed monetary reserves. Just let the free market set currency exchange rates, he said, and trade deficits will self-correct.

It may be true that governments, because they intervene in foreign exchange markets, have never completely allowed their currencies to float freely. But that does not absolve Friedman’s $8 trillion error. Once relieved of the discipline of defending a fixed value for their currencies, politicians the world over were free to cheapen their money and disregard their neighbors.

In fact, since chronic current-account deficits result from a nation spending more than it earns, stringent domestic belt-tightening is the only cure. When the dollar was tied to fixed exchange rates, politicians were willing to administer the needed castor oil, because the alternative was to make up for the trade shortfall by paying out reserves, and this would cause immediate economic pain — from high interest rates, for example. But now there is no discipline, only global monetary chaos as foreign central banks run their own printing presses at ever faster speeds to sop up the tidal wave of dollars coming from the Federal Reserve.

The second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970 it was just 40 percent of gross domestic product, or about $425 billion. When it reaches $18 trillion, it will be 40 times greater than in 1970. This debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.

In 1981, traditional Republicans supported tax cuts, matched by spending cuts, to offset the way inflation was pushing many taxpayers into higher brackets and to spur investment. The Reagan administration’s hastily prepared fiscal blueprint, however, was no match for the primordial forces — the welfare state and the warfare state — that drive the federal spending machine.

Soon, the neocons were pushing the military budget skyward. And the Republicans on Capitol Hill who were supposed to cut spending exempted from the knife most of the domestic budget — entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects. But in the end it was a new cadre of ideological tax-cutters who killed the Republicans’ fiscal religion.
Continue reading...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/opinion/01stockman.html?_r=1&ref=opini...

US military denies Wikileaks talks

The US military has denied having direct contact with whistle-blower website Wikileaks ahead of the expected release of about 15,000 leaked documents on the war in Afghanistan.

Responding to claims by Julian Assange, Wikileaks' founder, that military lawyers had been in touch with the group, the Pentagon said on Wednesday that it was not interested in helping to review the classified documents.

"We are not interested in negotiating some sort of minimised or sanitised version of classified documents," Bryan Whitman, a spokesman for the Pentagon, said.

"These documents are property of the United States government. The unauthorised release of them threatens the lives of coalition forces as well as Afghan nationals."
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/08/201081817315332737.ht...

August 18, 2010
Civilians to Take U.S. Lead After Military Leaves Iraq
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON — As the United States military prepares to leave Iraq by the end of 2011, the Obama administration is planning a remarkable civilian effort, buttressed by a small army of contractors, to fill the void.

By October 2011, the State Department will assume responsibility for training the Iraqi police, a task that will largely be carried out by contractors. With no American soldiers to defuse sectarian tensions in northern Iraq, it will be up to American diplomats in two new $100 million outposts to head off potential confrontations between the Iraqi Army and Kurdish pesh merga forces.

To protect the civilians in a country that is still home to insurgents with Al Qaeda and Iranian-backed militias, the State Department is planning to more than double its private security guards, up to as many as 7,000, according to administration officials who disclosed new details of the plan. Defending five fortified compounds across the country, the security contractors would operate radars to warn of enemy rocket attacks, search for roadside bombs, fly reconnaissance drones and even staff quick reaction forces to aid civilians in distress, the officials said.

“I don’t think State has ever operated on its own, independent of the U.S. military, in an environment that is quite as threatening on such a large scale,” said James Dobbins, a former ambassador who has seen his share of trouble spots as a special envoy for Afghanistan, Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo and Somalia. “It is unprecedented in scale.”

White House officials expressed confidence that the transfer to civilians — about 2,400 people who would work at the Baghdad embassy and other diplomatic sites — would be carried out on schedule, and that they could fulfill their mission of helping bring stability to Iraq...

...But the tiny military presence under the Obama administration’s plan — limited to several dozen to several hundred officers in an embassy office who would help the Iraqis purchase and field new American military equipment — and the civilians’ growing portfolio have led some veteran Iraq hands to suggest that thousands of additional troops will be needed after 2011...

...To move around Iraq without United States troops, the State Department plans to acquire 60 mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles, called MRAPs, from the Pentagon; expand its inventory of armored cars to 1,320; and create a mini-air fleet by buying three planes to add to its lone aircraft. Its helicopter fleet, which will be piloted by contractors, will grow to 29 choppers from 17.

The department’s plans to rely on 6,000 to 7,000 security contractors, who are also expected to form “quick reaction forces” to rescue civilians in trouble, is a sensitive issue, given Iraqi fury about shootings of civilians by American private guards in recent years. Administration officials said that security contractors would have no special immunity and would be required to register with the Iraqi government. In addition, one of the State Department’s regional security officers, agents who oversee security at diplomatic outposts, will be required to approve and accompany every civilian convoy, providing additional oversight.

The startup cost of building and sustaining two embassy branch offices — one in Kirkuk and the other in Mosul — and of hiring security contractors, buying new equipment and setting up two consulates in Basra and Erbil is about $1 billion. It will cost another $500 million or so to make the two consulates permanent. And getting the police training program under way will cost about $800 million.

Among the trickiest missions for the civilians will be dealing with lingering Kurdish and Arab tensions. To tamp down potential conflicts in disputed areas, Gen. Ray Odierno, the senior American commander in Iraq, established a series of checkpoints made up of American soldiers, Iraqi Army troops and pesh merga fighters.

But those checkpoints may be phased out when the American troops leave. Instead, the United States is counting on the new embassy branch offices in Mosul and Kirkuk. Administration officials had planned to have another embassy branch office in Baquba, but dropped that idea because of spending constraints.

“They will be eyes and ears on the ground to see if progress is being made or problems are developing,” Mr. Blinken said.

But Daniel P. Serwer, a vice president of the United States Institute of Peace, a Congressionally financed research center, questioned whether this would be sufficient. “There is a risk it will open the door to real problems. Our soldiers have been out there in the field with the Kurds and Arabs. Now they are talking about two embassy branch offices, and the officials there may need to stay around the quad if it is not safe enough to be outside.”

Another area that has prompted concern is police training, which the civilians are to take over by October 2011. That will primarily be done by contractors with State Department oversight and is to be carried out at three main hubs with visits to other sites. Administration officials say the program has been set up with Iraqi input and will help Iraqi police officers develop the skills to move from counterinsurgency operations to crime solving. The aim is to “focus on the higher-end skill set,” Colin Kahl, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, told reporters this week.

But James M. Dubik, a retired Army three-star general who oversaw the training of Iraqi security forces in 2007 and 2008, questioned whether the State Department was fully up to the mission. “The task is much more than just developing skills,” he said. “It is developing the Ministry of Interior and law enforcement systems at the national to local levels, and the State Department has little experience in doing that.”

Mr. Crocker said that however capable the State Department was in carrying out its tasks, it was important for the American military to keep enough of a presence in Iraq to encourage Iraq’s generals to stay out of politics.

“We need an intense, sustained military-to-military engagement,” he said. “If military commanders start asking themselves, ‘Why are we fighting and dying to hold this country together while the civilians fiddle away our future?’, that can get dangerous.”
To read in its entirety:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/world/middleeast/19withdrawal.html?_r=2&om_rid=NFw2$z&om_mid=_BMbSDyB8S6X$NK

CIA-assisted coup overthrows government of Iran
The Iranian military, with the support and financial assistance of the United States government, overthrows the government of Premier Mohammed Mosaddeq and reinstates the Shah of Iran. Iran remained a solid Cold War ally of the United States until a revolution ended the Shah's rule in 1979.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cia-assisted-coup-overthrows-...

Bull jumps out of ring into stands

Forty injured after animal leaps over barriers and tramples spectators in northern Spain

Video footage showed the bull landing in the stands among hundreds of spectators after jumping high enough to clear both the 1.5 metre barriers around the ring and a narrow alley where the bullfighters and officials stand.

The incident happened during an event in which people try to provoke the bull to charge them.

The accident comes amid an intense debate in Spain about bullfighting, which was banned by the north-eastern region of Catalonia last month.

About a dozen people have died at bull festivals in the past two years. The latest victim was gored to death earlier this month during a bull-dodging event in Godella, eastern Spain.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/19/bull-jumps-into-stands-spain

Submitted by ghettodefender on Thu, 08/19/2010 - 10:37am
The United States has asked Colombia to take "appropriate steps" to sustain relations a day after a key bilateral military accord was declared unconstitutional.

(how are we going to fund clandestine CIA ops without the coke you dopes.)

Are the French Roma Deportations A Sign of Growing Xenophobia?
TIME - ‎16 minutes ago‎

Why Wikileaks must be protected

...
There is understandably hysteria on high, with demands that the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is “hunted down” and “rendered”. In Washington, I interviewed a senior Defence Department official and asked, “Can you give a guarantee that the editors of Wikileaks and the editor in chief, who is not American, will not be subjected to the kind of manhunt that we read about in the media?” He replied, “It’s not my position to give guarantees on anything”. He referred me to the “ongoing criminal investigation” of a US soldier, Bradley Manning, an alleged whistleblower. In a nation that claims its constitution protects truth-tellers, the Obama administration is pursuing and prosecuting more whistleblowers than any of its modern predecessors. A Pentagon document states bluntly that US intelligence intends to “fatally marginalise” Wikileaks. The preferred tactic is smear, with corporate journalists ever ready to play their part.

On 31 July, the American celebrity reporter Christiane Amanapour interviewed Secretary of Defence Robert Gates on the ABC network. She invited Gates to describe to her viewers his “anger” at Wikileaks. She echoed the Pentagon line that “this leak has blood on its hands”, thereby cueing Gates to find Wikileaks “guilty” of “moral culpability”. Such hypocrisy coming from a regime drenched in the blood of the people of Afghanistan and Iraq – as its own files make clear – is apparently not for journalistic enquiry. This is hardly surprising now that a new and fearless form of public accountability, which Wikileaks represents, threatens not only the war-makers but their apologists...

...The pressure on Assange himself seems unrelenting. In his homeland, Australia, the shadow foreign minister, Julie Bishop, has said that if her right-wing coalition wins the general election on 21 August, “appropriate action” will be taken “if an Australian citizen has deliberately undertake an activity that could put at risk the lives of Australian forces in Afghanistan or undermine our operations in any way”. The Australian role in Afghanistan, effectively mercenary in the service of Washington, has produced two striking results: the massacre of five children in a village in Oruzgan province and the overwhelming disapproval of the majority of Australians...

I like Julian Assange’s dust-dry wit. When I asked him if it was more difficult to publish secret information in Britain, he replied, “When we look at Official Secrets Act labelled documents we see that they state it is offence to retain the information and an offence to destroy the information. So the only possible outcome we have is to publish the information.”
http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=584

Securities fraud. It might not be just for the private sector anymore.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, in its first securities-fraud case against a state, on Wednesday accused the state of New Jersey of misleading investors about the health of its two largest state pensions while selling billions of dollars in bonds.

follow the story withe link below

mark Riley from WWRL NY radio was working this story yesterday. notice it is on the Bloomberg blog. i think when Bloomberg pushes a story from it's blog they want to distance themselves from being part of the problem . The NYT does this all the time.

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/08/19/sec-new-jersey-settle-fraud-charges-...

Being Inflexible

666
views

In an interview late Wednesday, former DNC Chair Howard Dean reiterated his belief that the controversial "Ground Zero" mosque should be re-located, arguing that critics of his position were "guilty of" the same type of absolutism on the issue that they've accused Republicans of harboring.

The former Governor of Vermont told the Huffington Post that he "stood by" the remarks he had made earlier in the day on WABC radio in which he called the mosque plan "a real affront to people who lost their lives [on 9/11]." But in a clarification of sorts, he stressed that he would not have a problem if the proposed Islamic cultural center ultimately ended up being built in the current location.

"It won't upset me," Dean said, "except I think it is a missed opportunity to show some flexibility... I don't believe all this nonsense the right wing is putting out about radicals and all that stuff. I take the congregation at its word that it is a moderate congregation trying to heal the wounds of 9/11. But the best way to heal the wounds is not to have a court battle, but to sit down and try to work things out."

As Dean explained, the purpose of the Ground Zero mosque -- which is, in essence, to promote cross-cultural reconciliation -- became irrevocably compromised once the controversy began bubbling around the project. This is no fault of the planners behind the Cordoba House, Dean acknowledged. Nor was there any debate that the constitution was on their side. But that didn't nullify the argument that they would be better served to sit down with city and state officials to find an alternate site less objectionable the critics.

"They don't have to move," Dean said. "But the fact of the matter is, for better or worse, since 9/11 this country has been badly divided -- particularly by right wing politicians exploiting those divisions -- and this is an opportunity to bring the country together."

Dean's sentiments put him in, what surely seems like, rare political standing. The former DNC chair is not the first Democrat to oppose the current location for the Cordoba House. But he is the first critic to hail from the progressive community that, by and large, has viewed the debate over the mosque as a litmus test of sorts for a politician's commitment to constitutional rights and religious tolerance. Indeed, when Dean's viewpoints were broadcast, it was met with a mix of horror and anger from, what usually are, his chief defenders.

"I've seen a lot of the comments about this and a lot of it is silly that I'm agreeing with Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich," Dean said in response to the criticism. "That's just silly. I don't believe in race baiting..."

on WWRL? Last I checked, he was back on WLIB. It was WWRL that gave Fathead Schultz a foothold in NYC--at the expense of AAR.

Robert Gibbs and the Professional Not-So Left
By Paul Street

Thursday, August 19, 2010

DRUG TEST REFLECTIONS

Recently White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’s railed against what he called “the professional left.” “I hear these people saying [Obama is] like George Bush. Those people,” Gibbs pouted, “ought to be drug tested.” In his petulant little self-pitying rant, Gibbs dismissed the so-called professional left in terms similar to those of a Sean Hannity or a Rush Limbaugh, saying that “They will [only] be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon.” Of those liberals who complain – I would say observe – that Obama has caved to the right and corporate interests on healthcare, financial reform, carbon emissions, gay marriage, the Employee Free Choice Act and much more, Gibbs said, “They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”

Just for the record, I’m not a big Kucinich fan. If I was the in-power Leon Trotsky, the prophet re-armed of 21st century America, I would not dismantle the entire Pentagon. I’d keep at least half the budget for promotion of radical democratic revolution at home and abroad. Those seven Columbian military bases Obama got last year would be put to work advancing land redistribution, collective ownership and workers’ control.

Still, I do share with most Americans a longstanding preference for Canadian style single payer health insurance –Improved Medicare for All. And my new book The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power records numerous key policy parallels and continuities between the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Indeed, the original title of this book was going to be “The Re-Branding” and I seriously considered a cover photo showing Bush and Obama’s faces eerily merged.

So yes, maybe I should be watching for the knock on my door and the DEA officials to give me a plastic cup and a two hour deadline to fill it under the supervision of Robert Gibbs. At the same time, I would like propose a different sort of drug test. Let’s call it the “ObamaLaid” (Glen Ford’s term) test. This test would be for all “those [supposedly left-liberal] people” who oppose criminal wiretappings, immoral and illegal wars, plutocratic bankers’ bailouts and other vile policies when they are implemented in the name of a white Republican moron from West Texas but who become strangely silent when those same policies are enacted by people working beneath the picture of an eloquent black Democrat from Chicago. As Cindy Sheehan noted last year, thinking of all the liberals she could no longer interest in opposing Washington’s imperial policies, “Wars that were wrong under Bush become acceptable under Obama.” She could have made much the same point in relation to numerous Orwellian police state policies, to bankers’ bailouts, to U.S. enablement of criminal right wing coups in Latin America, and to much more that is documented at length in my new book.

It must be drugs. Just what authoritarian, democracy-disabling narcotic is it that makes you capable of hating terrible policies only if they are being carried out by one brand of politician and incapable of doing the same when the same policies – or much the same, slightly modulated – are conducted by a different brand of politician beholden to the same dominant social hierarchies and doctrines as the one you don’t like? A progressive mind is a terrible thing to waste on partisan and identity-based politics.
http://www.zcommunications.org/robert-gibbs-and-the-professional-not-so-...

NYC radio changes with the the seasons. I like the Gary Bird/imhotep who goes from WBLS to WBAI and Back to WLIB all the time.

Big ED has good subs like You mentioned earlier this week with Liz Winstead( sp). Today Errol Lewis is making faux pas after faux pas. His Blue fur is showing more and more and he is not dyeing his grey roots he is just making lots of $ these days. actually Bid Ed is starting to move more to the left of Errol. But personalities aside what can the high information voters do as we wait for the low information voters to wake up.?

I hear some good in Errol and then I hear some crap. I can tell many listeners experience the same. anyway you go girl with all the info that you have to offer .One never knows what will stick.

I would love to hear Sam have a debate with Errol . Our Sam could keep him focused and not let him switch topics when he cant rally the masses. Errol is getting pretty bougie. . I hope Sam and Move On keep working together that might be good for both of them.

Submitted by Leah on Thu, 08/19/2010 - 1:07pm.

A progressive mind is a terrible thing to waste on partisan and identity-based politics.

But the passive aggressive tone of the "reminder" I just got was...

Let's just say it got me to unsubscribe "real quick."

And I heard this...

Copyright © 2010 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

Is the sequel to the subprime mortgage crisis a subprime education crisis? The shares of several companies that own for-profit colleges and universities slid yesterday when the Department of Education reported on student loans and who is not repaying them. The nonpayment rates for people who attended some for-profits are so high they could jeopardize access to future loans for students at those for-profits.

Joining us is Jonathan Kaufman, who's education editor at Bloomberg News. Thank you very much for joining us.

Mr. JONATHAN KAUFMAN (Education Editor, Bloomberg News): Thank you.

SIEGEL: And first, according to the Department of Education, what is a tolerable rate of nonpayment of student loans for a college, and where are the for-profits in that - in regard to that rate?

Mr. KAUFMAN: Well, the tolerance is actually pretty high. The Education Department has said that if only 45 percent of your graduates are repaying their loans, that's okay. But what we found out on Friday is that for-profit colleges overall only have a 36 percent repayment rate, and some campuses, the rate is as low as nine or 10 percent.

SIEGEL: Some of the for-profits we're talking about include Kaplan University, which is owned by The Washington Post Company; the University of Phoenix; Strayer University. Strayer Education claims that the way they tally up their numbers, they come up with a repayment rate of 55 percent, and the Department of Education figures it's only 25 percent. Do you understand disparities that large?

Mr. KAUFMAN: Well, I think everyone is trying to understand that better. I think in the end, the government is going to make the call because it's the government's money, it's taxpayer money. But the investigations we've been able to do up to now suggest that those numbers are correct. But they're clearly in dispute.

SIEGEL: You say it's taxpayer money. Who's on the hook for those unpaid loans?

Mr. KAUFMAN: Well, essentially, taxpayers in the U.S. government. This money, it's the student's obligation to pay it back, and that's why the government is so concerned because what they're seeing is that the amount of money that for-profit colleges have gotten has soared.

In 2000, it was about $4 billion total in student aid going to for-profit colleges. Now, it's about $26, $27 billion. And they're concerned that if these repayment rates are so low, in the end, the government will be stuck with the bill.

SIEGEL: Anyone who's watched any commercial television in the past few years knows that these are institutions that advertise very, very heavily...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129259157

-----------

So what's going on here? Are things being set up to penalize/demonize the students rather than following through with the consequences of pointing out the flaws in the system--the WHOLE system--of higher education and how much it is costing even as wages continue to stagnate and opportunities continue to narrow even for those with degrees?

Is this a "bubble" in any meaningful sense? Or is this a "danger" in the sense that social security supposedly being insolvent is a "danger"? What happens if these students lose access to loans for these colleges when for any number of reasons they are still not able to attend traditional (often better) ones (including community colleges)? What is the upshot for WTP?
-----------
People who know things?

/

With "combat" troops gone, what happens next?
new
Submitted by CeeCee on Thu, 08/19/2010 - 11:06am.
August 18, 2010
Civilians to Take U.S. Lead After Military Leaves Iraq
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON — As the United States military prepares to leave Iraq by the end of 2011, the Obama administration is planning a remarkable civilian effort, buttressed by a small army of contractors, to fill the void.
...

==============================================

"Civilians to Take U.S. Lead..." These words grab me. What goes along with my understanding/perception of U.S. Militarist-Imperialist Destabilization is that the civilians who remain in Iraq and are allowed to hold power are the ones the Negroponte-style Death Squads did not target, threaten, drive away, maim, torture or murder/assassinate. In other words, the Iraq we see know is a 'cleansed' Iraq that is expected to be controllable for Corporate Imperialist purposes by the Imperialist Conquerors.

Many thanks!

BP is trying to create a MYTHICAL RECOVERY in the Gulf of Mexico and Gulfcoast in their disgusting ad.

In big type the BP ad says: "Making This Right/ Beaches/ Claims/ Cleanup/ Economic/ Investment/ Environmental Restoration/ Health and Safety/ Wildlife".

WHO do the BP Polluters think they are fooling??? They obviously INTEND to make the public believe "cleanup" and "restoration" is actually possible when what their pollution has created is truly an evolutionary experiment.

The BP Polluters obviously INTEND to pull the wool over the public's eyes and promote a make-believe return to an unpolluted Gulf when in reality those who run BP actually feel justified in DOUBLING the amount of toxic pollutants in the GULF from this disaster by ADDING MORE TOXIC POLLUTANTS to the ocean waters than the original oil well SPEWAGE put in the ocean waters. And BP's spraying of dispersants continues daily according to locals.

And look at this ad copy from the very BP Polluters who have made a Free Press reporting in the Gulf a FELONY!:

"BP has taken full responsibility for the cleanup in the Gulf. And that includes keeping you informed."

Oh, "informed" only if BP's own PROPAGANDA is the only thing you get to read, see and hear!

What sociopathic BP doublespeak, imo.

=====================

To clarify, the dispersants are made of PETROLEUM DISTILLATES -- that is, the original oil is DISTILLED into more toxic by-products and, therefore, the distillates are even more difficult to be broken down by ANY existing NATURAL process!!! We are witnessing a cruel experiment conducted by the insane.

Stevens built a home using corrupt funds.

Instead of acknowledging that Stevens was a charlatan, the politicians gather round his corpse and praise him. I guess these sorts of bought and paid for politicians just stick together snf eventually when dead get praise from other charlatans. Harrumph.

BRAVO!
Submitted by Sunshine Jim on Thu, 08/19/2010 - 5:42pm.

Thanks Sunshine Jim I was gonna try and post it; and depending on my computer know-how, chances are Target would be out of business by the time I got it on.

Clever protest.

Let's just say it got me to unsubscribe "real quick."
Submitted by gloryoski on Thu, 08/19/2010 - 5:18pm.
---

I was unsubscribed so fast and Quite impressed by the speed it happened ... lol

YES
Submitted by taozen on Thu, 08/19/2010 - 11:32am.
Are the French Roma Deportations A Sign of Growing Xenophobia?
===
This is awful! I can't believe I have been so numb to this. Roma/Gypsies have been getting terrible treatment in Europe for 1000 years. Worse than any group. I wondered what organized Jewish groups are doing in response to this atrocity

But it's legal. France is a democracy you know.

AUSCHWITZ WAS LEGAL!

BRAVO!
Submitted by Sunshine Jim on Thu, 08/19/2010 - 5:42pm.

thanks for posting, Sunny Jim

looks like the Target customers enjoyed it, too

Just click on "Embed" under the video, pick the smallest screen dimensions from the options shown, copy the embed code and paste it here.

And preview.

If the dimensions are still over 400 width, just change the numbers!

That's all.

:)

Published on Thursday, August 19, 2010 by The Guardian/UK
BP Oil Spill: Scientists Find Giant Plume of Droplets 'Missed' by Official Account
A 22-mile plume of droplets from BP's Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico undermines claim that oil has degraded

by Suzanne Goldenberg

Scientists have mapped a 22-mile plume of oil droplets from BP's rogue well in the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, providing the strongest evidence yet of the fate of the crude that spewed into the sea for months.

The report offers the most authoritative challenge to date to White House assertions that most of the 5m barrels of oil that spewed into the Gulf is gone.

"These results indicate that efforts to book-keep where the oil went must now include this plume," said Christopher Reddy one of the members of the team from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute....

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/19-8

An Israeli Attack On Iran Would Reduce Barack Obama To A One-Term President
By Juan Cole

Source: Juancole.com
Wednesday, August 18, 2010

What should a poor warmongering Neoconservative do? This political grouping includes WASPS such as former CIA director James Woolsey and former UN ambassor John Bolton, but at its core is politically active and extremely wealthy Jewish former Democrats who broke with their party in the 1980s to become war hawks in Republican administrations, and most of whom are rooted in Rightwing Zionism as exemplified in the thought of prominent fascist theorist Vladimir Jabotinsky. (They are almost mirror images of the general American Jewish community, 79 percent of which voted for Barack Obama, which is skittish about foreign wars and liberal on social issues).

The Neoconservative faction is in the political wilderness in the United States. Eager to play the role in Iran that the enormous floods have played in Pakistan, of paralyzing and destroying much of a thriving country, eager to reduce the shining city of Isfahan to rubble and displace its population into massive tent cities, they find their path blocked at every turn.

Always much happier when the militant and aggressive Likud Party is in power in Israel, they are nevertheless impatient with what they see as the timidity of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, compared to the reckless warmongering of the previous Kadima Party and its Labor ally (who managed to set back the Lebanese economy a decade in 2006 and to reduce the large penal camp of Gaza to further misery and rubble).

Despite being willing to stop in at an occasional cocktail party, President Obama could not care less what the Neoconservatives say, want or do. Few have been appointed from their ranks to high and influential positions in the Obama administration, in contrast to W.’s, where they held the 8 key positions that allowed them to help push the US into a decade of rampaging wars. The American public, having been tricked by their fallacious arguments and cynical propaganda into the Iraq War, does not want to hear from them. They no longer get much television time. Their main project of today, an aggressive war on Iran, is a non-starter with the current White House, its generals, intelligence officials, and most importantly with a public already unemployed, beggared and indebted to the tune of $13 trillion, in part because of the Neocons earlier mad adventures– a public that has also lost over 4000 dead and tens of thousands wounded and permanently disabled warriors over a pack of Neocon lies.

But being a Neocon means never having to say you are sorry, or that you were wrong, and it means never giving up on the dressing up of illegal and aggressive wars as Necessary and Right and Bright Shining Cities on a Hill that will Make the World Safe for “Democracy” and more importantly for Apartheid Israel.

Thus, in 1998 at the height of their impotence, the Neocons got up a hawkish letter with the support of the Republicans in Congress, insisting that President Clinton go to war against Iraq. It was absurd and monstrous. Iraq had been reduced to a poor weak fourth-rate power, its economy devastated, its children dying in droves, by US and UN sanctions pushed by the Neocons and their allies. Only five years later, under a different administration, they got their wish.

The Neocons’ life experience, then, is that aggressive warfare is never really off the table. Even a liberal internationalist like Obama can be pressured, and if he will not yield, be weakened and wounded and the way paved for a leader more pliable to their plans. A war that they pine for the way a teenager pines for a first love, a mass grave they dream of the way a retiree dreams of a Hawaiian resort, an orgy of destruction visited on ancient wonders that they dream of the way a world-class architect dreams of constructing a new city– all these things are really at most just 5 years away if the right political moves are made.

They have more assets than is visible on the surface. They have perhaps half of America’s 400 billionaires on their side. They have the enormous military-industrial complex on their side. They have the Yahoo complex of besieged lower middle class White America on their side. They have the Israel lobbies on their side. They have important segments of the Oil and Gas lobbies on their side. They have the whole American tradition of permanent war on their side. They should not be underestimated.

It is not so hard to get up a war. You position the war as inevitable. As Right. As Necessary. You reimagine the poor weak ramshackle enemy as a science fictional superpower, months away from possession of a Neutron Bomb that could Destroy the Universe. It has to be done. We are in danger.

Although not exactly himself a Neocon (he says he is for a two-state solution and says he is on the fence about an Iran war), Cpl. Jeffrey Goldberg of the Israeli army, where he was a prison camp guard during the first Intifada or Palestinian uprising, and who masquerades as a journalist over at the Atlantic, has fired a shot in the building campaign for destroying Iran. This war propagandist deliberately spread the bald-faced lie that Saddam had close ties to al-Qaeda, and goes on insisting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction capabilities in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary. He is either dishonest or so blindered by ideology that it comes to the same thing. Goldberg says he is “ambivalent” about an “American” attack on Iran in “2010.” But these are weasel words. What would be different in 2011? In fact, this way of speaking puts a time limit on “ambivalence,” after which conviction presumably kicks in. His ambivalence, he says, extends to whether Israel should attack Iran unilaterally, though he is convinced by his ‘interviewing’ that it likely will. It reminds me of all the caveats and ambivalences in Ken Pollack’s book ‘Gathering Storm,’ which was used by warmongers nevertheless to help get up the Iraq War.

Goldberg knows that Obama is not actually going to war against Iran. Despite what he says, Bibi Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, is for all his bluster far too personally indecisive to take such a major step (and certainly not without an American green light; Bibi thinks Clinton had him undermined and moved out of office for obstructing the Oslo accords, and does not want to risk the same fate for causing trouble for Obama in Iraq and Afghanistan). How Goldberg could miss this truism in Israeli politics is beyond me.

Goldberg is trying to make an Iran war seem highly likely if not inevitable, if not now then in the near future (say, within 5 years?).

But contrary to Goldberg’s conclusions, Gareth Porter finds that high Israeli intelligence and military figures entertain the severest doubts about a war on Iran. Could Goldberg really not find these voices that Porter dug up so effortlessly?

The Iran war hawks also almost certainly underestimate Iran’s conventional weapons capability of foiling any Israeli air strike.

There is no room for ‘ambivalence’ here, especially of the Pollack sort that actually leads straight to war. The stupidity of an air raid on Iran is easy for the clear-eyed to see. There is no evidence Iran has a nuclear weapons program as opposed to a civilian nuclear energy program. The centrifuge technology being used can be dispersed and an air strike is likely to be only a minor setback in the program. And, Iran is a major country of 70 million with extensive petroleum and gas resources. It has means of replying to any attack that can be subtle and effective. Mahan Abedin showed here recently how there can be no ‘limited war’ against Iran.

Obama’s plans for a decisive and timely withdrawal from Iraq would be completely ruined by an attack on Iran, which would reactivate the Shiite militias at a time when the US military is weak and open to attack. Obama would not have that achievement to run on in 2012. The Iranians can behind the scenes be major spoilers for the Afghanistan War, which already is not going well for Obama.

A Netanyahu attack on Iran would reduce Barack Obama to a one-term president, which may be what Goldberg and his fellow conspirators are really aiming for. That success would after all allow them to keep to the 5-year timetable for another Asian land war.

YEA! SANITY not More Lies from BP!

Heart Attack, Stroke-Prone Arteries More Common in Nasty People
An Antagonistic Personality Might Increase Your Risk For Cardiovascular Disease
By JOHN GEVER, MedPage Today Senior Editor
Aug. 17, 2010—

People with antagonistic or disagreeable personalities have thicker arterial walls that may make them more prone to heart attacks and strokes, researchers said.

The carotid artery lining was significantly thicker in people who rated low on a scale of agreeableness, reported Angelina Sutin of the National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, Md., and colleagues.

In a study of 5,614 residents of the Italian island of Sardinia, those ranking in the lowest 10 percent of agreeableness were 1.4 times as likely to have thickening in their lining of their carotid artery, the researchers found. This held true even after the researchers adjusted for cholesterol levels, smoking status and other risk factors.

Read this story on www.medpagetoday.com.

The researchers also found that an antagonistic personality predicted increased thickening over approximately three years of follow-up.

"Antagonistic individuals, especially those who are manipulative and aggressive, have greater increases in arterial thickening, independent of traditional cardiovascular risk factors," Sutin and colleagues wrote in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension.

The effect of personality appeared to be greater in women than in men, the researchers found. The carotid artery lining thickness in women with disagreeable personalities was similar to the average in men, who normally have significantly thicker arterial walls.

Previous studies have linked cardiovascular disease with certain personality types, notably the hard-charging "Type A" personality. Subsequent research showed that hostility was a major contributor to these findings, Sutin and colleagues reported.

They also cited some earlier studies linking various antisocial behavior patterns to arterial thickening. But these focused on specific populations, including poor young adults, women transitioning to menopause and men with untreated high blood pressure.

"Large, population-based samples are needed to test whether these associations hold across different demographic groups," Sutin and colleagues wrote.

Their sample came from an ongoing, prospective study in Sardinia designed to uncover genetic and environmental factors associated with complex and age-related health problems. Approximately 62 percent of the population in four towns has participated in the study.

One of the questionnaires included in the study was the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (Italian translation), a self-assessment that includes 48 items covering six traits associated with agreeableness: trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, and tendermindedness. Each is rated on a five-point scale from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree."

Carotid artery thickening was assessed by ultrasound at the time of enrollment and approximately three years later. The follow-up measurement was performed in 83 percent of participants.

Other risk factors included in the statistical analysis were age, sex, education, waist circumference, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, LDL and HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, fasting plasma glucose and insulin, smoling status, and use of antihypertensive, statin, or diabetic medications.

Sutin and colleagues found that agreeableness scores were significantly associated with initial arterial thickness and with changes during the three-year follow-up. The specific traits of straightforwardness and compliance were most strongly associated with the arterial thickness.

On the other hand, when the researchers looked at the risk of being in the top quartile of arterial thickness, high agreeableness scores did not appear to have a protective effect in participants from either gender.
Continue reading:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/heart-attack-stroke-prone-arte...

...but I have to wonder (not about him because he's just evil) whether this is a "which comes first" situation--behavior or temperament, or, a congenital medical condition which results in people not getting enough oxygen to their brains which induces a nasty disposition.

I'll take note and practice, practice, practice. :)

Published on Thursday, August 19, 2010 by TomDispatch.com
The Secret Killers: Assassination in Afghanistan and Task Force 373
by Pratap Chatterjee

"Find, fix, finish, and follow-up" is the way the Pentagon describes the mission of secret military teams in Afghanistan which have been given a mandate to pursue alleged members of the Taliban or al-Qaeda wherever they may be found. Some call these "manhunting" operations and the units assigned to them "capture/kill" teams.

Whatever terminology you choose, the details of dozens of their specific operations -- and how they regularly went badly wrong -- have been revealed for the first time in the mass of secret U.S. military and intelligence documents published by the website Wikileaks in July to a storm of news coverage and official protest. Representing a form of U.S. covert warfare now on the rise, these teams regularly make more enemies than friends and undermine any goodwill created by U.S. reconstruction projects.
Continue lengthy read:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/19-8

Anticorporatist views are becoming more and more common.

By RALPH NADER

Earlier this year, Barney Frank and Ron Paul convened the Sustainable Defense Task Force, consisting of experts "spanning the ideological spectrum." They recommended a 10-year, $1 trillion reduction in Pentagon spending that disturbed some in the military-industrial complex.

Other members of Congress were surprised by this improbable combination of lawmakers taking on such a taboo subject. But the spiral of bloated, wasteful military expenditures documented by newspapers has reached the point where opposites on the political-ideological spectrum were willing to make common cause.

A convergence of liberal-progressives with conservative-libertarians centering on the autocratic, corporate-dominated nature of our government may be growing. To be sure, there are obstacles to a synthesis of anticorporatist views becoming a political movement.

One is over-concern with labels and abstractions by both political factions. Yet once they take up the daily injustices—credit-card ripoffs, unsafe drugs and contaminated food—affecting people everywhere, common ground can be found. Another obstacle is that the concentrated power of big money and lobbies have so overtaken both political parties and controlled the parameters of political conversation that progressives and libertarians fail to recognize their similar, deep aversions to concentrated power of any kind. Finally, the anticorporatists in both camps are reluctant to collaborate in principled action because they have battled over issues for so long where they do not agree.

Yet this reluctance may be fading as abuses of corporate power, especially when supplemented by state power, become more plain to all. The multitrillion dollar bailout of an avariciously reckless Wall Street rammed through Washington, without any input from an angry public, epitomized shared outrage.

This perceived feeling of being excluded, disrespected and then taxed for the crimes and abuses of big business has been building for years. The loss of both sovereignty and jobs have produced a lasting resentment toward the antidemocratic North American Free Trade Agreement, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and unpatriotic U.S. corporations that hollow out communities as they shift industries to China and other repressive regimes.

I have received earfuls on these matters during my three nationwide presidential campaigns from both workers and taxpayers who call themselves conservatives or progressives. The Main Street versus Wall Street figures of speech bespeak a deep sense of loss of control over just about everything that matters to people's lives. In their daily discourse they know that big government beats to the drums of big business or, to use the elegant words of conservative philosopher Russell Kirk, "a host of squalid oligarchs."

Because corporatists falsely assume the mantle of conservatism, they keep agendas that the left and right would agree on—such as cracking down on corporate crime, fraud and abuse against consumers, taxpayers and investors—from being heard and talked about and acted upon. The issues that don't get nearly the attention they deserve include opposition to the arbitrary erosion of privacy by the Patriot Act and to the daily collection and storage of personal consumer information in corporate databases; resistance to tax-funded sports stadiums, the Federal Reserve's out-of-control powers, unconstitutional wars and monopolistic practices against small business, and to the swarm of corporate welfare subsidies, tax havens, handouts, giveaways and bailouts.

Corporate abuse is recognized by elements in our society that might surprise you. Some years ago, at a sizable gathering of evangelical Christians, I denounced the rampant direct marketing to children of junk food and violent programming, undermining parental authority and furthering childhood obesity and mental coarseness. As people of faith, as parents and citizens, the audience responded enthusiastically.

No matter how often corporatists call themselves conservatives, the two hail from very different moral, historical and intellectual antecedents.

The powerful nuclear power industry discovered this difference in 1983, when a tight coalition of conservative, environmental and taxpayer groups defeated the deficit-ridden Clinch River Breeder Reactor in Tennessee. More recently, in 2008, demands coming from both the left and right that Congress ban genetic discrimination by health insurers overcame the corporatist lobby.

In several polls, including ones by Businessweek and Gallup, a sizable majority of Americans say that corporations have too much control over their lives, that both major parties are failing and that America is going in the wrong direction.

Once this slowly awakening giant of American reform shucks off the corporatists who divide, distort and deny many common identities, a dynamic civic force for freedom, fairness and prosperity will define and advance its own political and electoral agendas.

Mr. Nader is a consumer advocate and the author of "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us" (Seven Stories Press, 2009).

still alive? Many well intentioned soldiers and special ops agents love their country and are taken advantage of by dark souls like cheney. If Osama was still alive I could see people trying to chase him down.,but maybe as the legends go he is alive and well in La paz or floating around lake Titicacca in a reed houseboat toasted on Blow and laughing at Jimi Hendtix's jokes.
If the roles where reversed I could see taking lots of risk to take cheney down or bring him to justice.
The CIA phrase Blow back is a bitch is pretty accurate. I am very impressed with the WiKi man. I wish him a safe life and hope he continues to hold a light up to the facts that our government wants to keep in the dark.

Tres Kewl Sunny J ;)

CHRISTINA LAKE, British Columbia — Police who uncovered two marijuana fields near the U.S.-Canada border had to tread carefully: 13 black bears were wandering around the crops.
The fields of about 2,300 plants were found near Christina Lake, just a few miles (kilometers) from the border.
Royal Candian Mounted Police Cpl. Dan Moskaluk says that when police arrived in the area two weeks ago, they discovered the bears and cautiously went about making the seizure.
He says the bears were docile and obviously were used to humans. They could be put down if they are too habituated to people.
The property's two owners were arrested on charges of production and possession of a controlled substance.
It's unclear if they used the bears to guard the pot fields or just liked having them as pets.
-------------

The Canadian Police really suck if they put the bears down for being docile. that part of the story is really offensive.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38765629/ns/world_news-americas/

"In several polls, including ones by Businessweek and Gallup, a sizable majority of Americans say that corporations have too much control over their lives, that both major parties are failing and that America is going in the wrong direction.

Once this slowly awakening giant of American reform shucks off the corporatists who divide, distort and deny many common identities, a dynamic civic force for freedom, fairness and prosperity will define and advance its own political and electoral agendas"

So Alice how long while it take for the sleeping giant to awake?.

Why dont you wake me if you see "him" stir? In the meantime I can be found In Rip Van Winkle's cabin in the
Adirondacks.

( I admit it I feed the bears dog food in the summers in Canada. Rip isnt such a good conversationalist and it can get boring upstate.) besides the bears like a little acoustic blues and they eat all the buds in the fall if you dont give them something else to much on.)

pleasant dreams (?)

many experiences with them. many good stories heard.

one year camping in a huge field and harvesting blackberries the bears were often on the other side of the blackberries from us. the family that owned the berries had watched 20 generations of bears munch those berry fields.

Jax and Ruzz would bark if they got closer than a hundred feet and the bears always moved away from us down wind.

I have never seen a bear in the wild just on TV . That seems so cool to share berries with those beauties.

I heard an indian story that God was going to try bears for his plans of evolution next if humans didnt get it together. I guess the age of bears is fast approaching

even people with weapons get killed ocasionally.

during mushroom season coinciding with a salmon return we always had a rifle with us in the bush. Odie was an amazing bear dog. he'd warn them off or tree them.

(bear stew is superb! the best i ever had was made by my old french canadian fur trapper buddy Jimmy LaRose.

in the 30's he had a young bear he raised. in the picture he showed me the bear was standing next to him and slightly taller than he was. this was when he was a logger in the steam donkey era.

sigh... i sure miss that ol fart.

:):(

Move on In a Ford Focus
new
Submitted by taozen on Thu, 08/19/2010 - 9:37am.
RIGHT ON

The thugs do a lot of damage but its the people living in their own little paradise that feel politics is 'dirty' et al. THEY are letting it happen. I'm not talking voter apathy here. [I know I'm preaching to the choir here ]

FCC commissioner Michael Copps - FCC Net Neutrality Hearing 8/19/2010

Cee cee do you think Osama is
Submitted by taozen on Thu, 08/19/2010 - 11:16pm.
still alive?

...but how would I know other than intuition and from reading around.

The Conspiracy Files: Osama Bin Laden, Dead or Alive?
Mike Rudin | 15:05 UK time, Thursday, 7 January 2010

The latest Conspiracy Files documentary explores the many stories about Osama Bin Laden's supposed illness and even death.

What is immediately apparent is the lack of intelligence about Bin Laden. We hear from the man who was tasked by President Obama to review US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The former CIA officer Bruce Riedel has seen the intelligence on Bin Laden and his blunt conclusion is that "there is no trail any more".

"It's not cold," he says, "it's frozen over".

Riedel, who has advised three US presidents, admits that despite the biggest manhunt in history "we haven't had eyes on target now in over eight years... and we don't have a clue where he is."

Nowadays, if there's a situation where there's no certainty, in jump the conspiracy theories.

Over the last eight years, Osama Bin Laden has become shrouded in myth and rumour.

There have been reports from some leading news organisations suggesting Bin Laden has been seriously ill with kidney disease and even some claiming that he is dead.

The leading French newspaper, Le Figaro, and Radio France International reported that Osama Bin Laden was given emergency kidney dialysis in the American Hospital in Dubai, a few months before 9/11.

CBS ran a story on their main evening news suggesting that Bin Laden was given kidney dialysis at the Pakistan Military Hospital in Rawalpindi, on the day before 9/11.

Often these reports emanate from smaller newspapers, such as one in the Pakistan Observer, which claimed that Osama Bin Laden had died of a lung complication during the battle for Tora Bora at the end of 2001 and was buried there in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. That report was then picked up around the world.

Such stories might once have slowly faded from view but now the internet stores them and endlessly recycles them. Years on, the stories are presented as fact, without any checks.

The hospitals in Dubai and Pakistan both deny the stories without reservation. Both have investigated the reports and checked their records.

Robert Baer spent 21 years working for the CIA as a case officer in the Middle East, with postings in Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq. He is surprised by how little is known about the world's most infamous terrorist but he's scathing about the reports of Bin Laden's kidney illness.

"He's probably in the same bed next to Elvis Presley. You can't hide something like that in Dubai," says Baer.

"It's the crap you read on the internet that people believe in," adds the experienced former CIA officer.

The editor of the Arabic newspaper Al Quds, Abdel Bari Atwan, interviewed Bin Laden in Tora Bora back in the 90s. He is critical of those who stay in their office and don't get out to research stories about Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

But there's an immediate rejoinder from the sceptics. David Ray Griffin, a retired philosophy professor in California, has written a book suggesting there is good evidence that Bin Laden is dead. He questions the motives of officials and former officials who contradict his theory:

"We do know historically that people have lied under pressure or promise of money or whatever. I'm not making any accusation. I'm saying I don't know these people. I don't know their motivations, but I'm saying that the very fact that people say these things don't necessarily mean they're true."
Griffin's previous book suggested the American government could be responsible for 9/11.

Now he speculates that US military intelligence could be faking Bin Laden's recent video statements to keep an evil bogeyman alive and to help justify the so-called war on terror in Afghanistan, Iraq and back at home.

He thinks the "military-industrial complex" has ample motive for this grand conspiracy in the huge sums that have been spent. Afghanistan alone has cost the US $240bn.

The CIA case officer, Robert Baer, dismisses those suggestions of conspiracy theories involving the US intelligence, but he does question whether Bin Laden is still alive: "The problem is nobody's convinced me he's alive."

Baer questions the veracity of some of the recent Bin Laden videos. Instead though, he thinks it is in the interests of al-Qaeda to fake the tapes to pretend their icon is still alive.

But perhaps the last word should go to the last journalist to interview Osama Bin Laden, back in November 2001.

Hamid Mir, now the executive editor of Geo TV in Islamabad, says Bin Laden is still alive and the secret of his survival is that he is "much cleverer and wiser than the American intelligence". And he warns: "we should not underestimate him. All these conspiracy theories are actually helping him."

Mike Rudin is series producer of The Conspiracy Files. The Conspiracy Files: Osama Bin Laden - Dead or Alive? is on Sunday 10 January at 9.30pm on BBC Two.

Also this one...

Has Osama Bin Laden been dead for seven years - and are the U.S. and Britain covering it up to continue war on terror?
By Sue Reid
Last updated at 10:59 PM on 11th September 2009

The last time we heard a squeak from him was on June 3 this year.
The world's most notorious terrorist outsmarted America by releasing a menacing message as Air Force One touched down on Saudi Arabian soil at the start of Barack Obama's first and much vaunted Middle East tour.

Even before the new President alighted at Riyadh airport to shake hands with Prince Abdullah, Bin Laden's words were being aired on TV, radio and the internet across every continent.

It was yet another propaganda coup for the 52-year-old Al Qaeda leader. In the audiotape delivered to the Arab news network Al Jazeera, Bin Laden said that America and her Western allies were sowing seeds of hatred in the Muslim world and deserved dire consequences.

It was the kind of rant we have heard from him before, and the response from British and U.S. intelligence services was equally predictable.

They insisted that the details on the tape, of the President's visit and other contemporary events, proved that the mastermind of 9/11, America's worst ever terrorist atrocity, was still alive - and that the hunt for him must go on.

Bin Laden has always been blamed for orchestrating the horrific attack - in which nearly 3,000 people perished - eight years ago this week. President George W. Bush made his capture a national priority, infamously promising with a Wild West flourish to take him 'dead or alive'.

The U.S. State Department offered a reward of $50million for his whereabouts. The FBI named him one of their ten 'most wanted' fugitives, telling the public to watch out for a left-handed, grey-bearded gentleman who walks with a stick.

Yet this master terrorist remains elusive. He has escaped the most extensive and expensive man-hunt in history, stretching across Waziristan, the 1,500 miles of mountainous badlands on the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Undeterred, Barack Obama has launched a fresh operation to find him. Working with the Pakistani Army, elite squads of U.S. and British special forces were sent into Waziristan this summer to 'hunt and kill' the shadowy figure intelligence officers still call 'the principal target' of the war on terror.

This new offensive is, of course, based on the premise that the 9/11 terrorist is alive. After all, there are the plethora of 'Bin Laden tapes' to prove it.

Yet what if he isn't? What if he has been dead for years, and the British and U.S. intelligence services are actually playing a game of double bluff?

What if everything we have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since the early days after 9/11 is a fake - and that he is being kept 'alive' by the Western allies to stir up support for the war on terror?...

...But the weight of opinion now swinging behind the possibility that Bin Laden is dead - and the accumulating evidence that supports it - makes the notion, at the very least, worthy of examination.

Read further:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1212851/Has-Osama-Bin-Laden-dead...

Nothing stopping you. ;)

CeeCee on Fri, 08/20/2010 - 10:55am.
But that doesn't mean that KFC is out of business.

gloryoski on Fri, 08/20/2010 - 12:10pm.
Like that bp tv commercial with the guy talking about all the "OL"?
I would suppose that after shooting the commercial he and the crew sat around and drank some bearz.

Well you can start another conversation about bears, ya' know
Submitted by gloryoski on Fri, 08/20/2010 - 12:10pm.
Nothing stopping you. ;)
------------------------
Ohio officials: Exhibitor-owned bear kills man

The Associated Press ‎
COLUMBIA STATION, Ohio — Authorities say a bear whose owner once staged wrestling shows featuring the animals has mauled a 24-year-old man to death in Ohio...
-----
The bear, a luchador wearing an El Santo mask, has yet to be identified.

but I must go exercise NOW {cuz i is late {blush}}

Personality: Dr. Wayne Thorburn, Author and Professor

Program: C-SPAN2 Book TV

Topic: A Generation Awakes: Young Americans for Freedom and the Creation of the Conservative Movement

This presentation was filmed at Young America's Foundation's National Conservative Student Conference held at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Date:
- Saturday, August 21 at 9:00 p.m. (ET)

- Sunday, August 22 at 11:15 a.m. (ET)

- Monday, August 23 at 7:00 a.m. (ET)

Not Loving The Way You Lie: Why Eminem “can’t tell you what it really is.”

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 - 04:15

(special thanks to Laura Duvall for sending this song and video my way)

Many of us have by now heard the new Eminem/Rihanna song “Love The Way You Lie.” The chart-topping tune, which combines Rihanna’s lilting voice and Eminen’s rhymes, attempts to portray an abusive relationship. The video has reached over 43 million (and counting!) views on youtube. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uelHwf8o7_U&feature=av2e) The song has already become one of the most downloaded songs of all time.
Eminem is no stranger to controversy. And this song is no exception. Some have questioned whether the song (and its accompanying video) doesn’t actually glamorize domestic violence. (See: http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/2010/08/06/megan_fox_eminem_rihanna and http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/08/07/true-love-is-violent-rih...)

Others have questioned the depiction of what seems to be a high level of female masochism in the song. (Rihanna sings: Just gonna stand there and watch me burn/But that's all right because I like the way it hurts./Just gonna stand there and hear me cry/But that's all right because I love the way you lie.) Neither the normalization of this dynamic nor the fact that the singer happens to be Rihanna, who was so brutally beaten by Chris Brown, will be addressed here. As a man, I feel that my energies around this issue are much better spent working to address men’s violence rather than commenting on and critiquing the motivations and choices of battered women. (An excellent discussion of those issues can be found on feministing.com: http://feministing.com/2010/08/10/love-the-way-you-lie-feministing-group....)

What I want to talk about here is the way that Eminem misrepresents domestic violence:

Both the song and the video present the experience of battering from the batterer’s perspective, which research has continually shown to be notoriously inaccurate.

Eminem’s rap begins: I can't tell you what it really is/I can only tell you what it feels like/And right now there's a steel knife/In my windpipe/I can't breathe/But I still fight. This “man-as-persecuted victim” theme is well documented in the stories of men who batter. Many batterers have an immense – at times even paranoid – and almost entirely inaccurate sense of persecution, and tend to see their physical violence as a means of self-defense... even though no one is physically threatening them.

Furthermore, what is totally absent from Eminem’s narrative (and from the narrative of most batterers) is any analysis of the context wherein men’s violence occurs – a patriarchal world where women are perceived to be inferior beings upon whom it is acceptable for men to vent our rage. The man’s lashing out in this song is depicted as a series of aggressive events between one man and one woman. But we know that domestic violence is a far, far larger phenomenon than just one man lashing out at one woman. It is a global scourge that violates women’s basic freedoms. The song utterly fails to recognize this patriarchal context, and it fails to acknowledge that the batterer’s fist in fact serves as a weapon that helps to keep women oppressed throughout the world.

Both the song and the video present the violence as mutual combat. This repeats another pattern that is common to many batterer’s narratives: the myth that “we were beating on each other.”

Eminem rhymes: “Now I know we said things/Did things/That we didn't mean/And we fall back/Into the same patterns/Same routine/But your temper's just as bad/As mine is/You're the same as me/But when it comes to love/You're just as blinded... Maybe our relationship/Isn't as crazy as it seems/Maybe that's what happens/When a tornado meets a volcano.”

This distorted batterer’s perspective seeks to describe the abusive dynamic as an “us” problem, rather than a “me” problem, and it locates the dysfunction somewhere in between the two parties, and not in the hands of the abuser. (O.J. Simpson took this story even further. When he was initially arrested for domestic violence against Nicole Brown Simpson, he claimed that he had not hit her, but rather that she had hit him. For O.J. Simpson, it wasn’t even an “us” problem. It was a her problem.)

But ultimately even Eminem’s riffs give lie to this mutual combat scenario:

"I apologize/Even though I know it's lies/I'm tired of the games/I just want her back/ I know I'm a liar/If she ever tries to fucking leave again/I'mma tie her to the bed/And set the house on fire.”

In the video the woman attempts to flee twice, but the man convinces/coerces her into returning. So even though the fights depicted here have a feeling of mutuality at times, the reality is that when she wants to leave, he does not let her. And Eminem ends his song with the ultimate threat: if she tries to leave again the man will kill her. And that’s not mutual.

(An interesting piece addressing the myth of mutual combat can be found here: http://www.abuseandrelationships.org/Content/Controversies/myth_mutual_c...)

The song and the video revel in ambiguity. For all of his rebellious posturing, Eminem has actually made a career of sitting on the fence. He continually makes dramatic statements with his art but then fails to stand behind them. In regard to Eminem’s prior controversies involving accusations of homophobia, Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys critically observed: "Eminem's defense of the homophobic lyrics on his albums has always been that he's not speaking as himself, he's speaking as a character, and he's representing homophobia in America." http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1453441/20020416/pet_shop_boys.jhtml?he...

One can imagine that Eminem will take a similar position in regard to this song: that he is merely representing a character, and not necessarily supporting what this character does. Watching the video, one gets the sense that Eminem does in fact see the situation as terribly troubled... but ultimately he doesn’t judge the batterer. And at the end of the video the couple is seen back in bed together, lying there peacefully.

While I understand that some people make strong arguments for the existence of “art for art’s sake,” I often wonder: Does there not come a point when a nonjudgmental depiction of evil becomes in fact evil in itself? Aren’t there some things that are just too urgent, too pressing, to be thrown out there without any sort of political or social commentary attached to them? Aren’t there some things that shouldn’t serve as mere entertainment? I believe that there are. And I believe that violence against women is one of those things.
Today, while radio stations and t.v. music channels play this song over and over, at least three women in North America will meet their death at the hands of their partner or ex-partner. But nowhere in this song or video does Eminem even begin to say: “Hey, guys, please don’t do this. Don’t be violent with women.” And that strikes me as a huge missed opportunity. Fans of Eminem might counter that Eminem doesn’t preach. But I think that he does. I think that he preaches male supremacy.

The song and the video celebrate violent masculine dysfunction. Eminem, despite his amazing talent – and his occasional flashes of insight – continues to celebrate and romanticize rage, dysfunction, and abusive behaviour. This song, like so much of his previous work, fully acknowledges male despair and pain, but then fails to either apologize for unacceptable behaviour or suggest that we men should do anything to try to resolve our demons. And like so many men who are in pain, Eminem (or is it just Eminem’s character?) acts out this pain onto women.

A few years ago I saw Sarah McLaughlin perform as part of her Lilith Fair Tour. Right before singing her song “Building A Mystery” – which contains the lines “you're a beautiful/a beautiful fucked up man” – McLaughlin told the crowd that she never understands why the men in the audience cheer when they hear her sing that verse. Being fucked up, she said, is nothing to celebrate.
Perhaps someone should tell that to Eminem.

(For an earlier profeminist analysis of Eminimen’s work, see http://www.jacksonkatz.com/eminem2.html )

http://www.xyonline.net/content/not-loving-way-you-lie-why-eminem-%E2%80...

------
This post has some limitations. Fails to acknowledge, FOR EXAMPLE and not to get into a whole thing, that domestic violence is not a totally male on female phenomenon. Still, I somehow thought it was worth putting up here, at the moment, and not just, as it were, fer scuz.

Always hated Eminem and loved the Pet Shop Boys.
Still glad someone made a movie about Eight Mile, even if it was Eminem.

Thanks for posting this:
Not Loving The Way You Lie:
new
Submitted by gloryoski on Fri, 08/20/2010 - 5:19pm.

Not Loving The Way You Lie: Why Eminem “can’t tell you what it really is.”

Anyway, it immediately reminded me of this:

Immigrants and faggots/They make no sense to me/ They come to our country/And think they'll do as they please/ Like start some mini-Iran or spread some fuckin' disease.

Inspired, I came across this old RS article. Starts with some references to NWA which are interesting given the Dr. Laura meltdown--

The lyrics have incited a lot of protest, so let's go over them line by line. Let's start with one of the verses, "Police and niggers, that's right/Get outta my way/Don't need to buy none/ Of your gold chains today."

I used words like police and niggers because you're not allowed to use the word nigger. Why can black people go up to each other and say, "Nigger," but when a white guy does it all of a sudden it's a big put-down. I don't like boundaries of any kind. I don't like being told what I can and what I can't say. I used the word nigger because it's a word to describe somebody that is basically a pain in your life, a problem. The word nigger doesn't necessarily mean black. Doesn't John Lennon have a song "Woman Is the Nigger of the World"? There's a rap group, N.W.A., Niggers with Attitude. I mean, they're proud of that word. More power to them. Guns N' Roses ain't bad ... N.W.A. is baad! Mr. Bob Goldthwait said the only reason we put these lyrics on the record was because it would cause controversy and we'd sell a million albums. Fuck him! Why'd he put us in his skit? We don't just do something to get the controversy, the press.

How about the next verse? Immigrants and faggots/They make no sense to me/ They come to our country/And think they'll do as they please/ Like start some mini-Iran or spread some fuckin' disease." Why that reference to immigrants?

When I use the word immigrants, what I'm talking about is going to a 7-11 or Village pantries - a lot of people from countries like Iran, Pakistan, China, Japan et cetera, get jobs in these convenience stores and gas stations. Then they treat you as if you don't belong here. I've been chased out of a store with Slash by a six-foot-tall Iranian with a butcher knife because he didn't like the way we were dressed. Scared me to death. All I could see in my mind was a picture of my arm on the ground, blood going everywhere. When I get scared, I get mad. I grabbed the top of one of these big orange garbage cans and went back at him with this shield, going, "Come on!" I didn't want to back down from this guy. Anyway that's why I wrote about immigrants. Maybe I should have been more specific and said, "Joe Schmoladoo at the 7-11 and faggots make no sense to me." That's ridiculous! I summed it up simply and said, "Immigrants."

How about the use of the word "faggots"?

I've had some very bad experiences with homosexuals. When I was first coming to Los Angeles, I was about eighteen or nineteen. On my first hitchhiking ride, this guy told me I could crash at his hotel. I went to sleep and woke up while this guy was trying to rape me. I threw him down on the floor. He came at me again. I went running for the door. He came at me. I pinned him between the door and the wall. I had a straight razor, and I pulled the razor and said, "Don't ever touch me! Don't ever think about touching me! Don't touch yourself and think about me! Nothing!" Then I grabbed my stuff and split with no place to go, no sleep, in the middle of nowhere outside of St. Louis. That's why I have the attitude I have.

Are you anti-homosexual then?

I'm pro-heterosexual. I can't get enough of women,......
http://chinese-democracy.blogspot.com/2009/08/august-1989-interview-with...

Still like GNR, however, fucked up Axl Rose maybe. Hate Nugent, and his music.

Woman is the Nigger of the World
John Lennon

Woman is the nigger of the world
Yes she is...think about it
Woman is the nigger of the world
Think about it...do something about it

We make her paint her face and dance
If she won’t be slave, we say that she don’t love us
If she’s real, we say she’s trying to be a man
While putting her down we pretend that she is above us

Woman is the nigger of the world...yes she is
If you don’t belive me take a look to the one you’re with
Woman is the slaves of the slaves
Ah yeah...better screem about it

We make her bear and raise our children
And then we leave her flat for being a fat old mother then
We tell her home is the only place she would be
Then we complain that she’s too unworldly to be our friend

Woman is the nigger of the world...yes she is
If you don’t belive me take a look to the one you’re with
Woman is the slaves of the slaves
Yeah (think about it)

We insult her everyday on TV
And wonder why she has no guts or confidence
When she’s young we kill her will to be free
While telling her not to be so smart we put her down for being so dumb

Woman is the nigger of the world...yes she is
If you don’t belive me take a look to the one you’re with
Woman is the slaves of the slaves
Yes she is...if you belive me, you better screem about it.

We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance

The inner workings of a America's fascist elite.

The US blogger on a mission to halt 'Islamic takeover'

New York blogger Pamela Geller is a key force in the campaign to stop Islamic centre near Ground Zero

Pamela Geller is on a mission to save the free world and she's doing it, on this occasion, in a bikini as she writhes around in the sea.

"Here I am in my chador, my burka," Geller jokes to the camera in one of a string of video blogs campaigning against Islamic "world domination" shortly before kicking back in the waves. "There is a serious reality check desperately needed here in America and I'm here to give it to you, but I'm just not ginormous enough. What can I say? And on that note I'm going to go swimming in the ocean, and visit my mama, and fight for the free world."

This strange performance might suggest that Geller is a figure consigned to the margins of the widening and increasingly heated debate about the role of Muslims in America. Far from it.

The flamboyant New Yorker, who appears on her own website pictured in a tight fitting Superman uniform, has emerged as a leading force in a growing and ever more alarmist campaign against the supposed threat of an Islamic takeover at home and global jihad abroad – and never more so than in the present bitter dispute over plans to build an Islamic centre near the site of the World Trade Centre, brought down by al-Qaida.

Geller has been at the forefront of drumming up opposition to the centre, two blocks from Ground Zero, through an array of websites such as the Freedom Defence Initiative (FDI) and Stop Islamisation of America (SIOA). They have become increasingly influential as conservative politicians exploit anti-Muslim sentiment before November's congressional and state elections.

SIOA is behind a series of advertisements opposing the "Ground Zero Mega Mosque", as Geller calls it, which appeared on the sides of New York buses this week picturing a plane flying into one of the World Trade Centre towers and a mosque divided by the question: Why Here?

Geller's answer is that the planned centre is viewed by Muslims as a "triumphal" monument built on "conquered land".

As extreme as that may seem, Geller and her views have been embraced by leading politicians such as Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, and John Bolton, the conservative former US ambassador to the UN, who are scheduled to speak at a rally against the controversial New York Islamic centre organised by Geller for September 11.

Gingrich this week likened the planned centre to putting Nazi signs outside the Holocaust museum.

The campaign against the centre also has the backing of Liz Cheney, daughter of the former vice-president and prominent conservative activist in her own right.

But while Geller has inserted herself into mainstream politics in America, she has also aligned herself with far-right causes across the globe including the English Defence League in Britain, white supremacists in South Africa and Serbian war criminals.

Geller says that after the September 11 attacks she "began to immerse herself in gaining a full understanding of geopolitics, Islam, jihad, terror, foreign affairs and the imminent threats to our freedoms that the mainstream media and the government wouldn't cover or discuss".

Civil rights groups have accused Geller of "hate speech" for her repeated warnings of a looming threat of "Islamic domination", including a claim that Muslim groups in America are working to impose sharia law on the entire population, and her assertions that the 9/11 attackers were practicing "pure Islam".

Geller has also compared the proposed mosque to a building a Ku Klux Klan shrine next to a black church in Alabama.

But she vigorously denies she is hostile to Muslims. "I'm not anti-Muslim. That's a slanderous slur and it's unfair," Geller said this week. "Secondly, I'm not leading the charge [against the Islamic centre near Ground Zero]. The majority of Americans – 70% – find this deeply insulting, offensive. To call it anti-Muslim is a gross misrepresentation and to say that I'm responsible for all this emotion, again a gross misrepresentation."

Geller, a former associate publisher of the New York Observer, is often found in the professional company of Robert Spencer, a bestselling author who is less generally visible but is taken more seriously as a scholar among conservatives.

Spencer, who describes himself as a consultant to the US military, the FBI and the government's joint terrorism taskforce, is the author of several books, including Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs. He also runs a high-profile website, Jihad Watch, which helped raise some of the tens of thousands of dollars to pay for the New York bus poster campaign.

Together the pair launched several organisations including the FDI, which says it is fighting "specific Islamic supremacist initiatives in American cities" and hunting down "infiltrators of our federal agencies", and SIOA, which calls itself a human rights organisation and is tied to a similar group, Stop Islamisation of Europe, which goes by the motto: "Racism is the lowest form of human stupidity, but Islamophobia is the height of common sense".

One member of the board of the Freedom Defence Initiative is John Joseph Kay, who has written that all Muslims are out to kill ordinary Americans: "Every person in Islam, from man to woman to child may be our executioner. In short, that there are no innocents in Islam ... all of Islam is at war with us, and that all of Islam is/are combatant(s).(sic)"

Geller and Spencer wrote a book, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America, for which Bolton provided the forward.

Geller writes for an Israeli media network based in the occupied territories that is the voice of the Jewish settler movement and runs another website, Leave Islam Safely, which claims to offer guidance on how to escape the religion without being killed.

But her principal outlet is her blog, Atlas Shrugs, named after the philosophical novel by the arch-conservative Russian emigre, Ayn Rand, which promoted "the morality of rational self-interest".

In Atlas Shrugs, Geller lays bare her sympathies with extremist groups across the globe. She has vigorously defended Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian president who died while on trial at The Hague for war crimes, and denied the existence of Serbian concentration camps in the 1990s.

She has allied herself with racist extremists in South Africa in promoting a claim that the black population is carrying out a "genocide" of whites.

The website also carries a picture of Geller hugging Geert Wilders, the far-right Dutch politician who advocates banning the Qu'ran and the construction of new mosques, and runs a support campaign for him as he faces trial for incitement to hatred.

Geller has also spoken out in favour of the English Defence League. When the anti-Islamic organisation was planning a rally outside parliament earlier this year, she wrote: "How I wish I could be there to stand with the English Defense League".

Geller has claimed regular contact with the EDL leadership and recently published a screed by the organisation's spokesman, Trevor Kelway. She said in one of her blogs: "I share the EDL's goals ... We need to encourage rational, reasonable groups that oppose the Islamisation of the West and not leave it solely to fringe groups like the BNP."

Geller has also said the EDL is misrepresented. "The EDL is routinely smeared in the British media, as the Tea Party activists are smeared in the US media ... There is nothing racist, fascist, or bigoted about the EDL," she wrote.

While mainstream politicians in Britain and other parts of Europe generally steer clear of the likes of the EDL, Wilders and Serbian war criminals, Geller is providing a bridge between foreign extremists and prominent politicians in the US.

Wilders is scheduled to appear on stage at the September 11 anti-mosque rally alongside Gingrich, Bolton and Gary Berntsen, a candidate for the US Senate.

The Southern Poverty Law Centre, the most prominent hate monitoring group in America, said that the campaign against the Islamic centre near Ground Zero had mixed political exploitation with hate-mongering.

"The politicians and other opportunists are stoking the fires," said Marc Potok, who heads the centre's operation to monitor the extreme right. "The politicians are in it because they want to win more seats. The Pamela Gellers of the world apparently will do anything they can to attack Islam and this Islamic centre has provided them with a very large opening."

Potok says that Geller and others have crossed the line from legitimate debate.

"I think we have seen a great deal of hate speech. It is one thing to talk about the sensibilities of New Yorkers and of survivors and relatives of those who died.

"It is quite another to talk about conspiracies on the part of Muslims to dominate the United States, plots to insert sharia law into American statute books, and the idea that Islam is in of itself a great evil. Those things seem to be clearly over the line and we're hearing more and more of that," he said.

Geller did not respond to requests for an interview. But the American Civil Liberties Union, which has spoken out forcefully in support of the right to build the Islamic centre and mosque, said that Geller and others campaigning against the centre were equally protected by the constitution.

"Just as religious liberty is a core American value so too of course is free speech," said Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU's freedom of religion programme.

"It's clear that many are exploiting this issue and the deep-seated anti-Muslim bigotry that underlies much of this controversy for bare political gain [but] there certainly is a constitutional right to speak out against this or any other project.

"We have a robust protection of free speech in this country including the right to speak hatefully."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/20/rightwing-blogs-islam-americ...

What do you get when you combine the most outlandish gaffes of Anne Coulter, the most awkward monologues of Sarah Palin, the senility of the crazy McCain Lady, filter any remaining logic out of it and give it a keyboard in the Bronx?

...In one of her recent tirades titled, CNN Tells, Sells More Lies About Palin — it’s Time to Expose the truth about Obama, Geller writes,

So why not tell the truth about Obama and his reported strange sexual predilections? My question is, it is well known that Obama allegedly was involved with a crack whore in his youth. Very seedy stuff. Why aren’t they pursuing that story? Find the ho, give her a show!

Here she calls on CNN to investigate Obama’s “strange sexual predilections.” She also says that it is “well known” but then sneaks in “allegedly” that Obama was “involved with a crack whore in his youth.” This is just the beginning of the craziness. She then goes on to state that she believes that President Obama’s trip to Pakistan in the 80′s was originally to go for drugs but that he became indoctrinated into Jihad.

Back in the early 80′s, there were only two reasons to travel to Pakistan. Jihad or drugs. I think he went for the drugs and came back with jihad. (He did, after all, change his name to Barack Hussein Obama from Barry Soetoro, upon his return from that trip).....

Pam, that ever-vigilant firecracker of a reporter broke a story that “even CNN didn’t care to touch.” What was this highly neglected breaking story? Obama is the illegitimate son of Malcolm X! In her 50,000 word rant, Pam Geller toys with all sorts of theories including the suggestion that Obama’s mom somehow had an amorous hook up with Malcolm?

Barack Hussein Obama Jr Malcolm X Barack Hussein Obama Sr. Barack Hussein Obama Sr., Tom Mboya, and Philip Ochieng, all share common physical features of the Kenyan Luo tribe: Modest stature under six feet, round faces, small chins, wide set eyes, slanted back foreheads, and retracted hairlines…none of these features are shared by Malcolm X and Barack Hussein Obama Jr.

She then goes on a long and wide conspiratorial line trying to link Barack’s mother with Malcolm X, and all the possibilities of how they could have hooked up. If you read the post, beware that it is long, like sleuthing through a swamp....

...Yet he was registered as a Muslim in an Indonesian school…And so now we have our first Muslim presidency, just eight years after 9/11. The media can spin their subjugation and adulation a million different ways, but America did not vote for a “Muslim presidency,” which is what this is. Everything this president has done so far has helped foster America’s submission to Islam.

If that weren’t enough then you could predict what comes next. Not only is Obama the illegitimate son of Malcolm X, not born in America, on top of all that it is obvious that since he is a Muslim he must also be an anti-Semite!

Every decision, every move, every policy decision the President has made in regards to Israel has been the act of …. an anti-semite....
http://www.loonwatch.com/2009/08/pamela-geller-the-looniest-blogger-ever...

This is who Howard Dean wants to surrender to.

"Except this year, there is a difference -the normal seasonal flu vaccine will be combined with swine flu (H1N1) vaccine as well.

“The 2010-2011 seasonal flu vaccine will include the H1N1 strain that was responsible for the 2009 pandemic,” said Vicki Monks, media spokesperson for the Oklahoma City-County Health Department."

--- THEY WILL NEVER GIVE UP THAT IS FOR SURE.

The swine flu was a hoax .... and what do they do now? Combine the H1N1 vaccine with the flu vaccine. Does anyone know what this combination will do to the human body? .
At the very least it will mean more convulsions, more seizures, more deaths for children. And then some.

Unbelievable.
====
Seasonal, H1N1 flu vaccine to be combined this fall

By Andrew Griffin on August 19, 2010

OKLAHOMA CITY — For those concerned about the impending flu season, the government will be making the seasonal flu vaccine available again this year.

Except this year, there is a difference -the normal seasonal flu vaccine will be combined with swine flu (H1N1) vaccine as well.

“The 2010-2011 seasonal flu vaccine will include the H1N1 strain that was responsible for the 2009 pandemic,” said Vicki Monks, media spokesperson for the Oklahoma City-County Health Department.

Monks pointed to a February 2010 press release on the Flu.gov website that states: “Today’s recommendation to include protection against the 2009 H1N1 flu strain in next season’s flu vaccine was made by the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee. The committee’s recommendations typically guide vaccine manufacturers in preparing each season’s flu vaccines. The World Health Organization has made the same recommendation.This recommendation will go into effect for next fall’s flu season. In the meantime, you can still protect yourself against the H1N1 flu by getting your H1N1 vaccine now.”

More information on this vaccine plan is noted at the Virology blog with the story “Trivalent influenza vaccine for the 2010-2011 season.”

Monks said the seasonal flu vaccine will be available at OCCHD sometime around the first week in October, although a precise date was not yet made available.

http://oklahoma.watchdog.org/1127/seasonal-h1n1-flu-vaccine-to-be-combin...

you're on somebodies payroll right?

I still don't know how far away this new Islamic Centre would be from Ground Zero exactly. Sometimes I read two blocks, then four blocks. What does that mean exactly? At first it sounded as if it was going to be build right there next to the WTC. Well, no wonder that was getting everyone in a tizzy.

Do you know how far from Ground Zero it is going to be? Still wondering.

You work for Kaiser Sunstein.

Ret Chief medical Officer for Finland condemns the Swine Flu issues and explores other related matters. Excerpt from The Researchers series, BASES 5.

Youtube has a series of interviews with Dr. Kilde and I listen to every single one. She is excellent. Talks about the dangers of mind control, vaccines (esp. when mandated), electrosmog, chemtrails, chips implants w. all your personal info incl. $$$ (v. scary but it will come soon, no doubt about that) and the general plan of the Elite for US. The Elite plans to survive and will go underground. Huge bases are being build all over the world. Research!!!

VIDEO

http://www.medicanalife.com/watch_video.php?v=d7c67d4c5e7fdee

"Do you know how far from Ground Zero it is going to be?"

the term was first used to refer to the devastation caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Sarah Silverman: My nightly terror

For the young Sarah Silverman, sleepovers were hell, school camp a nightmare. Why? Because until she was 16 she regularly wet the bed. The comedian writes of the shame, the soaked sheets and the plus-sized nappies that haunted her childhood
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/aug/21/sarah-silverman-bedwetter-...

technological innovation, tends [after a few repetitions] to remind one of

Which to some is not an entirely complementary comparison...[(In fact it leaves some of us entirely for Lorne.) (Yeah, well...still better than that smallpox blanket shit some were bringing this morning. You know--at least try diamonds--something...)]

("Pardon me!")

(If we were playing $20,000 pyramid that last bit might have proven helpful.)

Schizo time again
Nothing but a destruction.

----for Miss Sarah ;-

Lawdy miss clawdy-Elvis Presley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAfe5tVQveg&feature=related

Submitted by bridge on Fri, 08/20/2010 - 7:58pm.
I still don't know how far away this new Islamic Centre would be from Ground Zero exactly...
--------------
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-sledge/just-how-far-is-the-groun_b_66...

Just How Far Is the "Ground Zero Mosque" From Ground Zero?

Matt Sledge
Posted: July 28, 2010 10:50 AM

[Includes an aerial photo marked with locations, a video and text explanation.]

and for everyone who loves great rock and The King

Elvis Presley-Trying to get to you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCMdF-Etahs&feature=related

I couldn't ask for a better response and the link is excellent - its not THAT far away as I thought but not at Ground Zero for sure

the bird's eye view is amazing
I was trying to figure out all the buildings destroyed by the 9/11 explosions and it breaks my heart just looking at the site...all the memories kept rushing back. How can people be so cold blooded without an ounce of morality.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-sledge/just-how-far-is-the-groun_b_66...

Don’t Let Flawed Democracy Drown
By Mahir Ali

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

IS there any government anywhere in the world that would not have been found wanting in the face of such a profound calamity as the unprecedented floods that have devastated every province in Pakistan?

Probably not, at least in the absence of advance warning. It was therefore inevitable to some extent that the inadequacy of the state’s response to such a monumental tragedy would invite derision and anger. But, at the same time, can anyone seriously doubt that the perennial dysfunctionality of the civilian authorities has compounded the disaster?

That the army has been at the forefront of relief efforts, inadequate as they are, is hardly surprising. Inevitably, its endeavors in this regard will, at least in the short run, affect its ability to combat Islamist militancy in the regions bordering Afghanistan - and this, it has been suggested, could allow the Pakistani Taliban to slip into that country relatively unhindered.

That’s certainly a possibility. Even more alarming than that, however, have been the subtly insidious insinuations that a return to military rule would somehow, and to some extent, alleviate Pakistan’s woes. This is arrant nonsense. Neither the present government’s deplorable incompetence nor the head of state’s bizarre decision to undertake a European jaunt just as the nation he supposedly presides over was being run over by the worst natural disaster in its history should obfuscate this issue.
http://www.zcommunications.org/don-t-let-flawed-democracy-drown-by-mahir...

**

;)
{...i am just running {mentally} from issues I am dealing with. Sometimes it is just a bit much to view & deal daily, for decades...:):(}

...ahhh ya got some lent there ... let me get that for you...
;)
had to reboot, then "loop" it = listen numerous times...
;)

*

.

{in background}...well all my DVDs broke ;D ... weird lol eye-roll ...

{also inspires my works} TeaHee

Ms_A,
That could mean a couple of (yup, two) things: Hewlett-Packard (Nasty Carly) or Half-Huff-assed Past. What's the reference?
Affectionately - A

Mountaintop removal is an evil business. (See Brick TeeVee SPECIAL REPORT Mountaintop Removal Study.) Raise your hand if know who Don Blankenship is. With the death of Robert Byrd (who supported confirming Alito and Roberts) the Senate seat is open. "Dem" WVA Guv Joe Manchin is running for the seat. Now, if you've been following ANY of this you would know Manchin is in the pocket of Big Coal. Electing Manchin to the freakin' U.S. Senate is as good as putting Don Blankenship in there when it comes to Big Coal interests.
Democratic senators backing Manchin race
WV Gazette-Mail August 17, 2010 By Phil Kabler

~snip~ Among the $172,000 in political action committee contributions to Manchin's Senate campaign are 10 contributions totaling $60,000 from Leadership PACs of U.S. senators.

That includes maximum $10,000 contributions from the Searchlight Leadership Fund, run by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.; DanPAC, by Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii; and Impact PAC, by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

Manchin also reported $5,000 contributions from America's Leadership PAC (Sen. Debra Ann Stabenow, D-Mich.), DakPAC (Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D.), Green Mountain PAC (Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.), the Southwest Leadership Fund (Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M.), and TomPAC (Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa).

Other Leadership PAC contributions include $2,500 contributions from America Works PAC (Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio), and the Follow the North Star Fund (Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.). ~snip~

In the case of Sherrod Brown, he VOTED FOR strengthening regulations for Mountain Top Removal and other mining activities after the Massey mine catastrophe earlier this year.

If you have any of the above representing you, please send them a STRONGLY-WORDED letter how you feel about them supporting a Big Coal Anti-Renewable-Energy Global-Warming-Denier. Hell! Write 'em all! See Jeff Biggers @ Huff Po and elsewhere for background and news.

And support Coal River Mountain Watch www.crmw.org

Please support Mountain/Green Senate Candidate Jesse Johnson.
http://www.jessejohnson.org/

Thank you.

New BTV tomorrow!
How are ya?

;) ... Harry Potter ... It's Harry Potter weekend HaHaHa ;)

WHY do WTP {We The People} ALLOW "MOUNTAIN TOPPING"?

Or maybe didn't ever, or whatever.

(That's right SJ...WHATEVER.)

(He says he thinks a 14-year-old girl lives inside me that says that.)

(And my [belated] response is: How would that be different than with anything else that I say?)

JK (Yes, I fucking am. STFU!)

___
If I ever get into the vodka I will warn you so you can clear the decks because, I mean, can you imagine? (It's not pretty.)

Keyser, not Kaiser. (I KNOW.)

The Guns of August
Lowering the Flag on the American Century
By Chalmers Johnson

Source: TomDispatchFriday, August 20, 2010

In 1962, the historian Barbara Tuchman published a book about the start of World War I and called it The Guns of August. It went on to win a Pulitzer Prize. She was, of course, looking back at events that had occurred almost 50 years earlier and had at her disposal documents and information not available to participants. They were acting, as Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara put it, in the fog of war.

So where are we this August of 2010, with guns blazing in one war in Afghanistan even as we try to extricate ourselves from another in Iraq? Where are we, as we impose sanctions on Iran and North Korea (and threaten worse), while sending our latest wonder weapons, pilotless drones armed with bombs and missiles, into Pakistan’s tribal borderlands, Yemen, and who knows where else, tasked with endless “targeted killings” which, in blunter times, used to be called assassinations? Where exactly are we, as we continue to garrison much of the globe even as our country finds itself incapable of paying for basic services?

I wish I had a crystal ball to peer into and see what historians will make of our own guns of August in 2060. The fog of war, after all, is just a stand-in for what might be called “the fog of the future,” the inability of humans to peer with any accuracy far into the world to come. Let me nonetheless try to offer a few glimpses of what that foggy landscape some years ahead might reveal, and even hazard a few predictions about what possibilities await still-imperial America.

Let me begin by asking: What harm would befall the United States if we actually decided, against all odds, to close those hundreds and hundreds of bases, large and small, that we garrison around the world? What if we actually dismantled our empire, and came home? Would Genghis Khan-like hordes descend on us? Not likely. Neither a land nor a sea invasion of the U.S. is even conceivable.

Would 9/11-type attacks accelerate? It seems far likelier to me that, as our overseas profile shrank, the possibility of such attacks would shrink with it.

Would various countries we’ve invaded, sometimes occupied, and tried to set on the path of righteousness and democracy decline into “failed states?” Probably some would, and preventing or controlling this should be the function of the United Nations or of neighboring states. (It is well to remember that the murderous Cambodian regime of Pol Pot was finally brought to an end not by us, but by neighboring Vietnam.)
http://www.zcommunications.org/the-guns-of-august-by-chalmers-johnson

-So Alice how long while it take for the sleeping giant to awake?-

When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head?
or on the trigger of your gun?

Sweden withdraws arrest warrant for WikiLeaks founder
Issued on rape allegations that Assange calls 'without basis
NBC News Service -August 21, 2010

Swedish prosecutors on Saturday withdrew an arrest warrant for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, saying a rape allegation it was based on is unfounded.

The accusation was labeled a dirty trick by Julian Assange and his group, who are preparing to release a fresh batch of classified U.S. documents from the Afghan war.

Swedish prosecutors had urged Assange — a nomadic 39-year-old Australian whose whereabouts were unclear — to turn himself in to police to face questioning in one case involving suspicions of rape and another based on an accusation of molestation.

"I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape," chief prosecutor Eva Finne said, in announcing the withdrawal of the warrant. She did not address the status of the molestation case, a less serious charge that would not lead to an arrest warrant.

But Karin Rosander, a spokeswoman for the Swedish Prosecution Authority, told NBC News that the allegation of molestation remains. However, Rosander said that after a new prosecutor looked at the allegations, the arrest warrant was withdrawn because the severity of the case does not require an arrest at this stage.

Rosander told NBC News Swedish authorities have no idea where Assange is but have been trying to contact him.

Swedish prosecutors had urged Assange — a nomadic 39-year-old Australian whose whereabouts were unclear — to turn himself in to police to face questioning in one case involving suspicions of rape and another based on an accusation of molestation.
Continue reading here...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38796121/ns/world_news-europe/

Why WikiLeaks Must Be Protected
Friday 20 August 2010
by: John Pilger, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

On 26 July, WikiLeaks released thousands of secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan. Cover-ups, a secret assassination unit and the killing of civilians are documented. In file after file, the brutalities echo the colonial past. From Malaya and Vietnam to Bloody Sunday and Basra, little has changed. The difference is that, today, there is an extraordinary way of knowing how faraway societies are routinely ravaged in our name. WikiLeaks has acquired records of six years of civilian killing for both Afghanistan and Iraq, of which those published in the Guardian, Der Spiegel and The New York Times are but a fraction.

There is, understandably, hysteria on high, with demands that the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange be "hunted down" and "rendered." In Washington, I interviewed a senior Defense Department official and asked, "Can you give a guarantee that the editors of WikiLeaks and the editor in chief, who is not American, will not be subjected to the kind of manhunt that we read about in the media?" He replied, "It's not my position to give guarantees on anything." He referred me to the "ongoing criminal investigation" of a US soldier, Bradley Manning, an alleged whistleblower. In a nation that claims its constitution protects truth tellers, the Obama administration is pursuing and prosecuting more whistleblowers than any of its modern predecessors. A Pentagon document states bluntly that US intelligence intends to "fatally marginalize" WikiLeaks. The preferred tactic is smear, with corporate journalists ever ready to play their part.
Continue reading:
http://www.truth-out.org/why-wikileaks-must-be-protected62462

...What Judith Miller is busy, call the Swedes and have them issue a warrant?

Weekend Edition
August 20 - 22, 2010

CounterPunch Diary

"This is What Success Looks Like"

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

The last American combat brigade in Iraq has left the country, so the Pentagon announced this week. The 40,000 personnel from 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division began crossing into Kuwait August 19. The US combat mission in Iraq – Operation Iraqi Freedom - is scheduled to end on August 31.

The least credible human in America is a president or a general guaranteeing imminent victory, plus withdrawal of troops from the quagmire of the day.

The rhetorical embroidery decorating this pledge changes little from decade to decade. In 1970, President Richard Nixon declared that the Vietnam War was proceeding so auspiciously that he was planning to pull out 150,000 American troops. The South Vietnamese forces, he asserted, were now of sufficient military competence to carry the brunt of the fighting.

The truth was that the South Vietnamese forces were ill-trained, averse to battle and led by corrupt officers booking their flights to America. The war was lost, but it dragged on for another five years.

In Iraq in 2007, General Petraeus famously announced his "surge" strategy and confided to visiting journalists that the strategy was working well, with "astonishing signs of normalcy" in Baghdad. Monica Crowley of Fox News nominated Petraeus for the "most honest person of the year".

The truth was that in substantive terms, for reasons entirely unrelated to the fictive "surge", the Sunni had given up fighting the Americans. Baghdad was in ruins, the war, in terms of the objectives declared in 2003, was a disaster.

In 2008 Obama campaigned on pledges of withdrawal from Iraq and escalation in Afghanistan. At the start of this month, addressing cadets at West Point military academy on August 2, 2010, the president said that the war in Iraq had been won: "This is what success looks like." Departing US troops will leave behind a "democratic" and "sovereign" Iraq, one that is now "no haven" for "the kind of violent extremists who attacked America on 9/11."

It's a bizarre definition of success and furthermore the U.S. State Department, also General Odierno and others feels it necessary to emphasize that US involvement in Iraq is far from over. More on that here next week.

What about Obama's pledge, when he was selling his Afghan surge last year, that withdrawal there would begin in 2011? Here's where serious domestic politics – always the driver of foreign policy – takes over. The Democrats feel they cannot go into any election in either 2010 or 2012 and be accused of "losing" in Afghanistan. This, unlike Iraq, is Obama's war.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn08192010.html

Troops Punished After Refusing to Attend Evangelical Concert
Friday 20 August 2010
by: Mike Ludwig, t r u t h o u t | Report

"...The (Fort Eustis, VA) Commanding General's Spiritual Fitness Concert that Smith and others were told to attend was headlined by BarlowGirl, a "band of tender-hearted, beautiful young women who aren't afraid to take an aggressive, almost warrior-like stance when it comes to spreading the gospel and serving God," according to the group's web site.

"The group Smith marched with included at least two Muslim soldiers who fell out of rank and stopped marching on their own, according to a first-hand account published by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF)."

http://www.truth-out.org/troops-punished-after-refusing-attend-evangelic...

Guestworker Group Exposes Forced Labor in Tennessee
Friday 20 August 2010
by: Jacob Horwitz

"...He and 11 other Mexican guestworkers arrived in Smyrna, Tennessee, to work for a company called Vanderbilt Landscaping. Vanderbilt obtained guestworker visas by claiming to the U.S. Department of Labor that it could not find a single American to fill its highway-side landscaping jobs—at a time when Tennessee suffers a 10.1 percent unemployment rate.

"Though Vanderbilt had received $2.46 million in state contracts and $900,000 in guaranteed loans through the federal stimulus program, the company chose the guestworker program rather than hiring locally.

"One of the bosses’ first acts was to seize the Mexican workers’ passports. “Everyone had to turn over their passports,” Jimenez said. “No one said anything because we had all just arrived and we had the debt hanging over our heads.”

"Vanderbilt created an atmosphere of terror for the workers. Bosses openly carried pistols and brandished them. They placed workers in filthy, overcrowded housing under constant surveillance. “We were not allowed to talk to anyone,” Jimenez said..."
Read in its entirety:
http://www.truth-out.org/guestworker-group-exposes-forced-labor-tennesse...

I am on WikiLeaks side -- GRRR--& not surprised at "stalking" in "the faux-media" (ABC (Disney) & NBC (GE) & CBS (Business News Group) & Fox Entertainment of WikiLeaks & it's founder, Julian Assange.

Sound Familiar? Does anyone else see a pattern here?...
new
Submitted by CeeCee on Sat, 08/21/2010 - 1:22pm.

Sweden withdraws arrest warrant for WikiLeaks founder
Issued on rape allegations that Assange calls 'without basis
NBC News Service -August 21, 2010

Swedish prosecutors on Saturday withdrew an arrest warrant for , saying a rape allegation it was based on is unfounded.

The accusation was labeled a dirty trick by Julian Assange and his group,... more above Post...

*** ***

DITTO, I agree CeeCee re ...
Sound Familiar? Does anyone else see a pattern here?...
new
Submitted by CeeCee on Sat, 08/21/2010 - 1:22pm.

Do you ever have mega-fun for hours in "the real world" then return to the internet and get the feeling of,
"why did I even think that this shit is entertaining? It's the same thing over and over. It's bullshit."

...........Out.

"You look so tired-unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't, they don't speak for us"
-Radiohead.
www.sigzone.blogspot.com

much like Lindsay Lohan.

"You look so tired-unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't, they don't speak for us"
-Radiohead.
www.sigzone.blogspot.com

I can live without winning the good fight.
But I can't live without fighting it.

Good Posting and BTW Dinner looked Grand, even the Wine - but i just have to say Save for perhaps to "calling a Cab" or a Pinot Noir (;) ) ... Yum...
{cuz I am a mush drinker - :}

...My Fav {past or present} would be to meet with President Obama...
;)

Weekend Edition
August 20 - 22, 2010

When Wall Street Rules, We Get Wall Street Rules

Whacking the Middle Class

By DEAN BAKER

The middle class is getting whacked by the Great Recession. Fifteen million people are out of work, another 9 million workers can only find part-time jobs, and millions more have given up looking for work altogether. Those lucky enough to be employed are unlikely to see any substantial wage gains for years to come.

Millions of homeowners are facing the loss of their home and more than 10 million are underwater in their mortgage. Most of the huge baby boom cohort is approaching retirement with little other than Social Security to support them, now that the collapse of the housing bubble has destroyed their home equity and much of the rest of their savings.

This pain is infuriating for two reasons. First, this was an entirely preventable disaster. The housing bubble was easy to see. Competent economists had long warned of its dangers.

The second reason why the current situation is infuriating is that we know how to get the economy out of this mess. We just need to boost demand. This can be done either with much more government stimulus, more aggressive monetary policy from the Fed, or pushing the dollar down to boost exports.

If this disaster were preventable and we knew how to get out of it, why didn't our leaders try to stop it before it happened? Why don't they take the steps necessary now to get the economy moving again?

The answer to both these questions is simple: The politicians work for someone else. On Election Day, the politicians might need our votes, but they won't get to be serious contenders unless they've gotten the campaign contributions of the big money crew. And the moneyed elite has been using its control of the political process to ensure that an ever larger share of the economy's output is redistributed upward in their direction.
http://www.counterpunch.org/baker08192010.html

Sound Familiar? Does anyone else see a pattern here?...
Submitted by CeeCee on Sat, 08/21/2010 - 1:22pm.
---------

It certainly did, CeeCee,
I was out all day and just read that piece of news and all I could think was W H A T???
People are really out to get him. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange needs protection. Just like John Pilger wrote in above article, WikiLeaks must be protected.

from last night? :-)

It sounded like you had yourself quite a party .... very entertaining - did it take place in the third or fifth dimension? ;-) ... but today its gone.

I was meaning to ask you about a certain bridge over troubled water and a certain life preserver? Do you think that is needed? It caused some confusion late at night. Please enlighten me if you still remember ...

Peace, Rock n' Roll, Elvis and
CatsCatsCats to YOU :-)

A cup of Earl Grey for anyone? I just made a pot for us all :)

Microcosm & Macrocosm
;)

always comes to mind when I see your name. I feel we all are headed for some trouble waters and since I like you and value your efforts I was saying "check your life presever" because we all might need one shortly.
Crime is up locally on the streets on NYC I hear stories every day about assaults , robberies and police bullshit.
Today I listened to stories of stolen bikes, lost unemployment, nocking off people coming home from bars, polce harassmentt of brown people,etc. ghettodefender, nora and many more have been way ahead on this. to some they sound paranoid to me they sound prophetic( please excuse my grammar or spelling mistakes.)

I am taking a conscious effort to remain un- snarky and to do some Healiing with others I was insensitive with. I was cleansing my self and preparing for a big battle ,not on the blog but with the outragious class warefare that the good guys are losing. I was ackowledging friends and frenemies and in my feeble way hoping for some exchanges on a more positve note. I wasnt that drunk ,I get obtuse or fuzzy when I try to say too many things to too many people. we are all good as they say on the streets. Netroots is the medium we comunicate in these days and SAM IS THE MAN for allowing this forum to continue.

and jumps out of ring into stand.
On the Justice of Roosting Chickens
Submitted by ghettodefender on Thu, 08/19/2010 - 11:18am.

"The incident happened during an event in which people try to provoke the bull to charge them."

Well, the barbaric people got their wish.

Kudos to the courageous bull.

According to Dr. Rauni Kilde earth is an evil planet where very bad leaders "experiment" with the the living species. Humans, animals .... and the environment.

And the human species has no respect for the other living species on earth.
The barbaric bullfighting is just one example.
The human population on planet earth has no respect for other living species and hunts, kills, and enslaves them en masse.

The earthlings still have a very long way to go .... towards enlightenment. A long way. And they may never make it.

Finally {eye-roll} ;)

we are all heading for trouble waters. And we (my family) are starting to get the life preserver" together. This involves a lot of things to think about. Where is the safest place to live? The Dollar. Food. Defense. My head is spinning.

Since I don't listen to mainstream servant news at all and only to the alternative media I have different opinions than many on the blog. So many times I decide not to communicate my concerns cause I don't know How far I can go. I listen to and read the same "whistleblowers" I have for years now. I don't know if others think I am paranoid. But if they do I can only feel sorry for them because the mainstream news will not tell the people what is really going on.

Everywhere is talk about the wars and they will come. But that is only the start for us here in the "Homeland." We are now in the process of "disinformation." Same happened before the Iraq war. That Shapiro fellow tells us Obama can only survive as Prez and get the people united behind him with the help of another Oklahoma "terrorist" attack or another 9/11. Something to think about. A False Flag?

I am not falling for the right/left paradigm since they all work towards the exact same goal. In fact, the Dems and Reps hold each other up, so beating up on Rethugs is a total destraction IMO. But I do appreciate that Sam allows this forum to continue, too. Many bloggers I know since 2004 are still here and that is why I am still here. And you are here, taozen. Thats a good thing :-)

Btw. I didn't mean to say that you were drunk. Not at all. But I remembered you mentioned the possible legalization of weed in NY and so I thought maybe you were trying a bit of a leaf last night already ;-)

Talking about the "Life Preservers", we have to stay healthy. And strong. That is the most important thing.

xox

The Big Lie Technique Versus

The Reality Of Iran's Nuclear Program

Scott Horton On Russia Today

V I D E O

Antiwar Radio host Scott Horton discusses the Iranian nuclear program on Russia Today.

Iran '12 months from nuclear weapon' US warns as Bushehr reactor started:

The US sought to reassure Israel that Iran is still a year away from building a nuclear weapon, as Iran's leadership hailed the fuelling of its first nuclear power plant on Saturday.

Posted August 21, 2010

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26218.htm

-beating up on Rethugs is a total destraction IMO-

.

i think i just had a blogasm...(not the first time but it's been FOREVER since the last time)....

xxoo

I'm all dizzy now.. *lol...*
Submitted by Alice on Sat, 08/21/2010 - 11:53pm.
-----

Shells is back! wheeeeee.....

I'm all dizzy, too, while that Epic art is staring at me ... lol

How is school, Shells. Do you have a lot of homework to do?

xo

Why DEMS ATT IMHO... ;}
;)

US Troops Say Goodbye to Iraq
Torture. Corruption. Civil war. America has certainly left its mark

By Robert Fisk

August 20, 2010 "The Independent" - -When you invade someone else's country, there has to be a first soldier – just as there has to be a last.

The first man in front of the first unit of the first column of the invading American army to reach Fardous Square in the centre of Baghdad in 2003 was Corporal David Breeze of the 3rd Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment. For that reason, of course, he pointed out to me that he wasn't a soldier at all. Marines are not soldiers. They are Marines. But he hadn't talked to his mom for two months and so – equally inevitably – I offered him my satellite phone to call his home in Michigan. Every journalist knows you'll get a good story if you lend your phone to a soldier in a war.

"Hi, you guys," Corporal Breeze bellowed. "I'm in Baghdad. I'm ringing to say 'Hi! I love you. I'm doing fine. I love you guys.' The war will be over in a few days. I'll see you soon." Yes, they all said the war would be over soon. They didn't consult the Iraqis about this pleasant notion. The first suicide bombers – a policeman in a car and then two women in a car – had already hit the Americans on the long highway up to Baghdad. There would be hundreds more. There will be hundreds more in Iraq in the future.

So we should not be taken in by the tomfoolery on the Kuwaiti border in the last few hours, the departure of the last "combat" troops from Iraq two weeks ahead of schedule. Nor by the infantile cries of "We won" from teenage soldiers, some of whom must have been 12-years-old when George W Bush sent his army off on this catastrophic Iraqi adventure. They are leaving behind 50,000 men and women – a third of the entire US occupation force – who will be attacked and who will still have to fight against the insurgency.

Yes, officially they are there to train the gunmen and militiamen and the poorest of the poor who have joined the new Iraqi army, whose own commander does not believe they will be ready to defend their country until 2020. But they will still be in occupation – for surely one of the the "American interests" they must defend is their own presence – along with the thousands of armed and indisciplined mercenaries, western and eastern, who are shooting their way around Iraq to safeguard our precious western diplomats and businessmen. So say it out loud: we are not leaving.

read here

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26205.htm

Nearly 50 percent leave Obama mortgage-aid program

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
AP Economics Writer

August 21, 2010 "AP" -- Nearly half of the 1.3 million homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration's flagship mortgage-relief program have fallen out.

The program is intended to help those at risk of foreclosure by lowering their monthly mortgage payments. Friday's report from the Treasury Department suggests the $75 billion government effort is failing to slow the tide of foreclosures in the United States, economists say.

More than 2.3 million homes have fallen into foreclosure since the recession began in December 2007, according to foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac Inc. Economists expect the number of foreclosures to grow well into next year.

"The government program as currently structured is petering out. It is taking in fewer homeowners, more are dropping out and fewer people are ending up in permanent modifications," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics.

Besides forcing people from their homes, foreclosures and distressed home sales have pushed down on home values and crippled the broader housing industry. They have made it difficult for homebuilders to compete with the depressed prices and discouraged potential sellers from putting their homes on the market.

Approximately 630,000 people who had tried to get their monthly mortgage payments lowered through the government program have been cut loose through July, according to the Treasury report. That's about 48 percent of the those who had enrolled since March 2009. And it is up from more than 40 percent through June.

Another 421,804, or roughly 32 percent of those who started the program, have received permanent loan modifications and are making their payments on time.

read here

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26220.htm

if I have been graded for my first assignment..If you can believe this, it is creating two flyers in Word 2007...Seems like it will be easy enough, but also I will learn things...Suppose to be 8-12 hours a week of homework...

What's new in your world?

I HEAR YOU on the life presever thing

.I didnt smoke because I dont have extra money these days and it is actually medicine for my glaucoma anyway.

As we get to know each other we all can try saying things in different ways and there are no rules except honesty .

I'm very glad. :)

nite, my friendzzzz.

I'm out. L8rs.

We are busy getting the life preservers together. Getting the house ready for sale and looking for new real estate. We are not yet sure where that will be.

Mr. B. is waiting for me. Our movie tonight is "Alice in Wonderland."

Hope your weekend is a good one.

Peace xo

Today was better than it's been lately...mostly because the "offending" person(s) were not there today...

If you like to torture yourself on Sunday Morning watching corporo-teevee talking heads this is for you!

BRICK TEEVEE'S SHINY OBJECT OF THE WEEK!
http://www.samsedershow.com/node/5952

PLUS much more interesting stuff from the "Professional Left"!

This whole Assange "rape/molestation" BS is EXACTLY what John Pilger talks about in the post ghettodefender brought over earlier:

A Pentagon document states bluntly that US intelligence intends to “fatally marginalise” Wikileaks. The preferred tactic is smear, with corporate journalists ever ready to play their part.

I hope Assange is very careful in his travels.

being ahead of schedule..but it catches up to me quickly and suddenly I'm doing it all in one day.. :)

I still am a leftie and most democrats these days aren't even close to being left. Yes the two teams are pretty much the same .

Left to me means anti war, pro animal and earth all the things Mrs_A keeps coming back to. I appreciate her views on staying united and sticking to the path we all probably started on in our younger years.
Alice has been pretty consistant with seeing Nader's good points and trying to break patterns that less adventurous people still tolerate..

I hate it when people acquiesce to the pressures of fitting in and not rocking the boat. It makes sense to try and fix the dems but is that possible when the blue dogs are just as bad as the rethugs and maybe worse because they say one thing and do another?
So I guess I come back to how can I offer info and affect change? I think opening a door for someone who is ready to go through it is the best I can do. When I try to push people who aren't ready it doesnt work. I find I have to listen to so much crap about the mosque for example and It amazes me how easily people will take M$M news one way or the other and not interpret things for themselves. there are Sheeple then there are the watchdogs(or alpacas and Lamas( two kinds animal and spiritual ) that rise above the crowd and try to serve by protecting and warning and oiling the hinges so that the doors will open easily if there are people ready to WTFU.
(this is not smoke or drink driven)

the lama will assume the role of watchdog and protect the grazing sheep.It is quite amazing how fast they assume that role and they are very good at it. And then the Lamas from the Buddhist tradition we all know how important their energy is to keeping things going .

Submitted by Ms_Anthrope on Sat, 08/21/2010 - 12:45am.
...ahhh ya got some lent there ... let me get that for you...
-----------
Is it funnier if the use of the word lent is intentional or unintentional? I can't decide. I gave up deciding for Lint and it stuck.

Incidentally, Quadragesima is not the stage name of a bespectacled goth chanteuse despite what you might have read on one of Alex Jones' websites. It's Latin for Lent.

+Yea FilthyRich that is a concern I share. and Did I ever thank YOU for your work and posts? probably not enough >you do a good service..< I think you like to and that shows. I dont know if I can stomach watching the shows but At least you keep me aware of what's going down. Bravo

http://www.divshare.com/download/12094612-17b
---------------

39 years ago king curtis died in such a sad way

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Curtis#The_Murder_of_King_Curtis

SUNDAY 22 AUGUST 2010
Housing Crisis, System Failure
Saturday 21 August 2010
by: Rick Wolff, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

This capitalist crisis resembles a certain kind of serious disease. Different symptoms keep flaring up at different locations. It began with sub-prime mortgages in residential housing. Then, sequential flare-ups hit the private banking system, forced millions out of their jobs and homes, drastically cut world trade, and undermined the public services and national debts of several European countries. Meanwhile, another symptom festered in the credit freeze crippling so much private borrowing. Now, yet another symptom matures as government subsidies and supports to our crisis-ridden private housing industry add rising billions to the deficit.

The unspoken ideological taboo in most public discussion of the economic crisis prohibits seeing or treating the problem as systemic, as a problem of capitalism as a system. Instead, our political, journalistic, and academic leaders mostly see only symptoms and "develop policies" only for those symptoms. Alarms about one symptom -- and contested efforts to address it -- soon shift to another symptom and "policy responses" for it. Often such policies for one symptom actually worsen another symptom. For example, when stock markets collapsed early in 2000 (symptom), the Federal Reserve drastically cut interest rates (policy response); that move facilitated the excess lending that collapsed the entire economy in 2007.
http://www.truth-out.org/housing-crisis-a-symptom-capitalisms-failure625...

Chosen

The toxin of anti-Semitism isn’t a threat only to Jews.
By Christopher Hitchens

HONORED RECENTLY WITH an invitation from the family of Daniel Pearl to give the annual memorial lecture that bears his name, I tried to speak about the protean character of the world’s most ancient and tenacious prejudice. The Passover Haggadah speaks of Jew-hatred or attempted Judeocide as something that happens in every generation, but as true as this may be, it is of little help in making distinctions. There is, probably first and certainly foremost, religious anti-Semitism. Unlike other nations or peoples, Jews were among the witnesses to the alleged lives and preachings of Jesus and Muhammad, and turned away from men they deemed false Messiahs. It is inconceivable that they will ever be quite forgiven for doing so. Most medieval Christian anti-Semitism was of the “Christ killer” sort, usually enriched by lurid allegations about ritual slaughter and the ineffaceable nonreligious but actually racial deformities (body odor, birthmarks) that branded the Jew as outcast. After the deportation of Jews from Christian Spain, the Muslim Ottoman Empire kept up a tradition of “tolerance,” allowing large Sephardic communities in European cities as diverse as Salonika and Sarajevo as well as on the North African littoral. But the Jews of the Arab lands were expelled again in revenge for the defeat of Palestinian nationalism in 1947–48, and now the most evil and discredited fabrication of Jew-baiting Christian Europe—The Protocols of the Elders of Zion—is eagerly promulgated in the Hamas charter and on the group’s Web site and recycled through a whole nexus of outlets that includes schools as well as state-run television stations.

This might license the view that the sickness is somehow ineradicable and not even subject to rational analysis, let alone to rationalization. Anti-Semitism has flourished without banking or capitalism (for which Jews were at one time blamed) and without Communism (for which they were also blamed). It has existed without Zionism (of which leading Jews were at one time the only critics) and without the state of Israel. There has even been anti-Semitism without Jews, in states like Malaysia whose political leaders are paranoid demagogues looking for a scapegoat. This is enough to demonstrate that anti-Semitism is not a mere prejudice like any other: Sinhalese who don’t like Tamils, or Hutu who regard Tutsi as “cockroaches,” do not accuse their despised neighbors of harboring a plan—or of possessing the ability—to bring off a secret world government based on the occult control of finance.

Paradoxically, then, there is something almost flattering about anti-Jewish racism. To have been confined in the ghetto for so long, and then to be held responsible for Marx, Freud, and Einstein, to say nothing of Rothschild … Yet the outcome is always the same: to be treated as human refuse and to be either deported or massacred. Jean-Paul Sartre’s essay profiling the anti-Semite has many shortcomings, but it’s hard to argue with his conclusion that such a person must necessarily carry a thirst for murder in his heart. Yet this is perhaps true of other racists as well. What strikes the eye about anti-Semitism is the godfather role it plays as the organizing principle of other bigotries. The Nazis may well have thought of Slavs and Poles as less than human, but it was the hatred of Jewry that cemented their worldview (and, horribly enough, gave them something in common with many of their Slavic and Polish victims).

VIDEO: Christopher Hitchens speaks about anti-Semitism and his own Jewish heritage with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg and novelist Martin Amis.
More from this series: Hitchens discusses Iran, religion, and cancer with Goldberg and novelist Martin Amis.
Given the salience of this, it’s of some importance to teach ourselves to make distinctions. Robert Wistrich has been writing about this subject for a considerable time, and has succeeded in retelling the old and dolorous tale of witch-hunting, Inquisition, and pogrom in such a way as to furnish a solid work of reference. Yet for him, almost any piece of anti-Jewish graffiti is to be taken as seriously as the Protocols themselves, and virtually all propaganda against the state of Israel participates in an ancient agenda that has extermination as its object.

Thus, according to him, in 1982, after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon:

In Italy, shortly before Yasser Arafat was granted a hero’s welcome by the government, no fewer than two hundred thousand trade unionists passed before the Holocaust memorial of a Rome synagogue uttering cries of “Death to the Jews” and “Jews to the ovens.”
This simply did not take place as described. It is probable that some in that crowd shouted some of those things, but the Italian labor movement is not like that, as Wistrich knows full well. Nor does he mention that 300,000 Israeli Jews demonstrated in Tel Aviv at the same time over their revulsion at the massacre of Palestinians in Beirut by an Israeli-supported Phalange party that had been a historical sympathizer of National Socialism. At that time, too, Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon attempted to meet any criticism of their complicity in crimes by terming it “blood libel.” One does not want such a grave charge as that to be degraded by propaganda to the point where it meets diminishing returns.

Wistrich is not the only one sickened to see half-baked pro-Palestinian protesters superimposing the swastika on the Star of David (especially when some of the protesters don’t actually think the swastika was all that bad to begin with). But this is an auction of imagery that was started by Begin and other Israeli extremists who once openly and regularly compared the PLO to the Nazi Party. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, editor of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, used the dubious term Judeo-Nazi to describe elements of the Israeli settler movement as early as 1967: you could hardly guess at the existence of critics like him if Wistrich was all you had to go on. (Wistrich does devote a little space to the idea of the “self-hating” Jew, another catch-all propaganda device, most recently employed by Netanyahu fans to describe David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel.)

In some contrast, Anthony Julius’s study of the phenomenon in its English form is punctilious and specific. You “catch it on the edge of a remark,” as Harold Abrahams observes of non-philo-Semitism in Chariots of Fire. And if by chance you miss it, Julius will be there to catch it for you:

Scoffs and scorns, which are predicated on a sense of difference, may be evidence of nothing more than a certain amused contempt. I have several proof texts for this proposition: a World War I memoir, Adrian Bell’s Corduroy, a passage from one of Macaulay’s letters, a Balliol College rhyme, and then, by way of identifying the limit of this perspective, a short prose piece of Virginia Woolf’s and a remark of a Cambridge don.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/09/chosen/8173

Comments

ronstrauss 1 week ago
The nature of anti-Semitism, indeed all forms of prejudice, is rooted in each individual's fears, insecurities and self-hate, nourished by ignorance. The Jews are chosen, they're chosen by society to be their economic/political relief valve, and by envious individuals within that society for ill-gotten gain. As history has shown, when anti-Semitism rears its ugly head 'ask not for whom the bell tolls.' Eventually, everyone is suspect. Sadly, ethnocentrism defines a great deal of the human condition.
11 people liked this. Like Reply

zzz05 1 week ago
Sadly, yes; xenophobia is a hallmark of human societies, perhaps due to evolutionary forces selecting for us ancestors who didn't run out to pet the bear which randomly wandered into their cave. And as a result, nothing coheres a society more than waving an external threat at them, whether real or imaginary (Orwell's 1984 might be fiction, but the past decade in the US certainly wasn't). And Jews, historically the quintessential outsider in Europe, can be expected to be the resting place for the free-floating paranoias and unspecific insecurities of individuals and societies both.
5 people liked this. Like Reply

Sora Ryu 1 week ago
Very good points. I am glad that you are able to make distinction between the many shades of gray in the opposing poles of Zionism and Antisemitism instead of painting every opinion over in bold strokes of assumption as others do.

isaacplautus 1 week ago
"it’s of some importance to teach ourselves to make distinctions. "

Certainly one of the most difficult things to do in the Israel debate. I am appalled by the base anti-Semitism directed at Israel by many Muslim nations. Of course Israel has a right to exist; but at the same time I think the utter poverty and ghettozation of the Palestinian people has to be taken into account. How should we expect people forced to live in these circumstances to behave? What would you think of Israel if you lived in a hut next to them with barely enough food and clothing? Also the fact that Palestinians are viewed and condescended to by many Muslims in the same way "rednecks" are viewed by many whites. How was it that Bob Dylan song went? "Only a Pawn in their Game"

The most important distinction to be made is between those who hate Israel because they hate Jewish culture and Jewish people; and those like Andrew Sullivan who harbor no hatred of Jews and admire Israel but offer legitimate critiques of Israeli policy.
(Edited by author 1 week ago)
6 people liked this. Like Reply

isaacplautus 1 week ago in reply to isaacplautus
Also Hitch, let me add my small voice to the chorus of those wishing you all the best in your cancer fight!

ganpatram 3 days ago in reply to isaacplautus
Why does the Christian world have such a fearsome history of anti-Jewish hatred?

I need to point out that historically this HAS been a specifically Christian problem.

Because the Jews, after the triumph in the Roman world of Christianity, became stigmatised by the deadly, extremely emotional accusation of having been Christ-killers. The Christians, anxious after Hitler's Holocaust to dissociate themselves from the infamy of collusion in anti-Jewish hatred, have hugely exaggerated pre-Christian anti-semitism in the Roman world. But though this existed - based on resentment of Jewish exclusivism and contempt for pagan Gods, it was trifling compared to the terrible Christian charge of Christ-killing.

Without nearly two thousand years of daily, vrulent preaching of anti_jewish hatred by the Christian churches, the Holocaust could never have happened.

The Koran is often accused of being a book that incites violent prejudice. But it is no more full of virulent denunciation of unbelievers and misbelievers than the Bible, particularly the Old Testament - though there are many ferocious passages in the New Testament, too.

David Holbrooke once wrote a very enlightening essay pointing out that Westerners' bibiolatry had generally blinded them to how horrific a book of lethal threats and denunciations the Bible actually is.

The great difference between the Westerners and the Muslims is that over the centuries, drawing on the heritage of Graeco-Roman pagan culture - far more free in its tendencies - Westerners largely liberated themselves from the tiny, gloomy, totalitarian world-view of the Bible. The Muslims did not have that luck. They remain in the Middle Eastern mindset.

As I always say, had the Jews not been exiled, Israel would today be no more liberal than Saudi Arabia.

The Koran is not substantially different from one of stern books of the Old Testament, like the Books of Moses. The same single-minded monotheism and promises of retribution to those who dissent from it.

Mohammed indeed is known to have associated with Jews and Christians in Mecca and to have absorbed ideas from them. The Koran is a later version of Mosaic monotheism, in Arabic. Moses is a central prophet of Islam.

These things need to be pointed out today, when people readily assume that Judaism and Islam have nothing to do with each other. In fact, without Judaism there could have been no Islam, a daughter faith.

It is hard to see how a Jewish community that had no secularising experience in the West could have been any freer than the Arabs; indeed, the Jews of places like Yemen were no different from their Arab fellow-citizens in civilizational outlook.

As for Jewish contributions to thought, no-one disputes this has been huge in the modern age. But the civilizations of Greece, India, China, Egypt and Mesapotamia all contributed incomparably more in terms of science and philosophy than Israel, in the Ancient World. The Bible is striking in its absense of the kind of abstract philosophy that Plato engaged in. Nor is there a huge contribution by Jews to science until the ghetoes were destroyed by the French Revolution. Hitler went out of his way both to uphold Christianity and to explicitly denounce the "liberty, equality, fraternity" doctrine of the French Revolution - another fact Westerners often forget.

I didn't know that "Soul Serenade" was so important in King Curtis's life story (played at his funeral, according to Wikipedia you link above).

I love that song.

I didn't know any of that about how he died. Very sad.

First time "watching" (sort of) Rachel in a long time.

It all seems pretty legit, valuable, except for the part where she gets all excited firing the gun of the tank and talks about respect for firepower and that as a metaphor for our standing in the world and...

EWWWWW.

What is it about her and that stuff? I know we have rehashed it here many times.

Who owns NBC news now? Did the Comcast purchase go through or it still GE? I am blanking on that stuff right now...so I will Google later or someone can just tell me. Sorry, bad blogger, bad blogger. Just not in that place right now.

Good morning.

----
Here's a link to that segment. All pretty gross.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#38793559

The way the officer talks too, about how amazing it is that the brown folk are catching on so fast with their training. Etc, etc.

Bullfighting definitely not OK with me but I don't get any kind of vindication when I actually see this, for sure.

Just different, I guess.

Or maybe if they were already picando his back or slicing him up, I could feel more...

(Whatever...)

I should be done now, for the day.

----
Yeah, boy can he jump though. That makes me feel like, all that life, strength. Why would you fuck around with that, demean it, for sport, because you can? Then I feel it a little bit more.

;)

;|

;|

that Mega farming techniques and overuse of antibiotics has created the Egg problems. I am dissapointed that it took so long to start the re calls. I read this problem started up in May. Where was the government in all of this?. When people say they want less government in their lives I think that they aren't making proper distinctions about what part of their lives government should be involved in.

It is acutally legal to raise chickens for their eggs in NYC. You aren't supposed to raise chickens for the flesh

I am dissapointed that I hardly hear the brand names and lot numbers of eggs that are suspect,but the "news' will fill us up on the Battle against the Mosque. I hear the anti Mosque people want the Muslims to be more sensitive.

I dont hear enough about why the floods in Pakistan Have NEVER been like this. I don't hear the global warming deniers lately. I heard BBC radio last night and I fear the numbers of displaced familes is way higher. With the Paikstan and Russian catastrophes there are going to be big food problems for another 20% of the world going forward.. All here say ?,where are my links? ,please connect the dots.

AND MY MAIN POINT IS. America has to get out of the war business and humanity has to stop with this corporate driven endless expansion and total INSENSITVITY FOR The planet and all life forms. OBAMA IT IS A NEW WORLD AND THE OLD POLITICAL WAYS ARENT GOING TO WORK. STOP IT MAKE A CHANGE IN YOUR HEART AND STOP WITH YOUR EXCUSES. AND PROSECUTE SOME BUSH/CHENEY CRIMES AND REVAMP THE DOJ.

Submitted by Leah on Sun, 08/22/2010 - 4:57am.
Chosen

The toxin of anti-Semitism isn’t a threat only to Jews.
By Christopher Hitchens

Ths article and the responses are good examples of using your noodle.

( where is the Jefferson Noodles from Block Island these days? I guess hiding from the tourists.)

You must just be settling in from your time in Vermont. I think Rachael is changing her TV persona, She seems different from the AAR days. I notice some nervous laughing and more humor and less seriousness I think she thinks she will keep her gig longer at NBC and its other enities.They don't seem any more liberal and I think they are moving farther away from the center for sure. The big bad boys that have f'd everthing up are just trying to keep a lid on things at best. Then there is the Murdick crowd that wants to create more racial tension,I I t is scary out there.

In the open mic writes:

"In one of the reports, researchers at the University of Georgia said about three-quarters of the oil from BP's blown-out Macondo well was still lurking below the surface of the Gulf and may pose a threat to the ecosystem."

Has this well-name been widely reported and I have just been missing it? Just kind of wondering. Prolly not important...

However, I did hear on some interview on "This is Hell" a while ago that she now calls herself "an activist without an agenda?" (?!)

That's like...(Can't think of good quip right now.)

Actually just rewoke up (to sleep the first time at 4.)

Now got to do laundry--look at status of (now 4) student loans, see about completing this coursework.

'Tis why I am trying not to become too deeply enmeshed in the news, but the company today is pleasant so far...temptation etc

There is a mass cover up of all the BP and the other oil companies crimes against nature. It only seems logical to ask where has the oil gone.

This came from Ring of Fire's "newsletter"
---------------------
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-17/bp-oil-spill-c...

Nah...prolly nothing...
(Bites fist in mouth Gene Wilder style)

(Page 448 is not part of this book preview.)

This week on Ring of Fire Radio, the Congressman with Guts, Alan
Grayson
, will be joining us to tell us about his plan to limit the amount of
money that corporate America is pumping into political campaigns.

Mother Jones Magazine investigative reporter Andy Kroll

will give us the inside scoop on the people making millions of
dollars as a result of rampant home foreclosures.

Daily Beast correspondent and publisher of the Independent Weekly,
Rick Outzen

, will tell us how BP is covering up the truth about the amount of
oil that remains in the Gulf of Mexico.

And political satirist Matt Filipowicz

will be joining us to discuss the proposed deal by Google and
Verizon, that could leave millions of

Egg recall: Supplier reported to have history of health, safety violations

By Brad Knickerbocker, Staff writer / August 22, 2010

Two farms that recalled some 450 million potentially-tainted eggs have links to an Iowa businessman who “has been cited for numerous health, safety, and employment violations over the years,” according to a report Sunday.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0822/Egg-recall-Supplier-reported-to-h...

----
But then this oh-so-surprising twist was sitting right there in the news gadget on my homepage, so I thought I'd pass it along...

;) I need to brew more tea ...

Skepticism Widespread in Mideast Over New Peace Talks
Friday 20 August 2010
by: Sheera Frenkel and Margaret Talev, McClatchy Newspapers

Jerusalem - As the Obama administration heralded a new round of face-to-face talks on Mideast peace, the abiding reaction across the region Friday was skepticism, with many expressing doubt that conditions are ripe for much to come from negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

The talks are set to resume Sept. 2 after nearly two years.

Several coalition partners of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as members of his Likud Party, have threatened to topple him if he proceeds with some of the compromises the Palestinians expect in peace talks, such as an Israeli withdrawal from some Jewish settlements.

"Netanyahu knows not to go forth with the settlement freeze or with other stipulations placed by the Palestinians. We will not leave behind our duties to the settlers," said Danny Danon, a Likud member of Israel's parliament, the Knesset. [In spite of the fact that all settlement activity is in clear violation of international law.]

Palestinians said the atmosphere for peace talks was less positive than in past years. Speaking only on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, one member of the Palestinian negotiation team predicted that it would be "very difficult, though not impossible" to make progress under the U.S. initiative.
[If Obama is serious about a peace settlement within the context of international law, there will be one.]
http://www.truth-out.org/skepticism-widespread-mideast-over-new-peace-ta...

I know no one's here right now, but there is a diary on Kos right now about Sam by an author named Krush. If anyone is registered there they might want to go add to the comments. I haven't been reading here much but I always thought I learned good things from Taozen

but here lately...

:P ;}

He's been gettin' a little...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIT5Hpo6mmE&feature=related

Thattar's called a HYPERLINK...

Hooo-eeee! Thars anothern. Ther kinda magical. (But don't worry, only with a c, not with a K.)

Can't be nobody bein' snarky cuz "there's nobody here..." (we know this).

:)

I wonder if there's a name for that brain disease--and a number. Dr Laing? nora?

_________ ?

(My meth teacher always left blank spaces on his handouts for class discussions in case you wanted to add any alternatives. Just in case. You could think of any...)

See, it wasn't addys at all. It was meth.

That and La Policia Mexicana. (Cuz I didn't work for Home Depot.) ;) :) :)

yet missing passwords & never got again. My Bad! ;o

I think the term you are looking for in that particular case is strange (if you get my drift).

I can say that almost without a flicker of hesitation. (Does hesitation come in flickers?)

---
fyi 2:05. Can't ask my people to do anything I didn't do. Now I just gotta find some people...

Cars? With Todd Rundgren.

He did a lot of freelance producing that is possible.

I took Todd from his Woodstock wooden secret hide out to his family's very middle class philly home some time ago. He was pretty cool and had a very esoteric library with Alice Bailey Books and Evans- Wentz.

I think about you and your causes often.

Tori drag. (Blog folklore, compa, blog folklore...or does nothing after 2006 count as folklore?)

Oh Gloryoski You should do stand up. I was lucky they had Modern meth as an elective in my school.

s'nothurn.

If Ms. Mcgee showed up I'd give her a nice flannel robe and tell her to set her butt down by the fire. (OK, or the summer equivalent...)

(She herself admitted she wears flannel, so I am not breachin' there either.)

anyway I hope all of them are doin well. flannel or chanel l it all works for me.

I like to listen too Ms. Ella's stories, and this a real longun. She be da marm.

(The extra o is totally not a tribute to the real Sandy, but if she asks tell her it is, kay?) ;)

Pamela Geller: The Looniest Blogger Ever
Submitted by ghettodefender on Fri, 08/20/2010 - 7:36pm.

Ghettodefender this is good enough to give you a day off for the effort. A day with out Ghettodefender sucks. Nora what's your 20?

That's only for very special guests.

It's cold or it's hot.

(Wise old lesbian told me that a million times. But who ever listens to them, right?)

Nite.

;)

Flash Market Crash Is Still Under Investigation

It sounds like “Wall Street” meets “The X-Files.”

The stock market mysteriously plunges 600 points — and then, more mysteriously, recovers within minutes. Over the next few weeks, analysts at Nanex, an obscure data company in the suburbs of Chicago, examine trading charts from the day and are stunned to find some oddly compelling shapes and patterns in the data.

To the Nanex analysts, these are crop circles of the financial kind, containing clues to the mystery of what happened in the markets on May 6 and what might have caused the still-unexplained flash crash.

The charts — which are visual representations of bid prices, ask prices, order sizes and other trading activity — are inspiring many theories on Wall Street, some of them based on hard-nosed financial analysis and others of the black-helicopter variety.

To some people, like Eric Scott Hunsader, the founder of Nanex, they suggest that the specialized computers responsible for so much of today’s stock trading simply overloaded the exchanges.

He and others are tempted to go further, hypothesizing that the bizarre patterns might have been the result of a Wall Street version of cyberwarfare. They say high-speed traders could have been trying to outwit one another’s computers with blizzards of buy and sell orders that were never meant to be filled. These superfast traders might even have been trying to clog exchanges to outflank other investors...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/business/23flash.html?_r=1&src=twt&twt...

They weren't home at the time.

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/08/22/report-gunshot-fired-into...

Hells Angels, Vagos Shootout Leads To 27 Arrests In Arizona

CHINO VALLEY, Ariz. — Arizona authorities say 27 people have been booked on charges ranging from attempted murder to participation in a criminal street gang after shootings involving members of rival motorcycle gangs, the Vagos and Hells Angels.

Detectives estimate at least 50 rounds were fired Saturday during the shootings in the small community of Chino Valley, north of Prescott.

Yavapai sheriff's spokesman Dwight D'Evelyn says at least five people were shot but none of the wounds was life-threatening.

He says detectives are trying to locate one injured gang member who was helped away from the scene in an unknown vehicle.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/22/hells-angels-vagos-shooto_n_690...

The shootings brought dozens of Arizona law enforcement officers to the scene.

You know where to find him, if ya want him. (And doesn't everybody?)

---
Talkin' bout the twitter feed. Ain't got to Salon yet.

UPDATE - Live from Ft. Hood, Webcast of Protest Against 3rd Armored Cav Redeployment
Submitted by Ralph Lopez on Sun, 2010-08-22 22:17

Updatee - The military has taken the highly unusual decision to deploy the 3rd ACR in the middle of the night, tonight, under cover of darkness. The protesters have stated they will confront the deployment with "radical, direct action" whatever the hour. See latest update video below. If you keep your computer on tonight with this page up it will automatically play when broadcast recommences.

Using webcam technology, the anti-war soldier's coffee house outside of Ft. Hood, Texas is providing video updates and webcasting live the protest against redeployment of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment this month to Iraq. Protesters include active-duty soldiers (off-duty), veterans, soldiers families and supporters. Ft. Hood is the largest military base in the nation. The Under the Hood Cafe website reads:

As corporate media heralds the end of combat forces in Iraq, Fort Hood is deploying 3,000 troops to Iraq from the 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment. Many of them have been deemed “undeployable” due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and other conditions resulting from previous deployments during this decade of warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. Several upcoming events are aimed at peeling back the mass deception surrounding “the end of combat operations.” 1:30 pm, Sunday, August 22, Killeen. There will be a peaceful march to the East Gate of Fort Hood protesting the deployment of additional troops to Iraq and drawing attention to the numbers being sent who are suffering from conditions that should render them “undeployable.” Participants should gather at Under the Hood, 17 S. College, Killeen by 1:00 pm.

Please tune in and sign in to the live chatroom on the webcast page to join the discussion and show your support. NOTE: Look for the live action webcast to begin around 6pm EDT.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54518

----
Too bad a lil' late.

Lotsa links at the link. No DS bylines today, thank gods. Cause people who take 1 (1!) month off blogging to write a book and then blog during that month, are lookin' to get a wedgie.

(I'm serious I'd do the time. What's the bit for a wedgie? Is it different for atomic and non-atomic?)

---
Just below where I stopped copying there's an embed of the Under The Hood live chat, and there's stuff going on there.

Oyf Eybik Yung

Costa Rica: US Warships Cause Unease

Friday 20 August 2010
by: Jeff Leff, Global Post

Costa Rica is wary of plans to allow US Naval ships to dock on its shores.

San Jose, Costa Rica - A U.S. warship capable of deploying more than 1,000 military personnel and dozens of helicopters is headed this way — right for Costa Rica's peaceful Caribbean coast.

USS Iwo Jima comes in peace, according to a U.S. embassy statement, as part the Southern Command's "Continuing Promise 2010" mission, a humanitarian operation that aims to bring free health care, engineering projects, veterinary attention, donations and even baseball games to locals.

A charm offensive like this — a friendly naval ship armed with aid for one of the country's poorest regions — might be just what the United States needs to calm the waters around its longtime friend Costa Rica.

In July, the legislative assembly here approved a U.S. request for permission to dock 46 warships and 7,000 military personnel, mostly for narcotics missions on Costa Rican territory, sparking outrage among skeptics of the global war on drugs. The critics include outspoken politicians, pacifists, student groups and everyday Ticos, who are proud of their country's six decades without a military.

Leftist lawmaker José María Villalta said these vessels are looking for a fight. Legislator Luis Fishman said congress was uninformed when it voted and claimed the arrival of the boats would be an assault on Costa Rica's sovereignty. They filed complaints with the country's high court, which has suspended the agreement while it mulls over the case...

http://www.truth-out.org/costa-rica-us-warships-cause-unease62526

In Nicaragua, a Return of the Contras?
Friday 20 August 2010
by: Tim Rogers | The Christian Science Monitor | Report

A former commando known as 'Comandante Jahob' says he is rearming a group of contras to oppose the reelection of President Daniel Ortega. Former contra leaders and ex-military intelligence tell the Monitor it would be a mistake for the military to dismiss the threat.

Managua, Nicaragua - Hidden somewhere in the rugged mountains of Estelí, in northern Nicaragua, a former contra commando with CIA training says he’s organizing an armed rebellion against President Daniel Ortega.

José Gabriel Garmendia, a former counterrevolutionary special forces commander known by the codename “Comandante Jahob,” is reportedly leading a group of rearmed contras that promise to “remove Ortega from office with bullets” if the president tries to sidestep the constitution to get himself reelected next year.

US-backed counterrevolutionary forces, or “contras,” battled the left-wing Sandinista government in decade-long civil war in the 1980s, which claimed more than 36,000 lives. When Mr. Ortega and the Sandinistas were voted out of office in 1990, tens of thousands of contras – including Jahob – handed in their weapons and tried to return to civilian life.

Ortega returned to power in 2007 in his fourth attempt at reelection – a campaign he ran on promises of “peace and reconciliation.” But three-and-half years into his second term, Nicaraguan society has become increasingly polarized by Ortega’s government, which critics claim is pushing the country back toward dictatorship.

Ortega’s actions have allegedly forced some contras to return to clandestine struggle, according to Jahob. In a rare phone interview with a local newspaper earlier this month, the mysterious comandante said he and his men are looking for weapons and munitions and are prepared to remain in the mountains as long as they feel it’s necessary to ensure Ortega's ouster...

http://www.truth-out.org/in-nicaragua-a-return-contras62520

Profits Are Way Up at General Motors ... So Why Aren't They Hiring?
By Michael Moore

Source: Michael Moore.comSunday, August 22, 2010

So General Motors is back to making billions in profit. And if the past is any guide, we know what that means: time for some layoffs!

Or maybe not. Back in the '80s and '90s, when GM was consistently posting giant profits, they were simultaneously firing tens of thousands of workers in my hometown of Flint and across Michigan. Right now it looks like the only person being canned is CEO Edward Whitacre. (Only last week Whitacre was saying he wasn't planning to leave anytime soon—kind of ironic that the former president of the Boy Scouts of America failed to Be Prepared.)

But if they're not laying people off yet, they're also not hiring.

During the first half of 2010, GM made $2.2 billion in profit, yet according to The Wall Street Journal, they've only added 2,000 jobs in all of North America, taking their workforce from 113,000 to 115,000.

And what's true for GM is true for the country. The government stepped in with trillions of dollars in cash and guarantees to keep Corporate America from collapsing due to its own stupidity, short-sightedness and greed. And it worked—for Corporate America. You may not have noticed as you were being foreclosed on, but the profitability of the Fortune 500 is almost back to normal. It jumped to $391 billion in 2009, up 335 percent from 2008. And the 500 biggest non-financial corporations are now sitting on $1.8 trillion in cash, more than at any time in the past 50 years. (That's what the business press always says—that they're "sitting" on it—although as far as I know this is not literally true.)

That's what we should really focus on when talking about GM and other companies who've taken the free handout. It's not about the continuous reshuffling of the white-guys-in-suits deck of cards. What does it mean that the new CEO of GM is Daniel F. Akerson, a managing director at the Carlyle Group? Probably that GM is about to be run by some real ballbusters who have no problem flaunting the law or basic American decency.
http://www.zcommunications.org/profits-are-way-up-at-general-motors-so-w...

Marcela Lagarde Q&A: "Feminism Doesn't Bite"
Thursday 19 August 2010
by: Dalia Acosta | Inter Press Service | Report

Havana - After more than a century of existence, feminism is still around in Latin America and the world, but the history of this ideology that seeks equality for women is like a succession of breaking waves, with peaks and troughs.

That is how Mexican anthropologist and feminist Marcela Lagarde describes this "persistent critique of modernity," which in the early 21st century is at an unusual juncture, due to the inter-generational diversity of activists, and its expansion, through gender studies, to other social, academic and scientific fields.

"Feminism doesn't bite," said Lagarde, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and one of the promoters of the General Law on Women's Access to a Life Free from Violence, in effect in Mexico since Feb. 2, 2007, and of the inclusion of the specific crime of femicide (gender-based murders of women) in the country's criminal code.

Lagarde, head of the Red de Investigadoras por la Vida y la Libertad de las Mujeres (a women's research network for life and freedom), sat down with IPS during a visit to Cuba.

Q: What causes the persistence of prejudice against feminism, even within women's movements or in countries like Cuba that promote policies in favour of women?

A: The transmission of the role of feminism in modern culture has lacked continuity. It's as if there are times when the historical memory of feminism is lost, and then it has to be recovered. Since feminism is a critique of patriarchy, it has been perceived as dangerous by those who support patriarchal society, culture and power, or who think patriarchy is inevitable.

Feminist analysis views patriarchy as a metapolitical construction found across different societies and eras, and proposes concrete alternatives. [Damn that's good. What she said. Well maybe not meta as in only? I dunno.] Patriarchal power is power monopolised by men. Feminism proposes other values and alternatives that may be perceived as dangerous, as ideas that do bite, because they aim at eliminating gender-based domination...

http://www.truth-out.org/marcela-lagarde-qa-feminism-doesnt-bite62498

:(

More wedgies.

I hope I don't have to serve these sentences consecutively.

Then it was like I was abducted, or something. Just when I had got my demon offa my butt too.

Nite fer realz.

http://books.google.com/books?id=avh6dkSop0EC&dq=israel+shahak+2000&prin...

The Weight of Three Thousand Years

by Professor Israel Shahak

Contents:

Foreword by Gore Vidal
A Closed Utopia?
Prejudice and Prevarication
Orthodoxy and Interpretation
The Weight of History
The Laws against Non-Jews
Political Consequences
Notes and References
"Jewish History, Jewish Religion" may be purchased at: http://www.amazon.com

Foreword:

Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought him two million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train. 'That's why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.' As neither Jack nor I was an antisemite (unlike his father and my grandfather) we took this to be just another funny story about Truman and the serene corruption of American politics.

Unfortunately, the hurried recognition of Israel as a state has resulted in forty-five years of murderous confusion, and the destruction of what Zionist fellow travellers thought would be a pluralistic state - home to its native population of Muslims, Christians and Jews, as well as a future home to peaceful European and American Jewish immigrants, even the ones who affected to believe that the great realtor in the sky had given them, in perpetuity, the lands of Judea and Samaria. Since many of the immigrants were good socialists in Europe, we assumed that they would not allow the new state to become a theocracy, and that the native Palestinians could live with them as equals. This was not meant to be. I shall not rehearse the wars and alarms of that unhappy region. But I will say that the hasty invention of Israel has poisoned the political and intellectual life of the USA, Israel's unlikely patron.

Unlikely, because no other minority in American history has ever hijacked so much money from the American taxpayers in order to invest in a 'homeland'. It is as if the American taxpayer had been obliged to support the Pope in his reconquest of the Papal States simply because one third of our people are Roman Catholic. Had this been attempted, there would have been a great uproar and Congress would have said no. But a religious minority of less than two per cent has bought or intimidated seventy senators (the necessary two thirds to overcome an unlikely presidential veto) while enjoying support of the media.

In a sense, I rather admire the way that the Israel lobby has gone about its business of seeing that billions of dollars, year after year, go to make Israel a 'bulwark against communism'. Actually, neither the USSR nor communism was ever much of a presence in the region. What America did manage to do was to turn the once friendly Arab world against us. Meanwhile, the misinformation about what is going on in the Middle East has got even greater and the principal victim of these gaudy lies - the American taxpayer to one side - is American Jewry, as it is constantly bullied by such professional terrorists as Begin and Shamir. Worse, with a few honorable exceptions, Jewish-American intellectuals abandoned liberalism for a series of demented alliances with the Christian (antisemtic) right and with the Pentagon-industrial complex. In 1985 one of them blithely wrote that when Jews arrived on the American scene they 'found liberal opinion and liberal politicians more congenial in their attitudes, more sensitive to Jewish concerns' but now it is in the Jewish interest to ally with the Protestant fundamentalists because, after all, "is there any point in Jews hanging on dogmatically, hypocritically, to their opinions of yesteryear?' At this point the American left split and those of us who criticised our onetime Jewish allies for misguided opportunism, were promptly rewarded with the ritual epithet 'antisemite' or 'self-hating Jew'.

Fortunately, the voice of reason is alive and well, and in Israel, of all places. From Jerusalem, Israel Shahak never ceases to analyse not only the dismal politics of Israel today but the Talmud itself, and the effect of the entire rabbinical tradition on a small state that the right-wing rabbinate means to turn into a theocracy for Jews only. I have been reading Shahak for years. He has a satirist's eye for the confusions to be found in any religion that tries to rationalise the irrational. He has a scholar's sharp eye for textual contradictions. He is a joy to read on the great Gentile-hating Dr Maimonides.

Needless to say, Israel's authorities deplore Shahak. But there is not much to be done with a retired professor of chemistry who was born in Warsaw in 1933 and spent his childhood in the concentration camp at Belsen. In 1945, he came to Israel; served in the Israeli military; did not become a Marxist in the years when it was fashionable. He was - and still is - a humanist who detests imperialism whether in the names of the God of Abraham or of George Bush. Equally, he opposes with great wit and learning the totalitarian strain in Judaism. Like a highly learned Thomas Paine, Shahak illustrates the prospect before us, as well as the long history behind us, and thus he continues to reason, year after year. Those who heed him will certainly be wiser and - dare I say? - better. He is the latest, if not the last, of the great prophets.

-- Gore Vidal

CHAPTER 1

A Closed Utopia?

THIS BOOK, although written in English and addressed to people living outside the State of Israel, is, in a way, a continuation of my political activities as an Israeli Jew. Those activities began in 1965-6 with a protest which caused a considerable scandal at the time: I had personally witnessed an ultra-religious Jew refuse to allow his phone to be used on the Sabbath in order to call an ambulance for a non-Jew who happened to have collapsed in his Jerusalem neighbourhood. Instead of simply publishing the incident in the press, I asked for a meeting which is composed of rabbis nominated by the State of Israel. I asked them whether such behavior was consistent with their interpretation of the Jewish religion. They answered that the Jew in question had behaved correctly, indeed piously, and backed their statement by referring me to a passage in an authoritative compendium of Talmudic laws, written in this century. I reported the incident to the main Hebrew daily, Ha'aretz, whose publication of the story caused a media scandal.
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/jewhis1.htm

house being shot at. I worked for certain PDs & SOs many Moons ago. THIS IS SO NOT KEWL!

Prejudice LOUDLY ECHOES!

Certain Feminists Bite/Byte. HaHaHa
Tea Hee Cheers ;)

Because when you got a link that contains the phrase "gay-chart" you pretty much have to share it.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/08/22/weekinreview/22gay-chart.h...

----
MsA I have no idea to what you could be referring to (at, on, around or with).

Why I'm a regular HL round here (not Mencken).

... Glory, all I was saying was "To Wrap".

To be able to "wrap" my head around is a saying = to understand or in this case to "delve" into in trying to understand.
:) kewl? did i explain ok?

I don't get it either. 'Cept I do, cuz it's the same slow slippery slope we've been on for...like you always say...decades.

BUT

I was actually referring to your "Certain feminists Bite/Byte." (And so not copping, facetiously, on my part...)

You prolly meant you though, not me...no? Yes?

I recall now your reference some time ago to sharpening your fangs on certain...

Words fail. Or maybe it's just the muzzle.

Serpentina.
Delmira Agustini (1886-1914)

En mis sueños de amor ¡yo soy serpiente!
gliso y ondulo como una corriente;
dos píldoras de insomnio y de hipnotismo
son mis ojos; la punta del encanto
es mi lengua...¡y atraigo como el llanto!
soy un pomo de abismo.

Mi cuerpo es una cinta de delicia,
glisa y ondula como una caricia...

Y en mis sueños de odio ¡soy serpiente!
mi lengua es una venenosa fuente;
mi testa es la luzbélica diadema,
haz de la muerte en un fatal soslayo
con mis pupilas; y mi cuerpo en gema
¡es la vaina del rayo!

Si así sueño mi carne, así es mi mente:
un cuerpo largo, largo, de serpiente,
vibrando eterna, ¡voluptuosamente!

Tu amor, esclavo, es como un sol muy fuerte:
jardinero de oro de la vida,
jardinero de fuego de la muerte
en el carmen fecundo de mi vida.

Pico de cuervo con olor de rosas,
aguijón enmelado de delicias
tu lengua es. Tus manos misteriosas
son garras enguantadas de caricias.

Tus ojos son mis medianoches crueles,
panales negros de malditas mieles
que se desangran en la acerbidad;

crisálida de un vuelo del futuro,
es tu brazo magnífico y oscuro,
torre embrujada de mi soledad.
-------------
(Delmira es mi vampira preferida.)

with Full Wolves. I had to be the Alpha Leader so I do have the Wolf Spirit and Bites for Real. When Ex-Stray Cats give me attitude and swipes me {cuz male ex-Feral do swipe, when super happy:)}} I laugh and say, "I had Wolves. You call that a swipe?"
;)

Byte is for "computer 'play (work)'".
{also I speak esoterically, for many reason. ;}
;)

Or close enough anyhow.

:)

Mob forms at "GZM" protest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwaNRWMN-F4

fcc franken 20100819 media consolidation REMIX

fcc sen franken 20100819 net neutrality

... from a neophyte whom tis trying to speak "the tongue".
;)

FilthyRich on Sun, 08/22/2010 - 12:59am.
new
Submitted by gloryoski on Sun, 08/22/2010 - 1:25pm.

In the open mic writes:

"In one of the reports, researchers at the University of Georgia said about three-quarters of the oil from BP's blown-out Macondo well was still lurking below the surface of the Gulf and may pose a threat to the ecosystem."

Has this well-name been widely reported and I have just been missing it? Just kind of wondering. Prolly not important...

I believe the term "MACONDO" refers to the name of the undersea "pocket" of oil the Deepwater Horizon rig was trying to penetrate. Here in the land of SENSATIONALISM "Journalism" the Corporomedia has NOT used this term for various reasons 1. to make it "easier" for the brain-dead US populace to embrace it on the corporopress terms and 2. to not let out of the bag exactly what "black gold" Bloviating Pukes (BP) was trying to tap to prevent people from finding out how large this deposit really is by calling it by its correct name, thereby finding out how much oil could potentially spew out (the corporopress likes the term "leak" better").

But, yes, NOBODY in the corporopress has used the term "MACONDO WELL" to my knowledge, but I rarely tune in the corporopress except for NPR and top-of-hour news reports on the "Professional Left" shows.

jbenet on Mon, 08/23/2010 - 1:08am.

The name Macondo is the same name as the fictitious cursed town in the novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Colombian nobel-prize winning writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez.[1] Oil companies routinely assign code names to offshore prospects early in the exploration effort. This practice helps ensure secrecy during the confidential pre-sale phase, and later provides convenient names for casual reference rather than the often similar-sounding official lease names denoted by, for example, the Minerals Management Service in the case of federal waters in the USA...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macondo_Prospect
-----

"Then he skipped again to anticipate the predictions and ascertain the date and circumstances of his death. Before reaching reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen in the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forevermore, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on the earth."

http://www.amazon.com/One-Hundred-Years-Solitude-P-S/dp/0060883286/ref=s...

---
We may be speaking different languages...

Oh well.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/07/bolivias-new-order/steinmetz-p...

via http://twitter.com/thereisawayjose

Hamid Karzai: U.S. Taxpayer-Funded Private Contractors Engaging In Terrorist, Mafia-Like Activity

Afghanistan's embattled president Hamid Karzai said on Sunday that U.S. taxpayers were indirectly funding "mafia-like groups" and terrorist activities with the American government's support of private contractors inside his country.

In a rare U.S. media appearance, Karzai continued to press for the removal of the vast majority of U.S. private contractors by the end of this year. He argued that their continued presence inside Afghanistan was "an obstruction and impediment" to the country's growth, a massive waste of money, and a catalyst for corruption among Afghan officials.

"The more we wait the more we lose," Karzai said during an appearance on ABC's "This Week." "Therefore we have decided as an Afghan government to bring an end to the presence of these security companies... who are not only causing corruption in this country but who are looting and stealing from the Afghan people...

(video)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/22/karzai-us-taxpayerfunded-_n_690...

Gendering The Birthright Citizenship Debate
Michelle Chen
Posted: August 20, 2010 05:03 PM

The political showdown over the 14th Amendment has a woman's touch. A commentary by Gebe Martinez, Ann Garcia, Jessica Arons at the Center for American Progress dissects the politics and the psychology of the campaign to change the 14th Amendment to dismantle birthright citizenship. Aside from the many legal flaws in their argument and the sheer ridiculousness of trying to change the constitution to clamp down on immigration, the rhetoric stems from a rich history of white patriarchy in American politics. Terms like "anchor baby" and "drop and leave" reduce Latina immigrants to the status of breeders and criminals, negating not only their humanity but their right to motherhood as well.

The authors point out that the demonization of women of color is a pretty common theme throughout the history of racial justice struggles:

This is also an ugly strategy fueled by sexism and racism. It taps into a long history of population control--government efforts to curb growth among disfavored populations. During slavery, the children slaveowners sired with their slaves were deemed slaves themselves who could be sold as chattel, thereby increasing the wealth of the owner rather than the size of his family. Chinese women in the 1800s were labeled prostitutes and denied visas to join their husbands who labored on our railroads. And black women, Native American women, and Latinas were routinely sterilized either without their knowledge or without their consent as recently as the 1970s.

Conservatives' rhetoric on this issue is particularly insulting, likening the human birthing process to that of farm animals....

By portraying immigrant women as less than human--that they "drop" babies as animals drop their offspring--immigration opponents stir up fears that foreigners specifically come here to have children in order to derive citizenship from their children, or claim government benefits.

To understand the gender dimension of institutionalized racism, we can look back to the evolution of the earliest efforts to formalize racial hierarchy. For example, historians have noted that in Virginia's colonial plantation society, laws and customs were framed around the goals of entrenching Black enslavement, controlling Black women's fertility, and generally bolstering white men's legal and social privilege.

As for the 14th Amendment, as Victor Goode pointed out last week, the sanctity of the family was one of the main principles used to defend birthright citizenship in the courts--a legal battle that remains unsettled.

Drawing from history going back to the era of slavery, we see the underlying objective behind the dehumanization of Latina mothers in the political arena: to obliterate the concept of the immigrant family in the public consciousness. To erase their presence in American communities and their contributions to the social fabric (not to mention the inequities they face in reproductive health and labor rights). There's a sinister logic to it: Latina women aren't mothers; they drop babies. Latino fathers don't support their families; they steal jobs. So the undocumented are blurred into a faceless horde that threatens to crowd out deserving U.S. citizens. This rubric teaches "real Americans" that their status must be vigilantly guarded, because citizenship isn't a birthright, but a privilege, reserved for real people.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelle-chen/gendering-the-birthright-_b_...

----
For your consideration...

BP Oil Spill:
new
Submitted by ghettodefender on Thu, 08/19/2010 - 8:46pm.
Published on Thursday, August 19, 2010 by The Guardian/UK
BP Oil Spill: Scientists Find Giant Plume of Droplets 'Missed' by Official Account
A 22-mile plume of droplets from BP's Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico undermines claim that oil has degraded

by Suzanne Goldenberg

Scientists have mapped a 22-mile plume of oil droplets from BP's rogue well in the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, providing the strongest evidence yet of the fate of the crude that spewed into the sea for months.

The report offers the most authoritative challenge to date to White House assertions that most of the 5m barrels of oil that spewed into the Gulf is gone.

"These results indicate that efforts to book-keep where the oil went must now include this plume," said Christopher Reddy one of the members of the team from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute....

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/19-8
===================================

Question: How many more "plumes" of Pollution are unaccounted for?

Anchor Babies, Aweigh | The Seminal

Suddenly we’re hearing about a strange new threat called "anchor babies," and news media are not doing a very good job getting the facts right and putting the term in context. It’s important for journalists to report this carefully because the far right is citing the alleged threat of "anchor babies" to justify monkeying with one of the most important parts of the Constitution, the 14th Amendment, with its guarantee of citizenship to anyone born in this country.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, who claims to be a moderate, has been warning of the dire threat of "anchor babies" every chance he gets. Recently on CNN he was asked by Wolf Blitzer how many illegal immigrants come here just to have babies that automatically become U.S. citizens. Graham said there are "reports" of some 6,000. Blitzer failed to follow up and ask some obvious questions: What "reports?" What are they based on? And this figure of 6,000: does it refer to 6,000 a year, a decade, or some grand total over all time?

Politifact examines the issue carefully in a long article and ends up saying there’s no evidence of any large number of illegal immigrants coming here to give birth:

"Graham appears to be conflating two things — a pattern of wealthy foreigners engaging in ‘birth tourism’ using legal visas, and illegal immigration of poorer people from Mexico. In our view, failing to make the distinction exaggerates the alleged problem and uses inflammatory rhetoric to obscure legitimate policy questions. On balance, we rate his comment Half True."

Rating it half true seems overly generous. Graham knows very well he is misleading the public, and the overall impression he’s leaving is totally false. Even Lou Dobbs won’t go as far as Graham; Dobbs defends the 14th Amendment and "birthright citizenship."

This is an issue ripe for demagoguery, and it’s up to journalists to report the facts carefully and help the public have a sensible debate about immigration.

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/64098

----
Fact-checking the claims about 'anchor babies' and whether illegal immigrants 'drop and leave'

[...]

Limited benefits

It's important to note that having an "anchor baby" won't do much to help a Mexican mom become a U.S. citizen. Because citizen children cannot sponsor their parents for citizenship until they turn 21 -- and because if the parents were ever illegal, they would have to return home for 10 years before applying to come in -- having a baby to secure citizenship for its parents is an extremely long-term, and uncertain, process.

However, having a citizen child can produce some short-term benefits, said Marc Rosenblum, a senior policy analyst for the Migration Policy Institute. Pregnant women and nursing mothers could be eligible for certain benefits under the Women-Infants-Children (WIC) program, which provides food and nutrition vouchers, and their children could enroll in Medicaid, although the undocumented parents could not. Having a child can also help an undocumented parent qualify for relief from deportation, but only 4,000 unauthorized immigrants can receive such status per year, and the alien has to have been in the U.S. for at least 10 years. That means very long odds, Rosenblum said.

Most of the benefits of citizenship accrue over the much longer term. The child will be able to work here legally once he or she is old enough, said Roberto Suro, a communications and journalism professor at the University of Southern California who specializes in Hispanic issues, and when they're ready for college, they'll qualify for in-state tuition at most public colleges. "It is a hell of a lot of deferred gratification at best," he said.

[...]

Data doesn't support Graham's claim

Immigration data and surveys don't provide much support for Graham's notion that many women are illegally crossing the border in large numbers to have children, then leaving.

First, immigration from Mexico to the U.S. tends to go up and down in tandem with the health of the economy.

According to another Pew Hispanic Center report, immigration from Mexico dropped by about one-third between 2000-2001 and 2002-2003, coinciding with the recession precipitated by the dot-com bust and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The numbers climbed back as the economy recovered, rising close to their pre-decline numbers by 2005-2006. Then, the numbers fell again, starting in 2006-2007 (a bit before the current recession began) and have continued to fall as the economy has sputtered.

It should be noted that these are numbers for all immigrants coming from Mexico, legal and illegal combined. But Jeffrey S. Passel, a senior demographer with the Pew Hispanic Center, said that since illegal immigration historically accounts for 80 to 85 percent of all new immigration from Mexico, the trends for all immigrants tend to mirror those for illegal immigrants alone.

"All the data suggests that people come here to work -- especially Mexicans, and especially illegal Mexicans," said Suro. "If people came here because they were looking for work, you would expect to see the flow fluctuate with employment opportunities -- and that’s what the data shows. If people came here to have babies, the flows would be pretty constant, and they are not."

There's something else you don't see, Suro said. If having a baby was a significant driving factor in illegal immigration, you would expect to see a higher percentage of women of child-bearing age in the U.S. illegally compared to men of the same age. In fact, just the opposite is the case. Numbers from the Pew Hispanic Center show that in four separate age ranges between 20 and 40, undocumented men significantly outnumber undocumented women.

Finally, there's direct testimony from actual immigrants.

Princeton University sociologist Douglas Massey conducted in-depth interviews with 159 Latin American immigrants -- most of whom came to the U.S. illegally -- for a recent book he coauthored with Magaly Sanchez R., Brokered Boundaries: Constructing Immigrant Identity in Anti-Immigrant Times.

When they were asked about their motivations for coming to the U.S., "no one ever mentioned having kids in the U.S." Massey said. "I've been surveying Mexican immigrants to the U.S. for 30 years as part of the Mexican Migration Project. We don't ask people their reasons for migrating because most people cannot really articulate the reasons very well -- you get simple answers like, 'I came for the money,' but that doesn't tell you much because people can want money for all kinds of reasons. But we do ask about their migratory behavior, which we then link to social and economic conditions on both sides of the border. What our work shows is that migrants come in response to labor demand in the U.S. and are motivated by economic problems at home."

Misleading comments

Undoubtedly, citizenship plays some role in the decisions by undocumented immigrants to come to the U.S. After all, they have made a decision to make their future in the United States rather than in their home country, and part of building a better life in the U.S. is having citizenship for their children. But on Fox, Graham termed the practice "drop and leave," which suggests that illegal immigrants are coming here for the primary purpose of having babies with citizenship, then rushing home to wherever they came from.

Graham's comments on this are misleading. While that does appear to be happening with affluent "birth tourists," it's important to understand that those affluent "birth tourists" are not the ones illegally crossing the Rio Grande or the Sonoran desert. They are coming here with the proper legal papers and giving birth. Thus, whatever public policy challenges arise from "birth tourism" are separate and distinct from the public policy challenges of illegal immigration -- which is not at all the impression that Graham gave in his Fox appearance.

Graham tacitly acknowledged this distinction in his follow-up appearance on Van Susteren's show on Aug. 3, 2010, saying, "You have found and I've provided you information about groups that are marketing to Chinese, and Mideastern and European families a 90-day visa package, where you come to America as a tourist. You come to a resort. You have your child at a hospital within the resort. That child is an American citizen. You turn around and leave." But raising this example days later strikes us as an after-the-fact justification.

So let's recap.

It's true that many illegal immigrants are having children in the U.S. However, we are not convinced that "drop and leave" is a phenomenon. The data suggests that the motivator for illegal immigrants is the search for work and a better economic standing over the long term, not quickie citizenship for U.S.-born babies...

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/aug/06/lindsey-g...

:)

Why am I not sleeping?

Submitted by taozen on Fri, 08/20/2010 - 12:11am.
CHRISTINA LAKE, British Columbia — Police who uncovered two marijuana fields near the U.S.-Canada border had to tread carefully: 13 black bears were wandering around the crops.
The fields of about 2,300 plants were found near Christina Lake, just a few miles (kilometers) from the border.
Royal Candian Mounted Police Cpl. Dan Moskaluk says that when police arrived in the area two weeks ago, they discovered the bears and cautiously went about making the seizure.
He says the bears were docile and obviously were used to humans. They could be put down if they are too habituated to people.

...
=====================

Maybe the Bears were just used to the MARIJUANA (docile from its scent--is that possible?). Or, even more importantly, used to the land they grew up and have inhabited for MILLENIA!

How full of themselves these speciesist Authorities can get when it comes to BELIEVING that the ONLY relationship of any import in the animal world is the relationship WITH HUMANS. These humanoid murderous thugs seem to think that these Bears have no relationship to the land, to plants, to anything that is more important than the human relationship. Such a speciesism is nauseating and always ultimately destructive.

If I were a Bear, I wonder if I could ever get "used to" the murderous humans which have brought Bears to the brink of extinction all because so many humans show no desire whatsoever to just 'live and let live'. Heartbreaking.

They could have gotten used to the presence of other ones, no?

Still dumb you can kill something if it is "too habituated to people." I don't get that at all--from any perspective. I mean ANY. Even "species-ist."

Leave the bears. Leave the pot. Just leave it.

;)

{chuckle ;}

OK...that's enough. ("That's good" is still up in the air...or walking, whatever.)

Sweet dreams to Gloryoski, Ms_A, and everybody...

Lots of great posts here, so thanks for all the great reading. And now I'm tuckered-out.

Ciao.

Solae is giving 80 tons of soy protein isolate to Liberia to boost protein levels among schoolchildren.

The 80 tons will provide 9.7million 9.7 total servings for a nutritional beverage with 8.25 grams of protein that will be given to around 30,000 children.

Solae worked on the project with the American Soybean Association’s WISHH Program and the International Relief and Development (IRD) which has been coordinating US Department of Agriculture (USDA)-supported Food for Education efforts in Liberia.

”Our soy protein will be used for a nutritionally-balanced beverage for the school children in Liberia. Childhood is a critical time for good nutrition, and this product delivers nutrients required for growing children,” said Michele Fite, vice president of global strategy and marketing at Solae. “Shipping this soy protein to Liberia represents a very important milestone in a project that began about two years ago.”

http://www.nutraingredients.com/content/view/print/317068

http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2010/08/18/3247/

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/floods/2010-08-23-china-floods_N.htm

snip
BEIJING — Flooding has forced the evacuation of more than a quarter-million people in northern China along its border with North Korea, state media said Monday.
Heavy rains over the last several days caused the Yalu river, which marks the border, to breach its banks, although the water level had started to fall late Sunday, the official Xinhua News Agency state media said Monday.

It said four people died, including a couple in their 70s and a mother and son, after their homes in Dandong were swept away by flash floods. Xinhua said 253,500 residents have been evacuated after the Yalu rose to its highest level in a decade.

Please Don't Make The Same Mistake We Did. Resist Now!

Aug. 23, 2010 (KILLEEN, TX) - Five peace activists successfully blockaded six buses carrying Fort Hood Soldiers deploying to Iraq outside Fort Hood’s Clarke gate this morning at around 4 a.m. While the activists took the width of Clarke Rd. and slowed the buses to a halt, police made no arrests, but instead beat the activists out of the streets using automatic weapons and police dogs so the deploying Soldiers could proceed.

http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php/home-mainmenu-289/6600-ft-hood-di...

Officials Unveil High-Tech Ray Gun To Be Installed In County Jail

CASTAIC - A high-tech ray gun built for the military that fires an invisible heat beam capable of causing unbearable pain will be tested on unruly inmates in the sheriff's detention facility in Castaic, officials said Friday at an unveiling event.
The "Assault Intervention System" (AIS) developed by the Raytheon Co., could give the Sheriff's Department "another tool" to quell disturbances at a 65-inmate dormitory at the Pitchess Detention Center's North County Correctional Facility, said Cmdr. Bob Osborne, head of the technology exploration branch of the sheriff's Department of Homeland Security Division.

The 600-pound, 7-foot-tall device won't replace traditional methods such as tear gas, rubber bullets and batons, Osborne said.

"We're looking to see if we can exploit this science for the benefit of the Corrections Department," he said.

AIS fires a directed beam of invisible "millimeter waves" that cause an unbearable burning sensation by penetrating 1/64 of an inch into the skin, where pain receptors are located, said Mike Booen, Raytheon's vice president of advanced security and directed energy systems.

The beam, which is about the diameter of a compact disc, causes an instant and intolerable burning sensation when it touches skin, but the sensation stops instantly when the device is turned off or the target moves out of the beam.

At a news conference, several people volunteered to feel the effects of the machine first-hand.

Sheriff's Deputy David Judge manned the controls and fired the beam, using a joystick and a monitor, not unlike a video game, to aim the ray gun's camera.
Judge simply aligned cross-hairs in the center of the screen with his target and pulled the trigger. The beam can be targeted very precisely, allowing deputies to single out one person or even a specific body part.

One volunteer was able to stand in the beam's path for just 1.8 seconds before the heat sensation forced him to step out of the way.

"I don't care if you're the meanest, toughest person in the world. This will get your attention," Booen said.

The machine is designed to emit a burst of no more than three seconds with each trigger pull, but deputies can repeatedly fire the weapon as needed.

Similar devices have already been sold to the U.S. military, however the machine demonstrated Friday is the first to be placed in an American correctional institution, sheriff's officials said.

It is being installed as a test case at no cost to the Sheriff's Department, as part of a program through the National Institute of Justice, officials said.

"Millimeter wave" devices have been tested on more than 10,000 subjects so far and has been shown to cause no lasting injuries, Booen said...

http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_15844824

Oil Spill Aftermath? It's Only The Beginning!

Can you complete the following sentence? The BP oil spill is now ___________. If you used words or phrases such as "contained", "over", "capped", "out of the news" or "under control", you have unfortunately fallen prey to the mind play of the mainstream media. The oil spill is none of these things except perhaps out of the news. In fact, the aftermath of the biggest environmental disaster in history has not yet begun.

In early August, the mainstream media reiterated for days regarding the Obama administration's claim that most of the oil spewed from BP's well is either gone or widely dispersed. The lies were exposed at lightening speed.

Some estimates claim as much as 90% of leaked oil is still floating in the gulf. The latest estimate, writes Randy Rieland at environmental hub Grist, is that "only 10 percent of the oil that gushed out of the Deepwater Horizon well was 'actually removed from the ocean.'" That's one of the more "pessimistic" estimates thus far, and comes from an oceanographer at Florida State University. It's also "wildly at odds with what the feds have been saying--that as much as 75 of the oil is gone."

Marine biologist Stephen Mottram says that the current toxic load in the Gulf which is venturing well out into Atlantic waters will eventually threaten a large percentage of the world's phytoplankton community. "The balance and concentration of phytoplankton in the upper benthic layer is critical to the a major portion of world's oxygen and this community is now being exposed to major threat from the BP disaster and so-called clean up."...

http://preventdisease.com/news/10/082310_oil_spill_aftermath.shtml

via http://twitter.com/mparent77772

Journalist Amy Goodman talks about how she broke into journalism and her early inspiration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kktXcCKSZ5w&feature=youtu.be

Ph.D. are students competing for fewer and fewer jobs, and one professor believes the academic marketplace is turning into a Ponzi scheme.

This story was originally reported by PRI's The Takeaway. For more, listen to the audio above.

The recession is hitting Ph.D. students hard. After years of hard work with paltry pay, many students are finding out that the academic jobs of their dreams don't exist. There simply aren't enough tenure-track jobs out there to support all the Ph.D. students, according to Monica J. Harris, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky. So Harris has decided to stop admitting Ph.D. students.

http://www.pri.org/business/higher-education-is-like-a-ponzi-scheme2128....

----
That's PSYCH my friends. We ain't talkin' Comp Lit here.

Venezuela, More Deadly Than Iraq, Debates Why

Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

CARACAS, Venezuela — Some here joke that they might be safer if they lived in Baghdad. The numbers bear them out.

In Iraq, a country with about the same population as Venezuela, there were 4,644 civilian deaths from violence in 2009, according to Iraq Body Count; in Venezuela that year, the number of murders climbed above 16,000.

Even Mexico’s infamous drug war has claimed fewer lives.

Venezuelans have absorbed such grim statistics for years. Those with means have hidden their homes behind walls and hired foreign security experts to advise them on how to avoid kidnappings and killings. And rich and poor alike have resigned themselves to living with a murder rate that the opposition says remains low on the list of the government’s priorities.

Then a front-page photograph in a leading independent newspaper — and the government’s reaction — shocked the nation, and rekindled public debate over violent crime.

The photo in the paper, El Nacional, is unquestionably gory. It shows a dozen homicide victims strewn about the city’s largest morgue, just a sample of an unusually anarchic two-day stretch in this already perilous place.

While many Venezuelans saw the picture as a sober reminder of their vulnerability and a chance to effect change, the government took a different stand.

A court ordered the paper to stop publishing images of violence, as if that would quiet growing questions about why the government — despite proclaiming a revolution that heralds socialist values — has been unable to close the dangerous gap between rich and poor and make the country’s streets safer...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/world/americas/23venez.html?_r=2&hp

Media Matters audio clip on Google Verizon deal
new
Submitted by dharma41 on Mon, 08/23/2010 - 10:48am.
This is from a recent Media Matters podcast:

http://daetwg.blu.livefilestore.com/y1pS_ybdCT2n5KHaPDEP0a-q9d6tceWf8TIs...

====
But you have to go back to dharma's post to download the podcast. The link is bad here (?)

http://www.samsedershow.com/node/5942#comment-414477

Backlash with a Vengeance: Small Investors Pull $33 Billion From Wall Street Banksters

http://www.opednews.com/articles/People-to-Wall-Street--Dr-by-Chaz-Valen...

What You Will Not Hear About Iraq

By Adil E. Shamoo

August 23, 2010 "FPIF" -- Iraq has between 25 and 50 percent unemployment, a dysfunctional parliament, rampant disease, an epidemic of mental illness, and sprawling slums. The killing of innocent people has become part of daily life. What a havoc the United States has wreaked in Iraq.
UN-HABITAT, an agency of the United Nations, recently published a 218-page report entitled State of the World’s Cities, 2010-2011. The report is full of statistics on the status of cities around the world and their demographics. It defines slum dwellers as those living in urban centers without one of the following: durable structures to protect them from climate, sufficient living area, sufficient access to water, access to sanitation facilities, and freedom from eviction.

Almost intentionally hidden in these statistics is one shocking fact about urban Iraqi populations. For the past few decades, prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the percentage of the urban population living in slums in Iraq hovered just below 20 percent. Today, that percentage has risen to 53 percent: 11 million of the 19 million total urban dwellers. In the past decade, most countries have made progress toward reducing slum dwellers. But Iraq has gone rapidly and dangerously in the opposite direction...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26225.htm

Article: Political Killings In Colombia

For OpEdNews: Stephen Lendman - Writer

Political Killings in Colombia - by Stephen Lendman

Colombia, America's closest South American ally, is a corrupted narco-state, a repressive death squad faux democracy, threatening regional neighbors, and reigning terror against trade unionists, human rights workers, campesinos, pro-democracy organizations, independent journalists, and legitimate resistance groups like the FARC-EP. Established in 1964, James Petras calls it the "longest standing, largest peasant-based guerrilla movement in the world," persisting valiantly for decades.

Thanks to Plan Colombia and other support, the state is heavily militarized, more than ever now serving as Washington's land-based aircraft carrier against regional targets, including neighboring Venezuela.

The Pentagon got expanded access, former President Alvaro Uribe agreeing to US forces on seven more military bases (three airfields, two naval installations, and two army facilities), as well as unrestricted use of the entire country as-needed for internal and external belligerency, including out-of-control violence and human rights abuses, the region's most extreme to keep two-thirds of Colombians impoverished, millions displaced, corruption endemic, wealth concentration growing, and corporate predators freed to exploit and plunder.

Also to facilitate record amounts of Colombian cocaine from government-controlled areas reaching US and world markets, new President Juan Manuel Santos embracing the "Uribe Doctrine," now his. It's extremist, hard right, corrupt, brutal, corporate-friendly, and militarized in lockstep with Washington.

As Uribe's Defense Minister, James Petras explained that Santos was an assassin, deploying military forces and paramilitary death squads "to kill and terrorize entire population centers, (murdering) over 20,000 people....falsely labeled 'guerrillas.' "

UN Special Rapporteur Report on "Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions"

Mandated by the Human Rights Council (HRC), Special Rapporteur Philip Alston issued his March 31, 2010 report, based on his June 8 - 18, 2009 Colombia mission, understating the reality by citing "important gains," yet nonetheless damning, saying "very serious problems remain." Calamitous for most Colombians more accurately describes them...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Political-Killings-in-Colo-by-Stephen-L...

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) on Sunday said lawmakers
who have not signed onto Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to balance the budget lacked "courage" and could be targeted by the conservative tea party movement as a result.

Armey’s comments on NBC’s “Meet the Press” came just moments after Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) sidestepped a question about Ryan’s plan, which looks to balance the budget by reinventing slimmer versions of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the tax code. Ryan (R-Wis.) is the ranking member of the House Budget Committee

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003725365

The "mosque" debate is not a "distraction"
MONDAY, AUG 23, 2010 07:24 ET
Glenn Greenwald - Salon.Com
(updated below)

Opponents of the Park51 Islamic community center held a rally yesterday in Lower Manhattan, and a 4-minute video, posted below, reveals the true sentiments behind this campaign. It has little to do with The Hallowed Ground of the World Trade Center -- that's just the pretext -- and everything to do with animosity toward Muslims. I dislike the tactic of singling out one or two objectionable people or signs at a march or rally in order to disparage the event itself. That's not what this video is. Rather, it shows the collective sentiment of those gathered, as well as what's driving the broader national backlash against mosques and Muslims far beyond Ground Zero.

The episode in the video begins when, as John Cole put it, "some black guy made the mistake of looking Muslimish and was harassed and nearly assaulted by the collection of lily white mouth-breathers at the event . . . At about 25 seconds in, he quite astutely points out to the crowd that 'All y'all dumb motherfuckers don’t even know my opinion on shit'."

[...]
All of this underscores a point I've wanted to make for awhile. There's been a tendency, which I find increasingly irritating, to dismiss this whole Park51 debate as some sort of petty, inconsequential August "distraction" from what Really Matters. Here's Chuck Todd mocking the debate as a "shiny metal object alert" and lamenting "the waste of time" he believes it to be, while Katrina vanden Heuvel, in The Washington Post last week, condemned "pundits and politicians [who] are working themselves into hysteria over a mosque near Ground Zero" on the ground that it won't determine the outcome of the midterm elections. This impulse is understandable. If you chose to narrowly define the topic of the controversy as nothing more than the Manhattan address of Park 51, then obviously it pales in importance to the unemployment crisis, our ongoing wars, and countless other political issues.

But that's an artificially narrow and misguided way of understanding what this dispute is about. The intense animosity toward Muslims driving this campaign extends far beyond Ground Zero, and manifests in all sorts of significant and dangerous ways...

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/

---
All's I'm sayin'next time have it ready at 11, 12 at night when my mind is racing. Can't you comment on the news b4 it happens?

Sit. Roll over. Heel.

¿Estás contento?

good.

I know what she means, but it wasn't what she was saying.

And I can't say what she means either.

People who know things?

Anti-war and anti-imperialism Commencement Speech:

Planned destabilisation or social chaos?
Venezuela murder mystery

The scarily high murder rate in Venezuela could reflect social breakdown, imported narcowar or a ‘foreign conspiracy’. President Chávez has accused Bogota of trying to foment war by moving against Colombian rebels allegedly seeking refuge in Venezuela
by Maurice Lemoine
The Spanish newspaper El País rarely understates its criticism of Hugo Chávez’s “Bolivarian” Venezuela. But on 18 April it said: “Caracas is a bloody city. Rivers of blood flow from its buildings; rivers of blood flow from its mountains; rivers of blood flow from its houses.” Local residents to whom I showed this laughed, but they all agreed violence was a major issue. “We have a very serious problem” (Tulio Jimenez, president of the interior policy commission of Venezuela’s national assembly). “My wife has been attacked twice in two years – under that bridge” (a representative of Brazil’s MST landless workers’ movement). “For people in working class areas, violence is part of everyday life” (a resident in the Petare suburb). “Even policemen wearing bulletproof jackets get killed, so what chance have we got?” (a working class woman from Ocumaré del Tuy, a city south of Caracas). “Almost everyone in our community has lost a relative” (Father Didier Heyraud, a priest in Petare).

With a homicide rate of 48 in 100,000 in 2008, Venezuela is near the top of the fear league. In Caracas, the rate is as high as 127, with 1,976 murders between January and September 2009 in a city of 3.15 million.

The opposition blames Chávez; the media too: France’s L’Express said in May: “Under President Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution, the capital of Venezuela has become one of the most violent cities in the world.” Miguel Angel Pérez, the executive vice president of the Institut d’Etudes Avancées, complained: “They would like us to believe that insecurity is a product of Chavism. They’re forgetting how terrible it was in the late 80s and early 90s: you couldn’t go out in the street.”

In December 1996, two years before Chávez came to power, the French military/police specialist periodical Raids said: “With an average of 80 people shot dead each weekend, violence on public transport a daily occurrence, poverty growing exponentially and an economic crisis that has been gnawing away at the country for over 15 years – inflation is at more than 1,000% – Caracas has become one of the most dangerous cities in the world, perhaps the most dangerous.” Few people seem to remember this.

“This is an election year,” explained Pérez (1). “In election years, what we call the insecurity curve soars. Insecurity is the warhorse of the opposition and the media fan the flames.” Every Monday, an army of reporters gathers at the morgue in Bello Monte. Microphones at the ready, they rush to meet the families of the weekend’s victims – especially old women in tears – and shout: “Señora! How do you feel?”

Changing causes of violence

“Unofficial sources” have made incredible allegations. On 3 June the daily El Universal claimed that “the [national] homicide rate today is well over 70 per 100,000”. This is enough to make your heart rate go up if you live in a wealthy part of Caracas, such as Altamira, Los Palos Grandes or La Castellana. The authorities are partly responsible: the press offices of Venezuela’s scientific, penal and criminal investigations corps (CICPC) have been closed and there are no national databases providing figures based on uniform criteria. Anyone can make up a “record death toll” without the risk of being contradicted. And nobody ever considers the causes, only the effects.

At the beginning of the 20th century, oil was discovered in Venezuela. Peasants from the Andes and the plains flocked to the cities – Maracay, Valencia, Maracaibo and Caracas – in search of work, hoping to benefit from the oil miracle. The hills and mountains around Caracas were soon covered in shantytowns, without running water or electricity, clinging precariously to the slopes. With them came poverty, social exclusion and insecurity.

I was told: “People would rob you of a pair of shoes, a watch or a gold chain, because they had to, because they needed money to buy food. It was a very different kind of violence from what we have now.”

A typical incident occurred on 25 May in Petare: a young man was stabbed several times, then shot, for defending a friend involved in a dispute. Delinquent youths often start fights over a trifle. In another incident, El Sapo (the Toad) died in a gunfight. People said it was El Pupilo (the Pupil) who had killed him. El Sapo’s friends looked for El Pupilo. They caught his brother and demanded to know where he was. The brother said he didn’t know, so they killed him with a burst from a machine gun. Four-year-old Gabikley Ávila, who happened to be playing nearby, also died.

The victims are mainly from working-class areas, aged 15-25 and poor. People say: “You’re just walking down the street when you suddenly find yourself in the middle of a shootout and bang, you’ve had it.” It’s a mistake to resist: you can get a bullet in the head for not handing over a mobile phone.

People blame the usual causes: broken families, gender-based violence, violence in the home, imitative aggression or overcrowded conditions. Some say Venezuelans are naturally violent. Others believe there has been a loss of morality: people are no longer stealing out of necessity but just because they can. They see the emergence of a new value system, in which the respect a man commands is measured in terms of his motorcycle, the girl on the pillion and the number of people he has killed. Yet others blame the easy availability of alcohol and guns, or the influence of television (films that promote violence, advertising that encourages greed). Since poverty has been reduced, they say, people have more money, so there are more opportunities for thieves. They also believe the law favours the criminals, who know how to use it: you can arrest them, but they will be out again straight away.

The poverty rate has fallen from around 60% to 23% over the last decade, and extreme poverty from 25% to 5%, but crime has soared. The government may have fallen into the trap of blaming violence on poverty alone: it has channelled all its energies into accelerated social programmes focusing on health, education and food (with some success) but has neglected insecurity, which was supposed to go away as conditions improved.

As in almost every Latin American country, the police are part of the problem, rather than the solution. “The difficulty,” said Soraya El Aschkar of the General Police Council, “is that we have not one police force but 135.” In federal, decentralised Venezuela, every governor and mayor has his own security force. There are no common rules, even on training, which is often entrusted to former members of the armed forces who create institutions that are more military than professional.

Until recently the Metropolitan police force and five other municipal forces have shared responsibility for Caracas. They have not coordinated and have sometimes been on opposing sides owing to their political differences. In April 2002 elements of the Metropolitan, PoliChacao and PoliBaruta forces (controlled by opposition mayors) took part in an attempted coup against Chávez.

This May the (Chavist) governor of the state of Anzoátegui took a full page in Últimas Noticias to publish a list of 25 officers dismissed from the state police force for, among other offences, professional misconduct (15 officers), sexual harassment (two), theft (five) and homicide (one). The interior minister Tareck El Aissami recently said police officers were responsible for 20% of crime in Venezuela. El Aschkar told me that if the police remains “disconnected from society, without supervision or internal controls, violence will not abate. Only the far-reaching reforms we are undertaking will guarantee security.”

On 13 May, aware that the clock was ticking, Chávez opened Cefopol, a new police training centre at the National Experimental University for Secu0rity, set up to support the new Bolivarian National Police force. The centre is taking a novel approach: officers receive technical training but also learn to be sensitive to human rights and community relations. Some 1,058 “clean” former members of the old Metropolitan police force have already been trained and are serving in the Catia district. Their record so far is encouraging and insecurity has been substantially reduced. Another thousand are nearing the end of training. The force is seeking to recruit university graduates and aims to grow to 31,000 over the next three years. Given that the results may not be immediately perceptible, this is a lot – but also too little.

Sonia Manrique of Ocumaré del Tuy city council said: “These days, if a youth assaults you, it’ll be because of drugs.” Her colleague Andrés Betancur was angry that “minors are carrying heavy calibre guns – guns bigger than they are. Where do they get them? There must be gangsters behind them.”

Blame the Colombians

According to a 2007 survey, 4.2 million Colombians live in Venezuela, having fled their home country, which many observers claim (in all seriousness) is now a model of security. Most are honest, decent people and have been accepted into Venezuelan society (2). But thanks to the collusion of some elements of the police and the national guard, the Colombian drug trade is not only using Venezuela as a staging post on the way to the US or Africa but has also strengthened its hold on Caracas (3).

The scale of operations is huge. Marginalised youths are recruited with the offer of low price or even free (at first) cocaine. “We have seen a significant rise in consumption,” said a member of parliament, “and the indicators suggest a worrying number of teenagers are involved.” Once hooked, they burgle, rob, assault and kill to fund their drug habit. They become dealers but end up getting shot when they can’t pay their suppliers on time. They form gangs and fight for control of entire districts. “The turf wars between these imported networks,” I was told, “produce a lot of bodies, which is something the newspapers love.”

Could this simply be a natural result of the growth of international crime, which also affects Brazil and Central America, especially Mexico? Possibly.

The opposition and the media rejoice every time the US and Colombia claim (based on the testimony of supposed former guerrillas, whose identities are carefully concealed) that the leaders of the Colombian narcoguerrillas are in Venezuela. Yet they keep quiet about the revelations of Rafael García, former head of information technology at Colombia’s administrative security department (DAS, the intelligence arm of the president’s office). He does not hide his identity. Now in prison, García has revealed links between the DAS and extreme rightwing paramilitary organisations (the principals in the drug trade). He also claims that the former director of the DAS, Jorge Noguera, met paramilitaries and Venezuelan opposition leaders to plan the destabilisation of the Venezuelan government, and the assassination of Chávez.

It has long been known that paramilitary groups were present in the Venezuelan border states of Táchira, Apure and Zulia. In 2008 Últimas Noticias reported that the former head of the directorate of intelligence and prevention services (Disip), Eliézer Otaiza, had claimed around 20,000 Colombian paramilitaries were based in Venezuela and were involved in kidnappings, contract killings and drug trafficking. The Venezuelan press has said nothing on the issue, but on 31 January 2009 El Espectador, published in Bogotá, had the headline “The Black Eagles have flown to Venezuela” (4). The journalist Enrique Vivas reported that such groups controlled almost everything in Táchira, and even offered life insurance (except to members of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, several of whom were assassinated this February and March).

With the collusion of the Zulia state police (controlled by opposition governors) the paramilitaries have, through violence or money lending, taken control of parts of Maracaibo and of local trade and small business in Las Playitas. I was told: “The authorities in Zulia organise a lot of‘peasant rallies’. Loads of them come over from Colombia – and don’t go back.”

In the state of Barinas, further into the Venezuelan interior, a resident told me: “We have never had so many Colombians. They buy up property and rent it out. When people have problems, they offer financial help. They behave like the narcos in Brazil. Violent crime has shot up to the kind of levels they have in Caracas.” I asked if the criminals might be Venezuelan, and how was it possible to distinguish between criminals and paramilitaries? “In the past, the Colombians never came here. They used to go to Caracas to find work. We never saw contract killings, massacres or kidnappings on this scale.”

In April 2007, while investigating the kidnapping of the industrialist Nicolás Alberto Cid Souto, the Cojedes state police captured a group led by Gerson Álvarez, former head of the United Self-defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), who had been “demobilised” but had since become treasurer to the Black Eagles. In March 2008, in Zulia state, the CICPC arrested narco-paramilitary leader Hermágoras González. He was carrying Disip and national guard identity papers. In November 2009 Magally Moreno, known as La Perla (the Pearl), a former member of the AUC known to have links to the DAS, the army and senior government officials in Colombia, was captured in Macaraibo.

“We sometimes get quite abnormal peaks in insecurity. It looks like a policy of destabilisation,” said Guadalupe Rodríguez of the Simón Bolivar Coordination in the 23 de Enero district of Caracas, a Chavist stronghold. Pérez has studied the question in detail: “Caracas today is like Medellín in the 1980s. It’s the same MO – hidden forces are fostering insecurity with the aim of creating a para-state.”

A Venezuelan diplomat wondered if there really was a conspiracy orchestrated by external forces. He was taking a risk in expressing this view: it was Chávez himself, with his back to the wall following revelations of his collusion with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) (see “ The Colombian gold rush”), who came up with the smokescreen of a “foreign conspiracy”, partly to pay his accusers back in their own coin and partly to divert attention from his failure to combat insecurity.

Nevertheless, in 2004 a band of 116 Colombian paramilitaries were arrested on a farm near Caracas, while preparing to destabilise Venezuela’s government and assassinate its head of state. A few days before the constitutional referendum on 2 December 2007, several more were arrested in the La Vega district.

According to witness statements collected in La Vega, Los Teques and Petare, “the Colombians” are buying up houses and opening restaurants and bars, where they sell drugs; trying to take control of legal and illegal gambling and betting on horse racing, prostitution and taxi companies and cooperatives; lending money at 7%, without any guarantee; and offering protection (which it is advisable to accept) for a fee.

Near the Colombian border, in Apure and Táchira, paramilitaries have created chaos with violence, assassinations and kidnappings. Now they are handing out leaflets proclaiming that they will do away with drugs, crime and prostitution. They have provoked panic and now present themselves as saviours – this looks like a carefully planned strategy.

A senior civil servant told me: “I believe people at the higher levels of government underestimate the dangers. They are still talking about gangs of criminals when what we are facing is an organisation, or even an occupying army.” Was he exaggerating? Maybe not. The fact that the US is conducting “counter-subversive” operations in the region doesn’t make it easier to understand the problem. Venezuela may simply be witnessing the emergence of entrepreneurs in violence, who do not in fact have either a strategy of destabilisation or any real political loyalties.

With the exception of a few districts such as 23 de Enero, Guarena and Guatire, which are highly politicised, have been organised for decades and are in control of their “territory”, most districts seem defenceless. “Local governments are not yet sufficiently developed and can’t see what is going on,” said a Brazilian working with peasants in the state of Barinas. Referring to the rojos-rojitos (red, very red) districts, Aníbal Espejo said: “People know what is going on, but they don’t yet have the political maturity to face up to this kind of challenge.”

On 13 April 2002, two days after a coup that had ousted Chávez, massive demonstrations by the poor forced the putschists to back down and restore him to power. The writer Luis Britto García is concerned that “If there were to be another attempted coup, the presence of well-armed and well-organised paramilitaries in the barrios would make another 13 April impossible.” Pérez merely said: “The chaos created by these criminal groups, amplified, if not supported, by the media, is serving the interests of the right. The higher the body count, the more votes there will be for the opposition.”

Homicide rates in 2008

(per 100,000 inhabitants)

Honduras: 57.9
El Salvador: 49.1
Jamaica: 49.0
Venezuela: 48.0
Guatemala: 45.2
Colombia: 37.0
Belize: 30.8
Brazil: 25.7
Ecuador: 16.9
Paraguay: 12.5
Nicaragua: 12.0
Haiti: 11.5
Panama: 10.8
Mexico: 10.0
Costa Rica: 7.6
US: 6.1
Cuba: 6.0 (2005)
Peru: 5.5
Argentina: 5.2

Most dangerous cities

Ciudad Juárez (Mexico)
New Orleans (US)
Caracas (Venezuela)
Sources: Small Arms Survey project (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva) report for the United Nations; Información y Análisis de América Latina (Infolatam) website, 5 January 2010; World Health Organization.

That is a great article.

You typed it all out for us? Thanks again.

Homicide rates in 2008

(per 100,000 inhabitants)

Honduras: 57.9
El Salvador: 49.1
Jamaica: 49.0
Venezuela: 48.0
Guatemala: 45.2
Colombia: 37.0
Belize: 30.8
Brazil: 25.7
Ecuador: 16.9
Paraguay: 12.5
Nicaragua: 12.0
Haiti: 11.5
Panama: 10.8
Mexico: 10.0
Costa Rica: 7.6
US: 6.1
Cuba: 6.0 (2005)
Peru: 5.5
Argentina: 5.2

Most dangerous cities

Ciudad Juárez (Mexico)
New Orleans (US)
Caracas (Venezuela)
Sources: Small Arms Survey project (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva) report for the United Nations; Información y Análisis de América Latina (Infolatam) website, 5 January 2010; World Health Organization.

;);( kewl tea cheers ;

watch this movie "Wonderful World" with Matthew Broderick (but only if you can stream for 2.99 or you have netflix or something. Don't pay what used to be full rental price.)

I would be really interested in what you think about it...
What the memes are. (I don't want to say anything else.)

It mentions game theory. (It is not psychological or complex or anything, don't get me wrong, but game theory is a motif.)

If you look at it let me know what you think.

It's been dark all day here.

and 2 cover each other when away.

I miss Marc & SAM {at least I can sea Lizz on Ed's, at times} & Peter B {other than a few commercials on kkgn} and ESPECIALLY AT
THIS TIME >>> Jeff Farias <<< ;):(

...but also running away from certain projects...which is easy cuz I miss SAM & JEFF ATT & "the rest"... illogical... :(

I didn't expect him to be gone. I thought he had his own thing going and he would keep it up.

===

Should be doing other stuff while "watching" "Visioneers" with Galifianakis, which is purty good.

I am in the indy comedies category. I need it.

Take a deep breath - why the world is running out of helium
By Steve Connor
10:45 AM Monday Aug 23, 2010 Twitter

It is the second-lightest element in the Universe, has the lowest boiling-point of any gas and is commonly used through the world to inflate party balloons.

But helium is also a non-renewable resource and the world's reserves of the precious gas are about to run out, a shortage that is likely to have far-reaching repercussions.

Scientists have warned that the world's most commonly used inert gas is being depleted at an astonishing rate because of a law passed in the United States in 1996 which has effectively made helium too cheap to recycle.

The law stipulates that the US National Helium Reserve, which is kept in a disused underground gas field near Amarillo, Texas - by far the biggest store of helium in the world - must all be sold off by 2015, irrespective of the market price.

The experts warn that the world could run out of helium within 25 to 30 years, potentially spelling disaster for hospitals, whose MRI scanners are cooled by the gas in liquid form, and anti-terrorist authorities who rely on helium for their radiation monitors, as well as the millions of children who love to watch their helium-filled balloons float into the sky.

Helium is made either by the nuclear fusion process of the Sun, or by the slow and steady radioactive decay of terrestrial rock, which accounts for all of the Earth's store of the gas. There is no way of manufacturing it artificially, and practically all of the world's reserves have been derived as a by-product from the extraction of natural gas, mostly in the giant oil- and gasfields of the American South-west, which historically have had the highest helium concentrations.

Liquid helium is critical for cooling cooling infrared detectors, nuclear reactors and the machinery of wind tunnels. The space industry uses it in sensitive satellite equipment and spacecraft, and Nasa uses helium in huge quantities to purge the potentially explosive fuel from its rockets.

In the form of its isotope helium-3, helium is also crucial for research into the next generation of clean, waste-free nuclear reactors powered by nuclear fusion, the nuclear reaction that powers the Sun.

Despite the critical role that the gas plays in the modern world, it is being depleted as an unprecedented rate and reserves could dwindle to virtually nothing within a generation, warns Nobel laureate Robert Richardson, professor of physics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
Continue reading here -
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=1066823...

Pay Up
Got a blog that makes no money? The city wants $300, thank you very much.
by Valerie Rubinsky
Published: Aug 18, 2010

[ death and taxes ]
For the past three years, Marilyn Bess has operated MS Philly Organic, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home. Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she's made about $50. To Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it's a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut.

In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license.

"The real kick in the pants is that I don't even have a full-time job, so for the city to tell me to pony up $300 for a business privilege license, pay wage tax, business privilege tax, net profits tax on a handful of money is outrageous," Bess says.

It would be one thing if Bess' website were, well, an actual business, or if the amount of money the city wanted didn't outpace her earnings six-fold. Sure, the city has its rules; and yes, cash-strapped cities can't very well ignore potential sources of income. But at the same time, there must be some room for discretion and common sense.

When Bess pressed her case to officials with the city's now-closed tax amnesty program, she says, "I was told to hire an accountant."

She's not alone. After dutifully reporting even the smallest profits on their tax filings this year, a number — though no one knows exactly what that number is — of Philadelphia bloggers were dispatched letters informing them that they owe $300 for a privilege license, plus taxes on any profits they made.

Even if, as with Sean Barry, that profit is $11 over two years.

Barry's music-oriented blog, Circle of Fits, is hosted on Blogspot; as of this writing, its home page has two ads on it, but because he gets only a fraction of the already low ad revenue — the rest goes to Blogspot — it's far from lucrative.

"Personally, I don't think Circle of Fits is a business," says Barry. "It might be someday if I start selling coffee mugs, key chains or locks of my hair to my fans. I don't think blogs should be taxed unless they are making an immense profit."

The city disagrees. Even though small-time bloggers aren't exactly raking in the dough, the city requires privilege licenses for any business engaged in any "activity for profit," says tax attorney Michael Mandale of Center City law firm Mandale Kaufmann. This applies "whether or not they earned a profit during the preceding year," he adds.

So even if your blog collects a handful of hits a day, as long as there's the potential for it to be lucrative — and, as Mandale points out, most hosting sites set aside space for bloggers to sell advertising — the city thinks you should cut it a check. According to Andrea Mannino of the Philadelphia Department of Revenue, in fact, simply choosing the option to make money from ads — regardless of how much or little money is actually generated — qualifies a blog as a business. The same rules apply to freelance writers. As former City Paper news editor Doron Taussig once lamented [Slant, "Taxed Out," April 28, 2005], the city considers freelancers — which both Bess and Barry are, in addition to their blog work — "businesses," and requires them to pay for a license and pay taxes on their profits, on top of their state and federal taxes.

Mannino says the city doesn't keep track of how many bloggers and small-website owners are affected. But bloggers aren't the only ones upset with the city's tax structure. In June, City Council members Bill Green and Maria Quiñones-Sánchez unveiled a proposal to reform the city's business privilege tax in an effort to make Philly a more attractive place for small businesses. If their bill passes, bloggers will still have to get a privilege license if their sites are designed to make money, but they would no longer have to pay taxes on their first $100,000 in profit. (If bloggers don't want to fork over $300 for a lifetime license, Green suggests they take the city's $50-a-year plan.)

Their bill will be officially introduced in September. "There's a lot of support and interest in this idea," Green says.

Perhaps, but it doesn't change the fact that the city wants some people to pay more in taxes than they earn. "I definitely don't want to see people paying more in taxes and fees than what [we] earn," says Bess. "But I do think the city needs to establish a minimal amount of money that they won't tax, whether you're a bike messenger, microblogger or a freelance typist."
http://citypaper.net/articles/2010/08/19/blogging-business-privilege-tax...

...the only good is if around here, i would write/work more. :):(

bit by bit.

It's not stoppable. Not really. Don't know why the FCC should be any less broken than any other part of the gov't

Two, three years from now tops it ain't gonna be worth diddly to writers and activists/organizers and artists and entrepreneurs that really aren't evil.

WWW2 will be there kind of for institutionalized education. Adults who can afford higher education will get some good stuff for "free" but everything on that level will be proprietary and restricted.

I know I'm prolly not telling you anything you don't already know. (Or, otoh, feel free to argue. This is mostly pulled out of my intuitive/osmosisizing asshole.)
----

And on that happy note...

forget it.

There was nothing here e.g, about what I heard about SJ on the thing at the other place.

:)

bit by bit :( grrr

{Cheers Bobby ... RIP BTW}

& next regarding CRUSH Films...{There will be a petition soon...}
{eye-roll}

Grrr I will deal later, but I think I will call "a Cab". {I wish for a Pinot Noir, but will be very pleased with calling "a Cab..."}
;)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/weekinreview/22story.html?_r=1&ref=uni...

[excerpt]

Income Inequality and Financial Crises

By LOUISE STORY
Published: August 21, 2010

David A. Moss, an economic and policy historian at the Harvard Business School, has spent years studying income inequality. While he has long believed that the growing disparity between the rich and poor was harmful to the people on the bottom, he says he hadn’t seen the risks to the world of finance, where many of the richest earn their great fortunes.

Now, as he studies the financial crisis of 2008, Mr. Moss says that even Wall Street may have something serious to fear from inequality — namely, another crisis.

The possible connection between economic inequality and financial crises came to Mr. Moss about a year ago, when he was at his research center in Cambridge, Mass. A colleague suggested that he overlay two different graphs — one plotting financial regulation and bank failures, and the other charting trends in income inequality.

Mr. Moss says he was surprised by what he saw. The timelines danced in sync with each other. Income disparities between rich and poor widened as government regulations eased and bank failures rose.

“I could hardly believe how tight the fit was — it was a stunning correlation,” he said. “And it began to raise the question of whether there are causal links between financial deregulation, economic inequality and instability in the financial sector. Are all of these things connected?”

Professor Moss is among a small group of economists, sociologists and legal scholars who are now trying to discover if income inequality contributes to financial crises. They have a new data point, of course, in the recent banking crisis, but there is only one parallel in the United States — the 1929 market crash.

[more at link]

NYTimes Sunday editorial acknowledges Obama DOJ dropping all possible charges against Tom Delay:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/opinion/22sun2.html?scp=1&sq=Tom%20Delay's%20Legacy%20Aug.%2022&st=Search

[excerpt]

Editorial
Tom DeLay’s LegacyPublished: August 21, 2010

The Justice Department decided last week not to bring charges against Tom DeLay, whose unethical conduct represented a modern low among Congressional leaders. The decision is a reminder that some of Washington’s worst big-money practices remain either legal or far too difficult to prosecute.

DeLay, the Texas Republican who had been the House majority leader, crowed that he had been “found innocent.” But many of Mr. DeLay’s actions remain legal only because lawmakers have chosen not to criminalize them. Mr. DeLay’s wife and daughter, for example, were paid more than $500,000 by his political action and campaign committees for “strategic guidance” and event-planning. Others in Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have put family members on the payroll.

The Justice Department spent six years investigating Mr. DeLay’s relationship to Jack Abramoff, the über-lobbyist who served three years in prison for fraud, corruption and conspiracy. Just to recall: Mr. DeLay, his wife and several staff members took a lavish 10-day golf trip to England and Scotland in 2000. The trip was arranged by Mr. Abramoff and paid for by gambling-industry clients, including the Choctaw Indian tribe. Two months later, Mr. DeLay helped kill a bill to ban Internet gambling — a proposal that the tribe and Mr. Abramoff’s other client feared would hurt their business.

There were several other trips arranged by Mr. Abramoff and conveniently followed by legislative favors. In 1997, Mr. DeLay and his wife visited the South Pacific island of Saipan. The trip was paid for by the island’s government and garment manufacturers, clients of Mr. Abramoff. Mr. DeLay later helped block a bill that would have required the garment manufacturers to pay workers the minimum wage.

The Justice Department won convictions of 20 lobbyists and Congressional aides in connection to Mr. Abramoff, but only one member, Bob Ney, a former Ohio congressman. It remains notoriously difficult for prosecutors to prove that lawmakers solicit contributions or trips in exchange for promises of legislative action.

Mr. DeLay still faces a state trial in Texas on unrelated charges of money laundering and conspiracy. And despite the Justice Department’s decision, he has left an important legacy on Capitol Hill.

As a direct result of his and Mr. Abramoff’s actions — and voters’ fury — Democratic House leaders have restricted gift-taking, imposed new disclosure rules for lobbyist fund-raising, and created the Office of Congressional Ethics. The quasi-independent office has already recommended action against 13 lawmakers, and many House members are eager to weaken it or shut it down.

Mr. DeLay’s claims of innocence this week show why that must not happen — and why Congress must do a lot more to prove its commitment to real ethics reform.

[end excerpt]

"The Sexual Politics of Meat" by Carol J. Adams. First published in 1990...

http://www.caroljadams.com/spom.html

I go to do some work and then I sea this DeLaytripe... GRRR GRRR GRRR
I hope someone SUES that TWIT Judge for an invalid & improper BushJUDGE. I want his STATS. HE CANNOT GIVE A F*A*I*R JUDGMENT!
{Wolf snorts & growls...GRRR}

What do you think about that song?

In the open mics, change the part that says "so and so's blog."

I am only halfway not serious.

And don't you dare change it to "diary" either.

What, you didn't like the picture? ;)

http://action.humanesociety.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=15641.0&dlv_id=...

hug hug kiss kiss ;)

The courts stop Human embryo study but there are no controls on chicken embryos.

Democracy Now Is so much more informative on the Egg issue than any M$M.. Do you know chickens are given arsenic to speed their growth? Chicken manure (litter) is feed to cows , part of the mad cow cycle of feeding the wrong things to animals. If you can hear this story on factory farming you. will be very sad and worried.

on factory farming . DID you know more people are dieing frm MRSA (antibiotic resistant disease that is klllng people in hospitals) at a rate faster than those people with AIDS? Manure flu is a real sydrome and this flu Is serious. ..

David Kirby 's book is so informative.

http://animalfactorybook.com/

If this egg issue doesn't make the FAUX News Tea baggers wake up and see where government is letting them down I say they are being manipulated in a way they are being factory farmed for their votes

The same type of people who participate in greedy out of control unethical factory farming treat their own fellow humans as poorly as they do the chickens. and pigs and cattle.

Even if the moral part of eating animals doesn't bother you the gross dangerous farming techniques will make you look for better ways to sustain yourself.

Have to be reeea-lly careful or reeea-lly quiet.

---
Yes taozen. You are right.

people who play the market and invest in businesses that cause health damage and then act if as their hands are clean are participating in a continous criminal enterprise. . Dunkin Dounuts the largest vendor of coffee in the states is still using very bad materials for their cups. I am sure their eggs are from Iowa.

I know most of the country has money issues and It is hard to feed ourselves and get to work. BUT at least we can fight for change and learn how to improve our "lot" on the planet.

The bankers who squeeze the family farms out of existence and the inverstors in the Big Box Stores who push for the lowest prices on un safe Mega Farmed products are doing way more damage to the future of America than a few confused teenagers that
pick up on the wrong Interpretation of the Koran and act of their frustrations. Maybe the hormones in the food drive them to a violent expression of their frustrations?

Diabetes out of control ,is one outcome from junk food . Fat cats who dont care about their fellow humans and fill the market place with inferior foods and then have the gaul to say there isn't enough money to go around for Health Care are just soul-less crooks.

Nora and many others have brought all this up before . Of course Faux News will try and make Obama look responsible for the corporate crimes that have preceeded him. He is at fault for not listening to the will of the people that voted for him..

He could Bring more pressure and information and stand up and be pro- active.

He seems too concerned with the status quo and getting corporate donations . I feel for Michelle she has to sleep with him and I feel she would make a better leader. Obama is a follower of a broken paradigm.

Obama Plays Down Plan for Post-2011 Iraq Troop Presence

WASHINGTON, Aug 23, 2010 (IPS) - When the Barack Obama administration unveiled its plan last week for an improvised State Department-controlled army of contractors to replace all U.S. combat troops in Iraq by the end of 2011, critics associated with the U.S. command attacked the transition plan, insisting that the United States must continue to assume that U.S. combat forces should and can remain in Iraq indefinitely.

But the differences between the administration and its critics over the issue of a long-term U.S. presence may be more apparent than real.

All indications are that the administration expects to renegotiate the security agreement with the Iraqi government to allow a post-2011 combat presence of up to 10,000 troops, once a new government is formed in Baghdad.

But Obama, fearing a backlash from anti-war voters in the Democratic Party, who have already become disenchanted with him over Afghanistan, is trying to play down that possibility. Instead, the White House is trying to reassure its anti-war base that the U.S. military role in Iraq is coming to an end.

An unnamed administration official who favours a longer-term presence in Iraq suggested to New York Times correspondent Michael Gordon last week that the administration's refusal to openly refer to plans for such a U.S. combat force in Iraq beyond 2011 hinges on its concern about the coming Congressional elections and wariness about the continuing Iraqi negotiations on a new government.

Vice-President Joe Biden said in an address prepared for delivery Monday that it would take a "complete failure" of Iraqi security forces to prompt the United States to resume combat.

Obama referred to what he called "a transitional force" in his speech on Aug. 2, pledging that it would remain "until we remove all our troops from Iraq by the end of the next year".

He also declared an end to the U.S. "combat mission" in Iraq as of Aug. 31. But an official acknowledged told IPS that combat would continue and would not necessarily be confined to defending against attacks on U.S. personnel...

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/gareth-porter/30914/obama-plays-down...

hadnt been consciously broken by the Corporate war lords we probably would have the money to buy "old fashioned Local Food" .. If the unions werent demonized and removed from the work place There would be better "medical" services for the general popuation.
Everytime I see Ex prez Clinton I gag these days. I blame him for helping to usher in more corporate control . I feel betrayed by him and his kind. And Chelsea is going down the Banker's Path ?

Facebook Blocks Ads For Pot Legalization Campaign

For a typical college student, if it didn't happen on Facebook, it didn't happen. That gives the social networking behemoth an out-sized influence on the confines of political debate, if that debate falls outside what Facebook deems acceptable discourse.

Proponents of marijuana legalization, which is on the California ballot in 2010, have hit a Facebook wall in their effort to grow an online campaign to rethink the nation's pot laws. Facebook initially accepted ads from the group Just Say Now, running them from August 7 to August 16, generating 38 million impressions and helping the group's fan page grow to over 6,000 members. But then they were abruptly removed...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/24/facebook-blocks-ads-for-p_n_692...

Blackwater reaches $42 million settlement with US over weapons smuggling

blackwater 070919 mn1 Blackwater reaches $42 million settlement with US over weapons smugglingThe US State Department said Monday that Xe, the controversial private security firm formerly known as Blackwater, has agreed to pay 42 million dollars in fines to settle alleged export violations.

It said the civil settlement was reached on Wednesday for 288 violations "involving the unauthorized export of defense articles and provision of defense services to foreign end-users" in a number of countries between 2003 and 2009.

"These violations did not involve sensitive technologies or cause a known harm to national security," the State Department said in a statement.

Many of the alleged breaches occurred while Xe, which protects US officials in Iraq and Afghanistan, was "providing services in support of US government programs and military operations abroad," it said

The State Department said that because the firm had taken steps to tackle the causes of its violations, it will not be considered ineligible for future contracts.

It said that Xe agreed to "an aggregate civil penalty of 42 million dollars," but 12 million dollars of it will be suspended to make up for the compliance measures it takes.

Despite a murky history, Xe is doing brisk business with the US government, including a 100-million-dollar contract with the CIA that unleashed a furious response from lawmakers in June.

CIA chief Leon Panetta said his agency did not have much choice but to turn to Xe among the few companies that provide the needed security services in warzones after it underbid other competitors...

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/0824/blackwater-reaches-42-million-settl...

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes sink 27 percent to lowest since May 1995.

http://twitter.com/BreakingNews

Border deaths in Arizona may break record this year

Reporting from Tucson —

This year, Arizona became known as the state with the toughest policies against illegal immigration. That's why Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Eric Peters didn't think the Pima County coroner would see a surge in migrants killed while trying to cross Arizona's southern deserts.

But despite beefed-up efforts to stem illegal immigration and an economy that makes work harder to come by, migrants are still trying to get into the country. And many are dying.

In 2007, a record 218 bodies were found in Pima County. This year, the death toll could be worse. Already, authorities have recovered the remains of 170 migrants.

"We're kind of looking at a record-breaking year this year," Peters said.

July was the worst month of this year so far, with 59 people found dead. More than half of them died from heat-related causes. On July 15, the deadliest day of the month, seven bodies were found, among them the remains of Omar Luna Velasquez, 25. The high temperature that day was 108 degrees.

To accommodate the bodies in the summer heat, a 50-foot refrigerated trailer truck has been parked in the coroner's receiving area...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-border-deaths-20100...

And with GOOGLE I have noticed (sort of late ) how they push stories that aren't progressive and how they push back more progressive articles to the outer pages so that most people with time for quck perusal of
the news get a distorted picture. Edward Bernays keeps coming to mind.

WBAI Pacifica is really having a good monday and I must remember to start there first.

You mean it's not a sociopathic plot to co-opt everyone's social, artistic and political lives into some big brother international database that no one but Murdoch and his political favorites have any real control over?

That's terrific!!

I know some folks round here seem to have stopped using Facebook as a major means to organize events...

:)

Deli meat recalled nationwide for bacteria
380,000 pounds of sandwich products sold at Walmart may be tainted with listeria

msnbc.com
updated 1 hour 22 minutes ago

Approximately 380,000 pounds of deli meat products that may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes have been recalled by Zemco Industries in Buffalo, N.Y., the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced late Monday.

The sandwich meats were sold at Walmart stores nationwide. There are no reported illnesses associated with the recall.

The products subject to recall include:

* 25.5-pound cases of "Marketside Grab and Go Sandwiches BLACK FOREST HAM With Natural Juices Coated with Caramel Color" with the number 17800 1300.
* 28.49-pound cases of "Marketside Grab and Go Sandwiches HOT HAM, HARD SALAMI, PEPPERONI, SANDWICH PEPPERS" with the number 17803 1300.
* 32.67-pound cases of "Marketside Grab and Go Sandwiches VIRGINIA BRAND HAM With Natural Juices, MADE IN NEW YORK, FULLY COOKED BACON, SANDWICH PICKLES, SANDWICH PEPPERS" with the number 17804 1300.
* 25.5-pound cases of "Marketside Grab and Go Sandwiches ANGUS ROAST BEEF Coated with Caramel Color" with the number 17805 1300.
* The packages also bear vendor number "398412808" and the USDA mark of inspection.

The meat products were produced on various dates from June 18 to July 2, 2010, and have various "Use By" dates ranging from August 20 to September 10, 2010.

Listeria infection can cause fever and chills, headache, upset stomach and vomiting. It is most likely to affect pregnant women, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems.

© 2010 msnbc.com Reprints

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38829758/ns/health-food_safety/

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/08/24/facebook-censors-marijuana-h...

Watching a Watchdog
August 24, 2010

WASHINGTON -- Media organizations like to tout the firewalls that exist between the news and editorial pages, and the newsroom and the business staff, but when it comes to the editorial independence of The Washington Post on issues related to Kaplan, Inc., some critics are arguing that the walls aren’t strong enough.

The concerns arise from editorial stands and direct lobbying by a leader of the legendary Graham family -- someone who would get an open door in any Congressional office -- on behalf of for-profit higher ed.

On Sunday, policy makers, higher education watchers and ordinary readers opened their newspapers and Web browsers to an editorial endorsed by the Post’s staff board that took a stance that could’ve come right out of Kaplan’s playbook.

After disclosing the corporate link -- noting that the paper is owned by the same company that “owns Kaplan University and other for-profit schools of higher education that, according to company officials, could be harmed by the proposed regulations” -- the editorial bashed the U.S. Department of Education’s proposed rules, voicing concerns about access for low-income and working students, and worrying more broadly about how the country could meet President Obama’s higher education goals without for-profit colleges.

“When I first saw it, I thought, ‘Wow, this is really surprising,’ ” said Lauren Asher, president of the Institute for College Access and Success, which has been a strong advocate for the government's toughened regulatory approach to for-profit higher education. “Not just to see the Post editorializing on this issue, but to look at what the board is saying.” Asher had several objections to the editorial, including its assertion that the proposed rules on "gainful employment" would affect only for-profit colleges -- an assertion later corrected on the Post's website and in Monday's print edition.

Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president of government and public relations at the American Council on Education, said that while he is “sure the Post believes it has constructed sufficient firewalls, you can easily understand why people would raise questions based on what the board is saying and the fact that they had this editorial in their Sunday paper, which is the one with the largest distribution.”

While the federal government “is right to fashion reasonable regulation to discourage fraud or misleading practices,” the board wrote, “it would be wrong to impose rules that remove an option that is especially useful for poor and working students.” The editorial boards of The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times took pro-regulation stances in their editorials, published weeks ago, the latter wondering whether the rules were tough enough.

David Hawkins, director of public policy and research for the National Association for College Admission Counseling, took issue with that, and with many of the board’s other assertions. “The rules,” he said in an e-mail message, “would not automatically remove ‘an option’ that is useful for poor and working students. Rather, the rules would eliminate only those options that do not meet basic standards for accountability; options that may, in fact, be harmful to the very students about which the Post claims to be concerned.”

Ann L. McDaniel, senior vice president of human resources for the Washington Post Company, said the editorial speaks for itself in expressing the board’s views and revealing the paper’s link to for-profit higher education. The second-paragraph disclosure, featured as prominently as it was, “gives[s] the reader the information to evaluate our position,” she said.
Continue reading here...
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/24/post

Kennedy favors civilian courts in terrorism cases

(AP) – 4 days ago

KAANAPALI, Hawaii — Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said Thursday that most terrorism cases should be tried in civilian courts.

Kennedy addressed participants in the 9th Circuit Judicial Conference on Maui, where a panel discussion earlier this week reached a consensus in favor of using civilian courts instead of military commissions in most terrorism cases.

"Article III courts are quite capable of trying these terrorist cases," Kennedy said, agreeing with the conclusion.

Kennedy also praised the hundreds of attorneys attending the four-day conference at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort & Spa for taking up "one of the most crucial, dangerous and disturbing issues of our time — terrorism."

It was clear, he said, that an "attack on the rule of law has failed," referring to the use of military tribunals to try terrorist suspects, often before panels in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The justice is often considered the swing vote on the ideologically divided high court. During a question-and-answer session, Kennedy was asked how new Justice Elena Kagan would bring change to the high court.

"It will be a different court," Kennedy said, without elaborating.

The 9th Circuit includes federal trial, appeals and bankruptcy courts, as well as district courts in Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington state, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

Nearly 400 judges preside in 9th Circuit courts.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iW9hCoQmdTwSfgi-zf31gV...

US Drone Strike Destroys House Full of Children in Pakistan -- News from Antiwar.com

The Obama Administration’s policy of escalating drone strikes took another hit today, after the explosion from a drone attack against the house of “suspected militants” in North Waziristan also destroyed a neighboring house full of women and children.

The combined toll from the blast was 20 people killed, with at least four women and three children among the slain. At least 13 other civilians were also reported wounded, including a number of other children.

Pakistani intelligence officials say most of the “suspects” killed in the attacks were Afghans, but it is unclear how much evidence they had of wrongdoing. Large numbers of Afghan civilians have been living as refugees in the tribal areas since the 2001 US invasion.

The large numbers of civilians (700 in 2009 alone) killed in the US drone strikes has fueled considerable anti-American sentiment in Pakistan. When pressed during a previous visit Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shrugged off concerns about the civilians, saying only “there’s a war going on.”

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/08/23/us-drone-strike-destroys-house-full-o...

...and can enhance or limit the effectiveness of the White House and Congress and ultimately US. Mike Malloy was talking about this particular situation last night.

AUGUST 23, 2010
Protests, Rhetoric Feed Jihadists' Fire
By JONATHAN WEISMAN

Islamic radicals are seizing on protests against a planned Islamic community center near Manhattan's Ground Zero and anti-Muslim rhetoric elsewhere as a propaganda opportunity and are stepping up anti-U.S. chatter and threats on their websites.

One jihadist site vowed to conduct suicide bombings in Florida to avenge a threatened Koran burning, while others predicted an increase in terrorist recruits as a result of such actions.

"By Allah, the wars are heated and you Americans are the ones who…enflamed it," says one such posting. "By Allah you will be the first to taste its flames."

White House homeland security adviser John Brennan told reporters Friday that he had seen no evidence that the debate over the proposed Islamic center in Lower Manhattan, other mosque protests or the planned Koran burning had affected U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

A White House official on Sunday stressed that Mr. Brennan was addressing the narrow question of whether the debates in the U.S. over Islam were having an impact on U.S. counterterrorism efforts, and that Mr. Brennan specifically declined to address whether those debates were energizing the jihadists.

A U.S. official on Sunday said the administration was taking the upswing in anti-U.S. chatter seriously. "Terrorists like al-Qaeda and its violent allies are motivated already to try to attack the United States, but when it comes to propaganda, extremists are pure opportunists. They'll use whatever they can," the official said.

Many opponents of the planned Muslim community center say they have no bias against Muslims but that putting the building so close to Ground Zero shows an insensitivity toward the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Controversy over the community center, which will contain a mosque and other facilities, has helped fan anti-Muslim rhetoric in the U.S. far from Lower Manhattan in recent weeks.

Jarret Brachman, director of Cronus Global, a security consulting firm, and author of the book Global Jihadism, said al Qaeda and other groups have long used imagery from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to recruit new members. But the U.S. position has been that those wars are not against Islam and that the U.S. has Muslim allies in the fight.

Anti-Muslim rhetoric in the U.S is different, since jihadists can use Americans' words to make the case that the U.S. is indeed at war with Islam. The violent postings are not just on al Qaeda-linked websites but on prominent, mainstream Muslim chat forums, Mr. Brachman said.

We are handing al Qaeda a propaganda coup, an absolute propaganda coup," with the Islamic-center controversy, said Evan Kohlmann, an independent terrorism consultant at Flashpoint Partners who monitors jihadist websites.

Critics of the proposed Islamic center said their right to speak out shouldn't be influenced by the possibility of jihadist threats. "We will never win a war when we are afraid to even name our enemies," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said in an e-mail Sunday.

The most violent threats stem not from the debate over the Islamic center but more fringe issues, such as a declaration by Terry Jones, pastor at the Dove World Outreach Center, a mega-church in Gainesville, Fla., that Sept. 11 be an "International Burn a Koran Day."

In an interview Sunday, Mr. Jones said he planned to go ahead with the Koran burning on the evening of Sept. 11, despite the local fire department denying a permit for the event. He said the jihadist threats only confirmed his views of Muslims.

"I can understand that they would be offended. I think their reactions—violence, threats, murders terrorist attacks—that only reveals the true nature of Islam which needs to be revealed," he said.

Threats have been posted on Jihadist web sites in response to such planned actions as Mr. Jones's Koran burning. "Now, I wish to bomb myself in this church as revenge for the sake of Allah's talk. And here I register my name here that I want to be an intended-martyr," wrote a poster identifying himself as "Abu Dujanah."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870358980457544584183772527...

(Note: WSJ is owned by Murdoch)

LOYOLA RESEARCHERS ZERO IN ON PROTEIN THAT DESTROYS HIV

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- Using a $225,000 microscope, researchers have identified the key components of a protein called TRIM5a that destroys HIV in rhesus monkeys.

The finding could lead to new TRIM5a-based treatments that would knock out HIV in humans, said senior researcher Edward M. Campbell, PhD, of Loyola University Health System.

Campbell and colleagues report their findings in an article featured on the cover of the Sept. 15, 2010 issue of the journal Virology, now available online.

In 2004, other researchers reported that TRIM5a protects rhesus monkeys from HIV. The TRIM5a protein first latches on to a HIV virus, then other TRIM5a proteins gang up and destroy the virus.

Humans also have TRIM5a, but while the human version of TRIM5a protects against some viruses, it does not protect against HIV.

Researchers hope to turn TRIM5a into an effective therapeutic agent. But first they need to identify the components in TRIM5a that enable the protein to destroy viruses. “Scientists have been trying to develop antiviral therapies for only about 75 years," Campbell said. "Evolution has been playing this game for millions of years, and it has identified a point of intervention that we still know very little about."

TRIM5a consists of nearly 500 amino acid subunits. Loyola researchers have identified six 6 individual amino acids, located in a previously little-studied region of the TRIM5a protein, that are critical in the ability of the protein to inhibit viral infection. When these amino acids were altered in human cells, TRIM5a lost its ability to block HIV-1 infection. (The research was done on cell cultures; no rhesus monkeys were used in the study.)

By continuing to narrow their search, researchers hope to identify an amino acid, or combination of amino acids, that enable TRIM5a to destroy HIV. Once these critical amino acids are identified, it might be possible to genetically engineer TRIM5a to make it more effective in humans. Moreover, a better understanding of the underlying mechanism of action might enable the development of drugs that mimic TRIM5a action, Campbell said.

In their research, scientists used Loyola's wide-field "deconvolution" microscope to observe how the amino acids they identified altered the behavior of TRIM5a. They attached fluorescent proteins to TRIM5a to, in effect, make it glow. In current studies, researchers are fluorescently labeling individual HIV viruses and measuring the microscopic interactions between HIV and TRIM5a.

"The motto of our lab is one of Yogi Berra's sayings -- 'You can see a lot just by looking,'" Campbell said.

Campbell is an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. His co-authors are Jaya Sastri, a Stritch graduate student and first author; Christopher O'Connor, a former post-doctorate researcher at Stritch; Cindy Danielson and Michael McRaven of Northwestrn University Feinberg School of Medicine and Patricio Perez and Felipe Diaz-Griffero of Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

The study was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.
http://www.loyolamedicine.org/News/News_Releases/news_release_detail.cfm...

"Big Box Stores who push for the lowest prices on un safe Mega Farmed products"
seems to connect to Gloryioski's post

Deli meat recalled nationwide for bacteria
380,000 pounds of sandwich products sold at Walmart may be tainted with listeria

msnbc.com
updated 1 hour 22 minutes ago

Approximately 380,000 pounds of deli meat products that may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes have been recalled by Zemco Industries in Buffalo, N.Y., the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced late Monday.

The sandwich meats were sold at Walmart stores nationwide. There are no reported illnesses associated with the recall.

How can we really believe that last sentence?

your so good with your media stories.And that HIV/protein news seems promising!

AntiwarScott

Today on Antiwar Radio: Glenn Greenwald, Juan Cole, Chris Floyd 9-noon Pacific http://lrn.fm/

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This would be a time change. Not sure about the time.

Glenn is about to come on!!!

(bbk!)

Pentagon Was Given Access to Unpublished Documents (???)

This post originally appeared on the Daily Kos.

When WikiLeaks released its massive trove of documents on the Afghanistan war, the Pentagon immediately responded that the release would endanger Afghans who were helping the Army. WikiLeaks countered that they had attempted, using the New York Times as an intermediary, to ask the administration for help in redacting those names. The Pentagon claimed that it had not had direct contact with WikiLeaks and had not had the opportunity to redact critical information in the release.

A new report from Newsweek’s Mark Hosenball puts that assertion into question.

A lawyer representing the whistle-blowing Web site WikiLeaks says U.S. government officials have been given codes and passwords granting them online access to official U.S. government documents that WikiLeaks so far has not published.

Timothy Matusheski, a lawyer from Hattiesburg, Miss., who says he represents whistle-blowers and has been in touch with both WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and at least one government official involved in investigations of WikiLeaks, said the site had set up a “secure channel” through which authorized users could access the unpublished material. He said credentials for using this channel had been forwarded to representatives of the U.S. government whom he did not identify. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman did not immediately respond to requests for comment...

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/08/24/wikileaks-pentagon-was-gi...

Opinio Juris » Blog Archive » Can the U.S. Prosecute Wikileaks’ Founder? Sure, If They Can Catch Him

The WSJ has an article on the U.S. Defense Department’s push for a criminal prosecution of Wikileaks for releasing U.S. government documents on the Afghanistan war.

Several officials said the Defense and Justice departments were now exploring legal options for prosecuting Mr. Assange and others involved on grounds they encouraged the theft of government property.

Bringing a case against WikiLeaks would be controversial and complicated, and would expose the Obama administration to criticism for pursuing not just government leakers, but organizations that disseminate their information.

I agree it would be controversial, and probably counterproductive, to try to prosecute Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assuange. But as a legal matter, I don’t think there are many obstacles to his prosecution under U.S. law, as conservative Marc Theissen argues here.

The most relevant law, the Espionage Act, would seem to cover Assange’s alleged conduct.

(a) Whoever, for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States,…(b) receives or obtains or agrees or attempts to receive or obtain from any person, or from any source whatever, any document, . . . knowing or having reason to believe, at the time he receives or obtains, or agrees or attempts to receive or obtain it, that it has been or will be obtained, taken, made, or disposed of by any person contrary to the provisions of this chapter;

Obviously, there is an intent issue here (Did Assange obtain the info for the purpose of or with reason to believe it would be used to injure the U.S.?), but I actually don’t think that would be a problem. Wikileaks’ lawyer seems to think that the real problem is Assange’s nationality and the fact that Wikileaks does not have a presence in the U.S. But this is not a problem at all.

The Espionage Act has long been held to apply to foreign nationals who commits acts while abroad (see U.S. v. Zehe, 601 F.Supp. 196 (D. Mass 1985).). The only problem seems to be actually capturing Assange. It is worth noting, of course, that abducting Assange, even in violation of the sovereignty of a country where the U.S. has an extradition treaty, would not prevent a U.S. court from trying him. (See U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259 (1990)). And finally, Wikileaks may or may not have a First Amendment defense, and even if it does, the precedent of NY Times v. U.S., 403 U.S. 713 (1971), (the Pentagon Papers case) only seems to prevent prior restraint. Post-publication prosecution is probably OK under the First Amendment.

So Wikileaks really does have serious legal exposure, and pretty weak legal defenses. I hope they are getting better U.S. legal advice than the WSJ article describes. And if I were Assange’s lawyer, I would advise him to avoid the U.S., and international waters and airspace, for as long as possible.

http://opiniojuris.org/2010/08/21/can-the-us-prosecute-wikileaks-founder...

You see what happens to people?! It was like I was possessed by my boyfriend in the 80s.

(Glenn in 15 he says now.)

http://www.aftau.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=12759

Lets see If this work from American Friends Tel Aviv University will be helpful.

http://www.amazon.com/Dear-New-Orleans-Explicit/dp/B003ZJERUW?ie=UTF8&qi...

h/t Alternet

(sorry for the "ad," but it's not really...)

Good peeps. There's samples on the page of course.

Defense Department Task Force on (")Preventing Military Suicides(")

– LIVE at 1pm ET on C-SPAN http://cs.pn/C-SPANLIVE

College Dropout Factories
by Ben Miller and Phuong Ly

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/feature/college_d

It was money—or the lack of it—that determined where Nestor Curiel chose to go to college. The third of six children in an immigrant Mexican family, Nestor grew up in Blue Island, a gritty working-class suburb near Chicago’s South Side. His father worked, and still works, two jobs—machine operator and restaurant dishwasher—and his mother makes and sells crocheted gifts. Nestor, a polite twenty-one-year-old with black-rimmed glasses, graduated from Eisenhower High School with a 3.6 GPA and dreams of becoming an engineer. (As a child he was inspired by Discovery Channel documentaries about engineering marvels, and he also enjoyed helping his dad repair automobiles on weekends.) He particularly wanted to help his parents pay off the mortgage on their weathered gray house, which is two doors down from a corner store with a large “WE ACCEPT WIC” sign in the window.

Nestor was an above-average high school student who generally made the honors list, and he was diligent in his non-school hours as well, holding down a part-time job as a busboy and line cook at the restaurant where his father worked. His ACT score was 18, equivalent to about 870 on the SAT, which wasn’t high enough to gain him admission to a selective college. (This was typical for his school—41 percent Hispanic, 38 percent black—where only 31 percent of kids meet or exceed standards on state tests, versus 76 percent for the state.) And, apart from a career fair, Eisenhower High School didn’t provide much in the way of college guidance. One time, a guest speaker had urged students to expand their horizons and apply to schools out of state, but Nestor worried about going somewhere unfamiliar. Also, if he could live at home, he would save money.

Ultimately, Nestor wound up narrowing his choices down to two nearby schools: Purdue University Calumet and Chicago State University. Each seemed to have advantages and disadvantages, but Chicago State offered one extra perk: $1,000 in scholarship money if Nestor enrolled in its pre-engineering program. That sealed the deal. The stipend, combined with federal and state grants and a private scholarship from Chicago’s George M. Pullman Educational Foundation, meant that Nestor could get a college education with most of his expenses paid.

With its tree-lined campus and gleaming new steel and glass convocation center, Chicago State certainly looked impressive. But within his first month there, Nestor wanted to leave. Advisers in the engineering department seemed clueless about guiding him to the right courses, insisting that if he wanted to take programming he first needed to enroll in a computer class that showed students how to turn on a monitor and operate a mouse. (Nestor required no such training.) The library boasted a robot that retrieved books, but Nestor would have preferred that it simply stay open past eight p.m.,..

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8 PM!!! ARE THEY FRIGGIN' NUTS!!!

Countdown to Zero

By JOHN V. WALSH

If I was president Ahmadinejad’s national security advisor, and he asked me what to do, I would tell him to acquire a nuclear deterrent.

-- Professor John. J. Mearsheimer, July 9, 2010

John Mearsheimer’s imagined advice to Ahmadinejad leads to a simple and obvious conclusion. A country like Iran, which has been placed on the executioner’s list known as the “axis of evil” may have only one option if it is to survive. Get a nuclear deterrent - and notice Mearsheimer’s carefully chosen word is “deterrent.” The nukes need never be used, but they must be in one’s hand to keep one’s neck out of Empire’s noose. Given the fate of bloodied, ravaged and occupied Iraq, which did not get a nuke, and North Korea which did, the lesson is clear. It follows that the principal impulse for nuclear proliferation comes from the United States and Israel, since they are the countries now issuing threats of invasion, destruction, occupation and servitude, threats routinely carried out. This is a message that will not be found in the allegedly anti-nuclear flick “Countdown to Zero,” demonstrating one more time that the most effective lies are those of omission.

“Countdown to Zero” is now playing in a theater near you, at least if you live in a very “blue state” or a “blue neighborhood,” for example, Cambridge, MA, my hometown, or San Francisco. The movie is aimed squarely at the antiwar, anti-nuclear pro-Obama audience, which dwells therein and is all too susceptible to the “humanitarian” streak of imperialism. It is a very shrewd propaganda flick, as Darwin Bond-Graham demonstrated in his superb review on this site, a film which in fact helps to pry open a little bit further the door to a war on Iran...

http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh08232010.html

Homeless and Empty Homes -- an American Travesty

About 3.5 million US residents (about 1% of the population), including 1.35 million children, have been homeless for a significant period of time. Over 37,000 homeless individuals (including 16,000 children) stay in shelters in New York every night. This information was gathered by the Urban Institute, but actual numbers might be higher.

Fox Business estimates, there are 18.9 million vacant homes across the country.

3.5 million people without homes; 18.9 million homes without residents.

While an array of legal and logistical obstacles present themselves, the math is staggering. It's time to sort out the regulations and rates that would facilitate the solution: turning empty houses into homes for those in need...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-skip-bronson/post_733_b_692546.htm...

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Remember when we used to talk about how to do this, long ago, when more of us thought we were getting a more responsive gov't?

The report about the failure of the mortgage prog put it on the radar again? Fall in home sales? Whatever, it's a good thing, as things go.

Newly discovered oil-eating microbe ‘flourishing’ in Gulf

gulfoilslick Newly discovered oil eating microbe flourishing in Gulf

Researchers say previously unknown microbe thriving by eating spilled oil in Gulf of Mexico

A newly discovered type of oil-eating microbe is suddenly flourishing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Scientists discovered the new microbe while studying the underwater dispersion of millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf following the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

And the microbe works without significantly depleting oxygen in the water, researchers led by Terry Hazen at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., reported Tuesday in the online journal Sciencexpress.

"Our findings, which provide the first data ever on microbial activity from a deepwater dispersed oil plume, suggest" a great potential for bacteria to help dispose of oil plumes in the deep-sea, Hazen said in a statement.

Story continues below...

Environmentalists have raised concerns about the giant oil spill and the underwater plume of dispersed oil, particularly its potential effects on sea life. A report just last week described a 22-mile long underwater mist of tiny oil droplets.

"Our findings show that the influx of oil profoundly altered the microbial community by significantly stimulating deep-sea" cold temperature bacteria that are closely related to known petroleum-degrading microbes, Hazen reported.

Their findings are based on more than 200 samples collected from 17 deepwater sites between May 25 and June 2. They found that the dominant microbe in the oil plume is a new species, closely related to members of Oceanospirillales.

This microbe thrives in cold water, with temperatures in the deep recorded at 5 degrees Celsius (41 Fahrenheit).

Hazen suggested that the bacteria may have adapted over time due to periodic leaks and natural seeps of oil in the Gulf.

Scientists also had been concerned that oil-eating activity by microbes would consume large amounts of oxygen in the water, creating a "dead zone" dangerous to other life. But the new study found that oxygen saturation outside the oil plume was 67-percent while within the plume it was 59-percent.

The research was supported by an existing grant with the Energy Biosciences Institute, a partnership led by the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Illinois that is funded by a $500 million, 10-year grant from BP. Other support came from the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of Oklahoma Research Foundation.

Sciencexpress is the online edition of the journal Science.

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Online: http://www.sciencexpress.org.

Source: AP News

via http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/0824/newly-discovered-oileating-microbe-...

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PWKT??

You know, I'm not a big fan of Anna Marie but...you know maybe "f