Saturday, December 3, 2011

The entire United States is now a war zone: S. 1867 passes the Senate with massive support

Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer

This is one of the most tragic events I have written about since establishing End the Lie over eight months ago: the horrendous bill that would turn all of America into a battlefield and subject American citizens to indefinite military detention without charge or trial has passed the Senate.

To make matters even worse, only seven of our so-called representatives voted against the bill, proving once and for all (if anyone had any doubt remaining) that our government does not work for us in any way, shape, or form.


S.1867, or the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the fiscal year of 2012, passed with a resounding 93-7 vote.

That’s right, 93 of our Senators voted to literally eviscerate what little rights were still protected after the PATRIOT Act was hastily pushed in the wake of the tragic events of September 11th, 2001.

The NDAA cuts Pentagon spending by $43 billion from last year’s budget, a number so insignificant when compared to the $662 billion still (officially) allocated, it is almost laughable.

The bill also contained an amendment which enacts strict new sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank and any entities that do business with it, a move which will likely have brutal repercussions for the Iranian people – just like the sanctions on Iraq did.

 Not a single Senator voted against this amendment, which was voted on soon before the entirety of S.1867 was passed, despite the hollow threats of a veto from the Obama White House.

Based simply on historical precedent, I trust Obama’s promises as much as I trust the homeless man who told me he was John F. Kennedy.

I wish that I could believe that the Obama administration would strike down this horrific bill but I would be quite ignorant and naïve if I did so.

Furthermore, the White House’s official statement doesn’t even say that they will veto the bill. In fact, it says, “the President’s senior advisers [will] recommend a veto.”

As Glenn Greenwald points out, the objection isn’t even about opposing the detention of accused terrorists without a trial, instead it is the contention that, “whether an accused Terrorist is put in military detention rather than civilian custody is for the President alone to decide.”

Obama’s opposition has nothing to do with the rule of law or protecting Americans, in fact, Senator Levin disclosed and Dave Kopel reported that, “it was the Obama administration which told Congress to remove the language in the original bill which exempted American citizens and lawful residents from the detention power”.

As I have detailed in two past articles entitled Do not be deceived: S.1867 is the most dangerous bill since the PATRIOT Act and S.1253 will allow indefinite military detention of American civilians without charge or trial, the assurances that this will not be used on American citizens are hollow, evidenced by the fact that the Feinstein amendment to S.1867, amendment number 1126, which, according to the official Senate Democrats page, was an attempt at “prohibiting military authority to indefinitely detain US citizens” was rejected with a 45-55 vote.

Let’s examine some of the attempts to convince the American people that this will not change anything and that we will still be protected under law.

Florida’s Republican Senator Marco Antonio said:

In particular, some folks are concerned about the language in section 1031 that says that this includes ‘any person committing a belligerent act or directly supported such hostilities of such enemy forces.’ This language clearly and unequivocally refers back to al-Qaida, the Taliban, or its affiliates. Thus, not only would any person in question need to be involved with al-Qaida, the Taliban, or its surrogates, but that person must also engage in a deliberate and substantial act that directly supports their efforts against us in the war on terror in order to be detained under this provision.
While this might sound reassuring to some, one must realize that the government can interpret just about anything as engaging “in a deliberate and substantial act that directly supports their efforts against us in the war on terror”.

Consider the fact that the Homeland Security Police Institute’s report published earlier this year partly focused on combating the “spread of the [terrorist] entity’s narrative” which sets the stage for the government being able to declare that spreading the narrative amounts to “a deliberate and substantial act that directly supports their efforts against us in the war on terror”.

At the time I wrote:

Part of these domestic efforts highlighted in the report is combating the 'spread of the [terrorist] entity’s narrative' but never addressed is why exactly extremist groups have the ability to spread their narrative.
A frightening conclusion that can be drawn from the focus on the 'spread of the entity’s narrative' is that such claims could be used to justify limiting the American right to free speech.
It would be very easy to justify eliminating free speech if much of the United States was convinced of the danger of spreading terrorist narrative.
The report doesn’t specifically explain what the narrative is or why it is so dangerous, but one could assume that any anti-government, anti-war, anti-corporatist and pro-human rights speech could be squeezed under this umbrella. Essentially, anything that criticizes or questions the United States could easily be demonized because it is allegedly spreading 'the entity’s narrative'.
This raises an important question: could my work and the work of others devoted to exposing the fraud that is the “war on terror” and the intimate links between our government and the terrorist entities they are supposedly fighting be considered to be supporting these entities?
Unfortunately, the only conclusion I can come to is that it is possible for the following reasons:

1) The Department of Defense actually put a question on an examination saying that protests are an act of “low-level terrorism (which they later deleted after the ACLU sent a letter demanding it be removed).

2) Anti-war activists and websites are deemed worthy of being treated as terrorists and being listed on terrorist watchlists.

3) We likely will never even be told how exactly the government is interpreting S.1867.

In the case of the PATRIOT Act (which is overwhelmingly used in cases that are unrelated to terrorism in every way), there is in fact a secret interpretation of the PATRIOT Act, as revealed by Senator Ron Wyden back in May.
In October, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit (read the PDF here) in an attempt to force the government to reveal the details of the secret interpretation of the PATRIOT Act.

As of now, we still do not know how the PATRIOT Act is interpreted by the government, meaning that we have no idea how it is actually being used.

I do not believe that it would be reasonable to make the assumption that S.1867 would be interpreted in a straightforward manner, meaning that all of the assurances being made by Senators are worthless.

Glenn Greenwald verifies this in writing the following as an update to the post previously quoted in this article, “Any doubt about whether this bill permits the military detention of U.S. citizens was dispelled entirely today when an amendment offered by Dianne Feinstein — to confine military detention to those apprehended “abroad,” i.e., off U.S. soil — failed by a vote of 45-55.”

Furthermore, as I detailed in my previous coverage of S.1867, Senator Lindsey Graham clearly said, in absolutely no uncertain terms whatsoever, “In summary here, [section] 1032, the military custody provision, which has waivers and a lot of flexibility doesn’t apply to American citizens. [Section] 1031, the statement of authority to detain does apply to American citizens, and it designates the world as the battlefield including the homeland.”

The fact that the establishment media continues to peddle the blatant lie that is the claim that S.1867 will not be used on American citizens is beyond me.


This is especially true when one considers the fact that lawyers for the Obama administration reaffirmed that American citizens “are legitimate military targets when they take up arms with al-Qaida,” although we all know that no proof or trial is required to make that assertion.

As evidenced by the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, no trial is needed for our illegitimate government to assassinate an American citizen.

We can only assume that it is just a matter of time until American citizens are declared to be supporting al Qaeda and killed on American soil without so much as a single court hearing.

CNN claims, “Senators ultimately reached an agreement to amend the bill to make clear it’s not the bill’s intent to allow for the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens and others legally residing in the country.”

Yet, of course, they fail to cite the amendment, and quote Senator Feinstein in saying, “It supports present law,” even though Feinstein’s amendment was not passed.

The Associated Press reported, “Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., repeatedly pointed out that the June 2004 Supreme Court decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld said U.S. citizens can be detained indefinitely.

Yet they still quoted senior legislative counsel for the ACLU Christopher Anders who said, “Since the bill puts military detention authority on steroids and makes it permanent, American citizens and others are at greater risk of being locked away by the military without charge or trial if this bill becomes law.”

The fact that the corporate-controlled establishment media is barely covering this – if at all – is just another piece amongst the mountains of evidence showing that they are complicit in the criminal conspiracy that is dominating our government.

Every single Senator that voted for this amendment is a traitor. It’s that simple. 97 of our so-called representatives, which you can see listed in full here, are actively working against the American people.
They are turning the United States into such a hellish police state that the world’s most infamous dictators would be green with envy.

Unsurprisingly, the top stories on Google News makes no mention of the atrocious attack on everything that America was built upon that is embodied by S.1867.

This legislation is clearly being minimized and marginalized in the press, as if it is some minor bill that will never be invoked in order to detain Americans indefinitely without charge or trial.

That is patently absurd and to assume such would be nothing short of ignorant to an extreme degree, given that the American government utilizes every single possible method to exploit, oppress and assault Americans who stand up for their rights.

Furthermore, the Senators who voted against S.Amdt.1126, the amendment to S.1867 which would have limited “the authority of the Armed Forces to detain citizens of the United States under section 1031” should be considered traitorous criminals of the highest order, not to say that all 97 of those who voted for S.1867 are any better.

These Senators are not only defying their oath of office in waging war on the Constitution, they are also fighting to destroy the most critical rights we have in this country and in doing so are desecrating everything that our forefathers gave up their lives for.

Instead of British troops patrolling the streets in their red coats, it will be American soldiers who have the authority to detain you forever without a shred of evidence if they decide you’re a terrorist or supporting any organization affiliated with al Qaeda.
How they define that is anyone’s guess, but given that the entire interpretation of the PATRIOT Act is regarded as a state secret, we can assume that we will never even get to know.

Moreover, the fact that no charges or trial are needed under S.1867, the government needs no proof of supporting, planning, or committing terrorism whatsoever.


Since no evidence will ever be presented given that no trial or charges will ever be filed, they need not worry about that pesky thing called habeus corpus or anything resembling evidence of any kind.


All they need to do is declare that you’re an enemy combatant and suddenly you’re eligible to be snatched up by military thugs and locked away never to see the light of day again.

As far as I have seen, there are no detailed requirements set forth in the bill which have to be met before the military can indefinitely detain, and torture (or conduct “enhanced interrogation” if you’d prefer the government’s semantic work-around), Americans and people around the world.


What is stopping them from creating accounts for Americans who are actively resisting the fascistic police state corporatocracy which our once free nation has become on some jihadi website and using it has justification to claim these individuals are involved with terrorists?


What is stopping them from manufacturing any flimsy piece of evidence they can point to, even though they never actually have to present it or have it questioned in a court of law, in order to round up American dissidents?

The grim answer to these disturbing questions is: nothing. I regret having to say such a disheartening thing about the United States of America, a country I once thought was the freest nation in the world, but it is true.

I must emphasize once again that our government considers even ideology and protest to be a low-level act of terrorism, so if you’re anti-war, pro-peace, pro-human rights, pro-justice, anti-corruption, or even worse, if you’re like me and expose the criminal government in Washington that supports terrorism while criminalizing American citizens, you very well might be labeled a terrorist.

Keep in mind that the House sister bill, H.R.1540, was passed with a 322-96 vote on May 26th, now all that is stopping this ludicrous from utterly eliminating the Bill of Rights is resolving the differences which will be done by the following  appointed conferees: Levin; Lieberman; Reed; Akaka; Nelson NE; Webb; McCaskill; Udall CO; Hagan; Begich; Manchin; Shaheen; Gillibrand; Blumenthal; McCain; Inhofe; Sessions; Chambliss; Wicker; Brown MA; Portman; Ayotte; Collins; Graham; Cornyn; Vitter.

Unsurprisingly, not a single person who voted against S.1867 is included in that list.

I do not hesitate in saying that what our so-called representatives have done is an act of treason that represents the single most dangerous move ever made by our government.

Every single square inch of the United States is now a war zone and you or I could easily be declared soldiers on the wrong side of the war and treated as such.

No proof, no charges, and no trial are required. They do not even have to draw spurious links to terrorist organizations in order to indefinitely detain you as they could easily declare the evidence critical to national security and thus withhold it for as long as they please.

I will continue to hope that Obama decides to go against every single thing he has done after being sworn in, but I think the chances are so slim that it is almost delusional to believe that he will do this.

After all, the only reason his administration is opposing it is because it doesn’t give the executive enough power, not because it strips away every legal protection we have.

If this is not the most laughably illegitimate reason to oppose the attack on all Americans that is S.1867, I don’t know what is.

The most important question that remains unanswered, for which I am not sure that I have a viable solution, is: how do we stop this? Is there any way we can bring down a criminal government packed to the brim with traitorous co-conspirators in a just, peaceful manner?


After all, if the American people resort to violence, we are no better than those bloodthirsty members of our armed forces and law enforcement who kill and beat human beings around our nation and the world with impunity.

However, if our military and police forces realize that at any moment they too could be deemed enemy combatants and treated like subhuman scum and thus decide to refuse all unlawful orders and arrest the real terrorists in Washington, we might be able to reinstate the rule of law, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights which once defined our nation.

Please do not hesitate to contact me with your ideas, comments and information for future articles on this subject and any other issue for that matter. You can get in touch with me directly at Admin@EndtheLie.com and hopefully I will be able to read and respond if I’m not deemed an enemy combatant and shipped off to a CIA black site to be tortured into confessing to killing the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in 1914.

Madison Ruppert is the Editor and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database End The Lie and has no affiliation with any NGO, political party, economic school, or other organization/cause. He is available for podcast and radio interviews. If you have questions, comments, or corrections feel free to contact him at admin@EndtheLie.com

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COMMENT: This country is a police state and they are just making it "legal."

As to what to do about it, we have been under attack - both physical pollution and psychological warfare - our entire lives. It is our right as humans to defend ourselves when attacked; that right is not granted to us by a gov, and it cannot legitimately be taken away.
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Friday, November 25, 2011

Health department tyrants raid local 'farm to fork' picnic dinner, orders all food to be destroyed with bleach

Friday, November 11, 2011 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
 
(NaturalNews) It is the latest case of extreme government food tyranny, and one that is sure to have you reeling in anger and disgust. Health department officials recently conducted a raid of Quail Hollow Farm, an organic community supported agriculture (CSA) farm in southern Nevada, during its special "farm to fork" picnic dinner put on for guests -- and the agent who arrived on the scene ordered that all the fresh, local produce and pasture-based meat that was intended for the meal be destroyed with bleach.

For about five years now, Quail Hollow Farm has been growing organic produce and raising healthy, pasture-based animals which it provides to members as part of a CSA program. And it recently held its first annual "Farm to Fork Dinner Event," which offered guests an opportunity to tour the farm, meet those responsible for growing and raising the food, and of course partake in sharing a meal composed of the delicious bounty with others.

But when the Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD) got word of the event and decided to get involved, this simple gathering of friends and neighbors around a giant, family-style picnic table quickly became a convenient target for the heavy hand of an out-of-control government agency. And Monte and Laura Bledsoe, the owners and operators of Quail Hollow Farm, were unprepared for what would happen next. 
 
SNHD official Mary Oaks raids picnic without cause or warrant, orders destruction of dinner food

Laura Bledsoe explains in a letter to her guests written after the fact that two days prior to the event, SNHD contacted the farm to say that, because the picnic was technically a "public" event, the couple would have to obtain a "special use permit," or else face a very steep fine. Not wanting to risk having the event disrupted, the Bledsoes agreed to jump through all the demanded legal hoops even though their gathering was really just a backyard picnic.

But the day of the event, an inspector from SNHD, Mary Oaks, showed up and declared that all the food the Bledsoes would be serving was "unfit for consumption," and that it would have to be destroyed. Though there was no logical or lawful reasoning behind this declaration, and the Bledsoes had complied with all the requirements, Oaks insisted that the food be discarded and destroyed using a bleach solution.

One of the so-called reasons for this action included the fact that some of the food packaging did not contain labels, even though labels are not necessary if the food is eaten within 72 hours. Oaks also cited the fact that some of the meat was not US Department of Agriculture (USDA) certified, that the vegetables had already been cut and were thus a "bio-hazard," and that there were no receipts for the food (which was all grown on the farm, not purchased from a grocery store).

You can view pictures of the event, as well as video footage of Inspector Oaks raiding the party, at the following link:
http://www.reallyvegasphoto.com/Eve...

Unaware of their rights, the Bledsoes initially complied with Oaks' unlawful demands and destroyed the food. But shortly thereafter, Laura's husband Monte remembered that they had an emergency contact number for the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF) on their refrigerator.

Shocked that they even had to resort to this desperate measure, the Bledsoes called FTCLDF for advice and spoke with General Counsel Gary Cox, who instructed them to ask Oaks for a search and arrest warrant, which of course she did not have. The Bledsoes then asked Oaks to leave the property, upon which she allegedly stormed off in anger and screamed that she was going to call the police.

Police eventually arrived, but unaware of why they had been called and what the alleged crime was, they, too, left and offered their apologies to the Bledsoes. Fortunately, the Bledsoes were able to improvise with the chef to create a whole new meal for their guests, which ended up turning out to be a type of blessing in disguise, according to Laura.

The entire shocking incident serves as a reminder to know your rights when it comes to food and health freedom. Without a proper search or arrest warrant, so-called health inspectors or law enforcement officials have no business on your property. And if they ever try to pull a stunt like what happened at Quail Hollow Farm at your gathering, you have every right to demand that they vacate your property as well.

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COMMENT: Completely baseless charges, insane claims, unreasonable "solutions", AND SHE was actually in violation of the law. HOWEVER,  despite the Libertarian bent of Natural News' description of the reasons why this happened, it is NOT because of "the heavy hand of an out-of-control government agency"; this woman Mary is an obvious half-path.

This horrible evil will continue unless and until most people stop REFUSING to learn the FACTS about the heritability of psychopathy.
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Wednesday, November 23, 2011

School murder scandal shocks France

BBC News Europe



The French government has condemned the judiciary's handling of a teenager accused of rape who went on to murder a girl from his boarding school.
The boy, identified as Mathieu M, 17, had spent four months in jail for raping a minor in southern France.
He had been under judicial supervision. The school said it had not been fully aware of his past.
Last Friday, the body of Agnes, 13, was found in a forest close to the school. She had been raped and burned.

'Sexual aggression'
 
Agnes's mother, Paola Marin, said she would not have died "but for a little less negligence" from the school.
The victim's father, Frederic Marin, alleged that the school, Cevenol International in Chambon-sur-Lignon, had been aware of the boy's history and that he had problems involving "acts of sexual aggression".
Head teacher Philippe Bauwens told French radio station RTL that the school was aware the boy had had problems with the judiciary but did not know their nature.
"We had no contact with the judicial authorities," he said.

'Dysfunction'
 
After an emergency meeting with fellow ministers on Monday, French Interior Minister Claude Gueant told TF1 television that "there had been a dysfunction" in the case and that reform of the justice system for minors would be a priority after elections next spring.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon said that in the most serious cases where a minor was a suspect, they should be "placed in a secure educational centre".
He also asked cabinet colleagues to ensure that it was no longer possible for a pupil to be enrolled in a school without the head teacher being fully informed of serious cases involving judicial supervision.
French media report that Mathieu M was accused of raping a childhood friend and that after four months in custody had been assessed as not posing any danger.
His parents were said to have looked for another school for him to complete his education but had been rejected on several occasions before being given a place at Cevenol International.

Agnes disappeared on Wednesday last week and her body was found two days later. The prosecutor said she had been murdered in an extremely brutal manner.

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COMMENT: A clear case of a double-dose.

This horrible evil will continue unless and until most people stop REFUSING to learn the FACTS about the heritability of psychopathy.
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Sunday, November 20, 2011

The Top 0.1% Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains



Forbes.com

Capital gains are the key ingredient of income disparity in the US-- and the force behind the winner takes all mantra of our economic system. If you want to even out earning power in the U.S, you have to raise the 15% capital gains tax.

Income and wealth disparities become even more absurd if we look at the top 0.1% of the nation's earners-- rather than the more common 1%. The top 0.1%--  about 315,000 individuals out of 315 million--  are making about half of all capital gains on the sale of shares or property after 1 year; and these capital gains make up 60% of the income made by the Forbes 400.

It's crystal clear that the Bush tax reduction on capital gains and dividend income in 2003 was the cutting edge policy that has created the immense increase in net worth of corporate executives, Wall St. professionals and other entrepreneurs.

The reduction in the tax from 20% to 15% continued the step-by-step tradition of cutting this tax to create more wealth. It had first been reduced from 35% in 1978 at a time of stock market and economic stagnation  to 28% .  Again 1981, at the start of the Reagan era, it was reduced again  to 20%-- raised back to 28% in 1987, on the eve of the October 19 232% crash in the market. In 1997 Clinton agreed to reduce it back to 20%, which move was an inducement for the explosion of hedge funds and private equity firms-- the most "rapidly rising cohort within the top 1 per cent."

Make no mistake; the battle that is to be fought over the coming attempt to reverse this reduction in capital gains will be bloody and intense. The facts are clear according to the Congressional Budget Office: more than 80% of the increase in income inequality was the result of an increase in the share of household income from capital gains. In fact, you can go so far as to claim that "Capital Gains income is the most unevenly distributed-- and volatile-- source of household  income," according to Laura D'Andrea Tyson,  University of California  business professor and former chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton.

No wonder the super wealthy plutocrats obtained the largest share of national income-- 25% of the nation's wealth- greater than any other  industrial nation in the  the period of 1979 to 2005. Make no mistake; after unemployment-- this disparity between the 1%-- 3 million-- or the 0.1%-- the 300,000-- and the other  312 million citizens of the U.S. has become the major theme of the Occupy Wall Street movement-- and an important national debate.

I commend you to the late Justice Louis Brandeis warning to the nation that " We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the  hands of a few, but we can't have both." We have to make up our minds to restore a higher, fairer capital gains tax to the wealthiest investor class-- or ultimately face increased social unrest.

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COMMENT: This is Capitalism - investors trying to maximize their profits, and they don't care what effect it has on anyone else.

The small business owner is not a Capitalist. Most privately held companies are not started/run by Capitalists. 

KILL the U.S. Military Empire by killing its funding.

Let the Bush tax cuts expire forever.

And why are capital gains taxed separately from other income? Why aren't the rich paying 39% on ALL income?
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Thursday, November 3, 2011

Report finds massive fraud at Dutch universities

Investigation claims dozens of social-psychology papers contain faked data.
Ewen Callaway
Published online 1 November 2011 | Nature 479, 15 (2011) | doi:10.1038/479015a

When colleagues called the work of Dutch psychologist Diederik Stapel too good to be true, they meant it as a compliment. But a preliminary investigative report (go.nature.com/tqmp5c) released on 31 October gives literal meaning to the phrase, detailing years of data manipulation and blatant fabrication by the prominent Tilburg University researcher.

"We have some 30 papers in peer-reviewed journals where we are actually sure that they are fake, and there are more to come," says Pim Levelt, chair of the committee that investigated Stapel's work at the university.

Stapel's eye-catching studies on aspects of social behaviour such as power and stereo­typing garnered wide press coverage. For example, in a recent Science paper (which the investigation has not identified as fraudulent), Stapel reported that untidy environments encouraged discrimination ( Science 332, 251–253; 2011).

"Somebody used the word 'wunderkind'," says Miles Hewstone, a social psychologist at the University of Oxford, UK. "He was one of the bright thrusting young stars of Dutch social psychology — highly published, highly cited, prize-winning, worked with lots of people, and very well thought of in the field."
In early September, however, Stapel was suspended from his position as dean of the Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences over suspicions of research fraud. In late August, three young researchers under Stapel's supervision had found irregularities in published data and notified the head of the social-psychology department, Marcel Zeelenberg. Levelt's committee joined up with sister committees at the universities of Groningen and Amsterdam, where Stapel has also worked, to produce the report. They are now combing through his publications and their supporting data, and interviewing collaborators, to map out the full extent of the misconduct.

Mistakes made

Stapel initially cooperated with the investi­gation by identifying fraudulent publications, but stopped because he said he was not physically or emotionally able to continue, says Levelt. In a statement, translated from Dutch, that is appended to the report, Stapel says: "I have made mistakes, but I was and am honestly concerned with the field of social psychology. I therefore regret the pain that I have caused others." Nature was unable to contact Stapel for comment.

The report does not identify specific papers that contain manipulated or fabricated data, pending the completion of the investigations. The investigators conclude, though, that Stapel acted alone. "The co-authors, and in particular the PhD students, were absolutely not involved, they really didn't know what was going on in this data fabrication," Levelt says.

The data were also suspicious, the report says: effects were large; missing data and outliers were rare; and hypotheses were rarely refuted. Journals publishing Stapel's papers did not question the omission of details about where the data came from. "We see that the scientific checks and balances process has failed at several levels," Levelt says.

At a press conference, Tilburg University's rector, Philip Eijlander, said that he would pursue criminal prosecution of Stapel. The committee is also producing a list of tainted papers to guide co-authors and journal publishers in what will probably be a long list of retractions.

Joris Lammers, a psychologist at Tilburg who did his PhD under Stapel's supervision, says he is "shocked" by the findings. Lammers says he worked independently of Stapel and collected all the data in his PhD himself — the report notes that his dissertation is not under suspicion. Several other former collaborators contacted by Nature declined to comment.

Hewstone, who has never worked with Stapel, had initially fretted that Stapel's fraudulent oeuvre would undermine other findings in the field of social psychology. While editing a new edition of a social-psychology textbook, however, Hewstone turned up no references to Stapel's work in 15 chapters, suggesting that Stapel's work was not as influential as he had thought. "I think the impact is going to be particularly devastating for the young people he worked with, but not for the field of social psychology as such," he says.

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COMMENT: Another half-path PRETENDING to be competent, PRETENDING to practice the scientific method.


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Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Jon Corzine’s Spectacular Failure Just Got More Spectacular

There's no better argument against the privilege of wealth than Jon Corzine, the clownish former Goldman Sachs CEO who thought his facility for extracting money from a rigged financial game entitled him to run the state of New Jersey. After getting roundly rejected by voters after one term, he got a job from a friend running derivatives firm MF Global. Yesterday it went bankrupt. And today we learned that he's lost $700 million of his clients' money.

That's right—$700 million from client accounts have simply disappeared from MF Global. The missing money first came to light over the weekend as a potential buyer for the struggling firm pored over its books. When it realized that hundreds of millions in client dollars were unaccounted for, it backed out, leaving MF no choice but to file for bankruptcy yesterday.

Now the SEC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and CME Group—a commodities exchange where MF Global did business—are investigating. According to the New York Times, it appears that the firm used client money to finance its own trades, a big no no. Either way, not being able to answer the question, "Where are you keeping the $700 million these folks gave you?" is a sign that something is very, very wrong.

Jon Corzine, the man responsible for all this, is worth a half a billion dollars.

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COMMENT: Another obvious half-path.


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Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Millionaires and corporations are using tax breaks to help sway public opinion

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/17/millionaires-corporations-tax-breaks-sway-opinion
Rightwing thinktanks profess a love of freedom, but their refusal to reveal who funds them is deeply undemocratic

George Monbiot
guardian.co.uk, Monday 17 October 2011 15.30 EDT
Since the late 19th century, the very rich have been paying people to demand less government. The work of Herbert Spencer, for example, was sponsored by Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller and Thomas Edison. Spencer believed that society changed according to evolutionary laws. Humans were evolving towards perfection, but this process was inhibited by interference from the state. By protecting people from the consequences of their own actions (or their own bad luck), it stopped the winnowing process that would otherwise result in the survival of the fittest.

Social security, publicly funded education, compulsory vaccination, laws enforcing safety at work all interrupted social evolution. But a self-regulated free market would swiftly ensure that those who were best adapted would survive and triumph. It's not hard to see why the millionaires loved him. They saw themselves as winners of the evolutionary race, taking their rightful place at the pinnacle of the social order. Any attempt to limit their freedoms would prevent society from achieving perfection.

Today, sponsorship by millionaires and corporations explains why free-market thinktanks outnumber and outspend the thinktanks arguing for public services and the distribution of wealth. Or so I guess. But their absence of accountability means that guesswork is all we've got. As I showed last month, only one of the rightwing thinktanks I contacted was prepared to reveal who funded it. All the others refused on the grounds that they had to respect the privacy of their donors. These organisations exert great influence in public life. But we have no means of discovering on whose behalf they do it.

Revelations about this secret funding network have now brought down a cabinet minister. Liam Fox was enmeshed in a web of corporate influence about which we still know little. The organisation he founded, Atlantic Bridge, was registered with the Charity Commission as a thinktank. Like many others, it looked more like a lobbying outfit, demanding privatisation, deregulation and tax cuts. The key question remains unanswered: who funded it?

As a result of better transparency laws in the US, we know more about Atlantic Bridge's partner organisation, the American Legislative Exchange Council. It claims, like most thinktanks, to stand for limited government and free markets. What this means in practice is lobbying against government action such as regulating tobacco and greenhouse gases. By an astonishing coincidence, it turns out to have been funded by the tobacco companies Altria and Reynolds American, by the oil giant Exxon and by the billionaire Koch brothers, who run a fossil fuel and chemicals empire they call "the biggest company you've never heard of".

Freedom is what all these groups claim to stand for. But the freedom they promote is of a particular kind. They are not campaigning for freedom from hunger or poverty. They are not demanding free access to health and education. They are not lobbying for freedom from industrial injuries, exploitation, pollution or unscrupulous banking. When these libertarians say freedom, they mean freedom from the rules that prevent their sponsors behaving as they wish: mistreating their workers, threatening public health and using the planet as their dustbin.

Like everything else about these lobbyists, the true, unacceptable meaning of the freedom they espouse is hidden behind an acceptable front. Thinktanks and lobby groups are the bane of democratic politics. They are the means by which corporations and the ultra-rich influence public life without having to reveal their hand. Their refusal to reveal who funds them, and the British state's failure to demand it, are deeply undemocratic.

Last week in the Guardian, Michael White wondered why Liam Fox did not make his friend Adam Werrity an officially sanctioned special adviser. Had he done so, Werrity's presence in his department would not have broken civil service rules, and Fox might still be in his post. But it would also have meant that Werrity's activities would have been subject to freedom of information requests, and that could have been fatal to what he was doing.

What this case highlights is the asymmetry of information in public life. The public sector is now so transparent that we have a right to read the private emails of climate scientists working for a state-sponsored university. The private sector is so opaque that we have no idea on whose behalf the people who appear every day on the BBC, using arguments that look suspiciously like corporate propaganda, are speaking.

The Labour government weakened the rules on lobbying transparency. The ministerial code published in 2007 dropped the requirement that meetings between ministers and lobbyists should be recorded. It also rebuffed MPs' demands for a register of lobbyists. You'll be surprised to hear who the villain was: Tom Watson, then a Cabinet Office minister, now a heroic campaigner for corporate accountability. He brushed aside the call for a register with the claim that "we have a pretty good system in the UK". In fact, we have no system at all: the Commons public administration committee has pointed out that "Lobbying activity in the United Kingdom is subject to no specific external regulation."

Thanks to the Fox scandal, the coalition government will now be forced to do something. But unless new legislation also applies to the thinktanks, their funders will keep using them to promote their interests without disclosure. The law should insist that all organisations which seek to influence public opinion should reveal sources of funding greater than £1,000.

The government might also take a look at charity law. It seems remarkable to me that groups such as Policy Exchange, the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Global Warming Policy Foundation have charitable status. The Charity Commission disqualified Atlantic Bridge on the grounds that "it is not permissible for a charity to promote a particular pre-determined point of view". Should this not disqualify all of them? Can you imagine the IEA deciding that private companies should get their noses out of the NHS? Can you picture Lord Lawson's Global Warming Policy Foundation announcing that climate change is an urgent threat and fossil fuel companies need stricter regulation? Is it credible that these organisations do not have "a particular pre-determined point of view"?

And shouldn't it be a basic requirement of charity law that we know who, as taxpayers, we are subsidising? How can an organisation qualify as a charity if we don't even know whose interests it is promoting? I strongly suspect that we are granting tax breaks to multimillionaires and corporations to help them change public opinion. I invite the thinktanks to prove me wrong.

Let's also demand that the BBC reform its editorial guidelines, so that no one working for a group whose purpose is public advocacy can take part in a programme unless it has published a registry of interests. Otherwise the BBC is granting free airtime to corporations without disclosing who they are or what their interest in the question might be.

So come on you free-market libertarians, let's hear your arguments against transparency and accountability. And let's hear how you reconcile them with your professed love of freedom.

© 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

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COMMENT: George Monbiot is an idiot; there is no such thing as a greenhouse gas, and vaccines are an attack on the human race.


Perhaps that is why he stops short of saying what really needs to be done: the end of privacy.


The Lie is like air to the Evil; without the Lie, the Evil dies. The Truth is like air to the Good; without the Truth, the Good dies.


Everyone should be able to find out anything about anyone. No more secrets, no more lies!
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Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Random attacks cause concern in Chicago

Mob attacks create a sensitive issue for city officials eager to boost tourism and convention business


"I think it reflects badly on Chicago," said Dr. Jack Singer, 68, a Seattle oncologist who was one of two victims in town for a convention of cancer specialists at McCormick Place. "I've been coming to the convention every year, and this is the first time I've felt threatened downtown."

The outbreak of random violence along a busy stretch of Chicago Avenue and the lakefront creates a sensitive issue for city officials eager to boost tourism and convention business.

"No matter what, we have to remember this isn't just about downtown residents, but our tourism economy," said Ald. Brendan Reilly, whose 42nd Ward encompasses most of the downtown business district. "Perception is reality in tourism world. There are economic consequences if people think downtown isn't safe."

Reilly said Monday that police need more resources to deal with the influx of "hundreds of thousands" of people flooding downtown and the beaches on weekends.

Five youths were charged Monday in the crimes, and acting police Superintendent Garry McCarthy praised the department's response. He said there is no need for people to be afraid to walk around downtown.

"I think our reaction to it has been quick, it's been swift and it's been very effective," McCarthy said outside his confirmation hearing at City Hall.

The attacks occurred around 8:30 p.m. Saturday. Moments after a group of teens wrestled with Singer over his iPad and BlackBerry, members of the same mob attacked a 42-year-old doctor visiting from Japan. That doctor was beaten and robbed of his iPod Touch while walking in the 700 block of North Lake Shore Drive, authorities said.

"He looked like he had no idea what had happened," Singer said of the Japanese doctor, who rode with him in a squad car while helping police search for the assailants.
Both physicians were in town for the annual convention of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, which entered into a 10-year deal with McCormick Place in 2010. The five-day event typically brings in more than 30,000 doctors, vendors and other specialists from around the world.

Police sources said they have been aware of large groups of teens causing trouble along North Michigan Avenue for at least the last year. One source said the fear is the attacks could become more frequent as the weather gets warmer.

While there have been reports nationwide of shoplifting and other crimes carried out by "flash mobs" coordinating their efforts through text messaging, the attacks Saturday did not appear to be coordinated by any social media, police said.

On Monday, two 16-year-old boys were ordered held in custody on juvenile charges of attempted armed robbery and aggravated battery.

Three other teens were charged with robbery as adults: Dvonte Sykes, 17, of the 7500 block of South Normal Avenue; Trovolus Pickett, 17, of the 8400 block of South Dorchester Avenue; and Derod'te Wright, 18, of the 3500 block of South State Street. They remained in custody Monday night in lieu of bonds ranging from $200,000 to $300,000.

None of the defendants has any adult arrests, according to prosecutors.

The first victim, insurance salesman Krzysztof Wilkowski, 34, said he was sitting on his motor scooter checking his cellphone around 8:30 p.m. when he was hit in the head with a baseball, which knocked his helmet off.

"The next thing I know is I'm being hit by the helmet, then being dragged into the street," Wilkowski said. "I couldn't believe it. It was broad daylight outside, there were people around, and this happened."
 
Moments later, Singer, who was sitting on a park bench smoking a cigar and typing an email, was attacked by members of the same group. The teens then ran east to Lake Shore Drive, where they allegedly attacked the doctor from Japan and two other people along the bike path just south of Chicago Avenue.

Ryan Dacumos, 20, of the Lakeview neighborhood, said he was riding his mountain bike when the mob approached him and one of them grabbed the headphones to his iPad.

"They were asking for my wallet," Dacumos said. "After I gave it, they punched me in my mouth and in my left ear. I started to run away so fast because I scared."


Tribune reporter Kristen Mack and WGN-TV reporter Pat Curry contributed.

The board for this story has been closed because of excessive violations of the Tribune's comment policies. Details of those policies are described below.
Oh, "The board for this story has been closed because of EXCESSIVE violations of the Tribune's comment policies." FUCK YOU. The lie is like air to the Evil; without the lie, the Evil dies. The truth is like air to the Good; without the truth, the Good dies.
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Friday, June 3, 2011

Wall Street Baffled by Slowing Economy, Low Yields: Trader

Published: Wednesday, 1 Jun 2011 | 11:06 AM ET

By: Margo D. Beller
Special to CNBC.com


Wall Street is having a hard time figuring out what to do now that the U.S. economy appears to be sputtering and yields are so low, Peter Yastrow, market strategist for Yastrow Origer, told CNBC.
"What we’ve got right now is almost near panic going on with money managers and people who are responsible for money," he said. "They can not find a yield and you just don’t want to be putting your money into commodities or things that are punts that might work out or they might not depending on what happens with the economy.

"We need to find real yield and real returns on these assets. You see bad data, you see Treasurys rally, you see all bonds and all fixed-income rally and then the people who are betting against the U.S. economy start getting bearish on stocks. That’s a huge mistake."


"Interest rates are amazingly low and that, thanks to Ben Bernanke, is driving everything," Yastrow said. "We’re on the verge of a great, great depression. The [Federal Reserve] knows it. 
"We have many, many homeowners that are totally underwater here and cannot get out from under. The technology frontier is limited right now. We definitely have an innovation slowdown and the economy’s gonna suffer."

However, he said he wouldn’t sell stocks. 

"Any bears out there better be careful because the dividend yields on these stocks look awesome relative to all the other investment vehicles out there," Yastrow said. "So bears are going to have to find a new way to express their discontent with the U.S. economy."

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COMMENT: The U.S. economy has hit its natural size. In fact, we hit that point in 2000. ALL the APPARENT growth during the Bush years was FAKE. It was a lie. The U.S. economy will never grow again.

Karl Marx, although seriously wrong about Communism, was seriously right about Capitalism; the ability of Capitalism to deliver benefits to the majority of U.S. citizens has ended. We need Socialism now, and forevermore (this does NOT, however, mean every ridiculous Liberal bullshit).
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Thursday, May 19, 2011

Forgeries in the Bible's New Testament?

Analysis by Rossella Lorenzi
Wed May 18, 2011 04:19 PM ET

Nearly half of the New Testament is a forgery, according to a provocative new book which charges that the Apostle Paul authored only a fraction of letters attributed to him, and the Apostle Peter just wrote nothing. Written by Bart Ehrman, a former evangelical Christian and now agnostic professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the book claims to unveil "one of the most unsettling ironies of the early Christian tradition:" the use of deception to promote the truth.
"The Bible not only contains untruths of accidental mistakes. It also contains what almost anyone today would call lies," Ehrman writes in "Forged: Writing in the Name of God -- Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are."
According to the biblical scholar, at least 11 of the 27 New Testament books are forgeries, while only seven of the 13 epistles attributed to Paul were probably written by him.
"Virtually all scholars agree that seven of the Pauline letters are authentic: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon," said Ehrman.
Individuals claiming to be Paul wrote 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians and Colossians, he added.
Contradictory views, discrepancies in the language and the choice of words among the books attributed to Paul are all evidence of this forgery, the author asserts..
For example, Ehrman’s analysis of the book of Ephesians shows that the text, filled with long Greek sentences, doesn’t match with Paul’s peculiar Greek writing style, made of short sentences.
Moreover, the content of what the author says "stands at odds with Paul’s own thought, but is in line with the Ephesians," writes Ehrman.
The biblical scholar, who also challenges the authenticity of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John, disputes the assumption that the Apostle Peter wrote the Epistles of Peter or anything else.
Unlike Paul, Peter, a fisherman raised in rural Palestine, was most certainly illiterate. So was the Apostle John, who could have not written the Gospel bearing his name, said Ehrman.
But why would an author claim to be an Apostle when he wasn’t? The answer is pretty obvious according to the scholar.
In the early centuries of the church, Christians felt under attack from all sides. "They were in conflict with Jews and pagans over the validity of their religion... but the hottest debates were with other Christians, as they argued over the right thing to believe and the rights ways to live," said Ehrman.
Thus Christians aiming at authorizing views they wanted others to accept, wrote in the name of the Apostles, "fabricating, falsifying, and forging documents," said Ehrman.
"If your name was Jehoshaphat and no one had any idea who you were, you could not very well sign your own name to the book," said Ehrman.
"No one would take the Gospel of Jehoshaphat seriously. If you wanted someone to read it, you called yourself Peter. Or Thomas. Or James. In other words, you lied about who you really were," Ehrman concluded.
According to the scholar, the idea that "writing in the name of another" was a common, accepted practice in antiquity is wrong. Forgery was just as deceitful, inappropriate, and wrong as it is today, he said.
As expected, the book has raised a heated debate.
"The book is more provocative than insightful," writes the Catholic Herald.
Conceding that "some New Testament books probably were not written by the people traditionally assigned as authors," the Catholic website remarks that Ehrman "barely mentions the concept of oral tradition."
"So even if a specific letter was not done by Peter or Paul, it could well have been written by someone drawing from the oral tradition passed down by one or the other," wrote the Catholic website.

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COMMENT: FIRST, in science, it doesn't matter who AGREES, or how many AGREE.


SECOND, do these "scholars" who all "agree" know ANYTHING about alchemy, the fourth PHYSICAL dimension, the results of Jacques Vallee's and John Keel's investigations of the UFO "phenomenon", or the great science that's been done on the psychology and heritability of psychopathy? No? Then their "analysis" is BULLSHIT.

THIRD, "Unlike Paul, Peter, a fisherman raised in rural Palestine, was most certainly illiterate. So was the Apostle John, who could have not written the Gospel bearing his name, said Ehrman." is IDIOCY. Why couldn't an illiterate eye-witness tell someone else what he saw and heard, who then wrote it down?

Also, there is NO SUCH THING as "lying in the service of the Good." Indeed, it is "using the truth to lie" that is the hallmark of the psychopathic personality. Maybe what this "former" evangelical christian doesn't want to admit is that "saint" Paul was EVIL.

This book is obviously anything BUT "scholarly."
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Friday, May 13, 2011

How Perpetual War Became U.S. Ideology

By James Joyner
May 11 2011, 7:00 AM ET

The United States has found itself in a seemingly endless series of wars over the past two decades. Despite frequent opposition by the party not controlling the presidency and often that of the American public, the foreign policy elite operates on a consensus that routinely leads to the use of military power to solve international crises.
 
Ideological Domination

Neoconservatives of both parties urge war to spread American ideals, seeing it as the duty of a great nation. Liberal interventionists see individuals, not states, as the key global actor and have deemed a Responsibility to Protect those in danger from their own governments, particularly when an international consensus to intervene can be forged. Traditional Realists, meanwhile, initially reject most interventions but are frequently drawn in by arguments that the national interest will be put at risk if the situation spirals out of control.
In a widely discussed March essay, Harvard international relations professor Stephen Walt wrote of a "neocon-liberal alliance" in support of war, contending, "The only important intellectual difference between neoconservatives and liberal interventionists is that the former have disdain for international institutions (which they see as constraints on U.S. power), and the latter see them as a useful way to legitimate American dominance."
The Progressive Policy Institute's Jim Arkedis, who describes himself as a "progressive internationalist," calls this notion of a neocon-liberal alliance "bunk." Neocons, according to Arkedis, "disdain multilateral diplomacy and overestimate the efficacy of military force" in a way that "saps the economic, political, and moral sources of American influence." He adds, "Though our ends are similar, our thresholds for intervention, our military methodology, and our justifications for action could not be more different."
But are neoconservatives and liberal interventionists really so different? Neoconservative bastions like the Weekly Standard, Commentary, and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies are passionate advocates of spreading American values. In Iraq, the toppling of Saddam Hussein and discovery that there was no WMD program to speak of were both accomplished in the first weeks of the war and with a relative handful of American casualties. If these had been our chief concerns we would have left immediately; the apparent U.S. goals in staying on so many years were democracy promotion and nation-building, both ideals the neoconservative White House leadership shared with liberal interventionists.
Further, while neocons are doubtless less patient than liberal interventionists when it comes to exhausting diplomatic options and achieving international consensus, what does it really matter if the end result is the same either way: military action.
Neocons and liberal interventionists may have dominated American foreign policymaking since 1993, but what about the realists? During the Cold War, there was a bipartisan elite consensus against the U.S. involving itself in wars not believed to be directly tied to protecting vital American interests. This included two major hot wars in Korea and Vietnam and more than a dozen quick strikes and proxy conflicts aimed at stopping the spread of Soviet Communism, ranging from Cuba to Afghanistan to El Salvador. And there were a handful of interventions in the Middle East to protect Israel and retaliate for terrorist attacks.
Starting with the 1991 Gulf War, however, despite the end of the Cold War, we've had two decades of non-stop fighting: Somalia in 1992, Haiti in 1994, Bosnia in 1995, Serbia-Kosovo in 1999, Afghanistan starting in 2001, and Iraq again from 2003. With Libya, we've added another U.S. war.
Ideologically, the George H.W. Bush administration should not have been inclined toward military intervention. Bush senior was a reluctant intervener, the National Security Council was guided by eminent realist Brent Scowcroft, and Colin Powell, the author of an eponymous doctrine that urges extreme caution in going to war, headed up the Joint Chiefs. And yet the administration launched three major military operations in its four-year term: the Panama invasion (derided by many as Operation Just 'Cause), the first Gulf War, and the Somalia intervention.
But all three of those missions were at least ostensibly tied to U.S. national interests. As odd as the Panama invasion seems in hindsight, earning the derisive nickname "Operation Just 'Cause," at the time, it was justified within the realist goals of safeguarding U.S. personnel in country, combating drug trafficking, and protecting the Panama Canal. The first Gulf War was, at its heart, about preventing Saddam Hussein from gaining control of more than half the world's oil supply. And Bush envisioned Somalia as a purely humanitarian relief mission; it morphed into warlord hunting and nation building under his successor.
Clinton may well have been the first full-throated liberal interventionist since the days of Woodrow Wilson. During the 1992 campaign, he declared, "The continuing attacks by Serbian elements in Bosnia threaten the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian aid, jeopardize the safety of U.N. personnel and put at risk the lives of thousands of citizens." He added, in what could have been a textbook definition of liberal interventionism, "The United States should take the lead in seeking U.N. Security Council authorization for air strikes against those who are attacking the relief effort. The United States should be prepared to lend appropriate military support to that operation. Air and naval forces adequate to carry out these operations should be visibly in position."
Clinton followed through on these policies as president, committing American forces to military action in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Haiti for reasons almost exclusively framed in humanitarian and international legal terms. More importantly, perhaps, he committed to long-term nation-building operations after each conflict. He also greatly expanded the Somalia operation, turning it into a warlord hunting exercise that led to the infamous Black Hawk down incident.
While most mainstream Republicans in Congress and the commentariat bitterly opposed these interventions, Clinton had strong neoconservative allies in Bob Dole, John McCain, Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, and Robert Kagan. While realist Republicans were criticizing Clinton for the follies of nation-building, a bipartisan neoconservative group calling itself the Project for a New American Century issued a statement of principles in June 1997 calling for significant increases in defense spending in order to promote "a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities." Among the Republican signatories were Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.
In the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush, leveraging public frustration with Clinton's long string of interventions, declared that he would pursue a more "humble foreign policy" that eschewed "nation-building" and had as its "guiding question, 'Is it in our nation's interests?'" In other words, he pledged to be a realist president.
But, few readers will need reminding, he took us to war in Afghanistan -- a retaliation for a direct attack on the country and supported by virtually everyone -- but almost immediately turned it into the nation-building exercise in which we are still mired. And, of course, there was Iraq, ostensibly a preemptive strike at a rogue regime building weapons of mass destruction that instead became a years-long nation-building mission.
During his own 2008 campaign, President Obama gave every indication of a realist foreign policy, keeping Robert Gates on at Defense, reversing policies favored by our Eastern and Central European allies in order to improve relations with the increasingly important Russian state, and eschewing unhelpfully aggressive rhetoric about Iran. But the arguments of the liberal interventionists on his vaunted team of rivals -- notably Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power -- ultimately won the day on Libya debate, overwhelming the more realist caution of Gates and the intelligence leadership.

How Did We Get Here?

While neoconservatives and liberal interventionists have led post-Cold War U.S. foreign policymaking, traditional realists continue to dominate the academic study of security policy and even the rank-and-file military and intelligence communities. But their more ideological brethren are better positioned to win the day politically.
The Cold War not only provided a neat national grand strategy, the prospect that superpower competition could lead to global nuclear annihilation greatly restrained the inclination for adventurism. That may be why, for example, no one seriously suggested a Responsibility to Protect Ugandan innocents from the atrocities of military dictator Idi Amin; Uganda was a Soviet client state. Similarly, a U.S. invasion of Libya to affect regime change after Muammar Gaddafi's 1980s terrorist strikes against our citizens would have been unthinkable. There was simply too much risk of escalating U.S.-Soviet tension.
Those days are gone. Bush senior proclaimed a "new world order" after the quick and decisive victory in the 1991 Gulf War, thinking that a permanent international consensus to enforce norms of decency had been forged. Though that grand vision never came to pass, the notion that the United States and its allies were now free to project power to "do good" has remained intact.
This has coincided with a still-ongoing revolution in global communications technology. With the rise of network news channels that can broadcast far-away violence into American living rooms, and more recently of social media technologies that give voice to oppressed peoples in all corners of the globe, this environment has made it much easier for advocates of humanitarian intervention to make their case.
Realist arguments about national interests, unknown risks, and post-conflict reconstruction have proven far less able to sway Americans than are television images of humans being slaughtered. Whereas the victims of Idi Amin were statistics, those dying in the Arab Spring have faces, names, and Facebook accounts.
The passionate zeal of the liberal interventionists and neoconservatives satisfies an emotional hunger that has been a part of our political system since the emotion-laden days of the Cold War, when the public first came to view U.S. foreign policy as a tool of good to be deployed against evil. Both ideologies use the language of morality and appeal to our shared humanity. People want to do something about tragedy and it's easy to persuade them that doing the right thing will be worthwhile. Realists may often be right, but they are rarely convincing.

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COMMENT: What Harvard international relations professor Sthephen Walt calls "neoconservatives" is actually Conservative psychopaths; what he calls "liberal interventionists" are actually Liberal psychopaths.


Every U.S. President since the bullet entered the FRONT of JFK's head has been a psychopath (yes, even Mein Obama). Every other person whose name I bolded above is also a psychopath.
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Thursday, May 5, 2011

Gravity Probe B Confirms Two of Einstein’s Space-Time Theories

by Nancy Atkinson on May 4, 2011

Researchers have confirmed two predictions of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, concluding one of NASA’s longest-running projects. The Gravity Probe B experiment used four ultra-precise gyroscopes housed in an Earth-orbiting satellite to measure two aspects of Einstein’s theory about gravity. The first is the geodetic effect, or the warping of space and time around a gravitational body. The second is frame-dragging, which is the amount a spinning object pulls space and time with it as it rotates.

Gravity Probe-B determined both effects with unprecedented precision by pointing at a single star, IM Pegasi, while in a polar orbit around Earth. If gravity did not affect space and time, GP-B’s gyroscopes would point in the same direction forever while in orbit. But in confirmation of Einstein’s theories, the gyroscopes experienced measurable, minute changes in the direction of their spin, while Earth’s gravity pulled at them.

The project as been in the works for 52 years.

The findings are online in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Read full article...

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COMMENT: From Newton to Faraday to Maxwell to TESLA, humanity was on a path that would long ago have led to the development of extremely efficient - and environmentally clean - energy technology. By now, we would have eliminated both pollution and poverty on the entire planet.


This could not be allowed, so the Forces of Darkness sent in Albert Einstein and the Quantum Mechanics to DERAIL science, and put it on a counterfeit path. 


The fact of a fourth spatial dimension makes time the fifth dimension, not the fourth; there is NO SUCH THING as "the fabric of space-time".
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Thursday, April 21, 2011

IOWA: Video cameras now lethal weapons; Republicans launch another attack on your rights

Marti Oakley, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Iowa is following in Florida’s footsteps and working on passing a bill making it a criminal offense to film or photograph the abuse of animals on farms or in commercial CAFO operations. Apparently it is ok to abuse your animals, to leave them in fetid conditions, or to treat them inhumanely . . . Iowa just doesn’t want you documenting that abuse.

Nine House Democrats joined all of the Republicans present to pass the bill in a 66 to 27 vote on Iowa bill H.R. 589.

Turns out your video camera or camera are now considered lethal weapons…the stuff of terrorism!
In an effort to protect industrialized CAFO operations, and unscrupulous corporate growers, Iowa is standing up to those activist citizens who document the abhorrent conditions on industrialized farms and ranches and also in some privately owned operations, claiming this somehow interferes with, or tampers with the property of another. 

11A. “Record” means any printed, inscribed, visual, or audio information that is placed or stored on a tangible medium, and that may be accessed in a perceivable form, including but not limited to any paper or electronic format.

This means anything recorded on your film or camera that would adversely affect the profits of the person committing the abuse. This includes, video’s, stills, pictures captured on your cell phone or any other documentation.

d. Disrupt operations conducted at the animal facility, if the operations directly relate to agricultural production, animal maintenance, educational or scientific purposes, or veterinary care.
 
IF your pictures highlight the abuse, unsanitary conditions or what is referred to as educational or veterinary…..meaning drug testing, experiments, vivisection research, dissemination of disease for “research” or other inhumane activities under the guise of Education or scientific,……you too could be a unique terrorist with a camera. Animal maintenance is the catch-all phrase that covers abusive treatment, mistreatment, unsanitary conditions and lack of care.

And here is the coup de grace:




Sec. 9. NEW SECTION. 717A.2A Animal facility interference.

1. A person is guilty of animal facility interference, if the person acts without the consent of the owner of an animal facility to willfully do any of the following:

(1) Produce a record which reproduces an image or sound occurring at the animal facility as follows:
(a) The record must be created by the person while at the animal facility.
(b) The record must be a reproduction of a visual or audio experience occurring at the animal facility, including but not limited to a photographic or audio medium.

(2) Possess or distribute a record which produces an image or sound occurring at the animal facility which was produced as provided in subparagraph (1)

(3) Subparagraphs (1) and (2) do not apply to an animal shelter, a boarding kennel, a commercial kennel, a pet shop, or a pound, all as defined in section 162.2.

Wouldn’t the more prudent thing to do here have been to enforce animal cruelty laws? How about all those fake food safety regulations? Would it be too much to ask that a higher, safer standard of animal care be enforced? Rather than criminalizing those who expose the corruption and abuse  that occurs routinely in these facilities.

This bill, like so many others we are seeing from the Republicans is a direct assault on your first amendment rights; your right to free speech. They’ve already attacked workers rights, your right to alternative healthcare and now they want to stop you from documenting the corruption and abuse in corporate farming and livestock operations.

This works out really well . . . this way, you are prevented from gathering the evidence, producing the evidence and forcing them to acknowledge the evidence. Perfect scenario: Plausible deniability.

YES! Corporate protectionism is alive and well in Iowa! And why wouldn’t it be? This is Tom Vilsack’s home turf; a man, who if he was any closer to Monsanto and other bio-pirates would most likely have to give them their own key to his place. Apparently they already have the keys to Iowa.


Bill HR 589

Roll Call on bill vote

Bill history
 
Bill HR 589

Roll Call on bill vote

Bill history

Marti Oakley is a political activist and former op-ed columnist for the St Cloud Times in Minnesota. She was a member of the Times Writer’s Group until she resigned in September of 07. She is neither Democrat nor Republican, since neither party is representative of the American people. She says what she thinks, means what she says, and is known for being outspoken. She is hopeful that the American public will wake up to what is happening to our beloved country . . . little of it is left.  Her website is The PPJ Gazette        

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COMMENT: The truth is like air to the Good; without the truth, the Good dies.


The lie is like air to the Evil; without the lie, the Evil dies.


ALL of the people who voted for this bill made themselves EVIL by that action.
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