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If it’s good enough for a dog, it’s good enough for a kid, right? A school district in Texas will be watching over its students a lot more closely, but not with the aid of extra teachers. Instead each pupil will be monitored with microchips.
Officials at the Northside Independent School District in rural Bexar County, Texas have approved a plan to track the whereabouts of each and every student by requiring them to walk the halls with identification cards in their pockets that are equipped with RFID microchips.
By using Radio Frequency Identification System technology, teachers and faculty will be able to monitor the move of over 6,000 students at two select schools and every pupil with special needs throughout the district as soon as next semester. If the pilot program is a success, the district intends on expanding the tracking system to all of its 112 schools, totaling nearly 100,000 students.
Backers of the program say the move is well intentioned and will actually bring the school millions of dollars in extra funding. Ghastly attendance rates in Bexar County currently keeps the district from earning around $175,000 a day in state assistance, reports KHOU News out of San Antonio, TX. Speaking to that city’s Express-News, district spokesman Pascual Gonzalez explains that the school wants “to harness the power of (the) technology to make schools safer, know where our students are all the time in a school, and increase revenue.”
When each step of the students is being watched by administrators, the district expects to see their absentee count drop drastically. But is it worth the cost of killing the privacy of thousands?
“It’s going to give us the opportunity to track our students in the building," Principal Wendy Reyes of Jones Middle School tells KHOU. “They may have been in the nurse’s office, or the counselor’s office, or vice principal’s office, but they were marked absent from the classroom because they weren't sitting in the class. It will help us have a more accurate account of our attendance.”
It will also let teachers know who is in the bathroom and for how long and monitor the group habits of students. It could also become catastrophic, of course, if the very sensitive data ends up in the wrong hands. Similar programs were pitched elsewhere in recent years, but in other instances the American Civil Liberties Union stepped up to speak out; in many cases, the programs were shot down after the ACLU intervened.
"We are urging the school board to recognize the important civil liberties concerns and safety risks implicated in RFID technology," the ACLU’s Nicole Ozer, the technology and civil Liberties policy director of their Northern California office, wrote in a statement back in 2005 . "RFID badges jeopardize the safety and security of children by broadcasting identity and location information to anyone with a chip reader and subject students to demeaning tracking of their movements. We hope the school district reconsiders this serious issue."
In that case, the ACLU was opposed to a program at Brittan Elementary School Board in Sutter, California where youngsters were being tracked with RFID chips. Even though that kind of technology has become both more advanced and commonplace in the seven years since, it doesn’t change the concerns that continue to arise.
"The monitoring of children with RFID tags is comparable to the tracking of cattle, shipment pallets, or very dangerous criminals in high-security prisons," Cédric Laurant of EPIC told the ACLU in 2005. "Compelling children to be constantly tracked with RFID-enabled identity badges breaches their right to privacy and dignity as human beings."
But, hey — how else is the school going to raise a few grand?
“I think this is overstepping our bounds and is inappropriate,” Northside school board trustee M'Lissa M. Chumbley tells other district officials this week. “I'm honestly uncomfortable about this.”
Kirsten Bokenkamp of the ACLU tells the San Antonio Express-News that her organization is once again alarmed by Northside’s plans to implement the program. They are expected to challenge the board’s decision this time around too.
http://rt.com/usa/news/texas-microchips-school-district-262/If it’s good enough for a dog, it’s good enough for a kid, right? A school... more
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A tear of relief: Brian Banks after his rape conviction was dismissed Thursday.
Five years in prison. Then five years of probation and wearing an electronic monitoring device. The shame of being a registered sex offender. Not being able to get a job. His dream of playing in the NFL destroyed, possibly forever.
Brian Banks, now 26, has gone through all that.
Then Thursday, the California man's rape conviction was dismissed. His accuser, who last year sent Banks a message on Facebook suggesting that they "let bygones be bygones," had been videotaped saying she lied about being raped. Wanetta Gibson's previous statements to police about the alleged 2002 incident had been the only evidence against Banks — there was no physical evidence that Banks had raped her. With the change in her story, prosecutors and a judge agreed, there was no case.
Having his name cleared made for "the greatest day of my life,"Banks told Southern California Public Radio's Patt Morrison. Not only does the conviction come off his record, but the electronic monitor comes off his ankle and he no longer has to register as a sex offender.
The former high school football star, who once seemed to be on the way to playing for the University of Southern California, says he now wants to pursue that lifelong dream of playing in the NFL.
Banks' story, which he's scheduled to talk about later today withAll Things Considered, raises anew questions about the U.S. legal system. After his arrest, as KPCC reports, Banks' lawyer "urged him to plead no contest rather than risk a sentence of 41 years to life in prison if convicted."
Justin Brooks of the California Innocence Project, who handled Banks' case after the accuser recanted, told Patt Morrison that racism surely played a part in what happened. Banks' original lawyer, he said, basically told the then-teenager that because he was a large, black, young man it would be his word against hers and that he should take the deal.
As for Banks' accuser, she hasn't been willing to repeat to authorities what she said on the videotape (made by a private investigator) about the accusation. In fact, the Los Angeles Timessays, she "recanted her video statement." Her family had been granted a $1.5 million legal judgment from the Long Beach, Calif., public school system because she had claimed the rape happened on school property. Now, Brooks told the Times, she doesn't want to put that money at risk.
Banks is looking ahead. He told KPCC that, "I remained unbroken throughout this situation and I know that if I can get through this and get my life back, I'll be able to get through the rest."A tear of relief: Brian Banks after his rape conviction was dismissed Thursday.
Five... more
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As the country’s big wars on the Eurasian continent wind down, American war-making and war preparations fly ever more regularly under the radar. There has, for instance, been much discussion about the Obama administration’s policy “pivot” to Asia -- the only warlike act in the region so far has, however, been a little noted drone strike in the Philippines. At the same time, remarkably little attention has been paid to a massive build-up of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, and -- though both seem to be underway (and connected) -- who talks about the “pivot” to the Western Indian Ocean or the “pivot” to Africa?
For those keeping a careful eye out, U.S. drone (and air) bases in the region have been proliferating -- in the Seychelles Islands, in Ethiopia, and at an unidentified site on the Arabian peninsula, among other places. Recently, however, Wired’s Danger Room website reported that an Italian blogger had put the pieces together and offered impressive evidence of a larger war-making effort in the region, involving not only drones but F-15E fighter jets, possibly being used to bomb Yemen. Meanwhile, there are U.S. drone strikes in Yemen almost daily and at least 20 special forces operatives are reportedly now on the ground there, helping direct some of the fighting and even taking casualties.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Africa Command (Africom), set up in 2007, has been gaining clout. In 2011, 100 special operations troops, mainly Green Berets, were moved into Central Africa, officially to aid in the hunting down of Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army. Recently, it was reported that a brigade of regular U.S. combat troops will soon be assigned to the command and given training duties throughout the region. Meanwhile, the U.S. has been organizing a proxy war, supported by drone attacks, against al-Shabab rebels in Somalia, using Ugandan, Kenyan, and other African troops as those proxies. And more’s afoot. It’s just that, if you weren’t an obsessive news watcher, you would have next to no way of knowing that any of this was taking place.
War American-style, already long detached from the lives of most Americans, is growing more so: ever more secret, presidential, and beyond the control of, or accountability to, citizens or Congress. In only one way is this not true: we taxpayers still fork over the massive sums that make our perpetual state of war and war state possible. As Chris Hellman and Mattea Kramer of the invaluable National Priorities Project report, the expense of all this is blowing a hole in your wallet and our treasury. To offer but one small example, if someday soon the Pakistani/Afghan border is reopened to U.S. war supplies, you will be paying the Pakistanis $1,500-$1,800 for every truck that crosses it, at an estimated cost of at least $1 million a day (with other "fees" likely). And yet, it’s remarkable how little Americans know about what’s coming out of their pockets when the subject is “national security,” or where exactly it’s all going. Which is why we need Hellman and Kramer (and their new book, A People’s Guide to the Federal Budget) to keep us in the loop. Tom
War Pay
The Nearly $1 Trillion National Security Budget
By Chris Hellman and Mattea Kramer
Recent months have seen a flurry of headlines about cuts (often called “threats”) to the U.S. defense budget. Last week, lawmakers in the House of Representatives even passed a bill that was meant to spare national security spending from future cuts by reducing school-lunch funding and other social programs.
Here, then, is a simple question that, for some curious reason, no one bothers to ask, no less answer: How much are we spending on national security these days? With major wars winding down, has Washington already cut such spending so close to the bone that further reductions would be perilous to our safety?
In fact, with projected cuts added in, the national security budget in fiscal 2013 will be nearly $1 trillion -- a staggering enough sum that it’s worth taking a walk through the maze of the national security budget to see just where that money’s lodged.
If you’ve heard a number for how much the U.S. spends on the military, it’s probably in the neighborhood of $530 billion. That’s the Pentagon’s base budget for fiscal 2013, and represents a 2.5% cut from 2012. But that $530 billion is merely the beginning of what the U.S. spends on national security. Let’s dig a little deeper.
The Pentagon’s base budget doesn’t include war funding, which in recent years has been well over $100 billion. With U.S. troops withdrawn from Iraq and troop levels falling in Afghanistan, you might think that war funding would be plummeting as well. In fact, it will drop to a mere $88 billion in fiscal 2013. By way of comparison, the federal government will spend around $64 billion on education that same year.
Add in war funding, and our national security total jumps to $618 billion. And we’re still just getting started.
More at the linkAs the country’s big wars on the Eurasian continent wind down, American... more
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It’s official -- George W. Bush is a war criminal.
In what is the first ever conviction of its kind anywhere in the world, the former president of the United States and seven key members of his administration were found guilty of war crimes on Friday.
Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal advisors, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee, and John Yoo, were tried in absentia in Malaysia.
The trial held in Kuala Lumpur heard harrowing witness accounts from victims of torture who suffered at the hands of U.S. soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They included testimony from British citizen Moazzam Begg, an ex-Guantanamo detainee and Iraqi woman Jameelah Abbas Hameedi, who was tortured in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
At the end of the week-long hearing, the five-panel tribunal unanimously delivered guilty verdicts against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their key legal advisors, who were all convicted as war criminals for torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment.
http://tehrantimes.com/opinion/97842-bush-finally-found-guilty-of-war-crimesIt’s official -- George W. Bush is a war criminal.
In what is the first... more
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The testing of animals creates more horror stories that should be examined from the standpoint of humanization. It is not morally alright to experiment on animals especially since they have to undergo horrific suffering.The testing of animals creates more horror stories that should be examined from the... more
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She loves those dirty dogs!
A Long Island hooker sold more than just sausage at her roadside hot-dog truck — using the truck to peddle her own flesh even though she’d been busted on the same rap eight years ago, cops said yesterday.
Catherine Scalia, 45, was arrested Thursday night when she offered the off-menu special to an undercover cop and took him back to her East Rockaway pad for some home cooking.
The mother of four pleaded not guilty to a prostitution charge and was held on $2,000 bail.
It’s the second time Scalia’s been busted for mixing sex and Sabretts. She and a pal were nailed in December 2004 for running a similar operation out of the hot-dog truck.
Cops recently discovered she was back in business after disgusted residents near her Baldwin stand complained she was handing out suggestive business cards alongside steaming kielbasa.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/extra_relish_on_her_wieners_65pJQk8padvNlt2nuh3aEI#ixzz1u0fIxwXSShe loves those dirty dogs!
A Long Island hooker sold more than just sausage at her... more
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punman
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An American soldier says he released the photos to the Los Angeles Times to draw attention to the safety risk of a breakdown in leadership and discipline. The Army has started a criminal investigation.
The barbarism of American policy is self evident.An American soldier says he released the photos to the Los Angeles Times to draw... more
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jubal
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"The US's top military officer has warned Syria it could face armed intervention as international outrage grows over the massacre of women and children by tanks and artillery in Houla.
General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said that following the UN security council's condemnation of the slaughter – in which more than 100 people were killed, many of them children – there needed to be increased diplomatic pressure on Damascus. But he added that the US would be prepared to act militarily if it was "asked to do so".
"There is always a military option," he told Fox News. "You'll always find military leaders to be somewhat cautious about the use of force, because we're never entirely sure what comes out on the other side. But that said, it may come to a point with Syria because of the atrocities."
The warning comes as Barack Obama is under increasing pressure from his Republican opponent in November's presidential election, Mitt Romney, and members of Congress to take tougher action over Syria.
Romney accused Obama of weakness and disparaged his support for efforts by the former UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, to revive a failing peace plan. He said Washington should instead arm opposition groups.
"After nearly a year and a half of slaughter, it is far past time for the United States to begin to lead and put an end to the Assad regime. President Obama can no longer ignore calls from congressional leaders in both parties to take more assertive steps," he said.
Romney continued: "The Annan 'peace' plan, which President Obama still supports, has merely granted the Assad regime more time to execute its military onslaught. The United States should work with partners to organise and arm Syrian opposition groups so they can defend themselves. The bloodshed in Houla makes clear that our goal must be a new Syrian government."
Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate against Obama four years ago, called the White House "feckless" for not doing more to stop Syria.
"This is a shameful episode in American history," he said. "It's really an abdication of everything that America stands for and believes in."
Dempsey was asked if there is a place in Syria for the Libya model, in which Nato led a bombing campaign ostensibly to protect civilian areas but which swiftly evolved into action directly in support of the rebels.
"I'm sure there are some things that we did in Libya that could be applicable in a Syria environment or Syria scenario. But I'm very cautious about templates," he said.
Obama has steered clear of public discussion about military action against the Assad regime, saying that conditions in Syria are different from those in Libya. For a start, Russia is a major diplomatic obstacle to military action or even much stronger sanctions although it backed the UN security council condemnation of Damascus on Sunday, suggesting there are limits to the protection it is prepared to offer.
Neither is there much appetite for military intervention in other western capitals, including France which led the assault on Libya but which has since had a change of leadership with the election of Francois Hollande.
Domestic US political conditions have also shifted since the Libya campaign. With an election in November, the president may not want to embroil US forces in another Middle East conflict when he is trumpeting getting the US out of unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Washington is instead looking to a negotiated transition that would see President Bashar al-Assad surrender power as part of a power sharing agreement between the rebels and the regime.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, on Monday said that Russia is not wedded to keeping Assad in control.
"It is not the most important thing who is in power in Syria, what regime has power," he said. "For us, the main thing is to put an end to the violence among civilians and to provide for political dialogue under which the Syrians themselves decide on the sovereignty of their country.""The US's top military officer has warned Syria it could face armed... more
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The Russian Foreign Ministry has lashed out at US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul over his remarks on US-Russian relations, including an accusation that Moscow bribed Kyrgyzstan to close a US air base there.
The Foreign Ministry said it was “extremely perplexed” by McFaul’s remarks, made at a meeting with students of the Higher School of Economics on Friday.
“His assessments of interaction between Russia and the US go far beyond diplomatic etiquette in form and are an intentional distortion of some aspects of the Russian-American dialogue in substance," it said in a statement on Monday.
The Foreign Ministry added that this is not the first time statements and actions by “Mr. McFaul, who holds such a high post, cause confusion.”
The US envoy replied to the criticism saying in his Twitter account that he is “still learning the craft of speaking more diplomatically.”
The ministry stressed in its statement that the Russian leadership does not use the term “sphere of influence” in political practice, including with regards to Kyrgyzstan.
Moscow called for more “predictability and transparency” from Washington regarding its policy in Central Asia. It noted that ten years ago, the George W. Bush administration assured Moscow that the US military base in Manas, Kyrgyzstan, would only be used a year or two.
“We understand that there is a different administration in power in Washington now, but this does not solve the problem of the predictability and transparency of American activities in Central Asia. The ambassador should be able at least to explain the discrepancy between what is said and what is done," the ministry said.
http://rt.com/politics/russian-foreign-ministry-mcfaul-441/The Russian Foreign Ministry has lashed out at US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul... more
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What happens to Americans when they say goodbye to Uncle Sam and opt for citizenship elsewhere? A few US lawmakers are proposing that expatriates be banned from ever returning to America — and are taxed heavily once gone.
Senators Charles Schumer (D-New York) and Bob Casey (D-Pennsylvania) are suggesting that Congress hears a law that would force former citizens of the US to pay hefty taxes long after renouncing their citizenship and also bans them from ever setting foot again on American soil.
The proposed legislation is being dubbed the Ex-PATRIOT Act, an obnoxious acronym for the Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy bill. If passed, it intends to put pressure on US citizens from saying sayonara and shipping off elsewhere.
The Ex-PATRIOT Act is being called a direct response to the recently publicized news that Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin has become a citizen of Singapore, a maneuver which is expected to save him tens of millions of dollars in US taxes. Saverin says it isn’t a taxation issue; Schumers says it’s a “scheme.”
The New York Times reports that Saverin stands to make upwards of $4 billion when Facebook goes public later this week. Although he still has shares in the company, the co-founder parted ways with Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the social networking site shortly after he helped it get off the ground nearly a decade ago. He filed the paperwork to become a citizen of Singapore in January 2011 and was approved in September. Only recently, however, was the news publicized after the Internal Revenue Service published the names of recently declared expats.
“This had nothing to do with taxes,” Saverin explains in an interview with The Times published on Thursday. “I was born in Brazil, I was an American citizen for about 10 years. I thought of myself as a global citizen.”
In 2011 alone, the IRS reports that at least 1,788 Americans officially renounced their US citizenship. Saverin is reported to have settled down in Singapore after visiting there three years ago.
"Eduardo recently found it more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time," his spokesman, Tom Goodman, tells Bloomberg News.
Regardless of his intentions, Sens. Schumer and Casey want to make sure that other Americans aren’t encouraged to do the same. In a statement issued before they formally proposed the legislation, the lawmakers call Saverin’s move an “outrage” that was done only to “help him duck” paying taxes.
Singapore has no capital gains tax, unlike the States.
http://rt.com/usa/news/us-saverin-tax-citizenship-515/What happens to Americans when they say goodbye to Uncle Sam and opt for citizenship... more
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Armando Rodriguez was warned several times to continue taking his tuberculosis medicine.
At one point, authorities said, he told his case officer he stopped the treatment out of concern for his liver while binging on alcohol and methamphetamine.
So on Tuesday, authorities took the unusual step of arresting Rodriguez and charging him with refusing to comply with a tuberculosis order to be at home at certain times and make appointments to take his medication.
It’s a move that divides public health officials.
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/tb-patient-charged-california-meds-article-1.1079710?localLinksEnabled=falseArmando Rodriguez was warned several times to continue taking his tuberculosis... more
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If compensation took the form of credits for health care needs, about 60 percent of Americans would support it. Tax credits and tuition reimbursement were viewed favorably by 46 percent and 42 percent, respectively. Cash for organs was seen as OK by 41 percent of respondents.
Among people who said some form of compensation was acceptable, 72 percent said it should come from health insurers, followed by private charities at 62 percent and the federal government at 44 percent.
For all forms of compensation, rates of support tended to fall among older respondents.
There's been longstanding resistance to compensating donors financially in this country. There are concerns about exploitation and also worries that even small amounts of compensation would undercut a system that depends on altruism.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/05/16/152498553/poll-americans-show-support-for-compensation-of-organ-donorsIf compensation took the form of credits for health care needs, about 60 percent of... more
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A Florida woman who fired warning shots against her allegedly abusive husband has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Marissa Alexander of Jacksonville had said the state's "Stand Your Ground" law should apply to her because she was defending herself against her allegedly abusive husband when she fired warning shots inside her home in August 2010. She told police it was to escape a brutal beating by her husband, against whom she had already taken out a protective order.
Under Florida's mandatory minimum sentencing requirements Alexander could receive a lesser sentence, even though she has never been in trouble with the law before. Judge Daniel said the law did not allow for extenuating or mitigating circumstances to reduce the sentence below the 20-year minimum.
Alexander was convicted of attempted murder after she rejected a plea deal for a three-year prison sentence. She said she did not believe she did anything wrong.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57433184/fla-mom-gets-20-years-for-firing-warning-shots/A Florida woman who fired warning shots against her allegedly abusive husband has been... more
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The effects of global warming are making it more difficult for reservoir managers to control floods and manage flows for irrigation, recreation and fisheries.
Two days of record high temperatures and two days of record rainfall the same week in late April sent 26,000 cubic feet per second surging into the Boise River dam system, forcing federal river managers to increase flows to more than 8,100 cfs — the highest flow out of Lucky Peak Dam since 1998 and just the second time it has hit 8,100 in 30 years.
“If the reservoir had been full, we would have had a big problem,” said Patrick McGrane, manager of river operations for the Bureau of Reclamation’s Pacific Northwest Region, which operates the Boise River reservoirs in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
As late as the middle of January, this looked as if it was going to be a dry year across southern Idaho, especially in the Boise Basin, where Bogus Basin ski area had its latest opening in history.
But then the snows finally came. And in March, much of the precipitation fell as rain, causing the Payette and Weiser rivers to threaten flooding, said Ron Abramovich, a water-supply specialist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Boise.
The April warm spell and rains are examples of the higher variability that experts such as Abramovich say we can expect because of global warming. That’s making it harder to predict how reservoirs will fill — and what the flows will be in rivers with and without dams.
Despite better modern equipment, he said, “Our forecasts were more accurate in the ’60s through the ’70s than they are now.”
The more variability in the climate, the harder it is for the two federal dam-managing agencies to balance their competing tasks of preventing floods while filling the reservoirs to provide water for various uses.
100 YEARS OF DATA
The evidence that the runoff timing has changed is based on streamflow gauges maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey. One of the oldest is the gauge on the Middle Fork of the Boise River, installed near Twin Springs above Arrowrock Dam in 1912.
It shows that runoff that used to begin in early April now starts in late March. That flow used to peak in late May or June, but now peaks in early May.
Droughts and wet years have come and gone over the past century on the Boise River, said USGS hydrologist Greg Clark. But the past 30 years have generally been drier. With the snowpack melting earlier, that leaves flows even lower in the late summer and fall in the tributaries above reservoirs and in rivers without dams.
That affects things besides farmers’ irrigation water. It affects fish, for instance, especially since the water is getting warmer, said Clark, associate director for the Idaho Water Science Center in Boise.
It also affects recreation. On the Boise River, the longer period of high flows through town through the spring to prevent flooding delays floating season. On rivers such as the Middle Fork of the Salmon, low flows late in the season limit the number of days for whitewater rafting.
Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/05/08/2107406/climate-change-accelerating-complicating.html#storylink=cpy
More at the linkThe effects of global warming are making it more difficult for reservoir managers to... more
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"Does the United States still stand as a beacon of hope to the oppressed around the world? Human-rights lawyer and Chinese folk hero Chen Guangcheng thought we did. That’s why he risked his life to get to the United States Embassy in Beijing. But it was there he was betrayed for a few trillion shekels of yuan.
Human-rights activists around the world rejoiced when Chen—blind since birth—managed to escape house arrest and reach the perceived safety of the embassy. That relief turned to shock six days later, when the United States pressured Chen to leave, promising that they would stay with him in the hospital as he received treatment for injuries sustained during his escape.
Yet, Chen told CNN that once he reached the hospital the U.S. officials disappeared. Remember: he’s blind. The U.S. Embassy staff left an injured blind man who is an enemy of the state in the custody of his totalitarian oppressors. The State Department said today that the U.S. government has been in contact with Chen by phone and hopes to have a face-to-face meeting with him. So, they went from having him on American soil (the embassy) to not able to see him.
If only this was just incompetence. It seems so much worse.
Chai Ling, a former Tiananmen Square leader who escaped China in a cargo box, told me in an interview: “The U.S. Embassy wanted this ‘distraction’ to go away so they could get on with their business [of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to China].” In other words, trade and economic deals couldn’t be hampered by a human-rights nuisance. In Ling’s testimony before Congress today on behalf of her organization All Girls Allowed, which fights China’s one-child policy, she called America’s treatment of Chen “shameful.”"Does the United States still stand as a beacon of hope to the oppressed around... more
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MOSCOW -- Russia's top military officer has threatened to carry out a pre-emptive strike on U.S.-led NATO missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe if Washington goes ahead with its controversial plan to build a missile shield.
President Dmitry Medvedev said last year that Russia will retaliate militarily if it does not reach an agreement with the United States and NATO on the missile defense system.
Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov went even further Thursday. "A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens," he said at an international conference attended by senior U.S. and NATO officials.
Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov also warned on Thursday that talks between Moscow and Washington on the topic are "close to a dead end."
U.S. missile defense plans in Europe have been one of the touchiest subjects in U.S.-Russian relations for years.
Moscow rejects Washington's claim that the missile defense plan is solely to deal with any Iranian missile threat and has voiced fears it will eventually become powerful enough to undermine Russia's nuclear deterrent. Moscow has proposed running the missile shield jointly with NATO, but the alliance has rejected that proposal.
Makarov's statement on Thursday doesn't seem to imply an immediate threat, but aims to put extra pressure on Washington to agree to Russia's demands.
The two-day conference in Moscow is the last major Russia-U.S. meeting about military issues before a NATO summit in Chicago later this month. Russia has not yet said whether it will send top officials.
In a candid, lively exchange during a conference side session, officials talked about the high level of distrust remaining between the two sides.
"We can't just reject the distrust that has been around for decades and become totally different people," Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said in addressing U.S. and NATO officials. "Why are they calling on me, on my Russian colleagues, to reject distrust? Better look at yourselves in the mirror."
U.S. State Department special envoy Ellen Tauscher responded that neither country can afford another arms race.
"Your 10-foot fence cannot cause me to build an 11-foot ladder," Tauscher said. "It's going to have to take a political leap of faith and it's going to take some trust that we have to borrow, perhaps, from each other and for each other, but why don't we do it for the next generation?".
At a later news conference, Tauscher played down Makarov's comments on pre-emptive measures
"We've heard it before," she said. "We think that's off on the horizon. We think they were showing us what could happen. I think we're far from there, but we're aware of what they're saying."
The Obama administration tried to ease tensions with Russia in 2009 by saying it would revamp an earlier Bush-era plan to emphasize shorter-range interceptors. Russia initially welcomed that move, but has more recently suggested the new interceptors could threaten its missiles as the U.S. interceptors are upgraded.
The U.S.-NATO missile defense plans use Aegis radars and interceptors on ships and a more powerful radar based in Turkey in the first phase, followed by radar and interceptor facilities in Romania and Poland.
Russia would not plan any retaliation unless the United States goes through with its plans and takes the third and final step and deploys defense elements in Poland, Antonov said Wednesday. That is estimated to happen no earlier than in 2018.
Russia has just commissioned a radar in Kaliningrad, its western outpost near the Polish border, capable of monitoring missile launches from Europe and the North Atlantic.
On Thursday, at the start of the conference attended by representatives from about 50 countries, Russia's Security Council secretary reiterated Moscow's offer to run the missile shield together with NATO. Nikolai Patrushev said such a jointly run European missile defense system "could strengthen the security of every single country of the continent" and "would be adequate for possible threats and will not deter strategic security."
NATO's deputy secretary general, Alexander Vershbow, told the conference that the U.S.-led missile shield is "not and will not be directed against Russia" and that Russia's intercontinental ballistic missiles are "too fast and too sophisticated" for the planned system to intercept.
Meanwhile, U.S. Senator John McCain, on a visit to Lithuania, lashed out at Russia's plans in Kaliningrad.
McCain said using missile defense as an "excuse to have a military buildup in this part of the world, which is at peace, is really an egregious example of what might be even viewed as paranoia on the part of Vladimir Putin."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/03/russia-missile-defense-pre-emptive-strike_n_1473593.html
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Trust me, the Americans here who still defend the status-quo and cannot come to terms with how corrupt our system is, are in a very small global minority of people who still buy into American exceptionalism. Sooner or later, we're going to pick on the wrong kid in the schoolyard. It happens to all bullies.MOSCOW -- Russia's top military officer has threatened to carry out a pre-emptive... more
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Arizona's law, known as SB 1070, expanded the powers of state police officers to ask about the immigration status of anyone they stop, and to hold those suspected of being illegal immigrants. The law was challenged by the Obama administration, and four of its most contentious provisions were suspended by federal courts. Courts later temporarily blocked other state laws, including the one in Georgia. Constitutional lawyers on both sides of the argument say the case raises fundamental questions about federal powers. With the strong conservative bent the court has shown this session, a distinct possibility has emerged that the justices could uphold at least some of the Arizona law's contested sections, going against the trend in the lower courts on the core legal issues.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=942060&f=19Arizona's law, known as SB 1070, expanded the powers of state police officers to... more
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Julian Assange's debut as a TV interviewer on RT was bound to face criticism and praise from around the globe - and it's done just that. The world's most famous whistleblower attracted controversy mainly due to his choice of guest and the channel chosen to broadcast the show. American journalist and anti-war activist Don DeBar says there's nothing suprising in the wave of criticism against Assange's show in the U.S., given how whistleblowers are treated there.
http://youtu.be/MMO5SxkizFMJulian Assange's debut as a TV interviewer on RT was bound to face criticism and... more
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Male Victims of Domestic Violence - The Hidden Story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lHmCN3MBMI&feature=youtu.be
Video: How the DV Establishment Misrepresents DV
April 13th, 2012 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/2012/04/13/video-how-the-dv-establishment-misrepresents-dv/
And while we’re on the subject of domestic violence, take a look at this excellent video.
It’s just seven minutes long, but it covers several of the important points about DV that (a) people generally should know and (b) the domestic violence industry is at pains to keep the public from knowing.
As with so much about DV, there are, on one hand, the facts and on the other, the facts as they’re reported by the DV establishment. So, for example, the Liz Claiborne Institute did a study of teen dating violence that found, to no one’s great surprise, that girls victimized boys as much as boys victimized girls. But did the LCI report that? It did not. It only reported the figures about boys violence against girls.
And it’s that sort of frank misrepresentation of the facts that the domestic violence industry can’t seem to keep from doing. Put simply, they have the facts but refuse to make public any but those that fit their narrative of “men bad, women good.”
So, given the fact that the DV industry continues to misrepresent the truth, there are plenty of people who continue to confront it with its mendacity. That’s what the video is doing and to excellent effect.
At the end of the piece, the narrator asks you to send a link to the video to your congressperson. Let me urge you to do so as well. VAWA is up for reauthorization and most of our elected officials in Washington are getting their “information” from only one source - the DV industry that depends on funding from those very congresspeople.
So by all means, forward a link to the video to your congressperson in Washington and your state capital.
Thanks for your assistance.Male Victims of Domestic Violence - The Hidden Story... more
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