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24 Dec 09

Sarah and Her Tribe - The New York Review of Books

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2009 usa politics rhetoric clarity palin history career

20 Dec 09

Antifascist Calling...: Letting the Beast Out of the (Corporatist) Bottle: Obama Channels Bush on Bioweapons

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2009 biowar lobbying funding usa pharma industry security ownership globalization

However, not a single word in the 23-page NSC document addresses the vital issue of verification. Indeed, while no-holds-barred inspections of nuclear weapons' facilities undergird international treaties governing the destruction of warheads and missiles, thus ensuring compliance with treaty obligations by states, when it comes to biological weapons the "National Strategy" skirts the question entirely. Why?
the fact is, the "private sector" and the secret state's own Defense Department are dead-set against any initiative that give international arms' control monitors access to their facilities.
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- In other words, the "genetic fingerprint" and "extraordinary concentration" of the weaponized anthrax used in the attack would require a team of individuals, and not a proverbial "lone nut" to produce a biotoxin possessing such exquisitely lethal characteristics.
- Reporter Tim McElhatton disclosed that O'Toole "never reported her involvement with the lobbying group called the Alliance for Biosecurity in a recent government ethics filing." The Washington Times further reported that the Alliance "has spent more than $500,000 lobbying Congress and federal agencies--including Homeland Security--since 2005, congressional records show."
- OpenSecrets reports that since 1990, Big Pharma and their allies in the health products industry have spent a whopping $177,030,005 on "influence and lobbying." Breaking down the numbers, the watchdog group avers that the bulk of contributions have benefited Republicans ($111,405,078 or 63%) vs. Democrats ($65,056,643 or 37%).
- Alarmingly, "the troubling fact [was] that the sale of MBPI to BioPort had transferred control of a sensitive government program to a network of companies, one of which was headquartered in the Dutch Caribbean."

Antifascist Calling...: Public Menace-Private Profit: America's Biowarfare Alliance

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2009 bioweapons research security defense weaponry fear privatization control usa

Noting that "the relevant details of the 2005 anthrax accident were kept from the public at the time, just as happened with the illegal experiments that are coming to light today," TVC learned that this work is expanding, with little in the way of effective oversight by Congress or indeed, by any regulatory agency.
Cole unearthed documents, including a 1968 official history of Ft. Detrick penned by a Pentagon bioweaponeer who asserted forthrightly that "research and development in the offensive aspects of BW proceeded hand in hand with defensive developments for, in truth, the two are almost inseparable."
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- "What are sensory overloads on the maintenance of deceptive behaviors? How might we overload the system or overwhelm the senses and see how it affects deceptive behaviors?"
- Which is why, according to Greenwald, "it's so striking how we've collectively flushed this terrorist attack down the memory hole as though it doesn't exist." Indeed, "what makes this particularly significant is that the anthrax attack is unresolved and uninvestigated."

30 Nov 09

Obama’s “Freedom Agenda”—By Ken Silverstein (Harper's Magazine)

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2009 usa policy foreign honduras coup comparison

26 Nov 09

¡Obámanos! : Six Questions for Hendrik Hertzberg—By Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine)

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2009 usa politics society structure rhetoric media

The president is the head of just one of three separately elected federal “governments,” all of which must agree for anything fundamental to happen, especially on the domestic side. That’s no big problem if your agenda is limited to cutting taxes, starting wars, kowtowing to society’s winners, and punishing society’s losers. But if you want to do something large and positive and disturbing to the status quo, the obstacles are huge.

15 Nov 09

Calvin and Madison on Men, Angels and Government (Harper's Magazine)

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2009 government god being humanity usa music influence

Calvinism was not, by and large, a state religion. This led Calvinist philosophers, particularly those operating in the English-speaking world, to advance the notion of separation of church and state and ideas of religious liberty–as a matter of pragmatic self-interest.

13 Nov 09

Tette forbindelser - frifagbevegelse.no

www.frifagbevegelse.no/...article4701264.ece - Preview

2009 union usa norway politics

10 Nov 09

Asia Times Online :: Asian news and current affairs

www.atimes.com/...KK11Dj01.html - Preview

2009 default economy stability britain usa japan excess spending

the Bank of England has been slightly more irresponsible in its
financing mechanisms than even the Federal Reserve, leaving interest rates
above zero but funding fully one third of public spending through direct money
creation.
A second British problem not shared by the US is its excessive reliance on
financial services. As detailed in previous columns, this sector has roughly
doubled in the last 30 years as a share of both British and US GDP. In
addition, the sector's vulnerability to a restoration of a properly tight
monetary policy has been enormously increased through its addiction to trading
revenue.
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- the opposition Conservatives, likely to take power
  next spring, are led by a center-leftist with a background in public relations
  and no discernable backbone or principles.
- Japan does however have a couple of advantages that may enable it to avoid
  default. First, its public debt carries very low interest rates, mostly below
  2% per annum, and is owned almost entirely by its own citizens.

Russian Math, the Poincare Conjecture and Perelman - WSJ.com

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2009 math culture academia competition dedication work exploration proof capability russia usa

Following the war, the Soviets invested heavily in high-tech military research, building over 40 cities where scientists and mathematicians worked in secret.
"If I had been free to choose any profession, I would have become a literary critic," says Georgii Shabat, a well-known Moscow mathematician. "But I wanted to work, not spend my life fighting the censors."
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- In St. Petersburg he went on the (admittedly modest) payroll of the math research institute, where he showed up infrequently and generally kept to himself for almost seven years, one of the greatest mathematical discoveries of at least the last hundred years. It's all but impossible to imagine an American institution that could have provided Mr. Perelman with this kind of near-solitary existence, free of teaching and publishing obligations.
- A child of the Soviet math counterculture, he still held a singular truth to be self-evident: Math as it ought to be practiced, math as the ultimate flight of the imagination, is something money can't buy.

04 Nov 09

Asia Times Online :: Asian news and current affairs

www.atimes.com/...KK05Dj02.html - Preview

2009 economy usa money value spending inflation price resources speculation

Bernankeism is a form of voodoo economics. It assumes that the economy is
constantly suffering demand deficiencies, in relation to supplies of basic
products such as oil and food commodities, and that the remedy is sheer "money
helicoptering". This is different from the thinking of John Maynard Keynes, who
called for infrastructure spending to stimulate the economy and discarded money
injection into banks that can create a liquidity trap, or monetizing record
fiscal deficits on current expenditure that cannot be rolled back later for
political reasons.
Bernanke has constantly denied any link between monetary policy and commodity
prices, even though all money injection was going straight to speculation in
stocks and commodities.
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- banks were taking free money from the Fed, buying
  government bonds, and making a 3.8% net gain.

17 Oct 09

Delusional in Dixie—By Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine)

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2009 usa media belief

08 Oct 09

Smearing Grayson: Health Care Industry Puppets Now Accuse Democrat Of Anti-Semitism - By Mark Ames - The eXiled

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2009 politics usa media lies accusations danger control bailout

26 Sep 09

Why Is No One Touching This Incredible Whistleblower Story? - By Mark Ames - The eXiled

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2009 power infiltration intelligence usa

21 Sep 09

America Out of Work: Is Double-Digit Unemployment Here to Stay? -- Printout -- TIME

www.time.com/...0,8816,1921439,00.html - Preview

2009 economy usa retraining unemployment restructuring manufacturing instability service economics

The number of long-term unemployed, people who have been out of work for more than 27 weeks, was the highest since the BLS began recording the number in 1948. Jobless figures released Sept. 4 showed a 9.7% unemployment rate, pushing the U.S. — unthinkably — ahead of Europe, with 9.5%.
The idea that hysteresis happens to economies is one that economists don't like to think about. They prefer to consider economies as yo-yos tethered to the sturdy string of the business cycle, moving up and down from growth to slowdown and back. But from time to time, things do snap.
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- The alternative would involve reshaping what it means to work in America. Such a plan would start by changing what it means to be jobless. To begin with, this would require a massive increase in job retraining, one that assured that every laid-off worker had a chance to learn a new skill and years of funding to master it — instead of the six-month shots now generally offered
- Some of the world's most skilled machinists live in the American Midwest. But their skills are geared to a dying auto industry, and with no bank credit for start-ups and no way to organize, they have no chance to transform themselves into a workforce for globally competitive precision-manufacturing firms.

20 Sep 09

The Cold War

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2009 history academia analysis russia usa network scholarship government

19 Sep 09

The Great Gazoo Returns: “Don’t Scrap The Missile Shield, Dumb-Dumbs!” - By Mark Ames - The eXiled

exiledonline.com/ile-shield-dumb-dumbs%e2%80%9d - Preview

2009 strategy rhetoric media usa military

By ripping up the ABM treaty that quickly after we’d taken Kabul, Putin was made to look like a fool, and it showed in his television address that night.

18 Sep 09

Bush’s Gilded Age—By Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine)

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2009 usa administration comparison bush

13 Aug 09

Dissident Voice : Hillary Clinton’s Business Trip to India

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2009 trade india usa containment nuclear military arms business poverty cooperation history afghanistan islam

To a question of the Congressman Adam Shciff in a Subcommittee of the House of Appropriations Committee on April 23, 2009, Clinton explained how the militancy was linked to the US-backed proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan:
McCain’s proposal was a euphemism for the inclusion of nonEuropean US allies in a global military coalition.¹² The reason for this seems to be the rise of China as an economic power. The US National Intelligence Council called it “the unprecedented transfer of wealth from west to east.”¹²
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- Zbigniew Brzezenski boasted, “We actually did provide some support to the Mijahedeen before (Soviet) invasion.”¹⁴ “We did not push the Russians into invading, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would,” Brzezenski bragged. “That secret operation was an excellent idea. The effect was to draw the Russians into the Afghan trap.”¹⁵
- According to the congressional report “Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations,”: “Where before the principal motivation for arms sales by foreign suppliers might have been to support a foreign policy objective, today that motivation may be based as much on economic considerations as those of foreign policy or national security policy.”⁶
- Vice Admiral Jeffrey Wieringa, the head of the Pentagon agency that administers weapons exports, was more candid: “We sell stuff to build relationships.”⁷
- According to the World Bank poverty line of $1.25 (Rs. 56.13) per day, the number of poor in India during 2004-2005 was 456 million

12 Aug 09

Obama's torture hangover | Scott Horton | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

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2009 torture truth geneva humanitarian usa rhetoric action law obama privelege

Barack Obama gained the presidency with promises to restore America's fidelity to international law. A lawyer and law professor, he attacked the Bush administration's legal shortcuts in the "war on terror" and made a pledge to close Guantánamo. Since his inauguration, he has offered lofty rhetoric and reiterated pledges to end the Guantánamo camps, forbid torture and end the process of "extraordinary" renditions involving black sites. But his actions fall remarkably short of his words.
The Pentagon had hushed up all discussion about the case, and one official responsible for detainee affairs tells me "when the full story comes out, we won't look good". That is probably an understatement.
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- The US should be doing what Geneva and other international law instruments expect – its foreign prisons must conform with the law of the host country, and prisoners held in them must have the rights that local laws and international agreements, including the Geneva conventions, guarantee them.