Monday, December 31, 2012
On Whose Side Does The FBI Come Down?
The Banks, of course...
Dave Lindorff: FBI Ignored Deadly Threat to Occupiers: US Intelligence Machine Instead Plotted with Bankers to Attack Protest Movement
"New documents obtained from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security by the Partnership for Civil Justice and released this past week show that the FBI and other intelligence and law enforcement agencies began a campaign of monitoring, spying and disrupting the Occupy Movement at least two months before the first occupation actions began in late September 2011. As early as August, while acknowledging that the incipient Occupy Movement was 'peaceful' in nature, federal, state and local officials from the FBI, the DHS and the many Fusion Centers and Joint Terrorism Task Force centers around the country were meeting with local financial institutions and their private security organizations to plot out a strategy for countering the Occupy Movement’s campaign. Interestingly, one document obtained by PCJ from the Houston FBI office refers to what appears to have been a plan by some group, the name of which is blacked out in the released document, to determine who the leaders were of the Occupy Movement in Houston, and then to assassinate them with 'suppressed' sniper rifles, meaning sniper rifles equipped with silencers..."
Budgetary Politics:
Democracy Now! - Dennis Kucinich on Fiscal Cliff: Why Are We Sacrificing American Jobs for Corporate Profits?
"REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, I’ve been in Washington waiting to see if Congress would be called back into session, as it should be. And there really is no reason, no legitimate reason, why the country should be facing serious tax increases for middle class and also spending cuts that will further slow down the economy. You know, Amy, all the — we’ve made all the wrong choices. We should be talking about jobs, having more people involved in paying taxes. We should be talking about rebuilding America’s infrastructure. China has gone ahead with high-speed trains and massive investment in their infrastructure. Instead, we’re back to the same old arguments about taxes and spending without really looking at what we’re spending. We just passed the National Defense Authorization Act the other day, another $560 billion just for one year for the war machine. And so, we’re focused on whether or not we’re going to cut domestic programs now? Are you kidding me?... ...So, you know, this is—we really have to decide who we are as a nation. We’re spending more and more money for wars. We’re spending more and more money for interventions abroad. We’re spending more and more money for military buildups. And we seem to be prepared to spend less and less on domestic programs and on job creation. This whole idea of a debt-based economic system is linked to a war machine. And it’s linked to Wall Street’s concerns rather than Main Street’s concerns. We need to shift that. We need to get government—give government back the ability to create jobs. Private sector is not doing it... ...But I just want to go back to something, Amy. We have to start creating jobs. This debt-based economic system, where we’re having the—the next discussion is, we’re at $16.4 trillion, and so are we going to go not only over the cliff, but are we going to go into default? Wrong discussion. Why aren’t we creating jobs using the government’s inherent power under Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution, so that we spend money to rebuild the infrastructure, put millions of people back to work. You create new taxpayers. You don’t have to worry so much then about unemployment benefits, which are due to expire, that we have to worry about if you’re not creating jobs. It’s the wrong discussion we’re having. And so, I think that as we look into the new year, we’ve got a couple things going here. There’s a decreasing confidence in government. This isn’t about Democrats or Republicans anymore. It’s about the failure of the government to respond to the practical aspirations of people for jobs, for housing, for healthcare, for retirement security, and for the education of their children. And we’re still there. Yet we still are pursuing wars abroad. We still are doing military buildups. And this is the direction America is going in, and it’s the wrong direction..."
The Banks, of course...
Dave Lindorff: FBI Ignored Deadly Threat to Occupiers: US Intelligence Machine Instead Plotted with Bankers to Attack Protest Movement
"New documents obtained from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security by the Partnership for Civil Justice and released this past week show that the FBI and other intelligence and law enforcement agencies began a campaign of monitoring, spying and disrupting the Occupy Movement at least two months before the first occupation actions began in late September 2011. As early as August, while acknowledging that the incipient Occupy Movement was 'peaceful' in nature, federal, state and local officials from the FBI, the DHS and the many Fusion Centers and Joint Terrorism Task Force centers around the country were meeting with local financial institutions and their private security organizations to plot out a strategy for countering the Occupy Movement’s campaign. Interestingly, one document obtained by PCJ from the Houston FBI office refers to what appears to have been a plan by some group, the name of which is blacked out in the released document, to determine who the leaders were of the Occupy Movement in Houston, and then to assassinate them with 'suppressed' sniper rifles, meaning sniper rifles equipped with silencers..."
Budgetary Politics:
Democracy Now! - Dennis Kucinich on Fiscal Cliff: Why Are We Sacrificing American Jobs for Corporate Profits?
"REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, I’ve been in Washington waiting to see if Congress would be called back into session, as it should be. And there really is no reason, no legitimate reason, why the country should be facing serious tax increases for middle class and also spending cuts that will further slow down the economy. You know, Amy, all the — we’ve made all the wrong choices. We should be talking about jobs, having more people involved in paying taxes. We should be talking about rebuilding America’s infrastructure. China has gone ahead with high-speed trains and massive investment in their infrastructure. Instead, we’re back to the same old arguments about taxes and spending without really looking at what we’re spending. We just passed the National Defense Authorization Act the other day, another $560 billion just for one year for the war machine. And so, we’re focused on whether or not we’re going to cut domestic programs now? Are you kidding me?... ...So, you know, this is—we really have to decide who we are as a nation. We’re spending more and more money for wars. We’re spending more and more money for interventions abroad. We’re spending more and more money for military buildups. And we seem to be prepared to spend less and less on domestic programs and on job creation. This whole idea of a debt-based economic system is linked to a war machine. And it’s linked to Wall Street’s concerns rather than Main Street’s concerns. We need to shift that. We need to get government—give government back the ability to create jobs. Private sector is not doing it... ...But I just want to go back to something, Amy. We have to start creating jobs. This debt-based economic system, where we’re having the—the next discussion is, we’re at $16.4 trillion, and so are we going to go not only over the cliff, but are we going to go into default? Wrong discussion. Why aren’t we creating jobs using the government’s inherent power under Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution, so that we spend money to rebuild the infrastructure, put millions of people back to work. You create new taxpayers. You don’t have to worry so much then about unemployment benefits, which are due to expire, that we have to worry about if you’re not creating jobs. It’s the wrong discussion we’re having. And so, I think that as we look into the new year, we’ve got a couple things going here. There’s a decreasing confidence in government. This isn’t about Democrats or Republicans anymore. It’s about the failure of the government to respond to the practical aspirations of people for jobs, for housing, for healthcare, for retirement security, and for the education of their children. And we’re still there. Yet we still are pursuing wars abroad. We still are doing military buildups. And this is the direction America is going in, and it’s the wrong direction..."
Saturday, December 22, 2012
A Culture Of Violence:
Lucinda Marshall: A Culture That Condones The Killing Of Children And Teaches Children To Kill
"The Sandy Hook massacre isn’t just about the need for gun control laws, it is about a culture that condones the killing of children and teaches children that killing is okay.
It is about a country addicted to violence on television and movie screens.
It is about cuts in education spending.
It is about giving the military free access to our schools where they regale our children with romanticized delusions of military righteousness.
It is about environmental and health policies that expose our children to all manner of toxins in the air, land and water.
It is about thinking we have the right to kill children with drones or by dropping toxic munitions on their countries that cause birth defects and miscarriages.
It is about saddling our children with crippling education debt and no prospect for jobs.
It is about telling boys (and men) they have to be tough and to fight and kill for what they want or think is right.
It is about a national policy that denies children basic rights and systemically teaches them that violence is okay.
And it is about a media so insensitive that it thinks it is okay to shove a microphone in the face of young victims in the name of sensationalized 24/7 cable 'news' while under-reporting the root causes of this tragedy.
Sandy Hook did not happen because of a lone, disturbed young man and it is not an isolated incident. It is an epidemic and we are all to blame. And today (and tomorrow and every day after that) is the time to confront this self-inflicted tragedy."
Energy vs The Environment:
And using science to try and lie about...
AP: Univ. of Texas probe: Fracking study didn't meet standards
"An independent review of a University of Texas study into hydraulic fracturing found the research did not meet standards for scientific work. The Energy Institute researched hydraulic fracturing and water contamination. The head of the study, Chip Groat, had not revealed he was on the board, and had received in 2011 $413,000 in cash and stock from Plains Exploration and Production Co. The original report, titled 'Fact-Based Regulation for Environmental Protection in the Shale Gas Development,' was released earlier this year and claimed that there was no link between fracking and water contamination. The review panel says in its report, released Friday, that Groat's failure to disclose this was a 'principal shortcoming' in the research because it could have put into question the study's credibility. It says the research fell short of contemporary standards for scientific work. Groat retired last month. The institute's director resigned Monday. The university says it accepts the review's recommendations, including strengthening its conflict of interest policies."
Mining For Information:
Darren Nix: You’re not anonymous. I know your name, email, and company
"Sumit Suman recently visited a site, did not sign up for anything, did not connect via social media, but got a personal email from the site the next day. Here’s how they did it. I’ve learned that there is a 'website intelligence' network that tracks form submissions across their customer network. So, if a visitors fills out a form on Site A with their name and email, Site B knows their name and email too as soon as they land on the site..."
Security Ledger: Security Hole in Samsung Smart TVs Could Allow Remote Spying
"The company that made headlines in October for publicizing zero day holes in SCADA products now says it has uncovered a remotely exploitable security hole in Samsung Smart TVs. If left unpatched, the vulnerability could allow hackers to make off with owners’ social media credentials and even to spy on those watching the TV using compatible video cameras and microphones..."
Domestic Surveillance:
WIRED: Attorney General Secretly Granted Gov. Ability to Develop and Store Dossiers on Innocent Americans
"In a secret government agreement granted without approval or debate from lawmakers, the U.S. attorney general recently gave the National Counterterrorism Center sweeping new powers to store dossiers on U.S. citizens, even if they are not suspected of a crime, according to a news report. Earlier this year, Attorney General Eric Holder granted the center the ability to copy entire government databases holding information on flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and other data, and to store it for up to five years, even without suspicion that someone in the database has committed a crime, according to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story. Whereas previously the law prohibited the center from storing data compilations on U.S. citizens unless they were suspected of terrorist activity or were relevant to an ongoing terrorism investigation, the new powers give the center the ability to not only collect and store vast databases of information but also to trawl through and analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior in order to uncover activity that could launch an investigation. The changes granted by Holder would also allow databases containing information about U.S. citizens to be shared with foreign governments for their own analysis. A former senior White House official told the Journal that the new changes were 'breathtaking in scope,'..."
Lucinda Marshall: A Culture That Condones The Killing Of Children And Teaches Children To Kill
"The Sandy Hook massacre isn’t just about the need for gun control laws, it is about a culture that condones the killing of children and teaches children that killing is okay.
It is about a country addicted to violence on television and movie screens.
It is about cuts in education spending.
It is about giving the military free access to our schools where they regale our children with romanticized delusions of military righteousness.
It is about environmental and health policies that expose our children to all manner of toxins in the air, land and water.
It is about thinking we have the right to kill children with drones or by dropping toxic munitions on their countries that cause birth defects and miscarriages.
It is about saddling our children with crippling education debt and no prospect for jobs.
It is about telling boys (and men) they have to be tough and to fight and kill for what they want or think is right.
It is about a national policy that denies children basic rights and systemically teaches them that violence is okay.
And it is about a media so insensitive that it thinks it is okay to shove a microphone in the face of young victims in the name of sensationalized 24/7 cable 'news' while under-reporting the root causes of this tragedy.
Sandy Hook did not happen because of a lone, disturbed young man and it is not an isolated incident. It is an epidemic and we are all to blame. And today (and tomorrow and every day after that) is the time to confront this self-inflicted tragedy."
Energy vs The Environment:
And using science to try and lie about...
AP: Univ. of Texas probe: Fracking study didn't meet standards
"An independent review of a University of Texas study into hydraulic fracturing found the research did not meet standards for scientific work. The Energy Institute researched hydraulic fracturing and water contamination. The head of the study, Chip Groat, had not revealed he was on the board, and had received in 2011 $413,000 in cash and stock from Plains Exploration and Production Co. The original report, titled 'Fact-Based Regulation for Environmental Protection in the Shale Gas Development,' was released earlier this year and claimed that there was no link between fracking and water contamination. The review panel says in its report, released Friday, that Groat's failure to disclose this was a 'principal shortcoming' in the research because it could have put into question the study's credibility. It says the research fell short of contemporary standards for scientific work. Groat retired last month. The institute's director resigned Monday. The university says it accepts the review's recommendations, including strengthening its conflict of interest policies."
Mining For Information:
Darren Nix: You’re not anonymous. I know your name, email, and company
"Sumit Suman recently visited a site, did not sign up for anything, did not connect via social media, but got a personal email from the site the next day. Here’s how they did it. I’ve learned that there is a 'website intelligence' network that tracks form submissions across their customer network. So, if a visitors fills out a form on Site A with their name and email, Site B knows their name and email too as soon as they land on the site..."
Security Ledger: Security Hole in Samsung Smart TVs Could Allow Remote Spying
"The company that made headlines in October for publicizing zero day holes in SCADA products now says it has uncovered a remotely exploitable security hole in Samsung Smart TVs. If left unpatched, the vulnerability could allow hackers to make off with owners’ social media credentials and even to spy on those watching the TV using compatible video cameras and microphones..."
Domestic Surveillance:
WIRED: Attorney General Secretly Granted Gov. Ability to Develop and Store Dossiers on Innocent Americans
"In a secret government agreement granted without approval or debate from lawmakers, the U.S. attorney general recently gave the National Counterterrorism Center sweeping new powers to store dossiers on U.S. citizens, even if they are not suspected of a crime, according to a news report. Earlier this year, Attorney General Eric Holder granted the center the ability to copy entire government databases holding information on flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and other data, and to store it for up to five years, even without suspicion that someone in the database has committed a crime, according to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story. Whereas previously the law prohibited the center from storing data compilations on U.S. citizens unless they were suspected of terrorist activity or were relevant to an ongoing terrorism investigation, the new powers give the center the ability to not only collect and store vast databases of information but also to trawl through and analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior in order to uncover activity that could launch an investigation. The changes granted by Holder would also allow databases containing information about U.S. citizens to be shared with foreign governments for their own analysis. A former senior White House official told the Journal that the new changes were 'breathtaking in scope,'..."
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Energy vs The Environment:
Steve Horn: ALEC, CSG, ExxonMobil Fracking Fluid ‘Disclosure’ Model Bill Failing By Design
"Last year, a hydraulic fracturing ('fracking') chemical fluid disclosure 'model bill' was passed by both the Council of State Governments (CSG) and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). It proceeded to pass in multiple states across the country soon thereafter, but asBloomberg recently reported, the bill has been an abject failure with regards to 'disclosure.' That was by design, thanks to the bill's chief author, ExxonMobil. Originating as a Texas bill with disclosure standards drawn up under the auspices of the Obama Administration's Department of Energy Fracking Subcommittee rife with oil and gas industry insiders, the model is now codified as law in Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. Bloomberg reported that the public is being kept 'clueless' as to what chemicals are injected into the ground during the fracking process by the oil and gas industry... ...Another way of putting it is 'public relations ploy.' As Dory Hippauf of ShaleShock Media recently revealed in an article titled 'FracUNfocusED,' FracFocus is actually a PR front for the oil and gas industry. Hippauf revealed that FracFocus' domain is registered by Brothers & Company, a public relations firm whose clients include America’s Natural Gas Alliance, Chesapeake Energy, and American Clean Skies Foundation - a front group for Chesapeake Energy. Given the situation, it's not surprising then that 'companies claimed trade secrets or otherwise failed to identify the chemicals they used about 22 percent of the time,' according to Bloomberg's analysis of FracFocus data for 18 states. Put another way, the ExxonMobil's bill has done exactly what it set out to do: business as usual for the oil and gas industry."
Media Behaving Contrary To The Public Interest:
Eric Alterman: Let's Just Say It: The Republicans AND the Media Are the Problem
"Many mysteries plague us regarding the press coverage of the Obama era, but one strikes me as central to our political predicament. Why, after everyone else has given it up, do members of the mainstream media persist in helping to hide—and therefore empower—the radicalization of the Republican Party? The GOP strategy was clear from the start. Republicans, circa 2009, were no longer interested in bipartisan solutions to America’s problems. As then–Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told National Journal, 'The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.' Senator Jim DeMint famously promised healthcare reform could be used to 'break' Obama from day one. And that was before the Tea Party even existed. Part of the problem, for far too long, was that President Obama collaborated in the charade. He was so invested in the notion that both sides could just get along and legislate together that he couldn’t part with the illusion he had helped to create. His communitarian rhetoric, together with his compromise-in-advance legislative strategy, was always oriented toward inclusiveness, consensus-building and, ultimately, political passivity. As a result, Obama allowed the Republicans to stymie his ability to act on behalf of most of his agenda, beginning with the underfunded stimulus and carrying through with virtually every single initiative he undertook throughout the first two years of his term... ...No wonder the public remains so confused and misinformed about the realities of American politics, as bigfoot pundits—committed to the mindlessness of what I call 'on-the-one-handism'—not only whitewash Republican extremism, but paint Obama’s soggy centrism in false hues as its ideological equivalent. This exercise demands that these same pundits ignore the president’s actual words, and it is a task they meet with relish. The New York Times’s Thomas Friedman suffers from the worse case of this malady, but as Talking Points Memo’s Benjy Sarlin notes in a post called 'Pundits Urge President Obama to Back President Obama’s Proposals,' it’s become an epidemic. It not only appears in nearly every other Friedman column (Obama needs to 'go big' by pushing to raise taxes on the rich and endorsing a balanced long-term debt reduction plan, which, um, he’s done), but also those of David Brooks (Obamacare ought to limit the tax exclusion for employer-provided healthcare plans and offer subsidies for individuals to buy into regulated health insurance markets, which, um, it does). Columns by Jonathan Rauch evince the same problem (Obama should adopt a plan of short-term stimulus, long-term debt reduction and an extension on the debt limit, which, um, he has), as do those of Michael Gerson (Obama should stop denying the economic crisis and propose a plan to address it, but not a plan that raises the deficit, which, come to think of it, he has)."
Steve Horn: ALEC, CSG, ExxonMobil Fracking Fluid ‘Disclosure’ Model Bill Failing By Design
"Last year, a hydraulic fracturing ('fracking') chemical fluid disclosure 'model bill' was passed by both the Council of State Governments (CSG) and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). It proceeded to pass in multiple states across the country soon thereafter, but asBloomberg recently reported, the bill has been an abject failure with regards to 'disclosure.' That was by design, thanks to the bill's chief author, ExxonMobil. Originating as a Texas bill with disclosure standards drawn up under the auspices of the Obama Administration's Department of Energy Fracking Subcommittee rife with oil and gas industry insiders, the model is now codified as law in Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. Bloomberg reported that the public is being kept 'clueless' as to what chemicals are injected into the ground during the fracking process by the oil and gas industry... ...Another way of putting it is 'public relations ploy.' As Dory Hippauf of ShaleShock Media recently revealed in an article titled 'FracUNfocusED,' FracFocus is actually a PR front for the oil and gas industry. Hippauf revealed that FracFocus' domain is registered by Brothers & Company, a public relations firm whose clients include America’s Natural Gas Alliance, Chesapeake Energy, and American Clean Skies Foundation - a front group for Chesapeake Energy. Given the situation, it's not surprising then that 'companies claimed trade secrets or otherwise failed to identify the chemicals they used about 22 percent of the time,' according to Bloomberg's analysis of FracFocus data for 18 states. Put another way, the ExxonMobil's bill has done exactly what it set out to do: business as usual for the oil and gas industry."
Media Behaving Contrary To The Public Interest:
Eric Alterman: Let's Just Say It: The Republicans AND the Media Are the Problem
"Many mysteries plague us regarding the press coverage of the Obama era, but one strikes me as central to our political predicament. Why, after everyone else has given it up, do members of the mainstream media persist in helping to hide—and therefore empower—the radicalization of the Republican Party? The GOP strategy was clear from the start. Republicans, circa 2009, were no longer interested in bipartisan solutions to America’s problems. As then–Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told National Journal, 'The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.' Senator Jim DeMint famously promised healthcare reform could be used to 'break' Obama from day one. And that was before the Tea Party even existed. Part of the problem, for far too long, was that President Obama collaborated in the charade. He was so invested in the notion that both sides could just get along and legislate together that he couldn’t part with the illusion he had helped to create. His communitarian rhetoric, together with his compromise-in-advance legislative strategy, was always oriented toward inclusiveness, consensus-building and, ultimately, political passivity. As a result, Obama allowed the Republicans to stymie his ability to act on behalf of most of his agenda, beginning with the underfunded stimulus and carrying through with virtually every single initiative he undertook throughout the first two years of his term... ...No wonder the public remains so confused and misinformed about the realities of American politics, as bigfoot pundits—committed to the mindlessness of what I call 'on-the-one-handism'—not only whitewash Republican extremism, but paint Obama’s soggy centrism in false hues as its ideological equivalent. This exercise demands that these same pundits ignore the president’s actual words, and it is a task they meet with relish. The New York Times’s Thomas Friedman suffers from the worse case of this malady, but as Talking Points Memo’s Benjy Sarlin notes in a post called 'Pundits Urge President Obama to Back President Obama’s Proposals,' it’s become an epidemic. It not only appears in nearly every other Friedman column (Obama needs to 'go big' by pushing to raise taxes on the rich and endorsing a balanced long-term debt reduction plan, which, um, he’s done), but also those of David Brooks (Obamacare ought to limit the tax exclusion for employer-provided healthcare plans and offer subsidies for individuals to buy into regulated health insurance markets, which, um, it does). Columns by Jonathan Rauch evince the same problem (Obama should adopt a plan of short-term stimulus, long-term debt reduction and an extension on the debt limit, which, um, he has), as do those of Michael Gerson (Obama should stop denying the economic crisis and propose a plan to address it, but not a plan that raises the deficit, which, come to think of it, he has)."
Sunday, December 02, 2012
Taxes & Benefits:
Sen. Bernie Sanders: What ‘Grand Bargainers’ Simpson and Bowles Really Stand for
"There has been a lot of discussion about Congress enacting a 'grand bargain' during the lame duck session of Congress. Many members of Congress have talked about using the plan put forward by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles as an outline for a 'balanced' approach to deficit reduction. Let me take this opportunity to tell you a little about Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles and what their plan would do. As many of you know, Alan Simpson is a former conservative Republican Senator from Wyoming who has wanted to cut Social Security benefits for decades..."
Sen. Bernie Sanders: What ‘Grand Bargainers’ Simpson and Bowles Really Stand for
"There has been a lot of discussion about Congress enacting a 'grand bargain' during the lame duck session of Congress. Many members of Congress have talked about using the plan put forward by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles as an outline for a 'balanced' approach to deficit reduction. Let me take this opportunity to tell you a little about Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles and what their plan would do. As many of you know, Alan Simpson is a former conservative Republican Senator from Wyoming who has wanted to cut Social Security benefits for decades..."
