Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Monday, 8 April 2013


Daily Headlines

The current business of human rights means human rights for some and not for others. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Physicians for Human Rights, the Peace Alliance, and Citizens for Global Solutions are all guilty of buying into the false creed that U.S. military force can be deployed to promote human rights. None of these groups stood up to oppose the invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan.

By Marianne Hoynes
Birgitta Jonsdottir: Cyber Poet
Birgitta said, "I was so fond of this American idea of freedom of democracy and the freedom of expression, which just no longer exists today in the US. We have an entirely different way of communicating now than ever before, and so we need completely new laws created, to encompass all of the new technology. We are living in an entirely different world, so all of our laws are outdated...

Among the many fantasies coming from the religious right is "America was founded as a Christian nation. The founder would be very surprised if they were alive today.

Psychologists for Social Responsibility ( PsySR)released the following letter to Secretary of Defense Hagel on the ongoing hunger strike at Guantánamo.

What is Exxon trying to hide?

"We learned, the way that no other parents should learn, that the most dangerous, dangerous part of an assault weapon is the magazine," Nicole Hockley, whose son Dylan, 6, was killed Dec. 14, said at a press conference with other parents at the Capitol Monday morning.

Once again the UK is providing the lies necessary to justify military aggression by US imperialism, as Washington pursues plans to secure its global dominance against its rivals.

The ExxonMobil pipeline that ruptured was carrying Wabasca Heavy crude, a type of bitumen mined in Canada's oil sands region. Because bitumen is too thick to flow through pipelines, it is thinned with natural gas liquids and turned into dilbit, or diluted bitumen. In 2010, Canadian dilbit spilled into Michigan's Kalamazoo River from a ruptured pipeline, and oil is still being found in sections of the riverbed today, almost three years later. If the Keystone XL pipeline is approved, it will carry dilbit from Alberta, Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast. As it passes through Nebraska, the Keystone would cross one of the nation's largest and most important water sources, the Ogallala aquifer.

By Mike Krauss
American Apartheid
Getting out of the trap the banskters have sprung
By Andrew Schmookler
If These Are the Early Stages
I turn from consideration of my own aging, in its early stages, for comfort in the idea that we are part of something bigger than ourselves that carries forward the stream of life. But then, that larger view has also become disturbing, in the light of these early stages of climate change that are increasingly visible and palpable in the world right around me.

By Derryl Hermanutz
Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is the financial conquest of nations. Its policies are state-sponsored finance capitalism, the polar opposite of "free" markets. We turned our heads when "our" capitalists were appropriating the wealth of the Third World. Where will we turn now that they have appropriated "us"?

This article proposes to modify the verse beginning "Give me your tired, your poor..." that is found in the Statue of Liberty. What's needed is something more honest.

By Ethan Indigo Smith
108, How to Meditate
A simple way to understand how to meditate as glimpsed through the number metaphysical number 108.

The New York Times reports on the proliferation of fake scientific journals which will publish anything for a large fee. These "open access" publishers are typically located overseas, and aggressively try to fool honest researchers into agreeing to be on their editorial boards. it turns out to be a lot more difficult to get your name off of the editorial board than it is to get your name on it.

There are different ways to pay attention. Knowing how can change the way you see, feel and even cope with and experience pain.

The project will use an array of wide-field cameras to perform an all-sky survey to discover transiting exoplanets, ranging from Earth-sized planets to gas giants, in orbit around the brightest stars in the sun's neighborhood. An exoplanet is a planet orbiting a star other than the sun; a transiting exoplanet is one that periodically eclipses its host star. "TESS will carry out the first space-borne all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times as much sky as any previous mission. It will identify thousands of new planets in the solar neighborhood, with a special focus on planets comparable in size to the Earth. For TESS, we were able to devise a special new "Goldilocks' orbit for the spacecraft - one which is not too close, and not too far, from both the Earth and the moon. The selection of TESS has just accelerated our chances of finding life on another planet within the next decade."

In History Departments, It's Up With Capitalism - JENNIFER SCHUESSLER NYTimes.com
"the history of capitalism" -- as the new discipline bills itself -- has began proliferating on campuses, along with dissertations on once deeply unsexy topics like insurance, banking and regulation. "The dominant question in American politics today, scholars say, is the relationship between democracy and the capitalist economy. "And to understand capitalism," said Jonathan Levy, an assistant professor of history at Princeton University and the author of "Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America," "you've got to understand capitalists.' "
Saturday's conjunction of Venus & Mars with the Sun tells us it's time to become conscious of what we love and how we desire it. Wednesday's New Moon in Aries is the last of the beginning of the 2013 New Year. Who are you? Who do you want to be? It's time to look at yourself and decide. Are you a bit player in someone's B movie or are you the character who carries the story to its successful completion. Aries always leads.

South Stream is an ambitious endeavor of Russia's energy giant Gazprom to get direct access to the EU energy market. Editor's note: While some fact in this piece are difficult to verify, the lack of reliable information from that part of the world provides an aspect of leeway here.

Hundreds of poor people waiting outside of a closed grocery store for the possibility of getting the remaining food is not the picture of the "American Dream." Yet on March 23, outside the Laney Walker Supermarket in Augusta, Ga., that is exactly what happened.

On one covert video, farm workers illegally burn the ankles of Tennessee walking horses with chemicals. Another captures workers in Wyoming punching and kicking pigs and flinging piglets into the air. And at one of the country's largest egg suppliers, a video shows hens caged alongside rotting bird corpses, while workers burn and snap off the beaks of young chicks. Each video drew a swift response. But a dozen or so state legislatures have had a different reaction: They proposed or enacted bills that would make it illegal to covertly videotape livestock farms, or apply for a job at one without disclosing ties to animal rights groups. One of the group's model bills, "The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act," prohibits filming or taking pictures on livestock farms to "defame the facility or its owner." Violators would Violators would be placed on a "terrorist registry."

"The comments from China come on the heels of several days of escalating threats by North Korea against the United States and South Korea, including the possibility of nuclear attacks."

Mr. Muhammad and his followers had been killed by the C.I.A., the first time it had deployed a Predator drone in Pakistan to carry out a "targeted killing." The target was not a top operative of Al Qaeda, but a Pakistani ally of the Taliban who led a tribal rebellion and was marked by Pakistan as an enemy of the state. In a secret deal, the C.I.A. had agreed to kill him in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies. That back-room bargain, described in detail for the first time in interviews with more than a dozen officials in Pakistan and the United States, is critical to understanding the origins of a covert drone war that began under the Bush administration, was embraced and expanded by President Obama, and is now the subject of fierce debate.

Trading in the Dark - NYTimes.com
"Trading in today's market has increasingly migrated away from public exchanges, like the New York Stock Exchange, to private trading venues, mostly operated by big banks. Off-exchange platforms include "dark pools" that let traders post orders that are hidden from the rest of the market. They also have "internalizers," including firms like Citigroup, which pay retail brokers for the opportunity to handle trades before the orders reach a public exchange...But with some 40 percent of stock trades now occurring off-exchange, there is mounting evidence that the shift is obscuring the true prices of stocks, raising the cost of trading and, by extension, damaging investor confidence...Yet the response from American regulators largely has been to watch and wait. The inaction is in contrast to recent moves by Canada and Australia to limit dark trading. "
Origins of C.I.A.'s Not-So-Secret Drone War in Pakistan - MARK MAZZETTI NYTimes.com
Nek. Muhammad and his followers were "killed by the C.I.A., the first time it had deployed a Predator drone in Pakistan to carry out a "targeted killing." The target was not a top operative of Al Qaeda, but a Pakistani ally of the Taliban who led a tribal rebellion and was marked by Pakistan as an enemy of the state. In a secret deal, the C.I.A. had agreed to kill him in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies.The back-room bargain, described in detail for the first time in interviews with more than a dozen officials in Pakistan and the United States, is critical to understanding the origins of a covert drone war that began under the Bush administration, was embraced and expanded by President Obama, and is now the subject of fierce debate. The deal, a month after a blistering internal report about abuses in the C.I.A."
Tax Lobby Builds Ties to Max Baucus - NYTimes.com
As Congress prepares to debate a rewrite of the nation's tax code businesses have retained firms that employ lobbyists who are former aides to Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which will have a crucial role in shaping any legislation.No other lawmaker on Capitol Hill has such a sizable constellation of former aides working as tax lobbyists, representing blue-chip clients that include telecommunications businesses, oil companies, retailers and financial firms, according to an analysis by LegiStorm, an online database that tracks Congressional staff members and lobbying. At least 28 aides who have worked for Mr. Baucus, Democrat of Montana, since he became the committee chairman in 2001 have lobbied on tax issues during the Obama administration -- more than any other current member of Congress. "K Street is literally littered with former Baucus staffers.
We probably need to think, most of the time, about how to change the country, not the Democrats. If we build a movement strong enough to transform the national mood, then perhaps the trembling leaders of the Democrats will eventually follow. At which point we'll get an end to things like the Keystone pipeline, and maybe even a price on carbon.

Why did the peace movement of the middle of the last decade not grow larger? Why did it shrink away? Why is it struggling now?

By Tom Engelhardt
Bill McKibben: How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Democrats?
At 72, climate scientist James Hansen is retiring as head of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies to work even more actively on climate-change issues. Keep in mind that, in congressional testimony in 1988, he first put climate change on the national map. "It is time to stop waffling so much," he told the congressional committee members, "and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here."
A newly discovered document undercuts a key storyline of the anti-Soviet Afghan war of the 1980s -- that it was "Charlie Wilson's War." A note inside Ronald Reagan's White House targeted the Texas Democrat as someone "to bring into circle as discrete Hill connection."



Latest Articles
Cutting the Welfare Safety Net Is Not the Way to 'Make Work Pay'
So, there are far better and just ways to tackle the deficit and make work pay than going after the poor and vulnerable in our society. A prime example of that meanness of spirit is the bedroom tax that saves no more than -465m and possibly far less, but will affect 660,000 people, two-thirds of whom are disabled.
Debt Debt What's the Threat?
Economics is not finance and without that understanding no resolution will be satisfactory.
As far as the Salafi Jihadists are concerned, the longer-term interests of Iran, Israel, Syria and USA are currently aligned. It is surprising that there is no apparent cooperation in this area.

Fast Food Workers are in striking in New York. They are protesting low pay, lack of benefits, deplorable working conditions.

This is background as to why the San Diego Nine have gone on a Hunger Strike.

Destabilizing Venezuela: Longstanding US Policy
It doesn't surprise. It's likely happening ahead of Venezuela's April 14 presidential election. It'll continue when it's over.
More Peace Process Hypocrisy
On April 6, John Kerry began a multi-nation tour. He'll travel to Europe and East Asia. His first stop is Turkey. He'll meet with Netanyahu and Abbas. He wants peace talks restarted.
President Obama's High Stakes Budget Gamble
President Obama's proposal to put Medicare and Social Security back on the budget bargaining table ignited a virtual palace revolt among administration loyalists. The flashpoint is the proposal to tie Social Security payments to a chained CPI.
How we eat, how we process food is related to the health of the planet as well as our own health. In our world of genetic engineering and corporate food systems, we may not be as healthy as what the mainstream tells us. This article speaks to the work of Darryl D'Souza who makes a similar point. What choice do we have? he ponders. The choice is blatant: "Be healthy or extinct."

Israel deserves criticism, but sometimes, it's critics go too far. Itamar Marcus reports on what's happening with his PMW channel on Youtube.


Best News Links from the Web
RBC replaces Canadian staff with foreign workers
Remember when globalization was going to provide jobs. The idea was that developed countries would lose manufacturing jobs but gain jobs in the new information economy. Think again. Banks are outsourcing all jobs, including those in information technology, and raking in profits. Here's a flagrant example from Canada.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Bernanke Fed's monetary policy of fixing short-term interest rates at close to zero percent and with inflation at two percent or so of forcing negative real interest rates, was primarily designed not to help the U.S. economy but to shore up the super large American banks that were on the verge of bankruptcy when the investment bank Lehman Brothers failed on September 15, 2008. Indeed, with this policy, the Bernanke Fed has transferred hundreds of billions to these super banks at a huge cost to the rest of the economy and to international holders of U.S. dollars.

President Obama will soon release a new budget, and the commentary is already flowing fast and furious. Progressives are angry (with good reason) over proposed cuts to Social Security; conservatives are denouncing the call for more revenues. But it's all Kabuki. Since House Republicans will block anything Mr. Obama proposes, his budget is best seen not as policy but as positioning, an attempt to gain praise from "centrist" pundits. Republicans oppose any expansion of programs that help the less fortunate -- along with tax cuts for the wealthy, such opposition is pretty much what defines modern conservatism. But they seem to be having more trouble than in the past defending their opposition without simply coming across as big meanies.

Anonymous conducted a massive cyber attack against government and private websites in Israel over the past few days. The number of sites hit and the actions taken indicate a very deep hack. Latest from the Middle East...

"Within the past few months, the Republican Party's approval ratings have plummeted to a twenty-year low. With increasingly radical right-wing movements, the GOP has come to be seen as an extremist party, as a side that is unwilling to compromise or negotiate terms by which the U.S. can tackle the economic turmoil that challenges the nation. The deterioration of the GOP is completely self-inflicted and is not related to the rise of a stronger Democratic Party."

"A bipartisan Senate group on immigration legislation is attempting to craft an agreement so secure that the eight members will oppose amendments to its core provisions, an arrangement that could delay the introduction of a bill, people familiar with the negotiations said."

We've Wasted Our Timeout - THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN NYTimes.com
"everywhere you turn, you see different actors standing with their toes on red lines, seemingly ready and willing, even itching, to cross them . North Korea's boy king, Kim Jong-un has ordered his strategic rocket forces to be on standby, ready to hit U.S. and South Korean targets at a moment's notice. Which is why you see the South Koreans starting to wonder aloud whether they should stay on this side of the red line and not be building their own nuclear bomb. Iran is also steadily getting closer to a similar combination of a homemade nuclear weapon and delivery system, and so far no sanctions have deterred Tehran. Meanwhile, Egypt is running out of money to buy bread for its people and is perilously close to crossing the red line into failed-state status, which would destabilize the whole region. At the same time, Syria's mad leader, Basha al-Assad has chosen ruin for his country..."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday railed against the "cowardly" terrorists responsible for the attack that killed five Americans in Afghanistan, including a "selfless, idealistic" young diplomat on a mission to donate books to students. Kerry, in Turkey for meetings with the country's leaders, said 25-year-old Anne Smedinghoff of Illinois had assisted him when he visited Afghanistan two weeks ago. She served as his control officer, an honor often bestowed on up-and-coming members of the U.S. foreign service.

They describe the find, which they call the first annually resolved "Rosetta Stone" with which to compare other climate histories from Earth's tropical and subtropical regions over the last two millennia. The cores provide a new tool for researchers to study Earth's past climate, and better understand the climate changes that are happening today.

Isolated coral reefs can recover from catastrophic damage as effectively as those with nearby undisturbed neighbours, a long-term study by marine biologists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) has shown.

Our Nation in a Nutshell, summarized by Jeff Daniels
A must see video, exemplary for the way we should be talking, standing up for what's right and what's wrong. Three minutes of inspiration and desperation all in one. [My wife helped me place the speaker, Jeff Daniels, who starred in one of my favorite movies, The Butcher's Wife.]
Anonymous DDoS attempts are a way to raise global awareness for rights and freedom issues. The real cyber-terrorism is happening on a state level, taking such forms as the Stuxnet virus. Anonymous hacktivist group on Sunday launched a massive cyber-attack dubbed #OpIsrael, and claimed to have taken down hundreds of Israeli websites. The sites that reportedly crashed included the web pages of the Israeli Defense Ministry and Knesset, as well as some Israeli branches of major companies. Such actions should not be considered hacking attacks, rather a form of a mass-scale protest against the state-level clampdown on freedoms. The difference between this and real cyber-attacks can be seen very starkly in what happened when the US and the Israeli governments committed an act of cyber-terrorism when they attacked the Iranian nuclear production facilities when they released the Stuxnet virus.
Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 21:31