Condemnation of President Obama is intense, and growing, as a result of his announced intent to sign into law the indefinite detention bill embedded in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). These denunciations come not only from the nation's leading civil liberties and human rights groups, but also from the pro-Obama New York Times Editorial Page, which today has a scathing Editorial describing Obama's stance as "a complete political cave-in, one that reinforces the impression of a fumbling presidency" and lamenting that "the bill has so many other objectionable aspects that we can't go into them all," as well as from vocal Obama supporters such as Andrew Sullivan, who wrote yesterday that this episode is "another sign that his campaign pledge to be vigilant about civil liberties in the war on terror was a lie." In damage control mode, White-House-allied groups are now trying to ride to the rescue with attacks on the ACLU and dismissive belittling of the bill's dangers.

For that reason, it is very worthwhile to briefly examine - and debunk - the three principal myths being spread by supporters of this bill, and to do so very simply: by citing the relevant provisions of the bill, as well as the relevant passages of the original 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), so that everyone can judge for themselves what this bill actually includes (this is all above and beyond the evidence I assembled in writing about this bill yesterday):

In letters to Colorado public health officials, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) opposes a rule requiring workers in health care facilities to have an annual influenza vaccination or lose their jobs. Workers who had a rare religious or medical exemption would be required to wear a mask in patient care areas from November through March.

The religious exemption is too narrowly drawn, AAPS writes, and should be a philosophical exemption, as accepted in many states, to "to avoid inquisitions into matters of faith." The mask requirement "seems to be nothing more than a punitive retaliation against those who decline the vaccine" and should be dropped, the AAPS letter states, as both immunized and non-immunized individuals can transmit influenza or other illnesses.

The New Mexico study cited in support of the policy shows a tiny effect: an adjusted odds ratio of only 0.97 for confirmed influenza "outbreaks" (at least one case) in residents of long-term care facilities where 60% of direct-care workers were immunized compared with facilities with a 51% immunization rate. This means that in facilities where more workers were immunized, residents were still 97% as likely to get influenza. "Many other factors could account for the small difference," states AAPS executive director Jane Orient, M.D.

On December 16, Obama's signature will head America closer to full-blown tyranny.

Obama supports draconian FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act provisions. Justification given is national security and war on terror hokum.

Henceforth, anyone anywhere, including US citizens, may be indefinitely held without charge or trial, based solely on suspicions, spurious allegations or none at all.

No reasonable proof is needed, just suspicions that those detained pose threats. Henceforth, indefinite detentions can follow mere membership (past or present) or support for suspect organizations.

Presidents now have unchecked dictatorial powers to arrest, interrogate and indefinitely detain law-abiding citizens if accused of potentially posing a threat.

Constitutional, statute and international laws won't apply. Martial law will replace them if so ordered.

As a result, US military personnel anywhere in the world may arrest US citizens and others, throw them in military dungeons, and hold them indefinitely outside constitutionally mandated civil protections, including habeas rights, due process, and other judicial procedures.

An Occupy Wall Street activist explains why he thinks it is very important to spread knowledge about psychopaths and psychopathy.

Find out about the important connection between psychopaths and the ruling 1%.

This is not taught in schools (but should be).

Iraqi people greet pullout ceremony with ambivalence mixed with concern over an uncertain future

There was no triumphalism and certainly no shock or awe. The end of the war in Iraq was subdued and simple: a small band playing as the US forces flag was furled with 200 troops watching on quietly.

In a makeshift parade ground in a corner of Baghdad airport, time was called on the war just after 1pm on Thursday, eight years, eight months and 26 days after its far more dramatic opening in March 2003. Nearby a plane was waiting to take home the US high command. And in southern Iraq, the 4,000 US troops who remain were steadily streaming towards Kuwait.

By Sunday all the troops will be gone, called home for Christmas by an administration that decided there was little point sticking to the original end date of 31 December. The Iraqi government had made clear that it no longer wanted a US presence here and any soldier who stayed behind would not be granted legal immunity.

It seems that the good bacteria found in your gut may actually be destroyed with every bite of certain food that you eat.

While antibiotics typically hold first prize in depleting the body's gut flora levels, there may be a new culprit looking to take the spotlight which you may know as genetically modified food.

Monsanto's Roundup Ready Crops Leading to Decreased Gut Flora

A formula seems to have been made to not only ruin the agricultural system, but also compromise the health of millions of people worldwide.

With the advent of Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops, resistant superweeds are taking over farmland and public health is being attacked. These genetically engineered crops are created to withstand large amounts of Monsanto's top-selling herbicide, Roundup. As it turns out, glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is actually leaving behind its residue on Roundup Ready crops, causing further potential concern for public health.

Luis Moreno Ocampo of the ICC said Thursday he sent a letter to the head of the National Transitional Council asking what the government's plans are to investigate alleged war crimes by all parties, including the rebels

United Nations - The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court said Thursday there are "serious suspicions" that the death of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi was a war crime.

Luis Moreno Ocampo told reporters after briefing the U.N. Security Council that he sent a letter to the head of the National Transitional Council asking what the government's plans are to investigate alleged war crimes by all parties, including the rebels.

The uprising against Gaddafi's 42-year rule erupted in February, quickly escalated into civil war, and ended in October with Gadhafi's capture and death in unclear circumstances. Witness accounts and video taken of the deposed dictator after his capture by rebel fighters show that he was beaten and abused by his captors, and there were strong indications he was killed in custody.

"The death of Moammar Gaddafi is one of the issues to be clarified - what happened - because there are serious suspicions that it was a war crime," Moreno Ocampo said.

He said what the ICC does on Gaddafi's death and other war crimes will depend on what Libya's interim government does because under the Rome statute that established the war crimes tribunal, the ICC only steps in if national authorities are unwilling or unable to act.

"No government can exist for a single moment without the cooperation of the people, willing or forced, and if people withdraw their cooperation in every detail, the government will come to a standstill."
- Gandhi

The Occupy movement is now a genie that cannot be put back in its bottle.

And while it has certainly gone through growing pains, and will continue to do so, the adversity faced has only forced the movement to adapt and refocus.

After their first eviction, Occupy San Francisco decided to occupy sidewalks around the downtown financial district (the original strategy for Occupy Wall Street before 17 September, I should add.) Can't have an encampment? Adapt and take public sidewalks. There is now a nationwide movement to also throw the gauntlet at major banks like Bank of America, and re-occupy foreclosed homes for families thrown out by the financial criminal class. The move has even prompted Bank of America to fire out an email to its employees. And yes, the email's existence has indeed been confirmed by a Bank of America representative.

Writing from the very region that produces more clichés per square foot than any other "story" - the Middle East - I should perhaps pause before I say I have never read so much garbage, so much utter drivel, as I have about the world financial crisis.

But I will not hold my fire. It seems to me that the reporting of the collapse of capitalism has reached a new low which even the Middle East cannot surpass for sheer unadulterated obedience to the very institutions and Harvard "experts" who have helped to bring about the whole criminal disaster.

Let's kick off with the "Arab Spring" - in itself a grotesque verbal distortion of the great Arab/Muslim awakening which is shaking the Middle East - and the trashy parallels with the social protests in Western capitals. We've been deluged with reports of how the poor or the disadvantaged in the West have "taken a leaf" out of the "Arab spring" book, how demonstrators in America, Canada, Britain, Spain and Greece have been "inspired" by the huge demonstrations that brought down the regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and - up to a point - Libya. But this is nonsense.

The real comparison, needless to say, has been dodged by Western reporters, so keen to extol the anti-dictator rebellions of the Arabs, so anxious to ignore protests against "democratic" Western governments, so desperate to disparage these demonstrations, to suggest that they are merely picking up on the latest fad in the Arab world. The truth is somewhat different. What drove the Arabs in their tens of thousands and then their millions on to the streets of Middle East capitals was a demand for dignity and a refusal to accept that the local family-ruled dictators actually owned their countries. The Mubaraks and the Ben Alis and the Gaddafis and the kings and emirs of the Gulf (and Jordan) and the Assads all believed that they had property rights to their entire nations. Egypt belonged to Mubarak Inc, Tunisia to Ben Ali Inc (and the Traboulsi family), Libya to Gaddafi Inc. And so on. The Arab martyrs against dictatorship died to prove that their countries belonged to their own people.

Some things are unforgivable in a democracy. A bill moving through Congress, authorizing the military to imprison American citizens indefinitely, without a trial or hearing, ranks right at the top of that list.

I know - I lived through it on the Patriot Act. When Congress decided to squelch the truth about the CIA's advance warnings about 9/11 and the existence of a comprehensive peace option with Iraq, as the CIA's chief Asset covering Iraq, I became an overnight threat. To protect their cover-up scheme, I got locked in federal prison inside Carswell Air Force Base, while the Justice Department battled to detain me "indefinitely" up to 10 years, without a hearing or guilty plea. Worst yet, they demanded the right to forcibly drug me with Haldol, Ativan and Prozac, in a violent effort to chemically lobotomize the truth about 9/11 and Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence.

Critically, because my legal case was controlled by civilian Courts, my Defense had a forum to fight back. The Judge was an independent arbiter. And that made all the difference. If this law on military detentions had been active, my situation would have been hopeless. The Patriot Act was bad enough. Mercifully, Chief Justice Michael B. Mukasey is a preeminent legal scholar who recognized the greater impact of my case. Even so, he faced a terrible choice - declaring me "incompetent to stand trial," so my case could be killed - or creating dangerous legal precedents tied to secret charges, secret evidence, secret grand jury testimony and indefinite detention - from the Patriot Act's arsenal of weapons against truth tellers - that would impact all defendants in the U.S. Courts.