Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Friday 9 January 2015


 Daily Headlines

French Swat teams have killed the two terrorist Kouachi brothers who have been on the run plus another man who was holding hostages at a grocery store. Multiple reports on Twitter indicate that four hostages were also killed at the Jewish grocery store

Keystone's not dead yet -- feckless Democrats in the Congress could make some kind of deal later this month or later this year, and the president could still yield down the road to the endlessly corrupt State Department bureaucracy that continues to push the pipeline -- but it's pretty amazing to see what happens when people organize.
French police on Friday killed the two brothers suspected of massacring 12 people at a Paris newspaper on Wednesday and freed a hostage they had been holding unharmed, the authorities said. The police launched a simultaneous raid on a kosher supermarket in Paris where an alleged associate of the brothers was holding an unnamed number of hostages. That hostage taker was also killed, according to a senior French police official, and at least five hostages were freed.

By Guglielmo Tell
What Cuba is Gaining, Losing and Risking
The view of a long-time Cuba resident on the announced reestablishment of relations between Cuba and the US on Dec. 17, 2014.
President Obama fancies himself the leader of the "free world" yet he heads a nation that until recently organized black site prisons for torturing suspects and which continues to use armed drones to kill innocent and guilty alike.

French intel at least has concluded that this is no underwear bomber stunt. This is a pro job. That happens to take place just a few days after France recognizes Palestinian statehood. And just a few days after General Hollande demanded the lifting of sanctions against the Russian "threat."
Tens of millions of people made New Year's resolutions last week, but few were as creative as the one pushed through Congress yesterday. Apparently, the new Congress decided that its first order of business should be to go after workers who are no longer able to hold jobs due to injury or illness.
By Margaret Kimberley
Police Corruption Exposed
The awful truth which black people were well aware of is now out in the open for all to see. Police departments in the United States exist for the purpose of maintaining white people's prerogatives as the group in control of everyone else. Enhancing public safety is a secondary consideration.
Today the US public is divided between those who rely on the "mainstream media" and those who rely on the alternative Internet media. Only the latter have any clue as to what is really happening. The stories of Charlie Hebdo and the Tsarnaev brothers will be based not on facts but on the interests of government. As in the past, the government's interest will prevail over the facts.
Congress and the administration to Wall Street's rescue - in advance
A History of America's War on Whistleblowers and Journalists Since 9/11
With 2014 fresh in our rear view mirror, an honest examination of events and developments of what's been happening in America to whistleblowers and journalists since 9/11 under the Bush-Obama regime seems a worthwhile review, however disturbing ands foreboding. By definition a whistleblower is an individual who reports an employer's misconduct. The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 (WPA) is a law that protects federal government employees in the United States from retaliatory action for voluntarily disclosing information about dishonest or illegal activities occurring within a government organization. Yet despite these supposed legal protections in place, those who have gone public disclosing illicit and immoral behavior by the federal government have been consistently singled out for discrimination and excessive punishment.
Every night, Nancy Fleming Bird, joined by her two teenage children, lights a candle on a table in front of a bay window that is filled with photos and mementos of her life with a man who went for an afternoon walk a year ago and vanished. They sit at the dinner table next to an empty chair that is a constant reminder of the void in their lives and the unanswered questions about David Bird, the Wall Street Journal reporter who simply disappeared in a quiet New Jersey neighborhood an hour's drive from Manhattan.

During the fall semester of 2014, I taught a Religion course at Berea College called "Poverty and Social Justice." The course was personally significant because it rounded off 40 years of teaching at Berea, where my first class convened in 1974 -- exactly 40 years ago. Please allow me to share what I've learned over that time.
Earthquakes, once rare in the area, have been increasing in frequency, with more than 20 since last September, according to StateImpact Texas, a project of two Texas public radio stations. And with Irving sitting on top of the natural gas-rich and heavily fracked Barnett shale deposit as well as the Balcones Fault Zone, many residents and researchers are think it's to blame here too, just as in Ohio.
The military-industrial-security complex holds the commanding heights of society now, and it is utterly dependent on a steady supply of terrorist attacks (and the constant production of new terrorist entities to fight) in order to keep its power, privileges -- and profits -- going strong.
We are on the cusp of a systems collapse. All over the place, we see information regarding the ecology of the planet, constant warfare and the potential of several perhaps all species on Earth including humankind. This is not a bad thing, perhaps. Evolution requires death. Dare we die to what we are currently and evolve into something spectacular. Such is the message I heard in Sarah Drew's "Gaia Codex."
"A careful study of images taken by the NASA rover Curiosity has revealed intriguing similarities between ancient sedimentary rocks on Mars and structures shaped by microbes on Earth. The findings suggest, but do not prove, that life may have existed earlier on the Red Planet. On Earth, carpet-like colonies of microbes trap and rearrange sediments in shallow bodies of water such as lakes and coastal areas, forming distinctive features that fossilize over time. These structures, known as microbially-induced sedimentary structures, are found in shallow water settings all over the world and in ancient rocks spanning Earth's history. In a paper published last month in the journal Astrobiology, Noffke details the striking morphological similarities between Martian sedimentary structures in the Gillespie Lake outcrop (which is at most 3.7 billion years old) and microbial structures on Earth."
By Dominic Michaelis
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion can slow climate change.
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) can slow climate change.
The Progressive movement was an outgrowth of efforts to better manage progress, in order to foster the common good. Today as then, the dominance of big business concerns driving material progress must be tempered by intelligent ideals. This is the only way progress can be made sustainable.

By Roy Ulrich
The Constitutionality of a Net Worth Tax
Question Presented: Would a federal net worth tax violate Article I, Section 9, Clause 4 of the United States Constitution?
Perhaps following the example of Egypt, the US-client government of Mian Nawaz Sharif, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, has extended military courts jurisdiction all over Pakistan.

Most of us are not even close to being on the same page when it comes to freedom of expression. While we want free speech to be absolute, in the real world, it is not. And even as we stand with Charlie Hebdo we cannot pretend not to understand that. In reality, some of Charlie Hebdo's most offensive cartoons would not be published in most parts of the world. Few media outlets would print a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad crouched on all fours with his genitals bared or show the Father, Son and Holy Ghost sodomizing each other.
Politicians and the media have universally condemned the gunmen as "terrorists" and called their actions "terrorism." And for good reason, too: the killing of unarmed civilians for apparently political or religious reasons is the classic definition of terrorism. But would people be as willing to call the Paris attack "terrorism" if the suspects involved were white or members of a right-wing hate group? I don't think so.
This GOP move doesn't just hurt an abstract entity called "Social Security." It hurts people -- living, breathing human beings. This particular move targeted the disabled. Here's how: The overall Social Security fund is well-funded for the next two decades or so (and easily remedied beyond that point), but the disability insurance trust fund needs a short-term cash infusion from the larger retirement account.
By David Swanson
If Paris Killers Had Western Media on Their Side
Some killings are reported on in a slightly different manner from how the Charlie Hebdo killings have been. Rewriting a drone killing as a gun killing (changing just a few words) would produce something like this:
By Bob Burnett
Republicans Aren't Job Creators
As the Republican-controlled 114th Congress convenes, the GOP will unveil their program for the next two years. Republicans claim most of their initiatives will create jobs, but this is far from the truth. When the GOP trumpets "new jobs," it's typically a ploy to divert gullible Americans from the true Republican agenda: lining the pockets of the rich.
In both cases, the understandable reaction is fury and a desire for retribution and closure. The result in both cases will almost certainly be a decision to grant further authority to the security state in both countries to do "whatever is necessary" to protect us.

Special Report: Documents from the Reagan presidential library reveal that two major institutions promoting "democracy" and "freedom" -- Freedom House and National Endowment for Democracy -- worked hand-in-glove, behind-the-scenes, with a CIA propaganda expert in the 1980s, reports Robert Parry.
Economic inequality is the current economic reality in the US, comparable to the age of the robber barons in the 1890's. Incomes have been flat since the 1970's. Much of it has to do w/ the demise of domestic manufacturing w/the means of production taken to 3rd world countries, plant closures, job outsourcing & downsizing so many good paying middle class jobs have disappeared. For many the American dream has become a chimera.

 Latest Articles

Do Americans Hate Children?
Yes, I know you love your children, as I love mine. That's not in doubt. But do you love mine and I yours? Because collectively there seems to be a problem.
Both papers are aflutter today with news that the Eurozone fell into deflation. We have been trying for months to explain that there is nothing magic about the harm caused by deflation (as opposed to very low levels of inflation).

 Best News Links from the Web

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court can immediately start examining allegations of war crimes against Israel if she chooses, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador said Thursday. Riyadh Mansour told a group of reporters that Palestine's formal acceptance of the court's jurisdiction starting June 13, 2014 gives prosecutor Fatou Bensouda a green light to take up the question of alleged war crimes on Palestinian territory without waiting for Palestine to formally become a member of the court on April 1. "It is within her discretion that she can do that," Mansour said. The potential cases could include allegations of war crimes by Israel during last summer's Gaza war where the Palestinians suffered heavy civilian casualties. Israel's settlement construction on occupied Palestinian lands could also be examined.

The number of Americans who identify themselves as independent of the dominant US political parties has hit an average of 43 percent, marking a new high in Gallup polling since 1988. The 43 percent of voters who claim they are political independents, before taking into account those who lean toward either the Democratic or Republican Party, has risen steadily since 2008 - the year in which identification with the Democratic Party hit a 25-year high, at 36 percent, amid the end of Republican George W. Bush's second term in office. Gallup reported that "given historical trends, 2015 could bring a new record" for self-identified political independents in the US, "as the percentage identifying as independents typically increases in the year before a presidential election, averaging a 2.5-point increase in the last six such years."
A legal advocacy group is asking a St. Louis County judge to convene a second grand jury to investigate a white police officer's killing of an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Mo., contending prosecutors "fatally compromised" the case last year. When McCulloch announced Nov. 24 that the grand jury had declined to indict Wilson, a storm of rioting and protests followed.
Sen. Rand Paul introduced a bill that would cut U.S. funding to the Palestinian Authority until it withdraws its request to join the International Criminal Court. The bill introduced this week would close a loophole in legislation rushed through last month at the tail end of the previous congressional session. That legislation, packed into an omnibus spending bill, suspended aid to the Palestinians only after the launch of any investigation targeting Israelis. The United States provides approximately $500 million in an annual assistance to the Palestinian Authority.
President Obama will announce Friday that the federal government will work with states to waive the first two years of community college tuition for some students. If states go along, the program would cover full-time and half-time students who maintain a 2.5 grade point average and "make steady progress toward completing a program," the White House said in a fact sheet released Thursday night. The federal government would cover three-quarters of the average cost of community college for those students, the White House said.
Leaving Fossil Fuels Underground to Slow Global Warming
A third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves and over 80% of current coal reserves globally should remain in the ground and not be used before 2050 if global warming is to stay below the 2degreesC target agreed by policy makers, according to new research.
Coral reefs threatened
The lowering of the ocean's pH is making it harder for corals to grow their skeletons and easier for bioeroding organisms to tear them down. Erosion rates increase tenfold in areas where corals are also exposed to high levels of nutrients, according to a new study. As sea level rises, these reefs may have a harder time growing toward the ocean surface, where they get sunlight they need to survive.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has fined Honda Motor $70 million for failing to submit reports of fatal accidents and injuries to the government. It is the largest amount that the safety regulator has ever levied against an automaker. The penalty stems from the automaker's failure to report 1,729 death and injury claims to the agency for the last 11 years, and its failure to report certain warranty and other claims in the same period.