Show Notes 7/15

RWS                        -  7pm - 7:10pm

Gayle Faath           -  7:11pm - 7:39pm

Communications Director for Stand Up Florida

Toni Rosenburg [FPL] 

National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare

Hollie Albert [UNDERTAKER W/OCCUPY]

Ed Wujciak - War vs Human Needs    -  7:40pm - 7:50PM

Lee Camp Progressive Comedian    - 7:51pm - 7:57PM

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EVENTS AHEAD... JUST OVER THE HORIZON

Aug 4th Hands Across the Sand

Aug 18th Women's March on DC

August 24^th at 10:00am - Women’s Equality Day Event is going to be at FAU  

 Any activist organization interested in participating can contact me at President@pbcnow.org.  

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1. FUKUSHIMA

The direct causes of the accident were all foreseeable prior to March 11, 2011. But the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was incapable of withstanding the earthquake and tsunami that hit on that day. The operator (TEPCO), the regulatory bodies (NISA and NSC) and the government body promoting the nuclear power industry (METI), all failed to correctly develop the most basic safety requirements—such as assessing the probability of damage, preparing for containing collateral damage from such a disaster, and developing evacuation plans for the public in the case of a serious radiation release.

TEPCO and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) were aware of the need for structural reinforcement in order to conform to new guidelines, but rather than demanding their implementation, NISA stated that action should be taken autonomously by the operator. The Commission has discovered that no part of the required reinforcements had been implemented on Units 1 through 3 by the time of the accident. This was the result of tacit consent by NISA for a significant delay by the operators in completing the reinforcement. In addition, although NISA and the operators were aware of the risk of core damage from tsunami, no regulations were created, nor did TEPCO take any protective steps against such an occurrence.

Since 2006, the regulators and TEPCO were aware of the risk that a total outage of electricity at the Fukushima Daiichi plant might occur if a tsunami were to reach the level of the site. They were also aware of the risk of reactor core damage from the loss of seawater pumps in the case of a tsunami larger than assumed in the Japan Society of Civil Engineers estimation. NISA knew that TEPCO had not prepared any measures to lessen or eliminate the risk, but failed to provide specific instructions to remedy the situation.

We found evidence that the regulatory agencies would explicitly ask about the operators’ intentions whenever a new regulation was to be implemented. For example, NSC informed the operators that they did not need to consider a possible station blackout (SBO) because the probability was small and other measures were in place. It then asked the operators to write a report that would give the appropriate rationale for why this consideration was unnecessary. It then asked the operators to write a report that would give the appropriate rationale for why this consideration was unnecessary.

The regulators also had a negative attitude toward the importation of new advances in knowledge and technology from overseas. If NISA had passed on to TEPCO measures that were included in the B.5.b subsection of the U.S. security order that followed the 9/11 terrorist action, and if TEPCO had put the measures in place, the accident may have been preventable.

2. Jolting the Democratic Party from Its Stupor

by Ralph Nader

It is also remarkable how the Democrats keep letting the Senate Republican leader Senator Mitch McConnell intone, day after day, the “American people” want, do not want, demand, oppose this and that, to camouflage his plutocratic programs.

In December 2010, with 99 senators agreeing to unanimous consent to pass the auto safety legislation, the Democrats let one Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) sink it. President Obama, ready to sign this life-saving bill, declined to use his powers of persuasion on Coburn, his avowed close friend in the Senate.

It is the Democrats’ defeatism that is the most self-corrosive. Veteran Democratic legislators openly tell those who ask that they don’t think the party will regain control of the House in the November election though, they add, the Republicans have a terrible anti-people record.

Politics are about credibly answering the question “whose side are you on and whose side is your opponent on?” That means drawing a bright line between the two parties. Unfortunately, on military and foreign policy there isn’t much of a difference. So the bright line will have to be on domestic issues.

Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. and two dozen progressive co-sponsors are behind a bill called “Catching Up To 1968 Act of 2012” (H.R. 5901). This would raise the federal minimum wage, depleted by inflation over the years, from $7.25 to $10.00, thereby helping thirty million workers and boosting the recessionary economy. Neither the Democratic leadership nor President Obama have come out in support of such popular (70 percent in the polls) legislation that historically has been identified with the Democratic Party since the first minimum wage law in 1938.

Senior staffers in the House complain on behalf of their bosses that the President does not communicate with them. “Boehner will give us nothing,” was one staffer’s inadvertent summing up of the party’s defeatism. Imagine Gingrich talking in that supplicant manner when he was in the House minority. He toppled House Speaker Tom Foley (D-Wash.) and took control of the House of Representatives in 1994.

Perhaps one story is most telling: President Obama has been more reticent in his nomination of federal judges than his predecessors. In meetings between outside support groups and White House-Justice Department staff, the nominees hailing from the ranks of labor and public interest lawyers, as well as law professors, are received coolly. The Obama staff want what they call “stealth candidates,” – that is corporate lawyers with some enlightened pro bono tendencies. Why directly take on the Republicans for the future of the federal judiciary when you can settle for the corporate status quo?

Who’s fooling whom? The coming days await a new and open jolting push by prominent outside Democrats who fervently want to wrench their party back from the abyss, from its own self-imposed sense of dread before a devastating, self-inflicted November defeat.

3. Housing Groups Point to Justice Department as Stonewalling Investigations into Banks

A coalition of housing advocates that supported the state/federal investigation into securitization abuses that accompanied the foreclosure fraud settlement has turned against it sharply, charging the Justice Department with stonewalling the investigation and denying it critical resources that could move prosecutions against leading banks for their role in the housing crash and subsequent economic crisis.

The coalition, including Campaign for a Fair Settlement, the New Bottom Line, and members of the Campaign for America’s Future, have been frustrated with the agonizingly slow pace of the investigations into the Residential Mortgage Backed Securities (RMBS) working group for some time. But the focus on DoJ, and Eric Holder in particular, is new, and frankly a bit implausible.

It was fairly clear to some of us when the RMBS working group was announced inside a revived financial fraud enforcement task force that it would be a repository for existing investigations that could be re-branded as “going after the banks” in an election year. Indeed, masaccio has found the task force taking credit for investigations having nothing to do with securitization abuses. So the slow-walking of investigations should really come as no surprise: “task force” is what people in Washington create when they don’t want to do anything about a particular issue. Delaying the investigations also serves the purpose of allowing statutes of limitations to run out on various financial frauds.

But the CFS/New Bottom Line argument, made on a conference call today, is that the investigation is nearing a critical point, and the Justice Department specifically is blocking progress by denying resources. Most of the arguments come from this report from Richard Eskow of CAF, citing anonymous sources:

Confidential sources say that the President’s much-touted Mortgage Fraud Task Force is being starved for vital resources by the Holder Justice Department. Political insiders are fearful that this obstruction will threaten Democrats’ chances at the polls. Investigators and prosecutors from other agencies are expressing their frustration as the ever-rowing list of documented crimes by individual Wall Street bankers continues to be ignored [...]

A growing number of people are privately expressing concern at the Justice Department’s long-standing pattern of inactivity, obfuscation, and obstruction. Mr. Holder’s past as a highly-paid lawyer for a top Wall Street firm, Covington and Burling, is being discussed more openly among insiders. Covington & Burling was the law firm which devised the MERS shell corporation which has since been implicated in many cases of mortgage and foreclosure fraud.

Nobody we talked to wanted to publicly demean a public official’s reputation. Few of the people who are criticizing Holder privately want to fuel the right-wing witch hunt against him, which recently led to in the Republican House’s shamefully politicized contempt citation. But more of them expressed concerns about Holder, and expressed them strongly, than we expected [...]

One source familiar with the task force said that other Federal agencies were actively participating in the process, but that the Justice Department was preventing the group from getting even the relatively meager resources promised to it by the Justice Department.

While nobody provided precise numbers, several sources said the Task Force could show concrete results with twenty or thirty more staff members.Yet Holder’s Justice Department won’t make them available, said one source. By contrast, Republican officials allocated more than one thousand people to investigate the savings and loan scandal.

The objections are annoyingly vague, but I recognize in dealing with these matters that nobody wants to go on the record or get into much detail. This shift toward Holder, however, deserves scrutiny. There have been plenty of documented stories of reluctance toward investigation from Treasury and the SEC and HUD. This centers all the attention on DoJ, however. It’s not entirely credible that Holder is operating independently to slow-walk an investigation that has been slow-walked by virtually every official in the Obama Administration at one point or another. It feels as if Holder has become the “rotating villain” in this scheme, someone to deflect attention away from the whole policy framework to let the banks off for their crimes. Ultimately, the buck has to stop at the very top, with the President.

When pressed on this by me, everyone on the call insisted this was not the case. Brian Kettenring of CFS pointed to several protests his organization put on at Obama campaign fundraising events, and said that they would not ignore holding the President accountable. Tracy Van Slyke of NBL concurred. Richard Eskow insisted that his confidential sources all pointed to DoJ and DoJ alone as stopping progress on the working group. All involved said they would continue challenging the Administration as well as federal agencies to show proof that the investigation constitutes more than lip service. In particular, the New Bottom Line has tried to organize the 16 million underwater homeowners, many in swing states, as a constituency, to give the campaign an electoral bite.

It’s true that the resource allocation is pretty pitiful. Kettenring made the point that DoJ devoted 93 investigators to the failed Roger Clemens investigation for lying to Congress about taking steroids, but promised about the same amount to prove the biggest consumer financial fraud in American history. And according to Eskow, they aren’t even providing those meager resources, when they can be put to use.

But there’s a sense here where the train has already left the station. The working group was announced on January 27 and it took four months to name an executive director. The signs that nobody associated with this task force wants to really do the work are pretty obvious. And if we’re still talking about resource allocation this deep into the process, you have to suspect that the entire enterprise was a chimera from the start.

And ultimately, Eric Holder is not the sole actor responsible for that. In fact, by putting himself in a position to be denied resources, the leading individual in this mess outside of Washington, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, deserves plenty of scrutiny. Kettenring said that he didn’t want to do any “post-game analysis” as he believed there was still a window to be effective and force the investigation forward. But he added that “everyone associated with this should know that their reputation is on the line.”

4. iraqi constitution articles 30-34

Article 30:

First: The state guarantee to the individual and the family -- especially children and women -- social and health security and the basic requirements for leading a free and dignified life. The state also ensures the above a suitable income and appropriate housing.

Second: The State guarantees the social and health security to Iraqis in cases of old age, sickness, employment disability, homelessness, orphanage or unemployment, and shall work to protect them from ignorance, fear and poverty. The State shall provide them housing and special programs of care and rehabilitation. This will be organized by law.

Article 31:

First: Every citizen has the right to health care. The state takes care of public health and provide the means of prevention and treatment by building different types of hospitals and medical institutions.

Second: Individuals and institutions may build hospitals or clinics or places for treatment with the supervision of the state and this shall be regulated by law.

Article 32:

The State cares for the handicapped and those with special needs and ensure their rehabilitation in order to reintegrate them into society. This shall be regulated by law.

Article 33:

First: Every individual has the right to live in a safe environment.

Second: The State undertakes the protection and preservation of the environment and biological diversity.

Article 34:

First: Education is a fundamental factor in the progress of society and is a right guaranteed by the state. Primary education is mandatory and the state guarantees to eradicate illiteracy.

Second: Free education is a right for all Iraqis in all its stages.

Third: The State encourages scientific research for peaceful purposes that serve man and supports excellence, creativity, invention and the different aspects of ingenuity.

Fourth: Private and public education is guaranteed. This shall be regulated by law.

5. Laser Scanners at a Molecular Level

New Homeland Security Laser Scanner Reads People At Molecular Level

WASHINGTON (CBSDC) – The Department of Homeland Security will soon be using a laser at airports that can detect everything about you from over 160-feet away.

Gizmodo reports a scanner that could read people at the molecular level has been invented. This laser-based scanner – which can be used 164-feet away — could read everything from a person’s adrenaline levels, to traces of gun powder on a person’s clothes, to illegal substances — and it can all be done without a physical search. It also could be used on multiple people at a time, eliminating random searches at airports.

The laser-based scanner is expected to be used in airports as soon as 2013, Gizmodo reports.

The scanner is called the Picosecond Programmable Laser. The device works by blasting its target with lasers which vibrate molecules that are then read by the machine that determine what substances a person has been exposed to. This could be Semtex explosives to the bacon and egg sandwich they had for breakfast that morning.

The inventor of this invasive technology is Genia Photonics. Active since 2009, they hold 30 patents on laser technology designed for scanning. In 2011, they formed a partnership with In-Q-Tel, a company chartered by the CIA and Congress to build “a bridge between the Agency and a new set of technology innovators.”

Genia Photonics wouldn’t be the only ones with similar technology as George Washington University developed something similar in 2008, according to Gizmodo. The Russians also developed something akin to the Picosecond Programmable laser. The creators of that scanner claim that “it is even able to detect traces of explosives left by fingerprints.”

But what makes Genia Photonics’ version so special is that the machine is more compact compared to the other devices and can still maintain its incredible range.

Although the technology could be used by “Big Brother,” Genia Photonics states that the device could be far more beneficial being used for medical purposes to check for cancer in real time, lipids detection, and patient monitoring.

6. Drilling Strategies, Sensible and Fantastical

The Republicans and Mitt Romney have relentlessly accused President Obama of not moving swiftly enough to tap the nations’ considerable offshore reserves of oil and natural gas.

It is a tired complaint. Except for a necessary drilling ban in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil spill in 2010, Mr. Obama has always embraced offshore oil and gas exploration as an important component of a rounded energy strategy. What he has not embraced is the drill-now-drill-everywhere approach of President George W. Bush, now embodied in a House bill that would open the entire continental shelf and all of Alaska’s waters to drilling.

The Obama administration’s latest drilling plan, which covers the years 2012 to 2017, would allow 12 large lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and three smaller, carefully selected lease sales in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas and the Cook Inlet in Alaska. There would be preliminary seismic testing, but no leasing, in the Atlantic. The approach is broadly similar to the leasing program announced in March 2010 and put on hold after the BP spill.

The Republicans, however, are in a lather. Representative Doc Hastings, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, called the Obama plan “a giant step backward for American offshore energy production.” Mr. Hastings has unveiled a bill that would allow drilling rigs on the coasts of Maine, California, Oregon and Washington, and in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, a rich commercial fishery that even President George H. W. Bush chose to protect.

7. INSURANCE COMPANIES should be allowed to discriminate 

Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) said that insurance companies should be allowed to discriminate against people with brain tumors during a House Rules Committee debate of the GOP’s bill repealing the Affordable Care Act. The law, which Republicans will vote to eliminate on Wednesday, includes a provision prohibiting insurance companies from turning away sick people.

DREIER: And I believe my state of California has a structure in place to deal with pre-existing conditions. It’s a pooling process, which I think is one worthy of consideration, because while I don’t that think someone who is diagnosed with a massive tumor should the next day be able to have millions and millions and millions of dollars in health care provided, I do believe that there can be a structure to deal with the issue of pre-existing conditions.

8. Civic Liberties - lost in partisan unanimity

“Republicans already succeeded in backing him into a corner where he was unwilling to veto legislation that granted the military the power to indefinitely detain US citizens suspected of terrorism without charge.”

Ah, it was those dastardly Republicans that forced the President to do all this. As usual, Democrats would *prefer* to do the right thing, but their hands are tied. They’re just too weak, you see, to stand up for the Constitution and their own beliefs, and so we need to put more of them in office. Or something.

In reality, of course, it was President Obama himself — not the Republicans — who had indefinite detention inserted in the NDAA. It’s Obama himself (along with Axelrod) who oversees the Kill List. And so on.

http://rt.com/usa/news/obama-detention-ndaa-aclu-303/

9. Blowback we don't believe in no Stinking Blowback [history & karma] 

Based on incident inside the US, there are no terrorists in North America (outside the one who work for the Government).

When the IRA were busy in the UK (funded by citizens of the US) there were three to five incidents on the streets every week.

OTOH Arbusto@1 has a very good point that is completely unaddressed by our dear beloved leader in DC. All we are doing is multiplying enemies. We know how well that works, look at Israel.

Based on the US’ logic the UK should have come over to the US and leveled Boston, and invaded NY, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, for the third or fourth time.

10. Kill or Capture, Torture & Detain Indefinitely: Partisan Disagreement on the ‘War on Terrorism’

By: Kevin Gosztola Monday July 9, 2012 5:33 pm

The presidency of Barack Obama has entrenched many of the counterterrorism policies of President George W. Bush in the national security state and helped to further cement bipartisan consensus on these policies. However, there is one vile aspect about which conservatives and center-left individuals disagree, and that is on whether to outright kill terror suspects or not. But it’s not about the absence of due process. Republicans or conservatives contend intelligence is being lost and it would be better to capture, torture and hold terror suspects indefinitely.

This disagreement was highlighted on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC this morning, when Tom Junod appeared on the program to talk about his latest article for Esquire magazine, “The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama.” Appearing on the show to discuss Obama’s escalated use of drone executions or lethal force against “terrorists” with him were centrist Democratic hack Harold Ford Jr. and neoconservative pundit Dan Senor.

PNN - 7/8 Show Stories

 
1.  Nelson's Non-Response
2.  Dennis K on MSM and the Drone Program
3.  WHO's being spied on????    ah, they just can't say
4.  Whistleblowers Strikeback
5.  Hands Across the Sand Aug. 4th
6. Glen Greenwald - channels Sen. Frank Church
7. Nuns on the Bus - tour comments
8. NYC Police Reformers, harassed
9. Duke CEO Strikes GOLD - on his first day on the JOB
10. Ted Nugent - wishes he was in Dixie, and it'd WON
11. Bradley Manning Supporters, Investigated
12. Going into Libor
13. WAR INC. Comes Home

1. Bill Nelson responds (not)
Dear Mr. Spisak:

     Thank you for contacting me regarding the Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2012 (S. 3240), better known as the Farm Bill.  I grew up on a family ranch, and I understand the importance of the Federal agriculture programs that Floridians rely upon.

     On June 21, I joined with my colleagues in the Senate to pass the Farm Bill by a 64-35 bipartisan vote.  The legislation makes a number of important changes to existing policies and programs, including ending direct farm payments, expanding crop insurance to cover "shallow losses" that are not currently eligible for claims, consolidating funding streams for simplicity and efficiency, and establishing mandatory funding for a number of USDA energy, conservation, and organic farming programs. The legislation is also projected to reduce the Federal deficit by $24 billion over 10 years, promoting fiscal responsibility in addition to ensuring economic opportunity for our farmers and middle class.

     I have always worked to maintain Florida’s place as one of the country’s top producers of agricultural goods. During this session of Congress, I introduced legislation to provide research funding to combat the spread of plant diseases that threaten our State’s citrus crop, which generates an estimated $9.3 billion in economic activity every year.  I also consistently support programs that promote energy and environmental conservation efforts on farms, programs that provide nutrition assistance to those in need, and programs that invest money for rural development.

     I appreciate your taking the time to share your views with me on these important issues.  If you have further concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me again.

                                   Sincerely,
                                   Bill Nelson

2. Dennis Kucinich on DEATH SUPPORT by MSM embedded in the DRONE (programs)
Kucinich chides the media for not engaging in a better effort to uncover who is really dying in drone attacks. He states:
It’s not bad form to kill civilians, it’s only bad form to talk about it. That’s the problem. Let me say that there has been a tradition of American journalists in modern times to serve as the spear carriers for the government. They may look like pens but these are the spears of supernumeraries who have reporters’ cards. It’s what happens when you have fewer and fewer newspapers, and newspapers that are tied to large corporate interests. And a lack of enough institutions in the major media who are willing to serve as an effective counter-balance.

3. WHO IS BEING SPIED ON???  just can't say
Udall and Wyden sent a letter asking how many Americans have had their email communications read or their phone calls listened to by the NSA. They replied that they could not tell the senators because it would violate the privacy of Americans. Now, this is plainly laughable and, in fact, the entire room at Greenwald’s talk laughed hysterically when they heard this; Greenwald read the exact text of this response so he could clearly establish he was not making this newspeak up.

Udall and Wyden sent a letter asking how many Americans have had their email communications read or their phone calls listened to by the NSA. They replied that they could not tell the senators because it would violate the privacy of Americans. Now, this is plainly laughable and, in fact, the entire room at Greenwald’s talk laughed hysterically when they heard this; Greenwald read the exact text of this response so he could clearly establish he was not making this newspeak up.

4. Whistleblowers join suit
Three NSA whistleblowers back lawsuit over government's massive surveillance program

Electronic Frontier Foundation asks court to reject 'state secret' arguments so case can proceed
July 6, 2012 @ 12:05am | The KPBJ

SAN FRANCISCO — Three whistleblowers — all former employees of the National Security Agency (NSA) - have come forward to give evidence in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) lawsuit against the government’s illegal mass surveillance program, Jewel v. NSA.
In a motion filed July 2, the three former intelligence analysts confirm that the NSA has, or is in the process of obtaining, the capability to seize and store most electronic communications passing through its U.S. intercept centers, such as the “secret room” at the AT&T facility in San Francisco first disclosed by retired AT&T technician Mark Klein in early 2006.
“For years, government lawyers have been arguing that our case is too secret for the courts to consider, despite the mounting confirmation of widespread mass illegal surveillance of ordinary people,” said EFF legal director Cindy Cohn. “Now we have three former NSA officials confirming the basic facts. Neither the Constitution nor federal law allow the government to collect massive amounts of communications and data of innocent Americans and fish around in it in case it might find something interesting. This kind of power is too easily abused. We’re extremely pleased that more whistleblowers have come forward to help end this massive spying program.”
The three former NSA employees with declarations in EFF’s brief are William E. Binney, Thomas A. Drake and J. Kirk Wiebe. All were targets of a federal investigation into leaks to the New York Times that sparked the initial news coverage about the warrantless wiretapping program. Binney and Wiebe were formally cleared of charges and Drake had those charges against him dropped.

Jewel v. NSA is back in district court after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated it in late 2011. In the motion for partial summary judgment filed July 2, EFF asked the court to reject the state secrets arguments that the government has been using in its attempts to sidetrack this important litigation and instead apply the processes in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that require the court to determine whether electronic surveillance was conducted legally.

“The NSA warrantless surveillance programs have been the subject of widespread reporting and debate for more than six years now. They are just not a secret,” said EFF senior staff attorney Lee Tien. “Yet the government keeps making the same ‘state secrets’ claims again and again. It’s time for Americans to have their day in court and for a judge to rule on the legality of this massive surveillance.”

For the full motion for partial summary judgment: 
https://www.eff.org/document/plaintiffs-motion-partial-summary-judgment
For more on this case: 
https://www.eff.org/cases/jewel

5. “Hands Across the Sand” is coming soon to a beach near you,
and we need your help to make sure it is a success! Saturday, August 4, 2012

As described by its founder, Hands Across the Sand is a movement made of people of all walks of life and crosses political affiliations and the borders of the world. This movement is not about politics — it is about the protection of our coastal economies, oceans, marine wildlife and fisheries.  The accidents that continue to happen in offshore oil drilling are a threat to all of the above.  Expanding offshore oil drilling is not the answer; embracing clean energy is.
Oceana is supporting all the Hands events in Florida, but would like to make sure that South Florida is very well represented.  Please join with friends, family, and colleagues at one of the events.  You can find an event near you at http://www.handsacrossthesand.com/.

Oceana is collaborating with the Broward County Chapter of Surfrider Foundation to bring people together to join hands on the beach at the corner of Sunrise Boulevard and A1A.  The event will feature the traditional joining of hands at noon, to be followed by music, raffles and fun until 6:00 pm.  We also will be collecting photo petitions at events all around South Florida to support our effort to “stop the drill.”  Can you help?


6. Greenwald channels Senator Frank Church on the NATIONAL SECURITY STATE

report:
The National Security Agency’s capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. [If a dictator ever took over, the NSA could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.

Greenwald makes clear this scenario Church warned about has come to be.

The condition he has warned about, of the NSA apparatus being directed inward, has “come to pass.” Beginning in 2001, the NSA was secretly ordered to spy on American citizens. (Additionally, as Greenwald points out, no US senators these days would talk about the national security state in this manner and suggests it could get out of control and lead to “total tyranny.”)

The surveillance state has only grown under President Barack Obama.

Greenwald outlined some statistics on surveillance in the US. He mentioned William Binney, a former employee of the NSA and whistleblower who was targeted by the federal government for trying to call attention to abuse of spying abuses. He said on “Democracy Now!” the government under Obama has “assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions about US citizens with other US citizens.” They’ve assembled data “about everybody,” and from that data, they have targeted anybody they want. And what he said about these statistics is that what is remarkable is that despite how “incredibly ubiquitous”  and “menacing” it happens to be, the American people really know very little about it.

7. Nuns on the Bus
The Catholic nuns who began the “Nuns on the Bus” tour across the United States to protest cuts contained in the House Republican budget ended that tour today, blasting the GOP budget as “immoral” across from the U.S. Capitol. With more than a hundred supporters waiting outside the United Methodist center near the Capitol, the nuns criticized Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the author of the budget, for using Catholic social teaching to justify its cuts.

The nuns received widespread support; 75 members of Congress recently thanked them for embarking on the tour. As ThinkProgress has noted, the Republican budget finds 62 percent of its spending cuts from programs that benefit the poor and would kick millions of Americans off of food stamps and other programs.

“The Ryan budget would slash food stamps, it would slash Medicaid, it would slash a lot of domestic programs that benefit low-income people, affordable housing programs that [the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development] does,” Sister Richelle Friedman said. “So this is just really critical.”
Though Ryan attempted to justify the budget with Catholic social teaching, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops circulated letters urging members of Congress to vote against it, calling its cuts to safety net programs “unjustified and wrong.” Otherreligious leaders also condemned it.

8. Police Reform Activists Targeted by NYPD Won't Give In to Threats
from Alternet News
Two activists found a surprise in their local police precinct--a poster with their mug shots, calling them "professional agitators" and providing police with their address.

Two West Harlem residents, Christina Gonzalez, 25, and Matthew Swaye, 35, ran into a surprise when they showed up for a community meeting at their local NYPD precinct last week. There, on the wall of the 30th Precinct, were their mug shots—only they weren’t wanted for any crime.
Christina Gonzalez and Matthew Swaye are police reform activists who regularly film police interactions in their neighborhood, especially to record the NYPD’s controversial Stop and Frisk policy. Although filming police is completely legal, the poster (which was full of misspellings, I might add), advised officers to "be aware" that these "professional agitators" not only film police "performing routine stops," but also" post the videos on YouTube.
"Subjects purpose is to portray officers in a negative way and to [sic] deter officers from conducting their [sic] responsibilities." the warning from Sergeant Nicholson reads. "Do not feed into above subjects’ propaganda."
Gonzalez says it is the NYPD spreading propaganda and that the poster is an obvious tactic to criminalize, intimidate and target her. Since Gonzalez became involved with Occupy and the Stop-and-Frisk movement this fall, police have given her plenty of reasons to look over her shoulder, including calling her out by name and address, erecting a watchtower on her corner and aggressively arresting her sister in front of Gonzalez.
Of course, this is not the first time the NYPD or other police departments have targeted activists. The New York police have a history of infiltrating and intimidating activists, particularly during the Black Panther movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
For activists like Gonzalez, Stop-and-Frisk, a racial profiling tactic, is not only a violation of one’s constitutional rights, it is also part of the NYPD’s larger apparatus of racial oppression. Police stop more than 700,00 people per year, almost 90 percent of whom are young Black and Latino men. The best defense against the illegal searches, which occur during about 50% of stops, has proven to be video, and the ACLU recently launched an app to combat and document unconstitutional stops. But while the movement relies on cameras to expose Stop-and-Frisk, the NYPD targets filmers like Gonzalez with the same type of surveillance and repression police have used against activists in the past.
Gonzalez, who grew up in Far Rockaway, Queens, and graduated magnum cum laude from John Jay College of Criminal Justice last year, has long been familiar with the NYPD—though rarely appreciative of their services. A few years ago, she was a victim of intimate partner violence, and the NYPD routinely refused to help her.
“They blamed me for my own abuse,” Gonzalez said. “The police were supposed to protect me.” Her former partner is currently incarcerated for assaulting his latest girlfriend.
Gonzalez says police are familiar with her and her activism, and that as the movement to reform Stop-and-Frisk grows, so, too, does the police reaction.  Gonzalez said that, the more she filmed, demonstrated, and was arrested, the more police noticed her, often calling her by name and making comments like, “we remember you,” or, “be careful walking home; it’s a long walk to 153rd Street."
“That’s when I said, ‘Okay, they know where we live.’ That was kind of scary, especially to say in front of my little sister.”
In February, Gonzalez learned the NYPD were watching her YouTube page, where she posted videos of police harassment, such as the time officers taunted Gonzalez by telling her that her dreadlocked hair smells. Shortly after she posted the video, two officers called her by name over to their police car.

9. Duke Energy CEO To Receive $44 Million Payout Despite Resigning On His First Day
(from Think Progress)

Hours after new Duke Energy CEO Bill Johnson assumed his new position following the Duke/Progress Energy merger this week, he resigned his post. But Johnson can still qualify for up to $44.4 million for his time and effort:
Despite his short-lived tenure, Mr. Johnson will receive exit payments worth as much as $44.4 million, according to Duke. That includes $7.4 million in severance, a nearly $1.4 million cash bonus, a special lump-sum payment worth up to $1.5 million and accelerated vesting of his stock awards, according to a Duke regulatory filing Tuesday night. Mr. Johnson gets the lump-sum payment as long as he cooperates with Duke and doesn’t disparage his former employer, the filing said.
Under his exit package, Mr. Johnson also will receive approximately $30,000 to reimburse him for relocation expenses.
The Duke board voted for Johnson’s resignation, and since Johnson was eligible for severance if he quit for “good reason,” he is able to collect his $44 million. Grist calculates that Johnson’s pay package comes out to $5.5 million per hour, if he actually put in a full 8-hour day.
Johnson’s golden parachute after his one day of work is emblematic of the disconnect between worker pay and CEO pay that has occurred over the last few decades. Average CEO pay is now 380 times the pay of the average worker, and CEO pay has grown 127 times faster than worker pay over the last 30 years.

from a Comment -
[According to their quarterly report, Duke Energy has 29,250 employees who actually show up day after day putting in full 8 hour days. If you took that $44,400,000 and spread it over all of those people, you could give each of them a $1500 bonus and have money left over.]

10. TED NUGENT former Rock and Roll guitarist opines -
He wishes he was in the land of Cotton

ROMNEY ENDORSER TED NUGENT: ‘I’M BEGINNING TO WONDER IF IT WOULD HAVE BEEN BEST HAD THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR’ | Ted Nugent, the American rock singer known for his conservative politics and love of guns, also believes that the country would have been a better place had slavery won out. In a column for the Washington Times today, Nugent complains about a lack of regard for states’ rights, then says, “I’m beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War.” The statement isn’t a total surprise from a man who often dons confederate flag shirts and recently made a veiled threat to kill the President. But it does underline potential political repercussions for Mitt Romney, who actively sought Nugent’s endorsement.

11. Bradley Manning Supporters, Investigated by the US Army
from RT News
The US Army has confirmed that they are investigating the Bradley Manning Support Network, an international activism group that advocates on behalf of the imprisoned accused whistleblower.

A letter from the US Army Criminal Investigation Command (USACIDC) dated May 18, 2012 has been published to the Web in which Susan Cugler, the director of the Army’s Crime Records Center, responds to a Freedom of Information Act request for information pertaining to any internal files which may involve the Bradley Manning Support Network.
“A search of the USACIDC file indexes revealed that an active investigating is in process with an underdetermined completion date,” acknowledges Cugler. The memorandum just about ends there, however, with the Army refraining from revealing any more details into the advocacy group that backs the accused whistleblower who is alleged to have distributed classified materials to Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks site.

The Army invokes specific subsections of the Freedom of Information Act to brush off the FOIA request, essentially freeing itself from releasing any details of their investigation on the grounds that the release"could reasonably be expected to endanger [the] life or physical safety” of those discussed in the military’s files.
Manning, a 24-year-old private first class with the US Army, has been behind bars for nearly 800 days without trial. Military prosecutors have charged PFC Manning with aiding the enemy due to the alleged leaking of classified materials, a charge that could send him to prison for life if he is convicted. His attorneys are in the midst of a heated legal debate to hear the government’s accusations, fighting on behalf of the soldier that the materials he is accused of releasing did not have any detrimental implications for national security. Last week, attorneys for Manning were awarded permission to view some of the military’s documents that they intend to use against the soldier.


12. Going into Libor - a Cesarian CUT… maybe the Unkindest Cut of All
What's the most basic service banks provide? Borrow money and lend it out. You put your savings in a bank to hold in trust, and the bank agrees to pay you interest on it. Or you borrow money from the bank and you agree to pay the bank interest.
How is this interest rate determined? We trust that the banking system is setting today's rate based on its best guess about the future worth of the money. And we assume that guess is based, in turn, on the cumulative market predictions of countless lenders and borrowers all over the world about the future supply and demand for the dough.
But suppose our assumption is wrong. Suppose the bankers are manipulating the interest rate so they can place bets with the money you lend or repay them - bets that will pay off big for them because they have inside information on what the market is really predicting, which they're not sharing with you.
That would be a mammoth violation of public trust. And it would amount to a rip-off of almost cosmic proportion - trillions of dollars that you and I and other average people would otherwise have received or saved on our lending and borrowing that have been going instead to the bankers. It would make the other abuses of trust we've witnessed look like child's play by comparison.
Sad to say, there's reason to believe this has been going on, or something very much like it. This is what the emerging scandal over "Libor" (short for "London interbank offered rate") is all about.
Libor is the benchmark for trillions of dollars of loans worldwide - mortgage loans, small-business loans, personal loans. It's compiled by averaging the rates at which the major banks say they borrow.
So far, the scandal has been limited to Barclay's, a big London-based bank that just paid $453 million to U.S. and British bank regulators, whose top executives have been forced to resign, and whose traders' emails give a chilling picture of how easily they got their colleagues to rig interest rates in order to make big bucks. (Robert Diamond, Jr., the former Barclay CEO who was forced to resign, said the emails made him "physically ill" - perhaps because they so patently reveal the corruption.)
But Wall Street has almost surely been involved in the same practice, including the usual suspects — JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America - because every major bank participates in setting the Libor rate, and Barclay's couldn't have rigged it without their witting involvement.
In fact, Barclay's defense has been that every major bank was fixing Libor in the same way, and for the same reason. And Barclays is "cooperating" (i.e., giving damning evidence about other big banks) with the Justice Department and other regulators in order to avoid steeper penalties or criminal prosecutions, so the fireworks have just begun.
There are really two different Libor scandals. One has to do with a period just before the financial crisis, around 2007, when Barclays and other banks submitted fake Libor rates lower than the banks' actual borrowing costs in order to disguise how much trouble they were in. This was bad enough. Had the world known then, action might have been taken earlier to diminish the impact of the near financial meltdown of 2008.
But the other scandal is even worse. It involves a more general practice, starting around 2005 and continuing until - who knows? it might still be going on — to rig the Libor in whatever way necessary to assure the banks' bets on derivatives would be profitable.
This is insider trading on a gigantic scale. It makes the bankers winners and the rest of us - whose money they've used for to make their bets - losers and chumps.
What to do about it, other than hope the Justice Department and other regulators impose stiff fines and even criminal penalties, and hold executives responsible?

13. War Inc. Shifts Homeward

[Watching the BLOB - when the kids were warning about a monster threatening civilization
one COP wants to throw em all in jail, the other is inclined to listen - The reasonable chief says
"we have to keep reminding him, leave the WAR back overseas !"]

by Kelley B. Vlahos, May 22, 2012
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It’s been said many times that the war is a self-sustaining industry that requires a constant threat overseas to keep the machine thriving at home. Looking at the millions if not billions of dollars spent on securing “national special security events” against its own citizens, it’s clear that protesters have become the threat that has allowed, in part, the warfare state to flourish on American soil.
Sound dramatic? One need only to look at the lockdown of our cities during these “events” — whether it be the NATO Summit in Chicago today, or preparations to militarize the cities of Tampa and Charlotte for the Democratic and Republican conventions this summer — to see that the constitutionally protected, American tradition of protest has become a reason for law enforcement to spend their quickly evaporating budgets each year on new toys and overtime — including the latest in surveillance, crowd control gear and communications equipment, not to mention the helicopters overhead and armed vehicles on the ground.

Just as important, this threat allows the federal government to extend its own powers under the Patriot Act onto Main Street, all in the order of counterterrorism and national security.
No one would dispute that the gathering of representatives from 50 member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), including 28 members of the military alliance in Afghanistan, warrants extra security. Indeed, we live in a world today where gunmen walk right up to U.S. members of Congress and shoot them in the head, or pack cars full of explosives on the city street. But it becomes increasingly clear, after 10 years of conventions and “special events” with little or no incident, that the specter of terrorism is being used to generate intimidating and repressive conditions, particularly against peaceful protesters, and proliferating an industry that thrives on domestic conflict and chaos.
What is this industry? Look no further than the advertisements for this year’s GovSec 2012, the annual security exposition held in Washington, D.C. In April, it promised to help “arm homeland security professionals and law enforcement professionals alike with the training and tools they need to detect, prevent and respond to terrorist attacks — from large-scale international threats to the dangers posed by homegrown extremists and lone wolves.”

According to this report, funding for the U.S. homeland security and homeland defense sector (including federal, state and local governments, and the private sector) will grow from $184 billion in 2011 to $205 billion by 2014. The market will grow from $73 billion in 2011 to $86 billion by 2014.
“The face of terrorism is constantly changing,” insisted GovSec Director Don Berey in a GovSec press release. “As a result, it is critical that those on the front lines of homeland security understand where new threats may arise and how their strategies must be adjusted to remain ever vigilant.” Adjusted, and paid for.
Thus, the endless war over there, becomes the endless war at home. Chicago is just the latest example of putting these new “strategies” to use. Talking about Chicago last week on Democracy Now!, Bill Ayers, University of Illinois professor and right-wing nemesis, explained:
There’s a mass campaign. They’re shutting Lakeshore Drive. They’re shutting the trains. They’re closing exits off the freeways. And they’re creating a kind of culture of fear. We have police officers we—who are friends of ours, we run into in coffee shops. They’ve told us that the training is focused a lot on the danger of the protesters and how you should be careful when you grab one of them, because they might have some kind of poison spike in their sleeve or something. I mean, it really is quite nuts.
At the same time, they’ve denied permits, taken permits away, given them back, been very vague about making any agreement with the protesters…we insist that this is a family-friendly, nonviolent, permitted march. And all the kind of hysteria about what’s about to happen is really brought on by the police. I don’t think anything is going to happen, except that they are creating the conditions for a police riot, once again.
Reports on Monday morning indicated that 45 people were arrested and four officers injured, including a police officer who was reportedly stabbed during a dramatic clash with protesters on Sunday night. In his remarks to reporters Sunday, Chicago Police Chief Garry McCarthy blamed the “black bloc” for rushing the police and precipitating the violence.
Meanwhile, according to Firedoglake.com writer Kevin Gosztola, a number of independent journalists who were videotaping and/or livestreaming the event were pulled over and interrogated at gunpoint and “under the cover of night.”
There appears to have been a conscious targeting of bloggers and livestreamers. The Chicago police, possibly with help from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI or other federal agencies, appear to be working off a list of “suspected” people or spaces where they must go “check in” on what is happening simply to ensure all is safe…
In each of these instances, the police did not inform those detained why they were being detained.
Peace activist David Swanson, who was on hand for Sunday’s events and publishes the WarIsACrime.org weblog, admitted that a “segment of the activist world plays into these police tactics, wearing bandanas, shouting curses, antagonizing police, and eroding credibility for claims that violence is all police-initiated,” but that the buildup of tension and intimidation — including Friday’s pre-dawn raid and arrest of the so-called NATO 3 on terror charges (two additional arrests make it the NATO 5) — contributed to lower than expected turnout. All five of those arrested have been tied to the “Black Bloc.”
And who knows how much these dynamics fueled the anxiety and hostility in the air between police and protesters before exploding late Sunday afternoon? They don’t call it a tinderbox for nothing.
No one can have been disappointed with the turnout, but it might have been bigger if not for the fear that was spread prior to Sunday …
The fear was the result of a massive militarized police build up, rumors of evacuations, the boarding up of windows, brutal police assaults on activists, preemptive arrests, disappearances, and charges of terrorism.
A massive crowd of activists was significantly outnumbered on Sunday by armed police, many in riot gear. They lined the march route. They swarmed off buses. They looked a little ridiculous as we marched nonviolently, just as we’d intended to do. The marching didn’t harm anyone or destroy any accumulated riches or smash any of the windows that were not boarded up.
Police did not allow the day to end without any use of their training and weapons. Not long after I left, according to numerous reports, all hell broke loose. If it hadn’t, think of how many of those people fearfully watching Sunday’s march from their high balconies would have joined in the next one and invited their friends!
The militarization aspect is uncanny and has been captured in numerous photos now circulating in places like Twitter. All we need to know is on Thursday, Chief McCarthy took to the airways to talk about his 12,000 officers doing “12-hour tours” instead of 12-hour shifts, as though policing parades and protests and keeping vigilant outside of this international gathering was indeed, going to war.

This is not surprising, given how much law enforcement now emulates the military and the military feeds on this, handing down a record $500 million in surplus equipment to local departments in 2011 alone.
This is a decade-old phenomenon, in which “the military surplus program and (police) paramilitary units feed off one another in a cyclical loop that has caused an explosive growth in militarized crime control techniques.” Federal grants help the process along, leading “to a booming law enforcement industry that specifically markets military-style weaponry to local police departments,” wrote Rania Khalek in an explosive 2011 report for Alternet, which begins with the story of a 7-year-old girl who was shot in the neck by police during a SWAT raid in Detroit.
Today, Mayberrys all across the country have tanks and M-16s, and according to one estimate, SWAT teams outfitted for convoy on Route Michigan to Ramadi are conducting some 40,000 raids a year across America. Sadly, though SWAT teams were once only used in emergency situations like a hostage crises, these paramilitary units are more inclined to use their fancy new gear to perform normal police work, like executing warrants, often resulting in botched raids and the death of innocent citizens.
An interesting map of botched SWAT raids by Cato’s Radley Balko is here.
This year’s Occupy protests have been instructive in many ways, not the least of which they have shown how police are employing their military stockpiles and all the latest crowd control devices and strategy, the result of this massive niche market that has exploded after 9/11. This industry not only hawks the latest in hardware (pepper spray, Tasers, flash grenades, smoke bombs, rubber bullets, cameras, GPS), but traffics in training and consultants that cost municipalities big bucks for the privilege.
“Why is it that the state is spending so much money on arming the police here supposedly in response to what is being planned as a peaceful protest?” said John Beecham, an anti-war protest organizer, in an interview about Chicago with The Guardian.
Turns out Chicago raised upwards of $55 million, including $19 million in federal security grants, for security, traffic control and sanitation for the summit. We know that at least $1 million was used to buy new riot gear, and $40,000 for two new Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRAD). Officials say they are using this “modern megaphone” as a “messaging device,” and not to produce “high pitched alarm tones,” that have been blamed for damaging the protesters’ hearing when the LRAD was used at the Pittsburgh G8 summit in 2011.
We also note that some of the biggest corporate donors to Chicago’s summit fund are Honeywell, Boeing Corp & Raytheon, all huge players in the nation’s defense contracting industry.
Meanwhile, Tampa and Charlotte will each receive $50 million in federal taxpayer funding to secure their cities in anticipation of the zombie apocalypse RNC and DNC confabs respectively. That is in addition to whatever else the state and city fathers plan to contribute for the occasion.
According to Khalek at Alternet:
The (Tampa) city council agreed to spend nearly $237,000 on a Lenco BearCat armored vehicle, which will be used in conjunction with two aging armored vehicles the city acquired through the military surplus program. Tampa Assistant Police Chief Marc Hamlin told the Tampa Bay Times that the trucks are strictly for the purpose of protecting officers from potential gunfire, not for day-to-day patrolling and crowd control.
Whatever would be they doing in an armored vehicle during the convention if not engaging in some variation of “crowd control”? Are they truly expecting an insurgent attack in sunny downtown Tampa? It may feel as hot in August, but it is most certainly not Baghdad.
Another $1.18 million is going toward new digital video communication technology that will allow police helicopters to transmit video to cops on the ground equipped with handheld receivers. Various news outlets report that an additional $2 million was requested to ramp up surveillance with the installation of 60 surveillance cameras in downtown Tampa, far more than the five traffic cameras the city currently has.
Meanwhile, according to Ray Reyes of The Tampa Tribune, the city has purchased $815,000 in riot gear, and $6 million for new two-way walkie-talkies. The $13.5 million already spent also includes four-wheel drive utility vehicles, and 200 bikes for patrol officers. The city is also expected to pay $25 million to train, house and feed 3,000 visiting police officers for the event.
Despite the hype, there has been no major terror threat associated with the national conventions since 9/11. Given this, it is safe to assume that not only is the massive security presence an extravagant vanity exercise for the quadrennial gathering of politicians, lobbyists and party delegates, but yet another way to justify the enormous annual budgets of the burgeoning homeland enterprise. And as someone who has been to the last two rounds of conventions, I can say the display has gotten more intense each time.
Meanwhile, instead of shrinking from it, the protest movement seems to be growing in proportion to the hyper-militarization nationwide. The gulf between “civilian” and “soldier” on the street widens, too. Bursts of violent skirmishes appear inevitable now, a self-fulfilling prophecy unfolding before our eyes. While this may be quite profitable for War Inc., the impact on the health of our society, much less the republic, may be incalculable.
Follow Vlahos on Twitter @KelleyBVlahos

PNN Backgrounder 6/10/12

PNN 6/10/12

Guests

7:05 - 7:20 Ellis Robinson (Ruth's List)

7:22- 7:35pm - Dr. Lynn Ringenberg - coal ash issues

7:36 - 7:47 - Drew Martin - Sierra Club training on population

7:48 - 7:57 - Ann Fonfa

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

1. With the continued erosion of civil liberties that began in the Bush years and has expanded in the Obama administration, it was hopeful that a federal judge struck down one of the most chilling laws in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA): the right of the government to suspend habeas corpus and indefinitely detain US citizens under military authority.

What is habeas corpus? One dictionary definition is "a writ requiring a person to be brought before a judge or court, especially for investigation of a restraint of the person's liberty, used as a protection against illegal imprisonment." In short, under the NDAA, a president or his/her proxy could have you apprehended and detained without any legal process. This is what happened to people in the Soviet Union, in Nazi Germany, and countries such as Argentina during the dirty wars. It is the elimination of a key constitutional guarantee that distinguishes a democracy based on civil liberties from fascism and tyranny.

According to Wired.com,

Tuesday's decision by a New York federal judge halts a key terror-fighting feature of the 2011 National Defense Authorization Act and is a blow to the Obama administration. The government urged U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest not to adopt a nationwide ban on the measure, saying the move would be "extraordinary" and "unwarranted."

But the judge, ruling in a case brought by journalists and political activists, said the law was too vague and did not provide clear guidance on whom the government could indefinitely detain.

Last month when Judge Forrest granted standing to the plaintiffs based on their fears of being detained for their writing and political activism, she wrote that, "Before anyone should be subjected to the possibility of indefinite military detention, the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment requires that individuals be able to understand what conduct might cause him or her to run afoul of" the statute.

In short, Judge Forrest said that the clause allowing indefinite detention, bypassing the judicial process, was far too vague in its potential application, warning that a US citizen could violate the law without even knowing it.

The Obama administration wanted the ruling to apply only to the plaintiffs in the case, including noted pro-democracy journalist Chris Hedges. But the federal judge said her striking of the provision applied to all US citizens.

Given that we now have a president who one day a week sits down and goes over an assassination list, where he - Roman rule style - gives a thumbs up or thumbs down to who will be killed in the "war on terror," the ruling is a hopeful sign.

How did we get a constitutional lawyer as president who supports violating the Constitution?

At least some judges, despite Congress and the White House, value the nation's founding document and the protections of due process granted to US citizens contained therein.

2. When I see reports of drones hitting wedding parties, mosques and other civilian collateral damage, I have to question whether being so detached from these attacks allows us to lose our humanity over the loss of lives.

So with the caveat of my conflicted feelings on the use of drones, the framing of this particular article in The Daily Beast really struck me as very odd.

[State Dept. legal adviser Harold] Koh, perhaps the most forceful advocate of human rights law in the Obama administration, was preparing a speech in defense of targeted killing, and wanted to do his homework; he wasn’t going to put his reputation in jeopardy without knowing the drone strike program and its protocols inside and out. He spent hours at Langley grilling agency lawyers and operators. The operators were naturally suspicious of Koh—a wariness only fueled by Koh’s blunt demeanor. “I hear you guys have a PlayStation mentality,” he said.

The operators of the unmanned drones were civilians, but most were ex-Air Force pilots who took umbrage at the idea that they were “cubicle warriors” morally detached from killing. The lead operator lit into Koh. “I used to fly my own air missions,” he began defensively. “I dropped bombs, hit my target load, but had no idea who I hit. Here I can look at their faces. I watch them for hours, see these guys playing with their kids and wives. When I get them alone, I have no compunction about blowing them to bits. But I wouldn’t touch them with civilians around. After the strike, I see the bodies being carried out of the house. I see the women weeping and in positions of mourning. That’s not PlayStation; that’s real. My job is to watch after the strike too. I count the bodies and watch the funerals. I don’t let others clean up the mess.”

The conversation must have proved persuasive; Koh gave his speech, defending the legal underpinning of the job the drone operator and his colleagues do.

So what am I supposed to take from this? That drone operators have feelings, too? That their ability to watch the grieving widows carry the bodies out of the house somehow ameliorates the disingenuousness of how "surgical" these strikes are supposed to be? And while the Obama administration may want to contain how much we consider the civilian casualties, there's fairly good arguments that this kind of self-delusion is significantly hurting our long-term interests.

3. The Hypocrisy of “Clean Coal”

By: Heather Taylor-Miesle NRDC Action Fund Saturday June 9, 2012 7:00 pm

Photo: eutrophication&hypoxia

You may have heard about the recent kerfluffle surrounding the Obama campaign’s late addition of “clean coal” to the list of energy priorities listed on its website. This has me wondering why so many Dirty Energy politicians are so excited about “clean coal.”

The premise behind “clean coal” is presumably that coal is inherently dirty, but that if you do enough to deal with all that filth, you can make it clean. Many would argue that coal can never be clean. But, watching the polluter posse’s votes in congress and listening to their rhetoric on the campaign trail, you’d think that coal isn’t even dirty.

Here is just a selection of the recent times when Members of Congress had the chance to go on the record in support of cleaning up coal:

In April 2011, an amendment in the Senate to strip EPA of its ability to reduce the carbon pollution received 50 votes. Since coal fired power plants are a large source of carbon pollution, this was presumed to be part of EPA’s “War on Coal.” The House version of the bill had passed in a vote of 255 to 172.

In October, the House voted on and passed a bill that would prohibit the EPA from setting strict rules on how to dispose of toxic coal ash, which is filled with arsenic, lead and mercury. It passed with 267 votes. The Senate companion already has 13 cosponsors. Pro-coal members are now trying to tuck a version of this bill into the transportation bill, since it is unlikely to be signed into law by President Obama.

In November, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul offered a resolution that would have stopped lifesaving new protections to reduce smog and soot pollution. It garnered 41 votes and fell short of passing.

And now, Senator Jim Inhofe has filed a new resolution to void long-overdue limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants.

There doesn’t seem to be nearly enough support for “clean coal” when I look at this record. Instead, I see politicians who want to ensure that coal never has to get cleaner. From mercury that damages the brains of unborn children to the devastation of mountaintop removal mining to nasty spills of coal waste, some clean coal advocates seem almost eager to look the other way.

Surely some of these clean coal proponents will claim that the coal should be cleaned up, but that coal companies and power plants just need more time to do it. Don’t be fooled. The special resolutions being used to try to stop many of these pollution rules would stop EPA from ever issuing a similar rule again. That likely means that if Senator Inhofe gets his way, mercury at these power plants would spew forth into our families and our environment, without limits, forever.

Montana Senate candidate Denny Rehberg says he wants to make clean coal “safer and more efficient.” Yet, he’s supported each of the efforts above. What does clean coal mean to him?

Pennsylvania Senate candidate Tom Smith is bankrolling his own candidacy with funds he earned as an executive in the coal industry. He sees clean coal as a tremendous opportunity. Do you think he’ll support any of the efforts to actually make coal cleaner?

It’s time to stop the greenwashing. Rebranding dirty old coal as “clean coal” doesn’t magically make the filth disappear. Next time you hear a candidate propound the virtues of clean coal, I urge you to ask whether they see “clean coal” as a real aspiration for improving public health and the environment or just the vessel of another empty promise.

4. Cheap and stable electricity is vital. If all the reactors that previously provided 30% of Japan's electricity supply are halted, or kept idle, Japanese society cannot survive," Mr Noda said.

He added that some companies could possibly move production out of Japan, losing vital jobs as a result.

"It is my decision that Ohi reactors No 3 and No 4 should be restarted to protect the people's livelihoods," he said.

Controversial move

Mr Noda and members of his cabinet could make a formal decision by next week if the governor of Fukui prefecture, where the reactors are located, agrees.

But the move is extremely controversial, reports the BBC's Roland Buerk.

Earlier this week, a third of governing party members of parliament petitioned Mr Noda, urging him to exercise "greater caution" over the issue.

Protests met the prime minister's announcement in central Tokyo, with people waving placards stating, "We oppose restarts".

His statement was made only a few hours after the former president of the Fukushima plant operator testified before a high-profile investigative panel appointed by parliament.

Masataka Shimizu said that he did not consider a pullout of the plant's workers during the height of the crisis as had been alleged.

In April, the government set stricter safety guidelines for nuclear plants in a bid to win public confidence for restarts. These include the installation of filtered vents and a device to prevent hydrogen explosions.

Last month, the government asked businesses and households in parts of the country to cut electricity usage by up to 15% to avoid possible blackouts.

5. New MIT Study on Radiation Risks and Protective Action Guidelines

A new study from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientists suggests that the guidelines governments use to determine when to evacuate people following a nuclear accident may be too conservative.

The study, led by Bevin Engelward and Jacquelyn Yanch and published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found that when mice were exposed to radiation doses about 400 times greater than background levels for five weeks, no DNA damage could be detected.

Read the press release here. Read the journal article here.

Overview 

BACKGROUND: In the event of a nuclear accident, people are exposed to elevated levels of continuous low dose-rate radiation. Nevertheless, most of the literature describes the biological effects of acute radiation. Our major aim is to reveal potential genotoxic effects of low dose-rate radiation.

OBJECTIVES: DNA damage and mutations are well established for their carcinogenic effects. Here, we assessed several key markers of DNA damage and DNA damage responses in mice exposed to low dose-rate radiation.

METHODS: We studied low dose-rate radiation using a variable low dose-rate irradiator consisting of flood phantoms filled with ¹²⁵Iodine-containing buffer. Mice were exposed to 0.0002 cGy/min (~400X background radiation) continuously over the course of 5 weeks. We assessed base lesions, micronuclei, homologous recombination (using fluorescent yellow direct repeat [FYDR] mice), and transcript levels for several radiation-sensitive genes.

RESULTS: Under low dose-rate conditions, we did not observe any changes in the levels of the DNA nucleobase damage products hypoxanthine, 8-oxo-7,8-dihydroguanine, 1,N⁶-ethenoadenine or 3,N⁴-ethenocytosine above background. The micronucleus assay revealed no evidence that low dose-rate radiation induced DNA fragmentation. Furthermore, there was no evidence of double strand break-induced homologous recombination. Finally, low dose-rate radiation did not induce Cdkn1a, Gadd45a, Mdm2, Atm, or Dbd2. Importantly, the same total dose, when delivered acutely, induced micronuclei and transcriptional responses.

CONCLUSIONS: Together, these results demonstrate in an in vivo animal model that lowering the dose-rate suppresses the potentially deleterious impact of radiation, and calls attention to the need for a deeper understanding of the biological impact of low dose-rate radiation.

6. Fukushima forum: Dr. John Apsley says U.S. is feeling the effects of radiation

Dr. John Apsley appeared on the Fukushima forum on Coast to Coast AM on Saturday, June 9, 2012. For more than 30 years Dr. Apsley, author of “Fukushima Meltdown & Modern Radiation: Protecting Ourselves and Our Future Generations” has specialized in cell regeneration and accelerated wound repair. He appeared on the show to deliver his findings on the effects of Fukushima radioactive fall-out on the Japanese people, as well as Americans.

Dr. Apsely started off by making a few comparisons between Fukushima and Chernobyl. According to Apsely, the fuel pools at Fukushima contained 7 times the amount of nuclear waste as the fuel pools at Chernobyl. There were also 6 times the number of people in the area surrounding Fukushima and the west coast of the United States as there were in the area around Chernobyl.

With these figures in mind, Apsely says we're looking at a catastrophe that can be anywhere from seven to forty-two times worse than Chernobyl. Initial estimates at Chernobyl indicated that only about 64 deaths were related to the incident. That number has since grown to more than 1 million, and if you also include the number of people who were crippled or maimed the number skyrockets to more than 8 million over the 20-year period since the meltdown.

Apsley says the Japanese people and the American people are not being told the truth. The Japanese government, in order to avoid panic, is lowering the acceptable levels of radiation in food. However, there is no safe level of radiation. Radiation stays in our system for up to 250-300 years and whether it's one rad or 20, it's still radiation.

Apsley also says researchers are working off false comparisons to the A-bombs dropped on Nagasaki when calculating the potential effects and losses. The A-bomb is a clean bomb, meaning that it had a more perfect energy conversion, releasing few radioactive particles into the atmosphere. The meltdown at Fukushima is releasing far more radiation into the atmosphere and if unit 4 were to tumble, it would have the same effect as 1,100 A-bombs.

According to Apsley much more radiation than we've been led to believe has made its way to the American shores. Because of the prevailing winds at the time of the Fukushima incident, the west coast of the United States has been exposed to serious levels of radioactive fall-out. Hardest hit were Colorado and Wyoming. Surprisingly, Jacksonville, Florida falls into this category, too, due to wind currents.

But one of the hardest hit states in the nation is Pennsylvania because of the intense rainfall they had in the area approximately 3 weeks after the explosion. This rainfall carried tremendous amounts of radiation into the area.

According to Apsley, there has been a 48% increase in infant death rates in the Philidelphia area as a direct result of radiation. Vancouver, Canada has also experienced a 60% increase in infant death rates.

Apsley estimates the United States will see 5-15% damage to their overall health compared to what the people in Japan will experience. He's predicting 5-7 million deaths over the next 20 years in Japan and another 8-25 million people will be maimed over that same time span. Most will be newborns who will suffer because of their parent's exposure to the radiation.

The radiation that's made its way to North America is settling into the ground and being absorbed into the food we eat. Apsley advises that we eat super-foods which, when absorbed into our bodies, can help eliminate the radiation. Super-foods include mushrooms, whey products, fruits and vegetables that wake up our immune system.

In the course of his research, Apsley discovered two hospitals located in Hiroshima. After the A-bomb was dropped one hospital had an almost 100% mortality rate while the other was exactly the opposite. The second hospital had almost a 100% recovery rate and it was because the were using a special food diet to help stimulate patients' immune systems to help flush out radioactivity.

PNN Show New Notes for 6/3/12

PNN Notes 6/3/12

1. GOP Spokesman Slammed for 'Let's Hurl Acid' at Female Senators Comment
Steve Benen flags this story:

Jay Townsend, GOP Spokesman: 'Let's Hurl Some Acid At Those Female Democratic Senators'

A spokesman for Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-N.Y.) is facing criticism after advocating violence against female Democratic senators in a Facebook post.

Jay Townsend, the official campaign spokesman for the freshman representative, went on a vicious online rant on Saturday, which he began by taunting a constituent who voiced criticism about an earlier post on gas prices. "Listen to Tom. What a little bee he has in his bonnet. Buzz Buzz," Townsend wrote.

"My question today... when is Tommy boy going to weigh in on all the Lilly Ledbetter hypocrites who claim to be fighting the War on Women? Let's hurl some acid at those female democratic Senators who won't abide the mandates they want to impose on the private sector."...

Townshend is getting the response he deserves:

Comments from outraged constituents quickly followed. "‎'Hurl some acid' Jay Townsend? Do you realize what that means?" wrote one person. "Acid attacks are particularly brutal, aimed almost solely at women, with the intent to maim and disfigure. I couldn't imagine a worse piece of invective from someone who puts the Republican war on women in quotes."
Another commenter: "Mr. Townsend, do you think we live in Afghanistan?"

This, as it turns out, is the same Jay Townsend who, when he was running for Chuck Schumer's Senate seat in 2010, appeared at Pam Geller's rally against the "Ground Zero mosque" on June 6, 2010. Here's his speech at that rally -- in which he addressed the Islamic cultural center's champion, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, as if he was personally responsible for every bad thing done by anyone anywhere in the name of Islam:

... The wounds have not healed, Imam! And we cannot soon forget the hatred that spawned this assault on our sensibilities is taught in too many of your mosques and inscribed on too many of your prayer rugs. Not here, not now! Until you have excised the hatred that is inscribed in the schoolbooks of your impressionable young -- not here, not now!(Smiles.) Until you have removed from the world stage the despots who advocate the annihilation of America and her allies -- not here, not now! ...

And so on and so on. This, apparently, was all Imam Rauf's fault, according to Townsend. Odd that Townsend didn't mention acid attacks (though, admittedly, they weren't as much in the news then). But the fact that he's mentioning them now makes you wonder if the right's obsession with the behaviors that besmirch Islam is just a form of jealousy.

2. Zimmerman ordered back to jail, because of his lies.

SANFORD, Fla. — Trayvon Martin’s shooter must return to jail, a judge ordered Friday in a strongly worded ruling that said George Zimmerman and his wife lied to the court about their finances to obtain bond in a case that hinges on jurors believing his account of what happened the night the teen was killed.

Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder for the February shooting. The neighborhood watch volunteer says he shot Martin in self-defense because the unarmed 17-year-old was beating him up after confronting Zimmerman about following him in a gated community outside Orlando. Zimmerman was arrested 44 days after the killing, and during a bond hearing in April, his wife, Shellie, testified that the couple had limited funds available. The hearing also was notable because Zimmerman took the stand and apologized to Martin’s parents. Prosecutors pointed out in their motion that Zimmerman had $135,000 available then. It had been raised from donations through a website he set up and they suggested more has been collected since and deposited in a bank account.

Shellie Zimmerman was asked about the website at the hearing, but she said she didn’t know how much money had been raised. Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester set bail at $150,000. The 28-year-old was freed a few days later after posting $15,000 in cash — which is typical — and has since been in hiding. Prosecutor Bernie De la Rionda complained Friday, “This court was led to believe they didn’t have a single penny. It was misleading and I don’t know what words to use other than it was a blatant lie.” The judge agreed and ordered Zimmerman returned to jail by Sunday afternoon.


3. Edwards verdict

A North Carolina jury found former Sen. John Edwards not guilty today on one of six counts in a campaign-finance trial, and declared itself hopelessly deadlocked on the remaining charges, leading the judge to declare a mistrial on those counts. Edwards, a two-time presidential candidate, accused of soliciting nearly $1 million from wealthy backers to finance a cover up of his illicit affair and illegitimate child during his 2008 bid for the White House, was found not guilty on count 3 of the six-part indictment. That count pertained only to whether Edwards illegally received several hundred thousand dollars in donations from wealthy heiress Rachel "Bunny" Mellon to cover up the affair in 2008.
The one count the 12-member jury agreed on--count three--was related to $725,000 given to Edwards by Rachel "Bunny" Mellon, a wealthy Texas heiress. The jury found Edwards not guilty of that count.

4. NY Stop & Frisk in Black & White
Last year in New York City, police stopped and interrogated black men and boys between the ages 14 and 24 a total of 168,126 times. The total population of black men and boys aged 14 through 24 in New York City is 158,406.  That means the amount of times police stopped black men and boys in this age group exceeds the total number living in the city.
In fact, last year, more than 85% of the 685,000 people stopped by the NYPD were African American or Latino, most of them children and young adults. This is up from less than 100,000 stops a decade ago. Then, like now, 90% of those stopped are completely innocent. All this adds up to nothing less than the most aggressive street-level racial profiling program in the country.

5. Japan continues to create new Plutonium despite all reactors offline

 Last year's tsunami crisis left Japan's nuclear future in doubt and its reactors idled, rendering its huge stockpile of plutonium useless for now. So, the nuclear industry's plan to produce even more this year has raised a red flag. Nuclear industry officials say they hope to start producing a half-ton of plutonium within months, in addition to the more than 35 tons Japan already has stored around the world. That's even though all of the reactors that might use it are either inoperable or offline while the country rethinks its nuclear policy in light of the tsunami-generated Fukushima crisis. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, File)


6. Scott's Voter Attack Purge + Limiting Registration

On Thursday, a federal court in Florida issued a preliminary injunction against the state for restricting the registration drives, creating a window for those to resume before the August primary elections. Whether that will be appealed by the state or continue into the fall is not known, the League said in a press conference call.

But that is not all Scott has done to roll back voting rights. The governor also reversed rules established by his predecessor, Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, to re-enfranchise an estimated 70,000 nonviolent felons who have served their sentences. Scott imposed a five-year-waiting period before the ex-convicts can recover their voting rights.

“They are making it hard to get on the rolls by restricting voter registration drives. They are making it hard to vote by limiting the number of days for early voting. They’re shrinking the electorate by making it more difficult for people with felony convictions to get their rights restored. And now they are making it hard to stay on the rolls,” said Myrna Perez, senior counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, interviewed before Thursday's court ruling.

Scott’s latest gambit to purge what he alleges are 180,000 non-citizen voters pressed even more political hot buttons—in addition to possibly violating federal civil rights law, as the Justice Department informed him on Thursday evening.

The threatened mass voter purge rekindles memories of Florida’s 2000 presidential election, when Democrats lost the presidency by 537 votes after the U.S. Supreme Court halted the Florida Supreme Court’s statewide recount. In a litigation settlement in 2002, the state’s election division acknowledged that 22,000 legal voters had been purged from Florida rolls before the 2000 election. Their names were similar those on a nationwide felon list compiled by a contractor working for another arch GOP partisan, Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Longtime administrators such as Sancho believe the figure is closer to 50,000 purged voters, because the state was reluctant to admit its errors.


7. SEC prefers whaling on some "bite-sized" enemies

If f you want to see a perfect example of how completely broken our regulatory system is, look no further than a speech that Daniel Gallagher, one of the S.E.C.’s commissioners, recently gave in Denver, Colorado.

It’s a speech whose full lunacy is hard to grasp without some background.

It’s by now been well-established that the S.E.C.’s performance in policing Wall Street before, after, and during the crash has been comically inept. It would be putting it generously to say that the top cop on the financial services beat has demonstrated particular incompetence with regard to investigations of high-profile targets at powerhouse banks and financial companies. A less generous interpretation would be that the agency is simply too afraid, too unwilling, or too corrupt to take on the really dangerous animals in this particular jungle.

The S.E.C.’s failure to make even one case against a high-ranking executive involved in the mass frauds leading to the 2008 crash – compare this to the comparatively much smaller and less serious S&L crisis twenty years earlier, when the government made 1,100 criminal cases and sent 800 bank officials to jail – became so conspicuous that by the end of last year, the “No prosecutions of top figures” idea became an accepted meme in mainstream news media coverage of the economic crisis.

The S.E.C. in recent years has failed in almost every possible way a regulator can fail to police powerful criminals.

Failure #1 was that it repeatedly fell down on the job even when alerted to problems at big companies well ahead of time by insiders. Six months before Lehman Brothers collapsed, setting off a chain reaction of losses that crippled the world economy, one of Lehman’s attorneys, Oliver Budde, contacted the S.E.C. to warn them that the firm had understated CEO Dick Fuld's income by more than $200 million; the agency blew him off. There were similar brush-offs of insiders with compelling information in cases involving Moody’s, Chase, and both of the major Ponzi scheme scandals, i.e. the Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford cases.

The S.E.C.’s attitude toward whistleblowers at powerhouse companies has not just been aloof or indifferent, it’s been downright hostile at times. Whistleblowers commonly report being treated as though they're the criminal. The most notorious example probably involved Peter Sivere, a compliance officer at Chase who years ago went to the S.E.C. to complain that Chase was withholding an incriminating email from the agency, which was investigating an illegal trading practice. When Sivere contacted the S.E.C. with the documents, he asked if he would be eligible for an award; they told him no, and he gave them the documents anyway. Subsequently, Sivere was fired by Chase because, in the words of Chase’s attorneys, Sivere had "sought payment from the SEC to provide documents and information to them.”

Sivere had to scratch his head and wonder how his bosses knew about the award request , until it dawned on him: the S.E.C. had ratted him out to Chase! It subsequently came out that the S.E.C. official who’d narked on Sivere was George Demos, who more recently was seen running for Congress in New York.

Since the S.E.C. couldn’t make cases even when insiders handed them to them, it followed that the agency fared even worse when asked to deduce problems by mere analysis and review, which brings us to failure #2: the agency was spectacularly inept at detecting marketplace problems that should have been obvious to anyone with access to a federal regulator’s investigatory tools. It came out after the crash, for instance, that the SEC repeatedly ignored warnings of excessive risk-taking at companies like Bear Stearns; they even censored an IG report to conceal, among other things, their history of non-action.

More notoriously, the SEC stood by and did nothing even after the FBI publicly warned that the incidence of so-called “liar’s loans” – mortgage applications in which income levels and other information were not verified – was “epidemic” and could cause an “economic crisis.” The SEC could have walked into any major mortgage lender’s office anytime in the five years prior to the 2008 crash and in one afternoon’s worth of interviews learned that fraud in the mortgage markets was out of control, but instead they allowed companies like Countrywide and Long Beach to proliferate and pump the economy full of millions of bad loans, nearly destroying the economy.

Failure #3 is that even after the fact, they have so far failed to make cases against even the most obvious targets, from the Deutsche Bank executives who knowingly sold billions in risky mortgages they knew were “pigs,” to the Lehman bankers who hid liabilities and cooked the books in the infamous “Repo 105” case, to the creeps at Barclays who, in what one Wall Street attorney I spoke to described as “the biggest bank robbery in the history of the world,” siphoned off billions of dollars from the rotting hulk of Lehman Brothers just before that company’s collapse. In that deal, executives at Lehman and Barclays essentially sold Lehman assets and operations to Barclays at fractions of their real cost – and some of the Lehman executives involved went to work for Barclays right after Lehman collapsed. Lehman’s creditors want Barclays to pay back over $11 billion.

Failure #4: one company after another was allowed to settle serious criminal charges without having to admit wrongdoing. Failure #5: in those settlements, the S.E.C.continually allowed companies to avoid having to disclose the exact nature of their crimes, which not only shielded those firms from litigation, but kept the general public, which might otherwise have been warned away from doing business with those firms, in the dark about crucial information. “Truth is confined to secretive, fearful whispers,” federal judge Jed Rakoff complained, talking about the settlements. Failure #6: companies have been allowed to settle cheap on the promise that they would never commit the same crimes again, only to do exactly that – and be allowed by the S.E.C. to get off with the same promise!

The Times made a list of firms that got the “Just promise you’ll never do it again, again” treatment: They read like a Wall Street who’s who: American International Group, Ameriprise, Bank of America, Bear Stearns, Columbia Management, Deutsche Asset Management, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Putnam Investments, Raymond James, RBC Dain Rauscher, UBS and Wells Fargo/Wachovia.

All of this is important background for the speech given in Denver on April 13 by S.E.C. commissioner Gallagher. The commissioner was trying to explain the S.E.C.’s thought process in how it decides to allocate its relatively meager resources. The key thing, Gallagher explained, was to make sure that when you send Enforcement staff on a case, you should make sure there’s actually crime there to fight:

It is critically important that our enforcement program be extremely efficient… Recognizing that it is unrealistic to imagine we will ever achieve a one-to-one correspondence between incidents of misfeasance and SEC Enforcement staff, we’d better plan to do everything we can to increase our hit-rate per investigation opened, and should commit our staff resources carefully, which is to say, consciously.

Sounds reasonable, although this does also sound a little odd; how is securing a good "hit rate" in finding crime a problem in an era where even an $11 billion robbery isn’t high enough in the in-box to warrant a criminal investigation? For most of the last ten years, you could walk into any major bank in America and find whole departments committed to the practice of writing false, robosigned affidavits. We’re not talking about crime that is hidden in a line item, or has to be deduced by checking and re-checking the numbers of dozens of accounts: we’re talking about groups of flesh-and-blood human beings, sitting there in plain view with huge stacks of folders on their desks, openly committing fraud and perjury. Walk in any direction in lower Manhattan with a badge, you're going to hit a fraud case whether you want to or not.

But fine, Gallagher’s point is taken: when you commit resources, you want to make sure you get hits. So what’s the solution? He goes on, cheerfully employing a jockish metaphor:

Experience teaches us, for example, that fraud tends to proliferate in smaller entities that may lack highly developed compliance programs. It also means thinking carefully about what we might, borrowing again from the world of sports, call “shot selection.” It can be tempting to tangle with prominent institutions. But chasing headlines and solving problems are two different things. The question is what will do most good – where our focus should be. And the record seems to suggest that we can do most to protect smaller, unsophisticated investors by focusing more attention on smaller entities...

8. War on Yemen

 With a Western withdrawal from Afghanistan “irreversible," according to NATO, the Pentagon and CIA’s military focus will concentrate on Yemen, where diplomatic or political solutions seem impossible anytime soon.

From the official US perspective, Yemen is the center of gravity in their battle to subdue Al Qaeda-linked jihadist cells with plans to attack the US. There is a kernel of truth to the claim. For example: the so-called “underwear bomber”, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, began his December 2009 mission in Yemen; bombs concealed within printer cartridges inside larger packages were shipped from there in October 2010; and the US-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki – killed by a CIA drone last September – actively counseled many jihadists.

Despite tactical delaying actions, the long-term futility of counterterrorism was underscored last week when a suicide bombing killed at least 112 people and injured hundreds more in Sana, the 2,500-year-old capital of Yemen, “stunning the country’s beleaguered government and delivering a stark setback to the American counterterrorism campaign,” according to the New York Times. (May 22, 2012)

The bombing was in retaliation against the escalation of US military intervention, included at least 20 US Special Forces advisers assisting an offensive in southern Yemen. The US forces had been driven out of Yemen last year when a popular movement toppled the long-time dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, only to return in recent weeks. At least 18 US drone strikes have been reported just since March. (Los Angeles Times, May 17, 2012)

Beneath the secret war against Al Qaeda, in reality the US continues to intervene in an ongoing ethnic civil war in Yemen itself, a conflict that cannot possibly be “won” by a foreign military power. While professing no other aim but counterterrorism, the US is funding and advising a shaky new Sunni regime, one pitted militarily against northern Shiite tribes and southern secessionists. (For more, please see Jeremy Scahill’s “The Dangerous US Game in Yemen,” The Nation, March 31, 2011)

According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), Al Qaeda is launching “a wide-scale domestic insurgency,” and transforming itself from an AQ-affiliate to a “more Taliban-like movement as well,” known as Ansar al Sharia, which took credit for the Sana blast. One of the leaders of Ansar al Sharia is Tariq al Zahab, brother of the widow of the slain Anwar al-Awlaki. (CRS, p. 5)

According to the United Nations, in the wake of the civil war, 150,000 people have become refugees from a single southern province, Abyan, since May 2011. (CRS, p. 5)

This sectarian civil war threatens to reverberate across regional boundaries because Saudi Arabia worries that the insurrection on its southern flank will spread to include minority Shiite tribes in the eastern provinces of its royal kingdom.

The taxpayer cost of the Yemen war is almost as secret as the US military role. For FY2013, the White House is asking for $72.6 million in State Department funding. But there are at least 17 separate aid channels for Yemen, involving multiple DC agencies. Total US foreign aid to Yemen from FY2009-2011 averaged $185.3 million.

As for military appropriations, the Pentagon’s Section 1206 “train and assist” budget is the main source of overt Yemen assistance. Under President Bush, Yemen received $30.3 million in Section 1206 money, while in the past two fiscal years Yemen obtained $221.8 million. Yemen, as of FY2010, was the world’s largest recipient of 1206 funds, ahead of runner-up Pakistan. These sums do not include US budgeting for special operations or drone strikes.

Measured in direct funding, Yemen will become another billion-dollar war this year. The country has a population of 24 million, less than California.

9.  Propaganda the War on Truth

Here’s a quote from Sunstein’s paper:
[W]e suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippled epistemology of those who subscribe to such theories. They do so by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity.
Sunstein is a sort of caricature of everything people don’t like and don’t trust about government. The fact that he’s in charge of “open government” speaks volumes.

Apparently not a great enthusiast for the Freedom of Information Act, Sunstein has said that judges are not qualified to second-guess executive branch decisions on what the public should or should not be told.

In light of this record, it’s useful to consider Sunstein’s broader mandate: to make government more efficient and accountable. Releasing records involves, in part, cutting red tape. Another aspect of cutting red tape is getting rid of bureaucracy. And that’s where things get even more interesting. Under cover of making government more accountable, Sunstein gets to push for elimination of regulations that corporations find onerous. Here’s a Washington Post article on Sunstein holding up (for more than a year) food safety legislation that the industry doesn’t like.

What’s going on here? Why the seeming shift away from Obama’s initial commitment to openness? One attorney involved with these matters says he suspects this may be traceable to Obama’s order, shortly after he took office, to release many of the so-called “torture memos.” The President seemed taken aback by vociferous public demands that he prosecute the torturers—a perilous policy due to internal resistance—and quickly shifted to favoring the intelligence community and restricting disclosure. As the attorney points out, the broader concept—that transparency leads to public awareness which in turn leads to demands for political changes—certainly does not sit well with dominant sectors in this country. Obama has hardly distinguished himself for seriously taking on those sectors. Maybe because he doesn’t want to, maybe because…he can’t.

from WHOWHATWHY?

10. Compares Manning vs Guantanamo
WASHINGTON — US rights activists Friday condemned a lack of disclosure in the case against WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning, saying there was even less transparency than proceedings against the alleged September 11 attackers.

A coalition headed by the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a petition asking the US Army to order the judge in Manning's court martial to allow access to government papers, court orders and transcripts of proceedings, "none of which have been made public to date."

Manning, whose trial is scheduled to start on September 21, is accused of "aiding the enemy" and dozens of other charges over his alleged leaking of documents to the site -- a charge that carries a potential life sentence.

Manning allegedly leaked hundreds of thousands of military logs from Iraq and Afghanistan and US diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks between November 2009 and May 2010, when he served as a low-ranking intelligence analyst in Iraq.

But the lack of access to legal documents in Manning's case amounts to "denial of the public's First Amendment rights," and "is clearly erroneous and amounts to an usurpation of authority," the campaigners' petition said. "The contrast with the degree of public access provided for in the military commissions under way at Guantanamo is striking," it said.  "Courtroom proceedings at Guantanamo are open to public observers and also available for live viewing domestically via closed circuit television.

"Transcripts of these courtroom proceedings are posted in a time frame comparable to that provided for high-profile criminal trials," it added.  Manning, 24, last month faced pre-trial hearings at Fort Meade military base in Maryland, near the US capital. Earlier proceedings against him at the same base in December 2011 were conducted "largely outside the public view," those who signed Friday's petition said.