New study says online piracy isn’t hurting entertainment industry

By Eric Pfeiffer, Yahoo News October 3, 2013

For years, the entertainment industry has argued that online piracy has devastated business for movies, music and gaming.

But a new policy brief from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) says that not only does piracy not hurt the creative industry but it is actually helping.

Millions of people across the globe illegally access copyrighted material on a daily basis. The most common method of digital pirating is through torrent sites, which let an individual download and upload content through a peer-to-peer file-sharing system.

Individuals in the U.S. who are found guilty of violating digital piracy laws can face severe legal penalties, including a felony record, five years in prison and $250,000 in penalties.

In the briefing, authors Bart Cammaerts, Robin Mansell and Bingchun Meng call on governments to re-evaluate their antipiracy laws to include data from studies beyond those directly sponsored by the entertainment industry itself.

“Contrary to the industry claims, the music industry is not in terminal decline, but still holding ground and showing healthy profits. Revenues from digital sales, subscription services, streaming and live performances compensate for the decline in revenues from the sale of CDs or records,” Cammaerts said in report carried by the site TorrrentFreak.

In a separate story, TorrentFreak says that independent data actually suggests that those who pirate content are also more likely to spend their money on film, music and gaming content.

A June 2013 study found that roughly 45 percent of all Americans pirate copyrighted content on a regular basis, including 70 percent of those under 30.

In the LSE report’s key messages, the authors say that evidence does not back up claims that individual cases of copyright infringement are affecting entertainment industry revenues, that antipiracy laws around the world are not achieving their desired impacts and that governments should update their policies to include more evidence from a diverse set of sources.

“Despite the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) claim that online piracy is devastating the movie industry, Hollywood achieved record-breaking global box office revenues of $35 billion in 2012, a 6% increase over 2011,” the report states.

And while music sales have faced steeper declines in recent years, the authors say those numbers have largely been balanced out by increased sales in live performance and other outlets.

“The music industry may be stagnating, but the drastic decline in revenues warned of by the lobby associations of record labels is not in evidence,” the authors write.

Interestingly, in the same Columbia University study, which found that nearly half of all U.S. Internet users pirate copyrighted material, nearly half of those individuals say they would willingly pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to multimedia content.

And the LSE study authors say that is one possible solution for the entertainment industry going forward as a way to bridge the gap between content providers and consumers.

“Within the creative industries there is a variety of views on the best way to benefit from online sharing practices, and how to innovate to generate revenue streams in ways that do not fit within the existing copyright enforcement regime,” the authors conclude.

“When both [the creative industries and citizens] can exploit the full potential of the Internet, this will maximize innovative content creation for the benefit of all stakeholders.”

ObamaCare: Worse Than Doing Nothing?

Keeping the Insurance Companies in Command by RUSSELL MOKHIBER


That’s the conclusion of single payer advocate Dr. Quentin Young, national coordinator for Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), in his just released autobiography – Everybody In, Nobody Out: Memoirs of a Rebel Without a Pause.

“Had I been in Congress, I would have unequivocally voted against Obamacare,” Young writes. “It’s a bad bill. Whether it’s worse than what we have now could be argued. We rather think because of its ability to enshrine and solidify the corporate domination of the health system, it’s worse than what we have now. But whether it is somewhat better or a lot worse is immaterial. The health system isn’t working in this country — fiscally, medically, socially, morally.”

Young rejects the idea that President Obama should have compromised on single payer in the face of industry opposition.

“I don’t have any sympathy for the idea that the president had to compromise because his opposition was strong,” Young writes. “Winning is not always winning the election. Winning is making a huge fight and then taking the fight to the people — re-electing people who are supporting your program and defeating those who aren’t.”

Young first met the young Barack Obama in the mid-1990s at social gatherings.

At the time, Obama was lecturing at the University of Chicago Law School and practicing law.

“We did not become bosom buddies after a few of these social gatherings — I just viewed him as a nice, bright guy living in the neighborhood,” Young says.

When Obama ran for the Illinois Senate, Young supported him.

“I was happy with his views on health care,” Young writes. “He recognized that major reform was necessary and indicated support for a single-payer approach. No blushing friend, I took every opportunity to solidify his position. While not an official adviser, I tried to influence him as much as I could. My colleagues and I sent him notes touting the advantages of single-payer and the form it might take and talked with him and his staff about it whenever I had the chance.”

“I felt I did influence him,” Young said.

When Obama ran for the Senate in 2003, Obama told the Illinois AFL-CIO:

“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”

But just a year later, Obama had flipped and came out against single payer in Illinois.

“I was very disappointed by his move to the right to keep the insurance companies in command,” Young told the Springfield State Journal Register in 2004. “I’m not accusing him of lying or misconduct. I’m accusing him of a lack of courage.”

But despite Obama’s “lack of courage,” Young supported Obama in his run for U.S. Senate and later for president. Young was just setting himself up for more disappointment.

At a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in August 2009, Obama was asked whether he supported a universal health care plan.

“First of all, I want to make a distinction between a universal plan versus a single-payer plan, because those are two different things,” Obama said.

“A single-payer plan would be a plan like Medicare for all, or the kind of plan that they have in Canada, where basically government is the only person — is the only entity that pays for all health care. Everybody has a government-paid-for plan, even though in, depending on which country, the doctors are still private or the hospitals might still be private. In some countries, the doctors work for the government and the hospitals are owned by the government. But the point is, is that government pays for everything, like Medicare for all. That is a single-payer plan.”

“I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter because, frankly, we historically have had a employer-based system in this country with private insurers, and for us to transition to a system like that I believe would be too disruptive. So what would end up happening would be, a lot of people who currently have employer-based health care would suddenly find themselves dropped, and they would have to go into an entirely new system that had not been fully set up yet. And I would be concerned about the potential destructiveness of that kind of transition.”

“All right? So I’m not promoting a single-payer plan,” Obama said.

In March 2010, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — by a narrow margin.

“PNHP’s policy experts did a line-by-line examination of the bill and, while acknowledging that it contains some modest benefits that make changes around the edges of our existing system, basically gave it two thumbs down,” Young writes. “To this day, much to the chagrin of many of our friends who wanted reform, I remain adamant in my rejection of Obamacare.”

“Why? We want a system that excludes the private insurance companies,” Young writes. “ We demand such exclusion not because these companies are good or evil (although we think they’re pretty evil). Rather, the reason to exclude them is that they don’t address the needs of the American people.”

Young also rejects the idea of a “public option,” pushed by Democrats such as Howard Dean. A public option “would not have made any significant difference on the overall impact” of Obamacare “contrary to the view of many progressive who believed that it would,” Young says.

“Since WWII, we have learned a lot about disease and certainly have had dramatic improvements in what we can do,” Young writes. “I’m talking about surgery of the heart, vaccination, nutrition issues. All these things have been largely defined in the last half-century. We’ve had something approaching a 12-year life expectancy rise just from scientific intervention.”

“We have all this knowledge, all these options, but we have a very backward financing and delivery system and the result is a great deal of human suffering,” Young says. “And that’s why we remain opposed to the Affordable Care Act. We think we have a winning proposition despite the reality in Congress. Polls repeatedly vindicate our position. A solid majority of the public and 59 percent of doctors support the single payer approach.”

“President Obama could have made it happen,” Young says. “He could have stuck to all the virtues of single payer. And I won’t deny he may have been defeated in the first round. There’s no question that this fight has been dirty and it’s going to get dirtier.”

Yellowstone Supervolcano Alert: The Most Dangerous Volcano In America Is Roaring To Life

take this with a grain of salt, but better to know than not to know...


October 7, 2013

Right now, the ground underneath Yellowstone National Park is rising at a record rate. In fact, it is rising at the rate of about three inches per year. The reason why this is such a concern is because underneath the park sits the Yellowstone supervolcano – the largest volcano in North America. Scientists tell us that it is inevitable that it will erupt again one day, and when it does the devastation will be almost unimaginable. A full-blown eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano would dump a 10 foot deep layer of volcanic ash up to 1,000 miles away, and it would render much of the United States uninhabitable. When most Americans think of Yellowstone, they tend to conjure up images of Yogi Bear and “Old Faithful”, but the truth is that sleeping underneath Yellowstone is a volcanic beast that could destroy our nation in a single day and now that beast is starting to wake up.

From The End of the American Dream:

The Yellowstone supervolcano is so vast that it is hard to put it into words. According to the Daily Mail, the magma “hotspot” underneath Yellowstone is approximately 300 miles wide…

• The Yellowstone Caldera is one of nature’s most awesome creations and sits atop North America’s largest volcanic field.
• Its name means ‘cooking pot’ or ‘cauldron’ and it is formed when land collapses following a volcanic explosion.
• In Yellowstone, some 400 miles beneath the Earth’s surface is a magma ‘hotspot’ which rises to 30 miles underground before spreading out over an area of 300 miles across.
• Atop this, but still beneath the surface, sits the slumbering volcano.

When most Americans think of volcanic eruptions in the United States, they remember the catastrophic eruption of Mount St. Helens back in 1980. But that eruption would not even be worth comparing to a full-blown eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano.

And now the area around Yellowstone is becoming increasingly seismically active. In fact, Professor Bob Smith says that he has never seen anything like this in the 53 years that he has been watching Yellowstone…

Until recently, Bob Smith had never witnessed two simultaneous earthquake swarms in his 53 years of monitoring seismic activity in and around the Yellowstone Caldera.

Now, Smith, a University of Utah geophysics professor, has seen three swarms at once.

In September, 130 earthquakes hit Yellowstone over the course of a single week. This has got many Yellowstone observers extremely concerned…

Yellowstone’s recent earthquake swarms started on Sept. 10 and were shaking until about 11:30 a.m. Sept. 16.

“A total of 130 earthquakes of magnitude 0.6 to 3.6 have occurred in these three areas, however, most have occurred in the Lower Geyser Basin,” a University of Utah statement said. “Notably much of seismicity in Yellowstone occurs as swarms.

So what is the worst case scenario?

Well, according to the Daily Mail, a full-blown eruption of Yellowstone could leave two-thirds of the United States completely uninhabitable…

• It would explode with a force a thousand times more powerful than the Mount St Helens eruption in 1980.
• Spewing lava far into the sky, a cloud of plant-killing ash would fan out and dump a layer 10ft deep up to 1,000 miles away.
• Two-thirds of the U.S. could become uninhabitable as toxic air sweeps through it, grounding thousands of flights and forcing millions to leave their homes.

That is why what is going on at Yellowstone right now is so important, and the American people deserve the truth. The following are some more facts about Yellowstone that I compiled that I included in a previous article

#1 A full-scale eruption of Yellowstone could be up to 1,000 time more powerful than the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980.
#2 A full-scale eruption of Yellowstone would spew volcanic ash 25 miles up into the air.
#3 The next eruption of Yellowstone seems to be getting closer with each passing year.  Since 2004, some areas of Yellowstone National Park have risen by as much as 10 inches.
#4 There are approximately 3,000 earthquakes in the Yellowstone area every single year.
#5 In the event of a full-scale eruption of Yellowstone, virtually the entire northwest United States will be completely destroyed.
#6 A massive eruption of Yellowstone would mean that just about everything within a 100 mile radius of Yellowstone would be immediately killed.
#7 A full-scale eruption of Yellowstone could also potentially dump a layer of volcanic ash that is at least 10 feet deep up to 1,000 miles away.
#8 A full-scale eruption of Yellowstone would cover virtually the entire midwest United States with volcanic ash.  Food production in America would be almost totally wiped out.
#9 The “volcanic winter” that a massive Yellowstone eruption would cause would radically cool the planet.  Some scientists believe that global temperatures would decline by up to 20 degrees.
#10 America would never be the same again after a massive Yellowstone eruption.  Some scientists believe that a full eruption by Yellowstone would render two-thirds of the United States completely uninhabitable.
#11 Scientists tell us that it is not a matter of “if” Yellowstone will erupt but rather “when” the next inevitable eruption will take place

What makes all of this even more alarming is that a number of other very prominent volcanoes around the world are starting to roar back to life right now as well.

For example, an Inquisitr article from back in July described how “the most dangerous volcano in Mexico” is starting to become extremely active…

Popocatepetl Volcano is at it again. The active volcano near Mexico City erupted again this morning, spewing ash up into the sky.

The volcano is currently in the middle of an extremely active phase. According to the International Business Times, the volcano has registered 39 exhalations in the last 24 hours.

An eruption earlier this month caused several flights to be canceled in and out of Mexico City.

The BBC notes that officials raised the alert level yellow following Popocateptl’s eruption on Saturday morning. Yellow is the third-highest caution level on the city’s seven step scale.

And an NBC News article from August noted that one of the most dangerous volcanoes in Japan has erupted 500 times so far this year…

Ash wafted as high as 3 miles above the Sakurajima volcano in the southern city of Kagoshima on Sunday afternoon, forming its highest plume since the Japan Meteorological Agency started keeping records in 2006. Lava flowed just over half a mile from the fissure, and several huge volcanic rocks rolled down the mountainside.

Though the eruption was more massive than usual, residents of the city of about 600,000 are used to hearing from their 3,664-foot neighbor. Kagoshima officials said in a statement that this was Sakurajima’s 500th eruption this year alone.

Obama’s War on Whistleblowers

Obama signed both the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, expanding whistleblower protections, in November 2012, and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) furthering these protections in January 2013. His NDAA signing statement, however, undermines these protections, stating that those expanded protections “could be interpreted in a manner that would interfere with my authority to manage and direct executive branch officials.” Thus, in his signing statement, Obama promised to ignore expanded whistleblower protections if they conflicted with his power to “supervise, control, and correct employees’ communications with the Congress in cases where such communications would be unlawful or would reveal information that is properly privileged or otherwise confidential.”

Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the Obama administration is targeting government whistleblowers, having invoked the otherwise dormant Espionage Act of 1917 seven times. The Obama justice department has also used the Intelligence Identities Protection Act to obtain a conviction against Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) whistleblower John Kiriakou for exposing the waterboarding of prisoners, ironically making Kiriakou the first CIA official to be sentenced to prison in connection with the torture program. The justice department charged former National Security Agency senior executive Thomas Drake with espionage for exposing hundreds of millions of dollars of waste.

The highly visible prosecution of Bradley Manning has become what some may argue to be the most effective deterrent for government whistleblowers. Manning admitted to leaking troves of classified documents to WikiLeaks, but pleaded not guilty on counts of espionage.

 ~~###~~

Why Is Obama Bashing a Whistleblower Law He Already Signed?

In a signing statement, the president criticized—and perhaps undermined—a law intended to protect whistleblowers.
By Dana Liebelson

Remember that scene in Mean Girls where Regina George, the blonde queen bee, tells a classmate, "I love your skirt, where did you get it?" but then says, "That is the ugliest fucking skirt I've ever seen," behind the other teen's back? President Barack Obama might have just pulled a similar stunt with the whistleblower community.

Obama signed a new law expanding whistleblower protections for some government employees in November, and on January 2, he signed the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, which extends similar protections to defense contractors who expose waste and corruption. But the NDAA signing came with a caveat that blindsided the bill's backers and has some in the whistleblower community up in arms: In a signing statement, Obama wrote that the bill's whistleblowing protections "could be interpreted in a manner that would interfere with my authority to manage and direct executive branch officials," and he promised to ignore them if they conflicted with his power to "supervise, control, and correct employees' communications with the Congress in cases where such communications would be unlawful or would reveal information that is properly privileged or otherwise confidential."

"12 million contractors are going to be out in the cold because of this," warns Jesselyn Radack, the national security and human rights director for the Government Accountability Project and a former whistleblower. "Asking employees to go to their boss before going to Congress defeats the purpose of blowing the whistle." Radack adds that presidents "use signing statements to direct their subordinates on how to interpret and administer a law, and it can have substantial legal impact." She points to George W. Bush's signing statements on torture and the USA PATRIOT Act as examples, both of which allowed the former president to dodge parts of those laws.

"The language Obama used wasn't defined, it's completely ambiguous, and it's already led to confusion," says Angela Canterbury, director of public policy at the Project on Government Oversight. "I can imagine contractors claiming that disclosures made by whistleblowers are 'confidential,' and I think it could likely have a chilling effect."

Peter Van Buren, a former foreign service officer who wrote a book exposing contracting waste in Iraq (and was hassled by the State Department as a result) tells Mother Jones the signing statement "is merely another expression of [the Obama] administration's hostile policy toward all whistleblowers…It disappoints me, and devalues my own efforts to bring transparency to the government."

Obama didn't alert either Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who backed the protections, nor Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), one of the bill's sponsors, that the signing statement was coming, according to reports in the Huffington Post and the Washington Post. In a press release, Speier called Obama's signing statement "deeply disturbing," and warned it could potentially undo the language meant to protect contractor whistleblowers.

Obama has been accused of treating lawful whistleblowers like illegal leakers. His administration has wielded the World War I-era Espionage Act against more federal workers than all other presidents combined. Targets of Obama's crackdown have ranged from Thomas Drake, a former senior executive at the National Security Administration who helped expose hundreds of millions of dollars in waste on a government contract, and John Kiriakou, a former CIA agent who spoke out publicly about waterboarding and is facing prison time.

Other whistleblowers and whistleblower advocates are more optimistic—they're unhappy with the signing statement, but say they're glad they got new legal protections. "Obama's signing statement was rhetorical fluff," argues Tom Devine, the legal director of the Government Accountability Project (GAP). "Obama made no reference to restricting the law, or any type of enforcement against whistleblowers."

"It seems he is saying exactly what a good politician and president should say," argues Kathryn Bolkovac, who exposed human trafficking in Bosnia while serving on the UN Police Task Force (and inspired the movie The Whistleblower). "I am sure it will at times limit his authority, as it should when a conflict of interest may arise regarding executive officials who could potentially be involved, but I see that as a positive."

The new law could help whistleblowers like Bolkovac, who was fired for her disclosures, by creating safe channels for police officers stationed in United Nations peacekeeping areas who report on illegal activity. (Bolkvoac does acknowledge, however, that "private corporations like the one who employed me still have ways of intimidating their employees.") According to GAP, the law will affect about 12 million contractors and will work to protect the $1.9 trillion spent every year on outsourcing. Nonfederal workers can already file lawsuits on behalf of the government, but this law would permanently extend protections to all employees of defense contractors and subcontractors (and temporarily for other contractors, as part of a pilot program).

One thing the law doesn't do, however, is extend those same rights to contractors in the intelligence community, an exclusion that Devine calls "inexcusable."

Radack says that the continued exclusion of the intelligence community from whistleblower protections, in addition to the president's signing statement, demonstrates that "Obama is still giving whistleblowers baby pats on the head while screwing us on the other side."

But Canterbury says it's still "not definitively clear" yet what the impact of Obama's signing statement will be. "It's going to be incredibly important for Congress to conduct rigorous oversight to ensure the law is not weakened," she says.

 ~~###~~

Kiriakou and Stuxnet: the danger of the still-escalating Obama whistleblower war
The only official punished for the illegal NSA program was the one who discussed it. The same is now true of torture
Glenn Greenwald
theguardian.com


The permanent US national security state has used extreme secrecy to shield its actions from democratic accountability ever since its creation after World War II. But those secrecy powers were dramatically escalated in the name of 9/11 and the War on Terror, such that most of what the US government now does of any significance is completely hidden from public knowledge. Two recent events - the sentencing last week of CIA torture whistleblower John Kirikaou to 30 months in prison and the invasive investigation to find the New York Times' source for its reporting on the US role in launching cyberwarfare at Iran - demonstrate how devoted the Obama administration is not only to maintaining, but increasing, these secrecy powers.

When WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic cables in 2010, government defenders were quick to insist that most of those documents were banal and uninteresting. And that's true: most (though by no means all) of those cables contained nothing of significance. That, by itself, should have been a scandal. All of those documents were designated as "secret", making it a crime for government officials to reveal their contents - despite how insignificant most of it was. That revealed how the US government reflexively - really automatically - hides anything and everything it does behind this wall of secrecy: they have made it a felony to reveal even the most inconsequential and pedestrian information about its actions.

This is why whistleblowing - or, if you prefer, unauthorized leaks of classified information - has become so vital to preserving any residual amounts of transparency. Given how subservient the federal judiciary is to government secrecy claims, it is not hyperbole to describe unauthorized leaks as the only real avenue remaining for learning about what the US government does - particularly for discovering the bad acts it commits. That is why the Obama administration is waging an unprecedented war against it - a war that continually escalates - and it is why it is so threatening.

To understand the Obama White House's obsession with punishing leaks - as evidenced by its historically unprecedented war on whistleblowers - just consider how virtually every significant revelation of the bad acts of the US government over the last decade came from this process. Unauthorized leaks are how we learned about the Bush administration's use of torture, the NSA's illegal eavesdropping on Americans without the warrants required by the criminal law, the abuses at Abu Ghraib, the secret network of CIA "black sites" beyond the reach of law or human rights monitoring, the targeting by Obama of a US citizen for assassination without due process, the re-definition of "militant" to mean "any military age male in a strike zone", the video of a US Apache helicopter gunning down journalists and rescuers in Baghdad, the vastly under-counted civilians deaths caused by the war in Iraq, and the Obama administration's campaign to pressure Germany and Spain to cease criminal investigations of the US torture regime.

In light of this, it should not be difficult to understand why the Obama administration is so fixated on intimidating whistleblowers and going far beyond any prior administration - including those of the secrecy-obsessed Richard Nixon and George W Bush - to plug all leaks. It's because those methods are the only ones preventing the US government from doing whatever it wants in complete secrecy and without any accountability of any kind.

Silencing government sources is the key to disabling investigative journalism and a free press. That is why the New Yorker's Jane Mayer told whistleblowing advocate Jesselyn Radack last April: "when our sources are prosecuted, the news-gathering process is criminalized, so it's incumbent upon all journalists to speak up."

Indeed, if you talk to leading investigative journalists they will tell you that the Obama war on whistleblowers has succeeded in intimidating not only journalists' sources but also investigative journalists themselves. Just look at the way the DOJ has pursued and threatened with prison one of the most accomplished and institutionally protected investigative journalists in the country - James Risen - and it's easy to see why the small amount of real journalism done in the US, most driven by unauthorized leaks, is being severely impeded. This morning's Washington Post article on the DOJ's email snooping to find the NYT's Stuxnet source included this anonymous quote: "People are feeling less open to talking to reporters given this uptick. There is a definite chilling effect in government due to these investigations."

For authoritarians who view assertions of government power as inherently valid and government claims as inherently true, none of this will be bothersome. Under that mentality, if the government decrees that something shall be secret, then it should be secret, and anyone who defies that dictate should be punished as a felon - or even a traitor. That view is typically accompanied by the belief that we can and should trust our leaders to be good and do good even if they exercise power in the dark, so that transparency is not only unnecessary but undesirable.

But the most basic precepts of human nature, political science, and the American founding teach that power exercised in the dark will be inevitably abused. Secrecy is the linchpin of abuse of power. That's why those who wield political power are always driven to destroy methods of transparency. About this fact, Thomas Jefferson wrote in an 1804 letter to John Tyler [emphasis added]:

"Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues of truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is freedom of the press. It is therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions."

About all that, Yale law professor David A Schultz observed: "For Jefferson, a free press was the tool of public criticism. It held public officials accountable, opening them up to the judgment of people who could decide whether the government was doing good or whether it had anything to hide. . . . A democratic and free society is dependent upon the media to inform."

There should be no doubt that destroying this method of transparency - not protection of legitimate national security secrets- is the primary effect, and almost certainly the intent, of this unprecedented war on whistleblowers. Just consider the revelations that have prompted the Obama DOJ's war on whistleblowers, whereby those who leak are not merely being prosecuted, but threatened with decades or even life in prison for "espionage" or "aiding the enemy".

Does anyone believe it would be better if we remained ignorant about the massive waste, corruption and illegality plaguing the NSA's secret domestic eavesdropping program (Thomas Drake); or the dangerously inept CIA effort to infiltrate the Iranian nuclear program but which ended up assisting that program (Jeffrey Sterling); or the overlooking of torture squads in Iraq, the gunning down of journalists and rescuers in Baghdad, or the pressure campaign to stop torture investigations in Spain and Germany (Bradley Manning); or the decision by Obama to wage cyberwar on Iran, which the Pentagon itself considers an act of war (current DOJ investigation)?

Like all of the Obama leak prosecutions - see here - none of those revelations resulted in any tangible harm, yet all revealed vital information about what our government was doing in secret. As long-time DC lawyer Abbe Lowell, who represents indicted whistleblower Stephen Kim, put it: what makes the Obama DOJ's prosecutions historically unique is that they "don't distinguish between bad people - people who spy for other governments, people who sell secrets for money - and people who are accused of having conversations and discussions". Not only doesn't it draw this distinction, but it is focused almost entirely on those who leak in order to expose wrongdoing and bring about transparency and accountability.

That is the primary impact of all of this. A Bloomberg report last October on this intimidation campaign summarized the objections this way: "the president's crackdown chills dissent, curtails a free press and betrays Obama's initial promise to 'usher in a new era of open government.'"

The Obama administration does not dislike leaks of classified information. To the contrary, it is a prolific exploiter of exactly those types of leaks - when they can be used to propagandize the citizenry to glorify the president's image as a tough guy, advance his political goals or produce a multi-million-dollar Hollywood film about his greatest conquest. Leaks are only objectionable when they undercut that propaganda by exposing government deceit, corruption and illegality.

Few events have vividly illustrated this actual goal as much as the lengthy prison sentence this week meted out to former CIA officer John Kiriakou. It's true that Kiriakou is not a pure anti-torture hero given that, in his first public disclosures, he made inaccurate claims about the efficacy of waterboarding. But he did also unequivocally condemn waterboarding and other methods as torture. And, as FAIR put it this week, whatever else is true: "The only person to do time for the CIA's torture policies appears to be a guy who spoke publicly about them, not any of the people who did the actual torturing."

Despite zero evidence of any harm from his disclosures, the federal judge presiding over his case - the reliably government-subservient US District Judge Leonie Brinkema - said she "would have given Kiriakou much more time if she could." As usual, the only real criminals in the government are those who expose or condemn its wrongdoing.

Exactly the same happened with revelations by the New York Times of the illegal Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program. None of the officials who eavesdropped on Americans without the warrants required by law were prosecuted. The telecoms that illegally cooperated were retroactively immunized from all legal accountability by the US Congress. The only person to suffer recriminations from that scandal was Thomas Tamm, the mid-level DOJ official who discovered the program and told the New York Times about it, and then had his life ruined with vindictive investigations.

This Obama whistleblower war has nothing to do with national security. It has nothing to do with punishing those who harm the country with espionage or treason.

It has everything to do with destroying those who expose high-level government wrongdoing. It is particularly devoted to preserving the government's ability to abuse its power in secret by intimidating and deterring future acts of whistleblowing and impeding investigative journalism. This Obama whistleblower war continues to escalate because it triggers no objections from Republicans (who always adore government secrecy) or Democrats (who always adore what Obama does), but most of all because it triggers so few objections from media outlets, which - at least in theory - suffer the most from what is being done.

UPDATE

Kevin Gosztola of Firedoglake this week interviewed Kiriakou and provides much more detail on the charges against him, including the overblown allegation that he leaked the name of one of the torturers to a journalist who then passed it on to the ACLU for filing in a classified court pleading. It's well worth reading the background of what was done to Kiriakou, who - whatever else you may think of his actions - was, as Gosztola writes, "the first member of the agency to publicly acknowledge that torture was official US policy under the administration of President George W. Bush".

Meanwhile, Trevor Timm of Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Freedom of the Press Foundation (of which I'm a Board Member) has more on the highly invasive and inappropriate tactics being used by the DOJ to try to root out the NYT's Stuxnet source.

UPDATE II

Speaking of the Obama administration's propensity to leak classified information for propagandistic and other political purposes, numerous Senators have indicated their intent to investigate whether the CIA and other officials passed classified information about the bin Laden raid to the makers of Zero Dark Thirty in order to influence the film. If you have any doubts about whether this happened, just consider what ZDT screenwriter Mark Boal just said in Time Magazine about this film - here - and decide for yourself.

Looming Health Crisis: Wireless Technology and the Toxification of America

By James F. Tracy
Project Censored


As a multitude of hazardous wireless technologies are deployed in homes, schools and workplaces, government officials and industry representatives continue to insist on their safety despite growing evidence to the contrary. A major health crisis looms that is only hastened through the extensive deployment of “smart grid” technology.


In October 2009 at Florida Power and Light’s (FPL) solar energy station President Barack Obama announced that $3.4 billion of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act would be devoted to the country’s “smart energy grid” transition. Matching funds from the energy industry brought the total national Smart Grid investment to $8 billion. FPL was given $200 million of federal money to install 2.5 million “smart meters” on homes and businesses throughout the state.[1]

By now many residents in the United States and Canada have the smart meters installed on their dwellings. Each of these meters is equipped with an electronic cellular transmitter that uses powerful bursts of electromagnetic radiofrequency (RF) radiation to communicate with nearby meters that together form an interlocking network transferring detailed information on residents’ electrical usage back to the utility every few minutes or less. Such information can easily be used to determine individual patterns of behavior based on power consumption.

The smart grid technology is being sold to the public as a way to “empower” individual energy consumers by allowing them to access information on their energy usage so that they may eventually save money by programming “smart” (i.e, wireless enabled) home appliances and equipment that will coordinate their operability with the smart meter to run when electrical rates are lowest. In other words, a broader plan behind smart grid technology involves a tiered rate system for electricity consumption that will be set by the utility to which customers will have no choice but to conform.

Because of power companies’ stealth rollout of smart meters a large majority of the public still remains unaware of the dangers they pose to human health. This remains the case even though states such as Maine have adopted an “opt out” provision for their citizens. The devices have not been safety-tested by Underwriters Laboratory and thus lack the UL approval customary for most electronics.[2] Further, power customers are typically told by their utilities that the smart meter only communicates with the power company “a few times per day” to transmit information on individual household energy usage. However, when individuals obtained the necessary equipment to do their own testing they found the meters were emitting bursts of RF radiation throughout the home far more intense than a cell phone call every minute or less.[3]

America’s Telecom-friendly Policy for RF Exposure
A growing body of medical studies is now linking cumulative RF exposure to DNA disruption, cancer, birth defects, miscarriages, and autoimmune diseases. Smart meters significantly contribute to an environment already polluted by RF radiation through the pervasive stationing of cellular telephone towers in or around public spaces and consumers’ habitual use of wireless technologies. In the 2000 Salzburg Resolution European scientists recommended the maximum RF exposure for humans to be no more than one tenth of a microwatt per square centimeter. In the United States RF exposure limits are 1,000 microwatts per centimeter, with no limits for long term exposure.[4] Such lax standards have been determined by outdated science and the legal and regulatory maneuvering of the powerful telecommunications and wireless industries.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ceased studying the health effects of radiofrequency radiation when the Senate Appropriations Committee cut the department’s funding and forbade it from further research into the area.[5] Thereafter RF limits were codified as mere “guidelines” based on the EPA’s tentative findings and are to this day administered by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

These weakly enforced standards are predicated on the alleged “thermal effect” of RF. In other words, if the energy emitted from a wireless antenna or device is not powerful enough to heat the skin or flesh then no danger is posed to human health.[6] This reasoning is routinely put forward by utilities installing smart meters on residences, telecom companies locating cellular transmission towers in populated areas, and now school districts across the US allowing the installation of cell towers on school campuses.[7]

The FCC’s authority to impose this standard was further reinforced with the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act that included a provision lobbied for by the telecom industry preventing state and local governments from evaluating potential environmental and health effects when locating cell towers “so long as ‘such facilities comply with the FCC’s regulations concerning such emissions.’”[8]

In 2001 an alliance of scientists and engineers with the backing of the Communications Workers of America filed a federal lawsuit hoping the Supreme Court would reconsider the FCC’s obsolete exposure guidelines and the Telecom Act’s overreach into state and local jurisdiction. The high court refused to hear the case. When the same group asked the FCC to reexamine its guidelines in light of current scientific studies the request was rebuffed.[9] Today in all probability millions are suffering from a variety of immediate and long-term health effects from relentless EMF and RF exposure that under the thermal effect rationale remain unrecognized or discounted by the telecom industry and regulatory authorities alike.

Growing Evidence of Health Risks From RF Exposure
The main health concern with electromagnetic radiation emitted by smart meters and other wireless technologies is that EMF and RF cause a breakdown in the communication between cells in the body, interrupting DNA repair and weakening tissue and organ function. These are the findings of Dr. George Carlo, who oversaw a comprehensive research group commissioned by the cell phone industry in the mid-1990s.

When Carlo’s research began to reveal how there were indeed serious health concerns with wireless technology, the industry sought to bury the results and discredit Carlo. Yet Carlo’s research has since been upheld in a wealth of subsequent studies and has continuing relevance given the ubiquity of wireless apparatuses and the even more powerful smart meters. “One thing all these conditions have in common is a disruption, to varying degrees, of intercellular communication,” Carlo observes. “When we were growing up, TV antennas were on top of our houses and such waves were up in the sky. Cell phones and Wi-Fi have brought those things down to the street, integrated them into the environment, and that’s absolutely new.”[10]

In 2007 the BioInitiative Working Group, a worldwide body of scientists and public health experts, released a 650-page document with over 2000 studies linking RF and EMF exposure to cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, DNA damage, immune system dysfunction, cellular damage and tissue reduction.[11]

In May 2011 the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer categorized “radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans based on an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer, associated with wireless cellphone use.”[12]

In November 2011 the Board of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM), a national organization of medical and osteopathic physicians, called on California’s Public Utilities Commission to issue a moratorium on the continued installation of smart meters in residences and schools “based on a scientific assessment of the current available literature.” “[E]xisting FCC guidelines for RF safety that have been used to justify installations of smart meters,” the panel wrote,

“only look at thermal tissue damage and are obsolete, since many modern studies show metabolic and genomic damage from RF and ELF exposure below the level of intensity which heats tissues … More modern literature shows medically and biologically significant effects of RF and ELF at lower energy densities. These effects accumulate over time, which is an important consideration given the chronic nature of exposure from ‘smart meters.’”[13]

In April 2012 the AAEM issued a formal position paper on the health effects of RF and EMF exposure based on a literature review of the most recent research. The organization pointed to how government and industry arguments alleging the doubtful nature of the science on non-thermal effects of RF were not defensible in light of the newest studies. “Genetic damage, reproductive defects, cancer, neurological degeneration and nervous system dysfunction, immune system dysfunction, cognitive effects, protein and peptide damage, kidney damage, and developmental effects have all been reported in the peer‐reviewed scientific literature,” AAEM concluded.[14]

Radiating Children
The rollout of smart meters proceeds alongside increased installation of wireless technology and cell phone towers in and around schools in the US. In 2010 Professor Magda Havas conducted a study of schools in 50 US state capitols and Washington DC to determine students’ potential exposure to nearby cell towers. A total 6,140 schools serving 2.3 million students were surveyed using the antennasearch.com database. Of these, 13% of the schools serving 299,000 students have a cell tower within a quarter mile of school grounds, and another 50% of the schools where 1,145,000 attend have a tower within a 0.6 mile radius. The installation of wireless networks and now smart meters on and around school properties further increases children’s RF exposure.[15]

Many school districts that are strapped for cash in the face of state budget cuts are willing to ignore the abundance of scientific research on RF dangers and sign on with telecom companies to situate cell towers directly on school premises. Again, the FCC’s thermal effect rule is invoked to justify tower placement together with a disregard of the available studies.

The School District of Palm Beach County, the eleventh largest school district in the US, provides one such example. Ten of its campuses already have cell towers on their grounds while the district ponders lifting a ban established in 1997 that would allow for the positioning of even more towers. When concerned parents contacted the school district for an explanation of its wireless policies, the administration assembled a document, “Health Organization Information and Academic Research Studies Regarding the Health Effects of Cell Tower Signals.” The report carefully selected pronouncements from telecom industry funded organizations such as the American Cancer Society and out-of-date scientific studies supporting the FCC’s stance on wireless while excluding the long list of studies and literature reviews pointing to the dangers of RF and EMF radiation emitted by wireless networks and cell towers. [16]

The Precautionary Principle / Conclusion
Surrounded by the sizable and growing body of scientific literature pointing to the obvious dangers of wireless technology, utility companies installing smart meters on millions of homes across the US and school officials who accommodate cell towers on their grounds are performing an extreme disservice to their often vulnerable constituencies. Indeed, such actions constitute the reckless long term endangerment of public health for short term gain, sharply contrasting with more judicious decision making.

The 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment & Development adopted the precautionary principle as a rule to follow in the situations utilities and school districts find themselves in today. “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”[17] In exercising the precautionary principle, public governance and regulatory bodies should “take preventive action in the face of scientific uncertainty to prevent harm. The focus is no longer on measuring or managing harm, but preventing harm.”[18]

Along these lines, the European Union and the Los Angeles School District have prohibited cell phone towers on school grounds until the scientific research on the human health effects of RF are conclusive. The International Association of Fire Fighters also interdicted cell towers on fire stations pending “’a study with the highest scientific merit and integrity on health effects of exposure to low-intensity [radio frequency/microwave] radiation is conducted and it is proven that such sitings are not hazardous to the health of our members.’”[19]

Unwitting families with smart meters on their homes and children with cell towers humming outside their classrooms suggest the extent to which the energy, telecom and wireless industries have manipulated the regulatory process to greatly privilege profits over public health. Moreover, it reveals how the population suffers for want of meaningful and conclusive information on the very real dangers of RF while the telecom and wireless interests successfully cajole the media into considering one scientific study at a time.

“When you put the science together, we come to the irrefutable conclusion that there’s a major health crisis coming, probably already underway,” George Carlo cautions. “Not just cancer, but also learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and psychological and behavioral problems—all mediated by the same mechanism. That’s why we’re so worried. Time is running out.”[20]
Notes
[1] Energy.gov, “President Obama Announces $3.4 Billion Investment to Spur Transition to Smart Energy Grid,” October 27, 2009, http://energy.gov/articles/president-obama-announces-34-billion-investment-spur-transition-smart-energy-grid
[2] Ilya Sandra Perlingieri, “Radiofrequency Radiation: The Invisible Hazards of Smart Meters,” August 19, 2011, GlobalReserach.ca, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26082
[3] Dr. Bill Deagle, “Smart Meters: A Call for Public Outrage,” Rense.com, August 30, 2011, http://www.rense.com/general94/smartt.htm. Some meters installed in California by Pacific Gas and Electric carry a “’switching mode power-supply’ that ‘emit sharp spikes of millisecond bursts’ around the clock and is a chief cause of ‘dirty electricity.’” See Perlingieri, “Radiofrequency Radiation: The Invisible Hazards of Smart Meters.” This author similarly measured bursts of radiation in excess of 2,000 microwatts per meter every 30 to 90 seconds during the day, and once every two-to-three minutes at night.
[4] Magda Havas, BRAG Antenna Ranking of Schools, 2010, http://electromagnetichealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/BRAG_Schools.pdf
[5] Susan Luzzaro, “Field of Cell Phone Tower Beams,” San Diego Reader, May 18, 2011, http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2011/may/18/citylights2-cell-phone-tower/?page=1&
[6] FCC Office of Engineering and Technology, http://www.fcc.gov/oet/rfsafety
[7] Luzzaro, “Field of Cell Phone Tower Beams”; Marc Freeman, “Cell Towers Could Be Coming to More Schools,” South Florida Sun Sentinel, January 5, 2012, http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-01-05/news/fl-cell-towers-schools-palm-20120105_1_cell-towers-cellular-phone-towers-stealth-towers
[8] Amy Worthington, “The Radiation Poisoning of America,” GlobalResearch.ca, October 9, 2007, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7025
[9] Worthington, “The Radiation Poisoning of America.”
[10] Sue Kovach, “The Hidden Dangers of Cell Phone Radiation,” Life Extension Magazine, August 2007, http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2007 /aug2007_report_cellphone_radiation_01.htm
[11] Susan Luzzaro, “Field of Cell Phone Tower Beams”; Bioinitiative Report: A Rationale For a Biologically-based Public Exposure Standard For Electromagnetic Fields, http://www.bioinitiative.org/freeaccess/report/index.htm.
[12] World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer, “IARC Classifies Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields as Possibly Carcinogenic,” May 31, 2011, www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2011/pdfs/pr208_E.pdf; Joseph Mercola, “Be Aware: These Cell Phones Can Emit 28 Times More Radiation,” Mercola.com, June 18, 2011, http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/06/18/finally-experts-admit-cellphones-are-a-carcinogen.aspx.
[13] American Academy of Environmental Medicine, “Proposed Decision of Commissioner Peevy [Mailed 11/22/2011] Before the Public Utilities Commission of the State of California,” January 19, 2012. www.aaemonline.org
[14] American Academy of Environmental Medicine, “The American Academy of Environmental Medicine Calls for Immediate Caution regarding Smart Meter Installation,” April 12, 2012, http://www.aaemonline.org/
[15] Havas, BRAG Antenna Ranking of Schools, 31-38.
[16] Donna Goldstein, “Health Organization Information and Academic Research Studies Regarding the Health Effects of Cell Tower Signals,”Planning and Real Estate Development, Palm Beach County School District, January 30, 2012.
[17] Havas, BRAG Antenna Ranking of Schools, 17.
[18] Multinational Monitor, “Precautionary Precepts: The Power and Potential of the Precautionary Principle: An Interview with Carolyn Raffensperger,” September 2004, http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2004/09012004/september04interviewraffen.html.
[19] Luzzaro, “Field of Cell Phone Tower Beams.”
[20] Kovach, “The Hidden Dangers of Cell Phone Radiation.”

Widespread GMO Contamination: Did Monsanto the Devil Plant GMOs Before USDA Approval?

Did Monsanto actually plant genetically modified alfalfa before it was deregulated by the USDA?

By Cassandra Anderson and Anthony Gucciardi

Activist Post 

There is some shocking evidence that, until recently, was withheld from the public showing that Monsanto’s genetically altered alfalfa may have been set free in 2003 — a full two years or more before it was deregulated in 2005. In a letter, obtained by NaturalSociety with permission to post for public viewing, it becomes clear that the USDA may have turned a blind eye to the entire situation, allowing widespread GMO contamination of GMO-free crops.

Amazingly, the letter actually suggests that the USDA was fully aware of the situation. In order to fully understand the intricate details of this event, it is first important to understand a few key factors regarding alfalfa and its connection to the entire food supply.

Alfalfa is a perennial plant that grows for more than 2 years and may not need to be replanted each year like annuals. Because it is a perennial plant, it is exceptionally vulnerable to contamination. Interestingly, the modified alfalfa — created by Monsanto in partner with a group known as Forage Genetics — was the first perennial plant to be deregulated for open planting by the USDA. But did Monsanto unleash the plant before this occurred?

This is very serious because it is only a matter of time before alfalfa across America could be corrupted with Monsanto’s patented genetically modified trait. Organic meat and dairy could be tainted when animals are fed the modified alfalfa as well, threatening the very integrity of the organic food supply. What’s more, the contamination of natural alfalfa could be nearly impossible — if not entirely impossible — to remedy, so it could actually fracture the genetic stability of the entire crop on a global scale.

Shocking Letter Reveals Monsanto’s Contamination Dates Back 2 Years Before Deregulation

A letter from Cal/West Seeds shows that evidence of contamination was withheld and the USDA turned a blind eye to proof of contamination in 2005 which shows it was planted at least two years before it was initially deregulated in 2005. As you can see for yourself, the official letter states:

We first discovered the unintended presence of the Roundup Ready gene in our conventional alfalfa seeds in 2005. It was identified in one of our foundation seed production lots grown in California. We tested the foundation seed lot priot to shipping it to a producer who intended to plant it for organic seed production.

In another telling segment, the author writes:

We detected the presence of the … Roundup Ready gene in both our foundation seed and certified seed prior to deregulation. In order to protect the safety of the individual, some further contents cannot be divulged. Remember in the past, those who have stood up against Monsanto have received anonymous death threats — in one case, the threats were directed towards a mother and her children.

This video documents the timeline of events that led to the deregulation of Monsanto & Forage Genetics’ GMO alfalfa that is contaminating natural alfalfa.

As the video explains, the lawyers representing the farmers against Monsanto failed to hold an evidentiary hearing so the injunction (ban) against planting GMO alfalfa was removed and the case was sent back to the lower district court. The lawyers pursued no further action on this case.

Contamination levels are still very low, but will undoubtedly increase over time with unexpected results (like superweeds), so stopping the further planting of GM plants like alfalfa is of high concern. Furthermore, it would set a precedent for banning other GMO perennial plants as well — a monumental move in the legislative fight against GMOs. This letter, compounded with the other evidence presented in this article, is paramount in displaying just how serious of an issue genetic contamination is. What’s more, the USDA appears to have known the entire time. It’s time to spread the word.

Monsanto introduced genetically modified alfalfa in 2003—a full two years before it was deregulated, according to recently released evidence. Global Research reported that a letter from Cal/West Seeds indicated that “evidence of contamination was withheld and the USDA turned a blind eye to proof of contamination,” thus allowing widespread GMO contamination of GMO-free crops. The Cal/West Seeds letter to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) stated they found the Roundup Ready gene in foundation production lots seeds in 2005: according to the letter, the GMO-contaminated foundation seed originated in 2003 from a field in Solano County, California. The letter stated, “Cal/West Seeds had zero access to Roundup Ready seed at that time; therefore we assume the contamination originated from an external source.”

Alfalfa is a perennial plant that grows for more than two years and may not need to be replanted each year like annuals. As a perennial, it is exceptionally vulnerable to contamination. This genetically modified alfalfa could quickly spread to crops across the US, threatening the integrity of organic products—including organic meat and dairy products, if those animals are fed alfalfa believed to be GMO-free, but are in fact carrying Monsanto’s patented genetically modified trait.

In 2010, the USDA released a Final Environmental Impact Statement that acknowledged awareness of the GMO alfalfa spreading its traits to non-GMO alfalfa as far back as 2003. Not only was the USDA aware of the scandal, but the agency also deregulated genetically modified alfalfa with full awareness of the environmental dangers and contamination concerns.

Is Homeland Security Preparing for the Next Wall Street Collapse?

Ellen Brown

Activist Post

Reports are that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is engaged in a massive, covert military buildup. An article in the Associated Press in February confirmed an open purchase order by DHS for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. According to an op-ed in Forbes, that’s enough to sustain an Iraq-sized war for over twenty years. DHS has also acquired heavily armored tanks, which have been seen roaming the streets. Evidently somebody in government is expecting some serious civil unrest. The question is, why?

Recently revealed statements by former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the height of the banking crisis in October 2008 could give some insights into that question. An article on BBC News on September 21, 2013, drew from an explosive autobiography called Power Trip by Brown’s spin doctor Damian McBride, who said the prime minister was worried that law and order could collapse during the financial crisis. McBride quoted Brown as saying:

If the banks are shutting their doors, and the cash points aren’t working, and people go to Tesco [a grocery chain] and their cards aren’t being accepted, the whole thing will just explode.

If you can’t buy food or petrol or medicine for your kids, people will just start breaking the windows and helping themselves. 

And as soon as people see that on TV, that’s the end, because everyone will think that’s OK now, that’s just what we all have to do. It’ll be anarchy. That’s what could happen tomorrow.

How to deal with that threat? Brown said, “We’d have to think: do we have curfews, do we put the Army on the streets, how do we get order back?”

McBride wrote in his book Power Trip, “It was extraordinary to see Gordon so totally gripped by the danger of what he was about to do, but equally convinced that decisive action had to be taken immediately.” He compared the threat to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Fear of this threat was echoed in September 2008 by US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who reportedly warned that the US government might have to resort to martial law if Wall Street were not bailed out from the credit collapse.

In both countries, martial law was avoided when their legislatures succumbed to pressure and bailed out the banks. But many pundits are saying that another collapse is imminent; and this time, governments may not be so willing to step up to the plate.

The Next Time WILL Be Different

What triggered the 2008 crisis was a run, not in the conventional banking system, but in the “shadow” banking system, a collection of non-bank financial intermediaries that provide services similar to traditional commercial banks but are unregulated. They include hedge funds, money market funds, credit investment funds, exchange-traded funds, private equity funds, securities broker dealers, securitization and finance companies. Investment banks and commercial banks may also conduct much of their business in the shadows of this unregulated system.

The shadow financial casino has only grown larger since 2008; and in the next Lehman-style collapse, government bailouts may not be available. According to President Obama in his remarks on the Dodd-Frank Act on July 15, 2010, “Because of this reform, . . . there will be no more taxpayer funded bailouts – period.”

Governments in Europe are also shying away from further bailouts. The Financial Stability Board (FSB) in Switzerland has therefore required the systemically risky banks to devise “living wills” setting forth what they will do in the event of insolvency. The template established by the FSB requires them to “bail in” their creditors; and depositors, it turns out, are the largest class of bank creditor. (For fuller discussion, see my earlier article here.)

When depositors cannot access their bank accounts to get money for food for the kids, they could well start breaking store windows and helping themselves. Worse, they might plot to overthrow the financier-controlled government. Witness Greece, where increasing disillusionment with the ability of the government to rescue the citizens from the worst depression since 1929 has precipitated riots and threats of violent overthrow.

Fear of that result could explain the massive, government-authorized spying on American citizens, the domestic use of drones, and the elimination of due process and of “posse comitatus” (the federal law prohibiting the military from enforcing “law and order” on non-federal property). Constitutional protections are being thrown out the window in favor of protecting the elite class in power.

The Looming Debt Ceiling Crisis

The next crisis on the agenda appears to be the October 17th deadline for agreeing on a federal budget or risking default on the government’s loans. It may only be a coincidence, but two large-scale drills are scheduled to take place the same day, the “Great ShakeOut Earthquake Drill” and the “Quantum Dawn 2 Cyber Attack Bank Drill.” According to a Bloomberg news clip on the bank drill, the attacks being prepared for are from hackers, state-sponsored espionage, and organized crime (financial fraud). One interviewee stated, “You might experience that your online banking is down . . . . You might experience that you can’t log in.” It sounds like a dress rehearsal for the Great American Bail-in.

Ominous as all this is, it has a bright side. Bail-ins and martial law can be seen as the last desperate thrashings of a dinosaur. The exploitative financial scheme responsible for turning millions out of their jobs and their homes has reached the end of the line. Crisis in the current scheme means opportunity for those more sustainable solutions waiting in the wings.

Other countries faced with a collapse in their debt-based borrowed currencies have survived and thrived by issuing their own. When the dollar-pegged currency collapsed in Argentina in 2001, the national government returned to issuing its own pesos; municipal governments paid with “debt-canceling bonds” that circulated as currency; and neighborhoods traded with community currencies. After the German currency collapsed in the 1920s, the government turned the economy around in the 1930s by issuing “MEFO” bills that circulated as currency. When England ran out of gold in 1914, the government issued “Bradbury pounds” similar to the Greenbacks issued by Abraham Lincoln during the US Civil War.

Today our government could avoid the debt ceiling crisis by doing something similar: it could simply mint some trillion dollar coins and deposit them in an account. That alternative could be pursued by the Administration immediately, without going to Congress or changing the law, as discussed in my earlier article here. It need not be inflationary, since Congress could still spend only what it passed in its budget. And if Congress did expand its budget for infrastructure and job creation, that would actually be good for the economy, since hoarding cash and paying down loans have significantly shrunk the circulating money supply.

Peer-to-peer Trading and Public Banks

At the local level, we need to set up an alternative system that provides safety for depositors, funds small and medium-sized businesses, and serves the needs of the community.

Much progress has already been made on that front in the peer-to-peer economy. In a September 27th article titled “Peer-to-Peer Economy Thrives as Activists Vacate the System,” Eric Blair reports that the Occupy Movement is engaged in a peaceful revolution in which people are abandoning the established system in favor of a “sharing economy.” Trading occurs between individuals, without taxes, regulations or licenses, and in some cases without government-issued currency.

Peer-to-peer trading happens largely on the Internet, where customer reviews rather than regulation keep sellers honest. It started with eBay and Craigslist and has grown exponentially since. Bitcoin is a private currency outside the prying eyes of regulators. Software is being devised that circumvents NSA spying. Bank loans are being shunned in favor of crowdfunding. Local food co-ops are also a form of opting out of the corporate-government system.

Peer-to-peer trading works for local exchange, but we also need a way to protect our dollars, both public and private. We need dollars to pay at least some of our bills, and businesses need them to acquire raw materials. We also need a way to protect our public revenues, which are currently deposited and invested in Wall Street banks that have heavy derivatives exposure.

To meet those needs, we can set up publicly-owned banks on the model of the Bank of North Dakota, currently our only state-owned depository bank. The BND is mandated by law to receive all the state’s deposits and to serve the public interest. Ideally, every state would have one of these “mini-Feds.” Counties and cities could have them as well. For more information, see http://PublicBankingInstitute.org.

Preparations for martial law have been reported for decades, and it hasn’t happened yet. Hopefully, we can sidestep that danger by moving into a saner, more sustainable system that makes military action against American citizens unnecessary.

Texas' Next Lieutenant Governor Thinks You Shouldn't Be Trusted to Elect Senators

By Eric Nicholson, Mon., Oct. 7 2013 
Dallas Observer


It's not yet clear who will become Texas' next lieutenant governor. David Dewhurst, though tarnished by his defeat at the hands of Wendy Davis and her "unruly mob," could hang onto the seat. Or he could be out-flanked to the right in the Republican primary by a trio of challengers: Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson and state Senator and talk radio show host Dan Patrick.

All are deeply conservative men who wear their patriotism on their sleeve. None seem particularly keen to tinker with the Constitution, the bedrock upon which the greatest country in history was built -- except for one thing.

The 17th Amendment was ratified a century ago to allow for the direct election of Senators. Repealing it would shift the power to choose members of Congress' upper house from voters back to state legislatures, which was what the framers had originally intended.

The Tea Party has been tilting at this particular windmill since its inception, which is counterintuitive given the movement's full-throated embrace of direct democracy in other forms. The reasoning goes that the legislatures would be more vigilant about protecting their state's interest -- and thus the federalist system as a whole -- than would individual voters.

For the challengers, this seems a straightforward appeal to their Tea Party base. For Dewhurst it just so happens to dovetail perfectly with his own self-interest, as Burnt Orange Report notes. He would, after all, probably be a sitting U.S. Senator now if not for the populist tidal wave that swept Ted Cruz into office last year.

A movement based on the idea that voters can't be trusted to pick their Congressional representatives is unlikely to gain much traction. Then again, Ted Cruz is a Senator. Maybe they're onto something.

This Court Decision Could Create Corporate Sugar Daddies For Politicians

Who has more money for campaign donations, the average American or the average corporation?

October 7, 2013

Shaya Tayefe Mohajer, Take Part

Now that corporations are people, the U.S. Supreme Court is deciding if the super-rich can become sugar daddies for politicians, capable of making unlimited donations directly to candidates.

In McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, Shaun McCutcheon and the Republican National Committee are challenging the government's right to put any limits at all on campaign contributions. A ruling in their favor would go beyond the Citizens United ruling and remove limits from the amount that can be donated in a federal election directly to a candidate.

The campaign finance mayhem began in 2010 when the high court's Citizens United decision allowed corporations to have the same rights to free expression as people, namely, the right to give political donations.

Now, since corporations are people, they want to be best buddies with politicians, and could get the opportunity to do so if Republicans get their way in a new case that will be argued before the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

No limits. A candidate could literally be showered with millions of dollars by a corporation.

How likely is the court to take that route?

UCLA Law Professor Adam Winkler believes it's very likely to happen, because the court has been hostile to campaign finance laws since Chief Justice John Roberts took charge.

"This Supreme Court has struck down every campaign finance law that has come before it," Winkler said.

That's something considering every campaign season sets new records on campaign donations received, and there's more and more spending in federal politics every election cycle.

"Citizens United freed up a lot of corporations and unions, but many have still stayed on the sidelines. This would allow wealthy individuals to just give to candidate after candidate after candidate," said Winkler.

In effect, that would allow corporations to use the constitutional rights of people to the umpteenth exponent.

That's because very few people can match the buying power of a corporation when it comes to expendable income.

So, doesn't allowing corporations the right of free expression mean that businesses will have a bigger bullhorn in American democracy than people do?

Yes, it does.

Freedom in Decline: Internet Access Is Increasingly Monitored, Limited

New study surveys the whole wide world on the world wide web.

October 7, 2013

Daffany Chan -  Take Part

 

Turns out your Facebook friends aren’t the only ones catching up on your status updates.

Global Internet freedom has been on the decline with the increase of social-media surveillance by governments around the world, according to a recent study published by Freedom House.

Authoritarian states like Vietnam and Ethiopia experienced the worst new restrictions: The two countries saw increasing free speech limits, arrests, and punishments for anti-authority bloggers.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Syria was deemed the “most dangerous place for online reporters,” as approximately 20 were killed there in the past year alone.

The study measured each country’s level of online freedom, creating a ranking based on findings from field visits and consultations from over 70 local experts and representatives.

It wasn’t only the undemocratic nations where online speech protection went down the drain. Following India’s recent civil unrest and riots, the nation suffered from severe governmental blocking and filtering of social content.

And though it may seem like Internet use has become a complete free-for-all in the United States—with provocative viral videos and tweets overrunning the web—the country faced a significant decline, too. This is in large part due to NSA’s tightened surveillance on the public for intelligence and counterterrorism efforts. The study draws a grim portrait about the state of global web rights. But there’s a silver lining: The threat of restriction is resulting in growing civil activism.