Observations on current events

Domestic Surveillance:

First of all, why are we reading about this in the UK press (Mail & Telegraph)?
Secondly, what private entities (e.g. security contractors) might be interested in deploying similar technology, or are already doing so as projects run by entities related to manufacturers, like General Atomics? A question like this could easily tie into the illegal phone hacking that Rupert Murdoch's newspapers have been accused of.

Daily Mail (UK) - Is there a drone in your neighbourhood? Rise of spy planes exposed after FAA is forced to reveal 63 launch sites across U.S.
"There are at least 63 active drone sites around the U.S, federal authorities have been forced to reveal following a landmark Freedom of Information lawsuit. The unmanned planes – some of which may have been designed to kill terror suspects – are being launched from locations in 20 states. Most of the active drones are deployed from military installations, enforcement agencies and border patrol teams, according to the Federal Aviation Authority. But, astonishingly, 19 universities and colleges are also registered as owners of what are officially known as unmanned aerial vehicles. It is thought that many of institutions, which include Cornell, the University of Colorado, Georgia Tech, and Eastern Gateway Community College, are developing drone technology. There are also 21 mainstream manufactures, such as General Atomics, who are registered to use drones domestically. As well as active locations, the FAA also revealed 16 sites where licences to use spy planes have expired and four where authorisations have been disapproved, such as Otter Tail County, Minnesota. The authority revealed the information after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Electronic Frontier Foundation. Its website hosts an interactive map that allows the user to zoom in to the area around where they live to see if any sites are nearby. However, the FAA is yet to reveal what kinds of drones might be based at any of these locations. The agency says it will release this data later. Most of the drones are likely to be small craft, such as the Draganflyer X8, which can carry a payload of only 2.2lb. Police, border patrols and environmental agencies, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), could use for them effectively..."

Environment:

Why aren't the Governors of the affected Gulf states publicly up in arms about this? Companies as negligent as those involved in the spill should have had to forfeit their corporate charters, but that's not the sort of justice this society finds appropriate anymore. The spill & the chemical response are an environmental crime on a massive scale.

Al Jazeera: Gulf seafood deformities alarm scientists
"New Orleans, LA - 'The fishermen have never seen anything like this,' Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera. 'And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I've never seen anything like this either.' Dr Cowan, with Louisiana State University's Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences started hearing about fish with sores and lesions from fishermen in November 2010. Cowan's findings replicate those of others living along vast areas of the Gulf Coast that have been impacted by BP's oil and dispersants. Gulf of Mexico fishermen, scientists and seafood processors have told Al Jazeera they are finding disturbing numbers of mutated shrimp, crab and fish that they believe are deformed by chemicals released during BP's 2010 oil disaster. Along with collapsing fisheries, signs of malignant impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: horribly mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp - and interviewees' fingers point towards BP's oil pollution disaster as being the cause... ...'The dispersants used in BP's draconian experiment contain solvents, such as petroleum distillates and 2-butoxyethanol. Solvents dissolve oil, grease, and rubber,' Dr Riki Ott, a toxicologist, marine biologist and Exxon Valdez survivor told Al Jazeera. 'It should be no surprise that solvents are also notoriously toxic to people, something the medical community has long known'. The dispersants are known to be mutagenic, a disturbing fact that could be evidenced in the seafood deformities. Shrimp, for example, have a life-cycle short enough that two to three generations have existed since BP's disaster began, giving the chemicals time to enter the genome. Pathways of exposure to the dispersants are inhalation, ingestion, skin, and eye contact. Health impacts can include headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pains, chest pains, respiratory system damage, skin sensitisation, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, cardiac arrhythmia and cardiovascular damage. They are also teratogenic - able to disturb the growth and development of an embryo or fetus - and carcinogenic..."

Politics:

Dean Baker: Obama and Romney Are Politicians, Not Visionaries
"There is a dangerously painful story line that is being propagated about a presidential race between President Obama and Mitt Romney. The line is that this will be contest over competing visions for the country. In this story the alternative visions are outlined in the competing budgets put forward by President Obama and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, which Governor Romney has embraced.
The story of competing visions is a cute fairy tale for people who don’t know anything about Washington and American politics. For adults who have not newly arrived from some foreign country, this line is just silly.
President Obama and Governor Romney are politicians, not philosophers. They have not made it to the top of the political ladder because of their grand visions of the future. They got their positions by appealing to powerful political actors who were able to give them the money and/or votes needed to get ahead...
...Obamacare will, according to figures compiled by Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP), leave at least 23 million people without insurance, a figure that translates into an estimated 23,000 unnecessary deaths a year among people who cannot afford care. Costs will continue to climb. There are no caps on premiums, including for people with 'pre-existing conditions.' The elderly can be charged three times the rates provided to the young. Companies with predominantly female workforces can be charged higher gender-based rates..."

...and pure political corruption:

Lee Fang: Congressmen Awarding Big Defense Contracts to Companies in Which They Own Stock
"...As the Center for Responsive Politics noted, the F-35 Caucus members collectively received over $325,400 in contributions from the companies that make the F-35, including Pratt & Whitney, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and BAE Systems.

Republic Report has reviewed the personal finance disclosures of F-35 caucus, and found that a number of the lawmakers are also personally invested in the companies that produce the F-35:

– F-35 Caucus Member Congressman Michael McCaul (R-TX) owns between $350,000 and $750,000 in stock in the parent company of Pratt & Whitney.

– F-35 Caucus Member Congressman Kenny Marchant (R-TX) over $11,000 in stock with Northrop Grumman, over $5,000 in stock with Lockheed Martin, and over $5,000 in stock with the parent company of Pratt & Whitney.

– F-35 Caucus Member Congressman Richard Hanna (R-NY) owns up to $50,000 in stock with Lockheed Martin, and up to $15,000 in stock with the parent company of Pratt & Whitney.

Congressman Norm Dicks (D-WA), whose campaign committee is a top recipient of F-35 contractor cash, is helping to lead the F-35 Caucus along with Congresswoman Kay Granger (R-TX).

In February, Congress refused to attach Senator Sherrod Brown’s (D-OH) strong reform amendment to the Stock Act that would have forced legislators to place their investments in a blind trust..."


Health Care:

Chris Hedges: The Real Health Care Debate
"...There is no substantial difference between Obamacare and Romneycare. There is no substantial difference between Obama and Romney. They are abject servants of the corporate state. And if you vote for one you vote for the other.
But you would never know this by listening to the Democratic Party and the advocacy groups that purport to support universal health care but seem more intent on re-electing Obama. It is the very sad legacy of the liberal class that it proves in election cycle after election cycle that it espouses moral and political positions it will not pay a price to defend. And since we have no fight in us, since we will not punish politicians like Obama who betray our core beliefs, the corporate juggernaut rolls forward with its inexorable pace to cement into place our global neofeudalism..."


Targeting Iran:

Democracy Now! - Training Terrorists in Nevada: Seymour Hersh On U.S. Aid to Iranian Group
"Journalist Seymour Hersh has revealed that the Bush administration secretly trained an Iranian opposition group on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorists. Hersh reports the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command trained operatives from Mujahideen-e-Khalq, or MEK, at a secret site in Nevada beginning in 2005. According to Hersh, MEK members were trained in intercepting communications, cryptography, weaponry and small unit tactics at the Nevada site up until President Obama took office. TheMEK has been listed as a foreign terrorist groups since 1997 and is linked to a number of attacks, spanning from the murders of six U.S. citizens in the 1970s to the recent wave of assassinations targeting Iranian nuclear scientists. Hersh also discusses the role of Israeli intelligence and notes the Obama administration knew about the training, 'because they have access to what was going on in the previous administration in this area, in terms of the MEK, in terms of operations inside Iran.' His new report for The New Yorker blog, 'Our Men in Iran?,' comes as nuclear talks are set to resume this week between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency..."


Domestic Surveillance:

Bill Quigley: Thirteen Ways Government Tracks Us


Technology:

SecurityWeek: SMS-controlled Malware Hijacking Android Phones
"Researchers at NQ Mobile, working alongside researchers at North Carolina State University, have discovered new Android malware that is controlled via SMS that can do a number of things on the compromised device including recording calls and surrounding noise.
Called TigerBot, the recently discovered malware was found circulating in the wild via non-official Android channels. Once again, this discovery is proving the sensibility of only installing official applications, and only those available from known, legitimate sources such as Google Play.
TigerBot will hide itself on a compromised device by forgoing an icon on the home screen, and by masking itself with a legit application name such as Flash or System. Once installed an active, it will register a receiver with a high priority to listen to the intent with action 'android.provider.Telephony.SMS_RECEIVED,'..."

Matt Stoller: Corruption Responsible for 80% of Your Cell Phone Bill
"...Take your phone bill, and cut it by 80%. That’s how much you should be paying. You see, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, people in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Finland pay on average less than $130 a year for cell phone service. Americans pay $635.85 a year. That $500 a year difference, from most consumers with a cell phone, goes straight to AT&T and Verizon (and to a much lesser extent Sprint and T-Mobile). It’s the cost of corruption. It’s also, from the perspective of these companies, the return on their campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures. Every penny they spend in DC and in state capitols ensures that you pay high bills, to them..."

Nuclear Safety:

Michael Blanding: Vermont vs Vermont Yankee
"...The fight over Vermont Yankee goes back to 2002, when Louisiana-based Entergy Corporation purchased it. In exchange for state approval of the sale, Entergy signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU), agreeing that in order to renew its license past March 21, 2012, it would require a certificate of public good from Vermont’s Public Service Board. And in 2006, when the plant increased its power output, it agreed that relicensing would require legislative approval as well.
Soon, however, a stunning parade of missteps raised deep suspicions about Entergy’s ability to safely operate the plant. First, in 2007, one of its cooling towers collapsed dramatically, spewing water into the river and causing a 50 percent loss of power; then, that same year, Entergy proposed a misguided plan to spin off Vermont Yankee and five other plants into a highly leveraged new company called Enexus, which was immediately decried by legislators. The nail in the coffin of public support was driven in January 2010, when Entergy announced it had discovered radioactive tritium leaking into the groundwater. Company officials first testified under oath that the plant didn’t have any underground pipes from which the waste could leak. Later, however, not only did the company admit that the pipes exist; an NRC whistleblower revealed that tritium had leaked from them in 2005. Subsequent tests showed that the level of tritium was below that considered harmful, but Entergy’s credibility was shattered. An incensed State Senate pulled the plug, denying approval for license renewal in February 2010. Entergy sued, saying the state didn’t have the authority to shut the plant down since it was refusing renewal on the grounds that the plant was unsafe. According to federal law, only the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has the power to close plants because of safety concerns..."

Big Pharma Avoids Regulation In S. America:

Kelly Hearn: The Rise of Unregulated Drug Trials in South America
"...Foreign clinical trials for US-bound drugs have been commonplace for decades, and ethical breaches are a frequent side effect. Last year, a professor at Wellesley College unearthed evidence of a particularly egregious case from the 1940s in which scientists working for the Public Health Service deliberately infected Guatemalan prisoners, mental patients and soldiers with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases in order to study the effects of penicillin. President Obama apologized to Guatemala’s government and called for an investigation into the incident as well as current standards of practice. When the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues submitted its report in September, commission chair Amy Gutmann said, 'We must look to and learn from the past so that we can assure the public that scientific and medical research today is conducted in an ethical manner.'
But is it? A generation ago, most human testing took place in American academic institutions. Now it’s a global game dominated by corporations, called contract research organizations (CROs), that help Big Pharma bring new molecules from the lab to your medicine cabinet. More and more drug companies are turning to CROs for assistance with trial design and recruitment, regulatory compliance, marketing and branding—last year the CRO market was worth $20 billion, an estimated 100 percent jump from a decade ago. And CROs, in turn, are increasingly running trials in the developing world because doing so is cheaper and faster: regulations aren’t as onerous, patient recruitment is easier and informed consent is less clearly defined..."


The Lies That Led A Nation To War:

The Independent (UK) - The Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all
"A man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq – starting a nine-year war costing more than 100,000 lives and hundreds of billions of pounds – will come clean in his first British television interview tomorrow.
'Curveball', the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi's lies used to justify the Iraq war..."


Surveillance Society:

The Independent (UK) - Data watchdog questions GCHQ monitoring plans
"The data protection watchdog will press for 'limitations and safeguards' to protect citizens' privacy from Government proposals to monitor all calls, emails, texts and website visits.
Information Commissioner Christopher Graham wants assurances about plans that will mean internet companies are instructed to install hardware tracking telephone and website traffic.
The legislation, expected in next month's Queen's Speech, will enable GCHQ to access information 'on demand' in 'real time' without a warrant.
A spokesman for the Information Commissioner's Office said: "The Information Commissioner's role in this Home Office project, both under this government and the last, has been to press for the necessary limitations and safeguards to mitigate the impact on citizens' privacy.
'We will continue to seek assurances, including the implementation of the results of a thorough Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA).
'Ultimately, the decision as to whether to proceed with the project is one which has to be taken by Parliament.'
Downing Street insisted only data - times, dates, numbers and addresses - not content would be accessible as it sought to quell fears about the proposals amid a fierce backlash from its own backbenchers as well as civil liberties groups..."

Afghanistan:

This sounds more and more like My Lai. One man faced charges in that incident, too.
Two victims shot in the leg before being killed? Looks plainly like revenge for a soldier who lost a leg in an attack nearby.


Our (Fleeting) Civil Rights:

Eric Lightblau: Police Are Using Phone Tracking as a Routine Tool
"Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show...."


Better Living Through Chemistry:

Mike Barrett: FDA Rejects Monumental BPA Ban
"It was reported not too long ago that the Food and Drug Administration would make a decision on the banning of the endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol-A (BPA). Now, the agency has finally come to a decision, and unsurprisingly, it has decided that there is not enough scientific evidence supporting for the ban of BPA – that is to say, BPA will not be banned from use in food products, plastic packaging, and personal care products.
On Friday the agency made the decision due to lack of scientific evidence to justify the new restrictions, despite tons of evidence showcasing BPAs dangers. The FDA’s problem? Much of the research was performed using mice, and so they claimed that the findings don’t relate to humans...
...But it seems that many other nations and companies seem to disagree with the FDA, in that they have already taken action in banning or removing the chemical from use. Canada banned BPA from baby bottles in 2007, while the European Union, Turkey, and other countries banned BPA from baby bottled in 2008. What’s more, various companies such as Toys 'R' Us and even Walmart claimed to have discontinued use of BPA in children’s items..."


Health Care:

Robert Scheer: Five Hypocrites and One Bad Plan
"The Supreme Court is so full of it. The entire institution, as well as its sanctimonious judges themselves, reeks of a time-honored hypocrisy steeped in the arrogance that justice is served by unaccountable elitism.
My problem is not with the Republicans who dominate the court questioning the obviously flawed individual mandate for the purchasing of private-sector health insurance but rather with their zeal to limit federal power only when it threatens to help the most vulnerable. The laughter noted in the court transcription that greeted the prospect of millions of the uninsured suddenly being deprived of already extended protection under the now threatened law was unconscionable. The Republican justices seem determined to strike down not only the mandate but also the entire package of accompanying health care rights because of the likelihood that, without an individual mandate, tax revenue will be needed to extend insurance coverage to those who cannot afford it..."


The Banksters:

David Korten: When Bankers Rule The World
"The tell-all defection of Greg Smith, a former Goldman Sachs executive, provided an insider’s view of the moral corruption of the Wall Street banks that control of much of America’s economy and politics. Smith confirms what insightful observers have known for years: the business purpose of Wall Street bankers is to maximize their personal financial take without regard to the consequences for others.
Why has the public for so long tolerated Wall Street’s reckless abuses of power and accepted the resulting devastation? The answer lies in a cultural trance induced by deceptive language and misleading indicators backed by flawed economic theory and accounting sleight-of-hand. To shatter the trance we need to recognize that the deception that Wall Street promotes through its well-funded PR machine rests on three false premises.

1. We best fulfill our individual moral obligation to society by maximizing our personal financial gain.
2. Money is wealth and making money increases the wealth of the society.
3. Making money is the proper purpose of the individual enterprise and is the proper measure of prosperity and economic performance.

Wall Street aggressively promotes these fallacies as guiding moral principles. Their embrace by Wall Street insiders helps to explain how they are able to reward themselves with obscene bonuses for their successful use of deception, fraud, speculation, and usury to steal wealth they have had no part in creating and yet still believe, as Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein famously proclaimed, that they are 'doing God’s work,'..."


The Oceans:

Ronnie Greene: Dumping Persists Despite DOJ Crackdown
"The Department of Justice prosecution is one piece of a larger federal crackdown targeting dumping on the high seas, a form of pollution that taints global waterways and is drawing increased scrutiny..."