Susan Gilmore | SeattleTimes.com

A Fort Lewis soldier has been charged with assault after he allegedly held his 4-year-old daughter mostly under water because she couldn’t recite the alphabet. Charging papers equated the technique to torture.

The incident came to light Jan. 31, when Joshua Tabor’s girlfriend called police and said he was walking around their Yelm neighborhood, wearing a Kevlar vest and threatening to break windows, according to Thurston County Superior Court charging documents.

When officers arrived, Tabor’s girlfriend told them that she and Tabor, 27, had just had an argument and that he beats his daughter, said Yelm police Chief Todd Stancil. Officers found the girl hiding in a locked bathroom and covered with extensive bruises all over her body, including her ears.

“Once she spoke to officers, she was articulate and told us right away, ‘Daddy did this,’ ” Stancil said.

The girl told officers that her father hits her, and she also said he would fill a sink, lay her on her back and put her head into the water until the water was up to her eyes, Stancil said.
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Jeff Fobes  | MountainX.com 

Word is spreading on Twitter and on small-farm listserves that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will drop its program to monitor the movement of all livestock, a plan that encountered widespread resistance from farmers, particularly those from small farms, who argued it would bankrupt them.

The New York Times wrote on Feb 5:

Faced with stiff resistance from ranchers and farmers, the Obama administration has decided to scrap a national program intended to help authorities quickly identify and track livestock in the event of an animal disease outbreak.

In abandoning the program, called the National Animal Identification System, officials said they would start over in trying to devise a livestock tracing program that could win widespread support from the industry.

The program had been pushed by large industrial farms. However the American Farm Bureau Federation is seeking to distance itself from the failed program. The Times reports: “It was just overwhelming in the country that people didn’t like it, and I think they took that feedback to heart,” said Mary Kay Thatcher, public policy director of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

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Peter Worthington | TorontoSun.com

Those who are concerned that once history is distorted, it often never gets corrected, can breathe easier after a startlingly accurate documentary was premiered this past Sunday at the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in Toronto.

Even so, The Soviet Story, made two years ago and shown mostly in the Baltic states and Europe, has resulted in angry protests in communist quarters. The documentary’s young writer and director, Edvin Snores, a Latvian, has been hanged in effigy and denounced as a liar by some in the European Parliament.

One Russian historian publicly regretted having taken part in the film — a film in which he did not take part. Such is the outrage.

The Economist urged “those who want to ban it should try refuting it first.”

I’ve seen the film (it premiered in the U.S. six months ago) and, put bluntly, it cannot be refuted. Rejected, maybe; offensive to some sensitivities, perhaps; horrifying, undoubtedly; painful, without doubt. But refuted? Impossible.

The core theme is the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin was mentor to Hitler and the Nazis. Until Hitler turned on his ally, Stalin and the USSR were Hitler’s partners in war, with a treaty to divide Europe once the pesky problem of defeating Britain had been solved.
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AP | WashingtonPost.com

– Here is a look at the 30 plaintiffs being considered for the first trials among the thousands who claim work at ground zero made them sick.

JOBS: 12 worked for the New York Police Department, eight for the Fire Department, three for Con Edison, two for the Port Authority police, one for the New York City Transit Authority, one for the Camden County Sheriff’s Department in New Jersey, one for the Cresskill Police Department in New Jersey and two in construction.

TIME AT GROUND ZERO: At least a dozen said they were there on 9/11. Others came later, spending between a day or two to many months at the site.

DEATHS: Firefighter Ray Hauber died of throat cancer in 2007 at age 47. Police Sgt. Michael O’Loughlin died of colon cancer in 2006 at 39. Con Ed worker Darren Mitchell, diagnosed with cancer, died in 2005 at 38.

BREATHING PROBLEMS: A majority complain of having symptoms similar to asthma, with recurrent wheezing, shortness of breath and sinus problems. Most didn’t report starting to feel sick until years after the attacks.

CANCER: Five say they got cancer from World Trade Center dust. Aside from Hauber, O’Loughlin and Mitchell, they include police officer Mindy Hersh, 49, diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005 and fellow NYPD officer Paul Gerasimczyk, age 50.

AGES: A majority are middle aged. Nearly half are over 50. Another third are in their 40s.

Kleinheinder | NashivillePost.com

The tea party movement is dead. The one I was familiar with anyway. Judson Phillips held it down and Sarah Palindrove a stake right through its heart live last night on C-Span in front of an unsuspecting audience.

Sarah Palin didn’t give a tea party speech last night. She gave a partisan Republican address. It was a purelypolitical speech designed to position her for a presidential run in 2012 or 2016. Period. She wasn’t there to celebrate the organic nature of a movement she had nothing to do with creating. She was there to co-opt the name and claim the brand as hers. And she did.

The movement, that came to be officially recognized almost a year ago but whose roots go back further than that, has been snuffed out and replaced in the public mind. The movement that began as a people’s movement of angry independent, libertarians and conservatives will now be thought as the movement of people like Palin, Dick Armey, Judson Phillips, Mark Skoda, etc. Essentially, a wholly owned subsidiary of the “Official Conservative Movement” and the Republican Party.

This new tea party bears no resemblance to the one that began a year ago as a reaction to the collapse of our financial system and the subsequent bailout. That movement of ragtag and unorganized libertarians, independents and conservatives was something new and unique. An authentic protest movement angered not just by the new President, Barack Obama, who had presided over the bailouts but the president who started the ball rolling and whose incompetence had led to the crisis in the first place, George W. Bush.

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International Advisory Board

Example of influence of just one member.

USA Branch members

Ellen Nakashima | WashingtonPost.com

The world’s largest Internet search company and the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.

Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google — and its users — from future attack.

Google and the NSA declined to comment on the partnership. But sources with knowledge of the arrangement, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the alliance is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information without violating Google’s policies or laws that protect the privacy of Americans’ online communications. The sources said the deal does not mean the NSA will be viewing users’ searches or e-mail accounts or that Google will be sharing proprietary data.

The partnership strikes at the core of one of the most sensitive issues for the government and private industry in the evolving world of cybersecurity: how to balance privacy and national security interests. On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair called the Google attacks, which the company acknowledged in January, a “wake-up call.” Cyberspace cannot be protected, he said, without a “collaborative effort that incorporates both the U.S. private sector and our international partners.”

But achieving collaboration is not easy, in part because private companies do not trust the government to keep their secrets and in part because of concerns that collaboration can lead to continuous government monitoring of private communications. Privacy advocates, concerned about a repeat of the NSA’s warrantless interception of Americans’ phone calls and e-mails after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, say information-sharing must be limited and closely overseen.
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Posted at InterestingPeople.net

Begin forwarded message:

From: Lauren Weinstein
Date: February 1, 2010 7:11:50 PM EST
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Microsoft’s Police State Vision? Exec Calls for Internet “Driver’s Licenses”

Microsoft’s Police State Vision?
Exec Calls for Internet “Driver’s Licenses”

http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000676.html

Greetings. About a week ago, in “Google and the Battle for the Soul
of the Internet” ( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000673.html )
I noted that:

Even here in the U.S., one of the most common Internet-related
questions that I receive is also one of the most deeply disturbing:
Why can’t the U.S. require an Internet “driver’s license” so that
there would be no way (ostensibly) to do anything anonymously on the
Net?

After I patiently explain why that would be a horrendous idea, based
on basic principles of free speech as applied to the reality of the
Internet — most people who approached me with the “driver’s license”
concept seem satisfied with my take on the topic, but the fact that
the question keeps coming up so frequently shows the depth of
misplaced fears driven, ironically, by disinformation and the lack of
accurate information.

So when someone who really should know better starts to push this sort
of incredibly dangerous concept, it’s time to bump up to orange alert
at a minimum, and the trigger is no less than Craig Mundie, chief
research and strategy officer for Microsoft.
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Paul Joseph Watson | InfoWars.com

The Obama administration has announced that a further $215 million dollars will be spent on installing virtual strip search naked body scanners, meaning the devices will be in no less than half the nation’s airports by next year, but the historical record clearly shows that the scanners are a completely illegal violation of human rights.

“The $215 million proposal to acquire 500 scanners next year, combined with the 450 to be bought this year, marks the largest addition of airport-security equipment since immediately after the 9/11 attacks. There are only 40 body scanners in a total of 19 airports now,” reports USA Today.

Privacy advocate Marc Rotenberg pointed out that the scanners were yet another expensive instrument of the war on terror being used against the American people.

“We’ll have another Homeland Security Department program for the war on terror used almost exclusively on Americans,” said Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

As we have highlighted, the naked scanners are a boon for the military-industrial complex and people like former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, who vigorously promoted their use in the aftermath of the staged underwear bombing, having a huge financial stake in seeing them rolled out nationwide.

Despite the seemingly breakneck speed at which airports are rushing to adopt the scanners, some are proving to be less enthusiastic.

Durham Tees Valley Airport in the UK has refused to commit to installing the scanners despite the British government ordering all airports to adopt them before the summer season.

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9/11, Deep Events, and the Curtailment of U.S. Freedoms

A talk delivered to the New England Antiwar Conference, MIT, January 30, 2010.

By Prof Peter Dale Scott

Global Research, January 31, 2010

Hello everyone! I’m honored to be invited to this important anti-war conference. As I am in the final stages of editing my next book, The Road to Afghanistan, I have been turning down invitations to speak. But I was eager to accept this one, and to join my friends and others in debunking the war on terror, the false justification for the Afghan-Pakistan war.

Let me make my own position clear at the outset. There are indeed people out there, including some Muslim extremists, who want to inflict terror on America. But it is crystal clear, as many people inside and outside government have agreed, that it makes this problem worse, not better, when Washington sends large numbers of U.S. troops to yet another country where they don ‘t belong.[1]

A war on terror is as inappropriate a cure as a U.S. war on drugs, which as we have seen in Colombia makes the drug problem worse, not better. The war on terror and the war on drugs have this in common: both are ideological attempts to justify the needless killings of thousands – including both American troops and foreign civilians — in another needless war.

Why does America find itself, time after time, invading countries in distant oil-bearing regions, countries which have not invaded us? This is a vital issue on which we should seek a clear message for the American people. Unfortunately it has been an issue on which there has been serious disagreement dividing the antiwar movement, just as it divided people, even friends, inside the anti-Vietnam War movement of the 1960s.

Perhaps many of you in this room know that there was disagreement between Noam Chomsky and myself in our analysis of how America entered the Vietnam War. This did not stop Noam and I from speaking out on the same platform against the war, or remaining friends, even after our public disagreements. There was too much on which we agreed.

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Dana Priest | WashingtonPost.com

U.S. military teams and intelligence agencies are deeply involved in secret joint operations with Yemeni troops who in the past six weeks have killed scores of people, among them six of 15 top leaders of a regional al-Qaeda affiliate, according to senior administration officials.

The operations, approved by President Obama and begun six weeks ago, involve several dozen troops from the U.S. military’s clandestine Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), whose main mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. The American advisers do not take part in raids in Yemen, but help plan missions, develop tactics and provide weapons and munitions. Highly sensitive intelligence is being shared with the Yemeni forces, including electronic and video surveillance, as well as three-dimensional terrain maps and detailed analysis of the al-Qaeda network.

As part of the operations, Obama approved a Dec. 24 strike against a compound where a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi, was thought to be meeting with other regional al-Qaeda leaders. Although he was not the focus of the strike and was not killed, he has since been added to a shortlist of U.S. citizens specifically targeted for killing or capture by the JSOC, military officials said. The officials, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the operations.
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TimesOnline.co.uk

Goldman Sachs, the world’s richest investment bank, is facing a potential political storm over how much it pays its chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein.

Bankers in Davos for the World Economic Forum (WEF) told The Times they understood that Mr Blankfein and other top Goldman bankers outside Britain were set to receive some of the bank’s biggest-ever payouts, in defiance of President Obama’s attempt to shame banks into cutting bonuses. “This is Lloyd thumbing his nose at Obama,” said a banker at one of Goldman’s rivals.

Mr Blankfein took home his biggest bonus so far in 2007, when he was paid $67.9 million. Goldman’s profits last year were $1.8 billion higher than in 2007. This leaves the bank with a justification to pay him even more although payouts will be made in shares rather than cash to make them more politically palatable. Some rival bankers claim Mr Blankfein could receive up to $100 million, though even a much lower figure could prove politically explosive.

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Katrin Benhold | NYTimes.com 

France wants to use its presidency of theGroup of 20 next year to create a new international monetary system, President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday, adding that he believed the dollar should no longer be the primary reserve currency in the global economy.

n an expansive and lofty speech to the business and political leaders gathered here at the annual World Economic Forum, Mr. Sarkozy also called for a “revolution” in international regulation that would make labor, health and environmental standards as enforceable as trade rules.

Like Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain, he backed a tax on financial market transactions. But Mr. Sarkozy, pursuing his call for a more moral form of financial capitalism, suggested the proceeds be used to combatclimate change and create a World Environment Organization as powerful as the World Trade Organization.

Mr. Sarkozy also took a hard line on bankers’ bonuses, saying that lavish rewards should be denied to those who destroy wealth and jobs.

But before an audience that contained many Americans and many Chinese, his comments on currencies may have had the greatest resonance.

“We need a new Bretton Woods,” Mr. Sarkozy told a packed auditorium. “We can’t have on the one hand a multipolar world and on the other a single reserve currency on a global level.”

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Heartland Institute

Environment & Climate News > February 2010

Environment > Climate: Consensus

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Written By: James M. Taylor

Published In: Environment & Climate News > February 2010

Publication date: 02/01/2010

Publisher: The Heartland Institute

Only one in four American Meteorological Society broadcast meteorologists agrees with United Nations’ claims that humans are primarily responsible for recent global warming, a survey published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society reports.

The survey results contradict the oft-repeated assertion that a consensus of scientists believes humans are causing a global warming crisis.

Objective Methods

The American Meteorological Society (AMS) survey was limited to television weather forecasters who are also meteorologists. A prior survey of all television weather forecasters–including ones without meteorological training–produced a heavy percentage of skeptics. The new survey was designed to determine whether the meteorologists held the same opinion as the broader group of all television weather forecasters.

The survey was conducted by the congressionally funded National Environmental Education Foundation and vetted by an advisory board of climate experts from groups such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Weather Service, and Pew Center for Global Climate Change.

Alarmist Claims Rejected

The AMS study found:

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