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Financial speculators reap profits from global hunger
2008-04-26 10:04:00
Under conditions of growing debt defaults arising from the US subprime crisis, speculators and hedge fund groups have increasingly switched their investments from high-risk "bundled" securities into so-called "stores of value," which include gold and oil at one end of the spectrum and "soft commodities" such as corn, cocoa and cattle at the other. The article in the New Statesman points out that "speculators are even placing bets on water prices" and then concludes: "Just like the boom in house prices, commodity price inflation feeds on itself. The more prices rise, and big profits are made, the more others invest, hoping for big returns. Look at the financial web sites: everyone and their mother is piling into commodities.... The trouble is that if you are one of the 2.8 billion people, almost half the world's population, who live on less than $2 a day, you may pay for these profits with your life." Investment in "soft commodities" is currently highly recommended by lea...
More About: Hunger , Financial , Global , Profits , Speculators

Iraqis accuse Blackwater of shredding documents
2008-04-26 10:03:00
Families of Iraqis who died in a shooting involving Blackwater Worldwide contractors accused the company Friday of shredding documents and destroying evidence. Lawyers for the families made the accusations in court documents but identified the source of the information only as former employees. They said officials at the company's North Carolina compound shredded documents related to ongoing investigations sometime around March 18. Company lawyers had no immediate comment Friday night, but they are quoted in court documents as saying Blackwater took appropriate steps to make sure documents were not destroyed. Lawyers for the Iraqis do not say what investigation the documents relate to. Blackwater, a major security contractor in Iraq, is under scrutiny in several matters.Most notably, its guards are under investigation for a September shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead. There is no indication the Justice Department is investigating shredding as part of that case. ...
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National Bio Agro Defense Facility, The New Plum Island and a Frightening L
2008-04-26 10:01:00
The legacy of Plum Island Animal Disease Center is not one of promise and prosperity it is one of security breaches, enviromental releases and funding cuts. The funding and the grants will be of benefit to the business special interest, Academia and Universities not surrounding communities.  The community will be left with what New York residents are being left with, a dangerous bio hazard on a massive scale.  Ask yourself, Is the legacy of PIADC what you want for your children and  grandchildren?   The summary below is part of a petition. It outlines many issues that have not been part of the public debate. It appears here with the permission of the author,  Dr. Joseph Melamed,  Dr. Melamed recently had this to say about the lab, " This is not a political, economic, or race issue. It is a public health issue" ~ read on... ~  
More About: National , Defense , Agro

Food Riots Erupt Worldwide
2008-04-26 09:59:00
Food riots are erupting all over the world. To prevent them and to help people afford the most basic of goods, we need to understand the causes of skyrocketing food prices and correct the policies that have fueled them. World food prices rose by 39 percent in the last year. Rice alone rose to a 19-year high in March -- an increase of 50 per cent in two weeks alone -- while the real price of wheat has hit a 28-year high. As a result, food riots erupted in Egypt, Guinea, Haiti, Indonesia, Mauritania, Mexico, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen. For the 3 billion people in the world who subsist on $2 a day or less, the leap in food prices is a killer. They spend a majority of their income on food, and when the price goes up, they can't afford to feed themselves or their families. Analysts have pointed to some obvious causes, such as increased demand from China and India, whose economies are booming. Rising fuel and fertilizer costs, increased use of bio-fuels and climate change ha...
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B.C. shuts door on uranium projects
2008-04-26 09:56:00
British Columbia has slapped an official moratorium on uranium exploration and development in the province, reinforcing a long-standing informal ban on the nuclear fuel and dashing the hopes of companies that hoped to take advantage of soaring prices for the commodity. The ban, announced yesterday, makes B.C. a no-go zone for uranium and confirms a moratorium put in place in 1980 by a previous government responding to anti-nuclear sentiment in the province. That moratorium lapsed in 1987 but subsequent governments did not move to update it, as companies focused their exploration campaigns on other metals and because there was a widespread view that uranium production would be unpopular in the province. That changed in recent years, as uranium prices more than doubled and climate change concerns put emissions-free, uranium-fed nuclear power plants in the spotlight. ~ more... ~  
More About: Projects , Uranium , Door

Generation Rx
2008-04-26 09:43:00
Generating $130,000 per second for Big PharmaCommon Radius Films is a private documentary and media development company based in Vancouver, British Columbia. GENERATION RX marks the first film partnership between the company and international award-winning writer/producer/director Kevin P. Miller. This film explores how children have been caught in the middle of an unprecedented change in Western culture: that of drugging children with psychiatric medications earlier ? and more often than ever before.GENERATION RX has already garnered the support of some of the most respected names in Hollywood, including writer/director Paul Haggis, who won back-to-back Academy Awards for "Million Dollar Baby," and "Crash." GENERATION RX, Mr. Haggis said, "is a powerful and often chilling eye-opener. Weeks after viewing, the stories continue to haunt me."
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Israelis Claim Secret Agreement With U.S. - Americans Insist No Deal Made o
2008-04-26 09:41:00
A letter that President Bush personally delivered to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon four years ago has emerged as a significant obstacle to the president's efforts to forge a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians during his last year in office. Ehud Olmert, the current Israeli prime minister, said this week that Bush's letter gave the Jewish state permission to expand the West Bank settlements that it hopes to retain in a final peace deal, even though Bush's peace plan officially calls for a freeze of Israeli settlements across Palestinian territories on the West Bank. In an interview this week, Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, said Secret ary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed this understanding in a secret agreement reached between Israel and the United States in the spring of 2005, just before Israel withdrew from Gaza. U.S. officials say no such agreement exists, and in recent months Rice has publicly criticized even settlement expansi...
More About: Deal , Made , Americans , Agreement

Iran invasion talk: The killing machine is revving up again
2008-04-26 09:39:00
U.S. Weighing Readiness for Military Action Against Iran   The nation's top military officer said yesterday that the Pentagon is planning for "potential military courses of action" as one of several options against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government's "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq.   Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a conflict with Iran would be "extremely stressing" but not impossible for U.S. forces, pointing to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air Force. "It would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability," he said at a Pentagon news conference. Speaking of Iran's intentions, Mullen said: "They prefer to see a weak Iraq neighbor. . . . They have expressed long-term goals to be the regional power." Mullen made clear that he prefers a diplomatic solution and does not expect imminent action. "I have no expectations that we're going to get into a conflict with Iran...
More About: Machine , Talk , Invasion , Killing

'The inside story of how the Bush administration pushed disinformation and
2008-04-26 09:30:00
From: The Lie Factory   It's a crisp fall day in western Virginia, a hundred miles from Washington, D.C., and a breeze is rustling the red and gold leaves of the Shenandoah hills. On the weather-beaten wood porch of a ramshackle 90-year-old farmhouse, at the end of a winding dirt-and-gravel road, Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski is perched on a plastic chair, wearing shorts, a purple sweatshirt, and muddy sneakers. Two scrawny dogs and a lone cat are on the prowl, and the air is filled with swarms of ladybugs. So far, she says, no investigators have come knocking. Not from the Central Intelligence Agency, which conducted an internal inquiry into intelligence on Iraq, not from the congressional intelligence committees, not from the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. All of those bodies are ostensibly looking into the Bush administration's prewar Iraq intelligence, amid charges that the White House and the Pentagon exaggerated, distorted, or just plai...
More About: Story , Bush administration , Administration , Inside

Ecuador?s Leader Purges Military and Moves to Expel American Base
2008-04-26 09:19:00
Chafing at ties between American intelligence agencies and Ecuador ean military officials, President Rafael Correa is purging the armed forces of top commanders and pressing ahead with plans to cast out more than 100 members of the American military from an air base here in this coastal city.   Mr. Correa ? who this month dismissed his defense minister, army chief of intelligence and commanders of the army, air force and joint chiefs ? said that Ecuador's intelligence systems were "totally infiltrated and subjugated to the C.I.A." He accused senior military officials of sharing intelligence with Colombia, the Bush administration's top ally in Latin America. The dismissals point to a willingness by Mr. Correa, an ally of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, to aggressively confront Ecuador's military, a bastion of political and economic power in this coup-prone country of 14 million people. Mr. Correa's moves mark a clear break with his predecessors, illustrating...
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2010: D-day for the Internet as it hits "full capacity"?
2008-04-26 08:33:00
Doom-filled warnings arrive from AT&T this week. The company says that without substantial investment in network infrastructure, the Internet will essentially run out of bandwidth in just two short years. Blame broadband, says AT&T. Decades of dealing with the trickle of bandwidth consumed by voice and dialup modems left AT&T twiddling its thumbs. The massive rise of DSL and cable modem service in the 2000s has had AT&T facing a monstrous increase in the volume of data transmissions. And that's set to increase another 50 times between now and 2015. That's enough, says AT&T, to all but crash the system. In response, AT&T says it's investing $19 billion to upgrade the backbone of the Internet, the routers, servers, and connections where the bulk of traffic is processed. Of course, AT&T is using this breathlessness in part to point fingers beyond simple broadband use. Web video (especially high-definition video) is the most commonly mentioned ...
More About: Full , Hits , The Internet

Hemp - the maligned plant
2008-04-26 07:54:00
Hemp For Victory1942 - U.S. gov't documentaryHemp For Victory - A Global Warming SolutionRichard Davis of the USA Hemp Museum speaking on the need to use hemp to help solve the problem of global warming. The hemp plant makes a clean burning fuel and scrubs the air of excess CO2 gas.Ford Hemp CarIndustrial Hemp can be used to produce many unexpected products. Most people know it is the sustainable alternative to cotton, but very few know it can also be used as building material or to make plastics out of. Henry Ford's hemp car is a great example of the many ways in which Hemp could be used as a sustainable alternative to petrochemical plastics.Hemp Powered Car debuts in Washington, DCBiodiesel from hempseed powered car rolls out at the 2001 NORML conference in Washington, DC., with tour from the owners.Hemp HistoryJack Herer explains why hemp is the #1 Natural resourceThe Truth of Cannabis ( True Facts )The Truth About Marijuana: When a Good Plant Got a Bad NameHow marijuana cu...
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Japan's former top defence official admits bribery
2008-04-25 10:29:00
Japan's former top defence bureaucrat pleaded guilty on Monday to taking bribes for military contracts in a scandal that has embarrassed the government. Takemasa Moriya, 63, who was nicknamed "the emperor" for his influence within the defence ministry until he retired last year, admitted to bribery charges at the first hearing of his trial. "I apologise to the public and to officials for being behind such crimes," Moriya said in his opening statement at the Tokyo District Court, as quoted by Jiji Press and Kyodo News. Moriya has previously admitted that he and his wife accepted fine dining, gifts and golf trips from a military contractor. But Moriya had denied wrongdoing, saying the contractor was a friend. It was Moriya's first public appearance since the former vice defence minister was released on bail in January. He was arrested on November 28. According to the criminal complaint, he allegedly took 12.5 million yen (125,000 dollars) in bribes that influenced the awar...
More About: Defence , Bribery , Official

Actionday on June 6th, 2008 in Warsaw/Poland: SHUT DOWN FRONTEX!
2008-04-25 10:26:00
From no-racism.net :   Transnational Resistance against the "European Border Agency" - Fight the Border Regime - for Global Freedom of Movement!   Protest and press-conference in front of the headquarters of FRONTEX in Warsaw, against european borderregime and its externalisation to the East and South, in the frame of the transnational chain of migrationrelated actions!While the number of migrants and refugees is rising everywhere, the European Union is implementing a more and more restrictive border regime to limit, control and "manage" migration according to its own interests. The result is violent exclusion of migrants and refugees, leading to thousands of people dying every year outside the walls of Fortress Europe, in the desert, in the Mediterranean sea or in the Atlantic ocean, leading to enforced mass deportations, leading to millions of "undocumented migrants" and asylum seekers who are deprived of fundamental Human Rights and Labour Rights. FRONTEX, t...
More About: Poland , June , Shut , 2008

Sarkozy and the Specter of May 68
2008-04-25 08:55:00
The Liquidator by Philippe Marlière Forty years on, the specter of May 68 continues to haunt France. A week before his election to the French presidency, Nicolas Sarkozy launched an astonishing attack on the "moral and intellectual permissiveness" of May 68. According to the rightwing candidate, the heirs of May 68 would be responsible for all French ills: the demise of traditions, the undermining of authority and the making of an "unethical capitalism" (the one of golden parachutes and rogue bosses). Ségolène Royal, his socialist opponent, led a campaign based on law and order issues, exalting the tricolor and the Marseillaise. To hammer home the fact that she was also spurning all things soixante-huitardes, Royal went as far as promising the creation of re-education camps for juvenile delinquents under the supervision of the army. In his latest book, André Glucksmann (a philosopher who has made the long journey from Maoism to neoconservatism) argues that Sarkozy is in...
More About: Specter

"Taxi To The Dark Side" - Trailer
2008-04-24 07:32:00
This documentary murder mystery examines the death of an Afghan taxi driver at Bagram Air Base from injuries inflicted by U.S. soldiers. In an unflinching look at the Bush administration's policy on torture, the filmmaker behind Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room takes us from a village in Afghanistan to Guantanamo and straight to the White House. In English and Pashtu.
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Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight
2008-04-24 06:02:00
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.~ more and transcript ~
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Musical Innerlube: Medium Rara-Sitar and Panflute by Stephan Mikes/Bonnie P
2008-04-23 12:42:00
http://www.stephanmikes.com/source: Interview with Sitar Player Stephan Mikes
More About: Musical , Bonnie , Medium

Disapproval of Bush breaks record
2008-04-23 12:39:00
President Bush has set a record he'd presumably prefer to avoid: the highest disapproval rating of any president in the 70-year history of the Gallup Poll. In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, 28% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing; 69% disapprove. The approval rating matches the low point of his presidency, and the disapproval sets a new high for any president since Franklin Roosevelt. The previous record of 67% was reached by Harry Truman in January 1952, when the United States was enmeshed in the Korean War. Bush's rating has worsened amid "collapsing optimism about the economy," says Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies presidential approval. Record gas prices and a wave of home foreclosures have fueled voter angst. Bush also holds the record for the other extreme: the highest approval rating of any president in Gallup's history. In September 2001, in the days after the 9/11 attacks...
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South Africa: Union refuses to unload Zim arms
2008-04-23 12:31:00
Opposition to a shipment of arms being offloaded in Durban and transported to Zimbabwe increased on Thursday when South Africa 's largest transport workers union announced that its members would not unload the ship.SA Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) general secretary Randall Howard said: "Satawu does not agree with the position of the South Africa n government not to intervene with this shipment of weapons."Our members employed at Durban Container Terminal will not unload this cargo neither will any of our members in the truck driving sector move this cargo by road."He said the ship, the An Yue Jiang, should not dock in Durban and should return to China.   "South Africa cannot be seen to be facilitating the flow of weapons into Zimbabwe at a time where there is a political dispute and a volatile situation between the Zanu-PF and the MDC.""The view of our members is that nobody should ask us to unload these weapons," he said.Satawu said it planned to engag...
More About: Arms

Steven John Lalas - Greece's hidden ace in FYROM name negotiations
2008-04-23 07:39:00
Former Greek spy returns after 14 years in US prisonAthens - A former Greek spy on Sunday returned to Athens after spending 14 years in prison in the United States, ending a spectacular espionage affair between the two countries. The case had put a heavy strain on diplomatic relations in the 1990s. Fifty-four-year old Steven Lalas, a US citizen of Greek origin, worked as a member of the technical staff at US consulates in Izmir, Turkey, Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia and Athens, from where he forwarded secret documents to the Greek intelligence service. The documents were mainly concerned with US policy during the first phase of the Balkan crisis. Lalas was busted in 1992 and sentenced to 14 years in prison on charges of espionage in the US in 1993. His activities were discovered when he was working at the US embassy in Athens. High-ranking Greek diplomats are said to have boasted of being well-informed of US plans in the Balkans, leading US espionage experts t...
More About: John , Hidden , Negotiations

US man 'gave secrets to Israel'
2008-04-23 07:24:00
A military engineer has appeared in court in the US on charges of passing classified information to Israel . Ben-Ami Kadish is alleged to have given secrets involving information about nuclear weapons, fighter jets and missiles to Israel in the 1980s. He was charged with four counts of conspiracy, including disclosing documents relating to national defence and acting as an agent of Israel. He declined to comment on leaving the Manhattan courthouse. ~ read on... ~  
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Israel's Shin Bet launches blog
2008-04-23 07:21:00
The Israeli secret service has launched a new venture: it has started to carry an internet diary, or blog, written by four of its agents. The agents discuss how they were recruited, and what sort of work they perform; they also answer questions sent in by members of the public. The tone of the blog is chatty, at times even facetious. [ ... ] The blogs are intended to draw members of the public into other areas of the Shin Bet website - in particular the recruitment section. Some of the positions are advertised with a red star and the slogan "hot job". There is the opportunity to work on what are described as "irregular missions"; to work on one's own; and to acquire a variety of "special skills". ~ more... ~  
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Yemen: Discontent challenges government
2008-04-23 07:14:00
While calls for secession have been heard, a primary force driving recurrent waves of disturbances in the south and elsewhere in recent months appears to be the poor economic management of Saleh's General People's Congress (GPC) and discontent at its untrammeled domination of the governance system. Public sector and military employment is a fulcrum for southern protests because the security services constitute the largest single employer in a country in which up to 40 percent of the population live in poverty and unemployment stands at anywhere between 20-40 percent. The analyst who requested anonymity explained that, "What is sparking them [the protests] is part of a much larger grievance against the regime. And what you are starting to see now is an increasingly common narrative between what is going on in the south and what's going on in the north [al-Houthi rebellion]. "At their heart, these demonstrations are about the inability of the government to provide bas...
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' "Load up the pantry," says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street's top investo
2008-04-23 06:57:00
"Load up the pantry," says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street's top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund. "I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn't going to happen here. But I don't know how the food companies can absorb higher costs." (Full disclosure: I am an investor in Quaker Strategic) Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash. Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you'll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax. Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year. And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by m...
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'A Paris museum acknowledged Friday that its own star exhibit crystal skull
2008-04-22 18:36:00
From: Skullduggery, Indiana Jones? Museum says crystal skull not AztecOne of only a dozen such skulls known to exist worldwide, the Quai Branly museum's piece was acquired in 1878 from an Indiana Jones-type explorer, Alphonse Pinart, as an Aztec masterpiece believed to be hundreds of years old, the remnant of an ancient and mysterious civilisation. But in a statement Friday the museum admitted the skull, rather than dating from the Aztec period, was probably made in the 19th century. From May 20 the Paris skull goes on view to coincide with the premiere at the Cannes Film Festival of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" -- the fourth installment in Harrison Ford's archaeologist's adventures since the 1981 blockbuster "Raiders of the Lost Ark". While the plot of the latest archeological epic by Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas remains a tightly-guarded secret, bets are the Indiana Jones movie will mirror Aztec beliefs surrounding the skulls. Legend has...
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Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime (review)
2008-04-22 15:39:00
The Hindu custom of dowry has long been blamed for the murder of wives and female infants in India. In this highly provocative book, Veena Oldenburg argues that these killings are neither about dowry nor reflective of an Indian culture or caste system that encourages violence against women. Rather, such killings can be traced directly to the influences of the British colonial era. In the precolonial period, dowry was an institution managed by women, for women, to enable them toestablish their status and have recourse in an emergency. As a consequence of the massive economic and social upheaval brought on by British rule, women's entitlements to the precious resources obtained from land were erased and their control of the system diminished, ultimately resulting in adevaluing of their very lives. Taking us on a journey into the colonial Punjab, Veena Oldenburg skillfully follows the paper trail left by British bureaucrats to indict them for interpreting these crimes agai...
More About: Murder , Crime , Review , Imperial , Cultural

Revolutionary War Historian Joseph Ellis Says U.S. Imperialism Violates ?Hi
2008-04-22 15:32:00
America's military presence in Iraq represents "a basic violation" of its "historic identity," that of a nation founded in opposition to imperialism, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis said. Americans have neglected an important lesson from their own past, Ellis, an authority on the Revolutionary War period, said. "We have become the imperial power. We have become Great Britain and have succeeded Great Britain as the hegemonic power of the world. I would think we would wish to avoid making some of the mistakes she made." He challenged the idea that the U.S. needs a military presence in South Korea and Western Europe as well as Iraq. "The notion that (our problems) are going to be solved in a military fashion is fundamentally misguided and it's going to send us right down the path that Britain went and into oblivion," Ellis warned in a recent talk at the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover. [ ... ] Prior to assuming command in Iraq, General (David) Petrae...
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Saudi Arabia?s Terror Finance Problem
2008-04-22 15:25:00
There is little willingness to tackle the Saudi s anymore on the issue of cracking down on terror finance. Intelligence services here and in Europe know most of the money for the mujahadeed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere still come from wealthy donors in the Kingdom. Only a handful of officials, however, dare to say so publicly anymore for fear of ruffling the feathers of those who keep our gas prices above $3 a gallon and will not allow a Bible, Torah or any other non-Muslim book into their country.The exception has been Stuart Levey, the Treasury undersecretary for terror finance issues, who recently and publicly took on the Saudis in little-noted Congressional testimony. Fortunately, the LA Times did notice."Saudi Arabia today remains the location where more money is going to terrorism, to Sunni terror groups and to the Taliban than any other place in the world," Levey said under questioning.U.S. officials have previously identified Saudi Arabia as a major source ...
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Former war crimes prosecutor alleges Kosovan army harvested organs from Ser
2008-04-22 15:16:00
Carla Del Ponte, the ex-chief prosecutor for war crimes in former Yugoslavia, has unleashed a storm of recrimination with allegations of a trade in human body parts in Kosovo and Albania after Nato bombed Serbia in 1999. Del Ponte claims, based on what she describes as credible reports and witnesses, that Kosovan Albanian guerrillas transported hundreds of Serbian prisoners into northern Albania where they were killed, and their organs "harvested" and trafficked out of Tirana airport. The Kosovan government, now headed by the former guerrilla leader Hashim Thaci, dismisses the claims as untrue, while Serbia and Russia are demanding a war crimes investigation into the allegations. Del Ponte, now a Swiss ambassador, has been ordered to keep silent by the Swiss government. The allegations are aired in Del Ponte's just published memoirs of her eight years as chief prosecutor for the international war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia, based in The Hague. The Hunt: Me and ...
More About: Army , War Crimes , Crimes , Organs , Prosecutor