Pam Rotella home page VeggieCooking.com Vegan Cookbook Vegan Recipes Vegetarian Recipes Donate! Featured Articles: My Vegetarian Cookbook Index Healthy Eating The Genetic Fad - A Medical Myth Joel Wallach - Copper Deficiencies Lawrence Broxmeyer - Mad Cow Organophosphates - Mad Cow Multiple Sclerosis and Mercury Alternative Medicine Used for Flus Good Fats (Omega-3 Fatty Acids) Dr. Hulda Clark - Cancer and AIDs Alternative Cancer Treatments Vegans and Vitamin B-12 Aspartame, MSG - Excitotoxins Sickle Cell Anemia Jake Beason - Raising Children Election Fraud 2004 9-11: A Government Operation Pam Remembers Ronald Reagan Family Values Giving Thanks Travel Page Photo Gallery Main Page The Peace (Flower) Gallery Glacier National Park Gallery Autumn Foliage Gallery 2004 New York City Protests Yellowstone National Park Gallery The Badlands Photo Gallery The Main Caverns Gallery Luray Caverns in Virginia Shenandoah Caverns in Virginia Skyline Caverns in Virginia Endless Caverns in Virginia Dixie Caverns in Virginia Natural Bridge in Virginia Crystal Caverns at Hupp Hill in Virginia Cave of the Mounds in Wisconsin Kickapoo Indian Caverns in Wisconsin Crystal Cave in Wisconsin Niagara Cave in Minnesota Mena Airport Photo Gallery Skyline Drive Photo Gallery The House on the Rock Gallery Wisconsin Windmill Farm Copyright Notice & Limited Use Other Health Web Sites: Mercury Poisoned .com Cancer Tutor .com Dorway.com - Aspartame Breast Implant Dangers Dr. Hulda Clark - products Dr. Clark Information Center Dr. Joel Wallach Dr. Lawrence Broxmeyer Mark Purdey Dr. Joseph Mercola Dr. Hal Huggins Dr. Lorainne Day Dr. Andrew Weil Dr. Ralph Moss - Cancer Decisions Dr. Patrick Flanagan - Neurophone NUCCA-Certified Chiropractors Pranic Healing Alternative News Sites: Rense.com What Really Happened .com Buzz Flash .com Information Clearing House Prison Planet.com Alternative Radio: WBAI - New York City KPFK - Los Angeles KPFA - Berkeley WPFW - Washington, DC Air America Radio
	Pam Rotella’s Vegetarian FUN page -- your source for nutrition, health, environmental, political, and other news! Fun link of the month: "Spring Time," by UW art students (Video) -- I was impressed by a Starry Night/Scream variation wall mural at a coffeehouse, painted by one of the student animators of this rough animation short. The teacher has uploaded other students' animation, like The Route, Space Dance, Lonely, Picnic, Money Does Grow On Trees, Hot Potatoes, 3 Easy Ways to Cut in Line at the Supermarket, and Restless (this one's a little crude). I can't say they're as good as professional animation (hence the need for comedy writers), but they're SHORT, a little different, and kind of fun. And don't forget past fun links of the month -- just as fun as this month's! Week of 7th to 13th of March 2010 Feds: Montco woman "JihadJane" led Net death plot AS AUTHORITIES tell it, Colleen R. LaRose wasn't joking on June 20, 2008, when she posted a comment on YouTube using the screen name "JihadJane" and saying that she was "desperate to do something somehow to help" suffering Muslims. Instead, LaRose, 46, formerly of Pennsburg, Montgomery County, and a U.S. citizen, was about to embark on a plot to recruit terrorists and commit murder in Sweden, according to federal prosecutors. Authorities unsealed an indictment yesterday alleging that LaRose and five unindicted co-conspirators recruited men and women over the Internet to be terrorists in South Asia and Europe and to finance terrorism. A Department of Justice spokesman wouldn't confirm that the case was related to a group of people arrested in Ireland earlier yesterday on suspicion of plotting against a Swedish cartoonist who depicted the prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog. But a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity said LaRose had targeted the Swedish cartoonist and had online discussions about her plans with at least one of the suspects in Ireland. PAM COMMENTARY: After watching decades of bogus government ops, I'd say "Jihad Jane" is just too made-for-TV catchy, too memorable. It sounds like a name cooked up by a focus group in a think tank somewhere, assigned to marketing the next black op, And the story of how she got to where she is now doesn't seem to be there (or perhaps they haven't come up with it yet). But let's assume for the sake of argument that this woman is for real, and it's not just a ploy for the government to expand its definition of "terrorist" to average white Americans in its march to destroy habeas corpus and our civil rights. She'd still be the government's fault -- that's what happens when you try to equate wars with religious beliefs. Government propaganda via the mainstream media has convinced many regular people in America that Bush's old oil wars are in fact a fight between Islam and Christianity. So of course a few fanatics are going to believe that and try to jump in on the fight. That's one of the reasons that our country's founding fathers legally SEPARATED the government from religion -- they were already familiar with states that adopted official religions and the frequent religious wars that raged and ruined nations because of it. Winner: Paterson to call special election Gov. David Paterson will call for a special election to replace former U.S. Rep Eric Massa, state Sen. George Winner Jr. said Tuesday. Winner said he asked Paterson Tuesday afternoon if he was going to call for a special election during the governor’s visit to the Republican Senate Conference. “He said ‘yes, shortly,’” Winner said. Morgan Hook, a spokesman for Paterson, would not confirm the governor would soon call for a special election. Naked shower rows, tickling staff at birthday parties, and 'the son of the devil's spawn': The bizarre row gripping the White House A Democratic ex-Congressman is smashing a toxic path through Washington with a bizarre series of allegations in the most lurid controversy to hit the Obama administration yet. Eric Massa quit Congress yesterday amid allegations he sexually harassed a male staffer. Last night he admitted he had tickled a staffer at a birthday party and said his actions had been misinterpreted. He has also claimed that he was 'set up' by Democratic leaders because he opposed President Obama's healthcare bill. PAM COMMENTARY: So far it seems that everything Massa has described is just normal "horsing around." These days, some people are more sensitive and a few might want to complain about it, but in Massa's age group that sort of behavior was fairly typical. The real story here is that Massa thinks these incidents were exploited to pressure him to step down, after it became apparent that he would be voting against the Senate's version of health care reform. The silly behavior is just a side show that the mainstream press has tried to exploit to boost its sagging ratings, and wasn't half as bad as past scandals in Congress. For example, he wasn't trying to get sex from kids via instant messaging, pressuring young pages for sex, or denouncing the DC Madame while being one of her biggest customers, etc. 7 Years After Killing, Family of Slain US Peace Activist Rachel Corrie Heads to Israel for Wrongful Death Suit Against Israeli Gov’t [DN] AMY GOODMAN: We return now to the family of Rachel Corrie. Seven years after their daughter was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer and five years after filing a civil lawsuit against the Israeli government, the case has moved ahead. Today a district court in Haifa will begin hearing evidence about the circumstances of Rachel’s death. On Friday, just before they left for Israel, I sat down with Rachel’s family—her father Craig, her mother Cindy, and her sister Sarah—for an in-depth interview about the case. I asked Rachel’s father Craig to lay out the particulars of the court case. CRAIG CORRIE: This is a culmination, really, of seven years of our family searching for some sort of justice in the killing of Rachel. And we’ve tried to do that through diplomatic means, and we’ve asked for a US-led investigation into Rachel’s killing. We also understand that the Israelis, through Prime Minister Sharon, promised President Bush a thorough, credible and transparent investigation of Rachel’s killing. But, by our own government’s measure, that has not happened. So we’re left with simply a civil lawsuit. So, we’re accusing the state of Israel of either intentionally killing Rachel or guilty of gross negligence in her killing seven years ago. And so, we’re seeking—the only thing you can seek in a civil case is damages. You know, so it’s really a very small part of the story that’s gone on in our lives. But it’s critical to have our time in court. Our motivation for that was largely that it is an avenue which we understood we would be able to pursue and get information. So, through the discovery process, we were hoping to get a good deal of information. We have gotten some, but they’ve used sort of secrets of state to keep us, block us, from getting other evidence into court. But we’re going forward, and we’re very hopeful that we will get a fair trial. 'I saw Israeli bulldozer kill Rachel Corrie' The final moments of Rachel Corrie, the American peace activist crushed to death beneath a pile of earth and rubble in the path of an advancing Israeli army bulldozer, were described to an Israeli court by an eyewitness yesterday. The parents of the 23-year-old, who was killed by the bulldozer in March 2003, were present to hear the harrowing account on the first day of hearings in a civil lawsuit they have brought against the state of Israel. The country has never acknowledged culpability over Ms Corrie's death. Richard Purssell, a British activist with the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement (ISM), said he watched in horror as Ms Corrie was dragged four metres by the bulldozer moving forward at a "fast walking pace". He told how her fluorescent orange jacket became invisible beneath a pile of earth churned up by the blade of the 56-tonne D9 Caterpillar machine. Mr Purssell explained that he and two other ISM volunteers had been summoned from the Rafah neighbourhood of Tel Sultan earlier in the day to help five activists prevent bulldozers from carrying out what they feared would be the demolition of Palestinian homes. The five, including Ms Corrie, were in the suburb of Hai Salaam, close to the border with Egypt. Federally Funded “Ticket Blitz” in Virginia [AJ] A federally funded ticketing blitz in the state of Virginia landed a total of 6996 traffic tickets this weekend. The blitz, dubbed “Operation Air, Land & Speed” coincided with frantic efforts by state officials to close a$2.2 billion budget deficit. Supervisors ordered state troopers to saturate Interstates 81 and 95 to issue as many tickets as humanly possible over the space of two days. “The safety of Virginia’s highways begins the minute a vehicle is put in ‘drive,’” Virginia State Police Superintendent W. Steven Flaherty said in a statement. “Those split second decisions to choose not to drive drunk, to choose to wear a seat belt and to choose not to speed or drive aggressively really do make a difference in preventing and/or surviving a crash.” Officers had no trouble delivering the requested number of speeding tickets with a total of 3536 ordinary speeding citations written. In addition, another 717 “reckless driving” tickets were filed, although these most often are simple speeding tickets that happen to carry a fine of up to $2500. Driving as little as 10 to 15 MPH over the limit can qualify for this enhanced punishment. On the other end of the scale, some 310 tickets were handed to drivers who either forgot to wear their seatbelts or made a choice not to do so. PAM COMMENTARY: A flashback to Virginia's last gubernatorial election... Better not vote for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate -- he might raise the gas tax a few cents! We'll find our transportation money magically, from oil rigs that have yet to be built (if ever), or maybe from the other side of the moon, or maybe from you... Here's your ticket! See your insurance company for the rate increase once we put those extra points on your license... Harassing motorists with tickets to make up budget shortfalls is deplorable. McDonnell signs offshore energy bills Gov. Bob McDonnell has added his signature to legislation intended to further his goal of making Virginia the East Coast's energy center. The bills signed Wednesday endorse federal efforts to develop gas and oil drilling off the Virginia coast, and direct royalties to the state's growing transportation needs. A portion would also go the Virginia Coastal Energy Research Consortium. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is expected to announce his decision soon on whether the government will move forward with the sale of oil and gas leases. The triangular tract 50 miles off of Virginia has an estimated 130 million barrels of oil and 1.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. 2 Marine Corps fighter pilots rescued off SC coast CHARLESTON, S.C. — Two Marine Corps fighter pilots have been rescued from the ocean off South Carolina after their aircraft went down. The U.S. Coast Guard says it was notified by the Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort at about 5:17 p.m. Wednesday that two pilots aboard a Marine F/A-18D Hornet went down about 35 miles off the coast. Authorities say two parachutes were spotted, indicating that the pilots had ejected. A Coast Guard helicopter from Charleston rescued the pilots about an hour after the crash. A Marines news release says the jet suffered dual engine failure during a training exercise. Coast Guard spokesman Petty Officer Christopher P. Evanson says neither pilot needed to be hospitalized. Feingold gets dig in against Thompson Sen. Russ Feingold took aim at Republican Tommy Thompson on Monday, questioning in an e-mail to supporters why the former governor was getting so much encouragement from Washington insiders to run against him. "So you might ask, 'Well why are these people in Washington asking Tommy Thompson to run?' Because he's their friend. Because he does what they want. That's why they're asking him to run." Feingold added: "I've spent years and years taking on the special interests. And Tommy Thompson spent years taking them on as clients." Feingold's comments come a day after Republican lobbyist Bill McCoshen appeared on Mike Gousha's "UpFront" show, saying that Thompson was seriously considering a run for the Senate. PAM COMMENTARY: I don't think Feingold will have any difficulties with a challenge by Thompson -- they're not even in the same league. Feingold stands up against the wars all the time, and is known for his integrity. Wisconsinites who know Feingold's record are proud of him. Thompson may have some admirers among people who are fanatical against welfare, but otherwise feelings about him are mixed. Tommy Thompson had a lot of problems with his record as governor. I was amazed that Bush wanted him as Health and Human Services Secretary, because Thompson was famous for killing babies with brutal work-fare programs -- both in Wisconsin and those based on that model. (But then again, maybe that's the type of person Bush would like.) Women would get a minimum wage job that couldn't pay for child care or even pay their rent, and their kids would die in hot cars or storage lockers, where they were left to wait for their moms while they worked. Lots of controversial figures seem to be taken from the state that gave the country Joe McCarthy. Clinton appointed another Wisconsinite to HHS Secretary, Donna Shalala, who was known as one of the administrators in favor of raising tuition and putting enrollment caps on University of Wisconsin -- to limit the number of regular middle class kids who could attend. They wanted to attract more rich foreign kids, and give them classes with fewer kids from the Wisconsin families who actually paid the taxes to fund that University system. It was very controversial at the time -- I was one of many students fighting against it, but of course administrators didn't care about student opinion, and proceeded with the unpopular changes without a second thought. More Messages Link Senator to Job Effort WASHINGTON — Previously undisclosed e-mail messages turned over to the F.B.I. and Senate ethics investigators provide new evidence about Senator John Ensign’s efforts to steer lobbying work to the embittered husband of his former mistress and could deepen his legal and political troubles. Mr. Ensign, Republican of Nevada, suggested that a Las Vegas development firm hire the husband, Douglas Hampton, after it had sought the senator’s help on several energy projects in 2008, according to e-mail messages and interviews with company executives. The messages are the first written records from Mr. Ensign documenting his efforts to find clients for Mr. Hampton, a top aide and close friend, after the senator had an affair with his wife, Cynthia Hampton. They appear to undercut the senator’s assertion that he did not know the work might involve Congressional lobbying, which could violate a federal ban on such activities by staff members for a year after leaving government. The e-mail messages also hint at what Mr. Ensign’s office now says was an effort by the Las Vegas firm, a small energy investment business called P2SA Equity, to improperly link Mr. Ensign’s possible assistance to a promised donation. The F.B.I. and the Senate Ethics Committee are investigating whether Mr. Ensign, in trying to contain the fallout from his affair with Ms. Hampton, conspired to find lobbying work for her husband despite the federal restrictions. They are also examining a $96,000 payment Mr. Ensign’s parents made to the Hamptons. Press group: 8 reporters kidnapped in Mexican city Eight journalists have been kidnapped in a Mexican border city in a two-week span in a wave of abductions unprecedented in the Western Hemisphere, the Inter-American Press Association said Wednesday. The press group said only three of the journalists kidnapped between Feb. 18 and March 3 in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas, have reappeared alive. It said one died of apparent torture, two were released alive and five remain missing. "The Mexican government must act with urgency and with due force to rescue these journalists alive," said IAPA President Alejandro Aguirre. Aguirre called the abductions "serious and without precedent in the Western Hemisphere." The abductions were apparently carried out by drug gangs in the Gulf coast state of Tamaulipas where Reynosa is located. Number of millionaires is up 16% from 2008 Although millions of households are dealing with job losses or underemployment, the number of millionaires in the U.S. is up 16% over 2008, according to a national survey by the Spectrem Group. Clearly, the 69% rally in the stock market, which began March 9, 2009, helped restore riches to some of those reeling in 2008. Households with net worth of $1 million or more -- not including their primary home -- grew to 7.8 million in 2009, Spectrem said. The previous year, the millionaire population fell 27% as the stock market crashed and the recession took its toll throughout the economy. Health care costs open $1.7 billion hole in Texas budget AUSTIN – Lawmakers have been thinking ahead to a massive shortfall, topping $10 billion, that's probably coming when they write the next budget in 2011. But state officials told them Monday that they'll have to fix a hole in the current budget, too. Rising health care costs have dug a hole of about $1.7 billion, the officials said. Texas has about 350,000 more poor people on government health insurance than it did last year, and health care costs also are skyrocketing for state employees and prison inmates, several agency heads told the House Appropriations Committee. "We're running 11 percent ... growth in the Medicaid program," said Health and Human Services Commissioner Tom Suehs, referring to the nation's main health care program for the poor. Lawmakers assumed enrollment would grow by only 3.4 percent this year, he said. McGCSE: Work at McDonald's for two weeks and get equivalent of a B grade exam pass (UK) Teenagers who complete two weeks' work experience at a McDonald's restaurant will be awarded a qualification worth up to a B grade at GCSE. Youngsters will be offered the 'certificate in work skills' for completing a ten-day programme which includes flipping burgers, serving customers at the tills and cleaning the dining area. Schools will be able to count the qualification towards their ranking in GCSE league tables. McDonald's today becomes the first employer in the country to win accreditation for its work experience programme from an exam board. More than two extinct species a year in England, report reveals More than two animals and plants a year are becoming extinct in England and hundreds more are severely threatened, a report published today reveals. Natural England, the government's agency responsible for the countryside, said the biggest national study of threats to biodiversity found nearly 500 species that had died out in England, all but a dozen in the last two centuries. The losses recorded compare with a natural rate of about one extinction every 20 years before humans dominated the planet, but are almost certainly an underestimate because of poor records of any but the "biggest, scariest" creatures before the 1800s. The high rate at which species are being lost is set to continue. Almost 1,000 other species face "severe" threats from the same problems that drove their relatives extinct – hunting, pollution, development, poor land management, invasive species and, more recently, climate change – says the report, Lost life: England's lost and threatened species. This represents about a quarter of all species in the best-studied groups, including every reptile, dolphin and whale species, two-thirds of amphibians and one-third of butterflies and bumblebees. In total, the report records 55,000 known species in England. Dozens of wrecks found by Baltic Sea pipeline firm STOCKHOLM-A dozen centuries-old shipwrecks — some of them unusually well-preserved — have been found in the Baltic sea by a gas company building an underwater pipeline between Russia and Germany, Swedish experts said Tuesday. The oldest wreck probably dates back to medieval times and could be up to 800 years old, while the others are likely from the 17th to 19th centuries, said Peter Norman, of Sweden’s National Heritage Board. “They could be interesting, but we have only seen pictures of their exterior. Many of them are considered to be fully intact. They look very well-preserved,” Norman told The Associated Press. Thousands of wrecks from medieval ships to warships sunk during the world wars of the 20th century have been found in the Baltic Sea, which doesn’t have the ship worm that destroys wooden wrecks in saltier oceans. Rush Limbaugh moving to Costa Rica? (Poll) "I’ll just tell you this, if this passes and it’s five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented -- I am leaving the country. I’ll go to Costa Rica." There are a lot of strings attached to that hyperbole, er, promise. IF this happens. IF it's five years from now. But is he packing his bags already? Last week it became known that Rush is selling his four-bedroom, 4,661-square-foot condo on Fifth Avenue on New York City's Upper East Side. Two of its terraces overlook Central Park. Interested? Asking price is $14 million. PAM COMMENTARY: This article has a poll -- cast your vote! Rush should stay or Rush should go... Rush Limbaugh should maybe read up on Costa Rican health care I see that radio talker Rush Limbaugh is indulging in one of his patented tantrums, telling listeners that he'll leave the United States if health care reform passes. "I don't know. I'll just tell you this, if this passes and it's five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented -- I am leaving the country. I'll go to Costa Rica." I'm sure there are a lot of people whose motivation to pass health care reform just doubled. But, really, there's no need for Limbaugh to go anywhere. If he likes the Costa Rican health care system so much, he should advocate for its implementation. Of course, he'd be advocating for the implementation of government-run, universal health care: Costa Rica has universal health care, one of the best health systems in Latin America. As always with nationalized health care, expect red tape and long waits, but the quality of Costa Rica's health care is excellent. Private health care is also available, very affordable, and high quality. Many doctors speak English and have received training in Europe, Canada, or the U.S. There are three large, private hospitals that most expatriates use: CIMA hospital in Escazú, Clinica Biblica in San José, and Clinica Católica in San José-Guadalupe. Statistics from the World Health Organization frequently place Costa Rica in the top country rankings in the world for long life expectancy, often even ahead of Great Britain and the United States, even though the per-capita income of Costa Ricans is about one-tenth that of the U.S. and the U.K. Arguably, one reason for this is the slower pace of living in Costa Rica. And, of course, the healthy, fresh, non-preservative-laden foods found there, and the welcoming tropical climate. Costa Rica just seems to be a healthy place to live. Make music: Listening is good, but learning to play, or sing, builds brains Five months after we are conceived, music begins to capture our attention and wire our brains for a lifetime of aural experience. At the other end of life, musical memories can be imprinted on the brain so indelibly that they can be retrieved, perfectly intact, from the depths of a mind ravaged by Alzheimer's disease. In between, music can puncture stress, dissipate anger and comfort us in sadness. As if all that weren't enough, for years parents have been seduced by even loftier promises from an industry hawking the recorded music of Mozart and other classical composers as a means to ensure brilliant babies. But for all its beauty, power and capacity to move, researchers have concluded that music is little more than ear candy for the brain if it is consumed only passively. If you want music to sharpen your senses, boost your ability to focus and perhaps even improve your memory, the latest word from science is you'll need more than hype and a loaded iPod. You gotta get in there and play. Or sing, bang or pluck. 105,000 Tattoos: Iraqi Artist Wafaa Bilal Turns His Own Body into a Canvas to Commemorate Dead Iraqis & Americans [DN] AMY GOODMAN: Your brother died in Iraq? WAFAA BILAL: My brother Haji died in 2004 in a direct air-to-ground missile by American plane in our home town of Kufa. AMY GOODMAN: How old was he? WAFAA BILAL: He was twenty-eight, was married a year before. And when I received the news, I talked to the family, and they said what happened is he was out on the street when the United States Army was advancing on the city of Kufa, and he was hit. I was able to go to Iraq last July and know more about what happened. And what happened is Haji, involved in working as a contractor with Americans. When they came in, people would greet them. They thought, well, this is going to free them from the dictator. But the opposite happened. Americans were in their barricades in their camp, leaving Iraq to disintegrate into a chaos. And at the beginning, Haji helped in supplying just some material for building. And as a consequence, he was labeled as a collaborator by Muqtada al-Sadr. So, for one evening, to show good faith to the people of Kufa and Muqtada al-Sadr, he stood in a checkpoint outside Kufa while Americans were advancing. And at that point, that missile came and struck him, and he died on the spot. Lejeune water probe: Did Marine Corps hide benzene data? WASHINGTON — Congressional investigators late Tuesday requested detailed documents from Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and a private contractor that was involved in the testing and cleanup of contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, N.C., over the past two decades. More letters to the Environmental Protection Agency and a second private contractor are expected this week. Among investigators' questions: why a federal agency charged with understanding the health impacts of the contamination didn't realize until recently that benzene — a fuel solvent known to cause cancer in humans — was among the substances found in drinking water at Camp Lejeune. For years, the Marines apparently didn't provide documents about the benzene to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which has worked for nearly two decades to understand the contamination and its health impacts, said Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., the chairman of the oversight panel on the House Science and Technology Committee. Kucinich's Health Reform Dissents Merit Consideration Long before Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi began talking up health care reform as a top priority for the Democratic Party, Congress and America, Dennis Kucinich was doing so. Indeed, the former Cleveland mayor, Ohio legislator, two-time presidential candidate and now senior U.S. House members has across the past 35 years been one of the country's steadiest proponents of real reform of our broken health-care system. So Kucinich's questioning of the reform legislation being advanced by President Obama and House Speaker Pelosi is neither casual nor uninformed. The congressman from Ohio knows the intricacies of the health-care debate as well as any key player in Washington. And he objects to the compromises contained in the measure the president and the speaker are whipping House Democrats to support. "This bill doesn't change the fact that the insurance companies are going to keep socking it from the consumers," says Kucinich, who argues that, "The insurance companies are the problem and they are getting a bailout." This is not a new complaint from Kucinich. Nor is it an unfounded concern. Last fall, when the House was debating a better bill than the one Obama and Pelosi are now pushing, Kucinich raised objections that for the most part remain valid. Reviewing the details of what would become the House version of reform legislation, he asked on the House floor: "Is this the best we can do? Forcing people to buy private health insurance, guaranteeing at least $50 billion in new business for the insurance companies? PAM COMMENTARY: Kucinich has always been an advocate of single payer government-run health care, and he raises many valid concerns. Frankly, the Senate's version of health care reform being forced on the House right now is a corporate wish list for the insurance, pharmaceutical, and medical industries. (Massachusetts has already proven that forcing people to buy health insurance fuels poverty and buys people substandard policies that don't cover their real needs.) I'd never support it, and consider it to be another example of corporations dictating laws to benefit their own profits. Healthcare Summit Ends in Deadlock; Single-Payer Advocates Excluded (FLASHBACK) [DN] AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s go to Margaret Flowers, Baltimore pediatrician and congressional fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program, who is definitely in favor of that. Single payer was not a part of yesterday’s discussion. No advocate was there—Dennis Kucinich, not Physicians for a National Health Program. Your group asked to be represented, Dr. Flowers? DR. MARGARET FLOWERS: We did, because the President had stated that health experts should be involved in this process. And so, we wanted to offer our services as people that do research in this area. And indeed, they quoted several of our studies during the summit. AMY GOODMAN: What happened? Why wasn’t anyone represented? DR. MARGARET FLOWERS: Well, you know, this has been a series of—throughout the entire health process, that we’ve been excluded from this discussion. I think it’s pretty basic. It hearkens back to the special interests that have been involved in this process, you know, and we—it’s really interesting to watch this debate, because so many of the areas that the President and Congress are talking about—cost controls, increasing coverage, excluding pre-existing conditions—all of these would be met through a national Medicare-for-All system. But—so we win, you know, on the policy. But there is such a heavy influence from the insurance and pharmaceutical companies that they, I guess, felt threatened by the presence of the single-payer advocates. AMY GOODMAN: Just looking at a report from the National Journal by Ashlie Rodriguez, who writes, “Health care interests have given $46.6 million in campaign donations since 2005 to [the] 21 lawmakers” at the bipartisan healthcare summit, including Senator Max Baucus, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, and to the summit’s host, President Obama, according to this new report. And “Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington found that health professionals, political action committees, hospitals and nursing homes, pharmaceutical and health product companies, health services firms, HMOs and accident insurers have given heavily to all summit attendees.” How does that affect this discussion, Dr. Flowers? DR. MARGARET FLOWERS: You know, we could only imagine that it affects it pretty strongly. And we saw that through the year, is that the members of Congress need to get reelected, and if they speak out against the interests who are funding their campaigns, they’re not going to get that funding. So we continue to see these machinations around the dysfunctional situation that we have and tiny efforts to try to patch it together, and we’re missing the bigger picture entirely, which actually the majority of Americans understand and the majority of physicians understand, that we are very different from other industrialized nations because we do not have a health system, we do not take care of everybody in our country. And we actually could do that. We have a program that’s been working very well for forty-four years now in this country. It’s a model, a model where people can choose which doctor they want to go to. Doctors can choose the treatment for their patients without insurance companies interfering. And it’s also the model that will control healthcare costs and be much more efficient in our healthcare financing. Because we have this system of multiple private, for-profit—or profit-driven, really—insurance companies—their bottom line is not health; it’s profit—we’re wasting a third of our healthcare dollars, over $400 billion a year at this time. Patients' medical records go online without consent (UK) Those who do not wish to have their details on the £11 billion computer system are supposed to be able to opt out by informing health authorities. But doctors have accused the Government of rushing the project through, meaning that patients have had their details uploaded to the database before they have had a chance to object. The scheme, one of the largest of its kind in the world, will eventually hold the private records of more than 50 million patients. But it has been dogged by accusations that the private information held on it will not be safe from hackers. The British Medical Association claims that records have been placed on the system without patients’ knowledge or consent. "Spring Time" by Jackie Matelski, Tabi Starjnski, Leslie Kim and Amanda May (Video) PAM COMMENTARY: With Spring coming in the month of March, I chose this short rough animation by UW art students as the "fun link of the month." There's a story behind it. When I walked into a Wisconsin coffeehouse over the holidays, I saw an amazing mural on a wall there. It was a combination of Van Gogh's "Starry Night" and Munch's "The Scream," with a red-orange theme and some creative changes. I was impressed, as I'd seen other artists' variations on "Starry Night" (e.g. there's one hanging on the wall at Daddy Maxwell's Arctic Circle Diner in Williams Bay, WI), and had considered eventually painting my own southwestern-themed "Starry Night" for my home. ("Eventually" as in, when I have time, which usually means years from now or never.) I asked the barista who had painted it, and he pointed to the artist's signature -- a former employee of theirs turned art student at UW, Jackie Matelski. (Now folks, let the girl finish her college education -- don't be harassing her with requests to paint Starry Night variations on your walls... at least not until the summer when she doesn't have classes and could probably use the money.) So I started Googling her name to find any art she may have online. I found a few photos which were OK, and references to her ceramics, but nothing I liked as well as the mural pictured to the right. Also, I found the animation short linked to here which was obviously done for a class at UW. The teacher has uploaded other students' work, like The Route, Space Dance, Lonely, Picnic, Money Does Grow On Trees, Hot Potatoes, 3 Easy Ways to Cut in Line at the Supermarket, and Restless (this one's a little crude). I can't say they're as good as professional animation (hence the need for comedy writers), clearly they're just rough animation -- you can see where erasures were made, the figures are pretty crude, and there's rarely color added. But they're SHORT, a little different, and kind of fun. Chilean earthquake moved entire city 10 feet, researchers say The massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck off the coast of Chile last month moved the entire city of Concepcion -- the closest urban area to the quake's epicenter -- at least 10 feet west, American researchers said Monday. Chile's capital, Santiago, moved about 11 inches to the west-southwest, while Buenos Aires, all the way across the continent from the quake site, moved about an inch to the west, the researchers said. The cities of Valparaiso and Mendoza, Argentina, both northeast of Concepcion, also moved significantly. The results were obtained from precise global positioning satellite measurements taken before and after the quake, which occurred off the Maulé coast of Chile, according to earth scientist Mike Bevis of Ohio State University. Since 1993, Bevis has headed the Central and Southern Andes GPS Project, designed to monitor crustal motion and deformation in the region. The project has detected surface displacements as far away as the Falkland Islands and Fortaleza, Brazil. A map of the movements is available here. Bevis and others are currently in Chile to install more GPS units at sites whose previous locations are accurately known and to monitor continued movement along the fault. Biden pledges U.S. commitment to Israeli security Reporting from Jerusalem - Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday began an effort to mend strained ties with Israel, pledging a total U.S. commitment to that country's security and declaring that the bonds between the nations were "unbreakable." Opening a day of consultations with Israeli leaders, Biden also promoted indirect peace talks, set to begin soon, saying they offered "a moment of real opportunity" in the search for a settlement between Israelis and Palestinians. But tensions between the U.S. and Israel were underscored Tuesday by Israel's announcement that it would begin construction on 1,600 new housing units in disputed East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians hope to locate the capital of a future state. Senior Israeli officials said the units in Ramat Shlomo, a neighborhood for ultra-Orthodox Jews, had long been in the works. Biden quickly condemned the Israeli announcement. "The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks [with the Palestinians], is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I've had here in Israel," he said. Feds to probe cause of runaway Prius in Calif. Federal officials are sending two investigators to California to determine what caused a Toyota Prius to race out of control on a San Diego-area freeway. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Transportation said Tuesday that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will try to determine what caused the incident. Driver James Sikes sped along Interstate 8 for 20 minutes Monday before a Highway Patrol officer helped slow down the car. CHP Officer Brian Pennings says the 2008 Prius was towed to a Toyota dealership in El Cajon — presumably for inspection. Palin Crossed Border for Canadian Health Care Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- who has gone to great lengths to hype the supposed dangers of a big government takeover of American health care -- admitted over the weekend that she used to get her treatment in Canada's single-payer system. "We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada," Palin said in her first Canadian appearance since stepping down as governor of Alaska. "And I think now, isn't that ironic?" The irony, one guesses, is that Palin now views Canada's health care system as revolting: with its government-run administration and 'death-panel'-like rationing. Clearly, however, she and her family once found it more alluring than, at the very least, the coverage available in rural Alaska. Up to the age of six, Palin lived in a remote town near the closest Canadian city, Whitehorse. Officials at several hospitals in that area declined to give out information on patient visits. Ex-Edwards Aide Ordered to Jail Over Sex Tape Former John Edwards aide Andrew Young and his wife Cheri were ordered to spend up to 75 days in jail today over their handling of a purported sex tape allegedly made by the one-time presidential candidate and his mistress, according to ABC affiliate WTVD. Superior Court Judge Abraham Penn Jones said that he held the Youngs in contempt because he believes they are withholding other items from the court, including, WTVD says, additional copies of the tape. "There were things told to the court under oath, in affidavits, in testimony that turned out to be inaccurate. Right now, part of me says they didn't tell me the truth before in this court," Jones said, according to the Raleigh News and Observer. The Youngs were not placed in custody immediately, according to WTVD in Raleigh, N.C. Is Obama Turning on Goldman Sachs? As President Barack Obama hits the endgame for health care reform, is he making a ploy to associate price-gouging insurance companies with Wall Street greed? Goldman Sachs recently released a report encouraging investors to buy up shares in two large insurance firms and thereby profit from the industry's soaring premiums. Now, the White House is making that brief the centerpiece of Obama's closing argument for overhauling the health system. It appears that Obama is subtly using the Wall Street titan's toxic reputation to demonize the insurance industry and rally public support for a comprehensive bill. In a health care speech in Pennsylvania on Monday, Obama delivered a broadside against profiteering insurance firms. As an example of the industry's greed, he highlighted a conference call organized by Goldman Sachs. "An insurance broker told Wall Street investors that insurance companies know they will lose customers if they keep raising premiums," Obama said. But, he added, the lack of competition allows insurers to keep premiums high for their remaining customers. "And they will keep doing this for as long as they can get away with it." Obama's reference to the Goldman Sachs paper was no isolated incident. The White House press operation highlighted the report in a PR barrage targeting unfair insurance practices. White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer called attention to the study in a blog post on Sunday, while deputy press secretary Bill Burton pushed the report in a press gaggle and on Twitter on Monday morning. The White House's emphasis on the Goldman brief is especially intriguing considering that the administration has previously come under fire for its relationship with the Wall Street investment bank. Goldman Sachs was the single largest private donor to Obama's presidential campaign, and a number of high-ranking administration officials are Goldman alums, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's chief of staff, Mark Patterson. Over the past year, Goldman has been attacked for profiting from everything from AIG's collapse to the Greek financial crisis. But although Obama has recently revved up his rhetoric against Wall Street buck-raking, he has generally trod carefully when it comes to the big financial firms, whose cooperation he needs to pass his financial reform package. Last month, for instance, Obama said that he didn't "begrudge" Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein for taking home a $9 million bonus, noting that some professional baseball players made more money. PAM COMMENTARY: "...Single largest private donor to Obama's presidential campaign"? That explains a lot... Week of 28th of February to 6th of March 2010 Despite 935 documented lies, Rove book insists Iraq war was justified; Blames Democrats for Katrina aftermath The Associated Press obtained a copy of the book in advance of its March 9 release. In 2008, the AP reported that a study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks. The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses." The study -- posted on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism -- counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both. Adams of Natural News launches letter-writing campaign in support of herbalist Greg Caton To support Greg Caton's bid for freedom, NaturalNews is organizing a letter-writing campaign that seeks to inform the presiding Judge of just how many people support Greg Caton's work and website (www.AltCancer.com). This letter-writing campaign is being initiated as a courteous, supportive effort to lend support to Greg Caton during his hearing. It is not some sort of effort to bombard the Judge with hate mail or anything resembling that. In fact, if you choose to participate in helping Greg Caton, please keep your letters polite and professional. I've included my own letter to the presiding Judge below as an example. PAM COMMENTARY: Caton is the herbalist who was kidnapped from Ecuador, apparently because elements of the US government didn't feel like waiting for extradition procedures (if the country would have extradited Caton, which is questionable). See flashback below for details. FDA accused of international kidnapping, illegal detention of prominent Ecuadorian herbalist (FLASHBACK) Speaking via phone from Ecuador on Saturday, Caton's wife Cathryn said that the FDA finally explained its reason for her husband's abduction during Florida court proceedings. The FDA claimed that Greg Caton violated his supervised probation under a 2003 plea of selling "unapproved drugs." "Selling unapproved drugs" is a charge usually filed against herbalists who sell herbs and also make claims about the herbs' medicinal properties. The FDA does not allow medicinal claims about food or herbal products by those who also sell them. No actual "drugs," in the traditional sense of the term, were involved in the 2003 Caton case. Cathryn Caton said that Caton's company Alpha Omega Labs (AltCancer.com) had been selling herbal products after Caton's release in the US, but that the herbs were sold from Ecuador where herb sales are legal along with information on their medicinal properties. In fact, Caton had moved his company to Ecuador specifically because he could continue working with herbal remedies without restrictions on the information provided to customers. At issue is whether Caton's herb sales in Ecuador would violate Caton's probation in the United States. This legal issue could not be addressed in Ecuador, as Caton was seized before his court date there. It is possible that Caton's abduction was meant to preempt such legal precedent from being set on this matter. Stark pressured out of Ways and Means Committee chairmanship When President George W. Bush vetoed a bill to expand health insurance for children, Mr. Stark exploded. “You don’t have money to fund the war or children,” said Mr. Stark, an early opponent of the Iraq war. “But you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people, if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.” Those comments nearly got Mr. Stark censured in the House. More recently he was found to have applied for a state tax exemption for his Maryland home even though he was still a legal resident of California. But 3,000 miles away, where his district is stacked with liberals who share his outrage, his words barely caused a ripple. A lack of respect for decorum when addressing Republicans is hardly the kind of thing to get a man in trouble in Hayward or Fremont. PAM COMMENTARY: This article tries to ridicule Stark for his outspoken nature. But Stark is a solid anti-war Democrat, and no doubt didn't fit in with Dems who have sold out to the "defense" industry. Pentagon shooter was 9/11 Truther: Washington Post portrays beliefs as "from the radical left" By Joby Warrick and Spencer S. Hsu Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, March 6, 2010; A01 The setting was seemingly random: an outer gate at the Pentagon at evening rush hour. But John Patrick Bedell's violent rampage Thursday made him only the latest in the growing ranks of the disaffected and disturbed to take aim at a symbol of official Washington. The shooting contained jarring echoes of other recent attacks, from last month's plane crash at an IRS building in Texas to the shooting last June of a museum guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in the District. Although the circumstances differ greatly, all were acts of rage by men who blamed their personal misfortunes on what they perceived to be sinister forces within the government. All three also appear to have drawn ideological nourishment from the same well: online communities of like-minded people who validate and amplify extreme views. Today, more than in recent years, such communities are tapping into a broad undercurrent of anti-government discontent fueled by economic recession, joblessness and concern over the growing federal deficit, according to experts who have studied the phenomenon. For Bedell and others like him, Washington and its institutions are an irresistible target -- the "ultimate symbol of power for the powerless," said Jerrold Post, a professor of political psychology at George Washington University. PAM COMMENTARY: News flash to the reporters and out-of-touch professor they dusted off to make their talking points -- MOST Americans don't believe the government's story on 9/11 anymore, and 9/11 truth is really a MAINSTREAM view. The shooter wasn't "radical right" or "radical left" as they were trying to portray him. He was just a regular, everyday, pissed off American, and they've had several such people attacking them lately. So rather than admit this could be normal backlash for years of lying, killing, and corruption, the Pentagon's response was telling -- even as the cops outside of their front door were getting shot up, they still couldn't take any responsibility, or admit that any wrongdoing on their part may have contributed to the situation. Instead, they responded with their usual barrage of obvious propaganda from media whores. Surely that will make everyone feel better... Vaccines 'are making our dogs sick as vets cash in' Vaccines given to dogs are making them ill, a pet charity claimed yesterday. Profit-hungry drug companies and vets are 'frightening' dog owners into inoculating their pets more often than necessary, according to Canine Health Concern. Some puppies have developed conditions including autism and epilepsy after a raft of injections, it warns. Catherine O'Driscoll, from the charity, said: 'We are not anti-vaccination. What we are saying is that currently our pets are receiving far too many. Unlike Health Care, When It Comes To Nukes, Cost Is No Object The lead story in Saturday's Washington Post, about the nuclear weapons decisions facing President Obama, runs longer than 1,300 words, but five a reader won't find are "cost," "dollars," "money," "debt," or "deficit." A reader would also search in vain for any talk of a "fiscal crisis" or a need to balance nuclear weapons priorities with available revenues. That same reader, of course, rarely has to venture past the first sentence of a health care reform story to find that the subject is a "trillion dollar overhaul." Occasionally, it's noted that the trillion dollars is spread over ten years. One particular decision that Obama faces is whether to continue what's known as the "triad" - three independent ways the United States developed to annihilate the Soviet Union. Warheads can be delivered with bombers, from submarines or with intercontinental ballistic missiles. The military developed ICBMs in the '50s and '60s, recognizing that bombers would soon be obsolete and too easy to defend against. But the bomber squadrons have their own internal and industry defenders and have never been phased out. Each leg of the triad costs tens of billions of dollars per year to maintain. Spanish police arrest ringleaders who infected 13m PCs with credit-card stealing virus Spanish police have arrested three men accused of masterminding one of the biggest computer crimes to date, which created a network of 13million virus-infected computers. The virus, named the Mariposa botnet, stole credit card numbers and other personal details from infected machines. Mariposa had infected machines in 190 countries in homes, government agencies, schools, more than half of the world's 1,000 largest companies and at least 40 big financial institutions. 'It was so nasty, we thought "We have to turn this off. We have to cut off the head,"' said Chris Davis, CEO of Defence Intelligence Inc, which discovered the virus last year. Defence Intelligence along with the Spanish firm Panda Security did not say how much money the hackers had stolen from their victims before the ring was shut down two days before Christmas last year. Fake drug scam hijacks UK college websites UK academic institutions have unwittingly become the accomplices of criminals selling fake drugs online. A security firm has discovered many organisations using the .ac.uk domain are unknowingly pushing customers to websites offering the fake pills. The scam exploits software flaws to piggyback on the computing resources of the colleges and universities. Researchers at security company Imperva believe "thousands" of organisations may have fallen victim. Charlie Crist's downsized U.S. Sugar deal under siege It started out so big, so bold and with so much promise for healing the River of Grass that environmentalists proclaimed it the holy grail of Everglades restoration. But 20 months after Gov. Charlie Crist unveiled his $1.75 billion bid to buy out the U.S. Sugar Corp., the grail is at serious risk of slipping away -- rather, what's left of it. Crist remains confident his landmark land buy will survive. ``It's a done deal,'' he told The Miami Herald. ``It's got to be done.'' Others, even supporters like Drew Martin, Everglades chairman for the Sierra Club, are less certain. ``There is no question it's hanging by a thread,'' he said. With revenues evaporating like Lake Okeechobee on a summer day, South Florida Water Management District leaders are balking at bankrolling even the whittled-down first phase approved nine months ago: $536 million for 72,800 acres of citrus groves and sugar fields, with options on 107,500 more. Iceland votes 'no' to debt deal for collapsed bank Icelanders blew whistles and set off fireworks in the capital as referendum results Sunday showed they had resoundingly rejected a $5.3 billion plan to repay Britain and the Netherlands for debts spawned by the collapse of an Icelandic bank. Voters in the tiny Atlantic island nation defied both their parliament and international pressure to display their anger at how their nation was being treated. "This is a strong 'No' from the Icelandic nation," said Magnus Arni Skulason, co-founder of a group opposed to the deal. "The Icelandic public understands that we are sovereign and we have to be treated like a sovereign nation — not being bullied like the British and the Dutch have been doing." Despite the vote, all three governments promised to work on a new agreement between Britain, the Netherlands and Iceland, which is depending on international assistance to help drag itself out of an economic morass. Myths That Make It Hard To Stop Campus Rape There's a common assumption about men who commit sexual assault on a college campus: That they made a one-time, bad decision. But psychologist David Lisak says this assumption is wrong --and dangerously so. Lisak started with a simple observation. Most of what we know about men who commit rape comes from studying the ones who are in prison. But most rapes are never reported or prosecuted. So Lisak, at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, set out to find and interview men he calls "undetected rapists." Those are men who've committed sexual assault, but have never been charged or convicted. He found them by, over a 20-year period, asking some 2,000 men in college questions like this: "Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone, even though they did not want to, because they were too intoxicated [on alcohol or drugs] to resist your sexual advances?" Or: "Have you ever had sexual intercourse with an adult when they didn't want to because you used physical force [twisting their arm, holding them down, etc.] if they didn't cooperate?" About 1 in 16 men answered "yes" to these or similar questions. It might seem like it would be hard for a researcher to get these men to admit to something that fits the definition of rape. But Lisak says it's not. "They are very forthcoming," he says. "In fact, they are eager to talk about their experiences. They're quite narcissistic as a group — the offenders — and they view this as an opportunity, essentially, to brag." What Lisak found was that students who commit rape on a college campus are pretty much like those rapists in prison. In both groups, many are serial rapists. On college campuses, repeat predators account for 9 out of every 10 rapes. And these offenders on campuses — just like men in prison for rape — look for the most vulnerable women. Lisak says that on a college campus, the women most likely to be sexually assaulted are freshmen. Christmas day crotch bomber tied to Israel, FBI The Christmas Day “terrorist” is the latest in a series of staged incidents meant to make The Clash of Civilizations appear plausible and “the war on terrorism” rational. The storyline does not hold together. Not even a little bit. As usual, the source of this media-fueled fear campaign traces directly to Tel Aviv—with a supporting role by the FBI. How did a young Nigerian Muslim without a passport “slip through” security at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport? Not only did his itinerary feature an illogical travel route, he paid cash for a high-priced last-minute ticket and boarded without checked baggage. How? ICTS International, the security screening company at Schiphol, was founded by former members of Shin Bet, Israel’s civil security agency, and Israeli executives in charge of El Al security. ICTS had already proven its expertise in mounting this type of operation. In December 2001, Richard “The Shoe Bomber” Reid “slipped through” ICTS security at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Huntleigh USA, an ICTS subsidiary, shared responsibility for security at Logan International Airport in Boston where hijackers for two of the four 911 jets “slipped through” airport security. It gets better. End of the 'killer spy' 007 era; Dubai fallout 'dooms' secret hits [WRH] Some believe the fallout -- the killers whose faces and aliases were made startlingly public, their movements gone from state secrets to YouTube favorites -- could mean a permanent change in the murky world of espionage. The hit team got into the Persian Gulf city undetected, pulled off the highly complex killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, and escaped unscathed: mission accomplished, or so they must have thought. But then, the photos on their doctored passports were released by Dubai police and published worldwide. So were their 26 aliases, more than half of which turned out to belong to real-life dual nationals living in Israel, whose Mossad agency is widely assumed to have been behind the killing. Israel saw several of its important friends, including Britain, Ireland and Australia, express displeasure with the killing and the abuse of their passports. Terry Pattar, a security consultant for IHS Jane's in London, said the details that became public "might represent an unexpected operational risk that had not been planned for." New York police chief quits amid widening scandal Mr Corbitt said intense and "unacceptable" media scrutiny over the scandal was a factor in his departure. He said: "Any individual who is criticised constantly feels that pain. And in most cases there is some way to fight back. But in public service there is not. I'm not an elected official, I'm a public servant. "I'm a cop. And a good cop. So to continue to face that pressure, and even pressure from my family, the media showing up in my driveway - that's unacceptable. So for my own health and for my own sanity it's the right thing to do." PAM COMMENTARY: I've seen several shrill TV "news" broadcasts where Paterson's baseball tickets "scandal" was portrayed as "serious," and talking heads speculate on how much longer Paterson can last with such "serious" charges. Now they're harassing officials out of office, no doubt hoping it'll put pressure on Paterson to quit. 9/11 Radio Transmissions of WTC 2 Firefighters [WRH] This wma file is an extract from the The Complete Firefighters Tape and it contains the final transmissions made by firefighters located in the aircraft impact area of WTC 2 (floors 77 and 78). Floor 78 was officially being ravaged by an 800ºC inferno at this time. The transmissions document that only isolated pockets of fire were reported by the firefighters, so where was the all-consuming inferno? Also of note is the fact that these transmissions were made seconds before WTC 2's collapse. There were supposedly massive structural failings occurring in this section of the building at this time... ...yet no mention is made of this. The firefighters should have been screaming "the building's coming down, everybody get out!", instead they are calmly preparing to move up to the 79th floor. Underwater Plate Cuts 400-Mile Gash The magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck off the coast of Chile early Saturday morning occurred along the same fault responsible for the biggest quake ever measured, a 1960 tremor that killed nearly 2,000 people in Chile and hundreds more across the Pacific. Both earthquakes took place along a fault zone where the Nazca tectonic plate, the section of the earth’s crust that lies under the Eastern Pacific Ocean south of the Equator, is sliding beneath another section, the South American plate. The two are converging at a rate of about three and a half inches a year. Earthquake experts said the strains built up by that movement, plus the stresses added along the fault zone by the 1960 quake, led to the rupture on Saturday along what is estimated to be about 400 miles of the zone, at a depth of about 22 miles under the sea floor. The quake generated a tsunami, with small surges hitting the West Coast of the United States and slightly larger ones in Hawaii and other parts of the Pacific. A 7.7-foot surge was recorded in Talcahuano, Chile. Jian Lin, a geophysicist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said the quake occurred just north of the site of the 1960 earthquake, with very little overlap. “Most of the rupture today picked up where the 1960 rupture stopped,” said Mr. Lin, who has studied the 1960 event, which occurred along about 600 miles of the fault zone and was measured at magnitude 9.5. Mail-order brides offer traditional marriage roles? Three to six months worth of e-mails, a 14-day visit to Russia, and a new wife. That's the promise of Mark Scrivener, a Martensville, Sask., man who on Jan. 1 this year opened a Canadian branch of the Volga Girls mail-order bride service. Though available for 10 years via the Kentucky-based head office, Scrivener is providing Canadaspecific services to men looking for a wife who is a little bit more "out of the box." Of those single men he's counselled, he says "most men would rather have a cup of coffee and a sandwich ... than a $4,000 pay-cheque a month brought to them," and those foreign women signed up for his service are willing to provide just that. "They are more traditional in a marriage. They still don't mind pulling up their roots and probably not pursuing their career and maybe pursuing a family. Being a stay-at-home mother," Scrivener said. Obama advisers set to recommend military tribunals for alleged 9/11 plotters President Obama's advisers are nearing a recommendation that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, be prosecuted in a military tribunal, administration officials said, a step that would reverse Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s plan to try him in civilian court in New York City. The president's advisers feel increasingly hemmed in by bipartisan opposition to a federal trial in New York and demands, mainly from Republicans, that Mohammed and his accused co-conspirators remain under military jurisdiction, officials said. While Obama has favored trying some terrorism suspects in civilian courts as a symbol of U.S. commitment to the rule of law, critics have said military tribunals are the appropriate venue for those accused of attacking the United States. If Obama accepts the likely recommendation of his advisers, the White House may be able to secure from Congress the funding and legal authority it needs to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and replace it with a facility within the United States. The administration has failed to meet a self-imposed one-year deadline to close Guantanamo. The administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the president's legal advisers are finalizing their review of the cases of Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators. Asked about the process, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that "no decisions have been made." Privately, administration officials are bracing for the ire of disappointed liberals and even some government lawyers should the administration back away from promises to use civilian courts to adjudicate the cases of some of the 188 detainees who remain at Guantanamo. PAM COMMENTARY: So, only "liberals" would be concerned with constitutional rights or human rights? This seems to be a continuation of the Bush administration's pattern of eroding Constitutional rights -- especially attacking the Bill of Rights (not the part that gives them power, of course), so that they can turn the US into a police state. CNN's Sourcing on "Anthrax Killer" Continues to Cook the Story It is absolutely stunning that CNN has chosen to air an interview with Jean Duley by Joe Johns on "Knowing the Anthrax Killer." The anthrax killer being Bruce Ivins, the military scientist who reportedly committed suicide as the FBI was closing the case on 2001 anthrax letter, with Ivins being the sender. Why is it so stunning? Because the press already relied on using Duley as an "expert" on Ivins' mental state at the time of his death, only to later back off of her when they found out she is as unreliable of a source as they come given her repeated DUIs, drug charges and the complaint filed by her ex-husband for battery. See Glenn Greenwald's post with documentation ("Additional Key Facts re: The Anthrax Investigation") on this and my post ("Making Ivins Crazy"). The press also repeatedly referred to Duley as a psychologist or a psychiatrist, while in all actuality she was a social worker. Ironically, one who deals with addiction issues. Yet, you'll see her offer her own brand of psychoanalysis in the interview below. The question I'm asking CNN is why they revived this obviously (and inexcusably) unreliable source? I'll update you if I get a response. PAM COMMENTARY: See flashback to a CREDIBLE source on the anthrax attacks below... (FLASHBACK) Professor Francis Boyle on Alex Jones show - anthrax attacks were an inside job, and used to pass the "Patriot" Act, part 1 of 6 (video) [AJ] Francis Boyle interview on anthrax (YouTube video), part 2 of 6 Francis Boyle interview, part 3 of 6 Francis Boyle interview, part 4 of 6 Francis Boyle interview, part 5 of 6 Francis Boyle interview, part 6 of 6 PAM COMMENTARY: Here is a very brief excerpt from the YouTube interview above -- for a longer transcript (although not complete), see one of my old archives pages from late September '09: ALEX JONES: And then, by the way, the FBI agents that blocked the anthrax and the 9/11 investigation -- even before -- they all got record cash bonuses. And those that tried to stop the attacks -- they got demoted. FRANCIS A. BOYLE: Right, the people who were in charge of the cover-ups on both 9/11 and the anthrax have all been promoted, which indicates they've done what their masters wanted them to do. And I think the reason why -- you know, eventually, if we can unravel who is behind the anthrax attacks, we're going to find out who really was behind 9/11. And that's why they're so desperate to cover everything up and lie about it. ALEX JONES: I know you have a lot of gravitas sir, and so you like to very be careful about what you say. But do you think a person of interest (who) needs to be looked at is this Philip Zack person, or is he another red herring? FRANCIS A. BOYLE: I really don't know much about Mr. Zack, just what I've read in the public record. But certainly at the top of everyone's list should be Mr. Patrick (William C. Patrick III), who did this type of work for the CIA, and Ken Alibek (Alibekov), who did this type of work for the Soviet Union. Indeed, Alibek has made statements in the public that are inconsistent and simply not true. Alibek was brought over here by the CIA, so he's on their payroll. And Patrick was on the payroll. So I would, you know, certainly identify them as the top of the list. ALEX JONES: That's right, Alibek wrote about and was over an "accidental" release, remember, in the Soviet Union on that -- FRANCIS A. BOYLE: Sverdlovsk, right. ALEX JONES: Was it the Kamchatka peninsula? FRANCIS A. BOYLE: Right. Well no, Sverdlovsk, which is in Central Russia. ALEX JONES: But what was the other one? FRANCIS A. BOYLE: But you have to understand that it's just not Fort Detrick here that could have done this. The culture from what I can see came from Fort Detrick. But again, assuming any of this information coming out is correct, 25% of it came from Fort Detrick and 75% of it came from the Dugway Proving Ground run by the Army, and with the CIA and Battelle working there. So my guess is that the culture itself came from Fort Detrick, and then it was shipped out to Dugway to be weaponized. That is, to turn it into a trillion spores per gram, the aerosolization, the adding on the silica covering which involved nanotechnology, and then the electrostatic charges. ALEX JONES: How ridiculous is it -- FRANCIS A. BOYLE: So I believe it was weaponized at Dugway. I don't believe it was weaponized at Fort Detrick per se. So we have a team of people here, working on this. It's not simply a question of one, or two, or three people. 15,000 S.F. workers given layoff notices Emotions ranged from disbelief to despair to downright anger Friday as 15,000 San Francisco city workers received pink slips. But Mayor Gavin Newsom reiterated that his controversial plan to rehire them under shortened workweeks would wind up saving thousands of jobs. Newsom ordered the layoff notices be sent to most of the city's 26,000 workers and said the overwhelming majority of them will be hired back within two weeks to work 37.5 hours a week instead of their current 40 - meaning they'll see a 6.25 percent cut to their paychecks. The plan will save $50 million in the city's general operating fund, which has a $522 million deficit for the 2010-11 fiscal year. It will save another $50 million in departments that don't receive general fund money like the port and airport. Bob Muscat, head of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 21, also is chairing the Public Employee Committee, comprised of many unions working together to come up with a counterproposal. Tainted dips sold in Quebec, food agency says O'Connor refused to forecast whether this could be the start of a potential avalanche of food recalls all related to a common food additive, hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP), which is used in a wide range of products but produced by only a handful of big suppliers. HVP is added to many foods - including dips, salad dressings, chips, sauces, hotdogs, soups and frozen dinners - in order to give them a meaty or savory flavour. The culprit in this instance is all HVP produced since last September by Basic Food Flavors of Las Vegas. A recent inspection of the company's main plant by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found traces of salmonella on the processing equipment. If ingested, the bacteria can cause everything from nausea to deadly infections in people with weakened immune systems. To date, no illnesses linked to the contaminated HVP have been reported in either Canada or the United States. American authorities have issued recalls on 56 products containing the affected HVP additive. The recalls in Canada have to date been limited to the two types of veggie dip and a variety of potato chips sold under the Hawaiian Kettle brand name. The latter product is only distributed in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, O'Connor said. The CFIA has said that the risk of illness is much lower for products that are processed or cooked after purchase. This is because salmonella can be destroyed when foods are heated to a safe internal temperature, CFIA spokesman Guy Gravelle told Canwest News Service. Products that come ready-to-eat, like dips and chips, carry a higher risk, he explained. Texas Gov. Rick Perry wins GOP primary Polls closed at 8 p.m. local time, but sprawling Texas has two time zones, Central and Mountain, meaning residents in and around El Paso continued to vote for an hour after polls in the rest of the state were closed. The grudge match between Perry and Hutchison had been building for years. Hutchison portrayed Perry as lazy and corrupt. Perry painted his opponent as a reckless pork-barreler out of touch with her home state. But the race was not the ideological referendum -- pitting the conservative purity of Perry against Hutchison's relatively moderate stance -- that had been anticipated. Part of that reflected the change in the political climate over the last year. The visceral anger against Washington was a gift to the governor, who relentlessly pounded Hutchison as a Beltway insider representing everything -- bailouts, government mandates, red ink -- that Texas conservatives despise. "It definitely has made it more difficult for me," she said in the waning days of the contest. "I didn't think that anyone could turn my success in producing results for Texas into a negative." PAM COMMENTARY: Perry -- the same ex-governor who tried to force the new HPV vaccine (known for side effects like fainting, blood clots, paralysis, and death) on Texas schoolgirls. That was overturned by the Texas legislature -- see flashback below. Reluctant governor yields on HPV shots; Calling a veto useless, Perry chides legislators for opposing his vaccination order (FLASHBACK May 2007) Critics of Perry's order countered that it was the governor who mishandled the issue from the start by not consulting with senators and representatives before issuing his Feb. 2 executive order. Only three of 181 lawmakers voted against the bill rescinding his order. "All the governor would have had to do is talk to us and he would have seen that we would have embraced a program where there was an opt-in instead of an opt-out," said Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Perry's order that all sixth-grade girls be inoculated against HPV before entering school next year would have allowed parents to opt out their daughters. But the author of the bill overturning Perry's order, Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, said it's much better to allow parents to decide what's best for their daughters. "This drug has not been properly studied to know the impact on 11-year-olds and what the long-term impact might be on those young girls' fertility," Bonnen said. Sea Shepherd ships searched by Australian authorities Australian police conducted searches Saturday on two anti-whaling vessels that recently clashed with Japanese ships in the Antarctic Ocean in an attempt to obstruct their annual catch, police and activists said. Federal police with search warrants boarded the Steve Irwin and the Bob Barker, ships belonging to the activist group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, as the result of a "formal referral from Japanese authorities," a spokesman said on condition of anonymity in accordance with police policy. He gave no further details, including on what basis the warrant was issued. The search took place in Hobart, Tasmania -- an Australian island lying off the southeast corner of the mainland -- where the ships docked Saturday after returning from their pursuit of Japanese whalers in their annual three-month hunt for the sea mammals. The hunt is conducted in the name of research, although some of the whale meat is then sold in Japan. Jeff Hansen, Australian director of Sea Shepherd, said police had confiscated logbooks, video footage, charts and laptops and had interviewed some of the crew. He said police would not reveal the reason for their search, and the group had no idea what the Japanese complaints could be. "We're sort of hoping that they do bring on some sort of investigation or charges," Hansen said. "We'd love to see something get into the courts because the reality is ... [the Japanese] have been the aggressors this year. We'd love to get it in the courts and get their illegal activity into the courts as well." Canada opposes U.S. effort to ban polar bear trade A cross-border battle is looming over polar bears, the Arctic giants that provoke passionate reactions in both Canada and the United States. The U.S. wants to ban the trade in polar-bear body parts, a proposal that will be considered at a meeting beginning next week of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Canada, the only country allowing the sale of bear skins and trophy hunting of the animals, is trying to defeat the proposal. The looming dispute over the species that environmentalists have made a sentinel of climate change is already taking on a no-holds-barred intensity. Animal rights activists in the U.S. just issued a study claiming that stalking the big carnivores for trophies is a marginal economic activity benefiting only a handful of people, and asserting that widespread hunting of the animals is only a recently adopted part of Inuit culture. Inuit who organize trophy hunting, it suggests, are violating their culture's tradition of respect for animals. ‘Nuclear material dropped by Israeli jets’ [WRH] In a closed-door debate by the IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors, Syria reiterated its assertion that the uranium traces came with munitions Israel used to destroy the complex. IAEA head inspector Olli Heinonen replied that the chemical composition, size, shape and distribution of the traces made it extremely unlikely they were a type of uranium sometimes used in munitions as a hardening agent, diplomats present said. Rather, he said, they were traces of processed uranium -- which after further treatment could be used for nuclear fuel. In response, Syrian Ambassador Bassam Al-Sabbagh suggested Israel might have contaminated the site with uranium particles dropped by air during or right after the airstrike, participants in the meeting told Reuters. “The IAEA should verify the nature of the material dropped by Israel ... There were planes that overflew the site and we don’t know what it was that they dropped. I’m not just talking about munitions,” Al-Sabbagh was quoted by diplomats as saying. “The core of the problem is an aggressive act committed by the Zionist regime,” Iranian Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh said. He blamed Western powers for the IAEA focusing “on the minor issue of a few uranium particles.” Federal Judge Says Rumsfeld Can't Duck Trial [WRH] Federal Judge Wayne Andersen in Chicago refused Friday to drop a suit against former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld filed by Americans who were working as civilians in Iraq in 2006 when, they allege, they were locked up and tortured by American forces — Donald Vance for three months and Nathan Ertel for one. "Plaintiffs are not now, and never have been, terrorists or enemies of the United States," says Vance and Ertel's suit against Rumsfeld and the United States government. "To the best of their knowledge, Plaintiffs were never even legitimately accused of being the same." Nevertheless, the suit continues, they were held and abused, and "officials at the highest levels of of the United States government have endorsed just such abuses. In particular, Defendant Donald Rumsfeld devised policies that permit the use of torture in interrogations and the detention of Americans without just grounds and effectively without access to a court to seek habeas." These policies authorized a "series of measures...crafted in secret and without resort to the democratic process [that] effectively suspended certain very basic human and civil rights for those whom the officials target." Attorney Mike Kanovitz of the Chicago firm Loevy & Loevy, which represents the plaintiffs, says Vance, who's from Chicago, and Ertel were employees of Shield Group Security and were reporting back to the FBI in Chicago about illegal payments they believed were being made by the security firm to Iraqi sheiks. Kanovitz said American officials in Iraq weren't interested in what the two men had to say, so Vance got in touch with the FBI during a visit home. Their suit says SGS became suspicious and eventually they were arrested by American military forces, placed in solitary confinement, and interrogated repeatedly by military personnel using physically and mentally coercive tactics authorized by Rumsfeld. These included "threats of violence and actual violence, sleep deprivation and alteration, extremes of temperature, extremes of sounds, light manipulation, threats of indefinite detention, denial of food, denial of water, denial of needed medical care, yelling, prolonged, solitary confinement, incommunicado detention, falsified allegations and other psychologically-disruptive and injurious techniques." Hollywood Sarah According to Entertainment Weekly, Sarah Palin and Mark Burnett (of Survivor fame) are pitching a "TV docudrama" to major television networks this week in Los Angeles following her appearance on The Tonight Show. EW reports one insider said that the show will be "a planet-Earth-style" look at Alaska, referring to the magnificent BBC/Discover Channel documentary, and one executive quipped, "She’s pitching a sequel to Commander in Chief," referring to the ABC drama starring Geena Davis as the first female president. Read more here. The Hollywood Reporter reports that "Palin and her family would be followed on-camera in the show," and that one network executive described the show as "'Planet Earth' meets Alaska meets her family." A source close to the former governor told Politico that despite rumors that the show will be a reality series centering on the Palin family, it will be "about the people, geography, wildlife and wonders of Alaska." Read more here. Whatever ends up coming out of these negotiations, we're really hoping for "Survivor: Akun." In a related story, E! Online reports that while Palin was in L.A. this week, she and Bristol, and an "entourage" of about 20 stopped by an Oscar gift suite benefiting the Red Cross. According to a press release, Palin reportedly donated over $1,700 at the event and plans to give the Oscar swag she picked up to charity. It was a good day for charity, then; she and her crew were "like locusts" according to one vendor. Palin stocked up on free Bloom facial products, and snagged free jewelry, watches, food, and 40 free pairs of headphones. E! also learned from one annoyed source that Palin insisted that the gift suite be opened two hours early for her crew and that once arriving, pictures and interviews weren't allowed. Read more here. Privacy, Civil Liberties Groups Sound Alarm over Expanded Role for National Security Agency in Cyber Security [DN] JUAN GONZALEZ: And what were Einstein 1 and 2? LILLIE CONEY: They were documents that were drafted about the non—well, the civilian government network, so if you’re looking at the Department of Education website or you’re looking at the Department of Agriculture’s website and a number of other agencies that are considered to be federal government civilian agencies, if visiting those sites, the objective was to protect government networks from cyber attacks or anything that might prevent those sites from being up and available and running. So anyone visiting those sites would be monitored, screened, or a series of ways to identify whether the person is engaging in some activity that may pose a threat to these websites, sort of like building a fence around government agency websites and then checking who goes in and who goes out, which is something very different from the way the internet has worked in the past. AMY GOODMAN: Lillie Coney, your organization and Ralph Nader wrote a letter to President Obama about deploying full-body scanning devices at the nation’s airports. What’s your concern? LILLIE CONEY: Whole-body imaging technology is a whole new way to screen individuals. What we’re looking at with these technologies is that it can—the way they work, they can penetrate the outer layers of clothing and take a very detailed image of what someone looks like without their clothing. These technologies are not regulated. The privacy policies that are put in place are at the discretion of the agency, which in fact the agency could change at their own discretion at any time. So what we’re looking at are three things: one, looking at whether these—how the decision to reach regarding purchasing these systems, what the rationale was for trying to use that as a primary screening device, instead of what was initially announced by the agency, that it would only be used for secondary screening; and then the health issues that may be a part of using these systems on the general population; and then the third thing, establishing privacy protections that are not governed by the agency but are built in, from the beginning of the process to the end, that create transparency, oversight and accountability over the information that this agency might collect as it relates to the use of whole-body imaging. PAM COMMENTARY: Those full-body scanners have also been criticized for using a type of wave that causes genetic damage and cancer. Coal ash problems spread; Wastewater from landfill going all over Southeast CHATTANOOGA - More than a year after the Kingston coal ash spill created one of the worst environmental disasters of its kind in U.S. history, the problem is seeping into several other states. It began Dec. 22, 2008, when a retaining pond burst at a coal-burning power plant, spilling 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash across 300 acres into the Emory River and a shoreline community near Knoxville. It was enough ash to cover a square mile 5 feet deep. While the Tennessee Valley Authority's cleanup has removed much of the ash from the river, the arsenic- and mercury-laced muck or its watery discharge has been moving by rail and truck through three states to at least six different sites. Some of it may end up as far away as Louisiana. At every stop along the route, new environmental concerns pop up. The coal-ash muck is laden with heavy metals linked to cancer, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering declaring coal ash hazardous. More men file workplace sex harassment claims WASHINGTON — Jonathan Pilkington's boss wouldn't take no for an answer. During more than two years as a food runner at an upscale steak house in Scottsdale, Ariz., Pilkington says his male supervisor groped, fondled and otherwise sexually harassed him more than a dozen times. “It was very embarrassing,” Pilkington said. “I felt like I had to do something because the situation was just so bad.” Now Pilkington, a married father of two, is the star witness in a federal lawsuit against Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar and one of a growing number of men claiming they are victims of sexual harassment in the workplace. Cash-Strapped States Delay Paying Income-Tax Refunds This year, more Americans and businesses may be asking: Where's my tax refund? That's because cash-strapped states such as North Carolina, Alabama and Hawaii have been forced to slow down issuing income tax refunds to individuals and businesses because of a lack of funds in their budget. Kansas has hinted that a delay might be possible, and processing paper refunds in Iowa has slowed because the state doesn't haven't enough employees to get them processed faster. Another state, New York, is still considering whether they'll follow the likes of Hawaii and delay refund payments. Canada wanted Afghan prisoners tortured: lawyer Federal government documents on Afghan detainees suggest that Canadian officials intended some prisoners to be tortured in order to gather intelligence, according to a legal expert. If the allegation is true, such actions would constitute a war crime, said University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran, who has been digging deep into the issue and told CBC News he has seen uncensored versions of government documents released last year. "If these documents were released [in full], what they will show is that Canada partnered deliberately with the torturers in Afghanistan for the interrogation of detainees," he said. "There would be a question of rendition and a question of war crimes on the part of certain Canadian officials. That's what's in these documents, and that's why the government is covering up as hard as it can." Breast cancer survivor credits vitamin D for recovery Rhonda Abrams sees the sun in a new light. For years she was afraid of it. Skin cancer had killed her mother at the age of 49. The sun became her mortal foe and Abrams protected herself by wearing hats and long sleeves, seeking shade whenever possible. But when she was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 45, Abrams started to reconsider her ideals and decided she had been misguided in her fears. By hiding from the sun, she deprived herself of an important vitamin she now credits as being pivotal in her recovery from cancer: The sunshine vitamin, D. E-mails: Navy dogs in 'deplorable' conditions with contractor The task probably seemed innocuous enough when a small team of U.S. Navy personnel accepted it last fall. They would trek out to a private security contractor in Chicago to pick up 49 dogs, then transport them to a nearby military base. But what they found when they arrived was shocking, according to internal Navy e-mails: dirty, weak animals so thin that their ribs and hip bones jutted out. The dogs were supposed to have begun working months earlier to sniff out explosives at Navy installations across the country, including several in Hampton Roads. At least that was the plan when, for the first time, the Navy decided to hire an outside contractor to supply K-9s and handlers to help protect dozens of its bases and ships. But when the dog-handler teams showed up for work last spring, they couldn't find planted explosives during military certification tests, according to the Navy. So the bases sent them back to the contractor, Securitas Security Services USA. Liz Cheney says terrorists have no rights. Also, you're a terrorist. It can be argued that when Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol accused nine lawyers in Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department of being the "al-Qaida Seven," working in the "Department of Jihad," they were simply exercising their First Amendment right to say anything that would get them on a talk show. This is, after all, America. The right to cynically accuse someone of being a terrorist is protected under the Constitution. You would think, however, that when Cheney and Kristol launched their execrable "Keep America Safe" Web ad, they would have been very, very careful with their words. In the ad they accuse seven Justice Department lawyers and two colleagues--all of whom had represented Guantanamo detainees--of being members of the Department of Jihad. A screen shot of Osama Bin Laden and a creepy voice-over asks of these attorneys, "Whose values do they share?" Thanks to people like Kristol and Cheney, people take accusations of this sort very seriously. The Justice Department reports being swamped with panicked phone calls since the ad started running this week. In 2010, calling someone a Bin Laden-loving jihadist isn't just meaningless partisan hackery. Ten years ago, these were just words. Ten years ago, someone accused of being a terrorist had recourse to the same panoply of rights as everyone else. Ten years ago, an accused terrorist still had the right to a trial, for instance. But thanks to people like Liz Cheney and her dad, the Sixth Amendment right to a "speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury" is gone, once you've been branded a terrorist. Just ask Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. After 9/11, once you're branded an enemy combatant, you can be held for years without any of your constitutionally protected rights, including the right to be told of the charges against you or to confront the witnesses against you. Thanks to people like Cheney, those alleged to be members of al-Qaida are stripped of their Sixth Amendment right to prove they are not. But that's not all. Ten years ago, if you labeled someone a terrorist, he had an Eighth Amendment right to be free from torture, since the very idea of "cruel and unusual punishment" was anathema, even for our enemies. But thanks to people like Liz Cheney and the brave souls at the Bush Office of Legal Counsel, it's OK to torture terrorists these days. As long as you're pretty sure they're terrorists. This is good news for the Cheney way of thinking, because it means that you can abuse a possible terrorist into admitting that he actually is a terrorist without all that fact-finding necessitated by a criminal trial. But there's even more. Ten years ago, if some paranoid hysteric accused you of being an al-Qaida sympathizer or a jihadist, you could find a lawyer to help you make the case that you were not. But in the ever-expanding war on the Bill of Rights being waged by Liz Cheney, once you're designated a terrorist, you lose your Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Because just by representing you--even if you're acquitted—your lawyers become terrorists, too! PAM COMMENTARY: What kind of parents would teach their daughter to be so evil? I wonder if the girl really wanted to be a right-wing propagandist, or if she's only humoring her father until she gets her cut of his will. Leading Education Scholar Diane Ravitch: No Child Left Behind Has Left US Schools with Legacy of “Institutionalized Fraud” [DN] JUAN GONZALEZ: --strengthening the content of the education, not the bells and whistles and the structures for measurements, but that that was actually defeated and that Lynne Cheney had something to do with that. Could you talk about that, bring us some of that history? DIANE RAVITCH: Right. Well, when I went to work for the Department of Education, I came in as a Democrat, and I thought, somewhat naively, that education was somehow a nonpartisan issue. And so, I came in to work on the idea of promoting arts education, science education. And in the department--part of the department I was in, we gave grants to different professional associations of educators to develop voluntary national standards of the arts, science, history, geography, economics, civics, lots of different areas. We wanted people, educators across the country, to say this is what an education is, this is what all American children should have. It was not a race to the top. It was based on the idea of equal educational opportunity means that all children get these wonderful things. But I think, within the Bush administration, the more important dialogue that was going on, that I was just very peripheral to, was the idea of school choice, vouchers, charter schools, and then also accountability. And where the Democrats and the Republicans began to make common cause was around this theme of accountability. And what accountability ultimately meant, not just in the Bush administration, but in the Clinton, and now in the Obama--in the, you know, next Bush and then this administration, accountability means who should be punished. If the scores don’t go up, who should be punished? Teachers. Teachers should be punished. The unions should be demonized. But you asked me about Lynne Cheney. The reason that Lynne Cheney gets into this conversation is that she was the one who saw that the history standards were--you know, she attacked them. And there got to be a huge national brouhaha back in 1994, 1995, about whether the history standards were politically correct. And it caused such an uproar in the press with--you know, the right-wing talk-show hosts jumped all over it, and then you had people on the left defending it. Congress and the administration just said--and this was in the Clinton administration years. They said, “Let’s not touch this whole idea of standards. Let’s just stick with basic skills.” And that’s how we today have inherited this legacy of the only thing you’re allowed to really talk about is reading and math, don’t touch science, the arts. They’re all too controversial. You might get into an argument over evolution if you try to talk about science. PAM COMMENTARY: More demands from the Cheney family that truth won't get into the hands of the masses. Thousands of Students Taking Part in National Day of Action to Defend Public Education [DN] JUAN GONZALEZ: And Ananya Roy, in terms of the impact of these tuition increases—I think it’s about 171 percent now in the past few years in the University of California system—what has been the impact in terms of the student body, the students that you are now teaching versus those a few years ago, in terms of the class and racial opportunities for higher education? ANANYA ROY: Well, the impact is quite immediate. We are seeing students struggling to get into classes, to keep up with those classes. We’re seeing students holding down multiple jobs while they’re trying to get through school. We’re seeing students trying to finish their college education in a shorter amount of time, and yet their inability to get into all of the classes they need makes that more difficult. So we’re really looking at a generation that is facing great frustration, that they graduate from college with a crushing burden of debt, and that faces a general condition of hopelessness. I think there’s some very important questions here also about whether the University of California system will be able to maintain these twin mandates of access and excellence. We’re clearly seeing an erosion of access. Now, these are not new issues. Students of color have been fighting around these issues for quite awhile in the UC system and more broadly in California, that the doors of the public university have never been open for all. So we see this as a struggle to not only save the university, but to also transform it, to make those issues of access and opportunity, central to the struggle, visible to all. N.Y. Rep. Massa to step down next week On Wednesday, On Politics reported here that Massa planned to leave Congress after his term ended this year. In a conference call with reporters this week, Massa cited a recurrence of cancer, which he had previously battled in 1996, as the reason for his departure. But an ethics cloud has been building around the congressman since then. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said his office had been made aware of "allegations of misconduct" against Massa in early February and that Hoyer directed the complaints to the ethics committee. The Associated Press reports that Massa's resignation comes as the ethics committee was reviewing a harassment complaint by a male staff member who reportedly felt uncomfortable in a situation with Massa that had sexual overtones. Regarding the allegations, Massa said, "There is no doubt in my mind that I did in fact, use language in the privacy of my own home and in my inner office that, after 24 years in the Navy, might make a Chief Petty Officer feel uncomfortable. The five-year race to save India's vanishing tigers The poachers perch on the rough platforms they have built in the trees about 15 feet above the forest floor, waiting patiently for the tiger to come. They have been searching the forests of India's Ranthambhore reserve for days, following the pug marks and other tell-tale signs. When they found the fresh kill, they knew it would only be a matter of time before the tiger returned to eat. Working quickly, they placed their traps on the path, scattering small stones across the dry sandy soil, knowing that tigers hate to walk on them and will pick their way around if they can. The tiger pads forward, guided by the stones into the trap, which springs shut with a snap. The poachers have fashioned the device from old car suspension plates; there are no teeth, because a damaged pelt will fetch less money. In pain and desperate to free itself, the tiger thrashes around. Another foot catches in another trap, then a third. The poachers watch to make sure it cannot free itself, then edge down to the ground, still cautious, because a male Bengal tiger can weigh up to 500lb (227kg) and a female 300lb (136kg) and a single blow from those claws could kill a man. One man carries a bamboo stick into which he has poured molten lead to give it more weight. The other has a spear on the end of a 10ft pole. As the tiger opens its mouth, the poacher with the spear lunges forward, stabbing between its open jaws. As the blood starts to flow, he stabs again and again. His colleague smashes the tiger over the head with the stick. When it is over, they draw their heavy iron knives and set to work to skin it. They leave the paws intact; they are too fiddly to waste time on out in the open. Half an hour later, they are gone, melting away unchallenged into the jungle, once more eluding the forest guards. Fish and Game director wants expanded wolf hunting Elk numbers in the Lolo Zone peaked in the 1980s with a population of about 16,000. Biologists attribute the large herds to open fields created by large wildfire in the early part of the 20th century. But the open fields began filling with brush and young trees, reducing elk habitat and causing elk numbers to decline, and then plunge after the severe winter of 1996-1997. Fish and Game responded by restricting elk hunting and allowing more bear and mountain lions to be killed, which Groen said caused elk numbers to pick up. "Then wolves took over and became the leading cause of Lolo elk deaths," Groen said. "It wasn't until May of last year the state could finally manage wolves. By then, the balance of elk and wolves in the Lolo Zone was completely out of whack." The agency set a harvest limit of 27 wolves in the Lolo Zone and 17 in the Selway. But through Friday, 11 wolves in the Lolo Zone had been killed by hunters and seven in the Selway. Forest Service slowly embraces Tester plan to log 10,000 acres a year for 10 years One of the most contested parts of Sen. Jon Tester's Forest Jobs and Recreation Act is the plan to log 10,000 acres a year for 10 years. When he testified on Tester's bill on Dec. 17, Agriculture Undersecretary Harris Sherman told a congressional subcommittee "the bill would create unrealistic expectations on the part of communities and forest products stakeholders that the agency would accomplish the quantity of mechanical treatments required." He also said the bill "in particular includes levels of mechanical treatment that are likely unachievable and perhaps unsustainable. The levels of mechanical treatment called for in the bill far exceed historic treatment levels on these forests." In a visit to Missoula Feb. 5, Tester acknowledged that demand was causing some "heartburn" in the U.S. Forest Service. But he insisted the agency needs to change how it manages timber. Frustrated Icelanders vent rage in referendum Icelanders were deciding whether to approve the payment of $3.5 billion to Britain and $1.8 billion to the Netherlands as compensation for funds that those governments paid to around 340,000 of their citizens who had accounts with the collapsed bank Icesave, an Icelandic Internet bank that offered high interest rates before it failed along with its parent, Landsbanki. "This result is no surprise," Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir said. "Now we must turn to the task of finishing the negotiations on Icesave." The debt owed to Britain and the Netherlands is a small sum compared to the massive amounts spent to rescue other victims of the global meltdown -- $182.5 billion was paid out to keep U.S. insurance giant American International Group Inc. alive -- but many taxpayers in the country say they can't afford to pay it. The deal would require each person to pay around $135 a month for eight years -- the equivalent of a quarter of an average four-member family's salary. Six Navy skippers sacked since Jan. 8 Graf also has been accused on the Web site of endangering sailors' lives by engaging the Cowpens in a "drag race" with a destroyer, the John S. McCain, near Okinawa, Japan. The inspector general's report confirmed that the race had taken place last year but concluded that allegations Graf had endangered the Cowpens were "unsubstantiated." The six commanding officers the Navy has fired since Jan. 8 represent an unusually high number for the service. A total of 55 commanding officers were dismissed for cause from 2005 to 2009, an average of 11 a year, according to statistics supplied by the Navy. Lt. Justin Cole, a Navy spokesman, said that fewer than 1 percent of the service's approximately 1,500 commanding officers are relieved each year but added that the spate of firings so far in 2010 was not part of a planned crackdown or policy change. Toyota disputes critic who blames electronics Toyota Motor Corp. plans Monday to try to undercut suggestions that its electronics systems caused the sudden acceleration problems that led to the recall of more than 8 million vehicles. The automaker plans an event in which it will seek to debunk a critic who claims faulty gas pedals did not cause the sudden acceleration. Toyota will aim to duplicate the scenario created by David W. Gilbert, a professor at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Gilbert told Congress on Feb. 23 that he was able to recreate sudden acceleration in a Toyota vehicle by manipulating its electronics. The company is calling in the director of Stanford University's Center for Automotive Research to try to refute the claims. Toyota said Stanford professor Chris Gerdes will show that the malfunctions Gilbert produced "are completely unrealistic under real-world conditions and can easily be reproduced on a wide range of vehicles made by other manufacturers." Torture memos resemble Clarence Thomas' way of thinking Thomas' consistent record of dismissing claims of prison brutality, most of them joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, shows that Yoo's view of torture was not that of a rogue lawyer. Instead, it represents a strain of conservative thinking that looks back in history to define cruelty and torture, rather than toward what the court has called the "evolving standards of decency." Over two decades, Thomas and Scalia have repeatedly dissented when the court ruled for prisoners who alleged they were subjected to cruelty. They include an inmate who was handcuffed to a "hitching post" and forced to stand shirtless for seven hours in the hot summer sun of Alabama. Another involved an inmate from Louisiana who was repeatedly punched in the mouth by a guard. According to Thomas, this harsh treatment did not qualify as cruel and unusual punishment. "Judges -- not jailers -- impose punishment," he wrote. The two justices explained that the word "punishment" as it was used in the English Bill of Rights in 1689 referred to judges imposing punishment for a crime. Prison guards do not impose "punishment" even if they mete out cruelty, they said. Wisconsin woman loses fingers to zoo bear A Wisconsin woman remained hospitalized Saturday after her fingers were bitten off Friday by a bear at a Manitowoc zoo. Police say Tracy Weiler, 47, of Manitowoc, passed barriers and warning signs at the Lincoln Park Zoo and was trying to feed two Asiatic black bears around 11:30 a.m. Friday. Capt. Scott Luchterhand told the Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter that one of the bears bit off her thumb and forefinger and parts of her middle and ring fingers. Weiler, of Manitowoc, was rushed to a hospital in Green Bay, about 40 miles north of Manitowoc, and later transferred to Theda Clark Medical Center in Neenah, he said. States try to ban credit checks on job seekers; Financial history can pose another hurdle for many desperately seeking work ANNAPOLIS, Md. — It's hard enough to find a job in this economy, and now some people are facing another hurdle: Potential employers are holding their credit histories against them. Sixty percent of employers recently surveyed by the Society for Human Resources Management said they run credit checks on at least some job applicants, compared with 42 percent in a somewhat similar survey in 2006. Employers say such checks give them valuable information about an applicant's honesty and sense of responsibility. But lawmakers in at least 16 states from South Carolina to Oregon have proposed outlawing most credit checks, saying the practice traps people in debt because their past financial problems prevent them from finding work. Wisconsin state Rep. Kim Hixson drafted a bill in his state shortly after hearing from Terry Becker, an auto mechanic who struggled to find work. Poverty is hitting the suburbs with more sting In a startling shift, Twin Cities suburbs now have more poor people than the core cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Job losses, foreclosures and disappearing insurance coverage have pushed requests for food stamps, medical assistance and emergency housing aid to record levels. Homeless numbers are rising. Food shelves are scrambling to meet demand. It's a trend mirrored in suburbs across the nation, where a recent study found that suburban poverty has grown five times faster than it has in big cities. Worst hit are single moms and unskilled workers whose finances were shaky before the economy dipped. But financial stress reaches well into the middle class. TennCare cuts hit many: Knox quadriplegic, 14, among those who wouldn't be covered NASHVILLE - Gov. Phil Bredesen proposes shrinking overall TennCare spending by another $860 million in the coming year, and Ashley Manes is, indirectly, one small part of that plan. The 14-year-old Knoxville girl, a quadriplegic whose life depends on a ventilator and multiple medications because of a traffic accident 10 years ago, has been deemed ineligible for continued TennCare coverage, according to Joe Manes, her father. The governor's newest round of proposed TennCare reductions comes on top of previous cuts, some of which were offset in the current year by federal stimulus money. When that money is gone, the program's spending will be $1.2 billion lower next year than it was last year. The reductions proposed by the Bredesen administration include new caps on coverage - no more than $10,000 per year for hospitalization, for example - and no more than eight visits to an office for treatment in a year. There is also a 7 percent cut in payments to doctors, hospitals, nursing homes and other providers. Canada opposes U.S. effort to ban polar bear trade A cross-border battle is looming over polar bears, the Arctic giants that provoke passionate reactions in both Canada and the United States. The U.S. wants to ban the trade in polar-bear body parts, a proposal that will be considered at a meeting beginning next week of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Canada, the only country allowing the sale of bear skins and trophy hunting of the animals, is trying to defeat the proposal. The looming dispute over the species that environmentalists have made a sentinel of climate change is already taking on a no-holds-barred intensity. Animal rights activists in the U.S. just issued a study claiming that stalking the big carnivores for trophies is a marginal economic activity benefiting only a handful of people, and asserting that widespread hunting of the animals is only a recently adopted part of Inuit culture. Inuit who organize trophy hunting, it suggests, are violating their culture's tradition of respect for animals. Evaro Hill residents say wells polluted by Highway 93 construction EVARO – For 25 years, Dennis and Janet Elliot have drawn their water from a well that sits close to Evaro Road. The well, 500 feet from Highway 93 and 120 feet deep, has long delivered what they believed was sweet, clean water that nourished the family. Which is to say that several generations of Elliots have drunk it, bathed in it and used it to clean their clothes. But for the past year, ever since the widening of Highway 93 was in full bloom, the Elliots haven’t been drinking their water. Their grandkids, who live in another house on the same property, don’t even bathe in it. “We can’t drink the water because it’s not safe, and it’s not safe because something that happened during this project made it that way,” said Elliot, a big man who worked for Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. for 18 years and spent 28 years as a volunteer firefighter. “I feel like the state has been pretty cavalier in their lack of concern for our safety.” A Top Paterson Aide Quits In the latest upheaval for the Paterson administration, the governor’s communications director, Peter E. Kauffmann, resigned Thursday afternoon. “As a former officer in the United States Navy, integrity and commitment to public service are values I take seriously, ” Mr. Kauffmann said in a statement. “As recent developments have come to light, I cannot in good conscience continue in my current position.” The tenure of Gov. David A. Paterson has become imperiled by revelations that he and his administration intervened in a domestic violence episode involving a top aide and by accusations by a state ethics panel that the governor lied about his acceptance of free tickets to a World Series game. While Mr. Kauffmann did not elaborate further and declined to comment beyond his statement, the commission’s report suggests that testimony Mr. Kauffmann gave during the ethics panel’s investigation had revealed significant inconsistencies with Mr. Paterson’s account of how he acquired the tickets, leading the commission to conclude that Mr. Paterson had lied during his testimony. PAM COMMENTARY: What I find offensive is that they're trying to force Paterson from office based on baseball tickets. I mean, he's not owned by big corporate interests, he's not giving away lucrative contracts to buddies in organized crime, he's not even having hookers sent to his room. Trying to get his aide out of a domestic violence charge is a genuine concern, but was probably a hasty reaction based on panic. But baseball tickets? I only wish that New York was capable of electing such an honest governor. Obviously the big boys don't want him there, or they wouldn't be giving him so much trouble. FDA warns of salmonella risk from common flavor enhancer Thousands of types of processed foods -- including many varieties of soups, chips, hot dogs and salad dressings -- may pose a health threat because they contain a flavor enhancer that could be contaminated with salmonella, the Food and Drug Administration said Thursday. Salmonella was detected in one lot of hydrolyzed vegetable protein made by Basic Food Flavors Inc. as well as inside the company's Nevada manufacturing facility, according to the FDA. Basic Food Flavors is one of only a handful of companies that makes hydrolyzed vegetable protein, but its customer list is extensive. The FDA has posted on its Web site a list of products being recalled by manufacturers. The list contained 56 products as of mid-afternoon Thursday and is expected to balloon. It can be found at http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/HVPCP/. Hydrolyzed vegetable protein is widely used by food processors to boost flavor in ways similar to monosodium glutamate. A company that bought the tainted protein from Basic Food Flavors notified the FDA after it found salmonella in the lot, according to federal officials. Chilean Earthquake Toll Passes 800; Aid Yet to Reach Many Devastated Areas [DN] AMY GOODMAN: Many Chileans have complained that scores of deaths could have been avoided had the government responded faster. The earthquake set off a tsunami a few hours later that killed many who survived the quake. Despite the devastation, many say the human and economic costs could have been a lot worse, given the size of the earthquake, one of the strongest ever recorded in history. In fact, scientists say the 8.8-magnitude quake was so powerful it slightly shifted the earth’s axis and shortened the day by 1.26 microseconds. At a briefing at UN headquarters in New York, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Chief for Humanitarian Affairs Catherine Bragg said the disaster could have been far worse. CATHERINE BRAGG: Yes, the country is very well prepared. It has one of the strongest building codes. But at the same time, I don’t think any country can be prepared for an 8.8-magnitude earthquake totally adequately. It is, I think, if I’m not mistaken, the fifth most severe earthquake ever recorded in human history. So, no matter how prepared you are, there are going to be repercussions from something as big as this. It is true that there are some hospitals that are damaged, some that have collapsed. That’s why the government is asking for field hospitals to be put in—as their very targeted requirements that they have asked the international community to help with, because they do determine that it is an area that is needed. 2 Pentagon police officers shot WASHINGTON (AP) — A gunman coolly drew a weapon from his pocket and opened fire at the teeming subway entrance to the Pentagon complex Thursday evening, wounding two police officers before being shot and critically wounded, officials said. The two officers suffered grazing wounds and were being treated in a hospital, said Richard Keevill, chief of Pentagon police. The suspect, believed to be a U.S. citizen, walked up to a security checkpoint at the Pentagon in an apparent attempt to get inside the massively fortified Defense Department headquarters, at about 6:40 p.m. "He just reached in his pocket, pulled out a gun and started shooting" at point-blank range, Keevill said. "He walked up very cool. He had no real emotion on his face." The Pentagon officers returned fire with semiautomatic weapons. Of the suspect, the chief said, "His injury is pretty critical." Exclusive: RNC document mocks donors, plays on 'fear' The Republican National Committee plans to raise money this election cycle through an aggressive campaign capitalizing on “fear” of President Barack Obama and a promise to "save the country from trending toward socialism." The strategy was detailed in a confidential party fundraising presentation, obtained by POLITICO, which also outlines how “ego-driven” wealthy donors can be tapped with offers of access and “tchochkes.” The presentation was delivered by RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart to top donors and fundraisers at a party retreat in Boca Grande, Florida on February 18, a source at the gathering said. In neat PowerPoint pages, it lifts the curtain on the often-cynical terms of political marketing, displaying an air of disdain for the party’s donors that is usually confined to the barroom conversations of political operatives. Oxford hospital suspends heart surgery after four children die (UK) A hospital has decided to suspend heart surgery on children after four have died in the past three months. The John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford said the move was precautionary. There would be an external investigation into the reasons for the deaths, since such a spate was unusual, the hospital said. The children had congenital heart problems, and had been receiving care for some time before their operations. The hospital added that it alone haddecided to hold an investigation. In the meantime the parents of 26 children awaiting heart surgery at the John Radcliffe would be contacted and those scheduled for operations would be offered them elsewhere. Education should accompany prostate screening, new guidelines say New guidelines for prostate cancer screening issued Wednesday emphasize that physicians should better educate men about both the risks and benefits of using the PSA test for screening. They also call for cutbacks in the use of digital rectal exams to find tumors and recommend the end of mass prostate-screening programs at health fairs and other sites. The revised guidelines issued by the influential American Cancer Society come on the heels of several studies suggesting that large numbers of tumors identified by PSA screening are inconsequential and that biopsies and treatment produce more harm than those tumors would. Because of such findings, the new guidelines emphasize the importance of physicians explaining both risks and benefits to the patients more fully so that each man can make an informed decision about whether to get tested. Doyle signs bill limiting BPA use; Baby bottles can't be made with chemical Gov. Jim Doyle signed a bill into law Wednesday that bans BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups for children age 3 and younger, making Wisconsin the third state to do so. The law, which takes effect in June, prohibits the manufacture and wholesale of those items. It also requires that such bottles and cups be labeled "BPA Free." Wisconsin's action is the latest in a growing movement to rid children's products of the chemical. "It seems to me that if there's a question of (safety), the balance we should strike is on protecting our children," Doyle said. "We must continue our proud and progressive tradition of passing laws to keep our citizens safe." Rove Admits Bogus Iraq WMD Led to Invasion [AJ] Karl Rove, the White House adviser whom George W. Bush called his political “architect,” admits in a new memoir that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq severely damaged the Bush presidency — and he suggests the war might not have occurred had Bush actually known the truth. Of his own role, Rove writes that his biggest mistake was not pushing back against claims that the president had led the country into the Iraq war under false pretenses. If Bush had known about the absence of weapons of mass destruction, Rove questions whether the United States would have gone to war, according to an excerpt quoted by the New York Times. “Would the Iraq War have occurred without W.M.D., I doubt it,” Rove writes. “Congress was very unlikely to have supported the use-of-force resolution without the W.M.D. threat. The Bush administration itself would probably have sought other ways to constrain Saddam, bring about regime change and deal with Iraq’s horrendous human rights violations.” From New York to Liberia, Investigative Journalist Greg Palast Tracks Vulture Funds Preying on African Debt [DN] GREG PALAST: So who are these vultures? Vultures collect on debts of the poorest nations. But they never lent these poor countries any money at all. So how did these American speculators get their hands on Liberia’s debts? We’ve come to the offices of Greylock Capital, big players in the industry. Greylock CEO Hans Humes tells us how he ended up with some of Liberia’s debts. HANS HUMES: I ended up buying a lot of the loans that we had in Liberia when I called one of the banks that was going through a merger thirteen, fourteen years ago, and I said, “Hey, by the way, you were a lender to this African country.” And the guy said, “No, I’m not.” A couple days later, he said, “You know what? You’re right. We found this box in this warehouse that had files for all these loans. Do you want to buy all of them?” GREG PALAST: The reason Hans and other speculators were able to buy up Liberia’s debt dirt cheap was war. In the ’80s and ‘90s, Liberian warlords were chopping the country into bloody pieces, killing one in ten Liberians. Humes and others were willing to wait until peace could be restored. But for some vultures, Liberia’s misery was an opportunity. Four thousand five hundred miles away from the mayhem, they file a lawsuit in this courthouse in New York City. Now, Liberia didn’t really have a government. It was run by a bunch of warlords under UN sanctions. Not surprisingly, Liberia doesn’t show up in the courthouse, and they lose automatically, when the judge issues this default judgment requiring the nation to pay $23 million. Who was behind this lawsuit? The key figure is Eric Hermann, the owner of vulture fund FH International. And here he is, at a chandelier-lit gala. Hermann refused several requests to be interviewed, so we went to his office to ask why he sued war-torn Liberia. But his office seemed to have vanished. The Military-Industrial Complex is Ruining the Economy [WRH] A PhD economist told me: War always causes recession. Well, if it is a very short war, then it may stimulate the economy in the short-run. But if there is not a quick victory and it drags on, then wars always put the nation waging war into a recession and hurt its economy. You know about America's unemployment problem. You may have even heard that the U.S. may very well have suffered a permanent destruction of jobs. But did you know that the defense employment sector is booming? Political Prisoner Ernst Zundel Released [R] This morning at 2:45 EST, I received a phone call from our British friend, Lady Michele Renouf, who told me: "We have him in the car! All is well! Here he is..." and I could exchange a few happy words with my husband. Ernst assured me that his release went smoothly and that he would call me a bit later with additional details. Half an hour later I received a fax from his lady attorney, Alexandra Rittershaus, who told me: "Ernst is in freedom. A few people were (at the prison gates), but everything went peacefully. I did not have an opportunity to talk to him, but he looked happy." PAM COMMENTARY: When I was a guest on the Jeff Rense radio show years ago to promote my vegan cookbook, I was bumped to the last hour of the show because Ernst Zundel had been deported under suspicious circumstances. It seemed that the US government had manipulated his immigration status so that Zundel could be deported to a country where questioning anything to do with the holocaust was illegal. Zundel had questioned the existence of gas chambers at a certain Nazi prison camp, and to someone like me with a degree in history that’s not a scary idea -- we'd just consider him to be a "revisionist." If he could prove his case to the academic community, then his theory could gain acceptance, but it's rare for even accomplished academics to come up with strong enough evidence to do that. I can think of a couple of revisionist theories that have gained popularity through the years, although I can't remember the revisionists’ names offhand -- one examination of financial records showed that King Louis XVI (the king who was beheaded in France along with his "let them eat cake" wife Marie Antoinette) had spent about 50% of French revenues on the American Revolution. In other words, Ben Franklin was really doing his job getting money for the states, more money than the French could afford apparently. After much suffering by the French, Louis was beheaded, partly for helping us buy our freedom from England. Another theory that gained acceptance was that the population decline during the bubonic plague wasn't as great as originally thought, partly because of population growth elsewhere replacing some of the loss. I remember our professor joking that one day someone would say there was a population INCREASE during the plague, and everyone laughed. That's the nature of revisionism. Everyone can say what they want, but few theories have enough evidence behind them to gain widespread acceptance. In the case of Zundel, even if what he said was true -- and it could be -- the holocaust was still bad enough. I don't know why people feel threatened by Zundel. Rather, I feel threatened by Zundel’s imprisonment. As I've said here before, part of the reason governments like to restrict speech on unpopular ideas is because it sets legal precedent to restrict speech in many other ways later. It’s a gradual process, but the ultimate goal of most governments is to make criticism of the government illegal, one of the many characteristics of tyranny. James Bond gadgets: real, Canadian, and for sale; Historian fights to keep WWII spy-school collection in Canada A dagger lipstick, poison gas fountain pen and revolver in a hollowed-out book are among the “James Bond toys” included in a collection of wartime artifacts that a Durham Region historian is working furiously to save. The privately owned collection, which includes articles from the top-secret Camp X spy training school, is up for sale — asking price $1 million — and in danger of leaving Canada, says Lynn Philip Hodgson. “It is the only one of its kind in the world. There is nowhere else to see Camp X artifacts,” says Hodgson, who has spent half his life uncovering the spy school’s secrets. “If it leaves the country — it will go to the States because that’s where the money is — it’s gone for good,” he says, calling such a move disastrous for Canada’s heritage. Detroit homes sell for $1 amid mortgage and car industry crisis Banks are selling off properties in the worst neighbourhoods, which are usually surrounded by empty and wrecked housing, for a few dollars each. But even better houses can be had at a fraction of their former value. Technically, Brumit paid $95 for the land and $5 for the house on Lawley Street – which fitted what estate agents euphemistically call an opportunity. Brumit said: "It had a big hole in the roof from the fire department putting out the last of two arson attempts. Both previous owners tried to set it on fire to get out of the mortgages. So there's a big hole about 24ft long and the plumbing had almost entirely been ripped out and most of the electrics too. It was basically a smoke damaged, structurally intact shell with a snowdrift in the attic." Setting fire to houses to claim the insurance and kill off the mortgage is not uncommon in Detroit; a blackened, wooden corpse of a house sits at the bottom of Brumit's street. But it is more common for owners to just walk away from their homes and mortgages. PAM COMMENTARY: It's not really just a hundred dollars, when you consider thousands or tens of thousands in repairs to make the house usable again, in addition to any back taxes and liens that have to b e paid. Woodford board OKs wind farm road plans; Gamesa will guarantee quality of roadwork, accepts other conditions (South Africa) The Minonk and Roanoke projects were introduced to the county in about 2006 and have faced several hurdles along the way. Even after Gamesa secures a special use permit, it still has a long way to go before it can break ground on the project, which has a tentative start date of April 2011. David Radin, who is based in Gamesa's Chicago office, said the company also has to prove to ComEd that the project will occur so it can make the upgrades to its facilities, which will take about 18 months. Meanwhile, the Wednesday meeting was the committee's first formal one with new county engineer Jonathan Hodel, whose employment status was finalized only after he began work Feb. 22. After some disagreement among County Board members over his employment package, Hodel, the former Stark County engineer, accepted the board's offer. Sorting out current unemployment benefits The jobless got a temporary reprieve Tuesday night when President Obama signed a bill that extends federal funding for unemployment benefits and Cobra health care premium subsidies for one month. Last week, the House passed a one-month extension, but the bill got held up in the Senate by Jim Bunning, R-Ky., who wanted Congress to find a way to pay for the $10 billion package. Bunning relented on Tuesday, the Senate passed the bill, and Obama quickly signed it. As a result, workers who become involuntarily terminated through March 31 could be eligible for the Cobra subsidy, which pays 65 percent of the health care premium for up to 15 months. The previous eligibility deadline was Sunday. The unemployed also will have roughly one additional month to qualify for certain federal unemployment benefits, which were due to expire at the end of February. Get used to the gridlock: Long-range road funds lacking "We've already crossed over the point of not being able to stave off the severe congestion," Farmer said. "It sounds dire," Aubrey Layne, a Commonwealth Transportation Board member who represents Hampton Roads, said after hearing the numbers. "I think we need to come to the realization that we're going to have to look at alternatives to relieve our congestion.... We're going to have to find a way to leverage those monies." Layne said the state will need to seek more public-private partnerships to build roads - partnerships that generally require tolls - and to consider more transit options such as light rail, bus rapid transit and high-speed rail, for which there's federal funding. The grim long-range outlook perpetuates the current state of transportation funding in Virginia. About $4.6 billion has been cut from the state's operating and six-year transportation budgets in the past year and a half because of declining revenue. The major sources of transportation revenue are the gas tax and portions of the general sales tax and motor vehicle sales tax. PAM COMMENTARY: Voters made it clear in the last gubernatorial election that Virginians don't want an increase in their gasoline tax, even if that means no money to fix congestion or other transportation problems. The Democrat, Creigh Deeds, said he'd be willing to raise gas taxes to pay for transportation; the Republican Bob McDonnell (the winner) pledged not to raise the gas tax. Rather McDonnell wanted to raise transportation money through a one-time sale of its state liquor stores, and offshore oil drilling revenues. Of course there's currently no drilling off the shore of Virginia, and it's questionable whether enough oil exists there to make drilling worthwhile. Drilling also hasn't been popular with the tourist industry in Virginia, as beach business would be harmed by any oil spills. And the sale of the state's liquor store would permanently end state revenue from that source. These issues were all raised during the campaign, for those who cared to follow the race, so any transportation problems in Virginia are a choice that its voters made. California man gets eight years for stealing cheese A California man has been sentenced to up to eight years in prison for stealing a $3.99 (£2.60) bag of shredded cheese in a case critics say shows the need for reform of the state's criminal justice system and the overcrowded state of its prisons. Robert Ferguson, who prosecutors say has a nearly 30-year record of convictions for burglary and other offences, avoided a life sentence under the state's controversial "three strikes" law after a psychological evaluation deemed him bipolar and unable to control his impulses to steal, the Sacramento Bee reported. Prosecutor Clinton Parish said Ferguson had spent 22 of the past 27 years behind bars but had failed to show he could obey the law. A judge sentenced him to seven years and eight months in prison, but he could be eligible for parole in three years. The ruling came amid critical overcrowding in the California prison system, to which years of tough policies, the "war on drugs" and one of the highest US recidivism rates have contributed. The system held 166,569 inmates in August, but remains so overcrowded nearly 8,000 have been sent to prisons outside the state. "Nothing but rich horse breeders here..." A gallery of slums from Senator Bunning's state of Kentucky I don't mean to single out individual homeowners, rather I want to show that Senator Bunning's state has plenty of poverty and desperately needs Unemployment benefits, just like everyone else. And as the photos here show, any other aid would be good, too -- perhaps some neighborhood improvement projects... I drove through the state on Monday and Tuesday, stopping twice to take pictures of dilapidated housing. I didn't have extra time to do interviews, or to hang out at the Unemployment office searching for people on the verge of losing their benefits. Rather, I only wanted to show that Kentucky has slums like every other state. If there were ever an illusion that Kentucky doesn't know poverty, or that people there are all a bunch of rich horse breeders, this gallery will disprove it. Bunning's abrasive behavior spans careers Bunning, observers have noted, has a history of being abrasive. A newspaper in his home state published a scathing editorial Tuesday calling Bunning's block a "callous contempt for the more than one in 10 working Kentuckians whose jobs disappeared in the economic meltdown." The Lexington Herald-Leader editorial, titled "Bunning's callous grandstanding," said Kentucky has become "accustomed to bizarre, egocentric behavior from Bunning." In 2006, Time magazine called him one of the nation's five worst senators, noting that "Bunning shows little interest in policy unless it involves baseball." Gary Greenberg: “Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease” [DN] AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Gary Greenberg, who has written the book Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease. Talk about how the definition has changed over the decades and how we deal with it in this country. GARY GREENBERG: The definition of depression has been changing since it was first introduced as a medical concept, which was about a little more than a hundred years ago. But the most radical changes have occurred after 1973, when the American Psychiatric Association had suffered a series of embarrassments, including, particularly, the discovery suddenly that homosexuality really wasn’t a disease. And they were forced to grapple with the fact that they—not only were there questions about whether their diseases really were diseases, but doctors couldn’t agree on the same patient what disease that patient had. And so they went to a system of diagnosis that’s purely a checklist. If you meet the criteria, then, regardless of your circumstances, you have the disease. And that’s how depression works. And so, over time what’s happened is that the diagnosis has gotten increasingly detached from any sense of where it might come from, either within the psyche, as Freud would talk about, or from external circumstances, as more politically minded psychologists would talk about. And that, of course, goes hand-in-hand with the idea that it’s a biochemical illness, because if it’s not being caused by your external circumstances and it’s not being caused by some, you know, childhood trauma, then what’s left? In must be being caused by something inside your brain. And it’s become a brain disease. AMY GOODMAN: What role do pharmaceutical companies play in this? GARY GREENBERG: Well, pharmaceutical companies have been very eager to jump on that bandwagon. In fact, in many respects, they’ve originated that idea, or at least spread it through the culture like a virus. Since about 1960, the drug industry has been actively engaged in trying to help first doctors and now patients come—believe that demoralization is really a mental illness. They’ve done it through very clever marketing. For instance, they distributed 50,000 copies of a book called Recognizing the Depressed Patient to prominent doctors back in the early 1960s, in which the biochemical argument was made for the first time, in the almost entire absence of any findings that supported it. It was like a myth that was being given to the doctors to pass along to their patients, like viral marketing. Now with TV direct to consumer ads, every time there’s an advertisement for Prozac, it’s also an advertisement for the idea that depression is a disease. And I think that’s obviously very beneficial to the drug companies. FOX’s Glenn Beck and Laura Ingraham Fight Healthcare Reform by Mocking the Sick [BF] Bill O'Reilly and Laura Ingraham, who even O'Reilly considers an "ideologue," talked about the summit on O'Reilly's show Thursday evening, but Ingraham made it clear that she had no sympathetic sentiments and preferred to be snide about the whole event. Referring to the stories Democrats presented of real sufferers of the lack of healthcare reform, Ingraham wrote off Louise Slaughter's constituent by saying she had "won the Olympics of sob stories by saying...[she] had to wear her sister's dentures, okay, it got so bad with the healthcare system." To prove she could, in fact, take her dislike for the disenfranchised a step further, Ingraham continued to say, "You had Harry Reid on the cleft palate with his [constituents] . . . I mean, the whole thing was ridiculous." While Ingraham prominently features a cross on her chest during most of her television appearances, nothing about her attack on the story of someone with a cleft palate as "ridiculous" sounds remotely Christian. Nor does Ingraham's attempt to make light of an elderly woman in any way resemble a call to aid the literal or metaphorical "orphans and widows" of the world, a movement defined Biblically as "religion clean and undefiled." Instead, Ingraham's derision came across as a crass attempt at humor used to avoid the substance of the issue, something her conservative colleagues like Glenn Beck and his radio sidekicks continued. Beck himself ridiculed the condition of Slaughter's constituent by saying, "I am wearing George Washington's dentures right now. I'm wearing his teeth right now. Over my teeth." Beck's sidekicks took the attacks a step further, derisively imitating the voice of a two-year-old presumably writing in to President Obama to tell him, "I have no healthcare, Mr. Pwesident, and I have no feet and no tonsils because doctors took 'em out." It seems only a member of Beck's show could find humor in a small child missing body parts. Somehow, he appeared entertained. Ralph Nader on the GOP Filibuster of Unemployment Benefits Bill, the Collapse of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Proposal, and the Latest Auto Recalls [DN] AMY GOODMAN: Senate Republican Jim Bunning is continuing to filibuster a key spending bill to extend unemployment benefits for hundreds of thousands of American workers. The blocked bill also affects several governmental agencies, rural television customers and doctors receiving Medicare payments. At the same time, Senate Banking Committee Chair Christopher Dodd has abandoned an idea proposed by President Obama and favored by consumer groups to create an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency to protect consumers against abuses in mortgages, credit cards and other forms of lending. Dodd is seeking support from fellow Democrats for a Republican proposal now to create a new agency that would be housed within the Federal Reserve. The proposal to house the new agency within the Fed follows an earlier idea of placing it within the Treasury Department. The Fed has had consumer protection laws on its books for years, but failed to enforce them in the period leading up to the financial crisis. According to the Washington Post, the new proposal from Dodd would grant the agency independent funding and a presidentially appointed director, but it would not give the agency authority to enforce those rules. For more on this and other issues, we’re joined by longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic and former presidential candidate, Ralph Nader. He’s joining us on the line from his home in Connecticut. Ralph Nader, we welcome you to Democracy Now! I wanted you to address these two issues. On the one hand, you’ve got the Republican filibuster that could throw hundreds of thousands of people off of their unemployment benefits, as well as COBRA. And you have Chris Dodd backing off of this independent consumer protection agency. RALPH NADER: Well, it’s just the latest manifestation of the graveyard in Congress known as the US Senate. There are over 100 bills, many of them fairly good, that the House of Representatives have passed, including financial regulation, that are buried in the Senate. And the Senate rules allow one senator, like Senator Jim Bunning, who’s not running for reelection, so he doesn’t have to worry about adverse feedback from Kentucky, to block disbursements for unemployed people, unemployment compensation, and also opens the door to the banking lobby, which, as Senator Durbin of Illinois said a few weeks ago, run the place. That’s what his words. He said, “The banks run the place.” In coastal Chile, the sea has left little behind ILOCA, Chile -- The coast of the Maule Region -- 155 miles south of Santiago and lined by small resort towns like El Peñón, La Pesca, Rancura, El Buzo, Iloca and Duao -- is now a surrealist landscape. In those places, the sea changed the geography. Everything was swept away by tidal waves that rose 40 feet and higher. Chilean television showed military vehicles moving down highways, firemen working on the rubble of what was a large building in Concepción, fires and looting in the big cities. Here on the coast, nobody has seen any of that. In these places, the lack of communication is such that the residents believe that the disaster hit only them, that they're going through a nightmare that nobody else has suffered. The Chilean military found itself on the defensive Tuesday, four days after an 8.8 earthquake rattled much of the nation, and three giant waves soaked the coast. BBC confirms where the axe will fall The BBC plans to close two radio stations - 6 Music and the Asian Network - the corporation confirmed today in a wide-ranging strategy review. In a report to the BBC Trust titled Putting Quality First, the corporation said it wants to reprioritise nearly £600 million a year to higher quality content. It wants to halve the number of sections on its website, close "lower performing sites" and spend 25% less on its online offering. The closure of teen offerings BBC Switch and Blast! is also recommended. Bunning again blocks jobless benefits But Democrats are also reaping political gains by attacking Bunning and his fellow Republicans. All three major cable news networks carried Tuesday’s proceedings live, and two other members of the Democratic leadership, Charles Schumer of New York and Patty Murray of Washington, came to the floor to attack Republicans for blocking the legislation. “Today we have a clear cut example to show the American people just what’s wrong with Washington, D.C.,” Murray said. “That is because today one single Republican senator is standing in the way of the unemployment benefits of 400,000 Americans.” Bunning said again Tuesday that he opposed the extension because it would add $10 billion to the budget deficit, and he attacked Democrats for abandoning promises to pay for legislation instead of contributing to a budget deficits projected to hit almost $1.6 trillion this year. Bunning proposes to pay for the extension with unspent money from last year’s massive economic recovery package, but Reid objected. Democrats want to pass the measure with the unanimous permission of all senators, a common tactic to speed non-controversial measures through the notoriously balky Senate. Otherwise it could take almost a week to slog through the procedural steps required to take up the measure and defeat Bunning’s filibuster. Bunning is retiring from the Senate at the end of the current session, which gives fellow party members little leverage to try to force him to change his mind. Bunning has been feuding with his home state colleague, GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, who privately urged him to retire rather than risk losing the seat to Democrats. PAM COMMENTARY: That last line is very telling -- "retire rather than risk losing the seat to Democrats." GOP Sen. Kyl: Unemployment Benefits Make People Not Want To Get A Job A debate on the Senate floor Monday over unemployment compensation crystallized, at least for a moment, the divide between the two parties in Washington. Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican whip, argued that unemployment benefits dissuade people from job-hunting "because people are being paid even though they're not working." Unemployment insurance "doesn't create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work," Kyl said during debate over whether unemployment insurance and other benefits that expired amid GOP objections Sunday should be extended. "I'm sure most of them would like work and probably have tried to seek it, but you can't argue that it's a job enhancer. If anything, as I said, it's a disincentive. And the same thing with the COBRA extension and the other extensions here," said Kyl. Unemployment benefits are generally so small that much of it is often used to pay for COBRA health insurance, even when subsidized. The size of the benefits does not generally cover the cost of living and it would be hard to find a single person who would prefer unemployment to having a job so that they could get subsidized COBRA. PAM COMMENTARY: Apparently Kyl thinks that because he can survive by selling his soul to big drug companies, everyone else can make a living that way, too. Jerry Brown seeks return to Calif. governor's seat Democrat Jerry Brown officially entered the California governor's race Tuesday, giving the party an iconic candidate in a contest expected to be the most costly in state history. The state attorney general, who served two terms as governor in the era before term limits, officially declared his candidacy on his Web site. The announcement has been expected for months, while Brown was quietly raising millions of dollars. Brown, who will turn 72 next month, is the only serious Democratic contender. His ability to raise money and gain endorsements frightened away other Democrats, including San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. After the June primary, Brown will face of one of two wealthy Silicon Valley Republicans in the general election: former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, a billionaire, or state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, who also made nearly $1 billion as a high-tech entrepreneur. Bunning blocks unemployment extension bill again Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning Tuesday blocked a bill to extend unemployment benefits. He's been fighting the measure since Thursday, claiming the country doesn't have the money to pay for it. His one man campaign has become one of the most talked about stories in the country, as hundreds of thousands of unemployment workers wait for resolution. Tuesday afternoon, those fighting Bunning, and those supporting him, plan to voice their opinions outside the senator's Kentucky offices in both Louisville and Lexington. "Senator Jim Bunning should know better," Virgil Fugate, an unemployed worker, said. "People are hurting." Fugate has been looking for a job for over a year, putting him in that target group affected by the senator's decision. At the Kentucky Job Center in Lexington, panic has set in for some people, according to Workforce Development Manager Jeanne Scott. "They want to know where their money's at," she said. "I don't know what to tell them. I'm not a politician." There is also no shortage of people trying to reach the senator's Lexington office. 27 NEWSFIRST called this morning, and the senator's mailbox was full. Whaling opponents gather for meeting The Florida gathering cannot alter the 1986 moratorium but can make recommendations to the next full meeting of the IWC, to be held in June in the Moroccan fishing port of Agadir. Environmentalists have been scathing over the IWC compromise proposal, saying it would effectively undo the 1986 moratorium that is credited with restoring stocks of the giant mammals. "This would reward Japan for their abhorrent behaviour by legitimising commercial whaling in an international whale sanctuary," Phil Kline, an oceans campaigner with Greenpeace USA, said before the meeting. Australia and New Zealand have established what they call a Southern Ocean whale sanctuary, which Japan does not recognise. Democrats rip GOP senator for blocking jobless benefits extension Washington (CNN) -- Top Democrats tore into one of their Republican counterparts Monday for blocking an extension of unemployment benefits that would provide assistance to millions of jobless Americans. The Senate adjourned last week without approving extensions of cash and health insurance benefits for the unemployed after Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Kentucky, blocked the measure by insisting that Congress first pay for the $10 billion package. The emergency measure needed unanimous consent to pass. Bunning, who is retiring at the end of this year, said he doesn't oppose extending the programs, he just doesn't want to add to the deficit. Democrats claim the bill is an emergency measure that should not be subject to new rules requiring that legislation not expand the deficit. As a result of the Senate's inaction, many jobless people starting Monday were no longer able to apply for federal unemployment benefits or the COBRA health insurance subsidy. PAM COMMENTARY: Nice video, CNN tried to confront him on the suffering of the unemployed, but he just yells at them and takes off in the elevator. The Democrats aren't doing enough to get around him, though -- waiting a few weeks to give people their benefits back (which is their current course, apparently) is irresponsible. Spanish trains to be built at Tower Automotive Milwaukee's vacant Tower Automotive Corp. plant will be the site of a new factory to build passenger trains for use in Wisconsin, Oregon and possibly other states, Ald. Willie Wade said Monday. The plant could create "hundreds of jobs," far more than the original projection of about 80 positions, Ald. Bob Bauman added. Wade confirmed that the Spanish train manufacturer Talgo has selected the Tower site for its new plant. He said Gov. Jim Doyle would announce details at a 10 a.m. Tuesday news conference on the Tower grounds. Talgo spokeswoman Nora Friend declined to comment on the plant site, saying the decision had not yet been announced. A Doyle spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Wisconsin has a $47.6 million deal with Talgo to build two 14-car trains for Amtrak's Milwaukee-to-Chicago Hiawatha line, with an option to buy two more for a planned extension of that route from Milwaukee to Madison. The federal government has awarded the state $810 million in stimulus money for the Milwaukee-to-Madison route, which will start service at 79 mph in 2013 and reach 110 mph by 2015, plus another $12 million for upgrades on the Milwaukee-to-Chicago route. But the picture changed when the Oregon Department of Transportation announced Friday that it would be buying two 13-car trains made at the new factory "with a majority of American-made components" for Amtrak's Cascades line, which runs from Eugene, Ore., to Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Catalina Island wild foxes coming back in a big way The population had crashed to about 100 in 1999, when the conservancy and the Institute for Wildlife Studies launched a $2-million recovery program that includes vaccinations, aerial monitoring and education programs. A captive breeding program here ended in 2004, the same year the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the cat-sized subspecies as endangered. About 950 Catalina Island foxes call the island home, up from 784 at this time last year, according to a recent islandwide trapping effort by conservancy wildlife biologists Julie King and Calvin Duncan. The foxes are trapped once a year and inspected for illnesses, including an unusual, potentially fatal ear cancer that recently began showing up in older foxes. The animal's remarkable recovery was spurred, in part, by several years of fluctuations in the weather. An extreme drought in 2007 resulted in the deaths of significant numbers of mule deer, whose carcasses were scavenged by the omnivorous 5-pound foxes. By the time breeding season arrived in 2008, many foxes were literally obese, and females were in such good condition that they were having larger-than-normal litters. Good rains the past two years triggered an abundance of fruit-bearing cactuses and a population explosion of mice, convenient prey for female foxes to feed to their pups. Quakes can lead to more quakes, scientists suggest The deadly earthquake that struck in Chile on Saturday was probably due to stresses built up deep in the Earth's crust by the largest recorded temblor ever recorded in the same coastal nation 50 years ago, scientists proposed Monday as an explanation for the most recent devastating event. Similar stress from early historic earthquakes in California could well have helped trigger quakes like the damaging Coalinga (Fresno County) temblor of 1983 that destroyed the small city's downtown, they said. Ross S. Stein, a research geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, and Jian Lin, a geologist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, are conferring about the latest Chile quake in Stein's office this week, and in interviews Monday they discussed the concept they call "stress triggering." The monstrous Chile quake in 1960, with a magnitude of 9.5, created strong stress deep in the ground at both ends of the rupture zone, and Saturday's temblor relieved that stress in one lurch, Lin said. Week of 21st to 27th of February 2010 Kentucky Senator Bunning Repeatedly Blocks Unemployment Benefits Extension, Tells Dem "Tough S**t"; Kentucky's Unemployment Rate is 10.7 Percent Jim Bunning, a Republican from Kentucky, is single-handedly blocking Senate action needed to prevent an estimated 1.2 million American workers from prematurely losing their unemployment benefits next month. As Democratic senators asked again and again for unanimous consent for a vote on a 30-day extension Thursday night, Bunning refused to go along. And when Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) begged him to drop his objection, Politico reports, Bunning replied: "Tough s**t." Bunning says he doesn't oppose extending benefits -- he just doesn't want the money that's required added to the deficit. He proposes paying for the 30-day extension with stimulus funds. The Senate's GOP leadership did not support him in his objections. And at one point during the debate, which dragged on till nearly midnight, Bunning complained of missing a basketball game. "I have missed the Kentucky-South Carolina game that started at 9:00," he said, "and it's the only redeeming chance we had to beat South Carolina since they're the only team that has beat Kentucky this year. The unemployment rate in Kentucky is 10.7 percent. The stakes are enormous: provisions of last year's stimulus bill that allow extra weeks of unemployment benefits and COBRA health coverage are set to expire on Feb. 28. State workforce agencies have already sent out letters informing recipients that they'll be ineligible for extra "tiers" of benefits starting next month. The National Employment Law Project estimates that 1.2 million people will prematurely lose benefits in March. Judy Conti, a lobbyist for the NELP, said that even when Bunning is eventually thwarted and the extension is passed, state governments will still have to deal with the extra administrative costs of shutting down and restarting the extended benefits programs. PAM COMMENTARY: What a monster. That's how messed up the Senate is. One guy -- from a small state that deals with its own unemployed by exporting them to large cities -- can hold up unemployment benefits for millions (and cost the states a fortune going back and forth with notices). I think Kentucky should have to support all of the homeless from New York and California that this will cause -- after all, those states take in all the people from Kentucky who go to find work there when Kentucky's miniscule economy can't provide for them. 8.8-magnitude earthquake hits central Chile A massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck Chile early Saturday, killing at least 78 people, collapsing buildings and setting off a tsunami. A huge wave reached a populated area in the Robinson Crusoe Islands, 410 miles (660 kilometers) off the Chilean coast, said President Michele Bachelet. Tsunami warnings were issued over a wide area, including South America, Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, Russia and many Pacific islands. "It has been a devastating earthquake," Interior Minister Edmundo Perez Yoma told reporters. Bachelet said the death toll was at 78 and rising, but officials had no information on the number of people injured. She declared a "state of catastrophe" in central Chile. Governor Paterson quits poll race amid scandal The Governor of New York, David Paterson, has ditched his bid for re-election this November following revelations that a senior aide had been accused of domestic abuse. Governor Paterson's campaign had been officially launched for only a week when questions emerged about reported attempts by the state police to persuade the victim of the abuse to drop all complaints against the aide, David Johnson. Worse, the Governor himself had spoken by phone with the woman on the eve of a court appointment she failed to attend. Mr Paterson, who is registered blind, moved into the Governor's mansion in Albany only after his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, resigned after admitting that he had regularly visited prostitutes. The Governor's decicison will be welcomed by Democrats nationally. Party officials – and the White House – had been fretting for months that he would be a disastrous candidate, and that one of the most important governorships might be lost to a Republican in an election year that is already looking deadly for Democrats. Governor Paterson confirmed his decision at a press conference in Albany with his wife alongside him. "I have never abused my office – not now, not ever," he said. But he added: "I am being realistic about politics ... I cannot run for office and try to manage the state's business at the same time." PAM COMMENTARY: Awww.... Despite the supposed scandal, I doubt that New York will ever elect such an honest, unsold man for governor. Patriot Act extension passes House and Senate [BF] Wednesday evening, the Senate passed a one year extension of the Patriot Act. Similar to the initial passing of the Act, there was no debate. Because this was a voiced vote, there is no record for accountability. A convenience for many members, it potentially avoids the embarrassment should their constituents wish to hold them accountable for the decision come November’s elections. An irony that speaks volumes, considering the stir this legislation has caused within the American public, for nearly a decade. Thursday, the House sent Obama legislation that would temporarily extend the three expiring provisions for one year. Both the House and the Senate are working on long term renewals of the Act. The differences between the proposed bills are subtle. The Senate bill would reauthorize all authorities, while the House bill proposes eliminating one of the three provisions set to expire Sunday. Known as the “lone wolf” provision, which authorizes the government to “track a target without any discernible affiliation to a foreign power,” the exclusion of such powers would limit the intrusive nature of the Act a bit. However, according to Main Justice, it appears they have never used this provision anyway. With both Congressional bodies pushing for an extension, it is only a matter of time before Obama signs the legislation. This one year extension will reinstitute the Patriot Act in full. Besides the “lone wolf,” the other two provisions set to expire were: “Roving surveillance,” which means interception of communication can be utilized regardless of where a person travels. Previously, a wiretap was granted for a specific line at a specific location. and: “Business (and library) records,” which refers to NSLs (National Security Letters) used to request personal paperwork on a person under investigation. Thanks to the Act, these NSLs can now be used on American citizens without their knowledge and without probable cause. They also contain a “gag order” preventing the investigated citizen from knowing about it. In fact, a felony can be issued if the party requested to provide the information (say, your banker or librarian, for instance) informs the person under investigation. The overlapping violations to our constitutional rights, in just the above highlights of the Act, are astonishing. Poorly defined electronic surveillance is a clear invasion of privacy, which is the overall intention of our Bill of Rights. Reuters reported last month that the FBI has collected over 2,000 phone records under the pretense of terrorism, which it turns out, did not exist. While deciphering legislation in order to address their constitutionality is sometimes difficult, the term “gag order” immediately calls to mind our 1st Amendment guarantee of free speech. The right to search the property of citizens without previously required warrants, knowledge of the citizen being searched or even probable cause surely calls to mind our 4th Amendment right, guaranteeing our protection from unreasonable searches and seizures. The violation of these two Amendments is enough to concern the public. However, the most frightening aspect of the Act is surely the authority to detain witnesses as terrorist suspects indefinitely. (Obama reaffirmed such actions, calling it “prolonged detention” to soften the evident civil liberty violations presupposed.) Initially intended for non-citizens, the public quickly learned that the definition of “enemy combatants” is nebulous at best. This is a clear violation of our 6th Amendment right to fair trial, a right that has evolved over centuries since the inception of the Magna Carta (which introduced habeas corpus, the right to appeal an unlawful imprisonment). South Park's "Free Willzyx" Episode PAM COMMENTARY: South Park is always crude, tasteless, and kind of silly, but the recent whale news reminded me of this old episode. It's a spoof on the old film "Free Willy." Glenn Greenwald: Dems Hiding Behind Filibuster to Justify Political Inaction on Public Option [DN] GLENN GREENWALD: Well, they’re the fact that senators ended up saying that in private meetings with the White House, it was made clear to them that the public option was not something that was a priority for the White House and that they would end up happy to see it gone. Health insurance lobbyists were coming in and out of the White House. And the reason they didn’t end up vigorously opposing healthcare reform was because there would be no competition for the private health insurance industry in the form of the public option. And, of course, the final bill didn’t have a public option, and the White House did nothing to support it. But what’s most incredible was that the excuse that they gave to progressives was that the reason that we couldn’t have a public option was because there were fifty Democratic senators, or fifty-one Democratic senators, who supported it, but there weren’t sixty, and because of the filibuster rule, sadly, the public option just couldn’t get into the bill, and there was just nothing the White House could do, as much as the President wanted that to happen. Well, now you have a situation where everybody is talking about doing healthcare reform through reconciliation, where only fifty votes, not sixty votes, are required. And what does the President do? He immediately, when he finally unveils his first bill, excludes the public option from the bill, even as he says we’re going to use a process that will only require fifty votes. And you even saw Senator Jay Rockefeller, who spent the year pretending to be so devoted to the public option that he said he will not relent in ensuring that it gets passed, that there is no healthcare reform without a public option, now that it can actually pass and become a reality, he turns around and says, “I’m not inclined to vote for it in reconciliation.” This is what Democrats do. They use the filibuster rule as an excuse to their supporters to justify their inaction. They’ve been doing this for years. And now that the sham is exposed, because they’re really going to pass healthcare reform with fifty votes, they just turn around and so blatantly say, “Well, actually, we’ve been telling you all year we have fifty votes for a public option. Even now that we only need fifty votes, we’re still not going to do it.” It’s really quite extraordinary. ...AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Glenn Greenwald, constitutional law attorney and blogger for Salon.com. As we talk about the healthcare debate and other issues, I want to read you a quote from Quentin Young, the national coordinator of the National Health—Physicians for a National Health Program. He was talking about the fact that PNHP was not invited to this bipartisan healthcare summit. He said in this quote, “Similarly, requests from Reps. Dennis Kucinich [of Ohio,] Anthony Weiner of New York and Peter Welch of Vermont that single-payer advocates be included in the meeting have apparently gone unanswered.” There is a lot of hoopla over this being bipartisan. That isn’t to be confused with representing different options. GLENN GREENWALD: Well, first of all, one of the things that’s most amazing is that single payer and the public option both poll infinitely better than the healthcare bill itself, than the Senate healthcare bill that the President is advocating. And despite that, what you see all the time when they talk about bipartisanship is shifting the terms of the debate onto, essentially, the right-wing playing field to accommodate Republican views, which basically means there should be no healthcare reform, and excluding views that are to the left of anything that is essentially a conservative idea. And so, Anthony Weiner and Dennis Kucinich have both been the leading—two of the leading participants in the healthcare debate from the very start, but because they want to move the healthcare debate into the area that’s actually popular, which is providing either single payer or at least a robust public option, they’re excluded from the start. And this is the Democratic White House excluding anything to the left of conservative ideas in defining what the scope of the debate is. And, of course, that’s something that happens in issue after issue. Houstonians lead campaign donors; Texans send millions to races out of state, and most of it is going to Democrats Texas is considered a solidly Republican state by political professionals and pundits alike — but don't tell that to Democrats on Capitol Hill. A Houston Chronicle analysis of congressional campaign contributions in the 2010 election season found that Texans are shipping millions of dollars to out-of-state candidates this year, and most of the recipients are Democrats. Eight of the top 10 non-Texas recipients of Lone Star State political money are Democrats. Overall, Democrats are receiving about 60 percent of the $6,823,766 in Texas money headed to Senate and House candidates in other states, according to Federal Election Commission filings through Feb. 10. Houston, the top political exporter, sends about two-thirds of its campaign cash to Democrats. Thaksin Shinawatra stripped of half his fortune for abuse of power Thailand's supreme court today stripped the country's exiled former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra of more than half his seized assets, worth nearly £1bn. In an eight-hour judgement, the full bench of the court found Thaksin guilty on five counts of corruption. The nine justices agreed that the former leader had deliberately hidden his wealth and had masked his ownership of shares in his family-controlled telecommunications company, Shin Corp. The court also found that Thaksin's government pursued policies that enriched his family's companies, including through loans to countries such as Burma. The verdict was delivered under extraordinary security, with more than 20,000 armed riot police and soldiers on the streets of Bangkok. The judges were driven to the court in bulletproof vans while schools and offices near the court complex were closed. Ford to add 757 jobs at Windsor engine plant (Canada) Ford’s engine plant in Windsor is expected to get more than 700 new jobs over five years. The Ontario government says it will contribute up to $81.2 million towards the plant, building on an earlier investment of $17 million that helped reopen the shuttered plant in 2008. The initiative will allow Ford (NYSE:F) to introduce new manufacturing technology and will also establish a research and development centre. To date, Ford has invested $590 million in the plant, which will now build a fuel-efficient engine to be used in the Mustang. The announcement will help offset some of the 1,500 jobs that will be lost when Ford closes its assembly plant in St. Thomas, Ont., in 2011. Court motion in TVA ash spill wants suits combined KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Attorneys for people seeking damages from the Tennessee Valley Authority's coal ash spill have asked a federal judge in Knoxville to consolidate the pending cases. Among the dozens of attorneys, Elizabeth Alexander of Nashville said the motion is "just a way to streamline" the case for those seeking damages, and Rhon Jones of Montgomery, Ala., said in an e-mail statement that it shows a "new level of unity" among plaintiffs. The Thursday court filing asks to consolidate the cases for "all purposes, including discovery, class certification and trial." Doritos ads represent sick, demented nature of junk food companies and their products (NaturalNews) Junk food advertising has reached a new low with the recent Doritos "Crash the Super Bowl" ads which portray Doritos consumers as violent murderers who will kill fellow human beings to get a bag of Doritos. One Doritos ad portrays a man backing out of a parking lot when his car strikes an innocent person who drops a bag of Doritos and falls to the ground behind the car. Rather than trying to help the innocent victim, this man throws his car into reverse and drives over the victim, killing him with the vehicle and stealing the bag of Doritos. The message? Doritos are so valuable that it's okay to kill people just to score a bag. A second Doritos ad shows two loser-looking gym bums being attacked by an insane junk food ninja who uses Doritos chips as throwing stars to murder the guy who stole his bag of Doritos. The message here? Doritos are so valuable that it's okay to kill others to defend your snack. FBI, US Attorney Investigating Penn. School District’s Computer Spying on Young Students [DN] AMY GOODMAN: Mike Walker, your response? That was the school official explaining how fantastic their software is. MIKE WALKER: Well, I said there was very compelling evidence that they were using it. That’s the evidence. And it’s exactly like he described. When a computer wasn’t checking in, when it was reported stolen or missing or they didn’t know where it was, they could schedule commands for the computer to pick up the next time it checked in. So when it checked in, if it came—if it checked into the school’s central server and there were commands waiting for it to start taking pictures, it would start taking pictures. And what’s really interesting about that story that he just related is mistakes happen. They didn’t know where these computers were. And it’s important for people to understand, when these computers were activated, if they were reported missing, it would start taking pictures wherever they woke up. Even if they were stolen and they were in the bedroom of a kid who stole it, they were going to start taking pictures the moment they woke up. And after that search was conducted, then when the administration looked at the pictures, they were going to be able to find out whether that search was appropriate or not. JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Mike Walker, don’t you think that, given these features and this software that’s installed in these computers, that the school district had a responsibility to alert the parents of these students, at minimum, to say, “Hey, we’re giving you these computers, but you should know that these computers have these kind of features,” and then the parents could decide whether they wanted to accept them on that basis? MIKE WALKER: I think they had a responsibility to inform. And my personal opinion on the subject is, is I think they had a responsibility not to build the feature into the software at all, or to deploy software that did this, because the purpose of theft-tracking, of finding a computer and finding out who’s using it, can be fulfilled utterly by taking pictures of what’s being done on the screen and by the remote IP address tracking functionality that’s already in the computer. There are several highly effective computer-loss tracking mechanisms, like Computrace, that work that way that don’t take pictures. I think that’s a big leap in technology and one that shouldn’t have been made. AMY GOODMAN: Mike, you cover your camera on your computer? MIKE WALKER: I’ve had tape over my webcam since I bought my computer. And almost everyone I know that I work with does the same thing. Ahmed Chalabi's renewed influence in Iraq concerns U.S. BAGHDAD -- Ahmed Chalabi, the onetime U.S. ally, is in the limelight again, and his actions are proving no less controversial than they did years ago. On the eve of Iraq's parliamentary elections, Chalabi is driving an effort aimed at weeding out candidates tied to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. Chalabi is reprising a role he played after the U.S.-led invasion -- which many critics believe he helped facilitate with faulty intelligence -- and, in the process, is infuriating American officials and some Iraqis, who suspect his motive is to bolster his own political bloc. Chalabi, a Shiite, has defended the work of the commission he is leading as legal and crucial during a period of transition to Iraq's first sovereign government. But his reemergence on the political scene has rankled U.S. officials and fueled concerns that Sunnis and other secular Iraqis will be marginalized. Some Iraqi and U.S. officials think Chalabi might have his eyes on the ultimate prize, however unlikely he can attain it. "Even if it kills him, he's going to stay in Iraq to try to become prime minister," said Ezzat Shahbandar, a Shiite lawmaker from a competing slate who has known Chalabi for more than 20 years. "This issue is the only tool he has, because he has nothing else going for him." 19 killed in fireworks blast in southern China An explosion triggered by residents setting off fireworks to celebrate the Lunar New Year tore through a village in southern China, killing 19 people and wounding more than 30 as the country neared the end of its biggest holiday. The blast late Friday in the southern province of Guangdong was the deadliest of the 15-day Lunar New Year, which ends Sunday. Fireworks are a large part of the celebrations, especially at the beginning and end of the holiday, despite public safety campaigns. China's public security ministry has said fireworks-related accidents killed 11 people and injured more than 1,800 throughout the country during the first week of the holiday. A police official in Puning city confirmed Friday night's explosion and said police were investigating. State media reported 19 were dead. Agribusiness exec pleads not guilty in tomato racketeering case Reporting from Los Angeles and Sacramento - Former SK Foods owner Frederick Scott Salyer pleaded not guilty Friday to federal racketeering and corruption charges for allegedly directing a decade-long scheme to quash competition, pay bribes and sell tomato products at inflated prices. The agribusiness executive, who entered his plea in a federal courtroom in Sacramento, is charged with violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, as well as conspiracy, obstruction of justice and four counts of wire fraud. Salyer remained in federal detention without bail. But U.S. Magistrate Edmund F. Brennan agreed to continue the hearing next week in order to allow the defense team to question an FBI agent whose report concluded that Salyer was a flight risk and should not be freed on bail to await trial. Prosecutors opposed releasing Salyer. They contended that he had spent months living in southern France, moving money into overseas banks and making plans to flee extradition in connection with the charges. Killer-whale death at SeaWorld opens debate; The gruesome death of a trainer in Orlando, the latest in a string of attacks by captive orcas, seemed certain to rekindle discussion over using them at theme parks Naomi Rose, a senior scientist for the Humane Society of the United States, which has campaigned at marine parks, said Tilikum's reputation was well known and that SeaWorld specifically forbade trainers from entering the orca's tank. ``He clearly has some sort of issue with people in the water with him,'' she said of the orca. Rose and many marine mammal activists believe the stress of life in a tank is acute for orcas, large animals that roam deep waters in close-knit pods. ``They're moody,'' she said. Rector, who has campaigned for years to free Lolita, a female orca that has spent nearly four decades in captivity at the Seaquarium in Miami, says it leaves them ``demented.'' Lolita, Rose said, has not been linked to any serious attacks on trainers, but its old tank-mate, Hugo, died of a cranial bleeding in 1980 that activists blamed on the orca ramming its head against the sides of a small tank. SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau dies in killer-whale attack "It was terrible," Sobrinho said. "It's very difficult to see the image." Witnesses who watched the attack while eating at the "Dine with Shamu" show — a poolside buffet where trainers demonstrate their connection with the animals — told the Sentinel a female trainer was petting a killer whale when it grabbed her and plunged into the water. It reappeared on the other side of the tank and leapt up holding the woman, they said. Within minutes, an alarm sounded, and security workers escorted the spectators out. Some people were screaming, and children were crying, Sobrinho and Oliveira said. The scene was more orderly at "Dine with Shamu." Several spectators said the animals had been agitated during a 12:30p.m. show, playing or fighting with one another and refusing to obey commands to splash the crowd, a staple of the program. PAM COMMENTARY: The perspective from Orlando's local paper. Judge OKs detention of 2 men Bush panel cleared WASHINGTON -- A federal judge Wednesday ruled that the Pentagon can continue to hold indefinitely at Guantánamo two Yemeni captives whom the Bush administration cleared for release two years ago. The decisions bring to 11 the number of such cases that the government has won. In 32 other cases, judges have ruled that the Pentagon did not have sufficient evidence to hold the prisoners and have ordered that the detainees be released. Four of those are still at Guantánamo. The one-page orders by U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler upholding the detentions of Suleiman Awadh Bin Agil al Nahdi, 36, and Fahmi Salem al Assani, 33, did not include her reasoning. That will be released after her full ruling is declassified after a security review. In a twist, a Bush-era parole-style panel notified both Nahdi and Assani in February 2008 that the Pentagon's Administrative Review Board had approved their transfer home to Yemen. The notification is part of the federal court record. Those release decisions were suspended a year ago after President Barack Obama took office and set up a task force review of his own. It is not known what the Obama task force decided in either the Nadhi or Assani case. Bloom Energy unveils 'power plant in a box' Bloom Energy Corp., one of Silicon Valley's most secretive startups, unveiled on Wednesday its long-awaited "power plant in a box," a collection of fuel cells that the company says can provide clean electricity to homes, office buildings - even whole villages in the developing world. The Bloom Energy Server, a smooth metal box the size of a pickup truck, can generate electricity from multiple fuels while producing relatively few greenhouse gas emissions. With government subsidies factored in, power from the server costs less than power from the grid. Unlike other fuel cells, Bloom's is made mostly of sand, with no platinum or other precious metals thrown in as catalysts. And unlike solar panels and wind turbines, each server can produce the same amount of energy day and night for years on end, according to the company. The process is twice as efficient as burning natural gas. "This is not when the sun shines, this is not when the wind blows - this is base load, nonstop," said K.R. Sridhar, Bloom's co-founder and chief executive officer. The server, he said, could change the energy industry in much the same way that cell phones changed communications, decentralizing the generation of power. 2 companies propose wind farms off Virginia Beach Federal regulators have received leasing proposals from two Virginia companies seeking to develop offshore wind farms capable of supplying clean energy to hundreds of thousands of homes. Apex Wind Energy Inc. of Charlottesville is proposing to lease 116,000 acres for an undetermined number of wind turbines with the potential to generate up to 1,500 megawatts of power. Seawind Renewable Energy Corp. of suburban Richmond envisions building 240 turbines to generate enough power for more than 250,000 homes annually, according to a company statement. Both wind farms would be located 12 miles off of Virginia Beach. In Kazakhstan, the race for uranium goes nuclear TAIKONUR, KAZAKHSTAN -- The dry steppe stretches to the horizon in all directions from this remote outpost in southern Kazakhstan. But peeking out of the sandy soil, amid the sagebrush and desert shrub, are thousands of wells arranged in geometric patterns, each extracting radioactive treasure. These desolate fields sit above one of the world's largest deposits of uranium, and with nuclear energy in a renaissance, a rough-and-tumble battle is underway for access to them. The race echoes the geopolitical jockeying to control Central Asia's rich reserves of oil and natural gas -- a variation on Rudyard Kipling's Great Game, complete with corporate intrigue, a disgraced spy chief and an alleged plot by the Kremlin to keep this former Soviet republic under its thumb. Leading energy and mining firms from Russia, China, Japan, France and Canada have already invested billions here. Kazakhstan, meanwhile, is seeking to leverage its ore into a larger role in the global nuclear industry and has taken a stake in the U.S.-based nuclear giant Westinghouse. Argentina appeals to UN over Falklands oil drilling Argentina last night intensified its diplomatic offensive against Britain's oil exploration off the Falkland Islands by taking the case to the United Nations. The Argentinian foreign minister, Jorge Taiana, spelled out Buenos Aires's demands in a meeting in New York with the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, just a day after mobilising Latin American and Caribbean support. Taiana told reporters afterwards that Ban was not happy that tensions had worsened because of Britain's decision to start drilling and was willing to continue his "good offices" mission. The minister said the meeting was "very cordial, positive" but did not say if Ban had agreed to pressure London over the islands' sovereignty. The secretary general made no immediate comment. 'Widespread fraud' in California's smog test program; State aims to make major changes after finding that nearly a third of older cars fail roadside smog checks within a year of passing at test stations. Nearly a third of older-model cars stopped for roadside smog tests in Southern California failed them, despite having received a passing grade at inspection stations within a year, a state audit has found. The results of those surprise inspections of 6,000 models manufactured before 1996 have led law enforcement officials to crack down on unscrupulous stations, step up fines and file more criminal charges. Legislation introduced in the California Assembly this week would allow the state to bar low-performing test stations from conducting smog checks. "We found widespread fraud in the program," said Leo Kay, spokesman for the California Air Resources Board, which is sponsoring the bill. PAM COMMENTARY: I'm sorry, but does anyone else think there's something wrong with this story? How often do people get tune-ups? It's every year in warmer climates, sometimes twice in colder ones as people prepare for winter. And they're talking about older cars? Isn't it natural for them to need another tune-up after about a year? FBI raids 3 auto parts suppliers in antitrust probe (AP) The FBI raided the U.S. offices of three auto suppliers to Toyota and other manufacturers as part of an antitrust investigation, the agency said Wednesday. Agents raided offices of Denso, Yazaki North America and Tokai Rika on Tuesday evening. Justice Department spokeswoman Gina Talamona said in a statement that the department's antitrust unit is investigating automotive electronics suppliers: "The antitrust division is investigating the possibility of anti-competitive cartel conduct. We are coordinating with the European Commission and other foreign competition authorities." Denso spokeswoman Julie Kerr says the company's Southfield, Mich., office that was searched oversees operations in North and South America. She declined to offer details but said the investigation is unrelated to Toyota's recent recalls. Killer whale kills trainer ORLANDO, Fla. — A SeaWorld killer whale seized a trainer in its jaws Wednesday and thrashed the woman around underwater, killing her in front of a horrified audience. It marked the third time the animal had been involved in a human death. Distraught audience members were hustled out of the stadium immediately, and the park was closed. Trainer Dawn Brancheau, 40, was one of the park’s most experienced. It was not clear if she drowned or died from the thrashing. A former contractor with SeaWorld told the Orlando Sentinel that the whale, Tilikum, is typically kept isolated from SeaWorld’s other killer whales and that trainers were not allowed to get in the water with him because of his violent history. There were conflicting accounts of the attack. The sheriff’s office said Brancheau slipped or fell into the whale’s tank, but at least one witness said the animal leaped from the water and dragged the woman in. PAM COMMENTARY: You know, we all like to see whales and other animals at zoos and parks, or in the wild (as long as they're not attacking us), but it's really cruel to imprison them for the entertainment of humans. In the wild, orcas normally eat fish, but they also kill and eat other large species, including seals, porpoises, even OTHER WHALES -- that's why they're also called "KILLER whales." They're natural carnivores and a top predator in the ocean. What's going to happen when you confine them to a small space and force them to do tricks for their fish? I know that zoos also serve a conservation purpose, and nurture a love for animals among children, but still... Let's see if PETA has anything immediate to say on this tragic situation... Captive Whale Kills One More SeaWorld Trainer Earlier this afternoon, another trainer at SeaWorld in Orlando was killed after being pulled into the tank by an orca named Tilikum (or Telly, for short). According to a witness, the whale, who has been involved in two previous fatal incidents involving human beings and who our captive wildlife director, Debbie Leahy, describes as "12,300 pounds of sheer rage," leapt out of the tank and grabbed the trainer by the waist, pulled her into the water, threw her around like a rag doll, and then held her underwater until she drowned. SeaWorld officials canceled the dolphin and whale shows for the rest of the day, but SeaWorld remains open (have they no shame?!) and will continue to exploit and abuse these captive animals despite the many horrific injuries and deaths of trainers and animals that have occurred throughout the theme park's history. PETA has long been asking SeaWorld to stop taking wild, ocean-going mammals from their families and ocean homes and confining them with no semblance of a life to an area that, to them, is the size of a bathtub. No wonder these huge, intelligent animals, like the beaten elephants in the Ringling Bros. circus, lash out after being forced into subservience and forced to perform stupid circus tricks for their food for so long. For years, PETA has been calling on SeaWorld to switch to hugely popular robotic replacements like those used in the amazing "Walking With the Dinosaurs" exhibit. The public needs to stand up now against this cruelty and stop patronizing aquariums and whale and dolphin shows. Please join us in saying, "Enough!" PAM COMMENTARY: I'm not sure that people would want to see robots, but certainly PETA raises some good points. Joe the Plumber says John McCain 'screwed up my life' "I don't owe him ****," Sam Wurzelbacher – Joe's real name – told a US radio reporter when asked about Mr McCain. "He really screwed up my life, is how I look at it." Mr Wurzelbacher was thrust into the international spotlight when Mr McCain made repeated reference to him during one of the televised presidential debates. The two men had met days before and Mr Wurzelbacher had voiced fears about likely tax increases if Barack Obama were to become president. But the unexpected notoriety caused him instant problems, with reports the next day that he practised plumbing without a licence. Mr Wurzelbacher has no illusions about Mr McCain's motivations. "McCain was trying to use me," he told Scott Detrow, the reporter. "I happened to be the face of middle Americans. It was a ploy." PAM COMMENTARY: The "Tea Party Movement" may have had good intentions to start, but as with most "conservative" movements, it eventually seemed to be co-opted by Republican Party operatives. A lot of the new "movements" coming from the right are nothing more than the Republican Party throwing on a fresh coat of paint to spruce up the old (really old) image, as they try to get younger people interested in their pro-corporate/oil/pharma agenda. Professional Heart Attack Victim Dick Cheney and the Modern Heart Attack In 1984, Cheney underwent open-heart surgery to bypass blockages in four coronary arteries--an operation that was becoming one of the most common types of surgery. On two later occasions, doctors have placed stents in his coronary arteries to relieve blockages--a sign that his atherosclerosis continued to progress. In 1989, when Cheney was nominated to be Secretary of Defense, he disclosed he was taking medication to lower his cholesterol. Again, that was an increasingly common prescription at the time, reflecting large studies showing that cholesterol-lowering medication can prevent heart attacks and death among people with known coronary disease. Two weeks after the 2000 election, Cheney awoke with chest and shoulder pain that signaled his fourth heart attack. At the time, doctors revealed that Cheney's heart was weakened -- its output was below normal. That undoubtedly reflected the damage from successive heart attacks. In 2001, when he was vice president, Cheney suffered episodes of rapid heartbeat called ventricular tachycardia--a common condition among people whose hearts have been scarred by heart attacks. To prevent a "sudden death" heart attack, doctors installed a device that had come into common use by that time, an implantable defibrillator. It detects abnormal heart rhythms and when necessary delivers a jolt of electricity to shock the heart back into normal rhythm. Cheney has also suffered problems with his leg arteries, which can be a sign of atherosclerosis. He has gout, which can be related to obesity. And he has had episodes of fluid retention in his feet and lungs, which can reflect some degree of heart failure-- a weakening of the heart that is common in heart attack survivors. The former vice president's spokesman has described his latest heart attack as "mild." He is said to have undergone coronary angiography to check for new blockages in his heart's blood supply, but he and his doctors have not said whether he has had additional angioplasty or stents. PAM COMMENTARY: It's just his bad mass-murderer-of-history karma back in town to kick his butt. The grim reaper didn't claim him this time, probably because no one on the other side really wants Dick Cheney. I thought the "health" history in this article was interesting -- it seems to indicate a complete lack of self-discipline in Cheney's personal life. Quite a contrast from the amount of work he accomplishes to make money for himself, while also killing other people both here and abroad with enthusiasm. It seems Cheney (and everyone else on the planet) would have been better off if he had stayed out of politics, perhaps staying at home and eating organic salads. Time for another (cartoon) flashback -- cover your eyes if you can't stand unattractive men in their underwear. Note that Ariel Sharon (also appearing in this old cartoon) has already died from his own obesity-related health problems... Oshkosh gets new Army order The Defense Department has ordered nearly 1,500 new Oshkosh Corp. all-terrain vehicles for use by the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, the company said Tuesday. The $640 million award from the Army to deliver 1,460 mine-resistant ambush protected - MRAP - all-terrain vehicles is a continuation of a contract the company won in June 2009. That contract called for as many as 10,000 of the vehicles to be built. Oshkosh said Tuesday that it has so far received contract awards valued at more than $4.74 billion to build 8,079 of the vehicles. The company is also supplying spare parts kits and additional support. China imposes new rules for personal websites Reporting from Beijing - In a move that will give the government new powers to police the Internet, China will require individuals seeking to establish personal websites to verify their identities with regulators and have their photographs taken. The order lifts a ban on registering personal sites that was issued in December as part of a campaign to crack down on Internet pornography. To apply, an individual must visit his or her local Internet service provider's office, submit an identification card and pose for a photograph. Applications will then be sent to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for review. The new requirements add another layer of oversight in a country that is already deeply criticized for having some of the world's strictest Internet controls. Regulators have also discussed requiring stricter identity verification to purchase mobile phones and leave comments online. ENVIRONMENT: Tsunami of E-Waste Could Swamp Developing Countries "Recycling electronics is very complex. A mobile phone will be made up of 40 to 60 different elements," Kuehr said. Gold is one of those valuable elements, but the informal recycling commonly done in China and India nets only 20 percent of that gold. In total, gold worth hundreds of millions of dollars in mobile phones alone is never recovered, he says. That figure quickly climbs into the billions of dollars of valuable metals that are not recovered when all products with a plug or battery are considered. Mining and refining new metals like silver, gold, palladium, copper and indium and others have major environmental impacts, including considerable emissions of greenhouse gases, the report notes. And some materials are becoming scarce and therefore far more expensive. Developing vibrant national recycling schemes is complex and simply financing and transferring high-tech equipment from developed countries is unlikely to work, according to the report. It says China's lack of a comprehensive e-waste collection network, combined with competition from the lower-cost informal sector, has held back state-of-the-art e-waste recycling plants. Israel 'stole Palestinian heritage' Furious Palestinians have clashed with Israeli soldiers and accused Israel of "cultural genocide" after the country's government claimed a sacred tomb in the occupied West Bank as a national heritage site. The burial site of the biblical patriarch Abraham, which is sacred to both Jews and Muslims, is located in Hebron, which was yesterday shut down by a general strike in protest at the move as Israeli troops clashed with local youths. One soldier was reported lightly wounded as Palestinians threw stones and bottles and troops fired tear gas and stun grenades. Israel has also placed the believed tomb of the biblical matriarch Rachel, in occupied territory in Bethlehem, on the heritage list. Palestinian MP Hanan Ashrawi, a secular nationalist and former spokeswoman for peace negotiators, said that Israel's move "completes a whole programme of theft". "It's stealing the land, stealing our resources and now our cultural and historical heritage," she said. "It points to a mentality of cultural genocide. It's been a mosque and been sacred to Palestinian Muslims for centuries. They have to respect that." Please don't jail my favorite bartenders I recently had a beautiful cocktail at one of my favorite restaurants, lovingly crafted by the bartender using house-infused liquors. I won't tell you which one because I don't want him carted off to jail. The above sentence is a bit of an exaggeration, maybe, but it's not far from the truth. The California Alcoholic Beverage Control is cracking down on people who "adulterate" spirits by making limoncello and infusing spirits with herbs or fruit. Reportedly, agents have been in San Francisco recently sniffing out these grievous lawbreakers. It's ironic, the budget may be near the busting point, but the ABC still has resources to crack down on restaurants. In the last couple of weeks a team of enforcers have cited at least four restaurants in the Bay Area, making them pour out their creations. Kevin Westlye, the executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, gave his membership warnings in a recent newsletter. I asked for names of who had been cited, so I could talk to the restaurants involved, but they all wanted to remain anonymous. One thing you don't want to do if you're in the restaurant business is to piss off the ABC. Unemployment Benefits Plan In Senate Slammed By Advocates: 'A Disaster For Everybody' Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) plans to introduce a bill later this week to push back by an extra 15 days the eligibility deadline for extended unemployment benefits. But advocates for extending unemployment benefits say that the two-week extension will be "a disaster for everybody." The problem is that even though Congress will likely push back the deadline before extended benefits expire at the end of the month, state unemployment agencies still have to send out letters to benefits recipients informing them that they will be ineligible for the next "tier" of benefits starting after Feb. 28. Without an extension, more than 1 million people will run out of unemployment benefits in March, according to the National Employment Law Project. And the shortness of the extension guarantees that, in two weeks, workforce agencies will once again have to prepare to send out letters and Congress will once again scramble for another extension. "Unemployment offices are really really going to have a huge problem," said Judy Conti, a lobbyist for the NELP. "They can't handle this two-weeks-at-a-time stuff. It keeps them in a constant state of flux. This is going to create more work for them when they can least afford it." After Decades-Long Wait, US Navy to Study Health Effects of Water Contamination at the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base in North Carolina. [DN] JEROME ENSMINGER: My daughter Janey, as Barbara had mentioned before or earlier, that she was the only one of my four children that was conceived while we lived at Camp Lejeune. Subsequently, Janey was diagnosed when she was six years old with acute lymphocytic leukemia. We watched her die a little bit at a time for nearly two-and-a-half years, until that fateful day in September of 1985 when she finally passed away. Well, from the date of her diagnosis until a day in August of 1997, I always had this nagging question about why did this happen. Why did this happen to my daughter? Why did she have to go through this hell? And I never thought that I was ever going to get an answer to that nagging question. And one evening in August of 1997, I was walking in the living room from the kitchen with a plate of spaghetti to sit down and watch the evening news, and as I walked into the living room, the reporter on the television stated that ATSDR had completed their public health assessment for Camp Lejeune, and the chemicals that had been found in the drinking water—and they incorrectly stated from 1968 through 1985—were linked to childhood cancer, primarily leukemia. Well, I’m here to tell you, I dropped my plate of spaghetti on the living room floor. And, you know, I got a glimmer of hope at that time that I may get an answer to that nagging question. And ever since that time, I have been active in getting all the rest of these people an answer to that nagging question that they may have. So—and I’d like to point out one thing, that the 1957 date through 1987 is for the Tarawa Terrace housing area only. That was determined through ATSDR’s water modeling effort there. ATSDR is currently modeling the water systems at Hadnot Point, which is commonly referred to as Mainside, where most of the Marines that were stationed at Camp Lejeune would have been, and also their Holcomb Boulevard water system, which back in the ’80s, early to mid-’80s, there were eight different drinking water systems aboard the base. Hamilton: Albertan oil veteran pumping up 'nitrogen grid' The problem with today's electricity system is that, for the most part, power must be consumed when it's generated. In other words, supply and demand must be carefully balanced. Every electron that's produced and put onto the transmission system, whether from uranium, coal or wind, must be used somewhere along the grid or else the whole system can crash. This gets tricky when dealing with the wind, which doesn't necessarily blow when we need it. Large-scale energy storage can solve this problem by absorbing supply when it's not needed and releasing it when we do. But batteries are too expensive today, and other options – such as compressed-air storage in salt caverns – are largely limited by geography. It's here where McConnell's oil and gas experience fuelled his imagination. He knew that North America had an oil and gas pipeline network stretching thousands of kilometres, and that these pipelines – some of them not in use – were capable of holding highly compressed gases. What if, initially, unused portions of this pipeline network could be used to hold compressed nitrogen, an inert gas that represents more than three-quarters of the air we breathe? And instead of capturing wind energy and converting it into electricity for the grid, what if we could build special wind turbines that convert the wind into hydraulic energy that's used to compress nitrogen and inject it into a common pipeline? The idea is that the pipeline would become a big battery consisting of compressed nitrogen – that is, a nitrogen grid. At various points along the pipeline where electricity is needed, special generators would tap into the compressed gas and produce electricity as the nitrogen is released and rapidly expands. Honda makes a big drive into solar power Honda, the automotive giant, set the land speed record for solar-powered vehicles when it won the World Solar Challenge in 1996. Its Dream racer, an odd-looking vehicle shaped like a cuttlefish, covered 1,870 miles across the Australian outback at an average speed of 56mph. It took just under 34 hours. For dedicated petrolheads it was not the most inspiring event. The Dream was covered with 4,500 photovoltaic tiles but was, as its named implied, not a commercial vehicle. Yet the experience marked the beginning of a big industrial undertaking for the Japanese giant — how to design a better solar panel. Today, the carmaker is churning out 230,000 panels a year from its first solar plant, called Honda Soltec. They are not for a spruced-up version of the Dream; rather, these are designed for the roofs of houses and industrial buildings. This is more logical than it may seem. Solar panels comprise one part of the system that Honda hopes will be created to make a new generation of zero-emission, hydrogen-powered cars. The company is unique among carmakers in that it already has an energy business. It makes generators for the home that use a tiny engine burning natural gas to provide domestic electricity and heating. Honda’s Home Energy Station, a newer prototype, would also be able to produce hydrogen, which could be used to run a fuel-cell car, such as its FCX Clarity. Toyota says it has received two subpoenas regarding car defects Reporting from Washington - Toyota said Monday that it has received two federal subpoenas, including one from a New York grand jury, indicating that its deepening political and regulatory problems involving the safety of its vehicles have now expanded to include potential criminal and securities investigations. The automaker said it received a subpoena from the federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York Feb. 8, requesting "certain documents related to unintended acceleration of Toyota vehicles and the braking system of the Prius." The subpoena was issued to both the company and its subsidiaries. A second subpoena on Feb. 19 was issued by the Los Angeles office of the Securities and Exchange Commission to Toyota Motor Corp., the Japanese parent organization, and Toyota Motor Sales USA, the Torrance-based sales arm for North America. That subpoena was "seeking production of certain documents including those related to unintended acceleration of Toyota vehicles and the company's disclosure policies and practices," the company said in a brief statement. The units "intend to cooperate with the investigations and are currently preparing their responses," the company said. Va. Senate OKs coast drilling royalties for roads The Senate has passed a piece of Gov. Bob McDonnell's highway funding plan to direct royalties paid to drill for oil and gas off the Virginia coast to transportation. Monday's 21-19 vote completes legislative passage and sends the measure to McDonnell, who campaigned for it a year ago in his run for governor. The Senate narrowly rejected Sen. Dick Saslaw's bid to reroute the revenue to the state's cash-starved general fund. The bill won't provide relief to highway underfunding soon, though. Federal law now bans offshore drilling off the East Coast. Even if it were legalized immediately, it would take years for drills to be built and yield money. PAM COMMENTARY: The inside joke is that in Virginia, the man who is now governor (the Pat Robertson protégé Bob McDonnell) promised during his campaign to pay for transportation from offshore oil royalties. (This was much better than the Democrat's plan, he said, which was to raise the gasoline tax a little.) So even if Virginia has oil off of its coast, even if Congress approves drilling there, and even if Virginia's beach communities don't stop such projects to protect their tourist trade, it would take YEARS for such revenue to become available. In other words, no transportation relief for northern Virginia, unless it's begged from the Feds. Oh wait, Northern Virginians ARE the Feds... Disbar The Torture Lawyers Now [BF] Torture is illegal under both United States and international law. The Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment, and it states that treaties signed by the U.S. are the “supreme Law of the Land” under Article Six. The Geneva Convention and The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment both prohibit torture and have been signed by the United States. These laws provide no exception for torture under any circumstances. Moreover, the United States Criminal Code prohibits both torture and war crimes, the latter which includes torture. The Army Field Manual prohibits the use of degrading treatment of detainees. Despite this well-established law, under the Bush administration, torture was authorized by George Bush and kept secret using classified designations. The White House requested legal memoranda to support its use of torture and it received those authored by a host of attorneys, including John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Stephen Bradbury. Attorneys who advised, counseled, consulted and supported those memoranda included Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft, Michael Chertoff, Alice Fisher, William Haynes II, Douglas Feith, Michael Mukasey, Timothy Flanigan, and David Addington. Several of these memoranda have recently been released, and clearly demonstrate that these attorneys conspired to violate laws against torture and that their actions resulted in torture and death. Accordingly, these attorneys must be held accountable. We have asked the respective state bars to revoke the licenses of the foregoing attorneys for moral turpitude. They failed to show “respect for and obedience to the law, and respect for the rights of others,” and intentionally or recklessly failed to act competently, all in violation of legal Rules of Professional Conduct. Several attorneys failed to adequately supervise the work of subordinate attorneys and forwarded shoddy legal memoranda regarding the definition of torture to the White House and Department of Defense. These lawyers further acted incompetently by advising superiors to approve interrogation techniques that were in violation of U.S. and international law. They failed to support or uphold the U.S. Constitution, and the laws of the United States, and to maintain the respect due to the courts of justice and judicial officers, all in violation state bar rules. FDA relied heavily on BPA lobby; Regulators actively reached out to industry, e-mails show As federal regulators hold fast to their claim that a chemical in baby bottles is safe, e-mails obtained by the Journal Sentinel show that they relied on chemical industry lobbyists to examine bisphenol A's risks, track legislation to ban it and even monitor press coverage. In one instance, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's deputy director sought information from the BPA industry's chief lobbyist to discredit a Japanese study that found it caused miscarriages in workers who were exposed to it. This was before government scientists even had a chance to review the study. "I'd like to get information together that our chemists could look at to determine if there are problems with that data in advance of possibly reviewing the study," Mitchell Cheeseman, deputy director of the FDA's center for food safety and applied nutrition, said in an e-mail seeking advice from Steven Hentges, executive director of the trade association's BPA group. The FDA relied on two studies - both paid for by chemical makers - to form the framework of its draft review declaring BPA to be safe. Peanut allergy to be treated … with peanuts CHILDREN are to be given a little of what does them harm in the biggest trial of immunotherapy for peanut allergy ever to be conducted. The £1 million British study follows earlier research indicating that peanut allergy can be overcome – with peanuts. Gradually building up tolerance with small amounts of peanut protein appears to dampen down the potentially fatal allergic reaction. Now the idea is to be tested for the first time on a large scale with 104 British children aged seven to 17 suffering from peanut allergy. Their "medicine" will be increasing doses of peanut flour added to yoghurt. California regulator finds Blue Cross violations Poizner said he was filing official accusations with the state's Office of Administrative Hearing alleging the policy handling violations. That will trigger hearings on whether the insurer should be fined. "Complaints just keep coming in and increasing over time. When it gets into the hundreds, it gets my attention," Poizner said at a state Capitol news conference. "It's only when a health care company doesn't take corrective action or is belligerent or uncooperative with us that we take this type of action, and that's the case with Anthem Blue Cross." The 732 violations include allegations of 277 failures to pay claims in 30 days, 143 failures to respond quickly to regulators during complaint investigations, 66 instances of misrepresenting facts or insurance policies to consumers, 25 failures to pay interest on claims, 21 failures to pay or contest a claim within 30 days, 22 unreasonably low settlement offers, and 178 other miscellaneous delays and claims violations. "As the largest insurer in California, our responsibility is to pay the many millions of claims on behalf of our members each year fairly, fully and promptly," company spokeswoman Binns said in a written statement. "While this review represents a small fraction of those claims, it is nonetheless very important to us to make sure we take any corrective action that may be necessary." Peter Hallward on “Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment” [DN] PETER HALLWARD: So, it was generating, you know, more than half—it was, by far, the largest supplier of coffee, sugar, you know, the big commodities at the time, also hardwoods, various other things. And it generated more revenue for France in the 1780s than all of the North American colonies combined. So it was really an extraordinarily lucrative, very concentrated wealth generator in the eighteenth century. And it worked because you had a very brutal system of exploitation. Five—about five—almost half-a-million slaves, a very small number of white plantation owners, a few people in the middle. And this system worked to extract just vast amounts of profits. It was really exceptionally brutal by—even by colonial standards. It meant—the death rate was so high that by the time the Haitian slaves rose up against the system in 1791, most of the slaves that participated in that rebellion were born in Africa. You know, they never managed to create a system like they did in the southern United States, where the slave economy was self-replicating, where you could basically grow your own slaves locally. And this meant that the original security problem in Haiti, the plantation system, where you maintain order by, you know, simply massive, brutal levels of violence, had to be redesigned after the revolution, because the revolution was successful and the people who won that revolution were determined to avoid a return to the plantation system. So in Haiti, really unlike most other places in the world, certainly among like most of Latin America, the tendency towards the concentration of big farms and the expropriation of small holdings and of peasant farms didn’t really happen in Haiti, which meant that small farmers were able to hold onto their farms, resisted tendencies that pushed them—that would have pushed them in other places into slums in the cities, where they would have been exploited, basically, in factories and so on. That happened much later in Haiti, and it only happened to a relatively limited extent. So you then have to look at, well, how did that—and basically, in the twentieth century, there have been a couple of key episodes that allowed that process to accelerate a little bit and generated new security problems. All Officers Are Acquitted in Mineo Abuse Trial Acquitting all three men on all counts, the jurors rejected Michael Mineo’s claims that Officer Richard Kern repeatedly rammed a baton between his buttocks, therefore making the charges that two other officers helped him cover up the abuse irrelevant. “It’s been a long road and it’s finally over, thank God,” Officer Kern said afterward. “I’ll finally get a good night’s sleep. I’m glad the system works.” The verdict came after just one full day of deliberations in a trial that had lasted four weeks. Mr. Mineo’s lawyers promised to push forward with a multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit against the city, and to ask federal prosecutors to consider charges that his civil rights were violated. “It’s not over,” said Mr. Mineo, who was not in court when the verdict was read but spoke to reporters afterward. “I ain’t even surprised. I kind of had a feeling it would turn out this way. If you want to commit a murder, join the N.Y.P.D. and you get cleared off.” PAM COMMENTARY: I didn't hear all of the evidence and can't say for sure what happened here, but why would the officer let the guy off with outstanding warrants? It makes me wonder if he was ashamed of someone seeing the condition of the man if taken into the police station. Poland admits role in CIA rendition programme; Warsaw air control service confirms that at least six CIA flights landed at disused military air base in northern Poland in 2003 The Polish authorities have for the first time admitted their involvement in the CIA's secret programme for the rendition of high-level terrorist suspects from Iraq and Afghanistan, it emerged today. After years of stonewalling, Warsaw's air control service confirmed that at least six CIA flights had landed at a disused military air base in northern Poland in 2003. "It is time for the authorities to provide a full accounting of Poland's role in rendition," Adam Bodnar, of the Warsaw-based Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, said. "These flight records reinforce the troubling findings of official European inquiries and global human rights groups, showing complicity with CIA abuse across Europe." US investigators 'find author of China's cyber-attack on Google' Claims that Lanxiang, a high-school level institute that also trains hairdressers, chefs and car mechanics, could have been the source of the attacks was lampooned on the Chinese web. However the school's official website also says the college is home to the "biggest" computer laboratory in the world. Li Zixiang, the school's party chief, said that an "investigation in the staff found no trace the attacks originated from our school" and denied reports that the school had trained computer scientists who went on to join the military. However both leaked pieces of information would appear to be aimed at undermining the credibility of Chinese government denials, with researchers adding that US investigators had not found any indication that the institutions' servers had been compromised prior to the attacks. The author of the computer code that was used to insert spyware via a previously unknown security hole in the Internet Explorer web browser was not personally responsible for the attacks, the Financial Times added, but had posted his work on a known hackers forum. Interest in China school after Google hack report BEIJING – A Chinese school accused last week of links to cyberattacks on Google that have strained Sino-US ties has since received a flood of calls from students interested in attending. The New York Times said attacks on the US Internet giant, which have prompted the firm to reconsider its long-term presence in China, were traced to computers at the Lanxiang Vocational School and Shanghai Jiaotong University. Both institutions have denied involvement. But since the report, the Lanxiang school -- located in the eastern province of Shandong -- has reported a spike in enrolment inquiries. Falkland Islands oil drilling begins; UK government underlines support for exploratory project as shares in group Desire Petroleum soar by 25% Drilling for oil off the coast of the Falklands Islands began today after months of building diplomatic tensions between Britain and Argentina over rights to the islands and any natural resources that can be extracted from surrounding waters. The exploration group Desire Petroleum – named after HMS Desire, which claimed to have discovered the islands in 1592 – issued a statement to the London stock market today confirming its Ocean Guardian drilling rig had "spudded", or broken ground, at 2.15pm. Shares in Desire have climbed more than 25% since the Guardian rig departed from Cromarty Firth in Scotland in November destined for the South Atlantic. They dipped slightly yesterday, down 4.25p at 112.75p. Underlining the British government's support for the exploratory project, defence minister Bill Grammell today stressed he would take "whatever steps are necessary" to protect the legitimate activities on the islands and in its waters. "There has been no change whatsoever to our policy and we have no doubt ­whatsoever about the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands, and no change in our support to their legitimate right to develop a hydrocarbon industry within its waters. We do, we have, and we will take whatever steps are necessary to protect the Falkland Islands and our counterparts in Argentina are aware of that." His comments come after Buenos Aires has sought to ratchet up the diplomatic pressure on exploration in the area, located just 300 miles from the South American mainland. The Argentinian government still disputes British sovereignty despite its ill-fated invasion in 1982 which ended in UK forces reclaiming the archipelago following a seven-week war. PAM COMMENTARY: That particular war happened to end the famous "dirty war" in Argentina. Hugo Chavez demands Queen return Falkland Islands to Argentina He described British control of the islands in the South Atlantic as "anti-historic and irrational" and asked "why the English speak of democracy but still have a Queen". Mrs Kirchner sought to win new allies in Argentina's claims to the islands when she made a direct appeal for support at a meeting in Mexico of the Rio Group of Latin American and Caribbean countries. Venezuela and Nicaragua rallied to Argentina's side even before Mrs Krichner's appeal, and it was reported that Brazil was ready to support any resolution backing Argentina's sovereignty claims. Argentine anger is likely to increase after Desire Petroleum, the British oil company that has towed a rig from Scotland to about 60 miles off the north of the Falklands, announced on Monday it had begun drilling. Argentina is attempting to hamper oil exploration, insisting last week that all vessels using its ports must now seek permission if they plan to enter or leave British-controlled waters. Argentina wants other South American countries to impose its transport restrictions to the Falklands but it is unlikely to win support from those closest to the islands such as Chile and Uruguay. New York Times Publishes Column By War Machine Employee Demanding US Stop Thinking About All The Innocent Afghans Killed And Ramp The F**k Up The Bombing [AJ] Greenwald : Does anyone need it explained to them why causing large civilian deaths through air attacks in Afghanistan is not only morally grotesque but also completely counter-productive to our stated goals? No. But those bombs and missiles have to be dumped somewhere, so the warehouses and new orders can be filled and re-filled, over and over again. Python-hunting season set for next month The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Monday announced a special hunting season targeting Burmese pythons on state lands in South Florida March 8 through April 17. The special season, created by executive order, will allow anyone with a hunting license and a $26 management area permit to take reptiles of concern -- including Indian python; reticulated python; northern and southern African rock python; amethystine or scrub python; green anaconda; and Nile monitor lizard. Hunters may use rifles, pistols or shotguns, but no centerfire rifles. They may not bring reptiles out alive and must report all they kill to the FWC within 36 hours. Judge Accepts S.E.C.’s Deal With Bank of America In a ruling that freed Bank of America from some of its legal problems, a federal judge on Monday “reluctantly” approved a $150 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. But even as the judge, Jed S. Rakoff of the Southern District of New York, approved the settlement, he delivered harsh words for the S.E.C., saying that the agreement was “half-baked justice at best.” The settlement stems from the bank’s merger with Merrill Lynch, the firm known for its thundering herd of brokers, at the height of the financial crisis. In the months before the deal closed, Bank of America did not tell its shareholders about Merrill’s hefty bonus payouts or the mounting losses that eventually led to a second government bailout of $20 billion. In a written opinion released Monday morning, Judge Rakoff declared that the evidence showed that the bank failed to adequately disclose the bonuses and the losses, but he said it was unclear if the lack of disclosure resulted from negligence or ill-intent. A Base for War Training, and Species Preservation FORT STEWART, Ga. — Under crystalline winter skies, a light infantry unit headed for Iraq was practicing precision long-range shooting through a pall of smoke. But the fire generating the haze had nothing to do with the training exercise. Staff members at the Army post had set the blaze on behalf of the red-cockaded woodpecker, an imperiled eight-inch-long bird that requires frequent conflagrations to preserve its pine habitat. Even as it conducts round-the-clock exercises to support two wars, Fort Stewart spends as much as $3 million a year on wildlife management, diligently grooming its 279,000 acres to accommodate five endangered species that live here. Last year, the wildlife staff even built about 100 artificial cavities and installed them 25 feet high in large pines so the woodpeckers did not have to toil for six months carving the nests themselves. The military has not always been so enthusiastic about saving endangered plants and animals, arguing that doing so would hinder its battle preparedness. But post commanders have gradually realized that working to help species rebound is in their best interest, if only because the more the endangered plants and animals thrive, the fewer restrictions are put on training exercises to avoid destroying habitat. IVF may raise risk of diabetes, hypertension and cancer in later life People conceived through IVF treatment should be monitored for the early onset of high blood pressure, diabetes and certain cancers before the age of 50, according to a fertility specialist. While IVF is generally considered to produce healthy babies, doctors have identified subtle genetic changes that may raise the risk of particular medical conditions in later life. Since the birth of the first test tube baby, Louise Brown, on 25 July 1978, more than three million babies have been born through fertility treatment around the world. The vast majority are still under the age of 30. The extent to which IVF babies develop more hypertension, diabetes and cancer will begin to emerge over the next two decades as they enter middle age, doctors said. Week of 14th to 20th of February 2010 Fish and Wildlife chief dies after skiing WASHINGTON -- The director of the Fish and Wildlife Service died Saturday after suffering chest pains while skiing in Colorado. Sam Hamilton was 54. The 30-year veteran of the agency, who assumed its top post in September, died in the afternoon after being transported off the Keystone Ski Area, said Joanne Richardson, Summit County coroner. She said his death was consistent with an underlying heart problem. Hamilton helped lead restoration work in the Everglades, the largest ecosystem restoration project in the country. He oversaw the extensive recovery and restoration efforts required following hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which devastated coastal wetlands, wildlife refuges and other wildlife habitat along the Gulf of Mexico. Alexander Haig, former secretary of state, dies Retired Army Gen. Alexander Haig, who held influential positions in the United States military and in politics and who as White House chief of staff shepherded Richard M. Nixon toward peacefully resigning the presidency, died today of complications from an infection. He was 85. Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter sent the four-star general to Europe as supreme commander of NATO. Ronald Reagan made him secretary of state, resulting in a brief and stormy tenure in which he famously tried to assert command after the attempted assassination of the president. And Gen. Haig himself, a tall man with blue eyes who kept his chin-up military bearing long after he left the service, ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988. His influence peaked in his late 40s during Nixon's last 16 months in office, when brewing developments in the Watergate scandal damaged and increasingly distracted the president. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger famously told Gen. Haig to keep the country together while he held the world together during one of the greatest constitutional crises in the nation's history. Special prosecutor Leon Jaworski, and many others, called Gen. Haig the "37 1/2 president." Gen. Haig, untainted by the botched break-in to the Democratic National Committee headquarters, took over as chief of staff in May 1973 from H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, who would spend 18 months in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. When the public learned about the secret Oval Office taping system, which would eventually implicate Nixon in the coverup, Gen. Haig acknowledged later that he urged the president to destroy the tapes. PAM COMMENTARY: This article doesn't get to the famous "I am in control" quote until the last page, but it does provide a lot of good detail, and so I'd rather link to this than to shorter articles. Federal Bureau of Invention: CASE CLOSED (and Ivins did it) [WRH] That is only the first of many holes in FBI's case. Here is a sampling of some more. The report assumes Ivins manufactured, purified and dried the spore prep in the anthrax hot room at US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). His colleagues say the equipment available was insufficient to do so on the scale required. But even more important, the letter spores contained a Bacillus subtilis contaminant, and silicon to enhance dispersal. FBI has never found the Bacillus subtilis strain at USAMRIID, and it has never acknowledged finding silicon there, either. If the letters anthrax was made at USAMRIID, at least small amounts of both would be there. Drs. Perry Mikesell, Ayaad Assaad and Stephen Hatfill were 3 earlier suspects. All had circumstantial evidence linking them to the case. In Hatfill's case, especially, are hints he could have been "set up." Greendale, the return address on the letters, was a suburb of Harare, Zimbabwe where Hatfill attended medical school. Hatfill wrote an unpublished book about a biowarfare attack that bears some resemblance to the anthrax case. So the fact that abundant circumstantial evidence links Ivins to the case might be a reflection that he too was "set up" as a potential suspect, before the letters were sent. FBI fails to provide any discussion of why no autopsy was performed, nor why, with Ivins under 24/7 surveillance from the house next door, with even his garbage being combed through, the FBI failed to notice that he overdosed and went into a coma. Nor is there any discussion of why the FBI didn't immediately identify tylenol as the overdose substance, and notify the hospital, so that a well-known antidote for tylenol toxicity could be given (N-acetyl cysteine, or alternatively glutathione). These omissions support the suggestion that Ivins' suicide was a convenience for the FBI. It enabled them to conclude the anthrax case, in the absence of evidence that would satisfy the courts. PAM COMMENTARY: Time for another flashback... See below. Prof. Francis Boyle on Alex Jones Tv: Anthrax "Inside Job" (FLASHBACK) (Video) [AJ] "... and I say it's criminal because I was the person who drafted the statute making it a crime..." PAM COMMENTARY: The best interview on the anthrax attacks that I've heard so far, from the Alex Jones Show. Boyle is a top bioweapons expert. Conyers Slams Authors Of Torture Memos, Announces Hearings [BF] In a statement this afternoon, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) says that the Justice Department torture memo report released today makes "plain that those memos were legally flawed and fundamentally unsound, and may have been improperly influenced by a desire to tell the Bush White House and the CIA what it wanted to hear." Conyers, who posted the DOJ documents on his Web site, continued: "The Office of Legal Counsel has a proud tradition of providing independent, high quality legal advice to the executive branch. The materials released today make clear that the lawyers who wrote the torture memos did not live up that tradition." He announced the committee will hold hearings on the matter. Report: Bush Lawyer Said President Could Order Civilians to Be 'Massacred' At the core of the legal arguments were the views of Yoo, strongly backed by David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's legal counsel, that the president's wartime powers were essentially unlimited and included the authority to override laws passed by Congress, such as a statute banning the use of torture. Pressed on his views in an interview with OPR investigators, Yoo was asked: "What about ordering a village of resistants to be massacred? ... Is that a power that the president could legally--" "Yeah," Yoo replied, according to a partial transcript included in the report. "Although, let me say this: So, certainly, that would fall within the commander-in-chief's power over tactical decisions." "To order a village of civilians to be [exterminated]?" the OPR investigator asked again. "Sure," said Yoo. Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs BUENA PARK, Calif. — Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits. Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed. Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives — potentially for years to come. Yet the social safety net is already showing severe strains. Roughly 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment check before the end of April unless Congress approves the Obama administration’s proposal to extend the payments, according to the Labor Department. Welfare Recipients Forced to Sell Food Stamps to Buy Basic Necessities [DN] AMY GOODMAN: Well, TANF is up for reauthorization this fall, and journalist Seth Wessler’s investigation focuses on the impact of both the recession and welfare reform in Hartford, Connecticut, a state which has the shortest welfare time limit in the country, just twenty-one months. Seth Wessler is a senior research associate at Applied Research Center, a think tank on race, and a staff writer for ColorLines Magazine. His article, “Selling Food Stamps for Kid’s Shoes," is available online at colorlines.com. We welcome you to Democracy Now! Explain what’s happening in Hartford. SETH WESSLER: Well, this really is a story about what happens when the Great Recession meets welfare reform from 1996. It’s a story about what happens when people are pushed off of cash assistance by a welfare program that’s intent is to push people off of cash assistance, families trying to raise their children; what people do now that even those low-wage poverty jobs, that families have been stuck in for now a decade and a half, aren’t available. And so, I spent the winter reporting from Hartford, Connecticut, a city that’s long been hit by the disappearance of manufacturing jobs and is struggling economically to figure out what families are doing now that the recession has hit and there really is no substantive safety net for poor families. And what I found was that people are forced to make very difficult decisions and are forced to trade their food assistance at bodegas for pennies on the dollar in order to make some cash to pay their bills, to pay rent, to buy, in the case of one woman I spent time with—who we’re calling Eva in this story; she asked her name be changed—to buy children’s shoes for her kids. So, people are forced to, in the end, break the law to get by. And what I see this as is a story about poor families innovating to survive in a horribly difficult economy after years of a stripped safety net. Eva, the woman I spent three months with, talking to, was cut off of cash assistance last March. She’s in the state, Connecticut, with the shortest time limit in the country. After welfare reform, states were given vast amount of power to determine how long people could stay on cash assistance, how generous the program would be. And the state set the shortest time limit of any state of the country. She was cut off of cash assistance in the middle of the worst job crisis in a generation and has been searching for work endlessly without any luck. She’s a woman who’s been working low-wage poverty jobs for the greater part of a decade and now can’t even find one of those. She’s precipitously close to the edge now of becoming homeless, of not being able to feed her kids. And she’s forced to sell her food stamps, like many women who I talked to in Connecticut, in order to get by. PAM COMMENTARY: It sounds like Connecticut is trying to encourage its poor people to move to New York. The New Premiere Social Networking Site from Freeway Ricky Ross! PAM COMMENTARY: I was surprised to hear Freeway Rick (of CIA Crack Cocaine Trafficking/Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance" book fame) on the 12-February-2010 Alex Jones Show. Ricky Ross is out of prison now (despite his life sentence), and as usual is happy to openly share his experiences as the crack cocaine kingpin of Los Angeles with us. That's the best thing about Freeway Rick -- he's willing to talk honestly about what he did, and that gives Americans a piece of the country's history that we should have. The link above is from Ross' new social networking site. Try to stay out of jail this time, Rick! It's a lot better having you on the outside. Freeway Ricky Ross Is Free (FLASHBACK) (Video) PAM COMMENTARY: A little background on Ricky Ross, although this doesn't cover even 1% of it -- it's best to read Gary Webb's book "Dark Alliance" to see how everything fit together. Freeway Ricky Ross & The CIA Drug Game (FLASHBACK) (Video) PAM COMMENTARY: More background on how Ross fit into the CIA's drug trade. “A Bad Day for America”: Anti-Nuclear Activist Harvey Wasserman Criticizes Obama Plan to Fund Nuclear Reactors [DN] JUAN GONZALEZ: And Harvey, the issue both of the disposal of nuclear waste from these plants as well as the safety of the plants themselves? HARVEY WASSERMAN: The plants are no safer than they’ve ever been, and there is no solution to the nuclear waste problem. So, you know, it’s a double whammy here. We have technologies that will work, that will provide the jobs that we need for this country. And Obama has gone in completely the opposite direction. And I will tell you that the environmental movement, in general, is very unhappy about this. There will be tremendous resistance to this plant and to all the other ones that this administration may try to build. It’s quite indicative that, after all these years, the nuclear industry cannot get private financing for these reactors. They have to go to the federal government. And they can’t find Wall Street support or other independent support to build these reactors, because the reactors are not economically viable. And you’d think, after all these years, they’d have made enough progress at least to get even private insurance. The reality is that these reactors will be underwritten, in terms of liability, by the taxpayer. God forbid if there’s a mass accident at any nuclear power plant, including these, there will be only the federal government as an insurer, in case of liability. An astonishing statement on the technology—can’t work and will never work. And it’s a terrible mystery as to why the administration has taken this bad step. Ron Paul Wins CPAC Straw Poll Mr. Paul, a Republican Congressman from Texas who inspired an intense following for president in 2008, swept the 2012 presidential straw poll Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. He won with 31 percent of the nearly 2,400 votes at the conference, edging out Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who won the straw poll last year and who captured 22 percent of the vote. When Mr. Paul’s name was announced in the packed ballroom of a Washington hotel, it elicited hoots and boos along with applause. Although Mr. Romney won fewer votes, he seemed to draw stronger applause. Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, who did not attend the conference, was a distant third, with 7 percent of the vote. FDA DECLARES WAR ON ALTERNATIVE HEALTH AND MEDICINE THAT WORKS [R] This is the week for attacks on alternative medicine as the FDA just sent a well known and respected medical doctor Dr. Andrew Weil a threatening letter. First viewers were shocked to see the NBC corporation do a hatchet job on Suzanne Somers in her new book ” Knockout” and now they are after Dr. Andrew Weil. Why are they targeting Dr. Weil? Possibly because Dr. Weil represents to millions of his readers one of the most intelligent learned men in alternative health today. This has mostly to be upsetting millions of Americans who take herbal supplements and are trying to maintain good healthy diets. On a recent interview on CNN Dr. Weil talked about natural medicine and he talked of plants and herbs, which happens to be a target for the FDA. The FDA has teamed up with the FTC is now on a major offensive for targeting alternative medicine along with promoting the N1H1 Swine vaccine which is really a cancer vaccine. The drug makers are using the FDA as the attack dog to do their dirty work and their objective is to shut down all alternative medicine and their supplements. PAM COMMENTARY: They post the FDA's letter to Weil in this article -- it basically tells him that he can't sell a product while also telling people medicinal uses for that product, because it isn't approved as a drug. That's actually consistent with FDA policy, and isn't a new attack but rather aggressive enforcement of existing regulations. I suspect that Weil was targeted because he appeared on CNN's Larry King show and wasn't the lapdog that CNN wanted for their drug company sponsors -- he didn't endorse the H1N1 vaccine that CNN had been hyping for weeks. In fact, Weil dared to mention alternatives that people could try from herbal medicine, and said that he wasn't a friend of the pharmaceutical industry. Weil is a good enough doctor to sway people, and so I'm sure there was pressure on the FDA to look for something wrong with him. But long story short, the FDA allows either free speech OR sales of a product -- the two can't mix. You'll notice that I don't sell herbs or zappers, nor do I benefit financially from anyone who does. If I did, I couldn't give people my honest observations and opinions, or share things I'd learned from directly trying products or doing research. I feel that information on scientific breakthroughs like a zapper are just too important to withhold from my readers. No evidence of poison plot at Ft. Jackson, investigators say Five soldiers at Ft. Jackson, S.C., have been investigated on suspicion of making threats against fellow service members, but officials have found no substantive evidence of misconduct, U.S. military spokesmen said Friday. The Christian Broadcasting Network, founded by evangelist Pat Robertson, has reported that soldiers were suspected of plotting to poison the food supply at the Army base. The report said the soldiers were part of an Army translation program that included Arabic speakers. Army investigators have been conducting an inquiry since December, but "we have not found any credible information to substantiate the allegations," said Christopher Grey, a spokesman for the Army Criminal Investigation Command. It is unusual for the agency to comment on the preliminary findings of an ongoing investigation. PAM COMMENTARY: I hope this wasn't based on Robertson's "reporting" alone. Obviously, Pat Robertson is a TV preacher with some very strange beliefs, not much of a reporter. Controversial Diabetes Drug Harms Heart, U.S. Concludes Hundreds of people taking Avandia, a controversial diabetes medicine, needlessly suffer heart attacks and heart failure each month, according to confidential government reports that recommend the drug be removed from the market. The reports, obtained by The New York Times, say that if every diabetic now taking Avandia were instead given a similar pill named Actos, about 500 heart attacks and 300 cases of heart failure would be averted every month because Avandia can hurt the heart. Avandia, intended to treat Type 2 diabetes, is known as rosiglitazone and was linked to 304 deaths during the third quarter of 2009. “Rosiglitazone should be removed from the market,” one report, by Dr. David Graham and Dr. Kate Gelperin of the Food and Drug Administration, concludes. Both authors recommended that Avandia be withdrawn. The internal F.D.A. reports are part of a fierce debate within the agency over what to do about Avandia, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline. Some agency officials want the drug withdrawn because they believe there is a safer alternative; others insist that studies of the drug provide contradictory information and that Avandia should continue to be an option for doctors and patients. GlaxoSmithKline said that it had studied Avandia extensively and that “scientific evidence simply does not establish that Avandia increases” the risk of heart attacks. FDA issues warning on 4 common asthma drugs WASHINGTON (AP) — The government is taking steps to curb use of some long-acting asthma drugs taken by millions, issuing safety restrictions Thursday to lower an uncommon but potentially life-threatening risk that asthma could worsen suddenly. The Food and Drug Administration's warnings cover the drugs Advair, Symbicort, Foradil and Serevent. The FDA said they should be used only by asthmatics who can't control their lung disease with other medications — and then only for the shortest time possible. Nor should LABA-containing drugs ever be used without simultaneous use of a different asthma-controlling medication, such as an inhaled corticosteroid — a move that specifically targets two of the drugs, Foradil and Serevent, the FDA said. Why? These four drugs contain an ingredient that relaxes muscles around stressed airways, called a long-acting beta agonist or LABA. While they're very helpful at preventing day-to-day symptoms for some patients, the way LABA-containing drugs work also sometimes masks that inflammation is building in the airways. That means patients may not realize a serious asthma attack is brewing until they're gasping for air. FBI said to be probing Pa. webcam case PHILADELPHIA - A law-enforcement official with knowledge of the case says the FBI has opened a criminal investigation into a Pennsylvania school district accused of activating webcams inside students' homes without their knowledge. The official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, says the FBI will explore whether Lower Merion School District officials broke any federal wiretap or computer-intrusion laws. Lower Merion officials say they remotely activated webcams 42 times to find missing student laptops in the past 14 months, but never did so to spy on students, as a recent lawsuit claims. Wave of ill brown pelicans baffles scientists Brown pelicans, whose wave-skimming and dive-bombing for fish are familiar to people who spend time on the California coast, have been mysteriously falling ill and dying by the hundreds over the past few weeks. They have been turning up, sometimes starving and emaciated, in odd places: parking lots, backyards and freeways. The wave of ill pelicans has overwhelmed the International Bird Rescue Research Center in Cordelia, which has taken in about 100 of the birds. Another 300 have been - or are still being - treated in the center's San Pedro branch. "I have never seen anything like this that has lasted this long," said Jay Holcomb, director of the bird rescue center. Holcomb has been involved in rehabilitating marine birds for more than 40 years in California. Wildlife biologists are perplexed by the disease. Many of the ill pelicans are found waterlogged, meaning that the feathers that normally keep them dry have somehow become contaminated. As a result, the ill birds have been suffering from hypothermia because of exposure to winter weather and ocean water. In addition, necropsies of the pelicans have shown that the birds are eating prey, such as certain worms, inconsistent with their normal diet of anchovies and sardines. White House adopts low profile as Barack Obama meets Dalai Lama Barack Obama expressed "strong support" for the Tibetan way of life when he saw the Dalai Lama at the White House today, a meeting that risks further damaging US-China relations. The visit was as muted as the White House could manage in an effort to minimise offence to the Chinese government, which had called on the president to cancel the meeting. The Dalai Lama, speaking afterwards, said he was very happy with the meeting and that Obama had been "very much supportive". He said Obama had shown genuine concern for Tibet. He was in a playful mood as he left the meeting, drawing patterns in the heaps of snow outside the White House and flicking some at waiting reporters, his jollity contrasting with the seriousness of the visit and its potential consequences. Obama gave the Dalai Lama more than an hour, long enough to be polite to him and to show that he would not be cowed by Chinese demands not to meet the spiritual leader of Tibet. But, in deference to Chinese hostility, the White House kept the meeting as low-key as possible. There was no television footage of the two together and the meeting was in the map room rather than the oval office, a small but symbolic gesture to show that it was not an official event. The Lancet Slammed by Medical Veritas Editors; Vaccine Science Poisoned By Special Interests In PharmaMedia [R] In a letter to the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Gilbert Ross, medical director of the pro-vaccine industry American Council on Science and Health, wrote, "The retraction . . . comes far too late. Even now, Horton fails to accept responsibility for the human toll he engendered by publishing the Wakefield 'study.'. . ." "On the contrary," wrote Dr. Leonard Horowitz, Editor-in-Chief of Medical Veritas. "Dr. Horton's delay is best explained by his aversion to self incrimination and conspiring to cover-up iatrogenocide--the medical mass murder of innocent people for profit." The Winter, 2010 issue of Medical Veritas, evidenced gross conflicting interests undermining the The Lancet's integrity. Following the publication of Dr. Wakefield's controversial study, Reed-Elsevier-ChoicePoint mergers occurred. The mega-company formed has nearly monopolized the medical scientific publishing industry. Previous to this, The Lancet editors protested the "damaging" of medicine and health science by pharmaceutical companies. "Now it is obvious Dr. Horton's company has been grossly contaminated by special interests as biased as Dr. Ross's 'PharmaCouncil'," Dr. Horowitz said. Virus-carrying salmon will not sicken humans, FDA says (CNN) -- The Food and Drug Administration says Chilean salmon is still safe to consume despite a virus that has killed scores of fish. "We have no information that there is any harm that can come from eating Chilean salmon," said Ira Allen, a spokesman for the FDA Center for Food Safety & Applied Nutrition. Found only in Chilean farmed salmon, the virus causes infectious anemia in the fish, but it's not harmful to humans. More than 60 percent of all farmed salmon imported into the United States was from Chile in 2004 but by 2009 it was down to 30.1 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. PAM COMMENTARY: Thankfully, I don't eat fish. I've also seen too many questionable things from the FDA to trust what they say. Several people injured when plane hits Northwest Austin building A small plane crashed into a Northwest Austin building that houses federal offices about 10 this morning, injuring several people and sparking a fire that sent plumes of smoke into the air that could be seen for miles. Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said the crash, at the Echelon 1 building in the 9400 block of Research Boulevard, “appears to be an intentional act, appears to be by a sole individual, and it appears this individual was targeting federal offices inside that building.” The plane, a single-engine Piper Cherokee PA-28-236 Dakota, took off from a Georgetown airport at 9:40 a.m., Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown said. A federal official confirmed for the Statesman that its tail number is registered to a plane owned by Andrew Joseph Stack, a private plane pilot whose nearby home was on fire at roughly the same time. Plane crash into North Austin building PAM COMMENTARY: This photo gallery shows destruction from the plane crash in Austin, from the city's local newspaper. Short video of Austin plane crash (Video) PAM COMMENTARY: Watch out for the noise on this one -- it starts playing with police sirens, without you having to press a "play" button first. Aquaculture made safe (Opinion) While Americans' appetite for seafood continues to grow, most of us know little about where our fish comes from or how it was produced. In California, more than half of our seafood comes from aquaculture, often imported from fish farms in other countries. Just as most chickens, pigs and cows are raised in tightly confined, intensive operations, so too are many farm-raised fish. But raising fish in tight quarters carries some serious risks. Disease and parasites can be transmitted from farmed to wild fish. Effluents, antibiotics and other chemicals can be discharged into surrounding waters. Nonnative farmed fish can escape into wild fish habitat. And a reliance on wild-caught fish in aquaculture feed can deplete food supplies for other marine life. These environmental impacts have been evident in many other countries with intensive marine fish farming. In Chile, where industry expansion was prioritized over environmental protection, salmon aquaculture has collapsed, causing a major blow to what had been one of Chile's leading exports. Tens of thousands of people are now jobless in southern Chile, where the salmon farming industry once boomed. If aquaculture is to play a responsible role in the future of seafood here at home, we must ensure that the "blue revolution" in ocean fish farming does not cause harm to the oceans and the marine life they support. Marine census grows near completion Last fall the census reported having added 5,600 new ocean species to those already known. Ron O'Dor, a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, said there may be another 100,000 or more to be found. "Add microbes and it could be millions," he said. One benefit of learning more about ocean life is the chance of finding new medical treatments, Pomponi said. For example, a chemical discovered in deep water sponges is now a component of the cream used to treat herpes infections, Pomponi said. Other research is under way on pain killers and cancer treatments based on ocean life. Kristina Gjerde, of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, in Konstancin-Chylice, Poland, said the research will help guide governments in setting up marine protected areas to preserve species both for food and of value for other reasons. PAM COMMENTARY: It seems they'd do anything to find a new chemical they can patent and profit from. U.S. Senator Jim Webb Meets Governor & Local Senators The Senator is the chairman of the ast Asia and Pacific affairs subcommittee and serves on the senate committees on foreign relations, armed services and veteran's affairs. He was also once the secretary of the Navy. He has arrived on Guam after a visit to Japan. Webb is touring the region to get a better understanding of the U.S./Japan defense realignment agreement and the Guam Military Buildup. While Senator Jim Webb toured the island and met with local leaders today this is not the first time he's been on Guam. In fact the Senator from Virginia used to live and work on Guam. In 1974 he worked for the Bureau Of Statistics and Plans and even did a report titled "The Future Land Needs of The U.S. Military on Guam. Study raises red flag on counterfeit electronics in military Already heavily taxed by two wars and repeated worldwide deployments, the U.S. military is facing yet another challenge: the increasing intrusion of counterfeit electronics and other parts into its supply lines. And a new Commerce Department study finds the Pentagon is barely addressing the problem. The study of contractors, subcontractors and Defense Department agencies tracked the rise in counterfeit electronics entering the system since 2005 — from 3,868 incidents then to 9,356 in 2008. The Navy’s Air Systems Command asked for the study, suspecting that many more counterfeit and defective electronics were finding their way into the Pentagon’s vast supply chain in ways that could affect the reliability of weapons. The study found many flaws within the system: The different organizations, contractors, subcontractors, manufacturers, distributors and agencies themselves don’t talk enough about the issue. There’s a lack of accountability within organizations. Recordkeeping about instances of counterfeit parts is limited. And most organizations don’t know whom to contact in the government when confronted with fakes. Most Pentagon organizations, the report also found, don’t have policies in place to thwart counterfeit parts. Murkowski: Alaska needs economic 'soul searching' JUNEAU -- Alaska's economy faces significant threats from environmentalists, federal regulations, and even from within in the form of problems like high student dropout rates and domestic violence, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Thursday. The Republican told a joint legislative session she would do her part in Washington to fight such things as reactive or overreaching federal policies, but Alaska must do some "soul searching" about the future of its economy. Oil drives Alaska's economy -- nearly 90 percent of unrestricted general fund revenue comes from it. But forecasts call for production to continue declining from the aging North Slope fields, and there's currently a mix of high hopes and unease about the prospects for a major natural gas pipeline to help make up some of the anticipated revenue losses. Murkowski told legislators she would fight new federal oil and gas taxes and continue pushing for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an issue her father, Frank Murkowski, pressed as a U.S. senator before her. PAM COMMENTARY: "Threats" to the state from environmentalists and federal regulations? Drilling in ANWR? When will Alaskans be able to feel secure that their food supply from hunting and fishing will remain secure enough to stop fighting their own government? Time for another flashback... Being Caribou (Video, 72 minutes) In this feature-length documentary, husband and wife team Karsten Heuer (wildlife biologist) and Leanne Allison (environmentalist) follow a herd of 120,000 caribou on foot across 1500 km of Arctic tundra. In following the herd's migration, the couple hopes to raise awareness of the threats to the caribou's survival. Along the way they brave Arctic weather, icy rivers, hordes of mosquitoes and a very hungry grizzly bear. Dramatic footage and video diaries combine to provide an intimate perspective of an epic expedition. Oil on Ice PART ONE (Video) PAM COMMENTARY: It looks like someone took this movie off of YouTube, but now this service is hosting it... for now. I'll link to the first part -- the other parts are listed if you want to watch the whole thing. Enjoy it online while you can. Biologist dies in 3-car crash on Keys bridge A three-vehicle accident Thursday on the Seven-Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys killed a Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission biologist and injured three others, the Florida Highway Patrol said. The two-lane bridge was closed in both directions for several hours after the 4 p.m. accident. The bridge is the only road link between Marathon and the lower Keys. The accident involved a wildlife commission SUV pulling a boat on a trailer, a white van and a blue car. The SUV caught fire, trapping two biologists. They were taken to Fishermen's Hospital in Marathon, where one was pronounced dead. The driver of a second vehicle, a female, was taken to Lower Keys Medical Center in critical condition. The driver of the third vehicle, a female, was airlifted to the Ryder Trauma Center in Miami, according to FHP Lt. Alex Annunziato. She was listed in stable condition with a broken femur. It was too early to determine how the accident occurred, FHP said. PAM COMMENTARY: That's an extremely dangerous highway, people speed badly and try to pass over double yellows all the time. That's how I was hit on that road back in the 90s, and I was told by an insurance company at the time that it was the most dangerous road in America (at least according to insurance companies at the time, based on claims from accidents there). Africa's wildlife hotspot in trouble The Masai Mara in Kenya is without doubt on that exclusive list of the earth's greatest wildlife hotspots to which people will travel thousands of miles to experience. What for years has drawn visitors from all over the globe has been the abundance of Africa's "charismatic megafauna", as zoologists like to say, on the Mara's open grasslands. Not only are what hunters used to call the "Big Five" much in evidence – lion, elephant, buffalo, leopard and rhino (although the black rhino are increasingly rare) – but so are the vast herds of hoofed animals, the wildebeest, zebras and Thomson's gazelles. The Masai Mara and the Serengeti in effect form a single savannah ecosystem bestriding the Kenya-Tanzanian border, and in October the herds migrate back to the Serengeti, in some of the largest animal movements on the planet; the wildebeest are thought to number more than a million. Most of the other magnificent creatures which Africa displays can also be found: cheetah, hippopotamus, giraffe, hyena, many antelopes and gazelles, and more than 450 species of birds. Many Britons who have never visited Africa will be familiar with the park from television shows such as Big Cat Diary. Located 140 miles from Nairobi, and named after the Masai people, the tall cattle herders who were the traditional inhabitants of the area, the Mara has been a Kenyan national park since 1967. Tourists have flooded in for decades; the stiff entry fees ($60 [£38] for an adult last year, and $30 for a child) have been a major source of foreign currency for the Kenyan government. But all is not well with the park and its wildlife. A scientific paper published last year showed that many animal species were declining, and blamed increased human settlement in and around the reserve. Funded by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), the study monitored hoofed species in the Masai Mara on a monthly basis for 15 years, and concluded that six species – giraffes, impala, warthogs, topis and water-bucks – had declined significantly, and at an alarming rate. Now comes the suggestion that too much tourism, especially when not properly regulated, can also start to erode the value of one of the world's richest wildlife areas. It is clear that "charismatic megafauna" and humans can mix – but only so far. PAM COMMENTARY: This article seems to end abruptly with a theory, but no proof to support that theory. It may be another slanted conclusion to ask for more research money. But I'll link to the article anyway, because it does provide information on an alleged decline, no exact numbers given here though. The illegal camps that threaten to destroy Kenya's Masai Mara "Black rhinos are extremely shy and sensitive, and they need the shade and seclusion of riverine forest to calve," said Samson Lenjirr, an experienced warden and former head of the Masai Mara's rhino programme. "Where this camp is situated is the single largest such forested area in the reserve. These rhinos can't put up with permanent human settlement there, with generators running all day, tourist vans coming and going." The last-ditch battle to stop the new lodge is emblematic of the wider struggle to save Kenya's best-known tourist attraction which, scientists warn, is in danger of ecological collapse thanks to runaway development. An unpublished Kenyan government audit, seen by The Independent, reveals that the Greater Mara ecosystem is now weighed down by 108 camps and lodges, with more than 4,000 beds. Most of these units are flouting the law, failing to compensate local communities and not paying tax, the confidential report concludes. Nearly eight out of 10 of the camps surveyed have not carried out the required Environmental Impact Assessment while only 29 per cent of the camps are operating legally. The apparent free-for-all in the Mara has worried the influential International Federation of Tour Operators (IFTO) sufficiently that the UK office wrote to the Kenyan government two weeks ago demanding a list of the illegal camps. Rare wolf found safe in New Brighton After three nights on the run, a rare wolf mysteriously sprung from a cage at a wildlife center in Forest Lake was captured safely Thursday in New Brighton. "She's going to be fine, thank heavens. She's going to be fine," said Peggy Callahan, executive director of the Wildlife Science Center, who had the animal wrapped in a blanket in the back of an SUV. Acting on a tip from citizens, police and wildlife officials cornered the female Mexican gray wolf -- one of fewer than 150 worldwide -- against a chain-link fence near Long Lake Road and Interstate 694 as traffic zoomed by. They got nets around the animal, allowing a wildlife official to inject it with a tranquilizer. The wolf was disappeared Monday after someone broke a lock on its cage at the center. Its two sisters stayed behind. Officials plan to someday reintroduce the wolves to the wild. Gordon Brown pledges full probe into hit squad fake British passports Gordon Brown today promised a "full investigation" into the use of faked British passports by a hit squad who assassinated a Hamas commander in Dubai. The Prime Minister said: "We are looking at this at this very moment." "We have got to carry out a full investigation into this. The British passport is an important document that has got to be held with care," he told London's LBC Radio. "The evidence has got to be assembled about what has actually happened and how it happened and why it happened and it is necessary for us to accumulate that evidence before we can make statements." He spoke amid demands for the Israeli ambassador to be summoned to the Foreign Office to answer allegations that its security services were behind the assassination. Two of those whose British passports were apparently used by the killers have expressed their shock at being named among 11 suspects identified by Dubai police. At least some Dubai photos of Hamas 'assassins' appear fake Reporting from Jerusalem - At least some of the passport photos and information released by Dubai this week on 11 suspects in the assassination of an alleged Hamas arms dealer appears to be false, Irish officials and several Israeli citizens said Tuesday. The use of sophisticated fake IDs would match the professional manner in which the Jan. 20 slaying of Mahmoud Mabhouh was apparently carried out. Melvyn Adam Mildiner, a British Israeli who moved to the Jerusalem area from London nine years ago, awoke Tuesday to find his name splashed across Israel's major newspapers alongside someone else's photograph in a mug-shot collage of the alleged hit squad. "I went to bed with pneumonia and woke up a 'murderer,' " he mused to the Jerusalem Post. Mildiner, who spent the day fielding phone calls from reporters, said he was worried about what sort of travel problems he now might encounter if Interpol has an arrest warrant in his name. Former NYC police commissioner Bernard Kerik gets 4 years in jail Bernard B. Kerik, the former commissior of both the New York City Police Department and the Corrections Department and at one time George W. Bush's nominee for Secretary of Homeland Security was today sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of tax fraud and lying on federal documents during his background check by The White House. Kerik 54, was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $187,931 He was ordered to surrender no later than May 17, 2010 to begin serving his sentence. "It is a very sad day when the former Commissioner of the greatest police department in the world is sentenced to prison for base criminal conduct," said Preet Baharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. "Today's sentencing of Bernard Kerik is one of the most powerful recent reminders that no one in this country is above the law," A somewhat humble Kerik asked that his legacy not be tarnished by his crimes. PAM COMMENTARY: He must have really been guilty in a bad way for New York to do anything about him. 14 dead dogs dumped in NE Houston Houston SPCA investigators said it is “highly unlikely” 14 dead dogs dumped in a wooded area on the northeast side of town died of natural causes. The grisly discovery was made around 12:20 p.m. Wednesday after someone contacted Houston police to report the finding. The dogs were dumped in a wooded area just a short walk off Greens Road near the Eastex Freeway feeder road. All of the dogs' carcasses were such advanced stages of decomposition that no necropsies can be performed, Houston SPCA Chief Animal Cruelty Investigator Charles Jantzen said. In this case, the dogs appeared to have been dead for at least three days, Jantzen said. Keep pets out of plane cabins, doctors say Airline passengers with pet allergies should not be forced to share cabin space with dogs and cats, says an editorial published Tuesday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Last summer, Air Canada changed its policy to allow cats and small dogs to travel in the cabin, aligning itself with a WestJet policy. "Surveys have shown that there's widespread public support for keeping pets off airplanes, in the cabins, and for those reasons we feel strongly that this is a public health issue that really needs to be addressed thoughtfully," said Dr. Matthew Stanbrook, a respirologist who co-wrote the editorial. "Given the importance of air travel for Canadians and those who travel through Canadian airspace, we think that Air Canada needs to rethink its decision or be made to do so by government agencies." Robert Fisk: Passport to the truth in Dubai remains secret It's a propaganda war. Whoever killed the Hamas official in Dubai – let's speak frankly – it's part of an old, dirty war between the Israelis and the Palestinians in which they have been murdering their secret police antagonists for decades. Whose were the passports? Or should we say "passports". So here's a moment to reflect on realities. Many Dubaians believe that the collapse of the emirate's economy last year was the revenge of Western banks – spurred on, of course, by the Americans – to punish them for allowing Iranian shell companies to use Dubai as a sanctions-busting base during the cold-hot war between the US-Israeli alliance and Iran. Now the Americans (or the Israelis – you can take your pick) want to turn Dubai into the Beirut of the Gulf. That was actually a headline last week – in The Jerusalem Post, of course – which painted Dubai as dangerous as it was economically calamitous. But hold on a minute. According to a Dubai "source" of The Independent – readers will have to judge what this means – the security forces of the aforesaid emirate informed a "British diplomat" in Dubai (presumably the consul, since the embassy is in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi) of the UK passport details almost six days ago and "did not receive an appropriate reply". If this is true – the Foreign Office will be wrathful in its denials – then why didn't the British immediately express their outrage at the use of forged British passports and cough up details of the equally outrageous frauds a week ago? This misuse puts every British citizen at risk. Yet the Foreign Office – so keen to warn British citizens of the dangers they face in the Middle East – sat on their large behind and did bugger all. I'm sorry. If they had the details, they had a duty to UK citizens to speak up. If they hadn't got the details, they should have told us. But they were silent. Why? Was there a cold breeze coming beneath a closed door? Far too many police forces are now sending their minions to Israel to learn about "terror". The Canadians actually dispatched a team of cops to Tel Aviv who allowed themselves to wear "suicide vests" for publicity pictures. Air France now hands the US details of all its passengers' profiles – which, of course, go straight to the Israelis – despite the fact that Israeli security officers (like hundreds of Arab security officers in the Middle East) may well be involved in war crimes. Shadowy and deadly - the long arm of the Mossad Israel's Mossad secret service, more formally known as the Institute for Espionage and Special Tasks, has a long history of carrying out clandestine operations, including several spectacular assassinations. Much remains secret but cases that are documented have involved large teams of agents using false or stolen passports to disguise their Israeli origins. The Mossad's assassination unit has been known at different times as Caesarea and Kidon (Bayonet). Women agents have often been involved – there was reportedly one in the Dubai killing. Israel's official silence does not mean that it cannot be heard trumpeting its success. "The intelligence [about Dubai] was reliable and accurate," ­commented the respected national security specialist Yossi Melman in the newspaper Haaretz earlier this month. "Even though Mabhouh knew Israeli ­intelligence had him in its sights and took stringent precautions they still managed to get him." Information released by Dubai shows the professionalism of the suspected assassins and their methods, Melman commented today, citing a novel written by a former Mossad officer, Mishka Ben-David, the plot of which bears a close similarity to the abortive poison attack on the Hamas leader Khaled Misha'al in Jordan in 1997. That case caused huge political embarrassment when two agents using false Canadian passports fled to the Israeli embassy in Amman. Governors to come together over wind energy Gov. Bob McDonnell and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar don't have much in common when it comes to offshore drilling, but wind energy may be another story. Later this week, McDonnell and other mid-Atlantic governors will go to Washington to discuss how states can proceed in a "coordinated" fashion to access wind energy off the Atlantic coast. Last summer, federal authorities granted clearance to permit offshore wind projects along the coasts of New Jersey and Delaware. There's also a tower off Massachusetts' coast gathering wind data. And federal officials are reviewing applications for projects off Florida and Georgia. To speed along the process in Virginia, several lawmakers have filed bills this year to establish a state wind energy authority. Mexican gray wolf on loose in Forest Lake A Forest Lake science center hopes that the beckoning howls of 41 wolves and a waiting meal of venison will entice a missing Mexican gray wolf back to the cage it escaped after a break-in over the weekend. The biggest risk, said Bob Ebsen, education director for the Wildlife Science Center, isn't to people or pets but to the missing female wolf itself. The shy 55- to 60-pound wolf has never been in the wild and has had no hunting experience. It could be shot by someone who thought it was a coyote, harassed to the point of injury or wind up as roadkill, he said. Ebsen doesn't know who broke open the pen holding three female wolves Sunday night. "There are people out there who do things because they think it's the right thing to do, but the animal isn't benefiting now," he said. "You have a wolf that's been in a cage its whole life. It's a critically endangered species. ... They need housing facilities to recover this population." There are fewer than 150 Mexican gray wolves on the planet, he said. Bull trout protections up for public review MISSOULA, Mont. — A U.S. Fish and Wildlife plan that would more than quadruple habitat protection for bull trout in the West is up for public review. The agency is holding information sessions on the proposal in Montana, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Nevada. Biologist Wade Fredenberg, who held one session in Missoula on Tuesday, says people want to know what's happening in their home waters. Another public hearing is set for Boise, Idaho on Feb. 25. The plan would designate 23,000 miles of streams and 533,000 acres of lakes and reservoirs in the five states as critical bull trout habitat. Final action is expected Sept. 30. Operation Aphrodite (Video) [WRH] PAM COMMENTARY: "Something happened," huh? The point of this video, linked to by WhatReallyHappened.com, is that the military had been using remote controlled aircrafts since WWII. Obviously, many 9/11 truthers feel that the "terrorist" planes on 9/11 were actually government planes controlled remotely. Assembly backs limits on BPA in baby bottles Madison — The Assembly voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to ban the sale and manufacture of BPA in baby bottles and cups for children age 3 and younger, clearing the way for the matter to become law. The measure, passed 95-2, also requires that these items made without BPA be labeled to let consumers know that they don't contain the chemical. "Today, we are putting the safety and well-being of citizens before corporate profits," said state Rep. Kelda Helen Roys (D-Madison), the bill's co-sponsor. Last month, the state Senate unanimously passed an identical bill. The measure moves to Gov. Jim Doyle for his signature to become law. He is expected to sign it. PAM COMMENTARY: States stepping in to be responsible, where the Federal government won't. Nine hospitalized in Olympic concert chaos at LiveCity Yaletown In front of the stage, several barricades had collapsed under the weight of the surging crowd and chaos unfolded. "One of the band said the barricade had broken and it was sharp and people were hurt," Stewart said. "We heard a volunteer say a girl had hurt her foot and another girl had her leg cut pretty badly." Several ambulances were called, the concert was cancelled and all the estimated 7,600 in attendance were asked to leave. The future of the next few days of concerts is in doubt. PAM COMMENTARY: Canada wanted those winter games SO BADLY, and now look at the wall-to-wall misfortunes they're having. Must be their bad karma for harassing anti-Olympic activists, or detaining Amy Goodman at the border. Mexico's earthquake recovery could be a model for Haiti MEXICO CITY -- The devastating 1985 earthquakes delivered Felipe Lembrino a mixed blessing: one year living in a squalid makeshift camp for the displaced, but also a new home built on government-granted land, financed by the Red Cross, constructed with his own calloused hands. But it was not until Mexicans like Lembrino launched large protests against ineffective government -- barrio por barrio, neighborhood by neighborhood -- that they were assured permanent housing. ``The people of Haiti, they need to get together -- not everyone for himself, like we're seeing on television,'' Lembrino, 64, said of early images of Haitians fighting each other at aid distribution centers following last month's quake. Spurred by the social unrest following the quakes, the Mexican government, aid groups and activists built or rehabilitated nearly 100,000 housing units in the capital in less than two years -- an achievement widely considered a success that could serve as a model for quake-torn Haiti. Malaria, not murder felled King Tut “However, most of the disease diagnoses are hypothetical, derived by observing and interpreting artifacts and not by evaluating the mummified remains,” the paper says. But study researchers, led by Zahi Hawass of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo, were given unique and unfettered access to the withered corpses of Tut and many of his supposed ancestors. Using high-tech medical scanning equipment and DNA testing of mummified tissues, the researchers ruled out everything from Marfar to murder. Instead they found genetic evidence of the Plasmodium falciparum parasite — the creature that causes malaria – in the young monarch’s remains, as well as in those of his mother and father. The presence of malaria, accompanied by imaged evidence of degenerative bone diseases such as Kohler disease II, could have led to an acute episode of the mosquito-borne ailment when Tutankhamun broke his leg – likely by accident — during the ninth year of his reign. Obama offers loan to help fund two nuclear reactors President Obama seized a key Republican energy initiative as his own Tuesday, promising $8.33 billion in federal loan guarantees for a pair of Georgia reactors that he said would give new life to the U.S. nuclear power industry and create a surge of high-skill jobs. By helping to finance the construction of the reactors -- the first new U.S. nuclear power units in more than 30 years -- Obama is hoping to jump-start his efforts to pass comprehensive climate-change legislation, which has stalled in Congress in the face of GOP opposition. The president is also casting the nuclear initiative as a centerpiece of his plan to produce clean-energy jobs, although construction on the two reactors would not begin for more than a year. Nonetheless, after touring a Maryland training facility for energy jobs, Obama said the competition for those positions worldwide will be fierce. "If we fail to invest in the technologies of tomorrow, then we're going to be importing those technologies instead of exporting them," he said. "We will fall behind. Jobs will be produced overseas instead of here in the United States of America. And that's not a future that I accept." PAM COMMENTARY: "Clean" energy? What's so clean about radioactive waste? Electric motor expertise sold Spanish firm on Milwaukee In the race to attract green jobs, it turns out that Milwaukee's old-economy legacy of manufacturing is more plus than minus. The strengths of a region once known as the "machine shop to the world" helped set it apart from nearly 80 other cities considered by Spain's Ingeteam, which announced Tuesday it will open its first U.S. factory in Milwaukee's Menomonee Valley. Ingeteam expects to begin construction in April on a factory that it hopes to open in January with about 50 to 60 employees, said Alex Belaustegi, director of Ingeteam's renewable energy business. The factory is expected to employ 275 people by 2015. Ingeteam initially looked at 76 locations in eight states before narrowing the list to two finalists: Milwaukee and Grand Rapids, Mich., said Timothy Sheehy, president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. The key differentiator for Milwaukee: its labor force. In particular, Milwaukee had far and away the most people employed in the making of electric motors, the province of local firms including Rockwell Automation Inc. and New Berlin's ABB. Scientists: Teton Range bighorn herd at risk JACKSON, Wyo. — The roughly 100 animals that make up the isolated Teton Range bighorn sheep herd are at risk of extinction because they no longer migrate from their tough high-mountain habitat during the winter and are genetically isolated, scientists said. The herd used to migrate every winter from the high peaks of the Tetons to lower, warmer climes. The herd stopped migrating after about 1950 as development and domestic sheep grazing increased at lower elevations, said biologist Aly Courtemanch, a University of Wyoming master's degree candidate working for the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. "Their winter range was taken over by houses and roads," she said. Courtemanch and other researchers are using tracking devices and help from backcountry skiers to learn how the herd survives harsh temperatures and sparse winter habitat. It's the most recent effort of the Teton Bighorn Sheep Working Group, which formed in the early 1990s. Southeast timber coalition loses lawsuit over Tongass logging At more than 26,000 square miles, the Tongass is about the same size as West Virginia and is often labeled the "crown jewel" in the national forest system. It encompasses most of Southeast Alaska. The Bush plan leaves about 3.4 million acres of the 17 million acre forest open to logging and other development, including about 2.4 million acres of backcountry areas that are remote and roadless. About 663,000 acres are in areas considered most valuable for timber production. Mark Gnadt, a spokesman for the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, said his group was pleased with what he called a common-sense decision. "Had it gone the other way, it would've thrown out requirements for buffer strips to protect salmon streams and other guidelines most all Southeast Alaskans agree are reasonable parameters for the timber industry," Gnadt said. Palin slams ‘Family Guy’ over Down character JUNEAU, Alaska - Sarah Palin is lashing out at the portrayal of a character with Down syndrome on the Fox animated comedy “Family Guy.” In a Facebook posting headlined “Fox Hollywood — What a Disappointment,” the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee and current Fox News contributor said Sunday night’s episode felt like “another kick in the gut.” Palin’s youngest son, Trig, has Down syndrome. The episode features the character Chris falling for a girl with Down syndrome. On a date, he asks what her parents do. She replies: “My dad’s an accountant, and my mom is the former governor of Alaska.” Former city worker admits he led drug cell A former Houston Parks Department employee turned narco-trafficker admitted in federal court Tuesday that he led a drug cartel cell that moved millions of dollars worth of cocaine from Monterrey, Mexico, to Houston. Authorities have long contended that after his brother was murdered in Mexico, Jaime Zamora took sole control of the business in Houston, exchanging bulk cash and drugs in his East End home, as well as in his parents' house across the street. On Tuesday, he pleaded guilty to conspiring to possess with intent to distribute cocaine after he was snared in an undercover operation by a drug enforcement agent . He also is accused in state court of masterminding the Houston killing of a man he mistakenly thought was a hated drug rival, “El Narizon,” Spanish for Big Nose. Instead, the victim of the killing was just a man out having dinner with his family, shot down as his children watched. Surprise! Doctors Learn Some Drugs are Stinky; Doctors Confused by Patients Who Quit Pills Found Out That Many Drugs Reek Any good doctor will know about a drug's side effects, both brand names and generics before they prescribe it. But a doctor may have no idea that your medication tastes like fish. A group of family physicians in Georgia were surprised to learn that many of their diabetes patients had stopped taking a well-known medicine called metformin because it smelled like "dead fish," according to a clinical observation published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Now these doctors want to warn other physicians to be on the lookout for stinky drugs. "A physician may prescribe a drug and as far as seeing the drug, they may never have seen the tablet before and certainly never tried smelling it," said J. Russell May, a co-author of the clinical observation and a professor at the University of Georgia College of Pharmacy in Athens. Ga. PAM COMMENTARY: Nice little graphic on this article. Report: Wisconsin 2nd in nation in organic farms MILWAUKEE - The latest agricultural numbers show Wisconsin with more than 1,200 certified organic farms, which is second in the nation behind California. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also said Tuesday that Wisconsin leads the nation in sales of organic cranberries and beef cows. The numbers are from 2008, which was the most recent information available. Even though Wisconsin has a lot of organic farms, they are on average smaller than similar farms in other states. So Wisconsin is only sixth in the U.S. in total organic sales. Anti-whaling activist in custody on Japanese ship A New Zealand anti-whaling activist is being held in custody on a Japanese whaling ship after secretly boarding it the day before as part of a protest, the whalers said. Diplomats in New Zealand and Tokyo have been meeting to discuss what to do with Pete Bethune, who jumped aboard the Shonan Maru No.2 from a power-ski on Monday. Mr Bethune was the captain of the protest boat Ady Gil that sank after a collision with the Shonan Maru No.2 last month. He boarded the Japanese ship with the stated goal of making a citizen's arrest of the ship's captain and of handing over a $3 million bill for the destruction of the Ady Gil. The daring boarding is the latest escalation by the US-based Sea Shepherd activist group, which is trying to disrupt the Japanese whale hunt. PAM COMMENTARY: Why do the Japanese need whale meat so badly? I assume the whalers are just profiteers -- that's usually the way crime works. US senator says Japan base presence 'can be modified' TOKYO — A senior US senator and defence expert said he believes the American military presence in Japan "can be modified", as a row simmers over an air base with a new centre-left government in Toyko. But Senator Jim Webb also warned that the near 50,000 US armed forces in Japan, who are now concentrated on southern Okinawa island, remain essential to maintaining stability in the East Asian region. Washington and Tokyo have quarrelled over the planned relocation of the Futenma Air Station on Okinawa since a new Japanese government last year said it would review the plan for a fresh base, citing local opposition. Webb -- an ex-combat Marine and long-time Japan expert who heads the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on East Asia -- said that "I believe that the American military presence in Japan can be modified." US wants Japan's quick decision over airfield The United States is stepping up pressure on Tokyo to come to a quick conclusion over the relocation of US troops in Japan. Visiting US Senator Jim Webb said on Monday that a solution needed to be found quickly. In 2006, Washington and Tokyo agreed to relocate US troops stationed at Futenma Marine airfield from the larger city of Ginowan in Okinawa to the smaller town of Nago. However, the new Japanese government that took office last September announced that it would decide on the deal by May. Webb, a member of the US Senate Armed Services Committee, said the main purpose of his visit was to listen to the views of the Japanese government. Is defence treaty with US set to collapse? ALMOST exactly half a century ago, Tokyo and Washington signed a landmark agreement so divisive it forced then US president Dwight D Eisenhower to cancel a trip to Japan, led to the resignation of Japan’s prime minister Nobusuke Kishi and sparked large riots and violent demonstrations by students and trade unionists across the country. Yet, despite the best efforts of its opponents, the US-Japan Security Treaty (Ampo) – the keystone of US defence policy in Asia – is still with us. The two sides officially celebrated its anniversary last month, even as they were buffeted by what could be the most serious crisis in the treaty’s history. Many wonder if it will survive 2010 at all. The treaty is one of the odder creations of international diplomacy because it depends on a key contradiction: how can a country that is supposedly neutral and pacifist also be a key player in the American global defence network? The answer, points out Japan-based political scientist Douglas Lummis, is Okinawa, Japan’s southern-most prefecture. Nearly 1,000 miles from Tokyo, and a psychological world away, Okinawa hosts about 75 per cent of all US military facilities in Japan. Thousands of young marines – many battle-scarred from Iraq and Afghanistan – are uneasily stationed there. The marine’s Futenma air base squats right in the centre of crowded Ginowan city, bringing noise, pollution and crime. For decades, Okinawans complained of being forced to bear the burdens – and contradictions – of the nation’s entire defence strategy. Out of sight and mostly out of mind of the mainland, they demanded the US bases and troops be spread more evenly in Japan. Until last year, they were largely ignored by a succession of conservative governments led by the Liberal Democrats (LDP). But the election of the liberal-left Democrats (DPJ) under prime minister Yukio Hatoyama has raised expectations of long-awaited change. Use of temps to fill jobs may no longer signal permanent hiring When employers hire temporary staff after a recession, it's long been seen as a sign they'll soon hire permanent workers. Not these days. Companies have hired more temps for four straight months. But they remain reluctant to make permanent hires because of doubts about the recovery's durability. Even companies that are boosting production seem inclined to get by with their existing workers, plus temporary staff if necessary. "I think temporary hiring is less useful a signal than it used to be," says John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo. "Companies aren't testing the waters by turning to temporary firms. They just want part-time workers." The reasons vary. But economists and business people say the main obstacle is that employers lack confidence that the economic rebound has staying power. Many fear their sales and the overall economy will remain weak or even falter as consumers spend cautiously. Democratic Sen. Bayh of Indiana won't run for reelection Bayh cited the lack of bipartisanship on Capitol Hill as his main reason for leaving, adding to skepticism that the fractiousness in Washington can be repaired and undermining President Obama's efforts to build bridges. "There is too much partisanship and not enough progress -- too much narrow ideology and not enough practical problem-solving," Bayh said in a statement. "Even at a time of enormous challenge, the people's business is not being done." His announcement in Indianapolis came amid Democrats' rising anxiety about the party's national standing, especially among independent voters who tend to identify with middle-of-the-road Democrats such as Bayh. A growing anti-incumbent mood fueled Republican Scott Brown's victory last month in a special election for the Senate seat long held by the late Edward M. Kennedy, one of the chamber's stalwart liberals. Democrats were defeated in the 2009 gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey. And senior Democratic Sens. Byron Dorgan (N.D.) and Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) announced recently that they will not run for reelection. National polls underscore the American public's disenchantment with the government: Just 36 percent of those surveyed said they planned to vote to reelect their representative in Congress, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll this month. A hungry India balks at genetically modified crops MUMBAI, India — It began quietly in America a decade ago, with a tomato. Since the introduction of the Flavr Savr tomato, engineered for long shelf life, genetically modified food has become a fact of American life. Not so in India. The debate over GM food, long settled in America, is noisily beginning here. Last week, India halted the commercial release of the world's first genetically engineered eggplant, called Bt brinjal. The environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, said that given the lack of consensus within the scientific community and the pitch of public opposition, further study was needed to guarantee consumer safety. Why the skepticism over a technology many scientists say is crucial for feeding the 9 billion people who will populate the planet by 2050? To many in India, embracing Bt brinjal - which has a gene owned by Monsanto Co - also means embracing corporate farming and surrendering some control of the nation's food supply to a powerful foreign company. They worry this could have disastrous consequences for the nation's 100 million small farming families. PAM COMMENTARY: The issue of GMOs were never "settled" in America -- they were just forced on the population here in the midst of a serious disinformation campaign. Time for another flashback to India's favorite agri-activist... Vandana Shiva on Farmer Suicides, the U.S.-India Nuclear Deal, Wal-Mart in India and More (FLASHBACK) [DN] AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the water tower protests? VANDANA SHIVA: In the state of Rajasthan, which is the capital of the production of mustard--and mustard in India is very symbolic. It’s the color of our spring. When spring comes, we dress in the yellow of the mustard flower. It’s our staple oil, and we love the pungency of it. 1998, Monsanto and Cargill managed to get a ban on indigenous oils in order to create a market for soya oil, something we’ve never eaten before. We led a movement of women to bring back the mustard. But today, 70% of the oil India is eating, edible oil--and India was the capital of edible oil production—mustard, sesame, linseed, coconut, wonderful healthy oils—today, 70% of our edible oil market is soya oil dumped on us, palm oil dumped on us. And, as you know, today soya is being cultivated in cutting the Amazon, and palm oil is being cultivated cutting the rain forest of Borneo. When the farmers can’t sell their mustard—nobody’s buying it—they’ve had protests. Twelve farmers were killed in Central India. And there was a farmer who climbed onto the water tower a few months ago, mimicking a Bollywood film, but basically saying he would jump to suicide if the farmer’s mustard was not bought. This hijacking of the market for agriculture by a handful of agribusiness, which is what the rules of WTO are—the Agreement on Agriculture is basically putting all of agriculture into the hands of ADM, ConAgra and Cargill, and all the seed sector into the hands of Monsanto—it must necessarily destroy more and more farms, more and more farming, and push more farmers to suicide for a while, unless we get a change. We work for the change, and our work in Navdanya shows that farmers can double their incomes by using their own seeds, doing organic farming. All they need is a joining of hands with urban consumers and definitely a change in the rules of trade, which have treated the rights of Cargill as fundamental rights. And something Americans don’t know much about, the nuclear deal with India has a twin agreement, and that twin agreement is on agriculture. It’s called the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, and on the board of this agreement are Monsanto, ADM and Wal-Mart. So a grab of the seed sector by Monsanto, of the trade sector by the giant agribusiness, and the retail sector, which is 400 million people in India, by Wal-Mart. These are issues that are preoccupying us for about democracy in India right now. Energy firm picks Milwaukee for plant Politicians and business leaders were quick to celebrate - and claim credit for - Monday's announcement that a Spanish company will bring hundreds of new jobs to Milwaukee. Wisconsin's current governor, two candidates to succeed him, and not one but two regional economic development alliances all lined up to score points from a new Menomonee Valley plant for Ingeteam, a Spanish manufacturer of wind-turbine generators. About 270 manufacturing jobs will be created by the plant, said Greater Milwaukee Committee President Julia Taylor. Building the plant will bring construction jobs as well, said Patrick Curley, chief of staff to Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. It will be Ingeteam's first North American factory, said Gale Klappa, co-chairman of the Milwaukee 7 economic development coalition. Ingeteam chose the valley because of its proximity to workers, I-94 and Spanish-speaking neighborhoods, as well as Milwaukee's "great reputation for manufacturing," said Barrett, also a Milwaukee 7 co-chairman. Norway plans the world's most powerful wind turbine Norway plans to build the world's most powerful wind turbine, hoping the new technology will increase the profitability of costly offhsore wind farms, partners behind the project said Friday. With a rotor diametre of 145 metres (475 feet), the 10-megawatt protype will be roughly three times more powerful than ordinary wind turbines currently in place, Enova, a public agency owned by Norway's petroleum and oil industry ministry, said. The world's largest wind turbine, 162.5 metres (533 feet) tall, will be built by Norwegian company Sway with the objective of developing a technology that will result in higher energy generation for offshore wind power. It will first be tested on land in Oeygarden, southwestern Norway, for two years. The gain in power over current turbines will be obtained partly by reducing the weight and the number of moving parts in the turbine. According to the NTB news agency, the prototype will cost 400 million kroner to build and could supply power to 2,000 homes. Fish plant works to clean up its act, eliminate smell with $20M L. Preston Bryant, the secretary of natural resources under then-Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, summoned company executives to his office in Richmond. "I basically told them they needed to do something pretty drastic or else," Bryant recalled. "I think they heard me loud and clear." What happened next has become lore in Reedville, a coastal fishing village affiliated with the menhaden industry for the past 150 years. Omega executives from Houston flew into town unannounced, landing at a small corporate airstrip. They held a closed-door meeting, toured the plant on foot and by boat, then fired top managers and staff. "They decided we needed a culture change in Reedville," Landry said. Since then, a new general manager has been hired: Monty Deihl, a military veteran who grew up in Reedville and whose family has worked in the menhaden industry for decades. "When I was a kid around here, septic waste went straight into the creek. And that was pretty much true with the plant," Deihl said during a site tour last month. "But we've cleaned up. This is a different place. We have to be." PAM COMMENTARY: I'd rather have flaxseed oil as my Omega-3 supplement. I'm amazed that the government of Virginia (under the Democrat Kaine, of course) could get them to clean up their act. FPL power-line plan could prove costly for some Miami-Dade officials Nonetheless, the recent defeat of Feliu, a 12-year veteran of the South Miami City Commission, underscores how FPL's campaign to install high-voltage power lines in communities across South Florida is taking a toll on local politicians. Immediately before the election, WTVJ-NBC 6 aired a news report that said that five FPL executives from FPL's Jupiter headquarters contributed $250 apiece, the maximum contribution allowed, into Feliu's campaign coffers. Feliu said at the time these contributions didn't affect his favoring of the project. That didn't dissuade some residents. George Khuly said on election day that his vote for Stoddard came down to one point: ``I don't want the FPL lines.'' PAM COMMENTARY: More political wreckage from FPL... and I've wondered if the huge numbers of tumors on the backs of sea turtles had anything to do with FPL's Turkey Point nuclear power plant being located on prime sea turtle habitat. Ex-Clinton prosecutor Starr to lead Baylor Kenneth Starr, the prosecutor whose investigations into the administration and behavior of former President Bill Clinton made him a lightning rod for partisan politics, has been named president of Baylor University. The announcement ended an 18-month search that began after regents fired former president John M. Lilley in 2008, saying they had lost confidence in his ability to serve Baylor's many constituencies. Starr, 63, has been dean of Pepperdine University's law school since 2004. He is scheduled to be introduced on the Baylor campus Tuesday afternoon and starts work June 1. Baylor is the nation's largest Baptist university. Monday, he was praised for his academic and administrative credentials — the Pepperdine law school vaulted up more than 150 spots in the U.S. News and World Report rankings during his tenure — and for his potential to pull together the sometimes-fractious Baylor community. PAM COMMENTARY: For schools who'd rather have sensationalist news headlines than top academic credentials... I wonder whose b------ he'll be investigating there. On Crete, New Evidence of Very Ancient Mariners Early humans, possibly even prehuman ancestors, appear to have been going to sea much longer than anyone had ever suspected. That is the startling implication of discoveries made the last two summers on the Greek island of Crete. Stone tools found there, archaeologists say, are at least 130,000 years old, which is considered strong evidence for the earliest known seafaring in the Mediterranean and cause for rethinking the maritime capabilities of prehuman cultures. Crete has been an island for more than five million years, meaning that the toolmakers must have arrived by boat. So this seems to push the history of Mediterranean voyaging back more than 100,000 years, specialists in Stone Age archaeology say. Previous artifact discoveries had shown people reaching Cyprus, a few other Greek islands and possibly Sardinia no earlier than 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. The oldest established early marine travel anywhere was the sea-crossing migration of anatomically modern Homo sapiens to Australia, beginning about 60,000 years ago. There is also a suggestive trickle of evidence, notably the skeletons and artifacts on the Indonesian island of Flores, of more ancient hominids making their way by water to new habitats. Even more intriguing, the archaeologists who found the tools on Crete noted that the style of the hand axes suggested that they could be up to 700,000 years old. That may be a stretch, they conceded, but the tools resemble artifacts from the stone technology known as Acheulean, which originated with prehuman populations in Africa. Universities are crumbling, secret database reveals (UK) Scores of university halls of residences and lecture theatres in the UK were judged "at serious risk of major failure or breakdown" and "unfit for purpose", a secret database obtained after a legal battle by the Guardian reveals. Some of the most popular, high-ranking institutions, such as the London School of Economics, had 41% of their lecture theatres and classrooms deemed unsuitable for current use, while Imperial ­College London had 12% of its non-residential buildings branded "inoperable". At City University, 41% of the student digs were judged unfit for purpose. Universities argue they have spent hundreds of millions in refurbishment since the judgments were made two years ago and use some of the buildings for storage purposes only. The government agency that holds the information, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce), was forced to reveal it after an information tribunal ruled in the Guardian's favour, agreeing that it was in the public's interest for the data to be made public. Ringling Bros.' baby circus elephant, Barack, fighting deadly virus; Elephant calf named Barack pulled from circus lineup The first Asian elephant born as a result of artificial insemination at a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus facility has been pulled from the circus lineup after he became infected with a potentially deadly herpes virus. The 1-year-old calf, Barack, is being treated for elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus (EEHV), a disease that has killed several Asian elephants in zoos across the continent in the past three decades. He and his mother were taken off the traveling unit two weeks ago and sent to Ringling's Center for Elephant Conservation in Polk City, about 40 miles southwest of Orlando. The duo had made a brief appearance at the Orlando Amway Arena last month during the circus' "Greatest Show on Earth." Barack is expected to survive, said veterinarian Dennis Schmitt, chairman of veterinary services and director of research for Ringling. The calf, named for the president because he was born on the eve of Barack Obama's inauguration, did not show most symptoms, which include a bruised tongue, lethargy, and swollen head and neck. Trainers noticed, however, he had not been as active as usual. "We're cautiously optimistic that he'll continue to progress," Schmitt said. Little is known about the elephant herpes virus. Since 1977, at least 30 acute cases have been reported in North America, and most of them involved elephants younger than 7 years old, according to researchers at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington. About a third of those elephants survived after receiving the antiviral drug famciclovir, which is used to treat the virus in humans. However, EEVH only affects elephants and has not been linked to humans. From milk jugs to furniture In a spacious building in Duluth, Loll Designs has been making outdoor furniture out of recycled materials for four years. Though you can't find the furniture line in a Duluth store, the company's durable, colorful products are popular in states like California, Florida and Texas. Sales grew by 50 percent last year to $2 million and are expected to grow 50 percent again this year. The company also is poised to reach overseas markets with a European distributor. PAM COMMENTARY: This article is almost a commercial for the company, but the interesting part is that they're successful at doing it. The Year of the Tiger: The Chinese century The pace and extent of China's ascent among nations has been remarkable. Barely 20 years ago, it went virtually unnoticed. Today it is an economic superpower – if not (at least yet) a cultural and military one. By every measure it is a rising power. It is now the world's second- biggest economy behind the United States, and some experts predict it will overtake the US within two decades. It has overtaken Germany to become the world's largest exporter. It holds the largest foreign-currency reserves on earth, more than $2 trillion (£1.3 trillion). Barring a collision between China's authoritarian politics and its economic liberalisation – the paradox of "Confucian capitalism" – this momentum will surely continue. Despite its progress, China certainly has great potential weaknesses: a poor rural population and ethnic tensions, to name but two. It is also the world's greatest polluter. But its public infrastructure programme dwarfs anything in the West. In that sense especially, its centralised and authoritarian system is a source of strength, enabling decisions to be taken and vital projects to be launched without the delays that often hold up such investment elsewhere. The West's economic travails have, if anything, made China yet more confident and assertive, and more dismissive of criticism from abroad – be it of its human rights record or its manipulation of the yuan's exchange rate. The fact is that money, not gunboats, gives huge muscle to a diplomacy whose goals are mercantilist rather than ideological. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it seemed a foregone conclusion that the 21st, like the 20th, would be an "American Century". Now, for the first time in almost a millennium, a Chinese century is on the cards. PAM COMMENTARY: Happy Chinese New Year, by the way! It just happens to be on Valentine's Day this year. Tech CFOs are bullish about the economy That collective sigh you're hearing out of Silicon Valley, Austin and other tech outposts is from their chief financial officers. After a brutal 18-month stretch, more than two-thirds expect a bump in sales this year. Their bullish stance is the chief takeaway from an annual survey by BDO, one of the USA's leading accounting and consulting firms. The findings reflect a reversal in fortunes in the minds of CFOs. Last year, only 30% of them forecast improved sales revenue. On average, they anticipate a 9% jump in sales this year. A whopping 68% attributed their rosier outlook to an economic rebound in the United States. This year, 81% of tech CFOs expect merger and acquisition activity in the market to increase. Last year, only 43% predicted as much. More than half say the primary incentive for M&A activity is to increase sales and profits. North Fork Flathead protection latest in growing list of Northern Rockies conservation efforts As momentous as Campbell's announcement was, it's also part of a conservation trend sweeping across the Rocky Mountains on both sides of the border. Canadian conservationists have been pushing the Castles Special Place initiative to protect the mountains north of Waterton Lakes National Park. They've also been trying to extend Waterton's boundary west to the Flathead River. And then there's the big-umbrella project known as the "Yellowstone to the Yukon Initiative" which seeks to protect wild areas along a 2,000-mile swath of the Rocky Mountains. In the United States, Plum Creek Timber Co. is close to concluding its Legacy Project, which transfers 310,000 acres of corporate logging country to public and conservation ownership in the Seeley-Swan, Blackfoot and Clark Fork drainages of western Montana. Last summer, energy companies surrendered exploration leases on 111,000 acres of the Rocky Mountain Front east of Great Falls. "There's a constant theme - people really want to keep this landscape the way it is today," said Bob Ekey, director of the Wilderness Society's Northern Rockies region in Bozeman. "And you can't do nothing. You have to take some kind of action." And you don't have to wait for government to act either. Landowner-based projects like the Blackfoot Challenge and the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Proposal have been securing thousands of acres of ranch and farm land as wildlife habitat. The Nature Conservancy of Canada has been doing similar work around Crowsnest Pass. Victims of electrosensitivity syndrome say EMFs cause symptoms The explosive spread of electromagnetic fields across the world has undeniably spawned at least one disorder: electrosensitivity syndrome. Millions of people -- most of them in Europe -- say they suffer headaches, depression, nausea, rashes and other problems when they're too close to cellphones or other sources of EMFs. They've formed their own support groups, started their own newsletters and taken drastic steps to avoid EMFs, with some even wearing metallic clothing. A band of EMF "refugees" has moved to a valley in southern France to avoid radiation. The list of victims includes Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former director-general of the World Health Organization. In 2002, when she still held her title, Brundtland told the BBC that she didn't allow cellphones in her office because the radiation gave her headaches. In "Full Signal," a documentary that premiered at the 2009 Santa Fe Film Festival, a self-described sufferer of EMF poisoning says that if someone accidentally forgets to turn off a cellphone before entering her house, she starts to feel ill within a couple of hours. "After four hours I can't speak anymore," she says. Alarming, yes, but such symptoms may not have much to do with electromagnetic fields. Even David Carpenter, a professor of environmental health sciences and biomedical sciences at the University at Albany, State University of New York, who often warns against the dangers of EMFs, isn't convinced that low-level radiation can cause such a wide range of symptoms. He believes that EMFs can cause cancer and possibly neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig's disease, but there's no good evidence that cellphones can cause headaches and other vague complaints, he says. "I'm not sure electrosensitivity is real." PAM COMMENTARY: "Sure, it can cause cancer, but HEADACHES? Nahhh..." Photo gallery of 9/11 attacks PAM COMMENTARY: Notice the official government line used to describe the photo gallery, "after terrorists flew two airliners into the towers." Otherwise it's a nice little gallery for 9/11 researchers. Anti-whaling activists face trial in Japan Two Greenpeace activists who were arrested after attempting to expose embezzlement in Japan's whaling fleet will go on trial tomorrow in a case campaigners hope will spark a domestic backlash against the heavily-subsidised industry. Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki were detained in June 2008, two months after intercepting a consignment of whale meat they claimed had been stolen by a member of the crew on the Nisshin Maru, the Japanese Antarctic whaling fleet's mother ship. The activists – who claimed the meat was destined for the black market – face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty of theft and trespass. They said the package, retrieved from a warehouse in Aomori, northern Japan, was marked "cardboard" but contained 23kg of salted whale meat worth around 350,000 yen (£2,477). Greenpeace said it had evidence to prove that at least 23 of the ship's crew smuggled more than 90 boxes of salted whale, disguised as personal baggage, and accused them of defrauding the Japanese taxpayer with the approval of Kyodo Senpaku, which operates the whaling fleet. Kyodo Senpaku insisted the packages were a "bonus" for crew members who had spent several months in the inhospitable waters of the southern ocean. Week of 7th to 13th of February 2010 The Lobbying-Media Complex February 12, 2010 "The Nation" -- President Obama spent most of December 4 touring Allentown, Pennsylvania, meeting with local workers and discussing the economic crisis. A few hours later, the state's former governor, Tom Ridge, was on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews, offering up his own recovery plan. There were "modest things" the White House might try, like cutting taxes or opening up credit for small businesses, but the real answer was for the president to "take his green agenda and blow it out of the box." The first step, Ridge explained, was to "create nuclear power plants." Combined with some waste coal and natural gas extraction, you would have an "innovation setter" that would "create jobs, create exports." As Ridge counseled the administration to "put that package together," he sure seemed like an objective commentator. But what viewers weren't told was that since 2005, Ridge has pocketed $530,659 in executive compensation for serving on the board of Exelon, the nation's largest nuclear power company. As of March 2009, he also held an estimated $248,299 in Exelon stock, according to SEC filings. Moments earlier, retired general and "NBC Military Analyst" Barry McCaffrey told viewers that the war in Afghanistan would require an additional "three- to ten-year effort" and "a lot of money." Unmentioned was the fact that DynCorp paid McCaffrey $182,309 in 2009 alone. The government had just granted DynCorp a five-year deal worth an estimated $5.9 billion to aid American forces in Afghanistan. The first year is locked in at $644 million, but the additional four options are subject to renewal, contingent on military needs and political realities. In a single hour, two men with blatant, undisclosed conflicts of interest had appeared on MSNBC. The question is, was this an isolated oversight or business as usual? Evidence points to the latter. In 2003 The Nation exposed McCaffrey's financial ties to military contractors he had promoted on-air on several cable networks; in 2008 David Barstow wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning series for the New York Times about the Pentagon's use of former military officers--many lobbying or consulting for military contractors--to get their talking points on television in exchange for access to decision-makers; and in 2009 bloggers uncovered how ex-Newsweek writer Richard Wolffe had guest-hosted Countdown With Keith Olbermann while working at a large PR firm specializing in "strategies for managing corporate reputation." These incidents represent only a fraction of the covert corporate influence peddling on cable news, a four-month investigation by The Nation has found. Since 2007 at least seventy-five registered lobbyists, public relations representatives and corporate officials--people paid by companies and trade groups to manage their public image and promote their financial and political interests--have appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, CNBC and Fox Business Network with no disclosure of the corporate interests that had paid them. Many have been regulars on more than one of the cable networks, turning in dozens--and in some cases hundreds--of appearances. Study: Charter Schools Increasing Racial Segregation in Classrooms [DN] JUAN GONZALEZ: Efforts to expand the number of charter schools are being organized around the country. In Virginia, Republican Governor Robert McDonnell outlined a plan on Wednesday to increase the state’s cap on the publicly funded, privately run schools. In Mississippi, the state Senate passed a bill Tuesday to clear the way for charter schools. Here in New York City, the city’s Panel for Educational Policy recently approved closing nineteen public schools at a time when Mayor Mike Bloomberg was pushing state legislators to lift the cap on charter schools. Part of the push for the new charter schools has come from the Obama administration. Under a new program called “Race to the Top,” states are competing for $4.3 billion in federal grants for reforming schools. States submitted applications for the money in January. The money will be doled out by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, a strong supporter of charter schools. AMY GOODMAN: While the charter school movement is growing, some concerns are being raised about the system. A new study by UCLA’s Civil Rights Project suggests charter school growth is increasing classroom segregation. Seven out of ten black charter school students attend schools with extremely low numbers of white students. Black students account for 32 percent of charter school enrollment nationwide, twice the percentage enrolled in public schools. The UCLA report is entitled “Charter Schools’ Political Success is a Civil Rights Failure.” Gary Orfield joins us now on the telephone. He’s co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, author of many books including School Resegregation: Must the South Turn Back? and Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education. Gary Orfield, welcome to Democracy Now! Explain the results of your study. GARY ORFIELD: Very good to be with you. This study, which was conducted by Erica Frankenberg and Genevieve Siegel-Hawley and Jia Wang, uses a number of different federal data sets with data from all over the country to see how segregated charter schools are and to compare them with public schools and to look at them in a variety of ways. Basically, what we find is that although public schools have become much more segregated since the Supreme Court changed the law in the 1990s, charter schools are vastly more segregated than that; and that it’s segregation not just by race, but also by poverty; and that there are not only segregated black schools and some segregated Latino schools, but there’s also segregated white schools that overrepresent whites in some states, including California, and some of which have no—appear to have no free lunch facility. So, basically, the system of choice that’s used here doesn’t have the civil rights protections that good magnet schools have, for example. And the Bush administration, as it pushed the growth of these policies, really stopped trying to enforce civil rights in this movement. So what we’re saying is, these issues really need to be looked at. If we’re going to require or put very heavy pressure on states to increase the number of charters—and most states have relatively few; thirty-five states have just small numbers of students in charters—we’ve got to make sure that there are civil rights provisions attached to them. Manufactured Controversy Backfires As Vast Majority Back Medina, Attack Glenn Beck [AJ] Fox News blowhard Glenn Beck attempted to set up Medina on his radio show yesterday by asking her if she believed the U.S. government was involved in 9/11. “I think some very good questions have been raised in that regard,” Medina said. “There are some very good arguments, and I think the American people have not seen all the evidence there, so I have not taken a position on that.” Medina’s response was measured and even less vehement that than six of the ten 9/11 commissioners, who have all gone on the record to discuss how the government lied about the official story. Furthermore, in merely refusing to completely accept the official version of events, Medina stands firmly with the majority of Americans. An October 2006 CBS/New York Times poll found that only 16% of Americans thought the government told the truth about 9/11 and the intelligence prior to the attacks. Medina is in agreement with no less than 84% of Americans who do not readily accept the official story as true. Callers to 570 KLIF were unanimous in their response to the non-issue, agreeing that Medina’s answer was perfectly acceptable, accurate, and that they wouldn’t change their vote for her. The following clip is astounding in the fact that it completely unveils how the establishment media has once again brazenly tried, but failed, to dictate reality by claiming that Medina’s campaign is now over, despite the fact that the vast majority of Texans completely agree with her position on 9/11. The Legacy of Billy Tauzin: The White House-PhRMA Deal More than a million spectators gathered before the Capitol on a frosty January afternoon to witness the inauguration of Barack Obama, who promised in his campaign to change Washington’s mercenary culture of lobbyists, special interest influence and backroom deals. But within a few months of being sworn in, the President and his top aides were sitting down with leaders from the pharmaceutical industry to hash out a deal that they thought would make health care reform possible. Over the following months, pharmaceutical industry lobbyists and executives met with top White House aides dozens of times to hammer out a deal that would secure industry support for the administration’s health care reform agenda in exchange for the White House abandoning key elements of the president’s promises to reform the pharmaceutical industry. They flooded Congress with campaign contributions, and hired dozens of former Capitol Hill insiders to push their case. How they did it—pieced together from news accounts, disclosure forms including lobbying reports and Federal Election Commission records, White House visitor logs and the schedule Sen. Max Baucus releases voluntarily—is a testament to how ingrained the grip of special interests remains in Washington. In the 2008 campaign, Obama declared his intention to include all stakeholders as he sought to reform the nation’s health care system, but also supported key Democratic health reform policies. Among these were several that targeted the pharmaceutical industry: Allowing re-importation of drugs from first world countries with lower drug prices and providing Medicare with negotiating authority over prescription drug prices in the recently enacted Part D program. These weren’t just promises, Obama had already voted for both of them as a senator in 2007. (Roll Call Vote 132 and Roll Call Vote 150.) Set to carry out this agenda were two Capitol Hill veterans, schooled in the monied Washington culture, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and deputy chief of staff Jim Messina. Emanuel was a former fundraiser, Clinton administration official, investment banker and member of the Democratic leadership in Congress. Messina was the former campaign manager and chief of staff to the powerful Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus. Both were known for their unparalleled legislative abilities. Biology Professor Charged With Murder in Alabama Shooting; Three professors are dead; three others injured A biology professor who the police say began shooting at a faculty meeting Friday afternoon has been charged with murder. Three professors were killed and three others wounded in the shooting at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. Amy Bishop, a Harvard-educated biologist, was charged with a single count of capital murder Friday night. The Associated Press reported that when she was taken Friday night from a police precinct to the county jail, she could be heard saying, "It didn't happen. There's no way. ... They are still alive." Ms. Bishop had been informed months ago that she would not be granted tenure, but a university official said the faculty meeting was not related to her tenure case. One of the dead — Gopi K. Podila, chairman of the department of biological sciences — supported her tenure bid, according to the chairman of Huntsville's chemistry department. The police found the murder weapon, a 9-millimeter pistol, Friday night in a second-floor bathroom in the university's Shelby Center for Science and Technology, The Huntsville Times reported. Women of Color and the Anti-Choice Focus on Eugenics [BF] The truth is: Black women are more likely to be diagnosed with cervical cancer at a later stage and are more likely to die of cervical cancer. Black people make up 13 percent of the population in the United States yet account for more than 49 percent of AIDS cases. AIDS is the leading cause of death for Black women between the ages 25 to 34, and the second leading cause of death for Black men between the ages 35 to 44. Black and Hispanic women have the highest teen pregnancy rates. Forty percent of Black Americans report being uninsured at some point from 2007 through 2008. Black women continue to die from breast cancer at alarming rates and a recent study found that half of Black teenage women reported having had one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases. Will Bill Clinton slow down after heart procedure? CHAPPAQUA, N.Y. -- Right until he was wheeled into an operating room for a heart procedure, Bill Clinton was on the phone, talking about Haiti earthquake relief. An aide finally took the phone away from him. On Friday, the 63-year-old former president seemed to have returned to multitasking, just a day after having a clogged artery reopened and two stents inserted into his chest. "I feel great. ... I even did a couple miles on the treadmill today," Clinton said, speaking to reporters in a leather jacket from the driveway outside his home. He said doctors advised him "not to jog but walk. Not to walk fast up steep hills for a week." Aides said Clinton's second heart procedure in five years seemed unlikely to slow down his brutal work schedule, which included two trips to Haiti, stumping for Senate candidate Martha Coakley and attending an economic summit in Switzerland — all in just over a month. "He's working as hard as he's ever worked. He's done it for 63 years and will do it for the next 63 years. He's never going to stop," said Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist who helped guide Clinton's first presidential bid in 1992. But some other advisers said Clinton's brief hospitalization was a reminder that his health has become more fragile. They worried that he's running too hard. Guantanamo Detainee Deaths - Responding To The Defense Department's Whitewash [R] On December 7, 2009, under the direction of Professor Mark Denbeaux, Seton Hall University School of Law's Center for Policy & Research (CP&R) published its 15th GITMO report titled, "Death in Camp Delta," covering three simultaneous deaths on June 9, 2006 in the maximum security Alpha Block. The detainees were found hanged in separate cells shortly after midnight on June 10, unobserved for at least two hours, rags stuffed down their throats, despite constant surveillance by five guards responsible for 28 inmates in a lit cell block monitored by video cameras. One of them was scheduled for release in 19 days, so why would he commit suicide? The report found "dramatic flaws in the government's investigation (and) raise(s) serious questions about the security of the Camp (and) derelictions of duty by officials of multiple defense and intelligence agencies," who either let them die or killed them, then whitewashed the investigation to suppress it. DOD responded, adding to the coverup, CP&R saying: "The Center has found DOD's defense contradictory to, and inconsistent with, DOD's prior statement in its Naval Criminal Investigative Services (NCIS) report." Binyam Mohamed storm widens as Johnson defends MI5 over torture The political storm over allegations of MI5 complicity in torture escalated tonight after Alan Johnson, the home secretary, accused the media of publishing "groundless accusations" and commentators of spreading "ludicrous lies" about the Security Service. As defence lawyers prepared to challenge the government's success in suppressing severe criticism of MI5 officers made by one of Britain's most senior judges, the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, pointed the finger at the "very top of government" saying senior ministers had probably known about claims of Britain's involvement in torture but failed to take action to stop it. The home secretary's intervention came as Kim Howells, the chairman of the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), came out in support of Jonathan Evans, the director general of MI5, dismissing any suggestion that he had been misled by the Security Service. He said he had seen no evidence that MI5 had colluded in torture. That is at the centre of this week's appeal court ruling, which disclosed CIA-based intelligence showing that MI5 knew that British resident Binyam Mohamed had been subjected to treatment "at the very least cruel, inhuman, and degrading". The appeal court, presided over by the Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge, also referred to a recent US court case where the judge vindicated Mohamed's claims that "UK authorities" had been "involved in and facilitated the ill-treatment and torture" to which he was subjected while under the control of the US. $3 billion Oshkosh deal upheld; Losing bidders appealed, but firm will retain tactical trucks contract The U.S. Army has upheld a $3 billion contract with Oshkosh Corp. after an appeal by two losing bidders failed. It's good news for Oshkosh, which plans to begin building up to about 23,000 military trucks and trailers under the five-year contract starting in 2011. The work will help sustain about 2,000 jobs at the truck manufacturer, which is one of the largest employers in the Fox Valley. It also will support hundreds of jobs at Oshkosh suppliers, including companies in the Milwaukee area. "The residual effect is profound. People are going to be able to keep making their mortgage payments and will feel a little more comfortable now. Maybe they will go out and buy a car. It's a huge boost of confidence," said Jim Kacmarcik, owner of Kapco Inc., a metal-stamping company in Grafton and an Oshkosh supplier. It's terrible news for Sealy, Texas, where defense contractor BAE Systems currently builds the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles used to haul troops and supplies. Sealy, a city of about 5,800 residents 50 miles west of Houston, stands to lose a large percentage of the plant's 3,000 jobs. Classic Car Slideshow [R] PAM COMMENTARY: Jeff Rense linked to this on his site -- beautiful! Police to probe colonel's GTA past Police spokeswoman Const. Wendy Drummond said any investigation will be long and painstaking. "We will be working with the Ontario Provincial Police, as required, to go through any unsolved cases in our jurisdiction that may be somehow related," she said Thursday. "It'll take months before anything can be determined as far as previous cases and how they're linked." On Thursday, OPP investigators continued to scour the Ottawa home where Williams lived with his wife, Mary-Elizabeth Harriman, associate director of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. Williams, who was suspended as commander of the sprawling Canadian Forces Base Trenton after he was charged Monday, remains in a Kingston prison, but he is no longer under the suicide watch in place during his first days in custody. Excerpts released from Jaycee Dugard’s diary; DA uses journal passages in bid to stop her accused kidnapper from contacting her Jaycee Dugard, the California woman who was kidnapped as a child and held as a sexual prisoner for 18 years, both feared and felt protective of the man charged with holding her, newly released excerpts from her diary show. Dugard was 11 years old when she was abducted off the street near her home in South Lake Tahoe, California. She was found in 2009, living in a derelict outdoor addition to the home of Phillip and Nancy Garrido. She had given birth to two children during her time in captivity. Now Phillip Garrido’s lawyers want access to Dugard, 29. As part of a bid to prevent that, the District Attorney in charge of the case has made public portions of a diary she kept during the time she was the Garridos’ prisoner. “I don’t want to hurt him, sometimes I think my very presence hurts him,” Dugard wrote in September 2003, according to papers filed in court. “So how can I ever tell him how I want to be free. Free to come and go as I please. “Free to say I have a family,” she wrote. “I will never cause him pain if it’s in my power to prevent it. FREE.” Child Rapists Protected By The State [WRH] In the October 2009 print edition of the UK Column, we reported in our article “BBC Hides Truth of Girl’s Sexual Abuse Ordeal” the shocking ordeal of Downs Syndrome girl, Hollie Greig, who was horribly abused by an Aberdeen paedophile ring, over a period of ten years. After investigating and planning a documentary, the BBC abruptly dropped the case, despite admitting that Hollie was a reliable and accurate witness. It is important to stress that both the police and qualified medical experts have described Hollie as a competent and entirely honest witness. From the age of just six, Hollie was repeatedly sexually abused by her father, Denis Charles Mackie. Later, Mackie began sharing his daughter with a gang of paedophile “swingers” that has been operating in Aberdeen for many years. The identities of a further seven child victims are already known. There is no question that the gang are well-connected, efficiently organised and totally ruthless. Our frightening story is that they are protected by individuals of “high standing” within the Scottish establishment. In 2000, after 14 years of terrified silence, Hollie eventually told her mother, Anne, about the abuses. Formal statements were made to Grampian Police, providing all the horrifying details and the names of the abusers. They included a senior Scottish Sheriff, a policeman, social workers, a nurse, a solicitor, an accountant, a fire officer, married couples and others. Some of the rapes were carried out at the homes of these individuals, including that of the Sheriff’s sister. Other children were sometimes involved, including children of the paedophiles themselves. The latest chapters in this astonishing and horrifying story about Hollie, and the seven other abused children, have taken place over the past few weeks. The key issues are a continued refusal by Grampian police to fully investigate the overwhelming evidence for the paedophile rapes, and a wall of silence by the Scottish establishment. Whilst there has been some general Scottish media coverage, notably in The Firm and the Aberdeen Press and Journal, the media has been largely silent on what must be one of Scotlands worst top level paedophile scandles. A key figure in the press silence is the Lord Advocate, in her former role as Procurator Fiscal in Aberdeen, when in 2000 she is alleged to have effectively buried the case. Was this to prevent her associate and most influential member of the paedophile ring, Sheriff X, from being investigated, along with the other named members of the fifteen-strong rape gang? Court approves foster care for children taught racist beliefs WINNIPEG--A judge has ruled that Manitoba parents who taught their children racist beliefs and drew racial slogans on one child’s skin cannot regain custody any time soon. “Writing and drawing racist expressions and symbols on one’s child is not just bad parenting. Those interferences with a child’s person are batteries,” Justice Marianne Rivoalen wrote in a decision Thursday that grants permanent guardianship of the children to Manitoba Child and Family Services. “Advocating genocide and the wilful promotion of hatred against an identifiable group are crimes in this country. These children have a right to be protected from these things.” Rivoalen’s decision came two years after the children were seized by child welfare workers after the eldest showed up at her elementary school with racist slogans and symbols drawn on her skin in permanent marker. No one in the case can be identified under provincial law. PAM COMMENTARY: Not quite as bad as the schools who threw kids out for anti-Bush or peace slogans on their t-shirts during Bush's paranoid war-crazed years, but still bad enough. It isn't nice for parents to turn their kids into the freaks of the school, and it's possible that the state can make the case for some type of abuse there. But once you restrict speech in any way, legal precedent is set to restrict it in many more ways. Somehow restrictions of free speech, if allowed to stand legally, always lead down the road to making criticism of the government illegal. Bush tried to bring us to the point where people couldn't criticize his wars without a minimum of government harassment, and he would have liked to accuse peace activists of "terrorism" but most judges and enough police wouldn't go along with that. Still, that's where restrictions of free speech always lead when the wrong person takes power and has that legal precedent at his disposal -- say something about an obvious crazy leading the country into unjustified wars for financial profits, and you're a "terrorist" in jail. Asian carp proposal isn't pleasing many Chicago — In the wake of a three-hour public hearing Friday on the federal government's new plan to keep Asian carp from colonizing Lake Michigan, one thing is clear - nobody is thrilled with it. The plan released earlier this week calls for pumping tens of millions of dollars into building new barriers that the federal government hopes will stop the fish but keep barge traffic moving on the Chicago canal system. It also sets aside $5 million for fresh doses of fish poison and funds research to explore ways to keep the carp from reproducing. Most controversially, the plan also contemplates closing two navigation locks on specific days each month to periodically shut the last doors standing between the fish and Lake Michigan, and it vows to explore the feasibility of permanently cutting off the canal system to the Great Lakes, a project that would take years to accomplish. Business owners who rely on the canals for their livelihood worry that even periodic shutdowns go too far. "We sell the Chicago skyline, that's what we do, and we can't do it if we're not out on the lake," Mike McElroy of Mercury Sightseeing Boats, a business that takes tourists along the Chicago River and through the lock at Navy Pier, said as an estimated 300 people piled into the hearing. Va. House panel OKs repeal of gun-purchase limit Opponents of the bill said scrapping the law would, among other things, open the door for straw purchases of guns that would be resold to criminals and others who want to avoid electronic background checks. "If someone walks into a store and buys 10 brand-new Glocks, they're not putting them into their own pocket for their own protection," said Andrew Goddard, a gun-control activist whose son was wounded in the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech. "They're buying 10 new Glocks because they're trying to sell them to somebody." Goddard said lawmakers have created multiple avenues for gun buyers to avoid background checks. He cited a bill (HB69) the committee endorsed Friday that would exempt firearms and ammunition made and sold within Virginia from federal firearms laws. Goddard and other opponents of the bill said they hope to enlist Wilder's help in defeating Lingamfelter's bill if it reaches the Senate. Wilder did not respond to a phone message left at his office. But the former governor has been critical of elected officials in both parties who have advocated repealing the limit on handgun purchases. Parole official: Garrido acted ‘very strange’; Calif. releases 125 pages of documents about Dugard’s alleged kidnapper Because he was also convicted of rape in Nevada for the same offense, Nevada state parole officials decided to keep Garrido on life parole, however. But they wanted him supervised in California, where he had been living since he got out of prison. From the records, it appears that California did not want to take Garrido on. A Nevada parole agent wrote California parole officials in June 1999 urging them to accept the case, noting that "Ordering the subject to return to Nevada to await acceptance from your state would be disruptive and unproductive for the subject who has managed to change his behavior." California officials apparently relented and Garrido had his first encounter with state parole agents that same month. The agent's opinion of Garrido also seemed high, "He is stable and the prognosis of success is good," he wrote. Only four months later, the same parole agent, Al Fulbright, recommended that Nevada terminate Garrido's parole and reduce him to minimum supervision until then. "On parole from (Nevada) for LIFE. (Why did I take this case?" Fulbright wrote in May 2000, after his bid to end Garrido's supervision apparently failed. Man charged in Norfolk with plotting child's rape Strieper was arrested as part of a sting operation involving an undercover federal informant. According to the complaint, unsealed Monday, Strieper began an online chat with the undercover operative in November that culminated with a plot to kidnap a boy. On those Internet chats between the two, Strieper is heard professing his desire for boys as young as 2, the complaint says. On Dec. 1, the chats had turned to thoughts of kidnapping. "Have you ever thought of just grabbing a nice cutie that is walking home from school or something?" Strieper is quoted asking the informant. "If your flexible you could fly here and then we can drive to a town like 45 min away or something like that," Strieper said the following day, according to the complaint. The two arranged to meet in Norfolk on Feb. 5. When Strieper went to the airport, federal agents arrested him. “Haiti: Killing the Dream”: Excerpt of Documentary on Centuries of Western Subversion of Haitian Sovereignty RAMSEY CLARK: The arrogance with which we went about it, when you think of a young Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as an Assistant Secretary of the Navy, bragging—I can see him there bobbing on the deck now. And he’s writing the constitution for the free people of Haiti. There can’t be a more imperialist mentality than that. These people are too dumb to write their own constitution; I have to do it for them. NEWSREEL: Haiti’s own Dartiguenave is elected provisional president, and the riot-ridden republic begins to function as a nation once again. Here are troops of the Palace Guard, but United States Marines are ever-present. NOAM CHOMSKY: It was a murderous, bloody intervention which destroyed the constitutional systems, reinstated slavery. The Marines stayed there for twenty years. What they left behind them was a military force, a national guard, which essentially took over and has been running—and ran it under one or another dictatorship since. OSSIE DAVIS: In 1957, the United States propped up the regime of Haiti’s most feared president, François Duvalier. Known as Papa Doc, he was a country doctor who became a despot. To ensure he would not be overthrown by the army like his predecessors, Papa Doc built up his own vigilante militia, the infamous Tontons Macoutes. Volunteers for the Macoutes were paid by having free license to steal and extort from the people they tortured, raped and murdered. Toward the end of his life, Duvalier cemented his ties to Washington and arranged for his son, Jean-Claude, to succeed him. After Papa Doc’s death in 1971, nineteen-year-old Baby Doc took over as president for life. Baby Doc plundered the national treasury and, with army support, turned Haiti into a major drug trans-shipment stop. In 1986, a popular uprising ended the three decades of Duvalier dictatorship. Baby Doc was flown into exile aboard a US government jet, taking a vast fortune and leaving behind a devastated, but relieved, country. After years of living in fear, the Haitian people exploded, taking revenge on the most abusive Tontons Macoutes in the Dechoukaj, or uprooting of the Duvalier oppression. Some Macoutes who committed capital crimes suffered the popular justice called “Père Lebrun,” or necklacing: a tire filled with gasoline was placed around their bodies and burned. Grants to expand broadband infrastructure in Va RICHMOND, Va. - Two stimulus grants totaling $21.5 million have been awarded to expand broadband infrastructure in Virginia. The matching grants were announced Monday by U.S. Sens. Jim Webb and Mark Warner and Reps. Tom Perriello and Rick Boucher. A $16 million grant was awarded to Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative to expand an existing high-speed fiber network in southern Virginia. The expansion will connect K-12 schools to the network. Virginia Tech Foundation Inc. received a $5.5 million grant to add an open access fiber-optic network to an existing network operated by Mid-Atlantic. The expansion will connect the university's main campus in Blacksburg with the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine in Roanoke. A Warning To The Tea Party Nation [AJ] Obviously, not only did the GOP-controlled Congress not eliminate a single federal department or agency–or even shrink the size of the federal government at all–it expanded the size and scope of the federal government at every level. And there is one reason for it: Big Government neocons posing as champions of conservatism co-opted and destroyed the Conservative Revolution of 1994. If one wants to put names to these treasonous wretches (and I do), I’m talking about charlatans such as Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott. Anyone who thinks that Newt Gingrich is a real conservative or that he will do anything to reduce the size and scope of the federal government needs to speak with any of those Republican members of the freshman class of 1994. (Sadly, too, some of the members of that great freshman class went on to become Big Government toadies themselves. Such is the power of that Putrid Province by the Potomac.) The Tea Parties of 2010 remind me very much of the Conservative Revolution of 1994. And if the Tea Party Nation is not very careful, they will succumb to the same fate. The signs of a silent takeover of the movement are already appearing. As Toyota Recall Surpasses 10 Million Cars, Federal Regulators Faulted for Slow Response to Early Warnings [DN] AMY GOODMAN: That’s Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, speaking to George Stephanopoulos. Joan Claybrook, your response? JOAN CLAYBROOK: Well, my response is that since Secretary LaHood learned about this in November, I think that he’s been very tough and pushed hard to get Toyota to do these recalls. What I’m talking about is the period from 2004 to 2010 and why the agency was not Johnny-on-the-spot but was really just very lackadaisical about it. And it is true that two former employees, engineers, of the enforcement office at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration did go to Toyota. They still work there. And one of them, a guy named Santucci, was in charge of persuading the agency to narrow the scope of its investigations, so that the company did not have to supply certain kinds of documents and information. And the problem here is not only that the agency is underfunded, but that there’s a huge imbalance of knowledge and resources between a company like Toyota and the government agency. And that’s why the government agency needs to use subpoena power, so that the company knows that if they don’t give all the documents, relevant documents, to the agency, that some executives could go to jail. And the other thing is that there are no criminal penalties for covering up a defect, and the amount of the civil penalty is only $16.4 million, which is chump change to Toyota, that that civil penalty needs to be $100 million to $200 million, so the company knows it’s going to get a real civil penalty if it doesn’t recall dangerous vehicles. JUAN GONZALEZ: Joan Claybrook, what about the revolving door between the regulatory agencies of government that have to do with the automobile industry and the industry itself, people going back and forth from one job to the other? Could you talk about that? JOAN CLAYBROOK: Well, there are probably twenty former agency officials from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration at the highest levels, from administrators, deputy administrators, chief counsels, attorneys, and then also engineers, at a lower level, who have gone to work for major auto companies and been their advocates on issues dealing with auto safety and fuel economy. And there are rules for the highest-level officials not being able to do certain kinds of work for the companies, if they had handled certain matters at DOT. But for the engineers, they can pretty much go from one day working at the agency and the next day working for the company. And in the case of Toyota, they hired two talented engineers who had been helping them keep these particular safety problems from being required to be—these vehicles from being recalled by the government. Activists: Whalers hurt by their own pepper spray ADELAIDE, Australia — Japanese whalers who complained of injuries from rancid butter thrown at them by an anti-whaling group were actually suffering from their own pepper spray attack, the protesters said Saturday. Paul Watson, captain of the Sea Shepherd protest vessel Steve Irwin, said in a statement that video of Thursday's incident showed wind blowing the spray into the faces of the Japanese crew who were aiming it at the activists. The Japanese said Friday three crew members had eye and face injuries from butyric acid, produced from bottles of stinking rancid butter that the activists sometimes aim at the ships. The activists maintain that butyric acid is nontoxic. Watson said the Sea Shepherd video showed two of the Japanese crew on the deck of the Shonan Maru 2 wearing metal tanks on their backs. He said they aimed their nozzles and sprayed at the Sea Shepherd crew in an inflatable boat. "However, the wind was not in favor of this Japanese tactic and the pepper spray is blown back into the faces of the three crew, who can be clearly seen rubbing their eyes. They appear to be suffering irritation to their eyes," the statement said. "I think this video absolves Sea Shepherd of any wrongdoing and demonstrates that the Japanese whalers routinely spin their stories to demonize our efforts to defend the whales from their illegal activities." US senator to seek solutions on Japan base row WASHINGTON — US Senator Jim Webb will head to Japan in a bid to seek solutions in an increasingly rancorous debate over a US military base on the southern island of Okinawa, his office said Tuesday. Webb, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on East Asia and the Armed Forces subcommittee on personnel, will visit Tokyo, Okinawa and the US Pacific territory of Guam on the one-week trip starting Saturday. Webb will "listen carefully to the views of the current Japanese government, the leaders and citizens of Okinawa and Guam and US military leaders and personnel stationed in the Pacific region," his office said in a statement. The United States and Japan in 2006 reached an agreement to shift thousands of US troops to Guam from Okinawa, where the heavy presence of US forces has long led to frictions with the local community. Texas gov. candidate questions any US role in 9/11 A Republican gubernatorial candidate said Thursday she has questions about whether the U.S. government was involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — a statement she swiftly backed away from and one that drew immediate criticism from her better-known rivals in the race. Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison dismissed the comments made by Debra Medina on the Glenn Beck Show that there were "some very good arguments" that the U.S. was involved in bringing down the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. "I don't have all of the evidence there, Glenn," Medina said. "I think some very good questions have been raised. In that regard there's some very good arguments and I think the American people have not seen all the evidence there." Medina later released a statement saying she did not believe the government was involved in the attacks. PAM COMMENTARY: OH WELL, at least she tried to be honest the FIRST time... $272,000 in fines...and counting Muskego — A fence and berms built to perhaps shield business operations that violate city ordinances could cost a homeowner about $272,000 in fines. Since January 2009, Muskego has fined Jason Fry, the owner of the home in the South 8800 block of Racine Avenue, for two suspected violations of city home occupation and commercial ordinances. City officials suspect Fry of carrying on a landscaping and plowing business from his home, which is in an area zoned for residential with very limited business operations allowed. Starting in May, the city added citations for suspected violations of fence height and for having berms that are steeper than ordinances allow. The city allows a maximum fence height of 6 feet. Some of the fencing is placed on the top of tall berms, making a virtual wall between the property and neighboring properties. The fence is on at least three sides of the property. All four of the city citations are automatically renewed every day. At a maximum of $200 per day per citation, the potential total as of Thursday is about $272,000. PAM COMMENTARY: Quite a fine for a home-based business. Police search Ottawa home of Col. Williams OTTAWA—Forensic investigators from the Ontario Provincial Police spent hours Thursday combing through the Ottawa home of an air force colonel charged in the murders of two women and the sexual assaults of two others. Six plainclothes officers carrying boxes arrived at the semi-detached house shared by Col. Russell Williams and his wife shortly after noon. They papered over windows at the home in Ottawa's tony Westboro neighbourhood. The couple's BMW remained parked in the driveway. Williams, the former commander of Canada's largest military airfield, Canadian Forces Base Trenton, was arrested Sunday in Ottawa. The body of one of the victims, Jessica Lloyd, was found Monday. Pa. family: 'Friends' torture, kill disabled woman GREENSBURG, Pa. — Jennifer Daugherty's mom and stepdad didn't press for details when she mentioned she had made some new friends. The 30-year-old had the mental abilities of an adolescent but wasn't the kind to get in trouble, and she was even thinking about getting her own place soon. Police found her body Thursday stuffed into a garbage can in a school parking lot; they say she had been forced to consume detergent and urine — and to write a fake suicide note — before she was fatally stabbed by attackers who also shaved her head and painted her face with nail polish. Six suspects have been charged, including her new "friends." "She was exploited, and her kindness and her handicap made her very vulnerable," Daugherty's sister, Joy Burkholder, said. "She trusted everybody; she believed everyone was good, and no one would hurt her." Daugherty's stepfather said she often traveled on her own by bus from her home in Mount Pleasant to Greensburg, about 10 miles away, for dental or counseling appointments. After she hopped onto a bus Monday, she called her folks later in the day seeking permission to spend the night at "Peggy's" house. It was the last time she would talk to them. Sea Shepherd Successfully Shuts Down Japanese Whaling for 3 Days Thus Far Is Sea Shepherd finally successful in shutting down this year’s Japanese whaling campaign? Maybe. For 3 days now, the Japanese have been unable to kill a single whale. Sea Shepherd’s 2 remaining ships, Steve Irwin and Bob Barker, have been closely tailing the Nisshin Maru—Japan’s factory ship. They are currently on a northeastwardly pursuit and have enough fuel to last a month. According to their website: “Not a single whale has died since the Bob Barker intercepted the fleet at 0100 Hours on February 6th. It is now the third day that the whaling fleet has been unable to kill a whale. We intend to turn these three whaling free days into three whaling free weeks,” said Captain Paul Watson. “I am confident that once again we will severely cut their kill quotas and we will once again negate their profits.” High-speed rail carries high costs, Walker says Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker said Thursday the state should pass up the federal government's offer of $823 million for a high-speed rail line linking Milwaukee to Madison and Chicago - unless millions more for operating the line come with the deal. That's unlikely, he said. Based on what's known about the high-speed rail plan, Walker said he would reject the federal largess. The county executive, a Republican candidate for governor, said he might back the high-speed rail idea if "there was a model that could be shown where it was self-sufficient, where the operating costs were covered by the users." He acknowledged that also was unlikely. Walker warned against hidden costs linked to the line, which he said ultimately could lead to cannibalizing other state transportation projects or prompt some new tax or fee. "There's no appetite for a tax increase," Walker said. He also questioned the basic premise of the line, saying the ticket cost likely would be too high to attract enough riders. Walker said the fast trains wouldn't be as swift as driving a car, when factoring in time needed to get to the Amtrak station in Milwaukee and time to get from a proposed rail station at the Madison airport to the state Capitol or other Madison destinations. Chocolate may cut stroke risk, St. Mike’s neurologist finds Just in time for Valentine’s Day, research out this week suggests eating chocolate may have a positive impact on stroke. Don’t go buying too many heart boxes just yet, though, say the study authors. A new analysis, which involved a review of three prior studies, suggests eating about a bar of chocolate a week can help cut the risk of stroke and lower the risk of death after a stroke. But the evidence is still limited, said study author, neurologist Gustavo Saposnik at St. Michael’s Hospital, University of Toronto. “This is something that requires further investigation,” Saposnik said. One study they looked at found that 44,489 people who ate one serving of chocolate per week were 22 percent less likely to have a stroke than people who ate no chocolate. Another study found that 1,169 people who ate 50 grams of chocolate once a week were 46 percent less likely to die following a stroke than people who didn’t eat chocolate. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, Edward Kennedy's son, opts to retire at 42 The 42-year-old Democratic Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island has decided not to seek a ninth term from the itty-bitty state's First District. Kennedy, the son of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, who died last August of a brain tumor, is the 32d representative and the 14th Democrat to announce their retirement at the end of this congressional term, about 7% of the entire House membership. His departure means for the first time in nearly a half-century there will be no member of the Kennedy clan in the United States Congress. Patrick Kennedy, who was born after the assassination of his uncle, , the president, John F. was a standard liberal on social issues and more centrist on foreign policy and national security. Doug Wilder: Obama needs a staff shakeup I am an admirer of Tim Kaine, whom I backed in his current position as one of my successors as Virginia governor and even recommended for the vice presidency. But a spate of recent losses in races that Democrats should have won underscores what has been obvious to me for a long time: The chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee is the wrong job for him. The changes must go much deeper. Obama’s West Wing is filled with people who are in their jobs because of their Chicago connections or because they signed on with Obama early during his presidential campaign. One problem is that they do not have sufficient experience at governing at the executive branch level. The deeper problem is that they are not listening to the people. Hearing is one thing; listening is another. Some are even questioning whether Obama has forgotten how he got elected and the promises he made to the people who elected him. Don't take my word for any of this. Look at the clear message the American people have been sending at the polls these past few months. PAM COMMENTARY: The original Politico column by Wilder, calling for the replacement of Tim Kaine as DNC chair. Doug Wilder interviewed by MSNBC on Kaine/DNC remarks (Video) PAM COMMENTARY: This is a follow-up interview with Wilder after his column on Tim Kaine in Politico. A lot of people in the Democratic Party have been questioning Kaine's appointment from the beginning, as it seemed to be based on loyalty instead of talent. However, the weight of former Governor Doug Wilder saying the same thing gives real momentum to the idea of replacing Kaine. A good number of Democrats liked Howard Dean's leadership, and didn't think Kaine had any ideas that could be as successful as Dean's winning 50-state strategy. In defense of Kaine, there really wasn't much he could do for some of the lost races. For example, the Massachusetts race was really a vote against the Senate's version of health care reform (the one that would have forced people to buy their own health insurance if they didn't already have it). Maybe someone could have come up with a brilliant strategy to change the focus of that race, but I doubt it would have worked. And Virginia -- again, it seemed to be a vote against Obama's direction rather than a vote for the Republicans' Pat Robertson protégé who promised fantasy-land revenue streams and jobs. People had voted for Obama expecting him to end the wars, close Guantanamo, and especially fix the economy. Kaine's record as governor just prior to Deeds wasn't very inspiring, and so he didn't add anything to Deeds' campaign that way. In fact, Republicans won because turnout for that election was low. A lot of progressives just stayed home, some told me they didn't have anything to vote for. But to Kaine's credit, he dumped truckloads of money into the Virginia race. I even saw positive changes in Deeds' ads after the DNC became more involved in the campaign. I don't think that Tim Kaine can be held responsible for everything that went wrong, but sooner or later wins and losses matter, regardless of whether anyone else could have done better. So far, Kaine has lost and lost again, and he took the job with low expectations anyway. Wilder's hint of finding Kaine a job better suited to him might be the best way out for everyone involved. FBI calls for two year retention for ISP data FBI director Robert Mueller is still keen to get US internet service providers to keep their customers' web logs for up to two years. What is not clear is whether the director is talking about which websites are visited or the specific URL - which would require deep packet inspection and probably break US wiretap laws. Greg Motta, boss of the FBI digital evidence section, said his director wanted "origin and destination information for non-content data", according to CNet. Motta said the Feds simply want to keep powers they already have - since 1986 phone companies have been obliged to keep records of who makes calls, who they call, when they call and how long the call lasts. It's just that now, the Feds want to explicity include web activity as well. He said the FBI did not want to store the actual content of calls or emails. Profile: Dr Conrad Murray Originally from Grenada, Dr Murray was hired by promoters AEG Live, at Jackson's request, as the star's personal physician ahead of his 50-date residency in London, This Is It. Initially brought up on the Caribbean island by his maternal grandparents, Dr Murray proved a hard-working student, eventually following his absent father, also a doctor, to the US - where he enrolled at Texas Southern University. He graduated three years later with a degree in pre-medicine and biological sciences. He continued his medical studies in Nashville, Tennessee, before completing his training in California and the University of Arizona where he studied cardiology. Factbox: Jackson had vitiligo, wore wig, autopsy confirms LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Michael Jackson's full autopsy report was released following the filing of involuntary manslaughter charges on Monday against the singer's personal doctor. Following are some notable or new highlights of the Los Angeles County Coroner's report into Jackson's June 25 death. * Jackson died of "acute propofol intoxication" administered at a level equivalent to that used during anesthesia for "major surgery". A consultant anesthesiologist said there were "no reports of its use in insomnia relief." * None of the recommended monitoring, precision dosing or resuscitation equipment was present in Jackson's room. * Jackson had the skin pigmentation disorder vitiligo, with white patches particularly on his chest, abdomen, face and arms. * The hair on Jackson's head was described initially by police as "sparse and connected to a wig." The autopsy revealed "frontal balding". Anti-whalers, Japanese fleet fire water cannons ADELAIDE, Australia - Activists vowing to stop the killing of whales exchanged water-cannon fire with a Japanese whaling fleet they are tailing in the Antarctic Ocean, as sea confrontations that have led to collisions and a sunken vessel continue. The Sea Shepherd conservation group said its ships, the Steve Irwin and the Bob Barker, confronted the Japanese factory ship Nisshin Maru early Monday. "The factory ship turned on their water cannons and were surprised when the Steve Irwin responded with a more powerful water cannon that had a couple of the whalers diving for the bridge doors," said a Monday statement from the group. Obama Administration: US Forces Can Assassinate Americans Believed to Be Involved in Terrorist Activity [DN] REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, Congress has the authority, under a joint resolution, to challenge any presidential directive. It’s not widely known, Amy, but there are at least three states of national emergency that we’re operating under right now by presidential declaration: one relating to 9/11, another one relating to the war on terror, and a third one relating to Iran. You know, this idea of being governed by an edict, of being locked into this war on terror, poses all kinds of challenges to our Constitution. I take an oath to defend the Constitution. And when I see in the Fifth Amendment where it says that no one should be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, I want to know what’s the constitutional basis for suspending this provision for anyone, even for a moment, because if this is—if this, in any sense, can be set aside, then we are on a slippery slope to anti-democracy. And I think that the reason why this is important for the Attorney General to reflect upon is that the President and all federal officials take an oath to defend that Constitution. This is the Constitution. If they’re saying that the authorization for the use of military force passed after 9/11 is the basis for this action, we should know that they’re saying that. But a fair reading of that said it applied only to those who were involved in 9/11, not someone who joins an organization later on, no matter how misguided or wrongheaded that that may be, that is seen to be a threat to the US, that someone can just say, “Well, you know, you’re done. You’re dead.” You know, what about the right to be able to be told of the charges against you? What about the right to a trial? What about the right to be able to have—be presented by your accusers? This is—this is a dangerous moment. And either—I see it as a constitutional crisis. And Congress has to start stepping up to review these actions without regard to whether it’s a Democrat or Republican administration. AMY GOODMAN: Do you have support among your colleagues, Congressman Kucinich? REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: I just raised this issue in the last week, and it’s been snowing here, so I’ll be speaking to my colleagues about that when I see them. I’m here. I’m hopeful that this week there will still be some sessions of Congress, so we can begin the discussion. Rep. John Murtha, Iraq War Critic, Dies at 77 (FLASHBACK by "Democracy Now!") [DN] AMY GOODMAN: Your early call for withdrawal of troops from Iraq, which shocked a lot of people—a conservative Democrat that you are, the Vietnam veteran that you are—one of the leading Democrats is from here, New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton. She did not endorse that call. REP. JOHN MURTHA: Yeah, I’m disappointed. I’m not sure why that’s happened. She talked to me after I made my statement, and I see she’s finally calling for Secretary Rumsfeld’s resignation. And I think—I don’t know what the reason she’s decided not to endorse my position, but we’re spending $8 billion a month, $11 million an hour, and there’s so many things we could do. We cannot solve these other domestic problems without redeploying. And with 130,000 troops there for three-and-a-half years, the incidents are getting worse. AMY GOODMAN: What message would you have for the senator from New York right now? REP. JOHN MURTHA: Well, I think she has to look at this very carefully and decide. I think she ought to be out more in front. She’s a leader in this country. She’s a leading Democratic nominee, and I think she has to look at what I’ve been saying. AMY GOODMAN: Congress member John Murtha and war veteran. I spoke to him in 2006 here in New York. He died yesterday at the age of seventy-seven from complications after a gallstone operation. He was operated on at the National Naval Medical Center. They said his intestine was damaged during the gallbladder surgery. Former Va. governor urges DNC chairman's firing RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Democratic former Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder is urging President Barack Obama to fire Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine, another former Virginia governor. Wilder wrote of Kaine, in a column for the Politico news Web site, that "the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee is the wrong job for him." In an interview with The Associated Press, Wilder cited Republican victories in last month's Senate election in Massachusetts and in gubernatorial races last fall in New Jersey and Virginia. "I'm just disappointed in his leadership," Wilder told the AP. "And there are a lot of people - a lot of Democrats - who come to me and are disappointed but are not going to speak out like I'm saying it." "Don't let yourself believe that Massachusetts and Virginia and New Jersey were some aberration," Wilder said, "and I hope Tim and the president will take it in the constructive way it was intended." At the White House, civil rights in song Both songs captured the essence of the night: music that vitalized and comforted a generation through one of the most difficult cultural transformations in American history. "The civil rights movement was a movement sustained by music," Obama said. Timed to celebrate Black History Month, Tuesday's concert was the latest installment of the White House Music Series, a string of concerts celebrating uniquely American strands of sound. Since last summer, the series has hopscotched from genre to genre, with nods to jazz, classical, country and Latin music. But this show was genre-free, focusing instead on the songs that gave voice to a pivotal shift in our nation's history. Hosted by Morgan Freeman, the concert was streamed live on the White House Web site and will be televised Thursday at 8 p.m. on WETA. Beer builds better bones, study finds The average diet provides from 20 to 25 milligrams of silicon a day, the researchers said. Other studies contend that people, particularly older people, need twice that to keep their skin elastic and their bones, teeth and gums strong. Beer could be the answer, the study reports. “Beer is a very rich source of silicon,” said lead author Charles Bamforth of the Department of Food Sciences and Technology. Best of the bunch was India Pale Ale, with a higher content of malt and hops and therefore more silicon. “Wheat-based beers contain less silicon, which seems to be related to the lower levels of silicon in wheat malt.” Light beers contained even less silicon because of their corn content, he said. “The darker products, such as the chocolate, roasted barley and black malt all have substantial roasting and much lower silicon contents than the other malts, for reasons that are not yet known,” said Bamforth. Two litres a day of one of high-silicon beer would provide someone with their daily dose of silicon, the study said. Toyota on damage control as scope of recall increases WASHINGTON - In public, Toyota is running apologetic TV ads and vowing to win back customers' trust. Behind the scenes, the besieged carmaker is trying to learn all it can about congressional investigations, maybe even steer them if it can. It's part of an all-out drive by the world's biggest auto manufacturer to redeem its once unassailable brand - hit anew yesterday as Toyota's global recall increased to 8.5 million cars and trucks. Yesterday's safety recall of 437,000 of its flagship Prius and other hybrids, plus a Tokyo news conference during which Toyota's president read a statement in English pledging to "regain the confidence of our customers," underscored a determination to keep buyers' faith from sinking beyond recovery. Meanwhile, Honda Motor Co. said it was adding more than 378,000 cars to a safety recall for air bag inflation problems. It will replace the driver's side air bag inflator on the cars because they can deploy with too much pressure, risking injury or death to the driver. The recall now affects more than 822,000 vehicles. The latest Toyota recall is to fix brake problems. There have been about 200 complaints in Japan and the United States about a delay when the brakes in the Prius were pressed in cold conditions and on some bumpy roads. The delay doesn't indicate a brake failure. The company says the problem can be fixed in 40 minutes. Appeal judge watered down Binyam Mohamed torture ruling The government launched a successful last-minute bid to persuade the court of appeal to erase the most damning details of MI5's complicity in torture from its decision in the Binyam Mohamed case – but has been unable to suppress a letter that details some of the contents of the original draft ruling. On Monday, Jonathan Sumption QC wrote to the court warning that the paragraph in question was "likely to receive more public attention than any other parts of the judgments". This, Sumption pointed out, was because the paragraph would state that MI5 did not operate in a culture that respected human rights or renounced "coercive interrogation techniques". The letter also reveals that the judgment, before being rewritten, said this was particularly true of the MI5 officer known as Witness B who gave evidence in the case – and that this man's conduct was characteristic of MI5 as a whole. Colonel described break-ins for police: Report Col. Russell Williams is sitting in a provincial prison under close watch Wednesday, although authorities declined to say where. The once high-flying career military officer told investigators about four dozen break-ins in addition to the crimes he has been charged with, published reports say. Williams, who has been charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of two women and the sexual assaults of two others, described the string of break-ins that followed the same pattern: stolen lingerie and lots of photographs, the Globe and Mail reported, quoting several sources. He is also alleged to have told police he photographed the two break-ins that led to the rapes and the two murders of women. He has been denied bail on those four charges and remains in custody until his next hearing on Feb. 18. Alcohol abuse weighs on Army The Army needs to double its staff of substance-abuse counselors to handle the soaring numbers of soldiers seeking alcohol treatment, said Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the Army's No. 2 officer. About 300 more counselors are needed to meet the demand, cut wait times and offer evening and weekend services, Chiarelli, the Army vice chief of staff, said in an interview with USA TODAY. Last year, 9,199 soldiers enrolled in treatment after being diagnosed with alcohol problems, a 56% increase over 2003, when the Iraq war started, according to Army records released Monday. Overall, 16,388 sought some type of counseling, data show. TV isn’t making kids fat. It’s the ads It’s not time spent in front of the television, but rather the commercials that are contributing to childhood obesity, a new study suggests. Examiners studied the viewing habits of nearly 4,000 children, ranging from infants to 12-year-olds. They found that TV viewing itself is not an indicator of present or future obesity, as has long been contended. Instead, it was the kind of TV viewed that predicted a child’s likelihood of gaining an unhealthy amount of weight. Those children who watched commercial television and its attendant complement of ads tended to be obese. Children who watched public television or DVDs – essentially TV without the ads – were thinner and stayed thinner, on average. This effect was more pronounced in children under 7. “Commercial television pushes children to eat a large quantity of those foods they should consume least: sugary cereals, snacks, fast food and soda pop,” study author Fred Zimmerman said in a release. Zimmerman is the chair of UCLA’s School of Public Health. Man vs marine in the Chagos Islands Officially British Indian Ocean Territory, the islands are the subject of an ambitious plan by conservationists – backed by the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband – to keep them the way they are, by creating a marine protected area, where fishing and all other exploitation would be banned, of 210,000 square miles – more than twice the land surface of Great Britain. In an age when the oceans and their biodiversity are being ever more despoiled, it would be a supreme example of marine conservation and one of the wildlife wonders of the world – in effect, Britain's Great Barrier Reef, or Britain's Galapagos. The plan excites many wildlife enthusiasts and has the formal support of several of Britain's major conservation bodies, from the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew and the Zoological Society of London to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. The backing of the Foreign Office and the Foreign Secretary is significant. A public consultation on the plan ends on Friday. But there is a notable omission from the plan. It takes no account of the wishes of the original inhabitants, the Chagossians – the 1,500 people living on the islands who, between 1967 and 1973, were deported wholesale by Britain, so that the largest island, Diego Garcia, could be used by the US as an airbase for strategic nuclear bombers. When, in the 1990s, details emerged of the Chagossians' enforced exile, which left them in poverty and unhappiness on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, it was widely seen as a substantial natural injustice; and in 2000 the then-Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, gave them permission to return. However, after 9/11, Diego Garcia assumed a new strategic importance for the US – it is used as a base for bombing missions over Afghanistan (and has also been used for the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" flights taking captives around the world for interrogation). As a result, in 2004 the British Government reversed Cook's decision to let the islanders return, using the Royal Prerogative and bypassing Parliament. The islanders, some of whom are still in Mauritius and some of whom are now in Britain, challenged this decision, and in three judgments in successively higher courts, ending with the Court of Appeal, had it reversed, and won back their right of return. War casualties put UK hospitals under strain – ahead of fresh Afghan offensive Hospitals treating casualties of the war in Afghanistan are close to capacity and coming under growing pressure from the number of troops wounded by the Taliban-led insurgency, a report by parliament's independent watchdog warns today. The demands are so great that the Ministry of Defence will today announce an increase in the number of ward beds at its rehabilitation centre, at Headley Court in Surrey, from 66 to 96, the Guardian has learned. The report comes as ministers have warned of the prospect of further casualties as 4,000 British troops prepare to launch Operation Moshtarak – which means "together" in Pashtu – with US marines and Afghan forces. The aim of the operation, the biggest since the conflict in Afghanistan began, is designed to clear the town of Marjah in central Helmand, a Taliban stronghold and centre of the opium trade, of insurgents. NY governor says he'll step aside only 'in a box' ALBANY, N.Y. -- New York Gov. David Paterson, defying calls from even fellow Democrats to drop out of the race for a full term, said Tuesday that he would leave only if the voters turned him out through the ballot box, or he's carried out "in a box." Paterson spoke to reporters after several days of rumors sweeping the state Capitol about carousing in the governor's mansion, all of which Paterson strongly denied. A few months after Paterson took over from his predecessor, who resigned in a prostitution scandal, his popularity plummeted and many Democrats voiced their preference that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo run for governor when Paterson's term is up. That infighting and the recent rumormongering have further fractured state Democrats and added a decidedly weird edge to the national party's struggle to maintain ground it gained in the last election. PAM COMMENTARY: Go David Paterson! I don't know if New York will ever see another governor who's so honest with the public. Some ditch social networks to reclaim time, privacy Facebook reports that it has 400 million active users worldwide. Make that 399,999,999. Laura LeNoir is done. "I feel better, I feel lighter, I got my privacy back," says LeNoir, 42, an office manager at an educational software company in Birmingham, Ala., who logged off a few weeks ago. "People say, 'You'll be back.' But I read more, walk the dogs more. I'll be fine." As the social networking train gathers momentum, some riders are getting off. Their reasons run the gamut from being besieged by online "friends" who aren't really friends to lingering concerns over where their messages and photos might materialize. If there's a common theme to their exodus, it's the nagging sense that a time-sucking habit was taking the "real" out of life. Chinese farms cause more pollution than factories, says official survey Farmers' fields are a bigger source of water contamination in China than factory effluent, the Chinese government revealed today in its first census on pollution. Senior officials said the disclosure, after a two-year study involving 570,000 people, would require a partial realignment of environmental policy from smoke stacks to chicken coops, cow sheds and fruit orchards. Despite the sharp upward revision of figures on rural contamination, the government suggested the country's pollution problem may be close to - or even past - a peak. That claim is likely to prompt scepticism among environmental groups. The release of the groundbreaking report was reportedly delayed by resistance from the agriculture ministry, which had previously insisted that farms contributed only a tiny fraction of pollution in China. Haiti parents testify they gave kids to Americans Parents of some of the children who 10 U.S. missionaries tried to take out of Haiti after its catastrophic earthquake told a judge Tuesday that they freely handed over their kids, the Americans' lawyer said. The parents' testimony means no law was broken and "we can't talk any more about trafficking of human beings," attorney Aviol Fleurant told reporters. He said he was confident the judge will dismiss the case. Nine of the Americans, most from an Idaho church group, have now been interviewed by the judge, who is to decide whether they will stand trial. The judge did not speak with reporters. PAM COMMENTARY: Even if the parents voluntarily gave the children up, there's still the issue of whether the group set up a legitimate orphanage according to the laws of Haiti, or just started trucking kids around. F.D.A. to Increase Medical Radiation Oversight The federal Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that it would take steps to more stringently regulate three of the most potent forms of medical radiation, including increasingly popular CT scans, some of which deliver the radiation equivalent of 400 chest X-rays. With the announcement, the F.D.A. puts its regulatory muscle behind a growing movement to make life-saving medical radiation — both diagnostic and therapeutic — safer. Last week, the leading radiation oncology association called for enhanced safety measures. And a Congressional committee was set to hear testimony Wednesday on the weak oversight of medical radiation, but the hearing was canceled because of bad weather. The F.D.A. has for weeks been investigating why more than 300 patients in four hospitals were overradiated by powerful CT scans used to detect strokes. The overdoses were first discovered last year at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where patients received up to eight times as much radiation as intended. The errors occurred over 18 months and were detected only after patients lost their hair. Canadian North Fork off limits to mining, energy development British Columbia Lt. Gov. Steven Point declared the Canadian portion of the Flathead River Valley off limits to mining and energy extraction in a speech to his parliament on Tuesday. Citing a new partnership with Montana, Point said the Flathead River Basin would be managed for existing types of forestry, recreation, guide outfitting and trapping uses. His comments came in the annual Throne Speech, which presents the provincial government's agenda to the parliament. "Mining, oil and gas development and coalbed gas extraction will not be permitted in British Columbia's Flathead Valley," Point said. The partnership would also develop new ways of working out trans-border issues. Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer said he would be flying to Vancouver, B.C., next week to sign a memorandum of understanding between the state and the province. PAM COMMENTARY: This is a pollution control effort for the Glacier National Park area. NASA chief: Mars is our mission NASA's emerging exploration plan will call for safely sending humans to Mars, possibly by the 2030s, and de-emphasize exploration of the moon, the agency's leader said Tuesday. “That is my personal vision,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. “I am confident that, when I say humans on Mars is a goal for the nation, not just NASA, I'm saying that because I believe the president will back me up.” Bolden cited appearances set before congressional committees on Feb. 24 and 25 as a deadline for creating the “beginnings of a plan” for human exploration. At those hearings, Bolden said, he will be able only to give a range of dates for a Mars trip because scientific questions, such as mitigating radiation exposure and bone loss, remain unanswered. But he confidently said the 2030s, even the early 2030s, were viable if given a reasonable and sustained budget. Home hazardous: Family's residence in Prattville had been used as a meth lab PRATTVILLE -- The only room in this one-story house safe enough for human inhabitation is a small, non-ventilated room with a toilet, and even that is toxic. Brenda Maitland bought the house, hidden just off Alabama 59, about four years ago. It is where she, her husband and two young daughters were going to swim, ride their new horse, plant a garden -- make a home. But just after a week of living there, Maitland's youngest daughter got sick: sore throat, earaches, watery eyes, burning skin. They were the same symptoms that Brenda Maitland came down with while scrubbing the house the week before the family moved in. "I thought it was the flu," she said. The people who lived there before them were heavy smokers -- so it could have been from that, the family thought. But they learned it was far more than that. They learned they had bought a home that the previous owners had used as a methamphetamine lab. John P. Murtha, Congressman, Dies at 77 WASHINGTON — Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, a gruff ex-Marine who was one of the most hawkish Democrats in Congress but who became an outspoken critic of the Iraq war, died on Monday in Arlington, Va. He was 77. He died while under treatment for complications of gallbladder surgery, his office said. The first Vietnam veteran to serve in Congress, Mr. Murtha voted in 2002 to authorize use of military force in Iraq. But he evolved into a leading foe of the war as it was conducted under the administration of President George W. Bush. “The war in Iraq is not going as advertised,” Mr. Murtha said in November 2005, as he demanded an immediate withdrawal of American troops. He called the Iraq campaign “a flawed policy wrapped in illusion.” Michael Jackson's personal physician pleads not guilty to involuntary manslaughter Michael Jackson’s personal physician entered a plea of not guilty Monday afternoon at a standing-room-only arraignment attended by Jackson’s parents and several siblings. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Keith L. Schwartz set bail for Conrad Murray at $75,000 – three times the standard for involuntary manslaughter cases. The judge also forbade Murray from prescribing heavy sedatives, including propofol, to his patients. “I don’t want you sedating people,” the judge told Murray. CFB Trenton chief charged with murder of two women (Canada) The commander of CFB Trenton, a career officer with 23 years in the military, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of two women, including a corporal at Trenton and a Belleville woman who vanished 11 days ago. Col. Russell Williams, 46, was also charged Monday in connection with sexual assault in two home invasions in the Tweed area, Det. Insp. Chris Nicholas said at a news conference today in Belleville. The charges came “due to a singularity in those incidents,” Nicholas said. “We linked those crimes to a single suspect.” Jessica Lloyd, 27, vanished Jan. 28 and police said on Monday that her body had been found. A second woman, Cpl. Marie France Comeau of the 435th squadron, Trenton, was found dead in her home in Brighton on Nov. 25, 2009. World's tallest tower closed a month after opening The world's tallest skyscraper has unexpectedly closed to the public a month after its lavish opening, disappointing tourists headed for the observation deck and casting doubt over plans to welcome its first permanent occupants in the coming weeks. Electrical problems are at least partly to blame for the closure of the Burj Khalifa's viewing platform -- the only part of the half-mile high tower open yet. But a lack of information from the spire's owner left it unclear whether the rest of the largely empty building — including dozens of elevators meant to whisk visitors to the tower's more than 160 floors — was affected by the shutdown. The indefinite closure, which began Sunday, comes as Dubai struggles to revive its international image as a cutting-edge Arab metropolis amid nagging questions about its financial health. The Persian Gulf city-state had hoped the 2,717-foot (828-meter) Burj Khalifa would be a major tourist draw. Dubai has promoted itself by wowing visitors with over-the-top attractions such as the Burj, which juts like a silvery needle out of the desert and can be seen from miles around. Police "fire live ammunition" at protesters It took the presence of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela to calm the tensions and violence between protesting police reservists and police members at the Beyers' Naude Square, in central Joburg on Monday morning. Police reservists from around the country had gathered to hand a memorandum to the Gauteng MEC of Community Safety, Khabisi Mosunkutu, complaining about working for years without pay only to be overlooked when permanent vacancies are opened. Protesting reservists claim that about 11 of their peers had to be rushed to hospital after being shot with live ammunition by police officers. Given Zondo, a 35-year-old reservist from Orlando, Soweto, said she saw two people being shot at close range by the police officers. "They shot a man and a women and they dragged them into a police truck. When they shook the guy to wake him he was unresponsive," said Zondo, who has been a reservist for 9 years. Robert Fisk: Why does the US turn a blind eye to Israeli bulldozers? This majority of the West Bank - known under the defunct Oslo Agreement's sinister sobriquet as "Area C" - has already fallen under an Israeli rule which amounts to apartheid by paper: a set of Israeli laws which prohibit almost all Palestinian building or village improvements, which shamelessly smash down Palestinian homes for which permits are impossible to obtain, ordering the destruction of even restored Palestinian sewage systems. Israeli colonists have no such problems; which is why 300,000 Israelis now live - in 220 settlements which are all internationally illegal - in the richest and most fertile of the Palestinian occupied lands. When Obama's elderly envoy George Mitchell headed home in humiliation this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated his departure by planting trees in two of the three largest Israeli colonies around Jerusalem. With these trees at Gush Etzion and Ma'aleh Adumim, he said, he was sending "a clear message that we are here. We will stay here. We are planning and we are building." These two huge settlements, along with that of Ariel to the north of Jerusalem, were an "indisputable part of Israel forever." Northeastern Minnesota's moose population continues to decline Northeastern Minnesota's moose population continues to decline, based on the latest aerial survey this winter by the Department of Natural Resources. Wildlife researchers estimate that there were 5,500 moose in that region of the state. With a 23 percent margin of error, the estimate is not statistically different from last year's estimate of 7,600, but it supports other evidence that the moose population is declining. "We don't believe the population dropped 2,000 in the past year, but it's indicative that the population is declining and parallels everything else we've been seeing,'' said Mark Lenarz, DNR wildlife researcher. "Our concern continues.'' Lenarz said this is the first year the survey has agreed with other indices showing the decline. The proportion of cows accompanied by calves continued a 13-year decline, dropping to a record low of 28 calves per 100 cows. The bull-to-cow ratio also continued to decline, with an estimated 83 bulls per 100 cows. Reasons for the decline are uncertain, but researchers believe a warming climate is responsible. "There's more and more evidence suggesting it's related to climate,'' Lenarz said. Warmer temperatures can stress moose and make them susceptible to other diseases and parasites. Mortality from hunting or wolves is not a major factor, Lenarz said. Dominion looks to define its role in offshore wind "Wind is the largest renewable resource available to Virginia and it could end up being the cheapest one of scale," Doswell said. Dominion has joined on as a member of the VOW Coalition, Doswell said, and has been an active participant in studies conducted to measure the feasibility of utilizing the winds off local shores to capture energy. VOW, along with local politicians, has pushed for bills in the General Assembly that call for the creation of a state offshore wind authority with the power to help secure the issuing of bonds and government guarantees for loans, and to facilitate ways that might persuade the state's electricity monopoly to get on board. If the mid-Atlantic is to derive some of its electricity from offshore wind, there are a number of ways in which Dominion might get involved, Doswell said. Carp talks may miss bigger lake challenge; Summit called for fish threat, but biologists also fear ballast water The focus of Monday's White House Asian carp summit is to stop the giant, ecosystem-ravaging fish from slipping in the Great Lakes' back door - the Chicago canal system that links the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. But the governors who called for the summit don't just want to talk about carp; they want the Obama administration to tackle the larger issue of invasive species in the Great Lakes, which have become an ecological stew teeming with at least 185 foreign organisms. And if that discussion is going to occur, it will be impossible for regional and national leaders to ignore what's going on at the lakes' front door - the St. Lawrence Seaway, a manmade navigation corridor between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean. That's the invasive species pathway biologists say poses the most trouble for the Great Lakes, even if Chicago canals and Asian carp are grabbing all the attention at the moment. Oceangoing ships dumping contaminated ballast water are blamed for 57 species invasions since Seaway builders blasted their way into the lakes 51 years ago. Michael Pollan on “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual” [DN] AMY GOODMAN: But explain the issue and the problem with high-fructose corn syrup. MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, I mean, the reason I have suggested that you should avoid products with high-fructose corn syrup is not that we have science proving that it is a worse form of sugar than conventional cane sugar. AMY GOODMAN: Now, again, it’s made out of corn. MICHAEL POLLAN: It’s made from corn. It’s a very complex process that was invented by the Japanese in the ’70s, and it really has been a boon to the food industry, because high-fructose corn syrup is very cheap, because we subsidize the corn, and it has various properties of food science that are very valuable. If you put it in a bread product, it gets a nice brown coating. And it actually helps prevent freezer burn in frozen foods. So—and you make any food sweeter, and we’ll eat more of it, so they’re putting it in everything. So if you can avoid high-fructose corn syrup, you’re probably avoiding a heavily processed food that you should avoid anyway. So that’s why I said don’t eat it. But is it worse than sugar? Not necessarily. Both of them are about fifty-fifty glucose and fructose. They’re joined in a different way. Some people think that might affect absorption rates. But let’s assume they’re the same. And so, they’ve come back and reformulated a bunch of products with sugar. And they’ve said “with real sugar now” or “with no high-fructose corn syrup.” And people—you know, how do you read that? You say, “Well, if they’re boasting about it, it must be healthier.” And so, we now are—we’ve created a health claim for sugar, and I feel somewhat responsible, because it’s very deceptive. So I came up with a rule to avoid all these schemes, which is, don’t buy any food you see advertised on television. That is the only way to avoid their marketing cleverness. And that rule captures most processed food, because two-thirds of ad budgets go to heavily processed food. Only about five percent of ad budgets go to, you know, prunes or walnuts or real foods. So I’m hoping that your common sense will not—you know, will allow you not to tar them with the same brush. US soldier gives four-year-old daughter 'waterboarding' over alphabet Joshua Tabor allegedly told police he had used the technique because he was angry and knew his daughter was scared of water. The 27-year-old, who had recently gained custody of the young girl, said she "squirmed" as he pushed her under the water three or four times, it was claimed. Waterboarding is a controversial torture technique used by the CIA to interrogate al Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay, where water is poured over detainees so they think they are drowning. Mr Tabor, from the Lewis-McChord base in Tacoma, Washington, was arrested after he was seen wearing a Kevlar military helmet and threatening to smash windows. When police went to his home in nearby Yelm, his girlfriend told them about the alleged torture. Mr Tabor's daughter was found hiding in a cupboard with bruises on her back and throat. When asked how she got her injuries, she replied: "Daddy did it." A Federal Effort to Push Junk Food Out of Schools WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will begin a drive this week to expel Pepsi, French fries and Snickers bars from the nation’s schools in hopes of reducing the number of children who get fat during their school years. In legislation, soon to be introduced, candy and sugary beverages would be banned and many schools would be required to offer more nutritious fare. To that end, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will deliver a speech Monday at the National Press Club in which he will insist, according to excerpts provided to The Times, that any vending machines that remain in schools be “filled with nutritious offerings to make the healthy choice the easy choice for our nation’s children.” The first lady, Michelle Obama, said last month that she would lead an initiative to reduce childhood obesity, and her involvement “shows the importance all of us place on this issue,” Mr. Vilsack said. PAM COMMENTARY: Today's kids are exposed to a lot more junk food vending machines than my generation, because schools have turned to food vendors for a part of their budgets. Maybe it really does take a law to stop the madness. Monsanto Indian Farmer Suicide (Video) (FLASHBACK) PAM COMMENTARY: As long as we're on the topic of food profiteering, remember this old story? Beach family goes it alone in suit over Chinese drywall Ben Proto is mad. He's mad at his builder. Mad at his insurance company. Mad at his bank. Proto, like hundreds of homeowners, has a home built with tainted Chinese-made drywall. The gases released by the drywall have damaged his electrical appliances and led him to move his family out of the home. Unlike many of those home-owners who've added their names to the class-action lawsuit, Proto has gone at it alone, spending the past year negotiating with builders, lenders and insurance companies to get the home fixed. So far, none of the companies that helped usher the Protos into their home has come to their aid. All have pointed the finger elsewhere. Sarah Palin's palm cheat-sheet steals her show Has there been a more talked about stolen glance since George H.W. Bush looked at his wristwatch during a 1992 debate with Bill Clinton? On Saturday, former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin glanced at her left palm during a question and answer session at the first National Tea Party Conference in Nashville. The topic: her thoughts on what the top three priorities for the GOP ought to be should the party regain control of Congress. It quickly became apparent that Palin had been glancing notes written on her palm. The Huffington Post produced a photographic close-up, which showed her hand contained the words "Energy", "Tax" and "Lift American Spirits." The phrase "Budget cuts" was also there, though the word "Budget" had been crossed out. Much mockery has ensued -- from members of the press and liberal critics of Palin alike. Andrea Mitchell on Monday tweaked Palin's "cheat sheets" on MSNBC's Daily Rundown, saying she'd written notes on her own hand "just in case I didn't remember" the script. Study: Moms over 40 nearly twice as likely to have autistic children Women who give birth after age 40 are nearly twice as likely to have a child with autism as those under 25, California researchers reported Monday. Surprisingly, the age of the father plays little role in the likelihood of the disorder unless the mother is younger than 30 and the father is over 40, according to the analysis of all births in California in the 1990s. The number of women over age 40 in California giving birth increased by 300% in the 1990s, while the diagnosis of autism increased by 600%. At first glance, it might seem that the rise in older pregnancies could be responsible for the rise in autism, which is now thought to affect as many as one child in every hundred. But the authors of the paper, from UC Davis, calculate that older mothers account for less than 5% of the increase in autism diagnoses. "There is a long history of blaming parents" for the development of autism, said Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto of the UC Davis MIND Institute, the senior author of the report. "We're not saying this is the fault of mothers or fathers. We're just saying this is a correlation that will direct research in the future." PAM COMMENTARY: Well, the two major theories of autism are neurological damage from vaccines, or vitamin/mineral deficiencies (possibly both play a role). Older women are known to have more deficiencies, and it's possible that they're also more likely to trust their children to the medical establishment. Obviously, more research needs to be done on the real causes of autism and related statistical trends. Iran severs cultural ties with British Museum over Persian treasure British Museum officials were due to lend the 2,500-year-old artefact to Iran's national museum last month, but announced they were holding on to it to do some more research. The clay cylinder - which was acquired by the museum after being discovered in 1879 - is regarded as the world's first declaration of rights. Hamid Baghaei, head of Iran's Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organisation, said the decision to keep the cylinder was unacceptable and politically motivated. He said: ''The Cultural Heritage Organisation has cut all its relations and co-operation with the British Museum.'' 'Whaling ship rammed us' THE anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd says it will continue to monitor a Japanese whaling ship even though whalers allegedly rammed one of its vessels at the weekend off Antarctica. Sea Shepherd founder Captain Paul Watson said the Japanese ship rammed the Bob Barker and tore a gash in the hull above the water line. No one was injured in the incident about 300km off Cape Darnley, in the Australian Antarctic Territory, at 3.09pm on Saturday. The organisation claimed the harpoon ship Yushin Maru 3 "intentionally" rammed the Bob Barker. The anti-whaling craft had been actively blocking the slipway of the Nisshin Maru, the Japanese whaling fleet's factory ship, when the collision occurred. Need earlier news? Visit Pam's NEWS ARCHIVES Sources (if found on major alternative news boards) -- you may want to look at these boards yourself, as they're much more extensive than my site: [AJ] - InfoWars.com, PrisonPlanet.com, or other Alex Jones-affiliated sites [BF] - BuzzFlash.com [DN] - DemocracyNow.org [R] - Rense.com [WRH] - WhatReallyHappened.com ...and a few other news sources (a work in progress) ---------------------------
	Click here to send Pam an e-mail (no attachments please -- they will be deleted without notice) NOTICE: Recently this e-mail address has been used by spammers, who often fake any e-mail address they can find on web pages to send their spam. Checking the full header of your e-mail or tracing the e-mail will reveal that it did not come from pamrotella.com. Both comments@pamrotella.com and pam@veggiecooking.com have always been forwarded mail accounts only, i.e. you will never receive legitimate mail from either one of these addresses. When you send an e-mail to either of these addresses, your response will come from a different address. If you are receiving spam from either of these addresses, use your spam blocker software to block them. [Page created July 1998; last modified August 2009] All original content including photographs © 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2009, 2010 by Pam Rotella. (News excerpts copyright by their corresponding authors, news organizations, or other copyright holders, and quoted here typically as "fair use" or "teaser" paragraphs to generate interest in the full articles.) Opening banner's photographs, left to right: 1.) Small building on my publisher's property in Wever, Iowa; 2.) Deer grazing along Skyline Drive, Virginia; 3.) Centralia, Pennsylvania's burning underground coal mine; 4.) Rainbow west of Houston, Texas; 5.) Prickly pears at alleged 1897 alien crash site in Aurora, Texas; and 6.) Hummingbird at feeder, Ozark Mountains, Arkansas. Left navigation bar's photographs, top to bottom: 1.) Tulips at Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; 2.) Glacier National Park, Montana; 3.) The Badlands, South Dakota; 4.) Bison crossing stream at Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming; 5.) Skyline Drive, Virginia; 6.) Weeping Wall, Glacier National Park, Montana; 7.) Purple passion fruit flower, Paradise, Texas; 8.) Pathway near Kickapoo Indian Caverns, Wisconsin; 9.) Glacier National Park, Montana; 10.) Bison herd, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming; 11.) Bull in Paradise, Texas; 12.) Tulip at Olbrich Botanical Gardens, Madison, Wisconsin; 13.) Ladybug, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; 14.) Shenandoah Cavern, Virginia; 15.) Stained glass at House on the Rock, Spring Green, Wisconsin; 16.) Lighthouse in Minnesota; 17.) Birch trees & autumn foliage in Minnesota; 18.) Red dragon stained glass backlit table at House on the Rock, Spring Green, Wisconsin; 19) Yellow flower at Boerner Botanical Gardens, Hales Corners, Wisconsin; 20.) Luray Caverns, Virginia; 21.) Hay bales on farm, Shoemakersville, Pennsylvania; 22.) Mississippi River at Fort Madison, Iowa; 23.) Walkway along the Mississippi River, New Orleans, Louisiana