One Brotha's Mind

"Bankster's" Economic Crisis

2009-04-06T12:09:00.002-04:00

Moyers sits down with William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. Black offers his analysis of what went wrong and his critique of the bailout

Racist Cop Tasers Young Black Male To Death Near Jena N.O.

2008-07-24T11:40:00.000-04:00

World Exclusive: WTC7 Survivor Barry Jennings Account

2008-06-23T15:06:00.001-04:00

P.O.V.: Traces of the Trade | PBS

2008-06-23T13:26:00.002-04:00

Film shows how North profited from slavery

JOANNE OSTROW; The Denver Post
Last updated: June 23rd, 2008 01:23 AM (PDT)

Katrina Browne’s wealthy Rhode Island clan has a secret. The well-mannered Yankees would rather not speak of it, but their forefathers were perhaps America’s biggest slave-trading dynasty.
After introducing her ancestors via distinguished-looking oil paintings in the family mansion, now a museum, Browne sets out to retrace the physical route and the rocky emotional terrain of how her forefathers built their fortune.

The journey – from tearful soul-searching to squirming at the dinner table when confronted with the family’s obvious elitism – makes for a stunning documentary.

“Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North,” airing Tuesday on PBS’ “P.O.V.,” is eye-opening and important, digging deeper than what may be comfortable into what stands in the way of race relations in this country.

The filmmaker, Browne, is a seventh-generation descendant of Mark Anthony DeWolf, the family’s first slave trader. From 1769 to 1820, the DeWolfs trafficked in human beings as part of what was know as the “Triangle Trade.”

They sailed their ships from Bristol, R.I., to West Africa with rum to trade for African men, women and children. Captives were taken to plantations that the DeWolfs owned in Cuba or were sold at auction in Havana or Charleston, S.C. The proceeds bought sugar and molasses in Cuba, which were shipped to the family-owned rum distilleries in Bristol.

Rum traded for slaves, slaves traded for sugar, sugar used to make rum.

Over the generations, the family owned 47 ships that transported thousands of chained Africans across the Middle Passage into slavery. By the end of his life, James DeWolf was reportedly the second-richest man in the United States. He was also a U.S. senator who was granted political appointments and other favors from none other than Thomas Jefferson.

The film upends stereotypical notions about the American North fighting for abolition while slaves toiled away down South. Browne documents how crucial the slave trade was to New England for more than 200 years.

Individual homes may have acquired one or two slaves, as opposed to the masses on plantations in the South, but the textile mills, banks and insurance companies in the North were built on profits from the slave trade.

The documentary, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, follows 10 of DeWolf’s descendants (ages 32-71, ranging from sisters to seventh cousins) as they retrace the steps of the Triangle Trade: the DeWolf mansion in Bristol, slave forts on the coast of Ghana and the ruins of a family plantation in Cuba.

Family archives document various trades: In one entry, nine slaves (one woman and eight men) were swapped for “tobacco, rum, hats, bread, mackerel.” James DeWolf once gave his wife two African children, a boy and a girl, as a Christmas present.

Back home, Browne delves into questions of repair: How do the sins of the fathers weigh on the sons and daughters; what should be done about it? Are financial reparations due, and what spiritual/emotional work is owed, as well?

The film was nine years in the making and ought to spark conversations on race for at least that long. “Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North” airs as part of “P.O.V.”

When: 10 p.m. Tuesday

Where: KCTS, Channel 9

Thug Cop Slams Teenager’s Head Against Wall

2008-06-19T09:25:00.001-04:00

Infowars
June 18, 2008

Leave it up to the corporate media to deny reality. “A Michigan police officer has been suspended on suspicion of roughing up a teenager during an arrest, and the whole thing was caught on tape,” reports KNBC 4 in Los Angeles.

Suspicion? Maybe it was Derek Nugent’s doppelgänger that slammed the kid’s head against the wall. Did KNBC bother to look at the video footage posted on their website and apparently broadcast over their network?

“The teen, who was arrested on charges of violating rules outside of the Kalamazoo Transportation Center, suffered facial injuries and damage to three of his teeth, police said.”

Damage? In fact, the kid lost the teeth.

Nugent was “suspended” for 10 days without pay. Ouch, that’ll teach him. Not. He should be arrested, brought up on assault charges, convicted, and sent to the hoosegow.

But that will not happen. Because government prefers cops like Nugent to put the commoners in place, especially the poor black ones who ride public transport. Next time, maybe the cops will lose the video tape.

FEMA gives away $85 million of supplies for Katrina victims

2008-06-12T10:55:00.002-04:00

From Abbie Boudreau and Scott Zamost
CNN Special Investigations Unit

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- FEMA gave away about $85 million in household goods meant for Hurricane Katrina victims, a CNN investigation has found.

The material, from basic kitchen goods to sleeping necessities, sat in warehouses for two years before the Federal Emergency Management Agency's giveaway to federal and state agencies this year.

James McIntyre, FEMA's acting press secretary, said that FEMA was spending more than $1 million a year to store the material and that another agency wanted the warehouses torn down, so "we needed to vacate them."

"Upon review of our assets and our need to continue to store them, we determined that they were excess to FEMA's needs; therefore, they are being excessed from FEMA's inventory," McIntyre wrote in an e-mail.

He declined a request for an on-camera interview, telling CNN the giveaway was "not news."

Photos from one of the facilities in Fort Worth, Texas, show pallet after pallet of cots, cleansers, first-aid kits, coffee makers, camp stoves and other items stacked to the ceiling. Watch dismay over "out of touch" FEMA »

FEMA said some of the items were donations from companies after Katrina, but most were purchased in the field as "starter kits" for people living in trailers provided by the agency. And even though the stocks were offered to state agencies after FEMA decided to get rid of them, one of the states that passed was Louisiana.

Martha Kegel, the head of a New Orleans nonprofit agency that helps find homes for those still displaced by the storm, said she was shocked to learn about the existence of the goods and the government giveaway.

"These are exactly the items that we are desperately seeking donations of right now: basic kitchen household supplies," said Kegel, executive director of Unity of Greater New Orleans. "These are the very things that we are seeking right now. FEMA, in fact, refers homeless clients to us to house them. How can we house them if we don't have basic supplies?" Watch the great FEMA giveaway »

Kegel's group works with FEMA and other local organizations to rehouse victims of Katrina, the 2005 hurricane that flooded New Orleans and killed more than 1,800 people along the Gulf Coast. Community groups say thousands of people are still living in abandoned buildings in the city, though fewer than 100 people remain housed in tents.

Kegel said FEMA was told in regular meetings that Unity was desperate for household supplies and that the group has been forced to beg for donations. But she said FEMA never told Unity and other community groups that it had tens of millions of dollars worth of brand-new items meant for storm victims.

She said she learned of it from CNN, which found that those items never made it to people such as Debra Reed.

"An honest person like me didn't get nothing," said Reed, 54, who recently moved from a tent beneath a New Orleans bridge to a home with the help of Kegel's group. "I'm gonna turn, 'cause I'm gonna cry. I didn't get nothing. I fought to get my money, but they wouldn't give it to me. So I ended up going under the bridge."

FEMA confirmed that it had kept the merchandise in storage for the past two years and then gave it away to cities, schools, fire departments and nonprofit agencies such as food banks. In all, General Services Administration records show, FEMA gave away 121 truckloads of material.

McIntyre said that most of the items given away were not "standard-issue type supplies" that FEMA would have distributed after other disasters. He said that using the GSA, which manages federal property, to get rid of those stockpiles was "standard process."

Asked whether FEMA believed that Katrina victims no longer needed the items, McIntyre wrote: "If the state did not request the supplies, then FEMA would not know." Watch Kegel describe "the needs are just overwhelming" »

Pallets at the Fort Worth warehouse were piled high with boxes of buckets, boots, cleansers, mops and brooms. There were stacks of tents, lanterns and camp stoves for people still displaced, as well as clothing, bedding, plates and utensils.

Meanwhile, Kegel said, Unity's clients can take only "one fork, one spoon, one knife; they can only take one plate. We don't have enough to go around."

But FEMA said the items were no longer needed in the stricken region. So it declared them "federal surplus" and gave them away.

Federal agencies such as the Bureau of Prisons, Postal Service and Border Patrol got first dibs on the material when FEMA started giving it away. Other agencies that received items include the National Guard, U.S. Marshals Service, the Air Force and Navy and the departments of Agriculture, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security, according to a list the GSA provided to CNN.

These items also were offered to all states -- yet Louisiana, where most of the people displaced by the storm live, passed on taking any of them.

John Medica, director of the Louisiana Federal Property Assistance Agency in Baton Rouge, said he was unaware that Katrina victims still had a need for the household supplies.

"We didn't have anybody out there who told us they wanted it," Medica said.

Instead, 16 other states took the free items.

"Louisiana Recovery Authority Director Paul Rainwater is taking the lead on determing where this serious breakdown in communication occured and ... is working to pursue options for the state to still make use of these important supplies," said Michael DiResto of the Division of Administration.

DiResto said Rainwater has already taken up the issue with a FEMA official.

Kegel said she could not understand how Medica could not be aware of the need in the New Orleans area.

She said she had not heard of the agency and was not registered with them, but after CNN's interview, the agency contacted her about registering Unity of Greater New Orleans so it could qualify for available supplies in the future.

Police State Now in Effect in US: D.C. Police to Check Drivers In Violence-Plagued Trinidad

2008-06-06T09:24:00.003-04:00

By Allison Klein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 5, 2008; A01

D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier announced a military-style checkpoint yesterday to stop cars this weekend in a Northeast Washington neighborhood inundated by gun violence, saying it will help keep criminals out of the area.

Starting on Saturday, officers will check drivers' identification and ask whether they have a "legitimate purpose" to be in the Trinidad area, such as going to a doctor or church or visiting friends or relatives. If not, the drivers will be turned away.

The Neighborhood Safety Zone initiative is the latest crime-fighting attempt by Lanier and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, who have been under pressure from residents to stop a recent surge in violence. Last weekend was especially bloody, with seven slayings, including three in the Trinidad area.

"In certain areas, we need to go beyond the normal methods of policing," Fenty (D) said at a news conference announcing the action. "We're going to go into an area and completely shut it down to prevent shootings and the sale of drugs."

The checkpoint will stop vehicles approaching the 1400 block of Montello Avenue NE, a section of the Trinidad neighborhood that has been plagued with homicides and other violence. Police will search cars if they suspect the presence of guns or drugs, and will arrest people who do not cooperate, under a charge of failure to obey a police officer, officials said.

The enforcement will take place at random hours and last for at least five days in Trinidad, with the option of extending it five more days. Checkpoints could be set up in other neighborhoods if they are requested by patrol commanders and approved by Lanier.

The strategy, patterned after a similar effort conducted years ago in New York, is not airtight. There are many ways to get in and out of Trinidad, not just on the one-way Montello Avenue. And pedestrians will not be stopped, which is something critics say might render the program ineffective.

"I guess the plan is to hope criminals will not walk into neighborhoods," said D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large). "I also suppose the plan is to take the criminal's word for it when he or she gives the police a reason for driving into a neighborhood."

Since taking over as chief in December 2006, Lanier has struggled with the issue of violent crime. She has added patrols, revived a unit specializing in getting guns off the streets and changed commanders in six of the city's seven patrol districts. Last weekend, officers were close enough in one case that they heard the barrage of gunfire coming from a triple homicide on Holbrook Street in Trinidad.

The program is aimed at the city's most troubled areas. The 5th Police District, which includes Trinidad, has had 22 killings this year, one more than all of last year. Since April 1, the Trinidad neighborhood has had seven homicides, 16 robberies and 20 assaults with dangerous weapons, according to police data. In many cases in Trinidad and across the city, gunshots are fired from passing cars, victims are found in cars or cars are used to make fast getaways.

"We have to try to take away the things that are facilitating the ability to commit crime," Lanier said.

Leaders of the American Civil Liberties Union said yesterday that they will be watching what happens closely and that legal action is likely.

"My reaction is, welcome to Baghdad, D.C.," said Arthur Spitzer, legal director for the ACLU's Washington office. "I mean, this is craziness. In this country, you don't have to show identification or explain to the police why you want to travel down a public street."

Interim Attorney General Peter J. Nickles said that his office reviewed the initiative and that similar efforts had survived court tests.

"I don't anticipate us being sued," Nickles said. "But if you do want to sue us, the courts are open."

U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor said that D.C. officials consulted his office about their plans and that prosecutors suggested some changes to try to ensure that any arrests would hold up in court. "We applaud the District's efforts to make neighborhoods safer," Taylor said. "Whatever we do has to be consistent with the Constitution."

New York police set up a nearly identical checkpoint in 1992 in a neighborhood of the Bronx that was plagued by drug dealing and drive-by shootings. Police ran the Watson Avenue Special Operation on a random basis, mostly in evening hours. Officers stopped drivers, but not pedestrians, coming into the area, to confirm that they had a legitimate reason to be there.

A federal appeals court upheld the legality of the New York effort, saying in a 1996 ruling that it "served an important public concern" and was "reasonably viewed as an effective mechanism to deter crime in the barricaded area."

D.C. police have used various forms of checkpoints for years. In 1988, for example, they blocked streets and searched courtyards in a pair of apartment complexes in Northeast Washington in a bid to drive out drug dealers. That move came during the crack cocaine epidemic, in a year when the city recorded 372 homicides. Last year, the city had 181 killings.

Former D.C. police chief Isaac Fulwood Jr., who led the department from 1989 until 1992, said he liked using checkpoints because his officers were able to make arrests and gather intelligence.

"They are effective. You recover stolen cars and firearms," Fulwood said. "You've got to have a lot of them if you're going to have them. You need to move as the criminal element shifts."

Some residents expressed support for the plan yesterday, saying they are willing to submit to the checks if it makes the neighborhood safer. "We can't endure any more homicides," said neighborhood activist India Henderson.

But others said they were disappointed police have not developed relationships that would allow them to gather information and find criminals without resorting to the stepped-up tactics.

"I knew eventually we'd be a police state," said Wilhelmina Lawson, who has lived in the neighborhood for 20 years. "They don't talk to us, they're not community minded."

One of Lanier's plans, the Safe Homes initiative, has yet to get off the ground because of a community backlash. The plan, announced by Lanier and Fenty at a news conference in March, called for police to go door-to-door in crime-ridden areas and ask residents whether they could go inside and search for guns. Residents and some council members voiced concerns that homeowners would feel intimidated by police. Lanier backed off, but said she plans to move forward soon by having residents call police to set up appointments.

Another plan, to arm hundreds of patrol officers with semiautomatic rifles, starting this summer, also got mixed reviews from residents.

Kristopher Baumann, head of the D.C. police lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police, said he was concerned about public perception of the checkpoints and the potential that it could lead to more citizen complaints. He questioned Lanier's overall approach, saying, "There is no strategy and no mid-term and long-term planning.

"That's the biggest disappointment of Chief Lanier's tenure," Baumann said. "One thing we were excited about and optimistic about was, for once, we'd have strategies to combat crime and not just be reactive. But we haven't seen it. It's been a year and a half."

Council member Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5), who represents Trinidad and other parts of Northeast Washington, said he had informal discussions with Lanier in which she had mentioned the possibility of the checkpoint announced yesterday, but he got little notice before the news conference. Civil liberties are always a concern, said Thomas, who maintained that residents are so concerned about violence that they will be willing to give the latest program a try.

"I think the general consensus is that we have to do something because people live in fear," he said. "What would you rather have?" he asked. "A positive pattern of [police] checking things . . . or these folks who come into the community and wreak havoc?"

Catholic Priest rips Fox News a new one

2008-05-30T09:27:00.000-04:00

Looks like Fox News thought they were going to embarass Obama supporter Father Michael Pfleger, by sending out one of their henchmen to ambush him over his ties to and support of Barack Obama. Instead they got their tiny, little bigoted and ignorant heads handed to them.

The NEW JESSE VENTURA EXPOUNDS ON THE TRUTH

2008-05-25T23:18:00.000-04:00

JESSE should run for independent president 2008 he would smoke everyone else if he was allowed to debate. Listen to his messages as he confounds Donny DOUCHE!
Donny asked Jesse why we cannot find Bin Laden if you remember Bush said he no longer CARED about BIN LADEN!

Keith Olbermann Blasts Hillary Clinton

2008-05-25T23:07:00.001-04:00

Keith Olbermann Blasts Hillary Clinton: **MUST SEE** Regarding her Assassination Comment on Bobby Kennedy and Barack Obama

Cokely Vs Rubin

2008-05-23T22:27:00.000-04:00

See Black Nationalist Steve Cokely and the late Zionist Irv Rubin go at it.

Nas-These are our heroes

2008-05-20T11:40:00.001-04:00

It's the End of the World as We know it #31

2008-05-20T11:00:00.001-04:00

Indecision 2008 - West Virginia

2008-05-15T09:18:00.000-04:00

911 operator: 'I don't give a sh*t what happens to you'

2008-05-14T15:13:00.000-04:00

David Edwards and Mike Sheehan
Raw Story
Wednesday, May 14, 2008

A Nashville woman who waited hours for someone to respond to her call to 911 emergency services didn't hear the worst part of the call.

After Sheila Jones hung up the phone, a local news reporter found that one 911 operator said, "I really just don't give a shit what happens to you."

"I think I'm more hurt than I am mad that my life didn't mean a damn thing to them," said Jones, after hearing the tape played back to her for the first time. Jones had called for help after an ex-boyfriend assaulted and threatened her.

911 officials told Nashville's NewsChannel 5 that the staffer who took the call "was a trainee who was [later] fired ... not for the comment, but for flunking his final exam."

Philadelphia Police Beating Victims Not Connected to Shooting

2008-05-13T09:34:00.000-04:00

CNN's Rick Sanchez speaks with CNN analyst Mike Brooks and the Rev. Al Sharpton about the beating case in Philadelphia.

The Red Pill

2008-05-12T09:26:00.001-04:00

Short documentary film on the history of the shadow government within the United States and their role in the 9/11 attacks.

Court ordered a Chief Medical Examiner to Remove Any Reference to a Taser as an Precursor in the Deaths of Three Men

2008-05-12T09:11:00.004-04:00

Physicians speak out on bullying tactics of Taser International over its "less than lethal" weapons

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Thursday, May 8, 2008

Doctors have condemned as corporate "intimidation" a court decision ordering a chief medical examiner to remove any reference to the use of a taser as an antecedent in the deaths of three men.

Ohio examiner Dr. Lisa Kohler had noted in her autopsy reports that electrical shocks from Tasers were partially to blame for the deaths of individuals in three separate confrontations with police.

Taser International, now notorious for it's stern legal defense having won 68 out of 68 lawsuits, filed and won a civil suit, forcing Kohler to delete all mentions of the weapons and to term the deaths "accidental".

Jeffrey Jentzen, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, an organization that represents the majority of medical examiners in the United States, has warned that the actions of Taser International and the court ruling have set a dangerous precedent:

"Our membership is very concerned about these cases and the reaction of Taser to these cases," he said last night.

"Our membership is looking into the area and although Taser has developed its own opinion, there are certainly opposing opinions as to their involvement in causing sudden death in individuals.

"Our organization feels that it violates the physician's ability to make a medical decision. Ordering a professional physician to change or alter their records is in violation of their right to practice medicine.

"Taser has sued a number of medical examiners for making informed medical opinions in an attempt, I think, to both protect their product and send a threatening message to medical examiners.

"It is dangerously close to intimidation," he said. "They are attempting to send a message to medical examiners that if they elect to make that determination they may face a civil suit."

Dr. Matthew Stanbrook of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) also voiced his concern over the legal ruling, stating that the decision fails to take into account the difficulty of determining an exact cause of death in almost every case.

"If we were required to have at the level of scientific and medical certainty that something was the cause of death, before we were permitted to declare it, most of the people who died in North America would have died of unknown causes," Stanbrook said.

"It is a physician making their best judgment given all the facts available."

Stanbrook has called for an independent review of the stun guns and has intimated that most of the existing research into the effects of the weapon has been carried out by, or at the behest of, Taser International itself.

Steve Tuttle, Taser's vice-president of communications responded to the comments stating:

"Taser International's products have been demonstrated by numerous medical studies to be safe and effective. Taser International therefore aggressively defends our products in all litigation brought against the company with the best legal, scientific and medical expertise available."

Despite Tuttle's claims, many scientists and doctors have raised concerns about possible links between Tasers and potential heart and respiration problems, mental health and an individual’s state of exhaustion or agitation in confrontations with authorities.

Taser International CEO Rick Smith told CBC News in January that medical examiners had to be sure of their facts because if they made what he called a careless opinion, they will be held accountable in court.

However, It is not just physicians that are raising such concerns. Amnesty International has also cited hundreds deaths around the world after Taser use and has called for a full taser suspension while a thorough investigation into the impact of the weapon is conducted.

More recently, a UN Committee said the stun gun "causes acute pain, constituting a form of torture".

Deaths occurring where tasers have been used are now a daily occurrence, yet police and private security forces worldwide continue to be equipped with the weapons.

Recent reports have revealed that police are using the Taser as soon as someone displays a "fighting stance" or simply to get a non-violent suspect to do what they are told, rather than for their intended purpose as the last line of defense before lethal action.

Most recently police in Vancouver have been using the devices on transit fare dodgers.

As we previously reported, The Department of Homeland Security is now looking to evolve the technology in pursuing the introduction of a device known as the Security Bracelet, a wearable tag that would allow authorities to inflict pain compliance on suspects from a distance, while also recommending law enforcement applications and potential use in "crowd control situations".

Many Civil Liberties Associations and police departments across North America have called for a moratorium on the weapons. The stun gun is under particular scrutiny in British Columbia, Canada as part of an ongoing inquiry following the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver's airport in October.

Breakdown FM Immortal Technique-Sean Bell & Police Terrorism

2008-05-08T14:42:00.005-04:00

LISTEN TO INTERVIEW: (put mouse over link, when player opens, click play)

Breakdown FM Immortal Technique-Sean Bell & Police Terrorism

Breakdown FM: Immortal technique Interview pt2

Al Sharpton & Shawn Bell Supporters Arested

2008-05-07T20:11:00.002-04:00

OBM: The mainstream media is purposely not covering this in their continued campaign to marginalize Al Sharpton and this travesty of justice. March on ya'll.... I'm with you!!!!

TV video shows Philly officers kicking, hitting 3 suspects

2008-05-07T10:09:00.003-04:00

May 6 08:09 PM US/Eastern
By PATRICK WALTERS
Associated Press Writer

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A half-dozen police officers kicked and beat three men pulled from a car during a traffic stop as a TV helicopter taped the confrontation.
The video, shot by WTXF-TV, shows three police cars stopping a car Monday, two days after a city officer was shot to death responding to a bank robbery.

The tape shows about a dozen officers gathering around the vehicle. About a half-dozen officers hold two of the men on the ground. Both are kicked repeatedly, while one is seen being punched; one also appears to be struck with a baton.

The third man is also kicked and ends up on the ground.

"On the surface it certainly does not look good in terms of the amount of force that was used," Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said. "But we don't want to rush to judgment."

The officers were responding to a report of a shooting nearby, police said. It was not immediately clear what preceded the confrontation.

Ramsey said Philadelphia officers have been on edge since Saturday, when Officer Stephen Liczbinski was fatally shot with an assault rifle after a robbery.

Police fatally shot one of the robbery suspects; another was arrested Sunday and a third man is still being sought.

"There is also a lot of heightened emotions since Sgt. Liczbinski was murdered on the streets just Saturday," Ramsey said.

Liczbinski was the third officer slain on duty in the city in the last two years.

Attorney D. Scott Perrine, who represents the three men seen in the video, said that as terrible as the officer's death was, it does not excuse such actions by police.

"We don't take into consideration the emotions of police officers when it comes to the discharge of their duties. ... Your emotional state, being tired, doesn't justify what's on that video," Perrine said.

He said one of his clients suffered a welt on his head the size of a baseball and one of his legs was seriously injured; he didn't know the extent of any injuries on the other two men.

Perrine also said he did not know what preceded the traffic stop but called the actions seen on the tape unjustified.

"It clearly shows a lack of any reasonable investigation before these police yank these individuals out of the car and take turns delivering blows," he said. "This is a time for a thorough investigation to see what it is that happened here."

Perrine said that police told him all three men would be charged with aggravated assault.

Lt. Frank Vanore, a police spokesman, did not immediately return a call for comment from The Associated Press.

Shift Happens Narrated

2008-05-07T09:26:00.001-04:00

THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW!!!!!

Pastor Wright is RIGHT!

2008-05-04T19:51:00.001-04:00

The White Supremacist media has distorted Jeremiah Wright out of context. They racists are accusing their victims of racism!

Viewed from this different context, we see that everything he was talking about WAS TRUE.

His speeches confronted White Supremacy, and it is White Supremacists in the media and in the public who have tried to call Wright a racist in an immoral attempt derail the truth about White Supremacist crimes.

For the past month we have heard a lot about The Reverend Jeremiah Wright. There are endless loopings of the same half a dozen out-of-context sound bites. This is nothing more than a collective gang bang by mindless narcissistic media stars who intentionally dumb down what he said to create a phony scandal for Barak Obama. These tapes were probably unearthed by someone in the Hillary machine, or McCain’s, or one of their sympathisers. So now there is open season on this preacher. What is the substance of these attacks? It is no more substantive than late night TV or stand up comics. Besides the misquotations, the media focused on his style as a black minister.

We have heard endless loops showing how outrageous or bombastic he is. We heard clips of him singing Handel’s “And the Glory of the Lord” and his “God Damn America”. It’s as if the media were shocked!.....SHOCKED!! that there is such a thing as black Full Gospel preaching style, complete with spontaneous responses accompanied by organ improvisation. This genre is famous for using politics and themes of racial oppression for over 100 years. You would think that The Reverends Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson were unknown. Or Al Sharpton.

The Reverend Wright, in an attempt to add some substance to this sound bite circus, spoke at the National Press Club in Washington DC. last week. He was not giving a sermon. He was not “bombastic”. He spoke in a temperate voice and gave a scholarly speech on the black theological tradition in the USA. He talked about the role that “Liberation Theology” played in both the black churches, and in the Yankee Congregationalist, United Church of Christ.

The entire media were glued to this speech. They were not looking for a dispassionate discussion of theology in black churches, or context to his previous statements – that would be too boring – they were looking for another sensationalist sound bite, the more outrageous the better. They got it during the question & answer session after the speech, with confrontational questions which clearly showed the hostile bias of the questioner. The questions assumed that Wright is a kooky conspiracy theorist, and a blaspheming traitor to his country. No one really listened to what he said. In its reporting, the media reduced his comments to platitudes, and the endless references to his speech followed the predictable collective script of the fatuous imbeciles in the media to see who can repeat the same hackneyed phrases to win kudos from their colleagues.

What did he say that was so outrageous? Based on the comments of the lemming pundits, I seriously wondered whether they saw the same speech I did. I listened to the whole thing twice and was hard pressed to find anything that was outrageous or insane. I certainly have my criticism of “Liberation Theology” with its close association with Marxism, especially in Latin America. But this was not the focus of the media. Their focus was on him defiantly defending his “outrageous” remarks. Almost all of those remarks I agreed with.

He was asked if he was patriotic, and said that he served 6 years in the military and that it was more military time than Dick Cheney served. Was this an insane or even false statement?

He said that the US government oppresses people around the world, that it sends Americans, “to die for a lie”. When asked why he blamed the US for 911, he said that the “chickens have come home to roost” in the form of blowback from our policies overseas. Most did not bother to find out that he was quoting Edward Peck, the former ambassador to Iraq, and deputy director of terrorism under Ronald Reagan. Wright added, quoting the Bible’s golden rule, that you can not do terrorism to others and not have it come back to you. This is virtually the same thing for which Dr. Ron Paul got raked over the coals. Questioning the cause of 911 is the modern American Intellectual Inquisition equivalent of heresy. It is double heresy if you equate our government with a terrorist organisation, even though bombing civilians does cause terror. Recognised states don’t do terrorism unless they are Iraq or Iran.

He was asked if he would apologise to the American people for blaming them for 911. He made the distinction, lost on most Americans, between the people and their government. This is total blasphemy in the minds of the orthodox American Establishment. In their thinking the American people and their government are one in the same because of Democracy, and the vaunted electoral process. The idea that the government in this, “the most free and democratic nation on earth - EVER” would have its own corrupt agenda against the best interests of the people is a thoughtcrime. This is odd, since most Americans have no trouble spotting corruption at the state or local level, or complaining of excessive spending and taxation. In the NYC area, we have had three governors (NJ, NY, Conn.) resign in the last ten years for corruption. However, at the federal level, especially when it comes to war, Americans refuse to look at the truly mammoth corruption, distortion, and immorality of their government.

He was asked about his relationship to Reverend Louis Farrakhan. As he explained, this had to do with a statement made by Farrakhan 20 years ago about Israel, a sacred cow in the minds of the establishment. Wright explained his position regarding Israel: that it had a right to exist, that they were the children of God, BUT that they need to reconcile with their enemies; the Israelis need to sit down with the Palestinians and come to a peaceful understanding so that their children “don’t grow up talking about killing each other”. He said that reconciliation, not killing was God’s way. Is that an “insane” or “outrageous” notion? Is it theologically erroneous? The media had a field day with Wright’s comparing Farrakhan to stock broker EF HUTTON. Do media pundits not understand the use of analogies or similes or metaphors in speech? Wright was saying that when Farrakhan talks, the black community listens. Is this a false statement? If so, then why do the media, who are mostly white, bother to cover Farrakhan?

The punditry went berserk over his “conspiracy theory” that the US Government invented AIDS. The Reverend Wright cited the Tuskegee experiment, where the government used blacks to experiment on syphilis. He also pointed out that the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq were sold to Saddam by the US Government back when he was our ally and that he used them on the Iranians with our blessing. He said that, given the history of our government and its use of deception, he believed “it was possible”.

I personally doubt the conspiracy theory that the US Government invented AIDS, but I personally doubt any number of conspiracy theories of my friends, whilst I harbor conspiracy theories of my own with which others disagree. In fact most Americans believe in some form of conspiracy or secret, illegal dealings committed by their government. Why is that? Is this unique to Americans as a culture? I don’t know. We know the US Government has lied to us in the past. We know that the US has used the CIA to topple governments in South America at the behest of the United Fruit Company. We know, in spite of the official, revisionist “spin” that the government knew in advance of the Japanese carrier force prior to Pearl Harbour; and that even in the DC media there was open speculation that war with Japan was imminent. We know that the Navy translated the communiqué of the Japanese to their ambassadors in Washington and that they were instructed “to burn all documents and code machines”. We know the US Government lied about the Tonkin Gulf Incident, and lied about being in Laos and Cambodia. We know the US Government has been a king maker in the Mideast while denying same. None of these revelations ever get admitted at the time; only years later do books by insiders get written telling the truth. Would there be so many conspiracy theories in America if our government were transparent and honest or followed the Constitution? If you Google “conspiracy theory”, why do so many hits deal with the United States? Why doesn’t Switzerland come up except as a movie title? Why not Canada?......or Iceland?

Then there was the “God Damn America” quote. He explained this also, yet the media pretended not to hear. He said “damn” is derived from “condemn”, and that God condemns the actions of the US Government (again NOT the people) for inflicting violence on other nations and that non-violence was consistent with Christian teaching. He asked the questioner if he heard the whole sermon from which that quote was taken. But context or understanding did not figure into the thinking of the questioner. I wonder if there are examples, say in the Old Testament, of God condemning wicked immoral nations?

This electronic tabloid circus unfortunately drags in supposedly high-brow broadsheet press into the mud. This was especially true last week after his National Press Club Speech. One after another, the senior Washington polemicists and bureau chiefs chimed in so they could be counted in the “me too” column. There were the obligatory references to Wright as “crazy” and “lunatic” or “loony” with no attempt to address what he said. But the “intellectual” writers of the papers of record added new buzzwords, to wit: “narcissistic”, “solipsistic”, “divisive” “his fifteen minutes of fame” “revenge on Obama”.

Here we have the Establishment Left, many of whom, tired of the sleazy fraud of the Clintons, want Obama nominated and hope that he’ll beat McCain. Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote,”….Wright went to Washington on Monday not to praise Barak Obama but to bury him…….Feeling dissed by Sen. Obama, Mr. Wright gets revenge on his former follower…... He’s living a narcissist dream. At long last his 15 minutes have arrived.”

They called him divisive but not the mudslingers who brought edited sound bites public and replayed them over and over; sound bites that were part of a long sermon. Why are they dumping on Wright rather than blaming the tabloid media for taking him out of context? Here’s the reason. To quote Mr. Herbert:

“The question that cries out for an answer from Mr. Wright is why – if he is so passionately committed to liberating and empowering blacks – does he seem so insistent on wrecking the campaign of the only African-American ever to have had a legitimate shot at the presidency.”

DC Madam Palfrey's Murder: Alex Jones on Geraldo

2008-05-04T17:15:00.001-04:00

Fox News' Geraldo has Alex Jones on to examine the evidence that shows that DC Madam Deborah Jean Palfrey was murdered-- despite the official claim that she committed suicide.

Jones points out the numerous statements Palfrey made in refutation of suicide, as well as the criminology that women rarely hang themselves, generally preferring pills.

Geraldo and two co-hosts admit they agree with Alex Jones-- that claims of Palfrey's suicide are "stinky" and suspicious and that the case should be further investigated.

One woman even says that the John's on Palfreys list-- including many high-level politicians-- should be revealed and prosecuted.

Palfrey's hi-rise apartment manager in Florida says he saw Palfrey only days before her death when she told him a contract may be out on her life. Additionally, she made arrangments to secure her apartment for the next six years-- the approximate time she expected to be in prison--seemingly pointing to the idea that she expected to stay alive.

The Superclass

2008-05-04T07:04:00.001-04:00

David Rothkopf
Carnegie Endowment for Peace

MAXED OUT - DOCUMENTRY

2008-05-03T12:44:00.001-04:00

If you want want to know more about the banking and credit card scam, if you want to learn about the possibilities of beating them, then do your self and family and friends a favour and read this "MUST READ" book: www.natural-person.ca/pdf/mary_croft.pdf about this documentary: How credit cards impose modern slavery on the people. To give people digits on their bank account and charge interest on something that is not real, backed up by nothing except debt, never had value, does not have value and will never have value

In Lies We Trust: The CIA, Hollywood and Bioterrorism

2008-05-01T20:45:00.000-04:00

This feature length documentary about medical madness, cloaked in bioterrorism preparedness, will awaken the brain dead. It exposes health officials, directed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), for conducting a “War of Terror” that is killing millions of unwitting Americans. This urgent life-saving DVD comes without copyright restrictions. Every viewer is encouraged to reproduce and distribute copies to others. Donations to Tetrahedron Films to cover costs and produce more films like this are greatly appreciated online at www.inlieswetrust.com or by calling toll free 1-888-508-4787. You can screen the film on behalf of local charities. It was produced by award-winning humanitarian, Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz (www.DrLenHorowitz.com), a world-renowned authority in public health education, covert intelligence agency operations, and emerging diseases investigations. He is the author of three American bestsellers, including Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola—Nature, Accident or Intentional? and Healing Codes for the Biological Apocalypse. (Tetrahedron Press; 1-888-508-4787) This monumental film exposes the agents and agencies behind: Hollywood films and the media creating a profitable culture of bioterror; the “War on Terrorism” used to control populations; the most lucrative war in history—the “War on Cancer;” the onslaught of dozens of new immunological diseases and deadly flus; the “War on AIDS” triggered by contaminated vaccines; the anthrax mailings resulting in restricted freedoms, and sales of toxic drugs, deadly vaccines, and more. Documents displayed in film may be viewed online at inlieswetrust.com For over 400 of the top Critically important videos see netctr.com/media -- Much more at the site. Wake up, get involved, Save the Republic - Your kids, grand kids and your life will depend on what you do from now on. Key words: propaganda, war, terrorism, vaccinations, immunizations, cancer, biological warfare, weapons of mass destruction, pharmaceuticals, AIDS, anthrax, healthcare, Hollywood, CIA, CDC, and FDA.

Jeremiah Wright NAACP Dinner Full Speech April 27, 2008

2008-04-30T08:57:00.002-04:00

OBM: Great speach.....The Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivered an unapologetic speech on Sunday, alternately fiery and humorous as he defended the preaching that has taken center stage in the presidential campaign.

REASONS FOR ENERGY AND FOOD CRISES FACING AMERICA

2008-04-26T23:35:00.002-04:00

REASONS FOR ENERGY AND FOOD CRISES FACING AMERICA (Part 1)

REASONS FOR ENERGY AND FOOD CRISES FACING AMERICA (Part 2)

REASONS FOR ENERGY AND FOOD CRISES FACING AMERICA (Part 3)

REASONS FOR ENERGY AND FOOD CRISES FACING AMERICA (Part 4)

REASONS FOR ENERGY AND FOOD CRISES FACING AMERICA (Part 5)

Out of Control Fraud: Our Tax Dollars at Work

2008-04-24T09:09:00.001-04:00

brasschecktv.com

For four generations now, the Bush family has been involved in supporting the country's enemies (most notably the Nazi Party in Germany) and robbing the country blind.

The family was directly involved and profited from the Savings and Loan scandal of the 1980s and has participated in security fraud as well.

With this understanding as a background, the Iraq War can be viewed as their "masterpiece."

The Bush family and its associates have stolen countless billions of dollars in the course of the war. In fact, one of their motivations for pushing the war in the first place was the opportunity for theft.

Chances are the destruction of World Trade Tower Seven, the home of crucial and now lost forever SEC and other federal law enforcement evidence and case files was carried out to cover their tracks.

What is Peak Oil? & What Will Be the Effects?

2008-04-23T10:01:00.000-04:00

Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum production is reached, after which the rate of production enters its terminal decline. If global consumption is not mitigated before the peak, an energy crisis may develop because the availability of conventional oil will drop and prices will rise, perhaps dramatically. M. King Hubbert first used the theory in 1956 to accurately predict that United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. His model, now called Hubbert peak theory, has since been used to predict the peak petroleum production of many other countries, and has also proved useful in other limited-resource production-domains. According to the Hubbert model, the production rate of a limited resource will follow a roughly symmetrical bell-shaped curve based on the limits of exploitability and market pressures.

Some observers, such as petroleum industry experts Kenneth S. Deffeyes and Matthew Simmons, believe the high dependence of most modern industrial transport, agricultural and industrial systems on the relative low cost and high availability of oil will cause the post-peak production decline and possible severe increases in the price of oil to have negative implications for the global economy. Although predictions as to what exactly these negative effects will be vary greatly, "a growing number of oil-industry chieftains are endorsing an idea long deemed fringe: The world is approaching a practical limit to the number of barrels of crude oil that can be pumped every day."[1]

If political and economic change only occur in reaction to high prices and shortages rather than in reaction to the threat of a peak, then the degree of economic damage to importing countries will largely depend on how rapidly oil imports decline post-peak.

Secondary Effects of Peak Oil

Peak Oil is a cascading effect problem. We know it, but we may not yet be informed enough to realize the cascading effect problem is so pervasive. We know that MOST of the energy we use and food we eat comes directly or indirectly from non-renewable petroleum deposits. It is often argued that our large population, though only occupying a small physical area on the earth itself, is only sustained through the use of all these non-renewable resources. The obvious fix to this is switch to renewables and sustainable agriculture so we can keep as many people from starving as possible. Why? Starvation leads to war, and with nukes available in the countries most affected (China and India), it would be a very bad thing.

Additional problems are power shifts. Russia used to be very powerful, then their economy collapsed and a lot of people suffered and the ruthless rose to greater power, a meritocracy of crime and influence. Now Russia has surpassed the Saudis for oil production and they currently provide most of the natural gas heating homes and powering industry in Western Europe. The Russians want more power and influence, so they play games with supply, chiselling its called. Chip a little here, a little there and soon the other guy will give you his last dollar and the shirt off his back to keep going forward to his dreams. This is a reason I don't respect those who "follow their dreams". The romantic times are over with the cheap oil. Following your dreams in today's world gets your frilly behind killed or jailed. I respect practical people. You should too. So Russia is going to continue to rise in power, and use that power to force its Will on the rest of Europe in a way Hitler only dreamed he could get away with. The only freedom from the tyranny of Russian influence in Europe will be renewable power. It will have to be cheap, pervasive, and reasonably efficient.

As the price of oil rises it will cause a severe contraction in the world economy. Most observers of this occurrence agree that this will translate into higher prices all the way down the food chain- literally- right down to bread and fruit- as not only road and air transportation will be affected directly but the price of nearly ever commodity and product consumed in the world economy will be impacted indirectly.

When world petroleum production peaks, energy prices will go up dramatically. There will be a recession similar to the recessions that followed the energy price increases of 1974 and 1979, but with one difference: the US Federal Reserve Bank is much more active in setting economic policy than it was then, and its main focus is fighting inflation, so we can expect much lower inflation and much higher unemployment than in the 1970s. As interest rates soar, housing prices will fall and the stock market will suffer.

Eventually, the rest of the decline in oil production would have to be absorbed by a prolonged economic depression. Whenever energy prices soar, the Fed will raise interest rates until they have slowed the economy enough to stop inflation. To keep the demand for energy from exceeding the physical supply, they might have to reduce the GDP by 10 or 15 percent over 15 or 20 years. That could mean unemployment over 20 percent - about as high as it was during the worst years of the Great Depression.

Vast amounts of oil and gas are used as raw materials and energy in the manufacture of fertilizers and pesticides, and as cheap and readily available energy at all stages of food production: from planting, irrigation, feeding and harvesting, through to processing, distribution and packaging. In addition, fossil fuels are essential in the construction and the repair of equipment and infrastructure needed to facilitate this industry, including farm machinery, processing facilities, storage, ships, trucks and roads. If the price of oil rises substantially- all of these sectors of the food industry will have to pass on the extra costs to the consumer.

Commercial food production is oil powered. Most pesticides are petroleum- (oil) based, and all commercial fertilizers are ammonia-based. Ammonia is produced from natural gas. Oil based agriculture is primarily responsible for the world's population exploding from 1 billion at the middle of the 19th century to 6.3 billion at the turn of the 21st Oil allowed for farming implements such as tractors, food storage systems such as refrigerators, and food transport systems such as trucks

It's not just transportation and agriculture that are entirely dependent on abundant, cheap oil. Modern medicine, water distribution, and national defense are each entirely powered by oil and petroleum derived chemicals.

Most of the consumer goods we buy are made with plastic, which is derived from oil.

All manufacturing processes consume huge amounts of oil. For instance, the average car - including hybrids - consumes the energy contained in 25-50 barrels (or about 1,200-2,400 gallons) of oil during its construction, while the average computer consumes 10 times its weight in fossil fuels during its construction.

All electrical devices - including solar panels and windmills - make use of silver, copper, and/or platinum, all of which are discovered, extracted, transported, and fashioned using oil-powered machinery.

Food Rationing in America Confronts Breadbasket of the World

2008-04-22T11:42:00.002-04:00

BY JOSH GERSTEIN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
April 21, 2008
URL: http://www2.nysun.com/article/74994

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Many parts of America, long considered the breadbasket of the world, are now confronting a once unthinkable phenomenon: food rationing. Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

At a Costco Warehouse in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday, shoppers grew frustrated and occasionally uttered expletives as they searched in vain for the large sacks of rice they usually buy.

"Where's the rice?" an engineer from Palo Alto, Calif., Yajun Liu, said. "You should be able to buy something like rice. This is ridiculous."

The bustling store in the heart of Silicon Valley usually sells four or five varieties of rice to a clientele largely of Asian immigrants, but only about half a pallet of Indian-grown Basmati rice was left in stock. A 20-pound bag was selling for $15.99.

"You can't eat this every day. It's too heavy," a health care executive from Palo Alto, Sharad Patel, grumbled as his son loaded two sacks of the Basmati into a shopping cart. "We only need one bag but I'm getting two in case a neighbor or a friend needs it," the elder man said.

The Patels seemed headed for disappointment, as most Costco members were being allowed to buy only one bag. Moments earlier, a clerk dropped two sacks back on the stack after taking them from another customer who tried to exceed the one-bag cap.

"Due to the limited availability of rice, we are limiting rice purchases based on your prior purchasing history," a sign above the dwindling supply said.

Shoppers said the limits had been in place for a few days, and that rice supplies had been spotty for a few weeks. A store manager referred questions to officials at Costco headquarters near Seattle, who did not return calls or e-mail messages yesterday.

An employee at the Costco store in Queens said there were no restrictions on rice buying, but limits were being imposed on purchases of oil and flour. Internet postings attributed some of the shortage at the retail level to bakery owners who flocked to warehouse stores when the price of flour from commercial suppliers doubled.

The curbs and shortages are being tracked with concern by survivalists who view the phenomenon as a harbinger of more serious trouble to come.

"It's sporadic. It's not every store, but it's becoming more commonplace," the editor of SurvivalBlog.com, James Rawles, said. "The number of reports I've been getting from readers who have seen signs posted with limits has increased almost exponentially, I'd say in the last three to five weeks."

Spiking food prices have led to riots in recent weeks in Haiti, Indonesia, and several African nations. India recently banned export of all but the highest quality rice, and Vietnam blocked the signing of a new contract for foreign rice sales.

"I'm surprised the Bush administration hasn't slapped export controls on wheat," Mr. Rawles said. "The Asian countries are here buying every kind of wheat." Mr. Rawles said it is hard to know how much of the shortages are due to lagging supply and how much is caused by consumers hedging against future price hikes or a total lack of product.

"There have been so many stories about worldwide shortages that it encourages people to stock up. What most people don't realize is that supply chains have changed, so inventories are very short," Mr. Rawles, a former Army intelligence officer, said. "Even if people increased their purchasing by 20%, all the store shelves would be wiped out."

At the moment, large chain retailers seem more prone to shortages and limits than do smaller chains and mom-and-pop stores, perhaps because store managers at the larger companies have less discretion to increase prices locally. Mr. Rawles said the spot shortages seemed to be most frequent in the Northeast and all the way along the West Coast. He said he had heard reports of buying limits at Sam's Club warehouses, which are owned by Wal-Mart Stores, but a spokesman for the company, Kory Lundberg, said he was not aware of any shortages or limits.

An anonymous high-tech professional writing on an investment Web site, Seeking Alpha, said he recently bought 10 50-pound bags of rice at Costco. "I am concerned that when the news of rice shortage spreads, there will be panic buying and the shelves will be empty in no time. I do not intend to cause a panic, and I am not speculating on rice to make profit. I am just hoarding some for my own consumption," he wrote.

For now, rice is available at Asian markets in California, though consumers have fewer choices when buying the largest bags. "At our neighborhood store, it's very expensive, more than $30" for a 25-pound bag, a housewife from Mountain View, Theresa Esquerra, said. "I'm not going to pay $30. Maybe we'll just eat bread."

Church Sign Outrage: Pastor Questions Obama’s Faith With Link to Osama

2008-04-22T11:40:00.000-04:00

church sign
by luvnews

Daily Motion
Tuesday, April 22, 2008

'Perfect storm' food crisis grips globe

2008-04-22T10:09:00.004-04:00

scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com
By Marc Lacey
in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

HUNGER smashed in the front gate of Haiti's presidential palace. Hunger poured on to the streets, burning tyres and taking on soldiers and the police. Hunger sent the country's prime minister packing.

Haiti's hunger, that has become fiercer than ever in recent days as global food prices spiral out of reach, rising by as much as 45% since the end of 2006 and turning staples such as beans, corn and rice into closely guarded treasures.

Saint Louis Meriska's children ate two spoonfuls of rice apiece as their only meal and then went without any food the following day. His eyes downcast, his own stomach empty, the unemployed father said: "They look at me and say 'Papa, I'm hungry', and I have to look away. It's humiliating and it makes you angry."

That anger is palpable across the globe. The food crisis is not only being felt among the poor but is also eroding the gains of the working and middle classes, sowing volatile levels of discontent and putting new pressures on fragile governments.

In Cairo, Egypt, the military is being put to work baking bread as rising food prices threaten to become the spark that ignites wider anger at a repressive government. In Burkina Faso and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, food riots are breaking out as never before. In reasonably prosperous Malaysia, the ruling coalition was nearly ousted by voters who cited food and fuel price increases as their main concerns.

"It's the worst crisis of its kind in more than 30 years," said Jeffrey D Sachs, the economist and special adviser to the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon. "It's a big deal and it's obviously threatening a lot of governments. There are a number of governments on the ropes, and I think there's more political fallout to come."

Indeed, as it hits developing nations, the spike in commodity prices has pitted the world's poorer south against the relatively wealthy north, adding to demands for reform of rich nations' farm and environmental policies. But experts say there are few quick fixes to a crisis tied to so many factors, from strong demand for food from emerging economies such as China's to rising oil prices to the diversion of food resources to make biofuels.

There are no scripts on how to handle the crisis either. In Asia, governments are putting in place measures to limit hoarding of rice after some shoppers panicked at price increases and bought up everything they could.

Even in Thailand, which produces 10 million more tons of rice than it consumes and is the world's largest rice exporter, supermarkets have put up signs limiting the amount of rice shoppers are allowed to buy.

But there is also plenty of nervousness and confusion about how best to proceed and how bad the impact may be, particularly as already strapped governments struggle to keep up their food subsidies.

"This is a perfect storm," President Elias Antonio Saca of El Salvador said last week at the World Economic Forum on Latin America in Cancun, Mexico.

"How long can we withstand the situation? We have to feed our people, and commodities are becoming scarce. This scandalous storm might become a hurricane that could upset not only our economies but also the stability of our countries."

In Asia, if Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi of Malaysia steps down, which is looking increasingly likely amid postelection turmoil within his party, he may be that region's first high-profile political casualty of fuel and food price inflation.

In Indonesia, fearing protests, the government has revised its 2008 budget, increasing the amount it will spend on food subsidies by about $280m.

"The biggest concern is food riots," said HS Dillon, a former adviser to Indonesia's Ministry of Agriculture. Referring to small but widespread protests touched off by a rise in soybean prices in January, he said: "It has happened in the past and can happen again."

The Philippine government has started selling subsidised rice at military bases to ensure soldiers and their families have a sufficient supply of cheap grain, while other supplies are being stockpiled for the poorest members of society.

Last month in Senegal, one of Africa's oldest and most stable democracies, police in riot gear beat and used tear gas against people protesting over high food prices and later raided a television station that broadcast images of the event.

Many Senegalese have expressed anger at President Abdoulaye Wade for spending lavishly on roads and hotels for an Islamic summit meeting last month while many people are unable to afford rice or fish.

The rising prices are altering menus, and not for the better. In India, people are scrimping on milk for their children. Daily bowls of dahl are getting thinner, as a bag of lentils is stretched across a few more meals.

In Cairo's Hafziyah Street, peddlers selling food from behind wood carts bark out their prices. But few customers can afford their fish or chicken. Food prices have doubled in two months.

Ahmed Abul Gheit, 25, sat on a wooden chair by his own pile of rotting tomatoes. "We can't even find food," he said, looking over at his friend Sobhy Abdullah, 50. Then, raising his hands toward the sky as if in prayer, he said: "May God take the guy I have in mind."

Abdullah nodded, knowing full well that the "guy" was President Hosni Mubarak.

It is the kind of talk that has prompted the government to treat its economic woes as a security threat, dispatching riot forces with a strict warning that anyone who takes to the streets will be dealt with harshly.

Niger does not need to be reminded that hungry citizens overthrow governments. Its first postcolonial president, Hamani Diori, was toppled amid allegations of rampant corruption in 1974 as millions starved during a drought.

More recently, in 2005, it was mass protests in Niamey, the Nigerian capital, that made the government sit up and take notice of that year's food crisis, which was caused by a complex mix of poor rains, locust infestation and market manipulation by traders.

"As a result of that experience the government created a Cabinet-level ministry to deal with the high cost of living," said Moustapha Kadi, an activist who helped organise marches in 2005. "So when prices went up this year, the government acted quickly to remove tariffs on rice, which everyone eats. That quick action has kept people from taking to the streets."

In Haiti, where three-quarters of the population earns less than $2 a day and one in five children is chronically malnourished, the one business booming amid all the gloom is the selling of patties made of mud, oil and sugar, typically only consumed by the most destitute.

"It's salty and it has butter and you don't know you're eating dirt," said Olwich Louis Jeune, 24, who has taken to eating them more often in recent months. "It makes your stomach quiet down."

But the grumbling in Haiti these days is no longer confined to the stomach. It is now spray-painted on walls of the capital and shouted by demonstrators.

In recent days, President Rene Preval of Haiti – who has already seen his prime minister voted out – has patched together a response, using international aid money and price reductions by importers to cut the price of a sack of sugar by about 15%. He has also trimmed the salaries of some top officials. But those are considered temporary measures.

Meanwhile, most of the poorest of the poor suffer silently. In the sprawling slum of Haiti's Cite Soleil, Placide Simone, 29, offered one of her five offspring to a stranger. "Take one," she said, cradling a listless baby and motioning toward four rail-thin toddlers, none of whom had eaten that day. "You pick. Just feed them."

• Lydia Polgreen in Niamey, Niger; Michael Slackman in Cairo, Egypt; Somini Sengupta in New Delhi; Thomas Fuller in Bangkok, Thailand; and Peter Gelling in Jakarta, Indonesia contributed to this report

Ex-NFL Player Tasered For Pointing At Cop

2008-04-18T12:28:00.002-04:00

Incorrect body language, talking to an officer now results in "pain compliance"

PRISONPLANET.COM

Ex-NFL player Timothy Worley was tasered by Georgia police for "becoming confrontational" at a traffic stop according to news reports, but the video shows that the extent of Worley's aggression was merely pointing at the cop and raising his voice.

After Worley exits the vehicle and appears calm, the cowardly officer accuses him of "making fists" when Worley is doing no more than crossing his arms. Apparently, incorrect body language is now an offence that justifies "pain compliance" correction by means of a Tasering.

Worley even puts his palms together in a prayer-like pose in an attempt to reassure the officer he is calm but that is not good enough, after Worley points at the cop for half a second, the officer then approaches Worley who backs away but is then Tasered.

What should Worley's correct body language have been to have avoided 50,000 volts shooting through his body? Should he have kneeled and licked the officer's boots while he was being lectured?

Why are police being trained that simply talking to cops or pointing a finger is evidence of an imminent physical threat?

Media Mind Control - Two Screens, Two Pills

2008-04-17T00:49:00.001-04:00

Mind Control in America (version 1.2

2008-04-17T00:46:00.001-04:00

Homosexuality Explained in 17min.

2008-04-16T15:09:00.002-04:00

Is homosexuality genetic, or is it something people choose? What if it's neither! Dr. Julie Harren, a Licensed Marriage and Family ... all » Therapist in private practice in Palm Beach, Florida, discusses the meaning and causes of homosexuality. Dr. Harren is also an Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Graduate Counseling Psychology program at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Dr. Harren speaks in churches in churches, schools, and other settings on the topic of homosexuality.

Police Raid MoVal Black Barbershops in California

2008-04-15T11:45:00.004-04:00

Thursday, 10 April 2008
MORENO VALLEY
By Chris Levister

Moreno Valley barbers targeted in the April 2 raids claim police used inspectors from the California Department of Consumer Affairs Board of Barbering and Cosmetology (BBC) as a ruse to raid Black owned barbershops, intimidate customers and conduct "highly questionable" shop searches without a warrant.

Moreno Valley Police, BBC inspectors and city code compliance officers conducted a mid-day sweep of five barbershops and a beauty salon along busy Sunnymead Boulevard. Five of the six shops are owned and operated by African-American barbers.

Police Chief Rick Hall denied African-American barbershops were targeted and said "he had no information on customers being questioned or searched." He did however confirm that a customer was taken into custody for carrying a concealed weapon.

"This was a cumulative effort with the BBC the over arcing entity aimed at cracking down on business license and health and safety violators. Race was not a factor," said Hall. Chief Hall insisted individual businesses were selected from a list compiled by the city's code compliance office.

Contacted at the Sacramento offices of the Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) spokesman Kevin Flanagan said "Moreno Valley police sought out the agency's assistance."

"This was not our operation. Basically Moreno Valley police contacted us and said they wanted to look at these shops, naturally we agreed to go along," said Flanagan. "We found mostly ‘cleanliness' violations. Usually we'll only go along if there is a public safety issue. In my five years with the DCA I don't recall the agency participating in a local law enforcement operation like this. Our resources are scarce," he said.

A second DCA spokesman Russ Heimerich said "we tagged along, these types of operations are rare but not unheard of. The Moreno Valley raids appeared to be aimed at ‘shutting down drug operations'."

BBC inspectors routinely conduct random and targeted ‘health and safety' inspections on more than 250,000 establishments licensed under the state Bureau of Barbering and Cosmetology that offer barbering, manicurist, cosmetology, electrology and esthetician services.

Police reports show the raids resulted in at least two arrests, nearly $20,000 in fines and 49 citations mostly for health and safety infractions. Reports show police and code officers issued several citations for not having a business license, and parole violations. A barber was taken into custody for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana and released.

Hair Shack, in business since 1984, was issued 11 BBC health and safety citations and fined $1,500. Owner and barber stylist Kevon Gordon, well known in city civic and business circles including the DARE anti-drug program, angrily questioned police tactics. "These were minor violations like combs out of place." He claims during business hours five law enforcement officers, three BBC inspectors and three code compliance officers bolted through his front door while he was away on lunch break.

Barber Ron Jones who was watching television with a customer in the shop lobby claims officers and inspectors jumped from their vehicles and rushed the shop.

"They said ‘this is a health and safety inspection'." Jones, a barber for more than 20 years who is used to BBC inspectors dropping in unannounced, claims he was shocked to see them accompanied by five police officers dressed in bulletproof vests. "When I asked what's going on, an inspector showed her badge and began inspecting equipment and supply drawers. She then asked for my driver's license, I complied. She wrote down the license number, as she handed the license back to me a police officer snatched it and left the building to run my license for outstanding warrants," said Jones.

Jones said officers conducted a lengthy search of the shop opening closets and drawers. He noted officers picked up a box of crackers from the counter and shook it. "They asked my customer - "do you have any outstanding warrants?" the customer replied "no" but was clearly intimidated and confused by the police action."

"They were looking for ‘something' beside business and health and safety violations," said Gordon who says he plans to ask for an investigation into the raid.

"I've been here 24 years. We serve men, women and children. I don't tolerate loitering, drug dealing or rough play. What were the criteria used for selecting a business? Was this racial profiling? What was BBC's ‘real' role in the raids? We have no prior history of police trouble," said Gordon.

He claims the huge police presence in and around his shop aroused the suspicions of neighboring business owners, threatened to impugn his community standing and left him and Jones humiliated in the eyes of customers, many of whom are law enforcement officers. "Did they raid the white owned nail salon two doors down? I want answers," demanded Gordon.

"I've never seen inspectors accompanied by police in flack jackets," said Donzell ‘Vader' Tate a barber at Top of the Line Barbershop since 2005. "I didn't know individual barbers needed a business license," said Tate who was cited for not having one.

"The police rushed in and locked the doors. When we asked for search warrants, an officer announced this is a ‘health and safety inspection'. They kept insisting, ‘this is a DCA operation'," said Tate.

L.C. Whitehorn, Jr., a Top of the Line barber since 2005, was taken into custody on three misdemeanor violations and released. He was also cited and fined for not having a business license. Whitehorn claimed the BBC inspector showed a badge and while she performed routine checks for cleanliness and professional licensing, police and code officers took over the barbershop and demanded that everyone including customers show identification. They questioned customers and asked if anyone had warrants,

In addition to Hair Shack, and Top of the Line, the series of raids targeted Fades Unlimited, Untouchables, Hair Professionals and Hair Sculptures.

Hair Sculptures beauty salon co-owner Jackie Brazeau who is Latino said while she welcomes code compliance in the industry, the heavy handed police tactics left her shaken.

"I was shocked and insulted. They walked in and demanded an inspection. This was unusual since one of the inspectors in the raid had performed a routine inspection in December." Brazeau said "police officers rushed to the rear of the shop and started opening cabinets and drawers. They appeared to be looking for drugs or something. It was very confusing. They searched the place said some trays were not labeled and left the shop."

"Wouldn't the energies of these state and local agencies be better spent educating and encouraging small minority business owners, particularly (Black male) owed?" said hair products supplier Lorenzo Griffin. "I've serviced the Hair Shack for 25 years I've never witnessed even a whiff of drug or criminal activity."

"This operation was clearly a blatant abuse of police power. They co-opted the authority of the DCA hoping to uncover rampant drug dealing and criminal activity - without a search warrant, in violation of the barber's civil rights," said Griffin.

While You Slept Your Congress Took Away Your Constitution

2008-04-15T11:17:00.002-04:00

YouTube | April 11, 2008

Co-Payments Soar for Drugs With High Prices

2008-04-15T10:43:00.003-04:00

Robin Steinwand had been paying $20 a month for her multiple sclerosis drug, which she keeps in the refrigerator. When she went to pick up her prescription in January, it cost $325.

By GINA KOLATA
NY Times.com

Health insurance companies are rapidly adopting a new pricing system for very expensive drugs, asking patients to pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars for prescriptions for medications that may save their lives or slow the progress of serious diseases.

With the new pricing system, insurers abandoned the traditional arrangement that has patients pay a fixed amount, like $10, $20 or $30 for a prescription, no matter what the drug’s actual cost. Instead, they are charging patients a percentage of the cost of certain high-priced drugs, usually 20 to 33 percent, which can amount to thousands of dollars a month.

The system means that the burden of expensive health care can now affect insured people, too.

No one knows how many patients are affected, but hundreds of drugs are priced this new way. They are used to treat diseases that may be fairly common, including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia, hepatitis C and some cancers. There are no cheaper equivalents for these drugs, so patients are forced to pay the price or do without.

Insurers say the new system keeps everyone’s premiums down at a time when some of the most innovative and promising new treatments for conditions like cancer and rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis can cost $100,000 and more a year.

But the result is that patients may have to spend more for a drug than they pay for their mortgages, more, in some cases, than their monthly incomes.

The system, often called Tier 4, began in earnest with Medicare drug plans and spread rapidly. It is now incorporated into 86 percent of those plans. Some have even higher co-payments for certain drugs, a Tier 5.

Now Tier 4 is also showing up in insurance that people buy on their own or acquire through employers, said Dan Mendelson of Avalere Health, a research organization in Washington. It is the fastest-growing segment in private insurance, Mr. Mendelson said. Five years ago it was virtually nonexistent in private plans, he said. Now 10 percent of them have Tier 4 drug categories.

Private insurers began offering Tier 4 plans in response to employers who were looking for ways to keep costs down, said Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, which represents most of the nation’s health insurers. When people who need Tier 4 drugs pay more for them, other subscribers in the plan pay less for their coverage.

But the new system sticks seriously ill people with huge bills, said James Robinson, a health economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “It is very unfortunate social policy,” Dr. Robinson said. “The more the sick person pays, the less the healthy person pays.”

Traditionally, the idea of insurance was to spread the costs of paying for the sick.

“This is an erosion of the traditional concept of insurance,” Mr. Mendelson said. “Those beneficiaries who bear the burden of illness are also bearing the burden of cost.”

And often, patients say, they had no idea that they would be faced with such a situation.

It happened to Robin Steinwand, 53, who has multiple sclerosis.

In January, shortly after Ms. Steinwand renewed her insurance policy with Kaiser Permanente, she went to refill her prescription for Copaxone. She had been insured with Kaiser for 17 years through her husband, a federal employee, and had had no complaints about the coverage.

She had been taking Copaxone since multiple sclerosis was diagnosed in 2000, buying a 30 days’ supply at a time. And even though the drug costs $1,900 a month, Kaiser required only a $20 co-payment.

Not this time. When Ms. Steinwand went to pick up her prescription at a pharmacy near her home in Silver Spring, Md., the pharmacist handed her a bill for $325.

There must be a mistake, Ms. Steinwand said. So the pharmacist checked with her supervisor. The new price was correct. Kaiser’s policy had changed. Now Kaiser was charging 25 percent of the cost of the drug up to a maximum of $325 per prescription. Her annual cost would be $3,900 and unless her insurance changed or the drug dropped in price, it would go on for the rest of her life.

“I charged it, then got into my car and burst into tears,” Ms. Steinwand said.

She needed the drug, she said, because it can slow the course of her disease. And she knew she would just have to pay for it, but it would not be easy.

“It’s a tough economic time for everyone,” she said. “My son will start college in a year and a half. We are asking ourselves, can we afford a vacation? Can we continue to save for retirement and college?”

Although Kaiser advised patients of the new plan in its brochure that it sent out in the open enrollment period late last year, Ms. Steinwand did not notice it. And private insurers, Mr. Mendelson said, can legally change their coverage to one in which some drugs are Tier 4 with no advance notice.

Medicare drug plans have to notify patients but, Mr. Mendelson said, “that doesn’t mean the person will hear about it.” He added, “You don’t read all your mail.”

Some patients said they had no idea whether their plan changed or whether it always had a Tier 4. The new system came as a surprise when they found out that they needed an expensive drug.

That’s what happened to Robert W. Banning of Arlington, Va., when his doctor prescribed Sprycel for his chronic myelogenous leukemia. The drug can block the growth of cancer cells, extending lives. It is a tablet to be taken twice a day — no need for chemotherapy infusions.

Mr. Banning, 81, a retired owner of car dealerships, thought he had good insurance through AARP. But Sprycel, which he will have to take for the rest of his life, costs more than $13,500 for a 90-day supply, and Mr. Banning soon discovered that the AARP plan required him to pay more than $4,000.

Mr. Banning and his son, Robert Banning Jr., have accepted the situation. “We’re not trying to make anybody the heavy,” the father said.

So far, they have not purchased the drug. But if they do, they know that the expense would go on and on, his son said. “Somehow or other, myself and my family will do whatever it takes. You don’t put your parent on a scale.”

But Ms. Steinwand was not so sanguine. She immediately asked Kaiser why it had changed its plan.

The answer came in a letter from the federal Office of Personnel Management, which negotiates with health insurers in the plan her husband has as a federal employee. Kaiser classifies drugs like Copaxone as specialty drugs. They, the letter said, “are high-cost drugs used to treat relatively few people suffering from complex conditions like anemia, cancer, hemophilia, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and human growth hormone deficiency.”

And Kaiser, the agency added, had made a convincing argument that charging a percentage of the cost of these drugs “helped lower the rates for federal employees.”

Ms. Steinwand can change plans at the end of the year, choosing one that allows her to pay $20 for the Copaxone, but she worries about whether that will help. “I am a little nervous,” she said. “Will the next company follow suit next year?”

But it turns out that she won’t have to worry, at least for the rest of this year.

A Kaiser spokeswoman, Sandra R. Gregg, said on Friday that Kaiser had decided to suspend the change for the program involving federal employees in the mid-Atlantic region while it reviewed the new policy. The suspension will last for the rest of the year, she said. Ms. Steinwand and others who paid the new price for their drugs will be repaid the difference between the new price and the old co-payment.

Ms. Gregg explained that Kaiser had been discussing the new pricing plan with the Office of Personnel Management over the previous few days because patients had been raising questions about it. That led to the decision to suspend the changed pricing system.

“Letters will go out next week,” Ms. Gregg said.

But some with the new plans say they have no way out.

Julie Bass, who lives near Orlando, Fla., has metastatic breast cancer, lives on Social Security disability payments, and because she is disabled, is covered by insurance through a Medicare H.M.O. Ms. Bass, 52, said she had no alternatives to her H.M.O. She said she could not afford a regular Medicare plan, which has co-payments of 20 percent for such things as emergency care, outpatient surgery and scans. That left her with a choice of two Medicare H.M.O’s that operate in her region. But of the two H.M.O’s, her doctors accept only Wellcare.

Now, she said, one drug her doctor may prescribe to control her cancer is Tykerb. But her insurer, Wellcare, classifies it as Tier 4, and she knows she cannot afford it.

Wellcare declined to say what Tykerb might cost, but its list price according to a standard source, Red Book, is $3,480 for 150 tablets, which may last a patient 21 days. Wellcare requires patients to pay a third of the cost of its Tier 4 drugs.

“For everybody in my position with metastatic breast cancer, there are times when you are stable and can go off treatment,” Ms. Bass said. “But if we are progressing, we have to be on treatment, or we will die.”

“People’s eyes need to be opened,” she said. “They need to understand that these drugs are very costly, and there are a lot of people out there who are struggling with these costs.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 15, 2008
An article on Monday about a large increase in insurance co-payments for high-priced drugs misstated the way the multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone is administered. It is injected, not taken in pill form.

MORE & MORE AMERICANS GOING HUNGRY

2008-04-13T21:57:00.003-04:00

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL on PBS

WATCH HUNGER IN AMERICA

WATCH EXPOSÉ FARM SUBSIDIES

WATCH DAVID BECKMANN INTERVIEW

The news at the grocery store is grim for many. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, food prices rose by 4% last year, the largest increase in 17 years. And, the USDA predicts they will rise another 4% this year. Eggs are up 40% in the past year; milk up 26% a gallon; a loaf of standard bread, 20%.
All across the nation families, government agencies and food banks are feeling the pinch. So many people are in precarious straits our government figures 28 million Americans will be using food stamps this year, the highest level since the program began in the 1960s. Almost one in l0 people in Ohio get food stamps; one in eight in Michigan, and one in six West Virginians. The rising food prices make that assistance worth less and less and food banks and pantries are facing increased need and those same higher prices.

As so many people face empty fridges and bare pantries, American farmers are going all-out to meet the world-wide demand for food — and earning record prices for their efforts, as they should. Farm income almost doubled last year, and is now reaching an all time high. With grain prices skyrocketing and the federal deficit out of sight, this would seem the moment to cut back on those tens of billions of dollars that taxpayers shower on milk producers, cotton and rice farmers, and growers of corn, soybeans, wheat, and sugar — subsidies that keep coming whether they're needed or not. Our farm policies frankly are a ramshackle, a costly mess — a monster jerrybuilt by politics. What was supposed to be a temporary financial safety net for imperiled family farmers has become a huge boondoggle for a fraction of wealthy farmers, including landowners who've never gotten close enough to a barn to slip on the manure. But you don't have to take my word for it. Listen to a team of journalists from the Washington Post —which by the way, won six Pulitzer prizes this week. They spent over a year producing a long series of painstaking reports on farm subsidies. This account of what the post reporters found was produced by my colleagues at Exposé.

OUR ECONOMY: Inequality of wealth and income

2008-04-13T11:12:00.002-04:00

Researcher: Demetrius D.

Marriner S. Eccles who served as Franklin D. Roosevelt 's Chairman of the Federal Reserve from November, 1934 to February, 1948 detailed what he believed caused the Depression in his memoirs, Beckoning Frontiers (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1951):

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation s economic machinery. [Emphasis in original.] Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. This served them as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied to themselves the kind of effective demand for their products that would justify a reinvestment of their capital accumulations in new plants. In consequence, as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped.

That is what happened to us in the twenties. We sustained high levels of employment in that period with the aid of an exceptional expansion of debt outside of the banking system. This debt was provided by the large growth of business savings as well as savings by individuals, particularly in the upper-income groups where taxes were relatively low. Private debt outside of the banking system increased about fifty per cent. This debt, which was at high interest rates, largely took the form of mortgage debt on housing, office, and hotel structures, consumer installment debt, brokers' loans, and foreign debt. The stimulation to spending by debt-creation of this sort was short-lived and could not be counted on to sustain high levels of employment for long periods of time. Had there been a better distribution of the current income from the national product -- in other words, had there been less savings by business and the higher-income groups and more income in the lower groups -- we should have had far greater stability in our economy. Had the six billion dollars, for instance, that were loaned by corporations and wealthy individuals for stock-market speculation been distributed to the public as lower prices or higher wages and with less profits to the corporations and the well-to-do, it would have prevented or greatly moderated the economic collapse that began at the end of 1929.

The time came when there were no more poker chips to be loaned on credit. Debtors thereupon were forced to curtail their consumption in an effort to create a margin that could be applied to the reduction of outstanding debts. This naturally reduced the demand for goods of all kinds and brought on what seemed to be overproduction, but was in reality underconsumption when judged in terms of the real world instead of the money world. This, in turn, brought about a fall in prices and employment.

Unemployment further decreased the consumption of goods, which further increased unemployment, thus closing the circle in a continuing decline of prices. Earnings began to disappear, requiring economies of all kinds in the wages, salaries, and time of those employed. And thus again the vicious circle of deflation was closed until one third of the entire working population was unemployed, with our national income reduced by fifty per cent, and with the aggregate debt burden greater than ever before, not in dollars, but measured by current values and income that represented the ability to pay. Fixed charges, such as taxes, railroad and other utility rates, insurance and interest charges, clung close to the 1929 level and required such a portion of the national income to meet them that the amount left for consumption of goods was not sufficient to support the population.

Joe Madison Breaks Down the Darfur Genocide and Slavery in Sudan

2008-04-13T10:49:00.004-04:00

LISTEN HERE - 'real player only'

If you don't know what's going on in africa...here you go. Please black people get informed!!! and find out what you can do!!!!!

Michael Eric Dyson Puts It Down

2008-04-13T10:16:00.003-04:00

SEE VIDEO HERE

Author and cultural critic Michael Eric Dyson talked about his body of writing, the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the presidential candidacy of Senator Barack Obama and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Professor Dyson talked about issues such as the role of the church in black culture. He discussed the problem of black people who excel being considered exceptions while those who do unacceptable things being considered part of the norm. Professor Dyson reacted to a video clip of John McWhorter from March 2, 2008, talking about hip hop. He also responded to a video clip from July 1, 2004, of Bill Cosby talking about personal responsibility. He responded to telephone calls and electronic mail.

Ventura’s 9/11 Questions Break Through Mainstream Media Dam

2008-04-09T09:19:00.001-04:00

THE AMERICAN DRUG WAR....A MUST SEE DOCUMENTARY

2008-04-07T21:45:00.000-04:00

The Church of Oprah Exposed

2008-04-07T21:23:00.001-04:00

OBM:For thoes who call themselves Christians....If this is not enough I do not know what is!!!! People.....Ladies.....Sista's....Please wake up!!!!

28 Million American's On Food Stamps By End Of This Year

2008-04-02T11:46:00.000-04:00

Jesse Ventura ...Nails It!!!!!

2008-04-02T10:46:00.002-04:00

Jesse Ventura Part 1

Jesse Ventura Part 2

Jesse Ventura Part 3

Jesse Ventura Part 4

Jesse Ventura Part 5

Bill Moyers Journal on Race, Part 1, with former Senator Fred Harris (3/28/08)

2008-04-01T06:59:00.003-04:00

OBM: Part 1 of this (GREAT) show, which focuses on racism over the years, giving a history whites would all do well to familiarize themselves with. One of the few real attempts that the U.S. government made to really look at and learn the destructive power of their racism. Unfortunately it came only after wide spread violence and years of horrible poverty. The problem is that after white people looked at what they had created as a country they quickly began to reinstitute the racist laws and practices that continued these problems during the Reagan years. I am a beneficiary of the racism atonement programs that were started after the Kerner report. My father was able to get a family sustaining wage job and our family flourished. My siblings I and received a much superior education than our parents. Being the youngest I received the best education of my siblings. Because of our education, free lunch programs, and even bussing (which became assimilation programs that I oppose) we all have been able to more easily build professional careers and maintain financial stability with our families. My point...while slow...the racial atonement programs did work and instead of ending them they should of continued and be enhanced, and not have been eliminated or become under funded, corruptly managed, or hollow political campaign speak.

The 2009 Job Market

2008-03-31T09:14:00.000-04:00

Al Sharpton Smokes Fox Host about Obama's Pastor

2008-03-26T16:04:00.001-04:00

FOX & the Media Lies!! Barack Obama Pastor Wright

2008-03-23T08:26:00.001-04:00

FOX lied! Here's the whole context!

Different Standards for Black and White Preachers

2008-03-23T07:29:00.004-04:00

OBM: Massa Amerikkka & racist white men....please excuse Pastor Wright for stating facts about some of the damage Amerikkka has and is doing to other people. Please don't pay him no mind. He’s just one of thoes field hands who's always complaining. Massa...we's lov's you...and want to say thank you for bringing us negro's here, giving us longer jail sentences for the same crimes, hiring a few of us in your fine companies, for providing our neighborhoods with fine alcohol stores and drugs, for taking the time to under educate & brainwash our children with the lies of this great country, and best of all...we'll always remember those good "no-wage" paying jobs that you use to build our beautiful country. Thank you Massa!!!!

Posted March 19, 2008
Cenk Uygur
The Huffington Post

Rudy Giuliani's priest has been accused in grand jury proceedings of molesting several children and covering up the molestation of others. Giuliani would not disavow him on the campaign trail and still works with him.

Mitt Romney was part of a church that did not view black Americans as equals and actively discriminated against them. He stayed with that church all the way into his early thirties, until they were finally forced to change their policies to come into compliance with civil rights legislation. Romney never disavowed his church back then or now. He said he was proud of the faith of his fathers.

Jerry Falwell said America had 9/11 coming because we tolerated gays, feminists and liberals. It was our fault. Our chickens had come home to roost, if you will. John McCain proudly received his support and even spoke at his university's commencement.

Reverend John Hagee has called the Catholic Church the "Great Whore." He has said that the Anti-Christ will rise out of the European Union (of course, the Anti-Christ will also be Jewish). He has said all Muslims are trained to kill and will be part of the devil's army when Armageddon comes (which he hopes is soon). John McCain continues to say he is proud of Reverend Hagee's endorsement.

Reverend Rod Parsley believes America was founded to destroy Islam. Since this is such an outlandish claim, I have to add for the record, that he is not kidding. Reverend Parsley says Islam is an "anti-Christ religion" brought down from a "demon spirit." Of course, we are in a war against all Muslims, including presumably Muslim-Americans. Buts since Parsley believes this is a Christian nation and that it should be run as a theocracy, he is not very concerned what Muslim-Americans think.

John McCain says Reverend Rod Parsley is his "spiritual guide."

What separates all of these outrageous preachers from Barack Obama's? You guessed it. They're white and Reverend Jeremiah Wright is not. If it's not racism that's causing the disparity in media treatment of these preachers, then what is it?

I'm willing to listen to other possible explanations. And I am inclined to believe that the people these preachers go after are more important than the race of the preacher. It's one thing to go after gays, liberals and Muslims -- that seems to be perfectly acceptable in America -- it's another to accuse white folks of not living up to their ideals.

I think there is another factor at play as well. The media is deathly afraid of calling out preachers of any stripe for insane propaganda from the pulpits for fear that they will be labeled as anti-Christian. But criticism of Rev. Wright falls into their comfort zone. It's easy to blame him for being anti-American because he criticizes American foreign and domestic policy.

If Rev. Wright had preached about discriminating against gay Americans or Muslims, there probably would not have been any outcry at all. That falls into the category of "respect their hateful opinions because they cloak themselves in the church."

But one thing is indisputable -- the enormous disparity in how the media has covered these white preachers as opposed to Rev. Wright. Have you ever even heard of Rod Parsley? As you can see from what I listed above, all of these white preachers have said and done the most outlandish and offensive things you can imagine -- and hardly a peep.

If the disparity in coverage isn't racist, then what is it?

Furor Over Recorded Planned Parenthood Calls Targeting Minority Abortions

2008-03-18T15:46:00.001-04:00

Chicago school starts financial education early

2008-03-11T14:07:00.002-04:00

Starting in first grade, classes are given $20,000 to invest

The Associated Press
updated 4:55 p.m. ET, Sun., March. 9, 2008

CHICAGO - Like their peers elsewhere, the students at a one-of-a-kind public elementary school on the South Side of Chicago are dazzled by pop-culture stars — Beyonce and Common, Kanye West and Lil' Wayne, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade.

Listen closely to the hallway chatter at Ariel Community Academy, though, and you may hear unexpected references to uncool dudes like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. After all, these kids have their portfolios to worry about.

The Ariel school is an experiment in financial literacy with real-life oomph: Each incoming first-grade class gets $20,000 that the children ultimately get to pick stocks for and manage. The goal is to add an I — investing — to the three R's, according John Rogers Jr., chairman and chief executive of Ariel Capital Management, the Chicago-based money management firm that established the school in 1996.

At a time when pensions are being phased out and people must rely more on their own investment smarts, Rogers thinks saving and investment should be an integral part of the curriculum at schools across the country.

"It's important to have all the reading and writing and arithmetic skill sets, but we can't think of anything else more important than to be able to be financially viable and competent as you start to build your working career," he said.

Experts say easy credit, aggressive marketing and the dizzying array of financial products and cashless spending options have led many American consumers astray, making it more essential than ever for kids to learn about money.

Iowa State University professor Tahira Hira, a member of the newly formed President's Advisory Council on Financial Literacy, is among those advocating that personal finance be required teaching at every elementary school.

"People who were brought up with some lesson in saving or borrowing act differently than those who weren't," Hira said. Opening bank accounts for children, buying them stock in a fast-food company or the company that makes their favorite toy, teaching them to spend some, save some and give some away when they receive cash as a gift — "our research shows that all those things do matter," she said.

The Ariel school's success can't be fully judged until its first graduates, now juniors in high school, make their own mark. But high math test scores give it a blue chip reputation and some cachet for its students in a mostly black, high-poverty area.

When eighth grader Victoria Bills talks about investments with her friends, for example, "They're like, 'Oh Victoria, that's like so cool!'" she said. "They're like, 'I want to go to that school.'"

That's music to the ears of the 49-year-old Rogers, who has long put a special emphasis on trying to encourage other African-Americans to save and invest more.

A South Side native, Rogers first got enthused about investing at age 12 when his father began buying him different stocks every birthday and Christmas.

After graduating from Princeton, where he was captain of the basketball team, he started Ariel when he was 24 with his own savings and investments begged from friends and family. Today, it has more than $13 billion under management in three mutual funds and separate accounts for 89 institutional clients. Rogers is also a close adviser to Sen. Barack Obama, who lives just five blocks down the street from the school in the Kenwood neighborhood.

Inspired by a symposium he attended on financial literacy in the mid-1990s, Rogers had Ariel team with fellow Chicago investment firm John Nuveen & Co. to fund the innovative school program.

The concept is simple: Ariel's experts manage a $20,000 portfolio for each class until sixth grade, briefing them regularly along the way, and then begin turning over the decisions to the children. Upon graduation from eighth grade, each class returns the initial investment amount to the school for another first-grade class and donates, invests or pockets the profits.

After giving half the gains to community charity programs or school initiatives, each student can then take the rest in cash or invest it in a Section 529 college savings plan, in which case they are given an additional $1,000. Last year, 80 percent of graduates invested their 150 shares in a 529.

The financial focus extends well beyond the portfolio at a school where hallways are named after Wall Street and other marketplaces, and students announce the latest business news twice daily over the PA system.

Financial concepts are woven into the curriculum, with first graders learning about core economic principles, for example, while eighth graders put together their own business plans. All 440 students are offered free tutoring from Ariel's professionals on Saturdays, and the older kids have the chance to hear analyst presentations and attend meetings at McDonald's Corp., where Rogers sits on the board of directors.

There's nothing dry about such schooling to these kids, according to Connie Moran, the school's director of financial education.

"When I say we're going to talk about money today, they don't go 'Eeeeewww' like some kids might," said Moran, a former bond analyst. "It's like saying we're going to recess — that's never a problem."

Moran said her students soak up financial information like sponges. Besides, she noted, "We don't wait until our students are 16 to teach them how to read. Why wait until they're 16 to teach them how to manage a bank account?"

Twice a week or so, junior boards of directors elected by the seventh and eighth grades gather around a table under a giant mural depicting a bull and bear to discuss their class holdings.

With the whack of a gavel one recent day, they were off and running. The lively discussion touched on everything from the merits of the maker of Ugg boots to their tendency to load up on tech stocks to whether they should profit from companies that make weapons used in the war in Iraq.

Student Jordan Lillybridge likes sitting in the boardroom.

"It gives me an opportunity to express my opinion on which stock we should pick — especially me and Sony, because I am a big fan of Sony," said Lillybridge, who is 12. "Also Panera Bread."

Bills, too, revels in the whole experience, keeping tabs on financial news and monitoring her class' stocks at home.

"When I go to this school I actually feel special, because I'm learning things that most kids probably wouldn't even learn," she said, adding that she hopes to make enough in the market to help her mom.

Rogers, whose company spends nearly $1 million a year on the school, would love to see it churn out future portfolio managers, accountants and investment bankers. But for now he finds it "absolutely thrilling" just to sit in on the children's discussions about stocks.

Nurturing their education and watching them grow up and have fun with the stock market, he said, is "one of the greatest feelings in the world."

Pasror Manning attacks Obama

2008-03-11T10:20:00.003-04:00

OBM: I checked several of this guys clips out on youtube and I suggest you do the same. First this guy is no Christian pastor. A pastor is able to make his point without attacking and degrading people. I'll pray for this guy. Second...he is a shining example of why blacks can not criticize blacks like this in public. The racist are going to use what he says a weapon and justification for themselves. I do agree that blacks have areas of physiological improvement that are desperately needed. Can you say “Willie Lynch”….So many of us are still asleep and focusing on material possessions, rap music, sports, and who's gettin' wit' who. We need to spend more time focused on education of ourselves and or kids, learning our history, learning truthful corrupt American history and not “his-story” full of lies, local and national employment issues, crime and police brutality, health issues, and our spirituality to name a few. I do agree with the point of the reason middle age and elderly whites like Obama. Obama is not a confronter on issues of race. I also agree that God often has a leader experience jail either to break the person first so he can use them later or as a test of the leader’s faith and an example to those who follow them, but I disagree that jail time makes a leader.

America's Greatest Hits

2008-03-04T14:46:00.002-05:00

By Kennie Anderson, Land of Hypocrisy
Guerrillafunk.com

Truth often passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Second it is violently opposed. Third it is accepted as being self-evident. This process occurs when a new truth is revealed that contradicts current superstition, whether the truth comes out about the Earth not being the center of the universe or the truth comes out about the horrible atrocities performed by the United States government.

Yes, violence and oppression exist all over the world, and the United States is not the only country that has done wrong and made mistakes. But there is currently only one country that has conducted destruction with such strong involvement on a global scale. There is only one imperialistic empire that has been so deeply linked to so many corrupt dictatorships, oppressive regimes, and corporate exploitations. This material will focus on that one country.

Many simply say to people who criticize the government, "If you don't like the country, then why don't you leave?" First of all, there is no utopia, and concerned citizens will point out problems and strive for improvements wherever they live. Running away from these problems will not solve them. Additionally, if they were to leave the country, the problems inherent to the country (especially militarism and corporate exploitation) would often affect them more if they lived abroad.

Readers not raised in America probably have a better understanding. It is easier to recognize wrongdoings when one hasn't been educated by the perpetrator. Many Americans will see the inverted US flag on the cover of my book and be overwhelmed with defensiveness or hostility and would rather burn it than read it. Most of those people have never even considered the possibility that the United States might be guilty of some very serious wrongdoings.

If this work seems to be biased towards the oppressed people of the world and doesn't defend the position of the government or corrupt corporations, it is because there is no need to publicize the position that is stated in 99% of the mass media. The purpose of this work is to accurately present the world from a perspective other than the one that is hammered out by the mass media and show the viewpoints of those other than the rich and powerful.

Despite the constant bombardment of propaganda boasting how great America is, there are those who have seen the world from non-American eyes. Many will read this material with a sense of confirmation. These are the people who already have suspicions about the interests and motives of the rich and powerful. There are also those who will read this work with great scrutiny. Hopefully they will eventually apply that same scrutiny to the misinformation and deception being disseminated by the media for their corporate and government sponsors.

It is difficult for people to change their opinions after they 've reached a certain stage of development in their experiences and education. Beliefs are too strongly rooted in the foundations of their earlier years. Opinions were molded by early environmental factors and experiences, and many reject anything that does not support the information they were exposed to earlier.

The premature formulation of irreversible opinions is the result of people making judgments with only limited information. Many choose what they believe without researching a subject, and end up basing their belief on the information they are initially exposed to, even if that information is completely false.

This material focuses on presenting facts of record that have been ignored or concealed by mainstream sources of information.

America's Greatest Hits

Astonishingly, many Americans seem to be completely unaware of many of the atrocities committed by their own country. Ripping off the blindfold, the following contains a partial list of the death toll that American militarism has caused in the world during recent history (nearly all of the listings are within the past 60 years). The facts of this list will be expanded upon in following sections. Additional atrocities will also be presented in following sections.
This list includes interventions conducted both overtly and covertly. It includes the use of force through militaries armed, trained, funded, and directed by the US. It is true that some of these atrocities only had a few US officials actively involved, but these puppet armies would never have been capable of such destruction without US supplying and assistance (as detailed following sections show). There are countless mass killings missing from this list that the US is responsible for, but this list covers the most violent crimes committed by the US government in recent history.

Many horrible casualties are listed here, but it is important to not just think in terms of numbers and statistics. We should visualize each of the beautiful lives that were destroyed. Imagine stadiums filled with Korean children dying from napalm before your eyes. Visualize the mothers in Iraq digging up the corpses of their children. Picture children in Vietnam who were born without legs or arms because of residual effects of Agent Orange. Envision tens of thousands of Japanese civilians being wiped by out by atomic bombs before they even knew what hit them. Think about the children in Nicaragua crying on the street, seeking their mothers, not knowing that they had been killed by US-created contras. See the atrocities through the eyes of countless loving fathers in El Salvador who were forced to watch their infant children beat to death against rocks and their wives nailed upside down with their breasts cut off and skin of their face peeled off. Think about what it must have been like to be those victims or their grieving loved ones.

Worthy of noting is that almost all of these slaughters have been directed at non-whites and the vast majority of the victims of US militarism are civilians. The estimated ratio of civilians to soldiers that the US kills overseas is 10 to 1. In many cases the ratio is much worse. These innocent lives are the victims of the relentless drive by the United States' corporate and military elite for global economic domination. These victims have given their lives so that a small percentage of Americans can prosper.

The following is a partial list of atrocities, massacres, murders, and injuries in recent history for which the United States is responsible:

• 3,000,000 Vietnamese murdered over the course of about 30 years of US aggression.

• Well over 300,000 Japanese were massacred when the US raided Tokyo and dropped nuclear bombs on the urban civilian areas of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

• 600,000 civilians were killed in Cambodia by US bombing between 1969 and 1975.

• Over 500,000 people were killed in Laos when America subjected civilians to "secret bombing" from 1964 to 1973, dropping over two million tons of bombs on the country. Over one fourth of the population also became refugees.

• 100,000 people were murdered in South Korea prior to the Korean War by a brutal repression supported by US forces in 1945. This includes between 30,000 and 40,000 killed during the suppression of a peasant revolt on Cheju Island.

• Up to 4,500,000 Koreans were killed from 1951 to 1953 during America's massive slaughter in the Korean War.

• 200,000 were murdered when the Philippines were conquered by American forces. (This took place just over 100 years ago.)

• 23,000 people were slaughtered in Taiwan by US-backed, trained, equipped, and funded forces (Chiang's Nationalist army) during the late 1940s.

• 700,000 Indonesians (mostly landless peasants) were murdered in 1965 when the US armed and supported General Suharto.

• 200,000 were slaughtered in East Timor in 1975 by General Suharto with US support.

• 750,000 civilians were driven from their homes in East Timor by Indonesian forces in 1999 and 10,000 were killed.

• Over 1,700,000 Iraqis have been killed by US bombings and sanctions, mostly women and children.

• Over 1,000,000 lives were lost during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s in which the US used direct force and supported Hussein and Iraq.

• 35,000 Kurds were killed, 3,500 villages were destroyed, and between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 became homeless as a result of aggression by Turkey with US arming and training in the 1990s.

• Over 1,000,000 people were killed in Afghanistan's civil war from 1979 to 1992, in which the US strongly supported the Moujahedeen, the most violent and sadistic of the forces. (This also set the stage for the CIA-backed Taliban to attain power.)

• 45,000 people were killed in South Lebanon since 1982 by Israel, always armed and supported by the US.

• Thousands have been killed in Palestine and millions (in both Palestine and Lebanon) were made refugees by US-backed Israel.

• Over 150,000 were killed in Greece when America advised, equipped, and financed violent interventions in the late 1940s and late 1960s.

• Over 75,000 civilians were killed and over one million refugees were created in El Salvador from 1980 to 1994 when the US intensely supported the efforts of a brutal regime and its death squads to eliminate a popular uprising.

• 40,000 civilians were killed by the US-backed National Guard in Nicaragua over the course of almost 50 years.

• 30,000 lives were killed by the US contras in Nicaragua from 1979 to 1989.

• 200,000 Guatemalans were slaughtered from 1960-1990s by a military apparatus trained, armed, funded, and assisted by America.

• Over 35,000 Colombian civilians have been killed during the US-supported Columbian war against left-wing rebels.

• More than 4,000 innocent civilians were killed in Panama during the US invasion in 1989.

• Hundreds of thousands were killed by US direct and indirect interventions in Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Peru, and Argentina from the mid 60s through the 80s.

• 50,000 Haitians were killed when the US military destroyed a peasant uprising in 1915.

• Between 4,000 and 5,000 Haitians were killed in the early 1990s by US-established forces.

• Thousands were killed in the Dominican Republic during the 1960s when US and Dominican troops crushed a pro-Bosch rebellion.

• Over 3,000 were killed and countless others injured by US interventions in Cuba.

• Hundreds were killed or injured when the US invaded Grenada in 1983.

• Over 50,000 Somalians were killed between 1978 and 1990 by US-supported Siad Barre.

• Up to 10,000 more Somalians were killed by US troops during America's "humanitarian mission" in 1993.

• In the US-supported Rwandan genocide, an estimated 800,000 people were killed in just 100 days in 1994.

• Over 300,000 were killed and 80,000 were crippled in Angola from a US-supported civil war.

• Tens of thousands were killed and up to 200,000 were tortured in Chad by Hissen Habre with US support during the 1980's.

• 1,500,000 were killed between 1980 and 1988 in southern Africa by the US-armed South Africa.

• Thousands of people in Pacific islands, Puerto Rico, Utah, California, Nevada, Washington, New Mexico, and various other places have been killed, infected, or harmed as a result of US weapon experiments (especially nuclear weapons and weapons using depleted uranium).

• Hundreds of civil rights activists have been beaten, tortured, framed, and killed in the US by government agencies in recent history.

• Hundreds of Black Panther supporters and American Indians were framed, beaten, or murdered by the FBI and its cohorts in the late 60's and early 70's.

• Over a thousand American Muslims "disappeared" after September 11, 2001, and have been detained without evidence of wrongdoing.

• As of the this publishing, over 10,000 were killed in Afghanistan by America's "War on Terror."

Orwell Rolls In His Grave

2008-03-04T12:01:00.001-05:00

"Could a media system, controlled by a few global corporations with the ability to overwhelm all competing ... all » voices, be able to turn lies into truth?..."

This chilling documentary film examines the relationship between the media, corporate America, and government. In a country where the "top 1% control 90% of the wealth", the film argues that the media system is nothing but a "subsidiary of corporate America."

Director: Robert Kane Pappas - Run Time 1 Hour 46 Minutes «

Interview Proves Bush Planned Iraq War Before 911

2008-02-27T11:48:00.002-05:00

OBM: This is an ad for Ron Paul, but focus on the 60 minutes. part.

Dick Gregory at State of Black Union 08

2008-02-27T11:15:00.003-05:00

part 1

part 2

part 3

The Election Files

2008-02-23T05:36:00.001-05:00

The newest dvd from BBC Journalist Greg Palast check out his stories and buy the dvd that brings together his reports on the stolen elections at www.GregPalast.com

Nigga Technology

2008-02-23T05:29:00.000-05:00

Woman arrested for DWI, beat by police off camera

2008-02-23T05:13:00.000-05:00

THE U.S., ALL U.S. Banks, Corporations, and most U.S Wealthy profited and still are profiting from Slavery

2008-02-18T10:37:00.013-05:00

ALL U.S. BANKS ALL U.S. CORPORATIONS

THE UNITED STATES
OBM: What do you call a person who steals a large sum of money and with it starts successful businesses, continues his education, and produces products that earn him uncountable wealth? He also starts banks to manage his wealth as well as create new wealth for him. Then is exposed red handed for his crime and never apologies for it but instead, very slowly and in very small amounts gives money to the people whence he stole it form. I call him the lying thieving U.S. Country, U.S. Banks, and most U.S. Corporations. What do you call this person’s children who exploit and profit from this stolen wealth who say “It’s my father’s crime and money…I did not do it or steal it so I am not required to give it back.” I call them Accessories, Accomplishes and Co-conspirators.

Slavery and the American Economy
By Waldron H. Giles, Ph.D.

Slavery raises a host of negative images for Black people; so much so, they fail to realize the tremendous economic contributions they made, albeit forced, to the development of the United States into a world power. This lack of realization stems from the national shame of slavery and the concomitant national denial, which in reality has become a weak defense mechanism. To a large degree Blacks and whites have bought into this denial, albeit for different reasons. In spite of this contribution Blacks continue to vie for respect and acceptance by the very country that they practically own via a down payment with their own blood, sweat, and tears. Through the shame of slavery African Americans continue to increase the “Debt” they are owed instead of steadfastly demanding payment.

The resulting hypothesis of this economic analysis of slavery is that the current “Debt” is too large to foster healthy discussions with whites and continued avoidance of such discussions has been and will continue to be disguised under a variety of racist manipulations. The purpose of this economic analysis is to enlighten African Americans and end the impotence produced by this shame and to undo those stereotypical images of laziness, ignorance, criminal behavior, and incompetence.

The form of superiority imposed by self-pity continues to defeat the positive self-images and hinders the increased racial creativity and accomplishments that African Americans need in today’s jingoistic climate. Whether African descendants will be justly compensated for their sacrifices is not the principle issue, here. The paramount issue is that African Americans appreciate their contributions and constantly remind their heirs of the trillions of unpaid dollars earned by their ancestors. They and they alone made the largest national loan in history and financed the world’s greatest power. Most of that “loaned” money is still in circulation today and the “Debt” is still alive and real!

The first African slaves hit the shores of the United States in 1619 and were constantly imported into the US until 1860 even though importation had been outlawed in 1808. Over those intervening 246 years they contributed more than 605 billion hours of free labor, which funded the Industrial Revolution, financed most of the fortune 500 companies, helped finance two World Wars, and left a negative sociological impact on an entire race of people.

Slaves born in the US since slave importation started decreasing in 1810 supplied most of the labor. Importation as a source of free labor was replaced by forced breeding because it was a lot more profitable. However, the profits obtained from slave importation were phenomenal since slaves could be purchased in Africa for less than $40 and sold in the US for between $500 and $1,000. Profits obtained from a single ship traversing the golden triangle passage averaged greater than $175,000 even though as many as one in three of the slaves died during the middle passage. Commodities (cotton, tobacco, Bibles, and guns) were the cargoes on the other two legs of the triangle.

To determine the economic value of slavery, the population of slaves in the US was obtained from the US Census Bureau. It was assumed that, on average, slaves worked some 60 hours per week for 51 weeks during the years with the average pay rate over the 164 years at $.10 per hour. All of these assumptions are conservative since underreporting was a common practice since state and local taxes had to be paid on the number of slaves. This practice was offset since congressional representation counted slaves as 3/5 of a person.

The results of the economic value of this free labor are, when inflated conservatively at 3% to 2006 dollars, a staggering value of 20.3 trillion dollars or to put this number in a more visual perspective; it amounts to $563,450 per African American currently living in the US. This amount is low since slave labor was counted from the year 1700 instead of 1619 and, as mentioned previously, the census data, in all likelihood, is low for various taxing demands and for those members of the Black race that were able to pass for white or elude the census. The undercounting of Blacks still is a major problem for adequate representation, particularly in the South.

The 19.7 trillion dollar slave contribution is still within the US economy since the dollar has constantly inflated in value, and money like matter in never destroyed; it can be wasted but not destroyed, in an inflationary economy. This slave-induced contribution is still working and funding new ventures, within the US economy as we speak. Those who made this contribution, albeit forced, have been largely denied access to the very capital and business accouterments they developed.

Following the thread of these dollars would be another interesting aspect of black economic research since even without detailed research it is known that Aetna Insurance Co., E.I. Dupont, and J.P. Morgan, Brown University, to name a very, very few, reaped substantial benefits from the grim business of slavery. For example, Pierre Bauduy purchased 4 out of the original 16 shares issued for the E.I. DuPont Company for $8,000. Pierre Bauduy obtained his money from the profits of a Haitian plantation which he was forced to vacate during the Haitian revolution.

The manufacturers of slave ships and cotton merchants heavily financed Brown University in its early beginnings. Aetna Insurance Co. sold insurance policies on slaves to protect slave owners from the losses of run away slaves. The original capital for J.P. Morgan was derived from its cotton trading company in the South. So much fortune was amassed off the backs of the cotton, tobacco, and rice-picking slaves that J.P. Morgan loaned money to the US government during the Civil War.

Another way to view the economic contribution of slavery to the US economy would be to assume that only 5% of the value of the slave labor was invested in the stock market in the year the labor was accrued. Five percent was chosen since this is the most common bottom line that is found in Fortune 500 income statements. Using market growth data provided by the Rittenhouse Trust data and the moneys are accumulated from 1700 through 1830 (the beginning of the Rittenhouse data), yields a value of $6.42 trillion current dollars. The subsequent moneys are invested at the time they accrued yields an additional $1.44 trillion.

Combining these values leads to a staggering $7.86 quadrillion in 2006 dollars! With these staggering capital gains, we begin to gain insight into the US national avoidance on the subject of slave labor, reparations, and why African Americans are constantly being placed on the defensive around their monumental economic contribution. When one reflects on the magnitude of this capital, denial becomes a pitiful and yet effective excuse for continued domination of the people and nations that have been exploited.

Whereas, only four major institutions and corporations have been mentioned here, considering the vast sums of money most, if not all, major corporations have benefited in varying degrees from the $7,860 trillion of profits accrued from slavery. Major endowments to universities that have reluctantly, at best, supported Affirmative Action are another major financial thread yet to be unwound. Education and the business of education are another twist of irony for those who have struggled long and hard to escape the yoke and stigma of slavery.

The economic yields from slavery presented herein are for the United States only and covers only the period from 1700 through 1865. One must keep in mind that the first slaves came to North America almost 100 years prior to the time period of this economic evaluation. The majority of the slaves were imported to the Caribbean, Brazil, Columbia, the Guyanas, and other parts of South America, which more than doubles the economic figures, presented here when viewed on a global scale. Brazil alone has close to 100 million descendants of African slaves!

The capital gained from slavery in the Americas was invested in colonialism, which further compounded the current economic enslavement of the African descendants on both sides of the Atlantic. The problem was further compounded considering some 20 to 25 million young souls (mostly male) were taken from the continent of Africa, leaving that continent devoid of military protection and agricultural productivity. This human capital deficit from slavery and its evil offspring, colonialism, is still being felt in all African countries and the Diaspora.

On a global scale the magnitude of the total “Debt” is so huge as to possibly destabilize capitalism as opposed to the continued economic exploitation of Africa. Under the enormity of this “Debt,” reparations, which in the future may be the cheapest way out, will be vigorously resisted by the former colonial powers. Continuing demands for a return on investment of $7.86 quadrillion will force African nations (ironically, the original unwilling investors) further into debt leading to deeper poverty, depravation, political instability and exploitation of their natural resources.

The tragic irony of African national debts is that they were the original investors who should be seeking compensation for the egregious crimes of slavery instead of merely seeking debt relief. The sheer increasing weight of this global “Debt” is the force that must be reckoned with and surely will change world history in this the 21st century. The repayment will be extracted in one way or the other. As the saying goes, “What goes around, comes around!”

Charles Barkley call conservatives fake christians

2008-02-18T10:02:00.004-05:00

Sir Charles gives his views on conservatives by calling them fake christians.

OBM: While I only agree with one of his reasons, I still am given him a little credit for saying it. Also while I hold conservitive views on some issues I can think of several additional reasons most conservatives are fake christians: a lot of them are Racist, Fascist, Sinfully Greedy, Thieves, Sadistically Ignorant, Destructively Selfish, Control Freaks, and Racial/Class Supremacist to name a few.

THE MILITARIZATION OF OUR POLICE

2008-02-14T13:53:00.000-05:00

MSNBC KEITH OLBERMANN - GIULIANI TIED TERRORIST GROUP

2008-02-14T13:47:00.000-05:00

BIG BROTHER STATE

2008-02-14T13:36:00.000-05:00

DRIVERS LICENSES USED AS DEBIT CARDS

2008-02-14T09:50:00.000-05:00

OBM: One day very soon this or smoethine like this will be required.

How to create an Angry American

2008-02-14T09:46:00.001-05:00

Wheelchair Bound Man is Tossed on the Floor by Cop

2008-02-13T10:05:00.002-05:00

MIKE WELLS
Tampa Tribune
Wednesday February 13, 2008

TAMPA - A deputy roughly dumps a man out of a wheelchair, and he tumbles to the floor.

Brian Sterner lands on his ribs, then rolls over and lies on his back while Hillsborough County Detention Deputy Charlette Marshall-Jones checks his pockets before she and another deputy put him back in the chair.

These moments were recorded Jan. 29 by cameras in Orient Road Jail. The video has repulsed many and resulted in the suspension of Marshall-Jones, a 44-year-old deputy with 22 years on the job, and her supervisors.

Sterner, 32, can drive a car, but he hasn't been able to walk for 14 years.

He said he told Marshall-Jones as much when he was booked into jail on a traffic-related charge.

She didn't believe him, he said.

Sheriff David Gee said he was at a loss for words after viewing the video.

"This was not a training issue," Gee said late Tuesday. "It's a human decency issue. I can't imagine any explanation she might have.

"It's like being a blackjack dealer in Vegas," the sheriff said of the surveillance system. "I put those cameras in there for a reason. They're to protect the deputies as much as the suspects who are brought in."

Deputies arrested Sterner, 32, on a warrant from Tampa police at his home in Riverview. He posted bail and was freed Feb. 3.

Gee said he was told by his staff that Marshall-Jones has a good record and there have been no similar complaints against her.

The sheriff is in Jacksonville at a Florida Sheriff's Association meeting, leaving Chief Deputy Jose Docobo in command.

After watching the tape Monday, Docobo ordered Marshall-Jones to be immediately suspended without pay, he said. Three of her supervisors who were visible on the tape were suspended with pay.

'Indefensible, At Every Level'

"The actions are indefensible, at every level," Docobo said. "Based on what I saw, anything short of dismissal would be inappropriate."

Sterner's attorney, John Trevena, said he wants Marshall-Jones charged with felony battery and wants her supervisors to be disciplined and to undergo mandatory retraining so that this kind of incident is not repeated.

Gee said he spoke to Trevena early Tuesday evening and conveyed his feelings on the matter.

"I'm embarrassed, professionally and personally," the sheriff said. "I can't offer an explanation."

An internal affairs investigation is reviewing the actions by Marshall-Jones and the three supervisors: Cpl. Decondra Williams, 36; Cpl. Steve Dickey, 45; and Sgt. Gary Hinson, 51. Investigators had not interviewed the deputy or her supervisors, Docobo said.

No reports were filed about the incident, so investigators are trying to determine what the supervisors knew, Docobo said. Each of the three appears at various times on the video, but none intervenes with Marshall-Jones. Dickey walks into the frame from the side and appears to smile as he walks away.

"That none of the supervisors acted upon what they saw is of great concern," Docobo said. "This is not the norm at the sheriff's office. It's an aberration."

Woman Calls Police for Help, Gets Violently Strip Searched

2008-02-12T14:07:00.000-05:00

Part 2

Hope Steffey's night started with a call to police for help. It ended with her face down, naked, and sobbing on a jail cell floor. Now, the sheriff's deputies from Stark County, Ohio who allegedly used excessive force during a strip search 15 months ago face a federal lawsuit, and recently released video won't help their case.

According to the policy of the sheriff's office, strip searches conducted must be with officers of the same sex as the person arrested. In Steffey's case, both men and women ripped her pants down.

Steffey's ordeal with the Stark County sheriff's deputies began after her cousin called 9-1-1 claiming Steffey had been assaulted by another one of their cousins. When a Stark County police officer arrived, he asked to see Steffey's driver's license. But instead of handing over her own ID, she mistakenly turned over her dead sister's license, which she contends she keeps in her wallet as a memento. That's when the situation became complicated.

...Eventually, Steffey was arrested and taken to the Stark County Jail, charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. But once in custody, her attorney says seven jail workers, male and female, forcibly removed Steffey of all her clothes, including her undergarments, while she lay face down in handcuffs. Local news footage shows Steffey wailing, asking "What are you doing?!?"

And you have to ask yourself, what was the purpose of the strip search?" said Steffey's lawyer. "What was the necessity of it? This was a disorderly conduct claim."

The lawsuit says that Steffey remained in the cell for six hours and wrapped herself in toilet paper to stay warm. During that time, she was not allowed to use a phone or seek medical assistance for injuries she accrued that night, including a cracked tooth, bulging disc, and bruises.

Egomaniac Thug Cop Assaults 14 Year Old Kid

2008-02-12T13:53:00.000-05:00

On the video, the officer, Salvatore Rivieri, puts the boy in a headlock, pushes him to the ground, questions his upbringing, threatens to "smack" him and repeatedly accuses the youngster of showing disrespect because the youth refers to the officer as "man" and "dude." reports the Baltimore Sun. This video was posted on YouTube on Saturday but probably was made late last summer, according to the Police Department. Rivieri, who has been suspended pending review, has refused to comment.

OBM: Are this cops actions ok or to far????? I say way to far...

The FDIC Has Begun its Death Watch

2008-02-09T11:01:00.000-05:00

"I just saw a picture Bernanke stripped to the waist in the boiler-room shoveling greenbacks into the furnace." Rob Dawg, Calculated Risk blog-site

On January 14, 2008 the FDIC web site began posting the rules for reimbursing depositors in the event of a bank failure. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is required to “determine the
It's All Downhill From Here

by Mike Whitney
total insured amount for each depositor....as of the day of the failure” and return their money as quickly as possible. The agency is “modernizing its current business processes and procedures for determining deposit insurance coverage in the event of a failure of one of the largest insured depository institutions.” Source

The implication is clear, the FDIC has begun the “death watch” on the many banks which are currently drowning in their own red ink. The problem for the FDIC is that it has never supervised a bank failure which exceeded 175,000 accounts. So the impending financial tsunami is likely to be a crash-course in crisis management. Today some of the larger banks have more than 50 million depositors, which will make the FDIC's job nearly impossible.

Good luck.

It's worth noting that, due to a rule change by Congress in 1991, the FDIC is now required to use “the least costly transaction when dealing with a troubled bank. The FDIC won't reimburse uninsured depositors if it means increasing the loss to the deposit insurance fund....As a result, uninsured depositors are protected only if a bank acquiring the failed bank will pay more for all of the deposits than it would for insured deposits only.” (MarketWatch)

Great. That's reassuring. And there's more, too. FDIC Chairman Shiela Bair warned that “as of Sept. 30, there were 65 institutions with assets of $18.5 billion on its list of "problem" institutions;” although she wouldn't give names.

So, what does it all mean?

It means there's going to be an unprecedented wave of bank closures in the US and that people who want to hold on to their life savings are going have to be extra vigilant as the situation continues to deteriorate. And it is deteriorating very quickly.

Right now, many of the country's largest investment banks are holding $500 billion in mortgage-backed securities and other structured investments that are steadily depreciating in value. As these assets wear-away the banks' capital, the likelihood of default becomes greater. This week, Fitch Ratings announced that it will (probably) cut ratings on the 5 main bond insurers (Ambac, MBIA, FGIC, CIFG,SCA) “regardless of their capital levels”. This seemingly innocuous statement has roiled markets and put Wall Street in a panic. If the bond insurers lose their AAA rating (on an estimated $2.4 trillion of bonds) then the banks could lose another $70 billion in downgraded assets. That would increase their losses from the credit crunch--which began in August 2007---to $200 billion with no end in sight. It would also impair their ability to issue loans to even credit worthy customers which will further dampen growth in the larger economy. Structured investments have been the banks' “cash cow” for nearly a decade, but, suddenly, the trend has shifted into reverse. Revenue streams have dried up and capital is being destroyed at an accelerating pace. The $2 trillion market for collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) is virtually frozen leaving horrendous debts that will have to be written-down leaving the banks' either deeply scarred or insolvent. It's a mess.

There were some interesting developments in a case involving Merrill Lynch last week which sheds a bit of light on the true “market value” of these complex debt-pools called CDOs. The Massachusetts Secretary of State has charged Merrill with “fraud and misrepresentation” for selling them a CDO that was "highly risky and esoteric" and "unsuitable for the City of Springfield.” (Most cities are required by law to only purchase Triple A rated bonds) The city of Springfield bought the CDO less than a year ago for $13.9 million. It is presently valued at $1.2 million---MORE THAN A 90% LOSS IN LESS THAN A YEAR.

Merrill has quietly settled out of court for the full amount and seems genuinely confused by the Massachusetts Secretary of State's apparent anger. A Merrill spokesman said blandly, “We are puzzled by this suit. We have been cooperating with the Secretary of State Galvin's office throughout this inquiry.”

Is it really that hard to understand why people don't like getting ripped of?

This anecdote shows that these exotic mortgage-backed securities are real stinkers. They're worthless. The market for structured debt-instruments has evaporated overnight leaving a massive hole in the banks' balance sheets. The likely outcome will be a rash of defaults followed by greater consolidation of the major players. (re: banking monopolies) The Fed's multi-billion bailout plan; the “Temporary Auction Facility” (TAF) is a quick-fix, but not a permanent solution. The real problem is insolvency, not liquidity.

The smaller banks are dire straights, too. They're bogged down with commercial and residential loans that are defaulting faster than any time since the Great Depression. The Comptroller of the Currency,John Dugan--who is presently investigating commercial real estate loans---discovered that commercial banks “wrote off $524 million in construction and development loans in the third quarter of 2007, almost nine times the amount of 2006”. The commercial real estate market is following residential real estate off a cliff and will undoubtedly be the next shoe to drop.

Dugan found out that, “More than 60% of Florida banks have commercial real estate loans worth more than 300% of their capital, a level that automatically attracts more attention from examiners.” (Wall Street Journal) He said that his office was prepared to intervene if banks with large real estate exposure maintained unreasonably low reserves for bad loans. Dugan is forecasting a steep “increase in bank failures.”

According to Reuters: “Dozens of U.S. banks will fail in the next two years as losses from soured loans mount and regulators crack down on lenders that take too much risk, especially in real estate and construction," predicts Gerard Cassidy, RBC Capital Markets analyst. Apart from the growing losses in commercial and residential real estate, the banks are carrying over $150 billion of “unsyndidated” debt connected to leveraged buyout deals (LBOs) which are presently stuck in the mud. Like CDOs, there's no market for these sketchy transactions which require billions in cheap, easily available credit. They've just become another anvil dragging the banks under.

On January 31, Bloomberg News reported: “Losses from securities linked to subprime mortgages may exceed $265 billion as regional U.S. banks, credit unions and overseas financial institutions write down the value of their holdings.” Standard and Poor's added that “it may cut or reduce ratings of $534 billion of subprime-mortgage securities and CDOs as default rates rise.” Another blow to the banks withering balance sheets. Is it any wonder why the "new loans" spigot has been turned off?

Surprisingly, there's an even bigger threat to the financial system than these staggering losses at the banks. A default by one of the big bond insurers could trigger a meltdown in the credit-default swaps market, which could lead to the implosion of trillions of dollars in derivatives bets. The inability of the under-capitalized monolines (bond insurers) to “make good” on their coverage is likely to set the first domino in motion by increasing the number of downgrades on bond issues and intensifying the credit-paralysis which already is spreading throughout the system.

MSN Money's financial analyst Jim Jubak summed it up like this:

"Actually, I'm worried not so much about the junk-bond market itself as the huge market for a derivative called a credit-default swap, or CDS, built on top of that junk-bond market. Credit-default swaps are a kind of insurance against default, arranged between two parties. One party, the seller, agrees to pay the face value of the policy in case of a default by a specific company. The buyer pays a premium, a fee, to the seller for that protection.

This has grown to be a huge market: The total value of all CDS contracts is something like $450 trillion..... Some studies have put the real credit risk at just 6% of the total, or about $27 trillion. That puts the CDS market at somewhere between two and six times the size of the U.S. economy.

All it will take in the CDS market is enough buyers and sellers deciding they can't rely on this insurance anymore for junk-bond prices to tumble and for companies to find it very expensive or impossible to raise money in this market." (Jim Jubak's Journal; "The Next Banking Crisis is on the Way", MSN Money)

Jubak really nails it here. In fact, this is what Wall Street is really worried about. $450 trillion in cyber-credit has been created through various off balance sheets operations which neither the Fed nor any other regulatory body can control. No one even knows how these abstruse, credit-inventions will perform in a falling market. But, so far, it doesn't look good.

The enormity of the derivatives market ($450 trillion) is the direct result of Greenspan's easy-credit monetary policies as well as the reconfiguring of the markets according to the “structured finance” model. The new model allows banks to run off-balance sheets operations that, in effect, create money out of thin air. Similarly, “synthetic” securitization, in the form of credit default swaps (CDS) has turned out to be another scam to avoid maintaining sufficient capital to cover a sudden rash of defaults. The bottom line is that the banks and non-bank institutions wanted to maximize their profits by keeping all their capital in play rather than maintaining the reserves they'd need in the event of a market downturn.

In a deregulated market, the Federal Reserve cannot control the creation of credit by non-bank institutions. As the massive derivatives bubble unwinds, it is likely to have real and disastrous effects on the underlying-productive economy. That's why Jubak and many other market analysts are so concerned. The persistent rise in home foreclosures, means that the derivatives which were levered on the original assets (sometimes exceeding 25-times their value) will vanish down a black hole. As trillions of dollars in virtual-capital are extinguished by a click of the mouse; the prospects of a downward deflationary spiral become more likely.

As economist Nouriel Roubini said:

“One has to realize that there is now a rising probability of a 'catastrophic' financial and economic outcome, i.e. a vicious circle where a deep recession makes the financial losses more severe and where, in turn, large and growing financial losses and a financial meltdown make the recession even more severe. That is why the Fed has thrown caution to the wind and taken a very aggressive approach to risk management.” (Nouriel Roubini EconoMonitor)

"In the fourth quarter of 2007, new foreclosures averaged 2,939 a day, double the pace of a year earlier." (RealtyTrac Inc.) The banks are presently cutting back on home equity loans which provided an additional $600 billion to homeowners last year for personal consumption. Bush's $150 billion “stimulus package” will barely cover a quarter of the amount that is lost. As consumer spending slows and the banks become more constrained in their lending; businesses will face overproduction problems and will have to limit their expansion and lay off workers. This is the downside of “low interest” bubble-making; a painful descent into deflation.

Capital is now being destroyed at a faster pace than it is being created. That's why the Fed is looking for solutions beyond mere rate cuts. Bernanke wants direct government action that will provide immediate stimulus. But that takes political consensus and there's still debate about the gravity of the upcoming recession. The pace of the economic contraction is breathtaking. This week's release of the Institute for Supply Management's Non-Manufacturing Index (ISM) was a shocker. It showed steep declines in all areas of the nation's service sector---including banks, travel companies, contractors, retail stores etc—The Business Activity Index, the New Orders Index, the Employment Index, and the Supplier Delivery Index have all contracted at a “historic” pace. Everyone took a hit.

“The numbers are so terrible, it's beyond belief,” said Scott Anderson, senior economist at Wells Fargo & Co.

The $2 trillion that has been wiped out from falling home prices, the slowdown in lending activity at the banks, the loss $600 billion in home equity loans, and the faltering stock market have all contributed to a noticeable change in the public's attitudes towards spending. Traffic to the shopping malls has slowed to a crawl. Retail shops had their worst January on record. Homeowners are hoarding their earnings to cover basic expenses and to make up for their lack of personal savings. The spending-spigot has been turned off. America's consumer culture is in full-retreat. The slowdown is here. It is now. We are likely to see the sharpest decline in consumer spending in US history. Bush's $150 billion will be too little too late.

America's place in the world has been guaranteed not by what it produces but by what it consumes. The American consumer has been the locomotive that drives the global economy. Now that engine has been derailed by the reckless monetary policies of the Fed and by shortsighted financial innovation. When equity bubbles collapse; everybody pays. Demand for goods and services diminishes, unemployment soars, banks fold, and the economy stalls. That's when governments have to step in and provide programs and resources that keep people working and sustain business activity. Otherwise there will be anarchy. Middle class people are ill-suited for life under a freeway overpass. They need a helping hand from government. Big government. Good-bye, Reagan. Hello, F.D.R.

The Bush stimulus plan is a drop in the bucket. It'll take much, much more. And, we're not holding our breath for a New Deal from George Walker Bush

The FBI Deputizes Business

2008-02-09T10:56:00.001-05:00

By Matthew Rothschild, February 7, 2008

Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.
InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.

InfraGard started in Cleveland back in 1996, when the private sector there cooperated with the FBI to investigate cyber threats.

“Then the FBI cloned it,” says Phyllis Schneck, chairman of the board of directors of the InfraGard National Members Alliance, and the prime mover behind the growth of InfraGard over the last several years.

InfraGard itself is still an FBI operation, with FBI agents in each state overseeing the local InfraGard chapters. (There are now eighty-six of them.) The alliance is a nonprofit organization of private sector InfraGard members.

“We are the owners, operators, and experts of our critical infrastructure, from the CEO of a large company in agriculture or high finance to the guy who turns the valve at the water utility,” says Schneck, who by day is the vice president of research integration at Secure Computing.

“At its most basic level, InfraGard is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the private sector,” the InfraGard website states. “InfraGard chapters are geographically linked with FBI Field Office territories.”

In November 2001, InfraGard had around 1,700 members. As of late January, InfraGard had 23,682 members, according to its website, www.infragard.net, which adds that “350 of our nation’s Fortune 500 have a representative in InfraGard.”

To join, each person must be sponsored by “an existing InfraGard member, chapter, or partner organization.” The FBI then vets the applicant. On the application form, prospective members are asked which aspect of the critical infrastructure their organization deals with. These include: agriculture, banking and finance, the chemical industry, defense, energy, food, information and telecommunications, law enforcement, public health, and transportation.

FBI Director Robert Mueller addressed an InfraGard convention on August 9, 2005. At that time, the group had less than half as many members as it does today. “To date, there are more than 11,000 members of InfraGard,” he said. “From our perspective that amounts to 11,000 contacts . . . and 11,000 partners in our mission to protect America.” He added a little later, “Those of you in the private sector are the first line of defense.”

He urged InfraGard members to contact the FBI if they “note suspicious activity or an unusual event.” And he said they could sic the FBI on “disgruntled employees who will use knowledge gained on the job against their employers.”

In an interview with InfraGard after the conference, which is featured prominently on the InfraGard members’ website, Mueller says: “It’s a great program.”

The ACLU is not so sanguine.

“There is evidence that InfraGard may be closer to a corporate TIPS program, turning private-sector corporations—some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers—into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI,” the ACLU warned in its August 2004 report The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: How the American Government Is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society.

InfraGard is not readily accessible to the general public. Its communications with the FBI and Homeland Security are beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act under the “trade secrets” exemption, its website says. And any conversation with the public or the media is supposed to be carefully rehearsed.

“The interests of InfraGard must be protected whenever presented to non-InfraGard members,” the website states. “During interviews with members of the press, controlling the image of InfraGard being presented can be difficult. Proper preparation for the interview will minimize the risk of embarrassment. . . . The InfraGard leadership and the local FBI representative should review the submitted questions, agree on the predilection of the answers, and identify the appropriate interviewee. . . . Tailor answers to the expected audience. . . . Questions concerning sensitive information should be avoided.”

One of the advantages of InfraGard, according to its leading members, is that the FBI gives them a heads-up on a secure portal about any threatening information related to infrastructure disruption or terrorism.

The InfraGard website advertises this. In its list of benefits of joining InfraGard, it states: “Gain access to an FBI secure communication network complete with VPN encrypted website, webmail, listservs, message boards, and much more.”

InfraGard members receive “almost daily updates” on threats “emanating from both domestic sources and overseas,” Hershman says.

“We get very easy access to secure information that only goes to InfraGard members,” Schneck says. “People are happy to be in the know.”

On November 1, 2001, the FBI had information about a potential threat to the bridges of California. The alert went out to the InfraGard membership. Enron was notified, and so, too, was Barry Davis, who worked for Morgan Stanley. He notified his brother Gray, the governor of California.

“He said his brother talked to him before the FBI,” recalls Steve Maviglio, who was Davis’s press secretary at the time. “And the governor got a lot of grief for releasing the information. In his defense, he said, ‘I was on the phone with my brother, who is an investment banker. And if he knows, why shouldn’t the public know?’ ”

Maviglio still sounds perturbed about this: “You’d think an elected official would be the first to know, not the last.”

In return for being in the know, InfraGard members cooperate with the FBI and Homeland Security. “InfraGard members have contributed to about 100 FBI cases,” Schneck says. “What InfraGard brings you is reach into the regional and local communities. We are a 22,000-member vetted body of subject-matter experts that reaches across seventeen matrixes. All the different stovepipes can connect with InfraGard.”

Schneck is proud of the relationships the InfraGard Members Alliance has built with the FBI. “If you had to call 1-800-FBI, you probably wouldn’t bother,” she says. “But if you knew Joe from a local meeting you had with him over a donut, you might call them. Either to give or to get. We want everyone to have a little black book.”

This black book may come in handy in times of an emergency. “On the back of each membership card,” Schneck says, “we have all the numbers you’d need: for Homeland Security, for the FBI, for the cyber center. And by calling up as an InfraGard member, you will be listened to.” She also says that members would have an easier time obtaining a “special telecommunications card that will enable your call to go through when others will not.”

This special status concerns the ACLU.

“The FBI should not be creating a privileged class of Americans who get special treatment,” says Jay Stanley, public education director of the ACLU’s technology and liberty program. “There’s no ‘business class’ in law enforcement. If there’s information the FBI can share with 22,000 corporate bigwigs, why don’t they just share it with the public? That’s who their real ‘special relationship’ is supposed to be with. Secrecy is not a party favor to be given out to friends. . . . This bears a disturbing resemblance to the FBI’s handing out ‘goodies’ to corporations in return for folding them into its domestic surveillance machinery.”

When the government raises its alert levels, InfraGard is in the loop. For instance, in a press release on February 7, 2003, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Attorney General announced that the national alert level was being raised from yellow to orange. They then listed “additional steps” that agencies were taking to “increase their protective measures.” One of those steps was to “provide alert information to InfraGard program.”

“They’re very much looped into our readiness capability,” says Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security. “We provide speakers, as well as do joint presentations [with the FBI]. We also train alongside them, and they have participated in readiness exercises.”

On May 9, 2007, George Bush issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 entitled “National Continuity Policy.” In it, he instructed the Secretary of Homeland Security to coordinate with “private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as appropriate, in order to provide for the delivery of essential services during an emergency.”

Asked if the InfraGard National Members Alliance was involved with these plans, Schneck said it was “not directly participating at this point.” Hershman, chairman of the group’s advisory board, however, said that it was.

InfraGard members, sometimes hundreds at a time, have been used in “national emergency preparation drills,” Schneck acknowledges.

“In case something happens, everybody is ready,” says Norm Arendt, the head of the Madison, Wisconsin, chapter of InfraGard, and the safety director for the consulting firm Short Elliott Hendrickson, Inc. “There’s been lots of discussions about what happens under an emergency.”

One business owner in the United States tells me that InfraGard members are being advised on how to prepare for a martial law situation—and what their role might be. He showed me his InfraGard card, with his name and e-mail address on the front, along with the InfraGard logo and its slogan, “Partnership for Protection.” On the back of the card were the emergency numbers that Schneck mentioned.

This business owner says he attended a small InfraGard meeting where agents of the FBI and Homeland Security discussed in astonishing detail what InfraGard members may be called upon to do.

“The meeting started off innocuously enough, with the speakers talking about corporate espionage,” he says. “From there, it just progressed. All of a sudden we were knee deep in what was expected of us when martial law is declared. We were expected to share all our resources, but in return we’d be given specific benefits.” These included, he says, the ability to travel in restricted areas and to get people out.
But that’s not all.

“Then they said when—not if—martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn’t be prosecuted,” he says.

I was able to confirm that the meeting took place where he said it had, and that the FBI and Homeland Security did make presentations there. One InfraGard member who attended that meeting denies that the subject of lethal force came up. But the whistleblower is 100 percent certain of it. “I have nothing to gain by telling you this, and everything to lose,” he adds. “I’m so nervous about this, and I’m not someone who gets nervous.”

Though Schneck says that FBI and Homeland Security agents do make presentations to InfraGard, she denies that InfraGard members would have any civil patrol or law enforcement functions. “I have never heard of InfraGard members being told to use lethal force anywhere,” Schneck says.

The FBI adamantly denies it, also. “That’s ridiculous,” says Catherine Milhoan, an FBI spokesperson. “If you want to quote a businessperson saying that, knock yourself out. If that’s what you want to print, fine.”

But one other InfraGard member corroborated the whistleblower’s account, and another would not deny it.

Christine Moerke is a business continuity consultant for Alliant Energy in Madison, Wisconsin. She says she’s an InfraGard member, and she confirms that she has attended InfraGard meetings that went into the details about what kind of civil patrol function—including engaging in lethal force—that InfraGard members may be called upon to perform.

“There have been discussions like that, that I’ve heard of and participated in,” she says.

Curt Haugen is CEO of S’Curo Group, a company that does “strategic planning, business continuity planning and disaster recovery, physical and IT security, policy development, internal control, personnel selection, and travel safety,” according to its website. Haugen tells me he is a former FBI agent and that he has been an InfraGard member for many years. He is a huge booster. “It’s the only true organization where there is the public-private partnership,” he says. “It’s all who knows who. You know a face, you trust a face. That’s what makes it work.”

He says InfraGard “absolutely” does emergency preparedness exercises. When I ask about discussions the FBI and Homeland Security have had with InfraGard members about their use of lethal force, he says: “That much I cannot comment on. But as a private citizen, you have the right to use force if you feel threatened.”

“We were assured that if we were forced to kill someone to protect our infrastructure, there would be no repercussions,” the whistleblower says. “It gave me goose bumps. It chilled me to the bone.”

5 Of 9 Jiffy Lubes Caught Over-Charging

2008-02-09T10:47:00.000-05:00

We talked about this back in May, but now there's an excellent YouTube compilation of all four of the NBC4 LA's hidden camera investigation into Jiffy Lube.

5 out of 9 places they had their car serviced at scammed them. When confronted, the mechanics say they don't know why they did it and refer NBC to their district manager. When NBC finds the DM, he denies his identity and says he's just a customer. Jiffy Lube corporate confirms in an email that the man was in fact the DM and said they are taking steps to make sure it never happens again.

Moral of the story: learn how to change your own oil.

NEA Kids Book List of 100 Titles About African American Heritage

2008-02-06T09:18:00.000-05:00

NEA List
A celebration of heritage, tradition, and achievement
Timed to coincide with Black History Month, the National Education Association (NEA) has released a comprehensive reading list of 100 titles that celebrate African American heritage, tradition, and achievement. NEA President Reg Weaver says, "Taken together, these titles provide an overview of the civil rights movement and its leaders, as well as the trials, triumphs, and traditions of a heritage that has played -- and continues to play -- a vital role in our nation's history."

A. Philip Randolph: Union Leader and Civil Rights Crusader (African-American Biographies) by Catherine Reef. (Grades 5-8)

The Adventures of Midnight Son by Denise Lewis Patrick. (Grades 4-8)

All Night, All Day: A Child's First Book of African American Spirituals by Ashley Bryan (All grades)

Almost to Freedom by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson (Grades 1-4)

Arthur Ashe by Caroline Evensen Lazo (Grades 5-8)

Aunt Clara Brown, Official Pioneer by Linda Lowery (Grades 2-4)

One More Valley, One More Hill: The Story of Aunt Clara Brown by Linda Lowery (Grades 6 and up)

Aunt Flossie's Hats (and Crab Cakes Later) by James Ransome (Grades K-3)

Bigmama's by Donald Crews (Grades PreK-2)

The Black Cowboys by Gina De Angelis (Grades 5-8)

The Black Snowman by Phil Mendez (Grades 3-5)

Black Wheels by Michael Halperin (Grades 8 and up)

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (Grades 11 and up)

Booker T. Washington: A Modern Moses by Lois P. Nicholson (Grades 4-7)

Born in Sin by Evelyn Coleman (Grades 7 and up)

Brown Honey in Broomwheat Tea by Joyce Carol Thomas (All grades)

Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis (Grades 4-7)

Carter G. Woodson: The Man Who Put "Black" in American History by James Haskins (Grades 4-6)

Carver: A Life in Poems by Marilyn Nelson (Grades 6 and up)

Cassie's Word Quilt Faith Ringgold (Grades PreK-K)

Champion: The Story of Muhammad Ali by James Haskins (Grades 3-6)

The Color Purple by Alice Walker (Grades 10 and up)

Conjure Times: Black Magicians in America by James Haskins and Kathleen Benson (Grades 6 and up)

Don't Say Ain't by Irene Smalls (Grades 2-4)

Ellington Was Not a Street by Ntozake Shange (All grades)

Escape from Slavery: The True Story of My Ten Years in Captivity and My Journey to Freedom in America by Francis Bok (Grades 8 and up)

Especially Heroes by Virginia L. Kroll (Grades 3-5)

The Fire Next Time by James A. Baldwin (Grades 10 and up)

Fishing Day by Andrea Davis Pinkney (Grades K-3).

Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule by Harriett Gillem Robinet (Grades 4-7)

Frederick Douglass: Leader against Slavery Patricia and Fredrick McKissack (Grades 1-4)

Freedom River by Doreen Rappaport (Grades 2-5)

Freedom Roads: Searching for the Underground Railroad Joyce Hansen and Gary McGowan (Grades 5-9)

Goin' Someplace Special by Pat McKissack (Grades 2-5)

Hold Fast to Dreams by Andrea Davis Pinkney (Grades 5 and up)

Hush by Jacqueline Woodson (Grades 7 and up)

I Dream of Trains by Angela Johnson (Grades PreK-2)

I Love My Hair by Natasha Anastasia Tarpley (Grades PreK-2)

Ida B. Wells: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement by Dennis Brindell Fradin and Judith Bloom Fradin (Grades 5 and up)

In Daddy's Arms I Am Tall: African Americans Celebrating Fathers illustrated by Javaka Steptoe (Grades 3 and up)

In My Momma's Kitchen by Jerdine Nolan (Grades K-3)

In the Land of Words: New and Selected Poems by Eloise Greenfield (Grades 2-6)

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (Grades 11 and up)

Juneteenth: A Celebration of Freedom by Charles A. Taylor (Grades 4-7)

Kings and Queens of West Africa by Sylviane Anna Diouf (Grades 4-7)

The Land by Mildred D. Taylor (Grades 6 and up)

A Lesson for Martin Luther King Jr. by Denise Lewis Patrick (Grades K-2)

Like Sisters on the Homefront Rita Williams-Garcia (Grades 8 and up)

Lookin' for Bird in the Big City by Robert Burleigh (Grades 1-3)

Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America by Nathan McCall (Grades 10 and up)

Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary by Walter Dean Myers (Grades 5 and up)

Mansa Musa by Khephra Burns (Grades 3-6)

Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by Doreen Rappaport (Grades PreK-3)

Masai and I by Virginia Kroll (Grades 2-4)

Me and Uncle Romie: A Story Inspired by the Life and Art of Romare Bearden by Claire Hartfield. (Grades 1-4)

The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson (Grades 11 and up)

Money Hungry by Sharon G. Flake (Grades 7-9)

More than Anything Else by Marie Bradby (Grades K-3)

Native Son by Richard Wright (Grades 11 and up)

A Negro Explorer at the North Pole by Matthew A. Henson (Grades 8 and up)

Night Golf by William Miller (Grades 2-4)

Oh Lord, I Wish I Was a Buzzard by Polly Greenberg (Grades PreK-K)

Only Passing Through: The Story of Sojourner Truth by Anne Rockwell (Grades 2-5)

Papa's Mark by Gwendolyn Battle-Lavert (Grades 1-3)

Pass it on: African-American Poetry for Children edited by Wade Hudson (Grades K-5)

The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales by Virginia Hamilton (All grades)

Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women by Maya Angelou (Grades 8 and up)

Pictures for Miss Josie by Sandra Belton (Grades K-4)

Rap a Tap Tap: Here's Bojangles-Think of That by Leo and Diane Dillon.(Grades PreK-2)

The Return of Gabriel by John Armistead (Grades 5-8)

Richard Wright and the Library Card by William Miller (Grades 2-5)

Rock of Ages : A Tribute to the Black Church by Tonya Bolden (Grades K-3)

Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley (Grades 11 and up)

Separate but Not Equal: The Dream and the Struggle by James Haskins (Grades 7 and up)

Seven Spools of Thread: A Kwanzaa Story by Angela Shelf Medearis (Grades 2-5)

Something Beautiful by Sharon Dennis Wyeth (Grades 2-4)

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois (Grades 10 and up)

Sounder by William H. Armstrong (Grades 4-7)

Stealing Freedom by Elisa Carbone (Grades 6-10)

A Strong Right Arm: The Story of Mamie "Peanut" Johnson by Michelle Y. Green (Grades 4-7)

Sukey and the Mermaid by Robert D. San Souci (Grades K-3)

Summer Snow: Reflections from a Black Daughter of the South by Trudier Harris (Grades 11 and up)

Sunday Week by Dinah Johnson. Henry Holt, 1999 (Grades PreK-2)

Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt by Deborah Hopkinson (Grades K-3)

Taking Liberty: The Story of Oney Judge, George Washington's Runaway Slave by Ann Rinaldi (Grades 6 and up)

Talkin' About Bessie by Nikki Grimes (Grades 3-6)

Talking With Tebé: Clementine Hunter, Memory Artist by Mary E. Lyons (Grades 5 and up)

Tambourine Moon by Joy Jones (Grades K-2)

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (Grades 11 and up)

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (Grades 10 and up)

Through My Eyes: The Autobiography of Ruby Bridges by Ruby Bridges (Grades 4 and up)

To Be a Slave by Julius Lester (Grades 5 and up)

Tree of Hope by Amy Littlesugar (Grades K-3)

Twelve Travelers, Twenty Horses by Harriette Gillem Robinet (Grades 5-7)

Uncle Jed's Barbershop by Margaree King Mitchell (Grades PreK-3)

Virgie Goes to School With Us Boys by Elizabeth Fitzgerald Howard (Grades 2-5)

Vision of Beauty: the Story of Sarah Breedlove Walker by Kathryn Lasky (Grades 3-6)

Visiting Langston by Willie Perdomo (Grades 2-4)

The Watsons Go To Birmingham- 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis (Grades 4-7)

When Marian Sang: The True Recital of Marian Anderson by Pam Munoz Ryan (Grades K-3)

Alex Jones Interviews Paris (Guerrilla Funk Recordings)

2008-02-03T11:04:00.000-05:00

Listen Here

Keith Olbermann Special Comment FISA

2008-02-01T13:25:00.000-05:00

Getting Duped: How the Media Messes with Your Mind

2008-02-01T12:16:00.000-05:00

Statements made in the media can surreptitiously plant distortions in the minds of millions. Learning to recognize two commonly used fallacies can help you separate fact from fiction.

By Yvonne Raley and Robert Talisse

In 2003 nearly half of all Americans falsely assumed that the U.S. government had found solid evidence for a link between Iraq and al Qaeda. What is more, almost a quarter of us believed that investigators had all but confirmed the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a 2003 report by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes and Knowledge Networks, a polling and market research firm. How did the true situation in Iraq become so grossly distorted in American minds?

Many people have attributed such misconceptions to a politically motivated disinformation campaign to engender support for the armed struggle in Iraq. We do not think the deceptions were premeditated, however. Instead they are most likely the result of common types of reasoning errors, which appear frequently in discussions in the news media and which can easily fool an unsuspecting public.

News shows often have an implicit bias that may motivate the portrayal of facts and opinions in misleading ways, even if the information presented is largely accurate. Nevertheless, by becoming familiar with how spokespeople can create false impressions, media consumers can learn to ignore certain claims and thereby avoid getting duped. We have detected two general types of fallacies—one of them well known and the other newly identified—that have permeated discussion of the Iraq War and that are generally ubiquitous in political debates and other discourse.

Spinning Straw into Fool’s Gold
One common method of spinning information is the so-called straw man argument. In this tactic, a person summarizes the opposition’s position inaccurately so as to weaken it and then refutes that inaccurate rendition. In a November 2005 speech, for example, President George W. Bush responded to questions about pulling troops out of Iraq by saying, “We’ve heard some people say, pull them out right now. That’s a huge mistake. It’d be a terrible mistake. It sends a bad message to our troops, and it sends a bad message to our enemy, and it sends a bad message to the Iraqis.” The statement that unnamed “people” are advocating a troop withdrawal from Iraq “right now” is a straw man, because it exaggerates the opposing viewpoint. Not even the most stalwart Bush adversaries backed an immediate troop withdrawal. Most proposed that the soldiers be sent home over several months, a more reasonable and persuasive plan that Bush undercut with his straw man.

The straw man is used in countless other contexts as well. In his acceptance speech at the 1996 Democratic Convention, for instance, Bill Clinton opined: “… with all respect [to Bob Dole], we do not need to build a bridge to the past. We need to build a bridge to the future.” Dole did discuss restoring the values of an earlier America, but Clinton falsely implied that Dole was only looking backward (whereas Clinton was looking forward). People may use a straw man to discredit theories to which they do not subscribe. Characterizing evolution, for example, as “all random chance” is a straw man argument; it misrepresents a complex theory that only partly rests on the randomness of mutations that may lead to better chances of survival.

Recently, in a 2006 paper co-authored with Scott F. Aikin, one of us (Talisse) documented a twist on the straw man tactic. In what Talisse dubs a weak man argument, a person sets up the opposition’s weakest (or one of its weakest) arguments or proponents for attack, as opposed to misstating a rival’s position as the straw man argument does. In a July 2007 edition of Talking Points, Bill O’Reilly took on a claim by the New York Times that we had lost the war in Iraq by saying that “the New York Times declared defeat in Iraq Sunday on its editorial page, and there’s no question the antiwar movement has momentum.” (The editorial actually said that “some opponents of the Iraq war are toying with the idea of American defeat,” but let us assume that O’Reilly’s characterization was correct.)

O’Reilly then offered a weak man explanation for the purported defeat: “The truth is the Iraqi government and many of its citizens are simply not doing enough to defeat the terrorists and corruption. The U.S.A. can’t control that country. No nation could.... Unfortunately, the Iraqi failure to help themselves has come true.” Although Iraq’s failure to aid in fighting terrorism and corruption could be why we are losing the war, the troubles in Iraq could also stem from a host of logistical reasons, some of which may shed a negative light on the current administration. O’Reilly, however, kept any discussion of these reasons offstage, suppressing the various other possible—and possibly more likely—reasons for “defeat” in Iraq. Meanwhile his claims that the “U.S.A. can’t control that country” and that “no nation could” deflected blame from the U.S. government.

Weak man arguments are pervasive. In a 2005 editorial in Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, conservative writer and activist David Horowitz picked on ethnic studies scholar Ward Churchill, formerly at the University of Colorado at Boulder, whose views he described as “hateful and ignorant.” Horowitz then went on to claim that Churchill’s radical “hate America” convictions “represent” those of a “substantial segment of the academic community.” Thus, he used the example of Churchill (the weak man) to argue that “tenured radicals” have made universities into leftist political institutions and subverted the academic enterprise, thereby failing to acknowledge the presence of more highly regarded and politically mainstream scholars in academia.

Trolling for Truth
Weak man tactics are harder to detect than those of the straw man variety. Because straw man arguments are closely related to an opponent’s true position, a clever listener might be able to spot the truth amid the hyperbole, understatement or other corrupted version of that view. A weak man argument, however, is more opaque because it contains a grain of truth and often bears little similarity to the stronger arguments that should also be presented. Therefore, a listener has to know a lot more about the situation to imagine the information that a speaker or writer has cleverly disregarded.

Nevertheless, an astute consumer of the news can catch many straw man and weak man fallacies by knowing how they work. Another strategy is to always consider a speaker’s or writer’s motivation or agenda and be especially alert for skewed statements of fact in editorials, television opinion shows, and the like. It is also wise to obtain news from more balanced news sources. An alternative approach is to try to construct, in your own mind, the best argument against what you have heard before accepting it as true. Or simply ask yourself: Why should I not believe this?

1 Media Outlet is Just Now Reporting on the Poisoned Katrina Trailers Issue

2008-01-30T11:05:00.000-05:00

OBM: I guess the chocking, headaches, and other side effects that the people have been experiencing all this time isn't really important. Really there just refugees...remember.

Big Brother (NSA) is Copying Everything on the Internet

2008-01-25T11:31:00.000-05:00

Is the NSA copying everything on the internet -... (more)
Added: November 23, 2007
Is the NSA copying everything on the internet - your emails, web traffic, VOIP phone calls? Yep - check out this story:

"AT&T whistleblower: I was forced to connect 'big brother machine'"
Reported by David Edwards and Jason Rhyne
Published: Wednesday November 7, 2007

A former technician at AT&T, who alleges that the telecom forwards virtually all of its internet traffic into a "secret room" to facilitate government spying, says the whole operation reminds him of something out of Orwell's 1984.

Appearing on MSNBC's Countdown program, whistleblower Mark Klein told Keith Olbermann that a copy of all internet traffic passing over AT&T lines was copied into a locked room at the company's San Francisco office -- to which only employees with National Security Agency clearance had access -- via a cable splitting device.

"My job was to connect circuits into the splitter device which was hard-wired to the secret room," said Klein. "And effectively, the splitter copied the entire data stream of those internet cables into the secret room -- and we're talking about phone conversations, email web browsing, everything that goes across the internet."

Asked by Olbermann how he knew what was being sent along those particular lines, Klein said it was all part of his former job:

"As a technician, I had the engineering wiring documents, which told me how the splitter was wired to the secret room," Klein continued. "And so I know that whatever went across those cables was copied and the entire data stream was copied..."

According to Klein, that information included internet activity about Americans.

"We're talking about domestic traffic as well as international traffic," Klein said. " And that's what got me upset to begin with."

Previous Bush administration claims that only international communications were being intercepted aren't accurate, Klein says.

"I know the physical equipment, and I know that statement is not true," he added. "It involves millions of communications, a lot of it domestic communications that they're copying wholesale, sweeping up into that secret room."

When Olbermann asked Klein if being involved in the process reminded him of a scene in the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the former technician said he had another movie in mind.

"Actually, I'm a little older so my thought was George Orwell's 1984 and here I am forced to connect the big brother machine," he said. "And I felt I was in a funny position, but I needed my job, so I didn't want to make a fuss a the time. But after I retired, I thought about it some more." According to ABC News, Klein believes AT&T has similar operations in place in as many as 20 other sites.

He is in Washington to lobby Congress not to pass a proposed telecom immunity bill, which would provide legal immunity to companies who secretly participated in NSA warrantless eavesdropping programs. Some of the nation's largest telecommunications companies are currently facing an array of class-action lawsuits related to the matter.

High School Track Star Disqualified from Meet Because of Muslim Clothing

2008-01-18T10:48:00.000-05:00

By Adam Howard, AlterNet
Posted on January 17, 2008, Printed on January 18, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/74165/
This is ridiculous, bigoted insanity. When is it ever going to stop?

A Muslim DC high school track star competed with no trouble Wednesday, despite a speed suit that covers her head, neck and ankles, in deference to her faith.

On Saturday, Juashaunna Kelly was disqualified at a Montgomery County meet because she declined to change it. That's created a nationwide controversy on the internet, some of it vicious and filled with hate.

The 17 year old Gatorade Athlete of the Year took to the track this time with a huge smile instead of tears. The head of the DC Interscholastic Athletic Association told her it was fine to run in the multi-colored speed suit that serves as her Muslim headcovering when she competes.

"I'm not going to let no one stop me from competing," says the Roosevelt High School senior. "I'm just going to use what I have and go out there and do my best."

On Saturday, officials at the prestigious Montgomery Invitational told Kelly that the custom made outfit in her school colors violates the rules of the national athletic federation.

But DC officials said at the DC Invitational Wednesday that the national rules are just guidelines.

You can tell from this story and from this video that Ms. Kelly is a strong, proud and decent young person and I applaud her for sticking by her principles but it still saddens me that she has to and that she's been abused in this way. Apparently now both Juashaunna's family and the track meet director have been the subjects of hate and threat filled emails. The situation as of right now has not been resolved. Check out the video to your right for more.

McDonald's ads hit new low

2008-01-18T10:28:00.000-05:00

McDonald's, the clever folks behind the living billboard in Chicago that spelled out "Fresh Salads" with 16 different kinds of live, growing lettuce, has launched a different kind of advertising campaign.

This one can be seen on children's report cards.

If I couldn't see the image (left), I wouldn't believe it. But last week, students in Seminole County, Florida apparently received their report cards in envelopes adorned with Ronald McDonald promising a free Happy Meal to students with good grades, behavior or attendance, according to The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, a consumer advocacy group that works to protect children from the harmful effects of marketing.

The advertisement appears on report card envelopes for students in kindergarten through 5th grade. The envelopes are used to transport report cards to and from home throughout the school year, says the CCFC.

McDonald's picked up the $1,600 for printing costs associated with producing the report cards for the 27,000 students according to Adweek. But promoting Happy Meals flies in the face of McDonald's promise to only advertise its healthier options to children younger than 12 and to stop advertising all food or beverage products in elementary schools.

Yes, Happy Meals now might include milk and apple slices, but kids really want the cheeseburgers, French fries, and soft drinks. "Happy Meals featured on the report card can contain as many 710 calories, 28 grams of fat, or 35 grams of sugar," according to the CCFC.

I'm not sure who has hit a new low: McDonald's or the school district, which has said it will continue to run the McDonald's ads on report cards for the rest of the year and take the ONE COMPLAINT by a parent into consideration for next year.

Just one complaint? What are these parents thinking? It's fine if you want to reward your kid's good grades with fast food. This is America, after all. But whether it's Pizza Hut or McDonald's, advertisements for junk food have no place on a report card or its envelope in the same way that fast food has no business inside a school cafeteria.

Conservative Shelby Steele on Bill Moyers Journal

2008-01-15T11:51:00.000-05:00

WATCH SHELBY STEELE INTERVIEW

With the wildly vacillating predictions about the viability of the Obama candidacy in the news, Shelby Steele's most recent book is getting a lot of attention. In A BOUND MAN: WHY WE ARE EXCITED ABOUT OBAMA AND WHY HE CAN'T WIN, Steele assesses the potential impact of Obama's campaign in terms of white and black America's presumptions about race and politics.

OBM: While I do not have much problem with Steele's description of bargainers but, challengers can only challenge things that are historically true or currently factual.

PayPal to begin giving the IRS PayPal users account information

2008-01-14T14:37:00.000-05:00

COPY OF PAYPAL EMAIL
Notice of IRS Summons

Dear *My Name*,

PayPal has received a summons from the United States Internal Revenue Service requiring us to produce various account records, including data related to your PayPal account. PayPal understands the summons relates to the IRS' offshore compliance program in which the IRS has sought information about offshore credit card accounts from a number of companies. Your privacy is extremely important to PayPal. PayPal is obligated, however, to turn over the requested data. PayPal has been ordered by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California to provide the information to the IRS, and PayPal expects to begin providing this information to the IRS on January 10, 2008. The summons and court order both issue from the United States District Court in an action entitled: In The Matters of the Tax Liabilities of John Does, Case No. CV-05-04176-JW.

If you have any concerns about the disclosure of this information, you should consult with your tax or legal advisor. You may have rights in connection with the summons, including the right to seek to prevent the IRS from obtaining some or all of the information. The statute of limitations that limits the time in which the IRS may assert tax liabilities against you may be suspended beginning on the date which is six months after the IRS served the summons upon PayPal and continuing until PayPal finally resolves its response to the IRS. See 26 U.S.C. § 7609(e)(2). PayPal cannot provide you with legal advice. If you have questions concerning the summons and court order, we encourage you to contact the IRS, your tax advisor and/or your attorney. If you wish to contact the Internal Revenue Service regarding this matter, they can be reached at (215) 516-4777.

Thank You,

The PayPal Legal Team

For Those of Us Who Have Forgotten or do Not Know

2008-01-09T08:50:00.000-05:00

The Kingdom first 4 minutes

SWAT Goons Dispatched On Homeschoolers in Colorado

2008-01-08T22:13:00.000-05:00

Kurt Nimmo
Truth News
January 7, 2008

In Garfield County, Colorado, not only will the state determine if you should take your child to a doctor after a mishap, but if you don’t comply with their on-high directives, they will dispatch a SWAT team to ensure compliance.

According to Tom Shiflett, a Vietnam vet, his son was injured during horseplay, WorldNetDaily reports. Shiflett’s son, John, “was grabbing the door handle of a car as his sister was starting to drive away slowly. He slipped, fell to the ground and hit his head…. There were no broken bones, no dilated eyes, or any other noticeable problems.”

After a neighbor called an ambulance, paramedics “were allowed to see the boy, and found no significant impairment, but wanted to take him to the hospital for an evaluation anyway. Fearing the hospital’s bills, the family refused to allow that.”

According to friends of the family, Tom Shiflett, who has 10 children including six still at home, and served with paramedics in Vietnam, was monitoring his son’s condition himself.

The paramedic and magistrate, however, ruled that that wasn’t adequate, and dispatched the officers to take the boy, John, to a hospital, where a doctor evaluated him and released him immediately.

But this was not sufficient for the sheriff’s office and social services. “Nearly a dozen members of a police SWAT team” were subsequently unleashed in response, “punched a hole in the front door and invaded a family’s home with guns drawn, demanding that an 11-year-old boy… accompany them to the hospital, on the order of Garfield County Magistrate Lain Leoniak.”

It appears Shiflett and his family were made an example, as in part they “live by faith and homeschool,” social behavior anathema to the NWO and its minions in Colorado government and so-called social services and various control commissariats, conversely known as child kidnapping services.

“While people can debate whether or not the father should have brought his son to the ER — it seems like this was not the kind of emergency that warrants this kind of outrageous conduct by government officials,” a spokesman for the Home School Legal Defense Association told WND.

During the SWAT raid for non-compliance, the “boy’s parents and siblings were thrown to the floor at gunpoint and the parents were handcuffed… all because a paramedic was upset the family preferred to care for their son themselves.”

Of course, caring for your own is unacceptable, same as it was in the Soviet Union. Mr. Shiflett and his family learned first-hand that all of us are serfs and when the state barks “jump,” our only response should be “how high, sir?” Our children are property of the state and we will not be allowed to care for them — or for that matter, school them at home — and government intervention will be mandatory, otherwise SWAT goons will be dispatched to kick in the door and act like what they are, Gestapo goons revisited.

How to Lose Your Job on Your Own Time

2008-01-04T07:26:00.000-05:00

The New York Times
December 30, 2007

By RANDALL STROSS
WERE Henry Ford brought back to life today, he would most likely be delighted by the Internet: the uninhibited way many people express themselves on the Web makes it easy to supervise the private lives of employees.

In his day, the Ford Motor Company maintained a “Sociological Department” staffed with investigators who visited the homes of all but the highest-level managers. Their job was to dig for information about the employee’s religion, spending and savings patterns, drinking habits and how the worker “amused himself.”

Home inspections are no longer needed; many companies are using the Internet to snoop on their employees. If you fail to maintain amorphous “professional” standards of conduct in your free time, you could lose your job.

Employment law in most states provides little protection to workers who are punished for their online postings, said George Lenard, an employment lawyer at Harris Dowell Fisher & Harris in St. Louis. The main exceptions are workers who are covered by collective bargaining agreements or by special protections for public-sector employees; members of these groups can be dismissed only “for cause.” The rest of us are “at will” employees, holding on to our jobs only at the whim of our employers, and thus vulnerable.

A line needs to be drawn — Day-Glo bright — that demarcates the boundary between work and private life. When a worker is on the job, companies have every right to supervise activities closely. But what an employee does after hours, as long as no laws are broken, is none of the company’s business. Of course, what we used to call “off hours” are fewer now, and employees may connect to the office nightly from home. But when they do go off the clock and off the corporate network, how they spend their private time should be of no concern to their employer, even if the Internet, by its nature, makes some off-the-job activities more visible to more people than was previously possible.

In the absence of strong protections for employees, poorly chosen words or even a single photograph posted online in one’s off-hours can have career-altering consequences. Stacy Snyder, 25, who was a senior at Millersville University in Millersville, Pa., offers an instructive example. Last year, she was dismissed from the student teaching program at a nearby high school and denied her teaching credential after the school staff came across her photograph on her MySpace profile. She filed a lawsuit in April this year in federal court in Philadelphia contending that her rights to free expression under the First Amendment had been violated. No trial date has been set.

Her photo, preserved at the “Wired Campus” blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education, turns out to be surprisingly innocuous. In a head shot snapped at a costume party, Ms. Snyder, with a pirate’s hat perched atop her head, sips from a large plastic cup whose contents cannot be seen. When posting the photo, she fatefully captioned her self-portrait “drunken pirate,” though whether she was serious can’t be determined by looking at the photo.

Millersville University, in a motion asking the court to dismiss the case, contends that Ms. Snyder’s student teaching had been unsatisfactory for many reasons. But it affirms that she was dismissed and barred from re-entering the school shortly after the high school staff discovered her MySpace photograph. The university backed the school authorities’ contentions that her posting was “unprofessional” and might “promote under-age drinking.” It also cited a passage in the teacher’s handbook that said staff members are “to be well-groomed and appropriately dressed.”

MR. LENARD said last week that protections for employees for off-duty behavior varied widely from state to state. Colorado and Minnesota have laws explicitly protecting all employees from discrimination for engaging in any lawful activity off premises during nonworking hours. In other states, like Pennsylvania, where Ms. Snyder lives, such protection doesn’t exist.

What some employers regard as imprudent disclosure online may seem commonplace to the rest of us. On Dec. 16, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released the results of a study, “Digital Footprints,” showing that 60 percent of Internet users surveyed are not worried about how much information is available about them online.

The findings reflect a significant change within just a few years in public attitudes about privacy and disclosure. In an earlier Pew study, “Trust and Privacy Online,” published in 2000, some 84 percent of respondents expressed concern about “businesses and people you don’t know getting personal information about you and your family.”

Susannah Fox, associate director of the Pew project and an author of both the 2000 and 2007 surveys, told me that she was surprised by the reduced concern about online publication of personal information. Internet users are not just passively allowing personal information to slip from their control and end up online, where it is searchable; they are also actively putting the information online themselves. The “Digital Footprints” study coined a new phrase, “active digital footprint,” to refer to the personal information that individuals increasingly place online voluntarily.

Personal disclosure is the norm on social networking sites. But the Pew study included an unexpected finding: Teenagers have the most sophisticated understanding of privacy controls on these sites, and they are far less likely than adults to permit their profiles to be visible to anyone and everyone.

Tight privacy settings won’t always keep personal information placed on social networking sites safe from an employers’ prying eyes. A manager could literally look over your shoulder or afterward check a history of sites you visited.

Ms. Snyder had not adjusted her MySpace privacy settings to restrict public access, but why should she have done so? She anticipated that her profile page would be seen by school authorities. On it she declared that as an adult, over the age of 21, she believed that “I have nothing to hide.”

The day may come when nothing that is said online will be treated as embarrassing because we will have become accustomed to everyone disclosing everything. The Pew study phrases this possibility as a question: “Will we come to be more forgiving of embarrassing or unflattering information trails as more of us have our own experiences with personal data leftovers gone bad?”

In the interim, some people will be more cautious than Ms. Snyder. Ms. Fox of the Pew project recently paid a visit to New Orleans for a bachelorette party with female friends — husbands not included. She wanted to make sure that details of the festivities did not find their way to the Internet. She instructed her friends: “If you’re going to upload the pictures, don’t tag with real names.” The photos went up, without traceable digital fingerprints.

Calif. School Targets Mexican Students

2008-01-04T06:54:00.000-05:00

Dec 31 03:39 PM US/Eastern
By ELLIOT SPAGAT
Associated Press Writer

CALEXICO, Calif. (AP) - Children are more likely to shield their faces than to smile when Daniel Santillan points his camera.
Santillan's photos aren't for any picture album or yearbook—they help prove that Mexican youngsters are illegally attending public schools in this California border community.

With too many students and too few classrooms, Calexico school officials took the unusual step of hiring someone to photograph children and document the offenders. Santillan snaps pictures at the city's downtown border crossing and shares the images with school principals, who use them as evidence to kick out those living in Mexico.

Since he started the job two years ago, the number of students in the Calexico school system has fallen 5 percent, from 9,600 to 9,100, while the city's population grew about 3 percent.

"The community asked us to do this, and we responded," school board President Enrique Alvarado said. "Once it starts to affect you personally, when your daughter gets bumped to another school, then our residents start complaining."

Every day along the 1,952-mile border, children from Mexico cross into the United States and attend public schools. No one keeps statistics on how many.

Citizenship isn't the issue for school officials; district residency is.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled illegal immigrants have a right to an education, so schools don't ask about immigration status. But citizens and illegal immigrants alike can't falsely claim residency in a school district.

OBM: This is sickening...How about these cowards go to the employers of the parrents of these so-called illegal children and take pictures of them. Then take those pictures to so-called american law enforcement and ask for them to be arrested. Then futher, post the pictures of these american law breakers all over the internet. I wounder...if american criminals would stop being alloud to extort hispanics for cheep/slave labor, would this issue resolve itself. I sorry...I forgot....wealthy and mostly white americans are neveramnd have never been guilty of anything.

Enforcement of residency requirements varies widely along the border. Some schools do little to verify where children live beyond checking leases or utility bills, while others dispatch officials to homes when suspicions are raised.

Jesus Gandara, superintendent of the Sweetwater district, with 44,000 students along San Diego's border with Mexico, said tracking children at the border goes too far. "If you do that, you're playing immigration agent," he said.

The El Paso Independent School District in Texas sends employees to homes when suspicions are raised. But spokesman Luis Villalobos said photographing students at the border would be a monumental, unproductive effort.

That's not the thinking in Calexico, a city 120 miles east of San Diego that has seen its population double to 38,000 since 1990. A steel fence along the border separates Calexico from Mexicali, an industrial city of about 750,000 that sends shoppers and farm laborers to California.

Calexico's rapid growth outstripped school resources, resulting in overcrowding and prompting demands that Mexican interlopers be ousted. Taxpayers complained their children were bused across town because neighborhood schools were full, even after Calexico voters approved a $30 million construction measure in 2004. Portable classrooms proliferated.

The 62-year-old Santillan (pronounced sahn-tee-YAHN) was hired in He is an unlikely enforcer. Posters of Cesar Chavez and Che Guevara adorn the walls of his ranch-style home. The Vietnam War veteran and labor activist is an outspoken advocate of amnesty for illegal immigrants and fills water jugs in the desert for Mexicans who trek across the border illegally.

He parks his old Toyota Echo at the border two or three mornings a week, often in a handicapped spot that his bad knees allow him to occupy. He photographs some of the hundreds of students who exit the inspection building and walk to class.

Some hide their faces when they see his 6-foot-5, 310-pound frame. Sometimes he follows students to school.

Many of the students know him. Others in town are not always sure what he is up to. A new police officer once ran his name through a database of sex offenders. A talk-radio host warned listeners that an odd- looking man at the border might be looking for children to kidnap.

Some students taunt him. Friends have called him a hypocrite. Santillan reminds them that he is only enforcing school residency rules, not immigration laws. Still, he says, "You've got to have hell of a tough skin."

The California native also visits addresses listed on student enrollment forms, knocking on doors as late as 9 p.m. and introducing himself in Spanish.

One crisp December morning, he went to three homes before dawn, carrying a clipboard with several pages of students suspected of living in Mexico. A woman who opened her door at 6:30 a.m. said her niece no longer lives with her. At another home, a woman said her niece moved last month.

Many Calexico residents support the crackdown.

Fernando Torres, a former mayor, was upset when the district said his grandchildren would have to transfer because there was no room in their neighborhood school. "It's not right" for U.S. taxpayers to build classrooms for Mexican residents, he said. The district eventually relented.

School board member Eduardo Rivera estimates there are still 250 to 400 students from Mexico attending Calexico's schools.

"It's a continual struggle," Rivera said. "You have people who are determined to continue sending their kids over here."

FLASHBACK: One Reason to Check Out My Archives

2008-01-04T06:40:00.000-05:00

New 9/11 Truth Film Preview

OBM: Why isn't Israeli involvement mentioned ABOUT 9/11? Here is something to consider.

Health Professionals Call for End to Water Fluoridation

2008-01-01T02:09:00.000-05:00

As detailed in this ABC News Story, over 600 (now over 1,200) professionals are urging Congress to stop water fluoridation until ... all » Congressional hearings are conducted. They cite new scientific evidence that fluoridation, long promoted to fight tooth decay, is ineffective and has serious health risks.

Signers include a Nobel Prize winner, three members of the prestigious 2006 National Research Council (NRC) panel that reported on fluoride’s toxicology, two officers in the Union representing professionals at EPA headquarters, the President of the International Society of Doctors for the Environment, and hundreds of medical, dental, academic, scientific and environmental professionals, worldwide. (First aired: August 9, 2007). «

What is Ron Paul's View of Blacks and Issues Important to Blacks

2007-12-27T14:18:00.000-05:00

OBM: I found it....I knew if I kept digging I'd find the real scoop on Ron Paul. This post will only include clips of an artical series by The DAILY KOS. Click "read more" to see more clips. To read the full artical with all links click on the headline of this story.

Thanks DAILY KOS for this great research.
by phenry
Tue May 15, 2007 at 06:57:29 PM PST

RON PAIL HIGHLIGHTS:

Content from the Ron Political/Survival Report today:
1992 "LOS ANGELES RACIAL TERRORISM," on the subject of the so-called Rodney King riots in South Central Los Angeles in 1991:

"Regardless of what the media tell us, most white Americans are not going to believe that they are at fault for what blacks have done to cities across America. The professional blacks may have cowed the elites, but good sense survives at the grass roots. Many more are going to have difficultly avoiding the belief that our country is being destroyed by a group of actual and potential terrorists -- and they can be identified by the color of their skin. This conclusion may not be entirely fair, but it is, for many, entirely unavoidable.

Indeed, it is shocking to consider the uniformity of opinion among blacks in this country. Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty, and the end of welfare and affirmative action.... Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the "criminal justice system," I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.

If similar in-depth studies were conducted in other major cities, who doubts that similar results would be produced? We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, but it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings, and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers.

Perhaps the L.A. experience should not be surprising. The riots, burning, looting, and murders are only a continuation of 30 years of racial politics.The looting in L.A. was the welfare state without the voting booth. The elite have sent one message to black America for 30 years: you are entitled to something for nothing. That's what blacks got on the streets of L.A. for three days in April. Only they didn't ask their Congressmen to arrange the transfer."

DAILY KOS: The entire artical is a 3700-word racist tirade that is frankly stomach-turning in its depiction of African-Americans as violent, unevolved savages and even rapists."

During Paul's 1996 Congressional run, the Houston Chronicle:

Texas congressional candidate Ron Paul's 1992 political newsletter highlighted portrayals of blacks as inclined toward crime and lacking sense about top political issues.

Under the headline of "Terrorist Update," for instance, Paul reported on gang crime in Los Angeles and commented, "If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be."

Paul, a Republican obstetrician from Surfside, said Wednesday he opposes racism and that his written commentaries about blacks came in the context of "current events and statistical reports of the time."

... [I]n the same 1992 edition ... [Paul wrote], "We don't think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That's true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such."

Paul also asserted that "complex embezzling" is conducted exclusively by non-blacks.

"What else do we need to know about the political establishment than that it refuses to discuss the crimes that terrify Americans on grounds that doing so is racist? Why isn't that true of complex embezzling, which is 100 percent white and Asian?" he wrote.

Civil Rights:

Paul doesn't much care for ensuring your right to vote. Like when he voted with just 32 other members of Congress against reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Or when he voted for the bogus "Federal Election Integrity Act" voter suppression bill.

But at least Ron Paul knows who's responsible for racism in America: you are. "By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality," he writes, "the advocates of so-called 'diversity' actually perpetuate racism. Their intense focus on race is inherently racist, because it views individuals only as members of racial groups."

THE STRANGE CASE OF LARRY PRATT

In 1996, presidential candidate Pat Buchanan got in hot water when the Center for Public Integrity revealed connections between Buchanan's campaign co-chairman Larry Pratt and Pastor Pete Peters, a leader of the white supremacist Christian Identity movement. Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America, had been a frequent guest at meetings and on radio and television programs hosted by Peters, who inveighed against "Talmudic filth" as Pratt looked on. On February 15, 1996, Pratt took a leave of absence from the Buchanan campaign, so as to avoid causing a "distraction."

The very next day, reported the San Antonio Express-News on February 18, Ron Paul distributed a press release touting Pratt's endorsement of Paul's candidacy for the U.S. Congress. Pratt's endorsement of Paul was anything but pro forma; the February 22, 1996 issue of Roll Call noted that Paul and Mike Gunn, a Republican candidate for Congress in Mississippi who had done some work for David Duke in the latter's 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial campaign, were the only two candidates formally endorsed for office that year by Pratt's organization. Paul's opponent in the Republican primary, Rep. Greg Laughlin, called upon Paul to repudiate Pratt; Paul declined to do so, with his spokesman saying that Paul opposed racism but that "nothing has been proven against Mr. Pratt. He has denied it." (Pratt's enthusiasm for Paul continues to this day, as this quasi-endorsement of Paul's 2008 presidential campaign makes clear.)

THE COMPANY RON PAUL KEEPS:

Paul's disinclination to separate himself from the Larry Pratts of the world is part of a pattern that over the last 20 years has seen him snuggling up to some extremely questionable characters on the far right fringe. Like, for example, secessionists, who gathered at a conference in April of 1995 to hear Paul speak about the "once and future Republic of Texas." Or the beady-eyed listeners of The Political Cesspool. It's the unofficial radio program of the Council of Conservative Citizens--you know, the repainted White Citizens Council that got Trent Lott into a bit of trouble a few years ago. (Tune in tonight for their special program on "the disastrous Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education decision, one which ushered in an era of radical leftist ideology upon the American citizenry.") Paul has been a guest on the program; you'll find him listed under P, right above Prussian Blue, the white supremacist teenage singing duo.

Or the crazy-as-fuck John Birch Society, to which Paul is more than happy to grant the occasional interview and even speak at their dinners (the podcast, I am sorry to report, no longer seems to be available). In fact, Paul is the only member of Congress to receive a perfect 100 from the John Birch Society in its most recent member ratings.

THE KLAN'S MAN IN WASHINGTON:

Like many members of Congress, the prolific Paul posts his speeches, columns, and statements on his House Web site. He allows anyone to republish and distribute them, and many do. For example, our old friends the Council of Conservative Citizens occasionally publish Paul in its newsletter, the Citizens Informer (warning: PDF). And then there's David Duke, who can't get enough of Ron Paul; you can find his columns on davidduke.com here and here and here and here and here. If you're more of a dead-tree fan, you can find Paul's thoughts on foreign policy reprinted in the January 2007 issue of the National Times, a white supremacist newspaper that apparently gets distributed through the time-honored neo-Nazi method of throwing the thing onto unsuspecting people's porches in the middle of the night and scurrying away.

For a real look inside the tiny, demented mind of the neo-Nazi, though, we need to go to Stormfront. Stormfront is the oldest and largest white supremacist site on the World Wide Web; its discussion boards provide an unequaled opportunity for eavesdropping on the thoughts and plans of the racist underground in America and around the world. And you don't have to visit for very long before one thing jumps out at you: they positively adore Ron Paul. (Please note that links in this paragraph go to a hate site and should probably be considered NSFW.) An "Is Ron Paul the One?" topic is currently stickied in Stormfront's Newslinks & Articles forum; another active topic on Paul's candidacy has received 446 posts and 12,040 pageviews since late March. A topic called "Ron Paul's Race Problem" (hey, Wonkette musta read my diary!) was just started today and already has 17 replies. They're busy little racists over there.

Green Bay Police Begin Fingerprinting on Traffic Stops

2007-12-27T10:45:00.000-05:00

By Sarah Thomsen

If you're ticketed by Green Bay police, you'll get more than a fine. You'll get fingerprinted, too. It's a new way police are cracking down on crime.

If you're caught speeding or playing your music too loud, or other crimes for which you might receive a citation, Green Bay police officers will ask for your drivers license and your finger. You'll be fingerprinted right there on the spot. The fingerprint appears right next to the amount of the fine.

Police say it's meant to protect you -- in case the person they're citing isn't who they claim to be. But not everyone is sold on that explanation.

"What we've seen happen for the last couple of years [is] increasing use of false or fraudulent identification documents," Captain Greg Urban said.

Police say they want to prevent the identity theft problem that Milwaukee has, where 13 percent of all violators give a false name.

But in Green Bay, where police say they only average about five cases in a year, drivers we talked with think the new policy is extreme.

"That's going too far," Ken Scherer from Oconto said. "You look at the ID, that's what they're there for. Either it's you or it's not. I don't think that's a valid excuse."

"I would feel uncomfortable but I would do it," Carol Pilgrim of Green Bay said.

Citizens do have the right to say no. "They could say no and not have to worry about getting arrested," defense attorney Jackson Main said. "On the other hand, I'm like everybody else. When a police officer tells me to do something, I'm going to do it whether I have the right to say no or not."

That's exactly why many drivers are uneasy about the fine print in this fingerprinting policy.

Police stress that the prints are just to make sure you are who you claim to be and do not go into any kind of database; they simply stay on the ticket for future reference if the identity is challenged.

George Carlin: education and the owners of America

2007-12-13T11:25:00.000-05:00

Proposed Congressional bill creates new copyright cops that can seize your home computer

2007-12-13T10:59:00.000-05:00

A bipartisan group of Congressmen (and one woman) yesterday introduced a major bill aimed at boosting US intellectual property laws and the penalties that go along with them. While much of the legislation targets industrial counterfeiting and knockoff drugs, it also allows the government to seize people's computers.

The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO IP... groan) Act of 2007 has the backing of many of the most powerful politicians on the House Judiciary Committee, including John Conyers (D-MI), Lamar Smith (R-TX), and "Hollywood" Howard Berman (D-CA).

In addition to strengthening both civil and criminal penalties for copyright and trademark infringement, the big development here is the proposed creation of the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative (USIPER). This is a new executive branch office tasked with coordinating IP enforcement at the national and international level. To do this work internationally, the bill also authorizes US intellectual property officers to be sent to other countries in order to assist with crackdowns there. In addition, the Department of Justice gets additional funding and a new unit to help prosecute IP crimes.

A proposed bill now gives the government the ability to seize personal property, like the home computer, on suspicion of copyright infringement, and also proposes a new copyright police force to enforce existing laws.

GNN: As if the the government needs another excuse to seize personal property, these seizures have nothing to do with protecting national security but they do protect the bottom line for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The RIAA is no stranger to pressuring Congress to pass legislation criminalizing end users. The RIAA has advocated the denial of federal funding to colleges and college students who do not sign up to subscription-based downloading services

The bill, which will have a committee hearing soon, is supposed to kick-start the copyright reform process talked about for so long. But copyright reform means one thing to the PRO IP sponsors and another to the consumer groups that have been advocating for it.

Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, said in a statement, "seizing expensive manufacturing equipment used for large-scale infringement from a commercial pirate may be appropriate. Seizing a family's general-purpose computer in a download case, as this bill would allow, is not appropriate."

In addition, she protests the increase in "already extraordinary copyright damages" and calls for damages to be linked more closely to actual harm suffered by copyright holders.

The Digital Freedom Campaign, backed by the EFF, Public Knowledge, and the Consumer Electronics Association, was more muted in its criticism, instead choosing to praise the legislation for launching a "conversation" about copyright reform. The Digital Freedom Campaign's Maura Corbett said that meaningful copyright reform "must include limits on statutory damages and the codification of the vital principles of fair use," and she hopes that PRO IP "will serve as a catalyst to larger, more meaningful reform."

Fortunately, at least some members of the Judiciary Committee are at least aware that the consumer groups have legitimate points to make. Berman, who chairs the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, announced that his subcommittee would hold a hearing next week on the issue.

"As a cosponsor, I obviously feel very strongly that we must strengthen enforcement efforts to fight piracy and counterfeiting," Berman said. "At the hearing, we will be hearing testimony from both industry experts and from labor and consumer advocates to make sure that in doing so, we don't deny appropriate access to America's intellectual property."

Who is thrilled with the bill? The MPAA, for one. MPAA head Dan Glickman, in a statement praising the new bill, said that "films left costs foreign and domestic distributors, retailers and others $18 billion a year," a significant increase from the $6 billion it allegedly costs the studios.

A new education bill withholds federal aid if campuses do not provide alternatives to illegal downloads and peer-to-peer networks

2007-12-13T10:53:00.000-05:00

By Eric Bangeman | Published: November 11, 2007 - 11:15PM CT

A massive education bill (747-page PDF) introduced into Congress contains a provision that would force colleges and universities to offer "technology-based deterrents" to file-sharing under the pain of losing all federal financial aid. Section 494 of the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 is entitled "Campus-Based Digital Theft Prevention" that could have just as easily been called "Motion Picture and Recording Industry Subsidies," as it could force schools into signing up for subscription-based services like Napster and Rhapsody.

Under the terms of the act, which is cosponsored by Rep. George Miller (D-CA) and Rep. Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX), schools will have to inform students of their official policies about copyright infringement during the financial aid application and disbursement process. In addition, students will be warned about the possible civil and criminal penalties for file-sharing as well as the steps the schools take to prevent and detect illicit P2P traffic.

That's not all: schools would have to give students an alternative to file-sharing while evaluating technological measures (i.e., traffic shaping, deep packet inspection) that they could deploy to thwart P2P traffic on campus networks. Many—if not most—schools already closely monitor traffic on their networks, with some (e.g., Ohio University) blocking it altogether, and the bill would provide grants to colleges so they could evaluate different technological solutions.

The most objectionable part of the bill is the part that could force schools into signing up for music subscription services. In order to keep that beloved federal aid money flowing, universities would have to "develop a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property."

Introduced in 2003, campus-wide subscription agreements give students access to download services like Napster or Rhapsody whether they want it—or can use it (the iPod isn't supported by any of the subscription services). The services are typically funded by activity fees; by and large, they've been met with a collective yawn from students. Lack of iPod support is a major turn-off, as is the fact that the subscriptions end when a student graduates or transfers, rendering the downloads unplayable.

The Motion Picture Association of America doesn't see it that way. Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman called it a positive step in the fight against file-sharing, throwing out some unsubstantiated figures on how file-sharing allegedly costs jobs and hurts the economy. "Intellectual property theft is a worldwide problem that hurts our economy and costs more than 140,000 American jobs every year," said Glickman in a statement. "We are pleased to see that Congress is taking this step to help keep our economy strong by protecting copyrighted material on college campuses."

The Association of American Universities doesn't like the idea at all. In a letter (PDF) sent to Rep. Miller just before the bill was introduced, the group expressed its "grave concerns" about Section 494 of the bill. "We urge the Education and Labor Committee to reject the entertainment industry's proposal as it crafts its bill to reauthorize the HEA," reads the letter. "The proposal would mandate a completely inappropriate role for the Secretary of Education to single out individual institutions based on information under the control of the entertainment industry, force institutions to seek an unachievable goal of preventing illegal P2P file sharing, and risk the loss of student aid for countless students innocent of any illegal file sharing activity."

This isn't the first time Congress has threatened colleges and universities over file-sharing. In June, the House Committee on Science and Technology held hearings on the issue, with committee members telling schools that they need to explore technological measures in the battle against illicit P2P traffic. Two months later, an amendment to the Higher Education Act was proposed by Sen. Harry Reid (R-NV) that would have forced schools to crack down on P2P traffic.

Schools have objected to attempts to force them to the front lines of the copyright wars. Technological measures can be costly and are not always effective: they may not block all illicit traffic, while preventing some legitimate BitTorrent traffic from going through. Colleges and universities don't believe they should be forced to do the RIAA and MPAA's dirty work, especially since current copyright law and the DMCA give both organizations several avenues by which they can enforce their copyrights.

File-sharing may be commonplace on many college campuses, but universities shouldn't be treated any differently than other ISPs. The DMCA shields them from liability for the kind of traffic on their network, and removing that protection via an amendment to the Higher Education Act would create a dangerous precedent. Turning universities into copyright cops and forcing them to spend millions of dollars on untested technological solutions in a time of rising tuition and shrinking budgets is a bad idea.