Red Cross and Vatican helped thousands of Nazis to escape

guardian.co.uk/

The Red Cross and the Vatican both helped thousands of Nazi war criminals and collaborators to escape after the Second World War, according to a book that pulls together evidence from unpublished documents. Gerald Steinacher, a research fellow at Harvard University, was given access to thousands of internal documents in the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). They throw light on how and why mass murderers such as Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele and Klaus Barbie and thousands of others evaded capture by the allies. By comparing lists of wanted war criminals to travel documents, Steinacher says Britain and Canada alone inadvertently took in around 8,000 former Waffen-SS members in 1947, many on the basis of valid documents issued mistakenly. 

The documents – which are discussed in Steinacher's book Nazis on the Run: How Hitler's henchmen fled justice – offer a significant insight into Vatican thinking, particularly, because its own archives beyond 1939 are still closed. The Vatican has consistently refused to comment. Through the Vatican Refugee Commission, war criminals were knowingly provided with false identities.

Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts

http://www.cnbc.com/

The number of violent crimes in the United States dropped significantly last year, to what appeared to be the lowest rate in nearly 40 years, a development that was considered puzzling partly because it ran counter to the prevailing expectation that crime would increase during a recession. In all regions, the country appears to be safer. The odds of being murdered or robbed are now less than half of what they were in the early 1990s, when violent crime peaked in the United States. Small towns, especially, are seeing far fewer murders: In cities with populations under 10,000, the number plunged by more than 25 percent last year. Criminology experts said they were surprised and impressed by the national numbers, issued ... by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and based on data from more than 13,000 law-enforcement agencies. There was no immediate consensus to explain the drop. 

But some experts said the figures collided with theories about correlations between crime, unemployment and the number of people in prison. Take robbery: The nation has endured a devastating economic crisis, but robberies fell 9.5 percent last year, after dropping 8 percent the year before.....

Cry "anti-semitic"and Israel avoids criticism of its policies

UK Training Saudi Forces Used to Crush Arab Spring

Via: Guardian:

Britain is training Saudi Arabia's national guard – the elite security force deployed during the recent protests in Bahrain – in public order enforcement measures and the use of sniper rifles. The revelation has outraged human rights groups, which point out that the Foreign Office recognises that the kingdom's human rights record is "a major concern".

In response to questions made under the Freedom of Information Act, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed that British personnel regularly run courses for the national guard in "weapons, fieldcraft and general military skills training, as well as incident handling, bomb disposal, search, public order and sniper training". The courses are organised through the British Military Mission to the Saudi Arabian National Guard, an obscure unit that consists of 11 British army personnel under the command of a brigadier.

The MoD response, obtained yesterday by the Observer, reveals that Britain sends up to 20 training teams to the kingdom a year. Saudi Arabia pays for "all BMM personnel, as well as support costs such as accommodation and transport".

Bahrain's royal family used 1,200 Saudi troops to help put down demonstrations in March. At the time the British government said it was "deeply concerned" about reports of human rights abuses being perpetrated by the troops.

"Britain's important role in training the Saudi Arabian national guard in internal security over many years has enabled them to develop tactics to help suppress the popular uprising in Bahrain," said Nicholas Gilby of the Campaign Against Arms Trade. ...

Barry Shainbaum speaks with David Ray Griffin on Osama Bin Laden

davidraygriffin.com/

Barry Shainbaum speaks with David Ray Griffin, Ph.D., author of Osama Bin Laden, Dead or Alive.

Direct link to mp3 file:
20110508-barry-shainbaum-david-ray-griffin.mp3

Directing Libyan Air Strikes 'Like Playing a Computer Game'

Sydney Morning Herald

Destruction in Misrata. When asked what his work entailed, Flight Sergeant Thornton said: '"It is like playing a computer game. You can't just view it as a flat screen. ...Our job is to speed up the kill chain. " 

TEN thousand metres above Libya, the war against Muammar Gaddafi is being directed over the roar of aircraft noise by men hunched over banks of computer screens.

This is Magic 52, one of three Royal Air Force E-3D spy planes in charge of the operational effort to enforce United Nations Security Council resolution 1973.

From the airborne command, control and communication centre, specialists direct every part of the bombing campaign.

In the course of a nine-hour sortie, they can direct 100 aircraft to carry out strike after strike. With access to Britain's most sensitive military secrets, they co-ordinate reconnaissance, refuelling, and missions to track and attack Colonel Gaddafi's military.

At the weekend there were further strikes by the RAF on the dictator's compound in Tripoli.

The military pressure on the regime is about to be dramatically escalated with the arrival of British and French attack helicopters, which will step up attacks on forces on the ground.

South Africa's President, Jacob Zuma, will visit Tripoli this week on behalf of the African Union in a last-ditch attempt to broker an exit plan for Colonel Gaddafi, though signs are he is digging in against threats from the G8. ...

The Last Word on Osama Bin Laden

..But after finally waking from the 10 year nightmare of the Osama Bin Laden fable, are the public willing to go straight back to sleep? Or are they going to start questioning the official narratives that are cemented into place in the wake of every large-scale event, narratives that always support more government intrusion in our lives, expanded wars of aggression around the globe and an ever-expanding police state?...

As world burns, G8 leaders fiddle ... with the Internet. Seriously?

Christian Science Monitor

Sarkozy, Obama, and the other leaders at the G8 should be evaluating the policies that have brought them to the brink of financial ruin. Unfortunately, their attention will be elsewhere: on Internet regulation, for one thing.

President Obama will join other G8 leaders today at the posh, French seaside resort of Deauville. On the agenda: proposed global regulations for the Internet, post-tsunami Japan, and military escapades in North Africa. Bizarrely absent from the top priorities listed by hosting head of state Nicolas Sarkozy is the most urgent issue of all: the need to rein in massive government over-spending and debt.

One needn't travel to France to get a clear view of this problem. Here in the US, for example, federal revenues will top $2 trillion this year, but federal spending will approach double that amount. Such reckless spending has set the stage for a battle royal between Democrats and Republicans over raising the national-debt ceiling.

House Speaker John Boehner (R) of Ohio has correctly warned that increasing the debt ceiling without a firm commitment to slash spending would signal to investors that America still is not serious about kicking its spending addiction. ....

 

TEPCO now admits that three Fukushima reactors have melted, large holes present in containment vessels

 naturalnews.com/

May 27, 2011

The Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) house of cards is toppling, as it has now been revealed that three reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility all melted shortly after the devastating earthquake and tsunami hit them on March 11 (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...). TEPCO also now admits that holes likely exist in the reactors' containment vessels as a result, which explains the persistent water leaks and drastic temperature fluctuations that led to continuous containment problems (http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english...).

TEPCO officials claim that the company has never hidden any of this information from the public, but that recent data analysis has confirmed what many scientists and experts had correctly predicted weeks ago based on observation of the situation. And rightfully so, many remain critical of TEPCO's drastic underestimation of the true condition of the plant, and say the company's unrealistic optimism since the disaster first occurred has been wholly misleading, and not at all based in reality. ....

Obama, financial war and the elimination of DSK

voltairenet.org/ 

It is impossible to understand the downfall of Dominique Strauss-Khan without linking it to his project for the creation of a new international reserve currency, which was to be launched on 26 May 2011 at the Deauville G-8 summit. The project was paradoxically anticipated as much by the Emerging States as by stateless capital, but rejected by the U.S.-Israeli military-industrial complex. Thierry Meyssan exposes the chicanery of the Obama administration to dodge its commitments.

en francais

Why Aren't EU Protests Aimed at Central Banks?

thedailybell.com

Thursday, May 26, 2011

 

ECB presses battle against Greek restructuring ... The European Central Bank kept up its attacks on the idea of letting Greece restructure its crushing debt load, even as a top ratings agency argued that Germany's banks would probably survive losses from such a move with credit ratings intact. Juergen Stark, the European Central Bank's chief economist, said at a conference in Berlin on Wednesday that cutting Greece's debt by letting it pay later or less than the full amount owed to banks and other bondholders was not the simple solution some think it is. "To think that there is an easy way out, in that a country's debts are largely or fully relieved, is an illusion," Stark said. "Debt relief cannot and must not be the solution ... We should think one connection further when we use this miracle word debt relief, or debt restructuring," he told a conference organized by a group linked to Chancellor Angela Merkel's party. – AP

Dominant Social Theme: Central banks simply are not important. Remember that!

Free-Market Analysis: We can see from the above article excerpt that it is the ECB mainly that is behind the European Union's "immoveable rigor" when it comes to enforcing austerity measures on Greece, and other EU PIGS as well. It is always this way with central banks. Their members and operators tend to be the most holy about fiscal integrity because they are the least so in practice.

The ability to print money from nothing is the singular achievement of modern elites and the single most ruinous practice of the modern state. It is responsible for most if not all of the abuses of modern history, from torture, to war, to genocide. Money-printing (not money) is at the root of all evil.

It is strange that EU protests and Greek protests in particular have not in particular taken aim at central bankers and their banks. (At least not that we can tell.) Government buildings, police stations, private and commercial banks, all these have been targeted. But in our view, if EU protests over austerity are to be effective, it is central banks that have to be peacefully targeted on a consistent basis. A message needs to be sent and only physical protests around central banks can do that. [...]

Spanish Police Brutality

 via zerohedge.com

Spanish Police Brutality Against Protesters - #1 [video]

Spanish Police Brutality Against Protesters - #2 [videos]

Terrorist 'pre-crime' detector field tested in United States

Pre-crime is the current wet dream of Homeland Security...

----------------

Via: Nature:

The tactic has drawn comparisons with the science-fiction concept of 'pre-crime', popularized by the film Minority Report, in which security services can detect someone's intention to commit a crime. Unlike the system in the film, FAST does not rely on a trio of human mutants who can see the future. But the programme has attracted copious criticism from researchers who question the science behind it (see Airport security: Intent to deceive?).

From fiction to fact

So far, FAST has only been tested in the lab, so successful field tests could lend some much-needed data to support the technology. "It is encouraging to see an effort to develop a real empirical base for new technologies before any policy commitments are made," says Tom Ormerod, a psychologist in the Investigative Expertise Unit at Lancaster University, UK. Such testing, he adds, could lay the groundwork for a more rigorous randomized, controlled, double-blind study. 

According to a privacy-impact statement previously released by the DHS, tests of FAST involve instructing some people passing through the system to carry out a "disruptive act". Ormerod questions whether such role-playing is representative of real terrorists, and also worries that both passengers and screeners will react differently when they know they're being tested. "Fill the place with machines that go ping, and both screeners and passengers start doing things differently."

In lab tests, the DHS has claimed accuracy rates of around 70%, but it remains unclear whether the system will perform better or worse in field trials. "The results are still being analysed, so we cannot yet comment on performance," says John Verrico, a spokesman for the DHS. "Since this is an ongoing scientific study, tests will continue throughout coming months."

Some scientists question whether there really are unique signatures for 'malintent' — the agency's term for the intention to cause harm — that can be differentiated from the normal anxieties of travel. "Even having an iris scan or fingerprint read at immigration is enough to raise the heart rate of most legitimate travellers," says Ormerod.

Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, a think-tank based in Washington DC that promotes the use of science in policy-making, is pessimistic about the FAST tests. He thinks that they will produce a large proportion of false positives, frequently tagging innocent people as potential terrorists and making the system unworkable in a busy airport. "I believe that the premise of this approach — that there is an identifiable physiological signature uniquely associated with malicious intent — is mistaken. To my knowledge, it has not been demonstrated," he says. "Without it, the whole thing seems like a charade."

As for where precisely FAST is being tested, that for now remains a closely guarded secret. The DHS says that although the first round was completed at the end of March, more testing is in the works, and the agency is concerned that letting people know where the tests are taking place could affect the outcome. "I can tell you that it is not an airport, but it is a large venue that is a suitable substitute for an operational setting," says Verrico.

32 Signs That The Entire World Is Being Transformed Into A Futuristic Big Brother Prison Grid

EndoftheAmericanDream

Do you want your children and grandchildren to live in a futuristic "big brother" control grid where everything they do is watched, recorded, tracked and tightly controlled?  Well, that is exactly where things are headed.  We witnessed some really bad totalitarian regimes during the 20th century, but what is coming is going to be far more restrictive than any of the despots of the past ever dreamed was possible.  Today, nearly every government on earth is tightening their grip on their citizens.  Paranoia has become standard operating procedure all over the planet and nobody is to be trusted.  Global politicians will give speeches about liberty and freedom even as they undermine them at every turn.  There are very, very few nations on the planet where liberty and freedom are increasing.  Instead, almost everywhere you turn the "control grid" is getting tighter.  Governments don't want us gathering together and interacting with one another.  Instead, they want us to work our tails off to support the system, they want us enslaved financially and constantly drowning in debt, and they want us addicted to television and other forms of entertainment.  They want us as numb and docile as possible.  Meanwhile, all over the globe they continue to construct a futuristic "big brother" control grid that will ensure that they will always be able to control us.

Sadly, this is not the plot to some post-apocalyptic science fiction movie.

This is really happening.

When you read the list below, each of the 32 signs may not seem to be all that significant individually.  However, when they are all taken together, they paint a truly frightening picture.... [....]

Smoking Helps Protect Against Lung Cancer

 via Joe Vialls

Every year, thousands of medical doctors and other members of the "Anti-Smoking Inquisition" spend billions of dollars perpetuating what has unquestionably become the most misleading though successful social engineering scam in history. With the encouragement of most western governments, these Orwellian lobbyists pursue smokers with a fanatical zeal that completely overshadows the ridiculous American alcohol prohibition debacle, which started in 1919 and lasted until 1933.

Nowadays we look back on American prohibition with justifiable astonishment. Is it really true that an entire nation allowed itself to be denied a beer or scotch by a tiny group of tambourine-bashing fanatics? Sadly, yes it is, despite a total lack of evidence that alcohol causes any harm to humans, unless consumed in truly astronomical quantities.

Alas, the safety of alcohol was of no interest to the tambourine-bashers, for whom control over others was the one and only true goal. Americans were visibly "sinning" by enjoying themselves having a few alcoholic drinks, and the puritans interceded on behalf of God to make them all feel miserable again.

Although there is no direct link between alcohol and tobacco, the history of American prohibition is important, because it helps us understand how a tiny number of zealots managed to control the behavior and lives of tens of millions of people. Nowadays exactly the same thing is happening to smokers, though this time it is at the hands of government zealots and ignorant medical practitioners rather than tambourine-bashing religious fanatics.

Certain governments know that their past actions are directly responsible for causing most of the lung and skin cancers in the world today, so they go to extreme lengths in trying to deflect responsibility and thus financial liability away from themselves, and onto harmless organic tobacco instead. As we will find later in the report, humble organic tobacco has never hurt anyone, and in certain ways can justifiably claim to provide startling health protection. 

Not all governments around the world share the same problem. Japan and Greece have the highest numbers of adult cigarette smokers in the world, but the lowest incidence of lung cancer. In direct contrast to this, America, Australia, Russia, and some South Pacific island groups have the lowest numbers of adult cigarette smokers in the world, but the highest incidence of lung cancer. This is clue number-one in unraveling the absurd but entrenched western medical lie that "smoking causes lung cancer." [...]

Bad News From The BBC 'Replete With Imbalance And Distortion'

May 25, 2011 "Media Lens" -- - One of the main headlines on the BBC news homepage earlier this month read, 'Violence erupts at Israel borders'. Israeli soldiers had shot dead at least 12 protesters and injured dozens more. BBC 'impartiality' decreed that the brutal killings were presented almost as an act of nature, a volcanic eruption that simply happened.

Clicking on the link did at least bring up a more accurate headline: 'Israeli forces open fire at Palestinian protesters'. But the brutality was sanitised, with no details of the many victims. The Israeli viewpoint was prominent with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that he 'hoped' that 'calm and quiet will quickly return, but let nobody be mistaken, we are determined to defend our borders and sovereignty'.

Somehow a 'neutral' BBC perspective dictated that the lead image illustrating the story was of young Palestinian men throwing rocks in 'clashes' with fully armed soldiers from the Israeli Defence Forces.

The Palestinians had been taking part in annual protests on Nakba ('Catastrophe') day which, as the BBC put it, 'marks the moment when 100,000s of Palestinians lost their homes' on the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Again, the BBC's sanitised version of 'lost their homes' buries awkward history, as though homes had simply been repossessed when families fell behind on their mortgage payments. In reality, more than half of Palestine's native population, close to 800,000 people, had been uprooted and 531 village destroyed (Ilan Pappe, 'The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine', Oneworld, 2006).

After complaints from us, and perhaps realising the newspeak was just too much to swallow, the BBC tweaked the sentence the following day to read:

'Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced out of their homes in fighting after its creation.'

BBC Middle East correspondent Jim Muir was quick to implicate foreign powers in the latest annual Nakba protests, asking the leading question: 'Palestinian protests: Arab spring or foreign manipulation?' and pointing his finger at Syria and Iran. True to type, the BBC journalist's 'analysis' was not a million miles distant from the message being broadcast from Tel Aviv. Jonathan Cook, an independent journalist based in Nazareth, notes:

'With characteristic obtuseness, Israel's leaders identified Iranian "fingerprints" on the day's events - as though Palestinians lacked enough grievances of their own to stage protests.' (Jonathan Cook, 'On an old anniversary, a new sense that change is possible', The National, 17 May, 2011)

The BBC's famed 'balance' should mean that, in the wake of Muir's piece, we see a BBC article about US 'foreign manipulation' of Syria and Iran, and indeed the whole Middle East. Presumably the balancing piece is in the pipeline.

As with the most effective propaganda published by the Soviet newspaper Pravda, there may be something in what Muir says. But the required journalistic emphasis, as ever, is on the misdeeds 'our' officially sanctioned state enemies may be committing, not on the crimes of our own government. [...]

Priest in Archdiocese of Pope’s Adviser On Pedophilia Scandals Arrested on Pedophilia and Drug Charges

May 27th, 2011

Via: Time:

The latest sex-abuse case to rock the Catholic Church is unfolding in the archdiocese of an influential Italian Cardinal who has been working with Pope Benedict XVI on reforms to respond to prior scandals of pedophile priests. 

Father Riccardo Seppia, a 51-year-old parish priest in the village of Sastri Ponente, near Genoa, was arrested last Friday, May 13, on pedophilia and drug charges. Investigators say that in tapped mobile-phone conversations, Seppia asked a Moroccan drug dealer to arrange sexual encounters with young and vulnerable boys. "I do not want 16-year-old boys but younger. Fourteen-year-olds are O.K. Look for needy boys who have family issues," he allegedly said. Genoa Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, who is the head of the Italian Bishops Conference, had been working with Benedict to establish a tough new worldwide policy, released this week, on how bishops should handle accusations of priestly sex abuse. 

20 Questions To Ask Anyone Foolish Enough To Believe The Economic Crisis Is Over

The Economic Collapse
May 26, 2011

If you listen to Ben Bernanke, Barack Obama and the mainstream media long enough, and if you didn’t know any better, you might be tempted to think that the economic crisis is long gone and that we are in the midst of a burgeoning economic recovery.  Unfortunately, the truth is that the economic crisis is far from over.  In 2010, more homes were repossessed than ever before, more Americans were on food stamps than ever before and a smaller percentage of American men had jobs than ever before.  The reality is that the United States is an economic basket case and all of these natural disasters certainly are not helping things.  The Federal Reserve has been printing gigantic piles of money and the U.S. government has been borrowing and spending cash at a dizzying pace in an all-out effort to stabilize things.  They have succeeded for the moment, but our long-term economic problems are worse then ever.  We are still in the middle of a full-blown economic crisis and things are about to get even worse.

If you know someone that is foolish enough to believe that the economic crisis is over and that our economic problems are behind us, just ask that person the following questions….

#1 During the 23 months of the “Obama recovery”, an average of about 23,000 jobs a month have been created.  It takes somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth.  So shouldn’t we hold off a bit before we declare the economic crisis to be over?

#2 During the “recession”, somewhere between 6.3 million and 7.5 million jobs were lost.  During the “Obama recovery”, approximately 535,000 jobs have been added.  When will the rest of the jobs finally come back?

#3 Of the 535,000 jobs that have been created during the “Obama recovery”,only about 35,000 of them are permanent full-time jobs. Today, “low income jobs” account for 41 percent of all jobs in the United States. If our economy is recovering, then why can’t it produce large numbers of good jobs that will enable people to provide for their families?

#4 Agricultural commodities have been absolutely soaring this decade.  The combined price of cotton, wheat, gasoline and hogs is now more than 3 times higher than it was back in 2002.  So how in the world can the Federal Reserve claim that inflation has been at minimal levels all this time?

#5 Back in 2008, banks had a total of 27 billion dollars in excess reserves at the Fed.  Today, banks have a total of approximately 1.5 trillion dollars in excess reserves at the Fed.  So what is going to happen when all of this money eventually hits the economy?….

#6 If the U.S. economy is recovering, then why are shipments by U.S. factories still substantially below 2008 levels?

#7 Why are imports of goods from overseas growing much more rapidly than shipments of goods from U.S. factories?

#8 According to Zillow, the average price of a home in the U.S. is about 8 percent lower than it was a year ago and that it continues to fall about 1 percent a month. During the first quarter of 2011, home values declined at the fastest rate since late 2008. So can we really talk about a “recovery” when the real estate crisis continues to get worse?

#9 According to a shocking new survey, 54 percent of Americans believe that a housing recovery is “unlikely” until at least 2014.  So how is the housing industry supposed to improve if so many people are convinced that it will not?

#10 The latest GDP numbers out of Japan are a complete and total disaster.  During the first quarter GDP declined by a stunning 3.7 percent.  Of course I have been saying for months that the Japanese economy is collapsing, but most mainstream economists were absolutely stunned by the latest figures.  So will the rest of the world be able to avoid slipping into a recession as well?

#11 Next week, Republicans in the House of Representatives are going to allow a vote on raising the debt ceiling.  Everyone knows that this is an opportunity for Republican lawmakers to “look tough” to their constituents (the vast majority of which do not want the debt ceiling raised).  Everyone also knows that eventually the Republicans are almost certainly going to cave on the debt ceiling after minimal concessions by the Democrats.  The truth is that neither “establishment Republicans” nor “establishment Democrats” are actually serious about significantly cutting government debt.  So why do we need all of this political theater?

#12 Why are so many of our once great manufacturing cities being transformed into hellholes?  In the city of Detroit today, there are over 33,000 abandoned houses, 70 schools are being permanently closed down, the mayor wants to bulldoze one-fourth of the city and you can literally buy a house for one dollarin the worst areas.

#13 According to one new survey, about half of all Baby Boomers fear that when they retire they are going to end up living in poverty.  So who is going to take care of them all when the money runs out?

#14 According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, an average of about 5 million Americans were being hired every single month during 2006.  Today, an average of about 3.5 million Americans are being hired every single month.  So why are our politicians talking about “economic recovery” instead of “the collapse of the economy” when hiring remains about 50 percent below normal?

#15 Since August, 2 million more Americans have left the labor force.  But the entire period from August to today was supposed to have been a time of economic growth and recovery.  So why are so many Americans giving up on looking for a job?

#16 According to Gallup, 41 percent of Americans believed that the economy was “getting better” at this time last year.  Today, that number is at just 27 percent.  Are Americans losing faith in the U.S. economy?

#17 According to the U.S. Census, the number of children living in poverty has gone up by about 2 million in just the past 2 years, and one out of every four American children is currently on food stamps.  During this same time period, Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke have told us over and over that the U.S. economy has been getting better. So what is the truth?

#18 America has become absolutely addicted to government money. 59 percent of all Americans now receive money from the federal government in one form or another. U.S. households are now receiving more income from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes. Americans hate having their taxes raised and they hate having their government benefits cut.  So is there any hope that this will ever be turned around before disaster strikes?

#19 The combined debt of the major GSEs (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae) has increased from 3.2 trillion in 2008 to 6.4 trillion in 2011.  How in the world is the U.S. 

government going to be able to afford to guarantee all of that debt on top of everything else?

#20 If the U.S. national debt (more than 14 trillion dollars) was reduced to a stack of 5 dollar bills, it would reach three quarters of the way to the moon.  The U.S. government borrows about 168 million dollars every single hour.  If Bill Gates gave every penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.  So how in the world can our politicians tell us that everything is going to be okay?

The Secret: The Spirituality of Narcissism

By Stuart Davis

The Secret. 

It's all the rage. The book and movie have garnered the enthusiasm of millions. Everyone from Oprah to Montel is extolling Rhonda Byrne's spiritual juggernaut. The premise of The Secret is simple; The power of attraction. Like attracts like. What we think, what we feel, acts as a magnetic signal, attracting its correlate from the Universe. The Secret says our thoughts and feelings manifest that which we desire. In fact, according to the teachers of the Secret, this works 100% of the time, for 100% of the people who use it. The Universe responds to our wishes, providing whatever we desire. This is because "we create our own reality", and The Secret says science confirms this.

As with most things, The Secret is a Good news / Bad news scenario. First, the good news. The secret is (partly) true. Our thoughts and feelings are of consequence, and positive thinking and feeling can significantly characterize our experience of reality, even influence the way reality unfolds. The Secret cites everyone from Martin Luther King to Einstein as examples of people who knew -and employed- The Secret. Martin Luther King had a dream. Einstein said God doesn't play dice. And so on.

The Secret uses valid (but partial) suppositions such as:

Our thoughts and feelings are powerful

and inflates them to a Kosmic (and false) scale, giving us: Our thoughts are the most powerful things on Earth.

The secret takes a statement like

Thought can influence reality

and amplifies it to "Thoughts create reality." Not just any thoughts, but YOUR thoughts.

(By the way, are you a rape victim? I guess you created that reality with your thoughts. Was your family member killed in Iraq? I guessed you created that experience for yourself so you could learn from it. Wow. You are one sadistic cat.)

The Secret takes a truth like

The Self is one with the Universe,

and then immediately inserts the wrong self; The Ego. [...]

French group calls for Spain-style street protests

(Reuters) - A French group has called for a large demonstration in Paris this weekend to show solidarity with tens of thousands of youth protesters demonstrating against austerity programs in Spain.

Eyes will be on France this week when President Nicolas Sarkozy hosts world leaders in the seaside town of Deauville for a meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized countries. Such meetings are often the target of anti-globalization protests.

In Spain, tens of thousands of demonstrators, angry over unemployment and austerity measures, packed Madrid's Puerta del Sol square all last week ahead of local elections, overshadowing the last few days of campaigning. The ruling Socialists suffered a major loss at the polls on Sunday. [nLDE74M02A]

Solidarity with "los indignados" (the indignant) in Madrid has already inspired several dozen French youths to spend nights camped out at the Place de la Bastille, the Paris square where a jail was torn down during the 1789 French Revolution.

Protesters say demonstrations spreading this year through the Arab world have crossed the Mediterranean. They describe the fight in Spain as a European struggle against governments who favor the interests of financial institutions.

"They take money, we'll take the street," a French group named after the Spanish "Real Democracy Now" movement said on its website. "We're being strangled by these austerity plans that are multiplying throughout Europe."

Youth unemployment in France, at about 20 percent, is well below Spain's level of 45 percent, but opinion polls suggest the French are angry at sliding purchasing power as stagnant wages fail to keep up with inflation.

Paul Craig Roberts: Revolution is the only Answer

 

 PressTVGlobalNews 

Global financial crisis-On the Edge with Max Keiser-05-20-2011-(Part1) 

Global financial crisis-On the Edge with Max Keiser-05-20-2011-(Part2)

 

Food Inflation to Quicken; Nestle, McDonald’s, WholeFoods Lift Prices

May 26th, 2011

Bloomberg:

U.S. food-price inflation may top the government’s forecast as higher crop, meat, dairy and energy costs lead companies including Nestle SA, McDonald’s Corp. (MCD) and Whole Foods Market Inc. (WFMI) to boost prices. 

Retail-food prices will jump more than the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s estimate of 3 percent to 4 percent this year, said Chad E. Hart, an economist at Iowa State University in Ames. Companies will pass along more of their higher costs through year-end, said Bill Lapp, a former ConAgra Foods Inc. chief economist. 

Groceries and restaurant meals rose 2.4 percent in the four months through April, the most to start a year since 1990, government data show. During the period, rice, wheat and milk futures touched the highest levels since 2008, and retail beef reached a record. Yesterday, J.M. Smucker Co. announced an 11 percent price increase for Folgers coffee, the best-selling U.S. brand, after the cost of beans almost doubled in a year. 

“It’s going to be a tough year” for U.S. shoppers, said Lapp, who is president of Advanced Economic Solutions, an agriculture consultant in Omaha, Nebraska. “You’re looking at an economy where a lot of consumers are under some serious pressure from food and fuel costs.”

Angry Parents in Japan Confront Government Over Radiation Levels

May 26th, 2011

New York Times:

 “Do you really care about our children’s health?” one parent shouted. “Why have you acted so late?” said another. Among other concerns: isn’t radiation still raining down on Fukushima? Shouldn’t the entire school building be decontaminated? The entire city? Can we trust you? 

“We are doing all we can,” pleaded Tomio Watanabe, a senior official of Fukushima’s education board. 

A huge outcry is erupting in Fukushima over what parents say is a blatant government failure to protect their children from dangerous levels of radiation. The issue has prompted unusually direct confrontations in this conflict-averse society, and has quickly become a focal point for anger over Japan’s handling of the accident at the nearby Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, ravaged in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. 

At issue are updated government guidelines that allow schoolchildren to be exposed to radiation doses that are more than 20 times the previously permissible levels. That dose is equal to the international standard for adult nuclear power plant workers. 

Narco News Is On the Front Lines of Journalism in the 21st Century

narconews.com

The School of Authentic Journalism is Bringing Together Journalists Who are Redefining the Meaning of Journalism 

May 5, 2011

By Quincy Paul, Class of 2011 School of Authentic Journalism

There is no hiding from it: historical time is accelerating. Whether we spend our time glued to the screen of the news, in a busy trance of distracted denial, or in a frenzy of organizing, the world is moving beneath us, more than we can imagine. The last five years have contained enough world-historical events for at least a few decades, and the last five months have been more consequential than some centuries. Even in the last five weeks so much has changed: revolution, scandal, disaster, and war, from the largest scale to the smallest. Dare we wonder what is to come? Dare we contemplate what is to be done?

Quincy Saul

We have entered an unprecedented and pivotal moment that will reverberate into the long-term future of humanity and planet Earth. Is seems that more than ever is now at stake.

Very few outcomes are inevitable, and no solutions will be universal. But some things are essential to us all. Whether we are struggling to change the world, or to just survive, whether we arrive to one of these gradually or find ourselves suddenly saddled with both at once, we all need to know.

We need to know our world to understand it, and we need to understand our world in order to act in it, and on it. On the front lines of interpreting our world are journalists. They are writing, recording, and risking their lives to give us all something more essential, precious and delicate than just truth; it is the living connection with our world, without which we are stranded, helplessly adrift in the immense orbit of history.

Of course I am not talking about the corporate journalists, the ones who mystify and contort reality for profit or privilege, out of ignorance or indifference. They are enemies of this fragile life force we call knowledge, and they bear more blame than they know for every tragedy they hasten and exacerbate.

Nor am I talking about the strict dictionary definition of journalism. In the 21st century we will all have to think outside the box of the newsroom. 

Anyone who is reporting, reflecting, sharing and expressing their knowledge about current events for a wider audience, anyone who contributes creatively to this tangled web of real-time information that we live and breathe, which is the best foundation we have to build the future, these are the journalists of which I speak. Artists, orators, bloggers, videographers, fiction writers, performance artists, all of these and more are inheriting this calling. The old established news agencies continue to harbor a few journalists worthy of the cause, but can no longer be trusted to be the sole guardians of this vital profession.

On the front lines of journalism in the 21st century is Narco News. In its methodology and its content, Narco News blends history and theory with urgency and practice in a reportage of current events that demonstrates a commitment to both justice and fearlessness. Narco News runs several websites that frequently crack cutting edge stories. It has an online TV program, and runs a school for what it calls “Authentic Journalism.” This year, the 2011 class of the School of Authentic Journalism is bringing together 21st century journalists from five continents, all of whom are redefining the meaning and practice of journalism.

Few organizations in the world today can claim that they are doing as much as Narco News, especially considering its limited resources, to turn the tide in the war of ideas. Not only are its journalists providing an example of journalism at its best, but they are training the next generation. Narco News provides scholarships for all its students and pays travels costs for most of them.

I have what I consider to be the great honor of being among the class of 2011 at the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism. A decade of work as a student, organizer, writer, artist, and aspiring revolutionary have led me to this point. On behalf of Narco News and on behalf of the pivotal role of journalism at the dawn of the 21st century, I’d like to ask you to make a donation to the Fund for Authentic Journalism. It helps Narco News to fight the corporate media establishment and to defy the structures and systems that be. It helps me and 40 other journalists from around the world attend the only school of authentic journalism in the world. It helps Narco News keep up its cutting edge coverage. And it does this every day, every year. But seriously, it cannot do all this without your help!

Please make a donation today, online, at this link:

http://www.authenticjournalism.org

Or you can make a check out to:

The Fund for Authentic Journalism
PO Box 1446
Easthampton, MA 01027 USA

Thanks for reading,

Falte lo que falte… convenceremos!

(“Whatever is missing… We will convince!”)

Thank you,
Quincy Saul

Lea Ud. el Artículo en Español

There’s a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says

Wired.com.

You may think you understand how the Patriot Act allows the government to spy on its citizens. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) says it’s worse than you’ve heard.

Congress is set to reauthorize three controversial provisions of the surveillance law as early as Thursday. But Wyden says that what Congress will renew is a mere fig leaf for a far broader legal interpretation of the Patriot Act that the government keeps to itself — entirely in secret. Worse, there are hints that the government uses this secret interpretation to gather what one Patriot-watcher calls a “dragnet” for massive amounts of information on private citizens; the government portrays its data-collection efforts much differently.

“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says,” Wyden tells Danger Room in an interview in his Senate office. “When you’ve got that kind of a gap, you’re going to have a problem on your hands.”

What exactly does Wyden mean by that? As a member of the intelligence committee, he laments that he can’t precisely explain without disclosing classified information. But one component of the Patriot Act in particular gives him immense pause: the so-called “business-records provision,” which empowers the FBI to get businesses, medical offices, banks and other organizations to turn over any “tangible things” it deems relevant to a security investigation.

“It is fair to say that the business-records provision is a part of the Patriot Act that I am extremely interested in reforming,” Wyden says. “I know a fair amount about how it’s interpreted, and I am going to keep pushing, as I have, to get more information about how the Patriot Act is being interpreted declassified. I think the public has a right to public debate about it.”

That’s why Wyden and his colleague Sen. Mark Udall offered an amendment on Tuesday to the Patriot Act reauthorization.

The amendment, first reported by Marcy Wheeler, blasts the administration for “secretly reinterpret[ing] public laws and statutes.” It would compel the Attorney General to “publicly disclose the United States Government’s official interpretation of the USA Patriot Act.” And, intriguingly, it refers to “intelligence-collection authorities” embedded in the Patriot Act that the administration briefed the Senate about in February.

Wyden says he “can’t answer” any specific questions about how the government thinks it can use the Patriot Act. That would risk revealing classified information — something Wyden considers an abuse of government secrecy. He believes the techniques themselves should stay secret, but the rationale for using their legal use under Patriot ought to be disclosed.

“I draw a sharp line between the secret interpretation of the law, which I believe is a growing problem, and protecting operations and methods in the intelligence area, which have to be protected,” he says.

Surveillance under the business-records provisions has recently spiked. The Justice Department’s official disclosure on its use of the Patriot Act, delivered to Congress in April, reported that the government asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for approval to collect business records 96 times in 2010 — up from just 21 requests the year before. The court didn’t reject a single request. But it “modified” those requests 43 times, indicating to some Patriot-watchers that a broadening of the provision is underway.

“The FISA Court is a pretty permissive body, so that suggests something novel or particularly aggressive, not just in volume, but in the nature of the request,” says Michelle Richardson, the ACLU’s resident Patriot Act lobbyist. “No one has tipped their hand on this in the slightest. But we’ve come to the conclusion that this is some kind of bulk collection. It wouldn’t be surprising to me if it’s some kind of internet or communication-records dragnet.” (Full disclosure: My fiancée works for the ACLU.)

The FBI deferred comment on any secret interpretation of the Patriot Act to the Justice Department. The Justice Department said it wouldn’t have any comment beyond a bit of March congressional testimony from its top national security official, Todd Hinnen, who presented the type of material collected as far more individualized and specific: “driver’s license records, hotel records, car-rental records, apartment-leasing records, credit card records, and the like.”

But that’s not what Udall sees. He warned in a Tuesday statement about the government’s “unfettered” access to bulk citizen data, like “a cellphone company’s phone records.” In a Senate floor speech on Tuesday, Udall urged Congress to restrict the Patriot Act’s business-records seizures to “terrorism investigations” — something the ostensible counterterrorism measure has never required in its nearly 10-year existence.

Indeed, Hinnen allowed himself an out in his March testimony, saying that the business-record provision “also” enabled “important and highly sensitive intelligence-collection operations” to take place. Wheeler speculates those operations include “using geolocation data from cellphones to collect information on the whereabouts of Americans” — something our sister blog Threat Level has reported on extensively.

It’s worth noting that Wyden is pushing a bill providing greater privacy protections for geolocation info.

For now, Wyden’s considering his options ahead of the Patriot Act vote on Thursday. He wants to compel as much disclosure as he can on the secret interpretation, arguing that a shadow broadening of the Patriot Act sets a dangerous precedent.

“I’m talking about instances where the government is relying on secret interpretations of what the law says without telling the public what those interpretations are,” Wyden says, “and the reliance on secret interpretations of the law is growing.”

related:  Protest Backroom Deal to Extend Un-Patriot Act til 2015