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The PornScanners Are Here to Stay: TSA Spends Hundreds of Millions on Body Scanners


FoxNews.com
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 18:06 UTC
demonstrates a new full-body
© AP
Sept. 1: Transportation Security Administration employee Anthony Brock, left, demonstrates a new full-body scanner at San Diego's Lindbergh Field with TSA employee Andres Lozano in San Diego. Across the country, passengers must choose scans by full-body image detectors or probing pat-downs.

Despite the firestorm of controversy over the use of high-tech body scanners at airports, the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Transportation Security Administration is spending or looking to spend on them makes it unlikely that they'll be getting shelved anytime soon.

Each scanner costs about $130,000 to $170,000, the agency said, and President Obama's budget request for this year calls for $88 million to buy and install 500 new scanners.

The TSA already has already spent $80 million on body scanners, including $73 million received in stimulus funds.

Needless to say, the technology is big business, and the two companies that supply the scanners to the TSA, L-3 Communications and Rapiscan Systems, have a record of using high-powered political operatives and lobbyists to influence lawmakers. A number of other companies also are vying for future government contracts.
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Wolf

Menstruating woman subjected to TSA grope because panty-liner obscured her vulva on pornoscanner

Cory Doctorow
boingboing
Thu, 25 Nov 2010 22:15 UTC
A self-described "rule follower" went through an airport pornoscanner wearing a panty-liner (she was menstruating). Because the hygienic item obscured the screener's view of her vagina vulva, she was made to endure a humiliating fondling, "so invasive that I was left crying and dealing with memories that I thought had been dealt with years ago of prior sexual assaults."
These new scans are so horrible that if you are wearing something unusual (like a piece of cloth on your panties) then you will be subjected to a search where a woman repeatedly has to check your "groin" while another woman watches on (two in my case - they were training in a new girl - awesome). So please, please, tell the ladies not to wear their liners at the airport (I didn't even have an insert in). I'm a strong, confident woman; I'm an Army vet (which is why those camo liners crack me up), I work full-time and go to graduate school full-time, I have a wonderful husband, and I don't take any nonsense from anyone. I don't dramatize, and I don't exaggerate. I'm trying to give you a sense of who I am so you won't think that this is a plea for attention, or a jumping on the bandwagon about the recent TSA proposed boycott. I just don't want another woman to have to go through the "patting down" because she didn't know that her glad-rag would be a matter of national security."
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Handcuffs

Sarkozy's Mask Slips With "Paedophile" Outburst At Press

John Lichfield
The Independent, UK
Wed, 24 Nov 2010 00:00 UTC
Image
© Agence France-Presse
President Sarkozy told a journalist: 'I am personally convinced you are a paedophile'
President Nicolas Sarkozy was yesterday accused of calling French journalists "paedophiles" in a furious off-the-record exchange at the Nato summit in Lisbon last week.

The Elysée Palace denied that the President had ever used the word but a news magazine and an investigative website reported that Mr Sarkozy had lost his temper when questioned about "Karachigate" - allegations of kickbacks on French submarine sales to Pakistan in the 1990s.

The magazine L'Express and the website Mediapart said that President Sarkozy was briefing the Elysée press corps on Friday night about developments at the Nato summit. A journalist asked him a question about the latest developments in the Karachigate affair: allegations that the cancellation of commissions on a French submarine contract led to a bomb attack in Karachi in May 2002 in which 11 French engineers and four Pakistanis died.

Mr Sarkozy is then reported to have launched into a tirade about press ethics and the use of unnamed sources. "You say ridiculous things. You check nothing," he said to the journalist who asked the question.

"I have nothing against you but it seems that you are a paedophile. I am personally convinced of that fact. I have spoken to the security services but I won't tell you which ones. I have seen someone but it was just a verbal exchange. But now I am personally convinced that you are a paedophile."

After a stunned silence, the briefing moved on to other subjects. Before he left, President Sarkozy is reported to have said to the journalists: "So long paedophiles, see you tomorrow."

Comment: Isn't it great when the mask slips and we get a view of the real psychological profile of these 'leaders'...

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Black Cat

Lisbon Treaty will give EU control of Member States' energy policy, including vast oil deposits in Irish waters

Caroline Simons
Sovereign Independent
Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:31 UTC
Image
© Unknown
An oil find in Irish waters in May this year has been virtually ignored by the Irish media. Serica Energy plc, in partnership with RWE, the German utility, made the discovery while drilling for gas in the Slyne basin, off Mayo. This find is heralded as the first discovery of oil in Irish waters in 28 years.

Oil lakes and gas have been known to exist in Irish waters for the last decade and more, but at depths too deep for recovery at that time. The technology to exploit these deepwater natural resources now exists. Has our government gambled NAMA on exploitation of these resources?

The Norwegian government ensured that the Norwegian people would participate in, and profit from, the riches of an oil find. Since 1996, every krone the Norwegian government earns from oil has gone into a savings fund to guarantee the future well-being of Norway's 4.8 million citizens. The fund now totals some €260 billion. Norway has other energy investments - the Norwegians own 25.5% of the gas from the Irish Corrib field - that is 25.5% more than the Irish people own. It is to be hoped that the Irish government will have the Irish citizens' best interests at heart in the negotiation of the new round of exploration licences.

This cannot be taken for granted. We could be one of the wealthiest countries in Europe if the government deals in the interests of the Irish as a people, and not just in the interests of a chosen few.
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Che Guevara

IMF: International Monetary Fraudsters! Considered Ireland Ripe for Pillaging

Neil Foster
Sovereign Independent
Mon, 15 Nov 2010 16:57 UTC
Image
© Cathal McNaughton/Reuters
The article below from the Irish Independent, informing the Irish people that they must go to the IMF, coming from a former chief economist from the IMF, is nothing less than a pathetic, thinly disguised piece of propaganda portraying the pirates of the IMF as benevolent bankers who care for the welfare of the Irish people.

Ask any ordinary person in the Third World after these gangsters have moved in and crippled them with debt if they think the IMF is a good thing and I think you'll find an overwhelming majority, discounting the corrupt despots running these countries, who have seen their natural resources raped by international corporations, who have looted and pillaged every country they've gone into at the IMF's behest for their international banker criminal cartel, you'll find a resounding rejection of any such notion.

The so called 'Irish' government are as despotic and corrupt as any of the Third World leaders. The only difference is that they don't openly slaughter large numbers of people in the process, although poisoning of the water supply, our air and our food is also a less overt way of killing off the 'undesirables'.
Yep, that's you and me folks and don't think for a second that there aren't those in power in Ireland who know this is going on. If visitors to this website can find the information, then surely the apparent 'creme de la creme' of Ireland who are supposedly running the country can find out too?
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Briefcase

Corporate Profits Were the Highest on Record Last Quarter

Catherine Rampell
New York Times
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:30 UTC
The nation's workers may be struggling, but American companies just had their best quarter ever.

American businesses brought in $1.66 trillion at an annual rate in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or non-inflation-adjusted terms. Corporate profits have been going gangbusters for a while. Since their cyclical low in the fourth quarter of 2008, profits have grown for seven consecutive quarters, at some of the fastest rates in history.

This breakneck pace can be partly attributed to strong productivity growth - which means companies have been able to make more with less - as well as the fact that some of the profits of American companies come from abroad. Economic conditions in the United States may still be sluggish, but many emerging markets like India and China are expanding rapidly.
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Bad Guys

TSA Gestapo Empire

Paul Craig Roberts
Sott.net
Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:52 UTC
Amtrak TSA
© Associated Press
Armed guards: Coming to a rail station near you?
It doesn't take a bureaucrat long to create an empire. John Pistole, the FBI agent who took over the Transportation Security Administration on July 1 told USA Today 16 days later that protecting trains and subways from terrorist attacks will be as high a priority for him as air travel.

It is difficult to imagine New Yorkers being porno-screened and sexually groped on crowed subway platforms or showing up an hour or two in advance for clearance for a 15 minute subway ride, but once bureaucrats get their teeth in the bit they take absurdity to its logical conclusion. Buses will be next, although it is even more difficult to imagine open air bus stops turned into security zones with screeners and gropers inspecting passengers before they board.

Will taxi passengers be next? In those Muslim lands whose citizens the US government has been slaughtering for years, favorite weapons for retaliating against the Americans are car and truck bombs. How long before Pistole announces that the TSA Gestapo is setting up roadblocks on city streets, highways and interstates to check cars for bombs? That 15 minute trip to the grocery store then becomes an all day affair.

Indeed, it has already begun. Last September agents from Homeland Security, TSA, and the US Department of Transportation, assisted by the Douglas County Sheriff's Office, conducted a counter-terrorism operation on busy Interstate 20 just west of Atlanta, Georgia. Designated VIPER (Visible Inter-mobile Prevention and Response), the operation required all trucks to stop to be screened for bombs. Federal agents used dogs, screening devices, and a large drive-through bomb detection machine. Imagine what the delays did to delivery schedules and truckers' bottom lines.
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Card - VISA

It's Official: Rich Declare War on the Middle Class

Robert Freeman
Commondreams.org
Sun, 14 Nov 2010 11:44 UTC
war,middle,class
© Unknown

For the past thirty years the rich have been waging war on the middle class. It's been astonishingly effective, partly because it has been undeclared. But even that pretense is now being abandoned. The President's National Deficit Commission has effectively declared that the rich will now go after what is left of working and middle class wealth and will take whatever steps are necessary to seize it. If allowed to succeed, their plan will reduce Americans to a state of serfdom.

Ronald Reagan began the war on the middle class with his "supply-side" economics. Its very purpose, according to David Stockman, Reagan's Budget Director, was to transfer wealth and income upwards. It cut the marginal tax rate on the highest income earners from 75% to 35% while dramatically expanding spending for war. The results were two-fold: massive federal debt and an astonishing rise in the share of income and wealth going to those who were already the wealthiest people in the world.

The national debt quadrupled between 1980 and 1992. George W. Bush would repeat Reagan's policies and double it again between 2000 and 2008. Meanwhile, the share of national income going to the top 1% more than doubled, from 9% to 24%. The share going to the top one-tenth of 1% of income earners more than tripled. We now have the most unequal distribution of income in the developing world and the inequality is growing rapidly.
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Star of David

Mystery of who funded right-wing "radical Islam" campaign deepens

Justin Elliott
Salon
Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:44 UTC
Money/DVD
© iStockphoto/Salon
In the heat of the 2008 presidential election, an obscure nonprofit group called the Clarion Fund made national news by distributing millions of DVDs about radical Islam in newspaper inserts in swing states.

The DVDs, 28 million in all, were a boost to Republican candidates who were trying to paint Democrats as weak on terrorism -- and they arguably helped fuel the anti-Muslim sentiment that boiled over in the "ground zero mosque" fight last summer. The film, Obsession: Radical Islam's War With the West, was widely criticized for its cartoonish portrayal of Muslims as modern-day Nazis.

But who put up the money to send out all those millions of DVDs?

Clarion, which has strong links to the right-wing Israeli group Aish HaTorah and is listed in government records as a foreign nonprofit, would never say.

Indeed, the group does not have to release detailed donor information because of its nonprofit tax status. We knew only that there was serious money behind the effort: Clarion spent nearly $19 million in 2008, the year it sent out the DVDs.
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Crusader

Is Warped Christianity Threatening Our Democracy?

RogerShuler
Open Salon
Mon, 15 Nov 2010 23:25 UTC
133 C St. SE, WashDC, w/flag
© Flickr/Leoncillo Sabino
133 C St. SE
A misguided view of Christianity is chipping away at fundamental American principles, according to a new book about a shadowy religious/political organization in Washington, D.C.

Jeff Sharlet, in the new book C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy, shows how the group known as "The Family" influences foreign policy, the military, and other key elements of our government.

Based on personal experience, I would say a C Street-like mindset has invaded our courtrooms and corrupted our justice system at all levels. We also suspect that many boardrooms, and even universities, are infected with a values system that gives elites exalted status over everyday folks. In the end, this bastardized form of religion might pose a greater threat to America than Osama bin Laden ever could.

This is Sharlet's second book about C Street. In 2008, he wrote The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. In an interview about his new book, with Scott Horton of Harper's, Sharlet provides some frightening insight into the C Street mindset. Much of it is based on a relatively obscure passage from the Bible, Acts 9:15: "This man is my chosen instrument to take my name... before the Gentiles and their kings."

The original passage was about the Apostle Paul. But members of The Family evidently think it applies to them. Horton asks, "How do the men who gather at C Street interpret this passage?" Replies Sharlet:
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