Robert C. Koehler Common Wonders 2009-11-20 12:11:00
There's no armor, it turns out, for conscience.
So our men and women are coming home from the killing fields wounded in their heads, used up, greeted only by the military's own meat grinder of inadequate health care and intolerance for "weakness."
"Frankly, in my more than 25 years of clinical practice, I've never seen such immense emotional suffering and psychological brokenness." This is what whistleblower psychiatrist Kernan Manion wrote recently to President Obama about his experience counseling Marines at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, as reported by Salon.
In September, Manion, having been told to "cease and desist all further correspondence with the government," was fired by the Navy for his urgent, outspoken communiqués about the mental-health minefield the military has on its hands. Two months later, of course, the issue of PTSD was blown into the national headlines by the massacre at Fort Hood. And a day after that, according to Salon, the body of a Marine was found at Camp Lejeune and a fellow Marine was arrested for the murder.
The wars we fight keep getting worse, or seem at any rate to back up on us with an ever-intensifying fury. Our war on terror is tightening the psychological vise on our collective insecurity, beginning with the soldiers who are fighting it. Salon, citing official figures, reported that 42 Marines committed suicide in 2008 and 146 attempted to do so.
It is ironic that President Barack Obama would travel to China and speak against government control over the internet. If the American Department of Homeland Security has its way new cybersecurity laws will enable Obama's administration to take control of the internet in the event of a national crisis. How that national crisis might be defined would be up to the White House but there have been some precedents that suggest that the response would hardly be respectful of the Bill of Rights.
Many countries already monitor and censor the internet on a regular basis, forbidding access to numerous sites that they consider to be subversive. During recent unrest, the governments of both Iran and China effectively shut down the internet by taking control of or blocking servers. Combined with switching off of cell phone transmitters, the steps proved effective in isolating dissidents. Could it happen here? Undoubtedly. Once the laws are in place a terrorist incident or something that could be plausibly described in those terms would be all that is needed to have government officials issue the order to bring the internet to a halt.
Andre Damon World Socialist Website 2009-11-20 10:21:00
The number of home loans in the US that are either in foreclosure or at least one payment past due reached one in seven last month, a record high, according to a survey released Thursday by the Mortgage Bankers Association.
The survey found that nearly 10 percent of mortgage holders were at least one payment behind on their mortgages, while 4.47 percent of them were in foreclosure. Both of these are the highest figures on records dating back to 1972. About 7 million households are behind on payments or in foreclosure.
These figures present just one indicator of the worsening conditions facing US workers caught up in the longest economic downturn since the Great Depression. The number of people behind on their mortgage payments has doubled since last year, as has the percentage in foreclosure, according to the survey.
The foreclosures were spread throughout all borrower categories, with high-quality, fixed-rate mortgages showing the fastest growth in delinquencies, not the sub-prime mortgages that initiated the foreclosure crisis.
Committee also rules that Wall Street firms must prepay for their failures
Taking aim at Wall Street and the nation's central bank, a key House committee voted Thursday to assess upfront fees on large financial firms to pay for the failure of their peers and to require a sweeping congressional audit of the secretive Federal Reserve.
The votes were the final brush strokes to the House Financial Services Committee's response to last year's banking meltdown.
In a surprise, however, committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., delayed final action on a long-awaited regulatory overhaul bill until after Thanksgiving. Frank said members of the Congressional Black Caucus requested the delay because they were "troubled by a lack of response to the economic situation."
US President Barack Obama's administration received a political battering from both sides of the US congress yesterday for poor handling of the economy, amid widespread anger over persistent high unemployment.
Demanding that more be done to help the jobless, senior Republicans asked Mr Obama's Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, to resign yesterday after branding him part of the problem.
In tense exchanges during a joint house committee hearing, Mr Geithner was told the public had lost all confidence in his ability to do the job.
Mr Geithner hit back, telling his Republican accusers the financial crisis was their fault because "you gave this President an economy falling off the cliff".
But attacks over the Obama administration's economic policies following this year's massive stimulus package and bank bailouts were far from one-sided.
Even before Barack Obama was elected president, religious figures loomed large in his political career. The greatest threat to his presidential campaign came not from another candidate but from his longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright, whose controversial sermons prompted questions about Obama's judgment in associating with him. After Election Day, the first big controversy of the Obama era was the president-elect's invitation to evangelical preacher Rick Warren, an opponent of abortion rights and gay marriage, to give the opening prayer at his inauguration. And Obama has offered religious leaders an unusually prominent role in his administration by convening an advisory council for the White House faith-based office that's dominated by clergy and heads of religious groups.
That's the message from Obama administration lawyers to former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, whose case became a cause célèbre among Bush administration critics as ground zero of alleged political prosecutions.
The seeming disconnect between Obama's team and numerous Democrats -- including House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr., who's investigated Siegelman's case -- may be because President George W. Bush's US Attorney in Alabama is still in office. Democrats still haven't settled on a replacement, some eleven months after Obama's inauguration.
In advice to the Supreme Court made public early this week, Obama's Justice Department stood firmly behind the position of Bush US Attorneys who won Siegelman's conviction on bribery charges in 2006. The two US Attorneys connected to the case were Bush appointees -- whose numerous conflicts of interest were documented in the Raw Story series, "The Permanent Republican Majority," which received a nomination for best investigative reporting by the Online News Association in 2008.
Anne E. Kornblut Washington Post 2009-11-20 12:39:00
President Obama directly acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay will not close by the January deadline he set, but he said he hoped to still achieve that goal sometime next year.
Obama refused, however, to set a new deadline.
In an interview in the Chinese capital with Major Garrett of Fox News, Obama said he was "not disappointed" that the Guantanamo deadline had slipped, saying he "knew this was going to be hard."
"People, I think understandably, are fearful after a lot of years where they were told that Guantanamo was critical to keep terrorists out," Obama said. Closing the facility, he added, is "also just technically hard."
Obama came to office pledging to shut a detainee facility that had become a symbol for prisoner abuse at the hands of American officials. He signed orders to shut the military prison by January 2010, but White House officials quickly encountered resistance from members of Congress opposed to moving prisoners to U.S. soil and from other countries they had hoped would accept detainees.
Lisa de Moraes Washington Post 2009-11-20 11:44:00
Oprah Winfrey, one of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry, will announce Friday that her iconic daytime talk show will wrap at the end of its 25th season.
But don't panic -- her final appearance as host of The Oprah Winfrey Show is nearly two years away. And it's possible she'll move the whole shebang to the cable network she's setting up, called, naturally, the Oprah Winfrey Network.
"The sun will set on the Oprah show as its 25th season draws to a close on September 9, 2011," Winfrey's Harpo Productions said in an e-mail to TV station executives Thursday evening.
"As we all know, Oprah's personal comments about this on tomorrow's live show will mark a historic television moment that we will all be talking about for years to come."
Terry Hurlbut Essex County Conservative Examiner 2009-11-19 15:29:00
The University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Centre appears to have suffered a security breach earlier today, when an unknown hacker apparently downloaded 1079 e-mails and 72 documents of various types and published them to an anonymous FTP server. These files appear to contain highly sensitive information that, if genuine, could prove extremely embarrassing to the authors of the e-mails involved. Those authors include some of the most celebrated names among proponents of the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).
The FTP link first appeared on a blog called The Air Vent. The blog's owner, identified as "Jeff Id", downloaded the file, examined it, and posted a brief summary on his blog. Another commenter, identified as "Steven Mosher," passed the information on to Steven McIntyre's Climate Audit blog and to another blog, The Blackboard, run by a blogger identified as "Lucia." Most recently, blogger Anthony Watts, who runs a blog titled Watts Up With That? mentioned the FTP archive in his own blog.
Commentary on all the blogs involved has been brisk, except, oddly enough, at The Air Vent, where only seven comments have been received.
Further to an agreement with leading multinationals, from January 2010 advertising of snacks, burgers, fries and sugary drinks addressing children under 12 years will no longer be allowed in Russia.
The multinationals that have signed the agreement are Coca-Cola, Kellogg's, Kraft Foods, Bolshevik, Mars, PepsiCo, Unilever, and Nestlé Inmarko, an article in the Pravda paper notifies.
The UK has apologized to Spain after the Royal Navy used a buoy with the Spanish colors for target practice.
The exercise took place off the coast of Gibraltar earlier this week. The UK ambassador was summoned to the foreign ministry in Madrid to explain.
According to local reports, the navy hastily removed the buoy, which had a red-and-yellow marker, when approached by a Spanish police launch on Tuesday.
Ambassador Giles Paxman conceded it was insensitive and an error of judgment.
While acknowledging that the target had appeared "similar" to the Spanish flag, he insisted that was not what it was supposed to represent.
An eminent rabbi was so exhausted after three days of constant cocaine-fuelled partying with escorts that his pimp grew worried and cancelled that day's supply of girls, a jury was told.
Rabbi Baruch Chalomish, 55, who has a £6 million fortune, was a scholarly academic, an accomplished businessman, a charity giver and a dutiful family man until his first wife died of cancer and his world fell apart.
He turned to alcohol in his depression, then took refuge in cocaine, spending up to £1,000 a week. He lived in squalor, seeking comfort from prostitutes, Manchester Crown Court was told.
The prosecution said that Chalomish was the financier in a commercial cocaine supply business while Nasir Abbas, 54, a convicted drug dealer, provided the drugs and the customers.
A collision between a nuclear-powered US Navy submarine and a US warship in the Strait of Hormuz was caused by "catastrophic failure" in management, a US Navy report says.
US Navy investigators found that "ineffective and negligent" management and the failure of navigation practices were to blame for a March 2009 collision between the USS Hartford and the USS New Orleans, an amphibious vessel.
"This incident comes down to weak and complacent leadership, which led to inadequate planning and preparation of the crew," the Navy Times said in its report.
Commander of US Fleet Forces Command Adm. John C. Harvey Jr. endorsed the findings of the report and described the collision as "avoidable."
A failure of political will worldwide is contributing to the unnecessary deaths of more than six million children a year, according to a new report by World Vision.
Nearly nine million children die each year before their fifth birthday in the developing world; the overwhelming majority from preventable conditions such as pneumonia, diarrhea and neonatal complications.
At least two-thirds of these children could be saved, if governments make child health a priority and refocus health spending on prevention in the community and not just cures at the clinic, says World Vision.
A lesbian soldier, who says she deserted the U.S. military because she was constantly harassed and threatened with death, won a reprieve from deportation Friday in a Federal Court ruling that ordered the Immigration and Refugee Board to reconsider her failed asylum claim.
Pte. Bethany Smith, who adopted the name Skyler James upon fleeing to Canada two years ago, contends she was denied a discharge from the army because her superiors wanted to send her to Afghanistan.
She took her case to Federal Court after being rejected as a refugee by the Immigration and Refugee Board.
The Pakistani arm of the Taliban has denied responsibility for a recent series of terrorist attacks in Pakistan, instead pointing the finger at Xe Services, the security contractor formerly known as Blackwater, as well as the country's own security services.
"The Tehreek-e-Taliban are not responsible for the bombings, but Blackwater and Pakistan's spy agency are behind them," said Pakistani Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq, according to a translation from Al-Jazeera English.
''The dirty Pakistani intelligence agencies, for the sake of creating mistrust and hatred among people against the Taliban, are carrying out blasts at places like the Islamic university, Islamabad, and the Khyber bazaar, Peshawar,'' the Associated Press quoted Tariq as saying.
At least four people were shot dead and six South Korean visitors wounded when a gunman fired into a crowd of tourists on the resort island of Saipan, South Korea's Foreign Ministry said on Friday.
The gunman appeared to have taken his own life after the shooting spree, a ministry official said, adding that there were no further details immediately available.
A US unmanned drone aircraft has fired several missiles into a Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan, killing at least ten people and injuring several others.
The strike took place in the restive North Waziristan tribal district on Friday.
The death toll is expected to rise as some of the injured were said to be in critical condition. The attack took place in an area where people do not have access to urgent medical assistance.
The US alleges the air strikes, which are common in Pakistan, target pro-Taliban militants in the tribal belt.
The European Commission has signed a $1bn (£602m) development pact with Nigeria, aimed at tackling corruption and promoting peace.
A substantial amount of the funding will be spent on resolving conflict in the oil-rich and crime-plagued Niger Delta, the EU's development chief said.
The money will also target electoral reform and improving human rights.
But correspondents say many Nigerians will doubt the money will get to its intended targets.
The culture of fear and distrust that has grown up around this century's terror culture and its associated wars has created vast new markets for anything that can be branded with the words security or defence. In April 2010, London's Kensington Olympia will play host to a Counter Terror Expo, put on by DSEi's infamous events' organiser, Clarion, and sponsored by French arms company, Thales. Officially supported by a plethora of military, police and private security associations, the expo will showcase over 250 security, surveillance and specialist logistics companies; state agencies including NATO and the MoD; and anyone else claiming to provide protection against terrorism for both the armed forces and civilian populations. Joining the fray are a number of corporations involved in creating identity verification technologies. The biometrics and database management companies whose invasive products, based on the recognition of physiological characteristics, are finding voice as futuristic 'solutions' in, what is deemed, an 'increasingly dangerous world'.
The internet is such a huge part of life that Mandelson's plans to cut people off for copyright breach is a clear restriction of liberty
At 33 years old I'm more Generation X than Generation X-Box. I'm too old to be one of the new wave of "digital natives" who've never known life without the internet, but I'm just about young enough (and geeky enough) to consider myself an enthusiastic immigrant. I moved in about 13 years ago, and if I could swear an oath of allegiance to some Head Of The Internet State, I wouldn't hesitate.
Sadly there is no president of the internet, which is a shame because it means I'm stuck with my British passport instead. And relations between Britain and the internet have been strained of late.
Lord Mandelson is seeking to grant himself significant powers in the fight against copyright infringement - the ability to do just about anything so long as it's in the interest of protecting copyright, and without having to go through parliament.
Although we are slightly relieved that no Communications Data Bill has been sneaked into the Queen's Speech, as originally threatened by the disgraced former Labour Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, this Labour Government simply cannot resist producing some more useless and repetitive legislation, as a public relations diversion to hide their failure to control aspects of modern technology.
Ofcom has held talks over a monitoring system that would peer inside filesharing traffic to determine the level of copyright infringement, in preparation for new laws designed to protect the music, film and software industries.
The Digital Economy Bill, to be published by Lord Mandelson tomorrow, will require the communications regulator to measure how filesharers who exchange copyright material respond to a regime of warning letters.
If the overall level of infringement is not cut by 70 per cent in a year, further provisions will be triggered, compelling ISPs to impose speed restriction after warnings. Internet access will be suspended for the most persistent infringers.
Tomorrow morning Lord Mandelson will present the Digital Economy Bill to the public, which among other things is aimed at reducing illicit file-sharing. According to parts of the bill that leaked today, the legislation could lead to jail terms for file-sharers and unprecedented power for the entertainment industries.
Over the past months the UK government has tried to tackle the issue of online piracy. This has resulted in a proposal from Lord Mandelson, who plans to disconnect alleged file sharers without any judicial process.
Tomorrow the exact text of the bill is expected to be made public, but according to early reports, the legislation will open all doors for a digital police state where alleged pirates will be crucified by private companies.
Judging from some of the plans that leaked earlier today, the endless lobbying efforts of the entertainment industry by anti-piracy outfits including IFPI and the BPI have definitely paid off.
Nathan Barker Gouverneur Times 2009-11-19 09:39:00
Gouverneur, New York - The computerized voting machines used by many voters in the 23rd district had a computer virus - tainting the results, not just from those machines known to have been infected, but casting doubt on the accuracy of counts retrieved from any of the machines.
Cathleen Rogers, the Democratic Elections Commissioner in Hamilton County stated that they discovered a problem with their voting machines the week prior to the election and that the "virus" was fixed by a Technical Support representative from Dominion, the manufacturer. The Dominion/Sequoia Voting Systems representative "reprogrammed" their machines in time for them to use in the Nov. 3rd Special Election. None of the machines (from the same manufacturer) used in the other counties within the 23rd district were looked at nor were they recertified after the "reprogramming" that occurred in Hamilton County.
Major General Smedley D. Butler Ratical.org 2009-11-20 13:37:00
Comment: Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 - June 21, 1940) was a Major General in the US Marine Corps and one of the most decorated marines in US history. After blowing the whistle on the Business Plot, an attempt by Wall Street power brokers to institute a fascist dictatorship in 1934, Butler wrote the following pamphlet and toured the US warning Americans of the dangerous threat posed by the corporate elite. His insider's glimpse of how wars are created for profit is as prescient today as it was then.
War Is A Racket
War is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
Matthew Cole & Brian Ross ABC News 2009-11-18 12:55:00
The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S. intelligence official told ABC News this week.
Where affluent Lithuanians once rode show horses and sipped coffee at a café, the CIA installed a concrete structure where it could use harsh tactics to interrogate up to eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists at a time.
"The activities in that prison were illegal," said human rights researcher John Sifton. "They included various forms of torture, including sleep deprivation, forced standing, painful stress positions."
Lithuanian officials provided ABC News with the documents of what they called a CIA front company, Elite, LLC, which purchased the property and built the "black site" in 2004.
Lithuania agreed to allow the CIA prison after President George W. Bush visited the country in 2002 and pledged support for Lithuania's efforts to join NATO.
"The new members of NATO were so grateful for the U.S. role in getting them into that organization that they would do anything the U.S. asked for during that period," said former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, now an ABC News consultant. "They were eager to please and eager to be cooperative on security and on intelligence matters."
Israeli photos depicting shipping documents pointing to an alleged Iranian arms delivery to Hezbollah are forgeries, Iranian media claims.
The Israeli army in early November said it unloaded 36 containers of weapons at the Israeli port of Ashdod from the Antigua-flagged vessel Francop.
Thirty tons of weapons, rockets, missiles, hand grenades and ammunition were hidden behind thousands of plastic polyethylene bags, the army said.
Israel claimed the Iranian- and Russian-made arms were due to be unloaded in the Syrian port of Latakia and from there transferred to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Most of the 'terrorist' bomb attacks of the past sixty years have been false-flag attacks that were actually committed by the Israeli Mossad, the CIA, and British intelligence. For six decades the allied Western intelligence agencies have been carrying out an ongoing campaign to frame Muslims for bombings which were actually perpetrated by the Western intelligence agencies themselves. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11/2001 were a joint CIA/Pentagon/Mossad false-flag operation that was intended to provide an excuse for the subsequent US-led Coalition invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Western nations are not unique in their use of false-flag bombings to inspire public support for a government policy of aggression. The Russian government blamed Chechen 'terrorists' for perpetrating the horrific Moscow apartment bombings of the summer of 1999, but agents of the Russian FSB were seen placing military-grade explosives in the basement of an apartment building in Ryazan, near Moscow.
Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch accused the government on Wednesday of ignoring illegal settlement construction in one of several barbed remarks that could presage a first High Court of Justice decision ordering the demolition of illegal housing in the West Bank.
Beinisch made the comments while hearing a petition from Palestinian-rights advocacy group Yesh Din, which is asking the court to compel the government to implement an existing demolition order for nine homes in the West Bank settlement of Ofra.
Yesh Din argues that the homes were built on private Palestinian land, and while the government conceded on Wednesday that it is not claiming the construction is legal, it said the demolition orders would be carried out in order of priority.
The Secretary General of Hezbollah movement, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, has been re-elected chief of the Lebanese resistance movement for a sixth term.
The resistance movement announced its decision following a congress that also adopted a new manifesto on Thursday.
Hezbollah issued a statement declaring that it has endorsed "a number of organizational amendments that fit the new developing nature of its movement and path in the recent years on various aspects."
The statement further added that Sheikh Naim Qassem has been re-elected as the movement's Deputy Secretary General.
The Thursday statement however did not mention when senior Hezbollah officials voted to re-elect Nasrallah as the resistance movement's Secretary General.
Iran's Oil Minister Masoud Mir-Kazemi has unveiled a plan to counter possible fuel sanctions against the oil-rich country.
According to the plan, the Iranian petrochemical plants, such as Imam Khomeini, Bou Ali Sina and Borzouyeh, are equipped to produce about 14 million liters of gasoline per day if they have to.
Iran, OPEC's second largest oil exporter, only produces 60 percent of its domestic gasoline demand and imports the remaining 40 percent.
Rod Nordland The New York Times 2009-11-12 03:30:00
Iraq's Baghdad Trade Fair ended Tuesday, six years and a trillion dollars after the American invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, and one country was conspicuously absent.
That would be the country that spent a trillion dollars - on the invasion and occupation, but also on training and equipping Iraqi security forces, and on ambitious reconstruction projects in every province aimed at rebuilding the country and restarting the economy.
Yet when the post-Saddam Iraqi government swept out its old commercial fairgrounds and invited companies from around the world, the United States was not much in evidence among the 32 nations represented. Of the 396 companies that exhibited their wares, "there are two or three American participants, but I can't remember their names," said Hashem Mohammed Haten, director general of Iraq's state fair company. A pair of missiles atop a ceremonial gateway to the fairgrounds recalled an era when Saddam Hussein had pretensions, if not weapons, of mass destruction.
Although the Bush administration denied it, the conventional wisdom on the part of the anti-war movement was that the war on Iraq was launched in order for the US to take over Saddam's oil supplies which would give Washington an even more dominant position in the region. That there was no concrete evidence that the war was supported by the oil companies was discounted and, as it had been in 1991 during the first Gulf War, "No blood for oil!"became the battle cry.
If the war was indeed about oil, then, as the NY Timesreported on Friday, the US lost.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner on Wednesday said an Israeli decision to build hundreds of homes in East Jerusalem was not an obstacle to peace talks, despite international condemnation of the plan.
In Jaffa, speaking to reporters at the home of the French ambassador to Israel, Kouchner said he had understood from Prime Minister Netanyahu that the move was only in the stages of planning, which he accepted.
The French foreign minister met with opposition leader Tzipi Livni earlier in the day. He told her that, "The coming days are a test for the Israeli government."
Henry A. Giroux Share The World's Resources 2009-09-09 17:11:00
In the US, colleges and universities have embraced market fundamentalism at the expense of enabling equitable access. Higher education must be reclaimed as a fundamental public good and not allowed to be a training ground for corporate interests, writes Henry A. Giroux.
As the school year begins, colleges and universities in North America are doing everything possible to attract students, including making themselves over in the image of a high-end mall or a cool brand name. Some institutions are giving students free Apple iPhones and Internet-capable iPods. Others are building attractive athletic facilities, developing more retail stores on campus, and providing plenty of specialized coffee shops. Some welcome this change as a brilliant market strategy while others believe that any face lift will improve the often stodgy academic image many colleges project.
The US public debt topped 12 trillion dollars for the first time in history, Treasury officials disclosed Tuesday, moving past a key barrier that raised hackles in Congress.
Treasury data showed Monday's outstanding debt at 12.031 trillion dollars, up from 11.999 trillion on Friday.
The ballooning debt reflects the massive deficit spending by the government in an effort to revive an ailing economy over more than one year.
The public debt topped 10 trillion dollars in September 2008.
The debt is quickly approaching the statutory limit of 12.104 trillion dollars, meaning Congress would have to raise the ceiling to prevent a shutdown of government operations.
David Streitfeld The New York Times 2009-11-19 07:00:00
San Francisco - In January, Mike Rowland was so broke that he had to raid his retirement savings to move here from Boston.
A week ago, he and a couple of buddies bought a two-unit apartment building for nearly a million dollars. They had only a little cash to bring to the table but, with the federal government insuring the transaction, a large down payment was not necessary.
"It was kind of crazy we could get this big a loan," said Mr. Rowland, 27. "If a government official came out here, I would slap him a high-five."
In its efforts to prop up a shattered housing market, the government is greatly extending its traditional support of real estate, including guaranteeing the mortgages of middle-class and even upper-class buyers against default.
New York - Budget shortfalls poses a direct threat to millions of U.S. jobs, many in the private sector, as state and local governments lay off workers and cut spending on contracts and other business services, a think tank said on Thursday.
State and local governments will have to raise taxes and cut spending in the current and next two fiscal years to cover shortfalls totaling $469 billion, according to an Economic Policy Institute report.
The think tank -- where White House adviser Jared Bernstein spent years developing ideas found in the $787 billion economic stimulus plan he oversees -- said the U.S. government must give states and cities $150 billion in direct budget relief to save between 1.1 million and 1.4 million jobs.
"Given the fragility of the economy, already high unemployment and the magnitude of the budget shortfalls, it is clear that we cannot afford inaction," the report said, calling the gaps "a ticking time bomb for the economy."
At least 77,500 households are in arrears on their mortgages and rent payments.
This is more than twice previous estimates of the numbers of people struggling to keep a roof over their heads. It is a clear sign that the country is now gripped by a mortgage and rental crisis, experts said.
Also, one in five households are struggling to pay credit card bills, credit union loans and overdrafts. Higher-income families are more likely to owe money to credit card companies and to be overdrawn.
The major study of incomes and living standards by the Central Statistics Office indicates that thousands of homeowners and those who rent are so deep in debt that many are at risk of losing their homes.
The frightening figures underscore the mortgage misery in the country and stress the need for a rescue scheme for heavily indebted families, mortgage experts said.
Frank Tang and Jan Harvey Reuters 2009-11-18 04:08:00
Gold rose to a record high above $1,150 an ounce on Wednesday as stronger-than-expected U.S. consumer prices and a steadily weakening dollar stirred inflation fears.
Market sentiment also improved after news that billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson is launching a new gold fund, including $250 million of his own personal investment.
Doubts about a nascent economic recovery and worries about the consequence of unprecedented quantitative easing also increased gold's appeal as a safe haven.
"There is a lurking concern in the background that still exists," said Bill O'Neill, partner at LOGIC Advisors, noting that investors were worried about the vulnerability of banks and the financial system.
Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.
At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average.
Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth's average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.
Ironically, climate change appears to have stalled in the run-up to the upcoming world summit in the Danish capital, where thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists plan to negotiate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Billions of euros are at stake in the negotiations.
A team of US scientists has uncovered the complete genetic code of corn, a discovery that promises to speed development of higher yielding varieties of one of the world's most important food crops.
Corn is the third most abundant cereal crop, after rice and sorghum, researchers said. Advances in corn production could mean major steps toward feeding the world's growing population as it struggles with climate change.
The team of 150 experts, led by Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, said Thursday they had identified some 32,000 DNA sequences, or genes, in the 10 chromosomes that make up the genome of maize, the largest of any plant examined so far.
By comparison, the human genome includes 20,000 genes distributed in 23 chromosomes.
Much of our planet's mineral wealth was deposited billions of years ago when Earth's chemical cycles were different from today's. Using geochemical clues from rocks nearly 3 billion years old, a group of scientists including Andrey Bekker and Doug Rumble from the Carnegie Institution have made the surprising discovery that the creation of economically important nickel ore deposits was linked to sulfur in the ancient oxygen-poor atmosphere.
These ancient ores -- specifically iron-nickel sulfide deposits -- yield 10% of the world's annual nickel production. They formed for the most part between two and three billion years ago when hot magmas erupted on the ocean floor. Yet scientists have puzzled over the origin of the rich deposits. The ore minerals require sulfur to form, but neither seawater nor the magmas hosting the ores were thought to be rich enough in sulfur for this to happen.
"These nickel deposits have sulfur in them arising from an atmospheric cycle in ancient times. The isotopic signal is of an anoxic atmosphere," says Rumble of Carnegie's Geophysical Laboratory, a co-author of the paper appearing in the November 20 issue of Science.
Surplus biomass from the production of flax shives, and generated from Brassica carinata, a yellow-flowered plant related to those which engulf fields in spring, can be used to produce bioethanol. This has been suggested by two studies carried out by Spanish and Dutch researchers and published in the journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.
"These studies evaluate, from an environmental point of view, the production of bioethanol from two, as yet unexploited sources of biomass: agricultural residue from flax (for the production of paper fibres for animal bedding), and Brassica carinata crops (herbaceous plant with yellow flowers, similar to those which carpet the countryside in spring)," Sara González-García, researcher of the Bioprocesses and Environmental Engineering Group of the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), said.
González-García, along with other researchers from USC, the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the University of Leiden (Holland), has confirmed that if bioethanol is produced from these two types of biomass "both CO2 emissions and fossil fuel consumption will be reduced, meeting two of the objectives established by the European Union to promote biofuels."
Chronic stress in humans has been implicated in heart disease, weight gain, and diabetes, among a host of other health problems. Extreme environments, a source of chronic stress, present a challenge even for the hardiest organisms, and plants are no exception. Yet, some species somehow manage to survive, and even thrive, in stressful conditions.
A recent article by Dr. Yuri Springer in the November issue of the American Journal of Botany finds that certain wild flax plants growing in poor soils have succeeded in balancing the stress in their lives -- these plants are less likely to experience infection from a fungal pathogen. Walking the fine line between the costs associated with surviving under stressful conditions and the benefits that may be derived from growing in an environment with fewer interactions with antagonistic species is a tricky balancing act.
For plants, serpentine soils are one example of an extreme environment. Serpentine soils are those that provide a stressful medium for plant growth, due to features of the soil, such as a rocky texture, low water-holding capacity, high levels of toxic metals, and/or low levels of necessary nutrients.
The patient data associated with the 10 Ukraine isolates sequenced by Mill Hill and deposited at GISAID has been updated with demographic information, suggesting that the samples were from 10 individuals and four of the samples were from deceased patients. These are the same four samples that have D225G (see list below). This association suggests that swine H1N1 with D225G is more aggressive and is cause for concern.
As noted earlier, D225G has been appended onto multiple genetic backgrounds via recombination, and the data from Ukraine adds further support. Samples from Ternopil and Khmelnitsky (see updated map) have a regional marker that is found in swine but no other human isolates. This marker is on all 6 Termopil isolates, indicating it was an early acquisition, but only the two fatal cases have D225G indicating it was appended onto the Ternopil genetic background. However, it is also found in the two fatal cases from Lviv, which do not have the regional marker. Similarly, earlier isolates with D225G represent distinct genetic backgrounds with D225G.
Scientists in Norway announced Friday they had detected a mutated form of the swine flu virus in two patients who died of the flu and a third who was severely ill.
In a statement, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health said the mutation "could possibly make the virus more prone to infect deeper in the airways and thus cause more severe disease," such as pneumonia.
The institute said there was no indication that the mutation would hinder the ability of the vaccine to protect people from becoming infected or impair the effectiveness of antiviral drugs in treating people who became infected.
Oxford University scientists are using brain-scanning technology to understand how we learn to recognize and 'read' faces as children.
The research will also investigate whether there are any differences in the way people with autism spectrum disorders respond to seeing faces.
'Faces are really very similar in their basic features, but we are very good at recognizing different faces instantly. The brain has to be very specialized to be able to do this quickly and accurately,' says Dr Jennifer Swettenham, who is leading the study.
The ability to recognize faces is very important for communication and socializing. We need to be able to recognize people's facial features, and also understand their emotions, respond to where they are looking, and many other signs and indications.
If you have read any of my articles at OpEdNews over the past two years, or any by the many physicians who have also written articles and letters to the FDA commissioner, you will recognize what a bunch of stupid gobbledegook appears below. These critics of aspartame include Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, Internist H.J. Roberts, Psychiatrist Ralph Walton, and Pediatrician Kenneth Stoller, all medical doctors.
This new press release is one of the dumbest things I have ever read, but no surprise: aspartame is at the heart of the many reasons that Americans have gotten dumber, after decades of the "dumbing down" processes....
Catherine Lebel Medical News Today 2009-11-20 04:00:00
Children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) have a number of cognitive deficits, but mathematical ability seems particularly damaged. Little is known about the brain structures related to mathematical deficits in children with FASD. A new study that used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to investigate the relationship between mathematical skills and brain white matter structure in children with FASD supports the importance of the left parietal area for mathematical tasks.
Results will be published in the February 2010 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
"Children with FASD have learning difficulties with reading, memory, executive functioning, attention, and mathematics," said Christian Beaulieu, associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering at the University of Alberta and senior author for the study.
"Specific deficits in mathematics exist even when their global deficits are taken into account," added Claire D. Coles, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Emory University School of Medicine. "Children with FASD are similar in their presentation to children with nonverbal learning disabilities, which are sometimes associated with visual/spatial deficits and math deficits; one of the factors thought to produce these effects is deficits in white matter integrity."
They were in a deep sleep, yet sounds, such as a teakettle whistle and a cat's meow, somehow penetrated their slumber.
The 25 sounds presented during the nap were reminders of earlier spatial learning, though the Northwestern University research participants were unaware of the sounds as they slept.
Yet, upon waking, memory tests showed that spatial memories had changed. The participants were more accurate in dragging an object to the correct location on a computer screen for the 25 images whose corresponding sounds were presented during sleep (such as a muffled explosion for a photo of dynamite) than for another 25 matched objects.
"The research strongly suggests that we don't shut down our minds during deep sleep," said John Rudoy, lead author of the study and a neuroscience Ph.D. student at Northwestern. "Rather this is an important time for consolidating memories."
Leo Hickman and James Randerson The Guardian 2009-11-20 15:33:00
Hundreds of emails and documents exchanged between world's leading climate scientists stolen by hackers and leaked online
Hundreds of private emails and documents allegedly exchanged between some of the world's leading climate scientists during the past 13 years have been stolen by hackers and leaked online, it emerged today.
The computer files were apparently accessed earlier this week from servers at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, a world-renowned centre focused on the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change.
Climate change sceptics who have studied the emails allege they provide "smoking gun" evidence that some of the climatologists colluded in manipulating data to support the widely held view that climate change is real, and is being largely caused by the actions of mankind.
The veracity of the emails has not been confirmed and the scientists involved have declined to comment on the story, which broke on a blog called The Air Vent.
New revelations of a big hole in the moon don't revive the notion that our cosmic companion is made of Swiss cheese. Instead, scientists say, the unusually proportioned feature is most likely a portal into an underground cavern that once held flowing lava.
Analyses of high-resolution images taken by a moon-orbiting probe suggest that the 65-meter-wide, nearly circular feature is between 80 and 88 meters deep, says Carolyn H. van der Bogert, a planetary geologist at Westphalian Wilhelm's University Münster in Germany. Typical impact craters of this size, she notes, are less than 15 meters deep.
Although the hole is located in a lunar province once home to widespread volcanic activity, a dearth of hardened lava around the hole indicates that it isn't a volcanic crater, she and her colleagues report in the Nov. 16 Geophysical Research Letters. The geology of the region also suggests that the hole isn't associated with a fault zone.
Tim Gahr The Cornell Daily Sun 2009-11-18 01:55:00
In a strange case of science imitating art, one hobbit has again become the center of a heated and ongoing conflict.
Since its 2003 discovery on the Indonesian island of Flores, the Homo floresiensis (nicknamed hobbit because it only grew to be about three feet tall) has caused scientists across the world to debate whether the find is a new species or simply a variation of the modern human. The difference could signal a major paradigm shift in the study of primitive humans.
Although several partial H. floresiensis skeletons have been identified, the majority of the attention has been given to a specimen called LB1 (the first to be discovered) because it is the most complete skeleton and the only one that has an entire cranium.
The earliest known hobbit lived approximately 18,000 years ago, although archaeological records of ancient tools suggest that hobbits may have been alive as early as 12,000 years ago. Until the discovery of LB1, scientists had widely believed that the last non-modern humans were the Neanderthals, which became extinct around 24,000 years ago.
If hobbits are indeed a new species, they will replace Neanderthals as the most recent non-modern humans.
Researchers from North Carolina State University have identified a gene that tells embryonic stem cells in the brain when to stop producing nerve cells called neurons. The research is a significant advance in understanding the development of the nervous system, which is essential to addressing conditions such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and other neurological disorders.
The bulk of neuron production in the central nervous system takes place before birth, and comes to a halt by birth. But scientists have identified specific regions in the core of the brain that retain stem cells into adulthood and continue to produce new neurons.
NC State researchers, investigating the subventricular zone, one of the regions that retains stem cells, have identified a gene that acts as a switch -- transforming some embryonic stem cells into adult cells that can no longer produce new neurons. The research was done using mice. These cells form a layer of cells that support adult stem cells. The gene, called FoxJ1, increases its activity near the time of birth, when neural development slows down. However, the FoxJ1 gene is not activated in most of the stem cells in the subventricular zone -- where new neurons continue to be produced into adulthood.
A new technique using near-infrared images, obtained with ESO's 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT), allows astronomers to see through the opaque dust lanes of the giant cannibal galaxy Centaurus A, unveiling its "last meal" in unprecedented detail -- a smaller spiral galaxy, currently twisted and warped. This amazing image also shows thousands of star clusters, strewn like glittering gems, churning inside Centaurus A.
Centaurus A (NGC 5128) is the nearest giant, elliptical galaxy, at a distance of about 11 million light-years. One of the most studied objects in the southern sky, by 1847 the unique appearance of this galaxy had already caught the attention of the famous British astronomer John Herschel, who catalogued the southern skies and made a comprehensive list of nebulae.
Herschel could not know, however, that this beautiful and spectacular appearance is due to an opaque dust lane that covers the central part of the galaxy. This dust is thought to be the remains of a cosmic merger between a giant elliptical galaxy and a smaller spiral galaxy full of dust.
Between 200 and 700 million years ago, this galaxy is indeed believed to have consumed a smaller spiral, gas-rich galaxy -- the contents of which appear to be churning inside Centaurus A's core, likely triggering new generations of stars.
Alexandra Irena Eremia The Varsity 2009-11-19 06:47:00
A recent study has revealed that "earthly" minerals such as rhodium and platinum did not originate from our beloved blue planet. University of Toronto geology professor James Brenan collaborated with William McDonough at the University of Maryland to outline a new theory explaining the existence of certain metals in the Earth's crust.
Brenan and McDonough simulated the extreme temperature conditions that occurred during the Earth's formation. This allowed them to measure the proportion of metals that would have remained after the Earth's temperature cooled. Through their intensive research, they demonstrated that metals such as platinum, rhodium, and iridium (from the platinum metal group) should have been completely eliminated from the Earth's outermost layer as a result of high temperatures.
On Friday evening November 13, 2009, I was driving home from Harrisburg toward Newport, PA on Route 322 West. I was between the Watts and Midway exits. Above the mountain prior to the Midway exit, I saw what I thought was the moon behind the clouds.
Then, I noticed that there was more that one light. The size of the lights that I saw made me think that they might have come from people spotting for deer.
I realized that it wasn't the moon nor hunters, when I saw five or six lights in a row. The lights were above the clouds, so they could not have been people spotting for deer.
I liken the size of the lights to be the size of large spot-lights. They were not bright like spot-lights. The colors were pale blue, white, and pale red.
On November 6, 2009, at approximately 5:30 PM, my son David and I went out of the house to observe the aircraft that were flying over and creating all the noise. We saw about 20 fighters jets buzzing the skies of our town. This has never happened in the four years we have live here.
It was quite scary, because the jets looked like a bunch of angry bees. We watched for about 10 minutes, and went back into the house convinced they were playing some war games.
About 5 minutes later Mary's car pulled into the driveway. I took her mail out to her, as I pickup her mail from her postal box. Phyllis was with Mary, and both ladies stepped out of the car to observe the planes that were making all the noise.
My son David pointed to the northeast, and said "What is that?"
Location of Sighting: Garndiffaith, Pontypool, Torfaen, South Wales.
Date of Sighting: 08112009
Time: 12.30am Sunday 8th 2009
Witness Statement: At12.30am I was checking on my two boys who were asleep when something made me look out of their window, as I moved the curtains I noticed what I thought was a plane coming over the houses opposite, there seemed something unusual about it. As it got nearer I could see it was very large and shaped like a triangle with three orange lights, two at the bottom and one on the top, I was so surprised by this, I ran into our other bedroom were my wife was, and got her to look out at it. This is when we saw the second object, following in the same southerly direction, the lights were not flashing and there was no sound of engines running as by this time I had opened the window to have a better look.
Reader Submitted Report The UFO Chronicles 2009-11-20 15:36:00
Date: November 19, 2009
Time was for 2 hours between 6:30pm CST(Central Standard Time) to 8:45pm. Place is Tira, Texas 75482...that's 16 miles north of Sulphur Springs. This area is about half-way between Dallas and Texarcana in Hopkins County. Our house is on FM1536 which is off HWY19 and about 2 miles from Cooper Damn. Sky is real clear with hardly any humidity, no clouds, cold, with no wind.
I like to go outside and watch/search the skies after dark to see what everything looks like. Having done this so often, I become familiar with overhead airline flight patterns, random small planes, occasional helicopters, their shapes, colors, sounds, and usual flight patterns and motions...and their height in the sky. I also see many meteors and unexplained sights than most just because I go out sometimes more than once a night, if weather permits. Now, the story I'm going to tell you is true and I will try to give specific details. I have no good binoculars, telescope, or digital camera, so I cannot document my story except for the fact that tonight my 19 year old son witnessed most of this with me.
Los Angeles - As the White House considers sweeping strategic shifts in the war in Afghanistan, heroin addicts across the nation called on President Obama Monday to stick with the current U.S. policy, which has flooded the world market with low-price narcotics.
Kristen Zambo The Daily Journal 2009-11-19 10:50:00
It's a scenario of some residents' dreams: After returning home from a weekend getaway they find that someone has decorated their place for the holidays.
But it wasn't a dream for a Herscher family who came home to that very situation Monday, and police now are investigating the case as a crime.
The woman and her children left their apartment after 1 p.m. Saturday in the 600 block of East Second Street, and when they returned Monday morning they found a host of holiday decorations and lights had been put up, Herscher Police Chief Rick Gilbert said Tuesday.
