Neocon John Bolton: "Israel Has '8 Days' to Hit Iran Nuclear Site"

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 by Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON – Israel has "eight days" to launch a military strike against Iran's Bushehr nuclear facility and stop Tehran from acquiring a functioning atomic plant, a former US envoy to the UN has said.

Neocon John Bolton in this file photo. Israel has "eight days" to launch a military strike against Iran's Bushehr nuclear facility and stop Tehran from acquiring a functioning atomic plant, the former US envoy to the UN has said.Iran is to bring online its first nuclear power reactor, built with Russia's help, on August 21, when a shipment of nuclear fuel will be loaded into the plant's core.

At that point, John Bolton warned Monday, it will be too late for Israel to launch a military strike against the facility because any attack would spread radiation and affect Iranian civilians.

"Once that uranium, once those fuel rods are very close to the reactor, certainly once they're in the reactor, attacking it means a release of radiation, no question about it," Bolton told Fox Business Network.

"So if Israel is going to do anything against Bushehr it has to move in the next eight days."

Absent an Israeli strike, Bolton said, "Iran will achieve something that no other opponent of Israel, no other enemy of the United States in the Middle East really has and that is a functioning nuclear reactor."

But when asked whether he expected Israel to actually launch strikes against Iran within the next eight days, Bolton was skeptical.

"I don't think so, I'm afraid that they've lost this opportunity," he said.

The controversial former envoy to the United Nations criticized Russia's role in the development of the plant, saying "the Russians are, as they often do, playing both sides against the middle."

"The idea of being able to stick a thumb in America's eye always figures prominently in Moscow," he added.

Iran dismissed the possibilities of such an attack from its archfoes.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Tuesday that "these threats of attacks had become repetitive and lost their meaning."

"According to international law, installations which have real fuel cannot be attacked because of the humanitarian consequences," he told reporters at a news conference in Tehran.

Iranian officials say Iran has stepped up defensive measures at the Bushehr plant to protect it from any attacks.

Russia has been building the Bushehr plant since the mid-1990s but the project was marred by delays, and the issue is hugely sensitive amid Tehran's standoff with the West and Israel over its nuclear ambitions.

The UN Security Council hit Tehran with a fourth set of sanctions on June 9 over its nuclear programme, and the United States and European Union followed up with tougher punitive measures targeting Iran's banking and energy sectors.

The Bushehr project was first launched by the late shah in the 1970s using contractors from German firm Siemens. But it was shelved when he was deposed in the 1979 Islamic revolution.

It was revived after the death of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, as Iran's new supreme leader Ali Khamenei and his first president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, backed the project.

In 1995, Iran won the support of Russia which agreed to finish building the plant and fuel it.

The Real Reasons the U.S. Enables Israeli Crimes and Atrocities

Israel and its relationship to the U.S.
By Kathleen Wells, Race-Talk
Posted on August 16, 2010

Noam Chomsky is internationally recognized as one of America’s most critically engaged public intellectuals today. He spoke with Kathleen Wells, a political correspondent for Race-Talk, about Israel and its interplay with the United States.

Kathleen Wells: I’m speaking with Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and renowned political activist and writer. He has written over 100 books on linguistics, human rights, economics, and politics. Thank you, Professor Chomsky, for taking the time to speak with me this afternoon.

Noam Chomsky: Very pleased to be with you.

KW: Speak to me about the relation between the United States and Israel. Specifically, address, as you have previously stated, how every crime, violation of international law, that Israel commits is done through the direct participation and authorization of the United States.

NC: That’s a ... as a descriptive statement, that is pretty close to accurate. I mean "all" is a very strong word but it is certainly generally true. And, in fact, the United States has overwhelmingly vetoed Security Council resolutions condemning Israeli crimes and atrocities, prevented the Security Council from calling on Israel to terminate aggression, and so on and so forth. The descriptive comment is not really controversial. There are interesting questions about why it’s true. There were also interesting questions about the sources of support for this position in the United States, which helps us explain why it is true.

The history is reasonably clear. This was not the case up until 1967. In fact, before 1967, the relationships were not very different from relationships among other powers. There was sympathy and support for Israel, which has many, many sources, including the Christian Zionism, which is a very powerful force that precedes and is numerically far stronger than Jewish Zionism. But for somebody like, say, Harry Truman, raised in a deeply Christian tradition, it was just taken for granted that the Bible instructs us that God gave the land of Palestine to the Jews. So it is kind of like in his bones. And that’s true for a very large part of the American population, much more so than -- far more than any other country. So that is one factor, and there are other factors.

But the major change in relationships took place in 1967. Just take a look at USA aid to Israel. You can tell that right off. And in many other respects, it’s true, too. Similarly, the attitude towards Israel on the part of the intellectual community -- you know, media, commentary, journals, and so on -- that changed very sharply in 1967, from either lack of interest or sometimes even disdain, to almost passionate support. So what happened in 1967?

Well, in 1967, Israel destroyed the source of secular Arab nationalism -- Nasser's Egypt -- which was considered a major threat and enemy by the West. It is worth remembering that there was a serious conflict at that time between the forces of radical Islamic fundamentalism, centered in Saudi Arabia -- where all the oil is -- and secular Arab nationalism, centered in Nasser's Egypt; in fact, the two countries were at war. They were fighting a kind of a proxy war in Yemen at that time. The United States and Britain were supporting the radical Islamic fundamentalism; in fact, they’ve rather consistently done that – supporting Saudi Arabia. And Nasserite secular nationalism was considered a serious threat, because it was recognized that it might seek to take control of the immense resources of the region and use them for regional interest, rather than allow them to be centrally controlled and exploited by the United States and its allies. So that was a major issue.

Well, Israel effectively destroyed Nasserite secular nationalism and the whole Arab nationalist movement that was centered in it. That was considered a major contribution to U.S. geopolitical strategy and also to its Saudi Arabian ally. And, in fact, that's when attitudes toward Israel changed sharply and the U.S. support for Israel -- material, diplomatic, and other -- also increased sharply. In 1970, there was another turning point. In 1970, the Jordanian army (Jordan was a strong, close U.S. ally) – the Jordanian dictatorship was essentially massacring Palestinians during what's the month that's called Black September.

And the U.S. was in favor of that; it supported that. It looked as though Syria might intervene to support the Palestinians against the attack by the Hashemite dictatorship. The U.S. didn't want that to happen. It regarded it as a threat to its Jordanian ally and also a broader threat, ultimately, to Saudi Arabia, the jewel in the crown.

While the U.S. was mired in Southeast Asia at the time -- it was right at the time, a little after the Cambodia invasion and everything was blowing up -- the U.S. couldn't do a thing about it. So, it asked Israel to mobilize its very substantial military forces and threaten Syria so that Syria would withdraw. Well, Israel did it. Syria withdrew. That was another gift to U.S. power and, in fact, U.S. aid to Israel shot up very sharply -- maybe quadrupled or something like that -- right at that time. Now at that time, that was the time when the so-called Nixon Doctrine was formulated.

A part of the Nixon Doctrine was that the U.S., of course, has to control Middle-East oil resources -- that goes much farther back -- but it will do so through local, regional allies, what were called “cops on the beat” by Melvin Laird, Secretary of Defense. So there will be local cops on the beat, which will protect the Arab dictatorships from their own populations or any external threat. And then, of course, “police headquarters” is in Washington. Well, the local cops on the beat at the time were Iran, then under the Shah, a U.S. ally; Turkey; to an extent, Pakistan; and Israel was added to that group. It was another cop on the beat. It was one of the local gendarmes that was sometimes called the periphery strategy: non-Arab states protecting the Arab dictatorships from any threat, primarily the threat of what was called radical nationalism -- independent nationalism -- meaning taking over the armed resources for their own purposes.

Well, that structure remained through the 1970s. In 1979, Iran was lost because of the overthrow of the Shah and pretty soon the Khomeini dictatorship -- clerical dictatorship -- and the U.S. once tried to overthrow that and supported Iraq's invasion of Iran, and so on. But, anyway, that “cop” [Iran] was lost and Israel's position became even stronger in the structure that remained. Furthermore, by that time, Israel was performing secondary services to the United States elsewhere in the world. It's worth recalling that especially through the '80s Congress, under public pressure, was imposing constraints on Reagan's support for vicious and brutal dictatorships. The governments around the world -- say Guatemala -- the U.S. could not provide direct aid to Guatemala, because -- which was massacring people in some areas in a genocidal fashion up in the highlands -- Congress blocked it. Congress was also passing sanctions against aid to South-Africa, which the Reagan administration was strongly supporting South Africa and continued to do so right through the 1980s.

This was under the framework of the war on terror that Reagan had declared. The African National Congress -- Mandela’s ANC -- was designated as one of the more notorious terrorist groups in the world as late as 1988. [So] that it [could] support South-African apartheid and the Guatemalan murderous dictatorship and other murderous regimes, Reagan needed a kind of network of terrorist states to help out, to evade the congressional and other limitations, and he turned to, at that time, Taiwan, but, in particular, Israel. Britain helped out. And that was another major service. And so it continued.

KW: I want to come up to today, because I only have 30 minutes.

NC: So, it basically continues. I mean, if we go right up till this moment ... simply ask, where are the strongest sources of support for Israeli actions? Well, pick the newspapers. By far the most rabid pro-Israel newspaper in the country is the Wall Street Journal. That's the journal of the business community, and it reflects the support of the business world for Israel, which is quite strong. There's a lot of high-tech investment in Israel. [Our] military industry is very close to Israeli military industry. There's a whole network of interactions. Intel, for example, is building its next facility for construct development of the next generation of chips in Israel. But, altogether, the relations are very tight, very intimate, quite natural. And it's not surprising that the main business journal in the country would be supporting Israeli expansion and power. Take a look at the two political parties. Most Jewish money goes to Democrats and most Jews vote Democratic. But the Republican Party is much more strongly supportive of Israeli power and atrocities than the Democrats are. Then again, I think that reflects their closer relations to the business world and to the military system. There is, of course, also a Jewish lobby – an Israeli lobby -- AIPAC, which is a very influential lobby. And so there are many... and there's Christian Zionism, which is a huge element. Well, you know, all of these combined to provide a background for U.S. support for Israel, and they're facing virtually no opposition. Who's calling for support of the Palestinians?

KW: Exactly, and so when you hear statements being made that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, and yet you see the occupation and the blockade on Gaza, the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, what shall one think about this fact?

NC: First, let's ask about being the only democracy in the region. First of all, it’s not true. There were free elections in Palestine in January 2006. There were free elections in Palestine, carefully monitored, recognized to be free. The victor was Hamas, okay, centered in the Gaza Strip. Israel and the United States instantly, within days, undertook perfectly public policies to try to punish the Palestinians for voting the wrong way in a free election. I mean, it couldn’t have been... you couldn't see a more dramatic illustration of hatred and contempt for democracy unless it comes out the right way.

A year later, July 2007, the U.S. and Israel, together with the Palestinian authority, tried to carry out a military coup to overthrow the elected government. Well, it failed. Hamas won and drove Fatah out of the Gaza Strip. Now, here, that's described as a demonstration of Hamas terror or something. What they did was preempt and block a U.S.-backed military coup to overthrow the democratically elected government.

KW: What do you say to the fact that Hamas is listed on the United States State Department terrorist list? So they're characterized as terrorist?

NC: Yeah, they are. Because they do things we don't like. The terrorist list has been a historic joke, in fact, a sick joke. So take a look at the history of the terrorist list. Up until 1982, Iraq -- Saddam Hussein's Iraq -- was on the terrorist list.

In 1982, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the terrorist list. Why? Because they were moving to support Iraq, and, in fact, the Reagan administration and, in fact, the first Bush administration strongly supported Iraq right through its worst – Saddam, right through his worst atrocities. In fact, they tried to ... they succeeded, in fact, in preventing even criticism of condemnation of the worst atrocities, like the Halabja massacre -- and others. So they removed Iraq from the terrorist list because they wanted to support one of the worst monsters and terrorists in the region, namely Saddam Hussein.

And since there was an empty position on the terrorist list, they had to fill it, so they added Cuba. Cuba's probably the target of more terrorism than any country in the world, back from the Kennedy years. Right? In fact, just at that time, there had been a rash of major terrorist acts against Cuba. So Cuba was added to the terrorist list to replace Saddam Hussein, who was removed because the U.S. wanted to support him. Now, you take a look through the terrorist list, yeah, that's the way it is. So, for example, Hezbollah is on the terrorist list. Well, you know, probably it's carried out terrorist acts, but by the standards of the U.S. and Israel, they're barely visible. The main reason why Hezbollah is on the terrorist list is because it resisted Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon and, in fact, drove Israel out of Southern Lebanon after 22 years of occupation -- that's called terrorism. In fact, Lebanon has a national holiday, May 25th, which is called Liberation Day. That's the national holiday in Lebanon commemorating, celebrating the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in year 2000, and largely under Hezbollah attack.

KW: How would you characterize Hezbollah and Hamas?

NC: Hezbollah happens to be the major political grouping in Lebanon. It's the Hezbollah-based coalition, handily won the last election in the year 2009. Now you know it's not a perfect election, but it's one of the ... by the standards of U.S.-backed dictatorships it was an amazing election, and they won it. They didn't happen to win the largest number of representatives because of the way the confessional system works, but they won the popular vote by about the same amount that Obama had won. So they're the main political grouping in the country. They largely -- almost completely -- control southern Lebanon. They're a national Lebanese organization. They've ... they're charged with some terrorist acts outside of Lebanon, maybe correctly. But again, if the charges ... we take all the charges and weigh them against U.S./Israeli violence, aggression, and terror, they don't even count. But that's basically what they are. As far as Israel's concerned, Hezbollah‘s position is they don't recognize Israel.

They don't ... they... but they say their position is, well, they'll accept any agreement with Israel that the Palestinians accept; we're a Lebanese organization. What about Hamas? Hamas is a ... its background is it's an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization, which would be a major competitor in Egypt's elections, if Egypt permitted democratic elections, which it won't. The Egyptian dictatorship -- which the U.S. strongly backs, Obama personally strongly backs -- doesn't permit anything remotely like elections and is very brutal and harsh. But they don't ... they hate the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas is an offshoot. In its early days, Israel supported Hamas as a weapon against the secular PLO. Later, when Hamas really crystallized, became a significant organization, Israel turned against them, and it became bitterly opposed to them in January 2006, as the U.S. did, when they won a free election.

That was intolerable and they had to be overthrown. Hamas's position is that as a political party it does not recognize Israel, but that doesn't mean much: the Democratic Party doesn't recognize countries either. It says that their position is that they’re willing to accept a two-state settlement in accordance with the international consensus, which the U.S. and Israel have blocked for 35 years. So they say, "Yes, we'll accept that, but we don't want to recognize Israel." Well, okay, that's their position. Are they a nice organization? No. I wouldn't ... I certainly wouldn't want to live under their clerical rule.

But compared with organizations and states that the United States strongly supports, they don't stand out as particularly harsh, say Egypt, for example.

KW: So respond to those who defend Israel's policy and state that Israel is surrounded by enemies. Their Arab neighbors -- Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Ahmadinejad in Iran -- they pose a threat to Israel. They want to see Israel's destruction, and they feel like these Arab countries are an imminent threat to Israel. Give me your thoughts on those who defend Israel's policies.

NC: Well, the truth of the matter is that Israel and the United States, which act in tandem, are a tremendous threat mainly to the Palestinians. In fact, while we're discussing the potential threat to Israel that might exist, the United States and Israel are crushing and destroying the Palestinians. That's the live reality. Now what about the threat? Well, yeah, there's a potential threat, and Israel and the United States are substantially responsible for it. I mean, if the U.S. and Israel would accept the overwhelming international consensus on a political settlement, that would very sharply reduce the threat. But Israel and the U.S. prefer Israeli expansion to diplomatic settlement and, therefore, are blocking that settlement -- they're alone. I mean, Europe, the non-aligned countries -- the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic States, which includes Iran -- have all accepted the international consensus on the two-state settlement. I mean, there are details to be worked out, but the basic structure is clear. For 35 years, the U.S. and Israel have been blocking it. There are a few rare and temporary exceptions, but that's basically the story. I don't have time to run through all the details here.

KW: But what's the rationale?

NC: The rationale‘s very simple.

KW: Exactly.

NC: They prefer expansion to security. That's been explicitly true since 1971. I think the most fateful decision that Israel and the U.S. made in this regard was in February 1971 when President Sadat of Egypt offered Israel a full peace settlement -- full peace settlement; no conditions -- nothing for the Palestinians, in return for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, and, in fact, he cared only about Sinai. Jordan made the same proposal a year later with regard to the West Bank. Israel had to decide, at that point, whether to accept security -- which would certainly have followed from the withdrawal from the conflict of the major Arab military forces, primarily Egypt, secondly Jordan -- whether to accept security or to insist on expansion. Now expansion at that time was mostly into the Sinai. Israel was developing plans for substantial expansion into the Egyptian Sinai, including a major city, Yamit, supposedly a million people, a lot of settlements, and so on. And that was a very clear choice: do we choose expansion or security? They chose expansion. The crucial question is what would the United States do? Well, there was an internal bureaucratic battle in the U.S., and Henry Kissinger won out. He was in favor of what he called “stalemate.” A stalemate meant no negotiations, just force.

So the U.S. and Israel proceeded with expansion. Sadat, for the next... he made gesture after... move after move for the next year or two to try to convince the U.S. to accept the political settlement. It was disregarded. He kept threatening war if Israel continued to develop the northeast Sinai. It was dismissed. Then came the October 1973 war, which was a very close thing for Israel, the worst moment in its history. Well, at that point, Kissinger and the Israeli leaders recognized they can't simply dismiss Egypt, and they moved slowly toward the Camp David Settlement in 1978, which pretty much accepted what Sadat had offered in 1971 -- a diplomatic catastrophe. Meanwhile, Israel has continued its expansion, by then mostly into the West Bank, and the U.S. was supporting it all the way, and so it continues. So, sure, if Israel continues to settle in the occupied territories -- illegally, incidentally, as Israel recognized in 1967 (it's all illegal; they recognized it) -- it's undermining the possibilities for the viable existence of any small Palestinian entity. And as long as the United States and Israel continue with that, yes, there will be insecurity.

Read the rest of the interview on Race Talk.

Which Party Poses the Real Risk to Social Security's Future?

Obama Has Opened Pandora's Box
By MARSHALL AUERBACK

Social Security remains one of the greatest achievements of the Democratic Party since its creation 75 years ago. Although Republicans have historically fulminated against the program (Ronald Reagan once likened it as something akin to “socialism”), they have actually made little headway in touching this sacred “third rail” in American politics. President Bush pushed for partial privatization of the program in 2005, but the proposal gained no policy traction (even within his own party) because Social Security continues to be hugely popular with American voters. It’s a universal program that benefits all Americans, not a government handout to a few privileged corporations.

Which is why it’s odd that Democrats seem almost embarrassed to continue to champion the legacy of FDR. The party frets about long-term deficits and the corresponding need to “save” Social Security from imminent bankruptcy and, in doing so, opens the gate to radical cuts in entitlements that will do nothing but further destroy incomes and perpetuate our current economic malaise. It is true that some Republicans have signed on to the idea of privatization, notably a proposal championed by Rep. Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), the senior Republican on the House Budget Committee. But only a handful of GOP lawmakers have actively embraced the measure and, in the aftermath of the worst shock to the financial system since the Great Depression, many Republican lawmakers would just as soon see the idea forgotten.

So why don’t the Democrats leave well enough alone? Why bother even setting up “bipartisan commissions” to discuss the issue of Social Security? It was President Obama who most recently re-opened this issue by setting up a commission on reducing long term budget deficits and dealing with the long term issue of entitlements, including Social Security. In the Commission’s remit, nothing is off the table, including Social Security and Medicare. (Of course, given that one of the members is a director of Honeywell, it’s hard to envisage any suggestions of defense cuts). I also note that according to the Washington Post, “Democrats said Simpson and Bowles are uniquely equipped to blaze a path out of the fiscal wilderness — and to forge bipartisan consensus on a plan likely to require painful tax increases as well as program cuts.” No mention of Republicans getting on board. This is self-immolation, plain and simple. And Obama wonders why voters remain unhappy?

Now that the President has opened this Pandora’s Box, it is hard for him credibly to make the case, as he attempted to do in last Saturday’s weekly radio address, that “some Republican leaders in Congress want to privatize Social Security.” In fact, it is an idea enthusiastically embraced by a number of Wall Street Democrats who are funded with huge campaign contributions from Wall Street itself. (Candidate Obama received more money from Wall Street in 2008 than Hillary Clinton.) These contributors would be the Rubinites who for decades have played a huge role in allowing for greater financial leverage ratios, riskier banking practices, greater opacity, less oversight and regulation, consolidation of power in ‘too big to fail’ financial institutions that operated across the financial services spectrum (combining commercial banking, investment banking and insurance) and greater risk.

Privatization of Social Security represents the last of the low hanging fruits for Wall Street. Who better to provide this to our captains of the financial services industry than their major political benefactors in the Democratic Party?

The issue of privatization is germane when one considers the members of the Commission approved by the President. There are questions of possible conflicts of interest. As James Galbraith has noted, the Commission has accepted support from Peter G. Peterson, a man who has been one of the leading campaigners to cut Social Security and Medicare. It is co-chaired by Erskine Bowles, a current Director at North Carolina Life Insurance Co (annuity products are a competitor to Social Security and would almost certainly be beneficiaries of the partial privatization). Bowles’ wife, Crandall Close Bowles, is on the Board of JP Morgan, and she is also on the “Business Council,” a 27 member group whose members include Dick Fuld, Jeff Immelt, Jamie Dimon and a plethora of other Wall Streeters.

At the very least, these kinds of ties raise questions in regard to proposals for dealing with Social Security. Many members of the Commission stand to become clear direct and indirect beneficiaries of the privatization that the President is now warning against. It’s disappointing that these ties have not been fully explored by the press, and it is extraordinary that the President would exhibit such political tone deafness in making these kinds of appointments. It tends to undercut the message of his last radio address.

I’ll leave aside the nonsensical arguments in regard to Social Security’s “solvency,” because Professor Stephanie Kelton has dealt with them conclusively here, in her article, “Why Dean Baker Has Gone Off the Rails on Social Security.” The only point I would add is in regard to the alleged issue of deficit spending today burdening our grandchildren. In reality, we will be leaving our grandchildren with government bonds that are net financial assets and wealth for them. As Randy Wray and Yeva Nersisyan have recently argued, even if government decides to raise taxes in, say, 2050 to retire the bonds (for whatever reason), the extra taxes are matched by payments made directly to bondholders in 2050. We can question the wisdom of whether it is right to make this political argument in favor of bond holders over tax payers. But it is a decision to be made at that time (not before) by future generations as to whether they should raise taxes by an amount equal to those interest payments, or by a greater amount to equal retirement of debt.

In the meantime, President Obama’s approval ratings continue to plummet. His scaremongering has little credibility, given the disparity between his rhetoric and his actual policies. At the risk of further upsetting Robert Gibbs, we’ll try to explain why Obama isn’t finding stronger support from his base despite having passed, for instance, a health care bill, a fiscal stimulus bill and a financial regulation bill. For a start, follow the money: with the President and leading Democrats having taken the most campaign dollars from corporate interests those bills purport to challenge, and having gutted the most progressive elements in the bills themselves, it is clear that those signature pieces of legislation do not fundamentally challenge the structure of power at a time when that’s what Americans most want. The only “change” most Americans might experience is a reduction in their Social Security benefits from a President currently presiding over one of the most regressive wealth transfers in history. They’ll be receiving nothing but pocket change if a serious attack on entitlements is legitimized by this commission. A scaremongering radio address doesn’t do a whole lot to change that or to alter the country’s current economic trajectory.

America's Runaway Military Spending

(OK, imagine the economy if we could put a clamp on military spending. Imagine the peace in the world if we could control or eliminate the corporate military industrial complex.--jef)

***

How Much is Enough?
By LAWRENCE WITTNER

The August 9 announcement by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates of cost-containment measures at the Defense Department should not obscure two underlying facts. First, as he conceded, these proposed economies will not result in cutting the overall Pentagon budget, which is slated for expansion. And, second, as a Washington Post article reported, "defense officials characterized them as a political preemptive strike to fend off growing sentiment elsewhere in Washington to tackle the federal government's soaring deficits by making deep cuts in military spending."

But why should anyone want to cut the U.S. military budget?

One reason is that—with $549 billion requested for basic military expenditures and another $159 billion requested for U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—the record $708 billion military spending called for by the Obama administration for fiscal 2011 will be nearly equivalent to the military spending of all other nations in the world combined. When it comes to military appropriations, the U.S. government already spends about seven times as much as China, thirteen times as much as Russia, and seventy-three times as much as Iran.

Is this really necessary? During the Cold War, the United States confronted far more dangerous and numerous military adversaries, including the Soviet Union. And the U.S. government certainly possessed an enormous and devastating military arsenal, as well as the armed forces that used it. But in those years, U.S. military spending accounted for only 26 percent of the world total. Today, as U.S. Congressman Barney Frank has observed, "we have fewer enemies and we're spending more money."

Where does this vast outlay of U.S. tax dollars—the greatest military appropriations in U.S. history—go? One place is to overseas U.S. military bases. According to Chalmers Johnson, a political scientist and former CIA consultant, as much as $250 billion per year is used to maintain some 865 U.S. military facilities in more than forty countries and overseas U.S. territories.

The money also goes to fund vast legions of private military contractors. A recent Pentagon report estimated that the Defense Department relies on 766,000 contractors at an annual cost of about $155 billion, and this figure does not include private intelligence organizations. A Washington Post study, which included all categories, estimated that the Defense Department employs 1.2 million private contractors.

Of course, enormously expensive air and naval weapons systems—often accompanied by huge cost over-runs—account for a substantial portion of the Pentagon's budget. But exactly who are these high tech, Cold War weapons to be used against? Certainly they have little value in a world threatened by terrorism. As Congressman Frank has remarked: "I don't think any terrorist has ever been shot by a nuclear submarine."

Furthermore, when bemoaning budget deficits, Americans should not forget the enormous price the United States has paid for its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the highly-respected National Priorities Project, their cost, so far, amounts to $1.06 trillion. (For those readers who are unaccustomed to dealing with a trillion dollar budget, that's $1,060,000,000,000.)

When calculating the benefits and losses of these kinds of expenditures, we should also include the opportunities forgone through military spending. How many times have government officials told us that there is not enough money available for health care, for schools, for parks, for the arts, for public broadcasting, for unemployment insurance, for law enforcement, and for maintenance of America's highway, bridge, and rail infrastructure?

Admittedly, there are other reasons for America's failure to use its substantial wealth to provide adequate care for its own people. Some Americans, driven by mean-spiritedness or greed, resent the very idea of sharing with others. Furthermore, years of tax cuts for the wealthy have diminished public revenues.

Even so, it is hard to deny that there is a heavy price being paid for making military power the nation's top priority. With more than half of U.S. government discretionary spending going to feed the Pentagon, we should not be surprised that—in America, at least—it is no longer considered feasible to use public resources to feed the hungry, heal the sick, or house the homeless.

We would do well to recall an observation by one of the great prophets of our time, Martin Luther King, Jr.: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

The Need for an Independent Fed

(Why do we even need the Fed at all? They aren't a govt. institution, they are a private banking firm.--jef)

***

Bernanke's Paralysis

By DEAN BAKER

Last week the Fed announced that it would use the proceeds from retired mortgage-backed securities to buy up more government bonds. This may have a very modest effect in keeping long-term interest rates low, thereby giving a small boost to the economy.

Such a measure would be reasonable if the economy was basically fine and just in need of a modest lift. But this is not the case.

The unemployment rate is 9.5 percent and virtually certain to rise in the 2nd half of the year. Job growth has basically stopped and the GDP is likely to be in the range of 1-2 percent in the next four quarters, as state and local governments cut back spending, the stimulus phases down and the housing market resumes its slide.

In this scenario, the Fed should be taking aggressive steps to bring the economy back to full employment. After all, this is part of its job description. Its responsibility is to promote price stability and full employment. There is no concern about price stability in the sense of the rate of inflation being too high right now. Therefore the Fed’s responsibility should be to do everything within its power to reach full employment; obviously we are nowhere close now.

Bernanke even knows exactly what needs to be done, as the Wall Street Journal recently reminded us. He wrote a paper back in 1999 about Japan’s stagnant economy and mild deflation. Following a recommendation by Paul Krugman, he urged Japan’s central bank to target an inflation rate in the range of 3-4 percent.

A rate of inflation in this range would substantially reduce real interest rates, giving firms a powerful incentive to invest. It would mean, for example, that if they built a factory this year, the goods it produced would be selling for 15 to 20 percent more in five years. This modest level of inflation would also go far in reducing the debt burdens of households. The burden of their mortgages and other debt would be eroded as wages rise roughly in step with inflation, while the size of the debt remains fixed.

In spite of knowing exactly what needs to be done, Bernanke and the Fed show no inclination of moving in this direction. Instead, the Fed seems prepared to ignore its legal mandate to promote full employment.

The explanation for this incredible policy failure is straightforward. The people that Bernanke must answer to are the Wall Street bankers, not Congress and the public. The Wall Street bankers are not troubled by 9.5 percent unemployment. Their profits are back to pre-recession levels and bonuses are again hitting record levels.

For the Wall Street bankers, everything is just fine now. If Bernanke were to pursue a policy of targeting 3-4 percent inflation, it could erode the real value of many of their assets. These banks own mortgage debt and other assets whose value would be reduced by even modest rates of inflation. While targeting a slightly higher rate of inflation may be a no-brainer from the standpoint of workers and most of the country, it is not good for Wall Street, and this is who our supposedly independent Fed is answering to.

This is not the first time that Bernanke has done Wall Street’s bidding. When Goldman, Citigroup and the rest were on the edge of bankruptcy, Bernanke deliberately misled Congress to help pass TARP. He told them that the commercial paper market was shutting down, raising the prospect that most of corporate America would be unable to get the short-term credit needed to meet its payroll and pay other bills.

Bernanke neglected to mention that he could single-handedly keep the commercial paper market operating by setting up a special Fed lending facilities for this purpose. He announced the establishment of a lending facility to buy commercial paper the weekend after Congress approved the TARP.

Of course, the whole crisis stems directly from the Fed and Bernanke’s fealty to Wall Street. It was easy for any competent economist to recognize the housing bubble and the danger it posed to the economy as early as 2002. Yet, the Fed and Bernanke (then working as Greenspan’s sidekick as a Fed governor) insisted that everything was just fine with the housing market. After all, the Wall Street banks were making tons of money, what could be the problem?

The country badly needs a central bank that is independent of Wall Street, where its governors can do what they believe is best for the economy and the country. Unfortunately, we do not have such a Fed. Until Congress and the public start putting heat on Bernanke for his policy failures, we can expect to get kicked in the face again and again.

Taking a stand against genetically modified organisms

Food for Thought
By: Evan Folds - August 10th, 2010

Ever heard of genetically modified organisms (GMO)? I dare say that the majority of the population eats them in abundance on a daily basis. Why? Well, for one the USDA does not require the labeling of “food” products that contain GMOs. Some history of how we got here may help.

In 1978 a company called “Genentech” inserted a human insulin gene into an E. Coli bacterium in order to create functional insulin, marking the first use of the technology called “recombinant DNA,” where genes from different organisms combine to form a hybrid molecule.

In 1981 Amanda Mohan Chakrabarty successfully inserted foreign genes into a Pseudomonas bacterium and created an organism capable of eating oil spills (hmmm, BP, take note!). This marked the first time a living organism had been altered genetically. The ethics of this procedure were actually upheld by the Supreme Court in what has become the wartershed moment in GMO history. From 1981 onward companies would be incentivized to change life in order to patent and make money of off living organisms.

And we’ve never looked back.

This is the legacy we deal with today. We are so entrenched in this world view that we cannot bring ourselves to recignize what we’re eating.

Think about that.

There is no transparency in the US food system. Plants and animals that have had their genetics fundamentally altered are not being disclosed to consumers, and this is not a hard thing to accomplish. The reasons vary.

One: If GMO foodstuff were labeled, people would not eat it, and other countries would not buy our “food” exports. This has been proven in Europe where most countries disclose GMO products by law.
Two: Companies such as Monsanto and Cargill lobby heavily to prevent disclosure of what is in our food in order to reap huge monetary rewards. They do this by direct sale of the GMO seed and plants, and also by creating products that complement their GMO offerings. For instance, RoundUp is an herbicide containing glycophosphates invented by Monsanto in 1973. Glycophosphates have been marketed as “biodegradable” and “non-toxic,” but they subsist in the environment for up to three years, according to a Swedish study. Better yet, they are linked to Alzeihmers, reproductive issues, and many other horrific health problems.

Monsanto is also responsible for inventing RoundUp-ready soybeans. “RoundUp-ready” means that the soybeans, with the special genes inserted, are capable of withstanding treatment with RoundUp. So, they invent living organisms that can survive the stress of being doused with the toxic soups they create. That’s a brilliant business model, but it’s killing people and it’s simply evil. The only thing that RoundUp-ready crops ensure is more RoundUp!

The perspective that allows this blatant abuse of humanity and Earth’s ecosystems is hard to understand for the average individual, but it is alive and well. COO of Hugh Grant explains Monsanto’s development from a chemical company (RoundUp) to a biotech company (GMO) over the years:

“The answer that we developed was that we believe that the world needs about 35 to 40 percent more food produced on every acre. Chemicals weren’t the answer to that next increment of production. It was in genetics. It was in better seed. So, really, that’s been driving us for more than 10 years now.”

An entire article could be written on the faults of this logic, but the idea that we need more space to grow food is folly. For example, the largest irrigated crop in the U.S. is grass, with 40 million acres. That’s more than three times corn, which has 13 million acres under irrigation. If everyone simply turned their lawns into a garden, we’d be fine. (Suggested reading: “Food, Not Lawns.”)

Besides this, there is no doubt that GMO foods disrupt living systems. For example, Indian activist Dr. Vandana Shiva’s organization Navdanya conducted a study that verified a 14.2 percent decrease in bacteria and a 17 percent decrease in actinomycete populations in soil, from the use of GMO Bt Cotton over a three-year period. The repercussions of this have resulted in over 25,000 suicides by Indian farmers since 1995. Even more terrifying, there has yet to be one study that tests the effects of these frankenfoods on the human organism—yikes!

How can Monsanto and company possibly justify the idea that we do not need to label GMO “foods”? Let’s quote COO Hugh Grant of Monsanto again:

“Let me tell you the Monsanto view on labeling today. We believe very strongly—very strongly—that these products are safe. And in their safety, there is no need to label, and that’s the position that has been held by the FDA. The FDA labeling requirements are really triggered by if a product is essentially the same, then there is no labeling requirement.” (seriously!?--jef)

Should we trust the FDA? Should it really be up to a tool like Hugh Grant to determine whether or not what we eat is safe? Can you say, “Conflict of interest”? Is he really suggesting that fundamentally altering the genetics of a plant is “essentially the same” as a natural plant? All due respect to Monsanto’s “beliefs,” the real question is: Should we believe them?

No.

So, how can we avoid GMO crops? The “big four” consist of corn, soy, canola, and cotton. All processed foods also contain GMOs, in addition to corn flours, oils, sweeteners and meals created by the “big four” commodity crops. Think salad dressings, cookies and anything with high-fructose corn syrup (isn’t that everything?). To be clear, unless buying from local farms or “organic” whole foods—and this includes restaurants too—it most likely contains GMO products.

www.NonGMOProject.org.

'Fructose-Slurping' Cancer Could Sour the Soda Business

By SARAH GILBERT | 08/13/10

Soda and processed-food manufacturers have long insisted that all sugars are essentially the same. Yet, simultaneously they're delicately backing away from high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) as one study after another links the corn-based sweetener to obesity and diabetes. While the market for HFCS declined by 9% in 2008, says Ken Roseboro of the Organic and Non-GMO Report, it was still used in 55% of all sweetened edibles in 2009.

New findings published this month in the journal Cancer Research by University of California Los Angeles researchers could further sour the public's sentiment toward the super-sweet, super-cheap syrup and reduce its use even further. HFCS is 55% fructose and 42% glucose. The study found that pancreatic tumor cells metabolized fructose differently than glucose and that the cancer cells "readily metabolized fructose to increase proliferation." In other words, as the headline reads, "Cancer cells slurp up fructose."

Lawsuits Are Sure to Follow

This is a direct challenge to the Corn Refiner's Association, which made a splash in 2008 with commercials belittling consumers who disdained high-fructose corn syrup as self-righteous and incoherent. (The ads inspired a little outrage and a lot of spoofs and rebuttals.) In March 2010, the association put on its website a clip from CBS News calling differences in the chemistry of HFCS and table sugar "an urban myth." And despite the occasional study linking HFCS consumption to obesity, as well as insulin resistance and diabetes, the prevailing sentiment of the food industry was that the difference between HFCS and cane or beet sugar was negligible.

"Fructose is a natural, simple sugar commonly found in a variety of sweeteners, including table sugar, honey, and high fructose corn syrup, as well as in many fruits, vegetables, and juices," says Audrae Erickson, President of the Corn Refiners Association in a statement. "This study does not look at the way fructose is actually consumed by humans, as it was conducted in a laboratory, not inside the human body. The study also narrowly compared pure fructose to pure glucose, neither of which is consumed in isolation in the human diet."

Despite the Corn Refiner's Association's best efforts, high fructose corn syrup is still being maligned. But it is this latest study linking the sweetener to pancreatic cancer that may be the weapon of choice for eager attorneys in defense of angry consumers. As Frost & Sullivan industry analyst Christopher Shanahan says, laughing, when asked whether there will be lawsuits, "Yes, I'd put money on it."

But as damning as the headlines of this latest study seem to be, other scientists caution that further research needs to be done before people leap to the assumption that fructose helps cancer proliferate. The science blogger known as "Orac" writes that the research is "rather interesting," but far more work should be done before it's seen as proof that HFCS causes pancreatic cancer. "It's far too early to make any sort of recommendations about high fructose corn syrup and diet based on this study," he writes.

In a statement, the American Beverage Association said:

"It is important to recognize that this was not a clinical trial performed on humans, but rather a test tube study. In addition, the isolated cancer cells were subjected to extremely high levels of fructose that are unlikely in normal human metabolic processes. In fact, human beings do not typically consume fructose by itself, as it is normally found in combination with glucose in fruits and vegetables, or in the form of sucrose or high fructose corn syrup as found in myriad foods and beverages. The fact remains that no single food or beverage causes cancer, including pancreatic cancer."

Beverage Makers Under the Gun

The beverage companies are the easiest targets in the crusade against HFCS, says Shanahan. For "the corn manufacturers, the sugar manufacturers, the processed-food manufacturers, there is an underlying fear that, in the next 10 years, this is going to be a critical challenge similar to the top-down mandates that impacted the tobacco industry."

He points to a central problem of the U.S. agricultural system: Very few crops -- soy, wheat and especially corn -- account for a huge percentage of the American diet, especially when you consider the soy- and corn-fed livestock and myriad processed foods made from corn derivatives.

"The recent obesity measure, weight issues, diabetes, all can be routed back to the American diet," Shanahan says, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is complicit in the problem, with rich subsidies for wheat, soy and corn, the top recipient. The amount varies widely from year to year, but corn subsidies totaled $73.8 billion from 1995 to 2009. With corn so cheap, there's incentive to put it in more and more foods in place of other, more expensive, ingredients. Now it's in practically every processed food, and lots of nonfoods, too, including ethanol for fuel.

Getting the HFCS Out

Roseboro, of the Organic & Non-GMO Report, says change is coming. Big brands like Hunt's (CAG), Gatorade (PEP) and Starbucks (SBUX) are reformulating some of their products to remove HFCS. "I think the fact that big companies [like Hunt's and Pepsico] are going to stop using it is indication that a trend is going to be that companies will be taking it out, using sugar instead, and the smaller companies will follow along."

Shanahan agrees. "Food manufacturers are starting to diversify their product line to include cane sugar," he says. "The corn refiners are going to stop making corn sweeteners, and make ethanol instead."

It might be longer than he thinks before beverage companies and, most important, government agencies decide it's time for change, however. Switching away from corn sweeteners won't be easy. Cheap corn is, after all, the basis of many processed foods. It's not just the HFCS, of course. Corn is the source of oil for salad dressing and frying, of coloring for sodas, juices and yogurts, of livestock feed that makes $1 hamburgers possible.

"Over time, consumers will change their diets as they are taught the real cost of food," Shanahan says. "This is going to be a diminishing problem." Food and beverage makers have plenty of skin in this game and may as well get ahead of eventual regulation, he says, adding that a healthful product line is where the industry is headed. "Food processors are only doing what the man wants. They're going to sell you healthy food if you want it."

Just as with tobacco, we're in for a decade or two of growing awareness about the destructive effects of our subsidized cheap-sweetener system, with lawsuits and regulations to follow. But we'll get over it, Shanahan says. "In this transitional period, people don't want to eat the stuff, but they'll be more than happy to put it in their cars."

Gulf Shrimpers Find Oil In Reopened Fishing Areas (2 stories)

Governnment Says "Shut Up"
Sierra Club Alleges Areas Were Solely Reopened to Limit BP's Liability
Published on 08-16-2010 | Washington's Blog

While the government says that the oil is gone, shrimpers say its still there.

The Press-Register reports:

Opening state offshore waters to fishing and winding down the cleanup effort on the coast is premature, said Louie Miller, state director of the Mississippi Sierra Club.

"We've got shrimpers out there saying there is oil out there," Miller said. "We had a meeting Wednesday night where we had over 150 shrimpers... who are saying there is oil out there and these underwater plumes are varying in size and shape. This stuff is obviously moving around out there."

***

[William Walker, executive director of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources] "If you are not going to validate what you are saying through accepted scientific protocol and approaches, then quit talking about it without any evidence what you are saying is true," Walker said.

In other words, shut up.

Obviously, gulf shrimpers have a strong motivation to have everyone think that the shrimp is safe and the oil is all gone. They wouldn't be speaking out unless the problem was fairly bad.

Indeed, the Sierra Club accuses the government of reopening oiled fishing grounds to limit BP's liability:

The existence of oil is irrefutable, Miller said. Oil has reappeared on beaches in Alabama, Petit Bois and Horn islands and continues to wash ashore in Louisiana, he said.

Miller said there also is evidence of submerged oil.

"It is a weird thing. It is like strands, this black water, as they are calling it. It is like strands that are about three to four times the thickness of human hair. These things can be about foot-and-a-half, to five- to six-feet-long."

Miller said the assumption is oil that has been dispersed.

"To open up these waters, in my opinion, is nothing more than to limit the liability of BP to pay claims," he said.

"Because now they can deny any claims after the time at which these waters were opened back up," Miller said.

PBS Newshour also covered the shrimpers' distrust of the government's claims that all is well:

PBS: [Vice president of the Louisiana Shrimpers Association Acy] Cooper says despite government claims that most of the oil is gone, there’s plenty of it still on the bottom.

COOPER: I went out there and we made about four or five passes with the wheel, with the boat, stirred up the mud, and before you know it, oil was coming up. So these are the kind of areas that we need to distinguish where it's at, and these are the new places we need to keep closed. We don't need to open this. Keep them out of there.

(Video here). And see this.

Is the Sierra Club right? Are still-oiled fishing areas being reopened solely to limit BP's liability?

Are fishing areas instead being reopened to try to save the Gulf fishing industry (even though local fishermen and shrimpers would rather have dangerous areas remain closed so that Gulf seafood's reputation isn't permanently destroyed)?

Or is it just part of the same old attempt to cover up the severity of the crisis?

***

Louisiana Fishermen Slam Claims that Oil Almost Gone, Seafood Safe
Fishing grounds are full of oil-soaked marsh grass and tarballs, with shrimp season set to open next week, locals say
by Jacoba Charles - Aug 11th, 2010

HOPEDALE, LA.— In the small towns of coastal Louisiana, the widespread consensus is that the oil is far from gone.

Fishermen return from working on cleanup crews or from recreational angling trips with stories of crabs whose lungs are black with oil, or of oysters with shells covered in sludge. They take photos and carry tarballs home like talismans to show what they have seen. They talk about their fears with anyone who will listen, and often their voices are tinged with panic.

Yet a government report released last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that 75 percent of the oil has been cleaned up, dispersed or otherwise contained. And the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reports that of all the samples of seafood that have been tested since the oil spill, none have shown evidence of contamination.

While some in the coastal seafood industry agree with these assessments, a majority seem to view the news with a sense of betrayal.

"The cleanup isn't even close to being done," said Karen Hopkins of Dean Blanchard Seafood, which accounts for about 11 percent of the U.S. shrimp supply, on the barrier island of Grand Isle.

"The last thing I want to do is scare anyone away from the seafood down here," said Dawn Nunez, standing at the counter of the shrimp wholesale business and deli she owns in the tiny fishing town of Hopedale. "But if I’m not eating it or feeding it to my children, I can’t advise anyone else to eat it either."

On their dock across the street, Dawn's husband Marty Nunez pulls a clump of oil-ridden marsh grass out of a plastic bag.

"There's people fishing where this is at – or worse than this," he said. "I can't understand how they say things are getting back to normal."

Nunez surreptitiously picked the grass while working as part of BP's Vessels of Opportunity cleanup operation on Monday. For him the oil-soaked grass is a symbol of a lurking threat. Like many other people living along the coast, Nunez is confident that vast quantities of oil remain in the environment, despite highly publicized announcements to the contrary.

"Our fishermen bring home grass and tarballs and then we watch the news and they say there is no sign of oil," said Dawn Nunez. "Where did it go? Where did millions of gallons of oil go if it's not in the Gulf?"

A widely held theory is that the 1.8 million gallons of dispersants that were sprayed during the cleanup operation caused the oil to sink to the bottom.

"I've been working with oil all my life," said Brian Zito, a commercial fisherman on Grand Isle. "Dispersant is like a soap, and if you wash your hands in a bucket your water will be all white and soapy and fine. But let that bucket sit there for a few hours and see what happens – all that oil is going to come back together."

When they start trawling for shrimp or dredging for oysters, fishermen fear that the oil will get stirred up again.

For now that fear is largely untested. Although 5,144 square miles of federal waters affected by the oil spill had been deemed safe as of Tuesday, little of that good news applies to Louisiana. The state's three main fisheries are crab, oysters and shrimp – but the shrimp season doesn't open until next week. And crab and oyster fishing is almost entirely shut down because of the spill, as are most of the nearshore fishing grounds relied on by Louisiana's shrimpers.

But perhaps the biggest problem faced by the state's commercial fishermen is that they don't trust their own product. Even when the government decides they are allowed to fish in the marshes again, many say they are going to wait.

"I know what's out there and I'm not going to mess up my equipment with oil," Zito said in an often-repeated sentiment. "You can't even ride back there in a boat without stirring up tarballs, let alone put a net in the water."

Trawling for shrimp involves dragging a heavy chain, called a tickling chain, across the bottom of the marsh, lake or ocean. Shrimp that live in the muck swim up, and get scooped into the waiting net. And if oil is on the sea floor like the fishermen fear, that will get stirred up as well.

And if there is any contamination of the seafood, there is a very real chance that the individual fishermen could ultimately be held responsible. Past lawsuits filed by restaurant customers have made this possibility seem very real.

"We are going to have to buy product liability insurance on a product that we've never had to worry about before," Hopkins said.

Perhaps because of this, demand for Gulf Coast seafood is down. Marty Nunez said that the processor he has sold to for years called to warn him they wouldn’t be buying his product, should he get any in.

"They can't buy it because they can't sell it," he said. "They can’t even sell Gulf Coast shrimp that they have from last year."

But the fishermen facing this uncertain future stand to lose much more than a job. Many come from families that have hunted, fished and lived in Louisiana's swampy waterways for generations.

"This is a way of life," Nunez said. "It's what we eat, drink and breathe."

President goes for a swim in the Gulf – or does he?

By Guy Adams | Monday, 16 August 2010

President Barack Obama wanted to convince America that the Gulf of Mexico remains open for business. But perhaps he didn't want the world to catch another glimpse of his hairless chest.

So when he and his daughter, Sasha, took a dip in the sea off Florida this weekend, only the White House photographer was allowed to capture proceedings.

The official picture was intended to provide evidence that the region's beaches are back to normal. Yet it soon emerged that the private beach on which it was taken, off Alligator Point in St Andrew Bay, north-west Florida, isn't technically in the gulf.

Cynics complained that the supposed family holiday was more of a whistle-stop press tour. Barack, Michelle and Sasha Obama, plus their dog, Bo, spent just 27 hours in the important swing state. The first family went on a boating trip yesterday that saw them catch a view of local porpoises. On Saturday, they played crazy golf and Sasha, 9, scored a hole-in-one off the first tee.

***

(I don't know, looks like it's in the Gulf to me. I mean, it's in a bay that's almost landlocked but it opens into the the Gulf.--jef)

View Larger Map

Lawsuit alleges Disney, others spied on children’s Web surfing habits

By Daniel Tencer Sunday, August 15th, 2010

Profiles of computer users 'bought and sold on stock-market-like exchanges'

A class-action lawsuit filed in a federal court last week alleges that Disney and other large corporations spied on visitors to their Web sites using "Flash cookies" installed on users' browsers.

The lawsuit, filed in a US District Court in California on behalf of a group of parents and their children, alleges that Clearpsring, a company contracted by Disney, Warner Bros. Records, Playlist.com and other Web site operators, used its AddThis Web page tool to install "Flash cookies" in computer browsers which would then track individual computer users.

According to a report at CNET, the lawsuit states these cookies can't be erased using the usual methods of erasing browser history because they are built on Flash technology. Additionally, SecPoint.com reports that these Flash cookies can even un-delete, or "re-spawn," regular cookies that were erased by the user.

Once installed, these small pieces of software tracked users "across numerous Web sites, even spotting and tracking users when they accessed the Web from different computers, at home and at work," the lawsuit alleges.

"The data could reveal details about a person's financial situation, sexual preference, name, home, and e-mail addresses and telephone numbers," reports Greg Sandoval at CNET. "Perhaps one of the most disturbing charges that plaintiffs make is that health information could also be acquired by these companies."

The suit was filed by the Law Office of Joseph Malley -- the same law firm that last month launched another suit, that one against Clearspring competitor Quantcast, which works with ABC and NBC, among other companies. That lawsuit made similar allegations against Quantcast, saying the company used Flash cookies to invade users' privacy.

An investigation by the Wall Street Journal, published last month, found that about six percent of the cookies installed by major Web sites on people's computers were un-deletable Flash cookies. That information was then used to create detailed profiles of computer users.

"These profiles of individuals, constantly refreshed, are bought and sold on stock-market-like exchanges that have sprung up in the past 18 months," WSJ reported.

The investigation concluded that "the tracking of consumers has grown both far more pervasive and far more intrusive than is realized by all but a handful of people in the vanguard of the industry."

A study from the University of California at Berkeley, published last year, found that, of its sample of major Web sites, more than half used Flash technology to track users. The study even identified government Web sites, such as WhiteHouse.gov, as using questionable tracking methods.

"Earlier litigation has confirmed the right of sites to place cookies, but certain tracking behaviors are still subject to legal questions," the WSJ reports.

The plaintiffs in the Clearpring suit are petitioning to have their lawsuit classified as a class-action. They are seeking unspecified damages, CNET reports.

AT&T claims net neutrality is oppressive

(Oh, poor oppressed multinational corporation! I'm sure the billions of dollars they make once net neutrality is dead will help them forget...--jef)

***

AT&T Says that wireless is different

By Lawrence Latif

Mon Aug 16 2010

US TELECOM AT&T has come out in support of Google's contention that wireless communications are different than wireline Internet services.

Last week Google and Verizon agreed on a deal that left wireless communications free to be carved up by telecoms operators and tiered for commercial exploitation. Given Google's stance as a supporter of net neutrality, it has faced widespread criticism and even had 100 or so demonstrators outside its doors claiming that it had sold out.

Google defended its deal with Verizon by saying that its users simply misunderstood technology and that wireless was somehow different from wired technology. It comes as no big surprise that AT&T has also adopted this patronising position to concur with Google and Verizon, its largest competitor.

The firm claimed that even long term evolution (LTE) networks have only a fraction of the bandwidth found in fibre-optic networks. It also claims that the wireless network companies often "split cells" by installing new towers, but that is restricted by local authorities.

AT&T has come up with a three point action plan that includes the deployment of HSPA+ and LTE networks, using WiFi and microcells and installing even more cell towers.

AT&T said that policy makers can help by "protecting wireless broadband networks from onerous new net neutrality regulations", which it claims is "vital to the continued growth of the industry". Or in other words, net neutrality will limit the profits it can extract from wireless services.

The bare-faced cheek of the company calling net neutrality 'onerous' is a disgrace and simply goes to show how much AT&T and the like care for their paying customers. As we and many others had predicted, Google's deal with Verizon has opened the floodgates for telecoms operators to make ridiculous claims in order to destroy net neutrality and promote their own agenda of what AT&T termed 'continued growth'.

It should also be noted that AT&T's statement made no reference to how its network performance affects its subscribers. Rather it reads like a sob story, except that it's being told by a company that raked in $123 billion in revenues and about 12.5 billion profit last year alone. µ

Lawyer says DOJ ends criminal probe of Tom DeLay

(More proof the system is corrupt.--jef)

***

The Associated Press 8|16|2010

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has ended its six-year criminal probe of the ties between former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and disgraced ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff without filing any criminal charges against the former congressman.

One of DeLay's lawyers, Richard Cullen, said Monday the Justice Department's Office of Public Integrity informed DeLay's legal team early last week that it was ending the investigation.

"Six years is a long time and I'm sure he wishes it had happened years ago," Cullen said of the conclusion of the investigation. Cullen added that "for me, the result trumps the timing."

Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney declined to comment, which is normally the case when the department ends a criminal probe without filing charges.

Separately, DeLay has been indicted in Texas on charges of money laundering and conspiracy allegedly connected to 2002 state legislative elections. That case is pending.

Politico.com first reported on the closing of the U.S. Justice Department's probe of DeLay.

Last year, DeLay, a Republican from Texas, competed on ABC's hit show "Dancing With the Stars." DeLay withdrew from the ABC dance-off in October after being diagnosed with stress fractures in both feet.

Abramoff was released from a minimum-security prison camp in June.

The ex-lobbyist served about 3 1/2 years in prison for fraud, corruption and conspiracy. He spent three days in a halfway house in Baltimore before he was placed in home confinement. Abramoff currently is working in a kosher pizzeria in northwest Baltimore.

Some Democratic candidates distance themselves from Obama

(The rats desert the sinking ship?--jef)

***

By Chris Cillizza
Washington Post Staff Writer 
Monday, August 16, 2010

Fight or flight?

That is the question Democratic incumbents and challengers in this fall's elections are asking themselves when it comes to dealing with President Obama. Is the best course to distance oneself from a president whose job-approval rating has sunk below 50 percent and whose appeal to independents has gone missing? Or to embrace him and his policies -- the majority of which remain quite popular with the Democratic base that will be essential to any victories that the party claims this fall?

Powerful forces are lining up on both sides of that strategic divide.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine made clear in an interview with "Fox & Friends" last week that he thinks candidates distancing themselves from the president -- and from high-profile congressional leaders such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- are making the wrong move. "I can tell you Democrats who kind of are afraid to be who they are, or pushing back on their leaders, I think they're crazy," Kaine said.

And yet, in campaigns across the country, many Democrats are doing just that.

In Indiana, Rep. Joe Donnelly is running a television ad in which he details his generally conservative stance on immigration while images of Obama and Pelosi are shown on screen. "That may not be what the Washington crowd wants, but I don't work for them," Donnelly says in the ad. "I work for you."

Rep. Travis Childers, who represents a district in northern Mississippi where Obama won just 38 percent of the vote in 2008, takes a similar approach in his TV advertising -- promoting the fact that he has "voted against every big budget" since winning a special election two years ago.

Even some Democratic candidates who are being heavily touted by the White House appear determined to keep the president at arm's length. Shortly after Obama played a lead role in helping Sen. Michael Bennet defeat former state House speaker Andrew Romanoff in a Democratic primary fight last Tuesday, Bennet was asked whether he would want the president to campaign with him this fall. "We'll have to see," Bennet told ABC's George Stephanopoulos -- a response well short of a ringing endorsement of Obama's political standing.

One senior Democratic consultant suggested that the distance candidates are seeking to put between themselves and Obama is reflective of the ascendance of economic issues in voters' minds. "Barack Obama's economic policy of spending our way out of recession is seen as a failure at best and harmful at worst," the source said. "That should tell candidates in competitive jurisdictions all they need to know about running with the president."

Polling on the issue is slightly less stark. In a recent Washington Post-ABC News survey, 51 percent said it was more important to have Republicans in charge of Congress "to act as a check on Obama" while 43 percent said they would rather have Democrats in charge to "help support Obama's policies."

Although it appears as though most candidates won't be following Kaine's advice in the final three months of the midterm campaign, it's far less clear whether any Democrat -- particularly those who have spent the past two years in Congress -- can succeed in gaining separation from the president.

"Even if it made strategic sense, it is hard for Democratic incumbents with a voting record to literally distance themselves from the president," said Democratic pollster Fred Yang.

Obama himself has long argued behind closed doors that Democratic incumbents are stuck with him in good times and in bad; that is, voters simply will not differentiate between the Democratic president and their Democratic member of Congress in the vast majority of districts across the country.

By embracing the president and his policies, the argument goes, the Democratic base will be fired up. And, in midterm elections, base intensity isn't everything -- it's the only thing.

But Tom Davis, a former congressman from Virginia and one of the Republican Party's leading strategists, noted that although Democrats need the "Obama turnout model in urban and minority areas," the president is "radioactive" in the "South, border and mountain states." That push and pull creates a "dilemma" for Democrats on the ballot this fall, Davis said.

Martin Frost, a longtime Texas Democratic congressman who, like Davis, spent much of his time in Washington focused on campaigns, said that while "candidates in the South and Midwest will need to put some distance between themselves and Obama," the president can still help his party avoid disaster this fall.

"Obama's best contribution to the campaign will be to raise money for the party committees, as he did in Texas" recently, Frost said. "He can raise big money even in red states, and he shouldn't be offended when Democrats like Bill White and Chet Edwards don't show up for a photo," he said, referring to the party's candidate for Texas governor and a congressman from the state, respectively.

North Korea vows ‘severest punishment’ if war games go on as planned

By Agence France-Presse | Sunday, August 15th, 2010

North Korea's military threatened Sunday to launch the "severest punishment" against South Korea for staging massive joint war games with the United States this week.

The North's army and people will "deal a merciless counterblow" to the allies "as it had already resolved and declared at home and abroad", a spokesman for the country's army General Staff said in a statement published by state media.

"The military counteraction of (North Korea) will be the severest punishment no one has ever met in the world," he said.

The warning came a day before US and South Korean troops begin the 10-day computerised war games called "Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG)".

About 30,000 US soldiers will take part in the exercise, a US military spokesman said, adding an unspecified number of American soldiers based in the United States would join in via computer networks.

Some 56,000 South Korean soldiers will be mobilised for the war games, a defence ministry spokesman said.

In a message posted on a US military website, General Walter Sharp, who heads some 28,500 US troops based in the South, described the exercise as "one of the largest joint staff directed theatre exercises in the world."

A separate security drill involving South Korean government officials and soldiers will be held during the period, Yonhap news agency said.

This week's exercise is one of a series planned by the South -- either alone or jointly with the United States -- in the aftermath of the sinking of a South Korean warship in March.

The North has angrily denied responsibility for the sinking, which killed 46 sailors and sharply raised tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Last month South Korea and the United States held a massive joint naval and air drill in the Sea of Japan (East Sea), which were opposed by Beijing.

A week ago South Korea ended its largest-ever anti-submarine drill including live-fire training near the disputed Yellow Sea border.

The war manoeuvres including the UFG exercise "represent the phase of practical actions aimed at a full-dressed military invasion", the North's spokesman said.

"The more recklessly the warmongers persist in the war rackets as a result of wrong policy option, the faster and deeper they will fall into the grave of self-destruction," he said.

China also issued a warning Friday that a US decision to use a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in joint drills with the South constitutes a "fresh provocation" to China and its neighbours.

In a commentary published in the official China Daily, Rear Admiral Yang Yi said Washington would "pay a costly price for its muddled decision" to participate in further drills near Chinese territory over Beijing's objection.

Yang also warned it was "inadvisable" to push a country of 1.3 billion people, noting that there was instead wide scope for US-China naval cooperation should Washington choose the route of caution.

Last week, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said future joint US-South Korea drills would involve the nuclear-powered USS George Washington in the Yellow Sea.

China is North Korea's closest ally and trade partner and Beijing has refused to join in international condemnation of Pyongyang for the sinking of a South Korean warship.

Iran will build uranium enrichment centers, nuclear chief says

(I have to question the timing of this.--jef)

***

By the CNN Wire Staff | August 16, 2010

Tehran, Iran (CNN) -- Iran plans to begin construction of 10 uranium enrichment centers across the country by next year, state-run media is quoting Iran's nuclear chief as saying.

After a cabinet meeting Sunday, Ali Akbar Salehi told IRIB, a state network, that work on one of the centers will be started by March 2011.

Over the weekend, a top Iranian lawmaker defended his nation's right to enrich uranium in the future after Iran and Russia confirmed that Russians will start loading a nuclear reactor in the Islamic republic with fuel next week.

The August 21 arrival of fuel at the Bushehr facility, which Iran says will create atomic energy but other nations fear could be used for nuclear weapons, marks a key step toward its completion, Russia said Saturday, according to Iranian media.

The progress prompted the White House to question Iran continuing to enrich uranium within its borders, even as the project with Russia moves closer to completion.

"Russia is providing the fuel, and taking the fuel back out," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Friday.

"It, quite clearly, I think, underscores that Iran does not need its own enrichment capability if its intentions, as it states, are for a peaceful nuclear program," he said.

Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, responded Saturday by saying that Moscow will supply enriched uranium for the Bushehr plant as Iran plans to build a dozen more nuclear plants in the future, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

"We in the parliament have tasked the government with producing 20,000 megawatts of nuclear electricity. That means setting up 20 power plants like Bushehr," said Boroujerdi. "To supply the fuel needed for these power plants ... we should carry out (uranium) enrichment and we are doing it," he said.

The head of Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency will visit Iran next week, Fars reported Friday. A Russian group is already in Iran to make the necessary arrangements for his arrival.

"This event will symbolize that the period of testing is over and the stage of physical start-up has begun," said Sergei Novikov, spokesman for Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency.

The reactor in the western Iranian port city of Bushehr will be operational by the third week of September, Fars said, though Novikov said the plant will not be ready to produce energy for another six months.

The United States has urged Russia to wait, saying more evidence is needed that Iran doesn't plan to use the site to make weapons.

Novikov said the fuel's arrival and loading into the plant will be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"The IAEA inspectors will remove seals from containers with nuclear fuel, examine it," he said. "The fuel will be then transferred into a special storage facility. And when the Iranian nuclear watchdog agency gives its permission, the fuel will be loaded into the reactor."

Western corporations began the Bushehr facility in the 1970s but after the Iranian revolutions, the Islamic regime looked to Russia to complete the $800 million nuclear facility.

Iran has maintained all along that the site will produce energy, but the United States and other international observers remain unconvinced.

Earlier this month, the United States extended sanctions against Iran, saying it was targeting a number of Iranian businesses and groups accused of helping organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Taliban.

In June, the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions targeting the country's nuclear and missile programs -- identifying more than 20 companies and several individuals allegedly involved with those programs.

Record Five Million Sites Were Likely Infected By Hacked Web Widget

by Andy Greenberg, Aug. 16, 2010

Cybercriminals tend to seek economies of scale: the easiest attack with the largest number of victims. Now one scheme may have set a new record for efficient exploitation: one web-based hack that infected as many as five million individual websites.

Over the weekend, Wayne Huang, a researcher at cybersecurity firm Armorize, detected what may be the largest-ever collection of sites invisibly attempting to download malware to users’ PCs, thanks to just one widget that was compromised by hackers. That widget–an embeddable survey called the “Small Business Success Index”–was injected with malicious code aimed at installing a variant of the Koobface worm.

According to Huang, that infected site element was automatically included on every ”parked” domain–default registered sites that haven’t been updated–created by popular hosting provider Network Solutions. And a search on Yahoo! for a few search strings listed only on those parked domains revealed the total size of the infection: as many as five million individual sites.

Huang and others at Armorize hand-checked about 200 of Network Solutions’ parked sites and found that every one carried the Small Business Success Index widget, along with the Koobface variant. “These are just parked domains, but this is a record for sure,” says Huang. “It’s definitely a new type of attack.”

Huang alerted Network Solutions to the problem over the weekend and the hosting provider has removed the widget on its parked domains. Many more pages hosting the widget may still be infected–the survey box could also be installed on other platforms including Google’s Blogger platform, Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook.

Here’s a video Huang made to demonstrate his findings. Though he describes a pop-up window impersonating Chinese chat software QQ, that element of the attack only applies to users based in Taiwan and China, where Huang himself is based. The Koobface download happens without a pop-up window. “You view the page and you’re infected,” Huang says. “No clicks whatsoever.”

This isn’t Armorize’s first warning about the malicious widget. The company found in May that Boingboing.com, a site typosquatting on a similar domain to the popular blog BoingBoing.net, was downloading malware to users’ machines. That means the Small Business Success hack has probably existed for several months at least.

Armorize says the Koobface malware he found monitors a user’s browser activity and what sites they search, sometimes loading pop-up ads based on their search terms. It also “phoned home” to a command-and-control server that would allow it to be updated for other purposes.

Huang hasn’t fully analyzed what software is targeted by the attack, though he says a test PC running Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6 was vulnerable. Uploading the malware to the antivirus analysis site VirusTotal showed that only 21 out of 42 antivirus vendors are capable of spotting the malware.

Though this attack has largely been contained, Huang warns that attacking hosting providers like Network Solutions may be an increasingly common trick to spray malware at a high volume of targets. “It’s a very efficient way to infect a very large number of domains,” says Huang. “This is definitely one of the biggest mass scale drive-by-download attacks that we’ve seen.”

Special-Interest Spending Surges in State Supreme Court Campaigns

(And how does the current situation stay this way or get worse? By buying judges in the court system.--jef)

***

by Dan Eggen  |  Monday, August 16, 2010 by The Washington Post

While Washington politicians argue over the role of money in federal elections, a growing number of states are starting to grapple with their own challenge: a tide of special-interest money flowing into local judicial races.

An exhaustive study scheduled to be released Monday shows that spending on state Supreme Court elections has more than doubled over the past 10 years, to $207 million, mirroring the surge in contributions and expenditures for other kinds of political races during the same period.

The report, produced by a trio of nonpartisan policy groups, found that much of the increase has been fueled by outside groups funding attack ads of the kind commonly found in partisan races for the White House, Congress or governors' mansions. Industry groups, trial lawyers and others are increasingly targeting specific judges for removal over rulings that hurt their financial bottom line, the report shows.

The findings come amid mounting evidence that 2010 is likely to mark a new watershed for spending in a midterm election year. The study also underscores a growing debate in legal and political circles over the influence of campaign money in judicial races, particularly in 22 states where top judges face challengers or 16 others that hold "retention" elections for judges.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has joined her former colleague Sandra Day O'Connor in calling on states to give up the practice of electing judges, arguing that raising campaign money and promising outcomes on the bench is antithetical to a fair judicial system.

In an introduction to the new report -- produced jointly by the Brennan Center for Justice, the National Institute on Money in State Politics and the Justice at Stake Campaign -- O'Connor says the growing influence of special interests is undermining public confidence in the courts. "Left unaddressed, the perception that justice is for sale will undermine the rule of law that the courts are supposed to uphold," O'Connor wrote.

The debate over judicial elections comes amid a flurry of defeats for proponents of campaign finance restrictions, including a U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to spend an unlimited amount of money on political races.

Interest groups and political parties on both sides have already begun ramping up spending on key state court races in Alabama and Michigan. In Iowa, conservative activists are targeting justices involved in the state's decision to legalize gay marriage.

The new study shows that total spending in state Supreme Court contests has rocketed from less than $6 million at the start of the 1990s to more than $45 million during the 2008 election cycle. Much of the activity is focused in a handful of states with open elections for their high courts, including Alabama, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Texas, the data show.

The spending is driven in part by outside interest groups on the right, such as the Chamber of Commerce and its affiliates, and on the left, including unions and trial attorneys.

In perhaps the best-known recent example, the chief executive of Massey Coal Co. spent $3 million to help elect a West Virginia high-court judge, who then participated in a case overturning a $50 million verdict against the company. The case led to a landmark ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, which found that excessive campaign contributions can create an unconstitutional threat to a fair trial.

"What you've got now is an industrialized apparatus to turn high-court races into arms races," said Bert Brandenburg, executive director of Justice at Stake.

"There's an instinct among the public that courts are supposed to be different than the rest of the government, at least somewhat. The question is whether the courts can stay impartial if they become overwhelmed with cash," Brandenburg said.

In Wisconsin, a pair of high-profile contests in 2007 and 2008 attracted millions from outside groups focused on whether to curb lawsuits and damages awards. Those on the winning side in both races included the conservative Club for Growth, while organized labor and progressive groups spent heavily on the losers, the study shows.

The influx of hardball politicking prompted Wisconsin to enact public financing of its Supreme Court races in 2009, a system that is now under challenge in the courts.

Jeff Patch, spokesman for the Center for Competitive Politics, which is challenging the Wisconsin system, says complaints about spending on judicial races are overblown.

The group does not take a position on whether states should hold judicial elections, but those that do must not limit the free-speech rights of voters or candidates, he said.

"Part of our argument is that there isn't a different First Amendment standard for judicial campaigns," Patch said.