There's a lot more than meets the eye here

Debt is a pretty easy concept, right?

You owe somebody something, you pay it back. Simple. It's a moral imperative.

Or is it?

For example, how exactly do you pay your parents back? (Even if they were lousy parent.)

Eighteen years (more or less) of room and board, child care, medical care, one-on-one language instruction etc. etc.

If the market values associated with these things were ever itemized they would be astronomical. Some may actually pay it in one form or another, but very, very few do. Yet life goes on, doesn't it?

On a lazy Sunday in March 2012, I was headed out to run errands when CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 turned to a broadcast called Eugenics in America. The report recounted the sad history of minorities, prisoners, the poor and the disabled being forcibly sterilized during the early 20th century.

No news there, right? Yet, I was taken aback when the piece focused on California's role. I never knew the Golden State led the nation with nearly 20,000 sterilizations. Nor did I know that Nazi Germany consulted with California's eugenics leaders in the 1930s. I also was surprised that CNN's reporter was unable to get lawmakers in Sacramento to talk about this.

I set out to learn more. Were there any living victims? If so, how many and how could I find them?

Coincidentally, soon afterward, I received a tip that sterilizations may have occurred in California's women's prisons as recently as 2010. The assertion shocked me. It sounded outlandish.

Obama's new executive order (EO) that creates a global warming task force, The Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience, is a tool to implement Agenda 21, which is the blueprint for totalitarian control through the United Nations. The new task force utilizes corrupt science that comes directly from the the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that is the source of countless scandals.

Obama's strategy is designed to bypass Congress in order to lockdown land use and control water resources. And there are hidden UN and World Trade Organization treaties lurking in the background.

The threat of global warming is used as an excuse to force unnecessary, costly and tyrannical regulations on the public. Man-made global warming is a hoax and the Earth has been in a cooling phase over the last 15 years. For documented evidence of the hoax, click here for James Corbett's analysis of the United Nations' IPCC.

Obama uses executive orders to circumvent Congress in addition to bestowing unconstitutional powers on executive agencies under his control.

A current example of agency overreach is playing out right now as the EPA is trying to extend its jurisdiction over all bodies of water by changing the definition of 'water' in the Clean Water Act. The EPA does have jurisdiction over 'navigable waters' and is trying to expand its control by claiming that all bodies of water fit into that category because water has a common source under the Earth's surface.

Corporate rule through free trade created states that work for corporations. This inverted state protects corporations from democratic control instead of protecting people from predatory corporations. "Freedom" has become a contested term. We refer to people's freedom to live and earn a livelihood, to have access to vital resources - seed, food, water and land.

But "free trade" rules are written by corporations in order to destroy people's lives and livelihoods, their cultures and democracies by commodifying and privatzing every aspect of their lives.

For example, the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement of the World Trade Agreement imposes patents on seeds and patents allow biotechnology corporations like Monsanto to prevent farmers from saving seeds.

The suit accuses church officials of moving the Rev. Jerome Kern to an Edina church in 1969 after parents in St. Paul said he fondled boys.

A Catholic priest known by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for sexual misconduct was sued Thursday - the first of what attorneys say will be multiple lawsuits against him and the archdiocese.

The Rev. Jerome C. Kern was accused in a lawsuit of "sexual battery" involving an Edina boy from 1972 to 1976. Kern had been transferred to our Our Lady of Grace Church in Edina in 1969, after parents at his St. Paul church informed the archdiocese that he had sexually fondled their two school-age sons, attorneys said.

The lawsuit, in Ramsey County District Court, also names the archdiocese on civil charges related to its transfer of Kern to that church without addressing his alleged problems and without notifying families.

The plaintiff, now a man in his 50s, is one of at least 10 people abused by Kern that the law firm of Jeff Anderson & Associates is aware of, attorney Mike Finnegan said. The firm is preparing three more suits against Kern, he said.

An Arlington, Va.-based conservative group, whose existence until now was unknown to almost everyone in politics, raised and spent $250 million in 2012 to shape political and policy debate nationwide.

The group, Freedom Partners, and its president, Marc Short, serve as an outlet for the ideas and funds of the mysterious Koch brothers, cutting checks as large as $63 million to groups promoting conservative causes, according to an IRS document to be filed shortly.

The 38-page IRS filing amounts to the Rosetta Stone of the vast web of conservative groups - some prominent, some obscure - that spend time, money and resources to influence public debate, especially over Obamacare.

The group has about 200 donors, each paying at least $100,000 in annual dues. It raised $256 million in the year after its creation in November 2011, the document shows. And it made grants of $236 million - meaning a totally unknown group was the largest sugar daddy for conservative groups in the last election, second in total spending only to Karl Rove's American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, which together spent about $300 million.

Short, a soft-spoken but ferociously conservative 43-year-old operative, provided us a draft of a forthcoming IRS filing that will soon be available to the public. Short, like most in the Koch empire, feels wealthy conservative activists such as Charles and David Koch get a bum rap from the media. So, Short wants to ease his groups and their cause out of the shadows.


"There's a mystery around us that makes an interesting story," Short said in an interview in his conference room. "There's also a vilification that happens that gets exaggerated when your opposition thinks you're secretive. Our members are proud to be part of [the organization]."

Four investigations, hundreds of testimonies and stacks of medical reports on Yasser Arafat's unexplained death in 2004 have failed to produce hard evidence of what killed him - and findings presented Friday only created more confusion.

Palestinian officials said a report they received from Russia on the role of radioactive polonium in Arafat's death was inconclusive. They spoke just a day after Swiss scientists said the Palestinian leader was probably poisoned by the rare and extremely lethal substance.

Despite those discrepancies, the Swiss and Russian reports agreed that Arafat's death "was not caused by old age or disease, but as a result of a toxic substance," said Dr. Abdullah Bashir, a medical expert in the three-member Palestinian team that has been investigating Arafat's death. This, he told a news conference, is in line with the long-standing Palestinian contention that Arafat was poisoned.

The reports revived Palestinian allegations that Israel was behind the attack, despite its denial.

The Palestinian team's leader, Tawfik Tirawi, said Israel had the technical means and the motive.

"I say, with all the details available about Yasser Arafat's death, that he was killed, and that Israel killed him," he said. The former Palestinian intelligence chief did not present evidence to back up the claims.

In the four years leading up to his death, Arafat's relationship with his longtime nemesis, Israel's then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, had become increasingly hostile. Sharon, a hard-liner, blamed Arafat for encouraging anti-Israeli violence instead of working toward a peace deal and kept him isolated at his West Bank compound for extended periods.

The chief of the Federal Aviation Administration predicted Thursday that U.S. airspace could be crowded with as many as 7,500 commercial drones within the next five years, as he unveiled a long-awaited regulatory blueprint that seeks to protect Americans' privacy while requiring testing for law enforcement and private companies seeking to operate unmanned aerial vehicles.

FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said his agency would set up six sites across the country to test drone operators, but cautioned that there could be delays for those looking to obtain certificates to operate unmanned aircraft once the regulatory guidelines are in place. He said ensuring safety in increasingly congested skies was his agency's top priority.

"We must fulfill those obligations in a thoughtful, careful manner that ensures safety and promotes economic growth," Mr. Huerta said in a speech to aerospace industry executives.

The FAA's announcement is the latest step in the march toward transitioning drones from the military use in the war on terrorism that made them famous to civilian applications that can range from collecting survey and weather data to assisting rescues and law enforcement operations.

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems, the leading trade group for the nation's private-sector drone operators, estimated this year that the commercial drone industry will create more than 100,000 jobs and generate more than $82 billion in economic impact over the next 10 years - if the government moves quickly to establish workable operating regulations and safeguards.

The impending boom has raised concerns among privacy advocates about how and where drones might be used to collect data. The FAA is requiring future test sites to develop privacy plans and make them available to the public. The policy also requires test site operators to disclose how data will be obtained and used.

'Fedspeak' was first used to describe the long, often vague statements by Alan Greenspan on changes in Federal Reserve policy. In fact, Greenspan claims opaque answers to straight forward questions were part of the job as he did not want to make markets overreact. In his words,

"What tends to happen is your syntax collapses... All of a sudden, you are mumbling. It often works. I created a new language which we now call Fedspeak. Unless you are expert at it, you can't tell that I didn't say anything."

Recently, in a departure from 'Fedspeak', Central bankers around the world have made their intentions known about how they plan to manage their foreign exchange reserves, giving investors a rare glimpse into how to manage their own portfolios.

Jaipur - If you want a government job in Rajasthan, quit smoking and chewing gutka first. For, the department of personnel has issued a circular to all other departments and district collectors to extract an undertaking from candidates to the effect that they do not smoke or consume gutka while in government service.

In November 2012, state-level coordination committee (SLCC) for tobacco control had recommended that an undertaking should be taken from candidates before giving them government jobs. Such an undertaking would help young smokers to quit the habit in the initial stages itself, which otherwise would result in cancer, the committee felt.

Principal secretary, department of personnel, Sudarshan Sethi said, "Gutka and smoking are very harmful and their consumption is not at all a fashion statement. People should stay away from it."

A copy of the circular, issued on October 4, has been sent to the governor, Rajasthan Public Service Commission, secretary, Rajasthan Vidhan Sabha and registrar, Rajasthan High Court Jaipur/Jodhpur.

The circular was issued on the same day when the model code of conduct for assembly elections came into effect in the state.