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ACLU report card finds fault with Obama, rivals The American Civil Liberties Union has issued "Liberty Watch 2012," its report card for presidential candidates on issues like surveillance, torture, gay rights and immigration. No one gets an A, including President Obama.
Obama, the only Democrat among the 10 candidates rated, got a perfect score
four "torches"
on only one issue, allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, for his backing of the December 2010 law that repealed "don't ask, don't tell."
But he received lower marks on immigration, abortion rights and "closing Guantanamo Bay and indefinite detention," where his one-torch rating was attributed to backtracking on a promise to shut the prison for suspected terrorists and his support for holding their trials in military commissions.
The highest overall rating went to former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a Republican-turned-Libertarian, who opposes the Patriot Act and
unlike Obama
supports the right of gays and lesbians to marry. Among the leading Republican candidates, libertarian-leaning Rep. Ron Paul also got a higher score than Obama despite low ratings in several categories.
The ACLU gave the Texas congressman high marks for opposing the Patriot Act and indefinite detention of suspected terrorists, condemning waterboarding and voting to repeal "don't ask, don't tell." But it criticized Paul's call for an end to "birthright citizenship" for children of illegal immigrants, his support of the law that denies federal marriage benefits to same-sex couples and his opposition to abortion. (San Francisco Chronicle)
Officials concede gaps in U.S. knowledge of Iran plot Iran's supreme leader and the shadowy Quds Force covert operations unit were likely aware of an alleged plot to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, but hard evidence of that is scant, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.
The United States does not have solid information about "exactly how high it goes," one official said.
The Obama administration has publicly and directly blamed Iran's government for seeking to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, and has warned Tehran it will face consequences. The accusation has heightened tensions in the volatile, oil-rich Gulf.
Tehran has called the accusation a fabrication designed to sow discord in the region.
The U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said their confidence that at least some Iranian leaders were aware of the alleged plot was based largely on analyses and their understanding of how the Quds Force operates. (Reuters)
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)
ATF Fast and Furious: New documents show Attorney General Eric Holder was briefed in July 2010 New documents obtained by CBS News show Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the controversial Fast and Furious operation as far back as July 2010. That directly contradicts his statement to Congress.
On May 3, 2011, Holder told a Judiciary Committee hearing, "I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks."
Yet internal Justice Department documents show that at least ten months before that hearing, Holder began receiving frequent memos discussing Fast and Furious. (CBS)
Marijuana dispensary raided in south Sacramento A marijuana dispensary in south Sacramento was raided yesterday by Elk Grove police and the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department. The two operators of the dispensary, a son and his father were placed under arrest. The two police departments claimed that they were operating as a for-profit establishment while the law only allows for non-profit dispensaries. However, this is clearly a front used by the local police to try and scare others out of the pot industry that is developing.
An Oakland based group, Americans for Safer Access, contends that police departments frequently justify raids by claiming a dispensary is not operating as a non-profit establishment. But what they are really doing is trying to maintain control over a market that is starting to become more mainstream. Sacramento police should not be wasting their time busting up marijuana dispensaries. By doing so they are merely interfering in patients suffering from severe illnesses from gaining access to the medicine they need. They are imprisoning people over laws with little public support. They are wasting taxpayer money on an offense which is non-violent, and doesn't harm the surrounding environment. (Examiner)
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)
A Real Debate About Drug Policy: George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker on why the 'war on drugs' has failed--and what to do next "The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world."
That is the opening sentence of a report issued last week by the Global Commission on Drug Policy. Both of us have signed on to this report. Why?
We believe that drug addiction is harmful to individuals, impairs health and has adverse societal effects. So we want an effective program to deal with this problem.
The question is: What is the best way to go about it? For 40 years now, our nation's approach has been to criminalize the entire process of producing, transporting, selling and using drugs, with the exception of tobacco and alcohol. Our judgment, shared by other members of the commission, is that this approach has not worked, just as our national experiment with the prohibition of alcohol failed. Drugs are still readily available, and crime rates remain high. But drug use in the U.S. is no lower than, and sometimes surpasses, drug use in countries with very different approaches to the problem. (Wall Street Journal)
How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs As the violence spread, billions of dollars of cartel cash began to seep into the global financial system. But a special investigation by the Observer reveals how the increasingly frantic warnings of one London whistleblower were ignored
On 10 April 2006, a DC-9 jet landed in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, on the Gulf of Mexico, as the sun was setting. Mexican soldiers, waiting to intercept it, found 128 cases packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100m. But something else – more important and far-reaching – was discovered in the paper trail behind the purchase of the plane by the Sinaloa narco-trafficking cartel.
During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and others, it emerged that the cocaine smugglers had bought the plane with money they had laundered through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia, now part of the giant Wells Fargo.
The authorities uncovered billions of dollars in wire transfers, traveller's cheques and cash shipments through Mexican exchanges into Wachovia accounts. Wachovia was put under immediate investigation for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme. Of special significance was that the period concerned began in 2004, which coincided with the first escalation of violence along the US-Mexico border that ignited the current drugs war.
Criminal proceedings were brought against Wachovia, though not against any individual, but the case never came to court. In March 2010, Wachovia settled the biggest action brought under the US bank secrecy act, through the US district court in Miami. Now that the year's "deferred prosecution" has expired, the bank is in effect in the clear. It paid federal authorities $110m in forfeiture, for allowing transactions later proved to be connected to drug smuggling, and incurred a $50m fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine. (London Guardian)
Scientist: Japan earthquake, nuke “accident” are tectonic nuclear warfare; by Alfred Lambremont Webre Independent scientist Leuren Moret, whose 2004 landmark article in the Japan Times unmasked lies and distortions by government and company officials that led to the construction of nuclear power plants in seismically dangerous areas, has declared in an exclusive 65-minute video interview with Alfred Lambremont Webre that the “Japan earthquake and “accidents” at the Fukushima’s 6 nuclear power plant units starting March 11, 2011 are in fact deliberate acts of tectonic nuclear warfare, carried out against the populations ecology of Japan and the nations of the Northern Hemisphere, including the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.
In her May 23, 2004 Japan Times article, Japan's deadly game of nuclear roulette, Ms. Leuren predicted, “It is not a question of whether or not a nuclear disaster will occur in Japan; it is a question of when it will occur. Like the former Soviet Union after Chernobyl, Japan will become a country suffering from radiation sickness destroying future generations, and widespread contamination of agricultural areas will ensure a public-health disaster. Its economy may never recover.”
Japan earthquake triggered by HAARP-aerosol/chemtrails plasma weapon, to cause nuclear radiation mega leaks
Now, in an exclusive interview released March 20, 2011, independent scientist has set out the multiple reasons why the Japan earthquake was most plausibly conditioned and triggered by a HAARP-aerosol/chemtrails plasma weapon, to cause Chernobyl-like nuclear radiation mega leaks that, according to a report by the Swedish government, will be distributed over the entire Northern hemisphere of the planet.
Among the various aspects of the Japan earthquake discussed by Ms. Moret that fit the profile of a HAARP-triggered earthquake system are:
• The earthquake intensity and characteristics; the deliberate confusion by the U.S. around the scale of the earthquake;
• The foreshadowing sale of Japan Westinghouse (controlled by Rockefeller interests) in 2006 to Hitachi and other interests;
• The use of the Stuxnet virus in the Fukushima plant to cause the malfunctions of the cooling pumps and valves, thereby creating the dangerous radiation releases;
• The creation of HAARP-related vortex clouds over the San Francisco, CA Bay Area on March 18, 2011 to trigger a heavy rain out of the radiation from the first Fukushima plant explosion onto the population, food and ecology of the Bay area.
(Examiner)
Can geoengineering put the freeze on global warming? Scientists call it "geoengineering," but in plain speak, it means things like this: blasting tons of sulfate particles into the sky to reflect sunlight away from Earth; filling the ocean with iron filings to grow plankton that will suck up carbon; even dimming sunlight with space shades.
Each brings its own set of risks, but in a world fretting about the consequences of global warming, are these ideas whose time has come?
With 2010 tying as the world's warmest year on record and efforts to slow greenhouse gas emissions looking stymied, calls are rising for research into engineering our way out of global warming — everything from launching solar shade spacecraft to genetically engineering green deserts. An international consortium of 12 universities and research institutes on Tuesday, for example, announced plans to pioneer large-scale "ocean fertilization" experiments aimed at using the sea to pull more greenhouse gases out of the sky. (USA Today)
Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? Financial crooks brought down the world's economy -- but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them By Matt Taibbi. Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.
"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."
I put down my notebook. "Just that?"
"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."
Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.
This article appears in the March 3, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue is available now on newsstands and will appear in the online archive February 18.
The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What's more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions cost investors billions — from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who assured investors they would not lose even "one dollar" just months before his unit imploded, to the $263 million in compensation that former Lehman chief Dick "The Gorilla" Fuld conveniently failed to disclose. Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars.
"You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall Street," says a former congressional aide. "That's all it would take. Just once." (Rolling Stone)
Feds slap Zions over billions in illegal money transfers Two federal agencies have slapped Zions Bank with multimillion-dollar civil penalties for failing to monitor suspicious wire transfers of billions of dollars related to transactions that may have involved drug trafficking and other crimes.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Friday said it imposed an $8 million penalty against Zions for shortcomings in its anti-money laundering controls — violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and the USA Patriot Act.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — a Treasury Department agency involved in fighting money laundering — also fined Salt Lake City-based Zions $8 million but said the government would be satisfied by a single payment of $8 million.
“The bank is supposed to file suspicious activity reports if they find suspicious activity, and the bank failed to file those on a timely basis,” OCC spokesman Dick DeBuck said.
“The regulations also require the bank to monitor this wire activity, and the bank did not do that, either.” (The Salt Lake Tribune)
Fugitive Extradited from Mexico to Face Trial: Man Associated with Drug Tunnel Case Fled to Mexico Before 2001 (Press Release) Victor Flores, 51, was extradited to the U.S. from Hermosillo, Mexico and had his initial appearance before Magistrate Judge Marshall on Tuesday, December 14. The defendant will be detained until his trial on February 8, 2011 in front of Chief Judge John Roll.
Flores was to face trial in 2001 on cocaine charges related to a Naco, Ariz. drug tunnel that the defendants used to smuggle 20 tons of cocaine from its inception in 1996 until May 1999 when the tunnel was discovered.
Flores is charged in seven counts of the indictment with a variety of drug and gun violations, and he is alleged to have possessed with intent to distribute over 6,660 lbs of cocaine. An additional count alleges that he possessed three fully automatic machine guns to guard the load.
"The defendant fled to Mexico thinking that he was beyond the reach of this country's justice system and that he would not have to stand trial for his conduct. He was wrong on both counts. This extradition brings a defendant to Arizona to stand trial and marks a significant milestone in dismantling one of the largest border drug schemes in Arizona," said U.S. Attorney Dennis K. Burke. "This defendant's extradition is evidence of that the partnerships between the U.S and Mexico are working and that we are together gaining ground against violent drug trafficking organizations." (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
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)
Are Israeli art students spying in Utah? Is there door-to-door spying by Israelis in Utah?
Some very strange activities are occurring in America. Take the latest activity that came across my radar this morning. Perhaps you have heard about it, but most likely you have not.
In a recent article by Brent Hunsaker for ABC4, online, we find that:
“Sales people working neighborhoods in Northern Utah County have been asking some odd questions that have nothing to do with making the sale. Folks are reporting that they’re asking about the new National Security Agency’s data center that is being built at Camp Williams” (http://www.abc4.com/content/news/slc/story/Door-to-door-spies-in-Utah-County/sjOWsjk_zEqf6QeAfk4ZJw.csp)
The ‘sales’ people say they are Israeli art students and are selling their works to raise money for an art gallery. Some of the ‘art students’ have produced what appear to be legitimate Israeli passports, according to the report by Hunsaker. But we find out that:
“Blogs and even church bulletins are buzzing. One such bulletin sent out to LDS women in Highland said, “This is a scam! These are not art students and federal law enforcement groups are actually investigating their ties to organized crime and terrorist groups.” The note went on, “Part of their mission here is to gain information on the new NSA installation coming to our area” (ibid). (Daily Censored)
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)
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)
Worries about US data on Iraqis: Privacy advocates, those scanned fear misuse if files shared Over the past seven years, US soldiers in Iraq have used sweeping wartime powers to collect fingerprints, iris scans, and even DNA from ordinary people and suspected insurgents, an effort that has helped the Pentagon amass one of the world’s most comprehensive databases of biometric information collected during a war.
As the war draws down, however, the collection of so much personal information has raised questions about how data gathered during wartime should be used during times of peace, and with whom that information should be shared.
Nearly 7 percent of Iraq’s 29 million people are cataloged — their names, facial scans, and often other details about them, such as whether they were considered a friend or foe. Now, US officials are debating about how much of the powerful data should be shared with Iraq and how much Iraq’s own troubled security forces should be encouraged to continue collecting information.
Some Iraqis fear that the transfer of data to their government could create a “hit list’’ of Iraqis who worked with the US military or a tool for settling ethnic or sectarian scores.
“Those people, they trusted the US government and worked with them,’’ said Naseer Nouri, 52, who helps run an organization to assist Iraqi refugees in adjusting to life in the United States.
Today, the Pentagon’s database, which is kept separate from the FBI files, contains information on some 4 million people from around the world, about 40 percent of whom are Iraqis. Officials would not divulge from where the rest of the information was gathered.
US forces started collecting fingerprints in Iraq during the 2003 invasion, as part of interrogations of agents of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The US military also helped computerize Iraq’s fingerprint files from Hussein’s era. US soldiers reportedly collected fingerprints and DNA samples from 80,000 detainees in their custody. (It is not clear how those samples have been used.) (Boston Globe)
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)
'Just Say Now': Left-Right Coalition Launches Campaign To Legalize Pot A transpartisan coalition of prosecutors, judges, cops, students, bloggers and political operatives on both sides of the aisle launched a campaign Tuesday to bring an end to marijuana prohibition, focusing on ballot initiatives in 2010 and 2012. The campaign, "Just Say Now," gets its name from Nancy Reagan's iconic anti-drug slogan from the 1980s that has become synonymous with the government's black-and-white approach to drug policy.
"The stars are aligning in a very interesting way with Tea Party activists, who are generally libertarian," said Aaron Houston, head of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, on a conference call Tuesday afternoon announcing the formation of the coalition. "On the right and left it's a very popular issue."
The campaign will be backing marijuana initiatives in 2010 in Arizona, Oregon, California, Colorado and South Dakota. The group will back initiatives in Nevada and elsewhere in 2012. (Huffington Post)
Leading Ocean Scientists Issue Consensus Statement to End Dispersant Use in Gulf Leading ocean researchers and conservation leaders have issued a joint Consensus Statement calling for the immediate halt of the use of chemical dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico. BP has used nearly two million gallons of Corexit chemical dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico as part of the cleanup effort with support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The massive volume of dispersants and the way they have been applied—both on the surface and one mile below the surface —is unprecedented. Once oil is dispersed in deep water, it cannot be recovered. (1 Planet 1 Ocean)
Tropical Storm Bonnie Forms, Heading for Florida and BP's Gulf Oil Spill Tropical Storm Bonnie has formed south of the Bahamas and is on a track to move across the southern tip of Florida and into the oil-fouled waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
The storm has maximum sustained winds of 40 miles per hour (64 kilometers), and is expected to build strength as it bears down on the Florida Keys tomorrow, according to a special hurricane center advisory issued at 6:15 p.m. Miami time.
Violence Reaches New Peak In Mexican Drug War Over the past two weeks, hundreds of people have been gunned down in Mexico as drug violence continues to escalate. The surge in killings comes as President Felipe Calderon is ramping up efforts to win more public support for the drug war. Calderon said this week that the bloody offensive against the drug cartels isn't just his war but is an effort to make Mexico safe for all law-abiding citizens. More than 23,000 people have died in drug-related violence since Calderon took office 3 1/2 years ago. Outbursts of gunfire are common. It seems that nowhere in the country is immune. (National Public Radio)
Mexico To Limit US Dollar Cash Transactions To Combat Crime Mexico's Finance Minister Ernesto Cordero said Tuesday the government will seek to limit cash transactions in U.S. dollars as an anti-money laundering measure aimed at fighting organized crime. Mexico receives more than $10 billion a year in suspicious dollar flows, Cordero said at a press conference. The new rules, some of which will take effect during the next 90 days, will limit dollar bank deposits, the payment of loans and services, as well as foreign exchange transactions to between $1,500 and $7,000 a month, depending on the profile of the client, he said. (Wall Street Journal)
Feds under pressure to open US skies to drones Unmanned aircraft have proved their usefulness and reliability in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the pressure's on to allow them in the skies over the United States.
Last year, the FAA promised defense officials it would have a plan this year. The agency, which has worked on this issue since 2006, has reams of safety regulations that govern every aspect of civilian aviation but is just beginning to write regulations for unmanned aircraft. (Associated Press)
Iran sanctions as good as 'used tissue' The nuclear standoff on Iran is bound to deepen, aggravated by new United Nations sanctions on the Islamic republic and the United States digging in its heels against an alternative diplomatic plan that was designed to defuse tensions.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva accused the Security Council of acting out of "obstinacy" in accepting the US-drafted sanctions, "instead of bringing Iran to the table", the official Agencia Brasil news agency quoted Lula as saying. The Security Council had "thrown away a historic opportunity to negotiate calmly over the Iranian nuclear program". (Asia Times)
Now, however, Paul holds a much smaller advantage. The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey finds the GOP nominee with support from 49% of the state’s voters while Conway earns 41% of the vote. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and six percent (6%) are undecided. (Rasmussen)
An Imperfect Improvement: Obama's New Drug War Strategy There's no question that it points in a different direction and embraces specific policy options counter to those of the past thirty years. But it differs little on the fundamental issues of budget and drug policy paradigm, retaining the overwhelming emphasis on law enforcement and supply control strategies that doomed the policies of its predecessors. (Huffington Post)
Aerial drone will fly on Texas border soon, Napolitano says Texas is the last border state to receive a Predator drone, and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said the absence of one has hurt intelligence capabilities of federal, state and local law enforcement.
Napolitano said Texas was the last Southwest border state to receive a drone because "Texas airspace is more crowded." (Dallas Morning News)
A List of Goldman Sachs People in the Obama Government: Names Attached to the Giant Squid’s Tentacles Here you will find, I believe, the most comprehensive list of people-groups yet available to show how Obama’s administration has really become the Goldman Sachs administration. The Obama administration is not the first administration that Goldman has infiltrated, although it is perhaps the one that has been most completely co-opted from top to bottom. (Fire Dog Lake)
Aiding the Drug Cartels: The bank will pay a $160 million penalty to settle money laundering charges, acknowledging misbehavior that Barron's highlighted in 2009. PROSECUTORS IN MIAMI ANNOUNCED $160 million in money-laundering penalties against Wachovia Bank on Wednesday, the largest penalty ever obtained under federal anti-money-laundering laws. The bank acknowledged its failure to adequately monitor the billions of dollars it processed for Mexican currency-exchange houses between 2004 and 2007, a money flow including at least $110 million of narcotics proceeds from Mexican drug cartels. The Justice Department agreed not to prosecute Wachovia as long as regulators see continued compliance and cooperation from the bank—once the nation's fourth largest and now part of Wells Fargo. (Barron's)
Bill Gates talks about ‘vaccines to reduce population’ Gates made his remarks to the invitation-only Long Beach, California TED2010 Conference, in a speech titled, “Innovating to Zero!.” Along with the scientifically absurd proposition of reducing manmade CO2 emissions worldwide to zero by 2050, approximately four and a half minutes into the talk, Gates declares, "First we got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That's headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent." (author’s emphasis).
In plain English, one of the most powerful men in the world states clearly that he expects vaccines to be used to reduce population growth. When Bill Gates speaks about vaccines, he speaks with authority. In January 2010 at the elite Davos World Economic Forum, Gates announced his foundation would give $10 billion (circa €7.5 billion) over the next decade to develop and deliver new vaccines to children in the developing world. (Financial Sense)
Administration's FY 2011 Budget Proposal Demonstrates Balanced Approach to Drug Control "The new budget proposal demonstrates the Obama Administration's commitment to a balanced and comprehensive drug strategy," said Director Kerlikowske. "In a time of tight budgets and fiscal restraint, these new investments are targeted at reducing Americans' drug use and the substantial costs associated with the health and social consequences of drug abuse." (White House)
FARC’s Cocaine Sales to Mexico Cartels Prove Too Rich to Subdue Mexican drug cartels are getting cocaine from Colombia’s biggest guerrilla group in a deal that increases the security threat to both nations, according to a document captured by Colombian military intelligence and to a government official in that country.
The agreement was discussed in a meeting between a leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Raul Reyes, and an agent of a Mexican cartel at Reyes’s jungle hideout in mid- 2007, according to a letter Reyes wrote to other guerrilla commanders that was obtained by Bloomberg News.
The pact to bypass middlemen has given Reyes’s group, known as the FARC, an opportunity to double its profit by selling directly to the Mexican cartel, said the government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The FARC earned at least $1 billion and maybe several times that amount in the past year, according to officials familiar with the group. The arrangement has strengthened the cartels at a time when they are under pressure from an offensive ordered by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, the Colombian official said. (Bloomberg)
Council of Europe will investigate and debate on "Faked Pandemic" But around the Mexican outbreak, WHO in cooperation with some big pharmaceutical companies and their scientists re-defined pandemics and lowered the alarm-threshold. Those new standards forced politicians in most states to react immediately and sign marketing commitments for additional and new vaccines against "swine-flu" and spend billions of dollars to catch up with the alarming scenario that Big Pharma, media and WHO were spreading. (Wolfgang Wodarg)
Protests planned for Obama N.H. visit President Obama's town hall meeting on healthcare on Tuesday in Portsmouth, N.H., will almost certainly be far less of a free-for-all than the raucous ones that members of Congress have been having, filled with shouting matches, pushing and shoving, and even some arrests (Boston Globe)
'Buy American' a priority at 'three amigos' summit The global recession, climate change and the controversial Buy American program will be front and centre Sunday when North American leaders meet for two days of top-level talks in Guadalajara.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper joins U.S. President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon Sunday to forge a joint path forward for clean energy and continental might against competing global powerhouses. The annual gathering, dubbed the “three amigos” summit after it debuted in 2005, is designed to craft a multi-year framework for security and prosperity for North America in the face of an international financial crisis.
This time, though, the security and prosperity partnership and its streamlining of regulations is taking a back seat as the three leaders focus on the recession that has rocked the economies of all three countries. Harper is expected to take a strong stand against protectionist measures such as the U.S. Buy American plan which has hit some Canadian exporters hard.
The Guadalajara summit comes only a few weeks after Canada angered Mexico by slapping visa requirements on Mexican visitors – a move designed to stem the growing tide of Mexicans claiming refugee status in Canada.
Fighting the H1N1 flu virus, developing a common position on climate change and battling the growing problem of drug trafficking will also be on the agenda. (Edmunton Sun)
US to discuss trade, drugs with Mexico and Canada "The bottom line is that what affects our bordering neighbors has the potential to affect us all, so we want to be certain that we have the tightest and best possible cooperation," said National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones during a White House briefing with the news media.
The summit -- a part of the three nations' Security and Prosperity Partnership -- was established five years ago by leaders who are no longer in office, said Maureen Meyer, a Mexico expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, which promotes human rights and democracy in the region. (London Guardian)
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