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Saturday READ – 18 May 2013

May 182013

Posted by greydogg, 99GetSmart

* US GOVERNMENT SHILLS FOR GMO SEED COMPANIES THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, INCLUDING MONSANTO, REPORT REVEALS

By Mark Karlin, Buzzflash

Monsanto to Own Our Amber Waves of Grain

It’s official, the amber waves of grain in “America, The Beautiful” are now unofficially owned, in growing acreage, by Monsanto and the other giant seed companies. Not only that, the US State Department and executive branch have been acting as marketing agents for the companies who are patenting the most basic seeds necessary for human survival – and doing it throughout the world.

The non-profit organization Food and Water Watch just released a report in which it concludes:

In the past decade, the United States has aggressively pursued foreign policies in food and agriculture that benefit the largest seed companies. The U.S. State Department has launched a concerted strategy to promote agricultural biotechnology, often over the opposition of the public and governments, to the near exclusion of other more sustainable, more appropriate agricultural policy alternatives.

Russian Television (RT) provided more insight into the basis for the Food and Water Watch findings:

After US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks showed that the State Department was lobbying worldwide for Monsanto and other similar corporations, a new report based on the cables shows Washington’s shilling for the biotech industry in distinct detail.The August 2011 WikiLeaks revelations showed that American diplomats had requested funding to send lobbyists for the biotech industry to hold talks with politicians and agricultural officials in “target countries” in areas like Africa and Latin America, where genetically-modified crops were not yet a mainstay, as well as some European countries that have resisted the controversial agricultural practice.

The title of the white paper is “Biotech Ambassadors: How the U.S. State Department Promotes the Seed Industry’s Global Agenda” […]

READ @ http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17969-us-government-shills-for-gmo-seed-companies-throughout-the-world-including-monsanto-report-reveals

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* 10 YEARS LATER: A REVIEW OF GM CROPS FARMER TO FARMER

Source: naturalcuresnotmedicine

Survey Says No!

Well.. You heard it first. Straight from the farmers mouth. Here is a short look into the life of farmers that have chosen to grow GM crops. Here we discover the birth of “superweeds” – and cross contamination from bird droppings (in this case) but even just pollen blowing in the wind could lead to you being sued. They even explain how Tank-mixing is actually patented by Monsanto. It’s not much they don’t have their sticky fingers in at the moment. The epic grip-hold on these poor farmers hopefully is enough to stop or prevent other farmers from going GM or GE. Please let this message be heard.

READ / VIDEO @ http://www.naturalcuresnotmedicine.com/2013/05/10-years-later-review-of-gm-crops-from.html

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* GENETICALLY MODIFIED DEMOCRACY: MONSANTO AND CONGRESS MOVE TO STOMP ON YOUR RIGHTS

By Ronnie Cummins, CommonDreams

[…] Over the past 20 years Monsanto and the biotech industry, aided and abetted by indentured politicians and corporate agribusiness, have begun seizing control over the global food and farming system, including the legislative, patent, trade, judicial and regulatory bodies that are supposed to safeguard the public interest.

In the U.S., despite mounting evidence of the damage GE crops inflict on human health and the environment, approximately 170 million acres of GE crops, including corn, soybeans, cotton, canola, sugar beets, alfalfa, papaya, and squash, are currently under cultivation. These crops, untested and unlabeled, comprise 41 percent of all cultivated cropland, or 17 percent of all cropland and pastureland combined. According to the GMA, at least 70 percent of non-organic grocery store processed foods contain GMOs. And GE grains and mill byproducts now supply the overwhelming majority of animal feed on the factory farms that supply 90 percent to 95 percent of the meat, eggs and dairy products that Americans consume.

Yet despite their marketplace dominance, record profits and enormous political clout in Washington D.C., Monsanto and the biotech industry are in deep trouble. Evidence is mounting that Monsanto’s top-selling herbicide, Roundup, is a deadly poison, destroying important human gut bacteria and likely contributing to the rapid increase of food allergies and serious human diseases including cancer, autism, neurological disorders , Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD), dementia, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Those most susceptible to poisoning by Monsanto’s Roundup are children and the elderly.

Scientists aren’t the only ones raising new questions about Roundup. Farmers are complaining that they’re being forced to spray more and more chemicals on crops increasingly under siege from a growing army of herbicide-resistant weeds. The situation is so bad that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) just raised the limits of Roundup residue allowed on grains and vegetables to even more dangerous levels. But just in case the EPA someday stops raising the limits, Monsanto, Dow and the biotech industry are working on a new “solution” to the onslaught of herbicide-resistant Superweeds: They’ve applied for approval of a new and highly controversial generation of super toxic herbicide-resistant GE crops, including “Agent Orange” (2,4-D and dicamba-resistant) corn, soybeans and cotton.

As a recent widely-circulated article points out:

The use of 2,4-D is not new; it’s actually one of the most widely used herbicides in the world. What is new is that farmers will now ‘carpet bomb’ staple food crops like soy and corn with this chemical at a previously unprecedented scale—just the way glyphosate has been indiscriminately applied as a result of Roundup Ready crops. In fact, if 2,4-D resistant crops receive approval and eventually come to replace Monsanto’s failing Roundup-resistant crops as Dow intends, it is likely that billions of pounds will be needed, on top of the already insane levels of Roundup being used (1.6 billion lbs were used in 2007 in the US alone).

In addition to these Agent Orange crops, an expanded menu of genetically engineered organisms are awaiting approval. Next on the menu? GE apples, trees, and salmon. […]

READ @ http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/17-4

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* MILLIONS AGAINST MONSANTO – HELP!

Source: youtube

VIDEO @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj-G6VhUynY

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* ONE YEAR AGO: THE BATTLE OF #noNATO

Video by #crankstrap

Images from the anti-nato protests in Chicago — footage by crankstrop, cut with a few videos retrieved online. A sincere thanks to everyone who independently documented this event and published their media. special appreciation for circle takes the square and their song: “non-objective portrait of karma.”

VIDEO @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6mvVqeO1-Y4

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* IMPRISONED HUMAN RIGHTS ATTORNEY LYNNE STEWART DENIED CANCER TREATMENT

By Stephen Lendman, realnewsworldwide

Numerous previous articles have discussed Lynne Stewart’s case, character and dedication to rule of law principles. She’s an internationally recognized human rights lawyer.

Lynne Stewart and her husband Ralph Poynter leave the courthouse following her conviction on terrorism charges Oct. 20, 2006. – Photo: Chang W. Lee, New York Times

She tirelessly worked for justice. She devoted her life and work to upholding principles too important to reject. She knew the risks and took them. She did so because it matters.

For 30 years, she defended America’s poor, underprivileged, unwanted and forgotten. Without advocates like her, they never have a chance for due process and judicial fairness.

She was targeted for representing clients prosecutors want convicted. One case made her especially vulnerable.

At former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark’s request, she joined Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman’s defense team. In 1995, he was wrongfully convicted of seditious conspiracy, solicitation of murder, solicitation of an attack on American military installations, conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to bomb in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center attack.

He was bogusly accused. He was innocent of all charges. It didn’t matter. He never had a chance. Prosecutorial injustice framed him. It’s standard Justice Department practice.

She tirelessly worked for justice. She devoted her life and work to upholding principles too important to reject. She knew the risks and took them. She did so because it matters.

Defending Rahman got Lynne spuriously charged with:

conspiring to defraud the United States;
conspiring to provide and conceal material support to terrorist activity;
providing and concealing material support to terrorist activity; and
two counts of making false statements. […]

READ / VIDEOS @ http://realnewsworldwide.com/2013/01/31/imprisoned-human-rights-attorney-lynne-stewart-denied-cancer-treatment/

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* POPE BLAMES TYRANNY OF CAPITALISM FOR MAKING PEOPLE MISERABLE

By Nick Squires, The Age

Rome: Pope Francis has attacked the ”dictatorship” of the global financial system and warned that the ”cult of money” is making life a misery for millions.

He said free market capitalism had created a ”tyranny” and that people were being judged purely by their ability to consume goods.

Money should be made to ”serve” people, not to ”rule” them, he said on Thursday, calling for a more ethical banking system and curbs on financial speculation. Countries should impose more control over their economies and not allow ”absolute autonomy”, in order to provide ”for the common good”.

The gap between rich and poor was growing and the ”joy of life” was diminishing in many developed countries, the Pope said. ”While the income of a minority is increasing exponentially, that of the majority is crumbling,” said the pontiff who, as archbishop of Buenos Aires, visited slums, opted to lived in a modest flat rather than an opulent church residence and went to work by bus. In poorer countries, people’s lives were becoming ”undignified” and marked by violence and desperation, he said.

The Pope, who was elected two months ago, made the remarks in his first substantial speech on finance and the economy, during an address to foreign ambassadors in the Vatican. It underlined his reputation for showing deep concern for the plight of the poor and vulnerable.

”The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly human goal,” he told the ambassadors.

As the Catholic leader in Argentina, he often spoke out about the plight of the poor during the country’s economic crisis. Unchecked capitalism had created ”a new, invisible, and at times virtual, tyranny”, he said.

”The Pope loves everyone, rich and poor alike, but the Pope has the duty, in Christ’s name, to remind the rich to help the poor, to respect them, to promote them,” he said.

Pope Francis will make the first foreign trip of his papacy to Brazil in July. He will visit a Rio de Janeiro slum, meet young prison inmates and attend World Youth Day, a week-long event expected to attract more than 2 million people.

READ / VIDEO @ http://www.theage.com.au/world/pope-blames-tyranny-of-capitalism-for-making-people-miserable-20130517-2jru9.html

Friday READ – 17 May 2013

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May 172013

Posted by greydogg, 99GetSmart

* UPCOMING TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP (TPP) LOOKS LIKE CORPORATE TAKEOVER (BECAUSE IT IS)

By Dave Johnson, OpEdNews

You will be hearing a lot about the upcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. TPP’s negotiations are being held in secret with details kept secret even from our Congress. But giant corporations are in the loop.

TPP is a “trade” agreement between several Pacific-rim countries that is actually about much more than just trade. It will be sold as a trade agreement (because everyone knows that “trade” is good) but much of it appears to be (from what we know) a corporate end-run around things We the People want to do to reign in the giant corporations — like Wall Street regulation, environmental regulation and corporate taxation.

One-Sided Process

The TPP process appears to be set up to push corporate interests over other interests. The TPP is being negotiated in secret, so what we know about it comes from leaked documents. Even our Congress is being kept out of the loop. But 600 corporate representatives are in the loop while representatives of groups that protect working people, human, political and civil rights and our environment are largely not in the loop.

This one-sided participation unfortunately indicates that the interests of giant corporations are likely to override the interests of working people and those who want to protect non-corporate interests. Otherwise there would be more representation by representatives of organizations representing these concerns, and greater transparency into the process.

TPP Is A Very, Very Big Deal […]

READ @ http://www.opednews.com/articles/Upcoming-Trans-Pacific-Par-by-Dave-Johnson-130516-918.html

MORE INFORMATION ON TPP: The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement @ http://99getsmart.com/?p=3715

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* SENATE BANKING COMMITTEE – NOMINATION HEARING FOR FRED HOCHBERG

Source: youtube

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Q&A at the May 7, 2013 Senate Banking Committee hearing to consider the nomination of Fred P. Hochberg to serve as President of the Export-Import Bank.

VIDEO @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fmgaz-9DX3I

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* DRONE PILOTS EXPOSE POLITICIAN’S LIES

By David Swanson, War Is A Crime

Our elected and unelected officials tell us that drone strikes target top level enemies of the United States who are imminent threats to us, and that killing innocent people is avoided altogether or minimized.

Congressional hearings, with a couple of excellent exceptions, question outside academics about the legality of this purported strategy. The Obama administration declines to send any witnesses.

But drone pilots have begun talking to the media. And they describe policies that bear a lot closer resemblance to reporting from the areas where the missiles strike. These pilots should be brought before Congress.

Here is a stunning new interview with one of them:

“So the pilot is not only flying the airplane, he or she is using all those sensors to watch a potential target, circling over it for hours or days at a time. What can you really see?

“Okay, so in a village in, say, country X, where the houses are built together, there are adults who live in this house, and these children belong to those adults because we see them out in the fields together or we see them eating dinner. So you can start figuring out who is associated with who. Who is a stranger, who is it that’s visiting this house? There’s a dog and it barks at strangers, so if we needed to go in and free a hostage or conduct a raid, you’d want to tell the land forces there’s a dog there and either it’s an attack dog or it alerts the village that somebody’s coming.

“You must develop an emotional tie with the people on the ground that makes it hard if there is going to be a strike or a raid, people are going to be killed.

“I would couch it not in terms of an emotional connection, but a … seriousness. I have watched this individual, and regardless of how many children he has, no matter how close his wife is, no matter what they do, that individual fired at Americans or coalition forces, or planted an IED — did something that met the rules of engagement and the laws of armed conflict, and I am tasked to strike that individual. The seriousness of it is that I am going to do this and it will affect his family. But that individual is the one that brought it on himself. He became a combatant the minute he took up arms.”

This pilot, in fact this director of the Air Force Remotely Piloted Aircraft Capabilities Division, has not said that a high level operation leader of terrorists who is imminently threatening the United States is targeted. He has said that some ordinary guy who has chosen to violently resist the hostile foreign occupation of his country by shooting at the occupiers is targeted.

He has also not said anything to satisfy those who support the notion of just wars but want them conducted in compliance with the Geneva Conventions and other such legally binding limitations. This director of a U.S. drone kill program openly says that our public employees target a family for death if needed in order to blow up a foreign soldier from thousands of miles away. Every effort is made to avoid killing innocent family members, he says in the interview, but if it can’t be avoided, well, the target “brought it on himself.”

Here another pilot describes specific such incidents. Here the New York Times reports on the resulting PTSD suffered by drone pilots.

War is murder, and this type of war ought to look to most people like the murder that it is. But even if you accept war, this is not how ANYBODY claims it is to be legally done. This is beyond what Congressional witnesses or even Congress members would say is acceptable or legal. Yet this pilot blurts it out to the media with apparently no concern that his life will be inconvenienced by further questioning.

Enough is enough is enough. End this madness now.

READ @ http://warisacrime.org/content/drone-pilots-expose-politicians-lies

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* GREEK ADDICTS TURN TO DEADLY SHISHA DRUG AS ECONOMIC CRISIS DEEPENS

By Helena Smith, Guardian

A sisa user smoking his pipe on Kapodistriou Street.

Nobody knows which came first: the economic crisis tearing Greece apart or shisha, the drug now known as the “cocaine of the poor”. What everyone does accept is that shisha is a killer. And at €2 or less a hit, it is one that has come to stalk Greece, the country long on the frontline of Europe‘s financial meltdown.

“As drugs go, it is the worst. It burns your insides, it makes you aggressive and ensures that you go totally mad,” said Maria, a former heroin addict. “But it is cheap and it is easy to get, and it is what everyone is doing.”

The drug crisis, brought to light in a new film by Vice.com, has put Athens’s health authorities, already overwhelmed by draconian cuts, under further strain.

The drug of preference for thousands of homeless Greeks forced on to the streets by poverty and despair, shisha is described by both addicts and officials as a variant of crystal meth whose potential to send users into a state of mindless violence is underpinned by the substances with which the synthetic drug is frequently mixed: battery acid, engine oil and even shampoo.

Worse still, it is not only readily available, but easy to make – tailor-made for a society that despite official prognostications of optimism, and fiscal progress, on the ground, at least, sees little light at the end of the tunnel.

“It is a killer but it also makes you want to kill,” Konstantinos, a drug addict, told Vice. “You can kill without understanding that you have done it … And it is spreading faster than death. A lot of users have died.” […]

READ @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/16/greek-addicts-sisha-drug-crisis

SEE VIDEO @ http://www.vice.com/es

VIDEO: PART 1 @ http://www.vice.com/en_uk/vice-news/sisa-cocaine-of-the-poor-part-1

VIDEO: PART 2 @ http://www.vice.com/en_uk/vice-news/sisa-cocaine-of-the-poor-part-2

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* JOHN HENLEY: WHY SOCIAL MEDIA WAS CRUCIAL OT GREECE ON THE BREADLNE

Source: The Guardian

VIDEO @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2012/mar/27/greece-breadline-debt-crisis-video

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* UKIP’s NIGEL FARAGE MOBBED BY PROTESTERS IN EDINBURGH

Source: The Guardian

The leader of the UK Independence party, Nigel Farage, is hounded by protesters in Edinburgh on Thursday. The crowd, chanting ‘Ukip scum, off our streets’, encircles a taxi Farage attempts to get away in. The politician is followed to a pub where he planned to hold a news conference, with police forced to barricade him inside to keep him apart from the crowd.

VIDEO @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nh8NIB9q9o

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* IMF CHIEF LAGARDE HECKLED BY STUDENTS IN AMSTERDAM

Source: Roarmag

Dutch, Greek and Spanish members of the Occupy movement interrupt a lecture by IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde at the University of Amsterdam.

Christine Lagarde, the former French Finance Minister and current Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, was treated to an Occupy-style mic-check at the University of Amsterdam on Tuesday. During a lecture at the university’s economics department, a group of students rose up to interrupt (or rather start) the discussion, confronting the Fund’s chief with a number of inconvenient questions.

Attendees had been asked to send in questions before the “debate”, but the protesters were angry that their critical notes appeared to have been ignored. By standing up and submitting the IMF chief to a mic-check, they tried to get their concerns across anyway: “why is technocracy better than democracy?” one activist asked. Another asked Lagarde why the IMF submits developing countries to Western imperialism, to which the upper-class moderator tellingly responded that “we will not do that question”.

In a sign of the academic freedom at the University of Amsterdam, and civil liberties in the Netherlands more generally, the students — who reportedly included Dutch Occupy protesters, Spanish indignados and Greek activists associated with ReINFORM – were immediately escorted away by security and event organizers. Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad reports that some of the event organizers seemed to act like a “gang” in their willingness to use physical force while removing the activists. […]

READ / VIDEO @ http://roarmag.org/2013/05/imf-chief-lagarde-heckled-by-students-in-amsterdam/

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* THE TRICK TO SUPPRESSING THE REVOLUTION: KEEPING DEBT/TAX SERFDOM BEARABLE

By Charles Hugh-Smith, Of Two Minds

The 30 million whose labor funds the parasitic status quo don’t have to rebel; they simply have to stop going to work, stop starting enterprises, stop being productive.

Parasites must balance their drive to maximize what they extract from their host with the risk of losing everything by killing their host. This is the dilemma of the parasitic partnership of the central state and financial Elites everywhere: to extract the maximum possible in debt payments and taxes without sparking rebellion and revolution.

I have often commented on the current class structure, which paradoxically unites the interests of the top 1/5% of 1% and their political-class toadies and the bottom 50% who are drawing transfer payments/benefits from the state: both support the status quo because both receive direct benefits from it.

The 20% who pay most of the tax and service much of the debt are in the middle, a political minority of debt/tax serfs who finance the status quo, i.e. cartel-crony capitalism owned and operated by the financial and political Elites:

The Three-and-a-Half Class Society (October 22, 2012)

Entitlements, Taxes, Inequality and Three-Way Class Warfare (September 20, 2010)

Tyranny of the Majority, Corporate Welfare and Complicity (April 9, 2010)

Two Americas: The Gap Between the Top 5% and the Bottom 95% Widens (August 18, 2010)

READ @ http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com.es/2013/05/the-trick-to-suppressing-revolution.html

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* 10 AMAZING CHARTS THAT DEMONSTRATE THE SLOW, AGONIZING DEATH OF THE AMERICAN WORKER

By Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse

The middle class American worker is in danger of becoming an endangered species. The politicians are not telling you the truth, and the mainstream media is certainly not telling you the truth, but the reality is that there is nothing but bad news on the horizon for workers in the United States. In the old days, when the big corporations that dominate our society did well, that also meant good things for American workers since those corporations would need more of us to work for them. But in the emerging one world economic system that our economy is being merged into, those corporations have other choices now. For instance, the big corporations can now choose to limit the number of “expensive” American workers that they employ by shipping millions of jobs to the other side of the world. And from their perspective, it makes perfect sense. They can make much bigger profits by hiring people on the other side of the planet to work for them for less than a dollar an hour. If they can get good production out of those people, then why should they hire Americans for ten to twenty times as much, plus have to give those Americans health insurance and other benefits? Another major factor in the slow, agonizing death of the American worker is technology. We live during a period when technology is advancing at a pace that is almost unimaginable at the same time that it is steadily becoming cheaper and cheaper. That means that it is going to become easier and easier for companies to replace workers with robots and computers. As I have written about previously, it is being projected that our economy will lose millions of jobs to technology in the coming years. Yes, some of us will still be needed to help build the robots and the computers, but not all of us will. And of course the overall general weakness of the economy is not helping matters either. The American people inherited the greatest economic machine in the history of the world, and we have wrecked it. Decades of very foolish decisions have resulted in the period of steady economic decline that we are experiencing now.

America is simply not the economic powerhouse that it once was. Back in 2001, the U.S. economy accounted for 31.8 percent of global GDP. By 2011, the U.S. economy only accounted for 21.6 percent of global GDP. That is a collapse any way that you want to look at it.

Today, American workers are living in an economy that is rapidly declining, and their jobs are steadily being stolen by robots, computers and foreign workers that live in countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages. Politicians from both political parties refuse to do anything to stop the bleeding because they think that the status quo is working just great.

So don’t expect things to get better any time soon.

The following are 10 amazing charts that demonstrate the slow, agonizing death of the American worker… […]

READ / CHARTS @ http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/10-amazing-charts-that-demonstrate-the-slow-agonizing-death-of-the-american-worker

Thursday READ – 16 May 2013

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May 162013

Posted by greydogg, 99GetSmart

* LIONS AND TIGERS AND TERRORISTS, OH MY!

By Brandon Smith, Alt-Market

Lions and tigers and terrorists! Oh my!

The debate over what actions actually constitute “terrorism,” I believe, will become one of the defining ideological battles of our era. Terrorism is not a word often used by common people to describe aberrant behaviors or dastardly deeds; however, it is used by governments around the world to label and marginalize political enemies. That is to say, it is the government that normally decides who is a “terrorist” and who is a mere “criminal,” the assertion being that one is clearly far worse than the other.

The terrorist label elicits emotional firestorms and fearful brain-quakes in the minds of the masses. It causes the ignorant and unaware to abandon principles they would normally apply to any other malicious enterprise. They begin to reason that a criminal should be afforded justice, while a terrorist should be afforded only vengeance, even though the act of branding a person a “terrorist” is often completely arbitrary. This vengeance is usually pursued by any means. Thus, the terrorist moniker becomes a rationalization for every vicious and inhuman policy of the establishment, as well as for the citizenry.

Dishonorable and foolish people claim the existence of terrorism essentially gives license for the rest of us to become criminal, willfully trampling on individuals’ rights to privacy, property, free speech, due process, civic participation, etc. Mass criminality against the individual in the name of social safety is the glue that holds together all tyrannical systems, triggering a catastrophic cycle of moral relativism that eventually bleeds a culture dry.

Historically, the expanded use of the terrorist label by governments tends to coincide with the rising tides of despotism. A government that quietly seeks to dominate the people will inevitably begin to treat the people as if they are the enemy. Those citizens who present the greatest philosophical or physical threat to the centralization of power are usually the first to suffer. I do not think it is unfair to say that any system of authority that suddenly claims to see terrorists under every rock and behind every tree is probably about to rain full-on fascism down upon the population. […]

READ @ http://www.alt-market.com/articles/1501-lions-and-tigers-and-terrorists-oh-my

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* WHY COPS AND PROSECUTORS GET AWAY WITH THROWING INNOCENTS IN PRISON

By Margaret Kimberly, AlterNet

It is indisputable that America strives to put as many black people behind bars as possible.

The ironically named criminal justice system in this country is good at prosecuting and creating many criminals but not very good at producing any justice. The United States would not have the largest prison population of any other country on earth if it did not also have the harshest prosecution and sentencing system of any other country. America’s addiction to racism and violence creates outright criminality among police and prosecutors. Their misconduct is tolerated and even encouraged and the result is an untold number of innocent people in jail.

In 1989, five New York City teenagers, four black and one Latino, were convicted of raping and assaulting a then anonymous woman known as the Central Park jogger. In the now infamous case the teens were coerced into giving false video taped confessions. None of the established procedures for interviewing minors were in place and police and prosecutors broke the law in order to convict them. Unable to pay for good legal representation and convicted in the court of public opinion, the five spent between six and thirteen years behind bars.

In 2002 a sole perpetrator confessed to the attack, DNA tests proved his guilt and the convictions were vacated. Thanks to the new documentary, The Central Park Five, the prosecutors who orchestrated the travesty have come under scrutiny but none of them have suffered as a result of their actions. Until very recently prosecutor Elizabeth Lederer bragged about her involvement in the case and included it in her biography. She is still a law professor at Columbia University. It isn’t clear why anyone would want her to teach anything about the law, but there she sits in the lap of establishment legal profession luxury. When an outraged citizen circulated a petition pressuring Columbia to fire Lederer, the wagons circled around her and the media excoriated those who only wanted accountability and justice.

“The prosecutors who orchestrated the travesty have come under scrutiny but none of them have suffered as a result of their actions.” […]

READ @ http://www.alternet.org/why-cops-and-prosecutors-get-away-throwing-innocents-prison

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* CHRISTIANITY AND THE INQUISITION IN THE US ARMY

Source: The Real News

READ @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT3–3cm8aQ

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* EVERYTHING IS RIGGED, CONTINUED: EUROPEAN RAIDS OIL COMPANIES IN PRICE-FIXING PROBE

By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

European finance workers/Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images

We’re going to get into this more at a later date, but there was some interesting late-breaking news yesterday.

According to numerous reports, the European Commission regulators yesterday raided the offices of oil companies in London, the Netherlands and Norway as part of an investigation into possible price-rigging in the oil markets. The targeted companies include BP, Shell and the Norweigan company Statoil. The Guardian explains that officials believe that oil companies colluded to manipulate pricing data:

The commission said the alleged price collusion, which may have been going on since 2002, could have had a “huge impact” on the price of petrol at the pumps “potentially harming final consumers”.

Lord Oakeshott, former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said the alleged rigging of oil prices was “as serious as rigging Libor” – which led to banks being fined hundreds of millions of pounds.

The inquiry also involves Platts, the world’s largest oil price reporting agency. The concept here is very similar to both the LIBOR scandal, which involved banks manipulating the benchmark rates for interest rates, and to the possible rigging of interest rate swap prices through the manipulation of ISDAfix, the benchmark rate for those instruments, which is also the subject of a regulatory probe.

We wrote about both of those scandals in last month’s Rolling Stone article, “Everything is Rigged.” In that piece, finance professionals talked about the potential for manipulation in other markets that involve voluntary price reporting:

What other markets out there carry the same potential for manipulation? The answer to that question is far from reassuring, because the potential is almost everywhere. From gold to gas to swaps to interest rates, prices all over the world are dependent upon little private cabals of cigar-chomping insiders we’re forced to trust.

“In all the over-the-counter markets, you don’t really have pricing except by a bunch of guys getting together,” Masters notes glumly.

That includes the markets for gold (where prices are set by five banks in a Libor-ish teleconferencing process that, ironically, was created in part by N M Rothschild & Sons) and silver (whose price is set by just three banks), as well as benchmark rates in numerous other commodities – jet fuel, diesel, electric power, coal, you name it. […]

READ @ http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/everything-is-rigged-continued-european-commission-raids-oil-companies-in-price-fixing-probe-20130515

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* TOO BIG TO FAIL HAS BECOME TOO BIG FOR TRIAL

In case you missed this powerful video making the rounds a few months ago Elizabeth Warren made regulators squirm when confronted on “too big to jail.” Now she has written a letter to Ben Bernanke, Eric Holder and Mary Jo White.

Elizabeth Warren is one of the few Senators out there pushing to understand why the federal government has created an untouchable class of criminals in America that can do whatever they want whenever they want and, not only get away with it, but also get bailed out when they make mistakes.

VIDEO @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mavB1lbtIow

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* THE ANTI-GLOBALIZATION MOVEMENT AND THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM. IS “ANOTHER WORLD’ POSSIBLE

By Prof Michael Chossudovsky Global Research

The World Social Forum operating under the banner of “Another World is Possible” was founded in 2001 at its inaugural venue of Porto Alegre. Brazil.

From the outset in 2001, the WSF has been upheld as an international umbrella representing grassroots people’s organizations, committed to reversing the tide of globalization. Its stated intent is to challenge corporate capitalism and its dominant neoliberal economic agenda.

The World Social Forum at its inaugural meeting defined itself as a counter-offensive to the World Economic Forum (WEF) of business leaders and politicians which meets annually in Davos, Switzerland. The 2001 Porto Alegre WSF was held simultaneously with that of the WEF in Davos.

Yet upon careful review, the WSF –rather than effectively confronting the economic and financial elites– actually serves their interests.

From the outset in 2001, the World Social Forum was funded by governments and corporate foundations, including the Ford Foundation which has ties to US intelligence.

The anti-globalization movement is opposed to Wall Street and the Texas oil giants controlled by Rockefeller, et al. Yet the foundations and charities of Ford, Rockefeller et al will generously fund progressive anti-capitalist networks as well as environmentalists (opposed to Wall Street and Big Oil) with a view to ultimately overseeing and shaping their various activities.

The mechanisms of “manufacturing dissent” require a manipulative environment, a process of arm-twisting and subtle co-optation of a small number of key individuals within “progressive organizations”, including anti-war coalitions, environmentalists and the anti-globalization movement. Many leaders of these organizations have in a sense betrayed their grassroots. […]

READ @ http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-anti-globalization-movement-and-the-world-social-forum-another-world-is-possible/5335181

Wednesday READ – 15 May 2013

READ No Responses »

May 152013

Posted by greydogg, 99GetSmart

* WE CAN HANDLE THE TRUTH – OUT WITH IT

By James Traub, Foreign Policy

Americans deserve to hear the dirty secrets of the CIA’s war on terror. We’ll all be better off with the truth.

In April 1975, Sen. Frank Church impaneled a special investigative committee to look into shocking accounts of CIA dirty tricks. The Church Committee ultimately published 14 reports over two years revealing a clandestine agency that was a law unto itself — plotting to assassinate heads of state (Castro, Diem, Lumumba, Trujillo), carrying out weird experiments with LSD, and suborning American journalists. As a result, President Gerald Ford issued an executive order banning the assassination of foreign leaders, the House and Senate established standing intelligence committees, and the United States set up the so-called FISA courts, which oversee request for surveillance warrants against suspected foreign agents.

But the war on terror unleashed the CIA once again to carry out dark deeds against America’s enemies — torture, secret detention, and “rendition” to “black sites” across the world. How have Americans reckoned, this time, with the immoral and illegal acts carried out in their name? They have not: the CIA has retained control over the narrative. As the Constitution Project’s Detainee Treatment report describes in great detail, the CIA falsely reported — to the White House as well as to the public — that torture “worked” in wresting crucial information from high-level detainees, and thus needed to be an instrument available to interrogators. Officials like Vice President Dick Cheney repeated ad nauseum that the CIA’s dark arts had saved thousands of lives. Is it any wonder that a plurality of Americans think the United States should torture terrorists?

I wrote last month about the detainee treatment report, but I find it incredibly frustrating — and all too telling — that the findings were overwhelmed by the tidal wave of coverage of the Boston bombing. Because we fear terrorism far more viscerally than we feared communism — certainly by 1975 — we are all too susceptible to the view that America cannot afford to live by its own professed values. But of course that’s what Chileans and Brazilians thought in the 1970s. That’s why Sri Lankans have granted themselves the right to slaughter homegrown terrorists wholesale, and react furiously to any hint of criticism.

People give themselves a pass unless and until they are forced to face the truth, which is why a public airing of history is so important — and so politically fraught. There’s always a compelling reason to avoid facing the ugly truth. In early 2009, Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called for an independent commission to investigate allegations of torture. But President Barack Obama’s spokesman said that the proposal would not be “workable.” We know what he meant: you can hardly blame the president for avoiding a colossal fight with Republicans over the past, especially, when he had so many fights he needed to wage over the future. […]

READ @ http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/10/dirty_secrets_CIA_war_on_terror

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* MURDER IS OUR NATIONAL SPORT

By Chris Hedges, Truthout

Image: Jailed hands via Shutterstock

Murder is our national sport. We murder tens of thousands with our industrial killing machines in Afghanistan and Iraq. We murder thousands more from the skies over Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen with our pilotless drones. We murder each other with reckless abandon. And, as if we were not drenched in enough human blood, we murder prisoners—most of them poor people of color who have been locked up for more than a decade. The United States believes in regeneration through violence. We have carried out blood baths on foreign soil and on our own land for generations in the vain quest of a better world. And the worse it gets, the deeper our empire sinks under the weight of its own decay and depravity, the more we kill.

There are parts of the nation where the electorate, or at least the white electorate, routinely and knowingly puts murderers into political office. Murder is a sign of strength. Murder is a symbol of resolve. Murder means law and order. Murder keeps us safe. Strap the criminal into the gurney. Plunge the needles into veins. Haul away the corpse. It is our Christian duty. God Bless America! And one of the next on the list to be murdered in Florida—a state that has decided, under its new and cynically named “Timely Justice Act,” that it needs to accelerate its execution rate—is William Van Poyck. He is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. June 12 at Florida State Prison. He is a writer who has spent years exposing the cruelty of our system of mass incarceration. On June 12, if Gov. Rick Scott has his way, Van Poyck will write no more. And that is exactly how our political class of murderers wants it.

“Only God can judge,” Matt Gaetz, a Republican who sponsored the Timely Justice Act in the Florida House of Representatives, said during the debate. “But we sure can set up the meeting.” […]

READ @ http://truth-out.org/news/item/16337-murder-is-our-national-sport

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* GUANTANAMO BAY: INSIDE A LEGAL NIGHTMARE

By John Knefel, Rolling Stone

‘The Terror Courts’ by Jess Bravin, Yale University Press

As the hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay enters its fourth month and pressure to close the prison mounts, it’s easy to forget that Guantanamo is not only a detention facility but also the site of a unique legal experiment that has no direct precedent in U.S. history. At times, it can be difficult to keep track of the tangled mess of authorities claimed, cases appealed and lives destroyed with Guantanamo at its center. Those looking for clarity on these issues have a new, important resource in author Jess Bravin’s book The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay, which tells the story of the evolution of Guantanamo’s legal universe in captivating detail, and provides the reader with a clear picture of just how we arrived at this bizarre moment in our history.

Bravin, who is also the Supreme Court correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, populates his narrative with memorable characters, like Charlie Swift, the defense attorney in Navy whites who pulls a surprise Columbo moment before an early commission. Or Tom Umberg, who can’t believe that some of his fellow prosecutors want to push forward with the case against a detainee named Salim Hamdan despite a federal judge ruling it would be unlawful. “Guys, this is huge,” Umberg says in disbelief. “This is Marbury v. Madison.” Stu Couch, a prosecutor who refused to bring charges using evidence he thought was obtained through torture, plays a prominent role in the book as well.

Modern military commissions began as the result of an executive order signed by George W. Bush in November 2001. They were later approved by Congress in 2006, and again in 2009. Among other things, Bravin’s book examines the potential lasting implications of such commissions being formally approved by statute – rather than as the ad hoc, temporary authority they had always held in past wars. As they currently operate, they’re a mix of the civilian court and military court martial systems, a hybrid with very little case law and precedent to offer as guides.

Especially fascinating is Bravin’s description of the overlapping theories the government has used to justify detention. “From the perspective of the U.S. government, both in the Bush and Obama administrations, there are two separate and virtually unrelated legal rationales for holding people at Guantanamo,” the author says in a new 30-minute interview. First, “the government has asserted that under the laws of war it can detain people who are fighting against the United States for preventative reasons” – that is, to keep them from committing acts in the future. Bravin refers to this as “prospective detention,” and says “that premise has explained the imprisonment of everyone who has ever been held at Guantanamo Bay.” […]

READ @ http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/guantanamo-bay-inside-a-legal-nightmare-20130513

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* JUSTICE DEPARTMENT’S PURSUIT OF AP’s PHONE RECORDS IS BOTH EXTREME AND DANGEROUS

By Glenn Greenwald, Guardian

The claimed legal basis for these actions is unknown, but the threats they pose to a free press and the newsgathering process are clear

Attorney General Eric Holder was required by DOJ regulations to personally approve efforts to obtain phone records for AP journalists. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Associated Press on Monday revealed that the Department of Justice (DOJ) “secretly obtained two months of telephone records of [its] reporters and editors”, denouncing it as a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into the news gathering process. In a letter sent yesterday to Attorney General Eric Holder, AP’s President, Gary Pruitt, detailed that the phone records cover more than 20 telephone lines used by AP journalists, including their homes, offices and cell phones. He said the phones for which the DOJ obtained records also include ones at the AP bureaus in New York City, Washington DC, Hartford, and at the House of Representatives.

Pruitt wrote that “we regard this action by the Department of Justice as a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news.” He added that while AP is “evaluating its options”, he “urgently request[ed]” that the DOJ “immediately return to the AP the telephone toll records” obtained by the DOJ “and destroy all copies.” AP learned of the DOJ’s acquisition of these records only after the fact, and thus had no opportunity to raise legal and constitutional objections nor attempt to negotiate to narrow the scope of the records to be sought. Pruitt’s letter uses some inflammatory language as it is designed to advance the AP’s case and to generate public anger, but that’s entirely appropriate. The phone records reveal, at a minimum, all of the telephone numbers called by those AP journalists over the course of two months.

The ACLU last night condemned the DOJ’s acts as “press intimidation” and said it constitutes “an unacceptable abuse of power”. The Electronic Frontier Foundation denounced it as “a terrible blow against the freedom of the press and the ability of reporters to investigate and report the news”. The New York Times’ Editorial Page Editor Andy Rosenthal called the DOJ’s actions “outrageous” while Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron said they were “shocking” and “disturbing”. Even Democratic Sen. Pat Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said: “I am very troubled by these allegations and want to hear the government’s explanation.” […]

READ @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/14/justice-department-ap-phone-records-whistleblowers

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* 5 MILLION FARMERS SUE MONSANTO FOR $7.7 BILLION

Source: Why Don’t You Try This

Launching a lawsuit against the very company that is responsible for a farmer suicide every 30 minutes, 5 million farmers are now suing Monsanto for as much as 6.2 billion euros (around 7.7 billion US dollars).

The reason? As with many other cases, such as the ones that led certain farming regions to be known as the ‘suicide belt’, Monsanto has been reportedly taxing the farmers to financial shambles with ridiculous royalty charges.

The farmers state that Monsanto has been unfairly gathering exorbitant profits each year on a global scale from “renewal” seed harvests, which are crops planted using seed from the previous year’s harvest.

The practice of using renewal seeds dates back to ancient times, but Monsanto seeks to collect massive royalties and put an end to the practice. Why? Because Monsanto owns the very patent to the genetically modified seed, and is charging the farmers not only for the original crops, but the later harvests as well. Eventually, the royalties compound and many farmers begin to struggle with even keeping their farm afloat. It is for this reason that India slammed Monsanto with groundbreaking ‘biopiracy’ charges in an effort to stop Monsanto from ‘patenting life’.

Jane Berwanger, a lawyer for the farmers who went on record regarding the case, told the Associted Press:

“Monsanto gets paid when it sell the seeds. The law gives producers the right to multiply the seeds they buy and nowhere in the world is there a requirement to pay (again). Producers are in effect paying a private tax on production.”

READ @ http://www.whydontyoutrythis.com/2013/03/5-million-farmers-sue-monsanto-for-7-billion.html#sthash.NhB2VpH5.RTbxUKZF.dpbs

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* MONSANTO HAS TAKEN OVER THE USDA

By David Swanson, Nation of Change

Clearly, an investigation of large-scale government corruption by this singularly destructive corporation is long overdue.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been taken over by an outside organization. RootsAction has launched a campaign demanding a Congressional investigation.

The organization is called Monsanto.

Monsanto is, of course, the world’s largest biotech corporation. These are the people who brought us Roundup weed killer and the resulting superweeds and superbugs, along with growth hormones for cows, genetically engineered and patented seeds, PCBs, and Agent Orange — which Monsanto now wants us to use as herbicide on genetically engineered corn and soybeans.

This chemical company — responsible for environmental disasters that have destroyed entire towns, and a driving force behind the international waves of suicides among farmers whose lives it has helped ruin — has monopolized our food system largely by taking over regulatory agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

A recent study links Roundup to autism, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s.

While Hungary has just destroyed all Monsanto genetically engineered corn fields, the USDA takes a slightly different approach toward the chemical giant. The USDA has, in fact, never denied a single application from Monsanto for new genetically engineered crops. Not one. Not ever. […]

READ @ http://www.nationofchange.org/monsanto-has-taken-over-usda-1368111215

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* VANDANA SHIVA – ENVIRONMENTAL CAMPAIGNER

Source: BBC

VIDEO @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2OJPFSZ4OE&feature=youtu.be

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* VANDANA SHIVA ON THE PROBLEM WITH GENETICALLY-MODIFIED SEEDS

By Vandana Shiva interviewed by Bill Moyers

Bill talks to scientist and philosopher Vandana Shiva, who’s become a rock star in the global battle over genetically modified seeds. These seeds — considered “intellectual property” by the big companies who own the patents — are globally marketed to monopolize food production and profits. Opponents challenge the safety of genetically modified seeds, claiming they also harm the environment, are more costly, and leave local farmers deep in debt as well as dependent on suppliers. Shiva, who founded a movement in India to promote native seeds, links genetic tinkering to problems in our ecology, economy, and humanity, and sees this as the latest battleground in the war on Planet Earth.

VIDEO @ http://vimeo.com/45691238

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* ALL IN IT TOGETHER: HOW GOVERNMENT IS HANDING THE OWNERSHIP OF OUR SCHOOLS AND HOSPITALS TO BANKS

Source: Scriptonite Daily

There is a scandal unfolding quietly in this country which poses an existential threat to our most critical public services. It is called the Private Finance Initiative. Today, we look at the dangerous circle of self-interest which means our government is making the tax payer pay the bill for private service providers and banks to take over our schools, hospitals and other core public services.

What is PFI?

PFI stands for Private Finance Initiative. The schemes were initially designed by Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont in 1992 and were rapidly expanded under New Labour. They are touted as a form of Public Private Partnership. The government uses private finance, rather than borrowing in the usual way, to raise funds for projects. Since 1992, our hospitals and schools have been built this way. PFI loans are at least twice the rate of interest of ordinary government loans, and repaid over 25-30 years.

The Truth about PFI

A recent report by the Treasury Committee condemned the Private Finance Initiative, as “always…more expensive than government borrowing”. Furthermore, the report continues “we have not seen clear areas of savings and benefits in other areas…quality was lower in PFI buildings (and)…PFI is also inherently inflexible, especially for NHS projects”.

The report did identify major benefits to PFI unrelated to absolute costs or value for money.

The majority of PFI debt does not appear in government debt or deficit figures – the government can therefore use it to bury the true debt burden.
Government departments can use PFI to increase their own budgets without dipping into their allotted funds for capital investment. […]

READ @ http://scriptonitedaily.wordpress.com/2013/05/14/all-in-it-together-how-government-is-handing-ownership-of-our-schools-and-hospitals-to-banks/

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* HOW AUSTERITY KILLS

By David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu, NYTimes

EARLY last month, a triple suicide was reported in the seaside town of Civitanova Marche, Italy. A married couple, Anna Maria Sopranzi, 68, and Romeo Dionisi, 62, had been struggling to live on her monthly pension of around 500 euros (about $650), and had fallen behind on rent.

Because the Italian government’s austerity budget had raised the retirement age, Mr. Dionisi, a former construction worker, became one of Italy’s esodati (exiled ones) — older workers plunged into poverty without a safety net. On April 5, he and his wife left a note on a neighbor’s car asking for forgiveness, then hanged themselves in a storage closet at home. When Ms. Sopranzi’s brother, Giuseppe Sopranzi, 73, heard the news, he drowned himself in the Adriatic.

The correlation between unemployment and suicide has been observed since the 19th century. People looking for work are about twice as likely to end their lives as those who have jobs.

In the United States, the suicide rate, which had slowly risen since 2000, jumped during and after the 2007-9 recession. In a new book, we estimate that 4,750 “excess” suicides — that is, deaths above what pre-existing trends would predict — occurred from 2007 to 2010. Rates of such suicides were significantly greater in the states that experienced the greatest job losses. Deaths from suicide overtook deaths from car crashes in 2009. […]

READ @ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/opinion/how-austerity-kills.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1&

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* AUSTERITY AND THE UNRAVELING OF EUROPEAN UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

By Adam Gaffney, Dissent

From the “Block the Bridge, Block the Bill” rally, October 9, 2011. Photo: Loz Pycock/Flickr

A great human disaster is now unfolding in the many Eurozone countries that have agreed to slash spending, wages, and living standards to meet the demands of fiscal austerity. One facet of this story that has received far too little attention, however, is the effect of these measures on the health of these nations.

Austerity derives from the Greek austeros, for harsh or severe; but, in the area of health care, it has veered into the cruel: health expenditures dwindle, hospital budgets shrink, health care needs rise, and human suffering worsens. Suicide is on the rise; basic hospital supplies are missing; potentially life-saving surgeries are delayed; the rate of new HIV infections increases; drug shortages are ubiquitous; the prevalence of mental illness spikes. And these are just the obvious results.

The effects of austerity on health care are both immediate and long reaching. Deep cuts in public health spending clearly exacerbate the suffering caused by the prolonged economic depression. At the same time, the cuts contribute to a more pernicious, slow-moving, and decidedly political process.

For austerity is being wielded to initiate the unraveling of one of the great and humane achievements, indeed inventions, of modern Europe: the universal health care system. To understand why this is the case, let us take a brief look at how Europe came to have what it has today, before we return to the dangers of the present course. […]

READ @ http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/austerity-and-the-unraveling-of-european-universal-health-care?utm_source=Daily+Digest&utm_campaign=cad965a51b-DD_5_13_135_13_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e4428ba350-cad965a51b-10857025

Monday READ 13 May 2013

READ 1 Response »

May 132013

Posted by greydogg, 99GetSmart

* CORPORATE GIANTS AREN’T WEALTH CREATORS … THEY’RE PARASITES

Source: Scriptonite Daily

The private sector is evading its taxes, failing to pay workers a living wage, and becoming a burden on the tax payer for subsidies and bailouts. At what point to we stop calling them wealth creators and start calling them parasites?

Neoliberal democracies around the globe have been using taxpayer money to underwrite and directly pay off phantom debts made by the banking sector.

According to the National Audit Office, The UK National Debt rose by £1.5trn as a result of the Bank Bailout. This is twice the nation’s total annual budget. For this amount, the UK could have funded the health service (£106.7bn a year) for fourteen years , the entire education system for forty years(£42bn a year) or over three hundred years of Job Seekers Allowance (£4.9bn a year).

According to the Special Investigator General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program’s (SIGTARP) quarterly reports, the US government’s total layout in bailouts was $3.3trn whilst guaranteeing $16.9trn of future protections. The GDP of the US currently stands at just $14.99trn, meaning the tax payer has guaranteed toxic bank debts to the value of 113% of their total annual earning capacity. This is equivalent to ten years of total federal spending ($6.3trn a year), sixteen years of pension payments ($1.1trn a year), twenty one years of total education spending ($0.8trn a year) or a whole twenty eight years of the entire welfare system ($0.6trn a year).

Most recently, the people of Cyprus have had the Eurogroup and the IMF place conditions on their bailout of the Cypriot Banking sector requiring Cypriot depositors (people holding their money in the banks) rather than bondholders (people investing in the banks). This is the first time that the bailout of the banks by the public has been made in such an explicit way. The total sum required from Cyprus’ population of just 1.1 million people, is 5.8bn Euros.

One might argue the changes made to the Cyprus bailout have made it more egalitarian than those in the US and UK, given that all deposits under 100,000 Euros will be left untouched, whilst those over 100k could see up to 40% of their wealth confiscated in return for shares in the banks (worthless). The approach in the US, UK and wider Europe has been to fund the bailouts through catastrophic ‘austerity’ measures that have seen the eurozone economies stall, public services cut drastically, and mass unemployment.

However, the precedent of the EU and IMF creating the legal framework and the technical capacity to flick a switch and transfer money directly from the bank accounts of citizens to central banks cannot be overlooked.

Not a single banker has been tried or jailed for their undisputed responsibility for the financial crisis. Not one piece of additional regulation has been agreed for the derivatives market which the crisis emanated from, and the market continues unabated. Today, there is $700trn in derivatives debt just waiting to kick off the next financial crisis.

The poor and middle classes of Europe and the US are being asked to make life limiting cuts to their standards of living, wages and public services; meanwhile, there is no such thing as austerity for the 1%. […]

READ @ http://scriptonitedaily.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/corporate-giants-arent-wealth-creators-theyre-parasites/

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NIGEL FARAGE: EUROPE HIJACKED BY THE EU PROJECT

Source: youtube

VIDEO @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB__xRA0hJs&feature=share

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* GRITO MUDO / SILENT SCREAM / SPAIN

Source: catanesse

VIDEO @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3ks9DT4tfA&feature=youtu.be

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* LOS ESPAÑOLES ASEDIAN EL CONGRESO

Source: RT

Este jueves por la tarde miles de españoles se reúnen en el centro de Madrid para “asediar” el Congreso de los Diputados en protesta contra las políticas sociales y económicas que han llevado a la sociedad española a la pobreza.

MAS INFORMACIÓN: http://actualidad.rt.com/video/actual…

VIDEO @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2WOvu0qij4

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* ASI TE HEMOS CONTADO LA PROTESTA DEL 12-M

Source: El Pais

El movimiento 15-M está de aniversario. Dos años después de que miles de personas salieran a las plazas españolas para mostrar su “indignación” con el sistema político y económico, cientos de ciudadanos han vuelto esta tarde a la calle para reivindicar y actualizar las razones que gritaron aquel 15 de mayo de 2011. Con una estructura más atomizada y diseminada que entonces, pero con nuevas formas de protesta y visibilidad, los indignados han tomado de nuevo las principales ágoras. Ha habido manifestaciones en más de una veintena de ciudades. En Madrid, varias marchas han recorrido la capital hasta confluir en la Puerta del Sol, el símbolo público del movimiento. A las ocho estaba convocado un grito mudo colectivo, para el que se han congregado miles de personas, aunque la plaza emblema de la indignación no estaba tan llena como en otras ocasiones. Aquí te contamos en directo cómo trascurren las principales concentraciones a esta hora: […]

READ / VIDEOS / PHOTOS @ http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/05/12/videos/1368366060_778788.html?autoplay=1

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* MAHER, JOY REID CLASH WITH GLENN GREENWALD OVER BENGHAZI

Source: youtube

VIDEO @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rvxpFrHUzso#!

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* AFGHANS SAY AN AMERICAN TORTURED CIVILIANS

By Rod Nordland, NYTimes

US special forces in Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai’s government has ordered the elite force to leave Maidan Wardak province over claims of killing or torture of disappeared civilians. Photograph: David Bathgate/ David Bathgate/Corbis

MAIDAN SHAHR, Afghanistan — The authorities in Afghanistan are seeking the arrest on murder and torture charges of a man they say is an American and part of a Special Forces unit operating in Wardak Province, three Afghan officials have confirmed.

The accusations against the man, Zakaria Kandahari, and the assertion that he and much of his unit are American are a new turn in a dispute over counterinsurgency tactics in Wardak that has strained relations between Kabul and Washington. American officials say their forces are being wrongly blamed for atrocities carried out by a rogue Afghan unit. But the Afghan officials say they have substantial evidence of American involvement.

They say they have testimony and documents implicating Mr. Kandahari and his unit in the killings or disappearances of 15 Afghans in Wardak. Mr. Kandahari is of Afghan descent but was born and raised in the United States, they say. Included in the evidence, the Afghan officials say, is a videotape of Mr. Kandahari torturing one of the 15 Afghans, a man they identified as Sayid Mohammad.

Mr. Mohammad was picked up by the unit in Wardak six months ago and has not been seen since, the officials said. The partial remains of Mohammad Qassim, another of the 15 Afghans, were found in a trash pit just outside the fence around the unit’s base in the Nerkh district, according to Mr. Qassim’s family and Afghan officials.

Afghan officials who have seen the videotape say a person speaking English with an American accent can be heard supervising the torture session, which Mr. Kandahari is seen conducting. […]

READ @ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/world/asia/afghans-say-an-american-tortured-civilians.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp&pagewanted=all

THE GUARDIAN VERSION @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/24/afghanistan-us-special-forces-civilian-death

Friday READ – 10 May 2013

READ No Responses »

May 102013

Posted by greydogg, 99GetSmart

* LOCAL FIGHTS AGAINST AUSTERITY ARE GROWING ACROSS THE U.S.

By Mark Vorpahl, Occupy.com

Between sequestration, with its damaging impact on workers and the economy, and the billions of dollars in cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other necessary social programs that President Obama is pushing, it is evident that the economic policies of both major parties are not intended to promote a recovery for working people.

You cannot lift up a nation’s economy while slashing away at its consumers’ pocketbooks. In order to justify their defiance of this elementary law, both Republicans and Democrats start talking the language of “austerity,” that is, the notion that economic policy must be guided by reducing budgetary deficits first and foremost, and that workers exclusively must be made to pay the cost.

Policies associated with austerity include the cutting of public programs, privatizing existing government assets, mass layoffs of public workers and wage freezes for those who remain, union busting in the public sector and the revising of labor laws to further enhance the power of employers at the expense of employees.

Enforcing these policies during a recession prevents a recovery. Economic theory predicts this and history demonstrates it. Why, then, would the politicians promote austerity? Because these policies assure that the 1% will be let off the hook from paying their fair share of taxes that help subsidize the social safety net, and will have vast pools of public capital opened up for their private investment.

Why worry about the overall economy when the real power brokers from the corporations and banks are making out just fine with austerity? The message seems clear: As long as Wall Street is enjoying the “recovery,” no one else gets to. Wall Street has used its vast wealth to lobby politicians for policies that are in its interests. In order for working people to climb out of the recession, they will have to organize in order to create their own power base. […]

READ / PHOTOS @ http://www.occupy.com/article/local-fights-against-austerity-are-growing-across-us

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* NEW YORK’S ZONING BAN MOVEMENT FRACKS BIG GAS

By Ellen Cantarow, Truthout

$(Photo: CREDO.fracking / Flickr)$

(Photo: CREDO.fracking / Flickr)

On Thursday, May 2, New York State’s Appellate Court upheld the right of two townships – the Tompkins County town of Dryden and the Otsego County town of Middlefield – to use their zoning laws to ban gas drilling. This includes high-volume hydraulic fracturing, during which millions of gallons of sand-and-chemical-laced water are propelled into deep shale rock to force out the methane it contains. Last week’s decision defeated corporate challenges to the state’s constitutional home rule provision, under which local ordinances trump state laws.

If you haven’t been following New York State’s astonishing grassroots battle against fracking, the foregoing may seem humdrum. But in fact it represents a victory wrenched by unknown grassroots activists from giants of the fossil-fuel industry. While the corporations defeated in last week’s judgment are only two in number, the entire industry has had its eyes on New York State, which has become the epicenter of an international struggle against unconventional gas. (By “unconventional gas” I mean not only the drilling method, but the vast infrastructure that is metastasizing from hundreds of thousands of fracking wells into America’s rural countrysides.)

For decades, the mightiest industries in corporate history have lusted for the methane in the Marcellus Shale, the huge rocky sprawl that ripples far beneath New York and three contiguous East Coast states. Unlike Pennsylvania, where drilling began as early as 2005, New York passed a moratorium on fracking in 2009 (it holds to date). Under that umbrella, tiny groups of organizers in Otsego County, about 80 miles southeast of Syracuse on Otsego Lake, and Dryden, 100 miles west of Otsego near Ithaca, began eyeing zoning as a way of banning gas drilling. Even if the moratorium were lifted, bans on drilling within townships could halt the industry at the grass roots.

New York has a history of legendary movements, from abolition and women’s suffrage in the 19th century to Occupy in the twenty-first. Its environmental campaigns have included the watershed Storm King Mountain case, in which activists defeated Con Edison’s plan to carve a giant facility into the face of that Hudson River landmark. The decision established the right of anyone to litigate on behalf of the environment.

Today, that activist legacy is evident in the state’s grassroots anti-fracking insurgency, spearheaded by the zoning drives. New York’s fractivists defy all distinctions of political affiliation and social background. Everyone, after all, needs clean air and water – Republicans, Democrats, Tea Partiers; farmers and doctors, lawyers, nurses, physicists, accountants and teachers. “I have never seen [an environmental movement] spread with such wildfire as this,” says Robert Boyle, a legendary environmental activist and journalist who was central in the Storm King case and founded Riverkeeper, the prototype for all later river-guardian organizations. “It took me 13 or 14 years to get the first Riverkeeper going. Fracking isn’t like that. It’s like lighting a train of powder.” […]

READ @ http://truth-out.org/news/item/16252-new-yorks-zoning-ban-movement-fracks-big-gas

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* WHY AMERICA FELL SO FAR … SO FAST

Source: Washington’s Blog

All Empires Crash Soon After They Reach Their Peak

Thomas Jefferson said, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” And because I love my country, I frequently criticize America’s shortcomings in the hopes of making her better.

But the truth is that the United States is not unusual … it is just like all other empires which have hit their peak and then quickly crashed.

We noted in 2008:

Political insider and veteran reporter Kevin Phillips has documented that every major empire over the past several hundred years has undergone a predictable cycle of collapse, usually within 10 to 20 years of its peak power.

The indications are always the same:

- The financialization of the economy, moving from manufacturing to speculation;

- Very high levels of debt;

- Extreme economic inequality;

– And costly military overreaching.

We wrote in 2009:

In 2000, America was described as the sole remaining superpower – or even the world’s “hyperpower”. Now we’re in real trouble (at the very least, you have to admit that we’re losing power and wealth in comparison with China).

How did it happen so fast?

***

How Empires Fall

Paul Farrel provides a bigger-picture analysis, quoting Jared Diamond and Marc Faber.

Diamond’s book’s, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, studies the collapse of civilizations throughout history, and finds:

Civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society’s demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power…

One of the choices has depended on the courage to practice long-term thinking, and to make bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions at a time when problems have become perceptible but before they reach crisis proportions

And PhD economist Faber states:

How [am I] so sure about this final collapse?

Of all the questions I have about the future, this is the easiest one to answer. Once a society becomes successful it becomes arrogant, righteous, overconfident, corrupt, and decadent … overspends … costly wars … wealth inequity and social tensions increase; and society enters a secular decline.

[Quoting 18th century Scottish historian Alexander Fraser Tytler:] The average life span of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years progressing from “bondage to spiritual faith … to great courage … to liberty … to abundance … to selfishness … to complacency … to apathy … to dependence and … back into bondage”

[Where is America in the cycle?] It is most unlikely that Western societies, and especially the U.S., will be an exception to this typical “society cycle.” … The U.S. is somewhere between the phase where it moves “from complacency to apathy” and “from apathy to dependence.”

In other words, America’s rapid fall is not really that novel after all. […]

READ @ http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/05/why-america-fell-so-far-so-fast.html

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* IT’S TIME TO SHINE A LIGHT ON THE POVERTY CREATION INDUSTRY

By Alnoor Ladha, Joe Brewer and Martin Kirk, Occupy.com

PHOTOS BY SHAHIRAH ELAIZA

It’s about time we called out the great myth that is mass poverty, as if it were a natural part of some universal moral order. Such thinking is both profoundly untrue and disastrously misleading.

Poverty is human-made. It is created – knowingly and with scientific efficiency – by a vastly sophisticated industry that includes private companies, think tanks, media outlets, government policies, and more. This “Poverty Creation Industry” is about the least talked about feature of our global economy and yet it is perhaps the greatest market force in the modern world. Until we acknowledge this startling truth, progress towards global prosperity and sustainability will fall far short of what is possible.

This isn’t to suggest that there’s a dark, smoky room somewhere in which a small cabal plots to cause immeasurable misery just because they can. This isn’t a conspiracy theory. In truth, it happens in big boardrooms and political conferences, where people create rules and execute strategies to “maximize self-interest” as economists say, by extracting wealth from others. This is largely driven by a maniacal focus on short-term profit or advantage while ignoring one of its primary effects – the impoverishment of hundreds of millions of people. Willful ignorance, though, as any legal scholar will tell you, is no defense in law. It’s about time we applied the same standard to our economic rules and realities. […]

READ @ http://www.occupy.com/article/its-time-shine-light-poverty-creation-industry

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* VISUALIZING THE WORLD’S TAX HAVENS

By Tyler Durden, zerohedge

More and more companies are stashing their cash offshore, and they’re doing it at alarming rates. Why? Put simply, it’s about eluding the tax man.

Image compliments of Online Accounting Degrees

READ / CHARTS @ http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-09/visualizing-worlds-tax-havens

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* GREEK UNEMPLOYMENT HITS NEW RECORD HIGH, YOUTH JOBLESS RISED BY 5% IN ONE MONTH TO 64.2%

By Tyler Durden, zerohedge

The Greek economic depressionary catastrophe continues to merrily chug along. Hours ago, Greek Elstat reported that February unemployment rose to a new record high of 27.0%, with the January number revised from 27.2% to 26.7%, up from 21.9% in February 2012, and almost as if unlike the Greek BLS is not even trying to fudge numbers anymore and wants to show a deteriorating situation (or, as it was called in the Old Normal – “reality”).

That said, if the numbers were indeed gamed, the Greek statistical bureau had person-level detail: “The number of employed amounted to 3,568,186 persons. ?he number of unemployed amounted to 1,320,189 while the number of inactive to 3,358,649…. The number of employed decreased by 270,766 persons compared with February 2012 (a 7.1% rate of decrease) and by 28,650 persons compared with January 2013 (a 0.8% rate of decrease). Unemployed increased by 245,021 persons (a 22.8% rate of increase) compared with February 2012 and by 11,663 persons compared with January 2013 (a 0.9% rate of increase).”

Looking at the Shadow economy, the number of people who are inactive, or “neither worked neither looked for a job”, hit 3,358,649. This number is just shy of the total people employed, meaning in 2-3 months, the Greek shadow economy will be greater than the official, taxed-one. A gender breakdown shows that females have never had it worse with 31% unemployment, compared to 24.1% for men.

But the most stunning number was the number of unemployed Greek youths (15-24), which hit a record 64.2%, the highest number on record, and a mindblowing 5% increase from the 59.3% youth unemployment reported in January, and a 10% increase from a year ago (and compared to 16.9% in neighboring Turkey). […]

READ /CHARTS @ http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-09/greek-unemployment-hits-new-record-high-youth-jobless-rises-5-one-month-642

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* PEOPLE UNITED AGAINST THE TROIKA

Source: People United Against the Troika

On the 1st of June we come together, people in solidarity and in struggle against austerity and the troika, and demand a political and economical change for the future. People United Against The Troika!

Each one of us, in each country, in each city, in each household, feels the measures and policies which anihilates democracy and the rights conquered over decades. These measures have triggered massive unemployment throughout Europe, privatize anything that can be profitable and render any kind of sovereignty, either popular, social or economical, a joke. All this has been made under the constant propaganda of “foreign aid”. It is urgent that we join forces for the strong fight we have ahead.

To all citizens, with or without party, with or without a job, with or without hope, we call: join up! Rise up! To all political organizations, social movements, unions, parties, colectives, informal groups, we call: join up! Rise up!

Let us give them a 1st of June which will never be forgot!

VIDEO @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EzQxBbGqN7I#!

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* CHILE VIOLENCE: TEARGAS, WATER CANNONS USED AGAINST STUDENTS

Source: RT

Clashes broke out in the Chilean capital Santiago on Wednesday at a student demonstration to demand free education. Water cannons were used against the protesters when they bombarded police with a hail of stones. According to police, around 37-thousand people took part in the event, but organizers put the total much higher at 80-thousand – READ MORE: http://on.rt.com/hh7k58

Footage by RT’s RUPTLY video agency

VIDEO @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy1Kdcx5gBc&feature=youtu.be

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* FREE THE NATO 3!

Source: NATO5Support

VIDEO @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nKoAWv4k4ls#!

Wednesday READ – 8 May 2013

READ No Responses »

May 082013

Posted by greydogg, 99GetSmart

* EVERYTHING YOU’VE BEEN TOLD ABOUT RADICALIZATION IS WRONG

By John Knefel, Rolling Stone

Despite the rhetoric, scary YouTube videos don’t turn people into terrorists

Accused Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – FBI via Getty Images

If media accounts are to be believed, the accused Boston marathon bombers were “radicalized” by watching American-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki’s YouTube sermons and reading Inspire, the al Qaeda magazine. To whatever extent it is true of the Tsarnaev brothers, this narrative follows a familiar path: one in which seemingly ordinary people are exposed to radical ideas, then adopt those ideas as their own, and then become violent. That theory was set out in a 2007 NYPD report called Radicalization in the West, which focuses exclusively on Muslims, and describes a four-stage progression – a “funnel,” the report says – in which each step towards violence is intrinsically linked with increased religiosity. Though the intelligence community at the federal level has distanced itself from the NYPD’s theory, it continues to dominate thinking in law enforcement. There’s only one problem, according to critics: It’s reductive and simplistic at best, and at worst is a thin justification for racial profiling of Muslims.

“Nobody watches YouTube or reads Inspire and becomes a terrorist. It’s absurd to think so,” says John Horgan, director of the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at Pennsylvania State University. “YouTube videos and reading Al Qaeda magazines tends to be far more relevant for sustaining commitment than inspiring it.”

The mistaken belief that the earliest stages of terrorism can be seen at “radicalization incubators” – Muslim bookstores, hookah bars, mosques, virtually anywhere Muslims congregate in person or online – has resulted in a focus on so-called “preventive policing,” a policy whose stated aim is to prevent a terrorist attack before one happens. Since the theory says adopting radical ideas is the first step toward someone becoming violent, officials say they’re justified in surveilling places where “radical” ideas might take hold.

According to Horgan, though, that’s just not how it works. “The idea that radicalization causes terrorism is perhaps the greatest myth alive today in terrorism research,” he says. “[First], the overwhelming majority of people who hold radical beliefs do not engage in violence. And second, there is increasing evidence that people who engage in terrorism don’t necessarily hold radical beliefs.” […]

READ @ http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-youve-been-told-about-radicalization-is-wrong-20130506#ixzz2Sd9WYrCU:

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* WHY IS OBAMA WITHHOLDING SECRET TORTURE REPORT FROM AMERICANS?

By Marcy Wheeler, Salon

(Credit: AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

A massive report on torture reveals it’s far less effective than reported. But the CIA refuses to declassify it

Much of what you’ve been told (or seen in movies) about George W. Bush’s supposedly effective torture program is false and overhyped. At least, that’s one of the conclusions of the 6,000-page review of the program the Senate Intelligence Committee completed last year.

Yet, right now, President Obama is preventing you from learning any of this, by keeping the report classified.

Before the end of the Bush administration, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. — then the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee — started investigating the torture program. When Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., took over as chairwoman of the committee in 2009, she intensified the investigation and negotiated with the CIA to get access to its files. After almost four more years of work and reviewing 6 million pages of documents, the committee voted out the report in December on a mostly party line vote.

As you may recall from the debate around the film “Zero Dark Thirty,” Sens. Feinstein, Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John McCain, R-Ariz., have said the report shows that torture didn’t produce the intelligence that led us to finding Osama bin Laden. According to reports, it shows that torture didn’t produce much useful information. While discussing the report, Jay Rockefeller described the torture program this way:

[T]he people who ran it were ignorant of the topic, [it was] executed by personnel without relevant experience, managed incompetently by senior officials who did not pay attention to crucial details, and corrupted by personnel and pecuniary conflicts of interest. It was sold to the policymakers and lawyers of the White House, the Department of Justice, and Congress, with grossly-inflated claims of professionalism and effectiveness, so-called lives saved.

In short, the report rebuts claims that torture worked — and specifically the claim made by torture boosters from Dick Cheney to former Counterterrorism Center head Jose Rodriguez that it helped to find Osama bin Laden. […]

READ @ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/06/why_is_obama_withholding_secret_torture_report_from_americans/?source=newsletter

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* LOCKDOWN, USA: LESSONS FROM THE BOSTON MARATHON MANHUNT

By Henry A Giroux, Truthout

Police officers search for a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings in Watertown, Massachusetts, April 19, 2013. (Photo: Eric Thayer / The New York Times)

A tragedy of errors: nobody knows any more who is who. The smoke of the explosions forms part of the much larger curtain of smoke that prevents all of us from seeing clearly. From revenge to revenge, terrorism obliges us to walk to our graves. I saw a photo, recently published, of graffiti on a wall in NYC: ‘An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind’.

Eduardo Galeano[1]

The American public rightfully expressed a collective sigh of relief and a demonstration of prodigious gratitude towards law enforcement authorities when the unprecedented manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers came to an end. The trauma and anxiety felt by the people of Boston and to some degree by the larger society over the gratuitously bloody and morally degenerate attacks on civilians was no doubt heightened given the legacy of 9/11. Since the tragic events of that historical moment, the nation has been subjected to “a media spectacle of fear and unreason delivered via TV, news sites and other social media;”[2] it has also been engulfed in a nationwide hysteria about Muslims. Moreover, the American public has been schizophrenically immersed within a culture of fear and cruelty punctuated by a law-and-order driven promise for personal safety, certainty, and collective protection that amounted to a Faustian bargain with the devil, one in which Americans traded constitutional rights and numerous civil liberties for the ever expanding presence of a militarized security and surveillance state run by a government that has little regard for human rights or the principles of justice and democracy.[3]

The collective expressions of relief, compassion, and adulation were reasonable and appropriate once the threat from the Boston Marathon bombers had ended. But such feelings are short-lived in a country that infamously is losing its capacity to question itself, embracing instead a mode of historical amnesia “in which forgetting has become more important than learning.” [4] What is needed in the aftermath of this tragedy is a critical and thoughtful analysis about what the significance of locking down an entire city meant not simply for the present or the future of urban living, but for democracy itself. Locking down Boston was generally left unquestioned by the mainstream media, though a number of progressive and left intellectuals raised serious questions about the use and implications of the tactic, particularly the abridging civil liberties, squelching dissent, and legitimating the spectacle of the war machine. For example, Michael Schwalbe argues that he was troubled by what lockdown foreshadows with its connotation of authoritarian control, its expanding use, and its ongoing normalization in American society. He writes:

When I hear that authorities have locked down a school, a workplace, a transit system, a cell phone network, or a city, the subtext seems unmistakable: We are now in control. Listen carefully and do as you are told. What I hear is the warden saying that communication will flow in one direction only, and that silence and obedience are the only options.[5]

Other critics suggested the lockdown represented a massive overreaction that was symptomatic of a larger social crisis. Steven Rosenfeld argued that “beyond lingering questions of whether the government went too far by shutting down an entire city and whether that might encourage future terrorism, a deeper and darker question remains: why is America’s obsession with evil so selective?”[6] This was an important point and was largely ignored by most commentators on the tragedy. Implicit in Rosenfeld’s question is why the notion of security and safety are limited to personal security and the fear of attacks by terrorists rather than the rise of a gun culture, the shredding of the safety net for millions of Americans, the imprisonment of one out of every 100 Americans, or the transformation of public schools into adjuncts of the punishing and surveillance state. […]

READ @ http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16175-lockdown-usa-lessons-from-the-boston-marathon-manhunt

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* CRISIS-HIT GREECE SEES RISE IN SOCIAL INEQUALITY

By Helene Colliopoulou, AFP

A homeless man sits in his makeshift shelter at Greece’s main harbour, Piraeus, near Athens, on February 6, 2013. After six consecutive years of brutal recession, with homeless and unemployment rates skyrocketing, Greek society is experiencing an “unheard-of fragmentation”, made worse by fierce austerity measures, experts say.

ATHENS — After six consecutive years of brutal recession, with homeless and unemployment rates skyrocketing, Greek society is experiencing an “unheard-of fragmentation”, made worse by fierce austerity measures, experts say.

Battered by the eurozone’s three-year debt crisis and four years of austerity, Greece has the highest unemployment rate in the 27-nation European Union, with more than one in four people out of work.

And this economic crisis has now transformed into a social emergency, according to UN expert on debt and human rights, Cephas Lumina.

During a recent visit to the country, Lumina said there had been “an estimated 25 percent increase in the country’s homeless population since 2009″ and the poverty rate for under-17s was close to 44 percent.

“Adjusted for inflation and using 2009 as the fixed poverty threshold, more than one out of three Greeks (38 percent) had already fallen below the poverty line in 2012,” he estimated.

Drastic spending cuts imposed by the country’s international creditors in exchange for multi-billion-euro bailouts has made a difficult situation even worse, many believe. […]

READ @ http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h8X6uOls_47V8e6DrrfpE8KB6a_g?docId=CNG.4e45caa0c7bcb7ccfb34b383613a9397.261

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* ATHENS: UDATE ABOUT THE CASE OF ARRESTEES IN NEA FILADELFEIA

Source: contrainfo

Fight the terrorism of Power

Information about the arrest of five anarchists on Tuesday noon, April 30th, the criminal proceedings against them, and the hunger/thirst strike of comrade Dimitris Hadjivasiliadis.

On Tuesday, April 30th, at around 4pm, anarchists Yannis Naxakis and Grigoris Sarafoudis were arrested on Dekeleias avenue in the district of Nea Filadelfeia, as they were coming out of a cafeteria.

At the same time, a large police force stormed the café and caught the anarchist fugitives Argyris Ntalios —who tried to break out of the kettle— and Fivos Harisis-Poulos. Both comrades had arrest warrants pending against them since mid-February 2013 (after the double robbery in Velventos–Kozani and the incarceration of anarchists Andreas-Dimitris Bourzoukos, Dimitris Politis, Nikos Romanos and Yannis Michailidis).

Anarchist Dimitris Hadjivasiliadis was also arrested inside the same cafeteria in Nea Filadelfeia.

All five were transferred to the anti-terrorism service on the 12th floor of the Athens police headquarters. The two comrades that were caught out on the street, as well as the two that were wanted by the authorities encountered the violence of statist dogs in the anti-terrorist office. The fifth comrade was forced to stand for twelve hours handcuffed tightly behind his back —what officially is considered torture— and when he was taken into a cell (the white cells of the 12th floor), he remained handcuffed for several hours.

The same evening, the Greek security force put out a report that accused all of them of resisting arrest and giving false testimony —because the five anarchists refused to give fingerprints, profiles or DNA samples, which were ultimately taken by force. In addition, Naxakis, Sarafoudis and Hadjivasiliadis were charged with harbouring fugitives.

On Wednesday noon, May 1st, the arrestees were all transferred to Evelpidon courts, where the media crows were lurking, and were met with the comrades’ hostility. The comrades stood before prosecutor and interrogator without any formal indictment and (for some) without being allowed to meet with a defense lawyer in advance that would also be present in the hearing, what perhaps occurred for the first time in the history of similar cases. The judges applied their usual tactic to postpone the preliminary hearing for two days regardless of the arrestees’ wishes. Ntalios, Harisis, Naxakis and Sarafoudis refused to make any statement. On the other hand, Hadjivasiliadis demanded that he be heard immediately with the presence of a defense lawyer. His demand was dismissed, so the comrade stated that he has denied food and water already from the moment of his arrest, and he goes on hunger/thirst strike for as long as he be locked up in the white cells of the antiterrorism torturers. Lastly, he held the judges responsible for his prolonged custody on the 12th floor of the Athens police headquarters, where the cops were attempting only to ‘manufacture’ an accusatory brief against the three anarchists for whom no warrants were outstanding in order to ask for their pretrial incarceration.

On Wednesday evening, preventive detention warrants were executed against the two ex-fugitives, and Fivos Harisis and Argyris Ntalios were transferred to Koridallos prison.

On Thursday, May 2nd, Ntalios, Harisis, Naxakis and Sarafoudis were charged in past robbery cases on the basis of ‘findings’ from DNA samples that were forcibly taken by them. Additionally, an appellate judge who handles such cases issued preventive detention warrants against Yannis Naxakis and Grigoris Sarafoudis. An indictment was presented to all five arrested in Nea Filadelfeia, including the accusation of ‘membership into a criminal organization with a view to committing robbery,’ in accordance with the Greek antiterrorist law, without exhibiting any direct evidence of premeditation or even intent, other than some orange juices served on the cafeteria table…

Meanwhile, on Thursday, the cops staged a psychological war on Hadjivasiliadis to make him stop the strike. They brought water bottles inside the cell, repeatedly ‘offered’ him food and water, and threatened him that he would stay there for many more days. Hadjivasiliadis and his lawyer insisted on his right to medical examination. A doctor came in at night, and assured that there was no immediate danger to him at this stage but his condition could deteriorate any moment. The doctor also told the human-guards to let the transom window of the cell’s door open, to help the striker breath more efficiently.

On Friday morning, May 3rd, the five anarchists were brought to Evelpidon courts once again, where only a few comrades and relatives were gathered in solidarity. Four of the accused insisted upon their refusal to make any statement. Then Ntalios and Harisis read a text in solidarity to striker Hadjivasiliadis, declaring that he is being held without any substantial evidence whatsoever against him. The judges had no basis to press criminal organization charges against the arrestees and set bail conditions instead for all five of them.

Nevertheless, Dimitris Hadjivasiliadis was the only one to be released, and thus stopped his three-day hunger and thirst strike.

Argyris Ntalios and Fivos Harisis were taken back to Koridallos. The Solidarity Fund for imprisoned and persecuted fighters (Greece) released their prison address:

Fivos Harisis-Poulos – Argyris Ntalios
Dikastiki Filaki Koridallou, A Pteryga, 18110 Koridallos, Athens, Greece

In the meantime, Yannis Naxakis and Grigoris Sarafoudis were still held as suspects in bank robbery case, awaiting further proceeding in the city of Larissa. According to mainstream media, these two anarchists were brought before an interrogator on Saturday, May 4th. They are said to be remanded and moved to Koridallos prison.

More updates as they come @ http://en.contrainfo.espiv.net/

SOLIDARITY WITH ALL PRISONERS IN STRUGGLE

READ @ http://en.contrainfo.espiv.net/2013/05/04/athens-update-about-the-nea-filadelfeia-arrestees/

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* A HARD LOOK AT EUROPE

By Mark J. Grant, zerohedge

[...] Having just returned from the Continent I have been musing about the reality of what the European Union has become. I have crossed out the hype and the hyperbole and I concentrate this morning on not what we are all told but how the construct has evolved. In the forthcoming months as the likelihood of Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cypress, Slovenia and possibly Italy returning to the window for funds or more funds grows at a significant rate and as the Rules of Engagement have changed substantially; a realistic assessment now may prove to be quite worthwhile to consider future actions.

“The question is not what you look at but what you see.” – Henry David Thoreau

In the beginning there were a handful of core nations equal in partnership and full of the excitement of a new venture. Much of the esprit was a desire to band together and compete against the United States for economic dominance and world power. Americans were the upstarts, afterall, and it had long aggravated the Europeans that we had so much control. “Those cowboys,” sums up the European position nicely.

Now the Europeans didn’t say this aloud of course. They rattled off world peace and band of brothers soliloquys that held their populace at rapt attention. It was rather like Camelot where all of the knights sat at the Round Table in pursuit of their noble quest. Well, to quote an American colloquialism, “Them days is gone forever.”

So now we find the EU headquarters no longer staffed by equals but a useful front for Berlin which resides in another country. In the EU now there is Germany and then there is everyone else and whatever motives you may ascribe to the Germans and whatever political position you may wish to embrace; Germany has gained control of most of Europe. Much more pleasant to use Euros than tanks; on that most of us can agree.

This point is critically important to understand. Yes, sure, the Germans will smile and nod and give way on agricultural supplements and on fishing rights and trivial matters but when it gets down to it and the decision is important; Berlin will have its way. Consequently when considering what might happen or allocating your assets; politically and economically the sole thing to consider is the German viewpoint because it will be put in place. When contemplating the discussion on the European banking union or what took place in Greece with the retroactive change in laws that swacked the bond holders, or the confiscation of depositors’ money in Cyprus; this was all approved, if not formulated, in Berlin. It is called the European Union but the Emperor is German and the rest of the Court dances to the Prussian anthem.

The honey is free trade and money when needed and the vinegar is the lack of both. The EU stays intact by the utilization of this carrot and of this stick and it has proven to be a very effective strategy. The problem centers on the Germans wanting and expecting everyone to be German and the inability and the lack of desire for a great many of the people on the Continent to either be German in traditions and standards because of thousands of years of cultural differences that cannot be magically transformed by the occasional bratwurst for lunch. In the end, the Germans will demand too much and there will be some sort of revolt but for now; Puff the Magic Dragon holds sway.

The fact that the equity markets have done fabulously and that the interest rates for European sovereign debt have done remarkably well all rest on one thing and one thing only; the creation of money and a massive amount of it. There is no inflation because the underlying economies are in horrendous shape, unemployment in a number of countries at Depression levels and yet the band still plays on. The printing of money is the alchemist’s dream and we have finally learned how to coin gold from iron ore. […]

READ @ http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-07/hard-look-europe

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* EUROPEAN COMMISSION TO CRIMINALIZE NEARLY ALL SEEDS AND PLANTS NOT REGISTERED WITH THE GOVERNMENT

By Mike Adams, Natural News

A new law proposed by the European Commission would make it illegal to “grow, reproduce or trade” any vegetable seeds that have not been “tested, approved and accepted” by a new EU bureaucracy named the “EU Plant Variety Agency.”

It’s called the Plant Reproductive Material Law, and it attempts to put the government in charge of virtually all plants and seeds. Home gardeners who grow their own plants from non-regulated seeds would be considered criminals under this law.

The draft text of the law, which has already been amended several times due to a huge backlash from gardeners, is viewable here.

“This law will immediately stop the professional development of vegetable varieties for home gardeners, organic growers, and small-scale market farmers,” said Ben Gabel, vegetable breeder and director of The Real Seed Catalogue. “Home gardeners have really different needs – for example they grow by hand, not machine, and can’t or don’t want to use such powerful chemical sprays. There’s no way to register the varieties suitable for home use as they don’t meet the strict criteria of the Plant Variety Agency, which is only concerned about approving the sort of seed used by industrial farmers.” […]

READ @ http://www.naturalnews.com/040214_seeds_European_Commission_registration.html

Monday READ – 6 May 2013

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May 062013

Posted by greydogg, 99GetSmart

* THERE’S A REVOLUTION AND IT’S NOT BEING TELEVISED

By David Swanson, NewClearVision

Hundreds gathered in Dallas to reject the Bush Lie Bury, and three went to jail. I flew from Dallas to Syracuse, where hundreds protested Obama’s drone-murder program, and 32 went to jail and are still there (and will stay until trial unless bail can be raised)

some of them risk major jail time because they violated a protective order that the commander of a U.S. military base gained to protect himself from nonviolent peace activists. Another drone protester in Missouri, Brian Terrell, is just finishing a six-month sentence. Climate activist Tim DeChristopher just got out. The people locked in Guantanamo are refusing to eat, and groups around the world are making plans to fast with them. The people of Vieques, Puerto Rico, rallied on May 1st to demand that the U.S. military truly depart their island. Big plans are being made to rally for Bradley Manning on June 1st. This week I’m heading to the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee’s meeting in North Carolina, after which — just over in Tennessee — three courageous activists go on trial, facing major time in prison, for having entered and protested a nuclear weapons facility.

The revolution will not be televised.

Oak Ridge, Tenn., was created during World War II as a secret city (actually two, it was segregated by race) for producing nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons have a history that marches hand-in-hand with U.S. human experimentation programs. I just had a chance to read Susan Griffin’s A Chorus of Stones, and she recounts a nuclear test in 1957, when the U.S. government was still marching Marines to various distances from nuclear explosions in Nevada to find out what would become of them. Marines with their eyes closed saw the bones in their hands. They died of leukemia years later, but not before speaking about what else they saw: 10 or 12 people in a stockade formed by chain link fence and barbed wire, their faces and hands deformed, their hair falling out, their skin peeling off. Or this: men on the ground in agony, the smell of burning flesh, blood running from mouth, ears, and nose, a man trying to tear away wires that had been attached to his head. […]

READ @ http://www.newclearvision.com/2013/05/02/the-fruit-of-justice/

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* WHAT TO DO ABOUT DEBT AND THE EURO

By Michel Husson, Daniel Albarracín, Nacho Álvarez Peralta, Bibiana Medialdea, Francisco Louça, Mariana Mortagua, Stavros Tombazos, Giorgos Galanis, Ozlem Onaran, Manolo Garí,, Antonio Sanabria, Jorge Fonseca, Teresa Pérez del Río, Lidia Rekagorri Villar, CADTM

A manifesto

Daniel Albarracín, Nacho Álvarez, Bibiana Medialdea, Manolo Garí, Antonio Sanabria, Jorge Fonseca, Teresa Pérez del Río, Lidia Rekagorri Villar (Spain)
Francisco Louçã, Mariana Mortagua (Portugal)
Stavros Tombazos (Cyprus)
Giorgos Galanis, Özlem Onaran (Great Britain)
Michel Husson (France)

To sign the manifesto

The crisis

Europe is sinking into crisis and social regression under the pressure of austerity, recession and the strategy of “structural reforms”. This pressure is tightly coordinated at the European level, under the leadership of the German Government, the ECB and the European Commission. There is a broad consensus that these policies are absurd and even “illiterate”: fiscal austerity does not reduce the burden of the debt but generates a spiral of depression, more unemployment and despair among the European peoples.

Yet, these policies are rational from the point of view of the bourgeoisie. They are a brutal way – a shock therapy – for restoring the profits, for guaranteeing the financial rents and for implementing the neoliberal counter-reforms. What is going on is fundamentally the validation by the states of the financial claims on future production and GDP. That is why the crisis takes the form of a sovereign debt crisis.

A false dilemma

This crisis reveals that the previous neoliberal project for Europe was not viable. It presupposed that the European economies were more homogeneous than they actually are. Differences between countries increased due to their place in the global market, to their sensitivity to the euro exchange rate. Inflation rates didn’t converge and low real interest rates favored intense capital flows among countries and financial and housing bubbles. All these contradictions – exacerbated with the implementation of the monetary union – existed before the crisis but they have exploded with the speculative attacks against the sovereign debts of the most exposed countries.

The social and popular alternatives to this crisis require a daring refoundation of Europe, because European and international cooperation are required for the reconstruction of the industrial pattern, the ecological sustainability and the employment structure. But as such a global refoundation seems out of reach in the immediate relationship of forces, the exit from euro is proposed as an immediate solution in different countries. The dilemma seems to be between a risky ‘exit’ from the eurozone and a utopian European harmonization emerging out of the workers’ struggles. In our view, this is a false dichotomy and it is important to work for a viable political strategy for the immediate confrontation. Any social transformation implies the questioning of dominant social interests, their privileges and their power and it is true that this confrontation takes place primarily within a national framework. But the resistance of the dominant classes and their possible retaliatory measures exceed the national framework. The strategy of leaving the euro does not necessarily concentrate on this effort for a European alternative and in this sense, a strategy of rupture with “euroliberalism” is required in order to generate the means for an alternative policy. This text is not about the program for this rupture but rather concentrates on means to implement such a program.

What should a left government do?

We are in the midst of what can be technically called a “balance-sheet crisis”. This is a crisis triggered by private sector deleveraging and debt minimization, caused by the accumulation of an enormous amount of fictitious assets, not backed with real fundamentals. In practical words, it means that citizens have to pay for the debt or in other terms validate the claims of the finance on current and future production and taxes. The European states, in an action strictly coordinated at European and even at the global level, have decided to nationalize the private debts by converting them into sovereign debt and to impose austerity and transfer policies in order to pay for such debts. It is the justification, the motivation and the opportunity for the implementation of “structural reforms” whose objectives are classically neoliberal, shrinking the public services of the welfare state, cutting social spending and flexibilizing the labour markets, in order to lower the direct and indirect wage.

In our view, the political strategy of the left must concentrate on the fight for a majority for a left government, able to get rid of this straightjacket. […]

READ @ http://cadtm.org/What-to-do-about-the-debt-and-the

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* CORRUPT GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS – MANY OF WHOM ARE ATHEISTS – USE THE MOST EXTREME FORMS OF RELIGION TO DIVIDE AND CONQUER US

Source: Washington’s Blog

Preface: Fundamentalist Christians, Jews and Muslims all think they are in a “holy war” against the other guy. As shown below, fundamentalists are being manipulated by the powers-that-be – many of whom are actually atheists – as part of a divide-and-conquer strategy to disempower people.

The 2,000 Year Old Strategy

The strategy of dividing and conquering one’s foes is ancient.

Ancient Roman emperor Julius Cesar successfully used it thousands of years ago.

The application of the strategy in controlling one’s own people – divide and rule – has been used for just as long. As Wikipedia notes:

Elements of this technique involve:

creating or encouraging divisions among the subjects to prevent alliances that could challenge the sovereign

aiding and promoting those who are willing to cooperate with the sovereign

fostering distrust and enmity between local rulers [or groups]

encouraging meaningless expenditures that reduce the capability for political [organization or opposition] …..

In discussing the use of “divide and rule” in the U.S., Wikipedia discusses the “Use of left-right politics“.

Indeed – even though the Founding Fathers warned us against the danger of a two-party system to divide the nation – left-right partisan divisions have successfully been deployed to distract and weaken the American people for centuries.

Religion has been used for the same purpose:

England invaded Ireland in 1170, but for the first 439 years it was a conquest in name only. In 1609, however, James I founded the Plantation of Ulster, imported 20,000 Protestant settlers, and introduced religious strife as a political tactic. By favoring Protestants over the native Catholics in politics and economics-the so-called “Ulster Privilege-the English pitted both groups against one another.

The tactic was enormously successful, and England used it throughout its colonial empire. Nowhere were the British so successful in transplanting the Irish model than in India. […]

READ @ http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/05/when-religion-is-used-to-divide-and-conquer-us.html

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* 3 TROUBLING THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT BILLIONAIRE PENNY PRITZKER

By David Moberg, InTheseTimes

On May 2, 2013, in the White House Rose Garden, U.S. President Barack Obama announces his nominee for Secretary of Commerce, Hyatt hotel heir Penny Pritzker. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

Despite her business-friendly history, billionaire heir Penny Pritzker, President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Commerce, will likely face standard Republican flak in her Senate confirmation hearings.

But progressive Democrats are the ones with real reasons to be upset with her record and that of her family, which is among the wealthiest in America. Here are just a few:

1) Union-busting. Pritzker’s family businesses have often engaged in anti-union practices. She is a director of the Hyatt Hotels, which fired and then replaced long-time room cleaners in its Boston hotels with non-union subcontracted workers. Hyatt has refused to settle several contract disputes with UNITE HERE, some lasting nearly four years, on terms similar to those accepted by other big hoteliers.

2) Conflicts of interest. The family’s $20 billion empire was built on a diverse base of businesses, including Hyatt, Marmon (an industrial conglomerate), the TransUnion credit rating agency, and many others in industries such as container leasing, insurance and travel.

The family has long had a reputation for not only accumulating its wealth through elaborate schemes of tax evasion, including offshore accounts, but also for using its political clout to win favored treatment.

For example, community and teacher union critics berated Pritzker, who recently resigned from the Chicago Board of Education, for supporting the closing of dozens of public schools because of financial pressures. At the same time, the highly profitable Hyatt was receiving financial assistance from a Tax Increment Finance fund (a pool of money intended to support blighted neighborhoods in the city) whose assets effectively had been diverted from support of the schools. Pritzker also has drawn fire for her leading role in promoting privately operated charter schools, including networks of non-profits to which she has contributed.

While some Pritzkers support Republicans, others, like Penny, are active patrons of corporate-oriented Democrats. Penny Pritzker, who knew Obama before he ran for president, served as financial chair of his first campaign and is credited with bringing in millions of dollars in donations. Many observers see her appointment to the relatively weak—if symbolically still important—commerce post as typical campaign spoils for big contributors.

But if she is approved, it will burnish her reputation and increase her potential influence. The Pritzkers, who have contributed large sums to education, medicine, architecture and the arts in their hometown of Chicago and elsewhere, gain protection from the fallout of their questionable business practices through their public image as philanthropists.

3) Shady business dealings. The Pritzkers have a long history of business malfeasance at the expense of people of modest means. In one notable case, Congress passed legislation in 2003 to address issues raised by widespread charges that the Pritzker’s credit rating agency, TransUnion, had made serious flaws in its credit reports on individuals—and then failed to correct them upon discovery. […]

READ @ https://inthesetimes.com/article/14948/3_troubling_things_about_billionaire_penny_pritzker/

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* HERO OF THE AMERICAN LEFT, PROFESSOR NOAM CHOMSKY, DENOUNCES THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION

By Sam Rolley Personal Liberty Digest

Professor Noam Chomsky

Notable left-wing polemicist Professor Noam Chomsky has made a career of writing and speaking out against government abuses of civil liberties in the United States and abroad. In the 2008 Presidential election, the professor endorsed Barack Obama but contended that the youthful Presidential candidate would have little positive or negative impact on civil liberty.

Chomsky now says he is surprised and disgusted by the current President’s inexplicable “attack” on civil liberties, which he said goes beyond anything he could have ever imagined.

In an interview, Chomsky told the liberal blog Alternet:

I personally never expected anything of Obama, and wrote about it before the 2008 primaries. I thought it was smoke and mirrors. The one thing that did surprise me is his attack on civil liberties. They go well beyond anything I would have anticipated, and they don’t seem easy to explain. In many ways the worst is what you mention, Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project. That’s an Obama initiative and it’s a very serious attack on civil liberties. He doesn’t gain anything from it — he doesn’t get any political mileage out of it. In fact, most people don’t even know about it, but what it does is extend the concept of “material assistance to terror” to speech. […]

READ @ http://personalliberty.com/2013/04/30/hero-of-the-american-left-professor-noam-chomsky-denounces-obama-administration/

Thursday READ – 2 May 2013

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May 022013

Posted by greydogg, 99GetSmart

* EUROPE’S SOUTH RISES UP AGAINST THOSE WHO ACT AS SADISTIC COLONIAL MASTERS

The more you obey the more you get punished – that’s the troika’s way. But a second spring of discontent is in the air

By Costas Douzinas, Guardian

Demonstrators hold banners as they protest outside the European Union House in the Cypriot capital Nicosia. Photograph: Yiannis Kourtoglou/AFP/Getty Images

The “new world order” announced at the end of the 1980s was the shortest in history. Protest, riots and uprisings erupted all over the world after the 2008 crisis, leading to the Arab spring, the Indignados and Occupy. A former director of operations at MI6, quoted by Paul Mason, called it “a revolutionary wave, like 1848“. Mason agreed: “There are strong parallels – above all with 1848, and with the wave of discontent that preceded 1914.”

Many on the left have been more circumspect. The philosopher Alain Badiou welcomed the Arab spring but did not think it would lead to a “rebirth of history”. For Slavoj Žižek, 2011 was the “year of dreaming dangerously”. A melancholy of the left descended as the protest wave started receding. But on this occasion the pessimism was premature. Resistance against austerity and injustice is again in the air. In Bulgaria and Slovenia, protesters unseated the government. In Italy, the overwhelming anti-austerity vote has shaken the parties committed to the Berlin orthodoxy. Large marches and rallies in Portugal and Spain have undermined governments and policies and a new push for anti-austerity unity is emerging in Britain. In Greece, the parties that brought the country to its knees and are now administering policies causing the well-documented humanitarian catastrophe and rise of fascism are on the brink of exit.

Finally, the Cypriot government agreed the unprecedented haircut of bank savings but was forced to renege after MPs of all parties under pressure from the public voted against it and ruling party MPs had to abstain. This was the first formal rebuff of austerity, something that the obedient governments of southern Europe had not dared. When the government finally accepted the European blackmail, it presented it as unavoidable and, under instruction from Germany’s foreign minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, refrained from putting it to parliament or the people. The words “democracy” and “referendum” create panic in the corridors of Brussels. But the symbolic value of a small nation rejecting the initial troika blackmail and protecting the savings of ordinary people is immense. The European debate has concentrated on the protection of savings. The protection of our democracy is perhaps more important. […]

READ @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/28/europe-south-rising-up

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* EUROPE HAS BECOME A TOTALITARIAN STATE

By Mark J. Grant, zerohedge

Athens rioting police routinely attack peaceful protesters with chemical weapons

The rioting police in Athens routinely attack peaceful protesters with chemical weapons, batons, arrest and torture.

The Cyprus Template

“What manner of men had lived in those days…who had so eagerly surrendered their sovereignty for a lie and a delusion?”-Taylor Caldwell

Cyprus is absolutely the template for Europe now. It is just that the template is far worse than what is narrowly imagined.

It is not the small nation of Cyprus nor is it that the specifics of the criminality that was transacted in Cyprus which is any sort of template. This is not the center of the issue. It is what Cyprus means and the horrible implications of what took place.

I cannot issue a stern enough warning here. No words that I write will adequately embrace the transgression that has taken place in Cyprus. Any thought that you have that the Cyprus experience is a lone and isolated event that will not be repeated, in some form in the future, is going to be proven wrong.

Yesterday the Parliament in Cyprus narrowly passed the EU bailout. Part of this package included seizing 90% of the depositors’ money to help pay for the bailout. There was no due process of law, no bankruptcy proceeding, no judicial review of assets and, in fact, no law of any sort applied. Deposits were confiscated as mandated by the European Union and agreed to by the Cyprus Parliament. Europe demanded the seizure and that is what is critically important to understand and appreciate.

In Greece the EU demanded that the bond holders be penalized and to accomplish this they had Greece retroactively change the laws. In Cyprus Europe demanded the confiscation of depositors’ money. One + one still makes two and the template, when properly recognized, is that the European Union will do whatever they like and when they like it and to whom they like with little or no regard for existing laws. This is, quite frankly, the Soviet Union under the control of Stalin. To be more precise, given that all of this is formulated and approved in Berlin; this is Germany making the rules for their vassal states.

There is one set of guidelines for Germany now and Germany still operates under their own laws but when it comes to other nations in the European Union that are in financial difficulty there are no real laws left. All that there is now is the tyrannical demands of Berlin that must be obeyed to receive funds.

“It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.” -Thomas Jefferson

[…]

The European Union is controlled by Germany. The European Union no longer operates under the law; their laws or the laws of any singular nation. Europe has, in fact, become a totalitarian State. This is the template. This is the new reality!

“Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing a people to slavery.” -Thomas Jefferson […]

READ @ http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-01/europe-has-become-totalitarian-state

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* ROLLING FISTFIGHT ERUPTS IN VENEZUELAN PARLIAMENT OVER DISPUTED ELECTION

Brawl erupts after opposition members are banned from speaking until they accept Nicolás Maduro as president

Source: GuardianUK

A brawl has broken out in Venezuela‘s parliament between government and opposition members, leaving several people injured during an angry session linked to the nation’s bitter election dispute.

The opposition said seven of its parliamentarians were attacked and hurt when protesting against a measure that blocks them from speaking in the National Assembly because they have refused to recognise Nicolás Maduro‘s 14 April election as president.

Government legislators blamed their “fascist” rivals for starting the violence, which illustrated the volatile state of politics after the death of socialist leader Hugo Chávez in March.

“We knew the opposition came to provoke violence,” Maduro said of the incident. “This must not be repeated.”

The 50-year-old Maduro, who was Chávez’s chosen successor, defeated opposition candidate Henrique Capriles by 1.5 percentage points. Capriles, 40, has refused to recognise his victory, alleging that thousands of irregularities occurred and the vote was “stolen”. The election exposed a nation evenly divided after 14 years of Chávez’s hardline socialist rule. […]

READ / VIDEO @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/01/brawl-erupts-venezuelan-parliament

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* A HIDDEN WORLD, GROWING BEYOND CONTROL

By Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, Washington Post

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation’s other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings – about 17 million square feet of space.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year – a volume so large that many are routinely ignored. […]

READ @ http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/

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* THIS IS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE FREE IN AMERICA

By Simon Black, Sovereign Man

Bangkok, Thailand

I really hate to be negative… but this is positively revolting. Disgusting. Indescribably offensive.

In the Land of the Free recently, a California couple had their child kidnapped by the state. At gunpoint.

It all started in mid-April when Anna and Alex Nikolayev took their 5-month old son Sammy to the hospital in Sacramento to be treated for flu symptoms.

The parents didn’t particularly care for the treatment that their son was receiving. Doctors were pumping him full of antibiotics and soon began talking about performing surgery.

Anna and Alex argued with the doctors and said that they were going to get a second opinion; they took the baby and went to another hospital where another physician deemed it perfectly safe for the child to return home with his parents without the need for surgery.

The next day, with the family resting comfortably at home, the police showed up with Child Protective Services.

Alex, the father, went outside to talk to them where he was thrown to the ground by police. Officers then relieved him of his house keys and proceeded to let themselves into the house with hands on their pistols.

Then, still with their hands on their pistols, they told the mother “I’m going to grab your baby, and don’t resist and don’t fight me…”

The child was then ripped from his mother’s arms and placed into state custody, where he remained for a week. […]

READ @ http://www.sovereignman.com/trends/this-is-what-it-means-to-be-free-in-america-11754/

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* DR. CORNEL WEST – REMAKING AMERICA: FROM POVERTY TO PROSPERITY

Source: youtube

This video highlights Dr. Cornel West speaking at the Remaking America: From Poverty to Prosperity, a talk at George Washington University in Washington DC on Thursday, January 12, 2012.

Other panelists included Majora Carter, Barbara Ehrenreich, Michael Moore, Suze Orman, Vicki Escarra and Roger Clay, Jr.

The event was moderated by Tavis Smiley.

(The audio on this video is off slightly for the first 48 seconds only. Please forgive the quick edits at 4:05; 7:58; 12:16; 13:20; 15:19; 17:25 and 20:06, between Dr. West’s talks).

VIDEO @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ4A4K18hOk

Tuesday READ – 30 April 2013

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Apr 302013

Posted by greydogg, 99GetSmart

* THE MANIFESTO OF THE MEDITERRANEAN MEETING IN TUNISIA

Source: CADTM

We, the representatives of progressive political parties from the Mediterranean region, gathered in Tunis from March 23 to 24, 2013, at the call of the Popular Front, and adopted the following resolution.

1. – For more than a quarter of a century, neoliberal capitalist globalization has extended its dominance over the entire planet. The processes launched have accelerated the commodization of the world in favour of a minority and have confiscated peoples´ citizenship and nations´ sovereignty. They are exacerbating economic insecurity and social inequality in the North and South and further widening the gap between the rich countries and the so-called poor countries.

Peoples of the South are subjected to a particularly devastating regime of structural adjustment policies and free trade policies which impedes a fair development, destroys the environment and deprives them of their sovereignty, thus weakening them even more and exacerbating their dependence on dominant economic areas of the North.

The fate of humanity is now decided by a handful of transnational corporations and by the international financial institutions over which people have no control.

Since 2008, in the midst of a crisis of the world capitalist system, structural adjustment policies have been extended to the countries of the northern Mediterranean, the so-called contemptuously PIGS.

In Tunisia, these policies have been imposed since 1986 by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In 1995, these were reinforced by the Association Agreement imposed by the European Union and its Member States. The political dictatorship has ensured the application of such policies.

At present, the various neoliberal capitalist globalization actors intend to carry on with these policies, trying to take advantage of the revolutionary crisis, by strengthening and expanding their scope. Thus they seek to block the path that leads to the development of aspirations and the desire for radical change massively expressed by the masses, particularly youth, during the revolutionary uprising of December- January 2011.

2. – The removal of the dictator has disarmed the local neoliberal capitalist order without reversing it have led to some progress. The social system which is the historical product of imperialist domination and, more recently, of the restructuring of the neoliberal capitalist world, is still standing. But the revolutionary crisis that initiated the insurgency remains active. The victory of the democratic, social and national revolution in Tunisia, as in other countries in the region, still remains a possibility.

3. - The Tunisian revolution marked the beginning of the Arab revolution. To date, four dictators, whose average time in power exceeded 30 years, have been eliminated. These political changes are, without a doubt, the most important occurrence that has taken place in the Arab region and Maghreb in decades. This is clearly a turning point in the history of Tunisia and the Arab region.

This is, in the proper sense of the term, a “historic” moment. In fact, for the first time in their history, the peoples of the Arab region, who have not stopped fighting, are standing up today against their direct oppressors, bursting onto the political scene to take hold of their destiny in their own hands.

4. – The debt -odious, illegitimate- used under the dictatorship as a tool for political submission and as a mechanism for the transfer of income from labour to local but above all to world capital, currently serves the counter-revolution to maintain the neo-colonial economy and imperialist domination in Tunisia. Furthermore, in Egypt, Morocco, Greece, Cyprus, the Spanish State and in many other countries of the Mediterranean basin, debt continues to serve the interests of a minority against the interests of the vast majority. It is everywhere, it is the pretext for the implementation of austerity policies imposed by international financial institutions and the capitalistic states that violate human rights.

5. – Everywhere, both in the North and the South, the same logics of profit, domination and destruction of the planet operate and continue to be imposed on the peoples and on nature. The Tunisian revolution, the Arab revolution, the heroic struggles of all peoples of the world against a neoliberal capitalist order, such as in Greece, Portugal, Catalonia, Basque country or the Spanish state, are the political founding acts of a new world order; one based on solidarity, that is democratic, feminist peaceful that ensures popular sovereignty and self-determination of the peoples and environmentally friendly- for which all our respective political parties are fighting.

6. – But standing in opposition of this popular will for a radical shift are the ruling classes, the transnationals and global finance institutions. They form a united front to counter-attack and to implement even more antisocial and undemocratic policies in order to break through this liberating popular impulse and momentum, and thus continue to make the costs of the global capitalist system crisis fall on the same shoulders, those of the working people and the planet.

7. – We, the representatives of progressive political parties from the Mediterranean region in the world, are convinced that we must unite our efforts and our actions, both regionally and internationally, to support and contribute to the struggles of the people and of the exploited and oppressed classes, in the region and worldwide, who yearn for freedom, dignity and social justice. We support the revolutionary struggle of the Syrian people to achieve freedom, democracy, social justice, equality and national dignity. We condemn any foreign intervention that goes against the achievement of these objectives.
In order to work together in this direction, we the progressive political parties from the Mediterranean region, that participated in this meeting in Tunisia against debt, austerity policies and imperialist domination, advocate for a free, democratic, social, solidarity-based and environmentally friendly Mediterranean region. We therefore commit to:

Support the process of mobilization and struggle of social movements, trade unions and social organizations for a citizen audit
Promote motions for non-payment of illegitimate debt and the external debt relief in the institutions in which we participate.
Incorporate in our political programs the NON payment of the illegitimate debt and the promotion of citizen audit and the support of the struggle for the sovereignty of peoples and self-determination.
Advance on the development of a network of mutual support between the nations to assist those who decided not to pay the illegitimate debt
Establish a permanent communication network for the exchange of information and experiences.
Develop a concrete cooperation aiming at developing tools for the struggle and mobilization necessary to achieve our goals.
Organize the next meeting in the Spanish State.

The progressive political parties in the Mediterranean region and other parts of the world that participated in the Tunisian Mediterranean Meeting welcomed the World Social Forum that was held in Tunis from March 26 to 30, and that allowed to advance towards the realization of the objectives enshrined in the Charter of Porto Alegre.

Finally, we strongly condemn the killing of Chokri Belaid, Secretary General of the Unified Democratic Patriotic Party and leader of the Popular Front, which we refer to as a political crime. We demand the truth to be told about all those involved in this heinous crime. […]

READ @ http://cadtm.org/The-Manifesto-of-the-Mediterranean

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* SCIENTIST CONFIRM! “AUSTERITY IS TOO BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH”

Source: KeepTalkingGreece

Scientists confirm what we already know: that recession-driven austerity measures are not just bad for your wealth, they are also harming your health. It’s not only that your pockets are robbed causing sleepless nights, depression and heart attacks. The austerity cuts that primarily target the health sector boost infectious diseases as medicine and treatment become prohibitively expensive.

British scientists examined the impact of austerity to health issues and thus on the example of Greece and Great Britain.

The after-effects of the financial crisis is driving a wave of suicide, depression and infectious diseases as medicine and treatment become prohibitively expensive across Europe and North America, according to new research by academics.

After examining a decade of studies , Oxford University political economist David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu, an assistant professor of medicine and an epidemiologist at Stanford University, have concluded austerity is seriously bad for health.

More than 10,000 suicides and up to a million cases of depression have been diagnosed during what they call the “Great Recession” and the austerity that followed it , the pair conclude in a book due to be published this week.

They cite examples in Greece, which has seen the rate of the Aids-causing HIV virus increase by 200pc as the health budget have been cut. The more than 50pc youth unemployment rate has also seen drug abuse on the increase, hastening the spread of the virus.

Greece also experienced its first malaria outbreak in decades following budget cuts to mosquito-spraying programmes.

In Britain, the academics claim 10,000 families have been pushed into homelessness by the austerity budget, and in the US 5m people no longer have access to healthcare since the recession.

“Politicians need to take into account the serious – and in some cases profound – health consequences of economic choices,” said Mr Stuckler, a senior researcher at Oxford University and co-author The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills.

“The harms we have found include HIV and malaria outbreaks, shortages of essential medicines, lost healthcare access, and an avoidable epidemic of alcohol abuse, depression and suicide,” he said in a statement. “Austerity is having a devastating effect.”

Previous studies by Mr Stuckler published in journals such as The Lancet and the British Medical Journal have linked rising suicide rates in some parts of Europe to austerity measures, and found HIV epidemics to be spreading amid cutbacks in services to vulnerable people.

But he and Mr Basu said negative public health effects are not inevitable, even during the worst economic disasters. (full story Telegraph)

Greeks get really sick

Also Greek scientists have collected data on the impact of the austerity cuts on the people’s health. According to Christodoulos Stefanadis, cardiology professor at the University of Athens with experience at the country’s public hospitals:

Cardiovascular incidents increased by 20% in the last two years.

Increased is also the number of patients with high blood pressure.

One in six patients with cholesterol does not follow the prescribed treatment due to financial inability to come up with the self-participation percentage on prescribed medicine.

Unemployment, stress at work and depression are risk factors for cardiovascular diseases equal to risk factors like smoking, lack of exercise and unhealthy eating habits. […]

READ @ http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2013/04/29/scientists-confirm-austerity-is-too-bad-for-your-health/

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* CIA’s ‘BAGS OF CASH’ FUELED AFGHAN CORRUPTION, BOUGHT LITTLE INFLUENCE

By Jason Ditz, Anti-War

A Decade Later, CIA Still Throwing Money at Karzai

If you’re a top Afghan official money comes awfully easy. For Afghan President Hamid Karzai, you don’t even have to ask for it or leave your office, and people will show up with plastic shopping bags full of cash for you.

The “sacks of cash” phenomenon was unveiled in 2010, when officials revealed that Iran was showing up with $1 million in cash a few times a year for Karzai. The US was and is doing it too. The CIA has notoriously been showing up all the time with “ghost money” aimed at buying influence.

“It came in secret, and it left in secret,” noted Karzai’s former chief of staff. Over a decade later, the cash is still coming and going, but what influence if any was ever actually bought is unclear at best.

Officials are critical of the policy, saying that tens of millions of US dollars with no paperwork were actually a big part of how Afghanistan became one of the most corrupt nations in human history. Though there is of course no way of tracking all this money, US officials believe that large amounts were used to bribe politicians and warlords.

This is how all political business gets done in Afghanistan to this day, and despite officials insisting that the money is incredibly counterproductive, the CIA bags are still showing up regularly. […]

READ @ http://news.antiwar.com/2013/04/28/cias-bags-of-cash-fueled-afghan-corruption-bought-little-influence/

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* THE GUANTANAMO MEMOIRS OF MOHAMEDOU OULD SLAHI

By Larry Siems, Slate

Mohamedou Ould Slahi began to tell his story in 2005. Over the course of several months, the Guantánamo prisoner handwrote his memoir, recounting what he calls his “endless world tour” of detention and interrogation. He wrote in English, a language he mastered in prison. His handwriting is relaxed but neat, his narrative, even riddled with redactions, vivid and captivating. In telling his story he tried, as he wrote, “to be as fair as possible to the U.S. government, to my brothers, and to myself.” He finished his 466-page draft in early 2006. For the next six years, the U.S. government held the manuscript as a classified secret.

When his pro bono attorneys were allowed to hand me a disk labeled “Unclassified Version” last year, Slahi had been a Guantánamo detainee for more than a decade. I sat down to start reading his manuscript nearly 10 years to the day from the book’s opening scene:

“[Redacted] July 2002, 22:00. The American team takes over. The music was off. The conversations of the guards faded away. The truck emptied.”

We’re in the middle of the action. Slahi’s life in captivity had begun eight months earlier, on Nov. 20, 2001, when Slahi, then 30, was summoned by Mauritanian police for questioning. He had just returned home from work; he was in the shower when police arrived. He dressed, grabbed his car keys—he went voluntarily, driving himself to the police station—and told his mother not to worry, he would be home soon. [...]

READ @ http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2013/04/mohamedou_ould_slahi_s_guant_namo_memoirs_how_the_united_states_kept_a_gitmo.html

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* UNDERCOVER AT THE TAR SANDS

By Jerry Cleveland, Rolling Stone

Editor’s Note: In recent months, many climate activists have focused their efforts on Canada’s tar sands and the companies set on extracting fossil fuels from them. With the debate raging louder than ever, Rolling Stone is in contact with one of the workers helping to build a pipeline to bring oil from the tar sands to the U.S. Read on for that anonymous correspondent’s first dispatch from one of the world’s most controversial jobs.

There’s something in the air in Fort McMurray, Alberta – and it’s not just fumes from the massive oil sands processing plants north of town. Spend enough time here, and you’ll pick up the pungent scents of machismo and money.

This is the heart of Canada’s controversial tar sands operation. If all goes as planned, this region will soon be sending its bitumen – the sticky, black petroleum byproduct colloquially known as “tar” – down the Keystone XL Pipeline. President Obama has yet to give the contentious project the green light, but work in the oil sands shows no sign of slowing down any time soon.

The region has 80,000 permanent residents, and hosts about 40,000 temporary workers at any given time – welders, pipefitters, heavy equipment operators, technicians, engineers and other hired hands who pass through Fort McMurray as the work ebbs and flows. I joined them this winter when, after hearing stories about Fort Mac for years, I signed on to help build a massive pipeline (not the Keystone XL). I was eager to see the tar sands for myself, experience life in Fort Mac firsthand – and, let’s be honest, I wanted to make some oil money, too. I’m writing this story anonymously to protect my friends, my colleagues and myself.

The Fossil Fuel Resistance

Much of the work here relies on ice roads and freezing temperatures, so when spring comes, the work ends. The obvious irony is that the carbon economy itself is very likely contributing to the early springs, late winters and wacky weather that keeps interrupting our work.

Few in northern Alberta seemed to notice when thousands gathered in Washington, D.C. to protest the Keystone project in February. Instead, everyone was talking about the southern extension project coming up later this year, and the 14,000 jobs it would bring.

The recent rupture of an Exxon pipeline in Arkansas, spilling tens of thousands of Canadian crude, made some noise here. But most chalked it up to “bad timing” –folks are quick to point out that the pipeline in question was installed in the 1940s, and my foreman assured us that Exxon would “make sure everyone is taken care of.” The prevailing logic seems to be that if you throw enough money at a problem, it’ll go away. […]

READ @ http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/undercover-at-the-tar-sands-20130426

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