Another Blow to Guantánamo Plan

The Senate Armed Services Committee voted to bar the construction of a military detention center in Thomson, Ill., in a further blow to the Obama administration’s fading hopes of shuttering the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The committee met behind closed doors on Thursday to vote on amendments to the 2011 national defense authorization bill. On Friday, it released a summary of the results, which included the prison issue. The Obama administration has proposed spending $350 million to renovate a prison in Thomson and transfer dozens of Guantánamo detainees there. The House version of the bill contains a similar restriction, so the Senate committee’s decision means the final package is virtually certain to include such a ban.

Source: NY Times

Roundup Kills More Than Weeds

To protect our health, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets maximum legal residue levels for every pesticide, for dozens of crops. But a new study in the respected journal Toxicology has shown that, at low levels that are currently legal on our food, Roundup could cause DNA damage, endocrine disruption and cell death. The study, conducted by French researchers, shows glyphosate-based herbicides are toxic to human reproductive cells.

The potential real-life risks from this are infertility, low sperm count, and prostate or testicular cancer. But, “Symptoms could be so subtle, they would be easy to overlook,” says Theo Colborn, president of The Endocrine Disruption Exchange. “Timing is of critical importance. If a pregnant woman were to be exposed early in gestation, it looks like these herbicides could have an effect during the sexual differentiation stage. They really lock in on testosterone.” The bottom line is more research is needed before we can fully understand the effects of glyphosate exposure.

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China Government Requests Censorship On Foxconn News

According to one of the Hong Kong English newspaper report, the Chinese Government and authorities request all press media in China to use the official news from Xinhua when they report Foxconn suicide case. All news website have to remove all special reports on Foxconn and major forums are requested to delete related posts, and no new post is allowed to go public. So at the moment, major press media in China are only allowed to republish the news from three sources, Xinhua News Agency which is owned by the Government, the Government Press Release and Foxconn’s own statement.


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The Least Trusted Name in News

AC360: See Anderson Cooper Run for Ratings

If you would like to know why the network that calls itself "the most trusted name in news" is the least trustworthy, Freedom Magazine brings you, in living color, what Anderson Cooper refused to show.

With the ratings for Anderson Cooper 360 in a free fall over the past year and rumors rampant he is bailing out for another network, CNN had one final act of desperation up its sleeve.

CNN became the latest media outlet to buy into the increasingly over-the-top, bizarre tales spread by four admitted liars leading a self-proclaimed "posse" of expelled former Church of Scientology staffers. Their yearlong orchestrated campaign exploits the media to run stories which attack their former Church, attack their former friends and even attack their own families—parents, wives and children. It's all part of an effort to aggrandize themselves and make money by promoting everything from their self-published rants to their perverted style of psychological counseling and "deprogramming."

In doing so, the once-great network—that nearly 20 years ago set the standard for journalism during the Persian Gulf War—broadcast five nights of so-called reports on the Church of Scientology, becoming the mouthpiece for a criminal group of cyberterrorists. It used salacious, false allegations to try to salvage a program whose ratings have been so anemic that at times only about a half-million viewers tune in—roughly the population of a mid-size city.

Far from conducting an actual investigation, CNN was simply the latest stop on the "posse's" anti-Scientology media tour. There was literally no original reporting—just a regurgitation of long-disproven allegations that sourced from the Internet, and which dozens of outraged Church officials refuted with statements sworn under oath. This should have raised the antenna of any seasoned journalist, especially one who portrays himself as a skeptic, as Anderson Cooper does.

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Why Antidepressants Don't Work for Treating Depression

Here's some depressing recent medical news: Antidepressants don't work. What's even more depressing is that the pharmaceutical industry and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have deliberately deceived us into believing that they DO work. As a physician, this is frightening to me. Depression is among the most common problems seen in primary-care medicine and soon will be the second leading cause of disability in this country.

The study I'm talking about was published in The New England Journal of Medicine. It found that drug companies selectively publish studies on antidepressants. They have published nearly all the studies that show benefit -- but almost none of the studies that show these drugs are ineffective. (1)

That warps our view of antidepressants, leading us to think that they do work. And it has fueled the tremendous growth in the use of psychiatric medications, which are now the second leading class of drugs sold, after cholesterol-lowering drugs.

The problem is even worse than it sounds, because the positive studies hardly showed benefit in the first place. For example, 40 percent of people taking a placebo (sugar pill) got better, while only 60 percent taking the actual drug had improvement in their symptoms. Looking at it another way, 80 percent of people get better with just a placebo.

That leaves us with a big problem -- millions of depressed people with no effective treatments being offered by most conventional practitioners. However, there are treatments available. Functional medicine provides a unique and effective way to treat depression and other psychological problems. Today I will review seven steps you can take to work through your depression without drugs. But before we get to that, let's take a closer look at depression.

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Worth Re-reading This Memorial Day: War is a Racket by Gen Smedley Butler

CHAPTER ONE

War Is A Racket

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

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Monsanto's Poison Pills for Haiti

"A new earthquake" is what Haitian peasant farmer leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) called the news that Monsanto will be dumping 60,000 seed sacks (475 tons) of hybrid corn seeds and vegetable seeds on Haiti, seeds doused with highly toxic fungicides such as thiram, known to be extremely dangerous to farm workers. Hybrid seeds, like GMO seeds (in contrast to Creole heirloom or organic seeds) require lots of water, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides. In addition, if a small farmer tries to save hybrid seeds after harvest, hybrid seeds usually do not "breed true" or grow very well in the second season, forcing the now-indentured peasant to buy seeds from Monsanto or one of the other hybrid/GMO seed monopolies in perpetuity. Monsanto wanted initially to dump GMO seeds on Haiti, but even the corrupt Haitian government knew that this would spark a rebellion, so Monsanto cleverly decided to dump hybrid seeds instead. The Haitian small farmers organization has committed to burning Monsanto's seeds, and has called for a march to protest the corporation's presence in Haiti on June 4, for World Environment Day.

Since gaining their independence from France more than 200 years ago in a bloody slave uprising, Haitian farmers have wisely protected their seeds and nurtured native crop varieties. They know that true food security is maintained by farmers who save, trade and breed indigenous seeds using traditional organic methods.

As Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the Executive Director of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP), wrote earlier this year, "We need to establish seed banks and have silos where we can store our Creole seeds. Local, organic seeds are the basis of food sovereignty. It's urgent that Haitians buy local seeds. ... What's the danger we face today? It's that food aid from USAID and others is getting dumped in the country."

Monsanto's seeds will be distributed by the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) WINNER program. USAID is a tax-payer funded agency that promotes the United States' interests abroad. It is run by Dr. Rajiv Shah, an Obama appointee that the Organic Consumers Association opposed because of his work with the explicitly pro-GMO Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation works closely with Monsanto.

Please click here to contact President Obama and USAID administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah today to tell them to support Haitian farmers' demands for sustainability and food security, not Monsanto's poison pill.

USAID and Monsanto's poison pill for Haiti is designed to the make the island nation into a slave colony once again, except this time they won't be slaves for France, but rather for Monsanto and corporate agribusiness. Join the Haitian people and the growing global movement of Millions Against Monsanto.

You can donate to the distribution of local, organic seeds within Haiti by clicking here.

Follow Ronnie Cummins on Twitter: www.twitter.com/OrganicConsumer

Source: Huffington Post

GM’S CON GAME

“the money GM used to repay its bailout loan had come from a tax-payer financed escrow account held for the automaker at the Treasury.”

On April 21, the Wall Street Journal published an op ed by Ed Whitacre, CEO of General Motors, claiming GM had paid back the money it had borrowed from the government — plus interest. GM ads boasted of their rapid repayment of the company’s TARP loan debts. (The GM Bailout: Paid Back in Full)

“Today, General Motors is announcing that it has made a payment of $5.8 billion to the U.S. Treasury and Export Development Canada,” wrote Whitacre. “We’re paying back– in full, with interest, years ahead of schedule– loans made to help fund the new GM.”

Wow, I said to no one, “I can’t believe this.” GM paying back loans, as the ad says, “less than a year after emerging from bankruptcy.”

Even President Obama agreed. “Many believed this was a fool’s errand. Many feared we would be throwing good money after bad: that taxpayers would lose most of their investment and that these companies would soon fail regardless,” said Obama. (Presidential address, May 1)

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Judiciary chairman seeks answers from Facebook, Google

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) sent letters on Friday to Facebook and Google asking them to respond to privacy concerns that have arisen in connection with their services.

The Judiciary Committee is considering whether to hold hearings that could result in legislation regulating electronic communications and online security. The Federal Trade Commission is already looking into the privacy policies of Facebook and other social networks, however, and it is not clear whether Conyers intends to launch his own investigation.

The letter (pdf) to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asks for "a detailed explanation of the information about Facebook users that your company has provided to third parties without the knowledge of the account holders." It also requests that he "detail how the new policies Facebook is adopting differ from past practices, including whether the burden is on the user to opt in or out of the relevant privacy settings."

According to the Associated Press, a Facebook spokesperson "said the company looks forward to meeting with Conyers' staff to explain its privacy practices and policies."

The Judiciary Committee's concern over Google involves its recent admission that the "Street View" cars which it sends out to map the locations of wireless access points have also been capturing private data sent over those networks. Conyers' letter (pdf) to Google CEO Eric Schmidt asks the company to retain that data while preventing its further dissemination pending review.

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Iraq: Paralyzed, Dejected, Corrupt

Robbing the State

Seven years after the US and Britain invaded Iraq the country remains highly unstable and fragmented. So divided are parties and communities that no government has emerged from the general election three months ago, which was intended to be a crucial staging post in Iraq’s return to normality. Political leaders have not even started serious negotiations on sharing power.

“I have never been so depressed about the future of Iraq,” said one former minister. “The ruling class which came to power after 2003 is terrible. They have no policy other than to see how far they can rob the state.” None of this is very apparent to the outside world because US policy since 2008 has been to declare a famous victory and withdraw its troops. This week the US troop level drop to 92,000, lower for the first time than the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan. The US military wants to maintain the myth that it somehow turned round the war in Iraq by means of ‘the surge’ and emerged successfully from the conflict.

This claim was always exaggerated. The insurgency against the US occupation was rooted in the Sunni Arab community and when this was defeated by Shia government and militia forces in 2006-7 the Sunni had little choice but look for an accommodation with the Americans. The most important change in Iraq was more to do with outcome of the Shia-Sunni struggle than US military tactical innovations. This is why Americans generals are finding that the ‘surge’ in Afghanistan this year, supposedly emulating success in Iraq, is showing such disappointing results.

The foreign policy dominance of the military over civilian arm of the US government was reinforced by the Iraq war. Only this week the US Senate voted an extra $33 billion for the military ‘surge’ in Afghanistan, while the State Department only gets an extra $4 billion. This is on top of $130 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan this year already voted by Congress.

In Iraq violence is far less than three years ago and in this sense the country is ‘better’ than it was when 3,000 bodies of people killed in the sectarian slaughter were being buried every month. But periodic al-Qa’ida attacks are still enough to create a sense of unease. To prevent them the streets of Baghdad are so clogged with checkpoints and concrete blast walls that it is difficult to move through the city.

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Millions were in germ war tests

Of course things are different now. Right?

The Ministry of Defence turned large parts of the country into a giant laboratory to conduct a series of secret germ warfare tests on the public.

A government report just released provides for the first time a comprehensive official history of Britain's biological weapons trials between 1940 and 1979.

Many of these tests involved releasing potentially dangerous chemicals and micro-organisms over vast swaths of the population without the public being told.

While details of some secret trials have emerged in recent years, the 60-page report reveals new information about more than 100 covert experiments.

The report reveals that military personnel were briefed to tell any 'inquisitive inquirer' the trials were part of research projects into weather and air pollution.

The tests, carried out by government scientists at Porton Down, were designed to help the MoD assess Britain's vulnerability if the Russians were to have released clouds of deadly germs over the country.


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Goldman Trying To Get SEC Charge Knocked Down To “Material Omission” Instead Of Fraud

Goldman’s trying to settle with the SEC on a lesser charge than fraud, say John Gapper and Francesco Guerrera of the FT. The firm is also seeking to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and damages instead of billions.

The lesser charge is omitting or misstating disclosures to investors. It would also reduce the threat of lawsuits and avoid the firm’s have to settle a fraud charge.

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Fox News show: Gitmo ’suicides’ torture gone wrong?

When three detainees at Guantanamo Bay were found hanged in their cells on June 9, 2006, the official explanation was suicide. Human rights attorney Scott Horton, however, believes that "clearly these were homicides."

Horton has been speaking out about the incident since last winter, apparently motivated by a concern that the Obama administration may be participating in a cover-up. A Justice Department investigation was closed last fall without challenging the official version of the men's deaths.

In an appearance Thursday on Fox News' Freedom Watch,Horton stated that the only real question in his mind is whether the men's deaths were deliberate murders or were "negligent homicides" resulting from "some sort of procedure that was performed on them." He suggested, for example, that they might have suffocated as a result of being gagged while undergoing torture.

"The father of one of the deceased," Horton noted, "who himself was a general in the Saudi Arabian police, said he examined the body and he saw evidence of torture. He's convinced of that."

The show's host, Judge Andrew Napolitano, appeared clearly skeptical of the government account, and the segment was bannered, "Are the 'suicides' really torture interrogations gone wrong?"


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Reporters Committee urges justices to reconsider corporate privacy

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press joined a friend-of-the-court brief this week asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case that could widely expand the ability of corporations to keep information out of the public eye if it is not overturned.

Nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, the Reporters Committee and four other public interest groups filed the brief to explain why not overruling a decision made by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia (3rd Cir.) in FCC v. AT&T could undermine the intent of the Freedom of Information Act.

AT&T initiated its suit against the Federal Communications Commission seeking to halt the release of agency records under FOIA detailing an investigation into whether the telecommunications company over billed the government. The federal appeals court ruled last fall that corporate privacy is included in a public-records exemption that allows law enforcement agencies to withhold information that could threaten "personal privacy."

The FCC filed a petition in April asking the Supreme Court to hear its appeal of the Third Circuit opinion which created a vast expansion of the personal privacy exemption.

The FOIA exemption in question has historically allowed law enforcement agencies to withhold information that could cause harm to an individual's personal privacy, but whether this exemption can also be applied to protect corporate privacy rights has not been considered by the Supreme Court.

"The decision below warps the concept of ‘personal privacy’ in FOIA exemption 7 to cover the ’privacy’ interests of corporate entities, including those entities’ potential feelings of ‘embarrassment’ about their own conduct," the brief states.


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UN human rights expert: CIA drone strikes violate laws of war

"The CIA, by definition, is not accountable"

The use of drones by U.S. intelligence agencies to target suspected militants in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere lacks the accountability required under international law, a U.N. human rights expert said Friday.

Philip Alston, a New York University law professor, will call next week for new international rules to govern the use of drones to ensure they are deployed in line with the laws of war.

The CIA's program of drone strikes against suspected al-Qaida and Taliban insurgents has never been publicly acknowledged by U.S. administration officials, even though it has been written about extensively in the media.

A CIA spokesman said last month that the intelligence agency's counterterror operations are conducted in strict accord with the law.

"In my view there is no legal prohibition on CIA agents, or you and me, deciding to take a 'direct part in hostilities,' which is not to say that it is desirable," Alston told The Associated Press in an e-mail Friday.


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Suit: Pfizer/Wyeth sought black patients for unsafe drug

Pfizer’s $68 billion acquisition of Wyeth last year has turned into a full-employment act for the drugmaker’s outside law firms.

Yesterday the company was slapped with a whistleblower lawsuit alleging Wyeth detailers promoted the off-label use of the immunosuppressant drug Rapamune for kidney transplant patients even though the Food and Drug Administration has explicitly warned about serious side effects and increased mortality associated with switching them from safer drugs. According to Jim Edwards’ report on Bnet, the complaint alleges African-Americans were specifically targeted by salesmen since they are considered “high-risk” patients due to their higher organ rejection rates.


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Is The Consumer Protection Bill Just One Huge Governmental Subversion Of Privacy Ploy?

“Mr. President, make no mistake, behind the veil of anti-Wall Street rhetoric is an unrelenting desire to manage every facet of commerce under the guise of consumer protection."

If anyone has been curious why the Fed, banks and politicians have all been pushing for the "consumer protection" portion of the Financial Regulation bill, it appears we may have the answer. 

As CNSNews.com reports, the bill "would create the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection and empower it to “gather information and activities of persons operating in consumer financial markets,” including the names and addresses of account holders, ATM and other transaction records, and the amount of money kept in each customer’s account. 

The new bureaucracy is then allowed to “use the data on branches and [individual and personal] deposit accounts … for any purpose” and may keep all records on file for at least three years and these can be made publicly available upon request." Goodbye privacy, hello 1984.


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#203 No Agenda Show - Slaughterhouse Blues

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Witness: Secret Iraq prison for women and children

Iraq's Muthanna Army base has women and children in a secret prison, says an Iraqi eyewitness. He says some are family members of Al Qaeda suspect and are used to extract confessions.

There aren't supposed to be any prisons at the Muthanna Iraqi Army base, let alone ones with children in them.

But a member of the Iraqi security services says that as late as mid-May, he saw children playing in a makeshift detention center here.

"I just wish they would take the children out," he says, recalling the cries of an infant and a 3-year-old named Tiba. "I can't even tell my own wife and children what I do."

The Muthanna facility appears to be operating weeks after a separate undisclosed prison on the base, where more than 400 suspects were held and dozens tortured, was closed.

The witness, who is known to be credible, says he risked speaking to a Western publication because he and some colleagues were sickened by seeing women and children detained. He insisted on anonymity.

"To reach the point of detaining women and their children is unacceptable. A woman's honor is Iraqi honor," he says.

He says at least six women and at least eight children were being held, including the wives of two suspected Al-Qaeda in Iraq leaders, Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayub al-Masri. The two women were detained with their children when their husbands were killed in an April air strike.

A Defense Ministry spokesman at the time confirmed that children had been rounded up. Children under the age of 3 are allowed to remain in detention facilities if their mothers have been arrested.


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The Worst Money Supply Plunge Since The Depression Means A Double Dip Is Now A 'Virtual Certainty

The stock of U.S. money as measured by 'M3' money supply fell to $13.9 trillion from $14.2 trillion during the three months ending in April.

This 9.6% annualized contraction is unprecedented in the post-Depression era, and shows how, in this sense, America isn't printing more money. There are actually less dollars in the system since U.S. money supply is crashing, even well into the recent economic recovery.

The positive take on this is that we don't have to worry about either inflation or the Fed tightening significantly any time soon.

The negative take is that this crashing money supply will lead to both deflation and a double dip recession.


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House to Consider GAO Audits of Intelligence

Secret government? Why, that's just crazy talk.

Defying a previous veto threat from the White House, the House of Representatives will consider an amendment to bolster intelligence oversight by requiring intelligence agencies to cooperate with the Government Accountability Office when it performs audits that are requested by a congressional committee with jurisdiction over intelligence.

In general, the amendment (pdf) states, “the Director of National Intelligence shall ensure that personnel of the Government Accountability Office designated by the Comptroller General are provided with access to all information in the possession of an element of the intelligence community that the Comptroller General determines is necessary for such personnel to conduct an analysis, evaluation, or investigation of a program or activity of an element of the intelligence community that is requested by one of the congressional intelligence committees.”


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‘McCarthyite’ provision in defense bill targets ACLU lawyers

The defense appropriations bill currently moving through the House of Representatives includes a measure which directs the Defense Department's inspector general to investigate attorneys who may have "interfered with operations of the Department of Defense" while representing detainees at Guantanamo Bay and report back to Congress.

That measure has civil libertarians up in arms. Salon's Glenn Greenwald, for example, described the "truly vile provision" as a "McCarthyite attack on detainee lawyers" and identified it as "the brainchild of GOP Rep. Jeff Miller of Florida, who has labeled efforts to represent detainees ... a 'treacherous enterprise" and smeared those lawyers as 'disloyal.'"

According to ABC News, Rep. Miller "proposed the language to the bill because he was outraged by the allegations behind the Department of Justice investigation that is being led by U. S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. Miller said it's important to subject detainee defense lawyers to greater scrutiny in order to 'identify any policy violations,' that, he said, could compromise national security."

The allegations cited by Miller became public knowledge last March, when it was revealed that the Justice Department had secretly been investigating whether lawyers involved with the ACLU's John Adams Project had broken any laws in their attempts to to have detainees identify CIA interrogators who might have been involved in torture. When it appeared that the Justice Department was about to conclude that no crimes had been committed, the CIA complained and the department brought Fitzgerald in to resolve the dispute.

Since Fitzgerald's investigation remains ongoing, Miller's measure would seem to be intended primarily to drag the issue into the political arena and make it the subject of Congressional hearings during the period immediately prior to next fall's elections.


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Subprime goes to College (Another bubble ready to burst)

ITT Educational (ESI) has higher profit margins than Apple (AAPL)

(This is an excerpt from Here)

Steve Eisman, Frontpoint

Eisman’s theme was “Subprime goes to College.” After what transpired in the subprime mortgage market a few years ago, Eisman though he would never see a business with the capability to prey upon the underprivileged to those extremes again. Then he came across the For Profit Education industry. Despite only having 10% of the students these schools get 25% of the government aid. The industry is in bed with Washington due to serious lobbying efforts and the back and forth of executives from the companies to Government positions and back. Title IV loans offered by government programs comprise 90% of for profit education revenues.

ITT Educational (ESI) has higher margins than Apple (AAPL), and margins in the for profit education industry are 3-4 times those in other industries that deal with the government. For profit schools target poorer people, often leading them towards degrees that won’t get them jobs. The companies also maneuver to acquire small failing schools in order to get their accreditation. The loans the students take out for profit education have high default rates. ESI and Corinthian (COCO) often provision 50%-60% for the loans they privately offer, so the default rates overall are likely 50%. The companies in the industry are Education Management (EDMC), COCO, Apollo Group (APOL) and Washington Post (WPO). WPO, more than 100% of its EBITDA comes from for profit education. Eisman calculates there could be $300 Billion in defaults over the next 10 years. The key catalyst going forward is that the government will publish a rule for gainful employment , that threatens the companies. The government is also seeking to fix the accreditation process.

Petraeus orders US spies to prepare for anti-nuclear strike on Iran

Teams of American special forces have been authorised to conduct spying missions intended to pave the way for a military strike on Iran in case President Obama orders one, US government sources have confirmed.

The military units would penetrate Iranian territory to reconnoitre potential nuclear targets and make contact with friendly dissident groups, according to a secret directive written by General David Petraeus. The document’s existence was disclosed for the first time yesterday.

It authorises an expansion in the use of US special forces throughout the Middle East, US officials said. However, it is the possibility of American troops operating covertly inside Iran that has the greatest potential to destabilise regional security.


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Transocean Will Make $270 Million Profit from Insurance Payout on Destroyed Oil Rig

Actual Transocean logo.

Eighteen Democratic senators have asked the Justice Department to investigate the operator of the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig after the company announced it would dole out $1 billion to shareholders as oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico.

Transocean, according to the letter from the senators, plans to distribute dividends to its stockholders. And the senators are concerned that the payments might make it harder to collect liability payouts related to the massive oil spill.

Transocean, according to the letter, also says it will make a $270 million profit on the insurance policy for the rig. And the senators claim the rig was insured for more than it was worth.


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Mainstream Media Depictions Clash with Reality: "Iran Was Not What We Had Thought"

Although the relentless and incessant spates of mainstream media's psychological warfare have turned Iran into a hazardous and insecure region in the eyes of global public opinions, thousands of Western tourists "take the risk" of traveling to Iran each year to behold in person the concealed and withheld realities of the peaceful and magnificent Iran which a hawkish leader had idiotically categorized as a part of the so-called "Axis of Evil".

The American, French, German, British and Australian citizens who voluntarily travel to Iran to discover the veiled face of this ancient land usually confess identically that Iran had not been what they had thought. The interesting similarity in the viewpoints and statements of the Western citizens who find their preconceptions and prejudgments about Iran absolutely unfounded and erroneous upon visiting the country clearly reveals the fact that the Western corporate media are portraying Iran antagonistically and this is simply a misleading indoctrination to the global audiences who don't have sufficient information about Iran, its ancient civilization, history and contemporary developments.

The foreign tourists, specially the western journalists and artists who come to Iran to examine the veracity of their countries' media propaganda, usually get surprised and astonished by arriving at the splendor of Iran, its cultural heritage, industrial advancements and natural beauties.

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New World Currency Introduction

This week the world's financial markets will see the first ever execution and settlement of a trade conducted in Wocus(TM) (World Currency Unit), the newly-introduced world currency. The Wocu has been developed as a derived world currency unit to allow corporations, financial institutions, governments and even individuals to trade across national boundaries and hold foreign assets with minimal risk of losses caused by exchange rate fluctuations.

Whilst international trade is conducted in US dollars or Euros a sharp change in exchange rates causes huge differentials, vastly complicating risk management and forward planning. With the emergence of Russia, China and India into the world markets a less volatile world currency is needed. As the Wocu is a derivative of the exchange rates of the world's top 20 currencies as measured by GDP it substantially reduces the risk factors. WDX Organisation, the company behind the Wocu, has weighted its algorithm in line with these GDPs, creating a demonstrably less volatile and totally apolitical currency unit.

Howard Flight, fund manager, consultant, politician and author of 'ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT EXCHANGE RATES' was the keynote speaker at the launch. He said: "I expect this to be an important moment for the history of currency - a new currency reference is being born which should be very useful for both major buyers and sellers of world commodities." He adds: "The questions are as to who will use it? WDX commercial arrangements are lining up major banks to both trade in and settle international trade transactions on behalf of corporate clients in Wocus. Banks and InterDealer Brokers will also trade Wocu derivatives for clients. It is surprising the IMF has not modernised the SDR, which new technology would enable. The Wocu does just that".


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The Hire, Fire, Hire Census Game, Or Why the Unemployment Numbers Are Improving

You know the old saying: "Everyone loves a charade." Well, it seems that the Census Bureau may be playing games.
Last week, one of the millions of workers hired by Census 2010 to parade around the country counting Americans blew the whistle on some statistical tricks.

The worker, Naomi Cohn, told The Post that she was hired and fired a number of times by Census. Each time she was hired back, it seems, Census was able to report the creation of a new job to the Labor Department.

Below, I have a couple more readers who worked for Census 2010 and have tales to tell.

But first, this much we know.


Each month Census gives Labor a figure on the number of workers it has hired. That figure goes into the closely followed monthly employment report Labor provides. For the past two months the hiring by Census has made up a good portion of the new jobs.

Labor doesn't check the Census hiring figure or whether the jobs are actually new or recycled. It considers a new job to have been created if someone is hired to work at least one hour a month.

One hour! A month! So, if a worker is terminated after only one hour and another is hired in her place, then a second new job can apparently be reported to Labor . (I've been unable to get Census to explain this to me.)


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Insider Trading Is Perfectly Legal – But Only For Members Of The U.S. Congress

Monetary bribes are illegal. How about insider trading tips?

Did you know that insider trading is perfectly legal in the United States? Well, not for 99.9% of the population. It is actually only a very small percentage of the population that can legally indulge in insider trading - the members of the United States Congress. In fact, a law that would ban insider trading by members of Congress has been stalled for years on Capitol Hill. So why wouldn't lawmakers in Washington D.C. want to apply the same rules to themselves that apply to the rest of us? After all, how are we supposed to respect the integrity of those "serving" in Congress when they are playing by an entirely different set of rules? The American people aren't stupid. They can see what is going on. The truth is that there is a reason why approval ratings for Congress are at an all-time low.

The sad thing is that this issue has gotten very little attention in the mainstream media. Nobody seems really that upset about it. But it is a travesty that our lawmakers can legally make trades in the open market based on inside information that they have gained by being in positions of authority. As the Wall Street Journal recently explained, they can generally make all the money they want off of insider information without any fear of prosecution because "insider-trading laws generally do not apply to lawmakers, leaving them free to trade on nonpublic information."


But members of the U.S. Congress are generally in a greater position to influence the fortunes of individual companies than almost anyone else. For example, certain members of the U.S. Congress may know that certain legislation is going to be introduced that would have a dramatic impact on the economic fortunes of a particular industry or corporation. What would stop those members of Congress from making very profitable trades in the marketplace based on that information?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

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Are We About To Witness The Greatest Banking Consolidation In U.S. History?

As the number of bank failures in the United States continues to accelerate, many analysts are warning that we could soon see unprecedented changes in the U.S. banking industry. In fact, there are some economists that are warning that we could be about to witness the greatest banking consolidation in U.S. history. As dozens of small and medium size banks have failed, the megabanks have systematically been gobbling up larger and larger slices of market share. In fact, if current trends continue, it doesn't take much imagination to foresee a future where the entire U.S. banking industry has been consolidated down to between 5 and 10 "superbanks". So would that be so bad? Well, yes it would. It would represent a massive shift in financial power away from the American people to big, global corporate banks. But if you happen to be a fan of big, global corporate banks perhaps you will really love what is about to happen to the U.S. banking industry.

On Friday, federal regulators seized Pinehurst Bank, which brought the total number of U.S. banks closed this year to 73. At this point in 2009, only 36 banks had failed.

That means that the number of bank failures has doubled compared to the same time period a year ago.

Is that a good trend?

Well, it is a good trend if you are one of the megabanks that is gobbling up the remnants of these banks that were "small enough to fail".


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US Govt Concedes Vaccine/Autism Connection in Federal Court

After years of insisting there is no evidence to link vaccines with the onset of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the US government has quietly conceded a vaccine-autism case in the Court of Federal Claims.

The unprecedented concession was filed on November 9, and sealed to protect the plaintiff’s identify. It was obtained through individuals unrelated to the case.

The claim, one of 4,900 autism cases currently pending in Federal “Vaccine Court,” was conceded by US Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler and other Justice Department officials, on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services, the “defendant” in all Vaccine Court cases.

The child’s claim against the government — that mercury-containing vaccines were the cause of her autism — was supposed to be one of three “test cases” for the thimerosal-autism theory currently under consideration by a three-member panel of Special Masters, the presiding justices in Federal Claims Court.

Keisler wrote that medical personnel at the HHS Division of Vaccine Injury Compensation (DVIC) had reviewed the case and “concluded that compensation is appropriate.”

The doctors conceded that the child was healthy and developing normally until her 18-month well-baby visit, when she received vaccinations against nine different diseases all at once (two contained thimerosal).

Days later, the girl began spiraling downward into a cascade of illnesses and setbacks that, within months, presented as symptoms of autism, including: No response to verbal direction; loss of language skills; no eye contact; loss of “relatedness;” insomnia; incessant screaming; arching; and “watching the florescent lights repeatedly during examination.”


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