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Davis votes to support repeal of Citizens United ruling Yesterday, the city of Davis voted unanimously to support Assembly Joint Resolution 22. The text of the resolution passed by the Davis city council can be found here. AJR 22 is working its way through California's state legislature; the bill would urge Congress to begin the process of a Constitutional Amendment in order to overturn the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling. The Citizens United Supreme Court decision is what allows Corporations and "Super PACS" to spend unlimited funds on any individual candidate or party they choose.
Davis joins New York City and Portland in calling on Congress to begin the process of a Constitutional Amendment for campaign finance reform. The effort in Davis, like in these other cities, was spearheaded by the Occupy Davis group. Occupy is developed growing momentum for repealing the Citizens United ruling that many see as swinging the door of corruption completely open. (Examiner)
49-State Foreclosure Fraud Settlement Will Be Finalized Thursday Forty-nine states, every one but Oklahoma, as well as federal regulators will participate in a foreclosure fraud settlement that will release the five biggest banks (Wells Fargo, Citi, Ally/GMAC, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America) and their mortgage servicing units from liability for robo-signing and other forms of servicer abuse, in exchange for $25 billion in funding for legal aid, refinancing, short sales, restitution for wrongful foreclosures and principal reduction for underwater borrowers. The announcement will be made on Thursday.
This settlement arises from multiple abuses found in the servicing of loans and the foreclosure process over the past several years. At the height of the housing bubble, banks sliced and diced mortgages and traded them with little regard for the rules following land recording or securitization to such a sloppy extent that they lost track of the true owner on potentially millions of homes. To cover up for this massive failure, banks and their servicing units have been found to have routinely forged, back-dated and fabricated documents at county recorder offices and state courts across the country. Furthermore, they employed “robo-signers,” who signed hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of documents and affidavits without any knowledge of the underlying mortgages. In addition, investigations uncovered massive servicing abuses, including illegal fees charged to borrowers, putting borrowers into foreclosure at the same time as they were working out loan modifications, failing to honor previous settlements where promises were made on modifications, and countless other errors that maximized servicer profits and gouged homeowners. There are also cases of wrongful foreclosures where homeowners have been turned out of their homes without just cause, and servicer-driven foreclosures, where servicers illegally added late fees and applied payments inaccurately, pushing the homeowner into foreclosure. This is but a smattering of the examples of foreclosure fraud and servicer abuse found in a series of interlocking investigations, court depositions, reviews of documents in registers of deeds offices, and homeowner testimonials. (Fire Dog Lake)
Sacramento's Utilities Rates Advisory Commission approves water rate hikes Sacramento's Utilities Rates Advisory Commission voted 5-2 to raise water rates in the city by $19 a month over the next three years. The reason for the rate hike? It is to gain a loan from Goldman Sachs to renovate an aging water system. But that loan is going to raise water and sewer bills from $57 monthly to $350 a month in just 15 years.
The city council still must give its approval before the rate cuts are final. But officials seem more and more in support of this measure. City Council members must hear from their constituents that these rate hikes are unsustainable. In a city with near 11 percent unemployment, raising water and sewer bills will only put more financial strain upon the city's residents.
Also residents should be aware that this loan comes with a $10.8 million underwriting fee for Goldman Sachs. The loan itself would total $1.8 billion, and Goldman Sachs would also be making profit off that through interest. Sacramento is a city that is already struggling with painful budget cuts. Sacramento has had to lay off police and firefighters, as well as hundreds of teachers and other city employees. The city has closed libraries, and discontinued other public services. Can the city afford this loan? (Examiner)
125 MW solar power plant to land in Arizona by end of 2013 Maricopa County, Arizona is set to play host to a 125 MW photovoltaic solar power plant, according to an announcement on Tuesday from Fluor Corporation. The company has won the separate contracts to build and maintain the facility, which upon completion will fleetingly join the ranks of the the world's largest photovoltaic solar farms. The project, known as Arlington Valley Solar Energy II (AVSE II) will be built on 1.8 square miles (4.7 sq. km) near to the Arlington Valley Combined Cycle Facility, a 577 MW natural gas plant also designed and built by Fluor.
"The State of California will benefit from the green energy delivered from the project as well as the solar panel sales from a San Diego-based manufacturer for a portion of the project," said John King, executive vice president of LS Power, who awarded the contract. (Giz Mag)
Sacramento County supervisor challengers adopt Occupy platform Two candidates announced Wednesday that they will run on "pro-Occupy" platforms as they seek to unseat Sacramento County Supervisors Roberta MacGlashan and Susan Peters.
Jeff Kravitz, who is challenging Peters in north-central District 3, has been a volunteer attorney for Occupy Sacramento, which has been protesting at Cesar Chavez Plaza downtown. He is a civil rights attorney and former law professor, according to his biography. (Sacramento Bee)
Sacramento's City Manager is demanding city employees pay more for pensions Sacramento's City Manager, John Shirey, threatened that 100 city employees would be laid off, unless all city employees paid more money towards their pensions. Currently, most city employees pay four percent of their paycheck to their pension; Shirey wants that raised to seven percent. If Shirey's proposal is enacted it would save the city $14.2 million. Seems like a simple enough solution right?
But what Shirey is leaving out of the story is that raising pension contributions is another word for pay cuts. Years ago the city bargained with its employees to cover a portion of employee's pension contributions in exchange for receiving no pay increase. In essence, a pay raise would result from the city covering a portion of the employee's pension contribution. So to now go back on that promise, to force city employees to pay the full employee contribution, would be to reverse those pay raises. Reversing pay raises means city employee's pay will be cut. (Examiner)
Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Banks worldwide earned an estimated $13 billion by taking advantage of below-market rates on emergency U.S. Federal Reserve loans from August 2007 through April 2010. Roll over the bars below to explore details for each. To compare results with banks' net income or losses for the same timeframes, click the corresponding button. Worldwide total is the sum for 190 firms with available data; those banks lost a combined $21.6 billion.
The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.
The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue. (Bloomberg)
The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy: The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.
But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk." (London Guardian)
with national attention focused today on the pepper spraying of nonviolent protesters at UC Davis
Gov. Jerry Brown has kept silent.
Unlike Assembly Speaker John A. Perez, who was "appalled at the apparent use of excessive force by the UC Davis police force at a peaceful student demonstration," or Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, who called it "outrageous," Brown's office has issued no comment.
Nor would he address the Occupy movement when he was asked about it at a press conference last month. (Sacramento Bee)
Revealed: the capitalist network that runs the world AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.
The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.
The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs). (New Scientist)
keywords: Affiliated Managers Group, Allianz Se, Aviva, Axa, Bank Of America, Bank Of New York Mellon, Barclays, Bnp Paribas, Brandes Investment Partners, California, Capital Group Companies, Capital Group International, China Petrochemical Group Company, Cnce, Credit Suisse, Deposit Insurance Corporation Of Japan, Deutsche Bank, Dodge & Cox, Fmr Corporation, Franklin Resources Inc, George Sugihara, Goldman Sachs, Ing Groep NV, Invesco, James Glattfelder, John Driffill, Jpmorgan Chase, LA Jolla, Legal & General Group, Legg Mason, Lehman Brothers, Lloyds Tsb Group, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance, Merrill Lynch, Mitsubishi Ufj Financial Group, Morgan Stanley, Natixis, New England Complex Systems Institute, New Scientist, Nomura Holdings, Northern Trust Corporation, Occupy Wall Street, Old Mutual Public Limited Company, Plos One, Resona Holdings, Schroders, Scripps Institution Of Oceanography, Société Générale, Standard Life, State Street Corporation, Sun Life Financial, Swiss Federal Institute Of Technology, Switzerland, T Rowe Price Group, The Depository Trust Company, Tiaa, Ubs, Unicredito Italiano Spa, United States, University Of London, Vanguard Group, Vereniging Aegon, Walton Enterprises, Wellington Management CO, Yaneer Bar-yam, Zurich
10/8/2011
The federal government is cracking down on medical marijuana California's four U.S. Attorneys, including Sacramento's US Attorney Benjamin Wagner, held a press conference Friday to announce the federal government's intention to crack down on medical marijuana dispensaries. The federal government has sent out letters to dispensaries and their landlords in San Francisco, San Diego, and Marin County. The letters state that the dispensaries are in violation of federal law, which supersedes state law, and that landlords should evict their dispensary tenants and dispensaries should close up shop within 45 days otherwise both the dispensary owners and the landlords will be arrested and prosecuted.
The four U.S. Attorneys say they aren't aiming to close every dispensary in the state; just those that are "clearly profiteering" from the medical marijuana industry. But the letters come after the news that the IRS is trying to make Harborside Health Center in Oakland, the largest medical marijuana provider, pay $2.4 million in tax penalties for trafficking in illegal drugs. The federal government is sending a message loud and clear "we are no longer going to respect state medical marijuana laws". After Obama was elected he promised to respect state laws legalizing medical marijuana. He directed U.S. prosecutors to leave the sick with medical cards alone. Obama has broken that promise. By attacking the medical marijuana dispensaries the federal government is cutting off the sick from their medicine, and thus in effect attacking the sick with medical cards and ignoring state laws.
And while the Obama administration begins the assault on medical marijuana; there is a scandal growing that has gotten little attention. In December of 2010 a border patrol agent, Brian Terry, was found killed by drug cartels in Mexico. Then in March 2011 an agent of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), a federal agency, named John Dodson blew the whistle on a program called "Fast and Furious". "Fast and Furious" is a program by the ATF to sell thousands of guns to traffickers and drug cartels in Mexico; allegedly so the federal government can build a legal case. Two guns found at the scene of Brian Terry's death were linked to the "Fast and Furious" program. Since March the Obama administration has been distancing itself from the program. (Examiner)
The ReFund California Pledge The growing Occupy Wall Street movement has shown that there is another alternative. Corporate profits and taxes on the super-rich, including those who sit on our schools and universities’ boards, could pay for refunding public education. This is why organizations representing millions of students and educators around the state have joined together in calling for a week of action from November 9th through 16th to ReFund Public Education, and are calling upon the UC Regents, the CSU Trustees and other political and corporate leaders to sign the Refund California Pledge. (ReFund California Coalition)
Did chemical reactions cause Twin Towers collapse? A mix of sprinkling system water and melted aluminium from aircraft hulls likely triggered the explosions that felled New York's Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, a materials expert has told a technology conference.
"If my theory is correct, tonnes of aluminium ran down through the towers, where the smelt came into contact with a few hundred litres of water," Christian Simensen, a scientist at SINTEF, an independent technology research institute based in Norway, said in a statement released Wednesday.
"From other disasters and experiments carried out by the aluminium industry, we know that reactions of this sort lead to violent explosions."
The official report blames the collapse on the over-heating and failure of the structural steel beams at the core of the buildings, an explanation Simensen rejects.
Given the quantities of the molten metal involved, the blasts would have been powerful enough to blow out an entire section of each building, he said. (Agence France-Presse)
New evidence links Saudi Arabia to 9/11 hijackers: Graham Weeks after terrorists brought down the World Trade Center, FBI agents swarmed into a Sarasota gated community to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a wealthy young Saudi couple who apparently had ties to some of the hijackers.
The couple and their two children abandoned their home abruptly, just a week or so before Sept. 11, leaving behind cars, furniture and food on countertops.
According to one published report, the FBI discovered phone calls between the house and at least two of the hijackers and several other terrorism suspects stretching back a year.
Yet until a Fort Lauderdale website reported the news this week, no mention of the couple has ever appeared publicly — not in the Sept. 11 commission report, nor in FBI briefings to congressional investigators, former Florida Sen. Bob Graham said Friday.
Graham called on President Barack Obama to reopen the case.
"This is the most important thing about 9/11 to surface in the last seven or eight years,'' Graham told the St. Petersburg Times. "It's very important for the White House to take control of this situation. The key umbrella question is: What was the full extent of Saudi involvement prior to 9/11 and why did the U.S. administration cover this up?'' (St Petersburg Times)
Amazon.com Inc warned its 10,000-plus California sales affiliates on Wednesday that it may be forced to sever ties with them should the state begin taxing their online sales.
The wealthiest U.S. state became the latest -- on the heels of Illinois and Connecticut -- to be dropped by Amazon from its nationwide sales-affiliate program, which relies on in-state websites to drive its own online business.
Its affiliates, paid a fee when they funnel traffic to Amazon that results in a sale, have found themselves in the middle of a battle between Amazon and several states that argue the online retailer has a duty to collect sales taxes when those affiliates operate within their state.
(Reuters)
Bohemian Grove: Where the rich and powerful go to misbehave Every July, some of the richest and most powerful men in the world gather at a 2,700 acre campground in Monte Rio, Calif., for two weeks of heavy drinking, super-secret talks, druid worship (the group insists they are simply “revering the Redwoods”), and other rituals.
Their purpose: to escape the “frontier culture,” or uncivilized interests, of common men.
The people that gather at Bohemian Grove — who have included prominent business leaders, former U.S. presidents, musicians, and oil barons — are told that “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here,” meaning business deals are to be left outside. One exception was in 1942, when a planning for the Manhattan Project took place at the grove, leading to the creation of the atom bomb.
A spokesperson for Bohemian Grove say the people that gather there “share a passion for the outdoors, music, and theater.”
The club is so hush-hush that little can be definitively said about it, but much of what we know today is from those who have infiltrated the camp, including Texas-based filmmaker Alex Jones. In 2000, Jones and his cameraman entered the camp with a hidden camera and were able to film a Bohemian Grove ceremony, Cremation of the Care. During the ceremony, members wear costumes and cremate a coffin effigy called “Care” before a 40-foot-owl, in deference to the surrounding Redwood trees. (Washington Post)
Drug Legalization: A Step Closer, But Still a Long Shot A recent report on drug policy, backed by high-profile political figures, argues for a move away from the “zero tolerance” approach. However, it fails to offer any clear solutions on halting violence and organized crime, and has been rejected by a number of Latin American governments.
The Global Commission on Drug Policy's report (get it English and Spanish here) -- issued June 2 in New York City and signed by an unprecedented 19 high level world leaders, including former presidents of Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Switzerland, the incumbent Prime Minister of Greece, the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, the former European Union High Commissioner Javier Solana, and the British billionaire Richard Branson, among others -- may be the most important call ever for reform to the 1988 United Nations Convention on Drugs (pdf version here).
That convention, adopted worldwide and enforced largely by the United States, set the international ground rules for the so-called “war on drugs.”
The Global Commission is trying to rewrite those rules. And this recent proposal is nothing short of a paradigm shift. (In Sight)
Justices, 5-4, Tell California to Cut Prisoner Population Conditions in California’s overcrowded prisons are so bad that they violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday, ordering the state to reduce its prison population by more than 30,000 inmates.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in a 5-to-4 decision that broke along ideological lines, described a prison system that failed to deliver minimal care to prisoners with serious medical and mental health problems and produced “needless suffering and death.”
Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr. filed vigorous dissents. Justice Scalia called the order affirmed by the majority “perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation’s history.” Justice Alito said “the majority is gambling with the safety of the people of California.”
The majority opinion included photographs of inmates crowded into open gymnasium-style rooms and what Justice Kennedy described as “telephone-booth-sized cages without toilets” used to house suicidal inmates. Suicide rates in the state’s prisons, Justice Kennedy wrote, have been 80 percent higher than the average for inmates nationwide. A lower court in the case said it was “an uncontested fact” that “an inmate in one of California’s prisons needlessly dies every six or seven days due to constitutional deficiencies.”
Monday’s ruling in the case, Brown v. Plata, No. 09-1233, affirmed an order by a special three-judge federal court requiring state officials to reduce the prison population to 110,000, which is 137.5 percent of the system’s capacity. There have been more than 160,000 inmates in the system in recent years, and there are now more than 140,000.
Prison release orders are rare and hard to obtain, and even advocates for prisoners’ rights said Monday’s decision was unlikely to have a significant impact around the nation.
“California is an extreme case by any measure,” said David C. Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, which submitted a brief urging the justices to uphold the lower court’s order. “This case involves ongoing, undisputed and lethal constitutional violations. We’re not going to see a lot of copycat litigation.”
State officials in California will have two years to comply with the order, and they may ask for more time. Justice Kennedy emphasized that the reduction in population need not be achieved solely by releasing prisoners early. Among the other possibilities, he said, are new construction, transfers out of state and using county facilities. (New York Times)
Convicted RFK assassin says girl manipulated him Convicted assassin Sirhan Sirhan was manipulated by a seductive girl in a mind control plot to shoot Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and his bullets did not kill the presidential candidate, lawyers for Sirhan said in new legal papers.
The documents filed this week in federal court detail extensive interviews with Sirhan during the past three years, some done while he was under hypnosis.
The papers point to a mysterious girl in a polka-dot dress as the controller who led Sirhan to fire a gun in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel. But the documents suggest a second person shot and killed Kennedy while using Sirhan as a diversion.
For the first time, Sirhan said under hypnosis that on a cue from the girl he went into "range mode" believing he was at a firing range and seeing circles with targets in front of his eyes.
"I thought that I was at the range more than I was actually shooting at any person, let alone Bobby Kennedy," Sirhan was quoted as saying during interviews with Daniel Brown, a Harvard University professor and expert in trauma memory and hypnosis. He interviewed Sirhan for 60 hours with and without hypnosis, according to the legal brief. (Associated Press)
'Nuclear hellstorm' if bin Laden caught: 9/11 mastermind The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks warned that Al-Qaeda has hidden a nuclear bomb in Europe which will unleash a "nuclear hellstorm" if Osama bin Laden is captured, leaked files revealed Monday.
The terror group also planned to make a 9/11 style attack on London's Heathrow airport by crashing a hijacked airliner into one of the terminals, the files showed.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told Guantanamo Bay interrogators the terror group would detonate the nuclear device if the Al-Qaeda chief was captured or killed, according to the classified files released by the WikiLeaks website.
Sheikh Mohammed, the self-professed mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, has been held at Guantanamo since 2006 and is to be tried in a military court at the US naval base on Cuba over the attacks. (Agence France-Presse)
Radiation Detected In Drinking Water In 13 More US Cities, Cesium-137 In Vermont Milk • Unusual Reading At Chatanooga Nuclear Plant
• Milk Contamination At EPA Maximum
• Highest Levels Yet In Boise Rainwater
Radiation from Japan has been detected in drinking water in 13 more American cities, and cesium-137 has been found in American milk—in Montpelier, Vermont—for the first time since the Japan nuclear disaster began, according to data released by the Environmental Protection Agency late Friday.
Milk samples from Phoenix and Los Angeles contained iodine-131 at levels roughly equal to the maximum contaminant level permitted by EPA, the data shows. The Phoenix sample contained 3.2 picoCuries per liter of iodine-131. The Los Angeles sample contained 2.9. The EPA maximum contaminant level is 3.0, but this is a conservative standard designed to minimize exposure over a lifetime, so EPA does not consider these levels to pose a health threat.
The cesium-137 found in milk in Vermont is the first cesium detected in milk since the Fukushima-Daichi nuclear accident occurred last month. The sample contained 1.9 picoCuries per liter of cesium-137, which falls under the same 3.0 standard.
Radioactive isotopes accumulate in milk after they spread through the atmosphere, fall to earth in rain or dust, and settle on vegetation, where they are ingested by grazing cattle. Iodine-131 is known to accumulate in the thyroid gland, where it can cause cancer and other thyroid diseases. Cesium-137 accumulates in the body’s soft tissues, where it increases risk of cancer, according to EPA. (Forbes)
San Francisco Rainwater: Radiation 181 Times Above US Drinking Water Standard Radiation from Japan rained on Berkeley, California, during recent storms at levels that exceeded drinking water standards by 181 times. A rooftop water monitoring program managed by the University of California at Berkeley’s Department of Nuclear Engineering detected substantial spikes in rain-borne iodine-131 during those torrential downpours. The levels exceeded federal drinking water thresholds, known as Maximum Contaminant Levels -- or MCLs -- by as much as 181 times or 18,100%. Iodine-131 is one of the most cancer-causing toxic radioactive isotopes spewed when nuclear power plants are in meltdown. It is being ingested by cows, which have begun passing it through into their milk and radioactivity has been detected. [Multiple Sources]
Specific Scientific Data
The iodine-131 level in the rainwater sample taken on the roof of Etcheverry Hall on the campus of UC Berkeley on March 23rd, 2011, from 9:06-18:00hrs Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) states radioactivity levels at 20.1 Becquerels per Litre (Bq/L) = 543 PicoCuries per Litre (pCi/L). The federal maximum level of iodine-131 allowed in drinking water is 3 pCi/L or 0.111 Becquerels per Litre. The sample exceeded the federal guidelines for drinking water by 181 times. The UC Berkeley researchers also discovered trace levels of iodine-131 and other radioactive isotopes, believed to have originated in Fukushima, in commercially available milk and in a local stream within California. [UC Berkeley] (Business Insider)
as happened at Chernobyl
* Government says it was overwhelmed by the scale of twin disasters
* Japanese upgrade accident from level four to five
the same as Three Mile Island
* We will rebuild from scratch says Japanese prime minister
* Particles spewed from wrecked Fukushima power station arrive in California
* Military trucks tackle reactors with tons of water for second day
The boss of the company behind the devastated Japanese nuclear reactor today broke down in tears
as his country finally acknowledged the radiation spewing from the over-heating reactors and fuel rods was enough to kill some citizens
Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency admitted that the disaster was a level 5, which is classified as a crisis causing 'several radiation deaths' by the UN International Atomic Energy.
Officials said the rating was raised after they realised the full extent of the radiation leaking from the plant. They also said that 3 per cent of the fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima plant had been severely damaged, suggesting those reactor cores have partially melted down.
After Tokyo Electric Power Company Managing Director Akio Komiri cried as he left a conference to brief journalists on the situation at Fukushima, a senior Japanese minister also admitted that the country was overwhelmed by the scale of the tsunami and nuclear crisis. (UK Daily Mail)
Surgeon General: Buying Iodine a "Precaution" The fear that a nuclear cloud could float from the shores of Japan to the shores of California has some people making a run on iodine tablets. Pharmacists across California report being flooded with requests.
State and county officials spent much of Tuesday trying to keep people calm by saying that getting the pills wasn't necessary, but then the United States Surgeon General supported the idea as a worthy "precaution."
U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin is in the Bay Area touring a peninsula hospital. NBC Bay Area reporter Damian Trujillo asked her about the run on tablets and Dr. Benjamin said although she wasn't aware of people stocking up, she did not think that would be an overreaction. She said it was right to be prepared. (NBC)
Revolution U: What Egypt Learned From The Students Who Overthrew Milosevic Early in 2008, workers at a government-owned textile factory in the Egyptian mill town of El-Mahalla el-Kubra announced that they were going on strike on the first Sunday in April to protest high food prices and low wages. They caught the attention of a group of tech-savvy young people an hour's drive to the south in the capital city of Cairo, who started a Facebook group to organize protests and strikes on April 6 throughout Egypt in solidarity with the mill workers. To their shock, the page quickly acquired some 70,000 followers.
But what worked so smoothly online proved much more difficult on the street. Police occupied the factory in Mahalla and headed off the strike. The demonstrations there turned violent: Protesters set fire to buildings, and police started shooting, killing at least two people. The solidarity protests around Egypt, meanwhile, fizzled out, in most places blocked by police. The Facebook organizers had never agreed on tactics, whether Egyptians should stay home or fill the streets in protest. People knew they wanted to do something. But no one had a clear idea of what that something was.
The botched April 6 protests, the leaders realized in their aftermath, had been an object lesson in the limits of social networking as a tool of democratic revolution. Facebook could bring together tens of thousands of sympathizers online, but it couldn't organize them once they logged off. It was a useful communication tool to call people to -- well, to what? The April 6 leaders did not know the answer to this question. So they decided to learn from others who did. In the summer of 2009, Mohamed Adel, a 20-year-old blogger and April 6 activist, went to Belgrade, Serbia. (Foreign Policy)
Happy toking: Strong majorities for drug reform (The Economist/YouGov poll) THIS week’s Economist-YouGov poll contains some exciting news for devotees of the weed. A huge majority of Americans, more than two to one once don’t knows have been excluded, support the legalisation and taxation of marijuana. Even without excluding the don’t knows, a clear majority favours treating the drug equivalently to tobacco and alcohol.
The data (see chart) reveal some interesting patterns. In every age group, more people favour than oppose legalisation. Predictably enough, the young are very strongly in favour, but babyboomers are almost as strongly so; and even those over 65 are narrowly in favour as well. Breaking the poll down by party, one finds that Republicans as well as Democrats are in favour, though the former much more narrowly so. (The Economist)
What is a 'Presidential Alert'? "This is a test of the Emergency Alert System. This is only a test..."
You've heard that warning before, but it may soon come directly from the White House.
The Federal Communications Commission has approved plans to hold the first test of a "Presidential Alert," or a broadcast warning that might be issued in the event of a serious natural disaster or terrorism threat.
It may seem like a scene out of George Orwell's "1984" or some other apocalyptic Hollywood blockbuster, but government officials have wanted for years to establish a way for the White House to quickly, directly alert Americans of impending danger.
Commissioners voted last week to require television and radio stations, cable systems and satellite TV providers to participate in a test that would have them receive and transmit a live code that includes an alert message issued by the president. No date has been set for the test. (Washington Post)
California PENAL CODE SECTION 12403.7 Notwithstanding any other law, any person may purchase, possess, or use tear gas and tear gas weapons for the projection or
release of tear gas if the tear gas and tear gas weapons are used
solely for self-defense purposes, subject to the following
requirements:
(a) ... (g) Any person who uses tear gas or tear gas weapons except in
self-defense is guilty of a public offense and is punishable by
imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 for 16
months, or two or three years or in a county jail not to exceed one
year or by a fine not to exceed one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by
both the fine and imprisonment, except that, if the use is against a
peace officer, as defined in Chapter 4.5 (commencing with Section
830) of Title 3 of Part 2, engaged in the performance of his or her
official duties and the person committing the offense knows or
reasonably should know that the victim is a peace officer, the
offense is punishable by imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of
Section 1170 for 16 months or two or three years or by a fine of one
thousand dollars ($1,000), or by both the fine and imprisonment. (California State Assembly)
Berkeley votes on naming Bradley Manning a hero Berkeley City Council will today vote on whether to name the US Army private suspected of leaking military secrets to Wikileaks, Bradley Manning, a hero.
The resolution, from the city's Peace and Justice Commission, describes the military's treatment of Manning as unjust, and calls on the city to press the military for his release.
It cites Marjorie Cohn, professor of International Human Rights Law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, as saying: "If Manning did what he is suspected of doing, he should be honored as an American hero for exposing war crimes and, hopefully, ultimately, helping to end this war." (TG Daily)
Budding Prospects: Youth Activists Push Marijuana Reform On November 7 a group of student activists gathered in a room on the University of Colorado campus to discuss strategies for how to run a marijuana legalization campaign in the 2012 elections. Five days earlier, voters in California had defeated Proposition 19 by a margin of seven points. Although the vote represented the largest percentage a US legalization measure has ever garnered (46.5 percent), many in the drug policy reform community were discouraged. Young activists who had spent the past several months encouraging students on California campuses to register, and who worked furiously in the final days to get out the vote, were exhausted. There were a lot of sullen expressions in downtown Oakland on election night. But for the students in Boulder, and in some ways for the legalization movement more broadly, the fight is just beginning.
After all the media attention heaped on the Prop 19 campaign, it should come as no surprise that the vanguard of the legalization drive in Colorado is made up of college-age activists. Motivating young voters was a central focus of the grassroots effort for Prop 19, and to a large extent it worked. In a postelection follow-up, the Public Policy Institute of California found that 62 percent of voters under 34 supported the initiative. The campaign I helped to organize through Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) printed more than 100,000 door hangers with bar codes that, when scanned by cellphones, directed students to their polling place. And we didn't stop with California. We worked with our partners in the Just Say Now campaign to organize phone banks staffed by students from all over the country, who made thousands of calls for the low cost of several pizzas per night. (The Nation)
TSA: Despite objections, all passengers must be screened In response to a video of a California man's dispute with airport security officials, the Transportation Security Administration said Monday it tries to be sensitive to individuals, but everyone getting on a flight must be screened.
The video, in which software engineer John Tyner refuses an X-ray scan at the San Diego, California, airport, has sparked a debate over screening procedures.
Tyner told CNN on Sunday that he was surprised to see so many people take an interest in his refusal and the dispute with airport screeners that followed it. But he said he hoped the video will focus attention on what he calls a government invasion of privacy.
"Obviously, everybody has their own perspective about their personal screening," TSA administrator John Pistole told CNN. "The question is, how do we best address those issues ... while providing the best possible security?" (CNN)
The Citizens United Effect: 40 percent of outside money made possible by Supreme Court ruling In 2002 former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once flippantly described connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda terrorists by saying, "There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns; there are things we do not know we don’t know." Little did Rumsfeld know that his remark would be the most accurate description for a murky midterm election eight years down the road.
The 2010 midterm election is filled with both "known unknowns," outside groups raised and spent $126 million on elections without disclosing the source, and "unknown unknowns," we don't know what those undisclosed donors want. We do know one thing: the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling allowed this election to be the costliest and least transparent midterm in recent history.
The impact of Citizens United can be judged by simply following the money. The $126 million in undisclosed money represents more than a quarter of the total $450 million spent by outside groups. Add the $60 million spent by groups that were allowed to raise unlimited money, but still had to disclose, to the undisclosed money and the total amount of outside money made possible by the Citizens United ruling reaches $186 million or 40 percent of the total spent by outside groups. (Sunlight Foundation)
End the War on Pot I dropped in on a marijuana shop here that proudly boasted that it sells “31 flavors.” It also offered a loyalty program. For every 10 purchases of pot — supposedly for medical uses — you get one free packet.
“There are five of these shops within a three-block radius,” explained the proprietor, Edward J. Kim. He brimmed with pride at his inventory and sounded like any small businessman as he complained about onerous government regulation. Like, well, state and federal laws.
But those burdensome regulations are already evaporating in California, where anyone who can fake a headache already can buy pot. Now there’s a significant chance that on Tuesday, California voters will choose to go further and broadly legalize marijuana.
I hope so. Our nearly century-long experiment in banning marijuana has failed as abysmally as Prohibition did, and California may now be pioneering a saner approach. Sure, there are risks if California legalizes pot. But our present drug policy has three catastrophic consequences. (New York Times)
What the Feds Can Do About Prop 19: The attorney general will have a tough decision to make if California legalizes marijuana. Assume for a moment that California voters approve Proposition 19 on Nov. 2. The state will have just enacted a process for legalizing, regulating, and taxing marijuana use that no one else in the world has ever attempted. But Attorney General Eric Holder, President Obama’s top law-enforcement officer, has said the administration will “vigorously enforce” federal drug laws in the country’s most populous state regardless of the vote. For all the trails that approving Prop 19 would blaze, much of its impact would depend on the extent to which Holder follows through on that threat.
The attorney general has shown some willingness to scale back on marijuana enforcement; his Justice Department ended Bush-era crackdowns on medical pot dispensaries in California. Of course, the post–Prop 19 world would be different. California cities could license businesses that grow and sell marijuana on a large scale. Drug dealers in other states would surely head to California’s “coffee shops” (as weed retailers are called in Amsterdam), buy some California-grown product, and illegally transport it back home. It’s arguable that pot smokers and presumably some dealers can do that today, but they at least need a doctor’s permission and a state-issued ID card, which provides cover for authorities, however easily those cards may be obtainable. With that cover removed, Holder, whose department includes the Drug Enforcement Administration, could hardly ignore such a blatant violation of federal drug law. (Newsweek)
Former surgeon general calls for marijuana legalization Former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders told CNN Sunday she supports legalizing marijuana.
The trend-setting state of California is voting next month on a ballot initiative to legalize pot, also known as Proposition 19. The measure would legalize recreational use in the state, though federal officials have said they would continue to enforce drug laws in California if the initiative is approved.
"What I think is horrible about all of this, is that we criminalize young people. And we use so many of our excellent resources ... for things that aren't really causing any problems," said Elders. "It's not a toxic substance." (CNN)
Faulty Paperwork Prompts Deepening Foreclosure Problem Some lenders have put a temporary hold on foreclosures and state attorney generals have launched a joint investigation to sort out problems with questionable documents. Paul Solman gives details on the flawed paperwork as part of his ongoing series on making sense of financial news. (PBS)
One in 28 US kids has a parent in prison: study The US's exceptionally high rate of incarceration is causing economic damage not only to the people behind bars but to their children and taxpayers as a whole, a new study finds.
The study (PDF) from the Pew Research Center's Economic Mobility Project, released Tuesday, reports that the US prison population has more than quadrupled since 1980, from 500,000 to 2.3 million, making the US's incarceration rate the highest in the world, beating former champions like Russia and South Africa.
This means more than one in 100 Americans is in prison, and the cost of prisons to states now exceeds $50 billion per year, or one in every 15 state dollars spent -- a figure the study describes as "staggering."
According to the authors, one in every 28 children in the US has a parent behind bars -- up from one in 125 just 25 years ago. This is significant, the study argues, because children of incarcerated parents are much likelier to struggle in life.
A family with an incarcerated parent on average earns 22 percent less the year after the incarceration than it did the year before, the study finds. And children with parents in prison are significantly likelier to be expelled from school than others; 23 percent of students with jailed parents are expelled, compared to 4 percent for the general population. (The Raw Story)
Sooner or later, marijuana will be legal It's as predictable as the sun rising and setting. Even though police made more than 850,000 marijuana arrests last year, a recent government report shows youth marijuana use increased by about 9 percent.
Supporters of the failed war on drugs will no doubt argue this increase means policymakers should spend more taxpayer money next year arresting and incarcerating a greater number of Americans. In other words, their solution to failure is to do more of the same. Fortunately, the "reform nothing" club is getting mighty lonely these days -- 76 percent of Americans recognize the drug war has failed; millions are demanding change. (CNN)
Was San Bruno Explosion a Plane Crash? A number of reports suggest that the "natural gas pipeline explosion" Sept. 9 that killed seven, injured 50 and leveled 40 homes in San Bruno CA may have involved a plane crash or a missile. If so, there is a massive cover-up taking place.
On 09-10-10 at 11:06 A.M. a huge jet, resembling Air force One flew over San Jose. At 11:29 A.M. an F-18 flew over, and at 12:46 P.M. an AC -130 gunship (with the side gun turrets) followed.
The F-18's engines were roaring like a freight train. The F-18 appeared to be carrying large fuel tanks and ordinance. Being shortly before 9-11, I thought, "here comes another false flag incident."
Above is a photo of the F-18 as it flew over. Below is a photo showing the ordinance these jets can carry. It is not unusual to see an F-18 fly overhead here. It is very unusual for them to be heavily laden with weapons. It had its landing gear down, as you can see, and was headed north (towards Moffett Federal air base, Travis Air Force base, and San Francisco). These are all within thirty miles of San Bruno, where the pipeline allegedly exploded. (Henry Makow)
Last week, the government released its National Survey on Drug Use and Health. It didn't make much of a news splash, but it should have -- and in years past, it would have.
When a serious war is taking place, officials throughout the administration hold press conferences and issue statements while print and televised media across the country report on it. Almost none of this happened, although the reasons for talking and reporting are greater than they have been in a very long time.
Here's the takeaway: Illicit drug abuse is seriously affecting our children, our schools, our workplaces and our society. And it is on the rise. In 2009, nearly 22 million Americans were regularly abusing illicit drugs: a rise of 1.5 million abusers of marijuana from 2008 and a rise of 2.3 million users from 2007, a rise of 205,000 abusers of Ecstasy from 2008, a rise of 188,000 abusers of methamphetamine from 2008 and a rise of 800,000 abusers of prescription drugs from 2008. (CNN)
Gay Rights Campaign Contributions Down in Contentious Year So far during the 2010 election cycle, people and political action committees associated with this special interest area have donated $744,040 to federal candidates, with 96 percent of funds going to Democrats. That’s compared to more than $2 million contributed to federal candidates during the 2006 congressional elections and $1.8 million contributed during the 2008 presidential election cycle. (OpenSecretsblog)
How marijuana became legal: Medical marijuana is giving activists a chance to show how a legitimized pot business can work. Is the end of prohibition upon us? When Irvin Rosenfeld, 56, picks me up at the Fort Lauderdale airport, his SUV reeks of marijuana. The vice president for sales at a local brokerage firm, Rosenfeld has been smoking 10 to 12 marijuana cigarettes a day for 38 years, he says.
That's probably unusual in itself, but what makes Rosenfeld exceptional is that for the past 27 years, he has been copping his weed directly from the United States government.
Every 25 days Rosenfeld goes to a pharmacy and picks up a tin of 300 federally grown and rolled cigarettes that have been sent there for him by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), acting with approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Rosenfeld smokes the marijuana to relieve chronic pain and muscle spasms caused by a rare bone disease. When he was 10, doctors discovered that his skeleton was riddled with more than 200 tumors, due to a condition known as multiple congenital cartilaginous exostosis. Despite seven operations, he still lives with scores of tumors in his bones. (CNN)
They all thought it was an airplane.
It wasn't.
Freddy Tobar was upstairs in his kitchen getting ready to feed his Chihuahua Chiquita, when he heard popping sounds from under the ground and felt the house shaking.
He looked outside and saw his backyard crumble into the earth. Trees disintegrated into flames.
His first thought was to run outside, but the door was already melting. He pushed through, burned his hands and with his dog in one arm, ran outside with his cell phone and called his wife, Nora Orozco-Tobar. (San Francisco Chronicle)
Breaking News: San Bruno explosion update At just after 6:00 pm, a massive explosion tore through a quiet San Bruno. An area as large as two blocks wide has been leveled as houses burn out of control. The fire is burning so hotly that fire fighters cannot get close enough to contain the flames. While reports from witnesses describe that it was a plane crash, the FAA is claiming that it was not a plane. Reports are coming in that it may have been a natural gas explosion, which sounds like a jet engine when it erupts. The FAA and PG&E are both claiming the explosion was not related to them.
A witness less than a half mile from the epicenter of the explosion say he heard a noise that sounded like a distressed plane and then a sudden explosion that rocked his home. However, earlier reports of a plane involved accident may prove to be incorrect. The scene is one of absolute devastation, with homes flattened to the ground. Fire fires are desperately trying to move in to save homes that are now being caught by the rapidly spreading flames. At least a dozen homes have been incinerated, with additional homes catching fire.
Highway 280 is shut down completely in the northbound direction, as are thoroughfares around the fire. Do not attempt to travel into the affected area. Police roadblocks have been set up around the scene. The roads need to remain clear for the large cache of ambulances going in and out of the scene.
Larry Lee, a witness to the disaster, said his house shook, just after he had heard the sounds of a plane. Lee was concerned because the plane sounded as if it was right over his house. However, Lee did not visually see an airplane. Another witness said he was sitting at a red light when the explosion happened. He reports that the car shook as dirt blew up all around him. Then there was dark smoke. He said it was as if “the ground exploded.” He did not see a plane prior to the explosion. (Examiner)
Airport `Naked Image' Scanners May Get Privacy Upgrades Holli Powell, a Phoenix medical- software consultant who flies every week, says she avoids getting into airport security lines that end at what she calls a humiliating full-body scanner.
“Those scanners, I feel, are above and beyond,” Powell, 35, said in an interview. They generate “nearly naked images.”
The concerns of travelers such as Powell, which led privacy advocates to sue the government, may soon be eased. L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. and OSI Systems Inc.’s Rapiscan, makers of the scanners for U.S. airports, are delivering software upgrades that show a generic figure rather than an actual image of a passenger’s body parts. The new display would mark sections of a person’s body that need to be checked. (Bloomberg)
Devices detonated at Discovery gunman's home A gunman who burst into the Discovery Communications headquarters with explosive devices strapped to his body and took three people hostage on Wednesday was armed with starter pistols, Montgomery County Police said Thursday.
The two weapons in gunman James J. Lee's possession were starter pistols, and not handguns as police previously thought, Montgomery County Police Chief Tom Manger said at a press conference Thursday afternoon.
Starter pistols are incapable of firing bullets.
Authorities also found four explosive devices during a search of Lee's home in the 2500 block of Kimberly Street in Wheaton on Thursday morning. Those devices were successfully detonated. (WTOP)
Group Attacks Google Privacy, Schmidt with Times Square Ad Just in time for the holiday weekend, a California-based consumer group has purchased space on a Times Square jumbotron to display a video that attacks Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and his company's privacy policies.
The effort is part of Consumer Watchdog's "Don't Track Me" campaign, which is pushing Congress to pass legislation that would create a list of consumers who do not want Internet companies tracking their online activities – much like the "do not call" list bans unsolicited telemarketing calls.
"We're satirizing Schmidt in the most highly-trafficked public square in the nation to make the public aware of how out of touch Schmidt and Google are when it comes to our privacy rights," Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, said in a statement. (PC Mag)
How to Incorporate Philanthropy Into Your Business: Giving back can creates advantages in the for-profit world Recently divorced Mike Hannigan was in a grocery store looking for spaghetti sauce when he came across Newman's Own for the first time. Discovering that all the profits of the competitively priced brand were donated to charity made something to click for the office products company manager.
"As a consumer I wasn't making any sacrifice," he says. "Use business as a tool to accomplish a community goal — it made perfect sense."
In 1991 Hannigan started the office products company Give Something Back and committed to earmarking the company's profits for nonprofit organizations instead of shareholders or investors. Since then, the Oakland-based company has become the largest independent office products supplier in California and its main competitor is Staples' commercial division.
"I really encourage businesses that are starting up to incorporate the triple bottom line approach," says Christopher Ellinger, co-founder of Bolder Giving Initiative, an organization based in Boston and New York that aims to inspire and support donors to give at their full potential. That approach should be written into a clear mission statement that serves as the business’s moral compass.
Ellinger also suggests tapping into networks for social responsibility to get guidance and support. Prominent networks include B Corp, corporations that use business to address social and environmental problems, and the Social Venture Network. Beyond formal networks, informal ones can be valuable resources. "Reach out to people who have done it before and find out what lessons they've learned," Hannigan recommends. (Inc.)
COLUMN-In drug war, the beginning of the end? Bernd Debusmann Between 1971, when Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs, and 2008, the latest year for which official figures are available, American law enforcement officials made more than 40 million drug arrests. That number roughly equals the population of California, or of the 33 biggest U.S. cities.
Forty million arrests speak volumes about America's longest war, which was meant to throttle drug production at home and abroad, cut supplies across the borders, and keep people from using drugs. The marathon effort has boosted the prison industry but failed so obviously to meet its objectives that there is a growing chorus of calls for the legalization of illicit drugs.
In the United States, that brings together odd bedfellows. Libertarians in the tea party movement, for example, and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), an organization of former police officers, narcotics agents, judges and prosecutors who favor legalizing all drugs, not only marijuana, the world's most widely-used illicit drug.
"Taking all this together, there is reason to believe that we are at the beginning of the end of the drug war as we know it," says Aaron Houston, a veteran Washington lobbyist for marijuana policy reform.
Far-fetched? Perhaps. But how many people in the late 1920s, at the height of the government's fight against the likes of Al Capone, would have foreseen that alcohol prohibition would end in just a few years? Prohibition lasted from 1920 to 1933 and is now considered a failed experiment in social engineering.
Alcohol and marijuana prohibition have much in common: both in effect handed production, sales and distribution of a commodity in high demand to criminal organizations, both filled the prisons (America's population behind bars is now the world's largest), both diverted the resources of law enforcement, and both created millions of scoff-laws. (Reuters)
Today Judge Jeffrey White, federal district judge for the Northern District of California, issued a ruling granting the request of plaintiffs Center for Food Safety, Organic Seed Alliance, High Mowing Organic Seeds, and the Sierra Club to rescind the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) approval of genetically engineered “Roundup Ready” sugar beets. In September 2009, the Court had found that the USDA had violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by approving the Monsanto-engineered biotech crop without first preparing an Environmental Impact Statement. The crop was engineered to resist the effects of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, which it sells to farmers together with the patented seed. Similar Roundup Ready crops have led to increased use of herbicides, proliferation of herbicide resistant weeds, and contamination of conventional and organic crops.
In today’s ruling the Court officially “vacated” the USDA “deregulation” of Monsanto’s biotech sugar beets and prohibited any future planting and sale pending the agency’s compliance with NEPA and all other relevant laws. USDA has estimated that an EIS may be ready by 2012.
This case is Center for Food Safety v. Vilsack, No. C08-00484 JSW (N.D. Cal. 2010). (Center for Food Safety)
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