Hard Times Generation: Homeless Kids
March 9th, 2011Via: CBS / 60 Minutes:
The government considers a family of four to be impoverished if they take in less than $22,000 a year. Based on that standard, and government projections of unemployment, it is estimated the poverty rate for kids in this country will soon hit 25 percent. Those children would be the largest American generation to be raised in hard times since the Great Depression.
Research Credit: ottilie
Black 9/11: A Walk on the Dark Side
March 9th, 2011Via: Foreign Policy Journal:
In his important 2006 book, Nemesis, the Last Days of the American Republic, the third and concluding part of a trilogy, the late Chalmers Johnson, who was an expert on Japan and US foreign policy, writes that as much as 40% of the Pentagon budget is “black,” meaning hidden from public scrutiny.[1] If the figure is even approximately correct, and I believe it is, the number is alarming because it suggests that democratic oversight of US military research and development has broken down. In which case our democratic values and way of life are presently at risk; not from without, as there is no foreign enemy that can destroy the US Constitution, but from within.
I would argue that Chalmers Johnson’s estimate was corroborated on September 10, 2001, on the eve of the worst terrorist attack in US history, when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged during a press conference that the Department of Defense (DoD) could not account for $2.3 trillion of the massive Pentagon budget, a number so large as to be incomprehensible.[2] Any remaining hope that the US military might still get its budgetary house in order were dashed at 9:38 am the next morning, when the west wing of the Pentagon exploded in flames and smoke, the target of a terrorist strike. Incredibly, the exact point of impact was the DoD’s accounting offices on the first floor. The surgical destruction of its records and staff, nearly all of whom died in the attack, raises important questions about who benefited from 9/11. Given the Pentagon’s vast size, the statistical odds against this being a coincidence prompted skeptics of the official story to read a dark design into the attack. As Deep Throat said: “Follow the money.”
Was the Pentagon accounting office destroyed because diabolical individuals planned it that way? No question, the west wing presented a much more challenging target than the east wing. Targeting the west wing required a difficult approach over the Arlington skyline. The final approach was especially dicey and amounted to a downhill obstacle course, skirting apartments and a large building complex about a quarter-mile from the Pentagon known as the Naval Annex; which sits atop a hill that rises from the flat ground along the Potomac River. In April 2008, I interviewed Army Brigadier General Clyde Vaughn, a credible witness to the events of that morning. Vaughn explained over the telephone that on 9/11 he was on his way to work at the Pentagon via Shirley Highway (I-395) when the strike occurred. The general told me the hijacked aircraft (presumably AA 77) just missed the Naval Annex and would have hit the US Air Force memorial that presently occupies the site, had the 270 feet-tall monument existed on 9/11.[3] The new memorial was constructed in 2006 and dedicated the same year.
Why did the terrorists not take the easy approach up the Potomac River? The river approach would have afforded a reasonably good chance to crash the offices of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which were located on the opposite side of the building, in the middle of the outer “E” ring. The location of their offices was no secret. Surely terrorists would have been more interested in decapitating the command structure of the US war machine than going after a bunch of accounting clerks.
That morning, there were other striking anomalies. The crash of AA 11 into the North Tower at 8:46 am should also have raised red flags, because the point of impact at the 95th and 96th floors was too remarkable to be happenstance. Both floors were occupied by Marsh & McLennan, one of the world’s largest insurance brokerages, with family ties to the private intelligence firm, Kroll Associates, which held the security contract at the World Trade Center. Indeed, the network of corporate ties is so entangled that were I to trace all of the links, they would easily fill a book. Here, I will sketch out only the most salient connections.
More: Black 9/11: A Walk on the Dark Side – Part 2
Research Credit: Eileen
Britain: Rising Food Prices Could Spark Riots
March 9th, 2011Via: Herald Sun:
A SENIOR economist at the worldwide bank HSBC has warned of civil unrest in Britain if food prices continue to soar, Sky News reported yesterday.
Karen Ward cautioned that the UK was not immune to the kind of “food riots” seen in other countries around the world.
“Even in the developed world I think we have very, very low wage growth, so people aren’t getting more in their pay packet to compensate them for food and energy, and I think we could see social unrest certainly in parts of the developed world and the UK as well,” she told Sky News.
Libraries May Lend HarperCollins E-Books Just 26 Times… Before Having to Pay Again
March 9th, 2011Via: ABC News:
In what is shaping up to be a major battle over e-book lending, librarians across the country have banded together to boycott HarperCollins after the publisher decided it would limit the number of times an e-book can be checked out.
Under a new policy started Monday, HarperCollins will allow libraries lend out a digital version of a book just 26 times before the license expires. After that, the libraries must pay to lease the e-book again, so that another 26 readers can check out the book.
As more readers migrate to digital books and e-readers, publishers are under increasing pressure to create new business models to help them turn a profit. But since HarperCollins annnounced its decision last month, librarians have taken to the Web in protest, saying the plan will ultimately bring libraries to their knees.
Secret FBI, CIA Documents, Sex Videos Found at Egypt’s Secret Police HQ
March 9th, 2011Via: Gizmodo:
This mountain of shredded paper taking over several rooms was found inside the Egyptian Secret Police’s headquarters in Cairo on March 5, when hundreds of angry people invaded it. They called this day their Bastille Day.
An enraged population liberated prisoners still in their isolation cells, no larger than phone booths. In the process, they found torture devices, mountains of shredded documents, dozens of computers stripped from their hard drives and a stash of sex video tapes showing famous people—from actors to politicians, both Egyptians and from other countries. The videos were recorded by the secret police in hotel rooms. Nobody knows who stars in them, but I’m sure the world will know about it very soon…
Research Credit: cptmarginal
Handouts Make Up One-Third of U.S. Wages
March 9th, 2011Via: CNBC:
Government payouts—including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance—make up more than a third of total wages and salaries of the U.S. population, a record figure that will only increase if action isn’t taken before the majority of Baby Boomers enter retirement.
Even as the economy has recovered, social welfare benefits make up 35 percent of wages and salaries this year, up from 21 percent in 2000 and 10 percent in 1960, according to TrimTabs Investment Research using Bureau of Economic Analysis data.
“The U.S. economy has become alarmingly dependent on government stimulus,” said Madeline Schnapp, director of Macroeconomic Research at TrimTabs, in a note to clients. “Consumption supported by wages and salaries is a much stronger foundation for economic growth than consumption based on social welfare benefits.”
The economist gives the country two stark choices. In order to get welfare back to its pre-recession ratio of 26 percent of pay, “either wages and salaries would have to increase $2.3 trillion, or 35 percent, to $8.8 trillion, or social welfare benefits would have to decline $500 billion, or 23 percent, to $1.7 trillion,” she said.
NATO Starts 24/7 Surveillance of Libyan Airspace
March 8th, 2011Via: CNN:
NATO has launched around-the-clock surveillance flights of Libya as it considers various options for dealing with escalating violence in the war-torn country, America’s ambassador to the organization told reporters Monday.
Representatives of key Western powers also highlighted the possibility of establishing a no-fly zone in Libya — part of growing campaign to break strongman Moammar Gadhafi’s grip on power.
U.S. Farmers Fear the Return of the Dust Bowl
March 7th, 2011Via: Telegraph:
For years the Ogallala Aquifer, the world’s largest underground body of fresh water, has irrigated thousands of square miles of American farmland. Now it is running dry.
Arkansas: Emergency Order Halts Natural Gas Drilling After Fluid Injections Allegedly Caused Hundreds of Small Earthquakes
March 7th, 2011Via: Arkansas Online:
Chesapeake Operating Inc. and Clarita Operating LLC both said before a hearing Friday in Little Rock by the state Oil and Gas Commission that they will comply with an emergency request to stop injections of used natural-gas drilling fluid in the two wells in Faulkner County.
The drillers made the announcement in a pre-meeting notice. Still, the commission voted 8-0 to approve an emergency order ceasing operations at that the two injection wells. Commission staff suspects that the wells may be linked to an outbreak of hundreds of small earthquakes in the Faulkner County area.
Research Credit: Eileen
‘As many as 160 prisoners were injected with live cancer cells…’
March 7th, 2011Via: The Columbus Dispatch:
Perhaps the most famous was the cancer-vaccine test. As many as 160 prisoners were injected with live cancer cells.
The study, co-sponsored by Ohio State and the Sloan-Kettering Research Institute, ran from 1956 until 1961. Eventually, researchers said they lost track of most of the prisoners and thus had no results.
Related: Dr. Mary’s Monkey by Edward T. Haslam
Research Credit: DR
