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Best of the Web: The New 'Twilight Zone': Obama Declares Swine Flu Emergency

Dr. Mercola
Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:01 EDT

The shocking truth about why Obama announced a National Public Health Emergency in the US this weekend.

President Barack Obama declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency on Friday October 23, empowering the health secretary to suspend federal requirements and speed up treatment.

His declaration authorizes Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to bypass normal federal regulations so health officials can respond more quickly to the outbreak, which, allegedly, has killed more than 1,000 people in the United States.

"As a nation, we have prepared at all levels of government, and as individuals and communities, taking unprecedented steps to counter the emerging pandemic," Obama wrote in the declaration, which the White House announced Saturday.

He said the pandemic keeps evolving, the rates of illness are rising rapidly in many areas and there's a potential "to overburden health care resources."

Because of vaccine production delays, the government has backed off initial estimates that 120 million doses would be available by mid-October. As of mid-October, only 11 million doses had been shipped to health departments, doctor's offices and other providers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said.

The government now estimates to have about 50 million doses of swine flu vaccine out by mid-November and 150 million in December.

Paul Lewis and Rob Evans
The Guardian
Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:59 EDT

The roads were empty when Linda Catt and her father drove their white Citroën Berlingo into London on a quiet Sunday morning. They could not have known they were being followed.

But at 7.23am on 31 July 2005, the van had passed beneath an automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) camera in east London, triggering an alert: "Of interest to Public Order Unit, Sussex police". Within seconds Catt, 50, and her 84-year-old father, John, were apprehended by police and searched under the Terrorism Act.

After filing a complaint, the pair, neither of whom have criminal records, discovered that four months earlier, a Sussex police officer had noticed their van "at three protest demonstrations" and decided, apparently on that basis, it should be tracked.

The two anti-war campaigners were not the only law-abiding protesters being monitored on the roads. Officers have been told they can place "markers" against the vehicles of anyone who attends demonstrations using the national ANPR data centre in Hendon, north London, which stores information on car journeys for up to five years.

Nate Anderson
Arts Technica
Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:51 EDT

France's Conseil Constitutionnel has ruled that the country's new-and-improved Internet disconnection law is now legal. The country is also throwing its weight around at the European level to make sure the project isn't derailed by meddling lawmakers.

What sort of country puts "Les Immortels" in charge of its language and "Sages" in charge of its constitution? France, of course, where today the Sages had a crack at the country's brand-new, now-with-judicial-oversight version of its Internet disconnection law.

Apart from a minor nitpick, the Sages have approved the law in its entirety, just as France also forced the European Parliament to back down on its own opposition. The world's toughest "three strikes" regime will soon be the law of the terre.

The Guardian
Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:39 EDT

As demonstrations go, it was more of a lighthearted affair than a threat to the nation. About 600 climate change campaigners had gathered outside the Drax power station in North Yorkshire. They had chosen to demonstrate there because the huge plant is the UK's biggest emitter of carbon. The protesters were mainly families with young children, accompanied by clowns, cyclists, baton twirlers and, according to some reports, a giant ostrich puppet.

It was not completely without incident. Two protesters climbed a lighting pylon at the edge of the site and four others broke through the fence. About 30 others were arrested for public order offences.

Best of the Web: Remember the Women?

Ann Jones
The Nation
Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:14 EDT

Women are made for homes or graves. - Afghan saying

Gen. Stanley McChrystal says he needs more American troops to salvage something like winning in Afghanistan and restore the country to "normal life." Influential senators want to increase spending to train more soldiers for the Afghan National Army and Police. The Feminist Majority recently backed off a call for more troops, but it continues to warn against US withdrawal as an abandonment of Afghan women and girls. Nearly everyone assumes troops bring greater security; and whether your touchstone is military victory, national interest or the welfare of women and girls, "security" seems a good thing.

I confess that I agonize over competing proposals now commanding President Obama's attention because I've spent years in Afghanistan working with women, and I'm on their side. When the Feminist Majority argues that withdrawing American forces from Afghanistan will return the Taliban to power and women to house arrest, I see in my mind's eye the faces of women I know and care about. Yet an unsentimental look at the record reveals that for all the fine talk of women's rights since the US invasion, equal rights for Afghan women have been illusory all along, a polite feel-good fiction that helped to sell the American enterprise at home and cloak in respectability the misbegotten government we installed in Kabul. That it is a fiction is borne out by recent developments in Afghanistan--President Karzai's approving a new family law worthy of the Taliban, and American acquiescence in Karzai's new law and, initially, his theft of the presidential election--and by the systematic intimidation, murder or exile of one Afghan woman after another who behaves as if her rights were real and worth fighting for.

Thierry Meyssan
Voltaire.net
Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:13 EDT

While the Nobel Peace Prize award has led to a chorus of praise from the Atlantic alliance leaders, it has also raised skepticism around the world. Rather than discuss the reasons that might after the fact justify this surprising choice, Thierry Meyssan exposes the corruption of the Nobel Committee and the ties between its chairman, Thorbjørn Jagland, and Obama's associates.

"This morning, after listening to the news, my daughter came and told me:" Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize"¹. This is the touching story that the United States President told complacent reporters to attest that he had never wanted this distinction and was most surprised. Without any further inquiry, newspapers ran front pages on the "humility" of the most powerful man in the world.

Indeed, it is hard to say what is the most surprising: the awarding of such a prestigious distinction to Barack Obama, the grotesque staging that went with it, or the method used to bribe the jury and divert the prize from its original purpose.

Best of the Web: US Joins Ranks Of Failed States

Paul Craig Roberts
VDare
Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:01 EDT

The US has every characteristic of a failed state.

The US government's current operating budget is dependent on foreign financing and money creation.

Too politically weak to be able to advance its interests through diplomacy, the US relies on terrorism and military aggression.

Costs are out of control, and priorities are skewed in the interest of rich organized interest groups at the expense of the vast majority of citizens. For example, war at all cost, which enriches the armaments industry, the officer corps and the financial firms that handle the war's financing, takes precedence over the needs of American citizens. There is no money to provide the uninsured with health care, but Pentagon officials have told the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the House that every gallon of gasoline delivered to US troops in Afghanistan costs American taxpayers $400.

"It is a number that we were not aware of and it is worrisome," said Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the subcommittee.

According to reports, the US Marines in Afghanistan use 800,000 gallons of gasoline per day. At $400 per gallon, that comes to a $320,000,000 daily fuel bill for the Marines alone. Only a country totally out of control would squander resources in this way.

While the US government squanders $400 per gallon of gasoline in order to kill women and children in Afghanistan, many millions of Americans have lost their jobs and their homes and are experiencing the kind of misery that is the daily life of poor Third World peoples. Americans are living in their cars and in public parks. America's cities, towns, and states are suffering from the costs of economic dislocations and the reduction in tax revenues from the economy's decline. Yet, Obama has sent more troops to Afghanistan, a country half way around the world that is not a threat to America.

Youtube.com
Wed, 21 Oct 2009 06:50 EDT

In front of a senate committee, Al Gore struggles to make sense, or convince anyone that his "Global Warming" agenda is anything but cronyism and fraud on a global scale.

Al Gore's Snowjob

Al Gore's core arguments on "global warming" are dismissed by scientists

Best of the Web: Gilad Atzmon: Autumn in Shanghai

Gilad Atzmon
Gilad.co.uk
Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:36 EDT

Shanghai is modernity in action, it is up for business, its many staggering new high-rise buildings, spear the imagination as well as the sky. It is saturated with festive almost unreal glamour, it is soaking in wealth, it is overwhelmingly proud and yet, it is humane, very humane in fact. It is habitable, it is relatively quiet, it feels safe, it welcomes you on board. It is the Western Metropolis wannabe, yet it is in the East.

I was advised before my journey that Shanghai is not exactly a 'cultural shock', quite the opposite; one seems to have met Shanghai in one's urban fantasy a long time before landing there. Shanghai is in fact the incarnation of the Western urban dream: it is an astonishing materialisation of everything the Western metropolis is claiming to be. In parts it is the embodiment of the urban imagery; it is what New York was aiming at but somehow failed to reach. In other parts, it is the ultimate urban tranquillity of a Parisian tree-lined avenue with small bars and cosy cafés. It offers everything a big city can offer in terms of culture, entertainment, business and food yet it is totally sympathetic to its visitors and inhabitants.

Best of the Web: Starting Another Year of the War in Afghanistan

Norman Solomon
Huffington Post
Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:38 EDT

October 2009 has begun with the New York Times reporting that "the president, vice president and an array of cabinet secretaries, intelligence chiefs, generals, diplomats and advisers gathered in a windowless basement room of the White House for three hours on Wednesday to chart a new course in Afghanistan."

As this month begins the ninth year of the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan, "windowless" seems to be an apt metaphor. The structure of thought and the range of options being debated in Washington's high places are notably insular. The "new course" will be a permutation of the present course.

While certainty is lacking, steely resolve is evident. An unspoken mantra remains in effect: When in doubt, keep killing. The knotty question is: Exactly who and how?

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"The free press is the mother of all our liberties and of our progress under liberty" Adlai E. Stevenson

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"This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths." Simon Heffer in The Daily Mail, 7 June 2000

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