"To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. Fredrick Douglass
"The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their 'vital interests' are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the 'sanctity' of human life, or the 'conscience' of the civilized world. " James Baldwin, "The Devil Finds Work", Collected Essays, 1976
U.S .must make this one the 'right major crisis'
“We are on the verge of global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”
David Rockefeller in 1994 Statement to UN Business Council
WTO Chief Warns of Looming Global Political Unrest
The global economic crisis could trigger political unrest equal to that seen during the 1930s, according to the head of the World Trade Organization ) http://informationclearinghouse.info/article21940.htm
"...an economic crisis that serves as the foundation of our strength...."
Note: Killing the 'clean break' delusions kindly: liberal police state officially merges everything, domestic & int'l., hard & soft, under military
"I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger " National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/jones_munich_conferenc...
Gen. Jones's Remarks to the Munich Security Conference By James Jones National Security Adviser Obama Administration
Hotel Bayerischer Hof Munich, Germany February 9, 2009
Thank you for that wonderful tribute to Henry Kissinger yesterday.... As the most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger, filtered down through Generaal Brent Scowcroft and Sandy Berger, who is also here. We have a chain of command in the National Security Council that exists today.
I think my role today is a little bit different than you might expect. Following the speech of the Vice President and the presence of our distinguished members from the U.S. House of Representatives, I thought that I would spend my time talking to you about how taking the President's guidance and the Vice President's comments yesterday,
I would spend a few moments trying to discuss how the U.S. National Security Council intends to reorganize itself in order to be supportive... I have been here coming to this conference since 1980 ...and I am delighted to be back in an altered state, so to speak.... as the President has detailed, a comprehensive approach to our national security and international security in the 21st century must identify and understand that the wider array of existing threats that threaten us. To name a few: [...]
digest note: the usual litany, ending with this shocking admission: o And an economic crisis that serves as the foundation of our strength....
In our country, one of the institutions that is changing is the National Security Council, which like so much of our national and international security architecture was formed in the wake of World War II and during the Cold War. So let me say a few words about what the National Security Council does and how President Obama has asked that I approach my job as National Security Adviser. The President has made clear that to succeed against 21st century challenges, the United States must use, balance, and integrate all elements of national influence: our military and our diplomacy, our economy and our intelligence, and law enforcement capacity, our cultural outreach, and as was mentioned yesterday, the power of our moral example, in short, our values.
Given this role, the NSC is by definition at the nexus of that effort.
It integrates on a strategic sense all elements of our national security community towards the development of effective policy development and interagency cooperation. But to better carry out the president's priorities, the National Security Council must respond to the world the way it is and not as we wish it were. And it must consider the fusion of our national priorities within the broader international context and interest. The NSC's mission is relatively simple. It should perform the functions that it alone can perform and serve as a strategic center - and the word strategic is operative here - for the President's priorities....
Note: the costs in living color of saving the predators desperate to stave off mounting 'tsunami of populist rage' with BIG LIES
Obama Stumps for Stimulus in a City Hit Hard by Downturn
In Elkhart, Indiana, where unemployment has tripled in the last year to 15 percent...Wrapping himself in the mandate of his election last November, Mr. Obama sounded like a candidate all over again, scolding greedy Wall Street bankers and pointedly rejecting Republican critics for sticking with what he called a failed philosophy....“We can’t posture and bicker and resort to the same failed ideas that got us into this mess in the first place. That was what this election was all about. The American people rejected those ideas because they hadn’t worked. You didn’t send us to Washington because you were hoping for more of the same. You sent us there to change things.” ...http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/us/politics/10obama-web.html?8au&emc=au
Obama's calculated as well as genuine concern about being able to keep the peace for capitalism will soon take him to Ft. Meyers
In Florida, Despair and Foreclosures: Lehigh Acres, Fla., one of the sprawling exurbs that the housing boom reshaped, [where] the American dream is in high reverse.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/index.html
The 180-degree reversal of Obama's State Secrets position
(updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV)
Glen Greenwald,
Feb. 10, 2009
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
From the Obama/Biden campaign website, mybarackobama.com, here was what the Obama campaign was saying -- back then -- about the State Secrets privilege: ...
Apparently, the operative word in that highlighted paragraph -- unbeknownst to most people at the time -- was "the Bush administration," since the Obama administration is now doing exactly that which, during the campaign, it defined as "The Problem," the only difference being that it is now Obama, and not Bush, doing it. For journalists who haven't bothered to learn the first thing about this issue even as they hold themselves out as experts on it, and for Obama followers eager to find an excuse to justify what was done, a brief review of the State Secrets privilege controversy is in order.
Nobody -- not the ACLU or anyone else -- argues that the State Secrets privilege is inherently invalid. Nobody contests that there is such a thing as a legitimate state secret. Nobody believes that Obama should declassify every last secret and never classify anything else ever again. Nor does anyone even assert that this particular lawsuit clearly involves no specific documents or portions of documents that might be legitimately subject to the privilege. Those are all transparent, moronic strawmen advanced by people who have no idea what they're talking about.
What was abusive and dangerous about the Bush administration's version of the States Secret privilege -- just as the Obama/Biden campaign pointed out -- was that it was used not (as originally intended) to argue that specific pieces of evidence or documents were secret and therefore shouldn't be allowed in a court case, but instead, to compel dismissal of entire lawsuits in advance based on the claim that any judicial adjudication of even the most illegal secret government programs would harm national security. That is the theory that caused the bulk of the controversy when used by the Bush DOJ -- because it shields entire government programs from any judicial scrutiny -- and it is that exact version of the privilege that the Obama DOJ yesterday expressly advocated (and, by implication, sought to preserve for all Presidents, including Obama)....
Kevin Drum last night explained it quite clearly:
By itself, this [the quantitative increase in the post-9/11 use of the privilege] is bad enough. But it's not the worst part of the Bush administration's use of the privilege.
Before 2001, the state secrets privilege was mostly used to object to specific pieces of evidence being introduced in court, something that nearly everyone agrees is at least occasionally necessary. But the Bush administration changed all that. In their typical expansive way, they decided to apply the privilege not just to individual pieces of evidence, but to get entire cases thrown out of court. What's more, they did this not merely when a state secret was incidental to some unrelated complaint, but when the government itself was the target of the suit.
Now Barack Obama is president, and unfortunately he's decided to continue the Bush administration's expansive reading of the privilege. [...]
Note: Killing the 'clean break' delusions kindly: liberal police state officially merges everything, domestic & int'l., hard & soft, under military
"I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger " National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/jones_munich_conferenc...
Gen. Jones's Remarks to the Munich Security Conference By James Jones National Security Adviser Obama Administration
Hotel Bayerischer Hof Munich, Germany February 9, 2009
Thank you for that wonderful tribute to Henry Kissinger yesterday.... As the most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger, filtered down through Generaal Brent Scowcroft and Sandy Berger, who is also here. We have a chain of command in the National Security Council that exists today.
I think my role today is a little bit different than you might expect. Following the speech of the Vice President and the presence of our distinguished members from the U.S. House of Representatives, I thought that I would spend my time talking to you about how taking the President's guidance and the Vice President's comments yesterday,
I would spend a few moments trying to discuss how the U.S. National Security Council intends to reorganize itself in order to be supportive... I have been here coming to this conference since 1980 ...and I am delighted to be back in an altered state, so to speak.... as the President has detailed, a comprehensive approach to our national security and international security in the 21st century must identify and understand that the wider array of existing threats that threaten us. To name a few: [...]
digest note: the usual litany, ending with this shocking admission: o And an economic crisis that serves as the foundation of our strength....
In our country, one of the institutions that is changing is the National Security Council, which like so much of our national and international security architecture was formed in the wake of World War II and during the Cold War. So let me say a few words about what the National Security Council does and how President Obama has asked that I approach my job as National Security Adviser. The President has made clear that to succeed against 21st century challenges, the United States must use, balance, and integrate all elements of national influence: our military and our diplomacy, our economy and our intelligence, and law enforcement capacity, our cultural outreach, and as was mentioned yesterday, the power of our moral example, in short, our values.
Given this role, the NSC is by definition at the nexus of that effort.
It integrates on a strategic sense all elements of our national security community towards the development of effective policy development and interagency cooperation. But to better carry out the president's priorities, the National Security Council must respond to the world the way it is and not as we wish it were. And it must consider the fusion of our national priorities within the broader international context and interest. The NSC's mission is relatively simple. It should perform the functions that it alone can perform and serve as a strategic center - and the word strategic is operative here - for the President's priorities....
remember: u.s. state terrorism is 'national security'
The FBI defines a terrorist incident as a violent act or an act dangerous to human life aimed at intimidating or coercing a government or the civilian population in pursuit of political or social aims.
'HOMELAND' RACIST STATE-BACKED TERROR
Coatesville appears to be an escalation of amerikan genocide against Black people. A quick 'scroogle' search indicates the Coatesville arsons are part of an organized, ongoing racist -- probably state terrorist led -- drive to criminalize and eliminate the relatively large Black population from this town with its long history of racist oppression. A major giveaway is the shocking near-silence of major TV and print 'news' --- about what in different class-race conditions would be relentless front & center story ---- elsewhere a few miniscule blurbs, often mentioning 'suspected gang involvement', that echoes Coatesville's nazi propaganda {below}.
PA. has long been a center of violent national oppression and Black resistance -- for one major, moving story see A Brief History of MOVE by Mumia Abu Jamal, http://home.clara.net/heureka/gaia/move.htm
Citizens express fear, anger at Coatesville arson meeting
By WILLIAM BENDER
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/20090129_Citizens_express_fear__...
As the roads were beginning to freeze outside, tempers were flaring in the packed auditorium, where residents told government officials that they want more information.
One man said that cops should also be investigated as possible suspects....
Coatesville... a 1.6-square-mile city in which 11,500 residents are living in fear... has recorded 30 arsons since the beginning of 2008, including a December fire that killed an 83-year-old woman. Police arrested a 23-year-old man in connection with the December case, but homes are still going up in flames.Fourteen arsons have occurred this month alone, prompting Gov. Rendell to devote additional state-police resources to the city. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is also assisting in the investigation.... Just this month, 15 deliberately set fires have been reported. Dozens of residents are homeless after last weekend's blaze, and federal agents, state police and local cops are searching for what they believe to be multiple arsonists.Last weekend, the arsonists - police believe it is more than one person - set a fire that ripped through 15 Fleetwood Street rowhouses, including that of Councilwoman Robin Scott. The four-alarm blaze drew fire companies from four counties and caused nearly $2 million in damage. Dozens of residents are living in hotels....
Chester County District Attorney Joseph Carroll told the crowd last night that "all law-enforcement agencies that can possibly be involved" are trying to catch the firebugs, but said that he couldn't divulge specific details of the investigation.... Investigators are also looking into whether the fires are tied to gang initiations, and examining videos that have been posted online.
NYT 'all the news that's fit to print' [see why below]
Another Arson Fire Set
COATESVILLE, Pa. (AP) — Investigators in southeastern Pennsylvania have declared the 23rd arson of the year in the urban region that includes this Philadelphia suburb. The latest arson fire destroyed a mobile home just outside Coatesville late Friday. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says there have been 18 cases of arson in the city of Coatesville and five in the surrounding area in 2009. There were 15 arson fires in the city in 2008. No arrests have been made.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/us/08arson.html?ref=us
quote: "Niggers? Anyone From PA Know This Place? "
COATESVILLE, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- Residents looking for an end to a string of arson fires went to Coatesville City Hall on Monday demanding action.
http://www.vnnforum.com/showthread.php?p=927475 [nazi website]]
"There's blood on this City Council's hands," said one man, referring to the death of an 83-year-old woman in an arson last year.
There were at least 15 arsons in 2008, and 14 more this month -- including a massive blaze over the weekend that burned 15 homes.
The fire caused nearly $2 million in damage and left 11 families without homes, said authorities in the small city west of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Monday's meeting at City Hall was supposed to be only a sign-up for neighborhood watch, but many among the dozens who showed up hoped for a chance to voice their frustrations. Watch how closely the arsons were situated »
A meeting Sunday became standing-room-only as residents packed in. "Chaos erupted" when residents were there before any officials arrived, and some angry people were escorted out, CNN affiliate WPVI-TV reported. City Manager Harry Walker tried to defuse the situation by asking the residents to sign up for the neighborhood watch program. He said he needed residents working together with authorities "to catch these terrorists and end this tragedy in our city." "But it's not going to be accomplished through ad hoc assaults on City Hall while we have our regular business to do, which includes, No. 1, getting rid of these arsons," he said.
Authorities in Coatesville vowed to do what it takes to stop the arsons."We have placed nothing off the table in terms of how to deal with this matter and how to move forward," Police Chief William Matthews said Sunday. He added that the city's 11,000 residents can provide "22,000 more eyes" to keep a lookout. "It's vitally important that everyone participate".
In December, Coatesville police arrested three people -- two adults and a juvenile -- accused of carrying out arsons in 2008. They admitted to setting some fires, authorities said, but while the three were in custody, the fires started coming at a faster rate than ever this month....Walker also said the fires this month appear to be connected, while the three in custody for last year's fires appear to have worked separately. "The [modus operandi] clearly indicates a group of individuals -- but probably with the same aim. So there may be some sense of organization," he said. Asked if the fires could be gang-related, he responded, "It could be, yes."
The city had "a spate" of gang activity in the summer of 2007, "and we haven't had any further outbreaks," he said. Also, he added, authorities do not believe the gang activity included fires.
Note: Long occupied by state and fed. forces
Weed & Seed Program
http://www.coatesville.org/community/weedseed.asp
Pennsylvania Weed and Seed is based off of the Federal Weed and Seed program. The program’s name describes its two critical components: To first “weed” out violent offenders in high-crime areas and to second, “seed” these neighborhoods with prevention, intervention, treatment and revitalization services. Long-term effectiveness is the key to a successful Weed and Seed Program. Coatesville was selected as the eighth site on August 29, 2001. Currently, there are 15 Weed and Seed communities throughout the state of Pennsylvania....
Federal Weed and Seed
During the fall of 2003, the City of Coatesville applied for Official Recognition for the Federal Weed and Seed program to the U.S. Department of Justice.In recognition of its rapid progress in reducing crime, increasing community awareness and participation in crime prevention, and mostly, its successful city-wide revitalization efforts, The City of Coatesville received Official Recognition from the U.S. Department of Justice and was designated as a Federal Weed and Seed site on March 8, 2004...Even though hundreds of communities across the country have applied, Coatesville was included in a small percentage of sites that received Official Federal Designation during 2004. As with the Pennsylvania Weed and Seed Program, the Federal program provides provisions for activities in the four Weed and Seed emphasis areas which are law enforcement, community policing, neighborhood restoration and drug prevention, intervention and treatment that involves the community which is a pivotal partner in the Weed and Seed strategy. The City of Coatesville is eligible to apply for, and receive funds for five years which will help the City to empower community residents to restore their neighborhoods and become more involved in community policing efforts.
Under both the Pennsylvania and Federal programs, the City of Coatesville will always remain a Weed and Seed site and will continue to receive technical assistance from the state and Federal Weed and Seed programs.
Coatesville Ethnicity Statistics [undated]
http://profiles.nationalrelocation.com/Pennsylvania/Coatesville/
Last u.s. census 2000 report: pop 10, 838, White 4,542, 41.9% Black or African American 5,327, 49.2%
White 4,797
African American 5,612
Hispanic or Latino 1,165
Asian 80
American Indian or Alaska Native 132
Hawaiian / Pacific Islander 10
Other 603
Coatesville Crime
Population 11,505
Violent Crime 151
Murder and Nonnegligent Manslaughter 4
Forcible Rape 3
Robbery 81
Aggravated Assault 63
Robbery 81
Property Crime 486
Burglary 101
Larceny-theft 325
Arson 3
South Coatesville
Demographics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Coatesville,_Pennsylvania
As of the census[2] of 2000, there were 997 people, 376 households, and 263 families residing in the borough. The population density was 586.2 people per square mile (226.4/km²). There were 419 housing units at an average density of 246.3/sq mi (95.2/km²). The racial makeup of the borough was 34.80% White, 56.07% African American, 0.20% Native American, 0.30% Pacific Islander, 4.11% from other races, and 4.51% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 8.93% of the population.
There were 376 households out of which 27.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 41.0% were married couples living together, 22.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 29.8% were non-families. 25.8% of all households were made up of individuals and 13.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.64 and the average family size was 3.13.In the borough the population was spread out with 27.7% under the age of 18, 7.2% from 18 to 24, 25.3% from 25 to 44, 22.7% from 45 to 64, and 17.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females there were 87.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 83.9 males.
The per capita income was $14,321. About 11.9% of families and 12.6% were below the poverty line, including 11.3% of those under age 18 and 16.0% of those age 65 or over.
'GANG': CODE FOR POOR BLACKS -- NOT KILLER POLICE GHETTO-OCCUPATION GANGS:
PI pimps the state's racist 'anti-gang' war to violently criminalize and attack Black youth
Seattle Police Officer Adley Shepherd approaches to question a man while on patrol in the South End on Saturday.
Officers patrol front lines of Seattle's deadly gang problem
Shepherd and Briskey have put themselves on the front lines of Seattle's gang problem and they see firsthand a street culture that results in a deadly cycle of violence. Top department officials have praised them. Suspected gang members, such as the ones at the bus stop, know their names, too.... Last year, a federal jury awarded a South Seattle man $268,000 in damages, deciding Briskey made a false arrest in 2006, used excessive force and committed civil rights violations against Romelle Bradford. The case, which Briskey did not discuss in detail, is being appealed by the city... Briskey mistakenly believed Bradford -- a Boys & Girls Club staff member who had called police -- was part of a [gang] street disturbance. He was thrown into a pile of rocks and jailed overnight.... critics have said Briskey, a white man and Mount Si High School graduate, isn't sympathetic to others' struggles.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/399282_gangcop09.html
Note: 'mindless class hatred': 'uncomfortable' for class-race privileged liberaLs against the 'appearance', not reality of capitalist slumdog privilege
Op-Ed Columnist
Slumdogs Unite
By FRANK RICH, NYT
The tsunami of populist rage coursing through America is bigger than Daschle’s overdue tax bill, bigger than John Thain’s trash can, bigger than any bailed-out C.E.O.’s bonus. It’s even bigger than the Obama phenomenon itself. It could maim the president’s best-laid plans and what remains of our economy if he doesn’t get in front of the mounting public anger.
Now more than ever, the president must inspire confidence and stave off panic....
The public’s revulsion isn’t mindless class hatred. As Obama said on Wednesday of his fellow citizens: “We don’t disparage wealth. We don’t begrudge anybody for achieving success.” But we do know that the system has been fixed for too long. The gaping income inequality of the past decade — the top 1 percent of America’s earners received more than 20 percent of the total national income — has not been seen since the run-up to the Great Depression. This is why “Slumdog Millionaire,” which pits a hard-working young man in Mumbai against a corrupt nexus of money and privilege, has become America’s movie of the year. As Robert Reich, the former Clinton labor secretary, wrote after Daschle’s fall, Americans “resent people who appear to be living high off a system dominated by insiders with the right connections.”...
"It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true."
Henry Kissinger
U.S. Bank Bailout to Rely in Part on Private Money
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/business/09bailout.html?th=&emc=th&pag...
Wall Street helped produce the global financial and economic crisis. Now, as the Obama administration prepares to unveil a revised bailout plan for the banking system, policy makers hope Wall Street can be part of the solution.Administration officials said the plan...was likely to depend on the willingness of private investors other than banks — like hedge funds, private equity funds and perhaps even insurance companies — to buy the contaminating assets that wiped out the capital of many banks.... they are counting on the profit motive to create a market for those assets. The government would guarantee a floor value as a way to overcome investors’ reluctance to buy them.... to reduce the need for immediate federal financing and relieve fears taxpayers will pay excessive prices if the government takes over risky securities....under the Obama administration’s plan, it would be the government that stood ready to absorb losses if they were too large, while also providing some of the financing for the purchases. .... Details of the new plan... are sketchy. And are likely to remain so even after Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner announces the plan...
The Obama administration...will be seeking to spend the remaining half of the original $700 billion in bailout money....The assets were the product of a market that grew rapidly in the past two decades, in which loans made by banks, and sometimes by others, were packaged into investment securities with varying levels of risk. Because of the hedging of risks, some were presented as safe, even if the underlying loans were risky. When these securitized assets were being created, federal regulators declined to regulate this rapidly expanding shadow financial system. Alan Greenspan, then the chairman of the Federal Reserve, argued that the complex securities were improving the safety of the banking system by transferring its risks to outside investors. It turned out that he was wrong, as became clear when the crisis spread last year.
psywar necessary to convince people their pain is due to psychological perceptions ... not finance capitalism
News Analysis
Spending More Than $800 Billion Is the Easy Part
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/us/politics/09econ.html?th&emc=th
The stimulus package is the easiest element of the solution to understand, and the easiest to sell politically... But as Mr. Geithner and his team have discovered as they try to put together the bank bailout, the politics are running against them. Bankers have become symbols of excess and greed, making the politics of pouring more money into propping up Wall Street and the financial system that much trickier. “We know what we need to do: inject capital into the banks, clean up their balance sheets, get rid of the bad loans in their portfolios that are clogging up the arteries,” a senior member of Mr. Obama’s economic team said, declining to speak on the record ahead of Mr. Obama’s news conference and Mr. Geithner’s announcement on Tuesday. “But the perception is that you are bailing out a bunch of Wall Street bankers... “There’s a deep suspicion throughout the country because none of this worked the last time,” one of Mr. Obama’s top economic advisers said.... The new administration will have to develop convincing arguments that it has an approach that will work any better than the Bush approach did....
This week, President Obama and his Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, will prepare the country for the next, and far more difficult, step: another attempt to fill the huge hole blown in the center of the nation’s financial system. No one has yet put a price tag on that effort. But the administration’s diagnosis of what went wrong with the first attempt to right the financial system — that it was too small, and that the problem has ballooned in recent months — suggests that the next effort will almost certainly entail a far bigger commitment of taxpayer dollars than the $350 billion left from last year’s $700 billion effort to right the system, and probably far more than the stimulus package...the final part Mr. Obama is not expected to announce for days, involves spending billions of dollars more to prevent home foreclosures, for fear that the displacement and anger created by throwing people out of their homes, and putting more properties onto a glutted market, will create a psychological and financial death spiral....
WSN: MAJOR 'FREE PRESS HQs
For reality of u.s. 'freedom of the press', see political propaganda background of Sanger and other major journalist 'authors', liberal and conservative at
WSN, World Security Network Foundation
Sanger is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Aspen Strategy Group.[for other media,university/professor members see http://www.defconmen.com/CFR/benribqqq/cfrmembers5.html] also WSN'S http://www.globalsecuritynews.com/_dsp/dsp_authorBio.cfm?authID=104
...the World Security Network Foundation, an international, independent, nonprofit organization, the largest global elite network for foreign and security policy with more than 303,000 elite users all over the world who receive our weekly electronic newsletter, publishing this website with more than 2 million hits monthly with analysis and proposals, supported by an International Advisory Board of well-known experts from 19 countries-including 14 generals and admirals-and more than 200 authors from all over the world. 230 media partners and 136 institutes cooperate with WSN and make use of its analysis "Networking a safer world"...
more than 200 authors over 230 media partners (including CNN, CNBC, Newsweek, You Tube, Daily Star) and 136 institutes (including RAND and IISS) cooperate with WSN and make use of our analysis and proposals.59 mostly young editors with 27 nationalities report from New York, Washington, D.C., Tokyo, Paris, Vienna, London, Rome, Moscow, Athens, Munich, Berlin, Ankara, Sweden, Finland, Caucasus, Singapore, Beirut, New Delhi, Peshawar, Islamabad, China, Nepal, Mexico, Peru, and Australia. They are led by WSN Global-Editor-in-Chief Brig Gen (ret.) Dieter Farwick, former Director of Germany's "Federal Armed Forces Intelligence Office" and close aide to former German Defense Minister and later NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner...
WSN TV provides online more than 100 exclusive video statements on foreign affairs from global experts such as Brent Scowcroft, Senators McCain, Biden and Lieberman, General James Jones, Richard Holbrooke, Carl Bildt, Ali Larishani, Massoud Barzani, Gary Kasparow, Otto von Habsburg, or Klaus Naumann... Mentor and Pentagon Strategist with contributions by Alexander Haig, Henry Kissinger, and Donald Rumsfeld (see www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/fritzkraemer)...
What we are:
Our knowledge base is deep on the hard military aspects, the limits, and costs of peacemaking; our Advisory Board contains 16 generals. WSN also focuses on important, 'soft' factors in peacemaking: the second pillar of effective, credible double strategies. Softer factors are neglected in all conflicts, but hard reality shows them to be as important, or more important, as hard military power.
We promote fresh, innovative thinking. We look for well thought out action plans to contain crises, thinking 'out of the box' as we have successfully in business.
We follow a bottom-up approach, asking first what people on the ground need, and why the crisis has started. We integrate their needs and ideas into our proposals.
WSN is a new kind of global foreign affairs action network in the age of globalization...
http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/corp/index3.cfm
"The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions.”
Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law.
Orwell on mass-media deception
" ...To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary."
George Orwell, 1984
"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly...it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."
Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister
For a patriotically militarized ruling class
Send R.O.T.C. Back to School
By KENNETH HARBAUGH
New Haven
SINCE the Vietnam War, R.O.T.C. programs have been banned from operating on campus at elite universities like Yale and Harvard. These institutions have also long hindered the military’s efforts to recruit their students. But in March 2006, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the military must be allowed back on all campuses. The door is open. More important, the students themselves are ready... While it is true that few of the students I taught will ever serve in uniform, part of the reason is that no one has bothered to ask them to. To change that, our new commander in chief should order the military to activate new R.O.T.C. units. Then President Obama should direct it to step up in-person recruiting efforts on these campuses.
TV commercials showing marines scaling mountains will not work on Yale students. But programs like Teach for America have great success recruiting from Ivy League colleges ...My students were desperate to serve their country in some way. We owe it to them to offer the armed forces as a realistic option. But rebuilding a connection between America’s military and its most selective colleges is about more than providing exceptional opportunities to exceptional young people. It is, ultimately, about our military’s relationship to its civilian leaders.
As a candidate, Barack Obama called top colleges’ rejection of the military a “mistake.” As president, he can begin to correct that mistake by ordering the military to invest in new R.O.T.C. units and redouble campus recruiting efforts.... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/opinion/09harbaugh.html?th=&emc=th&pag...
Bushes aren't the only ones: here's a 'contribution' of just one of Yale's other great elite leaders
"We need a program of psychosurgery for political control of our society. The purpose is physical control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated. The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective. Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electronically control the brain. Someday armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain."
Dr José Delgado. Director of Neuropsychiatry, Yale University Medical School Congressional Record, No. 26, Vol. 118 February 24, 1974.
MADE-IN-USA WMD COVER-UP
Army Suspends Germ Research at Maryland Lab
Army officials have suspended most research involving dangerous germs at the biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., which the F.B.I. has linked to the anthrax attacks of 2001, after discovering that some pathogens stored there were not listed in a laboratory database. The suspension, which began Friday and could last three months, is intended to allow a complete inventory of hazardous bacteria, viruses and toxins stored in refrigerators, freezers and cabinets in the facility, the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases...
Rules for keeping track of pathogens were tightened after the 2001 anthrax letters, which killed five people. But pressure to improve recordkeeping and security at the Army institute intensified six months ago after the suicide of Bruce E. Ivins, a veteran anthrax researcher, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s announcement that prosecutors had been preparing to charge Dr. Ivins with making the deadly anthrax powder in his laboratory there...
News of the suspension, first reported Monday by the Science magazine blog ScienceInsider, comes as the Justice Department has been interviewing scientists at the Army institute to prepare the government’s legal defense against a lawsuit filed by the family of Robert Stevens, the Florida tabloid photography editor who was the first to die in the 2001 letter attacks.
That lawsuit, filed in 2003 and delayed by the government’s unsuccessful efforts to have it dismissed, accuses officials of failing to assure that anthrax bacteria at Fort Detrick and other government laboratories were securely stored. Dr. Ivins was not suspected in the attacks at that time, but the F.B.I.’s conclusion last year added new weight to the lawsuit’s claims.... Dr. Ivins’s former colleagues at the Army institute have said they are not convinced that he mailed the letters.
The F.B.I. has asked the National Academy of Sciences to convene a panel of experts to review its scientific work on the case, and the bureau and academy are completing a contract for the review, said an academy spokesman, William Kearney. The anthrax case has underscored the threat of biological attack by biodefense insiders like Dr. Ivins, who have access to pathogens and the expertise to work with them.
The number of such researchers has grown rapidly since 2001, when the anthrax letters set off a spending boom on biodefense that led to a rapid addition of laboratories working on potential bioweapons, notably anthrax. Before 2001, only a few dozen such facilities worked with anthrax. Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has registered 219 laboratories to do so, said an agency spokesman, Von Roebuck. He said 10,474 people had been cleared to work with dangerous pathogens and toxins nationwide after background checks by the Justice Department. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/washington/10germs.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
PUPPET PERIL
Back on World Stage, Larger-Than-Life Richard C. Holbrooke will formulate policy for the region: told European policy makers Afghan War ‘Tougher than Iraq’, warning of “a long, difficult struggle” ahead.
http://www.nytimes.com/
Leader of Afghanistan Finds Himself Hero No More
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/world/asia/08karzai.html?_r=1&th=&emc=...
KABUL, Afghanistan — A foretaste of what would be in store for President Hamid Karzai after the election of a new American administration came last February, when Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a senator, sat down to a formal dinner at the palace during a visit here.... President Obama said he regarded Mr. Karzai as unreliable and ineffective. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said he presided over a “narco-state.”...With the insurgency rising, corruption soaring and opium blooming across the land, it perhaps is not surprising that so many Afghans, and so many in Washington, see President Karzai’s removal as a precondition for reversing the country’s downward surge. .. the growing American dissatisfaction with Mr. Karzai, coupled with simmering frustration among Afghans over what they regard as the reckless killing of civilians by American forces, has prompted extraordinary reactions from Mr. Karzai. At a news conference on Tuesday...Mr. Karzai appeared side-by-side with Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general... Mr. Karzai wore his signature hat and cape, but his visage was wan and slack. Asked by an Afghan reporter about his relations with American leaders, Mr. Karzai sprang to life, accusing unnamed people in the American government of trying to “pressure” him to stay silent over the deaths of Afghan civilians in attacks by Americans. “Our demands are clear — to stop the civilian casualties, the searching of Afghan homes and the arresting Afghans,” Mr. Karzai said of the Americans. “And of course, the Americans pressured us to be quiet and to make us retreat from our demands. But that is impossible. Afghanistan and its president are not going to retreat from their demands.” ...
At a ceremony last month for the first graduates of Afghanistan’s National Military Academy, Mr. Karzai stood and addressed the assembled 84 cadets as well as a group of diplomats, including Mr. Wood. Mr. Karzai turned the occasion into a populist barnburner.“I told America and the world to give us aircraft — otherwise we will get them from the other place!” Mr. Karzai roared, prompting applause. “I told them to give us the planes soon, that we have no more patience, and that we cannot get along without military aircraft“...“We told them to bring us tanks, too — otherwise we will get them from other place!”
Yet for all the doubts about Mr. Karzai — and for all the strains he labors under — he remains by far the strongest politician in the country. He commands the resources of the Afghan state, including the army and the police, and billions of dollars in American and other aid that flows into the treasury. In his seven years in office, Mr. Karzai has successfully presided over the transition of the Afghan state from the devastated, pre-modern institution it was under the Taliban to the deeply troubled but largely democratic one it is today. Perhaps most important for his future, Mr. Karzai has assembled a team of senior administrators whose competence and experience would be difficult for any challenger to match....
'leaving Iraq'... in u.s. control
Despite Death Inquiries Defense [SIC] contractor, KBR, won a $35.4 million Pentagon Army Corps of Engineers contract to design and build a convoy support center at Camp Adder in southern Iraq. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/washington/08contractor.html
'Soft Power' Proof: US supported 'human rights' / 'humanitarian aid' NGOs in George Soros' vast global OSI network serve imperialist-zionism
Rights group: Hamas waging campaign against Palestinian opponents
The Amnesty International human rights group has accused Hamas of waging a deliberate campaign to kill or maim scores of Palestinian opponents in the Gaza Strip since the end of December. The human rights group said in a report that at least two dozen men were shot dead by gunmen from the Islamic group. AI said Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip have engaged in a campaign of abductions, deliberate and unlawful killings, torture and death threats against those they accuse of collaborating with Israel, as well as opponents and critics.
http://israelinewsnow.com/
Gangster govt. agencies: corporate protection racket -- putting public at risk
Peanut Case Shows Holes in Safety Net
Conditions at the Peanut Corporation of America were just one element in the outbreak of salmonella.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/us/09peanuts.html?th&emc=th
FAA to loosen fuel-tank safety rules, benefiting Boeing's 787
By Dominic Gates
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=20087...
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has quietly decided to loosen stringent fuel-tank safety regulations written after the 1996 fuel-tank explosion that destroyed flight TWA 800 off the coast of New York state. The FAA proposes to relax the safeguards for preventing sparks inside the fuel tank during a lightning strike, standards the agency now calls "impractical" and Boeing says its soon-to-fly 787 Dreamliner cannot meet. Instead of requiring three independent protection measures for any feature that could cause sparking, the revised policy would allow some parts to have just one safeguard. Boeing has worked closely with the FAA to make the change in time for the 787 Dreamliner, whose airframe built of composite plastic makes lightning protection a special challenge. But the move has stirred intense opposition inside the local FAA office from the technical specialists — most of them former Boeing engineers — responsible for certifying new airplane designs. The national union representing about 190 Seattle-based FAA engineers this past Tuesday submitted a formal critique to the agency, calling the new policy "an unjustified step backward in safety." In a lightning storm, the critique said, the less stringent rules could leave a commercial airliner "one failure away from catastrophe."
FAA management, contradicting its own technical staff, argues that relaxing the spark-prevention standard is balanced by new technology to reduce fuel-tank flammability that will increase safety overall. Boeing experts insist the 787 will be safer in a lightning storm than any jet flying today.
Jim Hall, the former National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chairman who oversaw the TWA 800 investigation, said he's disappointed in the FAA but not surprised. "It appears that management has overruled the judgment of the people that have day-to-day responsibility for the safety of aircraft," ...
The rules address two distinct areas: preventing sparks in the tank and reducing the flammability of the vapor inside the tank. Current policy dictates that airplane engineers must design three independent layers of protection in any conceivable scenario that could produce a spark."To this day, we have not had one manufacturer that has been able to demonstrate compliance with that rule," said Ali Bahrami, head of the FAA's Seattle office dealing with commercial-airplane certification. "We decided it's time to re-evaluate our approach."
The FAA granted exemptions in 2006 and 2007 to plane makers Dassault Aviation, of France, and Hawker Beechcraft, of Wichita, Kan., allowing them to certify their Falcon 7X and Hawker 4000 business jets with only two independent layers of protection on the wing-skin fasteners.
In a detailed briefing on the 787's protection systems, two high-level Boeing lightning experts — who spoke on condition that they not be named — said the Dreamliner cannot meet the requirement. "Boeing spent years trying to develop triple layers of structural lightning protection for every 787 fuel-tank fastener and joint, but we were unable to identify the technical means at many locations in the wings," ...
FAA, Boeing too close?
Tomaso DiPaolo, NATCA's aircraft-certification national representative, charges that when FAA engineers raised their safety concerns internally management simply removed them from the team developing the new policy. The FAA ignored its own technical people, he said, while making sure Boeing agreed with the policy change.... "It appears that whatever Boeing wants, Boeing gets." A Boeing internal document reviewed by The Seattle Times shows the company had a "team to assist FAA in wording of interpretation" of the lightning rule for the 787 as far back as August 2004, just eight months after the new jet program launched....
With the cancellation of another 16 orders for its 787 Dreamliner, which is two years late, Boeing has won 18 orders and lost 31 through cancellations.
When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.
Sinclair Lewis
For Catholics, Heaven Moves a Step Closer
“Bishop Announces Plenary Indulgences.”
In recent months, dioceses around the world have been offering Catholics a spiritual benefit that fell out of favor decades ago — the indulgence, a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife — and reminding them of the church’s clout in mitigating the wages of sin... the church outlawed the sale of indulgences in 1857 — but charitable contributions, combined with other acts, can help you earn one. There is a limit of one plenary indulgence per sinner per day.... Under the rules in the “Manual of Indulgences,” published by the Vatican, confession is a prerequisite for getting an indulgence.... Getting Catholics back into the confession booth, in fact, was one of the underlying motivations for reintroducing the indulgence....“the church wants the idea of ‘personal sin’ back in the equation. Indulgences are a way of reminding people of the importance of penance.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/nyregion/10indulgence.html?em
'perception' of capitalist criminal injustice system
Madoff agrees to permanent asset freeze: SEC
The Securities and Exchange Commission reached a partial settlement in its civil case with Bernard L. Madoff, the financier accused of masterminding a vast Ponzi scheme.... Madoff agreed to freeze without admitting or denying fraud charges in a civil case against him, a U.S. regulator said on Monday.... Madoff's lawyer Ira Sorkin said the SEC filing "means he has been enjoined from engaging in any violations of anti-fraud regulations."... Madoff has not appeared in court to formally answer civil or criminal charges.
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/sec-and-madoff-settle-civil...
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE5185IC20090209?pageNumber=...
