By Jack Blood
www.deadlinelive,info
June 25th 2010
Its THAT time again, when the club of 20 get together, pat themselves on the back for a year well ruled, and forge plans to keep it that way for yet another long and poverty stricken year for the rest of us.
While the cameras are focused on anti globalism protesters, Actors, provocateurs, and militarized Darth Vader riot police… Plans for further economic colonization, corporate fascism, and total centralization into the hands of a few runs forward as planned.
One can argue that is been a bad year for the Powers That Be, and the global banking establishment, and that is exactly what they need you to think! Keep protesting, and look over here… Nothing up our sleeves.
This weekend in Toronto (NWO capitol North) the 20 nations that hold together global governance will be to deciding our fate.
On Monday June 28th, another, possibly more important meeting, will take place to sweep it all up and put the plans into action… That would the meeting of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS)
This month we had the Bilderberg group meet up in Spain, these G-20 events in Canada, the BIS meets and will issue their annual “report” and in July, the elites can all look forward to the Cremation of Care ceremony at the Bohemian Grove in Californica.
WHAT WE KNOW IN ADVANCE
The Obama team, including Barney Frank have been working overtime (not something usually associated with Cousin Barry) to complete their Financial Regulatory Bill, as to have it in hand for the G-20.
The legislation (HR 4173), approved by the House-Senate conference committee shortly before 6 a.m. today, would impose new “restrictions” on risky financial instruments, create a special agency to “look out” for consumers, and “force” banks and other financial institutions to hold more capital to protect against future financial upheaval.
Under the derivatives compromise, banks would be able to keep their business in derivatives tied to interest rate swaps, which represent a huge swath of the market. Banks also would be permitted to continue to trade in derivatives related to foreign exchange swaps, credit, gold and silver, investment-grade credit default swaps and any transaction used to hedge risk. (Not to mention carbon credit swaps which represent a HUGE potential risk)
The conferees also struck an 11th-hour deal on the so-called Volcker rule, which would curb proprietary trading by banks.
Large banks and hedge funds would face a new fee, designed to generate $19 billion (Payoff), to help defray the costs of the new legislation.
The agreement gives the Obama administration a crucial victory and allows the president to ramp up pressure on the other G-20 countries to follow suit (integrate and consolidate) as he headed to Canada on today for a weekend meeting with global economic leaders.
From our friend and dissecter of all things economic and global – Joan Veon:
this bill will open up to the central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve, via the Treasury Department, all of the financial assets they do not have access to: credit unions, state chartered thrifts, the real estate market, and the insurance industry. Furthermore in a globalized world, you need to have interaction with a global regulatory agency—the Financial Stability Board. The U.S. is already a major player and has been since 1999 when it was the Financial Stability Forum.
The bottom line is that once America succumbs to a new set of rules, other countries will have to follow—like the European Union for instance. In fact, the weekend edition of the Financial Times hinted that “European leaders committed themselves to a stricter collective effort at fiscal discipline and called for rapid approval of draft laws aimed at tightening financial market regulation.
This well timed legislation will act as a device to advance further centralization of the world’s central banks who will ultimately decide who gets to play and how.
All of this is a direct result of the global meltdown in 2010, the “problem” which as we know was brought on by the very people who say that they are coming to save us with their Blueprint for total control.
So how is all of this so called “regulation” going to be judged, implemented and meted out? Who will be in charge? Answer: The “consumer bureau” which is embedded deep within the Federal Reserve, and overseen by the BIS incorporating the world’s regional central banks. Oh…Those guys again.
To reiterate…. THE VERY PEOPLE WHO DROVE THE GLOBAL ECONOMY OF A CLIFF, ARE GOING TO BE THE COPS MAKING SURE THAT NO ONE DRIVES US OFF A CLIFF. Yep.
As we often say…. ALL laws and regulations are political and selectively enforced. As the NWO often says, “Competition in a Sin”.
Just look at what’s going down in the Gulf of Mexico the past few months. BP and the gang were able to use their influence, and pressure to suspend regulations that should have been applied to all.
The solution will be MORE regulations (Read: Blackmail, extortion, and ruin for those like George Soros who cannot bypass the process)
Barney Frankenfurter has been pretty up front in his warnings (threats) to any banks (meaning non member banks) when he says that if you don’t go along, you won’t get along.
The economic 911 (inside job) has raised the perfect storm for total global economic control, and with the “solution” firmly in place, the usual suspects will have Carte Blanche to weed out dissenters, punish their enemies, and complete their New World Order.
Deadline Live
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Updated: G20 Provocateurs smash windows, clash with riot police
TORONTO — G20 protesters dressed like the anarchist group Black Bloc are smashing bank windows and have damaged a police cruiser as riot police defend Toronto's summit security zone.
Riot police armed with a tear gas cannon and gas masks are holding a line north of the zone.
Store front windows at a Starbucks have been smashed.
A roving pack of protesters, said to be part of the self-described anarchist group the Black Bloc, are running through the city with no police interference.
Riot police, however, are nearby, armed with tear gas cannons.
One protester has been seriously injured and was carried away by others.
EMS says at least three protesters received head injuries in a confrontation with riot police, and were bleeding but conscious.
The larger protest, meanwhile, continued along its route back to the Ontario legislature.
Ten thousand protesters were expected to gather on the grounds of the Ontario legislature today, but the city is being pelted with rain and early police estimates put the crowd at about 4,000.
The "People's First March" is being organized by an umbrella organization of labour unions.
Queen Street is the key watch point since the G20 security zone is just south of there and there has been talk protesters want to take a run at the steel and concrete barricades.
A wall of police on bicycles is holding the line at Queen, with riot police behind them and police on horseback further back.
A convoy of more than a dozen minivans carrying police is also moving into the area.
Police have said 5,100 officers from forces across the province have been tasked with protecting the summit.
Security has been pegged at $1 billion.
The large but seemingly peaceful crowd held banners reading "Save the planet, sink Harper" and "G20 Fascism."
Members of the Black Bloc are wearing their trademark black balaclavas.
Two people allegedly carrying "incendiary devices" were arrested near the protest before the march began. Reports say the two had so-called Molotov cocktails -- glass bottles filled with gasoline.
The Integrated Security Unit says there is no word of charges and would not specify what was seized from the pair.
On Friday almost 3,000 protesters marched through the city in a tense demonstration. Riot police aggressively moved into the crowd at one point and dragged a man into a building lobby, enraging the crowd.
Police held the crowd on University Avenue, far north of the security zone, before the protesters turned back.
At a Saturday morning news conference, the Toronto Community Mobilization Network said protesters intend to confront the heavily guarded security fence surrounding the summit site.
Source
UPDATE: Click for live updates
Click For Live TV Stream
4:40 p.m. Protesters attack police cars
In the financial district. Steve Russell/Toronto Star
4:34 p.m. Vandalism and violence at College and Yonge
They’re hurling the limbs of manequinnes nabbed outside a Footlocker and American Apparel. They’re ripping up G20 signs and targeting Zanzibar.
“This isn’t violence, this is vandalism against violent corporations. We did not hurt anybody, we did not target anybody,” said one protester. They say they’re targeting the companies responsible for the greatest oppression against people, companies that use sweat shops to create their products.
Targeting Nike and Addidas as they move up Yonge. They’ve also smashed a Swiss Chalet, filled with staff and customers. They’re making their way to Gerard.
Police presence seems to be diminishing – they’re just trying to channel the crowd. Smashed a Money Mart. Cops up the road with riot gear. Numerous protestors did not bring their cell phones to the march for fear they were being tapped.
Smashed a window at Bell store south of College, they’re hurling display cell phones into the crowd. Protestors are also using steel bars that hold up construction signs as a battering ram.
Smashed a window at the Carlu. Protestors are breaking the bricks from the middle of the street median and hurling them.
4:30 p.m. Outside police headquarters
A wall of police in riot gear has formed outside 40 College, police headquarters. People are hurling bricks and golf balls at them.
Meanwhile, windows at the TD across the street are being smashed. Police are filing out of two buses and grabbing their shields from underneath. Protestors are showing compassion to pedestrians and the public.
4:27 p.m. DeBoer's attacked
Protesters created a big hole in a display window at DeBoer’s, the high-end furniture store on Yonge just south of College. An employee approached the hole and yelled “Stop it”; protesters yelled back, “Move back, honey. We don’t hate you, we just hate the company you work for.” She complied. Protesters also smashed windows at the nearby Bell store, then ransacked it and threw cellphones into the street.
4:24 p.m. Police move north on horseback
20 officers on horseback are riding north on Yonge St. Two police coach buses have assembled at Yonge and Queen as the crowds move north.
4:22p.m. 'Torontonians should be outraged'
Mayor David Miller in an interview with CP24: “We have thousands of people peaceably asserting their democratic right to speak up, and a small, relatively small group, probably a few hundred, mostly people who seem to be not from Toronto, come here to on all evidence commit deliberate acts of violence. I think every Torontonian should be outraged by that.”
4:21 p.m. Zanzibar attacked
A female protester shouted “f-you” in the direction of the Zanzibar
Protesters then began tearing down the letters on Zanzibar
They also smashed windows of American Apparel, sending mannequins spilling into the street; protesters began ripping the mannequins apart.
Tropical Storm Alex expected to churn toward Gulf of Mexico
A potentially dangerous tropical storm named Alex that experts say could complicate the Gulf of Mexico oil spill clean-up formed Saturday in the Caribbean Sea.
At 0900 GMT, the eye of the storm, which packed sustained winds of 40 miles (65 kilometers) an hour, was located 220 miles (355 kilometers) east of Belize City, according to the Miami-based US National Hurricane Center.
A tropical storm warning was in effect on the east coast of Belize, Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and on the coastal islands in Honduras.
But after dropping rain on the Central American nations, the storm was expected to turn toward the Gulf of Mexico.
"A gradual turn toward the northeast and an increase in forward speed are expected in the next 48 hours," the government-controlled center said in an advisory.
Alex was expected to approach the Yucatan Peninsula on Sunday morning.
Weather forecasters had earlier said the storm by next week could head for the site of the huge oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico unleashed by the April 20 explosion of the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig.
"This will be the first time and there is no playbook," Coast Guard commandant Thad Allen told CNN commenting on the weather.
"I will tell you there has been an extraordinary amount of planning being done between the folks of the national incident command and incident commanders on the ground," he said.
Vice President Joe Biden was heading to the region on Tuesday and was due to visit the New Orleans-based National Incident Command Center and then travel to the Florida panhandle, Allen said.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Carol Browner, who heads the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, will also visit.
Oil began oozing on to beaches in northwestern Florida Thursday, prompting a swimming ban from far western Florida to the east side of Pensacola Beach through Santa Rosa Island, one of the region's most popular attractions.
The state's 1,260 miles (2,000 kilometers) of western coastline is home to scores of beaches as well as pristine coral reefs and an important fishing industry.
State officials have mounted an aggressive beach and coastline cleanup effort to stop the oil from reaching Florida beaches.
At a time of high unemployment in other sectors, tourism in Florida generates more than a million jobs, bringing the state 65 billion dollars in revenue in 2008.
BP shares plummeted to a 13-year low in London on Friday after the group ramped up the costs of the spill so far to 2.35 billion dollars (1.9 billion euros).
The company's share values have been cut by more than half since the April 20 explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers and unleashed the worst oil spill in US history.
The company's stock collapsed by almost nine percent in mid-morning trading to plumb a low of 296 pence on the London Stock Exchange, hitting a level last seen in August 1996 amid investor alarm over spiraling costs.
On Saturday, activists and southeast Louisiana residents are scheduled to gather at area beaches to hold hands and show their support for clean energy and oppose offshore drilling.
The "Hands Across the Sand" event will take place in all US states and some 30 countries, organizers said.
"It's time to stand up to the oil industry. It's time to move America beyond oil and into a clean energy future," said Aaron Viles, Campaign Director of the Gulf Restoration Network.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal separately declared Sunday a "Statewide Day of Prayer for perseverance during the oil spill crisis."
Jindal, a Republican politician of Indian descent, opposes the six-month moratorium imposed on exploratory offshore drilling, claiming it will only compound the state's suffering.
Oil siphoning operations resumed Wednesday morning, some 11 hours after BP removed the containment cap over the gushing well after a remotely-operated submarine robot bumped into the device.
The accident shut down a vent, forcing gas up into part of the system. The device traps spewing crude and siphons it up to two surface vessels.
The overall amount of crude gushing from the damaged well is still unclear, with the latest government estimates ranging from 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day.
Source
At 0900 GMT, the eye of the storm, which packed sustained winds of 40 miles (65 kilometers) an hour, was located 220 miles (355 kilometers) east of Belize City, according to the Miami-based US National Hurricane Center.
A tropical storm warning was in effect on the east coast of Belize, Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and on the coastal islands in Honduras.
But after dropping rain on the Central American nations, the storm was expected to turn toward the Gulf of Mexico.
"A gradual turn toward the northeast and an increase in forward speed are expected in the next 48 hours," the government-controlled center said in an advisory.
Alex was expected to approach the Yucatan Peninsula on Sunday morning.
Weather forecasters had earlier said the storm by next week could head for the site of the huge oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico unleashed by the April 20 explosion of the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig.
"This will be the first time and there is no playbook," Coast Guard commandant Thad Allen told CNN commenting on the weather.
"I will tell you there has been an extraordinary amount of planning being done between the folks of the national incident command and incident commanders on the ground," he said.
Vice President Joe Biden was heading to the region on Tuesday and was due to visit the New Orleans-based National Incident Command Center and then travel to the Florida panhandle, Allen said.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Carol Browner, who heads the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, will also visit.
Oil began oozing on to beaches in northwestern Florida Thursday, prompting a swimming ban from far western Florida to the east side of Pensacola Beach through Santa Rosa Island, one of the region's most popular attractions.
The state's 1,260 miles (2,000 kilometers) of western coastline is home to scores of beaches as well as pristine coral reefs and an important fishing industry.
State officials have mounted an aggressive beach and coastline cleanup effort to stop the oil from reaching Florida beaches.
At a time of high unemployment in other sectors, tourism in Florida generates more than a million jobs, bringing the state 65 billion dollars in revenue in 2008.
BP shares plummeted to a 13-year low in London on Friday after the group ramped up the costs of the spill so far to 2.35 billion dollars (1.9 billion euros).
The company's share values have been cut by more than half since the April 20 explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers and unleashed the worst oil spill in US history.
The company's stock collapsed by almost nine percent in mid-morning trading to plumb a low of 296 pence on the London Stock Exchange, hitting a level last seen in August 1996 amid investor alarm over spiraling costs.
On Saturday, activists and southeast Louisiana residents are scheduled to gather at area beaches to hold hands and show their support for clean energy and oppose offshore drilling.
The "Hands Across the Sand" event will take place in all US states and some 30 countries, organizers said.
"It's time to stand up to the oil industry. It's time to move America beyond oil and into a clean energy future," said Aaron Viles, Campaign Director of the Gulf Restoration Network.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal separately declared Sunday a "Statewide Day of Prayer for perseverance during the oil spill crisis."
Jindal, a Republican politician of Indian descent, opposes the six-month moratorium imposed on exploratory offshore drilling, claiming it will only compound the state's suffering.
Oil siphoning operations resumed Wednesday morning, some 11 hours after BP removed the containment cap over the gushing well after a remotely-operated submarine robot bumped into the device.
The accident shut down a vent, forcing gas up into part of the system. The device traps spewing crude and siphons it up to two surface vessels.
The overall amount of crude gushing from the damaged well is still unclear, with the latest government estimates ranging from 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day.
Source
Gulf Coast residents outraged at BP, government response
By Andre Damon and C. W. Rogers in Louisiana
WSWS, June 25, 2010
Source
WSWS, June 25, 2010
Children play among beached oil in Gulf Shores, Alabama
Gulf Coast residents are seething in anger at BP and the federal government for their inability to contain the oil spill and deal with its consequences.
Residents are nearly unanimous in their dissatisfaction with BP’s conduct of the cleanup, and many see the official response as incompetent and riddled with corruption.
There is widespread suspicion of a conspiracy between BP and the government to keep the public uninformed of the extent of the spill.
Workers in the petroleum Industry were among the most outspoken critics. Deneen, an employee of EMI petroleum in Houston, said she thought BP, together with the government, was engaged in a coverup.
"They knew immediately how much was coming out of that well. Anybody can figure out how much fluid comes out of a flow line. It’s a basic calculation. They were trying to fool people who weren’t in the oil and gas business, but they sure as hell couldn’t fool anybody who works in it," she said.
Oil washed up on the beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama
BP and the Obama administration have been forced to steadily increase their estimate of the flow rate, from initially claiming there was no spill, to succeeding figures of 1,000, 5,000, 12,000, 25,000, and finally 30,000-60,000 barrels a day.
Deneen also said she thinks BP is deliberately choosing not to employ certain available measures to stop the leak because it wants to continue harvesting oil from the well.
"If you ask me, BP could have capped the well by now," Deneen said. "But they don’t want to. As soon as you cap a well, you no longer own it. Another company can take it over. They’re trying to control the well, and that’s why it’s taking so long. When a well is sealed, it’s inaccessible," she said.
Among residents, the White House’s response, particularly Obama’s press appearances and visits to the gulf, are viewed with disdain.
Chester, a transportation contractor who works around the oil industry, said he was not impressed with Obama’s June 15 address from the Oval Office. "Obama’s about as smooth as smooth could be. But history has been made, and he can’t keep up with it," he said.
Deneen agreed. "Obama’s not responding; he’s acting for the cameras. The only reason he made those four trips [to the Gulf] was because of the criticism he was getting from the general public.
"Obama has no power; he works for the companies," she added. "It’s all about money; a ménage à trois between the government, the regulators and the companies."
Pamela Odom (left) and her cousin, Patricia Landry
"I think that the government should have taken this in their hands a long time ago," said Pamela, of Boothville, Louisiana. "I think BP is just piddling around."
Much of the public anger arises in response to the autocratic nature of the cleanup. "People are angry about the fact that they have no control over the recovery," said Laura Leckelt, a nurse at West Jefferson Medical Center stationed at Grand Isle, Louisiana, one of the centers of the oil spill response.
"BP is running the Gulf Coast like it’s a prison and they’re the wardens," said Natalie Walker, attorney and co-director of the group Advocates for Environmental Human Rights. "They dictate the terms," she said.
"There are plenty of regular folk who want to help," said Deneen. "But BP is controlling everything; you have to go through them if you want to help, and they just turn you away.
"I think the cleanup workers are as angry as anyone else. But they’re afraid of speaking out, because they signed away their rights to speak to the media when they joined. If they talk, they’ll get fired."
Ms. Leckelt said that the fishermen’s wives have been particularly vocal about the conditions facing their husbands. Many have spoken out at town hall meetings, including one in Grand Isle last week that addressed the health and environmental problems caused by the spill.
Boom stretched along the shore of Grand Isle, Louisiana
Over a hundred cases of health issues officially believed to be related to the spill have been reported, and thousands more are likely to follow.
The spill has already devastated the seafood industry in southern Louisiana. Last week, Ameripure Oysters, a $20-million seafood company based in Franklin, La, was shutting its doors, leaving hundreds of employees without work.
Dean Blanchard, owner of Dean Blanchard Seafood Inc., said that he plans to close his operations in Southern Louisiana after his company suffered a $3 million loss this season from the spill. "We’re on our second boat today," he said. "If things were back to normal we’d be at about seventy-five."
Blanchard said he blamed every level of the government for failing to regulate BP. "The United States government is crooked. They all took money from BP. They let them do what they wanted; nobody was regulating them.
"BP was giving money to the MMS, giving money to Congress, senators, representatives—the president, the whole system is bought and paid for," he said.
He said that the government should have taken over the response from BP long ago. With the present situation, "Nobody’s in charge, nobody’s taking responsibility, nobody knows what’s going on; it’s like a big money grab," he said.
Blanchard said he thinks that that BP’s holdings should have been seized in response to the disaster. "If they were drug dealers, the government would have seized their assets. I don’t think the BP executives are any better than common drug dealers. Drug dealers destroy lives, BP destroys lives. What’s the difference?"
U.S. government panel now pushing "vaccinations for all!" No exceptions…
(NaturalNews) An advisory panel to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended that every person be vaccinated for the seasonal flu yearly, except in a few cases where the vaccine is known to be unsafe.
"Now no one should say 'Should I or shouldn't I?'" said CDC flu specialist Anthony Fiore.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 11-0 with one abstention to recommend yearly flu vaccination for everyone except for children under the age of six months, whose immune systems have not yet developed enough for vaccination to be safe, and people with egg allergies or other health conditions that are known to make flu vaccines hazardous. If accepted by the CDC, this recommendation will then be publicized to doctors and other health workers.
The CDC nearly always accepts the advisory committee's recommendations.
Current CDC recommendations call for the yearly vaccination of all children over the age of six months, all adults over the age of 49, health care workers, people with chronic health problems and anyone who cares for a person in one of these groups. These recommendations cover 85 percent of the US population.
Excluded are adults between the ages of 19 and 49 who do not come into close contact with people in high-risk groups. The new recommendation, if adopted, would close that gap, bringing an end to a 10-year campaign by supporters of universal vaccination. In the past, the advisory committee has been reluctant to recommend universal vaccination for fear that it might produce vaccine shortages that place members of higher risk groups in danger. Yet even with current recommendations, only 33 percent of the public gets vaccinated every year, leaving millions of doses to be disposed of.
The H1N1 swine flu scare of the past year played a major role in the committee's about face, both because the disease killed many people falling outside the current recommended vaccine demographic and because it raised public awareness of and demand for vaccines.
Natural News
"Now no one should say 'Should I or shouldn't I?'" said CDC flu specialist Anthony Fiore.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 11-0 with one abstention to recommend yearly flu vaccination for everyone except for children under the age of six months, whose immune systems have not yet developed enough for vaccination to be safe, and people with egg allergies or other health conditions that are known to make flu vaccines hazardous. If accepted by the CDC, this recommendation will then be publicized to doctors and other health workers.
The CDC nearly always accepts the advisory committee's recommendations.
Current CDC recommendations call for the yearly vaccination of all children over the age of six months, all adults over the age of 49, health care workers, people with chronic health problems and anyone who cares for a person in one of these groups. These recommendations cover 85 percent of the US population.
Excluded are adults between the ages of 19 and 49 who do not come into close contact with people in high-risk groups. The new recommendation, if adopted, would close that gap, bringing an end to a 10-year campaign by supporters of universal vaccination. In the past, the advisory committee has been reluctant to recommend universal vaccination for fear that it might produce vaccine shortages that place members of higher risk groups in danger. Yet even with current recommendations, only 33 percent of the public gets vaccinated every year, leaving millions of doses to be disposed of.
The H1N1 swine flu scare of the past year played a major role in the committee's about face, both because the disease killed many people falling outside the current recommended vaccine demographic and because it raised public awareness of and demand for vaccines.
Natural News
The Coming Gulf Coast Firestorm: How the BP oil catastrophe could destroy a major U.S. city
(NaturalNews) It's hurricane season in the Atlantic, and that means Mother Nature could be whipping up fierce storms and sending them charging into the Gulf Coast any day now. In a normal hurricane season, that's bad enough all by itself... remember Katrina? But now there's something even more worrisome in the recipe: There's oil in the water.
So what happens when a Katrina-class hurricane comes along and picks up a few million gallons of oil, then drops that volatile liquid on a major U.S. city like Galveston or New Orleans?
Now, before we pursue this line of thinking any further, let's dismiss the skeptics out there who think oil can't drop from the sky because oil doesn't evaporate. Actually, if you look at the history of hurricanes and storms, you'll find thousands of accounts of lots of things that don't evaporate nonetheless falling out of the sky. The phrase "raining cats and dogs" it's entirely metaphor, you know: There are documented accounts of all sorts of things raining down from the sky: Fish, frogs, large balls of ice, and so on.
If rain storms can pick up fish out of the ocean, then drop them on land, then they certainly have the capacity to pick up oil, too.
Besides, as any chemist will tell you, the various petrochemicals found in crude oil evaporate even without a storm picking them up! Oil, in other words, does evaporate into the air. Or, more accurately, some of the lighter chemicals in crude oil evaporate even at temperatures of around 100 degrees (F). Those are Gulf Coast temperatures.
The EPA classifies oils into Classes A - D. Class A is the lightest kind of oil, which the EPA describes as follows (http://www.epa.gov/oem/content/lear...)
"These oils are highly fluid, often clear, spread rapidly on solid or water surfaces, have a strong odor, a high evaporation rate, and are usually flammable. They penetrate porous surfaces such as dirt and sand, and may be persistent in such a matrix."
That same EPA document makes it quite clear that the more volatile oils can evaporate from crude oil, rendering the remaining oil heavier and more "tar-like."
And we already know these oils can catch on fire. That's the whole point of tapping crude oil, of course: To pump it into engines then catch it on fire in order to turn the energy of that mini-explosion into force (to drive the eight pistons in your gas-guzzling SUV, for example).
The hurricane makes landfall in New Orleans, let's say, dumping potentially hundreds of thousands of gallons of what is essentially "volatile fuel" on the city of New Orleans. Now, at first it's just a wet, slippery toxic mess that kills trees and grass. But what happens after the storm when the sun dries out the city?
All the dead trees killed by the oil turn into kindling. The sun evaporates off the rain water, leaving behind fuel. A few days of sun baking and you have a city doused in fuel, ready to burst into flames. It's every fireman's worst nightmare. The whole city is essentially turned into a giant match.
Now, sure, the more volatile fuels might evaporate, but as they do, they'd fill the city with explosive fumes. One spark, one fire, one lightning strike and your whole city literally goes up in flames. The BP oil spill, in other words, provides the fuel that could turn an ordinary hurricane into Mother Nature's arson attack on an entire city.
And in the aftermath, you'd still have oil covering the beaches, oil in the ocean, and the threat of more firestorms yet to come. It could be just the first of many such incidents striking the Gulf Coast.
Think this couldn't happen? Sure, and BP said the oil was a "tiny" little leak that didn't matter, either. They said the oil rigs would never explode. They said they would cap the blowout. They said they would protect the shores. And all along the problem just got worse and worse until even the press noticed that these corporate criminals just couldn't stop lying.
Now, BP is at least $20 billion in the hole in an effort to compensate some of the Gulf Coast businesses for the damage they've caused. But how will they compensate people if an entire city burns to the ground?
The answer? They won't. That would be the end of BP. Immediately bankruptcy. B.P. = "Bankruptcy Protection," after all.
No more payments go out to anyone. BP goes belly up just like all the fish being murdered by CorExit dispersant chemicals in the Gulf right now. The company goes down in flames just like New Orleans (or some other major city on the coast).
Of course, the scenario I'm describing here is theoretical, and I hope it's a worst-case scenario, too. But it is possible. Catastrophe is what happens at the intersection of poor planning and bad luck. BP has given us poor planning, and now Mother Nature may be about to deliver a heavy-handed dose of bad luck in the form of a seasonal hurricane that takes oil from the Gulf and dumps it on land.
We can only hope that these two elements do not collide on our shores. For if they do, we may witness loss on a scale our world hasn't seen since the dropping of atomic weapons on civilian populations in World War II. If a hurricane drops oil on New Orleans (or any other Gulf Coast city) and it goes up in flames a few days later, the aftermath will, indeed, resemble the effects of a nuclear bomb explosion.
You probably don't want to be anywhere near that. Needless to say, if it starts raining oil in your neighborhood, that might be a good time to grab whatever you value and get outta Dodge.
Natural News
So what happens when a Katrina-class hurricane comes along and picks up a few million gallons of oil, then drops that volatile liquid on a major U.S. city like Galveston or New Orleans?
Now, before we pursue this line of thinking any further, let's dismiss the skeptics out there who think oil can't drop from the sky because oil doesn't evaporate. Actually, if you look at the history of hurricanes and storms, you'll find thousands of accounts of lots of things that don't evaporate nonetheless falling out of the sky. The phrase "raining cats and dogs" it's entirely metaphor, you know: There are documented accounts of all sorts of things raining down from the sky: Fish, frogs, large balls of ice, and so on.
If rain storms can pick up fish out of the ocean, then drop them on land, then they certainly have the capacity to pick up oil, too.
Besides, as any chemist will tell you, the various petrochemicals found in crude oil evaporate even without a storm picking them up! Oil, in other words, does evaporate into the air. Or, more accurately, some of the lighter chemicals in crude oil evaporate even at temperatures of around 100 degrees (F). Those are Gulf Coast temperatures.
These chemicals burn
Now, these lighter chemicals that more easily evaporate also happen to have lower flash points, meaning they catch on fire more easily and at lower temperatures than other elements in the oil. The flash point for gasoline, for example, is much lower than diesel fuel. That's because gasoline is "more flammable" and is a lighter fuel than diesel.The EPA classifies oils into Classes A - D. Class A is the lightest kind of oil, which the EPA describes as follows (http://www.epa.gov/oem/content/lear...)
"These oils are highly fluid, often clear, spread rapidly on solid or water surfaces, have a strong odor, a high evaporation rate, and are usually flammable. They penetrate porous surfaces such as dirt and sand, and may be persistent in such a matrix."
That same EPA document makes it quite clear that the more volatile oils can evaporate from crude oil, rendering the remaining oil heavier and more "tar-like."
And we already know these oils can catch on fire. That's the whole point of tapping crude oil, of course: To pump it into engines then catch it on fire in order to turn the energy of that mini-explosion into force (to drive the eight pistons in your gas-guzzling SUV, for example).
How the fire happens
So let's say the oil blowout continues, and the Gulf of Mexico is carrying millions of gallons of crude oil as a massive hurricane approaches. It's a hot July day in the Gulf of Mexico, with temperatures soaring towards 110 degrees, accelerating the evaporation of volatile oils which get mixed in with hurricane-force winds.The hurricane makes landfall in New Orleans, let's say, dumping potentially hundreds of thousands of gallons of what is essentially "volatile fuel" on the city of New Orleans. Now, at first it's just a wet, slippery toxic mess that kills trees and grass. But what happens after the storm when the sun dries out the city?
All the dead trees killed by the oil turn into kindling. The sun evaporates off the rain water, leaving behind fuel. A few days of sun baking and you have a city doused in fuel, ready to burst into flames. It's every fireman's worst nightmare. The whole city is essentially turned into a giant match.
Now, sure, the more volatile fuels might evaporate, but as they do, they'd fill the city with explosive fumes. One spark, one fire, one lightning strike and your whole city literally goes up in flames. The BP oil spill, in other words, provides the fuel that could turn an ordinary hurricane into Mother Nature's arson attack on an entire city.
Like a nuclear bomb
This would not be an ordinary city on fire, either: It would be a city doused with volatile fuels that soaked it to the core. The sewers would explode like massive terrorist bombs, ripping to shred any underground infrastructure (fiber optics, water delivery, electrical infrastructure, etc.). The pavement itself would be on fire, as would parks, grasslands and forests. The city would burn from top to bottom, and there would be no point even trying to put out the flames. All we could do is evacuate and watch it all burn to the ground.And in the aftermath, you'd still have oil covering the beaches, oil in the ocean, and the threat of more firestorms yet to come. It could be just the first of many such incidents striking the Gulf Coast.
Think this couldn't happen? Sure, and BP said the oil was a "tiny" little leak that didn't matter, either. They said the oil rigs would never explode. They said they would cap the blowout. They said they would protect the shores. And all along the problem just got worse and worse until even the press noticed that these corporate criminals just couldn't stop lying.
Now, BP is at least $20 billion in the hole in an effort to compensate some of the Gulf Coast businesses for the damage they've caused. But how will they compensate people if an entire city burns to the ground?
The answer? They won't. That would be the end of BP. Immediately bankruptcy. B.P. = "Bankruptcy Protection," after all.
No more payments go out to anyone. BP goes belly up just like all the fish being murdered by CorExit dispersant chemicals in the Gulf right now. The company goes down in flames just like New Orleans (or some other major city on the coast).
Of course, the scenario I'm describing here is theoretical, and I hope it's a worst-case scenario, too. But it is possible. Catastrophe is what happens at the intersection of poor planning and bad luck. BP has given us poor planning, and now Mother Nature may be about to deliver a heavy-handed dose of bad luck in the form of a seasonal hurricane that takes oil from the Gulf and dumps it on land.
We can only hope that these two elements do not collide on our shores. For if they do, we may witness loss on a scale our world hasn't seen since the dropping of atomic weapons on civilian populations in World War II. If a hurricane drops oil on New Orleans (or any other Gulf Coast city) and it goes up in flames a few days later, the aftermath will, indeed, resemble the effects of a nuclear bomb explosion.
You probably don't want to be anywhere near that. Needless to say, if it starts raining oil in your neighborhood, that might be a good time to grab whatever you value and get outta Dodge.
Natural News
Gulf Coast Toxicity Syndrome
Vicki B. Escarra, President and CEO of Feeding America, wrote, “Alongside natural disaster, a very real human disaster looms. The recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has wrought havoc on sea and on land. But attention is now turning to the long-term effects the disaster will have on the coastlines, on businesses, and on American men, women and children. The immediate effects of the oil spill are obvious. Others, such as its effects on American families, will be hard to measure and will take years to document.”
There are effects from the oil spill that you can see, like oil washing ashore, and those that you can’t, like when oil compounds break down and go airborne. What is unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico is truly a nightmare of epic proportions. And it’s going to be a health disaster whose dimensions are growing exponentially behind curtains erected by the federal government. Few people are grasping the magnitude of the Gulf oil tragedy, not grasping the grave consequences for many millions of people and eventually the entire world. It is going to affect not only the livelihoods and employment of locals but will also contribute to the health failure of millions of people. It is so profoundly sad – like watching a loved one with a gunshot to the belly witnessing the blood coming out, but in this case it’s the planet belching up black blood and poison gas in huge and very possibly unending quantities.
This monster disaster is going to affect not only the livelihoods and employment of locals but will contribute to the health failure of millions of people. It is so profoundly sad – like watching a loved one with a gunshot to the belly witnessing the blood coming out but in this case it’s the planet belching up black blood and poison gas in huge and very possibly unending quantities.
There’s an old adage about not seeing the forest for the trees. It means getting wrapped up in the details of a circumstance and losing appreciation for the big picture. Sometimes we need to step back and look at things from a different perspective. Consider the extraordinary situation in the Gulf. Not that much news coming out of there, no mention of deadly threats but we do know who went to the yacht races last weekend. Life seems almost normal on the front page of the Times or in Yahoo or Google News. Things are stabilizing at the king of pop’s mansion, and Obama is personally meeting with a young gay girl who was given a hard time with her prom.
While the situation in the Gulf is grim it will soon get a lot grimmer. There are certain chemicals mixed in with the oil that release toxic gases, finding a way to make it up into the air. Many different gases from hydrogen sulfate to benzene are being released into the air at around 4000 times what it considered safe to humans. As a result of this people are going to become gravely ill. People are going to be poisoned and unfortunately some are going to die. We have already seen breathing problems in the Gulf region and now reports are coming in as far away as Atlanta, Georgia.
Large amounts of rusty substance washed up on the beaches
and floated beneath the bridges and into the Bay of St. Louis Sunday.
“These 18-inch boom systems didn’t even slow it down. This is not
protection,” Mayor Les Fillingame said. “This is a wake-up call.”
You will be shocked that you are not reading what you are in this essay in the corporate-and-government-controlled mass media. The same people and government that love secrets seem to be holding back on us but this cannot be sustained for long as the disaster continues to unfold into a planet-damaging event. “Health officials say there seems to be little reason to worry at this point.” If you believe that, well, what can I say but that is the official position at this point on the 21st of June. “But some note that health effects months or years from now remain a question mark, particularly for the workers who are in the thick of it, cleaning up oil from the BP spill in the Gulf.”
On June 14th Obama promised that “things are going to return to normal” along the stricken Gulf Coast and the region’s fouled waters will be in even better shape than before the catastrophic BP oil spill. He even declared Gulf seafood safe to eat. Meanwhile people are hurting around the Gulf with many facing bankruptcy and complete life destruction and they are now talking openly of permanent ruptures to the seabed floor around the oil well.
According to F. William Engdahl, “Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the Russian State University of Oil and Gas, predicted that the present oil spill flooding the Gulf Coast shores of the United States “could go on for years and years … many years.” According to Kutcherov, a leading specialist in the theory of abiogenic deep origin of petroleum, “What BP drilled into was what we call a ‘migration channel,’ a deep fault on which hydrocarbons generated in the depth of our planet migrate to the crust and are accumulated in rocks, something like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia.” Ghawar, the world’s most prolific oilfield has been producing millions of barrels daily for almost 70 years with no end in sight. Ghawar like all elephant and giant oil and gas deposits all over the world, is located on a migration channel similar to that in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico.
Engdahl also writes, “According to a report from Washington investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, “the Obama White House and British Petroleum are covering up the magnitude of the volcanic-level oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and working together to limit BP’s liability for damage caused by what can be called a ‘mega-disaster.’” Madsen cites sources within the US Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, and Florida Department of Environmental Protection for his assertion. Obama and his senior White House staff, as well as Interior Secretary Salazar, are working with BP’s chief executive officer Tony Hayward on legislation that would raise the cap on liability for damage claims from those affected by the oil disaster from $75 million to $10 billion. According to informed estimates cited by Madsen, however, the disaster has a real potential cost of at least $1,000 billion ($1 trillion). That estimate would support the pessimistic assessment of Kutcherov that the spill, if not rapidly controlled, “will destroy the entire coastline of the United States.”
Read More...
There are effects from the oil spill that you can see, like oil washing ashore, and those that you can’t, like when oil compounds break down and go airborne. What is unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico is truly a nightmare of epic proportions. And it’s going to be a health disaster whose dimensions are growing exponentially behind curtains erected by the federal government. Few people are grasping the magnitude of the Gulf oil tragedy, not grasping the grave consequences for many millions of people and eventually the entire world. It is going to affect not only the livelihoods and employment of locals but will also contribute to the health failure of millions of people. It is so profoundly sad – like watching a loved one with a gunshot to the belly witnessing the blood coming out, but in this case it’s the planet belching up black blood and poison gas in huge and very possibly unending quantities.
This monster disaster is going to affect not only the livelihoods and employment of locals but will contribute to the health failure of millions of people. It is so profoundly sad – like watching a loved one with a gunshot to the belly witnessing the blood coming out but in this case it’s the planet belching up black blood and poison gas in huge and very possibly unending quantities.
There’s an old adage about not seeing the forest for the trees. It means getting wrapped up in the details of a circumstance and losing appreciation for the big picture. Sometimes we need to step back and look at things from a different perspective. Consider the extraordinary situation in the Gulf. Not that much news coming out of there, no mention of deadly threats but we do know who went to the yacht races last weekend. Life seems almost normal on the front page of the Times or in Yahoo or Google News. Things are stabilizing at the king of pop’s mansion, and Obama is personally meeting with a young gay girl who was given a hard time with her prom.
While the situation in the Gulf is grim it will soon get a lot grimmer. There are certain chemicals mixed in with the oil that release toxic gases, finding a way to make it up into the air. Many different gases from hydrogen sulfate to benzene are being released into the air at around 4000 times what it considered safe to humans. As a result of this people are going to become gravely ill. People are going to be poisoned and unfortunately some are going to die. We have already seen breathing problems in the Gulf region and now reports are coming in as far away as Atlanta, Georgia.
Large amounts of rusty substance washed up on the beaches
and floated beneath the bridges and into the Bay of St. Louis Sunday.
“These 18-inch boom systems didn’t even slow it down. This is not
protection,” Mayor Les Fillingame said. “This is a wake-up call.”
You will be shocked that you are not reading what you are in this essay in the corporate-and-government-controlled mass media. The same people and government that love secrets seem to be holding back on us but this cannot be sustained for long as the disaster continues to unfold into a planet-damaging event. “Health officials say there seems to be little reason to worry at this point.” If you believe that, well, what can I say but that is the official position at this point on the 21st of June. “But some note that health effects months or years from now remain a question mark, particularly for the workers who are in the thick of it, cleaning up oil from the BP spill in the Gulf.”
On June 14th Obama promised that “things are going to return to normal” along the stricken Gulf Coast and the region’s fouled waters will be in even better shape than before the catastrophic BP oil spill. He even declared Gulf seafood safe to eat. Meanwhile people are hurting around the Gulf with many facing bankruptcy and complete life destruction and they are now talking openly of permanent ruptures to the seabed floor around the oil well.
According to F. William Engdahl, “Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the Russian State University of Oil and Gas, predicted that the present oil spill flooding the Gulf Coast shores of the United States “could go on for years and years … many years.” According to Kutcherov, a leading specialist in the theory of abiogenic deep origin of petroleum, “What BP drilled into was what we call a ‘migration channel,’ a deep fault on which hydrocarbons generated in the depth of our planet migrate to the crust and are accumulated in rocks, something like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia.” Ghawar, the world’s most prolific oilfield has been producing millions of barrels daily for almost 70 years with no end in sight. Ghawar like all elephant and giant oil and gas deposits all over the world, is located on a migration channel similar to that in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico.
Engdahl also writes, “According to a report from Washington investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, “the Obama White House and British Petroleum are covering up the magnitude of the volcanic-level oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and working together to limit BP’s liability for damage caused by what can be called a ‘mega-disaster.’” Madsen cites sources within the US Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, and Florida Department of Environmental Protection for his assertion. Obama and his senior White House staff, as well as Interior Secretary Salazar, are working with BP’s chief executive officer Tony Hayward on legislation that would raise the cap on liability for damage claims from those affected by the oil disaster from $75 million to $10 billion. According to informed estimates cited by Madsen, however, the disaster has a real potential cost of at least $1,000 billion ($1 trillion). That estimate would support the pessimistic assessment of Kutcherov that the spill, if not rapidly controlled, “will destroy the entire coastline of the United States.”
Read More...
Anti-Iran Bill in House Makes Claims With No Basis in Fact
by Jeremy R. Hammond
Representative Jim Costa (CA) sponsored a bill introduced into the U.S. Congress on Tuesday “Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives on the one-year anniversary of the Government of Iran’s fraudulent manipulation of Iranian elections, the Government of Iran’s continued denial of human rights and democracy to the people of Iran, and the Government of Iran’s continued pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability.”
The bill, H.R. 1457, was referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and was cosponsored by Gary L. Ackerman (NY), Howard L. Berman (CA), Dan Burton (IN), Ron Klein (FL), Mike Pence (IN), Ted Poe (TX), and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL).
The bill claims that “vote counts in the June 12, 2009, election were inconsistent with Iranian demographics and political trends, including provinces in which more votes were allegedly cast than the number of registered voters and vote counts that indicated unusual pro-Ahmadinejad voting patterns by traditionally anti-Ahmadinejad constituencies”.
It also refers to what it calls “the Government of Iran’s unrealistic vote count and fraudulent announcement of election results”.
Additionally, the bill “condemns the Government of Iran’s continued pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability”.
The claim that the 2009 election results “were inconsistent with Iranian demographics and political trends” is based upon the claim that there was a “swing” to Ahmadinejad, but is contested by both past voting trends and numerous public opinion surveys conducted both before and after the election.
When Ahmadinejad won in a run-off election in 2005, he did so with 61.7 percent of the vote, comparable to his 63 percent margin of victory in 2009.
Just prior to the 2009 vote, a public opinion survey conducted by Terror Free Tomorrow, the New America Foundation, and KA Europe SPRL found that Ahmadinejad was the preferred candidate by a margin of more than 2 to 1.
In that survey, 34 percent of respondents said they would vote for Ahmadinejad, while just 14 percent said they planned on voting for the incumbent’s leading contender, Mir Hossein Mousavi.
Eight University of Tehran polls all found that Ahmadinejad was the frontrunner for the election.
A World Public Opinion survey conducted after the election, in September 2009, found that 55 percent of the 87 percent of respondents who said they voted in the election said that they voted for Ahmadinejad, while only 14 percent said they voted for Mousavi.
That survey also found that, asked who they would vote for if the election were to be held again, 49 percent said they would vote for Ahmadinejad, while only 8 percent would vote for Mousavi.
The poll also found that “81 percent of Iranians consider Ahmadinejad to be Iran’s legitimate president”, with only 10 percent who disagreed.
A GlobeScan poll following the election similarly found that a majority had voted for Ahmadinejad, with 76 percent of respondents saying they believed the election was fair and only 16 percent who believed it was “not very fair or not at all fair”.
Two further polls conducted by the University of Tehran similarly found that a majority of Iranians voted for Ahmadinejad.
Walter Mebane, a political scientist, statistician, and expert on electoral fraud, conducted an analysis of the results and found that “there’s no solid evidence of fraud.”
A World Public Opinion analysis in February, 2010 found that there was “little evidence to support” the conclusion that the Ahmadinejad had won by fraud.
The argument that more votes being cast in some provinces than the number of registered voters has been a leading argument put forth by those claiming fraud.
The most often-cited source cited for this claim is a Chatham House and Institute of Iranian Studies report entitled “Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran’s 2009 Presidential Election”, which argued that a turnout of more than 100 percent in Mazandaran and Yazd provinces was evidence of fraud.
That report acknowledged the fact that Iranian voters may cast their ballots anywhere in the country, and not only in their home province, but argued that the number of people who would have done so was not significant.
However, that analysis, principally authored by avowed expert on Iran, Professor Ali Ansari, fails to point out that the election occurred on a Friday, which is the Islamic day of prayer, and also the weekend in Iran.
Iran’s Guardian Council, in response to the allegations of fraud, put out a report that noted that people “journey to nicer geographic areas with better weather at weekends”, that students vote in cities where they go to school rather than their home districts, that members of the military similarly vote in the places they are based, and that cities attract workers who commute from elsewhere.
That report also observed that a similar phenomenon had occurred in the previous, uncontested, election and was “quite normal and inevitable”.
“In many areas the number of voters was significantly higher than the number of eligible voters in the area”, the Guardian Council report stated.
In one case, in Shemiranat, the voter count was at 800 percent the number of eligible voters, far higher than any single case in the 2009 election.
The claim of “fraudulent announcement of election results” contained within the bill is presumably based upon the fact that the Iranian government announced the results early.
However, typically omitted from accounts arguing that this is evidence of fraud is the fact that this was prompted by the Mousavi campaign’s announcement even before the first vote counts were released that he was “definitely the winner” based on “all indications from all over Iran.”
Mousavi told a news conference on the day of the election, “I am the absolute winner of the election by a very large margin.”
The state news agency responded an hour later by reporting than Ahmadinejad had actually won.
Political analysts Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett wrote in Foreign Policy earlier this month that the reason “so many got it wrong” on the Iranian election was because of “willfully bad journalism and analysis, motivated in at least some cases by writers’ personal political agendas.”
“From literally the morning after the election,” they observed, “the vast majority of Western journalists and U.S.-based Iran ‘experts’ rushed to judgment that the outcome had to have been the result of fraud.”
But, they added, “there has never been a shred of hard evidence offered to back up the assertion of electoral fraud.”
They also pointed out that “Mousavi failed to produce evidence substantiating his public claims”.
The claim in the draft bill that Iran continues to pursue “a nuclear weapons capability” is also not supported by the available evidence.
In 2007, a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluded that Iran did not have an active nuclear weapons program in parallel to its civilian one.
In September 2009, Newsweek reported that the intelligence community was still standing by that assessment.
The 2007 NIE had claimed that Iran had had a weapons program until 2003, but the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued a statement in September 2009 saying, “the IAEA reiterates that it has no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapon programme in Iran” (emphasis added).
The IAEA, which is actively monitoring Iran’s nuclear program, has consistently reported that there has been no diversion of nuclear material to any military aspect of the program.
The former Director General of the IAEA, Mohammed ElBaradei, had repeatedly pointed out that there was no evidence Iran had a weapons program
His successor, Yukiya Amano, also said just prior to taking over the office, “I don’t see any evidence in IAEA official documents about this”, in response to a question about whether Iran was seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
Since that time, the U.S. has continued to fail to offer any proof of its claims, such as contained in this new draft bill, that Iran is seeking the nuclear bomb.
Global Research
Representative Jim Costa (CA) sponsored a bill introduced into the U.S. Congress on Tuesday “Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives on the one-year anniversary of the Government of Iran’s fraudulent manipulation of Iranian elections, the Government of Iran’s continued denial of human rights and democracy to the people of Iran, and the Government of Iran’s continued pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability.”
The bill, H.R. 1457, was referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and was cosponsored by Gary L. Ackerman (NY), Howard L. Berman (CA), Dan Burton (IN), Ron Klein (FL), Mike Pence (IN), Ted Poe (TX), and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL).
The bill claims that “vote counts in the June 12, 2009, election were inconsistent with Iranian demographics and political trends, including provinces in which more votes were allegedly cast than the number of registered voters and vote counts that indicated unusual pro-Ahmadinejad voting patterns by traditionally anti-Ahmadinejad constituencies”.
It also refers to what it calls “the Government of Iran’s unrealistic vote count and fraudulent announcement of election results”.
Additionally, the bill “condemns the Government of Iran’s continued pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability”.
The claim that the 2009 election results “were inconsistent with Iranian demographics and political trends” is based upon the claim that there was a “swing” to Ahmadinejad, but is contested by both past voting trends and numerous public opinion surveys conducted both before and after the election.
When Ahmadinejad won in a run-off election in 2005, he did so with 61.7 percent of the vote, comparable to his 63 percent margin of victory in 2009.
Just prior to the 2009 vote, a public opinion survey conducted by Terror Free Tomorrow, the New America Foundation, and KA Europe SPRL found that Ahmadinejad was the preferred candidate by a margin of more than 2 to 1.
In that survey, 34 percent of respondents said they would vote for Ahmadinejad, while just 14 percent said they planned on voting for the incumbent’s leading contender, Mir Hossein Mousavi.
Eight University of Tehran polls all found that Ahmadinejad was the frontrunner for the election.
A World Public Opinion survey conducted after the election, in September 2009, found that 55 percent of the 87 percent of respondents who said they voted in the election said that they voted for Ahmadinejad, while only 14 percent said they voted for Mousavi.
That survey also found that, asked who they would vote for if the election were to be held again, 49 percent said they would vote for Ahmadinejad, while only 8 percent would vote for Mousavi.
The poll also found that “81 percent of Iranians consider Ahmadinejad to be Iran’s legitimate president”, with only 10 percent who disagreed.
A GlobeScan poll following the election similarly found that a majority had voted for Ahmadinejad, with 76 percent of respondents saying they believed the election was fair and only 16 percent who believed it was “not very fair or not at all fair”.
Two further polls conducted by the University of Tehran similarly found that a majority of Iranians voted for Ahmadinejad.
Walter Mebane, a political scientist, statistician, and expert on electoral fraud, conducted an analysis of the results and found that “there’s no solid evidence of fraud.”
A World Public Opinion analysis in February, 2010 found that there was “little evidence to support” the conclusion that the Ahmadinejad had won by fraud.
The argument that more votes being cast in some provinces than the number of registered voters has been a leading argument put forth by those claiming fraud.
The most often-cited source cited for this claim is a Chatham House and Institute of Iranian Studies report entitled “Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran’s 2009 Presidential Election”, which argued that a turnout of more than 100 percent in Mazandaran and Yazd provinces was evidence of fraud.
That report acknowledged the fact that Iranian voters may cast their ballots anywhere in the country, and not only in their home province, but argued that the number of people who would have done so was not significant.
However, that analysis, principally authored by avowed expert on Iran, Professor Ali Ansari, fails to point out that the election occurred on a Friday, which is the Islamic day of prayer, and also the weekend in Iran.
Iran’s Guardian Council, in response to the allegations of fraud, put out a report that noted that people “journey to nicer geographic areas with better weather at weekends”, that students vote in cities where they go to school rather than their home districts, that members of the military similarly vote in the places they are based, and that cities attract workers who commute from elsewhere.
That report also observed that a similar phenomenon had occurred in the previous, uncontested, election and was “quite normal and inevitable”.
“In many areas the number of voters was significantly higher than the number of eligible voters in the area”, the Guardian Council report stated.
In one case, in Shemiranat, the voter count was at 800 percent the number of eligible voters, far higher than any single case in the 2009 election.
The claim of “fraudulent announcement of election results” contained within the bill is presumably based upon the fact that the Iranian government announced the results early.
However, typically omitted from accounts arguing that this is evidence of fraud is the fact that this was prompted by the Mousavi campaign’s announcement even before the first vote counts were released that he was “definitely the winner” based on “all indications from all over Iran.”
Mousavi told a news conference on the day of the election, “I am the absolute winner of the election by a very large margin.”
The state news agency responded an hour later by reporting than Ahmadinejad had actually won.
Political analysts Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett wrote in Foreign Policy earlier this month that the reason “so many got it wrong” on the Iranian election was because of “willfully bad journalism and analysis, motivated in at least some cases by writers’ personal political agendas.”
“From literally the morning after the election,” they observed, “the vast majority of Western journalists and U.S.-based Iran ‘experts’ rushed to judgment that the outcome had to have been the result of fraud.”
But, they added, “there has never been a shred of hard evidence offered to back up the assertion of electoral fraud.”
They also pointed out that “Mousavi failed to produce evidence substantiating his public claims”.
The claim in the draft bill that Iran continues to pursue “a nuclear weapons capability” is also not supported by the available evidence.
In 2007, a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluded that Iran did not have an active nuclear weapons program in parallel to its civilian one.
In September 2009, Newsweek reported that the intelligence community was still standing by that assessment.
The 2007 NIE had claimed that Iran had had a weapons program until 2003, but the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued a statement in September 2009 saying, “the IAEA reiterates that it has no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapon programme in Iran” (emphasis added).
The IAEA, which is actively monitoring Iran’s nuclear program, has consistently reported that there has been no diversion of nuclear material to any military aspect of the program.
The former Director General of the IAEA, Mohammed ElBaradei, had repeatedly pointed out that there was no evidence Iran had a weapons program
His successor, Yukiya Amano, also said just prior to taking over the office, “I don’t see any evidence in IAEA official documents about this”, in response to a question about whether Iran was seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
Since that time, the U.S. has continued to fail to offer any proof of its claims, such as contained in this new draft bill, that Iran is seeking the nuclear bomb.
Global Research
BP Makes Largest Political Contribution in U.S. History
Amidst all the mistakes, misspeaks and obvious mechanical malfunctions, BP’s next move is to contribute $20 billion to an escrow account to pay out claims in the Gulf region. This sounds like humanitarianism and accountability, but there is something more sinister here. This is corruption. This is government domination of private business and this is political fundraising.
The account will be wholly controlled by the federal government. Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administration’s “Pay Czar,” has been placed at the helm of the BP Escrow Fund. Feinberg is an old pro at exerting fed control over some of the largest corporations in the nation: GM, Chrysler, AIG, Bank of America, Citibank and more.
Feinberg stated that BP “has no say in the claims that I declare legitimate and eligible.” BP is handing the Obama administration $20 billion to disburse at will. Obama has appointed yet another czar to handle it, and that czar will hand out billions, under no apparent oversight or legislative appropriation.
The suspect nature of this did not go unnoticed. In congressional hearings last Thursday, Rep. Barton (R-TX) apologized to Tony Hayward for Obama’s “shakedown.” Later, in a typical lack of backbone, the Republican leadership forced Barton to recant and apologize to avoid political upheaval.
Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota warned also, that this might lead to a government takeover of private industry and that BP might become a “permanent ATM” for the federal government. This would be a very keen observation if it were not for the companies already compromised: GM, Chrysler, AIG, Bank of America, and Citibank.
Even Jonathan Weisman of the Wall Street Journal stated BP had some victories, though at first seemingly at a loss. Specifically, they avoided liability for the job losses resulting from Obama’s six-month drilling moratorium and environmental restoration beyond pre-spill conditions. Victory? Those are two conditions unrelated to BP’s actions.
The fund is a desperate maneuver by BP. Any corporation would look at Obama’s history regarding corporations in crisis and try to preempt the ‘a**-kicking’ effect.
Considering this, BP has seemingly made a political donation; something for Obama to dole out as Robin Hood; something to take from one and give to another. Nobody knows who will get the money or the standards for a valid claim. We only know that $20 billion is waiting for the administration to give away to those they feel deserve it. Compared to this, the money Obama’s campaign took in from BP is dwarfed. And now Feinberg is asking for $34 billion more.
It is too late to scream: “Do not do this. Do not continue down this road!” BP already promised the money. The bottom-line: the administration will disburse monies (a lot) to voters; no questions so far asked. Fienberg keeps stressing the need to get this money out quicker; perhaps to beat an election cycle? No matter how you look at it, Obama was granted $20 billion to distribute in southern, Republican states at his will: The largest political contribution in U.S. History.
Though too late for BP, there is still a broader hope. Feinberg is encouraging claimants to avoid the civil process and work directly with the BP Escrow Fund. He wants voters to eat out of their hands (sounds familiar), not pursue restitution through the legal process. What can you do? Don’t take their money.
No matter the mistakes or ill-intent of BP (to get them out of trouble by paying off a political machine), the citizens still hold the ultimate power. They must pursue their claims through the courts, guarantee a neutral oversight – a federal judge – and disallow the Obama administration from buying them off with somebody else’s money.
Source
The account will be wholly controlled by the federal government. Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administration’s “Pay Czar,” has been placed at the helm of the BP Escrow Fund. Feinberg is an old pro at exerting fed control over some of the largest corporations in the nation: GM, Chrysler, AIG, Bank of America, Citibank and more.
Feinberg stated that BP “has no say in the claims that I declare legitimate and eligible.” BP is handing the Obama administration $20 billion to disburse at will. Obama has appointed yet another czar to handle it, and that czar will hand out billions, under no apparent oversight or legislative appropriation.
The suspect nature of this did not go unnoticed. In congressional hearings last Thursday, Rep. Barton (R-TX) apologized to Tony Hayward for Obama’s “shakedown.” Later, in a typical lack of backbone, the Republican leadership forced Barton to recant and apologize to avoid political upheaval.
Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota warned also, that this might lead to a government takeover of private industry and that BP might become a “permanent ATM” for the federal government. This would be a very keen observation if it were not for the companies already compromised: GM, Chrysler, AIG, Bank of America, and Citibank.
Even Jonathan Weisman of the Wall Street Journal stated BP had some victories, though at first seemingly at a loss. Specifically, they avoided liability for the job losses resulting from Obama’s six-month drilling moratorium and environmental restoration beyond pre-spill conditions. Victory? Those are two conditions unrelated to BP’s actions.
The fund is a desperate maneuver by BP. Any corporation would look at Obama’s history regarding corporations in crisis and try to preempt the ‘a**-kicking’ effect.
Considering this, BP has seemingly made a political donation; something for Obama to dole out as Robin Hood; something to take from one and give to another. Nobody knows who will get the money or the standards for a valid claim. We only know that $20 billion is waiting for the administration to give away to those they feel deserve it. Compared to this, the money Obama’s campaign took in from BP is dwarfed. And now Feinberg is asking for $34 billion more.
It is too late to scream: “Do not do this. Do not continue down this road!” BP already promised the money. The bottom-line: the administration will disburse monies (a lot) to voters; no questions so far asked. Fienberg keeps stressing the need to get this money out quicker; perhaps to beat an election cycle? No matter how you look at it, Obama was granted $20 billion to distribute in southern, Republican states at his will: The largest political contribution in U.S. History.
Though too late for BP, there is still a broader hope. Feinberg is encouraging claimants to avoid the civil process and work directly with the BP Escrow Fund. He wants voters to eat out of their hands (sounds familiar), not pursue restitution through the legal process. What can you do? Don’t take their money.
No matter the mistakes or ill-intent of BP (to get them out of trouble by paying off a political machine), the citizens still hold the ultimate power. They must pursue their claims through the courts, guarantee a neutral oversight – a federal judge – and disallow the Obama administration from buying them off with somebody else’s money.
Source
Jindal vetoes bill to open oil spill records
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Gov. Bobby Jindal rejected a bill Friday that would have required him to make public and to preserve all his office's documents involving the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
In his veto letter, the governor said the legislation would have hurt the state's position in future litigation against BP PLC, the oil giant that leased the rig which exploded April 20 in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and causing the disaster.
"This bill would allow BP and other parties with potential liability to the state to obtain information retained by any state agency responding to this tragic event," Jindal wrote, saying such access could jeopardize the state's position in seeking legal remedy for the spill's damage.
The Senate sponsor of the public records provision said Friday night that Jindal's veto was expected. He noted that the governor has repeatedly fought attempts to require preservation and open most of his office's records to public scrutiny.
"This governor has opposed transparency for the three years he's been in office, so that's not a surprise. What is sad about all this is it's just another black eye on Louisiana internationally now," said Sen. Robert Adley, R-Benton.
Adley slipped the language requiring the governor's oil spill records to be open for public viewing and preserved for at least 10 years into a measure by Rep. Gary Smith, D-Norco. Smith accepted the addition to his bill, and both the House and Senate voted overwhelmingly for passage of the public records requirement.
Despite hefty support for the bill, Adley said he doesn't think there's a realistic chance of getting lawmakers to agree to override Jindal's veto.
Adley also called it hypocritical for the governor to push BP to open some of its records to the state even as Jindal refuses to release his own.
"How in the world would making our records public let BP off for what they've done? That makes absolutely no sense," Adley said.
Jindal has said he wants BP to open its claims database to the state to help ensure payments are being processed promptly.
In the recent legislative session, Jindal's chief lawyer, Stephen Waguespack, opposed several public records bills. He argued that tweaks made to the governor's public records law last year afforded sufficient public access and that more sweeping proposals could squelch the free exchange of ideas in the governor's office.
---
Online:
House Bill 37 can be found at http://www.legis.state.la.us
Source
In his veto letter, the governor said the legislation would have hurt the state's position in future litigation against BP PLC, the oil giant that leased the rig which exploded April 20 in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and causing the disaster.
"This bill would allow BP and other parties with potential liability to the state to obtain information retained by any state agency responding to this tragic event," Jindal wrote, saying such access could jeopardize the state's position in seeking legal remedy for the spill's damage.
The Senate sponsor of the public records provision said Friday night that Jindal's veto was expected. He noted that the governor has repeatedly fought attempts to require preservation and open most of his office's records to public scrutiny.
"This governor has opposed transparency for the three years he's been in office, so that's not a surprise. What is sad about all this is it's just another black eye on Louisiana internationally now," said Sen. Robert Adley, R-Benton.
Adley slipped the language requiring the governor's oil spill records to be open for public viewing and preserved for at least 10 years into a measure by Rep. Gary Smith, D-Norco. Smith accepted the addition to his bill, and both the House and Senate voted overwhelmingly for passage of the public records requirement.
Despite hefty support for the bill, Adley said he doesn't think there's a realistic chance of getting lawmakers to agree to override Jindal's veto.
Adley also called it hypocritical for the governor to push BP to open some of its records to the state even as Jindal refuses to release his own.
"How in the world would making our records public let BP off for what they've done? That makes absolutely no sense," Adley said.
Jindal has said he wants BP to open its claims database to the state to help ensure payments are being processed promptly.
In the recent legislative session, Jindal's chief lawyer, Stephen Waguespack, opposed several public records bills. He argued that tweaks made to the governor's public records law last year afforded sufficient public access and that more sweeping proposals could squelch the free exchange of ideas in the governor's office.
---
Online:
House Bill 37 can be found at http://www.legis.state.la.us
Source
BP buys Google, Yahoo search words:Is it to keep people from real news on Gulf oil spill disaster?
In their most tenacious effort to control the ‘spin’ on the worst oil spill disaster in US history, BP has purchased sponsored links at the top of internet search engines, Google and Yahoo. The top listed links direct people to BP's official company website for news and information on the catastrophe.
BP spokesman Toby Odone confirmed to ABC News that the oil giant had in fact bought internet search terms.
The words ‘oil spill’, 'BP oil spill', 'Deepwater Horizon' and 'oil spill response' are among several other related search terms that all lead to the top listed sponsored links purchased by BP.
BP has not been completely forthcomming with information on the oil spill, which has damaged the companies public image.
Shortly after the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, 2010, BP executives quickly underestimated the size of the disastrous oil spill. Some suggest they did it to avoid costly EPA per-gallon spill fines. The less oil spilled, the lower the fines.
A month into the spill, the public learned through independent science, that the spill was in fact a million gallon a day gusher. BP got caught in their own lie when the used a syphon pipe in one of the broken riser pipes and proudly proclaimed that they were capturing 5,000 barrels of oil a day. With the oil obviously still gushing, they had to up their spill rate to explain the reported discrepancy in their earlier estimates.
As the dead bodies of birds, turtles and dolphins began showing up on land, BP used a private security company as their ‘oil spill police’ to try to keep photographers and reporters away from the true death toll from their spill. Tides of black goo lapping a shore lined in corpses did not portray the company image Tony Hayward wanted for BP.
The world is watching the Gulf of Mexico from airplanes, boats and satellite images. Buying the links listed first on internet search engines, which direct people to the BP company website, will not hide or erase the horrors of the apocalypse unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Yet the question remains: If BP were not trying to influence information on the Gulf oil spill, why would they buy sponsored links?
Source
BP spokesman Toby Odone confirmed to ABC News that the oil giant had in fact bought internet search terms.
The words ‘oil spill’, 'BP oil spill', 'Deepwater Horizon' and 'oil spill response' are among several other related search terms that all lead to the top listed sponsored links purchased by BP.
BP has not been completely forthcomming with information on the oil spill, which has damaged the companies public image.
Shortly after the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, 2010, BP executives quickly underestimated the size of the disastrous oil spill. Some suggest they did it to avoid costly EPA per-gallon spill fines. The less oil spilled, the lower the fines.
A month into the spill, the public learned through independent science, that the spill was in fact a million gallon a day gusher. BP got caught in their own lie when the used a syphon pipe in one of the broken riser pipes and proudly proclaimed that they were capturing 5,000 barrels of oil a day. With the oil obviously still gushing, they had to up their spill rate to explain the reported discrepancy in their earlier estimates.
As the dead bodies of birds, turtles and dolphins began showing up on land, BP used a private security company as their ‘oil spill police’ to try to keep photographers and reporters away from the true death toll from their spill. Tides of black goo lapping a shore lined in corpses did not portray the company image Tony Hayward wanted for BP.
The world is watching the Gulf of Mexico from airplanes, boats and satellite images. Buying the links listed first on internet search engines, which direct people to the BP company website, will not hide or erase the horrors of the apocalypse unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Yet the question remains: If BP were not trying to influence information on the Gulf oil spill, why would they buy sponsored links?
Source
Senate bill would authorize US president to seize control of Internet
By Mike Ingram
WSWS, 24 June 2010
A bill introduced by Joseph Lieberman, Independent Senator from Connecticut and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman, would give the US president wide-ranging powers, including the ability to order Internet providers to restrict access to the global network.
The bill, entitled the “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act” (PCNAA), was presented in the Senate June 10 by Lieberman, with the support of Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Tom Carper of Delaware.
Known by the short name “Protecting Cyberspace,” the bill has been dubbed an Internet Kill Switch as it presents the Internet itself as a US national asset, over which the president would be given extraordinary powers in a declared “cyber emergency.” Under PCNAA, already extensive powers to force private companies to comply with emergency decrees would be greatly expanded. Any company on a list created by the Department of Homeland Security that also “relies on” the Internet, telephone system, or any other component of the US “information infrastructure” could be taken under the control of a proposed new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC), which would be a section of Homeland Security.
A June 10 press release from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs claims, “The bill authorizes no new surveillance authorities and does not authorize the government to ‘take over’ private networks.” But in defending the bill, Lieberman said the president should be able to “say to an electric company or to say to Verizon, in the national interests, ‘There’s an attack about to come and I hereby order you to put a patch on this, or put your network down on this part, or stop accepting any incoming [traffic] from country A,’” CNET news reported.
The Obama administration has so far stopped short of endorsing Lieberman’s bill, but Philip Reitinger, Deputy Undersecretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said that he agreed the executive branch “may need to take extraordinary measures.” He preferred to have a single organization—that is, an arm of the DHS, rather than a new office—handle physical and Internet infrastructure. Reitinger pointed out that the 1934 Communications Act already gives the president broad emergency power. “Congress and the administration should work together to identify any needed adjustments to the act, as opposed to developing overlapping legislation,” he said.
Under the 1934 act, the president may, under “threat of war,” seize control of any “facilities or stations for wire communications.” Though dated, that definition would clearly apply to broadband providers or Web sites. Anyone disobeying a presidential order can be imprisoned for one year. In addition to making explicit the inclusion of Internet providers, a central component of the Lieberman bill is a promise of immunity from financial claims for any private company which carries through an order from the federal government.
The Lieberman bill is by no means the first attempt to impose restrictions on Internet access in circumstances when it is deemed to be in conflict with the interests of US imperialism. The 2009 CyberSecurity Act introduced by Senators Jay Rockefeller (Democrat from West Virginia) and Olympia Snowe (Republican from Maine) proposed giving the president similar all-encompassing powers over the Internet. In the end, the most controversial proposals were pulled from the 2009 bill and instead the act required US government agencies to prepare emergency contingency plans.
The push for new security measures ultimately comes from the White House itself. In a May 2009 press statement, Barack Obama revealed that the servers of his campaign during the presidential election had been hacked and the hackers had “gained access to emails and a range of campaign files, from policy papers to travel plans.” Choosing not to comment on who might be responsible for such an action, Obama claimed this was a powerful reminder that “In this information Age, one of your greatest strengths—in our case, our ability to communicate to a wide range of supporters through the Internet—could be one of your greatest vulnerabilities.”
The president stated that cybersecurity “is a matter, as well, of America’s economic competitiveness,” asserting that “E-commerce alone last year accounted for some $132 billion in retail sales.” The president declared, “In short, America’s economic prosperity in the 21st century will depend on cybersecurity.”
Utilizing the kind of rhetoric most closely associated with the former Bush administration, Obama continued, “Our technological advantage is a key to America’s military dominance. But our defense and military networks are under constant attack. Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups have spoken of their desire to unleash a cyber attack on our country—attacks that are harder to detect and harder to defend against. Indeed, in today’s world, acts of terror could come not only from a few extremists in suicide vests but from a few key strokes on the computer —a weapon of mass destruction.”
After pledging to “secure America’s information and communications networks,” Obama went on to claim that none of this would infringe on the democratic rights of ordinary citizens. “Let me also be clear about what we will not do. Our pursuit of cybersecurity will not—I repeat, will not include—monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic. We will preserve and protect the personal privacy and civil liberties that we cherish as Americans. Indeed, I remain firmly committed to net neutrality so we can keep the Internet as it should be—open and free.”
On the issue of monitoring private sector networks, it should be enough to point to the 3,580 data requests and 123 content removal requests made by the US government to Google between July 1 and December 31, 2009 which we noted on the WSWS in April this year. As for Obama’s supposed defense of net neutrality, we have recently drawn attention to the attack on the WikiLeaks web site, which has published video coverage contradicting the US government’s war propaganda. (See “Hands off WikiLeaks!” published June 14.)
In an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley, Sen. Lieberman gave some insight into the real purpose of the proposed measures when he cited the example of China. Invoking “cybersecurity” as the motivation for the bill, Lieberman said, “So I say to my friends on the Internet, relax. Take a look at the bill. And this is something that we need to protect our country.” Lieberman said that “Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too.”
China routinely shuts down or censors the Internet, not in response to war or “national emergency” but to social unrest and the threat posed by the emerging movement of the working class. That Lieberman chooses this as his example is an acknowledgement of the real purpose of the measures he proposes. As with all the attacks on democratic rights which have been carried through since 9/11, first by the Bush administration then continued under Obama, the proposed bill has nothing to do with fighting terrorism. Under conditions of increasing economic and social crisis, Lieberman longs for the type of repressive powers available to the regime in Beijing.
Source
WSWS, 24 June 2010
A bill introduced by Joseph Lieberman, Independent Senator from Connecticut and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman, would give the US president wide-ranging powers, including the ability to order Internet providers to restrict access to the global network.
The bill, entitled the “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act” (PCNAA), was presented in the Senate June 10 by Lieberman, with the support of Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Tom Carper of Delaware.
Known by the short name “Protecting Cyberspace,” the bill has been dubbed an Internet Kill Switch as it presents the Internet itself as a US national asset, over which the president would be given extraordinary powers in a declared “cyber emergency.” Under PCNAA, already extensive powers to force private companies to comply with emergency decrees would be greatly expanded. Any company on a list created by the Department of Homeland Security that also “relies on” the Internet, telephone system, or any other component of the US “information infrastructure” could be taken under the control of a proposed new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC), which would be a section of Homeland Security.
A June 10 press release from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs claims, “The bill authorizes no new surveillance authorities and does not authorize the government to ‘take over’ private networks.” But in defending the bill, Lieberman said the president should be able to “say to an electric company or to say to Verizon, in the national interests, ‘There’s an attack about to come and I hereby order you to put a patch on this, or put your network down on this part, or stop accepting any incoming [traffic] from country A,’” CNET news reported.
The Obama administration has so far stopped short of endorsing Lieberman’s bill, but Philip Reitinger, Deputy Undersecretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said that he agreed the executive branch “may need to take extraordinary measures.” He preferred to have a single organization—that is, an arm of the DHS, rather than a new office—handle physical and Internet infrastructure. Reitinger pointed out that the 1934 Communications Act already gives the president broad emergency power. “Congress and the administration should work together to identify any needed adjustments to the act, as opposed to developing overlapping legislation,” he said.
Under the 1934 act, the president may, under “threat of war,” seize control of any “facilities or stations for wire communications.” Though dated, that definition would clearly apply to broadband providers or Web sites. Anyone disobeying a presidential order can be imprisoned for one year. In addition to making explicit the inclusion of Internet providers, a central component of the Lieberman bill is a promise of immunity from financial claims for any private company which carries through an order from the federal government.
The Lieberman bill is by no means the first attempt to impose restrictions on Internet access in circumstances when it is deemed to be in conflict with the interests of US imperialism. The 2009 CyberSecurity Act introduced by Senators Jay Rockefeller (Democrat from West Virginia) and Olympia Snowe (Republican from Maine) proposed giving the president similar all-encompassing powers over the Internet. In the end, the most controversial proposals were pulled from the 2009 bill and instead the act required US government agencies to prepare emergency contingency plans.
The push for new security measures ultimately comes from the White House itself. In a May 2009 press statement, Barack Obama revealed that the servers of his campaign during the presidential election had been hacked and the hackers had “gained access to emails and a range of campaign files, from policy papers to travel plans.” Choosing not to comment on who might be responsible for such an action, Obama claimed this was a powerful reminder that “In this information Age, one of your greatest strengths—in our case, our ability to communicate to a wide range of supporters through the Internet—could be one of your greatest vulnerabilities.”
The president stated that cybersecurity “is a matter, as well, of America’s economic competitiveness,” asserting that “E-commerce alone last year accounted for some $132 billion in retail sales.” The president declared, “In short, America’s economic prosperity in the 21st century will depend on cybersecurity.”
Utilizing the kind of rhetoric most closely associated with the former Bush administration, Obama continued, “Our technological advantage is a key to America’s military dominance. But our defense and military networks are under constant attack. Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups have spoken of their desire to unleash a cyber attack on our country—attacks that are harder to detect and harder to defend against. Indeed, in today’s world, acts of terror could come not only from a few extremists in suicide vests but from a few key strokes on the computer —a weapon of mass destruction.”
After pledging to “secure America’s information and communications networks,” Obama went on to claim that none of this would infringe on the democratic rights of ordinary citizens. “Let me also be clear about what we will not do. Our pursuit of cybersecurity will not—I repeat, will not include—monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic. We will preserve and protect the personal privacy and civil liberties that we cherish as Americans. Indeed, I remain firmly committed to net neutrality so we can keep the Internet as it should be—open and free.”
On the issue of monitoring private sector networks, it should be enough to point to the 3,580 data requests and 123 content removal requests made by the US government to Google between July 1 and December 31, 2009 which we noted on the WSWS in April this year. As for Obama’s supposed defense of net neutrality, we have recently drawn attention to the attack on the WikiLeaks web site, which has published video coverage contradicting the US government’s war propaganda. (See “Hands off WikiLeaks!” published June 14.)
In an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley, Sen. Lieberman gave some insight into the real purpose of the proposed measures when he cited the example of China. Invoking “cybersecurity” as the motivation for the bill, Lieberman said, “So I say to my friends on the Internet, relax. Take a look at the bill. And this is something that we need to protect our country.” Lieberman said that “Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too.”
China routinely shuts down or censors the Internet, not in response to war or “national emergency” but to social unrest and the threat posed by the emerging movement of the working class. That Lieberman chooses this as his example is an acknowledgement of the real purpose of the measures he proposes. As with all the attacks on democratic rights which have been carried through since 9/11, first by the Bush administration then continued under Obama, the proposed bill has nothing to do with fighting terrorism. Under conditions of increasing economic and social crisis, Lieberman longs for the type of repressive powers available to the regime in Beijing.
Source
Rahm Emanuel’s BP Connection
Imagine if Bush were president right now, and it was revealed that his chief of staff had lived rent-free in the home of one of BP’s consultants. Yeah, that might be something the MSM would report on. Andrew Malcom on the Rahm Emanuel’s BP bennies:
In case you were tempted to buy the faux Washington outrage at BP and its gulf oil spill in recent days, here’s a story that reveals a little-known corporate political connection and the quiet way the inner political circles intersect, protect and care for one another in the nation’s capital. And Chicago.
We already knew that BP and its folks were significant contributors to the record $750-million war chest of Barack Obama’s 2007-08 campaign.
Now, we learn the details of a connection of Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago mayoral wannabe, current Obama chief of staff, ex-representative, ex-Clinton money man and ex-Windy City political machine go-fer.
Shortly after Obama’s happy inaugural, eyebrows rose slightly upon word that, as a House member, Emanuel had lived the last five years rent-free in a D.C. apartment of Democratic colleague Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and her husband, Stanley Greenberg.
The rest here.
Source
In case you were tempted to buy the faux Washington outrage at BP and its gulf oil spill in recent days, here’s a story that reveals a little-known corporate political connection and the quiet way the inner political circles intersect, protect and care for one another in the nation’s capital. And Chicago.
We already knew that BP and its folks were significant contributors to the record $750-million war chest of Barack Obama’s 2007-08 campaign.
Now, we learn the details of a connection of Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago mayoral wannabe, current Obama chief of staff, ex-representative, ex-Clinton money man and ex-Windy City political machine go-fer.
Shortly after Obama’s happy inaugural, eyebrows rose slightly upon word that, as a House member, Emanuel had lived the last five years rent-free in a D.C. apartment of Democratic colleague Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and her husband, Stanley Greenberg.
The rest here.
Source
Did 9/11 Justify the War in Afghanistan?
Using the McChrystal Moment to Raise a Forbidden Question
By Prof. David Ray Griffin
June 25, 2010 "Global Research" -- There are many questions to ask about the war in Afghanistan. One that has been widely asked is whether it will turn out to be “Obama’s Vietnam.” This question implies another: Is this war winnable, or is it destined to be a quagmire, like Vietnam? These questions are motivated in part by the widespread agreement that the Afghan government, under Hamid Karzai, is at least as corrupt and incompetent as the government the United States tried to prop up in South Vietnam for 20 years.
Although there are many similarities between these two wars, there is also a big difference: This time, there is no draft. If there were a draft, so that college students and their friends back home were being sent to Afghanistan, there would be huge demonstrations against this war on campuses all across this country. If the sons and daughters of wealthy and middle-class parents were coming home in boxes, or with permanent injuries or post-traumatic stress syndrome, this war would have surely been stopped long ago. People have often asked: Did we learn any of the “lessons of Vietnam”? The US government learned one: If you’re going to fight unpopular wars, don’t have a draft – hire mercenaries!
There are many other questions that have been, and should be, asked about this war, but in this essay, I focus on only one: Did the 9/11 attacks justify the war in Afghanistan?
This question has thus far been considered off-limits, not to be raised in polite company, and certainly not in the mainstream media. It has been permissible, to be sure, to ask whether the war during the past several years has been justified by those attacks so many years ago. But one has not been allowed to ask whether the original invasion was justified by the 9/11 attacks.
However, what can be designated the “McChrystal Moment” – the probably brief period during which the media are again focused on the war in Afghanistan in the wake of the Rolling Stone story about General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, which led to his resignation – provides the best opportunity for some time to raise fundamental questions about this war. Various commentators have already been asking some pretty basic questions: about the effectiveness and affordability of the present “counterinsurgency strategy” and even whether American fighting forces should remain in Afghanistan at all. But I am interested in an even more fundamental question: Whether this war was ever really justified by the publicly given reason: the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
This question has two parts: First, did these attacks provide a legal justification for the invasion of Afghanistan? Second, if not, did they at least provide a moral justification?
I. Did 9/11 Provide Legal Justification for the War in Afghanistan?
Since the founding of the United Nations in 1945, international law with regard to war has been defined by the UN Charter. Measured by this standard, the US-led war in Afghanistan has been illegal from the outset.
Marjorie Cohn, a well-known professor of international law, wrote in November 2001:
“[T]he bombings of Afghanistan by the United States and the United Kingdom are illegal.”2
In 2008, Cohn repeated this argument in an article entitled “Afghanistan: The Other Illegal War.” The point of the title was that, although it was by then widely accepted that the war in Iraq was illegal, the war in Afghanistan, in spite of the fact that many Americans did not realize it, was equally illegal.3 Her argument was based on the following facts:
First, according to international law as codified in the UN Charter, disputes are to be brought to the UN Security Council, which alone may authorize the use of force. Without this authorization, any military activity against another country is illegal.
Second, there are two exceptions: One is that, if your nation has been subjected to an armed attack by another nation, you may respond militarily in self-defense. This condition was not fulfilled by the 9/11 attacks, however, because they were not carried out by another nation: Afghanistan did not attack the United States. Indeed, the 19 men charged with the crime were not Afghans.
The other exception occurs when one nation has certain knowledge that an armed attack by another nation is imminent – too imminent to bring the matter to the Security Council. The need for self-defense must be, in the generally accepted phrase, "instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” Although the US government claimed that its military operations in Afghanistan were justified by the need to prevent a second attack, this need, even if real, was clearly not urgent, as shown by the fact that the Pentagon did not launch its invasion until almost a month later.
US political leaders have claimed, to be sure, that the UN did authorize the US attack on Afghanistan. This claim, originally made by the Bush-Cheney administration, was repeated by President Obama in his West Point speech of December 1, 2009, in which he said: “The United Nations Security Council endorsed the use of all necessary steps to respond to the 9/11 attacks,” so US troops went to Afghanistan “[u]nder the banner of . . . international legitimacy.”4
However, the language of “all necessary steps” is from UN Security Council Resolution 1368, in which the Council, taking note of its own “responsibilities under the Charter," expressed its own readiness “to take all necessary steps to respond to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.”5
Of course, the UN Security Council might have determined that one of these necessary steps was to authorize an attack on Afghanistan by the United States. But it did not. Resolution 1373, the only other Security Council resolution about this issue, laid out various responses, but these included matters such as freezing assets, criminalizing the support of terrorists, exchanging police information about terrorists, and prosecuting terrorists. The use of military force was not mentioned.6
The US war in Afghanistan was not authorized by the UN Security Council in 2001 or at anytime since, so this war began as an illegal war and remains an illegal war today. Our government’s claim to the contrary is false.
This war has been illegal, moreover, not only under international law, but also under US law. The UN Charter is a treaty, which was ratified by the United States, and, according to Article VI of the US Constitution, any treaty ratified by the United States is part of the “supreme law of the land.”7 The war in Afghanistan, therefore, has from the beginning been in violation of US as well as international law. It could not be more illegal.
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By Prof. David Ray Griffin
June 25, 2010 "Global Research" -- There are many questions to ask about the war in Afghanistan. One that has been widely asked is whether it will turn out to be “Obama’s Vietnam.” This question implies another: Is this war winnable, or is it destined to be a quagmire, like Vietnam? These questions are motivated in part by the widespread agreement that the Afghan government, under Hamid Karzai, is at least as corrupt and incompetent as the government the United States tried to prop up in South Vietnam for 20 years.
Although there are many similarities between these two wars, there is also a big difference: This time, there is no draft. If there were a draft, so that college students and their friends back home were being sent to Afghanistan, there would be huge demonstrations against this war on campuses all across this country. If the sons and daughters of wealthy and middle-class parents were coming home in boxes, or with permanent injuries or post-traumatic stress syndrome, this war would have surely been stopped long ago. People have often asked: Did we learn any of the “lessons of Vietnam”? The US government learned one: If you’re going to fight unpopular wars, don’t have a draft – hire mercenaries!
There are many other questions that have been, and should be, asked about this war, but in this essay, I focus on only one: Did the 9/11 attacks justify the war in Afghanistan?
This question has thus far been considered off-limits, not to be raised in polite company, and certainly not in the mainstream media. It has been permissible, to be sure, to ask whether the war during the past several years has been justified by those attacks so many years ago. But one has not been allowed to ask whether the original invasion was justified by the 9/11 attacks.
However, what can be designated the “McChrystal Moment” – the probably brief period during which the media are again focused on the war in Afghanistan in the wake of the Rolling Stone story about General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, which led to his resignation – provides the best opportunity for some time to raise fundamental questions about this war. Various commentators have already been asking some pretty basic questions: about the effectiveness and affordability of the present “counterinsurgency strategy” and even whether American fighting forces should remain in Afghanistan at all. But I am interested in an even more fundamental question: Whether this war was ever really justified by the publicly given reason: the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
This question has two parts: First, did these attacks provide a legal justification for the invasion of Afghanistan? Second, if not, did they at least provide a moral justification?
I. Did 9/11 Provide Legal Justification for the War in Afghanistan?
Since the founding of the United Nations in 1945, international law with regard to war has been defined by the UN Charter. Measured by this standard, the US-led war in Afghanistan has been illegal from the outset.
Marjorie Cohn, a well-known professor of international law, wrote in November 2001:
“[T]he bombings of Afghanistan by the United States and the United Kingdom are illegal.”2
In 2008, Cohn repeated this argument in an article entitled “Afghanistan: The Other Illegal War.” The point of the title was that, although it was by then widely accepted that the war in Iraq was illegal, the war in Afghanistan, in spite of the fact that many Americans did not realize it, was equally illegal.3 Her argument was based on the following facts:
First, according to international law as codified in the UN Charter, disputes are to be brought to the UN Security Council, which alone may authorize the use of force. Without this authorization, any military activity against another country is illegal.
Second, there are two exceptions: One is that, if your nation has been subjected to an armed attack by another nation, you may respond militarily in self-defense. This condition was not fulfilled by the 9/11 attacks, however, because they were not carried out by another nation: Afghanistan did not attack the United States. Indeed, the 19 men charged with the crime were not Afghans.
The other exception occurs when one nation has certain knowledge that an armed attack by another nation is imminent – too imminent to bring the matter to the Security Council. The need for self-defense must be, in the generally accepted phrase, "instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” Although the US government claimed that its military operations in Afghanistan were justified by the need to prevent a second attack, this need, even if real, was clearly not urgent, as shown by the fact that the Pentagon did not launch its invasion until almost a month later.
US political leaders have claimed, to be sure, that the UN did authorize the US attack on Afghanistan. This claim, originally made by the Bush-Cheney administration, was repeated by President Obama in his West Point speech of December 1, 2009, in which he said: “The United Nations Security Council endorsed the use of all necessary steps to respond to the 9/11 attacks,” so US troops went to Afghanistan “[u]nder the banner of . . . international legitimacy.”4
However, the language of “all necessary steps” is from UN Security Council Resolution 1368, in which the Council, taking note of its own “responsibilities under the Charter," expressed its own readiness “to take all necessary steps to respond to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.”5
Of course, the UN Security Council might have determined that one of these necessary steps was to authorize an attack on Afghanistan by the United States. But it did not. Resolution 1373, the only other Security Council resolution about this issue, laid out various responses, but these included matters such as freezing assets, criminalizing the support of terrorists, exchanging police information about terrorists, and prosecuting terrorists. The use of military force was not mentioned.6
The US war in Afghanistan was not authorized by the UN Security Council in 2001 or at anytime since, so this war began as an illegal war and remains an illegal war today. Our government’s claim to the contrary is false.
This war has been illegal, moreover, not only under international law, but also under US law. The UN Charter is a treaty, which was ratified by the United States, and, according to Article VI of the US Constitution, any treaty ratified by the United States is part of the “supreme law of the land.”7 The war in Afghanistan, therefore, has from the beginning been in violation of US as well as international law. It could not be more illegal.
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Gale force winds could leave Gulf oil gushing for 2 weeks
MIAMI — Gale-force winds days away from the Gulf of Mexico spill site could force at-sea workers to abandon their oil-collection efforts for two weeks, the head of the national response effort said Friday.
That timetable would conservatively unleash a half-million barrels of oil back in the sea — twice the Exxon Valdez spill. Using upper-end federal estimates of the leak, 840,000 barrels would gush out. That's 35 million gallons.
Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen described the cut-and-run plan in a conference call to reporters Friday morning in which he said, "Realistically, out of an abundance of caution," the Deepwater Horizon well would remain uncapped for "14 days."
A tropical wave in the west-central Caribbean is kicking up thunderstorms from the eastern coasts of Honduras and Nicaragua to Mexico's northeastern Yucatan Peninsula. The depression is likely to become the first tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season —Tropical Storm Alex — and is forecast to reach the southwestern Gulf of Mexico by early Monday.
Crews will need five days before a storm hits — 120 hours — to disconnect vessels and shut down, Allen said. Late Friday, however, operations were continuing, pushing the timetable for completing a shutdown at least to the middle of next week.
The decision to stop work will be made when a storm is predicted to reach gale-force winds — 46 mph. On Friday, maximum sustained winds in the depression were near 35 mph, the Hurricane Center said.
In other developments, BP's effort to drill a relief well through 2½ miles of rock to stop the Gulf spill is on target for completion by mid-August, the oil giant said. But BP's stock tumbled anyway over the mounting costs of the disaster and the company's inability to plug the leak sooner.
Also, a financial disclosure report released Friday shows that the Louisiana judge who struck down the Obama administration's six-month ban on deep-water drilling in the Gulf has sold many of his energy investments. U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman still owns eight energy-related investments, including stock in Exxon Mobil. Among the assets he sold was stock in Transocean, which owned the rig that exploded. The Justice Department asked a federal appeals court Friday to delay Feldman's ruling "to preserve the status quo" during the government's appeal.
Source
That timetable would conservatively unleash a half-million barrels of oil back in the sea — twice the Exxon Valdez spill. Using upper-end federal estimates of the leak, 840,000 barrels would gush out. That's 35 million gallons.
Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen described the cut-and-run plan in a conference call to reporters Friday morning in which he said, "Realistically, out of an abundance of caution," the Deepwater Horizon well would remain uncapped for "14 days."
A tropical wave in the west-central Caribbean is kicking up thunderstorms from the eastern coasts of Honduras and Nicaragua to Mexico's northeastern Yucatan Peninsula. The depression is likely to become the first tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season —Tropical Storm Alex — and is forecast to reach the southwestern Gulf of Mexico by early Monday.
Crews will need five days before a storm hits — 120 hours — to disconnect vessels and shut down, Allen said. Late Friday, however, operations were continuing, pushing the timetable for completing a shutdown at least to the middle of next week.
The decision to stop work will be made when a storm is predicted to reach gale-force winds — 46 mph. On Friday, maximum sustained winds in the depression were near 35 mph, the Hurricane Center said.
In other developments, BP's effort to drill a relief well through 2½ miles of rock to stop the Gulf spill is on target for completion by mid-August, the oil giant said. But BP's stock tumbled anyway over the mounting costs of the disaster and the company's inability to plug the leak sooner.
Also, a financial disclosure report released Friday shows that the Louisiana judge who struck down the Obama administration's six-month ban on deep-water drilling in the Gulf has sold many of his energy investments. U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman still owns eight energy-related investments, including stock in Exxon Mobil. Among the assets he sold was stock in Transocean, which owned the rig that exploded. The Justice Department asked a federal appeals court Friday to delay Feldman's ruling "to preserve the status quo" during the government's appeal.
Source
Springmeier: Government as Instrument of Foreign Tyranny
June 6, 2010
by Fritz Springmeier #65441-065
FCI
3600 Guard Rd.
Lompoc, CA.
USA 93436
Everything we do is a choice between life and death.
"See, I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil. . . I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live. . ." Deut. 30:15, 19.
And what kind of choices are we choosing today? God gave each of us free will to make choices. Liberty and free will are clearly more life-giving than bondage and dictatorship.
A normal person doesn't need complex definitions of freedom and liberty in order to recognize them. They are internally sensed. Still we need to keep in mind that the better part of freedom is the freedom to do the right things, and not freedom from restrictions. Life will always have restrictions and boundaries.
But how much constraint on our lives is natural (say for instance, Nature's Law of Gravity), and how much is overkill and suffocating?
Here, the California Penal Code lists 186 categories of "crimes against the Sovereignty, Executive Power, and Legislative power of the State."
Next comes 132 categories of "Crimes against the Person," and then an additional 292 categories of crimes against Public Decency, Public Peace, Property, etc.
Liberty. Some Americans assume they have it. Some don't care about it. Some have died for it. But no one is entirely content with the opposite state of affairs -- slavery.
The supposed "happy" pre-Civil War slave burned with a desire for freedom, and would rather eat crow as a freeman, than corn bread and molasses as a slave.
But the same thinking persists, that Americans can be made to be happy slaves.
In a prison lawsuit a few years ago, inmates challenged slavery in prison. The Federal Judge's decision was that there is nothing wrong with slavery in prison.
Yet, many people are not aware that the Supreme Court has repeatedly declared that an inmate's Constitutional Rights don't stop at the prison wall, but extend to an inmate even while he or she is incarcerated. Or do we no longer have a Constitutional right not to be forced into slavery? Interesting question.
Must we Sacrifice our liberty for some "sacred" government? Is the individual's interests shallow compared to the government's interests?
Supposedly the government is protecting us. Did the government protect America from a badly leaking oil well in the Gulf this year? They had the means, but did they use it? Who is government protecting?
We must be realistic in our expectations. A cat cannot become a mouse. But what made America great in the past was opportunity: educational opportunities, job opportunities, and spiritual opportunities. Americans developed a unique "can do" mentality, because they realized their dreams and because they had the freedom of opportunity.
How much freedom of opportunity is offered by a perfectly engineered Brave New World, where our government designs and molds its citizens' niches in life?
Not everyone is happy with their government. A former patriotic government employee is quoted in David Freed's article "The Wrong Man" The Atlantic (May 2010).
A former pro-government employee, Steve Hatfill, is quoted, "People think they're free in this country, don't kid yourself. This is a police state. The government can pretty much do whatever it wants. . . . I was a guy who trusted the government. Now I don't trust a * * * thing they do."
Steven Hatfill had his life ruined by Circumstantial evidence, until years later his innocence was vindicated.
At my trial/appeal, my sentencing Judge kept saying over and over -- "circumstantial evidence can be used to prove anything."
Indeed, that's why my case got into the books. However, the first Federal Judge I went up against was more honest; she, Judge Brown, said, "There is no evidence against this man."
By law, I am to receive 6 months halfway house time. That is my current struggle.
The U.S. Federal government is now a law unto itself. As Steven Hatfill learned the hard way, "The government can pretty much do whatever it wants."
Source
by Fritz Springmeier #65441-065
FCI
3600 Guard Rd.
Lompoc, CA.
USA 93436
Everything we do is a choice between life and death.
"See, I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil. . . I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live. . ." Deut. 30:15, 19.
And what kind of choices are we choosing today? God gave each of us free will to make choices. Liberty and free will are clearly more life-giving than bondage and dictatorship.
A normal person doesn't need complex definitions of freedom and liberty in order to recognize them. They are internally sensed. Still we need to keep in mind that the better part of freedom is the freedom to do the right things, and not freedom from restrictions. Life will always have restrictions and boundaries.
But how much constraint on our lives is natural (say for instance, Nature's Law of Gravity), and how much is overkill and suffocating?
Here, the California Penal Code lists 186 categories of "crimes against the Sovereignty, Executive Power, and Legislative power of the State."
Next comes 132 categories of "Crimes against the Person," and then an additional 292 categories of crimes against Public Decency, Public Peace, Property, etc.
Liberty. Some Americans assume they have it. Some don't care about it. Some have died for it. But no one is entirely content with the opposite state of affairs -- slavery.
The supposed "happy" pre-Civil War slave burned with a desire for freedom, and would rather eat crow as a freeman, than corn bread and molasses as a slave.
But the same thinking persists, that Americans can be made to be happy slaves.
In a prison lawsuit a few years ago, inmates challenged slavery in prison. The Federal Judge's decision was that there is nothing wrong with slavery in prison.
Yet, many people are not aware that the Supreme Court has repeatedly declared that an inmate's Constitutional Rights don't stop at the prison wall, but extend to an inmate even while he or she is incarcerated. Or do we no longer have a Constitutional right not to be forced into slavery? Interesting question.
Must we Sacrifice our liberty for some "sacred" government? Is the individual's interests shallow compared to the government's interests?
Supposedly the government is protecting us. Did the government protect America from a badly leaking oil well in the Gulf this year? They had the means, but did they use it? Who is government protecting?
We must be realistic in our expectations. A cat cannot become a mouse. But what made America great in the past was opportunity: educational opportunities, job opportunities, and spiritual opportunities. Americans developed a unique "can do" mentality, because they realized their dreams and because they had the freedom of opportunity.
How much freedom of opportunity is offered by a perfectly engineered Brave New World, where our government designs and molds its citizens' niches in life?
Not everyone is happy with their government. A former patriotic government employee is quoted in David Freed's article "The Wrong Man" The Atlantic (May 2010).
A former pro-government employee, Steve Hatfill, is quoted, "People think they're free in this country, don't kid yourself. This is a police state. The government can pretty much do whatever it wants. . . . I was a guy who trusted the government. Now I don't trust a * * * thing they do."
Steven Hatfill had his life ruined by Circumstantial evidence, until years later his innocence was vindicated.
At my trial/appeal, my sentencing Judge kept saying over and over -- "circumstantial evidence can be used to prove anything."
Indeed, that's why my case got into the books. However, the first Federal Judge I went up against was more honest; she, Judge Brown, said, "There is no evidence against this man."
By law, I am to receive 6 months halfway house time. That is my current struggle.
The U.S. Federal government is now a law unto itself. As Steven Hatfill learned the hard way, "The government can pretty much do whatever it wants."
Source
Friday, June 25, 2010
Can You Pass The Hamas Quiz?
The degree of mainstream media repression, obfuscation and nonsense concerning Hamas is endemic in the US and Canada . In my local newspaper, The Montreal Gazette, one searches in vain for meaningful coverage of the respected Goldstone Report yet reference to Barak’s mythical “Generous Offer” persists and ahistorical reporting on Hamas rockets dominates.
While one cannot entirely absolve Palestinians for their dire situation, three categorical truths should always be borne in mind to ensure that there is no confusion between victim and victimizer:
1. Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian land.
2. Occupied people have the legal right to resist occupation.
3. Palestinians are the only occupied people to suffer international sanctions (while Israel enjoys significant economic, military and diplomatic support from powerful states).
The following quiz is intended to provide needed context to the reporting on Hamas in the mainstream media.
THE HAMAS QUIZ QUESTIONS:
1. Has Hamas ever deliberately attacked an American target?
2. True or False: Israel supported Hamas in the past.
3. Which groups committed the following terrorist acts in Palestine to further nationalist goals during the British Mandate period?
3.1 July 22, 1946: Terrorists blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem killing or injuring more than 200 persons.
3.2 December 19, 1947: Terrorists attacked a village near Safad, blowing up two houses, in the ruins of which were found the bodies of 10 persons, including 5 children.
3.3 December 30, 1947: Terrorists attacked the village of Balad al Sheikh, killing more than 60 persons.
3.4 March 3, 1948: Terrorists drove an army truck up to a building in Haifa and escaped before the detonation of 400 pounds of explosives that killed 14 persons and injured 23.
4. Who said the following in 1998? “If I were a young Palestinian, it is possible I would join a terrorist organization.”
5. True or False: The Palestinian school curriculum incites hatred and anti-Semitism.
6. Identify the Middle East entities responsible for the following promulgations:
6.1 “Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase.” We aim “at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine.” “The…establishment of the state of Israel [is]…entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time…”
6.2 “The [entity]…flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River.”
6.3 “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.”
6.4 “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” “[We strive] to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine, for under the wing of Islam followers of all religions can coexist in security…”
7. Who made the following statements in 2007? “[T]here will remain a state called Israel—this is a matter of fact. …The problem is not that there is an entity called Israel. The problem is that the Palestinian state is non-existent.” “As a Palestinian…I speak…for a state on 1967 borders. It is true that in reality there will be an entity or state called Israel on the rest of Palestinian land.”
8. Which party, Israel or Hamas, broke the six-month ceasefire that was agreed to in June 2008?
9. Who stated the following on Democracy Now! , a news program, on February 14, 2006? “Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well.”
10. Who, after serving six US secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations, wrote the following: “For far too long, many American officials involved in Arab-Israeli peacemaking, myself included, have acted as Israel’s attorney, catering and coordinating with the Israelis at the expense of successful peace negotiations. If the United States wants to be an honest and effective broker on the Arab-Israeli issue, than surely it can have only one client: the pursuit of a solution that meets the needs and requirements of both sides.”
11. Who said the following: “Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples [in the Middle East and surrounding regions].”
12. According to the United Nations 1947 Partition Resolution, was the Gaza Strip to be part of the Jewish State or the Arab State?
13. Whose account of the forced expulsion of Palestinians by Jewish fighters in 1948 on the orders of David Ben-Gurion, was censored from his memoirs?
14. When Israel disengaged from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, approximately what percentage of the population of Gaza was Jews and approximately what percentage of the land of Gaza was controlled by Israel and Jewish settlers?
15. Who made the the following 2004 statement indicating the primary motivation for Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip: “The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process…And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of [the US] Congress.”
16. Who stated the following concerning Hamas’s victory in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections: “The boycott of Hamas after winning a free and fair election in 2006, and subsequent punishment of the people of Gaza, have backfired and the group may be more popular than ever. Polls show that Palestinians voted for Hamas members because of frustration with corruption in the dominant party, Fatah, and because Hamas’ humanitarian efforts and good governance of municipalities had helped people educate and provide for their children amidst a crippling occupation. The same polls show that popular support for Hamas in 2006 was not based on support for the group’s religious or political ideologies. The international community and Israel should have seized on the opportunity to persuade more Palestinians to participate in the political process, which would have done more to undermine extremist ideologies than the current course.”
17. What is the name of the Israeli soldier who was captured on 25 June 2006 by Palestinian fighters in a cross-border raid and has subsequently been held as a prisoner in Gaza by Hamas?
18. What are the names of the two Palestinians that were kidnapped from Gaza by Israeli soldiers on 24 June 2006?
19. Who made the following 2006 statement when referring to the purpose of economic pressure exerted on Gazans after the election victory of Hamas: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”
20. Which US leader said the following on 25 January 2006, the day after Hamas won the Gaza elections?: “So the Palestinians had an election yesterday, and the results of which remind me about the power of democracy….And there was a peaceful process as people went to the polls, and that’s positive.”
21. Who was the head of the United Nations fact finding mission, mandated to investigate the 2008-2009 military operations in Gaza?
22. Which human rights organization reported the following concerning the 2008-2009 military operation in Gaza ? “[We] found no evidence that Hamas…directed the movement of civilians to shield military objectives from attacks….In all of the cases investigated…of families killed when their homes were bombed…by Israeli forces…none of the houses struck was being used by armed groups for military activities.…[However we did find that Israeli soldiers] used civilians, including children, as ‘human shields’, endangering their lives…”
23. Who said the following, concerning peace with the Palestinians, on 29 September 2008: “We have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the meaning of which is that in practice we will withdraw from almost all the [occupied] territories, if not all the territories. We will leave a percentage of these territories in our hands, but will have to give the Palestinians a similar percentage, because without that there will be no peace.”
Click For Answers
While one cannot entirely absolve Palestinians for their dire situation, three categorical truths should always be borne in mind to ensure that there is no confusion between victim and victimizer:
1. Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian land.
2. Occupied people have the legal right to resist occupation.
3. Palestinians are the only occupied people to suffer international sanctions (while Israel enjoys significant economic, military and diplomatic support from powerful states).
The following quiz is intended to provide needed context to the reporting on Hamas in the mainstream media.
THE HAMAS QUIZ QUESTIONS:
1. Has Hamas ever deliberately attacked an American target?
2. True or False: Israel supported Hamas in the past.
3. Which groups committed the following terrorist acts in Palestine to further nationalist goals during the British Mandate period?
3.1 July 22, 1946: Terrorists blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem killing or injuring more than 200 persons.
3.2 December 19, 1947: Terrorists attacked a village near Safad, blowing up two houses, in the ruins of which were found the bodies of 10 persons, including 5 children.
3.3 December 30, 1947: Terrorists attacked the village of Balad al Sheikh, killing more than 60 persons.
3.4 March 3, 1948: Terrorists drove an army truck up to a building in Haifa and escaped before the detonation of 400 pounds of explosives that killed 14 persons and injured 23.
4. Who said the following in 1998? “If I were a young Palestinian, it is possible I would join a terrorist organization.”
5. True or False: The Palestinian school curriculum incites hatred and anti-Semitism.
6. Identify the Middle East entities responsible for the following promulgations:
6.1 “Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase.” We aim “at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine.” “The…establishment of the state of Israel [is]…entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time…”
6.2 “The [entity]…flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River.”
6.3 “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.”
6.4 “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” “[We strive] to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine, for under the wing of Islam followers of all religions can coexist in security…”
7. Who made the following statements in 2007? “[T]here will remain a state called Israel—this is a matter of fact. …The problem is not that there is an entity called Israel. The problem is that the Palestinian state is non-existent.” “As a Palestinian…I speak…for a state on 1967 borders. It is true that in reality there will be an entity or state called Israel on the rest of Palestinian land.”
8. Which party, Israel or Hamas, broke the six-month ceasefire that was agreed to in June 2008?
9. Who stated the following on Democracy Now! , a news program, on February 14, 2006? “Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well.”
10. Who, after serving six US secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations, wrote the following: “For far too long, many American officials involved in Arab-Israeli peacemaking, myself included, have acted as Israel’s attorney, catering and coordinating with the Israelis at the expense of successful peace negotiations. If the United States wants to be an honest and effective broker on the Arab-Israeli issue, than surely it can have only one client: the pursuit of a solution that meets the needs and requirements of both sides.”
11. Who said the following: “Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples [in the Middle East and surrounding regions].”
12. According to the United Nations 1947 Partition Resolution, was the Gaza Strip to be part of the Jewish State or the Arab State?
13. Whose account of the forced expulsion of Palestinians by Jewish fighters in 1948 on the orders of David Ben-Gurion, was censored from his memoirs?
14. When Israel disengaged from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, approximately what percentage of the population of Gaza was Jews and approximately what percentage of the land of Gaza was controlled by Israel and Jewish settlers?
15. Who made the the following 2004 statement indicating the primary motivation for Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip: “The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process…And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of [the US] Congress.”
16. Who stated the following concerning Hamas’s victory in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections: “The boycott of Hamas after winning a free and fair election in 2006, and subsequent punishment of the people of Gaza, have backfired and the group may be more popular than ever. Polls show that Palestinians voted for Hamas members because of frustration with corruption in the dominant party, Fatah, and because Hamas’ humanitarian efforts and good governance of municipalities had helped people educate and provide for their children amidst a crippling occupation. The same polls show that popular support for Hamas in 2006 was not based on support for the group’s religious or political ideologies. The international community and Israel should have seized on the opportunity to persuade more Palestinians to participate in the political process, which would have done more to undermine extremist ideologies than the current course.”
17. What is the name of the Israeli soldier who was captured on 25 June 2006 by Palestinian fighters in a cross-border raid and has subsequently been held as a prisoner in Gaza by Hamas?
18. What are the names of the two Palestinians that were kidnapped from Gaza by Israeli soldiers on 24 June 2006?
19. Who made the following 2006 statement when referring to the purpose of economic pressure exerted on Gazans after the election victory of Hamas: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”
20. Which US leader said the following on 25 January 2006, the day after Hamas won the Gaza elections?: “So the Palestinians had an election yesterday, and the results of which remind me about the power of democracy….And there was a peaceful process as people went to the polls, and that’s positive.”
21. Who was the head of the United Nations fact finding mission, mandated to investigate the 2008-2009 military operations in Gaza?
22. Which human rights organization reported the following concerning the 2008-2009 military operation in Gaza ? “[We] found no evidence that Hamas…directed the movement of civilians to shield military objectives from attacks….In all of the cases investigated…of families killed when their homes were bombed…by Israeli forces…none of the houses struck was being used by armed groups for military activities.…[However we did find that Israeli soldiers] used civilians, including children, as ‘human shields’, endangering their lives…”
23. Who said the following, concerning peace with the Palestinians, on 29 September 2008: “We have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the meaning of which is that in practice we will withdraw from almost all the [occupied] territories, if not all the territories. We will leave a percentage of these territories in our hands, but will have to give the Palestinians a similar percentage, because without that there will be no peace.”
Click For Answers