Continue reading »]]> By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

(Photo: Monsanto via The New York Times)

The common problem we face is the power of concentrated wealth and monopolistic corporate interests. This has created a crony capitalist economy that uses government to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the people, often threatening our basic necessities for life.A clear example of this is found in the behavior of the chemical and seed corporation, Monsanto.

Monsanto threatens the world’s food supply; this is a major challenge of our era. This struggle is central to the global ecosystem, economy and energy crises. Monsanto also pushes poisonous chemicals into the environment and promotes agricultural practices that exacerbate climate change.

Monsanto’s actions truly affect each of us. They put their profits over the need for healthy foods, diverse seed supplies and the stability of the agricultural economy. They employ a variety of tools to control access to seeds and aggressively push genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and toxic chemicals despite serious safety concerns about them. And they accomplish this with great help from the US government.

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Continue reading »]]> By Rebel of Oz

The other day I got into trouble with a family friend, whose 7-year-old came home from a play date with my son claiming ‘Santa does not exist!’ It’s all my fault. My son had heard at school from a school mate that there is something fishy about the Santa story. He knows that I have never lied to him, so he asked me, “Dad is it true what my friend told me that Santa does not exist?”

I didn’t dare to directly answer his question for fear of the wrath of my wife. However, I didn’t want to lie to him either. So I asked him back what he thinks. He told me that he had thought about it and that he thinks that it is logistically and technically impossible that the official story was true. There is no way that Santa would be able to deliver billions of packages all around the world in as little as 24 hours. The presents wouldn’t all fit in his sleigh either and what is more, not all houses had chimneys for Santa to slip in.

I could have weaselled my way out of this by referring to miracles and magic, but I couldn’t make myself abuse his trust. On his insistence to receive a straight answer, I replied back that he had answered the question himself. “Trust your common sense,” I said. I should have also told him to keep this mouth shut about what he had just found out. When, during his play date, the topic of Santa came up he showed off what he had just found out. His friend’s mother was not impressed.

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(AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon is asking Congress for more than $450 million for maintaining and upgrading the Guantanamo Bay prison that President Barack Obama wants to close.

New details on the administration’s budget request emerged on Tuesday and underscored the contradiction of the president waging a political fight to shutter the facility while the military calculates the financial requirements to keep the installation operating.

The budget request for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 calls for $79 million for detention operations, the same as the current year, and $20.5 million for the office of military commissions, an increase over the current amount of $12.6 million. The request also includes $40 million for a fiber optic cable and $99 million for operation and maintenance.

The Pentagon also wants $200 million for military construction to upgrade temporary facilities. That work could take eight to 10 years as the military has to transport workers to the island, rely on limited housing and fly in building material.

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Continue reading »]]> By MARTIN CRUTSINGER

WASHINGTON – Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said late Monday he will begin tapping into two government employee retirement funds to buy more time before the U.S. Treasury is faced with the prospect of defaulting on the national debt.

In a letter to congressional leaders, Lew said that he would tap the civil service retirement and disability fund and a similar fund that covers retired postal workers. The law allows him to remove investments from these funds to clear room for more borrowing until Congress votes to raise the debt limit

Under the law, any investments diverted from the pension funds must be replaced with interest once Congress approves raising the debt limit.

Lew has said the various bookkeeping measures he is allowed to employ should provide enough maneuvering room to keep the government from defaulting on its debt until after Labor Day. Other estimates say Lew may be able to forestall a default until as late as November.

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Bill Bard says:

What a fucking scam.

Continue reading »]]> By H. Schreuder & J. O’Sullivan

A recent NASA report throws the space agency into conflict with its climatologists after new NASA measurements prove that carbon dioxide acts as a coolant in Earth’s atmosphere.

NASA’s Langley Research Center has collated data proving that “greenhouse gases” actually block up to 95 percent of harmful solar rays from reaching our planet, thus reducing the heating impact of the sun. The data was collected by Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry, (or SABER). SABER monitors infrared emissions from Earth’s upper atmosphere, in particular from carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO), two substances thought to be playing a key role in the energy balance of air above our planet’s surface.

NASA’s Langley Research Center instruments show that the thermosphere not only received a whopping 26 billion kilowatt hours of energy from the sun during a recent burst of solar activity, but that in the upper atmospheric carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide molecules sent as much as 95% of that radiation straight back out into space.

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Continue reading »]]> Remember that scene in Scarface?

Two members of the FBI’s elite counterterrorism unit died Friday while practicing how to quickly drop from a helicopter to a ship using a rope, the FBI announced Monday in a statement.

The statement gave few details regarding the deaths of Special Agents Christopher Lorek and Stephen Shaw, other than to say the helicopter encountered unspecified difficulties and the agents fell a “significant distance.”

Last month, the team was involved in the arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings. And in February, it rescued a 5-year-old boy held hostage for six days in an underground bunker in Alabama.

“Whenever things go really wrong, the FBI calls in the Hostage Rescue Team. It’s the government’s 911,” Coulson said.

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Bill Bard says:

Seems convenient way to kill off two who might just know a bit more about Boston than was good for them.

Continue reading »]]> By David Ingram

U.S. President Barack Obama (2nd L) and Vice President Joe Biden (L), along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011. REUTERS/White House/Pete Souza/Handout (Ho New Reuters, / May 12, 2011)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that the U.S. government had properly classified top secret more than 50 images of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden taken after his death, and that the government did not need to release them.

The unanimous ruling by three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected a request for the images by a conservative nonprofit watchdog group.

Judicial Watch sued for photographs and video from the May 2011 raid in which U.S. special forces killed bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, after more than a decade of searching.

The organization’s lawsuit relied on the Freedom of Information Act, a 1966 law that guarantees public access to some government documents.

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Bill Bard says:

What are they hiding?

Continue reading »]]> Pennsylvania judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. has been sentenced to almost three decades in jail after conspiring with private prisons to trade kids for cash.

By Emily Smith

Mark Ciavarella Jr.

In the private prison industry, longer sentences earn more money from the state.

Since 2003, Ciavarella received millions of dollars in bribes for condemning minors to maximum prison sentences. In one case, Ciavarella sentenced a 10-year-old to two years in a detention facility for accidentally bottoming out his mother’s car.

According to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, over 5,000 young men and women were unjustly sentenced to prison and denied their constitutional rights. Many of them have now been released and cleared of their charges.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has overturned some 4,000 convictions issued by him between 2003 and 2008, claiming he violated the constitutional rights of the juveniles – including the right to legal counsel and the right to intelligently enter a plea. Some of the juveniles he sentenced were as young as 10-years old.

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Continue reading »]]> By: DSWright

Foreclosure Protester Arrested At DOJ

As Occupy Our Homes demonstrates at the Department of Justice the fraudclosure crisis continues unabated.

A Florida family man who not only made his mortgage payments on time but made payments early faces foreclosure by Wells Fargo. The explanation for initiating the foreclosure proceedings by Wells Fargo is nothing short of amazing and offers a sad commentary on how little has changed despite the 2008 financial crisis and supposed reforms like Dodd-Frank.

Etienne Syldor said he’s worked his whole life for a home in Orlando for his wife and three children.

Syldor is an immigrant from Haiti and a bus driver at Walt Disney World. At times, he said he has worked multiple jobs to make sure he never missed a mortgage payment.

Last year, Wells Fargo offered him mortgage modification, and he was told if he made four monthly payments during a trial period, the modification would be permanent.

So far so good. Family man working multiple jobs to make sure he is paying his bills – personal responsibility and all that jazz. Court records confirm that Syldor made his payments.

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Bill Bard says:

Bankers make the rules up as they go along.  Fucking ludicrous.

Continue reading »]]> by Anthony Gucciardi

A new precedent has been set. Despite extensive denial that drone strikes would endanger Americans, Attorney General Eric Holder has now openly admitted that four US citizens were killed through overseas drone strikes since 2009. 

While not on United States soil, the deaths of the US citizens in nations like Yemen and Pakistan highlight the new precedent being set by US government heads who wish to use drones as a form of lethal enforcement on US soil.  With Holder admitting that Americans have already died via drone strikes following his statements that Obama can alreadyinitiate drone strikes on US soil, we are now seeing the way paved to go ahead and announce armed drones to fight terrorism here in the US.We all remember the initial rhetoric that drones were ‘no real threat’, and that they were simply unarmed scouting machines used to save lives overseas.

Then, we saw them rapidly enter the nation, and we heard the same tired reassurances. We saw them killing innocents overseas with the high powered weaponry being attached to these ‘scouting’ drones, and we see them still doing so today. But, once again, we’re told not to worry. Political talking heads like Eric Holder assure us that domestic drones, for which over 1,400 permits have been issued, are not meant to be used as weapons. Well, that is unless Obama decides to use the drones as a weapon of war on US soil.

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Continue reading »]]> By Jon Queally | Common Dreams

(Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster)

Revelations about the targeting of whistleblowers, journalists and news agencies exposes president to increasing scorn

Saying the Obama administration “has gone overboard in its zeal to find and muzzle insiders,” the New York Times editorial board on Wednesday added its voice to the growing chorus of media outlets, journalists, and First Amendment advocates who say the White House is engaged in an assault on press freedom and investigative journalism itself.

In an additionally troubling pattern for the president this week, others have made the argument that Obama’s behavior is reminiscent of former president Richard Nixon when it comes to the obsessive protection of information and control of political narratives.

The list of critics has grown exponentially since revelations about the Department of Justice’s “unprecedented” monitoring of Associated Press journalists last week was made worse by new reporting this week that the DOJ also targeted a Fox News journalist as a possible “co-conspirator” for simply receiving information from a government source.

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Continue reading »]]> [satire]

EDL supporter

The sickening terrorism attack on a soldier in Woolwich has really brought out the caring, tolerant and inclusive sides of society, according to reports this morning.

With numerous calls to ‘send em back’, ‘bomb the hell out of wherever they come from’ or ‘let the people on the street deal with them’, British society is celebrating one of its finest hours.

English Defence League member Steve Matthews told us, “When I heard the news I was sickened, but then I began sporting a huge erection when I realised how this will give me an opportunity to spout my vile opinions.”

“There’ll be a rally near you soon, I guaranteed it.”

“What everyone needs to realise is that he best way to beat extremism is with a different type of extremism.”

“And our extremism is based on skin colour rather than religion, so it’s much more valid.”

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American Airlines planes taxi past a terminal at Miami International airport in Miami, Florida. (Reuters)

A shipment of gold valued at $625,000 vanished in a suspected heist after arriving in Miami on an American Airlines flight, authorities announced Thursday.

A police report says the gold, which arrived in a box, was brought on the flight from Guayaquil, Ecuador to the Miami International Airport early Tuesday, WSVN reports.

The plane’s cargo was unloaded by five crew members, but the box containing the gold disappeared after apparently being loaded onto a motorized luggage cart or tug, the report said.

The cart was found in front of a gate of the same terminal were the flight from Ecuador was unloaded, about an hour after workers emptied the cargo hold, but without the box containing the gold.

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Continue reading »]]> The Organic Prepper

The Monsanto Company likes to proclaim that they are the good guys, here to selflessly feed the world, help with sustainable agriculture, and, as if those lofty goals are not enough, champion human rights across the globe.  All you have to do is look at their commitments page to see how worthy they are of a shiny corporate halo:

At the heart of Monsanto is a very clear and principled code of conduct – one we expect all employees, contractors and management to live by every day. We operate under a genuine value system—our pledge—that demonstrates integrity, respect, ethical behavior, perspective and honesty as a foundation for everything we do.  

A key part of fulfilling the promise of our value system is by engaging our communities in a significant and positive manner. Not only do we work hard to support the family farmer in a variety of ways, but we also:

• provide extensive educational programs – particularly in science and agriculture – for students around the world

• fund numerous research grants for graduate students

• work in partnership with government bodies, non-profit agencies and advocacy groups to make agriculture more sustainable

If you happen to have your hip-wader boots on, you can delve even further into their purported goodness by reading, in it’s entirety, The Monsanto Pledge:

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Continue reading »]]> By Deirdre Imus

For decades, fluoride has been marketed and heralded as essential for good dental hygiene and used in most toothpastes and mouthwashes. In addition, parents have been routinely encouraged to give their kids cavity-fighting fluoride treatments when they visit the dentist.

Beginning in the late 1940s, aided by mass industry lead lobbying campaigns, the government encouraged municipal water authorities to add fluoride to their community’s drinking water. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), approximately 70 percent of the U.S. population ingests fluoride through their community drinking water today and they want this percentage to continue to climb. This is in stark contrast to other developed European nations were fluoride is rarely added to drinking water – Britain provides only about 10 percent of their population with fluoridated water.

The “experts” and the government told us fluoride would strengthen tooth enamel, help prevent tooth decay and is, of course, perfectly safe.

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Continue reading »]]> Click here to view the embedded video.

Connecting The Dots And Changing Course The young people of this world are the turning point generation. They are strong in numbers, more conscious than ever, facing more challenges than ever and united by the internet. It’s perhaps the best of times and the worst of times, but there is no time for distractions anymore. This video is produced by Generation Waking Up, which is “igniting a generation of young people to bring forth a thriving, just, sustainable world.” It’s a video with dozens of young voices expressing how they feel about their influence and potential impact at this turning point in history. “We are writing a different story than the one we have been led to believe is inevitable.” says one young woman proudly. Hoorah for that! –Bibi Farber

[Source]

Continue reading »]]> Activist Post

Dees Illustration

Up until now the Obama Administration has been coy about their policy to kill Americans abroad using drones.

Today, Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed that this administration has killed four Americans with drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan, and admitted one was killed deliberately.

According to the New York Times:

In a letter to Congressional leaders obtained by The New York Times, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. disclosed that the administration had deliberately killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was killed in a drone strike in September 2011 in Yemen.

The American responsibility for Mr. Awlaki’s death has been widely reported, but the administration had until now refused to confirm or deny it.

The letter also said that the United States had killed three other Americans: Samir Khan, who was killed in the same strike; Mr. Awlaki’s son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was also killed in Yemen; and Jude Mohammed, who was killed in a strike in Pakistan.

The letter says “Since 2009, the United States, in the conduct of U.S. counterterrorism operations against al-Qa’ida and its associated forces outside of areas of active hostilities, has specifically targeted and killed one U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi (Awlaki).”

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