Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Breast Cancer Photo Essay: Man Documents His Wife's Brave Battle With The Disease
HP | Christina Huffington | 03/28/13

When Reddit user freckledsmile posted a link to Angelo Merendino's photo essay of his wife Jennifer's battle with breast cancer, he moved even the most stoic of Redditors to tears. "I've never once cried from something I found on Reddit. Not until now... I think I'm actually sobbing," wrote one. "Wow. Just wow. Powerful," wrote another.

Merendino, a New York-based photographer, describes the photo essay as an attempt to "humanize the face of cancer." He writes that the photographs "show the challenge, difficulty, fear, sadness and loneliness" and that "most important of all, they show our love." ... Read more
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Schools Are Training Second-Graders to Attack Mass Shooters
MotherJones | Deanna Pan | 03/28/13

Braden Kling, an eight-year-old from Middletown, Ohio, knows what to do. His school has prepared him for the moment of reckoning. "We have this big board and we hide behind that. If he comes in, we start throwing stuff," he explains. "Pencils, chairs, boxes, books, markers. And then we escape. ... "

... Perhaps the most controversial approach has been instructing school children to fight back. After Newtown, one commentator was met with derision when she suggested that kids should be trained to "gang rush" a mass shooter rather than to hide from him. ... Read more

Putin orders surprise military exercises
Aljazeera | author | 03/28/13

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered ordered surprise military exercises in the Black Sea region involving 7,000 troops and dozens of ships to test the army's battle readiness, the Kremlin said.   The order was presented to the Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu in a sealed envelope in the middle of the night at 4:00 am (2400 GMT) on Thursday, with the drills to start immediately.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov indicated the order was aimed at testing out the battle readiness of the Russian armed forces and said Moscow was not obliged to warn its partners of the plan. ... Read more

Spamhaus Hit With 'Largest Publicly Announced DDoS Attack' Ever, Affecting Internet Users Worldwide
HP | Raphael Satter | 03/27/13

A record-breaking cyberattack targeting an anti-spam watchdog group has sent ripples of disruption coursing across the Web, experts said Wednesday.

Spamhaus, a site responsible for keeping ads for counterfeit Viagra and bogus weight-loss pills out of the world's inboxes, said it had been buffeted by the monster denial-of-service attack since mid-March, apparently from groups angry at being blacklisted by the Swiss-British group. ... Read more

Walmart's Death Grip on Groceries Is Making Life Worse for Millions of People
AlterNet | Stacy Mitchell | 03/26/13

... Having gained more say over our food supply than Monsanto, Kraft, or Tyson, Walmart has been working overtime to present itself as a benevolent king. It has upped its donations to food pantries, reduced sodium and sugars in some of its store-brand products, and recast its relentless expansion as a solution to "food deserts." In 2011, it pledged to build 275-300 stores "in or near" low-income communities lacking grocery stores. ... Read more

Not Just the Bees: Bayer's Pesticide May Harm Birds, Too
MotherJones | Tom Philpott | 03/27/13

Once again this spring, farmers will begin planting at least 140 million acres--a land mass roughly equal to the combined footprints of California and Washington state--with seeds (mainly corn and soy) treated with a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. Commercial landscapers and home gardeners will get into the act, too--neonics are common in lawn and garden products. If you're a regular reader of my blog, you know all of that is probably bad news for honeybees and other pollinators, as a growing body of research shows--including three studies released just ahead of last year's planting season.

But bees aren't the only iconic springtime creature threatened by the ubiquitous pesticide, whose biggest makers are the European giants Bayer and Syngenta. It turns out that birds are too, according to an alarming analysis co-authored by Pierre Mineau, a retired senior research scientist at Environment Canada (Canada's EPA), published by the American Bird Conservancy. And not just birds themselves, but also the water-borne insect species that serve as a major food source for birds, fish, and amphibians. ... Read more

Ghost Factories: Poison in the Ground
USAToday | author | current

Ken Shefton is furious about what the government knew eight years ago and never told him -- that the neighborhood where his five sons have been playing is contaminated with lead.

Their Cleveland home is a few blocks from a long-forgotten factory that spewed toxic lead dust for about 30 years.   The Environmental Protection Agency and state regulators clearly knew of the danger. They tested soil throughout the neighborhood and documented hazardous levels of contamination. They never did a cleanup. They didn't warn people living nearby that the tainted soil endangers their children. ... Read more

Banks Seek to Overturn Judge's Ruling in Critical Mortgage Case
NYTimes | Jessica Silver-Greenberg | 03/27/13

The nation's largest banks, facing a torrent of lawsuits over shoddy mortgage securities, are pushing to overturn a series of tough rulings in an important case.

In a rare move, 15 banks -- including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and UBS -- filed a motion in Federal District Court in Manhattan late Tuesday night to throw out a series of decisions by Judge Denise L. Cote, according to a copy of the court filing. In doing so, the financial institutions are aiming to broaden the amount of evidence they can gather in the hopes of quashing the lawsuit. ...

... In 2011, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, accused the banks of duping the housing giants into buying $200 billion of mortgage securities that ultimately imploded during the financial crisis. On Wall Street, the lawsuit is considered a critical litmus test for how successful the banks will be in stanching their losses from the mortgage litigation. ... Read more

Slick, Paranoid Tea Party Video Aims for Violent Insurrection
AlterNet | Richard (RJ) Eskow | 03/26/13

Attendees at last week's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) were reportedly thrilled by a short sci-fi video depicting a dictatorial near-future government and the underground "Movement on Fire" that springs up to resist it. The video, a thinly veiled advertisement for violent insurrection from the "Tea Party Patriots" group, boasts professional acting and Hollywood production values. But underneath its bright, professional sheen lurk dark overtones of End Times paranoia that will resonate with millions of American fundamentalists. ... Read more
Tea Party Patriots - A Movement On Fire! (03/09/13) [2:01]

Five Ugly Extremes of Inequality in America
AlterNet | Paul Buchheit | 03/25/12

The first step is to learn the facts, and then to get angry and to ask ourselves, as progressives and caring human beings, what we can do about the relentless transfer of wealth to a small group of well-positioned Americans.

1. $2.13 per hour vs. $3,000,000.00 per hour. Each of the Koch brothers saw his investments grow by $6 billion in one year, which is three million dollars per hour based on a 40-hour 'work' week. They used some of the money to try to kill renewable energystandards around the country. Their income portrays them, in a society measured by economic status, as a million times more valuable than the restaurant server who cheers up our lunch hours while hoping to make enough in tips to pay the bills.
2. Any of the ten richest Americans could pay a year's rent for all of America's homeless with their 2012 income.
3. The poorest 47% of Americans have no wealth
4. The U.S. is nearly the most wealth-unequal country in the entire world
5. A can of soup for a black or Hispanic woman, a mansion and yacht for the businessman

Meet the CEO Who Cut Worker Pay in Half While Pulling in $21 Million Last Year
AlterNet | Sam Pizzigati | 03/25/13

The founder of modern management science, Peter Drucker, considered excessive executive pay an assault on good enterprise management practice.   But Peter Drucker also cared deeply about enterprise morality. In his later years, he watched -- and despaired -- as downsizing became an accepted corporate gameplan for pumping up executive paychecks. Drucker could find "no justification" for letting CEOs benefit financially from worker layoffs. ...

... If Drucker were still writing today, he'd likely be even more unforgiving. CEOs these days aren't just slashing worker jobs to add on to their own rewards. They're slashing worker pay as well -- and no CEO may be benefiting more from shrinking paychecks than Ford chief executive Alan Mulally.   Entry-level workers at Ford used to make $28 an hour. That rate fell by half when the auto industry financial crunch first hit five years ago and now sits a bit above $19. And since the crunch all Ford workers, not just entry-level workers, have given up cost-of-living wage adjustments and health benefits. ... Read more

The Effort to Roll Back Dodd-Frank
Bill Moyers | author | 03/25/13

But it seems some members of the House Agriculture Committee aren't paying much attention to their colleagues in the Senate. They have brought seven bills to the House floor that will weaken federal regulation of derivatives trading. The bills take aim at Title VII of the Dodd-Frank bank reform act -- even though Dodd-Frank has not been fully implemented yet. ...

... There's a reason why Warren Buffett said, "Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal." And why Bill Clinton said he was wrong to avoid regulating derivatives when he had the chance. These financial instruments played a central role in the financial crisis, culminating with the collapse and bailout of AIG. … Read more

*Mary Jo White, Obama Pick to Head SEC, Pushed Former Enforcement Chief As Bank Lawyer
HP | Ben Hallman | 01/24/13

Morgan Stanley needed someone with an inside line to the Securities and Exchange Commission. It was 2005, and the investment banking giant's board of directors was hearing that its top candidate for CEO could be implicated in a probe of insider trading at a major hedge fund. Seeking clarity, the board engaged the lawyer many considered the best in the business: Mary Jo White.

White swiftly lived up to her reputation, setting Morgan Stanley's board at ease. According to a report later prepared by the Senate Finance Committee, she emailed and then spoke by phone with the agency's chief of enforcement and learned that the board's CEO choice, John Mack, was most likely in the clear. The SEC investigation -- which had seemed to be leading closer to Mack -- disappeared, and Mack took the helm at Morgan Stanley.

On Thursday, President Obama tapped White to run the SEC as its next commissioner, a powerful role as Wall Street's top regulator and cop. ... Read more

Wikileaks Was Just a Preview: We're Headed for an Even Bigger Showdown Over Secrets
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 03/22/13

I went yesterday to a screening of We Steal Secrets, Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney's brilliant new documentary about Wikileaks. The movie is beautiful and profound, an incredible story that's about many things all at once. ... ... As Gibney pointed out in his movie, this is a Wizard of Oz moment, where we are being warned not to look behind the curtain ...

... What will we find out? We already know that our armies mass-murder women and children in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, that our soldiers joke about smoldering bodies from the safety of gunships, that some of our closest diplomatic allies starve and repress their own citizens, and we may even have gotten a glimpse or two of a banking system that uses computerized insider trading programs to steal from everyone who has an IRA or a mutual fund or any stock at all by manipulating markets like the NYSE. ... Read more

Adrian Lamo on Bradley Manning: 'I knew my actions might cost him his life'
The Guardian | Ed Pilkington | 01/03/13

More than two years after Manning's arrest, the man who gave him up talks to Ed Pilkington about how he made the decision ... Read more

Ex-Hacker Adrian Lamo Institutionalized, Diagnosed with Asperger's
Wired | Kevin Poulsen | 05/20/10

... When Lamo was finally discharged to his parents' house on May 7, he left the hospital with a new diagnosis. At 29 years old Lamo learned he has Asperger's Disorder.

"It's kind of a surprise that it took me until almost 30 to find I had a particular disorder and get proper treatment for it," Lamo says.

Sometimes called the "geek syndrome," Asperger's is a mild form of autism that makes social interactions difficult, and can lead to obsessive, highly focused behavior.   There are no reliable figures on how many people have Asperger's, but anecdotally a lot of them are drawn into the computer field, particularly the logic-heavy world of coding. BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen has diagnosed himself with the disorder, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates is frequently speculated to have it. ... Read more

Rat may have caused Fukushima blackout, say officials
TheGuardian | AP | 03/20/13

A power cut at Japan's tsunami-crippled nuclear plant this week may have been caused by a rat, according to officials.   Masayuki Ono, spokesman for Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company), the utility that runs the Fukushima Daiichi plant, said a 6-inch rodent was found dead near a switchboard. He said the rat might be linked to the power failure. ... Read more

*Bill Moyers: Are the Monster Banks on the Verge of Unleashing Fresh Economic Disaster?
AlterNet | Bill Moyers | 03/24/13

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the question of the week: are the banks -- banks too big to fail and too big to jail -- are these monsters courting another disaster?   That's what it looks like. As you no doubt heard, last week, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a report and hauled in key executives from JP Morgan Chase -- the world's biggest derivatives trader -- demanding to know how the bank blew 6.2 billion dollars in funny money -- I mean, derivatives -- and hid the losses with some fancy accounting tricks aimed at fooling both regulators and the public.

Senator Carl Levin, the Chairman, bluntly summed up what they found out: "It exposes a derivatives trading culture at JP Morgan that piled on risk, hid losses, disregarded risk limits, manipulated risk models, dodged oversight, and misinformed the public." ... Read more

The Global Stagflation-O-Meter Brings Even More Bad News For Cyprus
ZeroHedge | author | 03/26/13

Even more bad news for Cyprus, which now has not only a depression to look forward to but a depressionary stagflation to boot. Bloomberg has ranked countries based on their risk of stagflation based on the following methodology: First, the average real Gross Domestic Product and average Consumer Price Index was calculated for each country from 2012 to 2014. Then the Stagflation Score was determined by multiplying average real GDP by average CPI if the average real GDP was negative or by dividing average real GDP by average CPI if the average real GDP was positive. The lower the score, the greater the risk of stagflation. The winner, or loser at the case may be? Cyprus was found to be most at risk of stagflation with a Stagflation Score of -4.733, followed by Portugal (-2.671), Italy (-2.133), Spain(-1.745) and Greece (-1.366). Switzerland was ranked least at risk with a score of (7.560), followed by China (2.612) and Japan (2.446). ... Read more
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Can We Save More Than Four Million Children's Lives In the Next 1,000 Days?
HP | Ray Chambers | 03/26/13

On December 31, 2015, 1,000 days from April 6, we'll reach the deadline for achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. These goals represent the most important effort to improve lives in history, endorsed by leaders from 193 countries and 23 international agencies, and they include three that are dedicated to global health, focused largely on children under five and pregnant mothers. ... Read more

North Korea orders artillery to be combat ready, targeting U.S. bases
Reuters | author |03/26/13

North Korea said on Tuesday its strategic rocket and long-range artillery units have been ordered to be combat ready, targeting U.S. military bases on Guam, Hawaii and mainland America after U.S. bombers flew sorties threatening the North.   The order, issued in a statement from the North's military "supreme command", marks the latest fiery rhetoric from Pyongyang since the start of joint military drills by U.S. and South Korean forces early this month. ... Read more

Cyprus Salvaged After EU Deal Shuts Bank to Get $13B
Bloomberg | Rebecca Christie | 03/25/13

Cyprus dodged a disorderly default and unprecedented exit from the euro by bowing to demands from creditors to shrink its banking system in exchange for 10 billion euros ($13 billion) of aid.

Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades agreed to shut the country's second-largest bank under pressure from a German-led bloc in a night-time negotiating melodrama that threatened to rekindle the debt crisis and rattle markets. ... Read more
Cyprus Salvaged After EU Deal Shuts Bank to Get $13B (03/25/13) [3:24]

The Drought That Ravaged US Crops Is Only Going to Get Worse
MotherJones | Suzanne Goldenberg | 03/22/13

The historic drought that laid waste to America's grain and corn belt is unlikely to ease before the middle of this year, a government forecast warned on Thursday.

The 147 People Destroying the World
AlterNet | Richard (R.J.) Eskow | 03/25/13

Can 147 people perpetuate economic injustice -- and make it even worse? Can they subvert the workings of democracy, both abroad and here in the United States? Can 147 people hijack the global economy, plunder the environment, build a world for themselves that serves the few and deprives the many? ...

... Derivatives, the Sequel: Four short years after too-big-to-fail banks nearly destroyed the world economy, as the nation continues to suffer the after-effects of the crisis they created, a Congressional committee moved to undo the already-insufficient safeguards in the Dodd/Frank law. ... Read more

*One Nation Under The Gun: Thousands Of Gun Deaths Since Newtown
HP | Jason Cherkis | 03/22/13

... In the first week after the Newtown, Conn., massacre on Dec. 14, more than 100 people in the U.S. were killed by guns. In the first seven weeks, that number had risen to at least 1,285 gunshot killings and accidental deaths. A little more than three months after Newtown, there have been 2,244. ... Read more
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Former Halliburton Subsidiary Received $39.5 Billion In Iraq-Related Contracts Over The Past Decade
BusinessInsider | Angelo Young | 03/19/13

The accounting of the financial cost of the nearly decade-long Iraq War will go on for years, but a recent analysis has shed light on the companies that made money off the war by providing support services as the privatization of what were former U.S. military operations rose to unprecedented levels.

Private or publicly listed firms received at least $138 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for government contracts for services that included providing private security, building infrastructure and feeding the troops. ...

... The No. 1 recipient?   Houston-based energy-focused engineering and construction firm KBR, Inc. (NYSE:KBR), which was spun off from its parent, oilfield services provider Halliburton Co. (NYSE:HAL), in 2007. ... Read more

Big Banks Offer Payday Loans At 300 Percent Interest
HP | Mark GongloffMark Gongloff | 03/21/13

Step aside, Tony Soprano: Big banks will now lend money at 300 percent interest without threatening to break a leg.   Then again, the payday loans some big banks are offering can have other ill effects, such as financial ruin, according to a new study by the Center for Responsible Lending. Even as public anxiety grows about the dangers of payday lending, with 15 states recently banning the practice, many big banks are offering the service to their customers. ... Read more

Rep. Alan Grayson: Paul Ryan wants sick poor people to die fast
RawStory | Eric W. Dolan | 03/12/13

Rep. Alan Grayson, a notably blunt Democrat from Florida, blasted House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Tuesday night.   While discussing the Republican congressman's latest budget proposal on Current TV, Grayson accused Ryan of wishing a large swath of Americans would die.

"In one case after another, you look at his principles, you look at his vision, and they're a nightmare for America," he said. "He wants Americans to work until they die, he wants poor people who get sick not be able to see a doctor, not to get the care they need, not to get better, he wants them to die, and he wants an America that consists of nothing but cheap labor for his corporate patrons." ... Read more

10 Years After the Invasion: America Destroyed Iraq But Our War Crimes Remain Unacknowledged and Unpunished
AlterNet | Nicolas J.S. Davies | 03/15/13

Since the end of the Second World War, American political leaders and opinion-makers have led the public to believe that the aggressive use of overt and covert military force are essential tools of US foreign policy. As we reel from one military disaster to the next, sending our loved ones off to war, killing millions of innocent people and destabilizing one region after another, each new administration assures us that it has learned the lessons of the past and deserves our support and sacrifice for its latest military strategy.

But the web of myths, euphemisms and ever-growing secrecy behind which our leaders feel compelled to hide their war policies belies their claims to have learned the lessons of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else. The brave efforts of Julian Assange, Wikileaks and Bradley Manning to let us honestly examine the record for ourselves and draw our own conclusions are met with vindictive terror in the halls of power.

Forty years after the last U.S. troops came home in defeat from Vietnam, Nick Turse's book, Kill Anything That Moves, has documented the systematic slaughter that thousands of American soldiers took part in and millions of Vietnamese suffered. Turse has restored the lived reality of millions of people to its rightful place in American history, from which it had simply been redacted and suppressed. ... Read more

Rat may have caused Fukushima blackout, say officials
TheGuardian | AP | 03/20/13

A power cut at Japan's tsunami-crippled nuclear plant this week may have been caused by a rat, according to officials.   Masayuki Ono, spokesman for Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company), the utility that runs the Fukushima Daiichi plant, said a 6-inch rodent was found dead near a switchboard. He said the rat might be linked to the power failure. ... Read more

White House Petition: Make Lawmakers Wear Logos Of Financial Backers On Clothing, Like In NASCAR
HP | Nick Wing | 03/20/13

From the depths of the White House's "We the People" petition website comes this cause created on Tuesday, hoping to force congressional lawmakers to prominently display their financial backers and monetary support from various lobbies. ... Read more

Freddie Mac Unaware Of Homeowner Complaints, Inspector General Concludes
HP | Ben Hallman | 03/21/13

For more than five years, many homeowners who complained about mortgage industry foreclosure abuses have wondered whether anyone with a financial stake in keeping them in their home was paying attention. On Thursday, with the release of a new report from a federal watchdog, they got their answer: No.

Four of the largest bank servicers -- Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Provident -- reported no escalated cases to Freddie Mac, despite handling more than 20,000 over a 14-month period, according to the report. Freddie Mac examiners did not notice that the mortgage companies were failing to disclose the complaints, nor did the FHFA, which relied on "incomplete" Fannie Mae examinations, the report concludes. The FHFA oversees the bailed out lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. ... Read more

Nine Pollution Picture Perfect Days In Beijing

America's Lost Decade in Iraq: A Marine Officer Looks Back
TheDailyBeast | Benjamin Busch | 03/19/13

Today marks the 10-year anniversary of our second invasion of Iraq, and the questions that were never answered about our nearly nine-year occupation are no longer being asked. Americans, our allies, and the Iraqi people are still owed an honest answer from the leaders who created the war and kept us in it: why were we there?

Hundreds of thousands of Americans protested at the start of the war, but bombing inevitably began on March 19, 2003. The next day U.S. and British forces drove through a breach in the high berm dividing Kuwait from Iraq. I entered as part of the invasion force sent to disarm Iraq. Colin Powell told the U.N. that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and was linked to 9/11. Rumsfeld said we would be done within a few months at a cost of around $50 billion. Paul Wolfowitz said Iraq could pay for its own reconstruction with oil revenue. Dick Cheney said we would be greeted as liberators. President Bush declared an end to major combat operations 44 days later under a banner that read "Mission Accomplished." We were not briefed on a post-hostilities plan, and even Saddam Hussein managed to evade capture for another seven months. ... Read more

*Lie by Lie: A Timeline of How We Got Into Iraq
MotherJones | Jonathan Stein | 2006

AT A CONGRESSIONAL hearing examining the march to war in Iraq, Republican congressman Walter Jones posed "a very simple question" about the administration's manipulation of intelligence: "How could the professionals see what was happening and nobody speak out?"   Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, responded with an equally simple answer: "The vice president."

But the blame for Iraq does not end with Cheney, Bush, or Rumsfeld. Nor is it limited to the intelligence operatives who sat silent as the administration cherry-picked its case for war, or with those, like Colin Powell or Hans Blix, who, in the name of loyalty or statesmanship, did not give full throat to their misgivings. ... Read more

Tomas Young, Dying Iraq War Veteran, Pens 'Last Letter' To Bush, Cheney On War's 10th Anniversary (featured in documentary "Body of War")
HP | Nick Wing | 03/19/13

Days after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Tomas Young, then a 22-year-old from Kansas City, Mo., made a decision repeated by many other Americans around the country: He was going to enlist in the military in hopes of getting even with the enemies who had helped coordinate the deaths of nearly 3,000 men, women and children.

Less than three years later, Young's Army service placed him not in Afghanistan -- where then-President George W. Bush had told the nation the terrorist plot had originated -- but in Iraq. On April 4, 2004, just five days into his first tour, Young's convoy was attacked by insurgents. A bullet from an AK-47 severed his spine. ... Read more
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Last Letter to Bush and Cheney @ Truthdig.com

Wall Street Deregulation Garners Bipartisan Support Despite Devastating JPMorgan Report
HP | Zach Carter | 03/19/13

A bipartisan cadre of House lawmakers will move on legislation to deregulate Wall Street derivatives Wednesday, less than a week after Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) released a devastating report on the multibillion-dollar derivatives debacle at JPMorgan Chase.

"The road to hell is paved with these bills," said Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), an advocate of financial reform. ... Read more

The Disturbing History of One of the Pentagon's Most Expensive Flying Turkeys
AlterNet | Jeremiah Goulka | 03/10/13

... So what did Lockheed do about the fate of the C-130? It bypassed the Pentagon and went straight to Congress. Using a procedure known as a congressional "add-on" -- that is, an earmark -- Lockheed was able to sell the military another fleet of C-130s that it didn't want. ...

... the Air Force did request some C-130s. Thanks to Senator John McCain, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) did a study of how many more C-130s the Air Force requested between 1978 and 1998. The answer: Five. How many did Congress add on? Two hundred and fifty-six. ... Read more

*Iraq War Media Failure Can Happen Again
HP | Michael Calderone | 03/19/13

Major news organizations have retracted or re-examined pre-war stories, while "liberal hawks" churned out mea culpas. There's now a small canon of books and TV specials chronicling the press failure, including Michael Massing's Now They Tell Us, Greg Mitchell's So Wrong For So Long, and Bill Moyers' "Buying The War."

Such criticism is well-deserved, given that the U.S. media -- with a few notable exceptions -- helped promote the Bush administration's flimsy case for invading a country that had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 terror attacks, thus beginning a nine-year war that killed more than 115,000 Iraqi civilians and 4,488 U.S. service members. ... Read more

*A Decade Later, Iraq Still A Bloody Mess: 57 Killed Today...
HP | Adam Schreck | 03/19/13

A wave of bombings tore through the Baghdad area Tuesday, killing 57 people on eve of the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion and showing how unstable Iraq remains more than a year after the withdrawal of American troops.

Violence has ebbed sharply since the peak of Sunni-Shiite fighting that pushed the country to the brink of civil war in 2006-2007. But insurgents maintain the ability to stage high-profile attacks while sectarian and ethnic rivalries continue to tear at the fabric of national unity. ... Read more

Iraq: War's legacy of cancer
Aljazeera | Dahr Jamail | 03/15/13

Contamination from Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions and other military-related pollution is suspected of causing a sharp rises in congenital birth defects, cancer cases, and other illnesses throughout much of Iraq.

Many prominent doctors and scientists contend that DU contamination is also connected to the recent emergence of diseases that were not previously seen in Iraq, such as new illnesses in the kidney, lungs, and liver, as well as total immune system collapse. DU contamination may also be connected to the steep rise in leukaemia, renal, and anaemia cases, especially among children, being reported throughout many Iraqi governorates. ... Read more

5 Exciting Verdicts: Occupy Keeps Winning in Court
care2.com | Kevin Mathews | 03/16/13

While Occupy might not be grabbing as many headlines as of late, many of the cases from previous years' incidents are finally reaching their conclusions in court. The good news is that the outcomes are overwhelmingly in favor of the activists, showing that even if the police and state are seemingly going above and beyond to obstruct dissent, the courts are paying more attention to the Constitution.

Whole Foods Market, the grocery story chain, has made the stunning announcement that labeling of genetically engineered foods (GMOs) will be required on all products sold in the company's 339 stores within five years.
care2.com | Ocean Robbins | 03/18/13

Making the historic declaration, Whole Foods Co-Chief Executive Walter Robb stated: "This is an issue whose time has come… With cases like horse meat discovered in the U.K., plastic in milk in China, the recalls of almond and peanut butter in the U.S., customers have a fundamental right to know what's in their food." ... Read more

*Iraq 10 Years Later: The Deadly Consequences of Spin
MotherJones | David Corn | 03/18/13

One night, more than a decade ago, I was a guest on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News show along with Bill Kristol, the godfather (or son-of-the-godfather) of the neoconservative movement. The subject: What to do about Iraq? The Bush administration had begun pounding the drums for war, claiming, as Vice President Dick Cheney had put it, that there was "no doubt" tyrant Saddam Hussein was "amassing" weapons of mass destruction "to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." As one of the few political analysts on television to question the rush to war, I noted that WMD inspections in Iraq could be useful in preventing Saddam from reaching the "finish line" in developing nuclear weapons. Kristol responded by exclaiming, "He's past that finish line! He's past the finish line!"

Saddam wasn't--as it turned out, he wasn't even in the race. ... Read more

Dick Cheney's not sorry
USA Today | Bruce Kluger | 03/17/13

On Friday, the Showtime network premiered its much-anticipated documentary The World According to Dick Cheney, a meticulous two-hour flashback to the eight-year reign of, arguably, the grumpiest vice president in U.S. history. The response to the landmark film has been nearly unanimous. While most critics agree that it is exhaustive (and, at 110 minutes, even exhausting), they likewise conclude that the mammoth undertaking is missing one crucial element: contrition.

the film features a full-frontal Cheney fielding hard-hitting questions on everything from waterboarding to infighting with President George W. Bush to his much alleged overreach for power. Yet, through it all, The Man from Wyoming remains unrepentant. "If you want to be loved," he remarks at one point, "go be a movie star."

We've known this about "Vice" for years. As his unofficial, unauthorized biographers (you can still buy our 2008 book, Young Dick Cheney: Great American ... on eBay), we learned early on that if you wanted answers from this dude -- honest, compelling, newsmaking answers -- you just had to make them up. ... Read more

Fish Near Fukushima Reportedly Contains High Cesium Level
AP & HP | Malcolm Foster | 03/17/13

The Japanese utility that owns the tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant says it has detected a record 740,000 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium in a fish caught close to the plant.   That's 7,400 times the government limit for safe human consumption. ... Read more

Would You Rather Have Your Deposits Confiscated, Or Used By JPMorgan's Prop Trading Desk To Buy Stocks?
ZeroHedge | author | 03/18/13

At this point a question is in order: while in Cyprus, and soon probably elsewhere, the government will openly confiscate deposits to fund insolvent banking systems, in the US excess deposits are used by the prop desks of banks like JPMorgan to inflate risk assets, corner a bond market (IG9), and to generally create a wealth effect... for the 1%. ... Read more
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Record U.S. Stocks at Lowest Valuation Since 1980
Bloomberg | Alexis Xydias | 03/18/13

Even after U.S. stocks more than doubled in the four-year bull market, companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index are cheaper than at any record high since 1980 as individual investors shun equities. ... Read more

*Chomsky: The Corporate Assault on Public Education
AlterNet | Noam Chomsky | 03/08/13

Our kids are being prepared for passive obedience, not creative, independent lives. ... Read more
Powell Memorandum

*Out of Control -- New Report Exposes JPMorgan Chase as Mostly a Criminal Enterprise
Naked Capitalism | David Dayen | 03/14/13

About JP Morgan Chase, Rosner writes, "we could not find another 'systemically important' domestic bank that has recently been subject to as many public, non-mortgage related, regulatory actions or consent orders."

Obviously this contrasts with Jamie Dimon's spotless reputation (at least in Washington) and his bold talk of a "fortress balance sheet." Yet as you read the report, it's hard to see the bank as anything but a criminal racket just days away from imploding, were it not propped up by implicit bailout guarantees and light-touch regulators. Rosner paints a picture of a corporation saddled with pervasive internal control problems, which end up costing shareholders, and which "could materially impact profitability in the future." He calculates that since 2009, JPM has paid out $8.5 billion in settlements for its outlaw activity, which equals nearly 12% of net income over the same period. ... Read more

*JPMorgan Report Piles Pressure on Dimon in Too-Big Debate
Bloomberg | Dawn Kopecki | 03/15/13

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)'s efforts to hide trading losses, outlined in a Senate report yesterday, probably will ignite debate over whether the largest U.S. bank is too big to manage and ratchet up pressure on Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon to surrender his role as chairman.

Dimon misled investors and dodged regulators as losses escalated on a "monstrous" derivatives bet, according to a 301-page report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The bank "mischaracterized high-risk trading as hedging," and withheld key information from its primary regulator, sometimes at Dimon's behest, investigators found. Managers manipulated risk models and pressured traders to overvalue their positions in an effort to hide growing losses. ... Read more
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Global-Tech: Betting Against American Workers
GlobalLabourRights.org | author | 09/27/12

Mr. Romney and Brookside Invest up to $23 Million in Global-Tech Sweatshop in China
"When I was back in my private equity days, we went to China to buy a factory there. It employed about 20,000 people. And they were almost all young women between the ages of about 18 and 22 or 23.... And they work in these huge factories, they made various uh, small appliances. And uh, as we were walking through this facility, seeing them work, the number of hours they worked per day, the pittance they earned, living in dormitories with uh, with little bathrooms at the end of maybe 10, 10 room, rooms. And the rooms they have 12 girls per room. Three bunk beds on top of each other. You've seen, you've seen them?.... And, and, and around this factory was a fence, a huge fence with barbed wire and guard towers." ... Read more

Chomsky: Corporations and the Richest Americans Viscerally Oppose Common Good
AlterNet | Noam Chomsky | 03/07/13

One of the great achievements of American democracy has been the introduction of mass public education, from children to advanced research universities. And in some respects that leadership position has been maintained. Unfortunately, not all. Public education is under serious attack, one component of the attack on any rational and humane concept of the Common Good, sometimes in ways that are not only shocking, but also spell disaster for the species.

Sometimes the attacks on education and on the Common Good are very closely linked. One current illustration is the "Environmental Literacy Improvement Act" that is being proposed to legislatures by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded lobby that designs legislation to serve the needs of the corporate sector and extreme wealth. This act mandates "balanced" teaching of climate science in K-12 classrooms."   "Balanced teaching" is a code phrase that refers to teaching climate change denial, to "balance" authentic climate science. ... Read more

Source of 47 Percent Video To Go Public
MotherJones | Monika Bauerlein | 03/12/13

On September 17, Mother Jones' David Corn broke a story that became a key factor in the presidential campaign, revealing video of GOP candidate Mitt Romney speaking candidly to donors at a $50,000-a-plate campaign fundraiser. In the video, Romney said that 47 percent of Americans.

Now the source himself has decided to go public: He will tell his story Wednesday night on MSNBC's The Ed Show. ... Read more

*The Disturbing History of One of the Pentagon's Most Expensive Flying Turkeys
AlterNet | Jeremiah Goulka | 03/10/13

... So what did Lockheed do about the fate of the C-130? It bypassed the Pentagon and went straight to Congress. Using a procedure known as a congressional "add-on" -- that is, an earmark -- Lockheed was able to sell the military another fleet of C-130s that it didn't want. ...

... the Air Force did request some C-130s. Thanks to Senator John McCain, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) did a study of how many more C-130s the Air Force requested between 1978 and 1998. The answer: Five. How many did Congress add on? Two hundred and fifty-six. ...

... Most of the dollars the company spends on lobbying are tax dollars. According to its 2011 annual report, "82% of our $46.5 billion in net sales were from the U.S. Government, including 61% from the Department of Defense." And don't forget that a significant part of the 17% of its sales that went to international customers in 2011 were actually paid for by Uncle Sam under the rubric of foreign military aid. Only 1% of its sales that year were to "U.S. commercial and other customers." Its CEO made $20,538,981, while the company paid only $722 million in net federal and foreign taxes in that same year. ...

... What will happen in this year's request? We don't know yet, because it's late in coming thanks to sequestration. But Lockheed isn't worried: even while threatening sequestration layoffs, the company forecasts record profits this year. ... Read more

TPP's Effects on the IP Law of Canada and Mexico
infojustice.org | Carrie Ellen Sager | 04/11/12

Comparison of the leaked IP provision in TPP and the currents hosts countries law.

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*Kyle Bass Warns "The 'AIG' Of The World Is Back"
ZeroHwdge | author | 03/12/13

Kyle Bass, addressing Chicago Booth's Initiative on Global Markets last week, clarified his thesis on Japan in great detail, but it was the Q&A that has roused great concern. "The AIG of the world is back - I have 27 year old kids selling me one-year jump risk on Japan for less than 1bp - $5bn at a time... and it is happening in size." As he explains, the regulatory capital hit for the bank is zero (hence as great a return on capital as one can imagine) and "if the bell tolls at the end of the year, the 27-year-old kid gets a bonus... and if he blows the bank to smithereens, ugh, he got a paycheck all year." Critically, the bank that he bought the 'cheap options' from recently called to ask if he would close the position - "that happened to me before," he warns, "in 2007 right before mortgages cracked." His single best investment idea for the next ten years is, "Sell JPY, Buy Gold, and go to sleep," as he warns of the current situation in markets, "we are right back there! The brevity of financial memory is about two years." ... Read more

*Paul Ryan, master of illusion - or - Paul Ryan's magical budget
Washington Post | Dana Milbank | 03/12/13

Paul Ryan's budget is an amazing and wondrous document.   Not only does it balance the budget in 10 years while reducing tax rates, it also does so without any pain or suffering -- or even breaking a sweat. It achieves not just the longtime goals of policymakers -- "a safety net strengthened .?.?. retirement secured .?.?. a nation protected" -- but also brings about changes in human nature that have bedeviled civilization from the beginning of time. "This budget ends cronyism; eliminates waste, fraud and abuse," Ryan's plan promises.

"Now, how do we do this?" Ryan (R-Wis.), the House Budget Committee chairman, asked with a magician's flourish as he unveiled his budget Tuesday morning.   Here's how: The former Republican vice presidential candidate's budget eliminates ___ loopholes in the tax code, cutting the ___ and the ____ deductions. It reduces spending on the ____ program by _____ and the _____ program by _____. Retirees would see ____, students would experience ____ and the poor would be _____. ... Read more

Welcome to Ayn Rand Planet: Why the Rich Prosper from the Stock Market While We Get Screwed
AlterNet | Les Leopold | 03/11/13

How appropriate to be promoting Ayn Rand books just as the stock market and corporate profits both reached record highs. How appropriate to think of the infamous John Galt withdrawing from society in comfort while the rest of us face high unemployment, oppressive student loans, increasing healthcare costs, upside-down mortgages, and declining real incomes. But, according to Rand's philosophy, this is as it should be -- the wealthy getting all the rewards while the rest of us get nothing.

None of this is accidental. Our two-tiered economic recovery is the direct result of policies, or the lack thereof, that flow directly from Randian principles. If we don't do something soon, we'll all be living on Planet Rand.   Before exploring this Randian policy coup, let's be clear on who owns how much stock in America, and therefore who is benefiting most from the record rise in the equity markets. ... Read more

10 Worst People on Forbes 2013 Billionaires List
AlterNet | Lynn Stuart Parramore | 03/12/13

It will hardly come as a surprise that the rich got richer in 2013. Didn't happen to you, did it? The combined wealth of the world's billionaires hit an all-time high of 5.4 trillion, up from 4.6 trillion in 2012.

The Forbes list of billionaires is brimming over with oligarchs, monopolists, thugs, miscreants, and hustlers. Not to mention right-wingers, narcissists, and parasitic predators. The only thing missing is the king of Mexian drug lords, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, whose assets were evidently too hard to calculate this year. ... Read more

Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Wednesday, March 13 [12:56]

DN | Overturning Citizens United: Is a Constitutional Amendment the Best Path to Limit Dark Money? (03/13/13) [18:51]

TRNN | Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Resolution S.RES.65 sends the message to Iran that the US objective is regime change... which is scary (03/13/13) [8:19]

The Worst Mistake in U.S. History -- America Will Never Recover from Bush's Great Foreign Policy Disaster
Tom Dispatch & AlterNet | Peter Van Buren | 03/07/13

Ten years ago, George Bush made a decision that this country will regret for a very long time.

I was there. And "there" was nowhere. And nowhere was the place to be if you wanted to see the signs of end times for the American Empire up close. It was the place to be if you wanted to see the madness -- and oh yes, it was madness -- not filtered through a complacent and sleepy media that made Washington's war policy seem, if not sensible, at least sane and serious enough. I stood at Ground Zero of what was intended to be the new centerpiece for a Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East. ... Read more

*No End in Sight Iraq's Descent Into Chaos (older but good) [1:41:54]

Tom Toles on the budget battle (great illustrations)

One Economy, Two Americas
Bill Moyers | Hedrick Smith | 03/06/13

Before you gulp down your favorite champagne to celebrate Wall Street's new stock market highs, remember that we are two Americas: The nation's economic divide is costing us all dearly in terms of lost jobs and growth and is fueling the angry, gridlocked politics in Washington.

As The New York Times reported Monday, corporate profits have been skyrocketing ever since 2008 --- rising an average of 20.1 percent a year for four years in a row. But out on Main Street, average household incomes have risen only 1.4 percent a year. CEOs and big investors have been hogging the profits. ... Read more

*How Bill Clinton Inspired The 47 Percent Filmmaker
HP | Ryan Grim | 03/12/13

Bill Clinton won the presidential election for Barack Obama. But it wasn't his masterful Democratic National Convention speech or the advice he offered the president's reelection campaign. Clinton, it turns out, inspired the man who filmed Mitt Romney's infamous and game-changing 47 percent comments.

The man, who tended bar for a company that catered to a high-end clientele, had previously worked at a fundraiser at a home where Clinton spoke. After Clinton addressed guests, the man recalled, the former president came back to the kitchen and thanked the staff, the waiters, the bartenders, the busboys, and everyone else involved in putting the event together. He shook hands, took photos, signed autographs, and praised the meal -- all characteristic of the former president.   When the bartender learned he would be working at Romney's fundraiser, his first thought was to bring his camera, in case he had a chance to get a photo with the presidential candidate.

Romney, of course, did not speak to any of the staff, bussers or waiters. He was late to the event, and rushed out. He told his dinner guests that the event was off the record, but never bothered to repeat the admonition to the people working there.

One of them had brought along a Canon camera. He set it on the bar and hit the record button.   The bartender said he never planned to distribute the video. But after Romney spoke, the man said he felt he had no choice. ... Read more

*Which 'Patriotic' US Companies 'Invested' The Most Cash Overseas Last Year?
ZeroHedge | author | 03/12/13

A Wall Street Journal analysis of 60 big U.S. companies found that, together, they parked a total of $166 billion offshore last year. That shielded more than 40% of their annual profits from U.S. taxes, though it left the money off-limits for paying dividends, buying back shares or making investments in the U.S. The 60 companies were chosen for the analysis because each of them had held at least $5 billion offshore in 2011. Within the group of 60 companies, WSJ found 10 that parked more earnings offshore last year than they generated for their bottom lines. The trend was most pronounced among the 26 technology and health-care companies. ... Read more
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Jack Lew, Citigroup and the Ugland Truth
Bill Moyers | Michael Winship | 03/08/13

... There you'll find Ugland House, a five-story office building that, according to a 2008 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), houses 18,857 corporations, about half of which have billing addresses back in the States. It's the business world equivalent of one of those circus cars that's packed with more clowns than you thought possible. In 2009, Obama said of Ugland House, "either this is the largest building in the world or the largest tax scam in the world." ... Read more

Antibiotic Resistance Poses 'Catastrophic Threat' To Medicine, Says Britain's Top Health Official
HP & Reuter | Kate Kelland | 03/10/13

Antibiotic resistance poses a catastrophic threat to medicine and could mean patients having minor surgery risk dying from infections that can no longer be treated, Britain's top health official said on Monday.

Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England, said global action is needed to fight antibiotic, or antimicrobial, resistance and fill a drug "discovery void" by researching and developing new medicines to treat emerging, mutating infections. ... Read more

Goldman leads decline as Wall Street commodity revenues plummet
Reuters | David Sheppard | 03/11/13

Wall Street commodity revenues crashed last year to their lowest on record, as tighter regulation and limited price swings squeezed the once dominant traders of Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) and Morgan Stanley (MS.N).

All three firms reported double-digit percentage declines in revenues for oil, grains and copper trading in 2012, illustrating how the one-time 'Wall Street Refiners' have withered in the face of subdued markets and restrictions on proprietary trading.   The decline is most stark at Goldman, where commodity revenues collapsed by more than 60 percent year-on-year in 2012 to just $575 million, according to the bank's annual report. Read more

The Many Faces of Evil
HP | Marina Nemat | 03/08/13

EVIL: How and why do good people turn evil?
VERSUS
GOOD: How can ordinary people be inspired to act heroically?
Read more
TED | The Many Faces of Evil. Philip Zimbardo: The psychology of evil (03/08/13) [7:35]

The Market Speaks
NYTimes | Paul Krugman | 03/07/13

... Meanwhile, about the stock market: Stocks are high, in part, because bond yields are so low, and investors have to put their money somewhere. It's also true, however, that while the economy remains deeply depressed, corporate profits have staged a strong recovery. And that's a bad thing! Not only are workers failing to share in the fruits of their own rising productivity, hundreds of billions of dollars are piling up in the treasuries of corporations that, facing weak consumer demand, see no reason to put those dollars to work. ... Read more

Elizabeth Warren: Banks Get Wrist Slaps While Drug Dealers Get Jail
HP | Mark Gongloff | 03/07/13

Sen. Elizabeth Warren unloaded on bank regulators Thursday about the fact that British bank HSBC is still doing business in the U.S., with no criminal charges filed against it, despite confessing to what one regulator called "egregious" money laundering violations. ... Read more

*Organic Consumers Association Calls for Boycott of Organic Brand Parent Companies That Helped Defeat Prop 37
organicconsumers.org | author | older 11/06/12

"Among the largest bankrollers of the NO on 37 campaign were huge multinational food and beverage companies whose subsidiaries make billions selling popular organic and 'natural' brands," Prop 37was narrowly defeated on Nov. 6, thanks to a relentless, deceitful $46-million advertising blitz. Among the food companies that helped to defeat the measure were:

*Tracing the shadows of 'Operation Condor'
Aljazeera | author | 03/06/13

A coordinated campaign to kill political dissidents across Latin America in the 1970s, all with the knowledge of the US, resulted in one of Latin America's darkest periods.

Tens of thousands of people were kidnapped, tortured and killed by military regimes across the continent and those who fled repression in one country were often targeted in another - there was no escape.   'Operation Condor' involved six different nations - led by Chile's former dictator Augusto Pinochet in response to the populist and socialist movements emerging throughout Latin America in the 1960s and 70s. ... Read more

*Elizabeth Warren Takes On Eric Holder's 'Too Big To Jail' Statement
HP | Mollie Reilly | 03/06/13

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) took on Attorney General Eric Holder's admission that some banks are too big for the Justice Department to prosecute, asserting that Holder's statement illustrates why the financial institutions should be held accountable.

"It has been almost five years since the financial crisis, but the big banks are still too big to fail," Warren said in a Wednesday statement. "That means they are subsidized by about $83 billion a year by American taxpayers and are still not being held fully accountable for breaking the law. Attorney General Holder's testimony that the biggest banks are too-big-to-jail shows once again that it is past time to end too-big-to-fail." ... Read more

Obama Invites Ryan, Van Hollen to White House Lunch
Bloomberg | Roger Runningen | 03/07/13

President Barack Obama invited House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and Chris Van Hollen, the panel's top Democrat, to lunch today as he seeks to restart talks on a long-term deal to reduce the federal deficit.

Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who was his party's vice presidential nominee in 2012, said in a statement he hoped the lunch with Obama and Van Hollen, a Maryland representative, "is the beginning of a serious discussion of the challenges we face." ... Read more

*The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food
NYTimes | Michael Moss | 02/20/13

On the evening of April 8, 1999, a long line of Town Cars and taxis pulled up to the Minneapolis headquarters of Pillsbury and discharged 11 men who controlled America's largest food companies. Nestlé was in attendance, as were Kraft and Nabisco, General Mills and Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Mars. Rivals any other day, the C.E.O.'s and company presidents had come together for a rare, private meeting. On the agenda was one item: the emerging obesity epidemic and how to deal with it. While the atmosphere was cordial, the men assembled were hardly friends. Their stature was defined by their skill in fighting one another for what they called "stomach share" -- the amount of digestive space that any one company's brand can grab from the competition. ... Read more

Why America Has the Cheapest, Most Addictive and Most Nutritionally Inferior Food in the World
AlterNet | Amy Goodman | 03/01/13

Amy Goodman: As we continue deep inside the $1-trillion-a-year "processed-food-industrial complex," we turn to look at how decades of food science have resulted in the cheapest, most abundant, most addictive and most nutritionally inferior food in the world. And the vitamins and protein added back to this processed food? Well, you might be surprised to know where they come from. That's the focus of a new book by longtime food reporter Melanie Warner, author of Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal. ... Read more

*The Weaponizing of Salt, Sugar and Fat: The Secrets of How Big Food Got Us Hooked on Junk
AlterNet | Amy Goodman | 03/10/13

Amy Goodman: Going deep inside the "processed-food-industrial complex," beginning with the "The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food." That was the cover story in the recent New York Times Magazine that examined how food companies have known for decades that salt, sugar and fat are not good for us in the quantities American's consume them, and yet every year they convince most of us to ingest about twice the recommended amount of salt, 70 pounds of sugar -- 22 teaspoons a day. Then, there's the fat. Well, New York Times reporter Michael Moss explains how one of the most prevalent fat delivery methods is cheese. Read more

Mars Rover Curiosity Sleeps As Solar Blast Races Toward Red Planet
HP | Alicia Chang | 03/07/13

Curiosity hunkered down after the sun unleashed a blast that raced toward Mars. Read more

Eric Holder: Drone Strike To Kill U.S. Citizen On American Soil Legal, Hypothetically
HP | Ryan J. Reilly | 03/05/13

The Obama administration believes it could technically use military force to kill an American on U.S. soil in an "extraordinary circumstance" but has "no intention of doing so," U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a letter disclosed Tuesday. ... Read more

This Time Is Different 2013 Edition
ZeroHedge | author | 03/06/13

A small note on the frankly hilarious news that the Dow Jones Industrial Average smashed through to all-time-highs.   First of all, while stock prices are soaring household income and household confidence are slumping to all-time lows. Employment remains depressed, energy remains expensive, housing remains depressed, wages and salaries as a percentage of GDP keep falling, and the economy remains in a deleveraging cycle. Essentially, these are not the conditions for strong organic business growth, for a sustainable boom. We're going through a structural economic adjustment, and suffering the consequences of a huge 40-year debt-fuelled boom. While the fundamentals remain weak, it can only be expected that equity markets should remain weak. But that is patently not what has happened.

In fact, it has been engineered that way. Bernanke has been explicitly targeting equities, hoping to trigger a beneficent spiral that he calls "the wealth effect" - stock prices go up, people feel richer and spend, and the economy recovers. But with fundamentals still depressed, this boom cannot be sustained. Read more
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*$1.5 Trillion for the Drug War? 5 Outrageous Areas of Gov't Spending That Should be Cut Instead of Social Services
AlterNet | David Sirota | 03/05/13

Let's assume that the New York Times was right this week when it asserted that in 2013, "the only issue that truly unites Republicans is a commitment to shrinking the federal government." Even though there's ample evidence that the GOP doesn't actually want to shrink the government, let's nonetheless assume that Republicans are trying to rhetorically brand themselves to the concept of small government, past votes be damned. And let's assume that gerrymandering means the GOP will control at least one house of congress for the remainder of the Obama presidency.

Does that, then, mean the next four years will automatically be mired in stalemate? Not necessarily, if Democrats call Republicans' bluff and use the GOP's small government argument for progressive ends. Indeed, with House Speaker John Boehner showing a penchant for violating the so-called Hastert Rule and allowing transpartisan bills to pass, the "small government" argument could be a perfect instrument for congressional Democrats to pick off just enough Republican votes to pass meaningful legislation in five key areas: ... Read more
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Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Wednesday, March 06 [12:25]

*Noam Chomsky: Can Civilization Survive Capitalism?
AlterNet | Noam Chomsky | 03/05/13

Capitalism as it exists today is radically incompatible with democracy.   The term "capitalism" is commonly used to refer to the U.S. economic system, with substantial state intervention ranging from subsidies for creative innovation to the "too-big-to-fail" government insurance policy for banks.

The system is highly monopolized, further limiting reliance on the market, and increasingly so: In the past 20 years the share of profits of the 200 largest enterprises has risen sharply, reports scholar Robert W. McChesney in his new book "Digital Disconnect." ... Read more
*Noam Chomsky | Who Owns the World? U.S.-Fueled Dangers, from Climate Change to Nuclear Weapons (10/27/12) [42:00]

Hugo Chavez Dead: Venezuela's President Dies At 58
HP & AP | author | 03/05/13

The Associated Press reports that Hugo Chávez, who led a leftist revolution and served as Venezuela's president for nearly 14 years, has died at 58 years old.

President Hugo Chavez, the fiery populist who declared a socialist revolution in Venezuela, crusaded against U.S. influence and championed a leftist revival across Latin America, died Tuesday at age 58 after a nearly two-year bout with cancer. ... Read more

*Is Antonin Scalia the Vilest Person in Washington?
AlterNet | Steven Rosenfeld | 03/04/13

A day after Justice Antonin Scalia caused gasps in the Supreme Court gallery by saying the 1965 Voting Rights Act had become a "racial entitlement" no congressperson could vote against, Rachel Maddow told The Daily Show she was in the courtroom and Scalia clearly enjoyed tormenting people. "I think he does know how that sounds," she said. "He's a troll. He's saying this for effect. He knows it's offensive." ... Read more

The US Navy Spends $4 Billion on Fuel Every Year
MotherJones | Chris Mooney | date

Yesterday's Climate Desk Live briefing--titled "How the US Navy Is Leading the Charge on Clean Energy and Climate Change"--told a different kind of environmental story from the one we're used to hearing. It was an "optimistic story," as panelist Julia Whitty, Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, put it--of a powerful institution, the Navy, adapting to the demands of a changing energy future simply because it's pragmatic, and because it makes sense. ... Read more

*Nobody Knows What Nanoparticles Do -- Yet They Are in Your Food, Cosmetics, and Toys
AlterNet | Carole Bass | 07/10/09

Your sunscreen, energy drink and high-tech clothing may be among the 800-plus consumer products made with nanomaterials: those manufactured at the scale of atoms and molecules. Sunscreen that turns clear on the skin contains titanium dioxide, an ordinary UV-blocker in extraordinarily small particles. Odor-eating socks are made with atoms of germ-killing silver. Supplement makers boast of amazing health effects from swallowing nanosolutions that are completely untested for effectiveness or safety. And that stain-repellant clothing? The manufacturer won't even tell you what nanomaterials are in it.

The problem is not just that you, the consumer, don't know what's in the products you use. The much bigger problem is that at the nanoscale, common substances behave in uncommon ways. And nobody--not even the world's leading nanoscientists--knows what nanoparticles do inside the body or in the environment. ... Read more

*Nuclear Disaster in the US: How Bechtel Is Botching the World's Costliest Environmental Cleanup
AlterNet | Joshua Frank | older but good10/21/11

Razor wire surrounds Hanford's makeshift borders while tattered signs warn of potential contamination and fines for those daring enough to trespass. This vast stretch of eastern Washington, covering more than 580 square miles of high desert plains, is rural Washington at its most serene. But it's inaccessible for good reason: It is, by all accounts, a nuclear wasteland. ...

... During Hanford's lifespan, 475 billion gallons of radioactive wastewater were released into the ground. Radioactive isotopes have made their way up the food chain in the Hanford ecosystem at an alarming rate. Coyote excrement frequently lights up Geigers, as these scavengers feast on varmints that live beneath the earth's surface. Deer also have nuclear radiation accumulating in their bones as a result of consuming local shrubbery and water. ... Read more

*Lords of Disorder: How the Big Banks Are Designed to Prey off Our Economic Misery
AlterNet | Richard (RJ) Eskow | 03/01/13

The President's "sequester" offer slashes non-defense spending by $830 billion over the next ten years. That happens to be the precise amount we're implicitly giving Wall Street's biggest banks over the same time period. ...

... These institutions are designed to prey off economic misery. They suppress genuine market forces in order to thrive, and they couldn't do it without our ongoing help. The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve are making it happen. ... Read more

Capping bonuses: Too little, too late?
Aljazeera | Inside Story | 03/02/13

The European Union has agreed to a new financial reform that includes a cap on bonuses for bankers, in a deal that is expected to be introduced next year.   But is going after the so-called 'fat cats' of the financial world the right move in troubled times?   The aim behind the move is to calm public anger at the financial sector. It was of course money from taxpayers that rescued banks that were deemed "too big too fail" following the 2008 crash.   Under the agreement, bankers' bonuses will be automatically limited to a year's salary, making it one of the world's strictest pay curbs. ... Read more

Most intellectually dishonest, self-aggrandizing Bernanke-speak to come out of the Fed Chairman's testimony [this week]:

Are Big Banks a Bunch of Organized Criminal Conspiracies?
AlterNet | Les Leopold | 92/27/13

Are too-big-to-fail banks organized criminal conspiracies? And if so, shouldn't we seize their assets, just like we do to drug cartels?   Let's examine their sorry record of deceit and deception that has surfaced in just the past two months:

Loan Sharking
You want to get really, really pissed off? Then read " Major Banks Aid in Payday Loans Banned by States" by Jessica Silver-Greenberg in the New York Times (2/23/13). In sickening detail, she describes how the largest banks in the United States are facilitating modern loansharking by working with Internet payday loan companies to escape anti-loansharking state laws. These payday firms extract enormous interest rates that often run over 500 percent a year. ...

Money Laundering for the Mexican Drug Cartels
HSBC, the giant British-based bank with a large American subsidiary, agreed on Dec. 11, 2012 to pay $1.9 billion in fines for laundering $881 million for Mexico's Sinaloa cartel and Colombia's Norte del Valle cartel. The operation was so blatant that "Mexican traffickers used boxes specifically designed to the dimensions of an HSBC Mexico teller's window to deposit cash on a daily basis," reports Reuters. They also facilitated "hundreds of millions more in transactions with sanctioned countries," according to the Justice Department. ...

Fleecing Distressed Homeowners
The big banks, in collusion with hedge funds and the rating agencies, puffed up the housing bubble and then burst it. Nine million workers, due to no fault of their own, lost their jobs in a matter of months. Entire neighborhoods saw their home values crash. Tens of millions faced foreclosure.   The big banks, which were bailed out and survived the crash, sought to foreclose on as many homes as possible, as fast as possible. Hey, that's where the money was. In doing so they resorted to many unsavory practices including illegal robo-signing of foreclosure documents. When nailed by the government, the big banks agreed to provide billions in aid for distressed homeowners. Were they finally forced to do the right thing? Not a chance. (See " Homeowners still face foreclosure despite billion in aid" NYT 2/22.) ...

Too Big to Indict?
Wait, it gets worse. Why weren't criminal charges filed against the bank itself? After all, the bank overtly violated money laundering laws. This was no clerical error. The answer is simple: " Too big to Indict," screams the NYT editorial headline. You see federal authorities are worried that if they indict, the bank would fail, which in turn would lead to tens of thousands of lost jobs, just like what happened to Arthur Anderson after its Enron caper, or like the financial hurricane that followed the failure of Lehman Brothers. So if you're a small fish running $10,000 in drug money, you serve time. But if you're a big fish moving nearing a billion dollars, you can laugh all the way to your too-big-to-jail bank. ...

The Indictments Go On
I could write a book about all the ways in which banks and their hedge fund cousins have turned cheating into a way of life. (In fact, I just did: "How to Earn a Million Dollars an Hour: Why Hedge Funds Get Away With Siphoning off America's Wealth. Here's the AlterNet interview. ) ...
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What Is The Sequester?
HP | Lisa_Miller | 03/01/13

The sequester is what everyone, at least in Washington, seems to be talking about. But what is sequestration exactly?   Set to begin March 1 at 11:59 p.m., the sequester is a set of automatic spending cuts put into law by the Budget Control Act. Signed by President Barack Obama in August 2011, that legislation raised the debt ceiling and sought to apply pressure on Congress to come up with a longer term plan for deficit reduction.

The $1.2 trillion in budget cuts would be spread over nine years and are equally divided between domestic and defense-related spending. During the remainder of the 2013 fiscal year, $85 billion worth of cuts are set to go into effect. The budget cuts would end in 2021. ... Read more

There Goes The Sequester
ZeroHedge | author | 03/01/13

Today is the day when an unprecedented $85 billion spending cuts will be sequestered, unleashing famine, pestilence, the apocalypse and grizzly bears (as all park rangers will be dead from starvation). Which is why we applaud the administration's desire to preempt this tragic for the nation outcome, by issuing, in one day alone: February 28, $80 billion in Treasurys sending debt to (obviously) what is a new all time high $16,687,289,180,215.37.   In other words, the entire apocalyptic impact of the sequester for 2013 was offset by one day's debt issuance. Read more