tagged w/ u.s. government
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https://secure2.convio.net/ida/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1379
Please Send An E-mail To Help Wild Horses
Public Comment Ends Friday Feb. 12
Our voices are making a difference for America's wild horses, but now is the time to keep up the pressure. In the last two months, after receiving well over ten thousand public comments in opposition, the BLM has postponed two scheduled wild horse roundups in Utah's Confusion Mountains Complex and eastern Nevada's Eagle Herd Management Area.
The agency even admitted that the tremendous public opposition to the roundups influenced its decisions. Read article here.
As a result of your emails, 700 free-living mustangs have gotten a reprieve from the BLM's brutal roundups, like the helicopter stampede in the Calico Mountains Complex that has cost 39 horses their lives so far and another 20-30 pregnant mares to spontaneously abort.
Now we need you to act again to oppose the massive removal of 1,506 wild horse in the Antelope Complex located in northeastern Nevada.
This proposed removal of approximately 75 percent of the horses would leave behind only 471 horses in the vast 1.3 million acre public lands complex! It's hard to believe, but the BLM is actually claiming that the 1.3 MILLION acres, consisting of four herd management areas (HMAs), can only support 471 to 788 horses.
This Antelope Complex roundup is currently scheduled to take place this summer or fall. The BLM's Elko and Ely District Offices are seeking public input for the preparation of a preliminary environmental assessment (EA). This is our chance to oppose and highlight that the BLM's determination of the "appropriate management level" (AML) for wild horses is flawed and must be revised before proceeding with yet another ill-conceived roundup and removal of wild horses.
In Defense of Animals has secured an extension for public comment until Feb 12. So please take minute to fill out the form below and customize the email. In addition, please send this alert to at least three friends and family ... you never know who may want to help stop and reform this unnecessary and wasteful government program which destroys the lives of so many wild horses.
Links to BLM press release and letter of notice:
http://www.blm.gov/nv/st/en/fo/elko_field_office/blm_information/newsroom/2010/january/blm_seeks_public_comment.html
http://budget.state.nv.us/clearinghouse/Notice/2010/E2010-117.pdf
http://www.mnn.com/sites/default/files/main_horses_0209.jpg
https://secure2.convio.net/ida/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1379 - Link for email letterhttps://secure2.convio.net/ida/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=137... more
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Please note that in the article that follows, I am not claiming that the U.S. Government knew Mutallab had a bomb or intended to hurt anyone on Flight 253 when the U.S. Government let him board.
Since our flight landed on Christmas Day, Lori and I have been doing everything in our power to uncover the truth about why we were almost blown up in the air over Detroit. The truth is now finally out after the publication of the following Detroit News article:
For the full SHOCKING STORY and VIDEO of Witness....http://ctpatriot1970.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/americans-u-s-government-agent-aided-underwear-bomber-onto-flight-253-the-sharp-dressed-man/Please note that in the article that follows, I am not claiming that the U.S.... more
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A new US assessment of Venezuela's oil reserves could give the country double the supplies of Saudi Arabia.
Scientists working for the US Geological Survey say Venezuela's Orinoco belt region holds twice as much petroleum as previously thought.
The geologists estimate the area could yield more than 500bn barrels of crude oil.
This assessment is far more optimistic than even the best case scenario put forward by President Hugo Chavez.
The USGS team gave a mean estimate of 513bn barrels of "technically recoverable" oil in the Orinoco belt.
Chris Schenk of the USGS said the estimate was based on oil recovery rates of 40% to 45%.
Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), Venezuela's state oil company, has not commented on the news.
However, Venezuelan oil geologist and former PDVSA board member Gustavo Coronel was sceptical.
"I doubt the recovery factor could go much higher than 25% and much of that oil would not be economic to produce", he told Associated Press news agency.
Venezuela holds the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East. Saudi Arabia has proven reserves of 260bn barrels.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8476395.stmA new US assessment of Venezuela's oil reserves could give the country double the... more
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There is documented evidence dated as far back as 2004 that Haiti may indeed have oil reserves under it and that the U.S. and others have an interest in exploring for oil there.
"There is evidence that the United States found oil in Haiti decades ago and due to the geopolitical circumstances and big business interests of that era made the decision to keep Haitian oil in reserve for when Middle Eastern oil had dried up. This is detailed by Dr. Georges Michel in an article dated March 27, 2004 outlining the history of oil explorations and oil reserves in Haiti and in the research of Dr. Ginette and Daniel Mathurin. "There is documented evidence dated as far back as 2004 that Haiti may indeed have oil... more
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In the hours following Haiti's devastating earthquake, CNN, the New York Times and other major news sources adopted a common interpretation for the severe destruction: the 7.0 earthquake was so devastating because it struck an urban area that was extremely over-populated and extremely poor. Houses "built on top of each other" and constructed by the poor people themselves made for a fragile city. And the country's many years of underdevelopment and political turmoil made the Haitian government ill-prepared to respond to such a disaster.
True enough. But that's not the whole story. What's missing is any explanation of why there are so many Haitians living in and around Port-au-Prince and why so many of them are forced to survive on so little. Indeed, even when an explanation is ventured, it is often outrageously false such as a former U.S. diplomat's testimony on CNN that Port-au-Prince's overpopulation was due to the fact that Haitians, like most Third World people, know nothing of birth control.
It may startle news-hungry Americans to learn that these conditions the American media correctly attributes to magnifying the impact of this tremendous disaster were largely the product of American policies and an American-led development model.
From 1957-1971 Haitians lived under the dark shadow of "Papa Doc" Duvalier, a brutal dictator who enjoyed U.S. backing because he was seen by Americans as a reliable anti-Communist. After his death, Duvalier's son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" became President-for-life at the age of 19 and he ruled Haiti until he was finally overthrown in 1986. It was in the 1970s and 1980s that Baby Doc and the United States government and business community worked together to put Haiti and Haiti's capitol city on track to become what it was on January 12, 2010.
After the coronation of Baby Doc, American planners inside and outside the U.S. government initiated their plan to transform Haiti into the "Taiwan of the Caribbean." This small, poor country situated conveniently close to the United States was instructed to abandon its agricultural past and develop a robust, export-oriented manufacturing sector. This, Duvalier and his allies were told, was the way toward modernization and economic development.
From the standpoint of the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Haiti was the perfect candidate for this neoliberal facelift. The entrenched poverty of the Haitian masses could be used to force them into low-paying jobs sewing baseballs and assembling other products.
But USAID had plans for the countryside too. Not only were Haiti's cities to become exporting bases but so was the countryside, with Haitian agriculture also reshaped along the lines of export-oriented, market-based production. To accomplish this USAID, along with urban industrialists and large landholders, worked to create agro-processing facilities, even while they increased their practice of dumping surplus agricultural products from the U.S. on the Haitian people.
This "aid" from the Americans, along with the structural changes in the countryside predictably forced Haitian peasants who could no longer survive to migrate to the cities, especially Port-au-Prince where the new manufacturing jobs were supposed to be. However, when they got there they found there weren't nearly enough manufacturing jobs go around. The city became more and more crowded. Slum areas expanded. And to meet the housing needs of the displaced peasants, quickly and cheaply constructed housing was put up, sometimes placing houses right "on top of each other."
More at the link above:In the hours following Haiti's devastating earthquake, CNN, the New York Times... more
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"The unstable, makeshift dwellings imposed upon Haitians by Washington’s neoliberal policies have now, for many, been turned into graves. Those same policies are to blame for the lack of hospitals, ambulances, fire trucks, rescue equipment, food and medicine. The blow dealt by such a natural disaster to an economy made so fragile from decades of plundering will greatly magnify the suffering of the Haitian people.""The unstable, makeshift dwellings imposed upon Haitians by Washington’s... more
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The statistics are in, and Americans are just as fat as they’ve always been. However, they aren’t getting any fatter according to new government data.
This is a bitter-sweet benchmark considering that the latest numbers confirm that two-thirds of adults and one-third of U.S. children are overweight – and signs show that those statistics aren’t getting any thinner.
Government data published a report detailing the obesity rate throughout 2007 and 2008. The U.S. obesity rate has held steady for nearly five years now, conveying that our household scales aren’t feeling anymore pressure.
Dr. William Dietz, an obesity expert for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the AP that we should be cautiously optimistic. "We're at the corner; we haven't turned the corner," he said.
American’s are still piling pounds on their scales, 34 percent are still obese; 17 percent of children are also obese. With nearly 51 percent of all American’s obese, the U.S. Government is feeling the pressure to step up weight awareness. Especially among pregnant mothers, as 10 percent of newborn to toddler are “precariously heavy”.
These reports surfaced as the CDC published two reports online in the Journal of American Medical Association.
Even contributing editors like, Dr. J. Michael Gaziano, at the journal is feeling the crunch. "Even though this finding is certainly good news, the statistics are still staggering," he stated in a JAMA article.
The CDC reports are published biannually, and provide data that explicate the weight and height measurements of 5,700 adults and 4,000 children. And for the past three surveys, 68 percent of Americans are still too heavy.
Black adults lead this weight crunch as Mexican-Americans and whites are following suit.
Even children and young adults, ranging from 2 to 19, were too heavy – another statistic that was left without significant change. These kids aren’t just a little overweight, they are extremely obese. Boys 6 to 19 have steadily increased to 15 percent from about 9 percent in 1999 and 2000.
This trend is not only a national epidemic; the White House has made it a priority health concern. President Barack Obama has pushed fervently that obesity prevention be a key factor in health reform. These measures are pending in Congress; they give hope that one day employers will invest in company-based wellness programs, as well as requiring nutritional facts at many key restaurant chains across the U.S. Even the First Lady, Michele Obama, has taken this cause as a focus. She planted a garden in 2009 with the hopes that eating healthy would become a standard among American families.
It’s unclear where Americans will weigh in when the new CDC survey comes out, but the U.S. government hopes scales across the nation won’t be cracking under any new pressure.The statistics are in, and Americans are just as fat as they’ve always been.... more
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Although the 9/11 truth movement was long ignored by the U.S. government and the mainstream media, recent polls have shown that (as Time magazine has acknowledged) the rejection of the official theory has become a mainstream political phenomenon.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the U.S. government and the Big Business controlled media have shifted tactics. No longer ignoring the 9/11 truth movement, they have released a flurry of stories and reports aimed at debunking it.
Considering how the 9/11 tragedy has been used by the Bush administration to propel us into immoral wars again and again, I believe that provocative questions about 9/11 deserve to be investigated and addressed. Trogoglin - YoutubeAlthough the 9/11 truth movement was long ignored by the U.S. government and the... more
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The rising cost of oil could damage the world economy just as it begins to rebound, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said on Tuesday.
Wide swings in oil prices are difficult for industries to manage and the U.S. government is concerned about another price spike, Chu said.
"Even $80 is making me nervous," he told the Reuters Washington Summit.
Oil prices hit record levels above $147 a barrel last year, before crashing as a global recession cut energy demand. Crude prices are one again climbing.
Chu said a sharp upswing in oil prices could hinder a global economic recovery. He pointed out that last year's oil price spike was a "disaster" for the world economy.
"We've repeatedly said what the world wants and needs is stable prices," Chu said. "They have been inching up recently and it's a little bit concerning."
Oil price volatility can also harm the alternative energy sector, Chu said. He said the fall in energy costs after the oil price shocks of the 70s and early 80s wiped out many clean energy companies.
To help stabilize crude prices, Chu said the administration is working to improve market transparency. In particular, he said the Energy Department is focused on teaching developing countries how to compile energy data.
"The more information one has, the less there are these uncertainties, which would prompt swings (in prices)," Chu said at the summit, held at the Reuters office in Washington.
Crude oil prices hit a one year high above $80 a barrel on Tuesday, before slipping to around $78 in morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The rising cost of oil could damage the world economy just as... more
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/us/politics/13intel.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
Image: Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, was among leaders critical of the secrecy of a counterterrorism program.
President Obama is facing new pressure to reverse himself and to ramp up investigations into the Bush-era security programs, despite the political risks.
Leading Democrats on Sunday demanded investigations of how a highly classified counterterrorism program was kept secret from the Congressional leadership on the orders of Vice President Dick Cheney.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who is the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Fox News Sunday called it a “big problem.” Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, on “This Week” on ABC, agreed that the secrecy “could be illegal” and demanded an inquiry.
Mr. Obama said this weekend that he had asked his staff members to review the mass killing of prisoners in Afghanistan by local forces allied with the United States as it toppled the Taliban regime there. The New York Times reported Saturday that the Bush administration had blocked investigations of the matter.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is also close to assigning a prosecutor to look into whether prisoners in the campaign against terrorism were tortured, officials disclosed on Saturday.
And after a report from five inspectors general about the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping said on Friday that there had been a number of undisclosed surveillance programs during the Bush years, Democrats sought more information.
That makes four fronts on which the intelligence apparatus is under siege. It is just the kind of distraction from Mr. Obama’s domestic priorities — repairing the economy, revamping the health care system, and addressing the long-term problems of energy and climate — that the White House wanted to avoid.
A series of investigations could exacerbate partisan divisions in Congress, just as the Obama administration is trying to push through the president’s ambitious domestic plans and needs all the support it can muster.
“He wants to dominate the discussion, and he wants the discussion to be about his domestic agenda — health care, energy and education,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, a professor of political science at Towson University who studies the presidency.
The Bush national security controversies “are certainly a diversion from what he wants to do,” Professor Kumar said. “He wants to talk about the present and not the past.”
Professor Kumar said a president’s signature accomplishments often come in his first year in office, a pattern that Mr. Obama and his aides are keenly aware of. In addition, investigations at this time could open Mr. Obama up to accusations from Republicans that he is undercutting national security.
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said on “Meet the Press” on NBC that despite his dismay at the Central Intelligence Agency’s past interrogation methods, including waterboarding, he opposed a criminal inquiry into torture, which he said would “harm our image throughout the world.”
“I agree with the president of the United States, it’s time to move forward and not go back,” Mr. McCain said.
* * * * * I agree with those who say we must investigate and possibly prosecute offenders in the Bush/Cheney Administration before we can move forward in reestablishing American's trust in government.
Do you think Obama be focusing only on solving the critical issues before him or should he include an investigation of the last Administration in accordance with his current efforts?http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/us/politics/13intel.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y... more
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By Gail Collins - Truly, Sarah Palin has come a long way. When she ran for vice president, she frequently became disjointed and garbled when she departed from her prepared remarks. Now the prepared remarks are incoherent, too.
“And a problem in our country today is apathy,” she said on Friday as she announced that she would resign as governor of Alaska at the end of the month. “It would be apathetic to just hunker down and ‘go with the flow.’ Nah, only dead fish ‘go with the flow.’ No. Productive, fulfilled people determine where to put their efforts, choosing to wisely utilize precious time ... to BUILD UP.”
Sarah Barracuda made her big announcement Friday afternoon on the lawn of her home to an audience that appeared to include only Todd, the kids and the next-door neighbors. Smiling manically, she looked like a parody of the woman who knocked the Republicans dead at their convention. She babbled about her parents’ refrigerator magnet, which apparently had a lot of wise advice. And she recalled her visit with the troops in Kosovo, whose dedication and determination inspired her to ... resign.
“Life is about choices!” declared the nation’s most anti-choice politician.
People, what is going on with governors in this country? Are we doomed to see them go bonkers one by one, state by state?
The timing of Palin’s announcement was extremely peculiar. Not only did she interrupt the plans of TV newscasters to spend the entire weekend pointing out that Michael Jackson is still dead, she delivered her big news just as the nation was settling into Fourth of July celebrations. You’d have thought she didn’t want us to notice.
“I choose to work very hard on a path for fruitfulness and productivity,” she said in a fairly typical moment. “I choose not to tear down and waste precious time, but to build up this state and our country, and her industrious, generous, patriotic free people!”
Palin has a year and a half left to go in her term of office. The political world had been wondering whether she’d run for re-election. The answer is no. And furthermore, it turns out that Palin believes that the only way her administration can “continue without interruption” is for her to end it.
One underlying theme in Palin’s remarks was that many ethics complaints have been filed against her on issues ranging from her alleged attempts to get her former brother-in-law fired from the state troopers to charging Alaska for her children’s travel expenses.
According to the about-to-be-ex governor, fighting all this negativity has cost the state “thousands of hours of your time” and $2 million “to respond to ‘opposition research.’ ” But now this is all water under the bridge. Every single unfair charge has been dismissed. (“We’ve won!”) And now that the battle is over and the time/money has been wasted, Palin is going to leave her job in the name of “efficiencies and effectiveness.”
“I cannot stand here as your governor and allow millions upon millions of our dollars go to waste just so I can hold the title of governor,” she said.
Perhaps there is some new and interesting scandal that Palin has yet to let us in on. (If so, I hope it involves a soul mate.) Otherwise, it would appear that this is all about her desire to start raising money and setting up operations for a presidential run in 2012. Her fans immediately interpreted the resignation as a canny move to get her back down to the lower 48, with as much time on her hands as Mitt Romney. (Mary Matalin called it “brilliant.”)
So if she’s starting to run, it will be as the same reporter-avoiding, generalization-spouting underachiever that she was last time around.
On Friday, Palin said that finishing out her term would be just too easy. “Many just accept that lame-duck status, hit the road draw the paycheck and ‘milk it.’ I’m not putting Alaska through that,” she said.
Apparently, she’s going to put the rest of us through it instead.
http://www.nytimes.com/20By Gail Collins - Truly, Sarah Palin has come a long way. When she ran for vice... more
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said Friday she will resign this month and will not run for re-election as governor.
"I'm not seeking re-election," Palin told a news conference at which she said she would transfer authority to Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell.
Palin was Republican presidential candidate John McCain's vice presidential running mate in last year's election and rallied the party's conservative base. There has been speculation that she would seek to be the Republican Party's presidential candidate in 2012.
"We know we can effect positive change outside government at this moment in time," she said.
Palin said her decision came after much "prayer and consideration." She did not want to waste time on "political blood sport" and cited public criticism of her actions and her family since the 2008 campaign.
* * * * * Maybe this means she will spare us a Palin for President campaign for 2012. On the other hand 2011 might be pretty boring with out the entertainment.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said Friday she will resign this... more
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Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has come out in support of the military coup in Honduras, chastising President Obama in a statement for what he calls "a slap in the face to the people" of that country.
From his statement:
"The people of Honduras have struggled too long to have their hard-won democracy stolen from them by a Chavez-style dictator. The Honduran Congress, the Honduran Supreme Court, and the Honduran military have acted in accordance to the Honduran constitution and the rule of law. [...]
"I am hopeful that as President Obama grows in office, he will eventually turn away from despots like Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Castro, and Zelaya, and give the United States' full-throated support to the people of any country who are fighting for the same values we cherish and defend in America. The people fighting for freedom around the world, in Iran and Honduras, should never have to wonder which side America will choose between freedom and tyranny.
"President Obama's call for the reinstatement of Zelaya is a slap in the face to the people of Honduras. And the resolution written by the Organization of American States tramples over the hopes and dreams of a free and democratic people.
"The rule of law is working in Honduras. President Obama should not undermine the democratic institutions that guarantee freedom by forcing an illegitimate President back into power.
The majority of world leaders have condemned the coup, confirmed by a resolution approved Tuesday approved by the United Nations General Assembly.
President Obama is one of them.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/02/demint-supports-honduras_n_225209.html
* * * * * Of course he does. He's a Republican.Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has come out in support of the military coup in Honduras,... more
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By Nicholas D. Kristof
This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s start of the war on drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won.
“We’ve spent a trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs,” Norm Stamper, a former police chief of Seattle, told me. “What do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available, at lower prices and higher levels of potency. It’s a dismal failure.”
For that reason, he favors legalization of drugs, perhaps by the equivalent of state liquor stores or registered pharmacists. Other experts favor keeping drug production and sales illegal but decriminalizing possession, as some foreign countries have done.
Here in the United States, four decades of drug war have had three consequences:
First, we have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average. In part, that’s because the number of people in prison for drug offenses rose roughly from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today. Until the war on drugs, our incarceration rate was roughly the same as that of other countries.
Second, we have empowered criminals at home and terrorists abroad. One reason many prominent economists have favored easing drug laws is that interdiction raises prices, which increases profit margins for everyone, from the Latin drug cartels to the Taliban. Former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia this year jointly implored the United States to adopt a new approach to narcotics, based on the public health campaign against tobacco.
Third, we have squandered resources. Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, found that federal, state and local governments spend $44.1 billion annually enforcing drug prohibitions. We spend seven times as much on drug interdiction, policing and imprisonment as on treatment. (Of people with drug problems in state prisons, only 14 percent get treatment.)
I’ve seen lives destroyed by drugs, and many neighbors in my hometown of Yamhill, Oregon, have had their lives ripped apart by crystal meth. Yet I find people like Mr. Stamper persuasive when they argue that if our aim is to reduce the influence of harmful drugs, we can do better.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/opinion/14kristof.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=yBy Nicholas D. Kristof
This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard... more
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By Judith Warner:
A lone gunman takes a life in a hate crime. Law enforcement officials describe him as acting alone.
But he’s not alone — not in spirit, at least.
Like Scott Roeder, the man charged in the shooting of the Wichita, Kan., doctor George Tiller nearly two weeks ago, James von Brunn, the white supremacist charged with killing a guard in an attempted shooting rampage at the Holocaust museum in Washington on Wednesday, doesn’t have any current, overt links to extremist groups. Yet his violent hatred — of Jews, blacks, the government — echoes throughout the universe of right-wing extremists, who just a few years ago hailed and revered him as a “White Racialist Treasure.”
And though he’s an outlier — disturbed, deranged, disavowed now by many who share his core views — his actions really can’t be viewed in isolation. As was the case with Tiller’s murder, which followed months of escalating harassment and intimidation at abortion clinics, von Brunn’s attack on the Holocaust museum has to be viewed as an extreme manifestation of a moment when racist, anti-Semitic agitation is rapidly percolating. White supremacist groups are vastly expanding. And right-wing TV rhetoric, thoughtless in its cruelty and ratings-hungry demagoguery, is helping feed the paranoia and rage that for some Americans now bubbles just beneath the surface.
“Rightwing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda,” the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reported this past April.
I wrote last week about the rising threats to and vandalism at abortion clinics that followed the election of our first pro-choice president in eight years. A similar increase in intimidating activism has been observed over the past seven months among hate groups — and simply hateful individuals.
As was the case with increasing clinic vandalism and verbally violent protest, it was only a matter of time before this racially motivated destruction and intimidation turned to physical violence. And there’s one additional, highly disturbing parallel between von Brunn’s intended white supremacist shooting rampage and Scott Roeder’s “pro-life” killing of George Tiller: In both cases, at least some of the core beliefs of extremists were echoed, albeit in more socially acceptable language, by right wing news commentators.
Bill O’Reilly had routinely talked in recent years about “Tiller the baby killer.” Other right-wing talk show hosts like Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh have similarly tapped into — in somewhat coded form — some of the key concerns of extremist hate groups: that the economy has been destroyed by government-proffered “bad” loans to illegal immigrants, for example, or that FEMA may or ma Beck equivocated for an awfully long time — be running “concentration camps” for U.S. citizens, or that the Obama administration is declaring war on decent Americans by labeling them as “extremists.”
The result of this wink-wink anti-immigrant and anti-government rhetoric has been “a kind of mainstreaming of hate propaganda,” Potok said. “The white supremacist propaganda agenda is being expressed by pundits, politicians, and preachers. The larger danger is the mainstreaming of these very vile and provably false ideas that do lead to violence.”
You can’t accuse Beck or Limbaugh of Limbaugh of inciting violence. But they almost certainly do stoke the flames. They may give people who are just about to go over the edge — the sort of “guy that could not take it anymore” as one poster on the white supremacist forum StormfStormfront.org, described von Brunn — some sort of validation for their rage.
“The pot in America is boiling,” Beck said this week, in the wake of the Holocaust museum killing. “And this is just yet another warning to all Americans of things to come.”By Judith Warner:
A lone gunman takes a life in a hate crime. Law enforcement... more
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The World Health Organisation (WHO) says it is close to declaring swine flu to be the first global flu pandemic in more than 40 years because of the sharp rise in cases in Australia.
So far 1,200 Australians have been infected with swine flu. This morning the entire Brisbane Broncos squad was placed in quarantine awaiting test results to determine if full-back Karmichael Hunt has swine flu.
WHO spokesman Dick Thompson says the declaration of a global pandemic, the organisation's highest alert level, is inevitable.
"We see no evidence that this virus is retreating," he said.
"It's continuing to spread, its appearing in new countries, the number of people infected keeps going up - it keeps pointing us in the direction of a pandemic."
Mr Thompson says the situation in Australia is being closely monitored.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/10/2593796.htmThe World Health Organisation (WHO) says it is close to declaring swine flu to be the... more
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Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) lambasted transparency advocates at a press conference Tuesday, when they renewed their promise to bring Senate business to a halt until their bill blocking the release of detainee photographs becomes law.
"We're not going to do any more business in the Senate," Graham said, his face flushed red. "Nothing's going forward until we get this right."
The duo's bill, which would allow the Pentagon to exempt Bush-era photos from the Freedom of Information Act, was stripped from the conference version of the war supplemental Monday night. In anticipation of trouble, Lieberman and Graham had already inserted the bill into the tobacco-regulatory legislation currently on the floor of the Senate.
By turns sober and furious, the two senators vowed again Tuesday to vote against -- and, if possible, filibuster -- the troop-funding bill and all other legislation until they get their way. They equated the weapons supplied by the war supplemental spending bill with detainee photos that they said would serve as a recruiting tool for al-Qaida and a weapon against U.S. troops.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/09/lieberman-graham-threaten_n_213262.html
* * * * * Speaking subjectively, photos of gory murder scenes are not released to the public so why should these be? Is it worth satisfying morbid curiosity and sensationalism to increase the threat to our troops? What's your opinion?Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) lambasted transparency... more
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President Barack Obama returned home from abroad Sunday to find that his own oratory laying out an ever-more-ambitious agenda, both in foreign and domestic policy, is ratcheting up demands for concrete achievements.
President Barack Obama toured the Sphinx and pyramids outside Cairo on Thursday with Egyptian antiquities expert Zahi Hawass.
."Expectations are rising with every speech," said Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland, who was consulted by White House aides on the president's speech to Muslims in Cairo on Thursday. "And the more issues you articulate, the more pressure you create to produce actual policies and achievements."
While the president is popular among many Europeans, he returned from his second trip to Europe with little more progress on key issues than he achieved during his first trip there in April, including over committing additional troops for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Mr. Obama on Saturday marked the 65th anniversary of the D-Day invasion in France before an audience sprinkled with a dwindling number of veterans from that day.
"D-Day was a time and a place where the bravery and selflessness of a few was able to change the course of an entire century," the president said in Colleville-sur-Mer, France.
White House officials have closely tracked the response to the president's address to the Muslim world, and they said that response has been overwhelmingly positive -- among Arabs and beyond. Mr. Telhami said Mr. Obama's even-handed, tough assessment of the Israeli-Palestinian issue and his promises of progress have grabbed the region's attention and stimulated constructive debate.
* * * * * President Obama continues to fill his plate. The world awaits to see if he is biting off more than he can chew. Perhaps at times he is. But in him is a charismatic leader, courageous in his convictions and confident in his decisions who, despite the antics of cynics and fault finders, is giving our country and the world a new sense of hope. He most likely will not be able to fully live up to the expectations of a threatened and anxious world but our times are calling for a willingness to give his ideas and ideals a chance to change it.President Barack Obama returned home from abroad Sunday to find that his own oratory... more
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The United States has fine-tuned its ability to shoot down long-range missiles that could be launched by North Korea based on a trio of tests mimicking such an attack, the head of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency said Tuesday.
"We have made adjustments to give ourselves even higher confidence, even though we have intercepted three out of three times in that scenario," Army Lieutenant General Patrick O'Reilly told a missile-defense conference at the Pentagon's National Defense University.
O'Reilly, in response to a question, said U.S. ability to hit a specific spot on the target missile had improved "dramatically" during the tests. The last test simulating a North Korean attack took place December 5.
"So, do I think it is likely that you're going to intercept if somebody launches out of there?" he said. "Yes, I do. And the basis is those three tests and what we know about that threat."
Any decision to try to knock out a missile launched by Pyongyang would be made by U.S. national command authorities headed by President Barack Obama.
South Korean media have reported that Pyongyang may this month test a missile designed to fly as far as U.S. soil. Last week, North Korea conducted a nuclear test, test-fired a barrage of short-range missiles and threatened to attack the South, raising tension to one of its highest levels since the 1950-53 Korean War.
The North appears to be preparing to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile with an estimated range of 2,500-4,000 miles from a west coast base, the daily JoongAng Ilbo has cited South Korean intelligence sources
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/idUSTRE55203Z20090603The United States has fine-tuned its ability to shoot down long-range missiles that... more
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If the Republican Party discontinued its destructive efforts to undercut the administration and applied its energies to the vastly more difficult task of solving the very complicated issues the country faces, it might in the process resolve some of its own problems.
I believe that most Americans would feel a bit more positive about a party that put the well-being of the country and all its citizens ahead of its concerns about regaining power, particularly when a significant portion of responsibility for the existence of these problems may be laid at the doorstep of said party.
By Glenina Nolte
* * * * A voice of reasonIf the Republican Party discontinued its destructive efforts to undercut the... more
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