American Journal of Preventative Medicine - Attacks on federal air pollution regulations dangerous to Americans' health

Public release date: 1-Nov-2011
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/ehs-aof102711.php

American Journal of Preventative Medicine

Authors of AJPM article urge physicians and medical societies to advocate against efforts in Congress to weaken clean air laws

SAN DIEGO, CA -- Efforts by some in Congress to dismantle clean air laws are a threat to public health, experts warn in a "Current Issues" article published online today in theAmerican Journal of Preventive Medicine.

"It is well accepted that air pollution has a deleterious impact on personal and public health," write authors Joshua Lipsman, MD, JD, MPH, Immediate Past Chairman, Environmental Health Committee, American College of Preventive Medicine, and Arthur L. Frank, MD, PhD, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Drexel University School of Public Health.

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Lawrence Weschler - The Art of the Shakedown, from the Nile to the Potomac

Posted on November 1, 2011, Printed on November 1, 2011
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175461/

How Corruption in the U.S. Puts Everyday Corruption in Africa to Shame 
By Lawrence Weschler

A bit over an hour into the five-hour drive across the ferrous red plateau, heading south toward Uganda’s capital Kampala, suddenly, there’s the Nile, a boiling, roiling cataract at this time of year, rain-swollen and ropy and rabid below the bridge that vaults over it.  If Niagara Falls surged horizontally and a rickety bridge arced, shudderingly, over the torrent below, it might feel like the Nile at Karuma.

Naturally, I take out my iPhone and begin snapping pics.

On the other side of the bridge, three soldiers standing in wait in the middle of the road, rifles slung over their shoulders, direct my Kampalan driver Godfrey and me to pull over.

“You were photographing the bridge,” one of them announces, coming up to my open window.  “We saw you.”

“Taking photos of the bridge is expressly forbidden,” the second offers by way of clarification, as the first reaches in and grabs the iPhone out of my hand.  “National security.  Terrorists could use such photos to help in planning to blow up the bridge.”

“Do I look like a terrorist to you?” I ask.  “And anyway,” I shout as Soldiers One and Two walk off with their prize, oblivious, “I wasn’t photographing the bridge.  I was photographing the rapids.  The bridge was precisely the one thing I wasn’t photographing!” 

To no avail.  I open my car door and begin to get out -- but the third soldier pushes me gently back and then leans into the window, peering amiably. “And besides,” I continue, “there were no signs forbidding such photographs.  Anyway, if it’s such a big deal just give me back the phone and I’ll delete the photos.  You can watch.”

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Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III - The "Tea Party" Movement, More Hype Than Reality

Monday 31 October 2011

by: Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III, Truthout | News Analysis

http://www.truth-out.org/tea-party-movement-more-hype-reality/1319826556

The validity of a political movement or party should be judged by the issues and policies that it champions as well as the candidates that it supports. Since 2009, the Tea Party has held sway over the Republican Party, moving its politics farther to the right and contributing to House Majority Leader John Boehner's (R-Ohio) inability to find common ground with the Obama administration.

A recent Pew Center poll [3] shows that the Tea Party is popular within the Republican Party, but losing support within the general electorate. "... more [people polled] say they oppose the Tea Party movement than support it (44% vs. 32%) ... the balance of opinion among independents toward the Tea Party is much more negative: Just 30 percent support the Tea Party movement while 49 percent are opposed."

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Tariq Ali - How do the 99% compare with mass protests of the past – and can they succeed?

Counterpunch,  October 31, 2011

by TARIQ ALI

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at,” wrote Oscar Wilde, “for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing. And when humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”

The spirit of that 19th century socialist is alive among the idealistic young people who have come out in protest against the turbo-charged global capitalism that has dominated the world ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters who have taken up residence at the heart of New York’s financial distract, are demonstrating against a system of despotic finance-capital: a greed-infected vampire that must suck the blood of the non-rich in order to survive. The protesters are showing their contempt for bankers, for financial speculators and for their media hirelings who continue to insist that there is no alternative. Since the Wall Street system dominates Europe, local versions of that model exist here too. (Interestingly it was the Wall Street occupiers rather than the indignados of Spain or the striking workers of Greece who had an impact in Britain, revealing once again that the real affinities of this country are Atlanticist rather than European.) The young people being pepper-sprayed by the NYPD may not have worked out what they want, but they sure as hell know what they’re against and that’s an important start.

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Mike Whitney - Is Goldman Sachs Poised to Takeover Europe?

Counterpunch.org  October 31, 2011

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/31/is-goldman-sachs-poised-to-takeover-europe/

by MIKE WHITNEY

Goldman Sachs is about to take over Europe, but you wouldn’t know it by reading the papers.

On Tuesday, G-Sax alum, Mario Draghi, will take the helm at the European Central Bank replacing retiring ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet. The appointment has slipped by the media virtually unnoticed even though the ECB is the most powerful institution in the EU and is likely to play a critical role in solving the debt crisis.

Draghi was formally a Managing Director at Goldman. He also served as an advisor to the Bank of Italy in 1990, chairman of the Italian Committee for Privatisations, and was an Executive Director of The World Bank from 1984 to 1990. His bio. affirms his globalist pedigree which makes him the perfect candidate to replace the curmudgeonly Trichet who failed to comply with all of Big Finance’s demands. That’s not likely to be the case with Draghi.

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Joshua Frank - Nuclear Disaster in the US: How Bechtel Is Botching the World's Costliest Environmental Cleanup

Nuclear Disaster in the US: How Bechtel Is Botching the World's Costliest Environmental Cleanup

By Joshua Frank, Seattle Weekly
Posted on October 21, 2011, Printed on November 1, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152816/nuclear_disaster_in_the_us%3A_how_bechtel_is_botching_the_world%27s_costliest_environmental_cleanup

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 World War II, the Hanford Reservation was chosen by the federal government as a location to carry out the covert Manhattan Project. Later, plutonium produced at Hanford provided fuel for the "Fat Man" bomb that President Truman ordered to be dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, killing upward of 80,000 Japanese. In all, nine nuclear reactors were built at Hanford, the last of which ceased operation in 1987. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency now estimates that as a result of the nuclear work done at Hanford's facilities, 43 million cubic yards of radioactive waste were produced and more than 130 million cubic yards of soil ultimately were contaminated.

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Ryan Gallagher - Governments Turn to Hacking Techniques for Surveillance of Citizens

Published on Tuesday, November 1, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/nov/01/governments-hacking-techniques-surveillance

Surveillance firms that recently attended a US conference are being accused of offering their services to repressive regimes

by Ryan Gallagher

In a luxury Washington, DC, hotel last month, governments from around the world gathered to discuss surveillance technology they would rather you did not know about. The annual Intelligence Support Systems (ISS) World Americas conference is a mecca for representatives from intelligence agencies and law enforcement. But to the media or members of the public, it is strictly off limits.

Italy's Hacking Team offers 'an offensive solution for cyber investigations' Gone are the days when mere telephone wiretaps satisfied authorities' intelligence needs. Behind the cloak of secrecy at the ISS World conference, tips are shared about the latest advanced "lawful interception" methods used to spy on citizens – computer hacking, covert bugging and GPS tracking. Smartphones, email, instant message services and free chat services such as Skype have revolutionised communication. This has been matched by the development of increasingly sophisticated surveillance technology.

Among the pioneers is Hampshire-based Gamma International, a core ISS World sponsor. In April, Gamma made headlines when Egyptian activists raided state security offices in Cairo and found documents revealing Gamma had in 2010 offered Hosni Mubarak's regime spy technology named FinFisher. The "IT intrusion" solutions offered by Gamma would have enabled authorities to infect targeted computers with a spyware virus so they could covertly monitor Skype conversations and other communications.

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Greg Palast - GOLDMAN SUX? Giant Squid Strikes Again at Occupy Wall Street's Credit Union

http://www.opednews.com/articles/GOLDMAN-SUX-Giant-Squid-S-by-Greg-Palast-111031-449.html

October 31, 2011 By Greg Palast What have I done?  There's one angry squid out there. Last week, Democracy Now! and The Guardian ran our story about Goldman Sachs yanking financial support from a community credit union for honoring one of its largest customers.  The customer:  Occupy Wall Street. Our report so enraged Goldman that, within days, it doubled down on its attack on the little community bank. Goldman had already demanded the return of its $5,000 payment to the Lower East Side Peoples Federal Credit Union.  Now, sources say, the trillion-dollar Wall Street mega-bank sent the following message to the not-for-profit community bank:  "You will never get a dime from any bank ever again." About those "dimes" Goldman is taking away:  They come from you and me, the taxpayers who put up billions into the Troubled Asset Recovery Plan (TARP), usually known as the Bank Bail-Out Fund. For Goldman to suck its $10 billion from the TARP trough, Goldman had to change from investment bank to commercial bank. This change makes Goldman subject to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and requires it by law to pay back a notable portion in funds for low-income communities, abandoned by the big banks.

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Greg Palast - Goldman Attacks Occupy Wall Street's Non-Profit Bank

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Sachs-Fiend--Goldman-Atta-by-Greg-Palast-111027-307.html

October 27, 2011 By Greg Palast Sachs Fiend: Goldman Attacks Occupy Wall Street's Non-Profit Bank When Goldman got huffy at a credit union honouring OWS and pulled its anniversary dinner funding, much more was at stake   Exclusive for The Guardian by Greg Palast , the author of Vultures' Picnic : In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores. Out November 14.  With Arun Gupta, founding editor of The Occupied Wall Street Journal.  [Zuccotti Park, Wall Street, New York.]  Mega-bank Goldman Sachs (assets $933 billion), has declared war on one of the smallest banks in New York (assets $30 million), the customer-owned community bank that happens to also be the banker for Friends of Liberty Plaza, Inc, also known as Occupy Wall Street. And you thought Goldman didn't care.

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Ari Berman - How the Austerity Class Rules Washington

By Ari Berman, The Nation

Posted on October 31, 2011, Printed on November 1, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152918/how_the_austerity_class_rules_washington

In September the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a bipartisan deficit-hawk group based at the New America Foundation, held a high-profile symposium urging the Congressional “supercommittee” to “go big” and approve a $4 trillion deficit reduction plan over the next decade, which is well beyond its $1.2 trillion mandate. The hearing began with an alarming video of top policy-makers describing the national debt as “the most serious threat that this country has ever had” (Alan Simpson) and “a threat to the whole idea of self-government” (Mitch Daniels). If the debt continues to rise, predicted former New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici, there would be “strikes, riots, who knows what?” A looming fiscal crisis was portrayed as being just around the corner.

The event spotlighted a central paradox in American politics over the past two years: how, in the midst of a massive unemployment crisis—when it’s painfully obvious that not enough jobs are being created and the public overwhelmingly wants policy-makers to focus on creating them—did the deficit emerge as the most pressing issue in the country? And why, when the global evidence clearly indicates that austerity measures will raise unemployment and hinder, not accelerate, growth, do advocates of austerity retain such distinction today?

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