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US Has Weapons To Fight UFOs and ET, Says Former Canadian Defense Chief, Plus An Even Bigger Secret
Paul Hellyer, the former Canadian Defense Minister, says UFOs are real and the U.S. military has weapons to use against UFOs and that aliens can help us learn about climate change. He adds he would probably get fired for his views if he was still Canada’s Minister of National Defense today, but is adamant he has seen UFOs himself, according to reports in the Daily Mail, AOL News and the Barrie Examiner.
Hellyer says, “the reality is that they (aliens) have been visiting earth for decades and probably millennia and have contributed considerably to our knowledge.”
He says UFOs are not the biggest secret in the world, the biggest secret he says is how a “handful of bankers” have “bamboozled” politicians for the past century to take control of the world’s currencies by creating a monopoly on printing money. He adds the bankers are “very clever” in financing politicians and now control the political processes.
Mr Hellyer presented his views on UFOs this week at the International UFO Congress in Scottsdale, Arizona, and says he is ‘convinced’ of their existence.
Hellyer says UFO have inadvertently caused the crash of military aircraft. The crashes were caused when jets approached too closely to the extraterrestrial craft and the energy fields that propel the saucers caused the military aircraft to fail. He also said that some aliens are helping the U.S. develop weapons.
Trusted political and scientific sources with whom Hellyer has spoken have suggested that the United States has developed new forms of energy at top-secret “black operation” installations, using reportedly extraterrestrial technology, according to AOL writer Lee Speigel.
In his book “Light at the End of the Tunnel: A Survival Plan for the Human Species” (AuthorHouse), Hellyer claims that an American “shadow government” is behind this activity.
Hellyer is on an advisory body to the Queen, works as an environmental campaigner and is credited with integrating Canada’s armed forces. But aside from all this, the ex-Canadian defense minister says UFOs are real, aliens have visited Earth and the U.S. government is covering up information about them.
Paul Theodore Hellyer, PC (born 6 August 1923) is a Canadian politician and commentator who has had a long and varied career. He is the longest serving current member of the Privy Council, just ahead of Prince Philip.
On 3 June 1960, Hellyer flew in by helicopter to officially inaugurate an Unidentified flying object landing pad in St. Paul, Alberta. The town had built the landing pad as its Canadian Centennial celebration project, and as a symbol of keeping space free from human warfare. The sign beside the pad reads:
“The area under the World’s First UFO Landing Pad was designated international by the Town of St. Paul as a symbol of our faith that mankind will maintain the outer universe free from national wars and strife. That future travel in space will be safe for all intergalactic beings, all visitors from earth or otherwise are welcome to this territory and to the Town of St. Paul.
Throughout his life, Hellyer has been opposed to the weaponization of space. He supports the Space Preservation Treaty to ban space weapons.
In early September 2005, Hellyer made headlines by publicly announcing that he believed in UFOs. On 25 September 2005, he was an invited speaker at an exopolitics conference in Toronto, where he told the audience that he had seen a UFO one night with his late wife and some friends. He said that, although he had discounted the experience at the time, he had kept an open mind to it. He said that he started taking the issue much more seriously after watching ABC’s Peter Jennings’ UFO special in February 2005.
Watching Jennings’ UFO special prompted Hellyer to finally read U.S. Army Colonel Philip J. Corso’s book The Day After Roswell, about the Roswell UFO Incident, which had been sitting on his shelf for some time. Hellyer told the Toronto audience that he later spoke to a retired Air Force General who confirmed the accuracy of the information in the book. In November 2005, he accused U.S. President George W. Bush of plotting an “Intergalactic War”. The former defence minister told an audience at theUniversity of Toronto:
“The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning…The Bush Administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide.”
Hellyer told the audience that in December 2004, he had enjoyed reading and had endorsed a book by Alfred Webre entitled “Exopolitics – Politics, Government and Law in the Universe”. He ended his 30 minute historical talk with a standing ovation by stating:
“To turn us in the direction of re-unification with the rest of creation the author is proposing a “Decade of Contact” – an “era of openness, public hearings, publicly funded research, and education about extraterrestrial reality”.”[citation needed]
In 2007, the Ottawa Citizen reported that Hellyer is demanding that world governments disclose alien technology that could be used to solve the problem of climate change:
“I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation…that could be a way to save our planet…We need to persuade governments to come clean on what they know. Some of us suspect they know quite a lot, and it might be enough to save our planet if applied quickly enough.”
In 2010, Hellyer accused Stephen Hawking of spreading misinformation about threats from aliens. Hawking has warned humanity against contacting aliens. According to Hawking, if human beings tried to contact aliens, they could invade us and take away our most important resources. Hawking had also said that though most extraterrestrial life could be only in the form of small animals, there could also be “nomads, looking to conquer and colonize” other planets. Hellyer told the Canadian Press that
Blaming Hawking for scaring mankind about aliens, he said, “He (Hawking) is indulging in some pretty scary talk there that I would have hoped would not come from someone with such an established stature.”
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/453/598/US_Has_Weapons_To_Fight_UFOs_and_ET,_Says_Former_Canadian_Defense_Chief,_Plus_An_Even_Bigger_Secret.html
JPMorgan's $907 million Madoff bonanza
Running a slush fund for Bernie Madoff was nice work for JPMorgan Chase while it lasted.
A new academic paper estimates the bank reaped nearly $1 billion in pretax profits over two-plus decades by servicing a checking account at the center of the giant Ponzi scheme.
Who looks greedy now?
The paper, by Linus Wilson of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, says JPMorgan (JPM) earned $907 million on the Madoff account between 1986, when Madoff opened an account at JPMorgan predecessor Chemical Bank, and 2008, when he ran out of money and turned himself in to the authorities.
The account, which held as much as $5.5 billion just before the market crash of September 2008, "was nothing more than a slush fund," the Securities and Exchange Commission said in a 2009 suit against Frank DiPascali, the former Madoff financial chief who pleaded guilty that year to conspiracy, fraud and money laundering.
Irving Picard, the lawyer trying to recover losses for the victims in the Madoff case, last year sued JPMorgan for $6.4 billion. Just $500 million of that was for estimated profits on the so-called slush fund account, which means the trustee may have unwittingly lowballed its demands on Chase.
The bank responded predictably to Picard's claims, sputtering in absurd, outraged tones that the trustee was "trying to pursue an enormous backdoor class action to recoup damages."
Yet JPMorgan is the one whose actions appear outrageous. Wilson notes that the bank failed to investigate the huge flows in and out of the Madoff account, in spite of its duty to report large, suspicious transactions -- a dereliction one commentator recently labeled contemptible.
Recent reports from the bankruptcy trustee and from the head of the Securities Investor Protection Corp., the federal agency that oversees brokerage accounts, leave Wilson wondering
if there was a material weakness in the anti-money laundering program at JPMorgan Chase. This paper finds that for many years in the 2000s over a billion dollars that was both deposited into the Ponzi scheme and was not used to pay investors cannot be found in the main Ponzi checking account at JPMorgan Chase. This indicates that large amounts of money stolen from Madoff's investors may still be unaccounted for.
JPMorgan Chase didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Wilson estimates that the bank made $398 million before taxes on the account, by using the low-cost deposits to fund higher-yielding loans. He assumes the bank then reaped additional profits by reinvesting the proceeds in itself, at a time when its shares generally were rising briskly. This additional gain on the bank's retained earnings yields his $907 million pretax profit estimate.
The bank was able to reap huge sums from the Madoff account because it held enormous balances in the last years before Madoff was collared. The average closing monthly account balance was $3.99 billion in 2007, for instance, compared with $718 million in 1999.
The profit estimate is substantially higher than one Wilson and another researcher, Louis Davis, made in a paper released last month. That one put JPMorgan's profit at $435 million after taxes over 16 years.
Wilson says the new estimate is higher because of the subsequent release of additional data by the head of the Securities Investor Protection Corp., Stephen Harbeck, in a letter to Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., and a change in methodology to focus on pretax rather than after-tax profits.
So if Madoff's victims are greedy, what are we to call JPMorgan Chase? For now I guess we'll have to stick with "failing upwards."
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/02/28/jpmorgans-907-million-madoff-bonanza/
First Deepwater Drilling Permit Since BP Spill Goes to ... a Well Co-Owned by BP
Offshore drilling regulators this week approved the first deepwater drilling permit since BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, and as many have pointed out, it’s going to a well owned and operated by Noble Energy
But here’s a lesser-noticed fact, which Reuters reported today: BP co-owns the well—46.5 percent of it , to be exact. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the revamped offshore drilling agency, made no mention of BP’s ownership of the well in its press release , which touted the newly approved permit as a “an important step towards safely developing deepwater energy supplies offshore.”
(BP confirmed with us its stake in the well, but referred further questions about its involvement in operating the well and its expected revenue to Noble Energy.)
Regulators had asked oil companies to prove their ability to contain oil spills occurring in deep water before granting any more permits for deepwater drilling, and two systems have been proposed—one by a company called Helix Energy Solutions and another by the Marine Well Containment Company, a group of oil companies led by Exxon. Just last month, Bromwich said that neither system was ready yet and allowing deepwater drilling would be "simply irresponsible." He stated this week that Noble—which has a contract with Helix —"is capable of containing a subsea blowout."
“This permit was issued for one simple reason: the operator successfully demonstrated that it can drill its deepwater well safely and that it is capable of containing a subsea blowout if it were to occur,” said agency chief Michael Bromwich. He said the agency expects more deepwater permits to be approved in the "coming weeks and months."
Gulf lawmakers and industry leaders welcomed news of the approved deepwater permit and called on regulators to move more quickly with their approvals, reported the Houston Chronicle.
What’s still unclear is whether regulators are adequately prepared to do so. Last month, the Government Accountability Office, the federal government’s internal watchdog, identified “significant problems with Interior’s management of federal oil and gas resources” and designated it a “high-risk ” area.
Another GAO report released today suggests that the Interior Department still faces ongoing problems with royalty collection and inadequate staffing. It expressed concerns—given the recent reorganization within the department—about whether the department can adequately balance oil and gas development with environmental stewardship. As we've noted and as the BP disaster revealed, they've not done this so well in the past.
http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/first-deepwater-drilling-permit-since-bp-spill-goes-to-a-well-co-owned-by-b
Jobless claims hit 2-1/2 year low last week
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/03/us-jobless-claims-idUSTRE7223GU20110303
OSUR 6.84 OraSure Technologies - OraSure, Roche get FDA clearance for drug tests
OraSure Technologies Inc. and partner Roche said Thursday the Food and Drug Administration cleared the companies' drug tests for use with the Intercept drug testing system.
The approved oral tests seek to find traces of abuse for drugs including cocaine, opiates and methamphetamine. OraSure makes the Intercept system.
"We are very pleased to announce this significant milestone in our joint effort with Roche to develop and market these important drugs of abuse (tests) assays," said OraSure President and CEO Douglas A. Michels, in a statement.
OraSure, based in Bethlehem, Pa., makes diagnostic kits to detect HIV and drug use.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/OraSure-Roche-get-FDA-apf-2201980952.html?x=0&.v=1
1 million workers. 90 million iPhones. 17 suicides. Who’s to Blame?
* By Joel Johnson
* Wired March 2011
It’s hard not to look at the nets. Every building is skirted in them. They drape every precipice, steel poles jutting out 20 feet above the sidewalk, loosely tangled like volleyball nets in winter.
The nets went up in May, after the 11th jumper in less than a year died here. They carried a message: You can throw yourself off any building you like, as long as it isn’t one of these. And they seem to have worked. Since they were installed, the suicide rate has slowed to a trickle.
My tour guides don’t mention the nets until I do. Not to avoid the topic, I don’t think—the suicides are the reason I am at a Foxconn plant in Shenzhen, a bustling industrial city in southern China—but simply because they are so prevalent. Foxconn, the single largest private employer in mainland China, manufactures many of the products—motherboards, camera components, MP3 players—that make up the world’s $150 billion consumer-electronics industry. Foxconn’s output accounts for nearly 40 percent of that revenue. Altogether, the company employs about a million people, nearly half of whom work at the 20-year-old Shenzhen plant. But until two summers ago, most Americans had never heard of Foxconn.
That all changed with the suicides. There had been a few since 2007. Then a spate of nine between March and May 2010—all jumpers. There were also suicides at other Foxconn plants in China. Although the company disputes some cases, evidence gathered from news reports and other sources indicates that 17 Foxconn workers have killed themselves in the past half decade. What had seemed to be a series of isolated incidents was becoming an appalling trend. When one jumper left a note explaining that he committed suicide to provide for his family, the program of remuneration for the families of jumpers was canceled. Some saw the Foxconn suicides as a damning consequence of our global hunger for low-cost electronics. Reports from inside the factories warned of “sweatshop” conditions; old allegations of forced overtime burbled back to life. Foxconn and its partners—notably Apple—found themselves defending factory conditions while struggling to explain the deaths. “Suicides in China Prompt Damage Control,” blared The New York Times.
I seem to be witnessing some of those damage-control efforts on this still-warm fall day as two Foxconn executives—along with a liaison from Burson-Marsteller, a PR firm hired to deal with the post-suicide outcry—lead me through the facility. I have spent much of my career blogging about gadgets on sites like Boing Boing Gadgets and Gizmodo, reviewing and often praising many of the products that were made right here at Foxconn’s Shenzhen factory. I ignored the first Foxconn suicides as sad but statistically inevitable. But as the number of jumpers approached double digits, latent self-reproach began to boil over. Out of a million people, 17 suicides isn’t much—indeed, American college students kill themselves at four times that rate. Still, after years of writing what is (at best) buyers’ guidance and (at worst) marching hymns for an army of consumers, I was burdened by what felt like an outsize provision of guilt—an existential buyer’s remorse for civilization itself. I am here because I want to know: Did my iPhone kill 17 people?
My hosts are eager to help me answer that question in the negative by pointing out how pleasant life in the factory can be. They are quick with the college analogies: The canteens and mess halls are “like a college food court.” The living quarters, where up to eight workers share rooms about the size of a two-car garage, are “like college dorms.” The avenues and boulevards in the less industrial parts of the campus are “like malls.”
For all their defensiveness, my guides are not far off the mark. The avenues certainly look more like a college campus than the dingy design-by-Communism concrete canyons I half expected to find. Sure, everything on the Foxconn campus is a bit shabby—errant woody saplings creep out of sidewalk cracks, and the signage is sometimes rusty or faded—more community college than Ivy League, perhaps. But it’s generally clean. Workers stroll the sidewalks chatting and laughing, smoking together under trees, as amiable as any group of factory workers in the first world.
But “college campus” doesn’t quite capture the vastness of the place. It’s more like a nation-state, a gated complex covering just over a square mile, separated from the rest of Shenzhen’s buildings by chain link and concrete. It houses one of the largest industrial kitchens in Asia—perhaps the world. Shenzhen itself was developed over the past three decades as one of party leader Deng Xiaoping’s Special Economic Zones—a kind of capitalist hot spot. The experiment was a rousing success. Millions of workers, gambling that low but dependable wages would be more readily found in Shenzhen, migrated from the poor, rural western provinces, packing into the tenement complexes that soon riddled the city. Factory work offered a chance to change their lives and the lives of their families back home, but it offered little in the way of security. Many companies did not supply housing, leaving workers to find shelter in dodgy slums or encouraging them to sleep on the assembly line. When they did provide lodging, it was typically a dorm room crammed with bunk beds.
According to company lore, Foxconn founder Terry Gou was determined to do things differently. So when the firm built its Longhua factory in Shenzhen, it included onsite dormitories—good ones, designed to be better than what workers could afford on their own. Terry Gou built on-campus housing, I am told, because Terry Gou cared about the welfare of his employees.
Up went a factory, up went a dorm. Up went an assembly line, up went a cafeteria. While other companies’ workers fended for themselves or slept under the tables they worked at, Gou’s employees were well fed, safe from the petty crime of a growing metropolis, and surrounded by peers and advocates.
It rings as unalloyed munificence—until a man puts his foot on the edge of a roof, looks across the campus full of trees and swimming pools and coffee shops, and steps off into nothing.
In the part of our minds where Americans hold an image of what an Asian factory may be, there are two competing visions: fluorescent fields of chittering machines attended by clean-suited technicians, or barefoot laborers bent over long wooden tables in sweltering rooms hazed by a fog of soldering fumes.
When we buy a new electronic device, we imagine the former factory. Our little glass, metal, and plastic marvel is the height of modern technological progress; it must have been made by worker-robots (with hands like surgeon-robots)—or failing that, extremely competent human beings.
But when we think “Chinese factory,” we often imagine the latter. Some in the US—and here I should probably stop speaking in generalities and simply refer to myself—harbor a guilty suspicion that the products we buy from China, even those made for American companies, come to us at the expense of underpaid and oppressed laborers.
From what I can tell, though, the reality is more banal than either of those scenarios. This is what it’s like to work at the Foxconn factory: You enter a five- or six-story concrete building, pull on a plastic jacket and hat, and slip booties over your shoes. You walk up a wide staircase to your assigned floor, the entirety of which lies open under unwavering fluorescent light.
It’s likely that your job will require you to sit or stand in place for most of your shift. Maybe you grab components from a bin and slot them into circuit boards as they move down a conveyer. Or you might tend a machine, feeding it tape that holds tiny microprocessors like candy on paper spools. Or you may sit next to a refrigerator-sized machine, checking its handiwork under a magnifying glass. Or you could sit at a bench with other technicians placing completed cell-phone circuit boards into lead-lined boxes resembling small kilns, testing each piece for electromagnetic interference.
If you have to go to the bathroom, you raise your hand until your spot on the line can be covered. You get an hour for lunch and two 10-minute breaks; roles are switched up every few days for cross-training. It seems incredibly boring—like factory work anywhere in the developed world.
You work 10 hours or so, depending on overtime. You walk or take a shuttle back to your dorm, where you share a room with up to seven other employees that Foxconn management has selected as your bunkmates. You watch television in a common room with bench seating, on an HDTV that seems insultingly small compared with the giant units you and your coworkers make every day. Or maybe you play videogames or check email in one of the on-campus cybercafes, perhaps sharing a semiprivate “couple’s booth” with a girlfriend or boyfriend.
In the morning, you clean yourself up in your room’s communal sink or in one of the dorm’s showers, then head back to the production line to do it all over again.
A report by the UK’s The Mail on Sunday in 2006 accused Foxconn of forcing workers to pull long shifts to meet unrealistic quotas. That report prompted an audit from Apple, which found “no instances of forced overtime” but noted that “employees worked longer hours than permitted by our Code of Conduct”—over 60 hours a week. (Apple has performed such audits every year since.)
Last April, the Chinese newspaper Southern Weekend sent a young reporter into Foxconn to work undercover for a month; he returned with bleak tales of hopelessness and “voluntary overtime affidavits.” An October report by Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, a Hong Kong-based labor rights group, found that workers at Foxconn’s Shenzhen plant worked 13 days straight, 12 hours a day, to produce the first generation of Apple’s iPad. Foxconn has denied the reports and said it complies with all Chinese regulations regarding working hours and overtime.
That 17 people have committed suicide at Foxconn is a tragedy. But in fact, the suicide rate at Foxconn’s Shenzhen plant remains below national averages for both rural and urban China, a bleak but unassailable fact that does much to exonerate the conditions at Foxconn and absolutely nothing to bring those 17 people back.
But the work itself isn’t inhumane—unless you consider a repetitive, exhausting, and alienating workplace over which you have no influence or authority to be inhumane. And that would pretty much describe every single manufacturing or burger-flipping job ever.
I walk one afternoon to the brassiest concentration of Shenzhen’s manufacturing power, the SEG Square electronics market in the Futian district. My Taiwanese guide, Paul, has spent the better part of a decade in Shenzhen as a steward for Western electronics companies seeking to procure components or goods from one of the city’s thousands of suppliers. Here in SEG Square, the products of those suppliers fill glass cases and hang from pegboards in vast, low-ceilinged grottoes that would echo if they weren’t crammed wall to wall with vendors’ stalls. Elsewhere in Shenzhen, such markets are stocked with bamboo knickknacks and counterfeit puffy vests; this one is filled with obviously fake iPhone chargers.
SEG Square’s markets are crowded, loud, and mildly mephitic from cigarette smoke and the odor of fresh-baked electronics. Whole floors are dedicated to knockoffs, not just at-first-glance-perfect clones of popular products but also cargo-cult evocations, like FM radios cast from a third-generation iPhone mold that probably wasn’t convincingly accurate in the first place. It all looks like so much junk, but there is something touching about it. Each item was once the moment’s work of a human being.
Paul has seen his share of factories in Shenzhen over the years. I ask him about Foxconn, and he echoes the sentiment I’ve heard from others: Whatever problems Foxconn has, it’s still one of the top places to work in the area. “In terms of infrastructure, Foxconn is by far the best factory in China,” he says. We stop to haggle with a vendor over five nonfunctional dummy iPhones (in mythic white) that I want to buy as gag gifts for friends back home. “But how much of that is a facade?” Paul asks, citing the LCD monitors that grace the company’s assembly lines—ostentatious symbols of modernity that provide little benefit to the worker. “Pointless waste of electricity.”
As for the Cyberfox Café, Foxconn’s onsite Internet lounge, where I recently ate a fine bowl of bitter melon soup? “It might look huge, but considering the size of Foxconn’s workforce,” Paul says, “it can’t even serve 5 percent of the employees.”
Even if it is one of the better places to work in Shenzhen (at least for entry-level factory jobs), by the middle of 2010, after the suicides, it was clear to Foxconn management that they were no longer running an anonymous manufacturing company. Foxconn was now a billion-dollar avatar of globalization, and they were feeling the rubbernecked gape of international scrutiny.
The living quarters on the Shenzhen campus were recently handed off to property management companies that are more experienced at addressing the living needs of employees. Foxconn hopes the outside firms will be quicker to respond to tenant complaints, although some critics suggest that the company hopes to outsource some of the blame as well. (When Foxconn constructs new inland factories, the living quarters will be managed in partnership with local governments.)
Foxconn has also built onsite counseling facilities, which are staffed by psychologists and counselors. I toured two such facilities. One, sharing storefront space on a busy avenue, has agents who can help workers replace lost keycards or buy prepaid mobile-phone cards to call home; this place was fairly busy. Another, off the main drag, was a full-on care center with music-therapy rooms, private counseling, and lounge areas; when I visited, it was nearly empty. In one room, a life-size Weeble Wobble with a scowling face could be smacked with a padded baseball bat. (It relieved my own stress for a moment.)
But the most ambitious effort to address worker morale is a modest-looking electronics store on the Foxconn campus, right next to a shop selling fresh fruit. It’s called Ten Thousand Horses Galloping. (I’m assured the name has more pizzazz in Chinese.) Inside, you can buy rice cookers and desk fans and phones. It’s like a RadioShack without the DIY components, or a Best Buy without the large appliances or racks of media. And according to Foxconn executives, it’s the future of their company.
Foxconn campuses already have company stores where workers can buy the products they manufacture at discounted prices. Ten Thousand Horses Galloping is designed to be an electronics store for the rest of China. Foxconn plans to offer franchises to employees and even grant them a little startup capital.
The idea is to give some lucky, hard-working employees a way to bring a touch of entrepreneurial spirit back to their home provinces, especially in the poorer west. The workers get to own their own businesses; Foxconn gets to supply the stores with goods. To date, Foxconn has granted franchises to 60 employees and several more to outsiders.
Foxconn positions Ten Thousand Horses Galloping as a new direction for the company, one that allows it to shift into retail while tapping into the cream of the roughly million-strong workforce it has cultivated in China. But the store also offers another benefit to Foxconn, one that wasn’t even needed until recently: employee retention. In recent years, factories have been sprouting up in China’s interior to take advantage of cheaper labor. Workers aren’t flocking to Shenzhen as they did a decade ago, when it was one of the only places to get a manufacturing job. “Now that work opportunities are increasing in the interior regions of the country, would-be migrants are willing to take a lower salary at home to stay with their families,” says Benjamin Dolgin-Gardner, general manager of Shenzhen CE and IT Limited. Even Foxconn itself is building a facility in Hunan, after being lured by multibillion-dollar tax and investment incentives from the provincial government.
Shenzhen may soon relinquish its role as the stoked furnace of the Chinese dream. But will that mean even greater expansion of the middle class, with commensurate benefits—or just the same old system shifted a thousand miles to the west?
Since Foxconn installed nets on all buildings at its Shenzhen campus, the suicide rate among employees has declined dramatically.
In America, we have wrestled with the idea of divine sanction since the country’s inception. Some of us believe we have a God-given dominion over the earth; others argue that we’re bound to a larger Gaian system and are, at our best, caretakers.
My heart is with the caretakers. But I believe that humankind made a subconscious collective bargain at the dawn of the industrial age to trade the resources of our planet for the chance to escape it. We live in the transitional age between that decision and its conclusion.
In this middle age, the West built a middle class. It’s now eroding and may be less enduring than the American Dream itself—a dream we exported to the rest of the world by culture and conquest. Nevertheless, most Americans have food, cars, gadgets. How can we begrudge a single person these luxuries if we want them ourselves?
By many accounts, those unskilled laborers who get jobs at Foxconn are the luckiest. But eyes should absolutely remain on Foxconn, the eyes of media both foreign and domestic, of government inspectors and partner companies. The work may be humane, but rampant overtime is not. We should encourage workers’ rights just as much as we champion economic development. We’ve exported our manufacturing; let’s be sure to export trade unions, too.
I’ve written thousands of posts, millions of words, about things. Usually things with electricity in them. Doing this for a living, on and off, for the better part of a decade, has greatly—perhaps fundamentally—changed how I perceive the world around me. I can no longer look at the material world as a collection of objects but instead see interfaces, histories, and materials.
To be soaked in materialism, to directly and indirectly champion it, has also brought guilt. I don’t know if I have a right to the vast quantities of materials and energy I consume in my daily life. Even if I thought I did, I know the planet cannot bear my lifestyle multiplied by 7 billion individuals. I believe this understanding is shared, if only subconsciously, by almost everyone in the Western world.
Every last trifle we touch and consume, right down to the paper on which this magazine is printed or the screen on which it’s displayed, is not only ephemeral but in a real sense irreplaceable. Every consumer good has a cost not borne out by its price but instead falsely bolstered by a vanishing resource economy. We squander millions of years’ worth of stored energy, stored life, from our planet to make not only things that are critical to our survival and comfort but also things that simply satisfy our innate primate desire to possess. It’s this guilt that we attempt to assuage with the hope that our consumerist culture is making life better—for ourselves, of course, but also in some lesser way for those who cannot afford to buy everything we purchase, consume, or own.
When that small appeasement is challenged even slightly, when that thin, taut cord that connects our consumption to the nameless millions who make our lifestyle possible snaps even for a moment, the gulf we find ourselves peering into—a yawning, endless future of emptiness on a squandered planet—becomes too much to bear.
When 17 people take their lives, I ask myself, did I in my desire hurt them? Even just a little?
And of course the answer, inevitable and immeasurable as the fluttering silence of our sun, is yes.
Just a little.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/02/ff_joelinchina/
I think so too, and would add platinum and palladium to continue moving up with gold and silver.
Ron Paul To Ben Bernanke "I Want A Definition Of Money!"
March 02, 2011 C-SPAN
New Study: More Than 130 Top Congressional Staffers Are Former Lobbyists
At least 130 current congressional chiefs of staff and legislative directors are former lobbyists, new research by the Center for Responsive Politics and Remapping Debate indicates.
And some of these powerful staffers -- both Democrats and Republicans -- have worked multiple lobbying jobs prior to working in their current congressional capacities, the project finds.
The majority of chiefs of staff and legislative directors represented corporations, trade organizations, or worked for lobbying firms that represented corporations, but a wide range of entities were represented: from the National Right to Work Committee to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; from King & Spalding to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group; and from the American Insurance Association to Human Rights Campaign.
"The bottom line is that many of the most powerful congressional staffers, who are now responsible for working on behalf of the public's interest, used to make a living convincing the government to benefit a client's special interest," said Sheila Krumholz, the Center's executive director. "Such relationships could present conflicts of interest and deserve continued scrutiny."
Said Craig Gurian, editor of Remapping Debate: "People have begun to appreciate that the flow of public officials and staffers to lobbying entities -- particularly to those who serve interests regulated by Congress -- has a significant and corrosive influence on the shape of public policy. The new tool that we have developed with the Center for Responsive Politics makes clear that those risks can be present when the revolving door brings former lobbyists -- especially those serving a narrow private interest rather than a broad public interest -- into government."
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/03/at-least-130-current-congressional.html
Who Will Buy Treasuries When the Fed Doesn’t?
(Snippet)
What an unbiased observer must admit is that most of the publically issued $9 trillion of Treasury notes and bonds are now in the hands of foreign sovereigns and the Fed (60%) while private market investors such as bond funds, insurance companies and banks are in the (40%) minority. More striking, however, is the evidence in Chart 2 which points out that nearly 70% of the annualized issuance since the beginning of QE II has been purchased by the Fed, with the balance absorbed by those old standbys – the Chinese, Japanese and other reserve surplus sovereigns. Basically, the recent game plan is as simple as the Ohio State Buckeyes’ “three yards and a cloud of dust” in the 1960s. When applied to the Treasury market it translates to this: The Treasury issues bonds and the Fed buys them. What could be simpler, and who’s to worry? This Sammy Scheme as I’ve described it in recent Outlooks is as foolproof as Ponzi and Madoff until… until… well, until it isn’t. Because like at the end of a typical chain letter, the legitimate corollary question is – Who will buy Treasuries when the Fed doesn’t?
http://www.pimco.com/Pages/Two-Bits-Four-Bits-Six-Bits-a-Dollar.aspx
Union Muscle Eclipsed by High-Profile Conservative Groups During 2010 Election
During 2009 and 2010, labor unions reported spending a combined $46.7 million on messaging designed to aide their preferred federal political candidates, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics. Those candidates were overwhelmingly Democrats.
This figure represents 16 percent of all such spending by non-party committees -- the lowest amount in years, according to the Center's research.
By contrast, the four biggest-spending conservative groups together accounted for about $1 of every $3 spent on these types of political advertisements.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Action Network, American Crossroads and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies reported spending a combined $97.6 million during the 2010 election cycle.
This decline comes as unions across the country are feeling the heat from GOP leaders, especially in Wisconsin, where newly elected Republican Gov. Scott Walker is trying to remove public employee unions' collective bargaining rights, Democratic state senators have fled the state to block the controversial legislation and tens of thousands of protesters have descended upon the state capital.
The graph below shows the spending levels of these four high-profile conservative groups, as well as the top-spending unions and all labor unions combined:
American Crossroads, Crossroads GPS and American Action Network were all launched last year. And they hope to continue to have a significant effect on future elections.
American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, for instance, intend to raise a whopping $120 million for the 2012 election cycle, as OpenSecrets Blog reported Tuesday.
The rise of these deep-pocketed conservative groups, furthermore, has been aided by well-connected political hands.
Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's former adviser, and former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie helped birth American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS.
Steven Law, the head of these two groups, is the former general counsel at the Chamber of Commerce and former chief of staff to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
And American Action Network is headed by former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) and shares office space with the two Rove-backed Crossroads groups.
As a so-called 527 organization-turned-super PAC, American Crossroads discloses information about its donors to the Federal Election Commission.
Both Crossroads GPS and American Action Network, however, are organized under section 501(c)4 of U.S. tax code as nonprofit organizations, and thus, they that are not required to disclose any information about their donors. The Chamber of Commerce, too, is not required to disclose information about its donors.
By the Center's calculations, liberal groups, conservative outfits and nonpartisan political action committees spent a combined $297 million on advertisements and other communications lauding their preferred candidates, attacking politicians they disagreed with and touting their pet issues. Legally known as independent expenditures, electioneering communications and communication costs, these expenses were regularly reported to the FEC during the 2010 election cycle.
Independent expenditures and electioneering communications -- which constituted the vast of majority of these expenditures -- cannot be coordinated with candidates' own campaigns or with party committees such as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee or National Republican Senatorial Committee.
During the 2006 election cycle, when Democrats wrested control of both houses of Congress away from Republicans, unions spent $21.6 million on independent expenditures, electioneering communications and other communication costs -- about 31.5 percent of all such expenditures by outside groups.
That cycle was a relative peak for such union spending.
During the 2008 election cycle, labor unions spent nearly $86 million on these types of political expenditures -- a figure that represented 28.5 percent of all such spending. And during the 2006 election cycle, labor unions spent $48.7 million -- about 24 percent of all such expenditures by outside groups.
Unions can also spend money on other activities that are not reported to the FEC but that may help get out the vote, such as grassroots lobbying, some member-to-member communications and issue ads.
Many unions also operate political action committees that donate directly to candidates. During the 2010 election cycle, labor PACs contributed $67.5 million to federal candidates and committees, with 93 percent of those funds benefiting Democrats, according to the Center's research.
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/03/union-muscle-eclipsed-by-conservative-groups.html
The point is not to stifle anyone, I am proud of the people standing up for themselves. What's happening to these groups (teachers, trade union groups, etc) is a SYMPTOM of a much bigger problem. What we need is major policy changes to benefit All Americans, not just certain professions.
Where where the unions when the small farmer was run out of town by big agri-business?
Where where the unions when the small retailers where run out of town by the likes of Walmart?
Where where the unions when cleaning people, cooks, and now truckers lost their jobs to Mexicans?
Where where the unions when most Manufacturing jobs were sent to China?
Where where the unions when IT & Call Center jobs were off-shored to India and Pakistan?
PRECIOUS METALS: Gold Hits New All-Time High On Mideast, Inflation Worry
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110302-708925.html
Defense Agency Awarded Contract to Director’s Father's Company
Here’s a moral conundrum for you. Let’s say that the director of a federal agency awarded a contract to a company she founded and which is now headed by her father and employs her sister. Is this an unacceptable conflict of interest or just another run-of-the-mill revolving door Washington deal?
Here are the details in the real world. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is one of the more intriguing corners of the U.S. government. It funds projects that explore the cutting edge of technology as they relate to national security.
On July 20, 2009, Regina Dugan, who had been a DARPA program manager from 1996 until 2000, was sworn in as DARPA’s first female director. Six months later, DARPA awarded a $400,000 research contract to a company called RedXDefense. In August 2010, RedXDefense received another contract from DARPA, an extension of the first one, this time in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security. RedXDefense is a legitimate company that does important work in the field of explosives detection and threat screening and had done business with DARPA before. However, it’s the company’s history that makes these more recent contracts just a bit questionable.
That’s because it was DARPA director Regina Dugan who co-founded RedXDefense in 2005, along with her father, Vince Dugan, and her uncle, John Dugan. Regina Dugan served as the company’s president and CEO. When President Barack Obama tapped her to head DARPA, in accordance with federal ethics regulations, she agreed to disqualify herself from matters relating to RedXDefense. However, her father is currently the CEO of the company and her sister is the vice-president of marketing.
In an e-mail response to AllGov about the ethical anomaly of awarding a contract to the director’s family’s business, the media affairs office of DARPA insisted that “at no time did Dr.
Dugan participate in any dealings between the Agency and RedXDefense related to this contract.”
Even if Dugan did not participate in the dealings between the agency she leads and the company run by her father, it surely must have come as a pleasant surprise to learn that DARPA’s contract management office had chosen the company she founded to do work for DARPA.
It is also worth considering whether President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates acted wisely when they chose the CEO of a defense contractor to lead an agency that does business with that company.
http://www.allgov.com//ViewNews/Defense_Agency_Awarded_Contract_to_Directors_Fathers_Company_110302
Stocks Fall as Oil Rises; Silver Advances to 31-Year High
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fg%2Fa%2F2011%2F03%2F02%2Fbloomberg1376-LHET6I0D9L3501-63NB4EMC9MGJ59AM8721SMT0ES.DTL
Isnt that what laws are for, To make sure we cant do what the lawmakers do?
Four time bombs that will blow up Wall Street
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
Put Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein in jail for six months, and all this will stop, all over Wall Street and America, a former congressional aide tells Matt Taibbi in his latest Rolling Stone attack, “Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail? Financial crooks brought down the world’s economy — but the feds are doing are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them.”
Taibbi’s right, everyone knows Wall Street’s run by a bunch of dictators who are doing more damage to democracy and capitalism than North Africa’s dictators. But jail the CEOs of Goldman, Citi, B. of A. or my old firm Morgan Stanley? Too late.
Berkshire contemplates acquisitions
Jamie Heller and Erik Holm discuss the implications of the newly released letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders from billionaire investor Warren Buffett.
Only a revolution will stop Wall Street’s self-destructive capitalism. And watching the people revolt against dictators like Mubarak and Gadhafi reminds us of the spirit that sparked America’s revolution in 1776. But today we need a 1930s-style revolution.
During the S&L crisis two decades ago America had a backbone, indicted 3,800 executives and bankers. Today’s leaders have no backbone. Besides jail time won’t reform the darkness consuming Wall Street’s soul. We’re all asleep, in denial about the moral crisis facing America. Yes, we need a new revolution.
Jail time? We’ve heard that many times before. Journalists have been beating that dead horse for three years. Jailing CEOs made sense in early 2009. But our naïve president missed that opportunity, instead surrounded himself with Wall Street insiders as Bush did with Blankfein’s predecessor. Trojan Horses manipulating a Congress filled with clueless Dems mismanaging tired Keynesian theories.
Taibbi got it right: Washington’s error was in protecting Wall Street’s billion-dollar crooks when they should have been prosecuting CEOs for criminal behavior in getting us into the 2008 mess. So today, the political statute-of-limitations has run. Jail solution is wishful thinking, like praying to the tooth fairy for a miracle. Time for action. Time for a revolution on Wall Street.
Jail Wall Street? Old news. They got away with it. We chickened out
“Jail Bank CEOs” makes a great sound bite in the cable pundits’ echo chamber. Remember Taibbi’s earlier indictment of Goldman Sachs: the “world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”
But so what? Just three years after Wall Street’s crooks “brought down the world’s economy” Goldman’s Blankfein and his buddies are paying record bonuses, and laughing at us.
Seriously, think about it folks: Since the 2008 meltdown magazines and newspapers have analyzed the 2008 crash to death. It really is old news, history. Journalists churned out book after book: “Greenspan’s Bubbles,” “House of Cards,” “Trillion Dollar Meltdown,” “13 Bankers,” “Dumb Money,” “Bailout Nation,” “All the Devils Are Here,” “The Big Short,” “Too Big to Fail,” “The Failure of Capitalism,” “This Time is Different,” “And Then the Roof Caved In,” on and on, ad nauseum. All talk, no action, and no effect.
Get it? With every book, every editorial, every expose the past three years, Wall Street bankers actually grew stronger, got richer, more arrogant, bolder on bonuses, impervious to attacks, even taunting us, like the dictators Mubarak, Ben Ali and Gadhafi, confident they could do no wrong, confident no one would rebel. Jail? Our moment to act is long past. We blinked.
Yes folks, Wall Street is the “Comeback Kid” story of the 21st century. Like a terrorist in a horror film, Wall Street thrives on threats. Three short years ago, Wall Street was virtually bankrupt, a ward of the state. We could have jailed “just one” of them back then, when they were down for the count. Instead, we bailed them out! Made them richer. Gave them $13.7 trillion, loans, credits, cash, asset buyouts. Gave them keys to the Treasury. They didn’t just recover, they “ran the tables,” to use a blackjack/pool metaphor. Now Wall Street dictators have absolute power, ruling Washington, America, you and me.
Yes, America’s bankrupt, but the rich just do not care
Admit it, we lost the opportunity. Jail a bank CEO and Wall Street will miraculously reform? You’re joking, right? Wall Street got away with a “legal” bank heist. Today the should-be/would-be inmates are running the prison.
Wall Street’s corrupt banks have lost their moral compass … their insatiable greed has become a deadly virus destroying its host nation … their campaign billions buy senate votes, stop regulators’ actions, manipulate presidential decisions. Wall Street money controls voters, runs America, both parties. Yes, Wall Street is bankrupting America.
Wake up America, listen:
-“Our country is bankrupt. It’s not bankrupt in 30 years or five years,” warns economist Larry Kotlikoff, “it’s bankrupt today.”
-Economist Peter Morici: “Capitalism is broken, America’s government is two bankrupt political parties bankrupting the country.”
-David Stockman, Reagan’s budget director: “If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians” the “tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing.”
-Business Week recently asked analyst Mary Meeker to run the numbers. How bad is it? America really is bankrupt, with a “net worth of a negative $44 trillion.” Bankrupt.
And it will get worse. Unfortunately, nothing can stop America’s self-destructive Wall Street bankers. They simply do not care that their “doomsday capitalism” is destroying themselves from within, and is bankrupting America too.
One mega-millionaire sent me an email after reading my Jan. 4 column, “America’s worst 10 years start now.”
“Paul, you may well be right about the coming decade, but the rich exist in a different world from the one you write about. They live privileged lives in gated communities. Meet for holidays at the world’s elite resorts. The richest just aren’t worried about today’s economy like your readers. Their issues revolve around who’s the best masseuse, best Pilates teacher, best concierge medical doctor, which private school to choose, what investments they are making at this time, etc. Folks at the top are not concerned with the underlying deterioration of America, except in the abstract, because they aren’t directly affected. That’s why no amount of information from you will ever change things. To them, it’s irrelevant. Best wishes, always enjoy your stuff.”
4 ticking time bombs that will ignite the Wall Street revolution
Yes, the rich live in a different world. And no, information won’t change them. But a revolution will. Revolutions build slowly over a long time. Then, suddenly, a critical mass, a flash point, something totally unexpected ignites the ticking bomb.
It happened recently in a remote Tunisian village. Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old college graduate, unable to pay bribes, set himself on fire to protest police confiscation of his unlicensed vegetable cart. That triggered a revolution. And his death rapidly led to the collapse of a 24-year dictatorship.
Today we have four hot time bombs, tick-ticking, soon to make history; any one can easily accelerate the revolution that’s already killing Wall Street from within.
1. Wealth gap: Super-Rich vs class wars, death of democracy
The gap: In one generation, America’s wealthiest 1% has exploded from 9% to 23% of America’s income, while middle-class income has stagnated. Even Buffett admits: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and winning.”
But my rich friend tells the real story, of their social disconnect. The rich just don’t care. They live in a different world, live by a self-centered code lacking a moral compass. The public welfare is honored only if supported by tax benefits.
The wealth gap is widening and soon something unpredictable will ignite a Wall Street revolution.
2. Wall Street’s doomsday capitalism vs rule by anarchy
A key Supreme Court decision accelerated and codified Wall Street’s ability to use billions stolen from taxpayers to lobby Washington and solidify its power, all for its own self-interest, through campaign payola, senators’ votes, presidential access, manipulation of regulators, grabbing tax benefits, etc. And it’s every man and woman for themselves.
Don’t believe it? Know this, democracy is dead and you’re in denial. Wall Street CEOs and Forbes 400 billionaires are either engaged in a secret conspiracy, or a classic anarchy picking apart America, oblivious of the fact they are setting up the next big revolution.
3. Pentagon’s perpetual war machine vs America’s budget time bomb
The mathematics of our $75 trillion Social Security and Medicare deficits often seem insurmountable, but can be recalibrated. However, the war-loving mindset of America’s neocons — fueled by China’s military actions, the insatiable expansion of our military spending and a Pentagon prediction that global population growth — is putting more and more pressure on the world’s scarce resources, and will, in turn, increase global wars and the demand for more war spending, increasing the risk of sudden revolutions everywhere.
4. Global population explosion vs resources, jobs, better lifestyles
As the world population explodes from 7 billion to 10 billion in the next generation, the demand for more jobs and the pressure on scarce resources will increase, while expectations will fall as the ratio of haves to have-nots increases, making the world all around Wall Street a burning powder keg setting up a revolution.
Bottom line: Forget jailing Wall Street’s dictators. It’s naïve and too late. We missed that opportunity. But a revolution will do the trick, give us a second chance to jail the crooks.
Until then, remember, these four factors are building to a head, merging into a critical mass that will accelerate into a revolution and destroy Wall Street from within: The widening wealth gap, capitalism’s new rule-by-anarchy, the high cost of feeding the Pentagon’s costly war machine, and the huge global population explosion.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/four-time-bombs-that-will-blow-up-wall-street-2011-03-01?pagenumber=1
Ron Paul: House Committee on Foreign Affairs 3/1/11
Congressman Paul questions Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Egypt, Libya, and supporting dictators in general.
Bernanke: Ready To Respond To Inflation If Necessary
By Michael R. Crittenden and Ian Talley
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday the central bank is ready to respond as needed to a surge in global commodity prices caused in part by unrest in the Middle East, though he said inflation expectations remain low and rising gas prices don't pose a risk to the U.S. economy.
Delivering his semiannual report on the state of the economy before a Senate panel, Bernanke reiterated that the U.S. economic recovery is gaining traction even as job growth and the housing markets remain weak. Bernanke said there may be reason for optimism on the jobs front in the coming quarters and also said the risk of deflation has greatly declined. He also signaled the Fed will not begin tightening monetary policy until he's confident the economy is on a sustainable path.
Bernanke, who will appear both Tuesday and Wednesday on Capitol Hill to discuss the economy, used his testimony to underscore the Fed's close focus on the politically volatile subject of inflation. While the central bank continues to project low inflation levels for the next several years, he acknowledged the uptick in a number of headline commodity prices since last summer.
While these increases are most likely to result in "at most, a temporary and relatively modest increase" in higher prices for U.S. consumers, Bernanke made clear the Fed will not hesitate to act if a sustained rise in oil or other materials threatens the economic recovery.
"We will continue to monitor these developments closely and are prepared to respond as necessary to best support the ongoing recovery in a context of price stability," Bernanke said.
He did warn that rising energy prices, which don't currently pose a significant risk to the economy, could cause problems if prices were to continue to gain.
"Sustained rises in the prices of oil or other commodities would represent a threat both to economic growth and to overall price stability," Bernanke said.
He also downplayed the role the Fed has had in the surge in global prices, continuing the central bank's offensive against criticisms that its accommodative stance and quantitative easing efforts are contributing to spikes in commodity prices. Noting that unrest in the Middle East has caused oil and gas prices to rise in recent weeks, Bernanke said it is global supply and demand--particularly from some emerging-market economies--and not U.S. monetary policy that is to blame.
"Commodity prices have risen significantly in terms of all major currencies, suggesting that changes in the foreign-exchange value of the dollar are unlikely to have been an important driver of the increases seen in recent months," he said.
He also offered a sharp response to complaints that the Fed is purposely using its various stimulus efforts to hold down the value of the dollar. He said the Fed is not devaluing the dollar, calling such fears "way overstated."
Still, he did say the Fed's various efforts to pump money into the U.S. economy over the past several years appear to have been successful. While some foreign officials have been critical of the Fed's announcement last year of a $600 billion bond-buying plan, known as QE2, Bernanke said market indicators suggest the economic outlook has improved since its unveiling.
"Of course, it is too early to make any firm judgment about how much of the recent improvement in the outlook can be attributed to monetary policy, but these developments are consistent with it having had a beneficial effect," he said.
In a nod to concerns from some on Capitol Hill about the Fed's exit strategy, Bernanke also repeated his position that the Fed has a number of tools to tighten monetary policy when appropriate. In response to questions, he said the Fed will be judging in the next few months whether the current economic recovery is self-sustaining enough for the Fed to start to pull back its stimulus efforts without causing any dislocation. Bernanke said the Fed can't stay "too easy too long" and must act before some economic indicators--such as full employment--reach acceptable levels.
"Once we see the economy is in a self-sustaining recovery and employment is beginning to improve and labor markets are improving and inflation is stable and approaching 2% or so ... at that point we'll begin withdrawing," Bernanke said.
He also said the Fed will continue to review its bond-purchase program and adjust it as needed, and will take other steps to help drain bank reserves at the appropriate time in order to promote a healthy economic situation.
"The FOMC remains unwaveringly committed to price stability and, in particular, to achieving a rate of inflation in the medium term that is consistent with the Federal Reserve's mandate," Bernanke said.
On the U.S. economy, Bernanke said the Fed sees growing evidence that consumer and business spending may be recovering to a point where growth is self sustaining. He also said foreign and domestic demand has helped bolster gains for U.S. manufacturing.
Despite those positive indicators, he said the U.S. housing market remains "exceptionally weak" and unemployment could take several years to return to more normalized levels.
"Until we see a sustained period of stronger job creation, we cannot consider the recovery to be truly established," Bernanke said.
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110301-712367.html
Bernanke warns on oil price 'threat'
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday warned "sustained rises" in oil prices could potentially threaten US growth and spark dangerous price rises, as he eyed the turmoil in the Middle East.
Bernanke told Congress he still believed unrest in Libya and elsewhere in the oil-rich region would result in "temporary" and "modest" increases in US prices, but acknowledged greater risks remain.
"The most likely outcome is that the recent rise in commodity prices will lead to, at most, a temporary and relatively modest increase in US consumer price inflation," the central bank chief told lawmakers.
"That said, sustained rises in the prices of oil and other commodities would represent a threat both to economic growth and to overall price stability."
He added there was a particular risk from unrest pushing up expectations of future price rises.
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/03/bernanke-warns-on-oil-price-threat.html
Protests Spread To Vietnam
Calls for political reform have not been confined to the Arab world.
Al Jazeera has obtained rare footage of a demonstration in Vietnam - a country where political dissent is swiftly put down by the government.
Fast-moving wildfire engulfs 10,000 acres in Florida
Firefighters in east central Florida were battling a massive, fast-moving wildfire early Tuesday that shut down roads and threatened neighborhoods, authorities said.
By midnight, the blaze had engulfed 10,000 acres and at least one residence, the Brevard County Emergency Management Office said.
Authorities shut down part of U.S. 1 and an 18-mile stretch of Interstate 95 in Volusia and Brevard counties. The area is along Florida's Atlantic coast in the east central part of the state, near Daytona Beach.
Flames, fueled by heavy winds and dry conditions, were threatening a nearby neighborhood, Florida Division of Forestry spokesman Cliff Frazier said.
However, Florida Gov. Rick Scott said Tuesday morning there was cause for hope.
"We just got an update on the fire," he said. "We think we're going to be able to get it under control." Rain is in the forecast, he said, and more assets and people are being moved into the area.
Heat from the fire was causing higher wind gusts late Monday, the National Weather Service reported.
Bright orange flames and blue police lights lit the night sky as residents evacuated from an RV park.
Harold Lacoste and his wife packed their car with pictures and family heirlooms as they prepared to evacuate their neighborhood Monday.
"It didn't look like it was going to hit us all afternoon, then all of a sudden it flared back up," Lacoste told CNN affiliate WFTV.
Lacoste told the station that he had been a victim of wildfires in the past and he didn't want to risk being trapped.
Leo Patterson said he was worried as he prepared to head to a shelter after authorities evacuated the Crystal Lake RV Park Monday night.
"Last year we were here and we had to worry about a tornado that went through, and now we have a fire going on, and a motor home sitting back there that's $180,000," he told WFTV.
The fire was first reported around 10 a.m. Monday, according to the station.
Video at link
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/03/01/florida.wildfires/index.html?hpt=T2
Boeing’s Reward for Paying No Federal Taxes Over Last Three Years? A $35 Billion Federal Contract
Despite reporting nearly $10 billion in domestic pre-tax profits between 2008 and 2010, the Boeing Corporation, which was granted a contract worth as much as $35 billion to build airplanes for the federal government earlier this week, did not pay a dime of U.S. federal corporate income taxes during this three-year period.
In particular:
- In 2010, Boeing reported $4.4 billion in pre-tax profits, and paid just 0.3 percent of its pre-tax income in federal income taxes.
- In 2009, Boeing reported $1.5 billion in pre-tax profits, but didn’t pay any federal income tax at all on those profits. Instead, the company claimed an outright tax rebate of $132 million.
- In 2008, the company reported $3.77 billion in pre-tax profits, and paid a paltry 1.2 percent federal income tax rate on those profits.
- Over the three-year period from 2008 to 2010, the company didn’t pay a dime of its profits in federal taxes, and actually received a rebate of $75 million. Its pretax U.S. profits over this period were $9.7 billion.
The data, which are based on Boeing’s tax filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, don’t make it clear exactly which tax avoidance mechanisms Boeing used to reduce its tax liabilities in this way. But a 2008 report from the General Accounting Office found that Boeing had 38 subsidiaries located in foreign tax havens.
“Throughout the competition for this lucrative federal contract, Boeing has tried to position itself as the company that supports America,” said Bob McIntyre, executive director of Citizens for Tax Justice. “But its shocking success in avoiding payment of US corporate income taxes tells a very different story.”
http://www.ctj.org/pdf/boeing0211.pdf
U.S. moves warships closer to Libya, freezes assets
By Missy Ryan and Ross Colvin
WASHINGTON | Mon Feb 28, 2011 7:37pm EST
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States moved warships and aircraft closer to Libya Monday and froze $30 billion in assets, ramping up pressure on what a top U.S. envoy called a "delusional" Muammar Gaddafi to relinquish power.
In the hardest-hitting U.S. denunciation yet of Libya's leader, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said Gaddafi is "disconnected from reality," is "slaughtering his own people" and is unfit to lead.
The United States also pressed Gaddafi's inner circle to abandon their leader. "You have to think very, very seriously which side you want to be on. ... You will be held accountable," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
The military preparations and tougher U.S. rhetoric follow days of criticism of President Barack Obama's administration by Republican lawmakers, conservative commentators and others for an initially cautious response to the turmoil in Libya.
The administration has defended its response, saying it had been reluctant to take any steps that could endanger U.S. citizens in the North African country. Washington imposed sanctions on Libya Friday just hours after a plane carrying some of the last Americans flew out of the capital Tripoli.
While its position on Gaddafi is now clear, the United States is still struggling to develop a coherent policy toward the various rebel groups. U.S. officials are in contact with them but have ruled out any immediate military aid.
One major problem is that while Libyan opposition groups have demonstrated they are capable of organizing themselves to confront Gaddafi, they are "not coalescing," a senior U.S. national security official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. The rebellion largely remains bereft of obvious leaders who the United States could deal with, he said.
FINANCIAL SQUEEZE
In the meantime, U.S. authorities are putting the financial squeeze on Gaddafi to pressure him to go.
A U.S. Treasury Department official said about $30 billion in assets in the United States have been blocked from access by Gaddafi and his family. David Cohen, acting Treasury under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said the sum was the largest ever blocked.
Gaddafi appeared to shrug off the stepped-up pressure in an interview with ABC's Christiane Amanpour, laughing when asked if he would step down and insisting that Libyans loved him.
Asked about Gaddafi's comments, Rice said: "It sounds just, frankly, delusional. And when he can laugh in talking to ... an international journalist while he is slaughtering his own people, it only underscores how unfit he is to lead and how disconnected he is from reality."
Foreign governments are increasing pressure on Gaddafi to leave in the hope of ending fighting in Libya that has claimed at least 1,000 lives and forced thousands of people to flee.
Colonel David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said the U.S. military is moving ships closer to Libya "in case they are needed." Lapan also said the Pentagon is repositioning planes nearer to Libya.
The U.S. ships could be used for humanitarian and rescue missions, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Geneva, where she told the U.N. Human Rights Council it was "time for Gaddafi to go -- now."
"There is not any pending military action involving U.S. naval vessels," Clinton said.
The Pentagon gave no details of the forces being moved but the United States has a major base near Naples, Italy, home to its Mediterranean headquarters, as well as in Rota, Spain.
As of Monday, the U.S. Navy had eight ships in the Sixth Fleet's area of operations, which includes the Mediterranean Sea and parts of the Atlantic Ocean usually patrolled by frigates and destroyers. It has two aircraft carriers further southeast in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea.
Washington is also working with allies on imposing a possible "no-fly" zone over Libya, U.S. officials said.
A no-fly zone would stop Gaddafi from using warplanes or helicopters to attack rebels who have seized large parts of the country, although it is unclear how big a role the Libyan air force has played in the crisis so far.
The Obama administration has said military action is one option it is looking at, although many analysts say the United States is highly unlikely to launch a ground invasion or air strikes because of the volatile situation on the ground.
U.S. planes bombed Libya in 1986, killing more than 40 people including Gaddafi's adopted baby daughter, in response to a Berlin bombing blamed on Libya that killed three people in a Berlin disco used by U.S. servicemen.
Obama, in a call to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper as part of an effort to forge international unity on Libya, agreed on the need to deter further violence by Gaddafi's government and also to weigh other options against it "should they become necessary," the White House said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/01/us-libya-usa-idUSTRE71K6D520110301
Paul Craig Roberts: How The Law Was Lost
Father of Reaganomics Paul Craig Roberts discusses how the American middle class is being systematically dismantled by means of destroying the ladders of upward mobility and offshoring US manufacturing as well as skilled jobs to China and India. He also explains how the rule of law has been eviscerated, greasing the skids for the evisceration of the Constitution and the undue monopoly of power in the executive branch of government, which has created a dictatorial system that threatens political stability.
Perceptions And Facts About The War On Terror
Saman Mohammadi
Long before quantum mechanics, the German philosopher Husserl said that all perception is gamble. Every type of bigotry, every type of racism, sexism, prejudice, every dogmatic ideology that allows people to kill other people with a clear conscience, every stupid cult, every superstition-ridden religion, every kind of ignorance in the world, are all results from not realizing that our perceptions are gambles. We believe what we see, and then we believe our interpretation of it, but we don't even know we're making an interpretation most of the time.
We think that this is reality. In philosophy that is called Naive Realism. "What I perceive is reality." Philosophers have refuted naive realism every century for the last 25 hundred years starting with Buddha & Plato, and yet most people act on the basis of naive realism." - Robert Anton Wilson. And the video of RAW saying this.
"The world is not governed by facts or logic. It is governed by BS (belief systems)." - Robert Anton Wilson.
"'Seeing' is not a function of the eyes alone, but of the eyes-and-brain working together. A popular proverb says, 'Seeing is believing,' but as the philosopher Santayana once pointed out, humans are much better at believing than at seeing." - Robert Anton Wilson.
American philosopher and author Robert Anton Wilson, who died four years ago at the age of 74, tried to awaken us to the fact that the "world is not governed by facts or logic," but by "belief systems." The priests of power in the United States understand this well, and they have used their knowledge to rule over the ignorant people below them, and keep America in the dark.
The new Rolling Stone article by Michael Hastings about how military commanders in Afghanistan are using professional Psy-Ops teams against senators and congressmen to persuade them to vote for more funding and more troops is a tiny glimpse into the world of perception management, information warfare, and psychological operations. These weapons are wielded against freedom and democracy by the devils and traitors who have hijacked the United States government.
But it is not just renegade army generals who are interested in managing perception in the war on terror. Lt. Gen. William Caldwell's use of disinformation and propaganda techniques against senators and congressmen in Afghanistan is similar to the propaganda and disinformation that is being aimed at the American and Western public on a constant basis by professional perception managers who operate out of the CIA, MI6, Mossad, and other organs of the U.S., British, and Israeli governments.
Perception management is big business. Here is a short definition of the term (from the website www.globalfocus.org):
Perception Management (PM): Actions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning as well as to intelligence systems and leaders at all levels to influence official estimates, ultimately resulting in foreign behaviors and official actions favorable to the originator’s objectives. In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception, and psychological operations. (Source: DOD)
Although PM is theoretically limited to foreign audiences, this may be an impractical limitation. False messages can easily bounce back to the domestic audience, or practitioners may ignore the limitation. The term suggests that an attempt is being made to alter or manipulate perception. Police know how difficult it is to interview eyewitnesses without getting distortions.
Free and open societies cannot exist if governments are allowed to get away with targeting their populations with psychological weapons like propaganda and perception management techniques on a regular basis. A society is not free when the people's thoughts and opinions about the most important events that have guided and influenced that society are managed by official propagandists and government luminaries.
Anybody who has critically examined the development of American society in the last sixty years knows that public perception has been managed to suit the anti-democratic ends of a small network of oligarchs, elitist political leaders, and power brokers who control the inner workings of the U.S. shadow state. Their motivations are to destroy America, and put in place a global authoritarian government.
It is a fact that without government deception and media propaganda the Iraq war would've never been supported by the American people in the initial stages of the war. Lies about Al-Qaeda, Islamic terrorism, Iraq and Saddam Hussein were deliberately told by officials in the Bush administration, and then repeated by their loyal dogs in the media. Their aim was to change mass perceptions about the Middle East so that they could sell numerous wars to the American people, and they were successful. One reason why they were so successful is because nobody in the mainstream media or Congress questioned their actions and words. Journalists accepted what Bush said about the 9/11 attacks at face value, and the American people's representatives in the Congress went along with Bush's program.
The admirable Admiral William J. Fallon, the man who was described by Thomas P.M. Barnett in Esquire magazine back in April 2008 as the "rarest of creatures in the Bush universe: the good cop on Iran, and a man of strategic brilliance," made an interesting remark about Congress's lack of interest in facts at an event called the "Global Communication Leadership Forum: Obama's Afghanistan: The Media and the War" that was held in November, 2009 at the campus of the University of Southern California. Fallon said:
People are fond of saying that they believe in facts, they want data. I was taught a pretty good lesson some years back in Washington. I was in front of a congressional committee, and someone was testifying on an issue, and they trammeled in front of this committee a barrage of information that I absolutely gagged upon hearing, because in my mind it was not only not factual, it was made up nonsense, and wore little resemblance to the vision that I had of this specific issue. So I sat there and allowed my teeth to grind a bit, when it came time to speak I said, "Mr. Chairman, in my business I deal in facts, and I really haven't heard many here," and I got about three more words out of my mouth before the Chairman came across the green table, and just about choked me, and said, "Admiral, you better learn something, buddy. Up here we deal in perceptions, and whatever you think of the facts doesn't matter.
Rather than runaway generals, the problem that America faces is runaway government. The current government has been taken over by gangsters, traitors, and thieves who don't want the American people to know the facts about 9/11, terrorism, and other issues.
Whether we like it or not, our perceptions of the war on terror, and the threat of terrorism, particularly Islamic terrorism, are perceptions, and not facts. Below I will list some of these perceptions and then list the facts.
1. Perception:
The United States of America was attacked by an international terrorist network called Al-Qaeda led by Osama Bin Laden on September 11, 2001.
Fact:
The threat from Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden is not real. It is made up. Muslim terrorists did not attack America on September 11, 2001. America was attacked by traitors within the Bush administration and National Security establishment, who cooperated with Israel's Mossad in the planning and execution of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Indeed, the real villains behind the 9/11 crime are not dressed in robes, but in suits.
Russian whistleblower Dimitri Khalezov, a former Russian military officer who specialized in nuclear intelligence in the late 1980s, is willing to go on the record to reveal that Mossad intelligence officer Mike Harari is one of the planners behind the 9/11 attacks. Veterans Today's senior editor Gordon Duff wrote on February 19, 2011:
Khalezov is a former Soviet Army officer who worked in the highly secretive world of nuclear detection. The doors he opens threaten our view of the last decades, revealing a secret world of deception too devastating for most to accept. However, as bizarre as his stories may seem, of everyone discussing 9/11, only Dimitri Khalezov has the resume that places him at the forefront.
The rest of us talk about 9/11, profess our theories and connect “dots,” real or imagined, moving the public toward a truth that may well be what the public wishes to believe than what is real.
That has been the trap.
Only Dimitri can testify, not “connect.” When Dimitri tells us that Mossad Operations Chief Mike Harari admitted planning 9/11, it is because Dimitri was there. This is testimony, not conjecture, backed by a willingness to take a lie detector test.
Of course, there are many other criminals who planned 9/11 besides Harari, who are both American and Israeli citizens. Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and Donald Rumsfeld are on the top of the list.
Col. Robert Bowman, an Air Force combat pilot, a Vietnam veteran, and a former Director of Advanced Space Programs Development for the U.S. Air Force, recently gave a speech in Florida in which he called for a new investigation into the 9/11 attacks, and the arrest of George W. Bush for war crimes and treason. Gordon Duff said this about Bowman's speech:
Bowman talks facts. Some people don’t like facts. Some people don’t like truth. Some people don’t have honor.
Without courage, without facts, without truth and without action, anyone who believes themselves an American patriot is very much the opposite.
2. Perception:
The United States government is in Afghanistan and Iraq to defend America's national security, and its freedoms from terrorists and rogue nations in possession of nuclear weapons.
Fact:
The United States government is in Afghanistan and Iraq for many reasons, but defense is not one of them. The power-tripping policy makers who run around in the highest circles in Washington D.C. are more interested in establishing a foothold in the most strategic area of the world, and extracting resources like oil and heroin than in protecting American soldiers, and the American people. The traitors who run Washington could care less about America's national security. They want to see America fearful and unsafe so that it collapses, and dies, not safe and prosperous and free.
3. Perception:
The American people support the war on terror, and America's occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Fact:
The war on terror is unpopular with the American people, but the absence of a military draft has created such a deep-rooted complacency that the anti-war movement that was active during the run-up to the Iraq war is essentially dead ten years into the war on terror. Political leaders and policy makers in Washington have not overlooked the fact that the wars are unpopular, they have just ignored it and marched on with their poisonous wars. But they have not looked away from this reality totally, either. Homeland Security and the U.S. Military have prepared for civil unrest and mass demonstrations. If government propaganda and media propaganda fails in taming the people and keeping them ignorant, the police and military will take over to repress the people, violently if need be.
4. Perception:
The masked traitors and invisible rulers in Washington are all-powerful, and cannot be defeated. The American people can't do anything to end the war on terror, they just have to suffer and watch as their country is used to kill innocent people in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other nations in the Middle East.
Fact:
No government is all-powerful. And there is no such thing as invisible rulers. The criminals who control public perception in America include Dick Cheney, George Bush, and Barack Obama, who are public faces. There is also no such thing as fate. War is never inevitable, it is always the result of politics and lies. A "long war" as the war on terror is called can be shortened if people in America and the West put pressure on their governments. People make their own destiny. Mubarak thought his rule over Egypt was indestructible, but the people of Egypt proved him wrong and delusional in a mere 18 days. Corrupt rulers can be overthrown by popular revolutions anywhere in the world, and most of all in America because America was founded by revolutionaries. America's foundations were built on freedom and self-government, a fact that the current tyrants in Washington like to forget.
5. Perception:
America is not guilty of state terrorism, and it doesn't sponsor terrorist networks. Only rogue nations like Iran can be considered as terrorist states.
Fact:
America is a shadow terrorist state. It is not a democracy. Its rulers are capable of committing terrorist acts (9/11) and they regularly spread fear and paranoia about the threat of terrorism, which is in fact a form of terrorism. The Military-Industrial Complex's clandestine activities creates conflict and a climate of perpetual fear and insecurity, allowing them to profit, and stay in power. America's shadow state can only exist if America is in a state of war. Peace is kryptonite to this shadow state.
6. Perception:
We will have to fight extremism and global terrorism for the rest of our lives. Peace is impossible. America has many enemies out there, and they will never go away.
Fact:
America's enemies are not in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, or any other country listed on the neocons' playbook. America's enemies are the crazy radicals who are in power in Washington. America's enemy is a domestic enemy, which is the country's shadow state that operates outside of the law and manipulates the public and the press. It is anti-democratic, lawless, and anti-freedom. The American shadow state's treacherous machinations and lies about terrorism must be exposed to the public. Peace will become a reality once the American war machine is put away, and the war criminals behind 9/11 and the war on terror are hanged for their crimes against humanity.
http://disquietreservations.blogspot.com/2011/02/perceptions-and-facts-about-war-on.html
Watching the dollar with concern as well, I fear if we break the 2008 lows, the down-slide may be off a cliff..
The Fibonacci in Tool's 'Lateralus'
Experts have no answers on what has caused the death of thousands of squid in the River Derwent this week.
MERYL NAIDOO
Dead and dying arrowhead squid have been washed ashore or spotted floating on the water at Austins Ferry and Berriedale since Tuesday.
Locals say they have never seen so many dead fish.
The Environment Protection Authority yesterday confirmed reports of more dead squid further down the river.
It is the third case of mass fish deaths in the Derwent in the space of two weeks.
Early this week a large mass of dead juvenile barracouta was found in Windermere Bay near Claremont Primary School.
This followed a similar number of juvenile barracouta being found dead just south of the Norske Skog paper mill at Boyer the week before.
EPA director Alex Schaap said it was unlikely that the deaths of the squid and barracouta were related.
Mr Schaap said young barracouta were particularly intolerant of low salinity, which was thought to have caused the mass deaths.
But water tests have left the barracouta deaths a mystery.
"We haven't found evidence of anything untoward," Mr Schaap said.
Water testing is now being done to cast light on the squid deaths.
"When we have an event which involves a single species we tend to suspect there is some behavioural factor involved, a natural phenomenon," Mr Schaap said.
"The squid don't appear to be fully grown.
"It is possible that these fish have been caught in low-salinity water following the high stormwater discharges over the weekend."
Residents fear the river may be contaminated.
Brenda Hale has lived on the Austins Ferry waterfront for 40 years and said she had seen dead fish only once before.
"All this squid is not a pleasant sight or smell," Mrs Hale said. "It makes me think something is not right with the water."
Tim Strange, of Claremont, who grew up in the area, said he had never seen anything like it before.
"Wherever you look you can see squid washed up all over the rocks," he said.
http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2011/02/25/209871_tasmania-news.html
Providence RI Fires All 1,926 of Its Teachers
Board votes to dismiss all Providence teachers
By Linda Borg
PROVIDENCE — After two hours of contentious discussion, the School Board voted 4 to 3 Thursday night to send out termination notices to each of the city’s 1,926 public school teachers.
More than 700 teachers jammed a high school gymnasium to tell school officials that their hearts were broken, their trust violated and their futures as teachers jeopardized.
“How do we feel? Disrespected,” said Julie Latessa, a special-needs teacher, before the vote. “We are broken. How do you repair the damage you have done today?”
Every teacher received a certified letter from the School Department on Thursday informing them that they might be terminated at the end of the school year. It also said the School Board would vote on the proposed dismissals at Thursday night’s meeting, which was moved to the Providence Career and Technical Academy to accommodate the huge turnout.
Many of the teachers were caught off guard by Mayor Angel Taveras’ decision to terminate teachers instead of laying them off. Last night, speakers questioned the mayor’s rationale: a $40-million school budget deficit and a March 1 deadline by which the School Department must notify teachers if their jobs are in jeopardy.
“This is a quasi-legal power grab,” said Richard Larkin, a teacher at Classical High School. “You want to pick and choose teachers. Well, we will not be bullied.”
More than 700 teachers turned out for the School Board’s meeting Thursday night at the Providence Career & Technical Academy, at which the board voted to terminate them at the end of the school year.
Speaker after speaker demanded to know why they were being fired. Didn’t the teachers union sign on to the federal Race to the Top initiative? Hasn’t the union collaborated with Supt. Tom Brady on new curricula? Isn’t the union working with the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers on a new teacher evaluation?
“I’m feeling disrespected, devalued and marginalized,” said Ed Gorden. “Termination is a career-ender. You are putting a scarlet letter on every one of us.”
Teachers begged the School Board to issue layoffs rather than fire them outright because, under the layoff provisions, teachers are recalled based on seniority. There is no guarantee that seniority would be used to bring back any of the fired teachers. School leaders have been vague about exactly how seniority will play out in the case of terminations.
Before the vote, several School Board members explained their reasons for supporting or rejecting the motion to dismiss:
Philip Gould said he believes that Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith is committed to serious and meaningful school reform, adding that if “we do this, it will be detrimental to the children of this district.”
Nina Pande said the board is faced with an extremely difficult decision and that the board was given only three days to close a $40-million deficit.
Melissa Malone, Kathleen Crain, Pande and Julian Dash voted for the motion to dismiss; Robert Wise, Brian Lalli and Gould voted against it.
Earlier Thursday, Smith called the terminations “an attack on labor and an attack on collective bargaining.”
“This is a back-door Wisconsin,” Smith said, referring to the weeklong protests in Madison by labor unions. “We don’t know why we’re being fired. The mayor says he needs flexibility. Can you buy that? I don’t know of any other district that has done this.”
Thursday night, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, called the possible dismissals “shocking,” and said the move will “disrupt the education of all students and the entire community.”
Superintendent Brady has said that the majority of teachers will be rehired but could not give any details until the mayor’s special panel completes its report on the city’s financial status.
Teachers who attended a meeting with Brady on Thursday afternoon left as dismayed and confused as they were when they entered the building. Many said they still didn’t understand why they were being dismissed.
“Everyone is anxious,” said Eileen Finklestein, an elementary school teacher. “We hope the School Board will make a rational decision.”
http://www.projo.com/news/content/PROVIDENCE_SCHOOL_MEETINGS_02-25-11_MCMMBSG_v26.1bd455c.html
More holographic 'employees', this time at Manchester Airport
Fly Over the 'Brainbow'
By Veronique Greenwood
Two neural mapping techniques illuminate the delicate architecture of flies’ brains.
Four years ago, Harvard scientists devised a way to make mouse neurons glow in a breathtaking array of colors, a technique dubbed “Brainbow.” This allowed scientists to trace neurons’ long arms, known as the dendrites and axons, through the brain with incredible ease, revealing a map of neuron connections.
Using a clever trick of genetic engineering, in which genes for three or more different fluorescent proteins were combined like paints to generate different hues, researchers created a system to make each neuron glow one of 100 different colors. The result was that the dendrites and axons of individual neurons, previously almost impossible to pick apart from their neighbors, could be traced through the mouse brain according to their color.
Now, fruit fly researchers have a similar bonanza on their hands. Last week, two Brainbow-based methods for making fly neurons glow customized colors—called dBrainbow and Flybow—were published in Nature Methods. This is the first time that scientists have converted the technique to work in fruit flies, and because these organisms have a very sophisticated set of existing genetic tools, researchers can exert even greater control over when and where the fluorescent proteins are expressed.
Because axons and dendrites are so long and fine, it's hard to tell which neurons they are from. Researchers have traditionally had to stain just one or two neurons in each sample, painstakingly compiling data from many brains to build a map. In contrast, many neurons are easily discernible in this cross-section of a fly’s brain made using dBrainbow. Using dBrainbow images, Julie H. Simpson and colleagues at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm could tell which motor neurons controlled parts of a fly's proboscis, which it uses to take in food.
Both techniques have reduced the number of color options from the original brainbow—dBrainbow has six and Flybow, developed by Iris Salecker and colleagues at the National Institute for Medical Research in London, has four. This makes it easier to identify neurons.
In dBrainbow, the color indicates which neurons arose from the same progenitor cell during development: each progenitor “decides” what color it will be, and all of its daughter cells will share that color, which is handy for studying how connections between different lineages of neurons are formed. In this shot of a fly's head, different progenitors gave rise to the blue olfactory neurons on the right and the red olfactory neurons on the left.
In contrast, Flybow cells can be made to “decide” their color at any point in development, because the enzymatic process that causes them to change colors is activated by applying heat. The cells are engineered so their default color is green. The longer they are heated, the more cells will switch from green to blue, yellow, or red. Heat applied early in development produces an effect similar to dBrainbow, while heat applied later produces individual cells that each glow their own color. Here, the visual system of an adult fruit fly shows individual neurons in four colors.
Using existing genetic techniques, scientists can restrict the activation of the dBrainbow and Flybow genes to specific subsets of cells, so only the neurons relevant to their research are visible. In this dBrainbow image, a group of about 2,000 highly studied neurons thought to underlie male courtship behavior are colored according to different subpopulations.
In a typical study, the red, yellow, and blue neurons in this image of a developing fly's nerve cord would never be seen together, but would instead be spread across many samples, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, leaving scientists to imagine what they might look like in the intact fly.
“It is a real revelation to see them actually next to each other, at the same time,” says Salecker. “To see them as they are, with their neighbors—it makes a huge difference.”
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/32423/page1/
Difficult for many of us brought up/conditioned with the western religions since our early & impressionable years to consider, but I strongly agree people need to look hard at Religion when trying to understand the power structure of our planet. Easy to see how the Muslim VS Cristian Hegelian being manipulated currently to try and manufacture consent for yet another level of divide and conquer.
The need to protect the internet from 'astroturfing' grows ever more urgent
The tobacco industry does it, the US Air Force clearly wants to ... astroturfing – the use of sophisticated software to drown out real people on web forums – is on the rise. How do we stop it?
Every month more evidence piles up, suggesting that online comment threads and forums are being hijacked by people who aren't what they seem.
The anonymity of the web gives companies and governments golden opportunities to run astroturf operations: fake grassroots campaigns that create the impression that large numbers of people are demanding or opposing particular policies. This deception is most likely to occur where the interests of companies or governments come into conflict with the interests of the public. For example, there's a long history of tobacco companies creating astroturf groups to fight attempts to regulate them.
After I wrote about online astroturfing in December, I was contacted by a whistleblower. He was part of a commercial team employed to infest internet forums and comment threads on behalf of corporate clients, promoting their causes and arguing with anyone who opposed them.
Like the other members of the team, he posed as a disinterested member of the public. Or, to be more accurate, as a crowd of disinterested members of the public: he used 70 personas, both to avoid detection and to create the impression there was widespread support for his pro-corporate arguments. I'll reveal more about what he told me when I've finished the investigation I'm working on.
It now seems that these operations are more widespread, more sophisticated and more automated than most of us had guessed. Emails obtained by political hackers from a US cyber-security firm called HBGary Federal suggest that a remarkable technological armoury is being deployed to drown out the voices of real people.
As the Daily Kos has reported, the emails show that:
• Companies now use "persona management software", which multiplies the efforts of each astroturfer, creating the impression that there's major support for what a corporation or government is trying to do.
• This software creates all the online furniture a real person would possess: a name, email accounts, web pages and social media. In other words, it automatically generates what look like authentic profiles, making it hard to tell the difference between a virtual robot and a real commentator.
• Fake accounts can be kept updated by automatically reposting or linking to content generated elsewhere, reinforcing the impression that the account holders are real and active.
• Human astroturfers can then be assigned these "pre-aged" accounts to create a back story, suggesting that they've been busy linking and retweeting for months. No one would suspect that they came onto the scene for the first time a moment ago, for the sole purpose of attacking an article on climate science or arguing against new controls on salt in junk food.
• With some clever use of social media, astroturfers can, in the security firm's words, "make it appear as if a persona was actually at a conference and introduce himself/herself to key individuals as part of the exercise … There are a variety of social media tricks we can use to add a level of realness to fictitious personas."
Perhaps the most disturbing revelation is this. The US Air Force has been tendering for companies to supply it with persona management software, which will perform the following tasks:
a. Create "10 personas per user, replete with background, history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographically consistent … Personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online services and social media platforms."
b. Automatically provide its astroturfers with "randomly selected IP addresses through which they can access the internet" (an IP address is the number which identifies someone's computer), and these are to be changed every day, "hiding the existence of the operation". The software should also mix up the astroturfers' web traffic with "traffic from multitudes of users from outside the organisation. This traffic blending provides excellent cover and powerful deniability."
c. Create "static IP addresses" for each persona, enabling different astroturfers "to look like the same person over time". It should also allow "organisations that frequent same site/service often to easily switch IP addresses to look like ordinary users as opposed to one organisation."
Software like this has the potential to destroy the internet as a forum for constructive debate. It jeopardises the notion of online democracy. Comment threads on issues with major commercial implications are already being wrecked by what look like armies of organised trolls – as you can sometimes see on guardian.co.uk.
The internet is a wonderful gift, but it's also a bonanza for corporate lobbyists, viral marketers and government spin doctors, who can operate in cyberspace without regulation, accountability or fear of detection. So let me repeat the question I've put in previous articles, and which has yet to be satisfactorily answered: what should we do to fight these tactics?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/feb/23/need-to-protect-internet-from-astroturfing
Starving eagles ‘falling out of the sky’
When David Hancock saw the bald-eagle count on the Chehalis River drop from more than 7,000 to fewer than 400 over a few days in December, he knew a crisis was coming.
Earlier this week, news reports that starving eagles were “falling out of the sky” in the Comox Valley, on Vancouver Island, confirmed his fears.
Wildlife rescue centres on the Island have reported birds growing so weak from hunger that they fall out of trees, or fly so clumsily they hit things. One crashed into a roof.
Mr. Hancock said a collapse of chum salmon runs has left British Columbia’s bald-eagle population without enough food to make it through the winter, leaving them weak from hunger and forcing thousands of birds to scavenge at garbage dumps.
Reports of starving eagles have been coming in from all over the Lower Mainland but seem concentrated in the Comox Valley, he said.
“This is what I said would be happening,” said Mr. Hancock, a biologist, publisher and author of The Bald Eagle of Alaska, BC and Washington.
Mr. Hancock said about 25,000 eagles flock to salmon rivers in the Pacific Northwest in the fall, to feed on the carcasses of spawning salmon. One of the biggest gatherings is on the Chehalis River, about 100 kilometres east of Vancouver, where as many as 9,000 eagles gather in November and December, drawn by what is usually a large run of chum salmon. The big fish, which average about 6 kilograms, are among the last salmon to spawn and their carcasses are usually available on gravel bars well into the winter.
But Mr. Hancock said the chum didn’t arrive in any numbers on the Chehalis this year, reflecting a coast-wide collapse of the species, and then heavy rains washed away what carcasses there were. The birds were forced to disperse, to look for food where they could find it.
“It was absolutely incredible. Within 10 days, we had gone from 7,200 eagles to 345 … So I knew it was going to be a pretty desperate winter,” said Mr. Hancock, who has been studying eagles for 50 years.
“So where did they go? I have a count of 1,387 one day at the Vancouver dump … that was in the week following the Chehalis dispersal,” he said.
Mr. Hancock said many birds have probably left the B.C.’s southern coast, perhaps flying far into the United States, but thousands have remained, and can be seen scattered across farm fields in the Fraser Valley and on Vancouver Island.
Others have flocked to the east coast of Vancouver Island, in the area between Qualicum Beach and Campbell River, which usually has a large herring spawn in early March.
The eagles feed on the fish, which spawn in the shallows, and hunt flocks of gulls and ducks that gather to eat herring eggs.
But the eagles are weak right now, and with heavy snow falling in the area, scrounging road kill or finding other dead animals can be difficult, said Robin Campbell, of North Island Wildlife Recovery Centre, in Errington, near Parksville.
Mr. Campbell said he has nine bald eagles under care, and most of them are recovering from poisoning they got while feeding at the Campbell River landfill.
“We had 1,300 eagles sitting there at the dump the other day,” Mr. Campbell said. “People dump poisoned animals in there and the eagles feed on them … the birds are starving, but a large percentage are poisoned, too.”
Maj Birch, manager of the Mountainaire Avian Rescue Society in Courtenay said she usually handles 40 eagles a year, but in the first two months of this year alone she has taken in 20 birds.
She said most of the birds she is called out to care for are so weak from hunger that “basically you just walk over and pick them up.”
Ms. Birch said many birds are found sitting on the ground.
“One young bird was perched in a tree and it just fell out. One was flying and hit a roof. They are falling, collapsing, losing their ability to fly,” she said.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/starving-eagles-falling-out-of-the-sky/article1918336/
Charges initiated against Pope for crimes against humanity
TWO GERMAN lawyers have initiated charges against Pope Benedict XVI at the International Criminal Court, alleging crimes against humanity.
Christian Sailer and Gert-Joachim Hetzel, based at Marktheidenfeld in the Pope’s home state of Bavaria, last week submitted a 16,500-word document to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at the Hague, Dr Luis Moreno Ocampo.
Their charges concern “three worldwide crimes which until now have not been denounced . . . (as) the traditional reverence toward ‘ecclesiastical authority’ has clouded the sense of right and wrong”.
They claim the Pope “is responsible for the preservation and leadership of a worldwide totalitarian regime of coercion which subjugates its members with terrifying and health-endangering threats”.
They allege he is also responsible for “the adherence to a fatal forbiddance of the use of condoms, even when the danger of HIV-Aids infection exists” and for “the establishment and maintenance of a worldwide system of cover-up of the sexual crimes committed by Catholic priests and their preferential treatment, which aids and abets ever new crimes”.
They claim the Catholic Church “acquires its members through a compulsory act, namely, through the baptism of infants that do not yet have a will of their own”. This act was “irrevocable” and is buttressed by threats of excommunication and the fires of hell.
It was “a grave impairment of the personal freedom of development and of a person’s emotional and mental integrity”. The Pope was “responsible for its preservation and enforcement and, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of his Church, he was jointly responsible” with Pope John Paul II.
Catholics “threatened by HIV-AIDS . . . are faced with a terrible alternative: If they protect themselves with condoms during sexual intercourse, they become grave sinners; if they do not protect themselves out of fear of the punishment of sin threatened by the church, they become candidates for death.”
There was also “strong suspicion that Dr Joseph Ratzinger, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of his church and as Pope, has up to the present day systematically covered up the sexual abuse of children and youths and protected the perpetrators, thereby aiding and abetting further sexual violence toward young people”.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/0223/1224290630240.html
46 Zimbabweans Arrested for Watching Videos of Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt
In an attempt to head off a potential uprising like those in the north of the African continent, the Zimbabwe regime arrested dozens of students, trade unionists and political activists who gathered to watch television coverage of events in Tunisia and Egypt.
Forty-six people are now in custody for participating in an illegal political meeting where they watched Al Jazeera and BBC News stories “as a way of motivating them to subvert a constitutionally elected government,” according to police.
Lawyers representing the accused have warned their clients that they may be charged with attempting to overthrow 87-year-old dictator Robert Mugabe, who has been in power since 1980. The punishment for such a crime is 20 years in prison.
http://www.allgov.com//ViewNews/46_Zimbabweans_Arrested_for_Watching_Videos_of_Uprisings_in_Tunisia_and_Egypt_110224
U.S. Companies Sold $247 Billion in Weapons Last Year
Business was absolutely booming for the American arms industry during the Great Recession; in 2009 alone, U.S. defense companies sold nearly $247 billion in weapons worldwide. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has determined that 45 of the top 100 arms dealers in the world were U.S.-based, including seven of the top 10. American companies were responsible for 61.5% of the sales of the top 100.
The leading American sellers of military hardware were Lockheed Martin ($33.4 billion), Boeing ($32.3 billion), Northrop Grumman ($27 billion), General Dynamics ($25.6 billion), Raytheon ($23 billion), L-3 Communications ($13 billion) and United Technologies ($11.1 billion).
Worldwide, arms sales by companies totaled $401 billion in 2009, an increase of 8% over 2008.
http://www.allgov.com//ViewNews/US_Companies_Sold_247_Billion_Dollars_in_Weapons_Last_Year_110224
We Are Change Asks Donald Rumsfeld About the 2.3 Trillion $ He Announced Missing on 9/10/01 (at 3:00 mark(skip ahead)