The Struggle At The New School Continues

One of the students arrested in the Good Friday occupation
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

NEW YORK — Did New School University president Bob Kerrey pepper spray his own students?

The student group calling itself the "New School In Exile" says that Bob Kerrey bears the bulk of the responsibility for police using physical force against unarmed students engaged in a peaceful protest — a protest that called for Kerrey to step down from his position as president of the New School.

In statements released on their website, students involved in the April 10th — Good Friday — takeover of the New School facility on 65 Fifth Avenue said that Kerrey called in riot police despite the existence of a "demonstrations policy" at the New School that banned the use of force and mandated other forms of action.

"The demonstrations policy states that "absolutely no form of physical violence or intimidation can be tolerated" on the part of demonstrators. But mobilizing the massive repressive apparatus of the riot police (or massacring an entire village in Vietnam) are apparently okay." – New School In Exile statement April 13, 2009

Kerrey's use of force against his students contradicts the core mission of the New School - to instill students with a passion for social justice activism:

"The New School is a legendary, progressive university comprising eight schools bound by a common, unusual intent: to prepare and inspire its 9,400 undergraduate and graduate students to bring actual, positive change to the world." – About The New School

KERREY'S PAST: BACKDROP TO A CONFLICT

Kerrey has been a controversial figure ever since he arrived at the New School in 2001. Frustrated students and their supporters have been quick to point out that during the Vietnam War Kerrey led a Navy SEAL team on a Phoenix Program mission targeting the peasant village of Thanh Phong. The CIA's Phoenix program orchestrated the assassination of thousands of Vietnamese — some of the targets were National Liberation Front ("Viet Cong") but many others were innocent women and children.

A sign calling Kerrey a war criminal
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

"Kerrey should be tried as a war criminal. His actions on the night of February 24-25, 1969 when the seven man Navy Seal unit which he headed killed approximately twenty unarmed Vietnamese civilians, eighteen of whom were women and children was a war crime. Like those who murdered at My Lai, he too should be brought into the dock and tried for his crimes." – Michael Ratner (interview with CounterPunch)

KERREY'S GOOD FRIDAY GAMBLE

Activists at the New School are locked in a protracted struggle with Kerrey, arguing that he is "corporatizing" the school while ignoring basic needs of the students. The student activists are calling for "socially responsible investing" (SRI) — an end to investing university funds in corporations run by defense contractors who engage in war profiteering. They are also demanding Kerrey's resignation.

STUDENT DEMANDS

The Demands:

• The removal of Bob Kerrey as president of the university.

• The removal of James Murtha as executive vice president of the university.

• The removal of Robert B. Millard as treasurer of the board of trustees.

• Students, faculty, and staff be allowed to elect the president, EVP, and Provost.

• Students be made part of the interim committee to hire a provost.

• Full transparency and disclosure of the university budget and investments.

• The creation of a committee on Socially Responsible Investments (SRI).

• The suspension of capital improvement projects like the tearing down of 65 Fifth Ave.

http://antiauthoritarian.net/NLN/?p=533

American vs foreign cars

 DaimlerChrysler             Chrysler Pacifica              Made in Canada
 DaimlerChrysler             Chrysler PT Cruiser        Made in Mexico 
 Ford Motor                     Ford Fusion                       Made in Mexico
 Ford Motor                     Lincoln MKX                     Made in Canada 
 General Motors              Chevrolet Impala             Made in Canada
 General Motors              Pontiac GTO                     Made in Austrailia

 Honda Motor                  Acura RDX                        Made in Ohio
 Honda Motor                  Honda Element                 Made in Ohio
 Toyota Motor                 Toyota Avalon                  Made in Ky
 Toyota Motor                 Toyota Camry Solara      Made in Ky

http://www.bartcop.com/

Subprime

subprime from beeple on Vimeo.

Cure For Honey Bee Colony Collapse?

For the first time, scientists have isolated the parasite Nosema ceranae (Microsporidia) from professional apiaries suffering from honey bee colony depopulation syndrome. They then went on to treat the infection with complete success.

In a study published in the new journal from the Society for Applied Microbiology: Environmental Microbiology Reports, scientists from Spain analysed two apiaries and found evidence of honey bee colony depopulation syndrome (also known as colony collapse disorder in the USA). They found no evidence of any other cause of the disease (such as the Varroa destructor, IAPV or pesticides), other than infection with Nosema ceranae. The researchers then treated the infected surviving under-populated colonies with the antibiotic drug, flumagillin and demonstrated complete recovery of all infected colonies.

The loss of honey bees could have an enormous horticultural and economic impact worldwide. Honeybees are important pollinators of crops, fruit and wild flowers and are indispensable for a sustainable and profitable agriculture as well as for the maintenance of the non-agricultural ecosystem. Honeybees are attacked by numerous pathogens including viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites.

For most of these diseases, the molecular pathogenesis is poorly understood, hampering the development of new ways to prevent and combat honeybee diseases. So, any progress made in identifying causes and subsequent treatments of honey bee colony collapse is invaluable. There have been other hypothesis for colony collapse in Europe and the USA, but never has this bug been identified as the primary cause in professional apiaries.

"Now that we know one strain of parasite that could be responsible, we can look for signs of infection and treat any infected colonies before the infection spreads" said Dr Higes, principle researcher.

This finding could help prevent the continual decline in honey bee population which has recently been seen in Europe and the USA.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090414084627.htm

MEAT CARDS: BUSINESS CARDS MADE FROM MEAT AND LASERS

We start with 100% beef jerky, and SEAR your contact information into it with a 150 WATT CO2 LASER.

Screw die-cutting. Forget about foil, popups, or UV spot lamination. THESE business cards have two ingredients:
MEAT AND LASERS.

Unlike other business cards, MEAT CARDS will retain value after the econopocalypse. Hoard and barter your calorie-rich, life-sustaining cards.

http://www.meatcards.com/

Different thieves

Smiles for Smirks

by Sean Penn

 

Once again the simple-minded media and its pundits are confused about the nature of Americanism and language. When President Obama today inferred consideration of holding former administration officials accountable to law, he was immediately accused of violating his belief that we should "look forward." Had President Ford "looked forward" in his decision as to whether or not to hold Nixon accountable, he perhaps would have seen the Bush administration abuse of power coming and chosen to be genuinely tough on crime -- you know, "tough on crime" -- sending Nixon to jail and deterring this recent avalanche of abuse.

Further, the criticisms of President Obama's warm greeting toward President Chavez of Venezuela have been the posturing of our nation's most bitter and humanly impotent voices. Why is anyone listening to former Vice President Cheney? He's the one person alive proven wrong on virtually every topic. Then there's Newt Gingrich, who commented on the Chavez greeting as being approached wrong. He suggested that the meeting itself may not be improper, but that it should have been handled with a cold demeanor. This is a pattern of bad acting advice from bad actors. (All wimps think playing a tough guy is done in one-note coldness.) With a friend, or an enemy, our president will gain greater strategic position with a smile.

I know President Chavez well. Whether or not one agrees with all his policies, what is certainly true of Chavez is that he is a warm and friendly man with a robust sense of humor (who daily risks his own life for his country in ways Dick Cheney could never imagine). To treat such a man coldly is akin to spitting on him. As a country we've done enough of that. Say what you will, but it has only resulted in the self-celebration of our smirking spitters, while costing us international respect, American lives, and left wounds in the hands of our children's future. The Cheneys, down to the O'Reillys and Hannitys and Limbaughs, effectively hate the principles upon which we were founded. They are among the greatest cowards in all of American history. I applaud an American President who's tough enough...to smile.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sean-penn/smiles-for-smirks_b_189801.html

The shaming of America

Judge Jay S. Bybee provided the legal framework for torture to the Bush administration. If he had even a particle of decency, he'd resign.

By Gene Lyons

Anybody with an active conscience can understand why President Barack Obama ordered the Bush administration's "terror memos" released, overruling his own CIA director. No intelligence secrets were revealed. Much of the information in the documents had previously been widely reported. They weren't classified "Top Secret" to protect national security, but the craven careerists who wrote them, and the White House officials who ordered it done.

To a one-time constitutional-law professor like Obama, the memos' legalistic rationalization of methods indistinguishable from those of the Soviet KGB or South African secret police must have been sickening. Besides shaming themselves and their country, their authors have sullied their profession.

In a 2002 advisory, Jay S. Bybee, subsequently appointed to the U.S. 9th District Court of Appeals by President George W. Bush, notes dryly that the practice of "waterboarding" -- recognized as torture since the Spanish Inquisition -- "constitutes a threat of imminent death," but says it's nevertheless legal because it doesn't cause "prolonged mental harm" in a psychologically healthy subject.

So here's my question: Would Bybee, in his capacity as a federal judge, uphold a murder conviction in which witnesses had been waterboarded? A rape confession? Would it be all right for police to induce confessions by keeping suspects awake for 11 days by shackling them naked in a standing position, dousing them with ice water and smashing their heads into a wall? How about cramming them into coffin-size boxes for weeks? He thought that appropriate for terror suspects.

If not, why not? Are rape and murder not the gravest of crimes? The answer, of course, is that criminal law recognizes that people can be tortured into confessing damn near anything. The "intelligence" implications, however, were lost on Bybee and the Bush White House.

FBI interviewers who obtained the only useful intelligence ever provided by al-Qaida functionary Abu Zubaydah before CIA toughs got hold of him described the man to author Ron Suskind as psychologically fragile. Suskind's CIA sources found Zubaydah an "insane, certifiable, split personality," whom the agency nevertheless waterboarded 83 times.

Zealots in Washington, see, refused to accept his handlers' insistence that Zubaydah had already told them everything he'd known.

Ironically, Bybee's successor, Steven Bradbury, noted in a 2005 memo that the U.S. State Department regularly "condemns coercive interrogation techniques ... employed by other countries." Also, that "certain of the techniques appear to bear some resemblance to some of the CIA techniques." Others appear to have been borrowed directly from George Orwell's novel "1984."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/04/23/lyons/

Waterboard torture memo set to music

Report attempts to quantify Iraqi civilian deaths

Iraq's government has recorded 87,215 of its citizens killed since 2005 in violence ranging from catastrophic bombings to execution-style slayings, according to government statistics that break open one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war.

By Kim Gamel

Farhan Hamza visits his father's grave in Najaf, south of Baghdad. Hamza's father was a civilian killed in violence in Iraq.

 

BAGHDAD — Iraq's government has recorded 87,215 of its citizens killed since 2005 in violence ranging from catastrophic bombings to execution-style slayings, according to government statistics that break open one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war.

Combined with tallies based on hospital sources and media reports since the beginning of the war and an in-depth review of available evidence by The Associated Press, the figures show that more than 110,600 Iraqis have died in violence since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

The number is a minimum count of violent deaths. The official who provided the data to The AP, on condition of anonymity because of its sensitivity, estimated the actual number of deaths at 10 to 20 percent higher because of thousands who are missing and civilians who were buried in the chaos of war without official records.

The Health Ministry has tallied death certificates since 2005, and the United Nations began using them late that year — along with hospital and morgue figures — to release casualty counts publicly. But the Iraqi numbers disappeared by early 2007, when sectarian violence was putting political pressure on the U.S. and Iraqi governments. The United Nations "repeatedly asked for that cooperation" to resume but never received a response, U.N. associate spokesman Farhan Haq said Thursday.

The data measure only violent deaths — people killed in the shootings, bombings, mortar attacks and beheadings that have ravaged Iraq. Indirect factors such as damage to infrastructure, health care and stress that caused thousands more to die are excluded.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/iraq/2009113518_iraqdeath24.html

Ralph Nader Was Right

Last year, Ralph Nader ran for President.
I was Ralph's national campaign coordinator.
During the campaign, Ralph called it as he saw it.
DC was a corporate prison.
The Democrats and Republicans were beholden to corporate America.
The corporate Obama we saw on the campaign trail in 2008 wouldn't be much different just because he became President Obama and moved into the White House in 2009.
As usual, Ralph was right.
Exhibit A: Health insurance.
Today, fifty million Americans are uninsured.
According to the Institute of Medicine, 22,000 Americans die every year from a lack of health insurance.
Obama knows that a Canadian style single payer national health insurance system - everybody in, nobody out, free choice of doctors and hospitals - will bring these numbers down to zero.
Zero people are uninsured in Canada.
Zero people die every year in Canada due to lack of health insurance.
Yet, during the 2008 campaign, Obama took single payer off the table.
It's still off the table in the corporate prison that is Washington, D.C.
This despite the fact that, according to the most recent polls, the majority of Americans, doctors, nurses, health economists and even small businesses want single payer.
Even a young Obama wanted single payer.
Before he became the politician that he is today.
Obama still knows what the answer is - single payer.
Yet he bows down before the ever powerful for-profit health and drug insurance industries.
That's just the seedy reality inside the beltway today.
The burning question outside is:
What are we going to do about it?
And the answer is:
We are going to deliver single payer for the American people.
To get the job done, we have launched - Single Payer Action.
Over the past couple of months, Single Payer Action has been out for a test drive.
We've been kicking the tires.
And things are looking good.
Single Payer Action exposed PBS Frontline for deliberately tilting its documentary "Sick Across America" to reflect an insurance industry bias.
The one-hour documentary never once mentioned single payer.

Single Payer Action activists burned their insurance bills outside a meeting of the health insurance industry's main lobbying group in Washington, D.C.

Single Payer Action blew open the story about how Obama tried to bar single payer advocates from the White House health care summit last month.

As a result of that reporting, Obama was forced to admit two single payer advocates inside the White House gates for the summit.

And in West Virginia last month, a group of Single Payer Action belly dancers drew widespread attention when they shook it up for single payer at the Martinsburg offices of Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV).

Last year, after the campaign, we wrote to you promising action on single payer.

Action time has arrived.

http://www.singlepayeraction.org.






 

Have we learned nothing from roadrunner cartoons?

Creepshow

CIA to close down secret prisons

 

Suspects were captured and flown to secret prisons overseas in the US "war on terror" [GALLO/GETTY]

The CIA is to close down its global network of secret prisons, where "war on terror" suspects were subjected to harsh interrogation techniques, Leon Panetta, the agency's director, has said.

Private contractors would also no longer be allowed to interrogate prisoners held by the CIA, Panetta said in a letter to CIA employees on Thursday.

"CIA no longer operates detention facilities or black sites and has proposed a plan to decommission the remaining sites," Panetta was quoted as saying in the letter by the Reuters news agency.

Panetta also said that the CIA had told the US congress that it had captured no new prisoners since he became director in February and the "black sites" were now all empty of prisoners.

"I have directed our agency personnel to take charge of the decommissioning process and have further directed that the contracts for site security be promptly terminated," he said.

http://english.aljazeera.net//news/americas/2009/04/200949223419594735.html

Free Speech

Rice gave early 'waterboarding green light'

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The CIA first sought in May 2002 to use harsh interrogation techniques including waterboarding on terror suspects, and was given key early approval by then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, a US Senate intelligence document said.

The agency got the green light to use the near-drowning technique on July 26, 2002, when attorney general John Ashcroft concluded "that the use of waterboarding was lawful," the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a detailed timeline of the "war on terrorism" interrogations released Wednesday.

Nine days earlier, the panel said, citing Central Intelligence Agency records, Rice had met with then-director George Tenet and "advised that the CIA could proceed with its proposed interrogation of Abu Zubaydah," the agency's first high-value Al-Qaeda detainee, pending Justice Department approval.

Rice's nod is believed to be the earliest known approval by a senior official in the administration of George W. Bush of the intelligence technique which current Attorney General Eric Holder has decried as "torture."

The Senate panel narrative is the most comprehensive declassified chronology to date of the Bush administration's support for the highly controversial tactics.

According to the Senate narrative, Rice was among at least half a dozen top Bush officials, including vice president Dick Cheney, who were in 2002 or 2003 debating, approving or reaffirming the legality of the interrogation practices used on Zubaydah and two other terror suspects.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Rice_gave_early_waterboarding_green_light_0423.html

Obama Stands Nuremberg on Its Head

By Mike Farrell

President Obama's decision to spare CIA torturers from prosecution stands the Nuremberg principles on their head. "Good Germans who were only following orders" are not exempt from the bar of justice. Individuals must be held responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. 

Justice Robert Jackson, chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, declared in his opening statement to the tribunal that the men charged "represent sinister influence that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust. They are living symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power."

The arrogance and cruelty of CIA officers who torture and brutalize helpless prisoners are not expunged just because, as Obama said, they "carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice." Attorney General Eric Holder says it's "unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department," but he fails to note these very CIA agents requested said authority in order to engage in what all but the most insidious parsing of legal thought recognizes as torture.

As Justice Jackson said, " ... it was under the law of all civilized peoples a crime for one man with his bare knuckles to assault another." When awakened, he said, "Plain people, with their earthly common sense, revolted at such fictions and legalisms so contrary to ethical principles. ... " He declared to the world that "[c]ivilization can afford no compromise with the social forces which would gain renewed strength if we deal ambiguously or indecisively with the men in whom those forces now precariously survive."

How we cheapen ourselves today. "Enhanced interrogation," "coercive techniques" and "harsh treatment" pretend torture is not torture. By what moral or ethical standard does a rational person determine that smashing a shackled human being's head into a wall is legal, let alone acceptable? It has been clear from before Nuremberg that the duty of the individual is to refuse to commit an illegal act, even if so ordered by one's commanding authority. 

Yet, "nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past," says our president, missing the point entirely. As a constitutional scholar, he above all should understand that impunity for torturers gnaws at the wound of injustice and denies healing. 

As Jackson said, "Crimes always are committed only by persons. … The Charter [of the tribunal] recognizes that one who has committed criminal acts may not take refuge in superior orders nor in the doctrine that his crimes were acts of states." "International Law," he went on, "is more than a scholarly collection of abstract and immutable principles. It is an outgrowth of treaties and agreements between nations and of accepted customs. The law, so far as International Law can be decreed, had been clearly pronounced when these acts took place."

The pressures on a new president are intense, of course, but for the Obama administration to demean justice based on what can only be understood as political calculus is deeply disheartening. At a minimum, one would hope that the price exacted from the "intelligence professionals" involved in this dehumanizing exercise would be immediate dismissal. 

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090420_obama_stands_nuremberg_on_its_head/?ln

The Garden

Stop the Music

by Nora Ephron

 

Every time I read something about Susan Boyle, I like to think it will be the last thing I read about her. But it never is. Days have passed, and people are still writing about her. Tina Brown has written something this morning that begins by saying that Susan Boyle's moment in history may have been totally fabricated but it doesn't matter because something true came from something false. I have no idea what the piece goes on to say, because I'm afraid to read it. Because the worst thing about Susan Boyle -- and there are several, but I'm going to deal with only one -- is that she sings that horrible song. That song is worse than all of Andrew Lloyd Webber, and it's worse than "It's A Small World After All." That song from Les Miserables that Susan Boyle sings is the all-time most horrible song ever in history, and the reason is simple: it sticks in your brain and never stops playing. Even if you watched Susan Boyle only once, dry-eyed, it sticks for days and days. And just when you think it's gone, you see the title in print, and it starts playing again.

 

Many years ago, when I was young, I had a boyfriend whose father had a symphony in his head. It wasn't Beethoven's Fifth, or anything worth listening to -- it was a completely original symphony. My boyfriend's father was not a composer; the symphony existed only in his head, and every time he lay down to try to sleep, the symphony began to play. He had to buy a special pillow that played the sound of the ocean in order to get the symphony to disappear.

 

I was fascinated by this, so fascinated that it's something I remember (as opposed to all the things I have forgotten). I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be tormented by the sound of music, but now I know: it's what happens when you get older, only in my case, it's not a symphony, it's just a series of bad songs. And they play and play and play. All day long. They play in rhythm as I walk down the street, and they float in and out of my brain as I work. Sometimes I dream them. In fact, I would say that on many occasions I dreamed a dream of them if I weren't so afraid of saying those unspeakable words. I have my very own soundtrack that plays to my very own life, only instead of consisting of songs I love, it's composed of the songs that stick in my brain. It's a form of hell, and that's the truth.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nora-ephron/stop-the-music_b_188961.html

Big Entertainment Wants to Party Like It's 1996

Introduction

Written by Cory Doctorow


The entertainment industry wants to retreat to the comfort of 1996. It was a good year for them. CDs were selling briskly, but no one had figured out how to rip them and turn them into MP3s yet. Music fans were still spending money to buy CD versions of music they owned on LP. DVDs had just been released, and movie fans were spending money to buy DVDs for movies they already owned on VHS.

And most importantly, the laws regulating copyright and technology were almost entirely designed by the entertainment industry. They could write anydamnfoolthing and get it passed in Congress, by the UN, in the EU.

Private agreements with electronics companies guaranteed that all new devices were crippled: Remember the Sony Minidisc players that could record sound digitally, but could only output it on the headphone jack, meaning that you couldn't just record your kid's first words and digitally transfer them to your computer for safe keeping?

1996 is gone, and good riddance.

In 2009, the world is populated by people who no longer believe that "Thou shalt sell media on plastic discs forever" came down off the mountain on two stone tablets. It's populated by people who find the spectacle of companies suing their own customers by the thousands indefensible. It's populated by activists who've figured out that the Internet is worth saving and that the entertainment industry is prepared to destroy it.

And the entertainment industry hasn't figured that out, and that's why they're doomed.

 

I recently found myself debating the head of the British Phonographic Institute, our local equivalent of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). He's Britain's top lobbyist for the collapsing record industry, and he said a remarkable thing.

An audience member had just stood up and asked one of those rambling non-questions that are really just polemics, words to the effect of, "You people are so evil -- just look at the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, it's full of bad things and it's all being negotiated in secret, away from public input. It's more corporate influence on government!"

And then Britain's top record industry lobbyist said the remarkable thing: "It's perfectly normal for this kind of treaty to be negotiated in private. There's nothing sinister going on at all." That's when I realized that the all-powerful entertainment lobby has developed advanced lobbyist's senility. Lost its tactical marbles. Lost its spine.

And I had to suppress a grin.

Here's some background for you: The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a draft treaty among a bunch of rich countries that is supposed to combat "increase in global trade of counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works." It's a private, multilateral negotiation that's taking place without the benefit of the United Nations' World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the UN agency where copyright treaties are normally negotiated.

WIPO is open to all the world's nations and to lots of non-governmental agencies (activists and corporate lobbyists alike), and it publishes public minutes.

ACTA is taking place in the proverbial smoke-filled room, and its provisions are nominally secret.

Still, though ACTA is nominally private -- the actual treaty language has been classified by the Obama White House as secret due to "national security" (!) -- we actually know rather a lot about its provisions.

Partly, that's because trade agreements like this are visible to "cleared advisors" -- members of the U.S. Trade Representative's advisory boards -- a list of hundreds of people, including many corporate lobbyists. For example:

• Sandra M. Aistars, Esq., Senior Counsel, Intellectual Property, Time Warner Inc.
• Francis (Frank) Z. Hellwig, Esq. Senior Associate, General Counsel, Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc.
• Douglas T. Nelson, Esq., Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary, CropLife America
• Shirley Zebroski, PhD, Director, Legislative Affairs, General Motors Corp.
• Robert E. Branand, Esq., Representative, National Paint & Coatings Association
• Ms. Laura J. Lane, Senior Vice President, International Government Affairs, Citigroup Inc.

That's right -- it's not just Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), the RIAA, and the Motion Picture Association who are in on this deal. It's also beer execs, execs from sinking banks and car-companies, fertilizer salesmen, and the people who make aluminum siding. They all get a seat at the table and get to know what's being said out of the public's earshot.

Well, once you tell hundreds of executives from random industry associations and corporations a secret, it's not going to remain secret for very long.

 

http://www.internetevolution.com/document.asp?doc_id=175415&

The difference between Somalian piracy and American piracy

Political Poll: Which Pundit Would Become Emergency Survival Meat First?

by Apoliticus Editors

Hmm...do I go for the meatiest or the most talkative first?

In our last poll, 80% of you said that what you missed the most about George W. was his incident-prone press conferences. You simply never knew when there might be an Inshoegency.

Now the Apoliticus editors have another serious question for you: If you were in a plane crash in the mountains of Argentina with every major political pundit, which one would you choose to be eat first?

If your plane crashed in the mountains of Argentina with every major American political pundit/talking head on board, who would you eat first to survive?

• Rush Limbaugh
• Keith Olbermann
• Sean Hannity
• Bill O'Reilly
• Glenn Beck
• Ann Coulter

http://www.apoliticus.com/2009/04/political-pundit-poll-who/

Island DIY: Kauai residents don't wait for state to repair road

By Mallory Simon

(CNN) -- Their livelihood was being threatened, and they were tired of waiting for government help, so business owners and residents on Hawaii's Kauai island pulled together and completed a $4 million repair job to a state park -- for free.

Polihale State Park has been closed since severe flooding destroyed an access road to the park and damaged facilities in December.

The state Department of Land and Natural Resources had estimated that the damage would cost $4 million to fix, money the agency doesn't have, according to a news release from department Chairwoman Laura Thielen.

"It would not have been open this summer, and it probably wouldn't be open next summer," said Bruce Pleas, a local surfer who helped organize the volunteers. "They said it would probably take two years. And with the way they are cutting funds, we felt like they'd never get the money to fix it."

And if the repairs weren't made, some business owners faced the possibility of having to shut down.

Ivan Slack, co-owner of Napali Kayak, said his company relies solely on revenue from kayak tours and needs the state park to be open to operate. The company jumped in and donated resources because it knew that without the repairs, Napali Kayak would be in financial trouble.

"If the park is not open, it would be extreme for us, to say the least," he said. "Bankruptcy would be imminent. How many years can you be expected to continue operating, owning 15-passenger vans, $2 million in insurance and a staff? For us, it was crucial, and our survival was dependent on it. That park is the key to the sheer survival of the business."

So Slack, other business owners and residents made the decision not to sit on their hands and wait for state money that many expected would never come. Instead, they pulled together machinery and manpower and hit the ground running March 23. Watch the volunteers repairing the road »

And after only eight days, all of the repairs were done, Pleas said. It was a shockingly quick fix to a problem that may have taken much longer if they waited for state money to funnel in.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/09/hawaii.volunteers.repair/

Which lie was deemed worthy of impeachment?

Impeach Bybee

by davidswanson

We're building a coalition.

Help the California Democratic Party pass a resolution asking for Bybee's impeachment.

The New York Times finally wants somebody impeached and it's Jay Bybee.

Congressman Jerrold Nadler finally wants somebody impeached and it's Jay Bybee.

Senator Russ Feingold finally wants somebody impeached and it's Jay Bybee.

A Spanish judge is seeking an indictment of Jay Bybee.

Jay Bybee's "legal" memos were thrown out by the Bush administration.

Jay Bybee signed memos authorizing torture.

Jay Bybee is a federal judge with a lifetime appointment who was not straight with us at his confirmation.

Lawyers have been held accountable for the crime of pretending to legalize crimes before, see: US v. Joseph Altstoetter.

Any act complicit in torture is a felony under US law.

Every single crime is in the past. "Looking forward" means looking forward to a world in which abuse and criminality cannot be deterred.

CLICK HERE to ask Congress to impeach Jay Bybee.

"I was following orders" is a Nazi excuse. CIA employees are civilians and don't get orders.

"I was following lawyers' advice" could permit absolutely anything because there is nothing a lawyer cannot be paid to say is legal.

The advice came after the torture began and the torture was never limited to the approved techniques.

The memo in which Bybee claims to legalize the torture of Abu Zubaydah itself claims only to be valid if certain facts and circumstances are true, which were not.

Secret laws produced as royal decrees are not laws at all, but their drafting can be a crime, and in the case of Bybee's memos violated the Convention Against Torture.

CLICK HERE to ask Congress to impeach Jay Bybee.

We can restore power to Congress AND begin to deter future abuses through one absolutely necessary action.

Bruce Ackerman made the case very well in a Slate article called "Impeach Jay Bybee: Why should a suspected war criminal serve as a federal judge?" Ackerman wrote:

"Jay Bybee is currently sitting on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. As assistant attorney general in President George W. Bush's Justice Department, he was responsible for the notorious torture memos that enabled the excesses at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and other places. While John Yoo did most of the staff work for Bybee, Yoo was barely 35 years old -- and his memos showed it. They not only took extreme positions; they were legally incompetent, failing to consider many of the most obvious counterarguments. Bybee was 49. He was the grown-up, the seasoned jurist. He had been a law professor and had served as associate counsel to President Bush. When he was promoted to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, he became the final judge of legal matters within the executive branch. Yet his opinion on torture was so poorly reasoned that it was repudiated by his very conservative successor, Jack Goldsmith."

Ackerman points out that when Bybee was confirmed by the Senate, his role in promoting the use of torture and other criminal acts was not known (well, was still denied by some people), and he absurdly claimed the right to keep his work secret. When torture teammate William Haynes was later considered for a similar appointment, the widespread use of torture had become known, and the Senate rejected him. That's the same Senate, although slightly improved by recent elections, that would have to convict Bybee in an impeachment trial.

CLICK HERE to ask Congress to impeach Jay Bybee.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/bybee

End of Scandinavian Neutrality: NATO's Militarization Of Europe

uruknet.info
  اوروكنت.إنفو
     

    informazione dall'iraq occupato
    information from occupied iraq

    

by Rick Rozoff

There was a noble if naive expectation that with the effective dissolution of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact in 1989 and even more so with its formal dismantling and the breakup of the Soviet Union itself into fifteen new countries two years later that an era of peace in the world and demilitarization of the European continent was dawning.

The peace might not be a just one, leaving the major Western military and economic powers in charge of the planet, but peace of a sort - any sort - seemed preferable to a continued state of armed, which meant nuclear, confrontation, some thought.

Hopes and talk abounded of a global peace dividend, with hundreds of billions of dollars and pounds, marks and francs and rubles hitherto expended on the production of weapons, the maintenance of armies and the prosecution of wars to be allotted to civilian production and to basic human needs in Europe, North America and throughout the world, especially its most underdeveloped and desperately needy nations.

The past twenty years, even the very first year of that double decade, 1989, proved that perspective wrong, tragically wrong, wrong in every particular.

With a diminished and all-but-dead Warsaw Pact and an internally weakened and infinitely compliant Soviet Union in 1989, the US felt free to invade Panama in late December of that year; the German Democratic Republic was incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany - and NATO - the following year; and in January of 1991 the United States, acting on the so-called Carter Doctrine, launched Operation Desert Storm, a series of devastating and deadly attacks on Iraqi forces in Kuwait and on Iraq itself, with the assistance of local client states and NATO allies Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Turkey, Portugal, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, the Netherlands and Norway. The only NATO nations not participating were diminutive Iceland and Luxembourg.

In March of 1991, six days after the war ended, then US President Bush H.W. Bush described the results of Operation Desert Storm and of the soon-to-be post-Cold War period: "Now, we can see a new world coming into view. A world in which there is the very real prospect of a new world order."

The new global order had no room for either peace or disarmament. It never intended that either should ever prevail.

http://uruknet.info/?p=m53349&hd=&size=1&l=e

End of GOP Comics

Just following orders

It’s Earth Day! Obama and Limbaugh celebrate it differently

 

To commemorate Earth Day, President Obama will tour and meet with workers at Trinity Structural Towers , the former Maytag plant which now houses a green manufacturing facility that produces towers for wind energy production, in Newton . The White House says, this is a "perfect example of how a community can rebuild a local economy with investments in clean energy and efficiency."

 

By Jimmy Orr

Just in case you were wondering, President Obama and Rush Limbaugh will not be holding a joint Earth Day press conference today.

It would be quite newsworthy, but perhaps it was a scheduling problem or the stars just didn't line up this year. Maybe next.

But, don't worry, each will join — according to CNN — one billion people around the planet in celebrating the annual event.

Is this Heaven?

Obama heads out to Iowa (or Heaven as some have called it). But not Dyersville, the home of the "Field of Dreams". Instead the president commemorates the Earth in Newton, where he will visit a green manufacturing facility that produces towers for wind energy production.

Explains the White House press office:

"Iowa , a leader in wind energy, is a perfect example of how a community can rebuild a local economy with investments in clean energy and efficiency. Trinity employs dozens of former Maytag employees and is part of the revitalization of a town hard hit by the closing of the Maytag plant."

Following the tour of the facility, President Obama will discuss his energy plan. Says the White House, Obama will discuss "promoting clean energy innovation to help end our dependence on foreign oil, creating millions of new jobs, and preventing the worst consequences of climate change."

The president wants $15 billion annually for 10 years directed to the renewable-energy industry.

"Go back to this plant in 10 years and, once we get this comprehensive energy and climate legislation through, they will see a dramatic rise in the number of employees," said an Obama energy aide to the Des Moines Register. "We're not suggesting we would completely fill this hole, but we're making dramatic improvements and steps in the Obama administration to get there."

Limbaugh

Meanwhile, the conservative talk show host is honoring the Earth by celebrating coal, the car, plastic bags, and light bulbs.

Last week, in preparation for the event, Limbaugh said, "Normally, those of us with sanity sit Earth Day out, while schools frighten kids with apocalyptic tales of the earth being destroyed, because we enjoy a high standard of living."

But Limbaugh came through this morning and singled out "pioneers who have contributed to the well-being of the planet".

In what he calls a "solemn tribute" he honors a man named Gordon Dancy. Who's he?

"He invented the first high-density plastic grocery bag, which can handle up to 40 pounds of stuff. That singular invention has benefited our daily life on earth in multitudinous ways," he explained.

But don't forget the coal industry. Something he says needs recognition.

http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/04/22/its-earth-day-obama-and-limbaugh-celebrate-it-differently/

The Birth of the Ecology Symbol

By Ron Cobb, from http://www.roncobbdesigns.com/International_symbol_for_Ecology.210.0.html

as it originally appeared in the Los Angeles Free Press - November, 1969

Transmission Lines versus Solar Power: Back to the Past or Leap to the Future?

By Jackie Devereaux

 

Yucca Valley, CA  -  At least two giant public utility companies said environmentalists "need not worry" about plans to build a "mega grid" of transmission power lines through Southern California because they are scaling back, considering other routes or carefully moving forward despite growing concerns.

 

The Green Path North proposal by Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP),  plans to construct 85 miles of new high-voltage transmission power lines through sensitive lands in the Hi-Desert and the Coachella Valley.  The Sunrise Powerlink proposed by San Diego Gas & Electric calls for 600 towers through 150 miles of Imperial and San Diego counties. 

 

Both plans met staunch grassroots opposition that has successfully stalled or steered those projects into other directions.  Two giant utilities claim they need more transmission lines to meet a state mandated "green power" goal by 2010.  Critics claim the companies do not want "green power" but instead want to control and manipulate the price of electric power.

 

LADWP has been hatching plans for two years to build Green Path North and applied for a "Right of Way" with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in December 2006.  The utility giant initially wanted Green Path North to begin at a new Palm Springs substation, then travel north along state route 62 through the hi-desert to join another electrical substation near Victorville. 

 

Utility companies claim they need these "mega grids" in order to meet a state mandated goal of 20 percent energy coming from green power sources, such as solar, wind and renewables by 2010, and with 33 percent green power by 2020.

 

Green Path North - Environmentalists' side of the story

 

Opponents say this is a lie.  Jim Harvey, executive director of Alliance for Responsible Energy Policy (AREP), a non-profit organization in the Hi-Desert opposing any new transmission lines said LADWP's plans also involve the taking of private properties through eminent domain. 

 

"There's a huge effort underway to obtain federal wilderness designation that for many years now was threatened by big solar and big wind industries and their transmission corridors," Harvey said. 

 

"Those of us opposed to Green Path North now have a genuine opportunity to make a difference," he noted the LADWP's route threatens a portion of the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve.  "Designating this and other areas as federal 'wilderness' will make it much more difficult to get approval for these devastating big energy projects," he said.

 

"The Green Path North project is not green at all," Harvey added, "In fact, it's the least likely way to bring green energy to California. If LADWP really wanted to increase green energy production they could do it in the four following ways:"

 

First, repeal the failed federal Energy Policy Act of 2005 that only benefits big energy companies.  Secondly, offer tax credits, rebates and low interest loans (from AB 811) to home an business owners for installing photo voltaic (solar panels) and micro wind turbines.  Thirdly, pass "feed-in tariff" laws requiring utility companies to  purchase surplus renewable energy from home and business owners at market rates.  Fourthly, remove the restrictions current California CSI law, that limit sizes of a renewable energy system in the home or business - this discourages renewable energy production surplus.

 

"Germany has been working towards achieving 2,000 megawatts of electrical capacity every year from rooftop solar panels.  Europe collects more solar power and has less sunny days than California.  By 2011, they will have added 10,000 megawatts - that's huge.  Green Path North only expects to bring in 800 megawatts of power, so there is no comparison," Harvey said.

 

"If LADWP's real agenda was to build a 20 percent renewables by 2010, then they'd be doing it this way," he added.  "And as far as looking into alternate routes, they are a smokescreen for their real motives - to control the supply and price of electricity," he said.

 

A Feb. 2, 2009 article by Carol A. Overland, a utility regulatory attorney and electrical consultant based in Minnesota, said not to believe big utility propaganda about why they need new transmission lines.  Overland said, "Planning for peak loads," is a transmission lie.  "We'll have blackouts" or "freeze in the dark" are transmission lies.  Utility company "forecasts" are a lie.  "It's for renewable energy" is a lie. "Long distance transmission" is a lie. "Utilities frame of need for public purposes" is a lie.

LADWP's side of the story

 

Tom Robbins’ "B is for Beer"

 

Northwest author Tom Robbins, who wrote "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" and other novels, has a new book out today. "B is for Beer" is Robbins' ninth novel and is a "children's book for grown-ups" or a "grown-ups book for children." Sounds pretty amusing already. You can read the first 25 pages of his book for free on his Web site. Robbins, who currently resides in La Conner, will be on tour to promote his new book. You can catch him in Seattle on May 21st when he makes his final stop at Elliott Bay Bookstore in Pioneer Square. Here's a little promotion about the book by publisher HarperCollins:

Once upon a time (right about now) there was a planet (how about this one?) whose inhabitants consumed thirty-six billion gallons of beer each year (it's a fact, you can Google it). Among those affected, each in his or her own way, by all the bubbles, burps, and foam, was a smart, wide-eyed, adventurous kindergartner named Gracie; her distracted mommy; her insensitive dad; her non-conformist uncle; and a magical, butt-kicking intruder from a world within our world.
Populated by the aforementioned characters--and as charming as it may be subversive--B Is for Beer involves readers, young and old, in a surprising, far-reaching investigation into the limits of reality, the transformative powers of children, and, of course, the ultimate meaning of a tall, cold brewski.

 

http://www.citizenrain.com/2009/04/robbins-pens-new-novel-b-is-fo.html

 

Earth Day Rap

The Sickening Arrogance and Condescension of Empire

by arthur4801

Thus speaks the new Imperial Master:

President Barack Obama said that the United States is in a position to place more responsibility in the hands of the Iraqis following provincial elections and a reduction in violence there.

"In conversations that I've had with the joint chiefs, with people, the commanders on the ground, I think that we have a sense now that the Iraqis just had a very significant election, with no significant violence there, that we are in a position to start putting more responsibility on the Iraqis," Obama told NBC television.

At the time of the initial invasion, Iraq posed no threat of any significance whatsoever to the United States. This blindingly obvious conclusion was clear to millions of people throughout the world -- "ordinary" people who examined the publicly available evidence, and who did not rely on "secret" knowledge, which goes by the viciously misnamed designation "intelligence," which "intelligence" is almost always wrong and which is never the basis for major policy decisions in any event.

The U.S. ruling class also knew that Iraq represented no threat of any consequence. They didn't care. They had entirely different objectives and concerns: the expansion and consolidation of American global hegemony. The world is the U.S. ruling class's oyster, and they will devour it. And you, and over a million innocent Iraqis, and whoever else proves troublesome. As a general rule, it is advisable not to place yourself in the path of a dangerously delusional homicidal maniac.

Thus, the United States government and almost all members of the ruling class -- with only two or three honorable exceptions -- embarked on a lengthy series of brutal, horrifying, profoundly immoral war crimes, and on a world historical genocide. Thus, all those members of the ruling class who have voted to continue and fund these crimes are war criminals. Barack Obama is a war criminal. Don't bother to argue with me: argue with the Nuremberg Principles.

How, then, in the name of all that is decent, humane and minimally civilized, does the President of the United States dare to say that "we are in a position to start putting more responsibility on the Iraqis"? "We" -- that is to say, the U.S. government and the ruling class -- are "in a position" to beg for forgiveness, which no decent human being should ever grant. There is nothing these criminals can ever do to earn it. "We are in a position" to make all those reparations possible, in whatever forms and whenever they can be offered. From an essay written two and a half years ago:

Given the immense, incalculable destruction we have caused, we are obligated to provide significant financial aid to Iraq for the foreseeable future. In light of the damage this catastrophe has already caused to our economy, that is a formidable prospect -- but it is markedly superior to continuing to pour billions of dollars down the drain of this murderous occupation. And we must be responsible for our actions, and especially for our gravely mistaken and immoral ones. To the extent amends are possible, we must offer them. No amount of money will ever make up for the lives that have been lost and those that have been irrevocably damaged, but we must do whatever is possible. That will still not merit forgiveness for our actions, but at least we will have acted with a minimal sense of honor.

Beyond this, "we" should do nothing but get out.

Get out. Every single goddamned American. Out, within months. To hell with the disgusting lie about "combat troops." All Americans, out.

Period, the fucking hell. Everyone out.

http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2009/02/sickening-arrogance-and-condescension.html

American Violet: documentary about racism and the drug-war

John Gilmore sez,

I just saw a pre-screening of "American Violet", which opens across the US starting tomorrow. "American Violet", is based on true stories of rampant rural-Texas racism fed and empowered by Federal drug war money -- the kind that Obama just gave two BILLION more dollars to as part of his stimulus. The more convictions your "anti-drug task force" gets, the more money you get. Busting random poor people and offering them lose-lose plea bargains (90+% of drug cases are resolved with a plea bargain) is the fast route to local power and federal riches. Before we try to fix it, come see up close how it works, and what the victims face if they ever step up to fight it. The movie opens April 17 across the US. It's a horror movie that's a little too close to home to leave you unaffected.

I know the real-life ACLU lawyer who's portrayed, I've talked with him and read the book about the first Texas town they cleaned up (Tulia); this movie is about the second (Hearne), though all the names are changed to protect the guilty. My donations funded some of ACLU's Texas work.

American Violet exposes the racism of the drug war

America makes great cars

Human Brains Make Their Own 'Marijuana'

U.S. and Brazilian scientists have discovered that the brain manufactures proteins that act like marijuana at specific receptors in the brain itself. This discovery may lead to new marijuana-like drugs for managing pain, stimulating appetite, and preventing marijuana abuse.

"Ideally, this development will lead to drugs that bind to and activate the THC receptor, but are devoid of the side effects that limit the usefulness of marijuana," said Lakshmi A. Devi of the Department of Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and one of the senior researchers involved in the study. "It would be helpful to have a drug that activated or blocked the THC receptor, and our findings raise the possibility that this will lead to effective drugs with fewer side effects."

Scientists made their discovery by first extracting several small proteins, called peptides, from the brains of mice and determining their amino acid sequence. The extracted proteins were then compared with another peptide previously known to bind to, but not activate, the receptor (THC) affected by marijuana. Out of the extracted proteins, several not only bound to the brain's THC receptors, but activated them as well.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090420151240.htm

UN rights chief shocked by U.S. boycott of anti-racism conference

   GENEVA, April 19 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations' top human rights official said on Sunday she deeply regretted the decision by the United States to boycott a major UN anti-racism conference to be convened in Geneva on Monday.

    "I am shocked and deeply disappointed by the United States decision not to attend a conference that aims to combat racism, xenophobia, racial discrimination and other forms of intolerance worldwide," said Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights.

    The five-day Durban Review Conference aims to evaluate progress toward the goals set by the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa in 2001.

    But the United States and several other Western countries have announced their decision to boycott the conference out of so-called "concerns" that it could be used as a forum for anti-Semitism and result in limiting free speech.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/20/content_11217644.htm

 

1969 vs. 2009

420: Thoughts on Pot vs. Alcohol from a Former Police Chief

by Norm Stamper

 

As 5:00 p.m. rolls around my interior clock starts chiming. I'll have an ice-cold, bone-dry martini, thank you. Jalapeno olives and a twist. If the occasion calls for it (temperatures in the twenties, a hot political debate on the tube) I may substitute two fingers of Kentucky sour mash. Four-twenty? Doesn't resonate. But with April 20 approaching and Waldos of the world gearing up to celebrate their favorite day of the year, it's not a bad time to consider, yet again, the pluses and minuses of alcohol vs. cannabis.

First, a disclaimer: I am a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, but I don't officially represent the organization in this forum. That said, I can't very well check my affiliation, or beliefs, at the keyboard when I sit down to blog for HuffPost. We at LEAP are current and former cops and other criminal justice practitioners who have witnessed firsthand the futility and manifold injustices of the drug war. Our professional experiences have led us to conclude that the more dangerous an illicit substance--from crack to krank--the greater the justification for its legalization, regulation, and control. It is the prohibition of drugs that leads inexorably to high rates of death, disease, crime, and addiction.

Back to booze vs. pot. How do the effects of these two drugs stack up against specific health and public safety factors?

Alcohol-related traffic accidents claim approximately 14,000 lives each year, down significantly from 20 or 30 years ago (attributed to improved education and enforcement). Figures for THC-related traffic fatalities are elusive, especially since alcohol is almost always present in the blood as well, and since the numbers of "marijuana-only" traffic fatalities are so small. But evidence from studies, including laboratory simulations, feeds the stereotype that those under the influence of canniboids tend to (1) be more aware of their impaired psychomotor skills, and (2) drive well below the speed limit. Those under the influence of alcohol are much more likely to be clueless or defiant about their condition, and to speed up and drive recklessly.

Hundreds of alcohol overdose deaths occur annually. There has never been a single recorded marijuana OD fatality.

According to the American Public Health Association, excessive alcohol consumption is the third leading cause of death in this country. APHA pegs the negative economic impact of extreme drinking at $150 billion a year.

There have been no documented cases of lung cancer in a marijuana-only smoker, nor has pot been scientifically linked to any type of cancer. (Don't trust an advocate's take on this? Try the fair and balanced coverage over at Fox.) Alcohol abuse contributes to a multitude of long-term negative health consequences, notably cirrhosis of the liver and a variety of cancers.

While a small quantity, taken daily, is being touted for its salutary health effects, alcohol is one of the worst drugs one can take for pain management, marijuana one of the best.

Alcohol contributes to acts of violence; marijuana reduces aggression. In approximately three million cases of reported violent crimes last year, the offender had been drinking. This is particularly true in cases of domestic violence, sexual assault, and date rape. Marijuana use, in and of itself, is absent from both crime reports and the scientific literature. There is simply no link to be made.

Over the past four years I've asked police officers throughout the U.S. (and in Canada) two questions. When's the last time you had to fight someone under the influence of marijuana? (I'm talking marijuana only, not pot plus a six-pack or a fifth of tequila.) My colleagues pause, they reflect. Their eyes widen as they realize that in their five or fifteen or thirty years on the job they have never had to fight a marijuana user. I then ask: When's the last time you had to fight a drunk? They look at their watches.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/norm-stamper/420-thoughts-on-pot-vs-al_b_188627.html

Report: ‘Greenwashing’ Runs Rampant

Green products are proliferating so quickly, and adding so many new consumer claims, that TerraChoice has increased its listing of greenwashing sins from six to seven.

The latest, "worship of false labels," describes product marketing that mimics third-party environmental certifications. The other sins of greenwashing are: lack of proof, vagueness, irrelevance, lesser of two evils, hidden trade-off and outright lying.

When TerraChoice put together its newest report, "The Seven Sins of Greenwashing: Environmental Claims in Consumer Markets" (PDF), it found that the number of big box store products making green claims grew 79 percent since its last report, in 2007..

In the United States and Canada, TerraChoice found 2,219 products making 4,996 green claims. TerraChoice then tested claims against best practices from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the Canadian Competition Bureau, the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission, and the standard for environmental labeling set by the International Organization for Standardization.

TerraChoice reports that 98 percent of the products committed at least one of its sins of greenwashing. Only 25 products tested in the U.S. and Canada were found to be "sin-free."

What TerraChoice calls legitimate eco-labeling has doubled in frequency. Legitimate eco-labeling now appears on 23.4 percent of "green" products in the report, as opposed to 13.7 percent last year.

The report finds that green claims are most common in kids toys, baby products, cosmetics and cleaning products.

http://www.environmentalleader.com/2009/04/16/report-greenwashing-runs-rampant/

Lego waterboarding

 

Fox Nation

Senior Bush figures could be prosecuted for torture, says Obama

President says use of waterboarding showed US had 'lost moral bearings' as Dick Cheney says CIA memos showed torture delivered 'good' intelligence

 

by Ewan MacAskill and Robert Booth

 

Senior members of the Bush administration who approved the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation measures could face prosecution, President Obama disclosed today .

He said the use of torture reflected America "losing our moral bearings".

He said his attorney general, Eric Holder, was conducting an investigation and the decision rested with him. Obama last week ruled out prosecution of CIA agents who carried out the interrogation of suspected al-Qaida members at Guantánamo and secret prisons around the world.

But for the first time today he opened up the possibility that those in the administration who gave the go-ahead for the use of waterboarding could be prosecuted.

The revelation will enrage senior Bush administration figures such as the former vice-president Dick Cheney.

The Obama administration views the use of waterboarding as torture, while Cheney claims it is not.

Obama, taking questions from the press during a visit by King Abdullah of Jordan, reiterated he did not believe in prosecution of those CIA agents who carried out the interrogations within the guidelines set down for them. But "with respect to shoe who formulated'' the policies, "that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws". He added: "I don't want to prejudge that."

Ewen MacAskill on Obama's reluctance to prosecute torturers Link to this audio

He also opened the way for a Congressional inquiry into the issue.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/21/cheney-obama-cia-torture-memos