Posted: March 6, 2010
Will Kilpatrick face jail time?
Some say it is possible, but there are defenses
BY BEN SCHMITT and JIM SCHAEFER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS

... "It seems that Judge Groner has lost his patience with Mr. Kilpatrick," Dubin said. "Judge Groner, in his opinions, has expressed the fact that the court has been offended by the nature of Kilpatrick's testimony, or the disingenuousness of Kilpatrick's testimony. For those reasons, the possibility of sending him to jail for a period of time so that he can contemplate the seriousness of abiding by his terms of probation seems real."

The state Court of Appeals said Kilpatrick and his lawyers do have defenses.

"At the probation violation hearings, defendant can raise the issue of ability to pay," Presiding Judge Karen Fort Hood wrote.

But Kilpatrick still could be in trouble over other allegations including: that he failed to provide a complete financial accounting for himself and his wife, Carlita Kilpatrick; did not surrender all tax refunds as ordered by the court, and did not disclose any gifts or benefits as ordered by the court.

Kilpatrick testified during previous restitution hearings that he received $240,000 in loans from local businessmen Peter Karmanos, Roger Penske, Dan Gilbert and Jim Nicholson.

"The trial court did not abuse its discretion by concluding that the $240,000 transfer of the loan from the defendant to his wife constituted a fraudulent conveyance," the appellate judges wrote.

In 2008, Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and no contest to assault, and resigned from office.

The plea came after the Free Press broke the text message scandal in January 2008 with a series of stories showing that Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff Christine Beatty perjured themselves during a 2007 civil whistle-blowers trial involving police officers.

Kilpatrick served 99 days in jail and was ordered to pay $1 million in restitution to the City of Detroit. He lives in a Dallas suburb and works at a $120,000-a-year sales job for Covisint, a subsidiary of Detroit-based Compuware. ...

The US Senate is known as the body where legislation goes to die, and a Republican senator from Kentucky has spent several days illustrating that point at the expense of nearly 500,000 out-of-work Americans.

Since last week Senator Jim Bunning [an ex-baseball player] has used his privilege under the chamber's parliamentary rules to hold up a 30-day extension of unemployment benefits, health insurance assistance, funding for road and infrastructure projects across the country, and other aid.

In exchange for lifting his objections he demands the senate come up with a way to pay for the $10bn extension package by reducing spending elsewhere, eliciting scoffs from Democrats who note that he voted for President Bush's $1.7tn tax cuts for the wealthy.

Nearly every major item on President Barack Obama's agenda, from health insurance reform to cap-and-trade climate regulation, has stalled in the Senate after passing the House of Representatives. ...

One of the biggest bonuses seen this year for any London-based banker was revealed today as HSBC announced it had given Stuart Gulliver, its head of investment banking, a £9.8 million package.

Mr Gulliver was awarded a £9 million bonus on top of his £800,000 base pay for his "exceptional performance" in trebling the profits of his division to $10.5 billion, HSBC said.

The payment came as Michael Geoghegan, HSBC chief executive, confirmed that he will give his £4 million bonus to charity.

HSBC disappointed investors after full-year profits fell by 24 per cent to $7.1 billion (£4.7 billion) following a big write down of the value of its own bonds. Its shares lost more than 5 per cent, down 37.1p, to 682.46p. ...

... Buffett has been criticizing overreaching corporate managers and complaisant directors for decades. But the question of how to motivate good corporate behavior has taken on new weight as Washington debates reining in the financial giants whose missteps brought the economy to its knees two years ago.

The Obama administration last month proposed separating banks' proprietary trading activities from their federally subsidized deposit-gathering and lending ones. Other proposed rules would increase the amount of capital banks hold against losses and how much cash they carry to deal with a surge of withdrawals.

But Buffett said there's a simpler way to cap risk-taking: Forcing lavishly compensated CEOs to take responsibility for assessing the risks at their firms -- and putting their own wealth at stake, to boot.

"It is the behavior of these CEOs and directors that needs to be changed," he wrote. "They have long benefitted from oversized financial carrots; some meaningful sticks now need to be employed as well."

The comment reflects a theme that has run through Buffett's letters to investors over the years: Shareholders are best served by managers who think like owners. More often, he has said, they are ill served by executives who instead pursue value-destroying mergers or pile up debt in a bid to boost returns. ...

Research the history of ancient Kurdistan, and you'll see why they're hated. Their country/empire was vast. They were also ahead of the times, had fabulous art, learning, and good science.

February 26. 2010 1:00AM
Prosecutors fight Michigan's freeing of violent offenders
Mike Martindale and Mike Wilkinson / The Detroit News

Hundreds of Michigan prison inmates convicted of violent crimes -- including 40 killers in Wayne County alone -- are eligible for release in the next two months as the state accelerates paroles to cut costs.

A recently compiled list of thousands of potential parolees obtained by The Detroit News provides a snapshot of who is on deck as the state seeks to trim its corrections budget by 6 percent in 2010. It includes some of the state's worst criminals, as well as hundreds of sex offenders, drug dealers, drunken drivers and bank robbers.

The list, demanded by Metro Detroit prosecutors and released only after a judge's order, provides a rare glimpse inside a process that has been going on routinely for years -- but is now under fire from law enforcement officials worried they don't have the time or resources to challenge potential parolees they believe pose a threat to public safety.

Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper led the fight to sue for the information because she said her office was repeatedly denied information about planned interviews of parole candidates in sufficient time to appeal certain cases.

The state argued that names of eligible parolees were only available a month in advance, but it was later determined the Parole Board's database included information on interviews scheduled months ahead of time.

"The Michigan Department of Corrections says 'trust us' in releasing criminals on parole to save money," said Cooper, who has called the state's effort "reckless."

"If (state officials) are so trustworthy, why did we have to sue them to obtain the list of individuals they are seeking to release?" ...

Power companies have been accused of profiteering from the coldest winter for 30 years after a surge in corporate profits.

ScottishPower, which has more than 5 million British customers, saw profits rise by 7.9% last year amid fears that many people could not afford to heat their homes during the bitter winter. Results tomorrow from British Gas, the country's biggest supplier of gas and electricity with 15.6 million customers, are expected to show that operating profits rose 46% to £554m, up from £379m in 2008.

The increases were condemned by unions, customer groups and charities representing the elderly, and follow warnings this week from the regulator Ofgem that companies boosted margins by £30 for each dual fuel customer in the last three months as wholesale costs fell.

Gary Smith, national officer at the GMB union, said: "Buying cheap and selling dear will always add up to high profits in a natural monopoly. No great managerial elan or skills are needed. It is long overdue that the government should step in and take control of the energy sector and put in place proper plans for secure supplies at reasonable prices as happens in the rest of Europe."

David Hunter of McKinnon & Clarke, which buys energy for businesses across Britain, said: "Despite wholesale prices going into freefall, ScottishPower hasn't cut domestic standard tariffs in almost a year. Failure of the big six suppliers [British Gas, EDF, npower, ScottishPower, Scottish and Southern, and E.ON] to pass on to customers the massive reductions in wholesale energy prices which they have been enjoying since 2008 is scandalous." ...



Hey, our utilities are doing the same thing to us in Yankistan - and why the fuck haven't gasoline prices plummeted either?

David Cameron's communications director, Andy Coulson, will come under fresh pressure to defend his editorship of the News of the World and his knowledge about the illegal activities of his journalists amid new allegations about the paper's involvement with private detectives who broke the law.

The Guardian has learned that while Coulson was still editor of the tabloid, the newspaper employed a freelance private investigator even though he had been accused of corrupting police officers and had just been released from a seven-year prison sentence for blackmail.

The private eye was well known to the News of the World, having worked for the paper for several years before he was jailed, when Coulson was deputy editor. He was rehired when he was freed.

Evidence seen by the Guardian shows that Mr A, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was blagging bank accounts, bribing police officers, procuring confidential data from the DVLA and phone companies, and trading sensitive material from live police inquiries.

Coulson has always insisted he knew nothing about the illegal activity which took place in the News of the World newsroom, telling MPs last year: "I have never had any involvement in it at all."

Mr A cannot be named now because he is facing trial for a violent crime, but his details will emerge once he has been dealt with by the courts. Coulson tonight refused to say whether he was aware of Mr A's criminal background, or of his return to the paper following his prison term. He said: "I have nothing to add to the evidence I gave to the select committee." ...

February 24. 2010 1:00AM
Judge expected to expand charges against Kilpatrick
Doug Guthrie / The Detroit News

Detroit --When former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick returns from Texas on Friday for arraignment on criminal probation violation charges, he will face far more accusations than missing a single restitution payment.

Wayne County prosecutors Tuesday were ordered by Circuit Judge David Groner to assist Michigan Department of Corrections authorities in expanding the single charge recommended by agents overseeing Kilpatrick's probation to include numerous alleged violations revealed during six days of recent hearings on Kilpatrick's finances.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy's spokeswoman, Maria Miller, declined to provide details, but legal experts say the charges could include perjury and fraud.

"We are prepared to proceed on Friday," Miller said. "We have assisted the probation department in their preparation of the warrant. The allegations will be contained in that petition."

With the charges broadened beyond Kilpatrick's failure to meet a deadline last week to pay $79,000 toward the $1 million restitution in the text message scandal, his lawyers' efforts to get the Michigan Court of Appeals to overturn Groner's recent restitution orders will likely have no impact on the coming proceedings, said Curt Benson, professor at Cooley School of Law. The higher court is likely to focus only on Kilpatrick's complaint that the judge overstepped his authority in ordering him to make more than $300,000 in accelerated restitution payments, because he determined Kilpatrick hid assets from the court.

The Court of Appeals agreed to consider Kilpatrick's appeal, but only after receiving transcripts of the lengthy restitution hearings. Groner's court reporter has almost a month to prepare the transcripts. The appeals court refused to delay payment deadlines. The first deadline, for $79,011, passed last Friday. The second, for $240,000, comes in April. ...

'Terminator' carp threatens Great Lakes
Environmentalists say Asian carp, an invasive species of food-guzzling fish, could cause an ecological disaster if it enters Lake Michigan
Ed Pilkington, Chicago
Tuesday 23 February 2010

The fight looks utterly unequal. In the red corner: the combined might of North America, including the US and Canadian governments, the US army, the governors of eight American states, two Senate c­ommittees and the supreme court. In the blue corner: one fish.

The way things are looking, the fish is winning.

At stake is the health of the Great Lakes, the world's largest body of fresh water. Environmentalists warn of ecological disaster, courtesy of Asian carp, an invasive species of food-guzzling fish that is within miles of entering Lake Michigan.

If they do, they would have the ­potential to spread throughout the lakes, wreaking havoc to their ecosystem and with it the $7bn (£4.7bn) fishing and recreation industries on which millions of jobs depend. "This is an intense threat, and people are just waking up to how big the danger is," said David Ullrich of the Great Lakes and St Lawrence Cities Initiative, which represents 70 waterfront cities in the US and Canada with a joint population of 13 million.

Asian carp were first introduced to southern states of the US from China in the 1970s to help clean tanks in fish farms. They escaped and for more than 30 years have steadily worked their way up the Mississippi river system, devouring food and devastating native fish populations along the way. Last December, DNA of the carp was found just a few miles from the Great Lakes outside Chicago, a discovery that Ullrich described as "a major shock to everyone". ...

Posted: Feb. 21, 2010
Feds have evidence ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick took bribes
Contractor said Kilpatrick got up to $100K, his father up to $290K; Kilpatrick's lawyer says he knows nothing of bribery accusation

BY JENNIFER DIXON and JIM SCHAEFER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS


A contractor who pleaded guilty in an ongoing corruption probe in Detroit has told investigators that he handed as much as $100,000 in bribes to then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in 2002, according to interviews and sworn documents reviewed by the Free Press.

The contractor, Karl Kado of West Bloomfield, also told the FBI he paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the mayor's father, and thousands more to a close mayoral aide, according to the records and interviews.

Kado told authorities he paid Kwame Kilpatrick in four or five installments of about $20,000 each. Kado, who is awaiting sentencing for paying bribes to protect multimillion-dollar Cobo Center contracts, said he sometimes delivered the money in envelopes to Kilpatrick's office on the 11th floor at City Hall, and sometimes Kilpatrick dropped by Cobo to get the cash.

The allegations are significant because they show, for the first time, that the government has secured the cooperation of someone who says he gave payoffs directly to Kilpatrick.

Authorities obtained the information as part of a years-long, complex and wide-ranging investigation in Detroit and Southfield that has produced a series of public corruption charges and 10 guilty pleas.

In pursuing Kilpatrick, investigators tracked cash moving in and out of bank accounts and wiretapped the phone of his father, among others, while slowly trying to build a case.

FBI agents also contend in sworn statements that they have grounds to believe Kilpatrick and his associates used the mayor's office to run a criminal enterprise, a term the FBI reserves for organized crime and racketeering cases. ...

Last Updated: February 22. 2010 1:00AM
Feds plan Kilpatrick charges
Ex-mayor, dad expected to face felonies in 'pay to play' probe
Paul Egan / The Detroit News

Detroit -- Federal officials are preparing felony charges against former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his father, business consultant Bernard N. Kilpatrick, The Detroit News has learned.

For at least five years, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office have been investigating an alleged "pay to play" system at City Hall under Kilpatrick and allegations that contractors wanting City Hall business were directed to hire the former mayor's father as a consultant.

Now there are new allegations that former Cobo Center contractor Karl Kado, who has been cooperating with the FBI since 2005, not only paid close to $300,000 to the mayor's father but made about $100,000 in illegal cash payments directly to the former mayor.

Those allegations are contained in sworn statements that are part of the evidence in the wide-ranging corruption probe, a person familiar with the investigation said Sunday. Charges are expected against both Kwame Kilpatrick and his father, though the timing and specific nature of those charges are still being determined, the source said.

It's the first time a source close to the investigation has said corruption charges against the former mayor are planned, though there have been strong signals Kilpatrick was the ultimate target of a long-running investigation that has netted nine guilty pleas.

A federal grand jury has subpoenaed records and testimony related to possible abuses in fundraising and expenditures connected with the former mayor's nonprofit foundation, the Kilpatrick Civic Fund, and possible felony income tax violations are being examined, people familiar with the investigation said. ...

Minnesota GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty joined the teleprompter wing of Republican Hypocrisy Caucus during his speech at CPAC on Friday when he used a teleprompter to promulgate the hoax that Pres. Obama uses teleprompters more than other politicians. Worse, however, Pawlenty’s attack against the president was quickly determined to be a lie:

“President Obama was in a grade school classroom speaking to elementary school children and he was using a teleprompter,” Pawlenty said Friday in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he added. “That’s not a joke. That’s a real story.”

Actually, it’s not. The tale spread by bloggers over the Internet and in some media, including the Comedy Channel’s Jon Stewart, blended together two Obama appearances Jan. 19 at the Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church, Virginia, to make it appear he used the teleprompter when speaking to a classroom of 30 pupils.

In reality, Obama sat on a chair and spoke with the pupils without the device.

In a different classroom, he used the teleprompter to give scripted remarks on education to television cameras.

At CPAC just one day earlier, Marco Rubio, Florida’s tea bagger candidate for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, read what was supposed to be a joke about Obama and teleprompters from a teleprompter.

But neither of these new members of the GOP Hypocrisy Caucus can hold a candle to the chairwoman, Sarah Palin, whose promotion of the Obama teleprompter hoax at the tea bagger ball in Nashville earlier this month prompted us to catalog 20 separate incidents in which she used teleprompters during her campaign for vice president in 2008.

Tax the church into extinction, please.

dave wood needs to be transported in a caged van to yarl's wood and kept there, treated like any other immigrant there, until it changes its tune.

Metropolitan police assistant commissioner John Yates has been reprimanded by the culture select committee for what it claims was a failure to give more detailed evidence to MPs over the scale of hacking into private phone messages by former News International employees. The chairman of the culture committee, John Whittingdale, has written to Yates to deliver the reprimand.

Yates has angrily replied it had never been his intention to mislead the committee and he is most concerned that the committee believed that to be the case.

The Guardian revealed last week that a freedom of information request had disclosed that the police found News International had pin codes, which are used for accessing voicemail messages, belonging to 91 people. The phones had been accessed by the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who worked for the News of the World and the paper's royal correspondent, Clive Goodman.

Knowing that the information was about to be made public, a senior police officer wrote to the select committee to inform them late last month.

At the time of giving oral evidence to the committee in September, Yates gave no indication he knew of the scale of the hacking. ...

Couple told by BT that broadband upgrade would cost £45,000
A couple, Ray and Frei Walker, who want broadband for their home and bed and breakfast business have been told by British Telecom that the installation would cost £45,000.
By Nick Britten
07 Feb 2010

They have managed with an old “dial up” service for the last nine years at the Victorian guest house they own.

But when they looked into getting broadband installed they were hit by the huge quote because BT said for the Walkers to benefit it would need to install new equipment that would also serve others in the village.

Mr Walker, 60, said: “It’s a farce, and obviously we’re staggered. We don’t have £45,000 and if we did we wouldn’t spend it on this.”

Currently BT broadband access is available to residents of the 150-strong village of Dufton, near Appelby, Cumbria, but BT said there was no capacity for any new users.

The Walkers currently have two telephone lines going into the house – one for a phone and one for the Internet – supplied by Digital Access Carrier System, or DACS, which allows BT to deliver both lines from its exchange through one copper wire.

The DACS box also services other villagers’ telephone lines.

They believed that by getting rid of one phone line, it would free up capacity for broadband.

But BT said to install broadband it would have to remove the current box, where the lines are squeezed down into one line and which is fitted to a telephone pole in the village, and install new, larger capacity equipment and cables for others in the village as well.

They quoted for the cost of removing the box plus “40 joint bosses, 637 metres of fibre copper cable and 1,341 metres of mole ploughing cable”.

Mr Walker accused the company of abusing its network monopoly because he had switched phone supplier and had been intent on using a different broadband supplier, even though BT still owns and maintains the equipment.

He said: “They seem to be wanting us to pay for equipment which will upgrade the whole village, and that’s what makes it more galling.

“We just want the same crap broadband service as everybody else in the village but BT won’t even let us have that.” ...

Ta much, dear Anneliese

Innocent victims of the subprime crisis
In spite of a law protecting tenants, people who rent across the US are being illegally evicted even if their finances are fine
Sasha Abramsky
6 February 2010

"What happens often is that after a foreclosure, a broker or an agent comes to the house and, as though the law didn't exist, tells renters the house has been foreclosed and they have to leave," says Judith Liben, senior housing attorney at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute.

The law Liben is referencing is the federal Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act, passed in spring last year and intended to remain on the books until 2012. It was intended to mitigate the collateral damage from the foreclosure epidemic by making banks give tenants on month-to-month leases 90 days notice before evicting them following the home owners' foreclosure; and by ensuring that tenants in good standing with year, or multi-year, leases couldn't be evicted mid-lease following a foreclosure. The new owners would, according to this act, have to honour the terms of the lease, keep up repairs on the property, and repay the tenants' security deposits upon completion of the lease.

Housing advocates cheered the law as representing a signal victory for struggling tenants in an increasingly brutal real estate environment. In the months since it was passed, however, many have concluded that in practice it is a largely toothless wonder: most tenants don't know about its existence, many banks – desperate to evict tenants living in foreclosed homes so that they can more easily sell the properties – have continued sending out illegal eviction notices; some even hire bailiffs to change the locks and to throw possessions out onto the street. And the federal government has no real mechanisms to enforce the act's provisions.

It is not uncommon for tenants in these situations to come home and find intimidating, anonymous, and legally misleading, posters stuck to their doors. One such starts with "Attention!! This property has been foreclosed and is now bank-owned. The eviction process has started. The property is being monitored." The words are in bold and the text is circled for emphasis. Another begins: "To whom it may concern: We were informed this property was vacant. We have changed the locks." Another resorts to financial intimidation: "The eviction process has been started by the bank. It is in your best interest to avoid having an eviction added to your credit report. It is very difficult to rent a property with an eviction on your credit report."

That homeowners have been hammered by subprime mortgages, by the collapse of real estate value, and by the broader economic malaise, is well-documented. But, out of the spotlight, more and more rented homes go into foreclosure: many tenants continue to pay rent to delinquent landlords, only to subsequently find they have been giving their money to a person who no longer owns the property. Others have been summarily evicted, having to scurry to find new homes – or ending up homeless. Many have lost the security deposits on their old rentals to owners who have simply disappeared. Others have seen their credit records [affected] by being evicted, despite the eviction not being the result of their own financial failings. ...

Perseverance and bluff – how the legal deal was done that sees BAE pay £285m fines
That the arms giant has finally been forced to pay substantial penalties is due to the doggedness of a small group of prosecutors
David Leigh and Rob Evans
Friday 5 February 2010

Since the Guardian first exposed BAE's worldwide system of undercover payments to secure contracts in 2003, the company has fought hard to deny its guilt, using every lobbying tool at its disposal and exploiting its influence within the offices of the then prime minister, Tony Blair.

That the arms giant has finally been forced to pay substantial penalties is due to the doggedness of a small group of prosecutors, currently led by Richard Alderman, director of the Serious Fraud Office, and his US counterpart, Mark ­Mendelsohn, at the department of justice in Washington.

Alderman's predecessor, Robert ­Wardle, stepped down from his post at the SFO in 2008, a frustrated man, ­having seen BAE and its friends persuade Blair to intervene and force a halt to extensive and long running criminal inquiries into the £43bn al-Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

But that turned out to be the high-water mark of BAE's political influence. The US authorities promptly picked up the Saudi case which Blair had claimed would be so damaging to Britain's "national security".

Washington officials were vigorously attempting to enforce their own Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and were long suspicious of BAE's surprising arms deals in the Czech Republic, about which they had vainly protested at the time.

Meanwhile Alderman, when he succeeded Wardle at the SFO, insisted he was no patsy. He ordered renewed investigations into BAE's remaining suspect contracts in Tanzania, South Africa, Romania and the Czech Republic. Alderman staked much of his credibility on attempts to change the lumbering SFO style of investigation. ...

Can you say, "Disbar"?

I knew you could.

Ta much, dear Ar0cketman

Too bad the site's so annoying. Adblock (enable tabs in options) and Remove It Permanently make it bearable, so visit the page and check out the scary reviews after installin' 'em.


Dirtiest Hotels - United States
(based on TripAdvisor traveler reviews)

* 1. Heritage Marina Hotel, San Francisco, California
* 2. Days Inn Eureka/Six Flags, Eureka, Missouri
* 3. Tropicana Resort Hotel, Virginia Beach, Virginia
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* 6. New York Inn, New York City, New York
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See more filthy finds worldwide.

* Asia
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* United Kingdom

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president

Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington
Saturday 25 September 2004

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.

The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty. ...

Ministry of Justice lists eco-activists alongside terrorists

• Campaigners lumped in with al-Qaida and far right
• Government criticised for tarring peaceful protesters
Matthew Taylor and Rob Evans
Tuesday 26 January 2010



Oh, jolly good show, UK. Bra-fricken-vo.

ACORN gotcha man among four arrested for attempting to tamper with Mary Landrieu's office phones
By David Hammer, The Times-Picayune
January 26, 2010

Alleging a plot to tamper with phones in Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in the Hale Boggs Federal Building in downtown New Orleans, the FBI arrested four people Monday, including James O'Keefe, 25, a conservative filmmaker whose undercover videos at ACORN field offices severely damaged the advocacy group's credibility.

Also arrested were Joseph Basel, Stan Dai and Robert Flanagan, all 24. Flanagan is the son of William Flanagan, who is the acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, the office confirmed. All four were charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony. ...


Ta much, dear Anneliese

Richard Dawkins

Haiti and the hypocrisy of Christian theology

We know what caused the catastrophe in Haiti. It was the bumping and grinding of the Caribbean Plate rubbing up against the North American Plate: a force of nature, sin-free and indifferent to sin, un-premeditated, unmotivated, supremely unconcerned with human affairs or human misery.

The religious mind, however, restlessly seeks human meaning in the blind happenings of nature. As with the Indonesian tsunami, which was blamed on loose sexual morals in tourist bars; as with Hurricane Katrina, which was attributed to divine revenge on the entire city of New Orleans for harboring a lesbian comedian, and as with other disasters going back to the famous Lisbon earthquake and beyond, so Haiti's tragedy must be payback for human sin. The Rev. Pat Robertson sees the hand of God in the earthquake, wreaking terrible retribution for a pact that the long-dead ancestors of today's Haitians made with the devil, to help rid them of their French masters.

Needless to say, milder-mannered faith-heads are falling over themselves to disown Pat Robertson, just as they disowned those other pastors, evangelists, missionaries and mullahs at the time of the earlier disasters.

What hypocrisy. ...


Ta much, dear Anneliese

As those of you in the U.S. have undoubtedly heard by now, our Supreme Court just overturned over 100 years of statute and precedent by ruling that corporations can spend all the money that they want to influence elections. At a time when many of us are becoming increasingly convinced that getting big money out of politics is the only way to bring about meaningful change, this is terrible news.

Imagine what increased corporate ownership of our politicians will do to minority positions, such as atheism. It is unlikely that corporations will be interested in funneling money to anyone holding unpopular views for fear that it would reflect badly on them (assuming we knew they were behind the funding). And unlimited corporate investment may well make it impossible for all but the extremely wealthy and well-connected to compete in the political arena.

I just signed Rep. Alan Grayson's petition to support his "Save Our Democracy" platform, and I hope you'll consider joining me. The idea of having a government that is essentially owned by multinational corporations who do not necessarily have our best interests in mind is repulsive and anti-democratic. ...


Ta much, dear Anneliese

Tea Partying Militia Leader Arrested for Rape, Possessing a Grenade Launcher
Tuesday, January 26, 2010 03:46 Devin Burghart

A former Marine with ties to Tea Parties and militias who talked openly about using his training “to become a domestic terrorist” has been charged in separate complaints with raping a child and possessing an unregistered grenade launcher. His arrest may signal that a wing of the Tea Parties is heading in a more militant direction.

Charles Allan Dyer, 29, of Marlow, Oklahoma was arrested on January 12 at his home by Stephens County Sheriff’s deputies on the rape charge. The arrest occurred after a 7-year-old girl told sexual-abuse experts about a January 2nd incident at Dyer's home.

While sheriff's deputies were at Dyer's home, they found several firearms and a Colt M-203, 40-millimeter grenade launcher, according to court documents. When they searched a national crime database, the deputies discovered that the grenade launcher was one of three stolen from a military base at Fort Irwin, California, in 2006. According to an affidavit, Dyer told law enforcement that he had received the grenade launcher "from his best friend who gave it to him while Dyer was stationed in California with the Marine Corps". ...

... Dyer has played a bridge role between the Tea Parties and the Oath Keepers, an organization that seeks to enlist military and law enforcement personnel to disobey orders they regard as unconstitutional. The group promotes many of the outlandish theories about gun confiscation and the rounding up of people into concentration camps. Oath Keepers founder, Stewart Rhodes, previously praised Dyer in speeches, but is now backtracking claiming that Dyer isn't a member because he never officially signed up and paid dues. Not everyone is looking to distance themselves from Dyer. Others in the movement almost immediately began calling Dyer the “1st P.O.W. of the 2nd American Revolutionary War.”

Prior to his arrest, Dryer was also busy organizing militia groups in Oklahoma. Dyer told an interviewer, “I came from California, where I was training with the SoCal militia and making liaison with active duty groups to train civilian. In February I will be traveling up North near Wyoming to assist in some cold weather training. At the moment, I am working with groups in Oklahoma to form a more cohesive militia here.”

And in another video, filmed during a militia training exercise, Dyer declared his intention to use his military training to become a domestic terrorist, "I'm going to use my training and become one of those domestic terrorists that you're so afraid of from the DHS reports." Dyer also stated, “Patriots we are not overpowered. If we united under one banner and fight for our children's liberty and the Constitution, our resolve is invincible to any standing army.” ...


Ta much, dear Anneliese

Screw you, fbi.

January 22, 2010
Public support teenager who killed Communist Party leader Li Shiming
Jane Macartney in Beijing

Everybody hated Li Shiming. Those who got on the wrong side of the district Communist Party secretary, or challenged his bullying or arbitrary land seizures, could be beaten up or driven away by his hired thugs.

So when Zhang Xuping, 19, drove a knife into Li’s heart, killing him with a single thrust, there were few who mourned. Quite the opposite: more than 20,000 residents signed a petition appealing for leniency even though the murder had been plotted for two years.

The case, and the clamour surrounding it, illustrates one of the greatest challenges facing the regime: corruption and abuse of power.

Li lorded it over Xiashuixi, an arid mining region where farmers struggle to find water to grow vegetables to sustain themselves or corn to feed their pigs. His position as local party boss gave him the power to run the district like a fiefdom.

That came to an end when Li visited a school in September 2008 and was stabbed. The official could only muster enough strength to stagger to his Audi car before he collapsed and died.The teenager, who had made a careful study of anatomy so that could kill Mr Li with a single strike, confessed to the crime.

Zhang had been paid 1,000 yuan (£90) by Zhang Huping, 35, a farmer who had been harassed by the official for years. The farmer said that he had been detained routinely on trumped-up charges after he led a group of neighbours to seek redress from provincial authorities. They complained that Li had razed 28 acres of woodland without permission or compensation in 2003.

Many residents had a grievance with the haughty apparatchik. Xin Xiaomei, another villager, said: “I didn’t feel surprised at all when I heard that Li Shiming had been killed because people wanted to kill him a long time ago. I wanted to kill Li myself but I was too weak.” She said that Li had harassed her husband for years after a dispute. ...

... Perception that the force is out of control has exploded since April when a police major shot dead a cashier and one other person in a Moscow supermarket. The interior ministry has shown little appetite for reform. It arrested an officer who complained of corruption in a video appeal to Vladimir Putin.

"Our law enforcement bodies all share a strong sense of impunity. This includes the police, the prosecutor's office, and the courts," Konstantin Korpachev, a colleague of the dead journalist, said. "This feeling is one of the main factors that allows cases like this to happen. They like to protect their own."

Korpachev dismissed insinuations by the local prosecutor's office that Popov had died of alcohol poisoning. The journalist had been savagely beaten to death, he said, adding that local officials were suffering from an "elementary lack of tact. We have lost a very nice and positive man."

Regional officials acknowledged that the behaviour of Russia's police force is unacceptable. Surveys show that 70% of Russians do not trust the police, who frequently turn to crime and corruption to supplement their low salaries.

Tomsk's governor Viktor Kress admitted: "This once again confirms the necessity of reforming our law enforcement structures."

During the late Soviet period the police force was known for its educated recruits, high standards and reasonable salaries. Since the end of communism, however, the force has attracted lower calibre officers.

January 21, 2010
The fault line in Haiti runs straight to France
The earthquake’s destruction has been aggravated not by a pact with the Devil, but by the crippling legacy of imperialism
Ben Macintyre

Where does the fault lie in Haiti? For geologists, it lies on the line between the North American and Caribbean tectonic plates. For some, the earthquake is evidence of God’s wrath: the American evangelist Pat Robertson has even suggested that the horror is recompense for some voodoo pact made with the Devil at Haiti’s birth.

More sensible voices point to the procession of despots who have plundered Haiti over the years, depriving it of an effective infrastructure and rendering it uniquely vulnerable to natural disaster. But for many Haitians, the fault lies earlier — with Haiti’s colonial experience, the slavers and extortionists of empire who crippled it with debt and permanently stunted the economy. The fault line runs back 200 years, directly to France.

In the 18th century, Haiti was France’s imperial jewel, the Pearl of the Caribbean, the largest sugar exporter in the world. Even by colonial standards, the treatment of slaves working the Haitian plantations was truly vile. They died so fast that, at times, France was importing 50,000 slaves a year to keep up the numbers and the profits.

Inspired by the principles of the French Revolution, in 1791 the slaves rebelled under the leadership of the self-educated slave Toussaint L’Ouverture. After a vicious war, Napoleon’s forces were defeated. Haiti declared independence in 1804.

As Haiti struggles with new misfortune, it is worth remembering that noble achievement — this is the only nation to gain independence by a slave-led rebellion, the first black republic, and the second oldest republic in the western hemisphere. Haiti was founded on a demand for liberty from people whose liberty had been stolen: the country itself is a tribute to human resilience and freedom.

France did not forgive the impertinence and loss of earnings: 800 destroyed sugar plantations, 3,000 lost coffee estates. A brutal trade blockade was imposed. Former plantation owners demanded that Haiti be invaded, its population enslaved once more. Instead, the French State opted to bleed the new black republic white.

In 1825, in return for recognising Haitian independence, France demanded indemnity on a staggering scale: 150 million gold francs, five times the country’s annual export revenue. The Royal Ordinance was backed up by 12 French warships with 150 cannon.

The terms were non-negotiable. The fledgeling nation acceded, since it had little choice. Haiti must pay for its freedom, and pay it did, through the nose, for the next 122 years. ...

Reports of racial and religiously motivated crime rose following the election of British National party councillors in several far- right strongholds, police statistics have revealed.

Complaints of hate crime increased in wards in the West Midlands, London and Essex after the election of a BNP member, in spite of declines in reported hate crime in the wider police areas. In other wards race crime reportedly rose in the runup to BNP election victories, according to the figures, obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act.

The findings came as the party stepped up its campaign to win its first seats in the House of Commons with a "weekend of action" in Barking and Dagenham, where the culture and tourism minister, Margaret Hodge, faces a challenge for her Labour seat from BNP leader, Nick Griffin. Hodge said the new figures cast doubt on police assurances that there is no link between racially motivated crime and a BNP presence.

Yesterday, BNP member Terence Gavan was jailed for 11 years after police found nail bombs and 12 firearms at his home in the borough of Kirklees, West Yorkshire, where the BNP has councillors. The Old Bailey heard that Gavan harboured "a strong hostility" towards immigrants.

One of the biggest increases in hate crime came in Barking's Eastbury ward, where racially motivated violence, theft and criminal damage more than doubled in the year after Jeffrey Steed won a council seat for the BNP in May 2006. A year later, hate crime rose again and 45 racial incidents were reported in 12 months. ...

A “financial crisis responsibility fee” - I like it.

I like it very much, thank you.

The grand obstructionist party is at it again, girls and boys.

VeriSign's iDefense security lab has published a report with technical details about the recent cyberattack that hit Google and over 30 other companies. The iDefense researchers traced the attack back to its origin and also identified the command-and-control servers that were used to manage the malware.

The cyber-assault came to light on Tuesday when Google disclosed to the public that the Gmail Web service was targeted in a highly-organized attack in late December. Google said that the intrusion attempt originated from China and was executed with the goal of obtaining information about political dissidents, but the company declined to speculate about the identity of the perpetrator.

Citing sources in the defense contracting and intelligence consulting community, the iDefense report unambiguously declares that the Chinese government was, in fact, behind the effort. The report also says that the malicious code was deployed in PDF files that were crafted to exploit a vulnerability in Adobe's software.

"The source IPs and drop server of the attack correspond to a single foreign entity consisting either of agents of the Chinese state or proxies thereof," the report says.

The researchers have determined that there are significant similarities between the recent attack and a seemingly related one that was carried out in July against a large number of US companies. Both attacks were apparently managed through the same command-and-control servers.

"The servers used in both attacks employ the HomeLinux DynamicDNS provider, and both are currently pointing to IP addresses owned by Linode, a US-based company that offers Virtual Private Server hosting. The IP addresses in question are within the same subnet, and they are six IP addresses apart from each other," the report says. "Considering this proximity, it is possible that the two attacks are one and the same, and that the organizations targeted in the Silicon Valley attacks have been compromised since July."



WTF, chinastan?
Ta much, dear MSiegel

Accounts invaded, computers infected – human rights activists tell of cyber attacks

• Authorities blamed for hacking into Gmail users
• Phishing scams and malware used as weapons

Tania Branigan in Beijing
Thursday 14 January 2010

Well-known human rights advocates in China and a Tibetan rights activist in the United States have disclosed that their Gmail accounts have been compromised.

They came forward after Google's announcement of a sustained cyber attack on activists and other illicit accessing of accounts, but stressed that the problem goes back much further. Some in China said they had repeatedly suffered from hacking and blamed the authorities .

Ai Weiwei, one of China's best-known contemporary artists, said he detected problems with email accounts two months ago.

Teng Biao, a law professor and human rights lawyer, and Zeng Jinyan, activist and wife of the jailed dissident Hu Jia, both said their email had been hacked as long ago as 2007. They realised the issue had recurred when they checked their accounts in light of Google's statement.

However, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, told a press conference in Beijing: "Chinese laws prohibit any form of cyber attacks including hacking."

On Tuesday, Google said hackers had gained limited access to two accounts in December's attack. It is understood the firm contacted the account holders.

Tenzin Seldon, 20, a US student whose parents are Tibetan exiles, said Google had checked her computer and confirmed an intrusion. "My email account was likely hacked because I am a Tibetan activist," she said.

Google said its investigation also showed that the accounts of dozens of Gmail users in the US, China and Europe who are advocates of human rights in China had been routinely accessed by third parties. This had not happened through an intrusion into its infrastructure, but probably through phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers. ...

... Earlier last year researchers at the ­University of Toronto said they had discovered a vast electronic spy network which seemed to have targeted embassies, media groups, NGOs, international organisations, government foreign ministries and the offices of the Dalai Lama, the leader of the Tibetan exile movement.

Computers were infected when users clicked on links in emails or documents attached to them.

The team said the "GhostNet", which had infiltrated hundreds of computers and stolen documents, was apparently controlled from computers in China. But they added that they could not identify who was behind it.



WTF, chinastan?

Metal Chinese jewelry a danger to kids: CPSC
Last Updated: Thursday, January 14, 2010
CBC News

Young children should not be given any cheap metal jewelry imported from China because it could contain high levels of cadmium, the head of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says.

"We have proof that lead in children’s jewelry is dangerous and was pervasive in the marketplace. To prevent young children from possibly being exposed to lead, cadmium or any other hazardous heavy metal, take the jewelry away," CPSC head Inez Tenenbaum posted Wednesday evening on the regulator's website. ...

... Observers have noted that the use of cadmium in children's jewelry comes as new U.S. regulations have severely restricted lead levels in such trinkets.

"We are moving swiftly to stop the replacement of lead with cadmium and other hazardous heavy metals in children’s products imported from China," wrote Tenenbaum.

U.S. regulators were moved to action after the March 2006 death of a four-year-old Minneapolis boy, who died four days after he swallowed a metal charm that was nearly pure lead.

Since 2004, the CPSC has conducted more than 50 recalls of more than 180 million units of metal jewelry because it contained a hazardous amount of lead. And since August 2009, it has been illegal to produce a piece of children’s metal jewelry with more than 300 parts per million of lead.

"Now we hear about cadmium in jewelry. This is unacceptable," wrote Tenenbaum.

Health Canada is in the process of conducting a routine round of testing on children's jewelry to determine cadmium levels.

In 2009, Health Canada tested 41 pieces of children’s jewelry for lead and cadmium, but it has refused CBC News requests to release the cadmium results.



WTF, chinastan?
Ta much, dear Glenn321

The rethuglicunt party should be ashamed, exploiting such obviously mentally handicapped folks - like palin!

Ta much, dear Glenn321

Sexist morons. It's not the one couple/one child policy at fault, it's the aborting and slaughtering of female babies!

A US maker of software that helps parents to filter internet content for their children is suing the Chinese Government for allegedly stealing its technology and using it to block sites deemed politically undesirable.

Cybersitter LLC has requested damages of $2.2 billion (£1.3 billion) after filing a federal lawsuit in Los Angeles. Gregory Fayer, representing the Santa Barbara-based firm, said: “I don’t think I have ever seen such clear-cut stealing.”

The US firm’s suspicions were aroused in the middle of last year when China stirred outrage among its people with a demand that every computer should be fitted with software called Green Dam. The intention, said the Government, was to protect children by equipping all computers with a pornography filter.

Cybersitter alleges that the Chinese copied its codes and incorporated them into software used to block access to sites disliked by the Government. Sony, Lenovo and Toshiba are also being sued for distributing the Chinese program with PCs sold in the country. ...

DIF, more of you damn japanese whale murderers.

Here's some good news.

Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful "deal" so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen.

China's strategy was simple: block the open negotiations for two weeks, and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it look as if the west had failed the world's poor once again. And sure enough, the aid agencies, civil society movements and environmental groups all took the bait....

... I was stopped and searched twice near London City airport – for watercolouring! I was not even facing the airport. I was painting the Tate and Lyle sugar factory opposite. They said they saw me on a camera and thought that "no one would want to paint a factory". I explained that LS Lowry did loads. Then they said I could be an anarchist and I was carrying "suspicious paraphernalia" – this being a flask of coffee and an iPod. Oh, and a box of watercolours.

Once they had all my gear out, rummaged through what identity documentation I had and double-checked it on a few radios, they were satisfied I was just "weird" and left me to it. Until the next week, when I went back to finish off the picture and had to go through the same rigmarole all over again.

I have painted in Ukraine, Russia, Vietnam and plenty of other "controlled" states, and have never been questioned about watercolour anarchism.

Liam O'Farrell

London

I'm posting the whole story because yahoo are such yahoos and delete stories after 5 minutes have passed.

Sun Dec 13, 1:45 pm ET
ST. LOUIS – Confidential contracts detailing Monsanto Co.'s business practices reveal how the world's biggest seed developer is squeezing competitors, controlling smaller seed companies and protecting its dominance over the multibillion-dollar market for genetically altered crops, an Associated Press investigation has found.

With Monsanto's patented genes being inserted into roughly 95 percent of all soybeans and 80 percent of all corn grown in the U.S., the company also is using its wide reach to control the ability of new biotech firms to get wide distribution for their products, according to a review of several Monsanto licensing agreements and dozens of interviews with seed industry participants, agriculture and legal experts.

Declining competition in the seed business could lead to price hikes that ripple out to every family's dinner table. That's because the corn flakes you had for breakfast, soda you drank at lunch and beef stew you ate for dinner likely were produced from crops grown with Monsanto's patented genes.

Monsanto's methods are spelled out in a series of confidential commercial licensing agreements obtained by the AP. The contracts, as long as 30 pages, include basic terms for the selling of engineered crops resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, along with shorter supplementary agreements that address new Monsanto traits or other contract amendments.

The company has used the agreements to spread its technology — giving some 200 smaller companies the right to insert Monsanto's genes in their separate strains of corn and soybean plants. But, the AP found, access to Monsanto's genes comes at a cost, and with plenty of strings attached.

For example, one contract provision bans independent companies from breeding plants that contain both Monsanto's genes and the genes of any of its competitors, unless Monsanto gives prior written permission — giving Monsanto the ability to effectively lock out competitors from inserting their patented traits into the vast share of U.S. crops that already contain Monsanto's genes.

Monsanto's business strategies and licensing agreements are being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice and at least two state attorneys general, who are trying to determine if the practices violate U.S. antitrust laws. The practices also are at the heart of civil antitrust suits filed against Monsanto by its competitors, including a 2004 suit filed by Syngenta AG that was settled with an agreement and ongoing litigation filed this summer by DuPont in response to a Monsanto lawsuit.

The suburban St. Louis-based agricultural giant said it's done nothing wrong.

"We do not believe there is any merit to allegations about our licensing agreement or the terms within," said Monsanto spokesman Lee Quarles. He said he couldn't comment on many specific provisions of the agreements because they are confidential and the subject of ongoing litigation.

"Our approach to licensing (with) many companies is pro-competitive and has enabled literally hundreds of seed companies, including all of our major direct competitors, to offer thousands of new seed products to farmers," he said.

The benefit of Monsanto's technology for farmers has been undeniable, but some of its major competitors and smaller seed firms claim the company is using strong-arm tactics to further its control.

"We now believe that Monsanto has control over as much as 90 percent of (seed genetics). This level of control is almost unbelievable," said Neil Harl, agricultural economist at Iowa State University who has studied the seed industry for decades. "The upshot of that is that it's tightening Monsanto's control, and makes it possible for them to increase their prices long term. And we've seen this happening the last five years, and the end is not in sight."

At issue is how much power one company can have over seeds, the foundation of the world's food supply. Without stiff competition, Monsanto could raise its seed prices at will, which in turn could raise the cost of everything from animal feed to wheat bread and cookies.

The price of seeds is already rising. Monsanto increased some corn seed prices last year by 25 percent, with an additional 7 percent hike planned for corn seeds in 2010. Monsanto brand soybean seeds climbed 28 percent last year and will be flat or up 6 percent in 2010, said company spokeswoman Kelli Powers.

Monsanto's broad use of licensing agreements has made its biotech traits among the most widely and rapidly adopted technologies in farming history. These days, when farmers buy bags of seed with obscure brand names like AgVenture or M-Pride Genetics, they are paying for Monsanto's licensed products.

One of the numerous provisions in the licensing agreements is a ban on mixing genes — or "stacking" in industry lingo — that enhance Monsanto's power.

One contract provision likely helped Monsanto buy 24 independent seed companies throughout the Farm Belt over the last few years: that corn seed agreement says that if a smaller company changes ownership, its inventory with Monsanto's traits "shall be destroyed immediately."

Another provision from contracts earlier this decade_ regarding rebates — also help explain Monsanto's rapid growth as it rolled out new products.

One contract gave an independent seed company deep discounts if the company ensured that Monsanto's products would make up 70 percent of its total corn seed inventory. In its 2004 lawsuit, Syngenta called the discounts part of Monsanto's "scorched earth campaign" to keep Syngenta's new traits out of the market.

Quarles said the discounts were used to entice seed companies to carry Monsanto products when the technology was new and farmers hadn't yet used it. Now that the products are widespread, Monsanto has discontinued the discounts, he said.

The Monsanto contracts reviewed by the AP prohibit seed companies from discussing terms, and Monsanto has the right to cancel deals and wipe out the inventory of a business if the confidentiality clauses are violated.

Thomas Terral, chief executive officer of Terral Seed in Louisiana, said he recently rejected a Monsanto contract because it put too many restrictions on his business. But Terral refused to provide the unsigned contract to AP or even discuss its contents because he was afraid Monsanto would retaliate and cancel the rest of his agreements.

"I would be so tied up in what I was able to do that basically I would have no value to anybody else," he said. "The only person I would have value to is Monsanto, and I would continue to pay them millions in fees."

Independent seed company owners could drop their contracts with Monsanto and return to selling conventional seed, but they say it could be financially ruinous. Monsanto's Roundup Ready gene has become the industry standard over the last decade, and small companies fear losing customers if they drop it. It also can take years of breeding and investment to mix Monsanto's genes into a seed company's product line, so dropping the genes can be costly.

Monsanto acknowledged that U.S. Department of Justice lawyers are seeking documents and interviewing company employees about its marketing practices. The DOJ wouldn't comment.

A spokesman for Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said the office is examining possible antitrust violations. Additionally, two sources familiar with an investigation in Texas said state Attorney General Greg Abbott's office is considering the same issues. States have the authority to enforce federal antitrust law, and attorneys general are often involved in such cases.

Monsanto chairman and chief executive officer Hugh Grant told investment analysts during a conference call this fall that the price increases are justified by the productivity boost farmers get from the company's seeds. Farmers and seed company owners agree that Monsanto's technology has boosted yields and profits, saving farmers time they once spent weeding and money they once spent on pesticides.

But recent price hikes have still been tough to swallow on the farm.

"It's just like I got hit with bad weather and got a poor yield. It just means I've got less in the bottom line," said Markus Reinke, a corn and soybean farmer near Concordia, Mo. who took over his family's farm in 1965. "They can charge because they can do it, and get away with it. And us farmers just complain, and shake our heads and go along with it."

Any Justice Department case against Monsanto could break new ground in balancing a company's right to control its patented products while protecting competitors' right to free and open competition, said Kevin Arquit, former director of the Federal Trade Commission competition bureau and now a antitrust attorney with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP in New York.

"These are very interesting issues, and not just for the companies, but for the Justice Department," Arquit said. "They're in an area where there is uncertainty in the law and there are consumer welfare implications and government policy implications for whatever the result is."

Other seed companies have followed Monsanto's lead by including restrictive clauses in their licensing agreements, but their products only penetrate smaller segments of the U.S. seed market. Monsanto's Roundup Ready gene, on the other hand, is in such a wide array of crops that its licensing agreements can have a massive effect on the rules of the marketplace.

Monsanto was only a niche player in the seed business just 12 years ago. It rose to the top thanks to innovation by its scientists and aggressive use of patent law by its attorneys.

First came the science, when Monsanto in 1996 introduced the world's first commercial strain of genetically engineered soybeans. The Roundup Ready plants were resistant to the herbicide, allowing farmers to spray Roundup whenever they wanted rather than wait until the soybeans had grown enough to withstand the chemical.

The company soon released other genetically altered crops, such as corn plants that produced a natural pesticide to ward off bugs. While Monsanto had blockbuster products, it didn't yet have a big foothold in a seed industry made up of hundreds of companies that supplied farmers.

That's where the legal innovations came in, as Monsanto became among the first to widely patent its genes and gain the right to strictly control how they were used. That control let it spread its technology through licensing agreements, while shaping the marketplace around them.

Back in the 1970s, public universities developed new traits for corn and soybean seeds that made them grow hardy and resist pests. Small seed companies got the traits cheaply and could blend them to breed superior crops without restriction. But the agreements give Monsanto control over mixing multiple biotech traits into crops.

The restrictions even apply to taxpayer-funded researchers.

Roger Boerma, a research professor at the University of Georgia, is developing specialized strains of soybeans that grow well in southeastern states, but his current research is tangled up in such restrictions from Monsanto and its competitors.

"It's made one level of our life incredibly challenging and difficult," Boerma said.

The rules also can restrict research. Boerma halted research on a line of new soybean plants that contain a trait from a Monsanto competitor when he learned that the trait was ineffective unless it could be mixed with Monsanto's Roundup Ready gene.

Boerma said he hasn't considered asking Monsanto's permission to mix its traits with the competitor's trait.

"I think the co-mingling of their trait technology with another company's trait technology would likely be a serious problem for them," he said.

Quarles pointed out that Monsanto has signed agreements with several companies allowing them to stack their traits with Monsanto's. After Syngenta settled its lawsuit, for example, the companies struck a broad cross-licensing accord.

At the same time, Monsanto's patent rights give it the authority to say how independent companies use its traits, Quarles said.

"Please also keep in mind that, as the (intellectual property developer), it is our right to determine who will obtain rights to our technology and for what purpose," he said.

Monsanto's provision requiring companies to destroy seeds containing Monsanto's traits if a competitor buys them prohibited DuPont or other big firms from bidding against Monsanto when it snapped up two dozen smaller seed companies over the last five years, said David Boies, a lawyer representing DuPont who previously was a prosecutor on the federal antitrust case against Microsoft Corp.

Competitive bids from companies like DuPont could have made it far more expensive for Monsanto to bring the smaller companies into its fold. But that contract provision prevented bidding wars, according to DuPont.

"If the independent seed company is losing their license and has to destroy their seeds, they're not going to have anything, in effect, to sell," Boies said. "It requires them to destroy things — destroy things they paid for — if they go competitive. That's exactly the kind of restriction on competitive choice that the antitrust laws outlaw."

Quarles said some of the Monsanto contracts let companies sell their inventory for a period of time, rather than be required to destroy it. Seed companies also don't have to pay royalty fees on the bags of seed they destroyed.

"Simply put, it was designed to facilitate early adoption of the technology," he said.

Some independent seed company owners say they feel increasingly pinched as Monsanto cements its leadership in the industry.

"They have the capital, they have the resources, they own lots of companies, and buying more. We're small town, they're Wall Street," said Bill Cook, co-owner of M-Pride Genetics seed company in Garden City, Mo., who also declined to discuss or provide the agreements. "It's very difficult to compete in this environment against companies like Monsanto."

The banks' defence of Fortress Bonus is starting to crumble. Their claim that unilateral action against excessive rewards by the UK would damage the City has been a key plank of their case against bonus reform, but that has been demolished by the chancellor's bank levy in the pre-budget report.

In this column I have repeatedly argued that action by the UK, where the financial sector is so dominant, would send a powerful signal to the rest of the world and embolden other countries to follow suit.

So it has proved: Nicolas Sarkozy is introducing a similar tax, with one French official saying "There is no obstacle to doing it now if it has been done in London." Angela Merkel is making warm noises; the hope is that the rest of the EU and the United States will join in.

Politically, the tax surcharge was a clever move. By sparking international action, the sting has been drawn from the Conservatives' cry of "class war"; George Osborne and David Cameron could not oppose the measure without alienating an angry public. ...

The rising power of China has been a constant theme in economic and political commentary in recent years, often accompanied by observations on the relative decline of the west. A seat at the top table is now always reserved for Beijing at global summits, whether it is climate change or financial stability under discussion. European politicians warn ruefully of the G2 – the US and China – settling world affairs between them.

But in admiring China's progress to economic superpower status, it is easy to forget how far it lags behind in political terms. Last week, there was a reminder. Liu Xiaobo, a 53-year-old former literature professor, was charged with "inciting subversion of state power", an offence that carries a potential prison term of 15 years.

Mr Liu's crime was to organise a petition last year, under the title Charter 08, calling for basic political freedom. He was first arrested for supporting the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and has spent much of the ensuing period in jail or under house arrest.

Meanwhile, the Charter 08 petition has collected thousands of signatures. For anyone in China to put their name on such a document is an act of immense courage, which is certain to draw a hostile reaction from Communist party officials. ...

Need another reason to hate diamonds? Here ya go.

This is a cult whose existence must end.

... Asked about the practice of plural wives, he replied: "Well, that's a complicated issue and very difficult to explain to someone who is not of the faith. There are probably many customs in other religions that would seem bizarre to me, but it's not for me to judge them." [Ed. Note: "...Complicated...and very difficult to explain..."? You're a dissembling arsehole, you are. Also, abuse is not a "custom," shithead.]

That is greeted with derision by Flora Jessop, a cousin of Raymond and Willie who fled the church at 16 when she was made a child bride. She has since helped dozens of others flee the movement, which she says treats its girls as concubines and boys as cheap labour.

"The egregiousness of the abuse that was uncovered in that raid on the ranch is almost impossible to listen to," she said. "I just hope that people will finally understand that polygamy is not a religious practice. It is the enslavement of women and children."



Nicked from dear BrightKnight

Patrick Stewart: the legacy of domestic violence

As a child, the actor regularly saw his father hit his mother. Here he describes how the horrors of his childhood remained with him in his adult life

Patrick Stewart
Friday 27 November 2009

... Our house was small, and when you grow up with domestic violence in a confined space you learn to gauge, very precisely, the temperature of situations. I knew exactly when the shouting was done and a hand was about to be raised – I also knew exactly when to insert a small body between the fist and her face, a skill no child should ever have to learn. Curiously, I never felt fear for myself and he never struck me, an odd moral imposition that would not allow him to strike a child. The situation was barely tolerable: I witnessed terrible things, which I knew were wrong, but there was nowhere to go for help. Worse, there were those who condoned the abuse. I heard police or ambulancemen, standing in our house, say, "She must have provoked him," or, "Mrs Stewart, it takes two to make a fight." They had no idea. The truth is my mother did nothing to deserve the violence she endured. She did not provoke my father, and even if she had, violence is an unacceptable way of dealing with conflict. Violence is a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it. ...

A university that accepted £25 million from Tesco has published a report with misleading figures to endorse the supermarket’s policy of giving away billions of single-use carrier bags.

The University of Manchester’s Sustainable Consumption Institute allowed senior Tesco staff to contribute to the report but failed to disclose the extent of the company’s involvement. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, joined Sir Terry Leahy, Tesco chief executive, at the publication of the report at the Royal Society in London last month.

The report includes an analysis of different approaches to reducing the number of disposable bags issued annually by supermarkets. It claims that Tesco’s approach of giving customers a loyalty card point for reusing a bag is more effective than requiring shops to charge for bags, which is used in the Republic of Ireland.

The reduction in Ireland was five times greater than that achieved across Tesco shops in Britain. Ireland cut plastic bag consumption by 90 per cent when it introduced a 15 cent charge per bag in 2002. The Tesco reward method took three years to cut the number of plastic bags by less than 50 per cent. ...

Judge wipes out couple's mortgage after bank's 'repulsive' behaviour
A New York judge was so angry with a bank's "harsh, repugnant, shocking and repulsive" behaviour towards a financially struggling couple that he wiped out their $525,000 (£316,000) mortgage.

By Tom Leonard in New York
Published: 12:06AM GMT 26 Nov 2009

In an unusual legal decision that may cheer ordinary homeowners but dismay lenders, Judge Jeffrey Spinner took a tough line on a California-based bank that he considered had been determined to foreclose on the couple's home in Suffolk County, Long Island.

His ruling against OneWest and its IndyMac mortgage division has relieved Greg Horoski and his wife, Diane Yano-Horoski, of the $291,000 they owed on the original loan as well as $235,000 in interest.

OneWest took $814 million in federal bailout money but has a reputation for foreclosing quickly on property owners who falls into arrears. ...

... The judge attacked the bank for repeatedly refusing to work out a deal, for misleading him about the sums in the case and for its treatment of the couple.

He wrote that OneWest's conduct was "inequitable, unconscionable, vexatious and opprobrious", cancelling the debt to deter it from "imposing further mortifying abuse" against the couple. ...

... Mr Horoski...told the New York Post, "I think the judge felt it was almost a personal vendetta. It was like dealing with organised crime."

They are more savage and uncivilised than any Native tribe whom any "great white explorer" ever encountered - headhunters included - and we buy their oil.

A Roman Catholic group at the centre of an inquiry into child abuse in Ireland today offered €161m (£145m; $244m) in cash and land to make amends to its victims.

The Christian Brothers, which ran the Republic's notorious Industrial Schools and orphanages, said they will hand over up to €30m to an Irish government trust fund, and will also give €4m for abuse victims' counselling services.

In their statement the Christian Brothers said they will also transfer land valued at €127m to joint ownership of the government and the Edmund Rice Schools Trust.

They said their decision had been taken in the light of the publication this May of the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, known as the Ryan report. ...



No offer is suitable which doesn't completely bankrupt them.

A Scotland Yard commander was accused of misleading parliament tonight after an inquiry found that undercover police were secretly deployed at the G20 protests to spy on activists, contrary to the police chief's denials.

Commander Bob Broadhurst, who had overall command of the G20 policing operation, told the home affairs select committee in May that "no plain clothes officers [were] deployed at all" during the demonstrations in the City of London.

It has emerged that 25 undercover City of London police were stationed around the Bank of England to gather "intelligence" on protesters on 1 and 2 April. Broadhurst stands by the evidence he gave to MPs, claiming the deployment of undercover officers was unknown to him.

The disclosure will add to pressure on the Metropolitan police, who will tomorrow be forced to react to the findings of a long-awaited government inquiry into the policing of protest. This inquiry, by Denis O'Connor, head of the government's policing inspectorate, was set up after criticism of the Met's handling of the protests, at which Ian Tomlinson, a newspaper seller, died after being attacked by police.

The inquiry's report is expected to call for a radical overhaul of public order policing, and to suggest that the heavy-handed way that forces handle protest threatens a broader breakdown in trust in the police. ...

Police officers are now routinely arresting people in order to add their DNA sample to the national police database, an inquiry will allege tomorrow.

The review of the national DNA database by the government's human genetics commission also raises the possibility that the DNA profiles of three-quarters of young black males, aged 18 to 35, are now on the database.

The human genetics commission report, Nothing to hide, nothing to fear?, says the national DNA database for England and Wales is already the largest in the world, at 5 million profiles and growing, yet has no clear statutory basis or independent oversight.

The highly critical report from the government's advisory body on the development of human genetics is published as the number of innocent people on the database is disclosed to be far higher than previously thought ‑ nearing 1 million.

The commission says the policy of routinely adding the DNA profiles of all those arrested has led to a highly disproportionate impact on different ethnic groups and the stigmatisation of young black men, with the danger of their being seen as "an 'alien wedge' of criminality". ...



Ta much, dear Glenn321

Doctors in Iraq's war-ravaged enclave of Falluja are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities in infants and a spike in early life cancers that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting.

The extraordinary rise in birth defects has crystallised over recent months as specialists working in Falluja's over-stretched health system have started compiling detailed clinical records of all babies born.

Neurologists and obstetricians in the city interviewed by the Guardian say the rise in birth defects – which include a baby born with two heads, babies with multiple tumours, and others with nervous system problems - are unprecedented and at present unexplainable.

A group of Iraqi and British officials, including the former Iraqi minister for women's affairs, Dr Nawal Majeed a-Sammarai, and the British doctors David Halpin and Chris Burns-Cox, have petitioned the UN general assembly to ask that an independent committee fully investigate the defects and help clean up toxic materials left over decades of war – including the six years since Saddam Hussein was ousted.

"We are seeing a very significant increase in central nervous system anomalies," said Falluja general hospital's director and senior specialist, Dr Ayman Qais. "Before 2003 [the start of the war] I was seeing sporadic numbers of deformities in babies. Now the frequency of deformities has increased dramatically." ...



Can you say, "Depleted uranium"?

I knew you could.

GOP Gone Wild: Unruly Republicans Silence Women Lawmakers With Screams, Shouts, And Delay Tactics

This morning, the House began consideration of the rule for debate of the House health care bill. As the Democratic Women’s Caucus took to the microphone on the House floor to offer their arguments for how the bill would benefit women, House Republicans — led by Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) — repeatedly talked over, screamed, and shouted objections. “I object, I object, I object, I object, I object,” Price interjected as Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) tried to hold the floor.

In an effort to delay and derail the proceedings, the Republicans continually talked over the Democratic women for half an hour. They sought to prevent the debate by calling for unnecessary “parliamentary inquiries” and requests for “expanding the debate” by an hour.

After being repeatedly interrupted by Republican shouts, Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH) observed:

Do I not have the right to be able to continue my sentence without objections that are trying to censor my remarks here on the floor that I have a right to make as a member of this House?

...

The goddam rethuglicunts musta been wearing these their entire repulsive lives.

Ta much, dear Anneliese

Scotland Yard faced calls for an "ethical audit" of all officers in its controversial riot squad tonight after figures revealed that they had received more than 5,000 complaint allegations, mostly for "oppressive behaviour".

Details of all allegations lodged against the Metropolitan police territorial support group (TSG) over the last four years reveal that only nine – less than 0.18% – were "substantiated" after an investigation by the force's complaints department.

The figures, released under the Freedom of Information Act, were described as evidence of a "culture of impunity" that makes it almost impossible for members of the public to lodge successful complaints against the Met's 730 TSG officers.

The TSG is a specialist squad that responds to outbreaks of disorder anywhere in the capital. It is under investigation for the most high-profile cases of alleged brutality at the G20 protests, including the death of Ian Tomlinson.

The unit came under renewed criticism this week after one of its officers was identified as a member of a team implicated in a "serious, gratuitous and prolonged" attack on a Muslim man. ...

The local mcdonald's should be getting some new applicants soon - from the soon-to-be former staff members (and I use the term advisedly) of the Sun City West retirement community, and several soon-to-be-ex-ahem-members of the 'police' department.

Ta much, dear Anneliese

A pot of £30m compensation due to be paid to thousands of African victims of toxic waste may end up being stolen thanks to the Ivory Coast regime's corruption, their lawyers said today.

The money was handed over by oil traders Trafigura in an out-of-court settlement in London and deposited in a bank in the west African state's capital, Abidjan, ready to be shared out in cash to each of the 30,000 victims. But the entire sum has been frozen in a sudden move backed by the local state prosecutor, according to Martyn Day, the senior partner at Leigh Day, the London lawyers who won the landmark settlement.

Moves are now in train, he said, to order all the cash to be handed over to a local group claiming to represent the victims. At the same time, Day has received a request to meet representatives of a senior Ivorian figure in Paris, to agree to come to an "arrangement".

"Blatant corruption" could be occurring, Day, who has flown back to London from Ivory Coast, said today. "There is a very serious risk that the compensation monies will simply disappear and our clients will see none of it." ...

... The 'satanic abuse' hysteria was particularly appalling, but year after year in America prudery exacts a terrible toll – as witness the unfortunate female schoolteachers packed often to prison with hefty sentences for having affairs with boys in their mid to late teens.

Is America permanently lodged in the 17th century so far as moral policing is concerned? The answer is Not exactly, since gay marriage wasn’t a big item on the legislative agenda of the colonies at that time. But regulation of sexual behaviour is the preferred route to wider social control.

The control of sex and pornography is a major part of promulgating a puritanical political culture without ever imposing overt political censorship. Sexual repression, often through the allegation of 'deviant' fantasy crimes, is the designated stand-in for violations of the social order that are hard to crush in a courtroom. As Williamson is now ruefully aware, the state not only has a long arm, it has a long gaze.

Moral: the eyes of the law are on you at all times, even at 8.30 am in the supposed privacy of your own kitchen.



What did you expect from a cuntry founded by folks so uptight the Brits threw them out?

... The phone taps record Mr Karadzic saying: "They have to know that there are 20,000 armed Serbs around Sarajevo.... it will be a black cauldron where 300,000 Muslims will die. They will disappear. That people will disappear from the face of the earth."

Mr Tieger said that Mr Karadzic showed nothing but contempt for the views of the international community for the Bosnian Serb programme of ethnic cleansing - the euphemism invented during the conflict to sanitise the killing of thousands of Muslims.

"As he said in October 1991 in anticipation of what he had planned: 'Europe will be told to go f*** itself, and not to come back until the job is finished'."

Mr Tieger concluded: "This case is about that Supreme Commander, a man who harnessed the forces of nationalism, hatred and fear to implement his vision of an ethnic Bosnia. That Supreme Commander was Radovan Karadzic."

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia decided to push ahead with proceedings today, even though Mr Karadzic refused to attend for a second day.

Judge O-Gon Kwon, the chief judge, issued a second warning that Mr Karadzic would have a legal representative imposed upon him if he continued to remain in his cell, and ruled that the prosecution could begin to outline the case against him.

Well done, texass.

Scotland Yard's most senior officer in charge of policing protests saidtoday that he would support a government inspectorate which has proposed a radical overhaul of public order policing.

Assistant commissioner Chris Allison said police would in the future be "far more explicit" about their commitment to facilitating peaceful protest, the main proposal made in an inquiry headed by Denis O'Connor, the chief inspector of the constabulary.

O'Connor's inquiry was launched in the aftermath of the Metropolitan police's controversial handling of the G20 protests, which saw several thousand protesters contained by officers in so-called "kettles" near the Bank of England. A newspaper-vendor, Ian Tomlinson, died after being pushed by a member of the Met's territorial support group.

The full report by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), outlining major reform for policing protests, will be published next month. However, the Guardian understands the Met hired lawyers to object to a central recommendation made in its interim findings.

HMIC sources said the Met instigated a "huge battle" with inspectors, who were attempting to bring the force's approach in line with human rights obligations to facilitate peaceful assembly. The HMIC was forced to pay for its own senior barrister, whose legal advice found in their favour.

A Home Office source said the Met was still resistant to change, and "the battle is far from won" over the right approach to demonstrations....

Police were in no mood for a "softly-softly" approach when climate change campaigners began their demonstration outside Kingsnorth power station in Kent last year. Their response was harsh and expensive – and has been roundly criticised. The £5m operation involved putting demonstrators, including children, through a total of 8,000 searches at airport-style checkpoints.

Loud music was blasted out to spoil protesters' sleep during the week-long camp, and more than 2,000 possessions were confiscated, including party poppers, a clown costume and camping equipment. Protesters were aghast; they were staging a piece of political theatre to publicise the dangers of global warming. The police looked on them, it seems, as a far graver threat, bent on putting out the nation's lights.

Without perhaps many of the activists realising it, their demonstration was colliding with an established official mindset focused on potential terrorists or saboteurs. It is a culture that conforms with a change in the way political activists have become viewed by the UK authorities. ...

Chief constables will be forced to justify the legality of recording thousands of law-abiding protesters on secret nationwide databases, the government's privacy watchdog announced today.

Christopher Graham, the information commissioner, said he had "genuine concerns about the ever increasing amount" of personal data held by police.

Graham's move came after the Guardian revealed how police have developed a covert apparatus to monitor people they consider are, or could be, "domestic extremists", a term which has no legal basis.

Photographs and personal details of thousands of activists who attend demonstrations, rallies and political meetings are being stored on the databases. Surveillance officers are given so-called "spotter cards" to identify individuals who may "instigate offences or disorder" at demonstrations. ...

Britain's retail banks should be banned from paying out "significant" cash bonuses as part of a drive to plough profits back into new lending, the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, will declare tomorrow.

In the strongest attack by the Tories on banks, Osborne will say that bonuses should be paid in shares, which cannot be cashed in for at least three years, as he warns that billions of pounds in "subsidised profits" are threatening to worsen the credit crunch.

In a speech to Thomson Reuters in Canary Wharf, east London, Osborne will tell financiers: "We cannot wait for the promised land of a new responsible bonus culture which looks more remote than ever. We need to take emergency steps to support bank lending and move the economy forward.

"I am today calling on the Treasury and the Financial Services Authority to combine forces and stop retail banks paying out profits in significant cash bonuses. Full stop. Then the cash that would have been paid out should be put on to banks' balance sheets explicitly to support new lending. This should be a condition of continuing to receive taxpayer guarantees and liquidity support." ...

"Ideas are hard. Blocking them is easy."

Ta much, dear Anneliese

... Clearly "news" is not what Fox is about. Republican media strategist Roger Ailes, the network's founder and architect, has run a brilliant rhetorical game from the start: Fox adopts the outward forms of the establishment US media and pretends to hew to its standards – in order to undermine those very things. Fox claims to give its viewers the straight story, while proclaiming it's the New York Times and CBS that are really biased.

Of course, CBS and the NYT have their problems. But to believe Fox tells it like it is is to conclude that a basic idea of journalism – that what's happening in the world can be understood and fair-mindedly explained – is a sham.

"Political" attacks are inherently unfair. But the White House is simply stating the obvious about Fox. Obama promised to be reality-based, right? And the criticism seems, for the first time in a while, to have started a real debate on the issue. The Washington news media has simply accepted Fox as one of their own – after all, it has money, cameras, anchors and an audience. Jacob Weisberg argues that journalists who value their credibility should stop appearing on Fox, as they only help perpetuate the network's misleading premise. ...

Assaults and drunken attacks on the street have been ignored by the police rather than recorded and investigated as violent crime, an inspection report disclosed today.

One in three decisions to record a violent incident that has occurred as a “no crime” was wrong, the police inspectorate said.

If the findings, based on a small sample, are repeated across all forces in England and Wales an estimated 5,000 violent offences a year are not being treated as a crime by officers.

Today’s report will raise concerns that officers are dismissing violent offences in order to make their forces’ figures look better. ...


Ya think?

Alistair Darling has openly criticised Goldman Sachs over its plan to pay huge staff bonuses so soon after the financial crisis nearly crushed the banking sector.

Speaking at an event in London this lunchtime, the chancellor cited the Wall Street giant as an example of a bank that "manifestly" failed to appreciate how the City landscape had changed.

"What happened with Goldman Sachs last week sends the wrong signals," said Darling, who was attending an event at Canary Wharf. "I've spoken to all our banks and none of them would be standing here today if the taxpayer hadn't put their hand into their pocket."

Goldman Sachs itself does not appear to share Darling's concerns. Last night, Lord Griffiths, vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International, claimed that huge salaries were a price worth paying.

"I believe that we should be thinking about the medium-term common good, not the short-term common good ... we should not, therefore, be ashamed of offering compensation in an internationally competitive market which ensures the bank businesses here and employs British people," said Griffiths. ...



I think you should fuck off, mr griffiths. I don't think any boss anywhere deserves pay that's more than 100 times what the lowest paid employees receive. I very much like the Japanese idea of bosses' getting no more than up to ten times what the lowest paid employees get.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Two newlyweds are fighting for the dismissal of the justice of the peace who refused them a marriage license because they are of different races. ...



Um, what century is this again?

If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one to hear it, can Carter-Ruck ban all mention of the sound?
Charlie Brooker
Monday 19 October 2009

... That's effectively what the Guardian did last week, except that there was no beloved actor, but rather a whopping great multinational company accused of dumping toxic waste off the Ivory Coast, following which a lot of people got rather sick and more than a little upset. In an apparent bid to save face, the company instructed its lawyers (Carter-Ruck) to sail up and down the media coastline, knowingly dumping toxic injunctions. Eventually they went completely berserk and issued a super-injunction preventing the Guardian from reporting a parliamentary question about one of their previous super-injunctions. This was too much for common sense or modern technology to bear. Private Eye printed the question, the Twittersphere went bonkers; soon everyone knew about it, and Trafigura's name was toxic mud. In terms of corporate PR, it was about as effective as appearing on the GMTV sofa to carve your brand name on to the face of a live baby. Anyway, the Trafigura debacle is one of the very few occasions where the cloaking device of the super-injunction has actually malfunctioned, leaving the hovering mothership visible, which raises a worrying question: what else don't we know about? Literally anything could be going on. Like the mysterious "dark matter" that scientists believe makes up a huge percentage of the universe, an entire alternative reality could be thriving just over our shoulders. Dean Gaffney might be made of staples. Hitler could be alive and well and currently in negotiations to present the Radio 1 breakfast show. Kellogg's could be raising an army of the damned and declaring war on Norwich. How many other "invisible" stories are out there, shrouded by thick legal mist?

God knows. But he's not allowed to tell you. ...

THE state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland is planning to hand out record bonuses of up to £5m each in a snub to struggling taxpayers.

The move would see the average employee in its high-risk investment banking arm take home £240,000, with the top 20 staff in line for payments of between £1m and £5m.

The payouts by the investment banking division — from a total pay and bonus pot of £4 billion — would top the deals awarded at the peak of the financial boom in 2007 and are 66% higher than those paid last year.

RBS, then headed by Sir Fred Goodwin, had to be rescued from collapse by the Treasury last October with an initial injection of £20 billion. The taxpayer now has a 70% stake in the bank. ...

A police officer has been airlifted to hospital after being hurt during violent scuffles with activists at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire.

Witnesses said one protester was also treated by ambulance crews at the site following a volatile stand-off with authorities.

A total of 21 people have been arrested after sections of the fence surrounding the station were torn down by protesters.

The violence broke out as lines of police attempted to push back the activists outside the fence.

Muray Smith, a spokesman for Camp for Climate Action, one of the groups that organised the demonstration, said: "Protesters pulled down two sections of fence and police are trying to restrict them getting through and are trying to move people back."

Some activists managed to enter the site and were arrested, he added.

Earlier, 10 people were held by police on suspicion of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass. Nine were from Manchester and one from West Yorkshire. They were aged between 19 and 53.

About 1,000 protesters are understood to have gathered at the site. Groups including Camp for Climate Action are demanding that coal-fired stations be decommissioned in favour of more environmentally friendly options. ...

Minton report: Carter-Ruck give up bid to keep Trafigura study secret
• Guardian 'released from restrictions forthwith'
• Report called firm's oil waste 'potentially toxic'
• Read the Trafigura study: the Minton report (pdf)

* David Leigh
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 16 October 2009 22.19 BST

Lawyers for oil traders Trafigura finally abandoned attempts to keep secret a scientific report about toxic waste dumping in west Africa, that was shown to the Guardian.

Just after 7.30pm Carter-Ruck, libel lawyers for Trafigura, wrote a letter to the Guardian which said the newspaper should regard itself as "released forthwith" from any reporting restrictions. An MP revealed the report's existence to parliament this week, after the Guardian was hit with a "super-injunction" banning all mention of it and other UK media were then subsequently notified of, and therefore bound by it.

The Minton report, commissioned in 2006 from the London-based firm's scientific consultants, said that based on the "limited" information they had been given Trafigura's oil waste, dumped cheaply the month before in a city in Ivory Coast, was potentially toxic, and "capable of causing severe human health effects".

The study said early reports of large scale medical problems among the inhabitants of Abidjan, were consistent with a release of a cloud of potentially lethal hydrogen sulphide gas over the city. The effects could have included severe burns to the skin and lungs, eye damage, permanent ulceration, coma and death.

The author of this initial draft study, John Minton, of consultants Minton, Treharne & Davies, said dumping the waste would have been illegal in Europe and the proper method of disposal should have been a specialist chemical treatment called wet air oxidation. ...

The law firm Carter-Ruck has made a fresh move that could stop an MPs' debate next week by claiming a controversial injunction it has obtained is "sub judice".

The move follows the revelation of the existence of a secret "super-injunction" obtained by the firm on behalf of the London-based oil traders Trafigura.

The injunction not only bans disclosure of a confidential report on Trafigura and toxic waste, but also banned disclosure of the injunction's very existence, until it was revealed by an MP this week under parliamentary privilege.

Carter-Ruck partner Adam Tudor today sent a letter to the Speaker, John Bercow, and also circulated it to every single MP and peer, saying they believed the case was "sub judice".

If correct, it would mean that, under Westminster rules to prevent clashes between parliament and the courts, a debate planned for next Wednesday could not go ahead.

Earlier this week, the Labour MP Paul Farrelly said Carter-Ruck might be in contempt of parliament for seeking to stop the Guardian reporting questions he had put down on the order paper revealing the existence of the "super-injunction".

The Conservative MP Peter Bottomley went on to tell Gordon Brown at prime minister's questions that he would report Carter-Ruck to the Law Society for obtaining an injunction that purported to ban parliamentary reporting. ...

MPs from all parties protested at Westminster this afternoon at attempts by lawyers acting for the oil trader Trafigura to stop reports of parliamentary proceedings.

The Labour MP Paul Farrelly told the speaker, John Bercow, attempts by lawyers Carter-Ruck to gag the media could be a "potential contempt of parliament".

The Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris said there was a need to "control the habit of law firms" of obtaining secrecy injunctions, and his colleague David Heath told the Commons a "fundamental principle" was being threatened: that MPs should be able to speak freely and have their words reported freely.

On the Conservative side, David Davies criticised the rising use of "super-injunctions", in which the fact of the injunction is itself kept secret. He said courts should not be allowed to grant injunctions forbidding the reporting of parliament. ...

... Farrelly, who tabled a parliamentary question yesterday that the Guardian had been forbidden from reporting, told the Commons: "I want to raise a point of order regarding a chain of events which may be of concern to the House.

"Today, the Guardian reported that it had been prevented from reporting a written question tabled by a member of parliament. This morning, I telephoned the Guardian to ask whether the MP was myself.

"The question was printed on the order paper yesterday and relates to the activities of Trafigura, an international oil trader at the centre of a controversy regarding toxic waste-dumping in the Ivory Coast, and to the role of its solicitors, Carter-Ruck.

"Yesterday, I understand, Carter-Ruck, quite astonishingly, warned of legal action if the Guardian reported my question. In view of the seriousness of this, will you accept representations from me over this matter and consider whether Carter-Ruck's behaviour constitutes a potential contempt of parliament?"

Earlier, Trafigura's law firm had refused to alter an existing blanket court order banning the Guardian from mentioning Trafigura's recourse to the courts. This refusal was despite the publication on parliament's official website of Farrelly's questions revealing the facts.

The result of Carter-Ruck's intransigence was an avalanche of online publication, as well as...in the magazine Private Eye...Bloggers who posted Farrelly's questions in full included the political website Guido Fawkes and the Spectator magazine website.

Large numbers of messages were posted on Twitter, to the extent that "Trafigura" and "Carter-Ruck" became the most viewed keywords in London throughout the morning.

Shortly before the case was due to come to court, Carter-Ruck announced that its clients would no longer oppose reporting of what was said in parliament about them. ...



Real genius, but the last five paras posted here are by far the funniest.

Her collaborator isn’t just a creationist. There’s the white supremacy issue, too ...

... The Palin book, moreover, is clearly being styled as a work of polemic, appealing to the Christianist base, thereby fanning homophobia, and empowering those who would like nothing more than to push gay people back into the closet, out of marriage, out of the military, and out of the workplace. Burnham is now directly party to this effort.

It's not possible to accuse Jonathan Burnham of hypocrisy because that would imply he has any convictions or principles at all. Here, for example, is his quote about a 400-page book written in two months:

“Governor Palin has been unbelievably conscientious and hands-on at every stage, investing herself deeply and passionately in this project…. It’s her words...”

Hey, if it makes a buck, and advances his career, Burnham will do it. As gay people prepare to march for their civil rights, Burnham, one of the more powerful gay men in New York, is preparing to capitalize on their avowed enemies. It's just money, after all. And buzz. Always buzz.

October 10, 2009
The barcode is nothing to celebrate
It killed off the traditional shop and gave us the checkout girl. And what’s with a 57th anniversary anyway?
Giles Coren

... It seems a rum thing to celebrate, though. Because what, after all, have we gained by the invention of the barcode (which, in the end, was first employed in a supermarket in Troy, Ohio, in 1974)?

As far as I can tell, the main thing that the barcode has achieved is to have brought an end to the old-fashioned scenario in one’s local shop, where the little man in the white overalls smiles as he takes down the flour tin from the shelf to weigh out your half-pound, and says: “Baking today, is it, Mrs Foskett? Not your famous fairy cakes? Hope there’s one left over for me!”

Good work, barcode. You’ve certainly seen off that nosey old bastard.

Yup, the barcode killed the shop. Nice one. Like all modernising inventions, it came along with a brief to speed things up and, where possible, eradicate people. A bit like the industrialised Nazi death camps (happy birthday, Heinrich!). And while that may be great as a model for business or genocide, it rather runs counter to the instinctive will of humanity.

I tell a lie. The barcode did give us something useful. It gave us the phrase “supermarket checkout girl” as a convenient shorthand for a girl of low status and minimal intellect — the sort of girl you don’t want to end up settling for, or, if you are a girl, end up being. Whichever it is, she’s waiting for you if you don’t get on with your homework.

Swipe, swipe, blip. Swipe, swipe, blip. It’s the sound of the end of the world. The final, total automation of the need to eat. The digitisation of the life instinct. Indeed, there are now supermarkets with no checkout staff at all, where you just swipe, swipe, blip the barcodes yourself and go home without speaking a word. Such places are generally full of lonely singletons buying frozen lasagne and soft porn, rapists and teenage muggers helping themselves to the booze. Good on you, Norman Joe! Hats off, Bernie!

And even if you are on the side of corporate rapine, and celebrate the bypassing of the human in all commercial transactions, wouldn’t you have been more excited about October 7 if barcodes actually worked? If it wasn’t always a case of some illiterate till popsy being unable to find the barcode on the egg box and turning it over and over and then banging it huffily down on the counter so that the omelette that you were going to have for lunch starts making itself right there in the shop, and then spending the next ten minutes trying to type in the numbers manually — tutting and sighing all the time — until she eventually hits “enter” and the display screen charges up a gross of Brussels sprout trees at £456? ...



Well done, Giles.

This asshole needs to lose its law license, its Merc, all of its books, and as Mom said, "And get his house burned down."

Ta much, dear Foxy

... For one thing, we learned that the modern conservative movement, which dominates the modern Republican Party, has the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.

But more important, the episode illustrated an essential truth about the state of American politics: at this point, the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple. If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America.

To be sure, while celebrating America’s rebuff by the Olympic Committee was puerile, it didn’t do any real harm. But the same principle of spite has determined Republican positions on more serious matters, with potentially serious consequences — in particular, in the debate over health care reform.

Now, it’s understandable that many Republicans oppose Democratic plans to extend insurance coverage — just as most Democrats opposed President Bush’s attempt to convert Social Security into a sort of giant 401(k). The two parties do, after all, have different philosophies about the appropriate role of government.

But the tactics of the two parties have been different. In 2005, when Democrats campaigned against Social Security privatization, their arguments were consistent with their underlying ideology: they argued that replacing guaranteed benefits with private accounts would expose retirees to too much risk.

The Republican campaign against health care reform, by contrast, has shown no such consistency. For the main G.O.P. line of attack is the claim — based mainly on lies about death panels and so on — that reform will undermine Medicare. And this line of attack is utterly at odds both with the party’s traditions and with what conservatives claim to believe.

Think about just how bizarre it is for Republicans to position themselves as the defenders of unrestricted Medicare spending. First of all, the modern G.O.P. considers itself the party of Ronald Reagan — and Reagan was a fierce opponent of Medicare’s creation, warning that it would destroy American freedom. (Honest.) In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich tried to force drastic cuts in Medicare financing. And in recent years, Republicans have repeatedly decried the growth in entitlement spending — growth that is largely driven by rising health care costs. ...



Ta much, dear Anneliese

Well done, Waitrose, et al...but why hasn't sky network dumped faux news?

The International Monetary Fund today threw its weight behind a new tax on the global financial sector designed to limit risky speculative behaviour and help the world's poorest countries.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF's managing director, said banks and other big financial institutions were responsible for systemic risk and it was only right that they provided resources to mitigate those threats to the world economy.

While ruling out a so-called Tobin tax – a levy on foreign currency transactions proposed by the American economist James Tobin in the early 1970s – Strauss-Kahn said a high-level IMF team would work on proposals in the coming months.

"The very simple idea of putting a tax on transactions won't work for many technical reasons," Strauss-Kahn said at a press conference held in the run-up to the IMF's annual meeting in Istanbul next week.

"On the other hand, considering the financial sector is creating a lot of systemic risks for the global economy, it is fair that the sector pay some part of its resources to mitigate risks it is creating itself." ...



Hmmm. This is a lot like seeing Lucifer giving orders to Beelzebub, innit.

Brown intervenes in bank charges standoff

PM tells bankers to settle long-running court battle over refunds for excessive charges 'without further delay' ...

DETROIT (WXYZ) - The man who is suspected of firebombing a home causing serious injuries to two small children turned himself into police Friday morning. ...



Horrid story; amusing mistake. Since he's turned himself into police, he'll now be defending the law 'stead of breaking it.

Britain’s big six energy companies have rebuffed calls for them to cut prices, despite a halving in the wholesale cost of gas and electricity over the past year.

Ofgem, the industry regulator, has been pressing the companies to reduce prices for consumers after it was revealed that the companies will be earning £170 from each dual fuel customer over the next year. Over the past three years they have earned an average of £110 per customer per year.

Alistair Buchanan, the regulator’s chief executive, wrote to the six companies last month telling them that “they owe it to their customers to better explain their pricing position to them”.

But replies to Mr Buchanan’s letter published yesterday showed that the companies - British Gas, E.ON, Scottish Power, Scottish & Southern Energy, EDF Energy - have no plans to trim prices for 26 million households this year. ...

Evil, insecure, ignorant, bastards! I'm with dear Anneliese, who sent me this via her review which reads, "For this our troops are dying?"

If Obama can't defeat the Republican headbangers, our planet is doomed

One year on, the world still looks to the US and holds its breath. The fate of a global climate treaty rests in American hands

The British oil trader Trafigura has offered to pay out in a historic damages claim from 31,000 Africans injured by the dumping of toxic waste in one of the worst pollution disasters in recent history, the Guardian can reveal.

The compensation deal for the victims of toxic oil waste dumping in west Africa – likely to be confirmed imminently – means the full extent of attempts to cover up what really happened can be spelled out for the first time.

The truth is laid bare in Trafigura's hitherto secret documents, published by the Guardian today.

The company's internal emails show the true nature of the toxic waste dumped around Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast. Trafigura had publicly claimed the waste was harmless.

The exposure of the company files has contributed to Trafigura's climbdown after three years of bitterly contested legal battles. We are publishing them online today. ...



How evil will solar power companies become?

Thank God/dess someone has the balls to speak truthfully here in Yankistan!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Bureau of Investigation's caseload for mortgage fraud has continued to grow as homeowners cope with the shattered housing market, FBI Director Robert Mueller told the U.S. Congress on Wednesday.

"The schemes have evolved with the changing economy, targeting vulnerable individuals, victimizing them even as they are about to lose their homes," he said in prepared remarks to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

He told the panel that the FBI has more than 2,600 cases open with most of them involving losses of over $1 million. That is more than triple the number three years ago and up from 2,400 cases Mueller said were open in May.

The FBI has shifted its investigative resources to focus on mortgage fraud and assigned about 300 special agents to the task, Mueller said, adding that their focus has centered on what he described as "industry insiders."

Economists have cited the housing bust that left banks holding souring mortgage securities as the primary cause of the deep recession that has swamped the U.S. economy since December 2007. ...



Sic 'em!!

The World Bank is spending billions of pounds subsidising new coal-fired power stations in developing countries despite claiming that burning fossil fuels exposes the poor to catastrophic climate change. The bank, which has a goal of reducing poverty and is funded by Britain and other developed countries, calls on all nations in a report today to “act differently on climate change”.

It says that the world must reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, but it is funding several giant coal-burning plants that will each emit millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide a year for the next 40 to 50 years.

Britain is contributing £400million to a World Bank fund that claims to support “clean technology” but is financing coal power plants.

The bank’s World Development Report says: “Developing countries are disproportionately affected by climate change — a crisis that is not of their making and for which they are the least prepared. Increasing access to energy and other services using high-carbon technologies will produce more greenhouse gases, hence more climate change.” ...



I really didn't need more proof the world bank is thoroughly evil, but thanks anyways.

Getcher karma, rethuglicunts.

What's the difference between religion and mental illness?

No, there's no punchline.

Ta much, dear Anneliese

The only people who can understand loonies are other loonies. I don't even try unravelling twisted psyches and learning how they tick - that's no language I wish to learn, nosireebob.

...their tests found that the Ribena contained a tiny amount of vitamin C, while another brand's orange juice drink contained almost four times more.

"We thought we were doing it wrong. We thought we must have made a mistake," Anna told New Zealand's Weekend Herald. The girls were both 14 and students at Pakuranga College in Auckland when they did the experiment in 2004.

Given Ribena's advertising claims that "the blackcurrants in Ribena have four times the vitamin C of oranges", they were astonished and wrote to the manufacturers, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). When they got no response, they phoned the company, but were given short shrift. "They didn't even really answer our questions. They just said it's the blackcurrants that have it, then they hung up," Jenny said.

But then the girls' claims were picked up by a TV consumer affairs programme, Fair Go, which suggested they take their findings to the commerce commission, a government watchdog.

GSK said the girls had tested the wrong product, and it was concentrated syrup which had four times the vitamin C of oranges. But when the commerce commission investigated, it found that although blackcurrants have more vitamin C than oranges, the same was not true of Ribena. It also said ready-to-drink Ribena contained no detectable level of vitamin C.

GSK is in court in Auckland today facing 15 charges relating to misleading advertising, risking fines of up to NZ$3m (£1.1m). ...

Ta much, dear Ar0cketman for making me ask the classic question, What in holy hell is going on here?!

The Pope blames atheists for global warming. Pope Benedict is claiming atheists are responsible for the destruction of the environment. The Pope made the claims in a recent speech given at the Vatican. The claim is a puzzling attack on atheism that frankly makes little sense.

Excerpt from the Pope's speech:

“Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where his existence is denied? If the human creature's relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the ‘final authority,’ and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to possess the most possible.”

The irony is that any historical evaluation places the blame for global warming and the degradation of the planet firmly in the lap of Christians and the Catholic church. The Holy Bible, a book atheists firmly reject for good reason, claims that God gave man dominion over the earth. Christians, including Catholics, took these words to heart. They used those words as carte blanche, a justification for all manners of planetary abuse.

Christianity, and Catholicism, are historically anti-environmental. In fact, if blame is to be placed for the current global environmental crisis, it is to be placed squarely upon the Judeo-Christian tradition. The fact that Christianity is anti-environmental is no secret. Indeed, many Christians have taken a perverse pride in claiming their dominion. For example, James Watt, who became U.S. Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, wrote an influential and damning article entitled "Ours Is the Earth". Watt, speaking for countless Christians, made it abundantly clear that for believers the earth is "merely a temporary way station on the road to eternal life...The earth was put here by the Lord for His people to subdue and to use for profitable purposes on their way to the hereafter."

For those of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the earth is, for all intents and purposes, disposable, nothing but a waiting room for eternity. As such the waiting room can be plundered in any fashion. After all, the earth is but a temporary and transient thing of no consequence when compared to the promise of eternity (pie in the sky, yum yum!). ...


Ta much for the afternoon's boggle o_0, dear Glenn321

Ta much, dear Shell42970

CIA threats to detainees' families exposed
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Monday 24 August 2009

An internal CIA report published yesterday reveals a host of incidents in which its interrogators went far beyond acceptable bounds, including threatening an al-Qaida leader that his children would be killed and hinting to another suspect that his mother would be raped in front of him.

The CIA document, which the agency fought for years to keep secret, was released after a court action by a civil rights group. It described interrogation techniques that were "unauthorised, improvised, inhumane and undocumented".

Interrogators, questioning al-Qaida and other suspects at Guantánamo and secret prisons round the world, took a power drill and a handgun into an interrogation room and also staged a mock execution in a cell next door.

The report says interrogators threatened Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, that if there was another attack on the US, "we're going to kill your children".

In a separate incident, an interrogator told a suspected al-Qaida leader, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, that if he did not talk "we could get your mother in here. We can bring your family in here". The report added that the interrogator wanted Nashiri to infer that the "interrogation technique involves sexually abusing female relatives in front of the detainee". ...



Go, usa. Rah rah fucking rah. Yippee. I'm so proud. Hooray.

/me vomits

The CIA's post-torture profits

Architects of a shameful chapter in the agency's history now reap rich rewards in the private sector. They must be held to account

o Tim Shorrock
o Tuesday 25 August 2009

Monday's release of the long-awaited CIA report on the agency's role in torture and interrogation brought me back to 1967, when I was a high school student opposed to the Vietnam war. Angry that my history teacher was only presenting the official story, I persuaded her to allow my class to read Vietnam! Vietnam!, a powerful indictment of the war by the British reporter Felix Greene. It was filled with disturbing images, including a haunting photograph of a Vietnamese fighter being waterboarded while American soldiers looked on. But my teacher and fellow students dismissed the book as propaganda, preferring instead the sanitised version of the war provided by the US government.

The CIA report, however, is the official word on the Bush-Cheney "war on terror". In gruesome detail, it shows how untrained CIA interrogators and private contractors, blessed by their superiors, inflicted detainees captured in the Middle East with "enhanced interrogation techniques" that ran the gamut from mock executions to threats to kill family members to waterboarding. While the intelligence provided important details about al-Qaida and some information about possible attacks, the report concluded that the interrogations violated US commitments to human rights and showed that the CIA "failed to provide adequate staffing, guidance and support" to those involved.

CIA director Leon Panetta attempted to downplay those findings by saying that "the challenge is not the battles of yesterday, but those of today and tomorrow". But we know from the American experience that is not true: as in Vietnam, we must come to grips with the fact that using the ends to justify the means has destroyed thousands of lives and stirred deep hatred for the US.

Curiously, there is a reference to the American cold war past in the CIA report. After Vietnam, it said, US interest in interrogation faded, only to re-emerge with US intervention in Central America as a way to "foster foreign liaison relationships" – presumably with the anti-communist governments such as El Salvador and Guatemala. But in the mid-1980s, after two CIA officers were investigated for killing a detainee – in a country blacked out in the report – the agency said it ended its so-called "human resource exploitation" programme. ...

You are queer steve anderson, and I claim my £5.

Ta much, dear BrightKnight

There's nothing higher or more important than truth - unless you're a conservative.

Ta much, dear Anneliese

... In 1981, Alexander built a 200sq ft home for lab rats. Rat Park, as it became known, was kept clean and temperate, while the rats were supplied with plenty of food and toys, along with places to dig, rest and mate. Alexander even painted the walls with a soothing natural backdrop of lakes and trees. He then installed two drips, one containing a morphine solution, the other plain water. This was rat heaven: but would happy rats develop morphine habits?

Try as he might, Alexander could not make junkies out of his rats. Even after being force-fed morphine for two months, when given the option, they chose plain water, despite experiencing mild withdrawal symptoms. He laced the morphine with sugar, but still they ignored it. Only when he added Naloxone, an opiate inhibitor, to the sugared morphine water, did they drink it.

Alexander simultaneously monitored rats kept in "normal" lab conditions: they consistently chose the morphine drip over plain water, sometimes consuming 16-20 times more than the Rat Parkers.

Alexander's findings - that deprived rats seek solace in opiates, while contented rats avoid them - dramatically contradict our currently held beliefs about addiction. So, how might society benefit if his results were applied to human addicts? Nobody seemed to care. ...



Ta much, dear DontheFox

August 6, 2009
Secret mission to expose L. Ron Hubbard as a fake
Dominic Kennedy, Investigations Editor

The founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, was exposed as a fraud 30 years ago by British diplomats who were investigating his qualifications.

The science-fiction writer, who invented a religion now followed by celebrities such as Tom Cruise, awarded himself a PhD from a sham “diploma mill” college that he had acquired, the diplomats found.

Such was the climate of fear and paranoia surrounding Scientology that the US believed the sect had sent bogus doctors to declare a high-ranking legal investigator mad and then taken his papers relating to the case.

Scientologists threatened to sue the British Government for libel after it acted in 1968 to ban followers from entering the country to visit the sect’s world headquarters in East Grinstead, West Sussex.

To defend itself, Britain needed to establish whether Lafayette Ron Hubbard was a charlatan. ...

Cockrel goes to cops on Conyers' missing stuff
BY NAOMI R. PATTON AND BEN SCHMITT • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS • August 7, 2009

Detroit City Council President Ken Cockrel Jr. today asked police to investigate the disappearance of more than $21,000 worth of city-owned equipment from the office of former Detroit City Council President Pro Tem Monica Conyers.

A Cockrel staffer hand-delivered to police a package that included the inventory of equipment found missing after she resigned, plus correspondence with Cockrel and her attorney.

Cockrel said he has not yet spoken to Police Chief Warren Evans or Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy since the package was delivered.

“We just got to a point where it became very clear we were not getting cooperation from either her or her attorney,” Cockrel said. “We’ve been promised, on a couple of occasions, a written response.”

He said attorneys with the council’s Research and Analysis Division have been the primary contact with Conyers' lawyer, Steve Fishman.

Fishman laughed today when informed of Cockrel’s report to police.
“I don’t have anything to add to what I said before,” Fishman said, before hanging up the phone.

Last month, Fishman said of the allegations: “"Monica Conyers did not take any property belonging to the City of Detroit, nor did she authorize anyone else to do so."

Cockrel initially sent Conyers a letter, dated July 23, telling her her that 29 items, valued at $21,300, were missing from her council offices. He asked her to arrange for the items – including, desktop computers, printers, a camcorder; and two digital cameras – to be returned, or “the items will be deemed stolen property and I will forward this documentation to the Detroit Police Department and the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office."

Since then two of the laptops -- an Apple MacBook and a Hewlett Packard PC -- and a computer carrying case have been returned, reportedly on Conyers behalf, by a former staffer. ...



She's just an evil, lyin,' t'iefin' bitch.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? indeed, Juvenal.

Lubna Hussein: justice deferred

Lubna Hussein's trial for 'indecent dressing' has been postponed. But whatever the result she has struck a blow for women's rights
Nesrine Malik
Wednesday 5 August 2009

August 5, 2009
Blackwater boss and guards accused of murder and 'killing Iraqis for fun'
Founder of security firm saw himself as a Christian Crusader whose task was to eliminate Muslims, former employees allege
Deborah Haynes, Defence Correspondent

Two former employees of Blackwater have accused the private US security firm and its founder of killing Iraqis for fun, smuggling weapons and deceiving the State Department.

The men, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation — one claimed that Blackwater management threatened to kill him — also claimed they had learnt that at least one person who has or planned to speak out against the US firm and its founder Erik Prince was “killed in mysterious circumstances”.

The claims were made in sworn statements filed in a court in Virginia earlier this week as part of a civil lawsuit by families of several Iraqis allegedly killed by Blackwater guards.

The ex-Blackwater workers, a former Marine identified as John Doe No 1 and another man identified as John Doe No 2, are American citizens.

John Doe No 2 makes a series of accusations against Mr Prince. He says the Blackwater Worldwide boss “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe”, according to his declaration posted, along with a series of other legal documents, on the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) website.

“To that end, Mr Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.”

He adds that "on several occasions after my departure from Mr Prince's employ, Mr Prince's management has personally threatened me with death or violence. In addition, based on information provided to me by former colleagues it appears that Mr Prince and his employees murdered or had murdered one or more persons who have provided information or were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities about the ongoing criminal conduct." ...



Well done the commenter who tosses prince into the same barrel as the other terrorists.

Sudan police beat protesters as woman goes on trial for wearing trousers

Case against former UN worker Lubna Hussein, who faces 40 lashes for 'indecent dressing', is adjourned

* Xan Rice in Nairobi and agencies
* Tuesday 4 August 2009 11.31 BST

Police fired teargas and beat supporters of a Sudanese woman facing 40 lashes for wearing trousers in public shortly before her trial was adjourned this morning.

Police in Khartoum moved in swiftly and dispersed about 50 protesters, mostly women, who were supporting Lubna Hussein, a former UN worker charged with "indecent dressing" in violation of the country's Islamic laws.

Some of the women demonstrators wore trousers in solidarity with Hussein. "We are here to protest against this law that oppresses women and debases them," said Amal Habani, a female columnist for the daily newspaper Ajraa al-Hurria (Bells of Freedom).

Hussein's trial was later adjourned until September by a judge to seek clarification from Sudan's foreign ministry over her status.

At the time of her arrest, Hussein was working for the media department of the UN mission in Sudan, which gives her immunity from prosecution. She submitted her resignation after her trial began last week because she wanted to go on trial to challenge the dress code law. ...



Have these idiots never heard of salwar kameez, FFS?!

... “At any given time, someone might be filming you,” said Macomb County Sheriff Mark Hackel, whose department passed along to the feds a case against a man accused of spying on his neighbor’s 10-year-old daughter by hiding a camera in her bathroom.

“These things are very small and very inexpensive,” Hackel said. “And with the good comes the bad.” ...

After Tenenbaum, who will take back the music industry from the RIAA?
By Angela Gunn | Published July 31, 2009

Because the Joel Tenenbaum trial hasn't been maddening enough, Engadget yesterday had a little item on how the RIAA is claiming that customers ought to just suck it up and accept that DRMed tracks will go poof even if they've been paid for, since no other products or service providers are expected to "provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works." That's interesting coming from a group that claims that alone of all industries, copyright holders somehow deserve to get paid in perpetuity for their output. I guess forever looks a lot longer when it includes server-maintenance duties. ...

... I think the recording industry is a culture-gutting abomination, and that the entire outfit ought to be torched like Rome during a Nero violin recital. Whatever figure the jury arrives at, the artists Mr. Tenenbaum loves will never see a cent of it; after over a century of treating most artists like sharecroppers, "the industry" takes the droit de seigneur approach to windfall profit.

Music is so much more than the music industry, and for the sake of music -- the transmission of it, the longevity of the worthwhile stuff -- I hope the industry which treats one of humankind's most powerful communication devices and repositories of memory like so much chattel withers and dies.

Now that distribution is a non-issue, A&R guys, vice-presidents of promotion, global distribution managers -- to all of the ranks that stand between us and the artists...

Buh-bye, hope an honest day's work happens to you someday. ...

"Baboons are evil."

-- Graham Norton

The race row that has inflamed the US took a bizarre twist last night when a Boston police officer was suspended for abusing Harvard scholar Professor Henry Louis Gates and calling him "a banana eating jungle monkey".

Hours before President Barack Obama was to sit down at the White House for a beer with Professor Gates and Sergeant James Crowley to calm tensions over the academic's arrest, it emerged that another police officer, Justin Barrett, was accused of sending an insulting email about Professor Gates to a local newspaper.

In a furious and at times ungrammatical rant at a reporter on the Boston Globe newspaper, the anonymous email, allegedly written by Officer Barrett said: "If I were the officer he (Professor Gates) verbally assaulted like a banana eating jungle monkey I would have sprayed him in the face with OC (capsicum spray)."

Later in the email, quoted in full on the website MyFoxBoston.com. the 36-year-old former English teacher suggested the headline for the newspaper's article on Professor Gates' arrest should read: "Conduct Unbecoming a Jungle Monkey - back to one's roots."

The Boston Police Department suspended Mr Barrett when the existence of the email became known. A spokesman for the police force said in a statement: "Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis placed Officer Justin Barrett, 36, on administrative leave pending the outcome of a termination hearing.

"Commissioner Davis was made aware of a correspondence with racist remarks and yesterday re[lie]ved the officer of his gun and badge." ...

... In most countries, you have two major political parties or broad factions. They disagree on many things. But both begin by accepting certain suppositions. I would imagine that in Britain, for instance, both Labour and the Tories think healthcare for all or at least most people is a good idea. They have different notions about how to do it, but the goal is agreed upon. I gather also that the Tories accept the basic idea that global warming exists and that man's actions have contributed to it.

But American conservatism does not believe healthcare for all or most is a desired outcome at all. Conservatives believe people are responsible for their own healthcare, and that people who don't have it just aren't showing enough pluck and initiative. Last Thursday, one Republican congressman announced that the party wouldn't even offer its own version of healthcare legislation – and this man runs the party's so-called Solutions Group! And on climate change, of course, most deny its existence, and all deny that human activity has played any role in it whatsoever. ...



gop = grand obstructionist party

Fuck you, riaa.

How very puerile of you, chinastan.

... Eastern Kentucky University professor Peter Kraska told the Washington Post that SWAT teams are currently sent out 40,000 times a year in the U.S. During the 1980's, SWAT teams were only used 3,000 times a year. Most of the time, SWAT teams are being sent out to simply serve warrants on non-violent drug offenders.

Many municipalities are using Homeland Security grants to even purchase large armored vehicles. The Pittsburgh Police Department now uses their 20-ton armored truck complete with rotating turret and gun ports to deliver many of their warrants. Pittsburgh Police Sgt. Barry Budd recently told the Associate Press: "We live on being prepared for 'what if'."

The training being given at many police academies appears to be the type of tactics one would use in Baghdad, rather than Baltimore. It would seem that our police officers are being readied for war, with the American public as the enemy. In the last several years, there has been a transformation from community policing to pre-emptive assaults

On January 24, 2006, Dr. Salvatore Culosi was shot and killed outside his house by a Fairfax County SWAT officer. Police used the SWAT team to serve a documents search warrant, after Dr. Culosi came under suspicion for taking sports bets. The investigation began after Fairfax Detective David Baucom solicited a bet with Dr. Culosi at a local sports bar.

Dr. Culosi was standing outside his home while talking with Det. Baucom, when SWAT Officer Deval Bullock quickly approached with his gun drawn and fatally shot Dr. Culosi in the chest. Court documents report that Culosi never made any threatening movements and made no attempt to run as he watched the SWAT team move in around him.

Dr. Culosi had no history of violence nor any criminal history whatsoever. He operated two successful optometry clinics at Wal-Marts in Manassas and Warrenton, Va. His parents have filed a $12 million lawsuit against the county of Fairfax, Va. ...



Land of the free and home of the brave, huh?

Monica Conyers' wrist slap is wrong message
BY STEPHEN HENDERSON • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • July 16, 2009

Someone in the local U.S. Attorney's Office may have some 'splainin to do.

They have it all backward in the ongoing city hall corruption probe.

Here's why.

Based on the indictment handed down Wednesday of political consultant Sam Riddle, it seems prosecutors believe Riddle and former Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers were running a pretty robust shakedown operation.

The documents say they hit up a strip club owner for $25,000, extorted $20,000 each from a technology company and a restaurant, and tried to put the arm on a real estate developer.

Riddle's facing a slew of charges related to each of those acts, as well as his involvement with Conyers on the rotten Synagro sludge deal and some other stuff. By statute, he could face a sentence in excess of 100 (yes, one hundred) years.

But Conyers, if you'll remember, copped a plea a few weeks ago to one count of conspiracy in the Synagro deal. And even though she's mentioned about as often as Riddle in his indictment, she isn't being charged for any of the non-Synagro schemes they allegedly hatched. She faces 5 years max in federal prison -- one-twentieth of the time Riddle could get.

Sorry, but that doesn't make sense.

Conyers was the public official involved here, the one who took an oath to serve the public faithfully, and the one who had the power to deliver on any favors she and Riddle concocted to sell. ...

... “You’d better get my loot, that’s all I know,” Conyers is quoted as telling Riddle regarding a payment from a restaurant owner.

Riddle passed her $10,000 in that caper, the indictment says. ...

... Conyers first took office in January 2006. Just 15 months later, according to the indictment, Conyers and Riddle began their extortion racket.

The indictment charges:

• Conyers conspired with Riddle to hit up the owner of a technology company for $20,000 to make Riddle a bogus “consultant.”

• Conyers and Riddle pressured a Detroit restaurant owner to pay Riddle $20,000 for another “consulting job” that didn’t exist.

• Conyers and Riddle received $25,000 from the owner of a strip club with an issue before the city council.

• Conyers and Riddle attempted to receive money in another faux “consulting contract” for Riddle, this time with a real estate developer.

Conyers, the wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a Detroit Democrat, became notorious for her bad temper in public. In private, she appears to be equally difficult. The indictment portrays her as nagging Riddle and ordering him to carry out her orders in their various schemes.

“This bitch is a trip,” Riddle told an owner of the technology company, explaining Conyers was eager to receive the owner’s final $5,000 payment.

“Work on the, uh, five thing,” Riddle advised, “so I can keep her chilled out and stuff.”

News of the World phone hacking: CPS to undertake urgent review of evidence

• Metropolitan Police rules out new investigation
• News International: 'Confidentiality obligations' prevent comment on 'certain' Guardian allegations
• Andy Coulson may face Commons culture select committee
• David Cameron defends his communications chief
• Gordon Brown: 'This raises serious questions'

* James Robinson, Andrew Sparrow and Leigh Holmwood
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 9 July 2009

The Crown Prosecution Service today said it would undertake an urgent review of evidence in the News of the World phone hacking case, after the Metropolitan Police revealed it did not plan a further investigation of the allegations.

However, Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor, now the Tory communications chief, could be grilled by MPs for a Commons inquiry into the affair.

Keir Starmer QC, the director of public prosecutions, said he had ordered an "urgent examination" of material provided by the police in the News of the World case three years ago. He added that the process will take time but he hopes to make a further statement in coming days. ...

Just think: 2-3 thousand £million lawsuits. That'd take the wind outta ol' rupee's sails, what what?

rupee should know better than to fuck with rich people.

Idiot.

You know damn well he'd sue hell outta anyone who tapped/hacked his phone, FFS!!

... Chris Huhne, the Lib Dems' home affairs spokesman, said: "It is extraordinary that the leader of the opposition, who wants to be a prime minister, employs Andy Coulson, who at best was responsible for a newspaper that was out of control and at worst was personally [involved] with criminal activity. The exact parallel is surely with Damian McBride. If the prime minister was right to sack Damian McBride, should the leader of the opposition not sack Andy Coulson?"

Hanson told MPs that phone-hacking without authority was a criminal offence punishable with a fine or a prison sentence of up to two years.

Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, prompted laughter as he urged everyone in the house to give a "measured response" to the issues raised and leave it to the police to decide whether there was "any new information that warrants further action".

... "If you imagine there was something of real major importance, you could have a public interest defence. But breaking into Gwyneth Paltrow's voicemail after she's just had a baby is not in the public interest. I'm at a loss to know what the public interest might be."

He also said the police had to explain why they failed to tell top politicians that their phones had been hacked into.

Neil said the story raised serious questions for Scotland Yard, top prosecutors and for judges: "It's not just a media story, it raises serious questions about the police.

"The police learn that the deputy prime minister has had his mobile phone compromised and they don't tell him. I just don't understand that.

"The police investigation unearthed evidence of clear wrongdoing and the Crown Prosecution Service does nothing."

He added: "The court is faced with evidence of conspiracy and systemic illegal actions and agrees to seal the evidence. All that is completely wrong, I just don't understand it."

Speaking earlier, on the BBC's Newsnight programme: "This is our criminal justice system in the dock."

Neil also said News International may face legal action from those who were victims of the phone hacking, a so called class action: "News International could face a class action by people who want to mount a class action to unseal those documents. There could be the most almighty class action, you're talking about multimillion pound losses. That gets scary.

"If this was in the US, shares in News International would collapse tonight." ...



Shares in "news" international should collapse tonight!

Murdoch papers paid £1m to gag phone-hacking victims

• News of the World bugging led to £700,000 payout to PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor
• Sun editor Rebekah Wade and Conservative communications chief Andy Coulson – both ex-NoW editors – involved
• News International chairman Les Hinton told MPs reporter jailed for phone-hacking was one-off case

Nick Davies
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 July 2009

... The payments secured secrecy over out-of-court settlements in three cases that threatened to expose evidence of Murdoch journalists using private investigators who illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of numerous public figures and to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills. Cabinet ministers, MPs, actors and sports stars were all targets of the private investigators.

Today, the Guardian reveals details of the suppressed evidence which may open the door to hundreds more legal actions by victims of News Group, the Murdoch company that publishes the News of the World and the Sun, as well as provoking police inquiries into reporters who were involved and the senior executives responsible for them.

The evidence also poses difficult questions for:

• Conservative leader David Cameron's director of communications, Andy Coulson, who was deputy editor and then editor of the News of the World when, the suppressed evidence shows, journalists for whom he was responsible were engaging in hundreds of apparently illegal acts

• Murdoch executives who, albeit in good faith, have misled a parliamentary select committee, the Press Complaints Commission and the public

• The Metropolitan police, who did not alert all those whose phones were targeted, and the Crown Prosecution Service, which did not pursue all possible charges against News Group personnel

• The Press Complaints Commission, which claimed to have conducted an investigation but failed to uncover any evidence of illegal activity.

The suppressed legal cases are linked to the jailing in January 2007 of News of the World reporter Clive Goodman for hacking into the mobile phones of three royal staff, an offence under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. At the time, News International said it knew of no other journalist who was involved in hacking phones and that Goodman had been acting without their knowledge.

However, one senior source at the Metropolitan police told the Guardian that during the Goodman inquiry, officers had found evidence of News Group staff using private investigators who hacked into "thousands" of mobile phones. Another source with direct knowledge of the police findings put the figure at "two or three thousand" mobiles. They suggest that MPs from all three parties and cabinet ministers, including former deputy prime minister John Prescott and former culture secretary Tessa Jowell, were among the targets. News International has always maintained that it has no knowledge of phone hacking by anybody acting on its behalf.

A private investigator who had been working on contract for News Group, Glenn Mulcaire, was also jailed in January 2007. He admitted hacking into the phones of five other targets, including Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association. Among those phones Mulcaire hacked into were the Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes, celebrity PR Max Clifford, model Elle MacPherson and football agent Sky Andrew. News Group denied all knowledge of the hacking, but Taylor last year sued them on the basis that they must have known about it. ...




Won't see this story at faux news, you betcha.

July 8, 2009
Bankers to face draconian pay veto
Suzy Jagger, Politics and Business Correspondent

City regulators will be able to veto the pay deals of bank executives under new proposals set out today by Alistair Darling.

Addressing MPs in the House of Commons, the Chancellor said that the Financial Services Authority (FSA) will monitor the structure of bankers' remuneration packages and produce a report on them every year.

Should the City watchdog find that an executive's pay encourages the financier to take risky investment decisions, it can order the lender to put aside more capital in reserve. Any such requirement would reduce a bank's profitability and, the Treasury believes, act as an effective veto.

"We need a change of culture in the banks and their boardrooms, with pay practices that are focused on long-term stability and not short-term profit," Mr Darling said. ...

Stupid; don't wanna insult cows; etc

Fuck you, chinastan. When the hell are you gonna stop acting like your founder and start treating people like human beings?

June 23, 2009
BNP faces legal challenge to whites-only membership
Fiona Hamilton, London Correspondent

The British National Party was today accused of operating illegally and threatened with an injunction over its whites-only membership policy.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission threatened the legal action over what it claimed were “potential breaches” of race discrimination law by the far-right nationalist party.

The commission has set a July 20 deadline for the party to address the issues, or face court action.

It said that the BNP needed to reassess its constitution and membership criteria, employment practices and provision of services to the public and constituents.

It believes that the party may discriminate on the grounds of race and colour, contrary to the Race Relations Act, because it restricts members to those regarded as particular “ethnic groups”.

In a statement the commission said: “This exclusion is contrary to the Race Relations Act, which the party is legally obliged to comply with. The commission therefore thinks that the BNP may have acted, and be acting, illegally.

“The commission has required the BNP to provide a written undertaking that it will not discriminate contrary to the Race Relations Act in its employment and recruitment policies, procedures and practices.

“The BNP’s website states that the party is looking to recruit people and states that any applicants should supply a membership number. The commission thinks that this requirement is contrary to the Race Relations Act, which outlaws the refusal or deliberate omission to offer employment on the basis of non-membership of an organisation.” ...

I wonder whether these evil idiots have Yankistani relatives who are kkk members.

OMFG, what century is it again?

... It has been almost 20 years since a royal commission raised the alarm of the widespread lack of care for Australian indigenous prisoners. The 1987 commission noted the disproportionately high number of Aboriginal Australians who were incarcerated and recommended measures to address the problem.

Yet in 2005 a government survey revealed that, while Aborigines comprised 2-3% of the population, they accounted for 20% of prisoners.



There's no racism like Strine racism.

Assholes.

... Erik von Brunn declined to say when he last spoke with his father or whether they were estranged. Still, he said, he never imagined that his father's rage would consume him to the point that he might take another life.

"I never had any inclination to think that. The man is 88 years old. I never would have thought he could do this," he said. "It really hasn't sunk in yet. It's a shock."

In the statement, von Brunn directly addresses white supremacists. "For the extremists who believe my father is a hero: it is imperative you understand what he did was an act of cowardice," he writes. "His actions have undermined your 'movement,' and strengthened the resistance against your cause. He should not be remembered as a brave man or a hero, but a coward unable to come to grips with the fact he threw his and his families lives away for an ideology that fostered sadness and anguish."

Larger-than-usual crowds have been visiting the museum since the incident, officials said. A little more than 8,573 people visited Friday, surpassing the June daily average of 7,320. ...

Racist rants of elected BNP man, Andrew Brons, revealed
Yorkshire MEP Andrew Brons drew up some of the National Front's most inflammatory policies
Jamie Doward, home affairs editor
The Observer, Sunday 14 June 2009

One of the British National party's first MEPs' attempts to play down his past links to the extreme right as "silly" teenage posturing are today exposed as a sham after it emerged that for many years he played a crucial role in shaping the National Front's most overtly racist policies.

In 1983, when he was in his late twenties, Andrew Brons edited the National Front's general election manifesto that called for a global apartheid to prevent the "extinction" of whites everywhere.

The Let Britain Live! manifesto was prepared by the party's policy department, chaired by Brons. It outlined a series of hugely controversial positions, crystallised in one of its opening statements: "The National Front rejects the whole concept of multiracialism. We recognise inherent racial differences in Man. The races of Man are profoundly unequal in their characteristics, potential and abilities."

The manifesto claimed the UK had been "swamped" by "racially incompatible Afro-Asians" and that "Black muggings of White people, especially elderly ladies, occurs regularly".

It continued: "The eruptions in Bristol in 1980 and Brixton in 1981 were just two examples of the 'cultural enrichment' promised to us by the multiracialists." And it claimed: "We believe the gradual dismantlement of the Apartheid system over the last 17 years to be retrograde ... The alternative to Apartheid, multiracialism, envisages an extinction of the White man."

Brons was also an enthusiastic contributor in the 1970s and 1980s to Spearhead, a far-right magazine considered so extreme even the BNP tried to distance itself from it. In two lengthy polemics for the magazine, Brons outlined the supposed importance of nationalism and interpreted genetic studies to suggest Europeans had a "greater cognitive ability" than non-whites. He attacked the influence of "people of Jewish ethnic origin" and peddled the myth that a number of predominantly Zionist organisations were controlling the world. ...



The little green donuts are callin' ya, andy boy!

chinastan, you just suck.

Shell pays £9.7m to families of executed activist
Royal Dutch Shell sought to draw a line under one of the most damaging episodes in its history on Tuesday by agreeing to pay £9.7 million to Nigerians who accused the company of complicity in their relations' execution by a military regime.
By Mike Pflanz, West Africa Correspondent
Published: 4:45PM BST 09 Jun 2009

The out-of-court settlement comes 14 years after nine Nigerian activists, including Ken Saro-Wiwa, a playwright and prominent campaigner against Shell's presence in the Niger delta, were hanged by the country's military dictator, General Sani Abacha.

Their relations took legal action against Shell in America, intending to press their allegation of complicity, which the company denies. But an eleventh-hour agreement means the case will not come before the court in New York.

Shell said it was innocent of the charges, including the suggestion that it supported Nigeria's former military government when it arrested and executed the nine men.

But the company faces separate legal action in New York brought by another man from Mr Saro-Wiwa's Ogoni tribe, and in Amsterdam by a group of environmental activists.

"Shell will be dragged from the boardroom to the courthouse, time and again, until the company addresses the injustices at the root of the Niger delta crises and puts an end to its environmental devastation," said Elizabeth Bast of Friends of the Earth US.

In Nigeria, there was broad support for the agreement, reached late on Monday in New York. But there were also angry claims that Shell is still polluting the creeks of the delta, which produces more than 650,000 barrels of oil a day for the company.

Bari-Ara Kpalap, a spokesman for the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni people, the organisation co-founded by Mr Saro-Wiwa, said that Shell continued to exploit Nigerian oil without giving proper compensation to the country's people. ...

Good on 'em, and I hope they win.

In the four newly released memos from the Bush Administration’s Office of Legal Counsel, the argument for using psychological torture tactics against al-Qaeda detainees is made in scientific terms

But the science underlying the decision was dubious at best.

In the memos, Justice Department lawyers Jay S. Bybee and Steven Bradbury conclude that tactics such as slamming detainees against walls, confining them in coffin-like boxes, denying them sleep for up to 11 days, and even inducing a drowning sensation through waterboarding do not legally qualify as torture, because the tactics don’t create severe pain and suffering or lasting medical or mental harm.

That conclusion relied heavily on the advice of two psychologists, James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.My July 2007 article, “Rorschach and Awe,” gave the first detailed account of the two psychologists’ role as the architects and teachers of the coercive interrogation methods used by the C.I.A. and, later, the Department of Defense. “Based on your research into the use of these methods at the SERE school and consultation with others with expertise in the field of psychology and interrogation, you do not anticipate that any prolonged harm would result from the use of the waterboard,” Bybee writes in a memo dated August 1, 2002

But what, if anything, did Mitchell and Jessen—both devout Mormons—know about real-world interrogations and the art of eliciting accurate, actionable intelligence from hostile foreign fighters? Absolutely nothing, according to Steve Kleinman, an Air Force Reserve Colonel and expert in human-intelligence operations. In 2007, Kleinman told Vanity Fair he found it astonishing that the C.I.A. “chose two clinical psychologists who had no intelligence background whatsoever, who had never conducted an interrogation … to do something that had never been proven in the real world.”

Others called their methods a “voodoo science.”In fact, their techniques were simply reverse-engineered versions of those believed to be used by the Soviet Union, North Korea, and China. ...

That's easy: they slaughtered an entire generation.

Bastards.

My comment to billo:



You are not a journalist. You are a rabble-rouser, and the rabble you rouse is our country's lowest denominator. You should be ashamed of yourself but that would require a functioning mind and heart, neither of which you possess.



Hit 'im, kids. Hit 'im as hard and as intelligently as you can.

... While individuals who self-identify as pro-life may be well-meaning and against violence, mainstream pro-life groups and the people who run them do not care about life, before or after birth. And while today anti-choice groups are half-heartedly condemning Tiller's murder, they continue to use the same outlandish and inflammatory rhetoric that inspired and enabled it.

Words mean things. Anti-choicers should certainly have every right to express their views, but they must also realise that actions have consequences and their rhetoric is not harmless. If you yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, it's reasonably foreseeable that people will panic and someone will be injured. And if you yell "Murderer!" "Baby-Killer!" and "Holocaust!" long enough, it's reasonably foreseeable that someone will take it upon themselves to make sure that vigilante justice is done (especially if you provide the name and address of the person who you claim is committing "genocide").

This was not the act of a lone extremist. It is one more act of violence to add to a long, long list of crimes committed by anti-choice terrorists, and it is the logical outcome of years of increasingly violent, dehumanising and threatening rhetoric and action on the part of supposedly mainstream pro-life groups. The responsibility for George Tiller's death surely falls on the shoulders of the person who actually pulled the trigger. But when pro-life groups did everything but give him a gun, their hands are hardly clean.

"Pro-life" as the self-description of the anti-abortion movement has a fundamental flaw at its heart. The moral absolute of "life" is not applied consistently, in my view, by the majority of those in this movement. Many in the "pro-life" anti-abortion movement seem to me to only be pro-life in the case of abortion -- unlike those who hold an ethic of life across a range of moral issues, not only abortion but also war and the death penalty, This makes "pro-life" in regard to abortion not only an inconsistent ethic, but an unstable one.

Nothing exposes this fundamental inconsistency and instability in the ethic of life as a description of the anti-abortion movement more than "pro-life" murder. ...

... Violence has been a part of the anti-abortion movement from the beginning, from the overt violence of the murder of other abortion providers to the covert violence of harassing women trying to get to clinics for reproductive services.

Violence is a logical outcome of the extreme self-righteousness of those who claim the "pro-life" label as an absolute and yet who do not have an actual, consistent ethic of life such as the views held by pacifists. Dr. Charles Kimball, a Baptist minister and professor of religion at Wake Forest University, well explains this logical connection in his book When Religion Becomes Evil. According to Kimball, two warning signs that indicate a religious viewpoint is becoming evil are "absolute truth claims" and "the end justifies any means." Violence, in Kimball's view, is an evil. ...

Atheism ‘is the greatest of all evils’, says outgoing Archbishop of Westminster
21 May 2009

TAKE a deep breathe … you are about to be annoyed. Very annoyed indeed. [Ed. Note: May I take a deep breath instead? I get even more annoyed when I take a deep breathe.]

In the same week in which the unremitting cruelty of Catholic institutions towards vulnerable youngsters in Ireland was exposed, the outgoing Archbishop of Westminster had the sheer gall to identify “lack of faith” as “the greatest of all evils.”

According to The Times, the rancid Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor – who recently said that secularists and atheists were “not fully human” – blamed atheism for war and destruction, and suggested it was a greater evil even than sin itself. ...



Oh, so athiests started the crusades? I learned something new. I can go home.

£500,000 Government report: commuters want trains to run on time
A two-year-long, 178-page report that cost taxpayers £500,000 has arrived at the unsurprising conclusion that commuters want trains to run on time.
By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Editor
Last Updated: 3:10PM BST 24 May 2009

... Tony Ambrose, of the passenger campaign group More Train Less Strain, said: "It beggars belief. It's bad enough having the highest fares and worst overcrowding in Europe without the added unpleasantness of finding out you have been filmed without your permission.

"The report is astonishing. It's a rehash, in consultant-speak, of what is blindingly obvious to every traveller."

The RSSB defended its study, however, insisting it was a "practical appraisal of real-life situations".

A spokesman added: "In total, about one hour of filming was undertaken, based on one person travelling for four to five days."

The report comes just a week after the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was attacked for spending £300,000 on a three-year study that proved ducks liked rainy weather.

... I don't want to start any libellous rumours here, but it's hard not to wonder if someone (Rush Limbaugh? Rahm Emanuel? It could work either way) has been putting cocaine in Cheney's morning coffee. The man just will not shut the hell up. Cheney was once the Republican party's mysterious Thomas Pynchon, but in the past two weeks he has become a media slut of Ulrika Jonsson-type proportions, with an accompanying sense of cringing embarrassment, and I would not be surprised if he turned up in the Big Brother house this summer, railing about the benefits of Abu Ghraib to fellow housemates Vanessa Feltz and Marcus Brigstocke.

On Thursday the all new Chatty Cheney gave a talk at the American Enterprise Institute on his favourite subject – Torture: it's Super! – while, as chance would have it, Obama happened to be giving a talk at almost exactly the same time on the proposed closure of Guantánamo Bay.

The American media billed this, bizarrely, as a "Clash of the Titans", which says a lot more about the lack of any viable figureheads in the ­Republican party than it does about this alleged "clash". The idea that an out-of-office former vice-president is a "titan" on a level with the current in-office president is about as plausible as pitching Halifax Town as a threat to Manchester United. ...

Go die, monsteranto.

BNP London assembly member could be banned from Buckingham Palace party
Deputy chief executive of Greater London Authority tells Richard Barnbrook he will be barred from garden party unless he agrees to take guest other than BNP leader Nick Griffin
Hélène Mulholland and Rachel Williams
Friday 22 May 2009

A BNP assembly member who planned to take the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, to a Buckingham Palace garden party hosted by the Queen was today told he would be barred from attending unless he agreed to take another guest.

In a letter to Richard Barnbrook, Jeff Jacobs, the deputy chief executive of the Greater London Authority, also warned him to "desist" from creating any further adverse publicity.

Barnbrook, a BNP member of the London assembly, yesterday said he had no intention of changing his choice of companion for the garden party, which takes place in June and is being held to recognise community service.

Boris Johnson, the London mayor, intervened after learning of Barnbrook's intention to take the BNP leader with him.

Six London assembly members have been nominated to receive some of the 25 pairs of tickets offered to the GLA by Buckingham Palace.

Johnson accused Barnbrook of turning a "happy event" into a political stunt. The mayor wrote to the chairman of the London assembly, Darren Johnson, to see whether the invitation could be rescinded. ...

I’M NOT A RACIST, SAYS ‘W*GS OUT’ BNP BIGOT
22nd May 2009
By Tom Hutchison

A BNP candidate is facing suspension for setting up a vile Facebook page demanding all blacks “go home”.

But Eddy O’Sullivan, 49, who is standing in the Euro elections, has denied being racist.

He set his web status on the site to “W*gs go home, Gurkhas very welcome”.

Mr O’Sullivan thought he had set his Facebook profile to private. But he accidentally made it public, exposing his sick beliefs.

The Salford party organiser, a driving instructor, is now facing suspension after admitting the comments.

In one he said of black people: “They are nice people oh yeah but can they not be nice people in the f***ing Congo or… Bongoland or whatever?” ...



File under "More bnp Brilliance."

Disturbed 19-year-old was seen as victim so risk to carer family was not assessed, Vale of Glamorgan inquiry finds



Nice one, idiots.

As frightening as it is disgusting. Exile the folks responsible for this to Chernobyl and see how they like it.

Why have humans consistently throughout history put idiots in charge of the most important things?

It's fiction, stupid!

Getcher Karma, pal, and good luck with it.

STAFF at a government-backed fund supposed to help some of the poorest people in the world have been awarded £65m in bonuses – equivalent to an annual £350,000 per employee.

The bonuses have largely come from investments intended to tackle poverty in the developing world. The fund was part of the Department for International Development (DFID) until it was part-privatised in 2004.

Charity workers say the government has allowed the fund, Actis, to skew Britain’s priorities overseas in its pursuit of high returns by depriving poor rural communities of investment. Actis manages funds for DFID’s investment body, CDC, tasked with reducing poverty, and has been praised for its success. But it has been awarding staff bonuses of up to £3m out of investments built up over years in developing countries.

Average pay for employees in 2007 was on a par with those at Goldman Sachs, the US investment bank. ...

Old reagan-in-a-dress has always been an evil cow.

I feel ill.

Sellafield: the most hazardous place in Europe

Last week the government announced plans for a new generation of nuclear plants. But Britain is still dealing with the legacy of its first atomic installation at Sellafield - a toxic waste dump in one of the most contaminated buildings in Europe. As a multi-billion-pound clean-up is planned, can we avoid making the same mistakes again? ...


In a word, No.

I hope they rot in jail for the rest of their lives.

"Compensation?" How in fuck do you compensate for this?

There are many ways to spell evil, and one of them is m-o-n-s-a-n-t-o.