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Wall Street vultures drive up food prices while billions starve

Keith Johnson
American Free Press
Sat, 09 Feb 2013 01:53 UTC
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© American Free Press
Goldman Sachs reaps $400M "bountiful harvest" by gambling on America's food staples

While people around the globe struggled to put food on the table in 2012, banking giant Goldman Sachs reaped a bountiful harvest. According to a new report by the UK-based anti-poverty group, World Development Movement (WDM), Goldman Sachs made approximately $400M in profits last year by betting on the prices of food staples like wheat, corn and soy.

"Goldman Sachs is the global leader in a trade that is driving food prices up while nearly a billion people are hungry," says WDM campaigner Christine Haigh. "The bank lobbied for the financial deregulation that made it possible to pour billions into the commodity derivative markets, created the necessary financial instruments and is now raking in the profits. Speculation is fueling volatility and food price spikes, hurting people who struggle to afford food across the world."
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Whistle

Whistle blower fired for reporting fraud at US defense contractor BAE


RT.com
Fri, 08 Feb 2013 03:16 UTC
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© AFP Photo / Shah Marai

A former manager for one of the biggest US defense contractors says he was removed from his job after accusing his higher-ups of defrauding the government.

Cornelius Hosch, the one-time head of counter-IED intelligence for BAE Systems Information Solutions' eastern Afghanistan office, sued his former employer in federal court on Tuesday.

Hosch, a US Army veteran with nearly 20 years of experience in the military, says his problems with BAE began after he alerted his supervisor to what he considered fraud in December 2011, just days after he started his employment with the company.

During his tenure with BAE, Hosch says the company overcharged the US government for services they were contracted to do.
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Eye 1

DHS can still grab your belongings without cause at border crossings


RT.com
Fri, 08 Feb 2013 16:16 UTC
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© AFP Photo / Jesus AlcazaUS Customs and Border Protection searches for illegal inmigrants in El Paso, Texas

The Fourth Amendment no longer means what you once thought it did: A new report reveals that the government has shrugged off concerns over the alleged constitutional infringements of its own citizens near international crossings.

An internal review of the US Department of Homeland Security's procedures regarding the suspicionless search-and-seizure of phones and laptops near the nation's border has reaffirmed the agency's ability to bypass Fourth Amendment-protected rights [.pdf].

In a two page executive summary published quietly last month to the official DHS website, the agency explains that a civil rights and civil liberties impact assessment of the office's little-known power to collect personal electronics near international crossings has passed an auditor's interpretation of what does and doesn't violate the US Constitution.

Since 2009, the DHS has been legally permitted to seize and review the contents of personal electronic devices, including mobile phones, portable computers and data discs, even without being able to cite any reasonable suspicion that those articles were involved in a crime.
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Dollar Gold

Former U.S. ambassador claims France paid $17 million in ransom to Islamists


RT.com
Fri, 08 Feb 2013 17:40 UTC
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© Reuters / Cheick DiouaraSoldiers from the Tuareg rebel group MNLA ride in a pickup truck in the northeastern town of Kidal February 4, 2013
A former US ambassador claims that France shoveled out $17 million to free a group of hostages held in Mali, only to have the money up in the hands of al-Qaeda militants and significantly strengthen the terrorist group.

And the hostages were never freed.

Former US Ambassador to Mali Vicki Huddleston told iTele that the alleged $17 million ransom payment funded the very militants that France is now fighting against in Mali.

In 2010, four French citizens were kidnapped from their guarded villas in Arlit, where they were employed at the French nuclear company Areva. According to Huddlestone, the French government made the ransom payment, only to lose the $17 million while the hostages remained captive. In early 2011, two other French hostages were taken and a seventh was taken in late 2012. Despite the alleged ransom payment made after the kidnapping of the first four, the hostages remain in the hands of al-Qaeda sympathizers.
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Eye 1

TSA sued for $5 million after arresting man over peanut butter jar


RT.com
Fri, 08 Feb 2013 17:37 UTC
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© AFP Photo / Kevork Djansezian
After being hauled away from New York's LaGuardia Airport for making a wisecrack about his jar of peanut butter, an Arizona man is suing a TSA agent and a Port Authority cop for $5 million.

Frank Hannibal, 50, is seeking millions of dollars according to a recently filed lawsuit that has been uncovered by the New York Daily Mail. In the complaint, Hannibal recalls a failed attempt to pass through a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint with a jar of gourmet peanut butter. By the time the incident was over, he says he spent over 24 hours in a jail cell.

"It sounds laughable now but at the time to be led out of there like a terrorist was unbelievable," Hannibal tells the Daily News. "My whole life was up in the air. It was a nightmare. My children were overwhelmed. It was crazy."

Hannibal's troubles began when a TSA agent questioned him about his jar of "Crazy Richard's Natural Peanut Butter," a spread sold at supermarkets across the country and marketed by Ohio's Krema Products Company. Speaking to the paper, Hannibal says the TSA agent appeared confused by the natural separation of oil inside the jar of peanut butter, which retails typically at around $7 a pop.
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Bizarro Earth

U.S. Air Force veteran added to no-fly list after visiting sickly mom


RT.com
Fri, 08 Feb 2013 17:35 UTC
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© Image from flyokc.comStatue of Will Rogers at Will Rogers World Airport
A 10-year veteran of the US Air Force is once again unable to return to his home after being mysteriously added to a federal no-fly list for a second time.

Saadiq Long, a Muslim American born in the state of Oklahoma, is stranded near his hometown despite having purchased a plane ticket to return to Qatar, a small Arab nation where he teaches English and lives with his wife and children.

Long has been visiting his family in the United States to tend to his ailing mother, who still lives in the small Midwest town of McAlester, Oklahoma, and intended on leaving on Wednesday to return to Qatar. He tells the Associated Press that while attempting to catch his flight, however, he was refused a boarding pass and was referred by the TSA to a group of armed police.

"I think about three police officers arrived after that," Long, a US citizen, tells the AP. "It was very, very strange, by the way, and very intimidating."
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Megaphone

W. Kamau Bell on drones: 'Obama isn't Hitler, he's Bush'

Eric W. Dolan
Raw Story
Fri, 08 Feb 2013 17:30 UTC
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The escalating controversy over President Barack Obama's policy on the use of drones, W. Kamau Bell said on Thursday, made him sick of people calling him a socialist, or comparing him to Adolf Hitler.

"Obama's not Hitler - he's [George W.] Bush," Bell said, setting off a round of confetti and celebratory music as he entered the rarified territory of a Black Comedian Criticizing a Black President.

"That's right, black liberal guy going at Obama," he whooped to the audience, before realizing that all that confetti was made out of his invitation to the White House.
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USA

Hating Karl Rove: Not just for liberals anymore

Adele M. Stan
AlterNet
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:22 UTC
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© Jenny Warburg
With his new Conservative Victory Project, Rove seeks to knock off Tea Party candidates in GOP primaries. Tea Party leaders are crying treaso

The Tea Party Express, a political action committee famous for its traveling shows of right-wing agitators and entertainers, is warning its members of a terrifying new threat -- no, not Obamacare, or black helicopters, or gun-seizures. It's something far more frightening: "We are under attack by Karl Rove," reads the subject line of a fundraising e-mail from Tea Party Express.

That's right: The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is lumbering through the streets of the Real America, terrorizing the denizens of Tea-Partyville.

At issue is a new political action committee formed by Rove and his associates at American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, the superPAC and related group that were supposed have been the unstoppable, big-money juggernaut that would win Mitt Romney the presidency.
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War Whore

Dirty wars: Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley's new film exposes hidden truths of covert U.S. warfare


Democracy Now!
Tue, 22 Jan 2013 14:57 UTC
Premiering this week at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, the new documentary "Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield" follows investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill to Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen as he chases down the hidden truths behind America's expanding covert wars. We're joined by Scahill and the film's director, Rick Rowley, an independent journalist with Big Noise Films. "We're looking right now at a reality that President Obama has essentially extended the very policies that many of his supporters once opposed under President Bush," says Scahill, author of the bestseller "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army" and a forthcoming book named after his film. "One of the things that humbles both of us is that when you arrive in a village in Afghanistan and knock on someone's door, you're the first American they've seen since the Americans that kicked that door in and killed half their family," Rowley says. "We promised them that we would do everything we could to make their stories be heard in the U.S. ... Finally we're able to keep those promises."

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Stop

Best of the Web: Stop the unconstitutional drone killings


peaceteam.net
Fri, 08 Feb 2013 14:26 UTC
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This week, an unclassified memorandum prepared by the Justice Department for members of Congress on the drone killings accidentally became public. The actual Office of Legal Counsel opinion which purports to authorize this program is still a wrongfully classified secret, and a federal judge just refused a FOIA request from the New York Times for release of the document.

This is exactly how the infamous torture memo came into existence during the Bush administration, a secret OLC opinion, the legal reasoning of which was so flimsy that it could not survive the light of day. So not only are we not supposed to question the murder of people in multiple countries, we are not even allowed to question the legal basis for it. It is sheer lunacy that LEGAL arguments need to be classified.
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