The next generation of American leaders, fully prepped for the challenges of the twenty-first century.
Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by barracuda » Wed Feb 16, 2011 1:51 am
by Bruce Dazzling » Wed Feb 16, 2011 1:16 pm
barracuda wrote:The next generation of American leaders, fully prepped for the challenges of the twenty-first century.
by justdrew » Sun Feb 20, 2011 1:22 am
by eyeno » Sun Feb 20, 2011 2:00 am
justdrew wrote:
February 19, 2011
Freak Winds Topple National Christmas Tree
By EMMARIE HUETTEMAN
WASHINGTON — High winds whipped through the metropolitan Washington area on Saturday, downing power lines, fueling brush fires and even toppling the National Christmas Tree.
The National Weather Service had issued a high wind warning for the area, cautioning that some gusts could reach 60 miles per hour.
No one was reported injured from the fires in Montgomery County, Md., or the fallen lines. which left thousands without power at various times during the day in Washington and suburban Maryland. By Saturday evening, all but 1,800 customers had power restored, said Bob Hainey, a spokesman for Pepco, the local utility.
The National Christmas Tree, a Colorado blue spruce more than 40 feet tall and nearly 48 years old, was donated by a family in Pennsylvania, according to the National Christmas Tree Web site. It was moved by the National Park Service in 1978, the Web site says, becoming a permanent fixture on the Ellipse in President’s Park. The tree had no known health problems when it fell, said a Park Service spokesman, Bill Line.
Knowing the tree would not live forever, Mr. Line said, the agency identified a successor two years ago but was not ready to reveal that tree’s location. The fallen spruce is expected to be replaced in late spring.
As part of an annual tradition dating to the Coolidge administration in 1923, the National Christmas Tree is decorated and then lighted by the president in a widely attended, nationally broadcast celebration. Recent ceremonies have featured guests including the poet Maya Angelou, the hip-hop artist Common and the singer Sheryl Crow.
by Nordic » Sun Feb 20, 2011 3:44 am
by stefano » Sun Feb 20, 2011 5:19 pm
by barracuda » Sun Feb 20, 2011 7:52 pm
The Six-Legged Meat of the Future
Insects are nutritious and easy to raise without harming the environment. They also have a nice nutty taste!
At the London restaurant Archipelago, diners can order the $11 Baby Bee Brulee: a creamy custard topped with a crunchy little bee. In New York, the Mexican restaurant Toloache offers $11 chapulines tacos: two tacos stuffed with Oaxacan-style dried grasshoppers.
Could beetles, dragonfly larvae and water bug caviar be the meat of the future? As the global population booms and demand strains the world's supply of meat, there's a growing need for alternate animal proteins. Insects are high in protein, B vitamins and minerals like iron and zinc, and they're low in fat. Insects are easier to raise than livestock, and they produce less waste. Insects are abundant. Of all the known animal species, 80% walk on six legs; over 1,000 edible species have been identified. And the taste? It's often described as "nutty."
The vast majority of the developing world already eats insects. In Laos and Thailand, weaver-ant pupae are a highly prized and nutritious delicacy. They are prepared with shallots, lettuce, chilies, lime and spices and served with sticky rice. Further back in history, the ancient Romans considered beetle larvae to be gourmet fare, and the Old Testament mentions eating crickets and grasshoppers. In the 20th century, the Japanese emperor Hirohito's favorite meal was a mixture of cooked rice, canned wasps (including larvae, pupae and adults), soy sauce and sugar.
by Nordic » Sun Feb 20, 2011 8:49 pm
The New York Times’ Gretchen Morgenson dutifully tells us, based on a Los Angeles Times sighting, that federal prosecutors will not be filing charges against the Tanned One, Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide. This follows the failure of investigations to lead to a criminal prosecution of another major perp in the financial crisis, one Joseph Cassano, the head of AIG’s Financial Products unit.
There has been far too little discussion of why no legal action has been taken.
Readers can no doubt come up with additional reasons, but I see at least two. The first is that the deregulation of financial services in the 1980s and 1990s, along with some very questionable court decisions (as in ones that reversed decades of precedents), have rendered many activities that would have been impermissible perfectly kosher. Yet the very fact that that people who oversaw businesses that were clearly engaged in reckless behavior and at a minimum serious omissions and misrepresentations to investors have gotten off scott free.
The ability of executives to use lawyers and accountants as paid-for human shields has greatly hindered prosecutions. Cassano’s “get out of jail free” card was that he told his accountants what he was up to.
In the sort of thefts that little people engage in, like holding up a store, the person who drives the car is an accessory and can be prosecuted. But white collar crooks can escape if they get their advisors to wink and nod (in both criminal and civil cases, most juries will be very reluctant to find an executive guilty for something his accountant signed off on). Now that would suggest that the logical route is to go after the crooked (or at best criminally incompetent) advisors. But as we wrote in ECONNED:
Legislators also need to restore secondary liability. Attentive readers may recall that a Supreme Court decision in 1994 disallowed suits against advisors like accountants and lawyers for aiding and abetting frauds. In other words, a plaintiff could only file a claim against the party that had fleeced him; he could not seek recourse against those who had made the fraud possible, say, accounting firms that prepared misleading financial statements. That 1994 decision flew in the face of sixty years of court decisions, practices in criminal law (the guy who drives the car for a bank robber is an accessory), and common sense. Reinstituting secondary liability would make it more difficult to engage in shoddy practices.
I haven’t seen anyone itemize the various changes over the last two decades that have wound up facilitating abuses in the financial services industry; the closest I’ve seen was in Frank Partnoy’s book Infectious Greed, which was published before the crisis.
The failure of legal experts to discuss what would need to change for seemingly obvious crimes to be prosecuted successfully strikes me as peculiar. But maybe the experts have circled the wagons and don’t want to expose the many ways in which financial reform fell short.
The second reason is timid prosecutors. A commonly invoked excuse for the failure to file criminal cases is that they are hard to win. But the standard set by the investigators seems to be that they will win all or most of the cases, which is bizarre. As long as a prosecution does not look foolish or overreaching, filing cases where there are good grounds for doing so does have deterrence value. High profile cases are costly to the targets: they consume management time and generate bad PR. Stanley Sporkin, the SEC’s head of enforcement in the 1970s was feared all over Wall Street precisely because he was not afraid to go after questionable behavior, even if he might not prevail in court.
And you aren’t going to be any good at litigating financial cases if you are afraid to try them. That in turn leads to a vicious circle: you won’t attract high caliber law school grads if you aren’t seen as being a good training ground (by contrast, the County of New York Robert Morgenthau was always able to attract talent because it was recognized in the law profession as a top flight operation; Sonia Sotomayor, Eliot Spitzer, and Andrew Cuomo were all assistant DAs under Morgenthau).
An obvious example is the SEC’s recent failed prosecution against former Bear Stearn hedge funds executives. Conventional wisdom is that the outcome proves that the loss confirms that it is hard to win complex criminal cases. But Enron was vastly more complex, yet it resulted in a raft of settlements (with jail time and big fines) and convictions. The fact is the SEC did a bad job. It made rookie mistakes, like relying overmuch on e-mails that looked damaging and failing to do adequate discovery on the surrounding circumstances.
By contrast, there is a blindingly obvious case that has not been filed, namely, against Richard Fuld for Sarbanes-Oxley and SEC violations. For reasons that strike me as unfathomable, the opinion of Anton Valukas, the Lehman bankruptcy examiner, who said he did not think Lehman’s deeds rose to the level of criminal prosecution, has been taken as the final word. Valukas has an admirable record as a litigator, but attorneys will often have differences of points of view as to the viability of a cause of action, and also might come up with legal theories different than the ones Valukas contemplated (particularly since structured finance litigation is a cutting edge area of the law).
I’d welcome securities lawyer input on this one, but the argument in Fuld’s favor would seem to be that he didn’t know about Repo 105 (an unacceptable posture under Sarbox, but that might get him out of criminal liability) and that the London law firm signed off on the procedure. Against Fuld would be that Lehman was clearly desperate to dress up its financial and was engaging in numerous questionable valuations that were attracting the attention of analysts, that the firm went opinion shopping for a legal opinion, and that the financial presentation was clearly misleading.
As various readers (as well as former securities litigators) have told me, prosecution is a very effective deterrent to white collar criminals. It certainly won’t end shady behavior but it would cut the incidence down considerably. Hence its absence as a real threat is a serious loss.
by JackRiddler » Sun Feb 20, 2011 9:42 pm
barracuda wrote:I realise it's somewhat hard to stomach, but the Wall Street Journal published today on the benefits of eating insects:The Six-Legged Meat of the Future
Insects are nutritious and easy to raise without harming the environment. They also have a nice nutty taste!
At the London restaurant Archipelago, diners can order the $11 Baby Bee Brulee: a creamy custard topped with a crunchy little bee. In New York, the Mexican restaurant Toloache offers $11 chapulines tacos: two tacos stuffed with Oaxacan-style dried grasshoppers.
Could beetles, dragonfly larvae and water bug caviar be the meat of the future? As the global population booms and demand strains the world's supply of meat, there's a growing need for alternate animal proteins. Insects are high in protein, B vitamins and minerals like iron and zinc, and they're low in fat. Insects are easier to raise than livestock, and they produce less waste. Insects are abundant. Of all the known animal species, 80% walk on six legs; over 1,000 edible species have been identified. And the taste? It's often described as "nutty."
The vast majority of the developing world already eats insects. In Laos and Thailand, weaver-ant pupae are a highly prized and nutritious delicacy. They are prepared with shallots, lettuce, chilies, lime and spices and served with sticky rice. Further back in history, the ancient Romans considered beetle larvae to be gourmet fare, and the Old Testament mentions eating crickets and grasshoppers. In the 20th century, the Japanese emperor Hirohito's favorite meal was a mixture of cooked rice, canned wasps (including larvae, pupae and adults), soy sauce and sugar.
by Nordic » Wed Feb 23, 2011 4:14 am
How Rich are the Superrich
A huge share of the nation's economic growth over the past 30 years has gone to the top one-hundredth of one percent, who now make an average of $27 million per household. The average income for the bottom 90 percent of us? $31,244.
Out of Balance
A Harvard business prof and a behavioral economist recently asked more than 5,000 Americans how they thought wealth is distributed in the United States. Most thought that it’s more balanced than it actually is. Asked to choose their ideal distribution of wealth, 92% picked one that was even more equitable.
by Laodicean » Wed Feb 23, 2011 10:58 am
Planned Parenthood Out, NASCAR Still in the Game!
I wish to the lady-loving Lord this were a joke: Moments before (or after) stripping Planned Parenthood of roughly $330 million in public funds dedicated to women's health (cancer screenings, STI tests, family planning services, etc.) last Friday, the House voted to continue allowing the Pentagon to sponsor NASCAR teams with taxpayer money:The House has voted to let the Pentagon continue using taxpayer dollars to sponsor NASCAR race teams.
By a 281-148 vote, lawmakers rejected an effort by Minnesota Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum that would have ended the practice. McCollum aides said the Army is spending $7 million on a sponsorship this year, and the Air Force and National Guard are spending additional money.
The vote was split pretty predictably along party lines, with Republicans overwhelmingly voting to keep public funding in place for NASCAR.
The House's message is clear: NASCAR is a basic human right that, if left unsubsidized, will seriously impact the health of millions of Americans.
Bullet dodged, you guys.
by Laodicean » Wed Feb 23, 2011 12:18 pm
Seattle-Area Restaurant Refuses To Serve TSA Agents
Fed up with what he views as crappy treatment from the TSA, the owner of a restaurant near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport has decided to put all TSA agents on his No-Eat List.
"We have posted signs on our doors basically saying that they aren't allowed to come into our business," one employee tells travel journalist Christopher Elliott. "We have the right to refuse service to anyone."
She says that whenever a TSA agent attempts to dine at the restaurant, "we turn our backs and completely ignore them, and tell them to leave... Their kind aren't welcomed in our establishment."
The restaurant claims that 90% of its patrons are in agreement with their stance and that the local police have actually helped escort TSA workers of the premises.
"Until TSA agents start treating us with the respect and dignity that we deserve, then things will change for them in the private sector," says the employee.
by Nordic » Thu Feb 24, 2011 3:34 am
WASHINGTON – The International Monetary Fund called for a weaker dollar to help the United States reduce its deficits with the rest of the world and rebalance the global economy, in a report released Wednesday.
In the report prepared for a Group of 20 finance chiefs meeting last week, the IMF said that its calculations showed the dollar remains "on the strong side" of medium-term fundamentals, while the euro and the Japanese yen were "broadly in line" and several Asian currencies, including China, were undervalued.
To address global imbalances, the G20 should allow the dollar to fall, the Washington-based institution said.
by Bruce Dazzling » Thu Feb 24, 2011 12:12 pm
Nordic wrote:http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/23/imf-says-weaker-dollar-would-help-global-growth/
IMF says weaker dollar would help global growthWASHINGTON – The International Monetary Fund called for a weaker dollar to help the United States reduce its deficits with the rest of the world and rebalance the global economy, in a report released Wednesday.
In the report prepared for a Group of 20 finance chiefs meeting last week, the IMF said that its calculations showed the dollar remains "on the strong side" of medium-term fundamentals, while the euro and the Japanese yen were "broadly in line" and several Asian currencies, including China, were undervalued.
To address global imbalances, the G20 should allow the dollar to fall, the Washington-based institution said.
by seemslikeadream » Thu Feb 24, 2011 12:15 pm
The Case Against Raymond Davis
The CIA's Killing Spree in Lahore
By MIKE WHITNEY
When CIA-agent Raymond Davis gunned down two Pakistani civilians in broad daylight on a crowded street in Lahore, he probably never imagined that the entire Washington establishment would spring to his defense. But that's precisely what happened. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mike Mullen, John Kerry, Leon Panetta and a number of other US bigwigs have all made appeals on Davis's behalf. None of these stalwart defenders of "the rule of law" have shown a speck of interest in justice for the victims or of even allowing the investigation to go forward so they could know what really happened. Oh, no. What Clinton and the rest want, is to see their man Davis packed onto the next plane to Langley so he can play shoot-'em-up someplace else in the world.
Does Clinton know that after Davis shot his victims 5 times in the back, he calmly strode back to his car, grabbed his camera, and photographed the dead bodies? Does she know that the two so-called "diplomats" who came to his rescue in a Land Rover (which killed a passerby) have been secretly spirited out of the country so they won't have to appear in court? Does she know that the families of the victims are now being threatened and attacked to keep them from testifying against Davis? Here's a clip from Thursday's edition of The Nation":
"Three armed men forcibly gave poisonous pills to Muhammad Sarwar, the uncle of Shumaila Kanwal, the widow of Fahim shot dead by Raymond Davis, after barging into his house in Rasool Nagar, Chak Jhumra.
Sarwar was rushed to Allied Hospital in critical condition where doctors were trying to save his life till early Thursday morning. The brother of Muhammad Sarwar told The Nation that three armed men forced their entry into the house after breaking the windowpane of one of the rooms. When they broke the glass, Muhammad Sarwar came out. The outlaws started beating him up.
The other family members, including women and children, coming out for his rescue, were taken hostage and beaten up. The three outlaws then took everyone hostage at gunpoint and forced poisonous pills down Sarwar's throat." ("Shumaila's uncle forced to take poisonous pills", The Nation)
Good show, Hillary. We're all about the rule of law in the good old USA.
But why all the intrigue and arm-twisting? Why has the State Department invoked the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations to make its case that Davis is entitled to diplomatic immunity? If Davis is innocent, then he has nothing to worry about, right? Why not let the trial go forward and stop reinforcing the widely-held belief that Davis is a vital cog in the US's clandestine operations in Pakistan?
The truth is that Davis had been photographing sensitive installations and madrassas for some time, the kind of intelligence gathering that spies do when scouting-out prospective targets. Also, he'd been in close contact with members of terrorist organizations, which suggests a link between the CIA and terrorist incidents in Pakistan. Here's an excerpt from Wednesday's The Express Tribune:
"His cell phone has revealed contacts with two ancillaries of al Qaeda in Pakistan, Tehreek-e-Taliban of Pakistan (TTP) and sectarian Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), which has led to the public conclusion that he was behind terrorism committed against Pakistan's security personnel and its people ....This will strike people as America in cahoots with the Taliban and al Qaeda against the state of Pakistan targeting, as one official opined, Pakistan's nuclear installations." ("Raymond Davis: The plot thickens, The Express Tribune)
"Al Qaeda"? The CIA is working with "ancillaries of al Qaeda in Pakistan"? No wonder the US media has been keeping a wrap on this story for so long.
Naturally, most Pakistanis now believe that the US is colluding with terrorists to spread instability, weaken the state, and increase its power in the region. But isn't that America's M.O. everywhere?
Also, many people noticed that US drone attacks suddenly stopped as soon as Davis was arrested. Was that a coincidence? Not likely. Davis was probably getting coordinates from his new buddies in the tribal hinterland and then passing them along to the Pentagon. The drone bombings are extremely unpopular in Pakistan. More then 1400 people have been killed since August 2008, and most of them have been civilians.
And, there's more. This is from (Pakistan's) The Nation:
"A local lawyer has moved a petition in the court of Additional District and Sessions ... contending that the accused (Davis)... was preparing a map of sensitive places in Pakistan through the GPS system installed in his car. He added that mobile phone sims, lethal weapons, and videos camera were recovered from the murder accused on January 27, 2011." ("Davis mapped Pakistan targets court told", The Nation)
So, Davis's GPS chip was being used to identify targets for drone attacks in the tribal region. Most likely, he was being assisted on the other end by recruits or members of the Tehreek-e-Taliban.
A lot of extravagant claims have been made about what Davis was up to, much of which is probably just speculation. One report which appeared on ANI news service is particularly dire, but produces little evidence to support its claims. Here's an excerpt:
"Double murder-accused US official Raymond Davis has been found in possession of top-secret CIA documents, which point to him or the feared American Task Force 373 (TF373) operating in the region, providing Al-Qaeda terrorists with "nuclear fissile material" and "biological agents," according to a report.
Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is warning that the situation on the sub-continent has turned "grave" as it appears that open warfare is about to break out between Pakistan and the United States, The European Union Times reports.....The most ominous point in this SVR report is "Pakistan's ISI stating that top-secret CIA documents found in Davis's possession point to his, and/or TF373, providing to al Qaeda terrorists "nuclear fissile material" and "biological agents", which they claim are to be used against the United States itself in order to ignite an all-out war in order to re-establish the West's hegemony over a Global economy that is warned is just months away from collapse," the paper added. ("CIA Spy Davis was giving nuclear bomb material to Al Qaeda, says report", ANI)
Although there's no way to prove that this is false, it seems like a bit of a stretch. But that doesn't mean that what Davis was up to shouldn't be taken seriously. Quite the contrary. If Davis was working with Tehreek-e-Taliban, (as alleged in many reports) then we can assume that the war on terror is basically a ruse to advance a broader imperial agenda. According to Sify News, the president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, believes this to be the case. Here's an excerpt:
"Zalmay Khalilzad, the former US envoy to Afghanistan, once brushed off Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari's claim, that the US was "arranging" the (suicide) attacks by Pakistani Taliban inside his country, as 'madness', and was of the view that both Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who believed in this US conspiracy theory, were "dysfunctional" leaders.
The account of Zardari's claim about the US' hand in the attacks has been elaborately reproduced by US journalist Bob Woodward, on Page 116 of his famous book 'Obama's Wars,' The News reported.
Woodward's account goes like this: "One evening during the trilateral summit (in Washington, between Obama, Karzai and Zardari) Zardari had dinner with Zalmay Khalilzad, the 58-year-old former US ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the UN, during the Bush presidency.
"Zardari dropped his diplomatic guard. He suggested that one of the two countries was arranging the attacks by the Pakistani Taliban inside his country: India or the US. Zardari didn't think India could be that clever, but the US could. Karzai had told him the US was behind the attacks, confirming the claims made by the Pakistani ISI."
"Mr President," Khalilzad said, "what would we gain from doing this? You explain the logic to me."
"This was a plot to destabilize Pakistan, Zardari hypothesized, so that the US could invade and seize its nuclear weapons. He could not explain the rapid expansion in violence otherwise. And the CIA had not pursued the leaders of the Pakistani Taliban, a group known as Tehreek-e-Taliban or TTP that had attacked the government. TTP was also blamed for the assassination of Zardari's wife, Benazir Bhutto." ("Pakistan President says CIA Involved in Plot to Destabilize Country and Seize Nukes", Sify News)
Zardari's claim will sound familiar to those who followed events in Iraq. Many people are convinced that the only rational explanation for the wave of bombings directed at civilians, was that the violence was caused by those groups who stood to gain from a civil war.
And who might that be?
Despite the Obama administration's efforts to derail the investigation, the case against Davis is going forward. Whether he is punished or not is irrelevant. This isn't about Davis anyway. It's a question of whether the US is working hand-in-hand with the very organizations that it publicly condemns in order to advance its global agenda. If that's the case, then the war on terror is a fraud.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 166 guests