Wednesday
Nov092011
Vaccine's Safety: A Crime Against Humanity
November 9, 2011 Dr. Sherri J Tenpenny warns about the perils of vaccination. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAJb01ZiJNk
Forging his way through the predictable UK media censorship: Dr Andrew Wakefield Responds to Measles Outbreak in Swansea
November 9, 2011 Wednesday
Nov092011
David Morgan - New Census Data Raise Number of Poor to 49 Million
November 9, 2011 Published on Tuesday, November 8, 2011 by Reuters
by David Morgan
WASHINGTON - The number of poor Americans hit a record 49 million in 2010, or 16 percent, according to new data released on Monday that showed poverty rates for the elderly, Asians and Hispanics higher than previously known.
The figures were calculated by the Census Bureau under a broad new measure intended to supplement the official standard with a fuller picture of poverty in the United States. Results contrast with official poverty data, released in September, that put the number of poor Americans at 46.2 million.
The biggest rise occurred among people aged 65 and older who are being driven into poverty by out-of-pocket medical expenses, including premiums and co-pays from the federal government's Medicare program for the elderly.
The poverty rate for the elderly jumped to 15.9 percent, or a roughly 1 in 6 senior citizens, versus 9 percent under the official count.
Wednesday
Nov092011
James Werrell - Science trumps climate change deniers
November 9, 2011 James Werrell | The Rock Hill Herald
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/11/08/129289/commentary-science-trumps-climate.html
November 08, 2011
Richard Muller was supposed to be the white knight for the deniers of global warming, smiting the fire-breathing activists who insist that climate change is real. In the end, though, science prevailed.
Muller, a well respected physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, has long been a critic of the scientific methods used to determine whether the climate is, indeed, changing and whether humans are responsible in any way. Two years ago, Muller and his team at Berkeley set out to examine the evidence compiled by mainstream scientists and set the matter straight.
While Muller insists that all he is interested in is promoting sound scientific studies, his project must have sounded promising enough to the Koch brothers, who ended up funding a quarter of the $600,000 cost of the study. The brothers, Charles and David, run the largest privately held company in the U.S.
Since the 1980s, foundations formed by the Koch brothers have spent more than $100 million on conservative organizations and causes. Koch Industries is involved in oil and other endeavors that produce large amounts of greenhouse emissions, and the Kochs have bankrolled numerous efforts to discredit climate scientists.
Wednesday
Nov092011
Tom Engelhardt - An All-American Nightmare – This is What Defeat Looks Like
November 9, 2011 Posted on November 8, 2011, Printed on November 8, 2011
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175464/
How about a moment of silence for the passing of the American Dream? M.R.I.C. (May it rest in carnage.)
No, I’m not talking about the old dream of opportunity that involved homeownership, a better job than your parents had, a decent pension, and all the rest of the package that’s so yesterday, so underwater, so OWS. I’m talking about a far more recent dream, a truly audacious one that’s similarly gone with the wind.
I’m talking about George W. Bush’s American Dream. If people here remember the invasion of Iraq -- and most Americans would undoubtedly prefer to forget it -- what’s recalled iskited intelligence, Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent nuclear arsenal, dumb and even dumber decisions, a bloody civil war, dead Americans, crony corporations, a trillion or more taxpayer dollars flushed down the toilet... well, you know the story. What few care to remember was that original dream -- call it The Dream -- and boy, was it a beaut!
An American Dream
Wednesday
Nov092011
Gareth Porter - Dissecting the Iran ‘Terror Plot’
November 9, 2011 By Gareth Porter
Global Research, November 7, 2011
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27525
As Israel again ratchets up its threats to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, anti-Iran propaganda, which could rally the American people behind another Middle East war, becomes critical. At this key moment, Gareth Porter takes a deeper look at an alleged Iranian assassination plot.
At a press conference on Oct. 11, the Obama administration unveiled a spectacular charge against the government of Iran: The Qods Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had plotted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, right in Washington, DC, in a place where large numbers of innocent bystanders could have been killed.
High-level officials of the Qods Force were said to be involved, the only question being how far up in the Iranian government the complicity went.
The U.S. tale of the Iranian plot was greeted with unusual skepticism on the part of Iran specialists and independent policy analysts, and even elements of the mainstream media. The critics observed that the alleged assassination scheme was not in Iran’s interest, and that it bore scant resemblance to past operations attributed to the foreign special operations branch of Iranian intelligence.
The Qods Force, it was widely believed, would not send a person like Iranian-American used-car dealer Manssor Arbabsiar, known to friends in Corpus Christi, Texas, as forgetful and disorganized, to hire the hit squad for such a sensitive covert action.
But administration officials claimed they had hard evidence to back up the charge. They cited a 21-page deposition by a supervising FBI agent in the “amended criminal complaint” filed against Arbabsiar and an accomplice who remains at large, Gholam Shakuri. [1]
Wednesday
Nov092011
Joel Hirschhorn - Jobless and Clueless -- America's Delusional Democracy
November 9, 2011 By Joel S. Hirschhorn
Global Research, November 6, 2011
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27508
When Americans who are the most victimized by our cruel economy still believe in something that is demonstrably no longer true, they are deeply delusional. They desperately want to believe in something once great about American society. The reality is that upward economic mobility has been destroyed, replaced by widely observable downward mobility. Some of the mostly younger jobless that have embraced the Occupy Wall Street and related Occupy efforts know the truth.
Consider the results of a new survey of unemployed adults this month:
“More than half of those polled said that they had experienced emotional or mental health problems like anxiety or depression because of their lack of work, and nearly half said that they had felt embarrassed or ashamed not to have jobs.”
“More than a third said that they had had more conflicts or arguments with family and friends because of being jobless.”
“Threats of foreclosure or eviction were reported by a fifth of the unemployed, and one in eight said that they had moved in with relatives or friends.”
Wednesday
Nov092011
Rocky Kistner - As Dolphins Die, Gulf Residents Ask What About Us?
November 9, 2011 Tuesday 01 November 2011
by: Rocky Kistner, Southern Studies
http://www.truth-out.org/dolphins-die-gulf-residents-ask-what-about-us/1320695005
Willie Seaman of Irvington, AL, lays carpet and floors for a living. But last summer, as the BP well gushed thousands of barrels of oil daily into the Gulf, Seaman signed up with the BP cleanup program, working on a shrimp boat several miles off shore.
It was brutally hot and the smell of oil was putrid, Seaman remembers. His job was to use a net to try to pull in the thick, reddish BP crude that he says was up to a foot thick in places. Problem was, the white protective suits didn't do much to keep the oil off, Willie recalls. Instead, he says they acted like absorbent pads, soaking up the oil that would rub against his skin.
Seaman says before long he started breaking out in blistery red hives on his hands and feet. The itching was so bad a coworker said Seaman would scrub his feet with a wire brush until his skin sloughed off like scales of a fish. Despite shots of steroids and numerous doctor visits, Seaman endured countless bouts of painful hives; and he still gets them, he says, especially after eating seafood from the Gulf. He also says he knows others who have broken out in hives after eating seafood.
Wednesday
Nov092011
The Morality of the Wall Street Mindset
November 9, 2011 In a sneak peek of my upcoming project investigating the plight of poor people in modern America, Jordan Belfort discusses how the elite Wall Street 1% conspires to exploit the other 99%.
Print Article | Permalink | tagged video | in Activism, Consumer Interest, Corporatocracy, Economic Crisis, Economics, Federal Reserve, Labor, OccupyWallSt Wednesday
Nov092011
Sherwood Ross - Ten Million American Families Sliding Towards Foreclosure
November 9, 2011 By Sherwood Ross
Global Research, November 8, 2011
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27530
Of the 55-million families with mortgages, 10.4-million of them “are sliding toward failure and foreclosure”---a tragedy that will depress the U.S. housing market for years to come, a result of too many houses for sale and too few buyers.
That’s the blunt conclusion of distinguished economics journalist William Greider, to be published in an article in the November 14th issue of The Nation magazine.
America’s “Economic recovery will have to wait until that surplus (excess houses) is gone, because the housing sector has always led the way out of recession,” Greider says. “The more housing supply exceeds demand, the more prices fall. The more prices fall, the more families get sucked into the deep muddy. The vicious cycle is known in the industry as the death spiral. So far, there’s no end in sight.”
Greider says the solution is to forgive the debtors: “Write down the principal they owe on their mortgage to match the current market value of their home, so they will no longer be underwater. Refinance the loan with a reduced interest rate, so the monthly payment is at a level that the struggling homeowner can handle.”
Wednesday
Nov092011
Mark Engler - Bank Transfer -- Successful
November 9, 2011 Published on Tuesday, November 8, 2011 by Dissent
http://dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=600
by Mark Engler
This past Saturday was “Bank Transfer Day,” a day of action in which thousands of people moved their money from “too big to fail” banking titans into credit unions and smaller regional banks. While it’s hard to tell precisely how many people followed through on their threats to close accounts on Saturday itself, over the past month credit unions have added 650,000 new members (as opposed to 80,000 in a regular month), resulting in more than $4.5 billion in new deposits.
As Sarah Jaffe at Alternet noted, ABC News aired a remarkable report calling the exodus of customers a “bank revolt” and stating, “as of today, 1 million consumers are hurling a lightning-bolt warning at the big banks, moving their money out in protest.”
Now, a lot of the impact of closing accounts might have been symbolic, and $4.5 billion might not be all that much money relative to the size of the banking system as a whole. But, asSalon’s Andrew Leonard writes, riffing on an old joke, “$4.5 billion here, $4.5 billion there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money, even for JPMorgan-Chase.”