How Washington Creates Global Instability by Nick Turse and Tom Engelhardt, September 19, 2011 | Print This | Share This | Antiwar Forum It was built for… well, not to put too fine a point on it, victory. I’m talking, of course, about the ill-named Camp Victory, the massive military complex, a set of bases really, constructed around an old [...]
Federal government admits not testing for arsenic, mercury or other toxic heavy metals in seafood
The US government, and even President Obama himself, have said that Gulf seafood is safe to eat in the wake of the massive BP oil spill.
But an admission from the federal government that it hasn’t been testing Gulf seafood for toxic heavy metals, and news that fishermen are being forced to sign waivers making them liable for toxins in their catch, suggest not everyone is convinced of the safety of Gulf seafood.
Louisiana fishermen’s activist Kindra Arnesen says dock owners are asking fishermen to sign waivers that put the full responsibility for toxins found in the catch on the fishermen themselves.
As the final convoy of the Army’s 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, based at Fort Lewis, Wash., entered Kuwait early Thursday, a different Stryker brigade remained in Iraq.
Soldiers from the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team of the 25th Infantry Division are deployed in Iraq as members of an Advise and Assist Brigade, the Army’s designation for brigades selected to conduct security force assistance.
So while the “last full U.S. combat brigade” have left Iraq, just under 50,000 soldiers from specially trained heavy, infantry and Stryker brigades will stay, as well as two combat aviation brigades.
The second largest shareholder in News Corp. — the parent company of Fox News — has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to causes linked to the imam planning to build a Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan, says a report from Yahoo!News.
According to the report from Yahoo!’s John Cook, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who owns seven percent of News Corp., “has directly funded [Imam Feisal Abdul] Rauf’s projects to the tune of more than $300,000.”
Cook reports that Prince Al-Waleed’s personal charity, the Kingdom Foundation, donated $305,000 to Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, a project sponsored by two of Rauf’s initiatives, the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, which is building the Manhattan mosque.
This is going to be a rarity, a different kind of post for me. I am just a person asked to help maintain this website since I happen to read a lot of news from around the globe and care about human freedom, the U.S. Constitution and equal justice. Occasionally I write some original blogs but mainly I just repost stories I find interesting that I feel help demonstrate the overall tapestry of collectivism descending upon this once free country. I try not to get into subject matter that is too “conspiratorial” in that there is a natural aversion to explanations that fall outside of the mainstream, and by that I really mean tightly controlled establishment media. Today, I may slightly cross that path and speak honestly after reading the White House National Security Strategy released in May of this year.
An attempt to destroy a political system necessarily coincides with an attempt to destroy the economy of that system. Economic sabotage is not the fictitious activity of nonexistent groups. It is the activity of real enemies, foreign and domestic. Watch the players at work. Consider which nations are manipulating oil prices, grain prices, and strategic metals. Ask yourself what their goal is. Why are they doing it? Are they attempting to raise the standard of living within their own countries, or attempting to smash the standard of living in the United States? In a recent speech on August 3, David Horowitz said, “We are in a war with enemies both internal and external who seek our destruction.” Horowitz was accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Young America’s Foundation. If anyone understands America’s internal enemy it is Horowitz. He was raised by communists, and broke with the Left when he realized what the Left actually signifies.
Last week’s meeting of 700+ scientists, policymakers, and concerned citizens in Chicago to discuss the science and economics of global warming at the Fourth International Conference on Climate Change was a huge success as measured by the intent of its sponsors: to establish once and for all that the climate realist position is increasingly the accepted conclusion among thinking people in the three categories noted above. That position is this: manmade global warming is not a crisis.
Yes, all parties at the conference pretty much agreed that there was a good deal of warming in the 1980s and 1990s, and that the trend stopped and reversed in the current decade. Global temperatures have been falling in recent years, even though the weather stations and other data chosen to represent the official temperature records are in fact skewed to show higher and more-rising temperatures than are actually occurring.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have become gigantic financial black holes that the U.S. government endlessly pours massive quantities of money into. Unfortunately, if the U.S. government did allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to totally implode, both the mortgage industry and the housing industry in the United States would completely collapse. So essentially the U.S. government finds itself between a rock and a hard place. Prior to the financial crisis of the last few years, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were profit-seeking private corporations that also had a government-chartered mission of expanding home ownership in America. But now that they have been officially taken over by the U.S. government, they have become gigantic bottomless money pits. It is hard to even describe just how much of a mess Fannie and Freddie are in. However, the unprecedented intervention by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the mortgage market over the past couple of years has been about the only thing that has kept it from plunging into absolute chaos. So what does the future hold for Fannie Mae and for Freddie Mac? Well, according to one estimate, it could take another 5 trillion dollars to “fix” Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac.
I have tried to remain quiet on this issue in the hope that common sense would prevail. However, since it seems that what is a very simple matter is being hijacked for political expediency, I can no longer in good conscience remain silent.
As a Libertarian, the ground zero mosque issue is not really an issue. The Constitution protects the religious rights of all religions and the right not to believe. The Constitution also protects the rights of organizations and individuals to own and administer legally owned property. The laws regarding the regulation and enforcement of zoning, something I often don’t agree with, have permitted the use of this building by the organization wanting to build a center there. Everything else is irrelevant.
New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly climbed to a nine-month high last week, yet another setback to the frail economic recovery.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 500,000 in the week ended August 14, the highest since mid-November, the Labor Department said on Thursday.
Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast claims slipping to 476,000 from the previously reported 484,000 the prior week, which was revised up to 488,000 in Thursday’s report.
A Labor Department official said there was nothing unusual in the state level data. The data covered the survey week for the government’s closely watched employment report for August, scheduled for release early next month.
“There are some technical factors out there and the seasonal factors seem to be pushing it up a little bit. But given the trend of claims it looks like the economy ran into a wall in August,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-MitsubishI UFJ in New York.
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