Organizers revealed new details about an international conference on clerical sex abuse slated for February of next year in Rome.

“We want to share the best practices ” in combating the issue, Fr. Hans Zollner S.J., Head of the Preparatory Committee of the Symposium, told CNA on June 18.

“So we’ve invited speakers who are experts in the field of working with victims and also those who are experts in understanding the psychology of perpetrators.”

The “Towards Healing and Renewal Symposium” will take place February 6-9, 2012, at the Jesuit-run Gregorian University in Rome.

The conference will invite over 200 representatives from bishops’ conferences and major religious orders around the world.

It’s hoped the gathering in Rome will assist them in drawing up new guidelines to deal with the issue of clerical abuse – a requirement recently imposed by the Vatican upon church bodies who don’t yet have such charters.

“We have to now put in action what the Pope has repeatedly asked for,” said Fr. Zollner, “that is to develop guidelines on how to deal with the issue of abuse in the church.”

The 3-day conference will hear from experts drawn from various fields – including psychology, canon law, moral theology and sociology – and also from around the globe. The June 18 launch heard from Baroness Sheila Hollins who is Professor of Psychiatry at St. George’s University in London, England.

“My talk at the symposium will be jointly shared by a victim of abuse. The person who is going to accompany me – and we’ll do a joint presentation – is somebody who has agreed to come but is not ready today to disclose her name and photograph.”

Also taking part will be the Canadian Monsignor Charles Scicluna who is the Vatican’s sex crimes prosecutor.

“The symposium that was announced today organized by the Pontifical Gregorian University intends to put the word ‘formation’ into the equation of responding to sex abuse by clergy,” he told CNA.

“That will help with prevention, with an adequate response to sexual abuse when it happens, and with formation of the local communities – family, young people and also Church leaders.”

A key legacy of the conference will be the establishment of an online educational resource called an “E-Center.”

“The E-Center will be a multilingual website that provides the most current information and resources on sexual abuse for Church leaders, not only for bishops and religious superiors, but also for Church leaders of dioceses,” said Monsignor Klaus Peter Franzl of the Archdiocese of Munich at Saturday’s press conference.

The most importantly factor at the conference though, says Monsignor Sciclula, will be that voice of the victims.

“That is a voice that we need to hear. It is a voice that has been silent for quite some time but we need to hear from victims because we need to learn the effects of sin, delicts and crimes.”

CNA

It was the 1970s, and the chief executive of a leading U.S. dairy company, Kenneth J. Douglas, lived the good life. He earned the equivalent of about $1 million today. He and his family moved from a three-bedroom home to a four-bedroom home, about a half-mile away, in River Forest, Ill., an upscale Chicago suburb. He joined a country club. The company gave him a Cadillac. The money was good enough, in fact, that he sometimes turned down raises. He said making too much was bad for morale.

Forty years later, the trappings at the top of Dean Foods, as at most U.S. big companies, are more lavish. The current chief executive, Gregg L. Engles, averages 10 times as much in compensation as Douglas did, or about $10 million in a typical year. He owns a $6 million home in an elite suburb of Dallas and 64 acres near Vail, Colo., an area he frequently visits. He belongs to as many as four golf clubs at a time — two in Texas and two in Colorado. While Douglas’s office sat on the second floor of a milk distribution center, Engles’s stylish new headquarters occupies the top nine floors of a 41-story Dallas office tower. When Engles leaves town, he takes the company’s $10 million Challenger 604 jet, which is largely dedicated to his needs, both business and personal.

The evolution of executive grandeur — from very comfortable to jet-setting — reflects one of the primary reasons that the gap between those with the highest incomes and everyone else is widening.

For years, statistics have depicted growing income disparity in the United States, and it has reached levels not seen since the Great Depression. In 2008, the last year for which data are available, for example, the top 0.1 percent of earners took in more than 10 percent of the personal income in the United States, including capital gains, and the top 1 percent took in more than 20 percent. But economists had little idea who these people were. How many were Wall street financiers? Sports stars? Entrepreneurs? Economists could only speculate, and debates over what is fair stalled.

Now a mounting body of economic research indicates that the rise in pay for company executives is a critical feature in the widening income gap.

The largest single chunk of the highest-income earners, it turns out, are executives and other managers in firms, according to a landmark analysis of tax returns by economists Jon Bakija, Adam Cole and Bradley T. Heim. These are not just executives from Wall Street, either, but from companies in even relatively mundane fields such as the milk business.

The top 0.1 percent of earners make about $1.7 million or more, including capital gains. Of those, 41 percent were executives, managers and supervisors at non-financial companies, according to the analysis, with nearly half of them deriving most of their income from their ownership in privately-held firms. An additional 18 percent were managers at financial firms or financial professionals at any sort of firm. In all, nearly 60 percent fell into one of those two categories.

Other recent research, moreover, indicates that executive compensation at the nation’s largest firms has roughly quadrupled in real terms since the 1970s, even as pay for 90 percent of America has stalled.

This trend held at Dean Foods. Over the period from the ’70s until today, while pay for Dean Foods chief executives was rising 10 times over, wages for the unionized workers actually declined slightly. The hourly wage rate for the people who process, pasteurize and package the milk at the company’s dairies declined by 9 percent in real terms, according to union contract records. It is now about $23 an hour.

“Do people bitch because Engles makes so much? Yeah. But there’s nothing you can do about it,” said Bob Goad, 61, a burly former high school wrestler who is a pasteurizer at a Dean Foods plant in Harvard, Ill., and runs an auction business on the side to supplement his income. “These companies have the idea that the only people that matter to the company are those at the top.”

Through a spokesman, Engles declined to be interviewed. Company officials threatened to call the police as a reporter was interviewing workers outside one of its dairies.

Defenders of executive pay have argued that today’s chief executives are worth more because, among other things, companies are larger and more complex.

But critics question why so much of the growth in income should go to the wealthiest. Douglas, the Dean Foods chief from the ’70s, died in 2007. But his son, Andrew Douglas, said his father viewed wages in part as a moral issue.

If his father had seen how much executives were making today, Andrew Douglas said, he’d be “spinning in his grave. My dad just believed that after a while, what else would you need the money for?”

Inherent inequality

Inequality, economists have noted, is an essential part of capitalism. At least in theory, “the invisible hand,” or market system, sets compensation levels to lead workers into pursuits that are the most productive to society. This produces inequality but leads to a more efficient economy.

As a result, economists have noted, there is an inherent tension in market-oriented democracies because while society aims to endow each person with equal political rights, it allows very unequal economic outcomes.

“American society proclaims the worth of every human being,” economist Arthur M. Okun, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in his 1975 book on the subject, “Equality and Efficiency.’’ But the economy awards “prizes that allow the big winners to feed their pets better than the losers can feed their children.”

Americans have been uneasy about the income gap at least since the ’80s, according to polls.

Repeated surveys by the National Opinion Research Center since 1987 have found that 60 percent or more of Americans agree or strongly agree with the statement that “differences in income in America are too large.”

The uneasiness arises out of the fear that extremes of wealth can unfairly reduce the economic opportunities and political rights of everyone else, according to sociologists. The wealthy, for example, can afford better private schools for their children or acquire political might by purchasing campaign advertising or making campaign donations. Moreover, as millions struggle to find jobs in the wake of the recession, the notion that the very wealthiest are gaining ground strikes some as unfair.

“Americans think income inequality is excessive and have done so consistently for years,” said Leslie McCall, a sociology professor at Northwestern University who is writing a book on the subject. “Their concerns arise when it seems that extreme incomes for some are restricting opportunities for everyone else.”

Whatever people think of it, the gap between the very highest earners and everyone else has been widening significantly.

Income inequality has been on the rise for decades in several nations, including the United Kingdom, China and India, but it has been most pronounced in the United States, economists say.

In 1975, for example, the top 0.1 percent of earners garnered about 2.5 percent of the nation’s income, including capital gains, according to data collected by University of California economist Emmanuel Saez. By 2008, that share had quadrupled and stood at 10.4 percent.

The phenomenon is even more pronounced at even higher levels of income. The share of the income commanded by the top 0.01 percent rose from 0.85 percent to 5.03 percent over that period. For the 15,000 families in that group, average income now stands at $27 million.

In world rankings of income inequality, the United States now falls among some of the world’s less-developed economies.

According to the CIA’s World Factbook, which uses the so-called “Gini coefficient,” a common economic indicator of inequality, the United States ranks as far more unequal than the European Union and the United Kingdom. The United States is in the company of developing countries — just behind Cameroon and Ivory Coast and just ahead of Uganda and Jamaica.

Democratic leaders, whose constituents have expressed more alarm over the divide, have used the phenomenon to justify their policies, such as universal health care.

“A nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous,” President Obama said in his inaugural address.

Breakdown of earners

But exactly what the government ought to do about the income gap hasn’t been clear, because economists have been divided over what is causing it to grow.

They weren’t even sure, for example, who was making all that money. Sure, people like Bill Gates and LeBron James made lots. But it wasn’t at all clear who the other roughly 140,000 earners were in the top 0.1 percent — that is, people earning about $1.7 million a year, including capital gains.

Then, late last year, economists Bakija, Cole and Heim completed their massive analysis of income tax returns.

Little noticed outside academic circles, their research focused on the top 0.1 percent of earners. From those tax returns, they could glean a taxpayer’s occupation, which is self-reported. Using the employer’s tax identification number, the researchers found the industry they were employed in.

After executives, managers and financial professionals, the next largest groups in the top 0.1 percent of earners was lawyers with 6.2 percent and real estate professionals at 4.7 percent. Media and sports figures, who are often assumed to represent a large portion of very high-income earners, collectively made up only 3 percent.

“Basically, executives represent a much bigger share of the top incomes than a lot of people had thought,” said Bakija, a professor at Williams College, who with his co-authors is continuing the research. “Before, we just didn’t know who these people were.”

Acceptable greed

Defenders of executive pay argue, among other things, that the rising compensation is deserved because firms are larger today. Moreover, this group says, more packages today are based on stock and options, which pay more when the chief executive is successful.

Critics, on other hand, argue that executive salaries have jumped because corporate boards were simply too generous, or more broadly, because greed became more socially acceptable.

Again, in settling these arguments, economists were hampered by a lack of data, particularly any that might give some historical perspective.

It wasn’t until economists Carola Frydman from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Raven E. Molloy of the Federal Reserve collected and analyzed data going back to 1936 — an exhaustive task because of the lack of computerized records going that far — that the longer-term trends became clear.

What the research showed is that while executive pay at the largest U.S. companies was relatively flat in the ’50s and ’60s, it began a rapid ascent sometime in the ’70s.

As it happens, this was about the same time that income inequality began to widen in the United States, according to the Saez figures.

More importantly, however, the finding that executive pay was flat in the ’50s and ’60s, when firms were growing, appears to contradict the idea that executive pay should naturally rise when companies grow.

This is a “challenge for the market story,” Frydman said.

So what happened since the ’70s that has sent executive pay upward?

While no company over this period of time — from the 1970s to today — can be considered completely typical, Dean Foods offers a better comparison than most because fundamentally it hasn’t changed.

The dairy business is still the root of the company; it was on the Fortune 500 by the late ’70s and remains there today. It grew then and more recently through acquisition.

Moreover, both chief executives — Douglas and Engles — could boast records of growing the company and profits.

From 1970 to 1979, while Douglas was the chief executive, sales at Dean Foods tripled and profits increased tenfold, to $9.8 million, according to company records. Similarly, from 2000 to 2009, sales at what would be Dean Foods had roughly doubled, and so had profits, to $228 million. (Engles became chief executive after the company he led bought Dean Foods in 2001 and adopted its name.)

Yet there are vast differences in the way the two men were paid, even when you adjust for the effects of inflation.

In the late 70s — 1977, 1978 and 1979 — Douglas made about $1 million annually in today’s dollars. The largest part of that was a salary; some came from a long-term incentive based on the stock price that would not mature until he retired.

By contrast, in the late 2000s — 2007, 2008 and 2009 — Engles averaged $10.5 million annually, most of it in stock and options awards and other incentive pay, according to proxy statements. After ’09, which was a particularly bad year, Engles’s compensation dropped to $4 million in 2010. If profits return, so will his higher earnings.

The case of Dean Foods appears to bolster the argument that executive compensation moves with company size: The profits for Dean Foods in 2009 were roughly 10 times what they were in 1979, adjusted for constant dollars. Engles’s compensation has averaged 10 times that of Douglas.

“It’s a different company today,” company spokesman Jamaison Schuler said. He declined to comment further.

But some economists have offered an alternative, difficult-to-quantify explanation: that the social norms that once reined in executive pay have disappeared.

This new attitude, according to this view, was reflected in epigrammatic form by the 1987 movie “Wall Street,” which made famous the phrase “greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” Americans were growing more comfortable with some extremes in pay. Payoffs for the stars on Wall Street, in the movies and in pro sports were rising.

But back in the ’70s, something was holding executive salaries back.

Harold Geneen, the president of ITT, then one of the nation’s largest companies, told Forbes in 1975 that while he might be worth six times as much to the company as he was making, he hadn’t sought a raise.

“No one moved up there, and I didn’t dare do it alone,” he explained.

Over at Dean Foods, Kenneth Douglas was likewise resistant to making more. Most years, board members at Dean Foods wanted to give Douglas a raise. But more than once, Douglas, a former FBI agent who literally married the girl next door, refused.

“He would object to the pay we gave him sometimes — not because he thought it was too little; he thought it was too much,” said Alexander J. Vogl, a members of the Dean Foods board at the time and the chair of its compensation committee. “He was afraid it would be bad for morale, him getting a big bump like that.”

“He believed the reward went to the shareholders, not to any one man,” said John P. Frazee, another former board member. “Today we get cults of personality around the CEO, but then there was not a cult of personality.”

Outside one of the Dean Foods dairies recently, the workers at the plant for the most part only rolled their eyes when asked about Engles’s salary. But they spoke admiringly of Douglas.

“People back then thought enough was enough,” said Ron Smith, 63, who maintains the machines at the plant.

Some were reluctant to criticize Engles to a reporter. Others defended him.

“You’re king of the hill, and you get paid for that,” said Ray Kavanaugh, 61, who operates a filler at the dairy. “He’s worth it if he keep the company making money.”

The employees said they only occasionally dwell on Engles’s riches, anyway. Their primary focus is on making ends meet, they said.

Joe Bopp, 55, said he has a second job taking care of a cemetery during the summer months, mowing the grass and digging graves.

“Twenty-three dollars an hour sounds like a lot of money,” he said. “But when you pay $4 a gallon for gas and $3.29 for a gallon of milk, it goes away real fast.”

This is the first in an occasional series.

The Washington Post

As far as we can discern the US Treasury thus far has spent and borrowed about $100 billion from the federal pension accounts. Unless there is a vote on the cash debt extension prior to August 2nd, government will probably have borrowed some $250 billion to $300 billion. The Treasury is paying virtually no interest on this debt. Three-month Treasury bills are currently yielding zero percent. Our question is how will the funds be generated to fulfill the Treasury’s obligation to the pension fund? What happens if on August 2nd if legislation is not passed? Does this go on forever? We will keep you apprised on new developments.

The current situation regarding the state of recovery in the US has turned from precarious to dismal and as we predicted a year ago May we will have to be treated to QE3 something no one really wants, but as we said before it is inevitable. The Fed and their controllers, the member bank owners of the Fed, know the present approach doesn’t work and it is only a matter of time, as a result of their policies, when more stimulus will be needed, which in turn leads to more inflation.

Due to the current state of affairs Fed Chairman Bernanke has been making one appearance on TV after another. He gets grilled over and over again and he doesn’t like the public reception at all. He shouldn’t, as more and more observers see that two quantitative easings haven’t worked. They cost at least $3.6 trillion in funds created out of thin air, and all they have done is prolong the agony. The flip side is the policy has caused higher inflation. What else can one expect when deficits astound and the Fed has to buy $1.6 trillion in Treasury bonds. A large percentage of this debt is used to wage perpetual war for perpetual peace. During this process the President has bypassed the Constitution and is deliberately repressing the freedoms of American citizens. There no longer is a separation of powers, but virtual dictatorship bought and paid for by Wall Street and banking.

It should be firmly implanted in your mind that your masters in government and those controlling government brazenly and arrogantly believe that they know better what is good for you, than you do. That is why when they speak to you their answers are dripping with condescension – as if to say, how dare you question what we tell you. Fed Chairman, Mr. Bernanke, is a perfect example of this. He, others and his predecessors have created a false economy based upon perpetual debt and upon money and credit being created out of thin air. Today that is accompanied with zero interest rates, a combination that in time can only bring a falling dollar, inflation and a collapsing economy. Mr. Bernanke appears to believe that an increased supply of money has little or no effect on the comparison between money and the prices of goods. He has to be living in a fairy tale land. Thinking such as this can only end up making a bad economic situation worse.

For more than a month the US has been faced with the task of extending the short-term debt limit. The game that is being played is that one side wants to cut the deficit and the other side does not. In reality both sides do not want to cut anything, or should we say the elitists who control these supposed representatives of the people do not want anything cut. They want the game to continue, so they can continue to loot the economy, an interesting take on this sideshow is if Treasury debt is not increased the situation grinds to a standstill.

Congress, the President and the so-called negotiators want an increase in this short-term debt of $2.4 trillion. That would be a short-term debt limit of $16.7 trillion to carry the debt limit past the next election. The offset of reduced spending is to come over the next ten years. How ridiculous and ludicrous. Do they really expect us to buy this charade?

The most recent strategy by the elitists is to keep Japan’s problems under wraps. Just do not let it into the media, even though some Japanese officials say the island could become uninhabitable. This is also why President Obama went to see Chancellor Merkel in Berlin. He urged her to make a deal to settle the Greek problem. He doesn’t understand that such a deal would make her and her party, the CDU, unelectable for a long time. The German citizens want Greece cut loose. They’ll take the losses and the result is many banks will go under. The President is as well trying to bolster his approval ratings.

The propaganda is flowing to keep Americans from panicking in the face of not recovering, no short-term debt extension, municipal and state failures and Europe starting to collapse. The elitists are in serious trouble due to these problems. The icing on the cake for them is the disaster that the Bilderberg meeting turned into in Switzerland.

US consumer confidence is lower now than it was at the beginning of the credit crisis. That isn’t unexpected when unemployment is rising, retail is falling and the manufacturing numbers out of Chicago and New York are falling steeply.

What professionals for the most part do not seem to understand is that the events of 2006/07 have never been solved. On February 2009 the inflationary depression began. There has now been a double dip since then. What we have witnessed is slight revivals caused by the injection of money and credit. Unemployment is close to the same level it was 2-1/2 to 3 years ago. That phenomenon has been the same in the UK and Europe. In the UK the Bank of England and in Europe the ECB are doing the same thing the Fed is doing and that is buying government debt by creating money and credit out of thin air. The City of London, Wall Street and Frankfurt would have you believe these injections into the systems were working, when in fact all they have done is temporarily bail out Wall Street and the City of London and the European financial centers as well as the governments involved. Nothing has been done to structurally assist the system and put people back to work. What readers have to understand is that what has been done to these economies does not work and the participants know it doesn’t work. Professionals, who are not connected with the elitists, have panicked, because they do not understand what is going on – what is being done to them. The market was ripe to fall, but there is another important factor, Wall Street wants a short-term debt extension with little or no spending cutbacks. The new conservatives say no, we are not going to do that. The market will be taken lower until these representatives see the light. How far are they willing to take the market down, probably to between 8,500 to 10,000 on the Dow, or until Congress gives them what they want. In the meantime they will attack commodities, gold and silver, so no one can profit. Unfortunately for them, that isn’t working this time. They are lower, but come back every time they are artificially pushed down. We believe that is what this market correction is all about. Wall Street will take the market down as far as they have to in order to get what they want. In the meantime the Middle East and Europe are in turmoil and wars abound in a number of Middle Eastern countries. Those on the inside understand that the market is fueled by major deficit spending and the injection of money and credit, as government inflates debt away. The economy and the market for the last two years have not justified stock prices at the level they have maintained during that period. The same is true for the UK and Europe.

Most of the professionals do not understand what is really going on and what is being done to them and their clients. Data is weak and getting weaker as economic statistics continue to fall and point to more problems ahead. This is ample justification for a falling market to aid the deliberate reduction in prices. We must remember that the only bastion of gains for the public left is the market. If it comes down Congress will hear from constituents loud and clear. That is what is supposed to force the issue on passing the short-term debt extension.

As a reaction to this free spending foreign governments have slowed or stopped their purchase of Treasury and Agency bonds leaving the job to the Fed. This problem is going to worsen as we go forward. Now it is not only foreign governments that are slowing purchases, but also American households as well. They are selling more than $1 trillion annually and sales are increasing, as mom, pop and hedge funds dump government paper.

As QE2 nears an end investors are getting emotional. It is called panic. They can expect little from the FOMC next week, Europe can expect the same from the EU meeting the following week. Greece is in a state of revolution and there is no agreement in sight. In fact, the banks, governments, the EU and the IMF cannot agree on anything. The Greeks want a break in terms. If they do not get one it is default.

We predicted Greece would pursue these ends and we told them to do so several times on radio, TV and in the press. A Greek default will not only bring the euro down, it will take down the European banking system and that was our intention from the beginning.

Greece and the other countries in financial and economic trouble should have never been included in the euro zone. They simply were not qualified and the solvent countries not only knew that, but also stood by as these countries cooked the books with the help of JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. We wrote about it 11 years ago, but no one was listening.

The Greeks after a year of austerity have had enough of it, and are in no mood to give away their country to the bankers. An interest in the telecom company was recently sold to the Germans for $0.30 on the dollar. The Greeks are not going to stand still for anymore such sweetheart deals. When Greece entered the euro zone on January 1, 2001, they were happy to have an austerity program for entry in as much as they had the highest inflation rate in Europe. Their deficits were higher than any other EU country at that time, but the bank and sovereign loans kept coming, because it was political. The EU and the euro zone were to be the template for the new world currency and the new world government. That is why Greece and others were rushed into the euro zone. Then there was the novel and stupid concept of one interest for all, which we said at the time guaranteed disaster, and that is what we have ten years later.

We have recommended the purchase of gold and silver coins, bullion and shares since June 2000, after we got subscribers and others out of the stock market in the second week of April 2000, two weeks after the top. We did the same thing at Dow 14,000 and predicted a bottom at 6,600. The fall was to 6,550. We got subscribers out of the real estate market starting in June of 2005. As you can see we have been on top of things all those years. The call on the destruction of the euro we hope will be our best call yet. The perceived risk from our point of view is that Greece will default and leave the euro to be followed by Ireland and Portugal and later Belgium, Spain and Italy. It will probably take two to three years for this to become reality. Germans do not want the euro and never have wanted it. We believe within three years every country will be back with their own currencies and the dream of one world government for now in Europe will be a dead issue.

The Greek fallout will take down a number of too big to fail European banks, and could cause serious harm to lender countries. These mistakes will not be anything they will do again, anytime soon. We do not believe the Fed will be able to bail out European banks this time. The American public won’t stand for it after having to go to federal appellate court and traverse two years to find out the Fed lied and overstepped its charter by being banker to the world. The problems in the US are similar to those of Europe and it is only a matter of time before the US financially blows up. If Greek yields can go to 17-1/2%, so can yields in all countries in trouble, and there are plenty of them. The taxpayers in the US, UK and Europe are fed up with paying the bill for all of this speculation and mad political escapades. That will soon come to an end. It has too, as bankruptcy seems to be the only option. Three-month Treasury bills yield zero percent, and 2-year bills yield 0.40%, as the 10’s yield 2.91%. There now is only one way for yields to go and that is up. There is a limit to credit creation, but we are not at the juncture as yet. It is probably two years off, perhaps three years.

One of the aspects of the debt disease we haven’t really discussed is the fallout from Greece if and when it goes under. Thirty-three European banks hold large amounts of bonds in the PIIG countries, and they could all go under if the 5 or 6 weak countries go bankrupt. In addition, there are the countries and others who are loaded with these bonds. Like the Fed the ECB has been bailing out banks and it is against the rules, so that could put the officers in legal jeopardy. The very fact that these bankers broke the rules is onerous. The big question is are they headed for jail? If they have made mistakes the taxpayer has to pay the bills. We believe they should be in jail. The bill for exposure to the debt of the 5 financially weak nations could be $625 billion. The ECB has done the same thing the Fed has done and that is bankroll insolvent banks by buying the toxic waste they own and putting it on their balance sheets, which the public get to pay for. It is the socialization of corporate debt, fascist style. Most of the garbage has no value or little value. We always wonder what prices the Fed and the ECB pay for the soiled merchandise. Both refuse to tell us.

It is said the ECB is using 24 to 1 leverage with only $116 billion in capital and reserves. If assets fall 4.25% its entire capital base would be wiped out. That could easily happen if Greece and the other four PIIGS default. We call that ominous because none of the problem countries want to repay the debt to a gaggle of bankers who are nothing but criminals. Our take is the 5 will eventually default and perhaps Belgium as well. That means the ECB is insolvent and the major banks throughout the euro zone are as well, including many central banks. Professionals do not have a clue about how serious this is to the entire world financial system. Perhaps we are wrong. The ECB only has $268 billion in Greek bonds. That is simply a trifle for such big socialist hitters. Yet, it is double their capital base.

A Greek default would put 94% of the direct losses on European creditors and 5% would be shared by US creditors. The other side of the equation is US companies making some 90% of all losses being owed by US writers of default insurance. These US banks have sold $120 billion of credit default swaps to European banks. These are the banks that are too big to fail, which American taxpayers will have to pick up the losses for. Have those US banks hedged their exposure? We do not know, but we do know what they have done is irrational and incompetent. That is unless the US or the Fed had to for some reason guarantee losses. Something similar to what we suspected in the US banks’ sale of toxic waste to these same European banks. If the Fed, the Treasury and the Exchange Stabilization Fund are audited we will find out. These numbers are staggering, but their exposure to $100 billion in Irish debt is equally as onerous.

Such speculation and secret deals have to come to an end if we are going to survive financially. We definitely need to re-pass the Glass-Steagall Act that we fought hard to protect 13 years ago.

We can promise you that if Greece defaults eventually the ECB will be insolvent. We have dreamed of that day for 12 years. The destruction of the ECB and the euro zone, which would in part destroy the Illuminist drive into world government.

We think in order to avoid such a catastrophe the ECB would simply print more money as the Fed has, prolonging the agony. The real bailout mechanism would be France and Germany to put up their gold to save the euro zone and the euro. That is if the US allows Germany to have their gold. We can promise you that if the politicians of these two countries attempted to use their countries gold as collateral or propose its sale they would be lynched.

Like the Fed, the ECB has no credibility left. It is obvious that these two central banks only mission is to save the financial system that owns them. When are people going to smarten up? The ECB and the bankers thought Greece and the Greek people would be a pushover. The bankers thought they would just move in and loot the country. Once the Greeks were educated on the issues they made the proper choices. That is why we spent so much time on radio, TV and in the press there. Now they know the truth and the bankers, the euro and the EU are screwed. The ECB, as a result, is dead meat whether they realize it or not.

World debt is unpayable, especially that of the US, UK and the euro zone. The only solution is collapse. There can be no saving the system. It is only a matter of time and what the catalyst is. It could be Greece.

The International Monetary Fund cut its forecast for U.S. economic growth on Friday and warned Washington and debt-ridden European countries that they are “playing with fire” unless they take immediate steps to reduce their budget deficits. The IMF, in its regular assessment of global economic prospects, said bigger threats to growth had emerged since its previous report in April, citing the euro zone debt crisis and signs of overheating in emerging market economies.

The Washington-based global lender forecast that U.S. gross domestic product would grow a tepid 2.5 percent this year and 2.7 percent in 2012. In its forecast just two months ago, it had expected 2.8 percent and 2.9 percent growth, respectively.

Overall, the IMF slightly lowered its 2011 global growth forecast to 4.3 percent, down from 4.4 percent in April. Its forecast for 2012 growth remained unchanged at 4.5 percent.

The IMF said it was slightly more optimistic about the euro area’s growth prospects this year, but a lack of political leadership in dealing with Europe’s debt crisis and the wrangling over budget in the United States could create major financial volatility in coming months.

“You cannot afford to have a world economy where these important decisions are postponed because you’re really playing with fire,” said Jose Vinals, director of the IMF’s monetary and capital markets department.

“We have now entered very clearly into a new phase of the (global) crisis, which is, I would say, the political phase of the crisis,” he said in an interview in Sao Paulo, where the updates to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook and Global Financial Stability Report were published.

In the United States, the political problems include a fight over raising the legal ceiling on the nation’s debt. A first-ever U.S. default would roil markets and Fitch Ratings said even a “technical” default would jeopardize the country’s AAA rating.

Olivier Blanchard, the fund’s chief economist, told reporters that while the risk of a double-dip recession in the United States is small, growth is unlikely to be fast enough to quickly bring down the 9.1 percent U.S. unemployment rate.

The IMF said the outlook for the U.S. budget deficit this year has improved somewhat due to higher-than-expected revenues. In a separate report, it forecast a deficit of 9.9 percent of GDP — still high, but better than the deficit of 10.8 percent of GDP it foresaw in April.

U.S. securities regulators are weighing civil fraud charges against some credit-rating companies for their role in developing the mortgage-bond deals that helped unleash the financial crisis, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s long-running probe into the deals has widened to the major credit-rating firms, including Standard & Poor’s, the people said.

The leading ratings companies have been criticized by lawmakers as “key enablers” of the financial meltdown, helping to fuel the $1 trillion Wall Street mortgage-securities machine before the boom ended.

But the major ratings firms have largely avoided any regulatory crackdown. [From our point of view they should be charged criminally. Bob]

The International Forecaster

Google-owned You Tube has sensationally censored a video clip showing CEO Eric Schmidt at the 2011 Bilderberg Group conference, by removing the “honors” associated with the Alex Jones Channel and preventing the clip from going viral, while You Tube has also threatened to terminate the account altogether after baseless accusations of racism were made against an Obama Joker video for the second time.

Google chief Eric Schmidt betrayed his notorious disregard for online privacy in 2009 when he told CNBC, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Maybe Schmidt should take his own advice, because he’s obviously keen to prevent the world from finding out about his 2011 attendance of the Bilderberg conference and how he discussed new ways to police the Internet with other technology moguls from the likes of Facebook and Microsoft.

After our Bilderberg confrontation video was linked at the mighty Drudge Report as well as the London Guardian, it shot to the top of You Tube’s rankings and appeared on the front page, achieving over 100,000 views in a matter of hours. However, right as the clip was set to go viral and achieve millions of views, You Tube unceremoniously deleted all of the “honors” associated with the Alex Jones Channel. This immediately ensured that the video was buried and therefore prevented millions more people from seeing Schmidt being confronted by protesters at the Bilderberg meeting.

The Alex Jones Channel has received numerous “honors” and these are permanently displayed on the left hand side of the channel’s home page just under the channel description, but not any longer, as all the achievements have been scrubbed and sent down the memory hole.

Removing the “honors” associated with our channel prevents our videos from ever going viral.

In addition to this act of censorship against the Alex Jones Channel, You Tube has for the second time issued us with a Community Guideline warning strike, disabled the Obama Joker poster contest video from two years ago and threatened to terminate our account altogether.

Despite the fact that we successfully defeated a 2009 complaint against the same video, You Tube has again acted upon a “denunciation” from a You Tube user and disabled the Obama Joker clip, presumably under the same justification that it is “racist.”

As we documented the first time the clip was banned, You Tube disabled the video after a Barack Obama supporter claimed it was “racist,” yet the video mentions nothing whatsoever about race. Indeed, George W. Bush was also depicted as the Joker, a Vampire and innumerable other derogatory characters, but such criticism was never deemed “racist”.

You Tube is once again cynically playing the race card not only to terminate this video, but as a prelude to shutting down the whole Alex Jones Channel, a stunt they already pulled once before when the channel was suspended for the “copyright violation” of Alex Jones showing a newspaper headline on camera.

“Additional violations may result in the temporary disabling of your ability to post content to YouTube and/or the termination of your account,” states the email from You Tube, before listing the Obama Joker video complaint from two years ago that we already shot down.

Ever since the Obama Joker poster campaign began, the establishment tried to silence legitimate and powerfully symbolic criticism of the government by claiming the entire campaign was “racist,” despite the fact that George W. Bush was also depicted as the Joker for years, proving that the characterization has nothing to do with skin color or race.

In addition to its own dirty tricks, You Tube blithely follows orders from governments to terminate accounts and disable videos on the flimsiest of pretexts. As we have documented, the vast majority of government removal requests for videos that show little more than legitimate protests are hastily acted upon by You Tube.

It is important to emphasize that You Tube has now become the virtual town hall for online video content. This is where the vast majority of the online world go to watch their videos. It’s not as if we could just put the video up on our own server and expect to compete with the behemoth that is You Tube and its owner Google.

By directing 95 per cent of the video watching community to You Tube, Google has obtained a stranglehold on user-generated video content. We are forced to compete on their battlefield and play by their rules, and even though we abide by their rules we are still constantly being censored with dirty tricks and unfair treatment.

Despite the fact that our channel has received over 25 million views, You Tube refuses to give us a Director account, despite handing them out to channels that have received far less views. We provide You Tube with hundreds of thousands of hits every week and yet in return we are treated with total disdain.

This kind of censorship needs to be addressed now because under Internet 2, when not just videos but all Internet traffic will be hosted on servers controlled by big corporations in the name of cybersecurity, such issues will become routine. By swallowing up all the Internet traffic and then arbitrarily censoring free speech, the likes of Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and others will be used by the establishment to strangle the alternative media out of existence.

Prison Planet

This is really no surprise, but the same Senate Judiciary Committee that unanimously approvedthe PROTECT IP Act, despite worries from internet experts and major media about how it would break the internet, has now also unanimously approved the anti-internet streaming billthat makes it a felony to stream certain videos online — potentially putting people in jail forembedding YouTube videos or just putting up YouTube lip synching videos.

What’s really troubling here is that the media and plenty of concerned citizens have directly raised the issues about the unintended consequences of this law. And while Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn and Christopher Coons continue to insist that (of course) the law is not intended to be used against such people, they have made no move to fix the bill. Even supporters of this bill, who insisted that we were wrong about what the bill allowed, eventuallyconceded that our argument was accurate and that this bill could be used to put people in jail for embedding a YouTube video or doing a lip synch video.

And that’s a huge, huge problem. Of course, no one thinks the bill is for that purpose directly or that it’s going to be widely used for such purposes. However, the bill, as written, clearly allows law enforcement to charge people with a felony for that, assuming it meets a few other conditions. But those conditions are pretty minimal (ads on your page? you’re in trouble…). The risk here of abuse is a serious risk, and it’s incredibly troubling that Klobuchar, Cornyn and Coons failed to change or adapt the bill, and worse that the rest of the Senate Judiciary Committee allowed the bill to move forward in such a broken state. They were clearly made aware of problems with the bill, but directly chose not to make any changes. How do you explain that other than incompetence or corruption?

TechDirt

NYU’s Langone Medical Center is getting a jump on that whole 21st-century medical care thing by ditching the clipboards and paperwork for palm scans and digital databases. On June 5th the hospital threw the switch on an electronic patient-tracking program from Epic Systems and paired it with biometric identification technology from PatientSecure, which scans the veins in persons hands using near-infrared light. Instead of being forced to fill out forms with your insurance info and social security number every time you visit, you simply place your hand on a scanner and — ta-da! — your records come right up. By combining the vasculature scans (which are even more unique than fingerprints) with patient photos, NYU should be able to minimize misidentification and cut down on duplicate records. Rather than go out on some cheesy pun about palm reading, we’ll leave the predictable word play to the folks at ABC news — check out their coverage after the break alongside PR from the Langone Medical Center.

Commentary by Engadget

Video by WABC

Osama bin Laden is in the clear. Federal prosecutors have elected to drop hundreds of criminal charges against the al Qaeda leader and architect of the 9/11 terror attacks because he will be unable to appear in court to answer them.

Bin Laden was indicted back in 1998 in the Southern District of New York for his role in the al Qaeda attack on the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, which killed more than 200 people, including a dozen Americans. Several superseding indictments in the same federal jurisdiction piled on more charges.

On Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Lewin presented a formal recommendation to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara that Bin Laden not be prosecuted on any of the charges, given that he is dead.

After reciting Bin Laden’s multiple aliases and then listing the counts against him for ten pages, Lewin notes, “On or about May 1, 2011, while this case was still pending, defendant Usama Bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the course of an operation conducted by the United States.”

Lewin then provides evidence that bin Laden was actually killed in the raid, including the confirmation of his identity by DNA analysis and facial recognition analysis, eyewitness confirmation by one of bin Laden’s wives, video of bin Laden found in the Abbottabad compound and the “significant quantity” of other al Qaeda material seized by U.S. Navy Seals during last month’s raid.

He also notes that “al Qaeda has itself publicly acknowledged the death of BIN LADEN. Among other pronouncements, a recently released video depicts senior al Qaeda leader and co-defendant Ayman al Zawahiri acknowledging bin Laden’s death.”

ABC News

A Marine Corps Reserve lance corporal who was carrying suspected bomb making materials and pro-al Qaeda literature was arrested in Arlington National Cemetery early this morning, triggering a bomb scare that snarled Washington’s morning rush hour. The FBI, however, determined that the material in the man’s backpack was harmless.

“There was not a device and the products found are determined right now to be inert,” said Brenda Heck, special agent in charge of counterterrorism for the FBI.

The material in the suspect’s backpack tested negative as a potential explosive, sources said.

Sources told ABC News earlier that the backpack contained what was believed to be ammonium nitrate and spent ammunition for an automatic weapon. The material was reportedly contained in four large ziplock type bags.

Sources also said there were pro-al Qaeda statements found in a notebook that contained mostly notes for a financial class. There was also was a page containing words “al qaeda,” “Taliban rules,” “mujahidin” and “defeated coalition forces.”

The suspect was identified as Yonathan Melaku, 22, of Alexandria, Va. U.S. Park Police said no charges have been filed against him yet.

Melaku is a naturalized citizen and lance corporal in the Marine Corps Reserve, 4th engineer batallion out of the Baltimore, Md.

He joined the Reserve on Sept 4, 2007, according to the FBI, and is listed as a motor vehicle operator with Combat Engineer Support Company. He had been awarded the National Defense Service Medal and the Selected Marine Corps Reserve medal.

“We are told he had a backpack with five pounds of something labeled ammonium nitrate but as of this juncture, has not passed the test that indicates explosive capacity,” New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said today, when asked about the arrest. “It is too early to, I think, draw any conclusions but the investigation obviously is going foward with the federal authorities.”

Sources say they haven’t found any ties to a terrorist organization.

Police and the media congregated at Melaku’s home in Fairfax County, Va. where two people were seen being questioned by authorities and FBI agents. The FBI and Fairfax police were seen huddling in groups and putting police tape to prevent people from entering the area. They went into the townhouse with bomb technicians without a search warrant under the “public safety hazard” issue.

An FBI spokesman would not confirm whether the house was indeed Melaku’s or his parents’ residence, but did say it’s connected to the suspect and there was no safety hazard.

Melaku allegedly told police in Arlington when he was captured that there were other “devices” in the area and also the location of his vehicle. But the FBI said there was no reason to believe other individuals were involved and they believe the suspect acted alone.

Police were investigating a vehicle, a red 2011 Nissan, that contained materials authorities were examining to determine if it was a bomb or other weapon. The material was reportedly neutralized, according to law enforcement spokesmen at the scene.

There are two main types of ammonium nitrate, agriculture and blaster’s grade. Ammonium nitrate for agricultural use is widely available but is of a chemical composition that will not easily detonate. Blaster’s grade ammonium nitrate is used widely in mining and blasting. It’s sale is under license and carefully monitored.

The Pentagon and the surrounding areas were closed to traffic this morning, creating a commuting nightmare.

Suspect in Custody After Pentagon Bomb Scare

Park Police Sgt. David Scholsser said in a news conference the man was found at about 1:30 a.m. in the Arlington National Cemetery, located near the Pentagon. He was first caught by the Ft. Myers police but then ran into adjacent Arlington National Cemetery, where he was apprehended by the military. When questioned, Melaku was uncooperative but then took the police to his car.

A man by the same name and birth month was also arrested in Fairfax

County for reckless driving and failure to stop. He pleaded guilty and paid a $200 fine for the former charge and $30 for the second charge.

One of the Melakus’ neighbors told reporters the young man’s father worked as a taxi driver and that he was friendly but quiet.

“He’s a pretty normal person,” said Dagnachew Bizuwerk, an 11-year-old Ethiopian boy who lives across the street from Melaku’s family. “He was a person that doesn’t really talk a lot, a quiet man, doesn’t say much.”

ABC News

ST. MORITZ, Switzerland—The secret globalist group “Bilderberg” called for a big war by expanding the turmoil in Libya into a full-scale conflict involving the entire Middle East except for Israel. This is a grim and bloody outlook, because, historically, every time Bilderberg orders war, the guns begin to shoot. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush followed orders and attacked Iraq in Persian Gulf War I. He lost to peace candidate Bill Clinton, who followed orders and invaded Yugoslavia.

The list is endless: Every war dating back to and including World War II has been ordered by Bilderberg. Although they did not start calling themselves Bilderberg until 1954, Rockefeller and Rothschild cronies had the ear of President Franklin Roosevelt when the White House baited the Japanese into conducting a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941. 

Similarly, President Harry Truman was pressured into going to war in Korea, and then Lyndon Johnson involved the U.S. in Vietnam.

Johnson seemed to enjoy cruelty. The same draft law used in World War II had been revived in 1946, making all able-bodied men aged 18-38 eligible for combat. A college student could finish his degree but must then report for duty. As a matter of policy, LBJ said students could finish their entire education, including postgraduate work, before reporting. And no one older than 27 would be drafted. The result: Dick Cheney and others avoided service by remaining in college until the age of 27. So the body bags were mostly filled by young boys with no more than a high school education.

“It will have to be a big war involving several countries to advance our goals of a global economy,” said Keith Alexander, director of the U.S. National Security Agency. “But the pressure to end the war in Libya is non-stop, mostly because of that damn Kucinich.” He was referring to Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), whose bill to end the invasion of Libya was defeated just before Congress adjourned for a week on June 3.

“But look at all the votes [148] he got,” Alexander said. “This is dangerous. Congress may cut or even eliminate war funding, and our soldiers are not even fighting.”

Bilderberg’s goal of expanding the turmoil surrounding the invasion of Libya into a huge bloodletting in the Mideast will be helped, they say, by their plan to maintain the global recession through 2012.

“The recession may keep coverage [of Bilderberg] down,” said John Kerr, a member of the British House of Lords and deputy chairman of Royal Dutch Shell. “Europe has many independent papers, but they go low-budget. We have made calls to Rupert Murdoch, still our good friend,” he said of the world’s largest owner of newspapers.

Kerr and the others were to be bitterly disappointed when confronted by angry crowds as their helicopters landed at the resort on Thursday, June 9. Most had planned to arrive Wednesday afternoon, after leaving their “cover meeting” of NATO countries in Brussels, Belgium. But frequent, heavy rains kept the copters grounded. Bilderberg traditionally has a “cover meeting” so, for example, outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates can attend a NATO session and slip, unnoticed, into the Bilderberg meeting. Gates addressed Bilderberg on Friday, June 10.

Gates had said the same things to the NATO crowd he later said at Bilderberg, calling for more aerial combat actions by allies even as the United States confines itself to a backup role. Gates called for more effort by the Netherlands, Spain and Turkey and urged Germany and Poland to join the war.

Gates’s hour-long speech at Bilderberg was mentioned by The Financial Times. His audience, however, was described only as a “gathering of dignitaries.” He said the European NATO members face “the very real possibility of collective military irrelevance” as a superpower unless they contribute more money and troops.

Washington has frequently requested, “with exasperation,” that European NATO countries meet the alliance’s benchmarks for defense spending, Gates said and called the situation in the current campaign in Libya “unacceptable.” He said “the blunt reality is there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress—and in the American body politic—to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources to make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense.”

NATO has degenerated into a “two-tiered” alliance with the United States and a small group of European allies doing the tough jobs while others benefit from NATO’s protection without bearing a fair share of costs and risks, Gates said. “This is no longer a hypothetical worry,” Gates said in one of the harshest speeches ever delivered at Bilderberg.

When Bill Clinton, a Bilderberg attendee, was president, NATO became the UN’s standing army, operating anywhere in the world on the orders of the Security Council. Under the UN, NATO invaded Yugoslavia. Under its charter, NATO is a defensive army only. But the first weapon fired in anger was an offensive war under direction of the UN.

Bilderberg has forgiven Barack Obama for hesitancy about what is now “his war.” They understand the political delicacy in Washington but, as one said, “he’s a good soldier and he’ll follow orders.”

Obama was praised for doing Bilderberg errands on his visit to a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Hawaii. A major Bilderberg goal of establishing a world government is to create an Asian-Pacific Union following an American Union, both patterned after the European Union superstate. Even as Bilderberg gathered, OPEC nations were following orders to keep oil prices pumped up to assist the goal of raising U.S. prices to $7 a gallon. While making clucking sounds about holding down prices, OPEC allowed a slight, momentary dip as a public relations gesture.

But Saudi Arabia maintains 3 million barrels a day of spare capacity. This did not fool Frank Verrastro, director of the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which is traditionally a Bilderberg collaborator.

“I think there’s going to be a lot of theatrics, but beyond that I don’t think it affects the outcome,” Verrastro said. “If OPEC becomes less cohesive, that means each country goes its own way on production.”

“All these countries need money,” said Fadel Ghett, oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. “They will produce as much as they can get away with without destroying demand.”

The French agreed in principle to subscribe to new issues of Greek sovereign debt to replace maturing bonds if all creditors do the same. The move could provide a way forward for involving private creditors in a Greek rescue program. But it falls short of a German demand for them to agree voluntarily on an extension of bond maturities. The French proposal echoes the thinking of the European Central Bank, which claims that a rollover of Greek debt, rather than a “reprofiling” with extended maturities, would be a good way for private creditors to be involved in a new deal. French banks are among Greece’s largest creditors.

But the German government reaffirmed its determination to persuade bondholders to contribute more to a rescue. They called for a seven-year voluntary extension of maturities.

Jean-Claude Trichit, president of the European Central Bank, told fellow Bilderbergers that Europe needs a “Eurozone treasury secretary” with independent authority over all EU banks to avoid further crises like those of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain. There is no time, when a crisis erupts, for the nations to come to a voluntary agreement, he said, because such a treasury department would have to act swiftly and with authority to impose bailout actions.

There was modest attention to China and Japan, relative newcomers to Bilderberg. In response to the explosions in Japan’s nuclear power plants, there was talk of imposing global rules on safety inspections. On China, there was talk of enjoying huge profits by bringing materials from slave-wage countries in Africa to be made into finished products by Chinese labor (itself relatively cheap).The finished product would be sold in the United States, where unemployment rates unofficially exceed 15 percent.

Craig Mundi, a Microsoft executive, complained about China establishing rules that favor building electronic gadgets at home and selling them without foreign competition. Another who Bilderberg tried to hide by keeping his name off its “official list” was Bill Gates, a self-made billionaire computer nerd who founded Microsoft.

AFP

Agents admit forceful pat-downs were conducted when officials opted out from body scanners

As the resurrected TSA anti-groping bill cleared the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence, and gathered enough support to pass both chambers, Texas state officials have recounted disturbing stories that highlight how the TSA is using forceful pat-downs as a form of “punishment” to those who opt out of the full body scanners.

“Let me put this delicately. I was still feeling the effects of the pat-down as I sat in my seat from New Orleans to Houston, and then Houston to Austin.” Chairman of the Texas Public Utilities Commission Barry Smitherman told Fox 7 News.

Smitherman described the groping as “aggressive” and recounted an admission by a TSA supervisor that he was being “punished” for opting out.

Texas State Rep. Barbara Nash also told Fox 7 that a TSA agent “moved my legs apart and went up my legs, all the way up, and then she made me stand a different way where she could go all the way up the front., and then all the way up the back of my dress.”

State Rep. David Simpson, who sponsored the original anti-groping bill, House bill 1937, noted “This is a sexual assault in any other activity. If that happened right now, it would be sexual assault.”

Watch the video:

HB 1937, the regular session bill banning TSA groping, cleared the House floor but was not taken up in the Senate following threats to effectively implement a no fly zone over the entirety of Texas by TSA officials and a federal judge.

However, the bill was was refiled in the special session: Senate Bill 29, authored by Senator Dan Patrick, and House Bill 41 authored by Rep. David Simpson, as well as 112 co-sponsors (out of 150 Reps.) .

HB 41 was cleared Unanimously by the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee and the dignity of Texas travelers, including women and children, is now in the hands of Governor Rick Perry, who must call for the bill to be addressed on the House floor.

Senator Patrick declared this week that he has gathered enough support, 18 out of 31 Senators, to successfully pass HB 41. In a letter to Perry, Patrick urged the Governor to consider the bill.

“I have polled the members of the Senate on Senate Bill 29 [the Senate's companion to HB 41] in an effort to bring the TSA anti-groping bill back to the floor,” Patrick wrote.

“As of today [Wednesday], I have the votes to pass it. I hope that with the support of Lieutenant Governor [David] Dewhurst and the coauthorship of more than one hundred State Representatives, this legislation will be added to the call of this special session.”

Call Perry’s office TODAY! (512) 463-2000
——————————————————————

Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, andPrisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.

Prison Planet

WASHINGTON — The Republican chairman and ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee said they want the head of the Transportation Security Administration to explain how racial profiling became a common practice among TSA screeners at Newark Liberty International Airport.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss) are both seeking answers from TSA Administrator John Pistole, after a federal report found several behavior detection officers, or BDOs, had singled out Mexican and Dominican passengers for special scrutiny, bag searches, questioning and document reviews in 2008 and 2009.

“We have been in contact with TSA. We are looking forward to hearing Administrator Pistole’s analysis,” King, who is from Long Island, said in a statement “After that, we will determine our course of action.”

Thompson said the report confirmed his fears the TSA’s Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques, or SPOT program, was vulnerable to manipulation or abuse.

“TSA should halt the SPOT program immediately until safeguards are put into place to address racial and ethnic profiling concerns,” Thompson said in a statement. “I will write TSA and request to see this internal report.”

The Star-Ledger obtained a copy of the January 2010 report and broke the news of its findings on Sunday.

The report, which was ordered by Newark’s former TSA director in the wake of complaints from BDOs, said passengers found to have lapsed visas or expired passports would be referred for additional screening or turned over to immigration officials. It was an easy way, the report said, for the behavior detection unit to boost its referrals and appear productive.

The group of managers and BDOs who engaged in racial profiling were dubbed “the Great Mexican Hunters” by other TSA employees at the airport.

Racial profiling violates official TSA policy and courts have found it unconstitutional in other contexts, including traffic stops on the New Jersey Turnpike, a situation that led to federal monitoring of the State Police until last February.

The TSA acknowledged the report’s findings, but insisted Newark’s BDOs have been retrained and steps taken to prevent the practice from resurfacing.

A behavior detection manager demoted as a result of the report’s findings denied that racial profiling went on at the airport. He said managers cited in the report were the victims of false allegations by disgruntled subordinates, and that he was singled out as a scapegoat.

Rep. Rush Holt (D-12th Dist.), a frequent critic of the TSA’s use of full-body scanners, said he had cautioned Pistole to guard against racial profiling in the past.

“No one should have to fear unlawful detention or inspection based solely on the color of their skin,” Holt said in a statement.

Ed Borocas, legal director of the ACLU of New Jersey, called the revelations in the report “deeply troubling.” William Buckman, a lawyer who helped to overturn scores of drug convictions obtained through racial profiling on the turnpike, said he was not surprised by the report’s findings.

“I’ve heard many anecdotal complaints about that,” Buckman said. Whether used by troopers or airport screeners, Buckman said, “Racial profiling seems to be a fallback position to produce statistics.”

NJ.com

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – The International Monetary Fund cut its forecast for U.S. economic growth on Friday and warned Washington and debt-ridden European countries that they are “playing with fire” unless they take immediate steps to reduce their budget deficits.

The IMF, in its regular assessment of global economic prospects, said bigger threats to growth had emerged since its previous report in April, citing the euro zone debt crisis and signs of overheating in emerging market economies.

The Washington-based global lender forecast that U.S. gross domestic product would grow a tepid 2.5 percent this year and 2.7 percent in 2012. In its forecast just two months ago, it had expected 2.8 percent and 2.9 percent growth, respectively.

With regard to the global economy overall, the IMF struck a measured tone, saying the slowdown of recent months should be “temporary.” It trimmed its forecast for global growth this year only slightly, to 4.3 percent from 4.4 percent, and maintained its estimate for robust Chinese growth of 9.6 percent despite recent signs of a slowdown there.

Yet that relatively benign global outlook could quickly fall apart if politicians in the United States and Europe do not start showing more leadership in addressing their countries’ debt problems, the fund warned.

“You cannot afford to have a world economy where these important decisions are postponed, because you’re really playing with fire,” said Jose Vinals, director of the IMF’s monetary and capital markets department.

“We have now entered very clearly into a new phase of the (global) crisis, which is, I would say, the political phase of the crisis,” he said in an interview in Sao Paulo, where the updates to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook and Global Financial Stability Report were published.

In the United States, the political problems include a fight over raising the legal ceiling on the nation’s debt. A first-ever U.S. default would roil markets, and Fitch Ratings said even a “technical” default would jeopardize the country’s AAA rating.

The IMF said the outlook for the U.S. budget deficit this year has improved somewhat due to higher-than-expected revenues. In a separate report, it forecast a deficit of 9.9 percent of GDP — better than the deficit of 10.8 percent of GDP it foresaw in April, but still near historic highs.

MARKETS INCREASINGLY ON EDGE

The fund, which has endured its own political crisis due to the resignation of its chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, on sexual assault charges, said the global economy “has gained ground” despite a slowdown it deemed “not reassuring.”

It attributed the weakness to temporary disruptions such as the Japan earthquake, bad weather pressuring food crops and higher energy prices. Global growth should “reaccelerate” during the second half of the year, the report said.

The fund’s forecast for global growth next year remained unchanged at 4.5 percent.

The IMF raised its growth view for the euro area in 2011 to 2.0 percent from 1.6 percent. For 2012, the IMF saw growth at 1.7 percent, little changed from its previous 1.8 percent.

Yet Europe also poses some of the biggest risks to the global economy, Vinals said.

“If you make a list of the countries in the world that have the biggest homework in restoring their public finances to a reasonable situation in terms of debt levels, you find four countries: Greece, Ireland, Japan and the United States,” Vinals said.

Greece has edged closer to default as euro zone officials disagree on a planned second aid package for the indebted country. With strikes and protests around the country, political turmoil has added to uncertainty, stoking fears that the government will not be able to tighten its belt enough to reduce crippling deficits.

Fears of contagion in the euro zone have driven global stock markets lower in recent sessions.

The fund raised its forecast for Germany, the powerhouse of the euro zone, to 3.2 percent from 2.5 percent, with growth moderating to 2 percent in 2012.

Forecasts for large emerging markets remained stable or slipped. While China’s GDP view stayed unchanged, the IMF lowered its Brazil outlook to 4.1 percent from 4.5 percent.

Those countries, along with Russia, India and South Africa, make up the fast-growing BRICS, a group of emerging economies whose brisk expansion has outstripped that of developed markets recently.

Robust economic growth and rising inflation have caused emerging economies to tighten monetary policy with higher interest rates and reserve requirements, even as many developed nations keep policy ultra-loose to try to boost anemic growth.

The IMF warned that many emerging markets still need more tightening. In China, for example, the high inflation rate means negative real interest rates.

Some emerging markets have been reluctant to tighten too far, fearful of derailing growth or attracting speculative investment flows that could push their currencies ever higher.

Reuters

WASHINGTON — A former senior C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him.

Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of PresidentGeorge W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war.

In an interview, Mr. Carle said his supervisor at the National Intelligence Council told him in 2005 that White House officials wanted “to get” Professor Cole, and made clear that he wanted Mr. Carle to collect information about him, an effort Mr. Carle rebuffed. Months later, Mr. Carle said, he confronted a C.I.A. official after learning of another attempt to collect information about Professor Cole. Mr. Carle said he contended at the time that such actions would have been unlawful.

It is not clear whether the White House received any damaging material about Professor Cole or whether the C.I.A. or other intelligence agencies ever provided any information or spied on him. Mr. Carle said that a memorandum written by his supervisor included derogatory details about Professor Cole, but that it may have been deleted before reaching the White House. Mr. Carle also said he did not know the origins of that information or who at the White House had requested it.

Intelligence officials disputed Mr. Carle’s account, saying that White House officials did ask about Professor Cole in 2006, but only to find out why he had been invited to C.I.A.-sponsored conferences on the Middle East. The officials said that the White House did not ask for sensitive personal information, and that the agency did not provide it.

“We’ve thoroughly researched our records, and any allegation that the C.I.A. provided private or derogatory information on Professor Cole to anyone is simply wrong,” said George Little, an agency spokesman.

Since a series of Watergate-era abuses involving spying on White House political enemies, the C.I.A. and other spy agencies have been prohibited from collecting intelligence concerning the activities of American citizens inside the United States.

“These allegations, if true, raise very troubling questions,” said Jeffrey H. Smith, a former C.I.A. general counsel. “The statute makes it very clear: you can’t spy on Americans.” Mr. Smith added that a 1981 executive order that prohibits the C.I.A. from spying on Americans places tight legal restrictions not only on the agency’s ability to collect information on United States citizens, but also on its retention or dissemination of that data.

Mr. Smith and several other experts on national security law said the question of whether government officials had crossed the line in the Cole matter would depend on the exact nature of any White House requests and whether any collection activities conducted by intelligence officials had been overly intrusive.

The experts said it might not be unlawful for the C.I.A. to provide the White House with open source material — from public databases or published material, for example — about an American citizen. But if the intent was to discredit a political critic, that would be improper, they said.

Mr. Carle, who retired in 2007, has not previously disclosed his allegations. He did so only after he was approached by The New York Times, which learned of the episode elsewhere. While Mr. Carle, 54, has written a book to be published next month about his role in theinterrogation of a terrorism suspect, it does not include his allegations about the White House’s requests concerning the Michigan professor.

“I couldn’t believe this was happening,” Mr. Carle said. “People were accepting it, like you had to be part of the team.”

Professor Cole said he would have been a disappointing target for the White House. “They must have been dismayed at what a boring life I lead,” he said.

In 2005, after a long career in the C.I.A.’s clandestine service, Mr. Carle was working as a counterterrorism expert at the National Intelligence Council, a small organization that drafts assessments of critical issues drawn from reports by analysts throughout the intelligence community. The council was overseen by the newly created Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Mr. Carle said that sometime that year, he was approached by his supervisor, David Low, about Professor Cole. Mr. Low and Mr. Carle have starkly different recollections of what happened. According to Mr. Carle, Mr. Low returned from a White House meeting one day and inquired who Juan Cole was, making clear that he wanted Mr. Carle to gather information on him. Mr. Carle recalled his boss saying, “The White House wants to get him.”

“ ‘What do you think we might know about him, or could find out that could discredit him?’ ” Mr. Low continued, according to Mr. Carle.

Mr. Carle said that he warned that it would be illegal to spy on Americans and refused to get involved, but that Mr. Low seemed to ignore him.

“But what might we know about him?” he said Mr. Low asked. “Does he drink? What are his views? Is he married?”

Mr. Carle said that he responded, “We don’t do those sorts of things,” but that Mr. Low appeared undeterred. “I was intensely disturbed by this,” Mr. Carle said.

He immediately went to see David Gordon, then the acting director of the council. Mr. Carle said that after he recounted his exchange with Mr. Low, Mr. Gordon responded that he would “never, never be involved in anything like that.”

Mr. Low was not at work the next morning, Mr. Carle said. But on his way to a meeting in the C.I.A.’ s front office, a secretary asked if he would drop off a folder to be delivered by courier to the White House. Mr. Carle said he opened it and stopped cold. Inside, he recalled, was a memo from Mr. Low about Juan Cole that included a paragraph with “inappropriate, derogatory remarks” about his lifestyle. Mr. Carle said he could not recall those details nor the name of the White House addressee.

He took the document to Mr. Gordon right away, he said. The acting director scanned the memo, crossed out the personal data about Professor Cole with a red pen, and said he would handle it, Mr. Carle said. He added that he never talked to Mr. Low or Mr. Gordon about the memo again.

In an interview, Mr. Low took issue with Mr. Carle’s account, saying he would never have taken part in an effort to discredit a White House critic. “I have no recollection of that, and I certainly would not have been a party to something like that,” Mr. Low said. “That would have simply been out of bounds.”

Mr. Low, who no longer works in government, did recall being curious about Professor Cole. “I remember the name, as somebody I had never heard of, and who wrote on terrorism,” he said. “I don’t recall anything specific of how it came up or why.”

Mr. Gordon, who has also left government service, said that he did not dispute Mr. Carle’s account, but did not remember meeting with him to discuss efforts to discredit Professor Cole.

Several months after the initial incident, Mr. Carle said, a colleague on the National Intelligence Council asked him to look at an e-mail he had just received from a C.I.A. analyst. The analyst was seeking advice about an assignment from the executive assistant to the spy agency’s deputy director for intelligence, John A. Kringen, directing the analyst to collect information on Professor Cole.

Mr. Carle said his colleague, whom he declined to identify, was puzzled by the e-mail. Mr. Carle, though, said he tracked Mr. Kringen’s assistant down in the C.I.A. cafeteria.

“Have you read his stuff?” Mr. Carle recalled the assistant saying about Professor Cole. “He’s really hostile to the administration.”

The assistant, whom Mr. Carle declined to identify, refused to say who was behind the order. Mr. Carle said he warned that he would go to the agency’s inspector general or general counsel if Mr. Kringen did not stop the inquiry.

Intelligence officials confirmed that the assistant sent e-mails to an analyst seeking information about Professor Cole in 2006. They said he had done so at the request of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which had been asked by White House officials to find out why Professor Cole had been invited to CIA-sponsored conferences.

John D. Negroponte, who was then the director of national intelligence, said that he did not recall the incident, but that the White House might have asked others in his office about Professor Cole. A spokeswoman for the office said there was no evidence that anyone there had gathered derogatory information about him.

Around the time that Mr. Carle says the White House requests were made, Professor Cole’s conservative critics were campaigning to block his possible appointment to Yale University’s faculty. In 2006, conservative columnists, bloggers and pundits with close ties to the Bush administration railed against him, accusing Professor Cole of being anti-American and anti-Israeli. Yale ultimately scuttled the appointment.

Professor Cole, 58, is still teaching at Michigan, and still writes his blog on the Middle East, called Informed Comment.

The New York Times

Big Brother Watch has long had concerns about Internet Eyes, the website allowing armchair voyeurs to monitor private CCTV cameras from the comfort of their computer. Back in March one of the first schemes in three outlets of Budgens in Norfolk was shut down barely a week after it launched after concerned customers complained to the shop owner about the intrusive system.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) have now lambasted the site for allowing unencrypted footage from their cameras to end up on YouTube. Because the site does not track viewers’ activities, it is impossible to identify who is responsible for uploading the video. After an investigation from the ICO, they discovered that Internet Eyes did not encrypt any of the video on the site. They have now demanded that all images are encrypted and all viewer activity is monitored to ensure CCTV footage is not transferred to other websites.

In addition, from 31^st July no viewer will be able to access footage from cameras located within a 30 mile radius of their registered location in an effort to stop people viewing their neighbours.

Ever since its inception, Internet Eyes has been fraught with crisis after crisis, upsetting privacy groups, the ICO and the general public. It is a terrible idea which should never have seen the light of day. Big Brother Watch and the ICO will continue to monitor their activities to ensure no further abuses occur with the footage.

ICO Deputy Commissioner David Smith said:

“CCTV footage should not end up on YouTube when it shows someone simply out doing their shopping. A person’s CCTV image is their personal data. The law says that it should only be disclosed where necessary, such as for the purposes of crime detection, and not merely for entertainment.”

Daniel Hamilton, director of Big Brother Watch released the following comment:

“Today’s ruling does little to address fundamental concerns many have about this system and its impact upon personal privacy. It’s fundamentally wrong to hand untrained and unaccountable voyeurs the power to monitor CCTV images. This should be left to trained professionals.”

Big Brother Watch

U.S. military helicopters fired on suspected militia fighters in southern Iraq on Wednesday, killing one, in a rare American air strike responding to a rocket attack on an airport, the U.S. military said.

The U.S. response at Basra came at a sensitive time as Baghdad and Washington debate whether American soldiers need to stay past a planned withdrawal at the end of 2011 after they finished combat missions last year.

Basra, the strategic oil hub for the OPEC member country, has been relatively calm in recent years compared to the more restive northern and central parts of the country, where al-Qaeda affiliates are still more active.

The U.S. helicopter intervention came after seven rockets were fired at U.S. and Iraqi forces stationed at Basra airport.

“The helicopter team was airborne while conducting a routine mission when they received the report about the base attack,” the U.S. military said in a statement.

“They viewed two males actively loading and launching the rockets and requested permission to engage.”

After the U.S. strike, “a team of Iraqi security forces were alerted and dispatched to the site and found three of the men responsible for the attack — one dead and two wounded,” the U.S. military said.

Local Iraqi media reported a civilian was killed and three others wounded in the U.S. operation, and the U.S. military said it was investigating whether there had been civilian casualties.

U.S. troops ended combat missions in August, and the remaining U.S. forces are mainly engaged in advisory and training roles. But they retain the right to defend themselves.

Eight years after the U.S. invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, violence in Iraq has fallen since a peak of sectarian conflict, but Sunni Islamist insurgents linked to al-Qaeda and Shi’ite militias continue daily bombings and assassinations.

U.S. officials say attacks have increased, especially in the south, where militias are trying to take credit for appearing to have forced the U.S. military to leave the country.

A senior Iraqi security official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, said U.S. forces in Basra had grown frustrated with the Iraqi military response to recent attacks on their base.

“During recent meetings with the Americans, they were complaining our security forces are not doing enough to stop bomb and rocket attacks targeting their base and ground troops,” the security official said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki says local forces are ready to contain any internal threat, but acknowledges gaps in air, naval and intelligence capabilities. U.S. officials say Maliki needs to ask soon if any troops are to stay.

Reuters

Al Qaeda’s new leader is known mostly for his organizational and tactical cunning, but he’s fueled by a deep hatred for the United States and the West, an anger made more personal by the deaths of his wife and two children in a U.S. airstrike following the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was officially announced as the successor to Osama bin Laden, is the son of an upper middle class Egyptian family of doctors and scholars. A surgeon by training, his father was a pharmacology professor at Cairo University’s medical school and his grandfather was the grand imam of Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam’s formal seat of learning.

At the age of 15, he founded his first underground cell of high school students to oppose the Egyptian government. He continued his militant activities while earning his medical degree, later merging his cell with other militants to form Islamic Jihad.

Al-Zawahiri, who turns 60 on Sunday and has a $25 million bounty on his head, served three years in an Egyptian prison before heading to Afghanistan in 1984 to fight the Soviets, where he linked up with bin Laden. Al-Zawahiri later followed bin Laden to Sudan and then back to Afghanistan, where they found a safe haven under the radical Taliban regime.

Soon after came the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa, followed by the 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen, an attack al-Zawahiri is believed to have helped organize.

In a 2001 treatise, he set down the long-term strategy for the jihadi movement — to inflict “as many casualties as possible” on the Americans.

“Pursuing the Americans and Jews is not an impossible task,” he wrote. “Killing them is not impossible, whether by a bullet, a knife stab, a bomb or a strike with an iron bar.”

The deaths of his wife and two of their six children in a U.S. airstrike has fanned the flames of his anti-American zeal.

Al-Zawahiri has worked in the years since to rebuild the organization’s leadership in the Afghan-Pakistan border. Al Qaeda has inspired or had a direct hand in attacks in North Africa, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, the 2004 train bombings in Madrid and the 2005 transit bombings in London.

The CIA came close to capturing him in 2003 and killing him in 2004 — both times in Pakistan. In December 2009, they thought they were again close only to be tricked by a double agent who blew himself up, killing seven agency employees and wounding six more in Khost, Afghanistan.

Al-Zawahiri has been in hiding for nearly 10 years and is widely believed to be near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. He has appeared in dozens of videos and audiotapes in recent years, increasingly becoming the face of al Qaeda as bin Laden kept a lower profile.

Most of his pronouncements on the videos and audiotapes show him to be a man consumed by deep hatred for the West, particularly the United States, and Israel.

Al-Zawahiri has been in hiding for nearly 10 years and is widely believed to be near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. He has appeared in dozens of videos and audiotapes in recent years, increasingly becoming the face of al Qaeda as bin Laden kept a lower profile.

Al-Zawahiri had been considered the most likely successor because of his longtime collaboration with bin Laden. Analysts had said that few were likely to challenge the al Qaeda deputy leader for the top spot despite some reservations.

Many predicted he would step up attacks to prove himself.

But while his ascendancy to the top of al Qaeda is official, U.S. intelligence officials have said that some members of the militant group find al-Zawahiri to be a controlling micromanager who lacks bin Laden’s populist appeal.

A senior Obama administration official also downplayed al-Zawahiri’s selection, telling CBS News that his lack of combat experience will make it difficult to replace bin Laden’s as al Qaeda’s top commander and inspirational leader.

Indeed, it would be difficult for anyone to lead the militant group as it continues to lose key members responsible for planning and executing attacks, the official noted.

He comes to power at a time the terror network is struggling for relevance amid a wave of Arab uprisings that has threatened to upstage it.

CBS News

An al-Qaida-linked website has posted a potential hit list of targets that include names and photos of several U.S. officials and business leaders, calling for terrorists to target these Americans in their own homes, NBC New York has learned.

The FBI has sent out a new intelligence bulletin to law enforcement agencies, warning that this new web-based threat, while not a specific plot, is very detailed. The bulletin said the list includes leaders “in government, industry and media.”

The FBI has notified those individuals who are named.

NBC New York will not identify them or their companies. The list includes Wall Street firms, political leaders, leaders with think tanks and contractors who do business with the military.

The websites contain 40 specific names, 26 of them with photos attached, and they call for posting home addresses. One jihadist called for sending package bombs to any listed address as just one possibility.

An FBI spokesman declined to comment.

The FBI is calling the list of names the most detailed web-based al-Qaida-linked threat since Osama bin Laden was killed. The list has also been discussed on another al-Qaida-linked web forum.

The concern is a lone actor could try to use the specific information for a plot.

The FBI letter says the information on the overseas websites “is aspirational and it’s unknown if the threat will progress beyond these discussion forums.”

These specific postings follow calls by Adam Gadahn — al-Qaida’s American-born communication chief — for individual attacks.

Officials are concerned the list has been shared on numerous jihadist sites.

“What’s scary about this is how specific the individual information is,” said former New York State Homeland Security Director Michael Balboni. “What you don’t know is, when does aspirational become operational in cases like this, involving a possible lone actor here inspired by a website.”

The FBI memo stresses al-Qaida and its supporters have a history of making web based threats with little result.

“Part of this is a necessary precaution. You don’t want to scare people,” Balboni said. “But there is much more specific, individual targeting than we’ve seen before.”

Since bin Laden was killed, intelligence officials have been working to track terrorists and monitor possible plots. Experts say fear of a homegrown or isolated actor remains a concern.

NBC New York

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court says courts must consider age when examining whether a child is in custody and must be given Miranda rights.

The high court on Thursday ruled that police and school officials were wrong when they interviewed a 13-year-old special education student about a string of break-ins in Chapel Hill, N.C.

The interview took place in a closed room at his school. The boy was never read his Miranda rights, and his lawyer challenged the use of his confession.

The North Carolina Supreme Court refused to throw out the confession and said courts cannot look at age when examining whether the boy thought he could leave.

But the U.S. Supreme Court said in a 5-4 vote that courts have to consider how old the child was during the interrogation.

AP

The days of filming a live concert or sporting event on your iPhone may soon be a distant memory.

Apple is developing software that will sense when a smartphone user is trying to record a live event, and then switch off the device’s camera.

Anybody holding up their iPhone will find it triggers infra-red sensors installed at the venue.

These sensors would then automatically instruct the iPhone to shut down its camera function, preventing an footage from being recorded.

Only the iPhone’s camera would be temporarily disabled; other features, such as texting and making calls, would still work.

Apple filed a patent application 18 months ago in Calfornia. It has just come to light after being obtained by The Times.

Such a development would be welcomed with open arms by many concertgoers, fed up with their view being blocked by a sea of glowing mobile phone screens.

However, the real reason Apple is developing the technology is to placate broadcasters upset that members of the public are posting footage of events on websites including YouTube when they have bought the exclusive rights.

Many of these firms sell their own recordings of high-profile events, including Glastonbury and Wimbledon, and dislike being pipped to the post by reams of amateur footage online.

Assisting record companies in this manner is likely to help Apple secure more favourable terms with labels when negotiating deals to place music for sale on its iTunes website.

It could also potentially provide Apple with another source of revenue by charging people to film live events.

The development comes just days after iPhone users in the U.S. found out they no longer have to rely on hackers to ‘unlock’ their devices to switch carriers or save money when travelling.

Apple quietly started selling ‘unlocked’ iPhones in the U.S. for the first time on its websites and in stores, for $649 and $749 depending on how much memory they have.

The devices are identical to the versions sold for use on AT&T Inc‘s network, but don’t require a two-year contract.

The buyer will separately have to buy a Subscriber Identity Module, or SIM card, from a carrier to activate the phone.

Apart from AT&T, the only national U.S. carrier that’s compatible with the phone is T-Mobile USA, and it can provide only phone calls and low data speeds.

OTHER APPLE PATENTS FOR INNOVATIONS THAT COULD SOON BE WITH US

The Daily Mail

Facebook now appears to be censoring some alternative news sites while allowing hackers to go after others. It is no wonder they lost 6 Million users in the US last month.

I recently talked to Alex Thomas from The Intel Hub who was listed as an honorable mention in the top 10 most influential people in alternative media list published by Activist Post.

I am frequently a guest contributor on the site and during our conversation he told me that Facebook is starting to ban articles from the site. At that point I figured most likely his account was flagged and left it at that.

Low an behold, top item in Reddit’s conspiracy section right now is this.

Facebook Not Allowing Users To Share Articles From The Intel Hub

So it is not just Alex’s account that has been banned but other users are also being censored from sharing Intel Hub articles.

So here we have Facebook blocking this Intel Hub write up of a main stream news article from the UK Independent but at the same time they will allow douchebag hackers to use a malicious YouTube video hack to try to hack me?

Don’t Fall For This Youtube / Facebook Hack

Douchebag hackers tried to hack me through a Facebook and YouTube hack. I documented here so you can avoid it if they try it on you.Read more…

It is not surprising that Facebook lost 6 million users in the US last month alone. If they keep this kind of crap up they will soon go the way of MySpace.

Bob Tuskin On Facebook losing 6 million users:

CIA Book, you continue to amaze me. Perhaps your users don’t like all of your privacy violations, including your most recent facial recognition addition.

In George Orwell’s infamous novel 1984, Big Brother could read your mind.

I used to think that this was far out and some sort of science fiction technology but with the popularity of Facebook it has become reality.

When people post their every thought on Facebook, the social networking giant becomes Big Brothers best friend.

Oh and by the way, I am on Facebook so feel free to add me.

If you do, you will not see me post about what I had for dinner or who my favorite contestant on dancing with the stars is.

Instead, you will see me posting solution oriented and informative intel, aka their worst nightmare.

It is now more important then ever to support alternative media!

The IntelHub

Last year Yasir Afifi, a 20-year-old U.S.-born citizen, found a strange device attached to his car. When he posted a photo of it online, the FBI showed up at his home two days later. They wanted their GPS tracking device back. The FBI had been tracking Afifi’s movement for months without his knowing about it. Moreover, the agency did so without a warrant and apparently based on the flimsy rationale that his friend wrote a blog they felt was questionable. This type of warrantless tracking seems to be an increasingly common government practice.

Following this incident, as well as revelations about how much location information Apple and Google are storing about their customers, there has been a significant public outcry over the privacy of location information. Congress has held a number of hearings on the topic and today Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) introduced companion bills in the Senate and House, respectively, to protect location privacy. The bills not only require law enforcement to get a warrant based on probable cause before accessing location information, but also regulate the use of this information by businesses. With location tracking cases popping up all over the country, this would provide a strong and clear national standard for law enforcement.

Disclosing location information can be particularly harmful to victims of stalking and domestic violence . It can reveal individual movements for months or years, including things like medical information (visits to a therapist or an abortion clinic), First Amendment-protected activity (attendance at a church or political protest), or personal habits (visits to a gun range or bar). It can also be just plain embarrassing – maybe you were at a bar when you said you were at church. Requiring a warrant will not deny the police information they need, it just mandates judicial review to ensure that authorities have a good reason to access such sensitive information.

This is already the law in Oregon, where the state’s Supreme Court held that tracking is the equivalent of a search as defined by the state constitution and therefore requires a warrant. The court said GPS tracking was a violation of an individual’s right to privacy and, unlike simply viewing a vehicle tracking device, it significantly limits freedom from scrutiny.

As technology has advanced, law enforcement has been quick to adopt new surveillance tools, but our privacy laws have not kept pace . We applaud Sen. Wyden and Rep. Chaffetz for bills that work towards bringing them in line. Please go here to ask your Members of Congress to co-sponsor this important piece of legislation.

ACLU

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – Michelle Obama wants to see more stories of military families on TV and in movies, so she came to Hollywood to do something about it.

The first lady met with members of the writers, producers, directors and actors unions at the Writers Guild Theater to discuss Joining Forces, an initiative aimed at increasing public consciousness and support of military families.

Obama said she created the initiative with Jill Biden to help the nation understand “that when our country goes to war, we have families that are serving right along with them.”

During Monday’s hour-long program, Obama shared the stage with a National Guard pilot, a retired soldier and the wife of an Army officer. Writer-director JJ Abrams, whose film “Super 8″ topped the weekend box office, moderated the discussion.

The service members said that simple gestures of thanks are often the most meaningful, such as receiving care packages while deployed or being welcomed home at the airport by a clapping, flag-waving crew.

Obama suggested that Hollywood storytellers, and all Americans, can benefit by visiting military hospitals and hearing military stories firsthand.

“It’s not just research,” she said, “it’s an experience.”

The first lady is doing some military storytelling of her own during her visit to Los Angeles: Obama is set to tape an episode of Nickelodeon’s “iCarly” about the main character’s efforts to connect with her dad on his birthday. Obama plays herself in the episode, in which two of Carly’s friends try to set up a father-daughter birthday Web chat.

Obama’s daughters are “iCarly” fans, so the first lady’s role on the show makes her “the coolest mom on the face of the planet,” she said. Though she has been diligently studying her lines, Obama admitted Monday: “I am terrified.”

She said the “iCarly” episode is a perfect example of how stories of military families fit perfectly into our everyday entertainment.

She hopes the Joining Forces initiative inspires Americans to understand the sacrifices made by military personnel and their families, and that appreciating them becomes part of our national fabric.

It’s important Hollywood gets the message, because TV and film have the power to teach.

“In the end, this isn’t just about the stories, but about having the men and women and their families who serve our country feel the gratitude every day from a grateful nation,” Obama said. “If we set this foundation, not just for today but for forever, regardless of whom the president is in office, that this is a part of who we are as Americans and lifting these families up … then we’ve been successful.”

Obama also appeared at two private fundraisers during her visit to Los Angeles on Monday.

___

Nickelodeon is owned by Viacom Inc.

AP

I imagine sometimes in my most optimistic moments that one day I will live in the midst of a true free market economy, where the tides of trade and investment, the ebb and flow of commerce, are a rather beautiful thing. A marketplace without centralized manipulation, were legitimate supply and demand are elevated instead of obscured, and toxic financial instruments, crooked corporate institutions, and even faulty currencies, are allowed to finally meet their long deserved demise because they no longer serve the needs of our nation and our culture. I imagine an economy that is not only continuously shedding off old skins and renewing itself as our society grows, but one whose primary purpose is to nurture and expedite that growth. I imagine an economy that works FOR the people, not against them. Like I said, “optimistic”.

In today’s economy, we have something quite different. We are imprisoned in a labyrinthian deathtrap of a mainstream system, one that feeds endless fiat formaldehyde into the crusted veins of a long since corpsified infrastructure; a financial golem, a wraith, a thing that creeps across the dark horizon of our country’s future waiting to unleash a special kind of hell. A thing that should not exist.

We live in an unnatural and monstrous economy. A Frankenstein creation…

This creation owes its wretched life to the efforts of a relatively small number of international bankers, corporate financiers, and of course, the private Federal Reserve; the mad scientists of our age, consumed with a lust for power over everything. One day, in the distant future, we will finally understand and appreciate their “brilliance”, or so they tell themselves. The “plan” is simply too complex and wondrous for we nearsighted and frightened villagers to comprehend.

In fact, the plan is very easy to comprehend, and not driven by brilliance, but hubris (one does not necessarily lead to the other). The key to grasping the mangled workings of our economy lay in the lifeblood of our commerce; the dollar itself. If you know the dollar, you’ll know just about everything else. Ignore the dollar, or assume comprehension without ample study, and you will find yourself completely lost in the fog and chaos of the markets.

This brand of confusion is very evident amongst a majority of investors, who seem bewildered by the seesaw activities in global indexes, Treasury Bonds and currency exchanges, and more specifically, the tug-of-war between the dollar and the euro. Why does debt instability keep cycling in the EU like a tornado? How could commodities decouple from currencies and act independently of “normal” market indicators? How could the U.S. economy still be on the verge of complete meltdown after three years of bailouts and quantitative easing measures? Where is all this headed?

Many of these questions can be answered by examining the battle going on between major developed and developing nations, including their currency policies, which appear to be at odds. However, there is indeed a concerted and focused effort in play underneath all the supposed “bumblings” and catastrophes around us, and this effort is not being implemented for our benefit…

The U.S. / EU Game Of Hot Potato

About every three months, give or take a week, the news is lambasted with yet another negative development in the EU, usually linked to Greece. This quarter was no exception, as S&P announced it was cutting Greece’s debt rating by three levels to CCC, and warned that the country was dangerously close to default:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Greece-falls-to-SPs-lowest-rb-4175011898.html?x=0

Greece now has a lower rating than even Ecuador, which defaulted in 2009. The EU warns of a “systemic spread” of the debt crisis if the Greece situation is not contained. Whether this is true or not is of secondary relevance. The most important issue is the relationship between EU instability and the U.S. dollar.

One can’t help but notice (if they’ve been following currency and commodity markets) that every time inflationary pressures break through another level in the U.S., or the dollar index edges dangerously close to dropping below the 72 point support level, the mainstream financial media and numerous establishment analysts suddenly turn their attentions back to Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, etc. The truth is that the problems in the EU never went away. They were never solved, nor was there ever any intention to solve them. The coverage and the transparency of those problems was the only thing squelched. The result is a brief but effective change in market psychology.

The Euro falls. The dollar index gains back a portion of its losses, because the assumption among uninformed investors is that the dollar will become a “safe haven” in the wake of Euro destabilization. Gold and silver take a hit, usually dropping between 5%-10%. Oil takes a much smaller loss, but its steady rise is impeded for at least a few weeks. And, stocks around the globe falter. What is important to recognize here, however, is that each time this game of passing the “hot potato” is played the dollar tends to fall even further afterwards, followed by a new explosion in commodities and inflation. What we are witnessing, is an attempt by global central banks to create a controlled decline of both the Dollar and the Euro; bouncing one off the other, which skews index measurements in order to hide the true extent of the damage being inflicted on each currency.

The most recent market seesaw is complicated even further by the debt ceiling debate going on in the U.S. Congress. That is to say, as the circumstances grow worse here in America, and the dollar continues to devolve into primordial jelly, global central banks need an even greater firestorm in Europe to drive investors temporarily into the arms of the Greenback to slow its decline. They certainly have a firestorm on their hands in the EU now, as a resurgence of protests overrun Greece in response to extreme austerity measures and social welfare cuts demanded by the IMF:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/15/us-eurozone-idUSTRE75D6JK20110615

One might ask, how will this tug-of-war end between the dollar and the euro? It can’t possibly go on forever, especially as each continues to degrade. Which one will come out on top in terms of market trust?

It is undeniable, the dollar will lose…

There is one primary factor that makes this inevitable, and that is the level of fiat creation going on in the U.S. We are out-printing every country on the planet, not to mention out-spending. But here’s the kicker; the dollar is not only being weakened to prop up our own failing system, it is also being weakened to prop up the EU!

After the Federal Reserve was finally forced through lawsuit to reveal the recipients of a large portion of bailout funds distributed in 2008, it became clear that a considerable amount of fiat (which becomes a debt burden for American taxpayers) was not going into American pockets, or American banks, but banks in Europe:

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2009/03/german_and_fren.html

Another important issue to consider is that the U.S. supports almost 20% of the IMF’s funding apparatus. This means that every time the IMF issues another bailout to a European nation, WE are footing at least 20% of the bill, on top of any capital we send directly overseas. The IMF is currently putting together a brand new bailout for Greece, barely a year after the last debacle costing around $150 billion. And, again, Barack Obama is pledging U.S. “help” (i.e. lots of your money) to aid in slowing the crisis in Europe:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/43321461

This is why, in the end, America will hit the ground hardest. We are essentially covering the overhead for collapses on both sides of the Atlantic. Therefore, we are devaluing our currency at a far faster rate than the EU ever could. If the EU was forced to print to bailout its own economic members, the story might be a little different, but as the situation stands, the dollar is being gutted to sustain foreign nations, so that they do not have to gut the Euro.

Why would the Obama Administration, the Federal Reserve, and the IMF pursue such a policy?Well, it makes little sense unless your goal is to deliberately implode the dollar, destroy its world reserve status, and replace it with something else (that something else being the IMF’s “Special Drawing Rights”). It also makes sense if you wish to draw Europe into a state of uncertainty, but not total anarchy.

If the Euro is allowed to collapse, then the idea of a centralized union of nations, and especially a global union of nations, becomes a financial joke. But, if the EU is merely wounded, and the Euro slightly hobbled, global banks can claim that the system “could still work”, if only it was “centralized more”. That is to say, globalists will demand that EU nations erase all political, not just economic, divisions, and accept the rule of a single guiding governmental body. They will claim that the weakness of the EU was caused because participating nations were “clinging to their sovereignty”, instead of working together as one unit. In fact, the suggestion to dissolve European sovereignty and giving more power to a single ruling body is being pressed right now:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/eu-must-move-toward-economic-federalism-2011-06-03

“…Barnier said the E.U. should try and unify its economic and finance policy functions in much the same way it has for foreign policy. The making of policy should be combined with the political ability to carry those decisions out, he said. He also said he can envision a day when member countries agree to merge the heads of key E.U. bodies, “so we’d have a real president of the European Union.””

“…he suggested that E.U. members must eventually allow more government authority to be centralized in order to better implement economic policies for the region.”

This process of centralization is already underway in Europe, and AMERICANS are paying for it.In the very near future, there will come a point at which the U.S. will no longer be able to print from thin air without also provoking a loss of world reserve status. The result will be a much faster implosion of the dollar compared to the Euro. Then, the roles will reverse, and it will be the U.S. asking for help from the IMF, and even Europe, to avoid complete default.

The Dollar’s Prominence Is Its Weakness

I often hear that because the dollar is so prolific, and its use so global, there will never be any chance that it will fall out of fashion. I’m not sure why so many consider that a logical position, but hey, if you parrot a mainstream talking point enough times, you might begin to believe it yourself. I would say, to the contrary, that the prominence of the dollar around the world is actually its primary weakness. The fact that we have accrued so much debt, and the fact that there are now trillions in U.S. Treasury Bonds floating around overseas, should not be a comforting thought to anyone. The reality that hundreds of countries and millions of investors blindly expect that we will be able to pay off said liabilities should be terrifying to even the most steeled economist.

All this “demand” for U.S. Treasuries and dollars is predicated on the delusion that such instruments will continue to hold significant value despite erosion in American marketplaces, and that eventually, a recovery will wash away all risk. But what happens when the Dow breaks into a downward spiral at the slightest mention that the Fed will no longer continue QE?Markets are already wobbling under the threat. The theory of recovery will certainly be dashed.What happens if the Federal Reserve announces QE3 to “ease concerns”, only to cause fear for the health of the dollar? What happens if the debt ceiling is raised yet again? What happens if it is not raised?

It’s a Catch-22. Regardless of which direction we turn, the “popularity” of the greenback is an expectation we cannot fulfill.

Imagine that you are a loan-shark (for some this might be fun). Now, imagine that you have lent considerable sums of cash to a chronic gambler who claims to be a millionaire. You figure, hey, he’s rich, he’ll be good for it. Suddenly, you discover he’s NOT rich. He’s in debt up to his eyeballs. His luxurious home, expensive cars, extravagant yacht; its all an illusion, a fantasy built upon borrowed money and borrowed time. His IOU’s aren’t worth the paper they are printed on.

You realize with fury, that this guy may never pay you back. So, what do you do? Well, you break his legs, of course! And, perhaps with a bit more gusto than some schmuck you had suspicions about from the beginning.

The analogy is simplistic, but I think you see my point. The U.S. is the fake millionaire, the rest of the world, the loan-shark (believe me, Treasury investors can be just as ruthless when they discover they might never be able to cash in their bonds). Very soon, buyers of U.S. debt will wake up and accept that America will not be able to honor all the loans it has compiled, and that the only foundation we have left to stand is the endless printing of our central bank. At that time, they will “cripple” our economic structure by flooding our system with those same bonds as well as dollars held in Forex Reserves that we allowed to become so prominent. Hyperstagflation, here we come…

For now, we have been saved by the distractions of European debt default, and the simultaneous devaluation of the Euro, among others. The guillotine comes down, though, when the illicit money creation of the U.S. for itself and Europe eclipses the debt instability of the EU, and markets the world over see which way the winds are really blowing. Obviously, you cannot win a tug-of-war when you are pulling for the other team…

Alt-Market

PASSENGERS will be required to produce photo identification before boarding domestic flights as part of the biggest recommended overhaul of airport and maritime security since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US.

It’s understood the recommendation is contained in a report to be released today by the parliamentary joint committee on law enforcement into the failure of existing security measures to combat organised crime in the aviation and maritime sectors.

The committee is understood to have identified drugs as the focus of most organised criminality in the aviation and maritime sectors, but says tax evasion, money laundering, fraud, identity theft and high-tech crimes are also being committed.

Qantas is one airline believed to have argued against the mandatory use of photo ID, claiming that elderly people, infants and people who don’t have a driver’s licence might not be able to meet requirements.

However, the committee is believed to have rejected Qantas’s view, suggesting those unable to provide photo ID should produce a signed statutory declaration confirming their identity before boarding.

The committee, chaired by the Labor senator Steve Hutchins, also found that ”the e-ticketing process introduces further vulnerabilities, increasing the opportunity for organised criminal networks to exploit the sector for illicit gain”.

In addition to its call for a joint police taskforce in every state and territory to probe the maritime industry, the committee recommends forming ”a Commonwealth maritime crime taskforce that would act as a national Australian Federal Police-led ‘flying squad’, responding to specific intelligence and also conducting randomised audits of maritime and seaport security”.

The Herald understands the committee was provided with evidence by the Australian Crime Commission and other law enforcement agencies which led it ”to the view that serious and organised criminality in the aviation and maritime sectors poses a very real threat to Australia”.

Last year, a port crime taskforce was set up by state and federal police in NSW under a model the Victoria Police is considering replicating.

The committee’s report will pose a major challenge for the Gillard government, whose budget in May has forced staff cuts at the Australian Crime Commission, customs and the federal police. The three agencies would have to commit dozens of staff in the recommended overhaul.

The committee is expected to also call for more sniffer dogs at airports and also raise the prospect of introducing ”passenger profiling”, involving individual risk assessments of passengers being conducted before boarding.

Other recommendations are likely to include new laws to make it a crime to travel under a false identity, and the introduction of CCTV software that enables the recognition of number plates and faces.

The maritime sector is understood to have been found to be more vulnerable to organised crime than the aviation sector, due to the greater volume of goods passing through ports, with ports in Victoria and NSW judged to have the highest levels of criminality, according to advice provided by the crime commission.

The committee is believed to have found criminal gangs are using small boats and fishing vessels to import drugs, leave illicit consignments in the ocean and conduct meetings at sea. Police in Brisbane recently discovered 464 kilograms of cocaine on a yacht. Light aircraft have been used to conduct ”black flights” to smuggle drugs from neighbouring countries such as Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

The committee is understood to have found potential weaknesses in Australia’s capacity to monitor small aircraft coming from nearby countries, with an admission by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority that private aircraft did not require its permission to enter Australia.

The report is also expected to examine the role of the ”trusted insider” working inside transport hubs on behalf of criminal networks. Such insiders usually have no criminal records and have been employed in trusted positions within the aviation or maritime sector for some time.

The Sydney Morning Herald

Embattled Rep. Anthony Weiner reportedly has told friends he will resign from Congress, amid growing pressure from top Democrats after he admitted to having sexually charged relationships with women on Facebook and Twitter.

The New York Times and CNN are reporting the news, citing unnamed sources. The report also has been confirmed by the Associated Press.

It is possible that Weiner, a New York Democrat first elected in 1998, will speak publicly later this morning.

The New York lawmaker, once touted as a leading candidate for New York City mayor, has admitted sending lewd photos of himself and lying about it for several days. The online sex scandal has rocked the U.S. House for the past three weeks, distracting Democrats who had been trying to bring attention to GOP plans to revamp Medicare ahead of next year’s elections.

CNN says Weiner called Rep. Steve Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, of his plans last night.

House Democratic leaders were planning to meet today to discuss Weiner’s fate and possibly oust him from his post on the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee if he continued to rebuff the calls to step down.

The House earlier this week granted Weiner a two-week leave of absence, after he said this weekend that he’ll enter a treatment facility. The House ethics committee has also begin a preliminary inquiry into Weiner’s actions.

Weiner decided to go into treatment after House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, national party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and campaign chairman Steve Israel called on him to resign. President Obama also has said Weiner should step aside, saying the congressman has “embarrassed” himself.

Weiner reportedly told friends he was waiting for his wife, Huma Abedin, to return from an overseas work trip before deciding his next step. Abedin, an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, returned early Wednesday.

USAToday

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) began a trial run of a radioactive water treatment system at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant on June 15 in a desperate effort to break away from the vicious cycle of injecting water into reactors to cool them and ending up with more contaminated water.

But even if the system, developed by France’s Areva SA, were to operate smoothly, it would produce a massive amount of high-level radioactive waste that could affect TEPCO’s roadmap to bring the troubled nuclear reactors under control by early next year.

“The water treatment system is moving along as scheduled, although contaminated water leaked from a pipe,” Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, told a news conference on June 15.

TEPCO, the operator of the troubled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, will try to reach “Step 1″ of the roadmap, in which radiation emissions are steadily declining, by mid-July. It hopes to reach “Step 2,” in which leakages of radiation are controlled and amounts of radiation are drastically reduced, within three to six months.

But while contaminated water is treated, the system developed by Areva is expected to produce about 2,000 cubic meters of radioactive sludge by the end of this year. The sludge is likely to be highly radioactive with 100 million becquerels per cubic centimeter. In addition, about two to four 2.3-meter-tall cesium-absorbing containers are expected to be needed each day, but the roadmap does not take into account work to dispose of the containers.

“Massive amounts of extremely high levels of radioactive waste will be produced and our work to deal with the crisis at the No. 1 Nuclear Plant will enter unknown territory. It could affect the roadmap,” said a senior official of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The ministry and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency are considering measures, including revising laws or enacting new laws, to deal with massive amounts of radioactive waste.

In the roadmap revised in May, TEPCO included the operation of circulatory cooling systems using water that had had radioactive substances removed.

At the No. 2 reactor, a hydrogen explosion damaged the pressure suppression pool. According to analysis by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, there is a hole of about 300 square meters there. Therefore, in order to circulate cooling water through the reactor, either damaged parts would need to be repaired or the pool would need to be covered with something like a huge concrete structure. But it is difficult for workers to approach the reactor because radiation levels in the reactor building are so high. As a result, TEPCO has not even been able to confirm damaged spots.

The situation is the same at the No. 1 and 3 reactors. The buildings housing the two reactors sustained serious damage in the hydrogen explosions that hit them. Massive repair work could therefore be required to ensure that water circulates through the cooling systems. It is not clear when the circulatory cooling systems will be made operational, and therefore contaminated water will be kept in a temporary tank after being treated.

Be that as it may, the radioactive water treatment system will have to be kept running all the time as long as work to cool nuclear fuel continues. It will cost a fortune to treat the radioactive water and manage radioactive waste.

WASHINGTON – Screenwriters who have shaped television programs such as The Late Show With David Letterman, CBS Radio News, How I Met Your Mother and Law & Order told a roomful of Capitol Hill staffers on Tuesday that a clampdown on Internet piracy would be consistent with the principles of net neutrality.

“We support net neutrality – otherwise it is almost certain that most of the content consumers view will be produced by a relative handful of entities,” said Michael Winship, president of the Writers Guild of America (East) and former senior writer for Bill Moyers Journal. “It is critical for the potential of the Internet and other digital media that diversity, accessibility, competitiveness and imagination not be stifled by multinational corporate behemoths that would restrict access for their own commercial gain.”

“Contrary to the assertions of some of its opponents, the Internet does not promote digital piracy,” Winship said. “We strongly support Senator [Patrick] Leahy’s [(D-VT)] Protect IP Act.”

Part of the purpose behind the panel was to build support for the Protect IP Act, which the Writers Guild of America strongly supports. The measure would empower officials to crack down on digital theft of intellectual property by ordering Internet service providers and search engines to filter results and block websites authorities deem to be infringing on copyrights.

Critics of Protect IP fear that it could be abused by officials to shut down websites, and the bill was put on hold last month by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), who said “the costs of the legislation far outweighed the benefits” and warned that it would “muzzle speech and stifle innovation and economic growth.”

Few reporters were invited to the event, which featured a panel of ten screenwriter panelists and an audience of at least 60 Congressional staffers — several of them worked for lawmakers who sit on the Judiciary Committee, which oversees Internet regulations and online piracy.

One of the panelists forcefully warned that failing to effectively go after Internet piracy – in an age where more and more viewership of television shows occurs online – could extinguish the fire that fuels the television industry.

“There’s a popular misconception that when you steal content, you’re only stealing from rich corporations who don’t need the money,” said Gina Gionfriddo, television writer for Law & Order and Cold Case and WGA Council Member. “But Internet piracy really takes income out of my pocket, out of the pockets of actors, writers, directors and technicians who create these programs.”

Winship and other screenwriters on the panel touted the vitality of a free and Internet – where no piece of information is prioritized over another – in fueling “entrepreneurial spirit” and sustaining the livelihoods of independent artists.

“Many, many people in my profession believe that net neutrality is essential to the narrative of our work, to the endurance of our business, and even to the vitality of our democracy,” said Duane Tollison, a news writer for CBS Radio Network and WGA Council Member.

Other panelists included Tom Rurecht, writer for How I Met Your Mother and former staff writer for the David Letterman; Daryn Strauss, creator of the web series Downsized and founder of DigitalChuckTV.com; Thom Woodley, online video pioneer and founder of Diorama; Julie Ann Emery, creator, director and executive producer of the award-winning web series Then We Got Help; Thomas Poarch, co-creator, writer and producer of the web series Brosephs, and Michael Kantor, director, producer and writer of PBS documentary Broadway: The American Musical.

Article: The Raw Story

WASHINGTON – Prisons will keep turning some crooks into jihadists unless the government keeps closer tabs on rogue jailhouse clerics, experts told lawmakers on Wednesday.

At a second fiery hearing on Islamic extremism, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King (R-L.I.) cited plots involving ex-cons converted to twisted versions of the faith, dubbed “prislam.”

King cited Brooklyn native and wanna-be dirty-bomber Jose Padilla, and James Cromitie, who awaits sentencing for conspiring to bomb a Bronx synagogue.

Lax oversight of prison clerics tempts fate, said Patrick Dunleavy, formerly of the New York State corrections agency. He cited the case of imam Zulquarnain Abdu Shahid, a convicted murderer arrested again in 2010 for trying to smuggle box-cutter blades onto Rikers Island.

Democrats slammed King in a repeat of the first hearing in March, alleging his focus on one religion is discriminatory.

King remained defiant, noting Democrats did not hold hearings on right-wing extremism during their majority from 2007 until this year.

Dunleavy called for the establishment of national standards governing qualifications for jailhouse clerics, and minimum ratios of chaplains to worshipers in prison.

The New York Daily News

Allied Irish Banks (AIB) has been deemed to be effectively in default on its debts by the association of banks that trade in credit derivatives.

The ruling means the writers of $500m (£306m) of the insurance-like contracts will now have to make cash payouts.

On Thursday, the Irish lender stopped interest payments on some of its bonds and postponed their repayment dates.

The move is expected to cause the affected bond investors 90% losses and to save AIB a total of 2bn euros.

It only affects AIB’s “junior” bondholders – the creditors who would stand last in line to get repaid if the Irish bank went into formal bankruptcy.

The International Swap and Derivatives Association (Isda) judged AIB’s decision to be a debt restructuring – one of various events that can trigger a payout on credit derivatives.

Credit derivatives are financial contracts traded by banks and investment funds that provide protection against the risk of a borrower going bust.

Losses on these kinds of contracts were responsible for causing the collapse of giant US insurer AIG at the height of the financial crisis in 2008.

However, Isda’s declaration of a credit event by AIB is unlikely to spark any financial market distress.

Osama bin Laden’s longtime deputy has been chosen as his successor to lead Al Qaeda, the group said Thursday.

Ayman Al-Zawahri, a doctor from a prominent Egyptian family, was the expected choice to replace bin Laden, who was killed early last month in a raid on his Abbottabad compound.

In a statement announcing the Zawahri pick posted on a militant website and attributed to al-Qaeda’s General Command, the terrorist group vowed to continue pursuing jihad against the “apostate invaders” – the United States and Israel. Its fight will continue “until all the invading armies leave the land of Islam.”

Zawahri is believed to be living along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, where he has taken on an increasingly large leadership role in recent years, releasing video and audio tapes while bin Laden stayed largely quiet. Zawahri is credited with introducing methods like suicide bombings and independent terror cells to Al Qaeda.

U.S. intelligence officials have argued that Zawahri is a weaker, less popular and less unifying leader than bin Laden.

Article: Politico

Image: Reuters

The Giles County School Board in Virginia is preparing for a long, costly court battle for approving to re-hang the Ten Commandments in district schools.

After being pressured to remove the Commandments from school halls last December, the board elected in a 3-2 vote to put them back on display among nine other historical documents.

“This particular display…has been upheld three times by three different courts of appeal decisions,” reports Mat Staver of the Liberty Counsel, who is advising the board. “So we’re very confident.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Freedom from Religion Foundation have vowed to sue, and Staver says it would help if the Public Expression of Religion Act, which made it through the U.S. House in 2006 but failed in the Senate, was passed.

“That particular law says that whenever you file suit over these public expressions of religion, that [no] attorneys fees…will be given to the side that prevails,” the Liberty Counsel attorney explains. “I think that would ultimately stop the intimidation that we see in groups like the ACLU.”

The opposition groups represent two anonymous Giles County families who say they will file suit in U.S. District Court.

One News Now

One homosexual activist says people who live the same lifestyle he leads aim to indoctrinate and recruit young children.

In a recent opinion article titled “Can We Please Just Start Admitting That We Do Actually Want to Indoctrinate Kids,” David Villarreal openly confesses that homosexual activists are pushing anti-bullying measures and pro-”gay” curriculum on children to “recruit” them. Villarreal writes that he would “very much like for many of these young boys to grow up and start [having sex with] men,” and he insists that children who are not indoctrinated to accept alternate lifestyles will later become “hateful” and ignorant.

Dran Reese, director of The Salt & Light Council, laments the goal to target young children.

“This is beyond perverted and immoral; this shows that homosexuals have no good, quality intentions with children but to indoctrinate them into a perverted, sexual lifestyle,” she contends.

And she says homosexual activists are “effective marketers” who have “lots of money from Hollywood” to promote their cause and tug on emotions.

“The homosexual community has gained ground in the public opinion polls because they exaggerate their cause, such as abuse and discrimination — appealing to the heart…through the media,” The Salt & Light Council director notes. “They are winning America to their perversion.”

Villarreal adds that homosexual activists would not push social studies classes and anti-bullying programs if they did not deliberately want to “educate children to accept queer sexuality as normal.”

One News Now

Computer hackers who brought down the website of the US Central Intelligence Agency say they were just out for laughs.

The CIA is the latest victim of a group called LulzSec, which is internet slang for laughing at your security.

The hackers have even been bold enough to set up a hotline for people to call in to suggest the next target.

This has at least one security expert up in arms, challenging the hackers to use their skills for good, not giggles.

The messaging system is manned by two characters called Pierre Dubois and Francois Deluxe.

After more than 3,500 missed calls, LulzSec tweeted it was time for it to sail away and peruse its voicemail.

Also known as the Lulz Boat, its online homepage has a picture of a steamship with the slogan “set sail for fail”.

Patrick Gray is the presenter of the Risky Biz internet security podcast.

“They hacked into PBS, the public broadcasting service over in the US, and published a story claiming that the rappers Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur, who both were killed I think in the 90s, are alive and well and living in New Zealand, which was probably their first little laugh,” Mr Gray said.

“They broke into some Fox websites and stole details on some contestants, and today we’ve seen them actually attack the Central Intelligence Agency’s website and take it offline which, I’ve got to say, is pretty ballsy.”

The CIA incident was not technically a hack but rather a distributed denial of service attack, which bombards a site with requests so that it malfunctions.

Mr Gray says there is very few websites on the internet which can withstand that bombardment and that the attacks make an important point.

“Inherently the internet is a pretty risky place if even the CIA can’t keep its website protected against a group of amateurs,” he said.

“I mean, I know plenty of people in the information security business who are quietly cheering these guys on.”

Not amused

Paul Ducklin from Sophos Security is not one of those cheering.

“Their motivation is supposed to be that cyber security is boring so let’s make it fun. Well I don’t find that very amusing,” he said.

Mr Ducklin says given its stated motive of fun, there is no way of guessing what LulzSec will target next.

But he says hackers with these skills should use them for good, not for evil.

“There’s a well known hacker called Johnny Long who’s set up a site called Hackers for Charity,” he said.

“There’s a video of a speech Johnny Long himself gave at a hacker convention.

“He said you guys remember Estonia and all the crap that hackers did to destroy a country. What I’m thinking is why don’t you take a country that’s getting the crap beaten out of it for no apparent reason, in this case he means Uganda, online and that has some resources but needs your help, why don’t you step in and help them out.

“I think that pretty much says it all. That’s a much better use of your time than proving that if you throw a brick at a window it’ll shatter.”

But Mr Gray says poor information security is a massive elephant in the room and the hackers are pointing it out.

“To a degree this is the only way we’re going to see it, is if it’s really in your face,” he said.

ABC News Australia

Google denied Wednesday that it gave President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign special access to a new advertising program, something a sales representative from the search and advertising giant had claimed in an email to customers.

The new ad program would charge clients for every email address (or other piece of user data) they collect. The program is attractive to campaigns eager for that information, so when a staffer at the National Republican Senatorial Committee saw what appeared to be an Obama ad built on this technology on the RealClearPolitics website last month, she emailed a Google sales rep to ask about creating a similar ad campaign for Republicans.

The saleswoman, Sirene Abou-Chakra, replied by suggesting that Obama had a special deal.

“This is a pre-alpha product that is being released to a select few clients,” she wrote in an email, referring to the first stage of a product’s roll-out. “I’d be happy to get you into the beta if you’re interested.”

A similar email went out to at least one other Republican digital media firm, a Republican source said.

“It certainly raises some red flags that the Obama campaign appears to have been given special access to a new online advertising product,” said NRSC communications director Brian Walsh in response to an inquiry from POLITICO.

But Google spokesman Jake Parrilo denied strenuously that the Obama campaign had been granted special access to the pilot program, and chalked the email up to inaccurate “puffery” by the sales representative. The ad that appeared on RealClearPolitics, he said, was not a Google ad at all.

“This is an experiment and while we generally do not comment on those experiments we can tell you that we have not sold a single CPL [cost-per-lead] ad unit to any political candidates or committees,” said Parrillo.

And Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt seconded the company’s account that the campaign had not purchased any ads or enrolled in the Google pilot program.

Google, whose chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt was an informal adviser and support of Obama and sits on the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, has been accused in the past of favoring the White House. The Federal Trade Commission dropped an investigation into the company after a major privacy breach, leading some Republican groups to cry for an investigation.

After POLTICO asked Google about the suggestion of a special deal for the campaign, a Google spokesman forwarded a reporter correspondence between the company and the NRSC, charging – inaccurately – that the committee had been the source of POLITICO’s information.

The forward prompted Walsh to add that he is “concerned that Google shared a private email exchange with our committee and their company with the media.”

The pilot program at issue is a new type of digital advertising that Google appears to be preparing to launch in the third quarter of 2011.

“It’s a cost-effective, easy and scalable way to generate leads,” boasted Google in a marketing document about their new product. “Fewer steps for users means they’re more likely to complete your lead form.”

Parrillo told POLITICO that the Republican and the Democratic political ad sales teams at Google are kept separate and are unaware of the other side’s projects or deals.

Article: Politico
Image: Reuters

Military intervention nears even as Obama administration prepares to launch full ground war in Libya

Even as the Obama administration prepares to launch a full ground war in Libya while expanding its drone attacks inside Yemen and Pakistan, US warships are being moved towards the Mediterrenean coast of Syria, precisely in line with forecasts that the Bilderberg Group intended to launch a massive new war in the Middle East, with Syria being its prime target.

In addition to information received by Infowars from military sources at Ft. Hood who tell us that troops are being readied for a full-scale U.S.-led ground invasion of Libya by October, the Obama administration is simultaneously considering opening up yet another front, by moving the USS Bataan amphibian air carrier strike vessel, along with 2,000 marines, 6 war planes, and 15 attack helicopters to a location just off the Syrian coast.

“This huge concentration of naval missile interceptor units looks like preparations by Washington for the contingency of Iran, Syria and Hizballah letting loose with surface missiles against US and Israeli targets in the event of US military intervention to stop the anti-opposition slaughter underway in Syria,” reports DebkaFile.

Another indication that the US is planning an intervention in Syria is the fact that Hizballah has moved its rockets from northern Lebanon to areas in the center of the country, acting on a warning from Iranian intelligence to move the weaponry “out of range of a possible American operation in Syria”.

Veteran reporter Jim Tucker’s warning, provided to him by his routinely accurate inside sources, that the powerful Bilderberg Group was planning a gargantuan new war in the Middle East to outstrip anything taking place in Libya, is now moving forward.

On Monday, journalist Adrian Salbuchi also told Russia Today that Bilderberg’s “hidden agenda” towards Syria would make itself visible after the conclusion of the elitist confab in St. Moritz, Switzerland, a forecast already coming to fruition.

Syrian rights organizations say that around 1,300 civilians have been killed since the start of the uprising in March against President Bashar Assad. Around 300 soldiers and police have also been killed. Thousands of Syrians fled the town of Maarat al-Numaan yesterday as government troops and tanks moved north.

The US military-industrial complex has been very choosy about who it targets for regime change under the umbrella of “humanitarian intervention”. Despite the fact that protesters in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have been the victims of similarly brutal government crackdowns, the US has turned a blind eye.

Quite how the Obama administration believes the United States can afford to prosecute yet another war while it is still engaged in two major occupations and a number of other regional conflicts, and as top ratings agencies warn the country is about to lose its triple A credit status due to insurmountable debt problems, is a mystery.

Article: Prison Planet
Image: Wikipedia Commons

Infowars.com has received alarming reports from within the ranks of military stationed at Ft. Hood, Texas confirming plans to initiate a full-scale U.S.-led ground invasion in Libya and deploy troops by October.

The source stated that additional Special Forces are headed to Libya in July, with the 1st Calvary Division (heavy armor) and three corps deploying in late October and early November. Initial numbers are estimated at 12,000 active forces and another 15,000 in support, totaling nearly 30,000 troops.

This information was confirmed by numerous calls and e-mails from other military personnel, some indicating large troop deployment as early as September. Among these supporting sources is a British S.A.S. officer confirming that U.S. Army Rangers are already in Libya. The chatter differs in the details, but the overall convergence is clear– that a full-on war is emerging this fall as Gaddafi continues to evade attempts to remove him from power.

A caller identified as “Specialist H” working for mortuary affairs under USCENTCOM revealed that there have already been American casualties inside Libya. He confirmed that at least 2 soldiers and 3 civilians have died from combat bullet wounds, something the media has yet to report, and needs to investigate and address.

Geo-political expert Dr. Webster Tarpley also told the Alex Jones Show today that wider war is being planned for Libya, while the count of simultaneous U.S. wars has reached five conflicts– including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and Yemen. The potential for an even greater spread of regional conflict could well provoke a World War III scenario, drawing in tenuous nations like Syria, Lebanon, Iran or even Saudi Arabia, according to Tarpley.

For his part, President Obama has brushed off demands to answer to Congress for continuing military action beyond the 60 day limit set under the war powers act. The engagement he first claimed would be over in mere days, Obama then dubbed a “kinetic action” rather than a war. Further, Obama has justified his commitment of American forces under a United Nations mandate, unconcerned by his own admission with the will of Congress. Now, with significant overlap in reports, we can confirm an apparent decision by Obama to support wider war and a longer-term involvement in Libya.

Prison Planet

China‘s security services have managed for now to curb social unrest in the southern manufacturing city of Zengcheng after migrant workers set fire to government buildings over the weekend. But one economist says the discord is more worrying for markets than the nation’s widely-telegraphed soaring inflation.

“I think that any amount of cracking down is going to be a little bit like in Syria,” Enzio Von Pfeil, CEO of the Economic Time Bond Fund told CNBC on Thursday. “You’ve put out the flame in one section of the kitchen but then another flame erupts in another section of the kitchen.”

The latest protests were sparked after a pregnant woman was reportedly pushed to the ground by security guards who tried to remove her food stall in Zengcheng, located in Guangdong province.

“Normally [this] would not give rise to the scale of violence that we have witnessed,” Von Pfeil said in emailed notes.

He added that unresolved problems such as endemic corruption and the lack of rule of law were heightening concerns over rising prices, bringing things to a head.

Von Pfeil, who previously worked for firms such as ABN Amro, Clarion Capitol and S.G. Warburg, said the unrest was snowballing because of coverage over the internet.

“People are seeing people riot in one little city so they decide to go and riot in their own cities,” he said.

Von Pfeil believes the problems are also aggravated by the household registration system, known as Hukou, which provides social benefits only to registered residents of a city and discriminates against migrant workers. “People are getting caught between having migrated to a new job, not getting the job, and then not having the social benefits.”

Ironically enough, when it comes to inflation itself, Von Pfeil says the pressures are likely to abate.

“The outlook for inflation, crazily, is not bad. This is because the Central Bank has been guiding away from excess supply of money to excess demand for money,” he wrote in emailed notes. “That excess demand for money, in turn, is creating an excess supply of goods, so we reckon that the “demand pull” engine of inflation will abate.”

CNBC

Internet users will now be able to upload old holiday snaps and find out where they were taken with a new image search function available on Google, as well as see ‘instant pages’ and search by voice

It’s official: The housing crisis that began in 2006 and has recently entered a double dip is now worse than the Great Depression.

Prices have fallen some 33 percent since the market began its collapse, greater than the 31 percent fall that began in the late 1920s and culminated in the early 1930s, according to Case-Shiller data.

The news comes as the Federal Reserve considers whether the economy has regained enough strength to stand on its own and as unemployment remains at a still-elevated 9.1 percent, throwing into question whether the recovery is real.

“The sharp fall in house prices in the first quarter provided further confirmation that this housing crash has been larger and faster than the one during the Great Depression,” Paul Dales, senior economist at Capital Economics in Toronto, wrote in research for clients.

According to Case-Shiller, which provides the most closely followed housing industry data, prices dropped 1.9 percent in the first quarter, a move that the firm interpreted as a clear double dip in prices.

Moreover, Dales said prices likely have not completed their downturn.

“The only comfort is that the latest monthly data show that towards the end of the first quarter prices started to fall at a more modest rate,” he said. “Nonetheless, prices are likely to fall by a further 3 percent this year, resulting in a 5 percent drop over the year as a whole.”

Prices continue to tumble despite affordability, which by most conventional metrics is near historic highs.

The rate for a 30-year conventional mortgage is around 4.5 percent, just above the historic low of 4.2 percent in October 2010. The ratio measuring mortgage costs to renting is 7 percent below its norm, while the price-to-income ratio is 23 percent below its average, Dale said.

Yet other factors are constraining the market.

After the fallout from the subprime debacle, in which millions lost their homes when they defaulted on loans they could not afford, banks changed underwriting standards.

More than four in every five mortgages now require a down payment of 20 percent, and credit history standards have tightened. At the same time, foreclosures continue at a brisk pace, pushing more supply onto the market and pressuring prices downward.

Then there is the issue of underwater homeowners—those who owe more than their house is worth—representing another 23 percent of homeowners who cannot leave or are in danger of mortgage default.

Indeed, the foreclosure problem is unlikely to get any better with 4.5 million households either three payments late or in foreclosure proceedings. The historical average is 1 million, according to Dales’ research.

The only bright spot Dales found, aside from the slowing in price drop in March, was some isolated strength in states such as Nevada, Michigan, South Dakota, Alaska and Iowa.

CNBC

Chicago’s Big Brother network of over 10,000 public and private surveillance cameras is already the most extensive and integrated in the nation. But, it’s about to get even bigger.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel chaired his first Public Building Commission meeting on Tuesday and joined his fellow members in adding three potential terrorist targets to the city’s surveillance network: the Board of Trade, the Federal Reserve and the AT&T switching center.

All three are located in Chicago’s financial nerve center. But, they apparently constituted gaping holes in Chicago’s camera network.

“It’s necessary. They’re key buildings. They were not a part of the network. The fiber had already been laid. I don’t know if I’d use the word weird or strange. But, if you’ve laid the fiber and you have key pieces of critical national security … that don’t have the cameras,” they should be added, Emanuel said.

“Work’s been done. We should complete it because it’s identified as important in the Homeland Security reports. … The camera network is a part of security and safety for the city.”

During the meeting, Erin Lavin Cabonargi, executive director of the Public Building Commission, disclosed that the commission has already installed 3,300 surveillance cameras at key government buildings and other potential terrorist targets.

The new cameras will be paid for with a $650,000 federal Homeland Security grant.

Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union pushed for a moratorium on new surveillance cameras and new rules to safeguard citizens’ privacy.

The ACLU argued that cameras “invade the freedom to be anonymous in public places” and that the millions of dollars spent on cameras would have been better spent hiring more police officers to ease a severe manpower shortage.

The group also questioned the effectiveness of the cameras.

Six months later, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano toured Chicago’s 911 emergency center and ranked the city’s “very robust camera infrastructure” among the “top two or three” in the nation.

Asked to identify rivals, she named only New York City.

“It’s not just cameras. They are interconnected and then connected back here to tell first responders what they’re going to be confronting,” she said then.

Pressed on whether the ever-expanding network was a good thing, Napolitano said, “Absolutely. If you look at cities around the world — like London, for example, [and] Madrid has been employing more cameras — they are deterrents. But, they are also force multipliers. They enable us to make the best use of our first responders.”

Also at Tuesday’s Public Building Commission meeting, Emanuel pledged to double the number of city-owned buildings with the environmentally friendly LEED certification over the next four years. Chicago already leads the nation with 41 such government-owned buildings.

“Nothing gets done unless you have a goal,” the mayor said.

“We lead the country. … And I want to set a goal so we don’t rest on our laurels. … It creates jobs. It’s energy efficiency. And it … adds to the lure of the city. As people and businesses look around, they see a city that’s seizing the future and making the changes necessary to be more energy-efficient and create jobs at the same time.”

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. It’s an internationally-recognized certification system for sustainable buildings developed by the U.S. Green Building Council.

The group provides building owners with a framework for identifying and implementing green building design, construction, operations and maintenance.

Article and image, courtesy of The Chicago Sun Times

Withholding the exact location of the base at the request of US officials, Associated Press reported on Wednesday that Washington has decided to build the airbase following indications that an anti-American faction may take over Yemen and ban US forces from fighting against al-Qaeda there.

According to the report, the White House has also increased the number of CIA officers in Yemen and stepped up the schedule to construct the drone base, from a two-year timetable to a rushed eight months, following months of political deadlock in Yemen.

US officials have described the moves as precautionary measures taken to face the possibility of al-Qaeda or other anti-American rebel forces gain control of Yemen.

The top US military counterterrorism outfit, the Joint Special Operations Command, and the CIA claim that they have been fighting al-Qaeda elements in the country since 2009 under the permission of the Yemeni government.

The US forces have recently expanded strikes by US armed drones and even war planes.

Officials with Yemen’s Defense Ministry have confirmed that the US has been launching drone strikes on a daily basis against the nation in June, with more than 15 confirmed strikes already in the very month.

The deputy governor of Abyan Province said at least 130 people, among them civilians, were killed in US drone attacks.

Analysts believe that Washington is using Yemen’s chaos as a cover for the its drone campaign.

Press TV

MINEOLA, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) – A five-yearveteran of the Nassau County police force has been arrested and charged for allegedly forcing a woman to grope him during a traffic stop.

Garrett Mannerz, 34, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to bribe receiving, official misconduct and sexual abuse. He faces up to seven years in prison if convicted.

The incident happened last February on Hempstead Turnpike in East Meadow after Mannerz pulled over a woman and her two friends — all of whom are in their early 20s.

WCBS 880?s Sophia Hall reports: An Abuse Of Power?

Prosecutors said after Mannerz administered a field sobriety test on the driver, he ordered one of the passengers out of the car, commented on her attire and asked for her telephone number.

Mannerz then allegedly told the woman that if she “did something for him” he would allow the driver to leave without receiving a summons or being charged. Prosecutors said he then grabbed the woman’s wrist and forced her to touch him sexually.

Two hours after letting the women go, Mannerz began a series of sexually suggestive telephone calls to the passenger he grabbed, prosecutors said.

“I think it’s disgusting,” East Meadow resident Erica Cooperberg told CBS 2’s Derricke Dennis. “I’m shocked. It’s disgusting.”

1010 WINS’ Mona Rivera reports: Prosecutors Are Looking For Other Potential Victims

Mannerz was arrested after the woman recorded a call and reported it to police.

“This is a shocking case of a policeman abusing his power,” district attorney Kathleen Rice said. “This defendant was supposed to protect the people, but chose instead to disgrace himself and the Nassau County Police Department.”

Lawyer William Petrillo calls the woman’s claims “absurd” and said his client has been falsely accused.

“The notion that this respected officer allegedly did this right off a busy road in an open gas station, in a police car, allegedly in front of witnesses is absurd,” Petrillo said.

Long Island residents were also stunned by the allegations.

“I’m appalled at the fact that he thinks he could use his badge as way of leverage,” Christine Kunkel, of Rockville Centre, told CBS 2?s Jennifer McLogan.

“You definitely want to report that – something like that, you can’t let go,” Hempstead resident Stephanie Thomas said.

“That’s against the law,” Doris Velasquez, of East Meadow, said. “He should be in jail for doing that.

Prosecutors are urging anyone with a similar experience to contact the District Attorney’s Public Corruption Bureau at 516-571-2100.

CBS New York

State police say nitrates detected in a piece of checked luggage at Boston’s Logan International Airport were traced to a sample of mud brought back from a river in Hong Kong.

Two gates at the American Airlines terminal were closed as a precaution on Tuesday afternoon after the nitrates were detected. The gates were reopened about an hour later after it was determined there was no danger.

State police said the mud sample was brought to Boston by a doctoral student at Hong Kong University who was participating in a research program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Certain nitrates can be ingredients in explosives.

Police said Tuesday’s incident demonstrated the ability of security equipment at the Boston airport to detect even minute levels of potentially dangerous substances.

Article and image, coutesy of AP

SAN FRANCISCO — US payroll-handling firm Automatic Data Processing (ADP) said Wednesday that hackers broke into one of its benefits administration business systems.

ADP believed the “system intrusion” at recently acquired Workscape was limited to one client, whose name was not disclosed.

“ADP immediately notified the client… and continues to take all appropriate measures to investigate and to help mitigate any issues,” the New Jersey-based company said in a release.

The hack was detected by routine security monitoring and did not involve payroll information, according to ADP, which said it was working with law enforcement to investigate the incident.

The hack was the latest in a growing list of cyber attacks with targets ranging from videogame companies to the US Senate and a military weapons maker.

AFP/The Raw Story

Gerald Celente on RT America 14 june 2011
Trends Journal: http://www.trendsresearch.com/journal
Twitter: http://twitter.com/geraldcelente

Despite the corporate-driven hubbub surrounding the inevitability of “the cloud” replacing personal hard drives as the pre-eminent storage center for all web content, this system represents another dangerous trojan horse for the establishment to complete their agenda to regulate and shut down the free Internet.

Apple, Google and Amazon amongst other tech giants have all jumped on board with “the cloud,” a remote server network that allows users to store their data without using hard drives.

“It’s all part of a generational trend away from owning physical media content and towards renting media content from the computing universal cloud,” reports Investmentu.com.

However, despite the convenience of having all your files easily accessible in one place wherever you go, the drawbacks are ominous.

The Cloud is basically a You Tube for everything, and the problem with this is that You Tube routinely blocks, censors and deletes content when ordered to by governments. As we reported back in May, You Tube is now following orders from governments to remove videos that show protests, demonstrations and other sensitive information the state doesn’t want others to see.

Indeed, Amazon’s Cloud network notoriously deleted the entire Wikileaks website from its servers following a phone call made by Senator Joe Lieberman’s Senate Homeland Security Committee demanding the website be axed.

Lieberman has been at the forefront of a push to purge the Internet of all dissent by empowering Obama with a figurative Internet kill switch that he would use to shut down parts of the Internet or terminate websites under the guise of national security. Lieberman spilled the beans on the true reason for the move during a CNN interview when he stated “Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too.”

The cloud is therefore the perfect compliment to cybersecurity. The goal is to force everyone to use one of the cloud networks run by a major corporation, first by taxing, regulating, and making the normal Internet prohibitively expensive, and eventually by shutting it down all together. Once the vast majority of data is confined to the cloud network, harsher copyright, free speech and defamation laws will slowly be tightened, which will force the alternative media out of business.

When you agree to have your content hosted on the cloud, you are virtually handing it over to a large corporation which then through “terms of use” has the power to access or delete your information.

For example, Amazon’s Cloud Locker’s “binding agreement” with users mandates that Amazon can exercise, “the right to access, retain, use and disclose your account information and Your Files”.

Handing your data over to the cloud also makes it that bit easier for the government to obtain your private information.

“It’s not like putting your data in a desk drawer,” Chris Calabrese of the American Civil Liberties Union told the Washington Post. “Although the government needs a judge’s order to seize a hard drive, a subpoena is often enough authority to obtain cloud data.”

Security is also virtually non-existent on Amazon’s cloud. Amazon writes that “We do not guarantee that Your Files will not be subject to misappropriation, loss or damage and we will not be liable if they are. You’re responsible for maintaining appropriate security, protection and backup of Your Files.”

So if a hacker or Amazon itself deletes your files – tough luck – there’s no recourse.

Technology buffs have also predicted problems for people who later decide to switch between clouds, say moving from Apple to Google.

“Providers of cloud services like Apple, Google and Facebook will have strong profit incentives to hold on to their users to maximize revenue,” writes Tony D’Altorio. “They’ll do their best to limit consumers’ freedom to roam freely from cloud to cloud.”

“So consumers may get stuck in Apple’s iCloud and not be able to get out without a hassle. Mark Little, an analyst at Ovum, remarked, “Switching costs [from cloud to cloud] is likely to be one of the biggest parts of the cloud story.”

The cloud is nothing more than a trojan horse to eviscerate the free Internet. It’s an effort to assimilate the alternative media into a borg hive before destroying it from within. It’s one component of Internet 2 and the move towards a world wide web that resembles something more like cable TV than what we know as the Internet today, a system where a small number of giant corporations will work with governments to decide what can and cannot be published.

The cloud will kill the free Internet unless we get the message out that it is a tool perfectly honed for shutting down free speech on the world wide web.

Prison Planet

American support for the Nato mission to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi in Libya is wavering after the legal grounds for going to war were questioned.

President Barack Obama has been warned he will be violating the War Powers Resolution unless he seeks permission from Congress for its involvement in the NATO operation – or withdraws the U.S. from the mission.

This is because President Obama has not sought congressional consent for the operation within 60 days of the first air strikes against Gaddafi’s forces on March 19.

It comes as Nato refused to rule out bombing Libya’s ancient Roman Leptis Magna ruins, a Senate resolution supporting the entire operation was left in limbo and rumours on the ground indicated Gaddafi was ‘losing support every day’ in his stronghold of Tripoli.

The leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, Speaker John Boehner, has written to President Obama urging him to explain the legal grounds for the continued U.S. military involvement.

He said that, come this weekend, the White House will ‘clearly’ be in violation of the 1973 War Powers Act.

The Act states the President is supposed to halt military involvement if Congress has not formally approved it within 60 days.

He wrote: ‘Either you have concluded the War Powers Resolution does not apply to the mission in Libya or you have determined the War Powers Resolution is contrary to the Constitution.

‘The House and the American people whom we represent deserve to know the determination you have made.’

Mr Boehner, who complained the administration had provided briefings for politicians but had not sought formal authorisation, said he wanted an answer by Friday.

The letter comes two weeks after the House voted 268 to 145 to formally rebuke President Obama for maintaining an American role in Libya without the express consent of Congress.

A resolution passed then also asked for a report on the scope of the Libyan operation, its costs and its impact on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr Boehner added: ‘The ongoing, deeply divisive debate originated with a lack of genuine consultation prior to commencement of operations and has been further exacerbated by the lack of visibility and leadership from you and your administration.’

The White House, which initially brushed off the non-binding measure,  said it had been in compliance with the War Powers Act and called the resolutions unhelpful and unnecessary.

But it said it will respond to detailed questions on the U.S. mission in Libya within the deadline.

Tommy Vietor, National Security Council spokesman, said: ‘We are in the final stages of preparing extensive information for the House and Senate that will address a whole host of issues about our ongoing efforts in Libya, including those raised in the House resolution as well as our legal analysis with regard to the War Powers Resolution.

‘Since March 1, administration witnesses have testified at over 10 hearings that included a substantial discussion of Libya and participated in over 30 Member or staff briefings, and we will continue to consult with our Congressional colleagues.’

Mr Boehner’s warning comes at a critical time, as it has been reported that Gaddafi is ‘losing support every day’ in his key stronghold of Tripoli.

An increased sense of chaos, with escalating petrol prices and predicted food shortages, is said to be the catalyst behind people now not being afraid to speak out.

A businessman from the city told the Guardian: ‘Ninety-five per cent of people want him to leave, not just because of politics, but because of our desire for a return to normal life.’

A shopkeeper added: ‘Most people want him out and more people can talk about this now than before because he is under pressure. But you still have to be careful. If you are caught, God knows what will happen to you.’

Nato commands the operation, but the U.S. still plays a significant support role, including aerial refuelling of warplanes and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance work.

In the Senate, the fate of a resolution signalling support for the operation was left in limbo.

Senator John Kerry, a Democrat and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said plans for the panel to write a resolution would be delayed to allow politicians to review the White House report.

He left open the possibility of action on a resolution next week and said: ‘We just want everybody to see the information and see how it impacts their thinking.’

Senator John McCain, a top Republican and leading proponent of military action against Gaddafi, said he backed the resolution and warned party colleagues against any steps that would send a positive signal to Gaddafi.

He said: ‘I caution my friends, both here in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, that we don’t want to do anything or pass legislation which would encourage Gaddafi to remain in power.

‘I would say to my Republican friends: If this were a Republican president, would you be trying to impose these same conditions?’

Senators Jim Webb, a Democrat, and Bob Corker, a Republican, introduced a separate resolution last week that pressed Obama to seek congressional consent for continued U.S. military involvement in Libya and required the administration to provide a detailed justification for the decision to go to war.

On Monday, the House essentially voted to prohibit money for the Libya operation, backing an amendment barring the use of any funds in contravention of the War Powers Act.

The vote was 248-163 on a spending bill that still must be reconciled with the Senate.

The debate over the legal grounds for going to war comes as Nato refused to rule out bombing the ancient Roman city of Leptis Magna if Gaddafi was using them to hide military equipment.

Rebels in the divided country claimed the under-pressure Libyan leader could be hiding rocket launchers at the UNESCO World Heritage site – which is between the capital Tripoli and rebel-held Misrata.

Wing Commander Mike Bracken, a spokesman for Nato’s Libya mission, said it would be a concern for the alliance if Gaddafi and his forces were to violate international law and hide themselves in such a location.

According to CNN, he said: ‘If we were to take on any targets we would consider all risks.’

However, he said that Nato could not confirm rebel concerns that weapons might be placed at the heritage site, which was founded by Phoenician colonists around 1100 BC and became a prominent city of the Roman Empire.

Excavations began in the 1920s and it is one of the best preserved sites of its kind.

The Daily Mail

They say that to know where you’re going, you should know where you come from.

In that case, America’s high school students are in trouble.

Just 13 per cent appear to know anything about U.S. history, according to the test dubbed the Nation’s Report Card, released today.

The other 87 per cent of high school seniors who took the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress showed a less than solid academic performance in the subject. 

They were not alone: just 22 per cent of fourth grade students and 18 per cent of eighth-graders scored proficient or better.

The test quizzed students on topics ranging from colonization, the American Revolution and the Civil War to the contemporary United States.

For example, one question asks fourth-graders why it was important for the U.S. to build canals in the 1800s (to increase trade between states, of course.)

‘The history scores released today show that student performance is still too low,’ said Education Secretary Arne Duncan in a prepared statement.

‘These results tell us that, as a country, we are failing to provide children with a high-quality, well-rounded education.’

Education experts say a heavy focus on reading and math under the federal No Child Left Behind law in the last decade has led to lagging performance in other subjects such as history and science.

‘We need to make sure other subjects like history, science and the arts are not forgotten in our pursuit of the basic skills,’ said Diane Ravitch, a research professor at New York University and former U.S. assistant education secretary.

Of the seven tested subjects on the national test, students performed the worst in U.S. history.

Officials with the National Assessment Governing board, which oversees the tests, say the U.S. history results aren’t comparable to the other tests because different students take each exam in different years.

The scores on the history test did not vary remarkably from years past; in 1994, for example, 19 per cent of fourth-grade students scored proficient or better in U.S. history.

More than 7,000 fourth-grade students, 11,000 eighth graders and 12,000 high school seniors from a nationally representative sample took the test last year.

Judy Brodigan, who was head of the elementary social studies curriculum for the Lewisville, Texas, school district for a decade, said history and social studies classes aren’t as much of a priority for school districts as math and reading.

She noted that many states only test history and social studies starting in middle school, which means elementary school students don’t’ get the background they need in the subject.

‘When the foundation isn’t built in elementary school, these students are coming to middle school lacking crucial skills,’ Ms Brodigan said.

‘What is means is that in what is becoming a more and more global society, American students are more and more at a disadvantage.’

Educators said history is critical to students learning how to become better citizens and understanding how the country’s political and cultural systems work.

Students need to not only recognize leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln, but also understand why they were important to the development of the country.

‘Overall the quality and success of our lives can only be enhanced by a study of our roots,’ said Steven Paine, former state schools superintendent for West Virginia.

‘If you don’t know your past, you will not have a future.’

Answer: B) Spanish missionaries

The Daily Mail

Civil liberties advocates are raising alarm over news the FBI is giving agents more leeway to conduct domestic surveillance. According to the New York Times, new guidelines will allow FBI agents to investigate people and organizations “pro-actively” without firm evidence for suspecting criminal activity. Democracy Now! interviews former FBI agent Mike German, who now works at the American Civil Liberties Union. Also interviewed is Texas activist Scott Crow, who has been the focus on intense FBI surveillance from 2001 until at least 2008. Using the Freedom of Information Act, Crow received 440 pages of heavily-redacted documents revealing the FBI had set up a video camera outside his house, traced the license plates of cars parked in front of his home, recorded the arrival and departure of his guests and observed gatherings that Crow attended at bookstores and cafes. The agency also tracked Crow’s emails and phone conversations and picked through his trash to identify his bank and mortgage companies. “It definitely has been traumatizing at different points,” says Crow. “But if we don’t come out and be open about this, then they’ve already won, and the surveillance and the ‘War on Terror’ wins against us.”

Transcript:

As the United States Postal Service looks at ways to deal with declining revenue, the president of the National Association of letter carriers is going against the grain. Fredric Rolando says the agency should be increasing the services offered, among his ideas to outfit postal trucks with sensors so letter carriers can thwart biological terrorist attacks, according to recent reports.

Twenty-eight months after Congress passed President Obama’s signature economic stimulus law, and nearly one year after he declared the summer of 2010 to be “Recovery Summer,” 1.9 million fewer people are employed.

In February 2009, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that 141.7 million people were employed. By the end of May 2011 – the last month for which data are available – that number had fallen to 139.8 million, a difference of 1.9 million.

While the number of people with jobs has increased slightly from its low point during the recession – 137.9 million in December 2009 – those 1.9 million jobs have been lost despite $800 billion in stimulus spending.

This does not mean that the economy is not creating jobs, but rather that it is not creating jobs fast enough to keep up with a combination of layoffs and people entering the job market for the first time.

In a Washington Post op-ed, former White House chief economist Larry Summers noted that the percentage of the population that has a job has not improved, even though the economy is technically in recovery.

“From the first quarter of 2006 to the first quarter of 2011, the U.S. economy’s growth rate averaged less than 1 percent a year,” Summers wrote. “The fraction of the population working remains almost exactly at its recession trough, and recent reports suggest that growth is slowing.”

The fraction of the population with a job has in fact fallen in the 28 months since Congress passed the stimulus – down from 60.3 percent in February 2009 to 58.4 percent in May 2011.

The economy cannot create jobs fast enough to keep pace with layoffs and recent high school and college graduates seeking employment. If the trend continues, as Summers notes may happen, the economy will suffer further in the future as college graduates delay entry into the labor force, reducing their lifetime productivity.

“Beyond the lack of jobs and incomes, an economy producing below its potential for a prolonged interval sacrifices its future,” argued Summers. “Huge numbers of new college graduates are moving back in with their parents this month because they have no job or means of support.”

As both Summers and the BLS data make clear, the economy is not creating new jobs fast enough to make up for layoffs and new graduates, calling into question Obama’s oft-repeated claim that the economy is recovering and creating jobs.

In fact, by citing figures from the first quarter of 2006, Summers is understating the economy’s poor performance. According to BLS data, the number of people with jobs peaked at 146.6 million in November 2007, meaning that over the entire recession – which officially began in December 2007 – the number of people employed has fallen by 6.8 million.

CNS News

Following up yesterday’s report that the CIA will begin targeting al-Qaeda in Yemen, today the Associated Press reports:

The United States is building a secret CIA air base in the Persian Gulf region to target terrorists in Yemen, preparing for the possibility that an anti-American faction may take over Yemen and ban U.S. forces from hunting a lethal Al Qaeda faction there.

The effort against al-Qaeda reportedly directed by Pentagon dinner guest Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen is being run by the Joint Special Operations Command and the CIA.

The new CIA base provides a backstop, if Al Qaeda or other anti-American rebel forces gain control, one senior U.S. official explained. The White House has already increased the numbers of CIA officers in Yemen, in anticipation of that possibility. And it has stepped up the schedule to construct the base, from a two-year timetable to a rushed eight months.

The American al-Awlaki and al-Qaeda wasted little time providing an excuse for the Pentagon and the CIA to move operations into Yemen and then across the Gulf of Aden into Somalia and the Horn of Africa.

Islamic militants emboldened by months of turmoil in Yemen launched a surprise dawn attack Wednesday on a southern city, seizing entire neighborhoods after gunfights with government forces, security officials said.

The militants include al-Qaeda, according to the Associated Press.

The attack came a day after a senior U.S. official said Washington was worried that the ongoing unrest in Yemen could fuel connections between al-Qaida-linked militants in the Arab nation and al-Shabab insurgents in Somalia. Witnesses in Houta said some of Wednesday’s attackers had Somali features and did not speak Arabic. Lahj is home to a refugee camp housing several thousand Somalis who escaped the violence in their country across the Red Sea in the Horn of Africa.

Pakistani intelligence is directly involved in al-Shabab terrorism. In July of 2010, after a bombing attributed to the group that killed 76 people watching the soccer World Cup final, a number of Pakistani nationals were arrested.

In July of 201, the Christian Science Monitor reported “veteran insurgents from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have relocated to the chaotic country of Somalia in large enough numbers to spark worry inside the international community, according to Kenya’s foreign minister.”

Pakistan’s ISI and the CIA have worked together since the early 1980s to create terrorist organizations and radical Muslims like the Taliban movement. It looks like they are now repeating the pattern in Africa.

The script-reading corporate media has lately insisted there was a falling out between U.S. and Pakistani intelligence, but this is not the case.

“Actually, contrary to public perception, CIA and ISI are the best of partners,” Pakistan’s envoy to the U.S. Husain Haqqani said in April.

“Just as there are people who don’t want to believe the birth certificate even if it exists, similarly, there are people who don’t want to believe that the ISI is a partner of the CIA.”

Infowars

Correction: This article originally stated that the Bohemian Grove encampment begins today. It begins in mid-July.

Every July, some of the richest and most powerful men in the world gather at a 2,700 acre campground in Monte Rio, Calif., for two weeks of heavy drinking, super-secret talks, druid worship (the group insists they are simply “revering the Redwoods”), and other rituals.

Their purpose: to escape the “frontier culture,” or uncivilized interests, of common men.

The people that gather at Bohemian Grove — who have included prominent business leaders, former U.S. presidents, musicians, and oil barons — are told that “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here,” meaning business deals are to be left outside. One exception was in 1942, when a planning for the Manhattan Project took place at the grove, leading to the creation of the atom bomb.

A spokesperson for Bohemian Grove say the people that gather there “share a passion for the outdoors, music, and theater.”

The club is so hush-hush that little can be definitively said about it, but much of what we know today is from those who have infiltrated the camp, including Texas-based filmmaker Alex Jones. In 2000, Jones and his cameraman entered the camp with a hidden camera and were able to film a Bohemian Grove ceremony, Cremation of the Care. During the ceremony, members wear costumes and cremate a coffin effigy called “Care” before a 40-foot-owl, in deference to the surrounding Redwood trees.

Bohemian Grove’s spokesperson calls the ceremony “a traditional musical drama celebrating nature and summertime.” The spokesperson also said that while Jones’ comments are inaccurate, the footage is real.

Watch the controversial footage of the ceremony below:

Another infiltrator, Spy magazine writer Philip Weiss, posed as a guest for seven days in 1989, when the waiting list was 33 years long and the grove had several thousand members. Weiss published the article “Inside Bohemian Grove,” writing: “You know you are inside the Bohemian Grove when you come down a trail in the woods and hear piano music from amid a group of tents and then round a bend to see a man with a beer in one hand … urinating into the bushes. This is the most gloried-in ritual of the encampment, the freedom of powerful men to pee wherever they like, a right the club has invoked when trying to fight government anti-sex discrimination efforts and one curtailed only when it comes to a few popular redwoods just outside the Dining Circle.”

Former President Bill Clinton once told a heckler, “The Bohemian club! Did you say Bohemian club? That’s where all those rich Republicans go up and stand naked against redwood trees right? I’ve never been to the Bohemian club but you oughta go. It’d be good for you. You’d get some fresh air.”

The Sonoma County Free Press, which has published investigative stories on the grove since at least the 1980s, says activities include plays and comedy shows in which women are portrayed by male actors, and Lakeside Talks, in which high-ranking officials speak about information not available to the public. The group calls them “public interest talks.”

Protests take place at the Bohemian Grove nearly ever year. This year’s protest is organized by the California State Greens and endorsed by other social activist groups.

Bohemian Grove’s 2011 retreat begins in mid-July. We don’t suggest any infiltrators try to make their way through the entrance, guarded by camp valets and redwoods some 200 feet in height. It didn’t end too well for the last Vanity Fair editor who tried it.

Bloomberg