has upgraded to namebrand tuna
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"Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap". - Barbara Jordan
And I can tell you a few stories about crooked Sheriffs too.
:) What the heck IS safe to eat. If you go organic there is no telling what has blown over into the feild. That's why Monsanto likes to plant West.
Do I have this straight or not? The legal citizens of this Country have to be subject to the Patriot Act but illegal aliens can't be asked for their green card?
Deep concerns’: Napolitano testifies Arizona immigration law will be reviewed
Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano said Tuesday that US justice officials have "deep concerns" about a controversial new Arizona law that critics fear may encourage racial profiling and other acts of discrimination.
The law, signed Friday by Arizona's Republican Governor Jan Brewer, allows police to question and detain anyone in the southwestern border state they believe may be an illegal immigrant, even if they are not suspected of committing another crime.
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0427/jackson-arizona-law-terrorism-innocent/
Killer Cocktail: PTSD and Your Local Police
Members of the Army National Guard and Reserves have been rotating in and out of the two-front war with such regularity it’s become difficult to tell the difference between the "part timers" and the active-duty force – with one major distinction. Guardsmen and reservists go back to civilian jobs in between their multiple tours. Many are police officers. In fact, police departments across the country are actively recruiting part-time soldiers and veterans because their acquired "skill set" apparently makes them a desired fit for this line of work.
So what happens when they bring the war to work with them?
http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2010/04/26/killer-cocktail/
Looks like the alfalfa farmers will be driven out of business next.
US Supreme Court eyes bar on Monsanto GM alfalfa
Supreme Court justices sounded critical Tuesday about the federal court decision blocking US biotech giant Monsanto's sale of genetically modified alfalfa because some farmers fear their crops will be contaminated.
A federal judge in California in May 2007 ruled in a finding upheld on appeal in 2009 to block the sale of Monsanto's GM alfalfa seeds.
The ruling also asked the USDA to carry out an environmental impact study which it had not done before gaving a green light back in 2004 to the sale of these seeds.
Plaintiffs, who are organic farmers supported by organizations such as the Center for Biological Diversity, worry that genetically modified seeds will contaminate their crops.
Monsanto took the fight all the way to the highest court in the land, arguing that the federal court did not have authority to block the alfalfa seed sales.
In a hearing, justices had questions about whether the environmental impact could be addressed before the USDA had done an impact study.
Judge Antonin Scalia minimized potential risks saying, "This is not the contamination of the New York city water supply. This isn't the end of the world. It really isn't."
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/US_Supreme_Court_eyes_bar_on_Monsan_04272010.html
U.S. | Health, Housing, and Public Services
Chinese report documents human rights disaster in the United States
by repost
Friday Mar 19th, 2010 8:05 AM
The United States is the only country in the world that claims to be superior in every aspect, especially in human rights, and that lie is again exposed, this time by a report from China on the United States, all from US sources. The US is in fact a backward cesspool, the most backward country in the industrialized world.
From: Chinese report documents human rights disaster in the United States
19 March 2010 by Patrick Martin
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/pers-m19.shtml
and the full report is at:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-03/12/c_13208219.htm
On March 13, China’s Information Office of the State Council published a report titled, “The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009.”
This document was clearly intended as a rebuttal to the annual US State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2009, released two days earlier.
The Chinese report quite legitimately notes that the US government “releases Country Reports on Human Rights Practices year after year to accuse other countries, and takes human rights as a political instrument to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, defame other nations’ image and seek its own strategic interests. This fully exposes its double standards on the human rights issue…”
Delivering the US government a well-deserved dose of its own medicine does not, of course, absolve the Chinese regime of its own gross violations of human rights. It rules autocratically over 1.3 billion people, most of them desperately poor peasants and super-exploited workers.
That being said, the Chinese report is an eye-opening document—factual, sober, even understated, drawn entirely from public government and media sources in the United States, with each item carefully documented. It presents a picture of 21st century America as much of the world sees it, one which is in sharp contrast to the official mythology and American media propaganda.
Not surprisingly, the report went unmentioned in the US mass media.
The 14-page report is divided into six major sections: Life, Property and Personal Security; Civil and Political Rights; Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; Racial Discrimination; Rights of Women and Children; US Violations of Human Rights Against Other Nations. The cumulative picture is one of a society in deep and worsening social crisis.
A few of the facts and figures cited on violence and police repression in the United States:
• Each year, 30,000 people die in gun-related incidents.
• There were 14,180 murders last year.
• In the first ten months of 2009, 45 people were killed by police use of tasers, bringing the total for the decade to 389.
• Last year, 315 police officers in New York City were subject to internal supervision due to “unrestrained use of violence.”
• 7.3 million Americans were under the authority of the correctional system, more than in any other country.
• An estimated 60,000 prisoners were raped while in custody last year.
On democratic rights, the report notes the pervasive government spying on citizens, authorized under the 2001 Patriot Act, extensive surveillance of the Internet by the National Security Agency, and police harassment of anti-globalization demonstrators in Pittsburgh during last year’s G-20 summit. Pointing to the hypocrisy of US government “human rights” rhetoric, the authors observe, “the same conduct in other countries would be called human rights violations, whereas in the United States it was called necessary crime control.”
The report only skims the surface on the socioeconomic crisis in the United States, noting record levels of unemployment, poverty, hunger and homelessness, as well as 46.3 million people without health insurance. It does offer a few facts rarely discussed in the US media:
• 712 bodies were cremated at public expense in the city of Los Angeles last year, because the families were too poor to pay for a burial.
• There were 5,657 workplace deaths recorded in 2007, the last year for which a tally is available, a rate of 17 deaths per day (not a single employer was criminally charged for any of these deaths).
• Some 2,266 veterans died as a consequence of lack of health insurance in 2008, 14 times the military death toll in Afghanistan that year.
The report presents evidence of pervasive racial discrimination against blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans, the most oppressed sections of the US working class, including a record number of racial discrimination claims over hiring practices, more than 32,000. It also notes the rising number of incidents of discrimination or violence against Muslims, and the detention of 300,000 “illegal” immigrants each year, with more than 30,000 immigrants in US detention facilities every day of the year.
It notes that the state of California imposed life sentences on 18 times more black defendants than white, and that in 2008, when New York City police fired their weapons, 75 percent of the targets were black, 22 percent Hispanic and only 3 percent white.
The report refers to the well-known reality of unequal pay for women, with median female income only 77 percent that of male income in 2008, down from 78 percent in 2007. According to the report, 70 percent of working-age women have no health insurance, or inadequate coverage, high medical bills or high health-related debt.
Children bear a disproportionate burden of economic hardship, with 16.7 million children not having enough food at some time during 2008, and 3.5 million children under five facing hunger or malnutrition, 17 percent of the total. Child hunger is combined with the malignant phenomenon of rampant child labor in agriculture: some 400,000 child farm workers pick America’s crops. The US also leads the world in imprisoning children and juveniles, and is the only country that does not offer parole to juvenile offenders.
US foreign policy comes in for justifiable criticism as well. A country with so many poor and hungry people accounts for 42 percent of the world’s total military spending, a colossal $607 billion, as well as the world’s largest foreign arms sales, $37.8 billion in 2008, up nearly 50 percent from the previous year.
The Chinese report notes the documented torture of prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, the worldwide US network of military bases, the US blockade of Cuba (opposed by the UN General Assembly by a vote of 187 to 3), and the systematic US spying around the world, utilizing the NSA’s “ECHELON” interception system, as well as the US monopoly control over Internet route servers.
The report also points out the deliberate US flouting of international human rights covenants. Washington has either signed but not ratified or refused to sign four major UN covenants: on economic, social and cultural rights; on the rights of women; on the rights of people with disabilities; and on the rights of indigenous peoples.
The report does not discuss the source of the malignant social conditions in the United States—nor should that be expected, since that would require an explanation of the causal connection between poverty, repression and discrimination and the operations of the capitalist profit system, something that Beijing is hardly likely to undertake.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/chin...
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/03/19/18641919.php
Peter Schiff: Financial Regulation
http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=11678
Hey!!!! Schiff for President :)
NEW AND IMPROVED FLU SCAM FOR 2010
http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=11677
Monday, April 26, 2010
Geithner: "I Never Had A Real Job"
During a CNN interview, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admits he never had "a real job." What is even more interesting is that, in a light-hearted manner, he says that many people would not even consider the period he worked for Henry Kissinger Associates as private sector work. How true, Timothy. How true.
The clip is here. You should also note that the interview is conducted by Fareed Zakaria, who just so happened to be the person who defended Goldman Sachs this morning in an WaPo Op-Ed. Zakaria's defense was correct, but it is an awfully small club, isn't it?
Here is the Video: http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=11679
What is Governmentium?
In: Physics, Chemistry, Most Amusing Questions Ever Asked on WikiAnswers
Governmentium
Research has led to the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neuron, 25 assistant neurons, 88 deputy neurons, and 198 assistant deputy neurons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.
These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second to take from four days to four years to complete.
Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2-6 years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neurons and deputy neurons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neurons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass. When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_Governmentium
LOL Longhorn convinced me early last week to jump on them.
Blagojevich Evidence Stolen: Burglary At Lawyer's Offices
MIKE ROBINSON | 12/ 4/09 06:54 PM |
.Amazing
CHICAGO — Burglars broke into the offices occupied by two members of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's legal defense team overnight and stole eight computers and a safe, police said Friday.
The break-in occurred at the South Side offices of veteran Chicago criminal defense lawyer Sam Adam and his son, Samuel E. Adam, police said. They are two of the three leading members of the team defending Blagojevich on charges that he schemed to sell or trade President Barack Obama's former U.S. Senate seat.
Chief of detectives Steve Peterson told a news conference that detectives don't know whether anything related to Blagojevich's federal fraud case was contained on the computers. But he said they are interviewing the attorneys.
Even if the computers contained sensitive material related to the federal case against Blagojevich, the lawyers had all of its material in backup files on a master server elsewhere in the offices that was untouched by the burglars, according to an individual with knowledge of the legal defense team.
A number of discs with material related to the case were around the office but not taken, said that person who spoke only on condition of anonymity.
Police said the burglars broke into the offices overnight and at some point tripped an alarm.
Several attorneys besides the Adamses work out of the offices.
The third key member of Blagojevich's legal defense team, Sheldon Sorosky, works out of his law firm's downtown offices.
Sam Adam is a veteran of 40 years of criminal law practice in Chicago and has handled numerous high-profile cases. His son gained the spotlight last year with shouting, whispering, table-pounding closing arguments at R. Kelly's trial on child pornography charges, which ended with the R&B singer's acquittal.
___
Associated Press writer Don Babwin contributed to this story
Because plastic is earth freindly. :)
11,24 and 48.
Good luck to all. :)
From an email I received.
GMO Health Risks Brochure
Genetically modified foods:
YES, you’re eating them.
NO, they’re not safe.
http://www.responsibletechnology.org/utility/printpage/index.cfm?ObjectID=1757
Did you know... since 1996 Americans have been eating genetically modified (GM) ingredients in most processed foods.
Did you know... GM plants, such as soybean, corn, cottonseed, and canola, have had foreign genes forced into their DNA. The inserted genes come from species, such as bacteria and viruses, which have never been in the human food supply.
Did you know... The American Academy of Environmental Medicine states, “Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food,” including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, faulty insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system. They ask physicians to advise patients to avoid GM foods.1
Find out what the risks are and start protecting yourself and your family today!
Why isn’t the FDA protecting us?
In 1992, the Food and Drug Administration claimed they had no information showing that GM foods were substantially different from conventionally grown foods. Therefore they are safe to eat, and absolutely no safety studies were required. But internal memos made public by a lawsuit2 reveal that their position was staged by political appointees who were under orders from the White House to promote GMOs. In addition, the FDA official in charge of creating this policy was Michael Taylor, the former attorney for Monsanto, the largest biotech company, and later their vice president.
In reality, FDA scientists had repeatedly warned that GM foods can create unpredictable, hard-to-detect side effects, including allergies, toxins, new diseases, and nutritional problems. They urged long-term safety studies, but were ignored.
Today, the same biotech companies who have been found guilty of hiding toxic effects of their chemical products are in charge of determining whether their GM foods are safe. Industry-funded GMO safety studies are too superficial to find most of the potential dangers, and their voluntary consultations with the FDA are widely criticized as a meaningless façade.3
Genetic modification is radically different from natural breeding
Genetic engineering transfers genes across natural species barriers. It uses imprecise laboratory techniques that bear no resemblance to natural breeding, and is based on outdated concepts of how genes and cells work.4 Gene insertion is done either by shooting genes from a “gene gun” into a plate of cells or by using bacteria to invade the cell with foreign DNA. The altered cell is then cloned into a plant.
Widespread, unpredictable changes
The genetic engineering process creates massive collateral damage, causing mutations in hundreds or thousands of locations throughout the plant’s DNA.5 Natural genes can be deleted or permanently turned on or off, and hundreds may change their behavior.6 Even the inserted gene can be damaged or rearranged,7 and may create proteins that can trigger allergies or promote disease.
GM foods on the market
There are eight GM food crops. The five major varieties—soy, corn, canola, cotton, and sugar beets—have bacterial genes inserted, which allow the plants to survive an otherwise deadly dose of weed killer. Farmers use considerably more herbicides on these GM crops and so the food has higher herbicide residues. About 68% of GM crops are herbicide tolerant.
The second GM trait is a built-in pesticide, found in GM corn and cotton. A gene from the soil bacterium called Bt (for Bacillus thuringiensis) is inserted into the plant’s DNA, where it secretes the insect-killing Bt-toxin in every cell. About 19% of GM crops produce their own pesticide. Another 13% produce a pesticide and are herbicide tolerant.
There is also Hawaiian papaya and a small amount of zucchini and yellow crookneck squash, which are engineered to resist a plant virus.
Growing evidence of harm from GMOs
GM soy and allergic reactions
Soy allergies skyrocketed by 50% in the UK, soon after GM soy was introduced.8
A skin prick allergy test shows that some people react to GM soy, but not to natural soy.9
Cooked GM soy contains as much as 7-times the amount of a known soy allergen.10
GM soy also contains a new unexpected allergen, not found in natural soy.11
Bt corn and cotton linked to allergies
The biotech industry claims that Bt-toxin is harmless to humans and mammals because the natural bacteria version has been used as a spray by farmers for years. In reality, hundreds of people exposed to Bt spray had allergic-type symptoms,12 and mice fed Bt had powerful immune responses13 and damaged intestines.14 Moreover, the Bt in GM crops is designed to be more toxic than the natural spray and is thousands of times more concentrated.
Farm workers throughout India are getting the same allergic reactions from handling Bt cotton15 as those who reacted to Bt spray.16 Mice17 and rats18 fed Bt corn also showed immune responses.
GMOs fail allergy tests
No tests can guarantee that a GMO will not cause allergies. Although the World Health Organization recommends a screening protocol,19 the GM soy, corn, and papaya in our food supply fail those tests—because their GM proteins have properties of known allergens.20
GMOs may make you allergic to non-GM foods
GM soy drastically reduces digestive enzymes in mice.21 If it also impairs your digestion, you may become sensitive and allergic to a variety of foods.
Mice fed Bt-toxin started having immune reactions to formerly harmless foods.22
Mice fed experimental GM peas also started reacting to a range of other foods.23 (The peas had already passed all the allergy tests normally done before a GMO gets on the market. Only this advanced test, which is never used on the GMOs we eat, revealed that the peas could actually be deadly.)
GMOs and liver problems
Rats fed GM potatoes had smaller, partially atrophied livers.24
The livers of rats fed GM canola were 12-16% heavier.25
GM soy altered mouse liver cells in ways that suggest a toxic insult.26 The changes reversed after they switched to non-GM soy.27
GMOs, reproductive problems, and infant mortality
More than half the babies of mother rats fed GM soy died within three weeks.28
Male rats29 and mice30 fed GM soy had changed testicles, including altered young sperm cells in the mice.
The DNA of mouse embryos functioned differently when their parents ate GM soy31
The longer mice were fed GM corn, the less babies they had, and the smaller their babies were.32
Babies of female rats fed GM soy were considerably smaller, and more than half died within three weeks (compared to 10% of the non-GM soy controls).33
Bt crops linked to sterility, disease, and death
Thousands of sheep, buffalo, and goats in India died after grazing on Bt cotton plants after harvest. Others suffered poor health and reproductive problems.34
Farmers in Europe and Asia say that cows, water buffaloes, chickens, and horses died from eating Bt corn varieties.35
About two dozen US farmers report that Bt corn varieties caused widespread sterility in pigs or cows.36
Filipinos in at least five villages fell sick when a nearby Bt corn variety was pollinating.37
The stomach lining of rats fed GM potatoes showed excessive cell growth, a condition that may lead to cancer. Rats also had damaged organs and immune systems.38
Functioning GM genes remain inside you
Unlike safety evaluations for drugs, there are no human clinical trials of GM foods. The only published human feeding experiment revealed that the genetic material inserted into GM soy transfers into bacteria living inside our intestines and continues to function.39 This means that long after we stop eating GM foods, we may still have their GM proteins produced continuously inside us.
If the antibiotic gene inserted into most GM crops were to transfer, it could create super diseases, resistant to antibiotics.
If the gene that creates Bt-toxin in GM corn were to transfer, it might turn our intestinal bacteria into living pesticide factories.
Animal studies show that DNA in food can travel into organs throughout the body, even into the fetus.40
GM food supplement caused deadly epidemic
In the 1980s, a contaminated brand of a food supplement called L-tryptophan killed about 100 Americans and caused sickness and disability in another 5,000-10,000 people. The source of contaminants was almost certainly the genetic engineering process used in its production. The disease took years to find and was almost overlooked. It was only identified because the symptoms were unique, acute, and fast-acting. If all three characteristics were not in place, the deadly GM supplement might never have been identified or removed.
If GM foods on the market are causing common diseases or if their effects appear only after long-term exposure, we may not be able to identify the source of the problem for decades, if at all. There is no monitoring of GMO-related illnesses and no long-term animal studies. Heavily invested biotech corporations are gambling with the health of our nation for their profit.
Help end the genetic engineering of our food supply
When the tipping point of consumer concern about GMOs was achieved in Europe in 1999, within a single week virtually all major food manufacturers committed to remove GM ingredients. The Campaign for Healthier Eating in America is designed to reach a similar tipping point in the US soon.
Our growing network of manufacturers, retailers, healthcare practitioners, organizations, and the media, is informing consumers of the health risks of GMOs and helping them select healthier non-GMO alternatives with our Non-GMO Shopping Guides.
Go to www.responsibletechnology.org to get involved and learn how to avoid GMOs.
Start buying non-GMO today.
Help us stop the genetic engineering of our food supply.
Membership
Membership in our Campaign for Healthier Eating in America is free; Contributing members receive a free educational gift. Donations to the Institute For Responsible Technology are tax-deductible.
The Institute is a fully tax deductible project of The Coordinating Council, a 501c(3).
There are three ways to become a member or make a donation:
By mail: Institute For Responsible Technology P.O. Box 469, Fairfield, IA 52556
Online: www.ResponsibleTechnology.org
By phone: (641) 209-1765
The health information is from the book Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risk of Genetically Engineered Foods, by Jeffrey M. Smith. © Copyright 2010. Institute For Responsible Technology
Download your free Non-GMO Shopping Guide at www.ResponsibleTechnology.org
[1] See http://www.aaemonline.org/gmopost.html
[2] See www.biointegrity.org
[3] See Part 2, Jeffrey M. Smith, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, Yes! Books, Fairfield, IA 2007
[4] See for example 233-236, chart of disproved assumptions, in Jeffrey M. Smith, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, Yes! Books, Fairfield, IA 2007
[5]J. R. Latham, et al., “The Mutational Consequences of Plant Transformation,” The Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology 2006, Article ID 25376: 1-7; see also Allison Wilson, et. al., “Transformation-induced mutations in transgenic plants: Analysis and biosafety implications,” Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Reviews – Vol. 23, December 2006.
[6]Srivastava, et al, “Pharmacogenomics of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) and the cystic fibrosis drug CPX using genome microarray analysis,” Mol Med. 5, no. 11(Nov 1999):753–67.
[7]Latham et al, “The Mutational Consequences of Plant Transformation, Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology 2006:1-7, article ID 25376, http://www.hindawi.com/journals/JBB/index.html; Draft risk analysis report application A378, Food derived from glyphosate-tolerant sugarbeet line 77 (GTSB77),” ANZFA, March 7, 2001, www.agbios.com/docroot/decdocs/anzfa_gtsb77.pdf; E. Levine et al., “Molecular Characterization of Insect Protected Corn Line MON 810.” Unpublished study submitted to the EPA by Monsanto, EPA MRID No. 436655-01C (1995); Allison Wilson, PhD, Jonathan Latham, PhD, and Ricarda Steinbrecher, PhD, “Genome Scrambling—Myth or Reality? Transformation-Induced Mutations in Transgenic Crop Plants Technical Report—October 2004,” www.econexus.info; C. Collonier, G. Berthier, F. Boyer, M. N. Duplan, S. Fernandez, N. Kebdani, A. Kobilinsky, M. Romanuk, Y. Bertheau, “Characterization of commercial GMO inserts: a source of useful material to study genome fluidity,” Poster presented at ICPMB: International Congress for Plant Molecular Biology (n°VII), Barcelona, 23-28th June 2003. Poster courtesy of Dr. Gilles-Eric Seralini, Président du Conseil Scientifique du CRII-GEN, www.crii-gen.org; also “Transgenic lines proven unstable” by Mae-Wan Ho, ISIS Report, 23 October 2003, www.i-sis.org.uk
[8] Mark Townsend, “Why soya is a hidden destroyer,” Daily Express, March 12, 1999.
[9] Hye-Yung Yum, Soo-Young Lee, Kyung-Eun Lee, Myung-Hyun Sohn, Kyu-Earn Kim, “Genetically Modified and Wild Soybeans: An immunologic comparison,” Allergy and Asthma Proceedings 26, no. 3 (May–June 2005): 210-216(7).
[10] A. Pusztai and S. Bardocz, “GMO in animal nutrition: potential benefits and risks,” Chapter 17, Biology of Nutrition in Growing Animals, R. Mosenthin, J. Zentek and T. Zebrowska (Eds.) Elsevier, October 2005.
[11] Hye-Yung Yum, Soo-Young Lee, Kyung-Eun Lee, Myung-Hyun Sohn, Kyu-Earn Kim, “Genetically Modified and Wild Soybeans: An immunologic comparison,” Allergy and Asthma Proceedings 26, no. 3 (May–June 2005): 210-216(7).
[12] M. Green, et al., “Public health implications of the microbial pesticide Bacillus thuringiensis: An epidemiological study, Oregon, 1985-86,” Amer. J. Public Health 80, no. 7(1990): 848–852; and M.A. Noble, P.D. Riben, and G. J. Cook, Microbiological and epidemiological surveillance program to monitor the health effects of Foray 48B BTK spray (Vancouver, B.C.: Ministry of Forests, Province of British Columbi, Sep. 30, 1992)
[13] Vazquez et al, “Intragastric and intraperitoneal administration of Cry1Ac protoxin from Bacillus thuringiensis induces systemic and mucosal antibody responses in mice,” 1897–1912; Vazquez et al, “Characterization of the mucosal and systemic immune response induced by Cry1Ac protein from Bacillus thuringiensis HD 73 in mice,” Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research 33 (2000): 147–155; and Vazquez et al, “Bacillus thuringiensis Cry1Ac protoxin is a potent systemic and mucosal adjuvant,” Scandanavian Journal of Immunology 49 (1999): 578–584. See also Vazquez-Padron et al., 147 (2000b).
[14] Nagui H. Fares, Adel K. El-Sayed, “Fine Structural Changes in the Ileum of Mice Fed on Endotoxin Treated Potatoes and Transgenic Potatoes,” Natural Toxins 6, no. 6 (1998): 219–233.
[15] See for example “Bt cotton causing allergic reaction in MP; cattle dead,” Bhopal, Nov. 23, 2005, http://news.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=170692&cat=Health;
[16] Ashish Gupta et. al., “Impact of Bt Cotton on Farmers’ Health (in Barwani and Dhar District of Madhya Pradesh),” Investigation Report, Oct–Dec 2005; and M. Green, et al., “Public health implications of the microbial pesticide Bacillus thuringiensis: An epidemiological study, Oregon, 1985-86,” Amer. J. Public Health 80, no. 7(1990): 848–852; and M.A. Noble, P.D. Riben, and G. J. Cook, Microbiological and epidemiological surveillance program to monitor the health effects of Foray 48B BTK spray (Vancouver, B.C.: Ministry of Forests, Province of British Columbi, Sep. 30, 1992)
[17] Alberto Finamore, et al, “Intestinal and Peripheral Immune Response to MON810 Maize Ingestion in Weaning and Old Mice,” J. Agric. Food Chem., 2008, 56 (23), pp 11533–11539, November 14, 2008
[18] Joël Spiroux de Vendômois, François Roullier, Dominique Cellier and Gilles-Eric Séralini. 2009, A Comparison of the Effects of Three GM Corn Varieties on Mammalian Health . International Journal of Biological Sciences 2009; 5(7):706-726; and Seralini GE, Cellier D, Spiroux de Vendomois J. 2007, New analysis of a rat feeding study with a genetically modified maize reveals signs of hepatorenal toxicity. Arch Environ Contam Toxicol. 2007;52:596-602
[19] FAO-WHO, “Evaluation of Allergenicity of Genetically Modified Foods. Report of a Joint FAO/WHO Expert Consultation on Allergenicity of Foods Derived from Biotechnology,” Jan. 22–25, 2001; http://www.fao.org/es/ESN/food/pdf/allergygm.pdf
[20] Gendel, “The use of amino acid sequence alignments to assess potential allergenicity of proteins used in genetically modified foods,” Advances in Food and Nutrition Research 42 (1998), 45–62; G. A. Kleter and A. A. C. M. Peijnenburg, “Screening of transgenic proteins expressed in transgenic food crops for the presence of short amino acid sequences indentical to potential, IgE-binding linear epitopes of allergens,” BMC Structural Biology 2 (2002): 8–19; H. P. J. M. Noteborn, “Assessment of the Stability to Digestion and Bioavailability of the LYS Mutant Cry9C Protein from Bacillus thuringiensis serovar tolworthi,” Unpublished study submitted to the EPA by AgrEvo, EPA MRID No. 447343-05 (1998); and H. P. J. M. Noteborn et al, “Safety Assessment of the Bacillus thuringiensis Insecticidal Crystal Protein CRYIA(b) Expressed in Transgenic Tomatoes,” in Genetically modified foods: safety issues, American Chemical Society Symposium Series 605, eds. K.H. Engel et al., (Washington, DC, 1995): 134–47.
[21] M. Malatesta, M. Biggiogera, E. Manuali, M. B. L. Rocchi, B. Baldelli, G. Gazzanelli, “Fine Structural Analyses of Pancreatic Acinar Cell Nuclei from Mice Fed on GM Soybean,” Eur J Histochem 47 (2003): 385–388.
[22] Vazquez et al, “Bacillus thuringiensis Cry1Ac protoxin is a potent systemic and mucosal adjuvant,” Scandanavian Journal of Immunology 49 (1999): 578–584. See also Vazquez-Padron et al., 147 (2000b).
[23] V. E. Prescott, et al, “Transgenic Expression of Bean r-Amylase Inhibitor in Peas Results in Altered Structure and Immunogenicity,” Journal of Agricultural Food Chemistry (2005): 53.
[24] Arpad Pusztai, “Can science give us the tools for recognizing possible health risks of GM food,” Nutrition and Health, 2002, Vol 16 Pp 73-84
[25] Comments to ANZFA about Applications A346, A362 and A363 from the Food Legislation and Regulation Advisory Group (FLRAG) of the Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA) on behalf of the PHAA, “Food produced from glyphosate-tolerant canola line GT73,” http://www.iher.org.au/
[26] M. Malatesta, C. Caporaloni, S. Gavaudan, M. B. Rocchi, S. Serafini, C. Tiberi, G. Gazzanelli, “Ultrastructural Morphometrical and Immunocytochemical Analyses of Hepatocyte Nuclei from Mice Fed on Genetically Modified Soybean,” Cell Struct Funct. 27 (2002): 173–180.
[27] M. Malatesta, C. Tiberi, B. Baldelli, S. Battistelli, E. Manuali, M. Biggiogera, “Reversibility of Hepatocyte Nuclear Modifications in Mice Fed on Genetically Modified Soybean,” Eur J Histochem, 49 (2005): 237-242.
[28] I.V. Ermakova, “Diet with the Soya Modified by Gene EPSPS CP4 Leads to Anxiety and Aggression in Rats,” 14th European Congress of Psychiatry. Nice, France, March 4-8, 2006; “Genetically modified soy affects posterity: Results of Russian scientists’ studies,” REGNUM, October 12, 2005; http://www.regnum.ru/english/526651.html; Irina Ermakova, “Genetically modified soy leads to the decrease of weight and high mortality of rat pups of the first generation. Preliminary studies,” Ecosinform 1 (2006): 4–9.
[29] Irina Ermakova, “Experimental Evidence of GMO Hazards,” Presentation at Scientists for a GM Free Europe, EU Parliament, Brussels, June 12, 2007
[30] L. Vecchio et al, “Ultrastructural Analysis of Testes from Mice Fed on Genetically Modified Soybean,” European Journal of Histochemistry 48, no. 4 (Oct–Dec 2004):449–454.
[31] Oliveri et al., “Temporary Depression of Transcription in Mouse Pre-implantion Embryos from Mice Fed on Genetically Modified Soybean,” 48th Symposium of the Society for Histochemistry, Lake Maggiore (Italy), September 7–10, 2006.
[32] Alberta Velimirov and Claudia Binter, “Biological effects of transgenic maize NK603xMON810 fed in long term reproduction studies in mice,” Forschungsberichte der Sektion IV, Band 3/2008
[33] I.V. Ermakova, “Diet with the Soya Modified by Gene EPSPS CP4 Leads to Anxiety and Aggression in Rats,” 14th European Congress of Psychiatry. Nice, France, March 4-8, 2006; “Genetically modified soy affects posterity: Results of Russian scientists’ studies,” REGNUM, October 12, 2005; http://www.regnum.ru/english/526651.html; Irina Ermakova, “Genetically modified soy leads to the decrease of weight and high mortality of rat pups of the first generation. Preliminary studies,” Ecosinform 1 (2006): 4–9.
[34] “Mortality in Sheep Flocks after Grazing on Bt Cotton Fields—Warangal District, Andhra Pradesh” Report of the Preliminary Assessment, April 2006, http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6494
[35] Mae-Wan Ho, “GM Ban Long Overdue, Dozens Ill & Five Deaths in the Philippines,” ISIS Press Release, June 2, 2006; and Mae-Wan Ho and Sam Burcher, “Cows Ate GM Maize & Died,” ISIS Press Release, January 13, 2004, http://www.isis.org.uk/CAGMMAD.php
[36] Personal communication with Jerry Rosman and other farmers, 2006; also reported widely in the farm press.
[37] See for example Mae-Wan Ho, “GM Ban Long Overdue, Dozens Ill & Five Deaths in the Philippines,” ISIS Press Release, June 2, 2006; “Study Result Not Final, Proof Bt Corn Harmful to Farmers,” BusinessWorld, 02 Mar 2004; and “Genetically Modified Crops and Illness Linked,” Manila Bulletin, 04 Mar 2004.
[38] Arpad Pusztai, “Can science give us the tools for recognizing possible health risks of GM food,” Nutrition and Health, 2002, Vol 16 Pp 73-84; Stanley W. B. Ewen and Arpad Pusztai, “Effect of diets containing genetically modified potatoes expressing Galanthus nivalis lectin on rat small intestine,” Lancet, 1999 Oct 16; 354 (9187): 1353-4; and Arpad Pusztai, “Facts Behind the GM Pea Controversy: Epigenetics, Transgenic Plants & Risk Assessment,” Proceedings of the Conference, December 1st 2005 (Frankfurtam Main, Germany: Literaturhaus, 2005)
[39] Netherwood et al, “Assessing the survival of transgenic plant DNA in the human gastrointestinal tract,” Nature Biotechnology 22 (2004): 2.
[40] Ricarda A. Steinbrecher and Jonathan R. Latham, “Horizontal gene transfer from GM crops to unrelated organisms,” GM Science Review Meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on “GM Gene Flow: Scale and Consequences for Agriculture and the Environment,” January 27, 2003; Traavik and Heinemann, Genetic Engineering and Omitted Health Research; citing Schubbert, et al, “Ingested foreign (phage M13) DNA survives transiently in the gastrointestinal tract and enters the bloodstream of mice,” Mol Gen Genet. 242, no. 5 (1994): 495–504; Schubbert et al, “Foreign (M13) DNA ingested by mice reaches peripheral leukocytes, spleen, and liver via the intestinal wall mucosa and can be covalently linked to mouse DNA,” Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 94, no. 3 (1997): 961–6; Schubbert et al, “On the fate of orally ingested foreign DNA in mice: chromosomal association and placental transmission to the fetus,” Mol Gen Genet. 259, no. 6 (1998): 569–76; Hohlweg and Doerfler, “On the fate of plants or other foreign genes upon the uptake in food or after intramuscular injection in mice,” Mol Genet Genomics 265 (2001): 225–233; Palka-Santani, et al., “The gastrointestinal tract as the portal of entry for foreign macromolecules: fate of DNA and proteins,” Mol Gen Genomics 270 (2003): 201–215; Einspanier, et al, “The fate of forage plant DNA in farm animals; a collaborative case-study investigating cattle and chicken fed recombinant plant material,” Eur Food Res Technol 212 (2001): 129–134; Klotz, et al, “Degradation and possible carry over of feed DNA monitored in pigs and poultry,” Eur Food Res Technol 214 (2002): 271–275; Forsman, et al, “Uptake of amplifiable fragments of retrotransposon DNA from the human alimentary tract,” Mol Gen Genomics 270 (2003): 362–368; Chen, et al, “Transfection of mEpo gene to intestinal epithelium in vivo mediated by oral delivery of chitosan-DNA nanoparticles,” World Journal of Gastroenterology 10, no 1(2004): 112–116; Phipps, et al, “Detection of transgenic and endogenous plant DNA in rumen fluid, duodenal digesta, milk, blood, and feces of lactating dairy cows,” J Dairy Sci. 86, no. 12(2003): 4070–8.
[41] William E. Crist, Toxic L-tryptophan: Shedding Light on a Mysterious Epidemic, http://www.seedsofdeception.com/Public/L-tryptophan/index.cfm; and Jeffrey M. Smith, Seeds of Deception, Yes! Books, Fairfield, IA 2003, chapter 4, Deadly Epidemic
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Copyright © 2005, The Institute for Responsible Technology
--
With Experience, no explanation is necessary. Without Experience, no explanation is possible.
Wouldn't be surprised.
Good evening :)
Halfway through this movie but I think I'm going to pause it and hit the sack.
Even my peanut butter diet doesn't sound so good anymore..........
Food, Inc.
Hungry For Change?
Video Documentary
In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.
Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield's Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms' Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.
http://www.foodincmovie.com/about-the-issues.php
Six Banks Control 60% of Gross National Product
Is the U.S. at the Mercy of an Unstoppable Oligarchy?
By Bill Moyers
The big banks became stronger as a result of the bailout. That may seem extraordinary, but it's really true. They're turning that increased economic clout into more political power. And they're using that political power to go out and take the same sort of risks that got us into disaster in September 2008.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25308.htm
Peace: A New Way of Thinking about Achieving and Preserving It
By Raymond G. Wilson
Emeritus Associate Professor of Physics, Illinois Wesleyan University
Most people in the world have no conception of the enormity of the effects of nuclear war. Why? It was some 22 to 30 years after 1945 before the United States would allow people to see the truth of the nuclear devastation Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was a human slaughter and the deadly evidence of it, in photographs of the victims, was confiscated by the American occupation forces, and not revealed until 1967, not by the US Government but mainly through the efforts of citizens
Warning:
Some of the graphics and ideas in this document are for mature and thoughtful viewers.
Most people in the world have no conception of the enormity of the effects of nuclear war. Why? It was some 22 to 30 years after 1945 before the United States would allow people to see the truth of the nuclear devastation Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was a human slaughter and the deadly evidence of it, in photographs of the victims, was confiscated by the American occupation forces, and not revealed until 1967, not by the US Government but mainly through the efforts of citizens.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25307.htm
"If a country develops an economic system that is based on how to pay for the war, and if
the amounts of fixed capital investment that are apparent are tied up in armaments, and if
that country is a major exporter of arms, and its industrial fabric is dependent on them,
then it would be in that country's interests to ensure that it always had a market. It is not an
exaggeration to say that it is clearly in the interests of the world’s leading arms exporters
to make sure that there is always a war going on somewhere." — Marilyn Waring
Big Liars and the Voters Who Love Them
By Bob Burnett
April 23, 2010 "Huffington Post" -- It's not surprising that Republicans oppose the Obama Administration - they want to suck up to the rich by maintaining the status quo. And it's not surprising that they lie - this is, after all, the Party that created the fictional Iraqi atomic bomb threat so they would have a winning issue in the 2002 mid-term elections. What is surprising is that they've been so successful. Why are Republican supporters so enthusiastic when they've been force-fed a diet of BS?
The Republican master plan is hauntingly reminiscent of Hitler's Big Lie philosophy: "Never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it." It's based on the immoral stance: "the ends justify the means."
During the 2009 Presidential campaign, the GOP big lie program started rumors that Obama had not been born in the US, was a Muslim, and palled around with terrorists. It worked! A recent Louis Harris poll of Republicans found that 67 percent "believe that Obama is a socialist." 57 percent "believe that Obama is a Muslim." 45 percent believe that Obama "was not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president."
Once Obama became President, the Republican propaganda machine claimed Democrats were responsible for the financial collapse - that stemmed from Bush era mismanagement - and favored bailouts for Wall Street because Obama was a liberal elitist.
During the yearlong healthcare debate, the GOP lie machine generated a series of nasty falsehoods: "death panels," Washington bureaucrats interfering with the doctor-patient relationship, seniors losing Medicare coverage, and so forth. Meanwhile, Republican Senators feigned cooperation, dragging on deliberations with the intent of killing the healthcare bill by attrition.
Now Republicans - guided by conservative pollster Frank Luntz - are opposing financial reform with another big lie assault: the Democratic plan would produce future bailouts, create a massive government bureaucracy, and stifle small businesses.
During the past fifteen months, the Tea Party developed, a faux movement bankrolled by archconservatives such as the Koch brothers, in order to mobilize resentment among hard-core Republicans who'd been turned off by the McCain campaign. They serve the same function for the GOP in the US that the Basij volunteers do for Ahmadinejad in Iran. They hassle the opposition, pal around with militias, and serve as a conduit for relentless negativism. Tea Party activists swallow the Republican lies, hook, line, and sinker.
There are five reasons for their energy and gullibility: First, none of them voted for Obama, so it's easy for them to believe he won by cheating and to blame him for everything that's gone wrong since - including The Great Recession that had its roots in the Bush Administration. A recent NEW YORK TIMES Tea Party poll found that 57 percent of Tea Party adherents - most of whom are Republicans - had a favorable opinion of former President Bush. Only 7 percent had a favorable opinion of President Obama.
Second, it's easier to attack public policy than it is to propose practical solutions. Republicans malign the Democratic financial reform plan because they don't have any alternatives. Meanwhile, Tea Party adherents are angry about the way things are going in Washington and want to reduce the size of government; 90 percent believe "the country is headed in the wrong direction."
Third, Republicans have historically played to the myth of "rot at the top," and it's convenient to do this again. Tea Party adherents hate the bailouts, see the economy as "very bad," and blame Congress, Wall Street, and the Obama Administration. They oppose financial reform because they don't trust the Federal government.
Fourth, in his classic political study What's the Matter with Kansas Tom Frank noted that fiscal conservatives - favoring deregulation and lower taxes - constantly bamboozle social conservatives - favoring social issues such as abortion and gay rights - by using the theme of victimization. They blame America's problems on the "'liberal elite,' ... they eschew economic reasons in favor of accusing this elite of simply hating America, or having a desire to harm 'average' Americans." The big liars are using victimization again: 77 percent of Tea Party adherents see Obama as "very liberal," 89 percent feel he has expanded the power of government "too much," and 92 percent believe he is moving the country towards socialism.
Finally, there's the role of race. Barack Obama is America's first African-American President and the Tea Party movement has become a haven for racists. 89 percent of Tea Party adherents are white; 52 percent believe "too much has been made of the problems facing black people," and 25 percent believe Obama "favors blacks over whites."
The Republican big lie campaign is immoral. It's fomenting class and racial conflict. It's created a Washington environment where GOP politicians have abandoned America's long-term interests for short-term political gain.
Bob Burnett, Berkeley writer, retired Silicon Valley executive
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25300.htm
My question is how does this article fit in with all that oil supposedly found recently?
The Imminent Crash Of The Oil Supply
What Is Going To Happen And Why Weren't We Forewarned?
By Nicholas C. Arguimbau
Look at this graph and be afraid. It does not come from Earth First. It does not come from the Sierra Club. It was not drawn by Socialists or Nazis or Osama Bin Laden or anyone from Goldman-Sachs. If you are a Republican Tea-Partier, rest assured it does not come from a progressive Democrat. And vice versa. It was drawn by the United States Department of Energy, and the United States military's Joint Forces Command concurs with the overall picture.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25306.htm
===
The Death Penalty for Murderous Corporate Persons
23 April 2010, 2:41 pm
by Len Hart /
The Existentialist Cowboy
If corporations are ‘people’, as SCOTUS has said they are, then, by law, a corporation committing murder should be executed! A corporation like Dow or Union Carbide perpetrating mass murder should be tried and when found guilty put to death! Because corporations are now ‘people’, the same criminal penalties must apply to them as well as to the rest of us. To do otherwise violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, specifically, the ‘equal protection’ clause. How do you put a corporation to death? How do you execute a corporation?
You wipe the incorporation off the books; it no longer exists; you round up the major decision makers –the board, top execs etc –and you put them to the SAME punishment that would be exacted individuals for the same crime!
***
My friend David Tingley summed it up:
•Forfeiture of all company assets to the government. All stocks become worthless on conviction. Real estate, buildings and equipment auctioned off to the highest bidder – someone willing to turn them back into an honest business perhaps?
•All senior officers of the company surrender bonuses for the 5 years preceding the offense and salary for the last two. Officers involved in the decision process leading to the death face the same jail time as an armed robber who kills
If corporations are people then they must obey the same laws that apply to people who commit mass murder, armed robbery or any number of crimes that corporations may have gotten away with simply because they were not people. Times have changed. Corporations must now live in real world where ‘evil doers’ are locked up in a dank cell or worse — getting the lethal needle in Texas. In Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment applies to the states by way of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment reads:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
http://www.americanpendulum.com/2010/04/death-penalty-for-murderous-corporate-persons/
The Devaluation of the US Dollar – By Jim Willie
23 April 2010, 9:47 am
by Jim Willie, CB / A close look at the official USGovt gold ledger reveals the mysterious ‘Deep Storage Gold’ which might imply gold bullion held in vault facilities half a mile underground. The ugly truth is that the deep storage gold claimed by the USGovt is unmined gold in the form of raw mineral ore, housed in mountainsides, yet to be processed. So the USGovt backs the USDollar with unmined gold ore at 1 to 10 grams per metric tonne contained under the Rocky Mountain range and the Sierra Nevada range. What a sham! What a shame! Notice the trend of foreign nations demanding the return of their gold bullion from US and London, held in custodial accounts. See Switzerland, see Dubai, see Hong Kong. They suspect, based upon direct independent audits (not revealed) that their gold bullion had been illegally leased, sold, and replaced with paper certificates. Thus the gold physical shortages lately. Thus the hidden war with Union Bank of Switzerland.
http://www.americanpendulum.com/2010/04/the-devaluation-of-the-us-dollar-by-jim-willie/#more-6995
Computerized Front Running and Financial Fraud
How a Computer Program Designed to Save the Free Market Turned Into a Monster
By Ellen Brown
April 23, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- While the SEC is busy investigating Goldman Sachs, it might want to look into another Goldman-dominated fraud: computerized front running using high-frequency trading programs.
Market commentators are fond of talking about “free market capitalism,” but according to Wall Street commentator Max Keiser, it is no more. It has morphed into what his TV co-host Stacy Herbert calls “rigged market capitalism”: all markets today are subject to manipulation for private gain.
Keiser isn’t just speculating about this. He claims to have invented one of the most widely used programs for doing the rigging. Not that that’s what he meant to invent. His patented program was designed to take the manipulation out of markets. It would do this by matching buyers with sellers automatically, eliminating “front running” – brokers buying or selling ahead of large orders coming in from their clients. The computer program was intended to remove the conflict of interest that exists when brokers who match buyers with sellers are also selling from their own accounts. But the program fell into the wrong hands and became the prototype for automated trading programs that actually facilitate front running.
Also called High Frequency Trading (HFT) or “black box trading,” automated program trading uses high-speed computers governed by complex algorithms (instructions to the computer) to analyze data and transact orders in massive quantities at very high speeds. Like the poker player peeking in a mirror to see his opponent’s cards, HFT allows the program trader to peek at major incoming orders and jump in front of them to skim profits off the top. And these large institutional orders are our money -- our pension funds, mutual funds, and 401Ks.
When “market making” (matching buyers with sellers) was done strictly by human brokers on the floor of the stock exchange, manipulations and front running were considered an acceptable (if morally dubious) price to pay for continuously “liquid” markets. But front running by computer, using complex trading programs, is an entirely different species of fraud. A minor flaw in the system has morphed into a monster. Keiser maintains that computerized front running with HFT has become the principal business of Wall Street and the primary force driving most of the volume on exchanges, contributing not only to a large portion of trading profits but to the manipulation of markets for economic and political ends.
The “Virtual Specialist”: the Prototype for High Frequency Trading
Until recently, most market making was done by brokers called “specialists,” those people you see on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange haggling over the price of stocks. The job of the specialist originated over a century ago, when the need was recognized for a system for continuous trading. That meant trading even when there was no “real” buyer or seller waiting to take the other side of the trade.
The specialist is a broker who deals in a specific stock and remains at one location on the floor holding an inventory of it. He posts the “bid” and “ask” prices, manages “limit” orders, executes trades, and is responsible for managing the uninterrupted flow of orders. If there is a large shift in demand on the “buy” side or the “sell” side, the specialist steps in and sells or buys out of his own inventory to meet the demand, until the gap has narrowed.
This gives him an opportunity to trade for himself, using his inside knowledge to book a profit. That practice is frowned on by the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), but it has never been seriously regulated, because it has been considered necessary to keep markets “liquid.”
Keiser’s “Virtual Specialist Technology” (VST) was developed for the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX), a web-based, multiplayer simulation in which players use virtual money to buy and sell “shares” of actors, directors, upcoming films, and film-related options. The program determines the true market price automatically, by comparing “bids” with “asks” and weighting the proportion of each. Keiser and HSX co-founder Michael Burns applied for a patent for a “computer-implemented securities trading system with a virtual specialist function” in 1996, and U.S. patent no. 5960176 was awarded in 1999.
But things went awry after the dot.com crash, when Keiser’s company HSX Holdings sold the VST patent to investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald, over his objection. Cantor Fitzgerald then put the part of the program that would have eliminated front-running on ice, just as drug companies buy up competing patents in order to take them off the market. Instead of preventing front-running, the program was altered so that it actually enhanced that fraudulent practice. Keiser (who is now based in Europe) notes that this sort of patent abuse is illegal under European Intellectual Property law.
Meanwhile, the design of the VST program remained on display at the patent office, giving other inventors ideas. To get a patent, applicants must list “prior art” and then prove that their patent is an improvement in some way. The listing for Keiser’s patent shows that it has been referenced by 132 others involving automated program trading or HFT.
Since then, HFT has quickly come to dominate the exchanges. High frequency trading firms now account for 73% of all U.S. equity trades, although they represent only 2% of the approximately 20,000 firms in operation.
In 1998, the SEC allowed online electronic communication networks, or alternative trading systems, to become full-fledged stock exchanges. Alternative trading systems (ATS) are computer-automated order-matching systems that offer exchange-like trading opportunities at lower costs but are often subject to lower disclosure requirements and different trading rules. Computer systems automatically match buy and sell orders that were themselves submitted through computers. Market making that was once done with a “specialist’s book” -- something that could be examined and audited -- is now done by an unseen, unaudited “black box.”
For over a century, the stock market was a real market, with live traders hotly bidding against each other on the floor of the exchange. In only a decade, floor trading has been eliminated in all but the largest exchanges, such as the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE); and even in those markets, it now co-exists with electronic trading.
Alternative trading systems allow just about any sizable trader to place orders directly in the market, rather than routing them through investment dealers on the NYSE. They also allow any sizable trader with a sophisticated HFT program to front run trades.
Flash Trades: How the Game Is Rigged
An integral component of computerized front running is a dubious practice called “flash trades.” Flash orders are permitted by a regulatory loophole that allows exchanges to show orders to some traders ahead of others for a fee. At one time, the NYSE allowed specialists to benefit from an advance look at incoming orders; but it has now replaced that practice with a “level playing field” policy that gives all investors equal access to all price quotes. Some ATSs, however, which are hotly competing with the established exchanges for business, have adopted the use of flash trades to pull trading business away from the exchanges. An incoming order is revealed (or flashed) to a trader for a fraction of a second before being sent to the national market system. If the trader can match the best bid or offer in the system, he can then pick up that order before the rest of the market sees it.
The flash peek reveals the trade coming in but not the limit price – the maximum price at which the buyer or seller is willing to trade. This is what the HFT program figures out, and it is what gives the high-frequency trader the same sort of inside information available to the traditional market maker: he now gets to peek at the other player’s cards. That means high-frequency traders can do more than just skim hefty profits from other investors. They can actually manipulate markets.
How this is done was explained by Karl Denninger in an insightful post on Seeking Alpha in July 2009:
“Let’s say that there is a buyer willing to buy 100,000 shares of BRCM with a limit price of $26.40. That is, the buyer will accept any price up to $26.40. But the market at this particular moment in time is at $26.10, or thirty cents lower.
“So the computers, having detected via their ‘flash orders’ (which ought to be illegal) that there is a desire for Broadcom shares, start to issue tiny (typically 100 share lots) ‘immediate or cancel’ orders - IOCs - to sell at $26.20. If that order is ‘eaten’ the computer then issues an order at $26.25, then $26.30, then $26.35, then $26.40. When it tries $26.45 it gets no bite and the order is immediately canceled.
“Now the flush of supply comes at, big coincidence, $26.39, and the claim is made that the market has become ‘more efficient.’
“Nonsense; there was no ‘real seller’ at any of these prices! This pattern of offering was intended to do one and only one thing -- manipulate the market by discovering what is supposed to be a hidden piece of information -- the other side’s limit price!
“With normal order queues and flows the person with the limit order would see the offer at $26.20 and might drop his limit. But the computers are so fast that unless you own one of the same speed you have no chance to do this -- your order is immediately ‘raped’ at the full limit price! . . . [Y]ou got screwed for 29 cents per share which was quite literally stolen by the HFT firms that probed your book before you could detect the activity, determined your maximum price, and then sold to you as close to your maximum price as was possible.”
The ostensible justification for high-frequency programs is that they “improve liquidity,” but Denninger says, “Hogwash. They have turned the market into a rigged game where institutional orders (that’s you, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Public, when you buy or sell mutual funds!) are routinely screwed for the benefit of a few major international banks.”
In fact, high-frequency traders may be removing liquidity from the market. So argues John Daly in the U.K. Globe and Mail, citing Thomas Caldwell, CEO of Caldwell Securities Ltd.:
“Large institutional investors know that if they start trying to push through a large block of shares at a certain price – even if the block is broken into many small trades on several ATSs and markets -- they can trigger a flood of high-frequency orders that immediately move market prices to the institution’s disadvantage. . . . That’s why institutions have flocked to so-called dark pools operated by ATSs such as Instinet, and individual dealers like Goldman Sachs. The pools allow traders to offer prices without publicly revealing their identities and tipping their hand.”
Because these large, dark pools are opaque to other investors and to regulators, they inhibit the free and fair trade that depends on open and transparent auction markets to work.
The Notorious Market-Rigging Ringleader, Goldman Sachs
Tyler Durden, writing on Zero Hedge, notes that the HFT game is dominated by Goldman Sachs, which he calls “a hedge fund in all but FDIC backing.” Goldman was an investment bank until the fall of 2008, when it became a commercial bank overnight in order to capitalize on federal bailout benefits, including virtually interest-free money from the Fed that it can use to speculate on the opaque ATS exchanges where markets are manipulated and controlled.
Unlike the NYSE, which is open only from 10 am to 4 pm EST daily, ATSs trade around the clock; and they are particularly busy when the NYSE is closed, when stocks are thinly traded and easily manipulated. Tyler Durden writes:
“[A]s the market keeps going up day in and day out, regardless of the deteriorating economic conditions, it is just these HFT’s that determine the overall market direction, usually without fundamental or technical reason. And based on a few lines of code, retail investors get suckered into a rising market that has nothing to do with green shoots or some Chinese firms buying a few hundred extra Intel servers: HFTs are merely perpetuating the same ponzi market mythology last seen in the Madoff case, but on a massively larger scale.”
HFT rigging helps explain how Goldman Sachs earned at least $100 million per day from its trading division, day after day, on 116 out of 194 trading days through the end of September 2009. It’s like taking candy from a baby, when you can see the other players’ cards.
Reviving the Free Market
So what can be done to restore free and fair markets? A step in the right direction would be to prohibit flash trades. The SEC is proposing such rules, but they haven’t been effected yet.
Another proposed check on HFT is a Tobin tax – a very small tax on every financial trade. Proposals for the tax range from .005% to 1%, so small that it would hardly be felt by legitimate “buy and hold” investors, but high enough to kill HFT, which skims a very tiny profit from a huge number of trades.
That is what proponents contend, but a tiny tax might not actually be enough to kill HFT. Consider Denninger’s example, in which the high-frequency trader was making not just a few pennies but a full 29 cents per trade and had an opportunity to make this sum on 99,500 shares (100,000 shares less 5 100-lot trades at lesser sums). That’s a $28,855 profit on a $2.63 million trade, not bad for a few milliseconds of work. Imposing a .1% Tobin tax on the $2.63 million would reduce the profit to $26,225, but that’s still a nice return for a trade that takes less time than blinking.
The ideal solution would fix the problem at its source -- the price-setting mechanism itself. Keiser says this could be done by banning HFT and installing his VST computer program in its original design in all the exchanges. The true market price would then be established automatically, foreclosing both human and electronic manipulation. He notes that the shareholders of his former firm have a good claim for voiding out the sale to Cantor Fitzgerald and retrieving the program, since the deal was never consummated and the investors in HSX Holdings have never received a penny for the sale.
There is just one problem with their legal claim: the paperwork proving it was shipped to Cantor Fitzgerald’s offices in the World Trade Center several months before September 2001. Like free market capitalism itself, it seems, the evidence has gone up in smoke.
Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are www.webofdebt.com, www.ellenbrown.com, and www.public-banking.com.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25303.htm
Vichy America
By David Glenn Cox
April 23, 2010 -- Were it not all so real it would make a great book; Dan Brown could add another hundred million dollars to his collection. Perhaps he could call it "The Bhagwan Code," while I prefer to think of it as “Vichy America.” Our synthetic, middle class, pseudo nazis, protesting for their gun rights or tax rights, a smiling, flag-waving, picture-mugging, minivan-driving collection of the dumbest individuals ever to stand up on two legs.
It's like a sort of reverse evolution where mankind evolves back into a creature that moves on three legs while leaving one hand free to carry the Bible or a cell phone. They are too dumb to even understand the herd mentality, too dumb to know the difference between predator and prey. The gun nuts rally to show off their machismo to each other thinking that they might somehow intimidate the government with their show of force like a baby shaking its rattle at a rattlesnake.
Do the Taliban march through Kandahar to show how tough they are? Do the Greeks wave tea bags and shout, "Don't tread on me"? The herd shouts, “Restore the Constitution!” but they don’t have a clue as to what that really means, unaware that the Constitution that they imagine is miles from what they want. The herds are out protesting in favor of the predators and against themselves.
The Walton family fortune is worth some $90 billion and was made primarily on imported goods and exploitive labor practices. The Bush tax cuts saves the Walton family millions of dollars a year in taxes and saves the average worker $240 per year. The right wing government that they want to protect them has eliminated trade tariffs and a tariff is a tax on a foreign good that you don’t pay. Are they protesting for an end to the Bush tax cuts yet?
If there is a tariff on bananas you don’t pay it unless you buy bananas, and even if you do the cost per banana is miniscule. It is a tax on companies which import bananas into the United States and most of those companies are owned by Americans. Right now the US Congress is mulling over the idea of a value-added tax or a national sales tax. Leaving aside that sales taxes are the most regressive and unfair taxes on the working poor. Look at it this way: they have taken the taxes off the multinational corporations' incomes in the name of free trade, and now, to make up the deficit, they want to put the tax on to you.
I used the example of bananas because I thought it might strike a chord with these knuckle-dragging baboons. Imagine you and I share a toll bridge on the border and I charge a nickel for each person crossing the bridge my way and you charge a nickel for each person crossing your way. Five thousand people cross each day going your way while ten million people cross each day going my way. You earn $250 per day and I earn $50,000 a day.
Free trade argues that if you eliminate that nickel tax more people will want to cross the bridge. That it will create jobs and industry on both sides of the bridge, except the people on my side of the bridge earn $20.00 an hour and the people on your side earn $5 per day. The benefit goes to the guy that owns the banana trees; the loss goes to the workers in the country earning $20.00 per hour. It's true that traffic on the bridge has increased, but since there are no longer any tolls collected, what does it matter?
To me that is a far greater threat to national sovereignty than any of the made up reasons of the gun nuts and teabaggers. Because now they want you to pay the taxes to make up for the lost bridge tolls and even to buy them a new bridge! We live in an America under a two party system, those with money and those without money, and for those without money it's no party. Take, for example, our Treasury Secretary Mr. Geithner.
He began his early career at Kissinger and Associates; then he was a senior fellow for the Council on Foreign Relations before moving on to the Federal Reserve. He served in the Clinton administration under Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin. Their names came up recently when Bill Clinton commented that he had been given bad advice about derivative trading by Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin. Before Geithner joined the Obama administration his take home pay was around $7,000 per week, just like yours. What? You don’t take home $28,000 per month?
I know, most of us don’t, but I use that figure because many of us have no concept of wealth. None of the teabaggers and gun nuts have any concept of wealth. Geithner is a hamburger flipper in a red paper hat and nylon jump suit when compared with his predecessor. Hank Paulson was worth over $700 million and just the interest on $700 million in a bad year is $35 million dollars. Hank could buy a new $10 million yacht and a $25 million estate in the South of France every year and never touch the principle.
John McCain’s wealth is between $20 and $25 million. Diane Feinstein's, $40 to $100 million. John Kerry, $167 million and Georgia Senator Johnny Isackson, $23 million. So who do these people have more in common with, you or each other? That’s why John McCain and John Kerry can wholeheartedly agree that it is important to send $1.5 billion a year to Pakistan to build schools and infrastructure. Last week Defense Secretary Gates was out advocating for a free trade agreement with Colombia. Apparently Mr. Gates has enough time on his hands to fill in at the Commerce Department, but what do we need from Columbia that we can’t get now?
It's just another chance for the American wealthy to sell toothpaste made in China or Fords made in Mexico or hire workers in a country where half live below the poverty line. You see, the United States market already accounts for 40% of Colombia’s exports and the US accounts for less than 30% of Columbia’s imports. So a free trade agreement would be a net 10% loss for a trade deficit which last month grew to over $38 billion. The winners? Multinational corporations. The losers? You!
Try and understand, the tea partiers and gun nuts aren’t wrong. They’re just stupid. The herd senses danger and closes up but doesn’t know the difference between lions and giraffes. They’re smart enough to know that something is wrong but not smart enough to figure out what it is, so they follow the leader. Their leader who makes ten times as much money as Tim Geithner and who tells them, “They’re destroying your Constitution.”
What was it that George W. Bush called it? “Just a goddamned piece of paper!” Are you sitting down? Bush was right. A constitution that doesn’t protect you from exploitation or rapacious greed, that allows your life and prospects for prosperity to be sold down the river in the name of corporate good is just that, “a goddamned piece of paper!” You might think that it’s superman standing on top of the Empire State Building, cape and flag waving in the breeze behind him, but the rich folks is having monkey stew tonight and you’re invited!
I look into my poor man’s crystal ball and I can tell you what the future will bring: income for banks and corporations will rise while unemployment will remain unchanged and wages will remain flat. The President’s committee on deficit reduction will recommend cuts and tax hikes to Social Security and Medicaid but only to “Save” them. Those hikes and cuts won’t be recommended until after the November elections. Then as the presidential election season is upon us the Republicans will again put up a weak challenger and maybe the teabaggers will hoist some clown as their standard bearer thus making sure that Obama is re-elected.
Then the Mr. Burnses of this country will lament, “Oh, fiddle dee dee, now I didn’t want that to happen.” What you see happening in Greece today will come to America. “Gosh, we really hate it that we have to cut spending and social programs but the revenue just isn’t there.” No, of course it’s not, it's all been shipped overseas, but the profits still have a place to call home.
Capitalism is like a jackass pulling a plow; the jackass will do a good job for you if you put him in a harness and let him know what will happen if he doesn’t do as he’s told. If, however, you don’t show that jackass who's boss, he’s going to sit on his backside and laugh at you!
There will be blood; not because I want it or advocate it. There will be blood because “power never takes a back step - only in the face of more power.” There will be blood when people begin to realize that prosperity and jobs are not coming back and when their extended benefits begin to run out. The blood won’t come from gun nuts or teabaggers but from the same place it always comes. Students didn’t shoot National Guardsmen at Kent State and protesters didn’t beat up policemen in Chicago. The groundwork is already being laid.
April 20 (Bloomberg) -- Al-Qaeda and its ideological allies are using English-language Web sites and forums to encourage non-Arabic speakers to make war on the West as terrorists seek the next Ft. Hood shooters and “Jihad Janes.”
“Their goal to widen the pool of prospective terrorists beyond traditional Middle East and Asia sources is part of a search for 'white al-Qaeda' activists who could foil racial profiling and initiate attacks, according to Evan Kohlmann, a consultant with FlashPoint Partners, a New York-based security research company. "The effort is consistent with the gradual decentralization of Islamic-inspired holy war," he said in a telephone interview.
This, coupled with the President’s unilateral decision that he can extra-judiciously kill Americans, means that you are the terrorists and the terrorists are you. That after you’ve lost your home, your job, your family and your future, it is Al-Qaeda that you’re fighting for and not your dignity and the teabaggers and gun nuts will probably believe them if Glenn Beck says it's so.
“Let you alone! That's all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?" (Fahrenheit 451)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25310.htm
Silverstein Was Calling Lawyer To Get Double Insurance On WTC On The Evening Of 9/11
Posted by sakerfa on April 23, 2010
RELATED: Bombshell: Silverstein Wanted To Demolish Building 7 On 9/11
Via email……
In response to your excellent new article, “Bombshell: Silverstein Wanted To Demolish Building 7 On 9/11,” I thought you might find the following of use:
Firstly, you can watch a recent CBS interview in which Silverstein claims that he should have been in the WTC on 9/11, but his wife insisted he go to a dermatologist’s appointment, thereby saving his life:
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/60_minutes/video/?pid=dCJDTFzLiEO_a32xTRfMdMMYQd1nHV1N&play=true
Secondly, it is worth noting that already on the evening of 9/11, Silverstein was calling his lawyers, to see if he could make a double claim on his WTC insurance policy. See this 9/11 Timeline entry:
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a091201doubleinsurance&scale=0
The key information is from pp. 18-19 of Steven Brill’s book, After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era. Brill wrote:
“Real estate developer Larry Silverstein was on his way to a dermatologist on the morning of the 11th, instead of the Trade Center—the multibillion-dollar complex where he had leveraged a $14 million personal investment in a partnership that owned the leasing rights to the buildings into bragging rights as the complex’s putative owner. Silverstein would tell the author five months later that he was so shocked and sickened by the destruction and by the loss of four of his employees that morning that he did not think he focused on issues like insurance or finances until “perhaps two weeks later.” In fact, according to his own lawyers, by that evening he was on the phone with them worrying whether his effort to shave costs when he’d bought insurance would now come back to hurt him, or whether his insurance policies could be read in a way that would construe the attacks as two separate, insurable incidents rather than one. The difference was roughly $3.55 billion versus $7.1 billion—the kind of gap corporate litigators dream of.”
[End of quote]
If you want to verify this quote for yourself, you can search Brill’s book at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743237099/
(Just do a search for “Silverstein,” and select the third result from the list.) Source: Prison Planet
http://dprogram.net/2010/04/23/silverstein-was-calling-lawyer-to-get-double-insurance-on-wtc-on-the-evening-of-911/
Policing for Profit - The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture
http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=11594
The Permanent Bailout Bill
By Rocky Vega
04/23/10 Stockholm, Sweden – President Obama is proposing a new bill to establish a permanent bailout fund. The bill proposes that this fund, run by unelected bureaucrats, will have the power to decide if banks and financial companies are in trouble and will have the authority to step in before problems become too bad.
The natural question is why the newly established fund should be any better than all the federal institutions we already have — none of which detected the last crises in time.
For more details, we turn to Republican House of Representatives Minority Leader John Boehner:
“Under his proposal, the largest Wall Street firms would become eligible for special treatment, including taxpayer-funded resources unavailable to smaller financial firms. These include exclusive access to a pre-existing bailout fund, a Treasury-backed line of credit and a government guarantee for any debt.
“Such perks will benefit the likes of Goldman Sachs, President Obama’s top financial contributor during the 2008 campaign and a firm that just happens to be under investigation by the SEC for defrauding investors.
“The decision to designate Goldman and other giant banks as ‘too big to fail’ won’t be made by taxpayers or their elected representatives. Under the Democrats’ plan, a new ‘Financial Stability Oversight Council’ made up of unelected federal bureaucrats — including representatives from the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the CFTC, the FDIC and the SEC — would have absolute power to seize any company and do whatever it wants with it.
http://dailyreckoning.com/the-permanent-bailout-bill/
I do have a political spaghetti dinner to go to Sunday. I'm taking my own noodles to throw at the bastard.
SEC order helps maintain AIG bailout mystery
In May, the SEC approved a request by AIG to keep secret an exhibit to a year-old regulatory filing that includes some of the details on the most controversial aspect of the AIG bailout: the funneling of tens of billions of dollars to big banks like Societe Generale, Goldman Sachs (GS.N), Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) and Merrill Lynch.
Webmaster's Commentary:
This is why we cannot take the SEC investigation into Goldman Sachs at face value.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1116982020100111
Vitamin D deficiency linked to more aggressive lymphoma
Lymphoma patients with vitamin D deficiency are twice as likely to die from their cancer than patients with sufficient blood levels of the vitamin, according to a study conducted by researchers from the Mayo Clinic and presented at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology
http://www.naturalnews.com/028609_vitamin_D_lymphoma.html
IRS Refuses Identify How Many New IRS Personnel Needed to Enforce Obamacare
http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=11512
Ash may hover for days over uncertain Europe
With the sky blackened out and the wind driving a fine, sticky dust, dairy farmer Berglind Hilmarsdottir teamed up with neighbors to round her animals and get them to shelter. The ash is toxic — the fluoride causes long-term bone damage that makes teeth fall out and bones break.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Then why is fluoride in the US drinking water system????
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jh7lQ-qBxQMPzPd3Iap7_s3YDBfQD9F51NIO0
School IT allegedly took "thousands" of pics in webcam case
By Jacqui Cheng | Last updated 4 days ago
Remember the lawsuit filed by the family of 15-year-old Blake Robbins against the school district that spied on him at home via webcam? The latest news comes from a motion filed by the Robbins family claiming that the school took more than 400 photos of Blake in his room—some while sleeping and others while he was "partially undressed."
According to the motion filed Thursday, the Robbins family said that it was only aware of a handful of images being captured at the time the lawsuit was filed back in February. Now, thanks to the court order asking the district to preserve evidence on all school-issued computers, the family has discovered more than 400 photos of Blake alone, not to mention the "thousands" more taken of other students in their homes. In addition to these photos of students doing private things in their rooms, the school district also allegedly took screenshots of IM conversations they were having with friends.
Even worse, the IT staff responsible for implementing and monitoring the student laptops seemingly viewed the whole thing as entertainment. The motion cites e-mails sent between staffers—one says the pictures were "like a little [Lower Merion School District] soap opera." Carol Cafiero, one of the administrators responsible for the program responded "I know. I love it!" Cafiero is one of two staffers who have been placed on administrative leave.
The school district has always argued that it only turned on the webcams in the event that a laptop appeared to be lost or stolen, but the Robbins argue that there were numerous cases in which the school spied on students despite knowing exactly who had the laptops—sometimes, students absentmindedly forgot to return their computers on time or failed to pay the $55 insurance fee in a timely manner. The latter was the case for Blake; the school says it initially spied on him because he failed to pay the fee, though there appears to be no explanation as to why the IT staff watched him for at least two full weeks before he ended up getting disciplined for "improper behavior" at home.
Understandably, the court has issued an order barring any of the 400+ photographs or screenshots from being made available to anyone but the lawyers.
Even if you think the school district is within its rights to install monitoring software on school laptops, the IT staff appear to have gotten the whole district into a hairy situation by turning laptop security into their own real-life high school "soap opera."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/school-it-allegedly-took-thousands-of-pics-in-webcam-case.ars
After Getting Bailed Out By American Taxpayers, General Electric Pays ZERO U.S. Taxes, Pretending that All of Its Profits are Overseas
General Electric got bailed out by American taxpayers.
Specifically, it was given $139 billion in FDIC guarantees and used the Federal Reserve program supporting it's commercial paper (see this).
So you'd think that GE would return the favor by paying American taxes, right?
Wrong. GE paid no U.S. taxes for 2009.
As CNN points out:
GE had plenty of earnings last year -- just not in the United States. For tax purposes, the company's U.S. operations lost $408 million, while its international businesses netted a $10.8 billion profit.
Unfortunately, GE is not alone
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/
Do You Hate The Government? - The Cafferty File
http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=11398