U.S. News
Alternet
Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:34 EST
Corporate interests are eyeing our water. From wastewater to drinking water, big business is looking to cash in on public water systems and they've got a new tactic: They're using desperate economic times to convince city officials that they should place a corporation between families and their ability to eat, drink, and clean.
Take Akron, Ohio, for example. In September 2008 I wrote an
article for Alternet about a ballot measure in Akron where voters were asked whether to lease the city's wastewater system to a corporation in return for an immediate, one-time payment. The plan was roundly defeated. But more importantly, as the article suggested, the lease signaled a new direction for water privatization in the U.S. This involved a collaboration between water companies and Wall Street to snatch up control of water infrastructure for the better part of a century.
Raw Story
Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:49 EST
© Unknown
Wall Street CEOs have formed a group to take advantage of new fundraising possibilities opened up by the Supreme Court decision to end the ban on corporate election spending.
Just three weeks ago, the United States Supreme Court ended a ban on corporate spending in political elections, drawing intense criticism for the ruling's potential to erode the democratic process.
This week, a group that includes some of the wealthiest Republican CEOs on Wall Street have formed a group to take advantage of new fundraising possibilities for the GOP.
The Supreme Court ruling could
potentially allow the group, called the American Action Network, to take unlimited contributions from corporations for use in political campaigns.
"This administration as well as Citizens United [the Supreme Court ruling] - when you combine the two the prospects for funding these types of efforts are greatly enhanced," said Norm Coleman, one of the group's organizers.
Noelle Crombie
Oregon Live
Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:00 EST
A bizarre blowup between a professor and a student in a Portland State University classroom recently has sent ripples of concern and curiosity through the campus.
It also has prompted the student, openly accused by the professor of being an FBI informant and a killer, to hire a prominent local civil rights attorney, and led the university to launch an investigation into the educator. The school has taken the unusual step of stripping the tenured professor of his teaching responsibilities while it conducts its inquiry.
Meanwhile, others at PSU are divided along two lines: Those who think the professor did the right thing, if in an unorthodox way; and those who think his actions were strange and out of line.
Comment: From an
online discussion of the case:
You people who have left comments know NOTHING about the situation or persons involved. The articles published so far tell a story that makes the prof. look crazy. This student is someone who speaks about violence to people he barely knows and the professor is someone who is committed to the well-being and safety of his students. Prof. Hall allowed this student to freely express his ideas in a class which the student presented a paper on his experiences as an Israeli soldier and spoke of violence none of us other students had ever seen. Prof. Hall has been respectful and flexible to this student since 2006 when this student began taking classes with him. I have never seen the professor be disrespectful or unkind to this student. It was not until other students were concerned for their safety and the administration did nothing when students went to them about this student carrying weapons on campus among other things, that the professor did what he felt he had to do, when no one else was standing up for his students. This students lawyer (Elden Rosenthal, who was Brandon Mayfield's lawyer) has done a good job so far, because this student's myspace and other websites that described his hobbies as a sniper and many other incriminating pieces of information have been removed from the internet. No articles have represented the real story. I hope the truth comes out. I think it would be best if the media would interview Professor Hall and publish his words.
Nathan Hurst
The Detroit News
Thu, 04 Feb 2010 09:45 EST
Washington --The State Department didn't revoke the visa of foiled terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab because federal counterterrorism officials had begged off revocation, a top State Department official revealed Wednesday.
Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary for management at the State Department, said Abdulmutallab's visa wasn't taken away because intelligence officials asked his agency not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist over concerns that a denial would've foiled a larger investigation into al-Qaida threats against the United States.
"Revocation action would've disclosed what they were doing," Kennedy said in testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Allowing Adbulmutallab to keep the visa increased chances federal investigators would be able to get closer to apprehending the terror network he is accused of working with, "rather than simply knocking out one solider in that effort."
Terra Daily / SPX
Sun, 07 Feb 2010 22:49 EST
© Unknown
Public concern about global warming has dropped sharply since the fall of 2008, according to the results of a national survey released by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities.
The survey found:
- Only 50 percent of Americans now say they are "somewhat" or "very worried" about global warming, a 13-point decrease.
- The percentage of Americans who think global warming is happening has declined 14 points, to 57 percent.
- The percentage of Americans who think global warming is caused mostly by human activities dropped 10 points, to 47 percent.
In line with these shifting beliefs, there has been an increase in the number of Americans who think global warming will never harm people in the United States or elsewhere or other species.
"Despite growing scientific evidence that global warming will have serious impacts worldwide, public opinion is moving in the opposite direction," said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change.
Oliver Willis
Sun, 07 Feb 2010 22:26 EST
© Unknown
Yeah, the teleprompter stuff was already dumb (I'd like to see some conservative pols handle an unscripted session like Obama did with the House GOP), but after seeing dear Sarah read off her hand at the teabag convention, that talking point should die.
It should be noted that in this speech Palin referred to President Obama as a "guy with a teleprompter". Irony.
* Updated to indicate that Sarah Palin whipped out her "palm pilot" during the Q&A session and not during the speech (where she used note cards, AKA an analog teleprompter)
Comment: It never ceases to amaze how low the calibre of political animal is granted the spotlight these days.
Mail Online
Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:40 EST
© Getty Images
Human rights activists demonstrate waterboarding in front of the Justice Department. A soldier father stands accused of waterboarding his daughter because she couldn't recite the alphabet
Joshua Tabor admitted to police he had used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry.
As his daughter 'squirmed' to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline.
Tabor, 27, who had won custody of his daughter only four weeks earlier, admitted choosing the punishment because the girl was terrified of water.
Peter Schworm
Boston Globe
Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:18 EST
They were youthful sweethearts who, after separate lives and failed marriages, had found each other again later in life. They settled in an idyllic Cape Cod cottage she had inherited from her father, refurbishing it, taking long walks with their golden retriever, Winston, and spending hours on their back porch overlooking a tidal salt marsh on the bay.
It was a storybook tale of second chances and rediscovered love, and Benjamin and Jane Wolff told it often. They also talked of his once high-flying investment career at Goldman Sachs, of the times he rubbed elbows with the likes of Martha Stewart and Warren Buffett, and of the lucrative investment deals he was pursuing in retirement. But then in 2005, the story line received a jolt: A Barnstable County sheriff's deputy seized the Cape Cod cottage in foreclosure proceedings, and the couple soon disappeared.
Due in court this month on police charges of defrauding a handful of bed and breakfasts over the summer, it appears the Wolffs had set out from the Cape four years ago on a house-hunting tour that turned into a nomadic odyssey of cheating one landlord and innkeeper after another, staying without paying at rented homes, extended-stay hotels, and upscale inns, according to police, public records, and interviews with people who encountered the couple.
They spent days happily puttering and touring pricey real estate that they never bought. Benjamin spent time on the phone with people he said were business associates and talked of a $20 million deal that was perpetually about to close. Even as checks bounced, insurance lapsed, or eviction proceedings swirled around them, the Wolffs seemed to have not a care, charming most everyone they met and relying on the simplest of ruses - that they were who they appeared to be, a prosperous, happy-go-lucky retired couple.
Jamie Schram, Larry Celona, and Lukas I. Alpert
The New York Post
Sat, 06 Feb 2010 02:13 EST
© Robert Miller
Police detectives yesterday enter the posh Peninsula Hotel on Fifth Avenue, where pharmaceuticals multimillionaire Gigi Jordan allegedly killed her autistic 8-year-old son before trying to commit suicide in a $1,175-a-night deluxe suite.
A wealthy pharmaceutical exec -- distraught about an imaginary upcoming divorce and custody battle -- murdered her 8-year-old son and tried to kill herself yesterday in a deluxe suite at the Peninsula Hotel on Fifth Avenue, officials said.
Investigators found the body of Gigi Jordan's son, Jude Michael Mirra, lying face-up on the bed in his pajamas in Room 1603 at the swank hotel.
Jordan was barely conscious, slumped on the floor, "babbling incoherently," police sources said.
The $1,175-a-night room was littered with pill bottles and "thousands" of loose pills and scattered documents -- including a suicide note penned by Jordan, who is believed to have a net worth of about $100 million, a source said.
Rocco Parascandola and Larry Mcshane
New York Daily News
Sat, 06 Feb 2010 12:34 EST
© Costanza
The body of socialite Gigi Jordan's son, 8-year-old Jude, is removed from the Pennisula Hotel in Manhattan.
Gigi Jordan just wanted the pain to end - for her, and for her beloved 8-year-old son.
In a bizarre message intended as a suicide note, the wealthy one-time pharmaceutical company executive detailed a life of sadness interrupted by a single ray of hope: her only child, Jude.
"I hope Jude is in a better place," the 49-year-old Belgian wrote in the strange two-page note left in her 16th-floor suite at the posh Peninsula hotel.
At one point, Jordan suggested
her son was a rape victim and "in constant pain." She mentioned speaking with a Wyoming child porn investigator about the sexual abuse of kids.
304,117 people have viewed this page since Tue, 02 Jan 2007
Emails sent to SOTT.net, Ark, Laura, or Cassiopaea become the property of Quantum Future Group, Inc and may be republished without notice. Reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views of the volunteers, editors, and directors of SOTT.net or the Quantum Future Group.
Some icons appearing on this site were taken from KDE-look.org, Afterglow, Mayosoft, Everaldo, IconDrawer, VisualPharm, IconFactory, Klukeart, Icons-land, TpdkDesign.net, and IconShock.com.
Remember, we need your help to collect information on what is going on in your part of the world!
Send your article suggestions to: 
Original content © 2009 by SOTT.net/Signs of the Times. See: Fair Use Policy
![[Valid Atom 1.0]](/images/valid-atom.png?1222505720 "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed")
![[Valid RSS 2.0]](/images/valid-rss.png?1222505756 "Validate my RSS 2.0 feed")
