In my previous post on Climategate I blithely said that nothing in the climate science email dump surprised me much. Having waded more deeply over the weekend I take that back.The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering. And, as Christopher Booker argues, this scandal is not at the margins of the politicised IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] process. It is not tangential to the policy prescriptions emanating from what David Henderson called the environmental policy milieu [subscription required]. It goes to the core of that process.
Oh my. Another warming advocate sees the light on Climategate
Clive Crook writing in The Atlantic:
The Real All-Seeing EYE: CIA pulls SWIFT one to get peak at your bank records
European Union governments have given in to the pressure and appear set to make a last-minute agreement with the United States to allow its intelligence agencies to monitor bank accounts and transactions across the bloc. Actually, the EU has been clandestinely allowing US intelligence agencies to have access to these financial records since 2001, allegedly to fight terrorism.
U.S. Antitrust Investigation of Monsanto
For plants designed in a lab a little more than a decade ago, they’ve come a long way: Today, the vast majority of the nation’s two primary crops grow from seeds genetically altered according to Monsanto company patents.
Ninety-three percent of soybeans. Eighty percent of corn.
The seeds represent “probably the most revolutionary event in grain crops over the last 30 years,” said Geno Lowe, a Salisbury, Md., soybean farmer.
But for farmers such as Lowe, prices of the Monsanto-patented seeds have steadily increased, roughly doubling during the past decade, to about $50 for a 50-pound bag of soybean seed, according to seed dealers.
The revolution, and Monsanto’s dominant role in the nation’s agriculture, has not unfolded without complaint. Farmers have decried the price increases, and competitors say the company has ruthlessly stifled competition.
Now Monsanto — like IBM and Google — has drawn scrutiny from U.S. antitrust investigators, who under the Obama administration have looked more skeptically at the actions of dominant firms.
Climate Data Dumped
Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.
The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.
Dubai debt move 'carefully planned': top official
Dubai's move to suspend payments on its Dubai World conglomerate's debt was "carefully planned" and done in full knowledge of how the markets would react, the chairman of the Supreme Fiscal Committee said on Thursday.
-- "Our intervention in Dubai World was carefully planned and reflects its specific financial position," Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum said in a statement.
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No Agenda News - Your daily source for the news that matters.
High Court to Hear PATRIOT Act Challenge
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case challenging a law that critics say treats human rights advocates as criminal terrorists, and threatens them with 15 years in prison for advocating nonviolent means to resolve disputes.
The case is known as Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, and is the first case to challenge a portion of the PATRIOT Act before the Supreme Court. Originally brought in 1998, the suit challenges the constitutionality of the law that makes it a crime to provide "material support" to groups the administration has designated as "terrorist."
The plaintiffs, led by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), charge that the law goes too far in making speech advocating lawful, nonviolent activity a crime. The lower courts have unanimously declared several provisions of the law – including one added by the PATRIOT Act – unconstitutionally vague because they encompass speech and force citizens to guess as to their meaning.
The case challenges those aspects of the "material support" statute that criminalize pure speech – specifically the prohibitions on providing "training," "personnel," "expert advice or assistance," and "service."
The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict
In 2003 Donald Rumsfeld estimated a war with Iraq would cost $60 billion. Five years later, the cost of Iraq war operations is over 10 times that figure. So what's behind the ballooning dollar signs? Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilme's exhaustedly researched book, "The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict," breaks down the price tag, from current debts to the unseen costs we'll pay for years to come. In 2003 Donald Rumsfeld estimated a war with Iraq would cost $60 billion.
Five years later, the cost of Iraq war operations is over 10 times that figure. So what's behind the ballooning dollar signs? Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilme's exhaustedly researched book, "The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict," breaks down the price tag, from current debts to the unseen costs we'll pay for years to come.
NA-152-2009-11-29
#152 No Agenda For Sunday November 29th 2009
Attack Of The Icebergs
Attack Of The Icebergs
Direct Link to the show.
The rise of the Carbon Fat Cats
Adam Smith and Karl Marx disagreed about many things, but they would surely have concurred that the very idea of a ‘carbon market’ is bonkers. Carbon dioxide is an invisible gas and a naturally occurring substance. When it is produced as a waste product from another process, like burning fossil fuel, it cannot be used for anything else. How on earth could carbon dioxide, as waste product, have a value and be subject to exchange? How could it become the gaseous analogue to money or gold, an atmospheric ‘universal equivalent’ into which other gases can be converted?
The carbon market in 2007 was worth $64billion: how could this be? A market is supposed to be the exchange of products that are the result of somebody’s work, for the satisfaction of somebody else’s needs. Smith stated that the value of the product is proportional to the amount of work expended in it: ‘The real price of everything’, he wrote in the Wealth of Nations, ‘is the toil and trouble of acquiring it’ (1). This goes for markets in bread or tables, iTunes or diamonds, no matter what nature the ‘work’ or how frivolous the ‘need’. But a market in carbon: quoi?
Quietly and without fuss, all the rules of classical economics are being torn up – in a way that could be very foolish indeed. As we approach the deal-making at the UN conference on climate change at Copenhagen, it is worth thinking about exactly what we are doing here.
Hacked E-Mail Data Prompts Calls for Changes in Climate Research
Some prominent climate scientists are calling for changes in the way research on global warming is conducted after a British university said thousands of private e-mail messages and documents had been stolen from its climate center.
The scientists say that the e-mail messages, which have circulated on the Internet and which disclose the inner workings of a small network of climatologists who chart the planet’s temperature, have damaged the public’s trust in the evidence that humans are dangerously warming the planet, just as many countries are poised to start reining in greenhouse gas emissions.
“This whole concept of, ‘We’re the experts, trust us,’ has clearly gone by the wayside with these e-mails,” said Judith Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Institute of Technology.
New pre-emptive arrest powers in Denmark in time for climate summit
The Danish parliament has passed a new law that goes into effect on 7 December that gives police the power to pre-emptively arrest people for acts of civil disobedience. It also allows for extended custodial sentences upon arrest.
Prosecutor to Homeschoolers: No Compromise—You’re Going to Jail!
Juergen and Rosemary Dudek of Archfeldt, Germany, were sentenced to 90 days in prison in July 2008 because they homeschool their children. Their sentence was overturned by an appeals court because of a legal error, and a new trial was ordered. Their new trial began November 16. German news reports indicate the judge appears disposed to seek a compromise. But prosecutor Herwig Mueller has vowed to appeal any sentence that does not include jail time for these parents, who have been in the spotlight for years because of their insistence on homeschooling. This was the same prosecutor who appealed the lower court sentence of only a fine, saying to the family, "You don't have to worry about the fine because I will send you to jail."
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US stocks dive on Dubai financial problems
NEW YORK — US stocks dived Friday as investors confronted the fallout from Dubai's debt problems that have rocked global markets.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 183.35 points (1.75 percent) to 10,281.05 at 1500 GMT.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite slid 44.40 points (2.04 percent) to 2,131.65 and the broad-market Standard & Poor's 500 retreated 22.52 points (2.03 percent) to 1,088.11.
"The Dubai debt debacle will dominate trading today, overshadowing news flowing out of the retail sector regarding Black Friday -- the first major barometer of holiday consumer spending," Briefing.com analysts said in a client note.
Wall Street was closed Thursday for the Thanksgiving Day holiday, when Asian and European markets tumbled on news that Dubai World, the city state's flagship conglomerate, is seeking a six-month moratorium on repayment of 59 billion dollars in debts.
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Secret service ‘cutting corners,’ endangering Obama: author
A socialite couple that gate-crashed a White House state dinner Tuesday night were able to do so because the Secret Service has been "cutting corners," and in the process endagering the life of the president, says an investigative reporter.
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Ronald Kessler, author of The President's Secret Service, told CBS News Thursday morning that "the Secret Service has been cutting corners to a shocking degree ever since Homeland Security took it over in 2003."
Kessler said that "there absolutely could have been an assassination" at the state dinner Tuesday evening, when President Barack Obama hosted Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
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War Profiteers Stealing Our Lunch, Dinner, & Breakfast Money
You would think that $8.5 billion would buy a lot of chow for our soldiers in Iraq. But instead of purchasing grub for mess hall trays, federal prosecutors say a lot of that coin went to overhead, inflated prices, and lining pockets of a wealthy Kuwaiti family whose business got the contract. But thanks to a whistleblower and a nineteenth-century war profiteering statute, taxpayers may actually get some of that money back.
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The U.S. Attorney's Atlanta office on Monday handed down an indictment against the Public Warehousing Company (PWC) for defrauding the United States. PWC, now reincorporated under the name Agility, was second only to Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR) as the military's largest logistics contractor in Iraq.
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Blair knew Iraq had no WMD before war, inquiry hears
British Prime Minister Tony Blair was told ten days before the invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs likely remained "dismantled," but the prime minister continued to insist that Iraq was producing chemical and biological weapons, a British inquiry heard Wednesday.
"With British and US troops massed on the border, the new intelligence was dismissed," reports the Times of London.
Sir William Ehrman, the director of international security at the UK's Foreign Office from 2000 to 2002, told the British government's inquiry into the Iraq invasion that "on March 10 we got a report saying that the chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and that Saddam hadn't yet ordered their re-assembly and he might lack warheads capable of effective dispersal of agents."
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How and Why China Will Flood the Gold Market With Demand
The Chinese government is telling people gold and silver are good investments that will safeguard their wealth. After last year's meltdown in the stock market, people believe it. After all, Chinese citizens don't receive government retirement money... and they don't have company pension plans like people in many other countries do.
This is why folks in China are lining up outside of banks, post offices, and the new official mint stores to buy gold and silver (they especially like silver because it's cheaper per ounce).
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This is why folks in China are lining up outside of banks, post offices, and the new official mint stores to buy gold and silver (they especially like silver because it's cheaper per ounce).
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Congress May Probe Leaked Global Warming E-Mails
A few days after leaked e-mail messages appeared on the Internet, the U.S. Congress may probe whether prominent scientists who are advocates of global warming theories misrepresented the truth about climate change.
Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said on Monday the leaked correspondence suggested researchers "cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not," according to a transcript of a radio interview posted on his Web site. Aides for Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, are also looking into the disclosure.
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Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said on Monday the leaked correspondence suggested researchers "cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not," according to a transcript of a radio interview posted on his Web site. Aides for Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, are also looking into the disclosure.
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Unearthed Files Include “Rules” for Mass Mind Control Campaign
Futerra's "Rules of the Game."
Hacked into by a person or persons unknown, the unearthed material out of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit's main server reveals a 62 megabyte zip file confirming that which was already blatantly obvious, namely that the data has been fudged to convince unsuspecting audiences that 'the debate is over'.
The intruded central computer was not only filled to the brim with obvious and attempted ostracizing of scientists who don't blindly follow the leader, the files also reveal that the folks of the IPCC made use or considered making use of a disinformation campaign through a 'communication agency' called Futerra.
The agency describes itself as "the sustainability communications agency" and serves such global players as Shell, Microsoft, BBC, the UN Environment Programme, the UK government and the list goes on. The co-founder of Futerra, Ed Gillespie explains:
"For brands to succeed in this new world order, they will have to become eco, ethical and wellness champions."
The document included within the climategate treasure-chest is called 'Rules of the Game' and shows deliberate deception on the part of this agency to ensure that the debate would indeed be perceived as being settled. When facts do not convince, they reasoned, let us appeal to emotions in order to get the job done.
Outlining the 'rules of the game' in regards to climate change communication strategies, Futerra considers these rules as a "first step to using sophisticated behaviour change modelling and comprehensive evidence from around the world to change attitudes towards climate change."
"We need to think radically", proclaim the authors, "and the Rules of the Game are a sign that future campaigns will not be "business as usual.""
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Hacked into by a person or persons unknown, the unearthed material out of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit's main server reveals a 62 megabyte zip file confirming that which was already blatantly obvious, namely that the data has been fudged to convince unsuspecting audiences that 'the debate is over'.
The intruded central computer was not only filled to the brim with obvious and attempted ostracizing of scientists who don't blindly follow the leader, the files also reveal that the folks of the IPCC made use or considered making use of a disinformation campaign through a 'communication agency' called Futerra.
The agency describes itself as "the sustainability communications agency" and serves such global players as Shell, Microsoft, BBC, the UN Environment Programme, the UK government and the list goes on. The co-founder of Futerra, Ed Gillespie explains:
"For brands to succeed in this new world order, they will have to become eco, ethical and wellness champions."
The document included within the climategate treasure-chest is called 'Rules of the Game' and shows deliberate deception on the part of this agency to ensure that the debate would indeed be perceived as being settled. When facts do not convince, they reasoned, let us appeal to emotions in order to get the job done.
Outlining the 'rules of the game' in regards to climate change communication strategies, Futerra considers these rules as a "first step to using sophisticated behaviour change modelling and comprehensive evidence from around the world to change attitudes towards climate change."
"We need to think radically", proclaim the authors, "and the Rules of the Game are a sign that future campaigns will not be "business as usual.""
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Microsoft denies it built 'backdoor' in Windows 7
Microsoft today denied that it has built a backdoor into Windows 7, a concern that surfaced yesterday after a senior National Security Agency (NSA) official testified before Congress that the agency had worked on the operating system.
"Microsoft has not and will not put 'backdoors' into Windows," a company spokeswoman said, reacting to a Computerworld story Wednesday.
On Monday, Richard Schaeffer, the NSA's information assurance director, told the Senate's Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security that the agency had partnered with the developer during the creation of Windows 7 "to enhance Microsoft's operating system security guide."
Echoing earlier concerns, Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronics Privacy Information Center (EPIC), questioned the wisdom of letting the NSA participate in OS development. "The key problem is that NSA has a dual mission, COMPUSEC, computer security, now called cyber security, and SIGINT, signals intelligence, in other words surveillance," Rotenberg said in an e-mail.
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"Microsoft has not and will not put 'backdoors' into Windows," a company spokeswoman said, reacting to a Computerworld story Wednesday.
On Monday, Richard Schaeffer, the NSA's information assurance director, told the Senate's Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security that the agency had partnered with the developer during the creation of Windows 7 "to enhance Microsoft's operating system security guide."
Echoing earlier concerns, Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronics Privacy Information Center (EPIC), questioned the wisdom of letting the NSA participate in OS development. "The key problem is that NSA has a dual mission, COMPUSEC, computer security, now called cyber security, and SIGINT, signals intelligence, in other words surveillance," Rotenberg said in an e-mail.
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Expanding U.S. military presence leads to Venezuela-Colombia tensions
Operating as a U.S. proxy, Colombia poses threat to Latin America
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Tensions between Colombia and Venezuela have been on the rise. On Nov. 20, the Venezuelan army destroyed two footbridges used by smugglers operating along the 1,375-mile border between Colombia and Venezuela.
Although neither of the bridges was indicated in any treaty between the two countries, the Colombian government labeled the destruction an act of "aggression" and a violation of international law, and put its military forces on high alert. Venezuela has asserted its right to take action to destroy an illegal port of entry for oil and drug smugglers.
The border region between Venezuela and Colombia has been the site of increased violence over the last several months. Paramilitaries linked to the Colombian army recently killed two Venezuelan soldiers and nine Colombian civilians at the border. Venezuela has captured three Colombian men accused of being spies; Colombia has acknowledged that at least one is an agent of its Administrative Security Department, the country's intelligence agency.
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JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters
Douglass presents a very compelling argument that Kennedy was killed by "unspeakable" (the Trappist monk Thomas Merton's term) forces within the U.S. national security state because of his conversion from a cold warrior into a man of peace. He argues, using a wealth of newly uncovered information, that JFK had become a major threat to the burgeoning military-industrial complex and had to be eliminated through a conspiracy planned by the CIA – "the CIA's fingerprints are all over the crime and the events leading up to it" - not by a crazed individual, the Mafia, or disgruntled anti-Castro Cubans, though some of these may have been used in the execution of the plot.
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What’s the Pentagon Talking About?
There's Virtually Zero Percent Chance of There Ever Being a Real Afghan Army
The Western press claims that some 90,000 Afghan soldiers are trained and that the force will be up to 200,000 in the near future. While some 90,000 soldiers have been trained no one has reported of ever seeing such an army anywhere in Afghanistan.
The problem is that with 40% unemployment in the country, young men join up the paid training and disappear immediately after. Many of the men are former mujahidin and undoubtedly Taliban.
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Frontal Attack on the Heart of Science
One of the foundational components of the scientific method is the idea of reproducibility (Popper 1959). In order for an experiment to be considered valid it must be replicated. This process begins with the scientists who originally performed the experiment publishing the details of the experiment. This description of the experiment is then read by another group of scientists who carry out the experiment, and ascertain whether the results of the new experiment are similar to the original experiment. If the results are similar enough then the experiment has been replicated. This process validates the fact that the experiment was not dependent on local conditions, and that the written description of the experiment satisfactorily records the knowledge gained through the experiment. From Rand and Wilensky 2006
CRU's decision to withhold data and code from public inspection is not only against the scientific method, given the impact their work has on governmental policies and taxpayer funded programs, it is, in my opinion, unethical. – Anthony Watts
Guest post by Willis Eschenbach – originally posted on Omniclimate with an updated version here per Willis' request.
UPDATED 11/24/09 8:30PM PST
People seem to be missing the real issue in the CRU emails. Gavin over at realclimate keeps distracting people by saying the issue is the scientists being nasty to each other, and what Trenberth said, and the Nature "trick", and the like. Those are side trails. To me, the main issue is the frontal attack on the heart of science, which is transparency.
Science works by one person making a claim, and backing it up with the data and methods that they used to make the claim. Other scientists then attack the claim by (among other things) trying to replicate the first scientist's work. If they can't replicate it, it doesn't stand. So blocking the FOIA allowed Phil Jones to claim that his temperature record (HadCRUT3) was valid science.
This is not just trivial gamesmanship, this is central to the very idea of scientific inquiry. This is an attack on the heart of science, by keeping people who disagree with you from ever checking your work and seeing if your math is correct.
As far as I know, I am the person who made the original Freedom Of Information Act to CRU that started getting all this stirred up. I was trying to get access to the taxpayer funded raw data out of which they built the global temperature record. I was not representing anybody, or trying to prove a point. I am not funded by Mobil, I'm an amateur scientist with a lifelong interest in the weather and climate. I'm not "directed" by anyone, I'm not a member of a right-wing conspiracy. I'm just a guy trying to move science forwards.
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Eugenics in action: Czech government expresses regret for illegal sterilizations of Roma women
On Nov. 22, at the instigation of Czech Human Rights Minister Michael Kocáb, the government of the Czech Republic expressed regret over the illegal sterilizations of women that have been performed in the country. Speaking after a cabinet session, Kocáb said a set of measures are being designed to prevent similar cases from recurring with more rigorous standards for assuring informed consent. There are currently no statistics on the number of women who have been harmed by this surgery in the Czech Republic, but activists say dozens of Romani women have undergone forced sterilizations in the Ostrava region. Several institutions have devoted attention to the issue of illegal sterilizations, including Czech ombudsman Otakar Motejl, who has received complaints from approximately 80 women, most of them Roma. (Romea, Prague, Nov. 24)
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FDIC INSURANCE FUND IS BROKE
As the number of problem U.S. banks swells to the hundreds, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is increasingly hard-pressed to fill in the gaps where institutions have put depositor's funds at risk.
Unfortunately, a dire prediction made by government officials in early 2009 has come true: the FDIC's deposit insurance fund is now broke, according to published reports.
"The deposit insurance fund dropped by $18.6 billion during the third quarter of 2009 to negative $8.2 billion, as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. set aside $21.7 billion in provisions for additional bank failures," The Wall Street Journal reported. "This is the second time in the agency's history that the balance has fallen into negative territory."
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German government to give Israel warships for free
Israel, which has recently been condemned by the UN Human Rights Council because of their war crimes (1), asks Germany to build them two new warships – for free. (2)
After the German chancellor Merkel argued in front of the US congress that "whoever threatens Israel, threatens us" (3), it seems as if Israel will get what it wants. This wouldn't, however, be anything new: At the turn of the millennium, Germany financed three submarines spending 560 Million Euros on them. In 2012, there will two additional submarines, this time German tax payers will have to pay 333 Million Euros. (4)
After the German chancellor Merkel argued in front of the US congress that "whoever threatens Israel, threatens us" (3), it seems as if Israel will get what it wants. This wouldn't, however, be anything new: At the turn of the millennium, Germany financed three submarines spending 560 Million Euros on them. In 2012, there will two additional submarines, this time German tax payers will have to pay 333 Million Euros. (4)
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Japan Fines 'Fat' People, Companies Must Measure Waist Lines of Employees
A CNN news story (watch below) is reporting that Japan has issued new guidelines. "Companies and local governments must now measure waist lines of all employees and family members over the age of 40," they reported. Apparently if you don't make the cut, your company can be fined massively and will get increased health premiums. The company the reporter profiled, NEC, is facing 19 million dollars in penalties if employees don't slim down.
And what's overweight by Japanese standards? Men with waists over 33.5 inches and women over 35.5 inches. I can't even imagine issuing fines for Americans under those guidelines!
While the story didn't go into a great deal of depth, the reporter blamed recent weight gain in Japan on U.S. foods. Standing outside a McDonald's, she compared the typical Japanese meal (vegetables, miso soup, and fish) at 600 calories to the MickeyD's burger, fries, and coke, which comes in at 1300 calories. Woops, sorry guys. I guess it wasn't enough to screw up the health of everyone in our own country. Yeah for globalization.
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CBS Reporter Blows the Lid Off the Swine Flu Media Hype
--"Across the country, state by state, they were testing [for H1N1] until CDC told them not to bother. They were testing, in general, the cases most likely to be believed to have been swine flu based on a doctor's diagnosis of symptoms and risk factors such as travel to Mexico.
These special cases were going to state labs for absolute confirmation with the best test -- not the so-called "rapid testing," but the real confirmation test.
Of those presumed likely swine flu cases out of approximately every hundred of what was tested, only a small fraction were actually swine flu. In every instance, perhaps the biggest number of cases that were swine flu was something like 30%. The smallest number was something like 2% or 3%.
Maybe there's one state where it was just 1%.
The point is, of the vast majority of the presumed swine flu cases recognized by trained physicians, the vast majority were not flu at all. They weren't swine flu or regular flu; they were some other sort of upper respiratory infection."
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Scientist Repeats Swine Flu Lab-Escape Claim in Published Study
Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Adrian Gibbs, the virologist who said in May that swine flu may have escaped from a laboratory, published his findings today, renewing discussion about the origins of the pandemic virus.
The new H1N1 strain, which was discovered in Mexico and the U.S. in April, may be the product of three strains from three continents that swapped genes in a lab or a vaccine-making plant, Gibbs, and fellow Australian scientists wrote in Virology Journal. The authors analyzed the genetic makeup of the virus and found its origin could be more simply explained by human involvement than a coincidence of nature.
Their study, published in a free, online journal reviewed by other scientists, follows debate among researchers six months ago, when Gibbs asked the World Health Organization to consider the hypothesis. After reviewing Gibbs' initial three-page paper, WHO and other organizations concluded the pandemic strain was a naturally occurring virus and not laboratory-derived.
"It is important that the source of the new virus be found if we wish to avoid future pandemics rather than just trying to minimize the consequences after they have emerged," Gibbs and colleagues John Armstrong and Jean Downie said in today's eight- page study.
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UK banks win shock ruling on overdraft fees
LONDON — High Street banks on Wednesday won a landmark Supreme Court appeal saving them from paying out more than a billion pounds in compensation for fees charged for unauthorised overdrafts, prompting a furious reaction from consumer groups.
The ruling, which favoured seven banks and a building society, overturns an earlier verdict obtained by the Office of Fair Trading over the banks' practice of charging people for going over their credit limits.
Consumer groups called the ruling "devastating." It will deal a severe blow to millions of customers whose claims for those charges to be refunded have been put on ice while the test case was put through the courts.
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CIA’s Lost Magic Manual Resurfaces
At the height of the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency paid $3,000 to renowned magician John Mulholland to write a manual on misdirection, concealment, and stagecraft. All known copies of the document — and a related paper, on conveying hidden signals — were believed to be destroyed in 1973. But recently, the manuals resurfaced, and have now been published as "The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception." Topics include working a clandestine partner, slipping a pill into the drink of the unsuspecting, and "surreptitious removal of objects by women."
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Afghan Army Turnover Rate Threatens US War Plans
One in every four combat soldiers quit the Afghan National Army (ANA) during the year ending in September, published data by the U.S. Defense Department and the Inspector General for Reconstruction in Afghanistan reveals.
That high rate of turnover in the ANA, driven by extremely high rates of desertion, spells trouble for the strategy that President Barack Obama has reportedly decided on, which is said to include the dispatch of thousands of additional U.S. military trainers in order to rapidly increase the size of the ANA.
The ANA has been touted by U.S. officials for years as a success story. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal called in his August 2009 strategy paper for increasing the ANA to 134,000 troops by October 2010 and eventually to 240,000.
But an administration source, who insisted on speaking without attribution because of the sensitivity of the subject, confirmed to IPS that 25 percent has been used as the turnover rate for the ANA in internal discussions, and that it is regarded by some officials as a serious problem.
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Audit the Fed? The Battle Against Obama’s Bankers Begins on Capitol Hill
For the first time since the Crash of 2008, there is cause for hope that Wall Street's devouring of the U.S. state can be halted. Republican libertarian Rep. Ron Paul (TX), leading a bipartisan coalition comprising a solid majority of the U.S. House, last week won committee approval of a bill that would open the books of the Federal Reserve, the heretofore unaccountable engine of bankster thievery on a cosmic scale.
The Obama presidency has seen by far the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of the world – some $23.7 trillion as of July, in the form of grants, loans and guarantees to the financial sector. Only a small fraction of this mind-bending mass of money – a sum approaching in volume two years of total U.S. economic activity (GDP) – was legislatively authorized by the U.S. Congress. Aside from the congressionally mandated $700 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) monies, nearly all of the mega-trillions were put at Wall Street's disposal by Barack Obama's executive branch and the quasi-public monstrosity, the Federal Reserve.
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Officials: Census Worker Bound His Hands, Feet and Mouth with Duct Tape, Wrote “Fed” on His Chest and Hung Himself
The Census Bureau employee found dead in September killed himself and staged his death to look like a homicide, state and federal law enforcement officials said Tuesday.
William E. Sparkman Jr. died of asphyxiation and was found with hands, feet and mouth bound with duct tape, a rope around his neck and the word "FED" written on his chest, investigators concluded. Passersby spotted his body on Sept. 12 in a remote area of the Daniel Boone National Forest.
Witnesses said Sparkman had discussed ending his own life, recent federal investigations of public officials in Kentucky and negative perceptions of federal agencies expressed by Clay County, Ky. residents, investigators said.
Sparkman also secured two life insurance policies that would not pay out for suicide shortly before his death, investigators said. Authorities decided to share some, but not all of the details of their investigation on Tuesday due to the high level of national interest.
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The DNA snatchers: Police arresting innocents just to grab genetic details for Big Brother database
Police are arresting innocent people in order to get their hands on as many DNA samples as possible, senior Government advisers revealed last night.
The Human Genetics Commission said the Big Brother tactic was creating a 'spiral of suspicion' among the public.
The panel - which contains some of Britain's leading scientists and academics - said officers should no longer routinely take samples at the point of arresting a suspect.
They also called for all police - including support staff - to place their own DNA on the national database in a show of solidarity with a public being routinely placed under suspicion.
By law, officers are only allowed to make an arrest if they have ' reasonable suspicion' that a person has committed a crime.
But the HGC, which has carried out a lengthy review of the merits of the database, said evidence had emerged of police arresting people purely so they could take their DNA.
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Affidavit From Ex-Editor Details Inner Workings Of Moonie Owned Washington Times
A wide-ranging affidavit by Washington Times editorial page editor Richard Miniter in the lawsuit he is filing against the Times provides a detailed picture of the inner workings of the newspaper that has been rocked in recent weeks by the canning of three executives and the resignation of its top editor.
Budget meetings Miniter attended show that the newspaper relies on a roughly $40 million annual subsidy, delivered weekly, from the Unification Church, he alleges in the affidavit. Church leader Rev. Sun Myung Moon founded the Times and his son Preston controls its parent company. Miniter writes:
70. Based on what I learned in budget meetings, the paper relies on a roughly $40 million annual subsidy from the Unification Church and cannot survive without that subsidy, which is paid in weekly amounts. Of the slightly more $70 million the Washington Times spends annually, less than $37 million comes from advertising and subscription revenue. In addition, the number of paid subscribers has been falling since July 2008 and advertising revenue is plunging as competition from the Washington Examiner and others intensifies.
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Science frauds may face criminal charges
For some time the main publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science Magazine, has effectively banned any papers that dissent with the global warming orthodoxy.
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Apparently there are some alarm bells ringing over at Science's offices. In a breaking news post, they are contemplating criminal liability for the Scientists involved in this scandal.
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GNR-018-2009-11-24: Turkey Coma
Gitmo Nation Roundtable 18
Turkey Coma
Tuesday November 24, 2009
Brian and BaS return to the Gitmo Nation Cardtable to discuss this week's stories from around Gitmo Nation. The first annual Thanksgiving episode luckily doesn't entail too much Thanksgiving talk. Please leave some feedback at http://gnr.noagendaforums.com
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Turkey Coma
Tuesday November 24, 2009
Brian and BaS return to the Gitmo Nation Cardtable to discuss this week's stories from around Gitmo Nation. The first annual Thanksgiving episode luckily doesn't entail too much Thanksgiving talk. Please leave some feedback at http://gnr.noagendaforums.com
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Feds: Former US Prosecutor Helped Rub Out Witnesses For Gangster Clients, Ran Drugs And Call-Girls
From federal prosecutor to accused violent gangster, pimp, and drug-dealer...That's the unusual career trajectory taken, say the Feds, by Paul Bergrin, who was indicted earlier this month in a 39-count racketeering indictment.
In a drama that could have been made for HBO, Bergrin -- a white-collar defense lawyer who once represented, pro bono, a solider accused of abusing Abu Ghraib detainees -- seems to have allowed his gangster clients to drag him into a world of violent crime. And he may have gone a lot further than Maury Levy ever did for Stringer Bell.
Bergrin, a former AUSA with the U.S. attorney's office in New Jersey, is charged with leading a criminal enterprise that used violence, intimidation, and deceit to generate millions of dollars, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. Among the most eye-catching allegations against him:
- That he used a Newark restaurant as a front for a cocaine-distribution network.
- That he oversaw a $1,000-an-hour call-girl ring in New York City.
- That he had a witness killed in one drug case, and hired a hitman to kill another.
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Climategate Exposes the Alarmist Machine
In 2006, just as global cooling was beginning to make things uncomfortable for people who believed that manmade CO2 was warming the earth, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ran a documentary that was meant to bring an increasingly skeptical public back on board with the idea of manmade global warming. Airing on The Fifth Estate, an influential and respected investigative journalism program, "The Denial Machine" attempted to throw mud at any scientist who dared to question the so-called 'consensus' on manmade global warming by implying all such scientists were secretly funded by oil companies.
As the recent exposure of the UK's Climate Research Unit (CRU) and its decidedly unscientific research demonstrates, the truth is almost exactly the opposite. Rather than a vast, oil company-funded conspiracy, skepticism about climate fearmongering appears to have been quite correct: the CRU's bluster was hiding the fact that even they couldn't understand their own climate models or data. However, as their internal documents show, they were being well-funded for making up scare stories about the CO2-induced end of the world. This was part of a process where public grants would routinely go to the researcher with the most dire predictions about the ravages of global warming. Call it The Alarmist Machine.
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Warmists using suicidal animals to push discredited theory
The desperate hyperventilation you hear is the result of the mad scramble by climate change shills to play their few remaining global warming cards. A combination of increasing skepticism by the public, combined with the recent exposure of wholesale collusion on the part of the warmist industry to slant the data and suppress evidence that would disprove their chicken-little theories is echoed by a sudden rash of intemperate and way- over-the-top commercials.
Paul Chesser at the American Spectator provides the most recent projection of warmist fears onto our furry friends.
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Study: CEOs cashed in before Wall Street meltdown
The CEOs of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, the two investment banks that collapsed during last year's financial meltdown, walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation even as the company's shareholders lost everything, says a new report from Harvard Law School.
The top five executives at Bear Stearns made a total of $1.4 billion from bonuses and equity sales between 2000 and 2008, while the top five executives at Lehman Brothers made around $1 billion during that same period -- the period during which the companies ran up the bad investments that would see them collapse in 2008, according to "The Wages of Failure" (PDF), a report from Harvard Law School's Program on Corporate Governance.
"The people who invested in these companies should feel betrayed," Nell Minow, a compensation expert at the Corporate Library, told NBC's Lisa Myers. "The whole idea of capitalism is that the people provide the capital and the executives take care of it for us. In this case, the people provided the capital, and the executives took it."
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More weather hypocrisy at the New York Times
How do you spell hypocrisy? Try N-e-w-Y-o-r-k-T-i-m-e-s.
Yep, the paper that triumphantly published everything from The Pentagon Papers to all types of highly classified documents on eavesdropping and wire tapping, compromising the safety and security of all Americans, especially those in the military and spies, while piously basking in the glory from the hate America first crowd for doing so, has suddenly become circumspect. Or at least one of its reporters has.
The Times' earth blogger, Andrew Revkin, of Dot Earth: Nine Billion People. One Planet, referring to the hacked climate documents demonstrating hack science has decided that because
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Yep, the paper that triumphantly published everything from The Pentagon Papers to all types of highly classified documents on eavesdropping and wire tapping, compromising the safety and security of all Americans, especially those in the military and spies, while piously basking in the glory from the hate America first crowd for doing so, has suddenly become circumspect. Or at least one of its reporters has.
The Times' earth blogger, Andrew Revkin, of Dot Earth: Nine Billion People. One Planet, referring to the hacked climate documents demonstrating hack science has decided that because
The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won't be posted here.
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Hurricane Katrina Even More of a Man-Made Disaster Than We Thought
This week, a federal district judge finally ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers was indeed responsible for part of the devastation in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward and parts of St. Bernard Parish.
The failure of the Corps to recognize the hazards wetland destruction had created was "clearly negligent on the part of the Corps," said U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr. "Furthermore, the Corps not only knew, but admitted by 1988 [the threats to human life] and yet it did not act in time to prevent the catastrophic disaster that ensued."
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Obama to deploy 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan, report says
"After completing a rigorous final meeting, President Obama has the information he wants and needs to make his decision and he will announce that decision within days," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
And that troop increase is likely to be large. According to veteran intelligence reporter Jonathan Landay at McClatchy's Newspapers, the White House plans to dispatch some 34,000 additional troops -- slightly more than half the number requested by Afghan commander Stanley McChrystal.
"President Barack Obama met Monday evening with his national security team to finalize a plan to dispatch some 34,000 additional U.S. troops over the next year to what he's called 'a war of necessity' in Afghanistan," officials purportedly told the newswire.
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Obama Quietly Backs PATRIOT Act Provisions
With the health care debate preoccupying the mainstream media, it has gone virtually unreported that the Barack Obama administration is quietly supporting renewal of provisions of the George W. Bush-era USA PATRIOT Act that civil libertarians say infringe on basic freedoms.
And it is reportedly doing so over the objections of some prominent Democrats.
When a panicky Congress passed the act 45 days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, three contentious parts of the law were scheduled to expire at the end of next month, and opponents of these sections have been pushing Congress to substitute new provisions with substantially strengthened civil liberties protections.
But with the apparent approval of the Obama White House and a number of Republicans – and over the objections of liberal Senate Democrats including Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Dick Durbin of Illinois – the Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to extend the three provisions with only minor changes.
Those provisions would leave unaltered the power of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to seize records and to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail in the course of counterterrorism investigations.
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Obama using Blackwater for assassinations in Pakistan
The Obama administration is using mercenaries with the firm formerly known as Blackwater to kidnap and assassinate high value targets in Pakistan, according to a published report.
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The program, operated out of the US Joint Special Operations Command, "is so 'compartmentalized' that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence," an unnamed source with direct knowledge of the program told The Nation reporter Jeremy Scahill.
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Inhofe to call for hearing into CRU, U.N. climate change research
The publication of more than 1,000 private e-mails that climate change skeptics say proves the threat is exaggerated has prompted one key Republican senator to call for an investigation into their research.
In an interview with The Washington Times on Monday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) announced he would probe whether the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not."
He added that it was "interesting" that the e-mails surfaced only weeks before an important climate change summit would bring world leaders to Copenhagen.
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Audit the Fed Attached as an Amendment
By Ron Paul
This was a major triumph for transparency and accountability in government. With unprecedented turmoil in the financial markets, the people are demanding to know and understand the extent of the Federal Reserve's involvement in the creation of out-of-control business cycles, who they are helping, and how. We need information. The excuses for not giving out this information are flimsy at best, and the passage of this amendment is a major step to finally getting at the truth.
Pressure mounts for Geithner to resign
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner is making few new friends in Congress these days, as a growing litany of bipartisan critics are questioning whether he should keep his job.
Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican House member on the Joint Economic Committee, on Thursday was the latest lawmaker to call for Mr. Geithner to resign, saying the nation has lost confidence in the Obama administration's ability to handle the economy.
"For the sake of our jobs, will you step down from your post?" Mr. Brady asked Mr. Geithner during a hearing of the panel.
Mr. Geithner, who was appointed by Mr. Obama and took office in January, shrugged off the request, saying that it was "a great privilege for me to serve this president."
"I agree with almost nothing in what you said," the secretary added. "And I think almost nothing of what you said represents a fair and accurate perception of where this economy is today."
Another Texas Republican, Rep. Michael C. Burgess, went a step further than Mr. Brady in his criticism of the secretary.
"I don't think that you should be fired; I thought you should have never been hired," Mr. Burgess told Mr. Geithner.
Mr. Burgess said questionable actions in Mr. Geithner's past, such his admission shortly after his nomination that he owed back taxes, made him unsuitable for the job from the beginning.
"It did not leave the American people with a good feeling about the person who was going to be responsible for this economic recovery," he said.
Climategate scientists settle on a ludicrous defense
With the world in possession of an unprecedented, absolutely massive, easily searchable database of "context", they're going with this defense: we're being quoted out of context.
Hacked E-Mails Fuel Global Warming Debate | Privacy Digest
Hacked E-Mails Fuel Global Warming Debate | Privacy Digest
Another e-mail from Jones dated last year with the subject line "IPCC and FOI" is a request to Michael Mann, asking him to delete certain e-mails. Bloggers allege that Jones was trying to destroy data that had been requested under the Freedom of Information Act.
Jones wasn't available for comment. Mann told Threat Level that he never deleted any e-mails and doesn't know the context under which Jones made the request. ... [Gavin Schmidt]: "It's just scientists talking about science, and they're talking relatively openly as people in private e-mails generally are freer with their thoughts than they would be in a public forum. The few quotes that are being pulled out [are out] of context. People are using language used in science and interpreting it in a completely different way."
Trenberth agrees.
"If you read all of these e-mails, you will be surprised at the integrity of these scientists," he says. "The unfortunate thing about this is that people can cherry pick and take things out of context."
Britain's new Internet law -- as bad as everyone's been saying, and worse. Much, much worse.
The British government has brought down its long-awaited Digital Economy Bill, and it's perfectly useless and terrible. It consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry (including the "three-strikes" rule that allows your entire family to be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial), as well as a plan to beat the hell out of the video-game industry with a new, even dumber rating system (why is it acceptable for the government to declare that some forms of artwork have to be mandatorily labelled as to their suitability for kids? And why is it only some media? Why not paintings? Why not novels? Why not modern dance or ballet or opera?).
So it's bad. £50,000 fines if someone in your house is accused of filesharing. A duty on ISPs to spy on all their customers in case they find something that would help the record or film industry sue them (ISPs who refuse to cooperate can be fined £250,000).
But that's just for starters. The real meat is in the story we broke yesterday: Peter Mandelson, the unelected Business Secretary, would have to power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes. And he says he's planning to appoint private militias financed by rightsholder groups who will have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the network, demand the removal of files or the blocking of websites, and Mandelson will have the power to invent any penalty, including jail time, for any transgression he deems you are guilty of. And of course, Mandelson's successor in the next government would also have this power.
So it's bad. £50,000 fines if someone in your house is accused of filesharing. A duty on ISPs to spy on all their customers in case they find something that would help the record or film industry sue them (ISPs who refuse to cooperate can be fined £250,000).
But that's just for starters. The real meat is in the story we broke yesterday: Peter Mandelson, the unelected Business Secretary, would have to power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes. And he says he's planning to appoint private militias financed by rightsholder groups who will have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the network, demand the removal of files or the blocking of websites, and Mandelson will have the power to invent any penalty, including jail time, for any transgression he deems you are guilty of. And of course, Mandelson's successor in the next government would also have this power.
Prison Factories
The Justice Department reported in August that there are nearly 1.6 million men and women incarcerated in the United States -- currently the highest incarceration rate in the entire world. This startling figure tops off a decade of rapid expansion of America's prison population, fueled by a "war on drugs" that is steadily undermining the rights so succinctly expressed in the Bill of Rights more than 200 years ago.
As 1995 drew to a close, one out of every 167 Americans was in prison or jail, compared to one out of 320 in 1985, when the crack cocaine trade began to proliferate. The total number of inmates has more than doubled in the past decade, and we just can't seem to build enough prisons to keep them all in.
Add the trend towards private prison facility management and corporate use of prison labor, and you have an extremely unsettling social situation. Are we witnessing the creation of a slave labor force for the corporate New World Order?
Quite possibly, if the Oakhill Correctional Institute in Dane County, Wisconsin serves as a model. Seventeen inmates crowded in a makeshift basement factory in that facility crank out over a million dollars' worth of office chairs per year, in exchange for wages ranging from twenty cents to $1.50 per hour.
The operation is run by Badger State Industries, the Wisconsin prison industries program, which employs 600 inmates and which raked in a $1.2 million profit in 1995. In the past, to protect manufacturers from unfair competition, Wisconsin allowed sale of prison-made goods only to state and local government agencies. But Governor Tommy Thompson's new state budget allows commercial entities to use prison facilities and labor for manufacturing purposes. The money will be used to pay for the costs of incarcerating the prisoners -- including the ones who work in the factories.
Wisconsin is following the lead of other states, such as California, Tennessee, Kansas, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Nevada and Iowa, which have incorporated prisoners into the labor force, placing artificial downward pressure on wages. Thousands of state and federal prisoners are currently generating more than $1 billion per year in sales for private businesses, often competing directly with the private sector labor force. The Correctional Industries Association predicts that by the year 2000, 30 percent of America's inmate population will labor to create nearly $9 billion in sales for private business interests.
As 1995 drew to a close, one out of every 167 Americans was in prison or jail, compared to one out of 320 in 1985, when the crack cocaine trade began to proliferate. The total number of inmates has more than doubled in the past decade, and we just can't seem to build enough prisons to keep them all in.
Add the trend towards private prison facility management and corporate use of prison labor, and you have an extremely unsettling social situation. Are we witnessing the creation of a slave labor force for the corporate New World Order?
Quite possibly, if the Oakhill Correctional Institute in Dane County, Wisconsin serves as a model. Seventeen inmates crowded in a makeshift basement factory in that facility crank out over a million dollars' worth of office chairs per year, in exchange for wages ranging from twenty cents to $1.50 per hour.
The operation is run by Badger State Industries, the Wisconsin prison industries program, which employs 600 inmates and which raked in a $1.2 million profit in 1995. In the past, to protect manufacturers from unfair competition, Wisconsin allowed sale of prison-made goods only to state and local government agencies. But Governor Tommy Thompson's new state budget allows commercial entities to use prison facilities and labor for manufacturing purposes. The money will be used to pay for the costs of incarcerating the prisoners -- including the ones who work in the factories.
Wisconsin is following the lead of other states, such as California, Tennessee, Kansas, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Nevada and Iowa, which have incorporated prisoners into the labor force, placing artificial downward pressure on wages. Thousands of state and federal prisoners are currently generating more than $1 billion per year in sales for private businesses, often competing directly with the private sector labor force. The Correctional Industries Association predicts that by the year 2000, 30 percent of America's inmate population will labor to create nearly $9 billion in sales for private business interests.
What’s in your H1N1 flu vaccine?
Chris Shaw wasn't always skeptical about vaccines. The neuroscientist at the University of British Columbia had his teenage son vaccinated with most of the recommended shots. But then he started studying some of the ingredients commonly found in vaccines.
What he discovered caused him to go cold turkey on all shots for his six-year-old daughter. And that includes the vaccine for the H1N1 flu.
"I am not convinced H1N1 is sufficiently hazardous to most people to risk the potential downside of the vaccine," Shaw said over the phone from his office in the research pavilion at the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority.
Shaw isn't an easily dismissed vaccine conspiracy theorist. He is a leading expert on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease) and Parkinson's disease. While investigating unusually high rates of ALS and other neurological disorders among veterans who have Gulf War syndrome, he found evidence that the cause may have been aluminum salt, an ingredient in the cocktail of vaccines given to soldiers before deployment.
Although aluminum salt isn't present in the H1N1 vaccine, Shaw's discovery made him concerned about other vaccines, including the swine-flu shot. He isn't alone in his thoughts.
The War on Soy: Why the 'Miracle Food' May Be a Health Risk and Environmental Nightmare
These days, you can get soy versions of just about any meat -- from hot dogs to buffalo wings. If you're lactose-intolerant you can still enjoy soy ice-cream and soy milk on your cereal. If you're out for a hike and need a quick boost of energy, you can nibble on soy candy bars.
Soy is a lucrative industry. According to Soyfoods Association of North America, from 1992 to 2008, sales of soy foods have increased from $300 million to $4 billion. From sales numbers to medical endorsements, it would seem that soy has reached a kind of miracle food status.
In 2000 the American Heart Association gave soy the thumbs up and the FDA proclaimed: "Diets low in saturated fat and cholesterol that include 25 grams of soy protein a day may reduce the risk of heart disease." Over the course of the last decade medical professionals have touted its benefits in fighting not just cardiovascular disease, but cancers, osteoporosis and diabetes.
But soy's glory days may be coming to an end. New research is questioning its health benefits and even pointing out some potential risks. Although definitive evidence may be many years down the road, the American Heart Association has quietly withdrawn its support. And some groups are waging an all-out war, warning that soy can lead to certain kinds of cancers, lowered testosterone levels, and early-onset puberty in girls.
Most of the soy eaten today is also genetically modified, which may pose another set of health risks. The environmental implications of soy production, including massive deforestation, increased use of pesticides and threats to water and soil, are providing more fodder for soy's detractors.
All of this has many people wondering if they should even be eating it at all. And you are most likely eating it. Even if you're not a vegetarian or an avid tofu fan, there is a good chance you're still eating soy. Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved, explains that soy is now an ingredient in three-quarters of processed food on the market and just about everything you'd find in a fast food restaurant. It's used as filler in hamburgers, as vegetable oil and an emulsifier. It's in salad dressing, macaroni and cheese, and chicken nuggets.
"Even if you read every label and avoid cardboard boxes, you are likely to find soy in your supplements and vitamins (look out for vitamin E derived from soy oil), in foods such as canned tuna, soups, sauces, breads, meats (injected under poultry skin), and chocolate, and in pet food and body-care products," wrote Mary Vance for Terrain Magazine. "It hides in tofu dogs under aliases such as textured vegetable protein, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, and lecithin--which is troubling, since the processing required to hydrolyze soy protein into vegetable protein produces excitotoxins such as glutamate (think MSG) and aspartate (a component of aspartame), which cause brain-cell death."
US builds up its bases in oil-rich South America
The United States is massively building up its potential for nuclear and non-nuclear strikes in Latin America and the Caribbean by acquiring unprecedented freedom of action in seven new military, naval and air bases in Colombia. The development – and the reaction of Latin American leaders to it – is further exacerbating America's already fractured relationship with much of the continent.
The new US push is part of an effort to counter the loss of influence it has suffered recently at the hands of a new generation of Latin American leaders no longer willing to accept Washington's political and economic tutelage. President Rafael Correa, for instance, has refused to prolong the US armed presence in Ecuador, and US forces have to quit their base at the port of Manta by the end of next month.
So Washington turned to Colombia, which has not gone down well in the region. The country has received military aid worth $4.6bn (£2.8bn) from the US since 2000, despite its poor human rights record. Colombian forces regularly kill the country's indigenous people and other civilians, and last year raided the territory of its southern neighbour, Ecuador, causing at least 17 deaths.
President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who has not forgotten that US officers were present in government offices in Caracas in 2002 when he was briefly overthrown in a military putsch, warned this month that the bases agreement could mean the possibility of war with Colombia.
Red Alert: The Second Wave of The Financial Tsunami
The Irreconcilable Differences
Some two decades ago, it was decided by the global financial elites that the framework for the global economy shall consist of:
1) A global derivative-based financial system, controlled by the US Federal Reserve Bank and its associate global banks in the developed countries.
2) The re-location from the West to the East in the production of goods, principally to China and India to "feed" the developed economies.
The entire system was built on a simple principle, that of a FED-controlled global reserve currency which will be the engine for growth for the global economy. It is essentially an imperialist economic principle.
Once we grasp this fundamental truth, Bernanke's boast that the "US can produce as many US dollars as it wishes at no cost" takes on a different dimension.
I have talked to so many economists and when asked what is the crux of the present financial problem, they all respond in unison, "it is the global imbalances… the West consumes too much while the East saves too much and consumes not enough". This is exemplified by the huge US trade deficits on the one part and China's massive surpluses on the other.
Incredible wisdom and almost everyone echoes this mantra. The recent concluded APEC Summit was no different. This mantra was repeated as well as the call for freer trade between trading nations.
This is a grand hoax. All the current leaders on the world's stage are corrupted to the rotten core and as such have no interest to call a spade a spade and expose the inherent contradictions within the existing financial system.
The call for a multi-polar world is meaningless when the entire global financial system is based on the unipolar US dollar reserve currency. This is the inherent contradiction within the present system and the problems associated with it cannot be resolved by another global reserve currency based on the IMF's Special Drawing Rights as advocated by some countries. It was stillborn, the very moment it was conceived!
The leaders of China, Japan and the oil producing countries of the Middle East are all cursing and pissing about the current situation, but they don't have the courage of their convictions to spell it out to their countrymen that they have been conned by the financial spin masters from the Fed acting on the instructions from Goldman Sachs.
Tell me which leader would dare admit that they have exchanged the nation's wealth for toilet papers?
The toilet paper currency pantomime continues.
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Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out
At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average.
Ironically, climate change appears to have stalled in the run-up to the upcoming world summit in the Danish capital, where thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists plan to negotiate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Billions of euros are at stake in the negotiations.
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Linux Fights Fascism
Fascism is Big Business plus Big Government and it obviously didn't die with WWII. Fascism is flourishing in our financial system, in education, energy, medicine, you name it.
Open Source is fighting back. Freedom is the enemy of Fascism and Linux is about Freedom. Open software developers aren't just developing software they are fighting for freedom of expression and our basic human right to contol our own lives.
Those who tell us what we can and can't do with the hardware and software we purchase are trying to obsessively control the world around them and us with it, which is the fundament of Fascism.
Contributing to Open Source Software is fighting for Freedom and fighting for Freedom is contributing to Open Source Software. It might seem silly and many will laugh but the battleground for human rights is in the little details.
Does it matter when you ride the bus where you sit? Is it worth fighting for?
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By Anthony Fox
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By Anthony Fox
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For lively discussion on this topic and more go to NoAgendaForums.com and NoAgendaChat.com.
Pentagon Manhunters: America's New Murder, Inc.?
When CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed that for eight years the Agency ran a secret program to hunt down and kill top leaders of the Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets known as al-Qaeda, it set off a political firestorm.
While congressional Democrats and Republicans diverted the public's attention with claims and counterclaims whether or not the Company had "misled" Congress by not disclosing the program's existence, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported months earlier that former Vice President Richard Cheney had stood up an "executive assassination ring."
According to Hersh, that fully-operational program was run, not by the CIA, but by the Pentagon's secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), a subunit attached to United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). During a "Great Conversations" event last March at the University of Minnesota, Hersh told the audience:
Old news right? Well, not entirely.
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Read the rest at:BlacklistedNews.com
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While congressional Democrats and Republicans diverted the public's attention with claims and counterclaims whether or not the Company had "misled" Congress by not disclosing the program's existence, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported months earlier that former Vice President Richard Cheney had stood up an "executive assassination ring."
According to Hersh, that fully-operational program was run, not by the CIA, but by the Pentagon's secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), a subunit attached to United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). During a "Great Conversations" event last March at the University of Minnesota, Hersh told the audience:
"Congress has no oversight of it. It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.
"Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us." (Eric Black, "Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh describes 'executive assassination ring'," MinnPost.com, March 11, 2009)
Old news right? Well, not entirely.
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Read the rest at:BlacklistedNews.com
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Government Debt Default, How (Not If) Will it Happen
The crisis of 2008 has led to a revival of interest in the Austrian School's theory of the business cycle. Why? Because several Austrian School economists and newsletter writers warned of the looming crisis. They did so two years before it hit. These predictions were dismissed as radical and out of touch. The most widely viewed debate over this matter – after the fact – took place on CNBC in 2006. Peter Schiff warned of the recession. Arthur Laffer dismissed it.
Finally, the Wall Street Journal ran an article on Mises' prediction of the Great Depression. The article ran on November 6, 2009. Better late than never.
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Read the rest at:MarketOracle.co.uk
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Protecting Afghan Opium Fields, Bribing Taliban
Not content with savaging American taxpayers with two huge new financial burdens during an economic recession, in the form of health care reform and cap and trade, close allies of Barack Obama have proposed a new war surtax that will force Americans to foot the bill for the cost of protecting opium fields in Afghanistan, paying off drug lords, and bribing the Taliban.
Warning that the cost of occupying Afghanistan is a threat to the Democrats' plan to overhaul health care, lawmakers have announced their plan to make Americans pay an additional war tax that will be taken directly from their income, never mind the fact that around 36 per cent of federal taxes already go to paying for national defense.
"Regardless of whether one favors the war or not, if it is to be fought, it ought to be paid for," the lawmakers, all prominent Democratic allies of Obama, said in a joint statement on the "Share The Sacrifice Act of 2010 (PDF)," reports AFP.
The move is being led by the appropriately named House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey, Representative John Murtha, who chairs that panel's defense subcommittee; and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank.
The tax would apply to anyone earning as little as $22,600 per year in 2011.
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Read the rest at:GlobalResearch.ca
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Jobs 'Saved or Created' in Congressional Districts That Don't Exist
Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.
There's one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts.
And ABC News has found many more entries for projects like this in places that are incorrectly identified.
Late Monday, officials with the Recovery Board created to track the stimulus spending, said the mistakes in crediting nonexistent congressional districts were caused by human error.
"We report what the recipients submit to us," said Ed Pound, Communications Director for the Board.
Pound told ABC News the board receives declarations from the recipients - state governments, federal agencies and universities - of stimulus money about what program is being funded.
"Some recipients clearly don't know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on jobs numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes," Pound said.
The issue has raised hackles on Capitol Hill.
Rep. David Obey, D-Wisc, who chairs the powerful House appropriations Committee, issued a paper statement demanding that the recovery.gov Web site be updated.
"The inaccuracies on recovery.gov that have come to light are outrageous and the Administration owes itself, the Congress, and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes."
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There's one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts.
And ABC News has found many more entries for projects like this in places that are incorrectly identified.
Late Monday, officials with the Recovery Board created to track the stimulus spending, said the mistakes in crediting nonexistent congressional districts were caused by human error.
"We report what the recipients submit to us," said Ed Pound, Communications Director for the Board.
Pound told ABC News the board receives declarations from the recipients - state governments, federal agencies and universities - of stimulus money about what program is being funded.
"Some recipients clearly don't know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on jobs numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes," Pound said.
The issue has raised hackles on Capitol Hill.
Rep. David Obey, D-Wisc, who chairs the powerful House appropriations Committee, issued a paper statement demanding that the recovery.gov Web site be updated.
"The inaccuracies on recovery.gov that have come to light are outrageous and the Administration owes itself, the Congress, and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes."
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Read the rest at:InformationLiberation.com
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Climate Skeptics See ‘Smoking Gun’ in Researchers’ Leaked E-Mails
Hackers broke into the servers at a prominent British climate research center and leaked years worth of e-mail messages onto the Web, including one with a mysterious reference to a plan to "hide the decline," apparently in temperatures.
The Internet is abuzz about the leaked data from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (commonly called Hadley CRU), which has acknowledged the theft of 61MB of confidential data.
Climate change skeptics describe the leaked data as a "smoking gun," evidence of collusion among climatologists and manipulation of data to support the widely held view that climate change is caused by the actions of mankind. The files were reportedly released on a Russian file-serve by an anonymous poster calling himself "FOIA."
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Read the rest at:Aftermath News
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$4.8 trillion - Interest on U.S. debt
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Here's a new way to think about the U.S. government's epic borrowing: More than half of the $9 trillion in debt that Uncle Sam is expected to build up over the next decade will be interest.
More than half. In fact, $4.8 trillion.
If that's hard to grasp, here's another way to look at why that's a problem.
In 2015 alone, the estimated interest due - $533 billion - is equal to a third of the federal income taxes expected to be paid that year, said Charles Konigsberg, chief budget counsel of the Concord Coalition, a deficit watchdog group.
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European Union gets medieval with ultra-secret elections
What does the ultra-secretive Bilderberger Club, Henry Kissinger, and closed-door meetings made up of anonymous politicians, bankers and industrialists have in common with transparency, democratic procedure and open societies?
If you answered 'nothing' you would find yourself in rather cozy company. In fact, the European Union's secretive election process more resembles a Vatican conclave to elect a new pope than a modern experiment in democratic procedure. Indeed, the only thing the EU needs to do now is build a smokestack in Brussels so that a puff of smoke will tell us when their arcane ritual is complete (Note: a top-ranking EU official will defend the process behind the election process at the end of this article).
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Read the rest at:Dprogram.net
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The Goal Is Freedom: The Mandated Health Insurance Outrage
With the introduction of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's 2,074-page health insurance nationalization bill, we can be thankful for one thing at least. It will most likely be the last bill of its kind introduced this year. Who'd have time to wade through another?
This doesn't mean there is anything in the bill to be thankful for. Like its Senate predecessors and House counterpart, it should offend any advocate of liberty and good economic sense.
First and foremost among its defects is the individual health insurance mandate: Every individual would be forced to buy government-defined comprehensive medical coverage (or to have it bought by one's employer). A fine up to $750 awaits anyone who defies the mandate.
As Shikha Dalmia points out in Forbes this week, the individual insurance mandate is the major outrage in the whole "health care reform" scam. I would say it's the keystone. Remove it and most of the rest crumbles to the ground.
Who do these politicians think they are? Our lives are not theirs to dispose of.
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Read the rest at: TheFreemanOnline.org
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Pharmaceutical Giant Paid $500,000 to Psychiatrist Who Used Chicago's Poor as Guinea Pigs
"If he is in fact worth half a billion dollars to (AstraZeneca)," the company's U.S. sales chief wrote in 2001, "we need to put him in a different category." To avoid scaring Reinstein away, he said, the firm should answer "his every query and satisfy any of his quirky behaviors."
Putting aside its concerns, AstraZeneca would continue its relationship with Reinstein, paying him $490,000 over a decade to travel the nation promoting its best-selling antipsychotic drug, Seroquel. In return, Reinstein provided the company a vast customer base: thousands of indigent, mentally ill residents in Chicago-area nursing homes.
During this period, Reinstein also faced accusations that he overmedicated and neglected patients who took a variety of drugs. But his research and promotional work went on, including studies and presentations examining many of the antipsychotics he prescribed on his daily rounds.
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Read the rest at: AlterNet.org
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CIA Secret 'Torture' Prison Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy
The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S. intelligence official told ABC News this week.
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Where affluent Lithuanians once rode show horses and sipped coffee at a café, the CIA installed a concrete structure where it could use harsh tactics to interrogate up to eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists at a time.
"The activities in that prison were illegal," said human rights researcher John Sifton. "They included various forms of torture, including sleep deprivation, forced standing, painful stress positions."
Lithuanian officials provided ABC News with the documents of what they called a CIA front company, Elite, LLC, which purchased the property and built the "black site" in 2004.
Lithuania agreed to allow the CIA prison after President George W. Bush visited the country in 2002 and pledged support for Lithuania's efforts to join NATO.
"The new members of NATO were so grateful for the U.S. role in getting them into that organization that they would do anything the U.S. asked for during that period," said former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, now an ABC News consultant. "They were eager to please and eager to be cooperative on security and on intelligence matters."
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