Monday, September 13, 2010

How To Make Sure You Don't Accidentally Visit Organizations That Don't Want You

To make sure that you don't unintentionally copying and pasting too much, and getting sued by Righthaven LLC, it is perhaps wisest to not visit any of the news organizations associated with the Stephens Group--who apparently are funding at least part of Righthaven's actions. The Stephens Group has a lot of different newspapers. While the list of these organizations has been floating around for a couple of weeks, someone pointed out this useful Firefox add-on.

1. Install this Firefox add-on by clicking this link and following the instructions: http://bit.ly/dnCc8I

2. Copy the following into a .txt file and save it somewhere on your computer. The easiest way to do this is Start, All Programs, Accessories, Notepad. Come back to your browser, then select the following text with your mouse, and pull down the Edit menu and pick Copy. Then go back to Notepad, and pull down Notepad's Edit menu and pick Paste.

[BlockSite]
http://www.stephensmedia.com/
http://www.stephensmedia.com/gamingwire/
http://www.examiner-enterprise.com/
http://www.boonevilledemocrat.com/
http://www.charlestonexpress.com/
http://www.courier-tribune.com/
http://www.columbiadailyherald.com/
http://www.thedailyworld.com/
http://www.eltiempolibre.com/
http://www.elynews.com/
http://www.greenwooddemocrat.com/
http://www.hilohawaiitribune.com
http://www.hilohawaiitribune.com
http://www.herald-democrat.com/
http://www.herald-democrat.com/
http://www.lasvegascitylife.com
http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/
http://www.reviewjournal.com/
http://www.reviewjournal.com/
http://www.arkansasnews.com/
http://www.arkansasnews.com/
http://www.thevidette.com/
http://www.nwaonline.net/
http://www.paris-express.com/
http://www.pbcommercial.com/
http://www.pressargus.com/
http://www.southernnevadahomeandgarden.com/
http://www.snhomes.com/
http://www.swtimes.com/
http://www.vanburencountydem.com/
http://www.viewnews.com/
http://www.stephensdc.com/
http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/
http://www.1st100.com/
http://www.FOIArkansas.com/
http://www.LasVegasNewsPapers.com/
http://www.NWAOnline.net/
http://www.FortSmith.com/
http://www.PineBluff.com/
http://www.Van-Buren.com/
http://www.CasinoGaming.com/
http://www.LasVegas.com/
http://www.LA.com/
http://www.Hawaii.com/
http://www.lvrj.com/
http://donrey.koz.com/
http://www.texomalink.com/

This puts this list in Notepad. Now pick File, Save in Notepad, and save the file in My Documents with the file name SummersEve.txt.

3. Goto Tools > Add-ons in your copy of FireFox and click the Preferences button for the BlockSite add-on.

4. Make sure the blacklist radio button is selected and use the import button to import your list from My Documents\SummersEve.txt.

5. Enable BlockSite, warning messages, and link removal.


Now, you won't be able to unintentionally visit one of the Evil Empire's websites. Obviously, you can disable the Add-On, or change the list if you need to. This is primarily to protect yourself from the infamy of putting even a fraction of a penny in the pocket of these creeps.

UPDATE: From the comments here:

There is an extension for chrome called 'SiteBlock' that seems to do the same thing for that browser.

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/pfglnpdpgmecffbejlfgpnebopinlclj?hl=en
And from a comment over at Snowflakes in Hell:
If you want to join in on the Stevens Media boycott with Safari, GlimmerBlocker is an open source proxy based solution for Mac OS X (10.5+).

Spammers Make 57,000 Fake Web Sites a Week


Matrix PayPal

Spammers and hackers are constantly trying to take advantage of unsuspecting consumers (also known as my parents) online. According to a three-month study by antivirus developer PandaLabs, these cyber-criminals are creating around 57,000 new fake websites every week. That's close to 3 million per year. And all of it is being done to exploit major brands.

top 10 banks

These counterfeit sites are aimed at tricking users into providing personal information. So their biggest targets are banks and transaction companies such as Visa, Amazon, and PayPal. Together, these sites make up about 65% of the fakes. Clearly, hackers are cutting right to the chase: bank accounts and social security numbers.

And of the 375 high-profile brand most often imitated, two companies are mimicked 44% of the time: eBay and Western Union, companies that do a huge bundle of business transactions every day.

"Although search engines are making an effort to mitigate the situation by changing indexing algorithms, they have so far been unable to offset the avalanche of new websites being created by hackers every day," said Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs, in an interview with Security Week.

It should come as no surprise with this "avalanche" of fakes then that close to 75% of U.S. Internet users have fallen victim to some kind of cyber attack. We'd better make sure our parents are prepared.

Tightened muzzle on scientists is 'Orwellian'

Documents reveal federal researchers, whose work is financed by taxpayers, need approval from Ottawa before speaking with media


The Harper government has tightened the muzzle on federal scientists, going so far as to control when and what they can say about floods at the end of the last ice age.

Natural Resources Canada (NRC) scientists were told this spring they need "pre-approval" from Minister Christian Paradis' office to speak with journalists. Their "media lines" also need ministerial approval, say documents obtained by Postmedia News through access-to-information legislation.

The documents say the "new" rules went into force in March and reveal how they apply to not only to contentious issues including the oilsands, but benign subjects such as floods that occurred 13,000 years ago.

They also give a glimpse of how Canadians are being cut off from scientists whose work is financed by taxpayers, critics say, and is often of significant public interest -- be it about fish stocks, genetically modified crops or mercury pollution in the Athabasca River.

"It's Orwellian," says Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at the University of Victoria. The public, he says, has a right to know what federal scientists are discovering and learning.

Scientists at NRC, many of them planetary experts, study everything from seabeds to melting glaciers. They have long been able to discuss their research, until the rules changed this spring.

"We have new media interview procedures that require pre-approval of certain types of interview requests by the minister's office," wrote Judy Samoil, NRC's western regional communications manager, in a March 24 e-mail to colleagues.

The policy applies to "high-profile" issues such as "climate change, oilsands" and when "the reporter is with an international or national media organization (such as the CBC or the Canwest paper chain)," she wrote.

The Canwest papers are now part of Postmedia Network Inc.

Samoil later elaborated, saying "the regional communications managers were advised of this change a couple of weeks ago."

The documents show the new rules being so broadly applied that one scientist was not permitted to discuss a study in a major research journal without "pre-approval" from political staff in Paradis' office.

NRC scientist Scott Dallimore coauthored the study, published in the journal Nature on April 1, about a colossal flood that swept across northern Canada 13,000 years ago, when massive ice dams gave way at the end of the last ice age.

The study was considered so newsworthy that two British universities issued releases to alert the international media.

It was, however, deemed so sensitive in Ottawa that Dallimore, who works at NRC's laboratories outside Victoria, was told he had to wait for clearance from the minister's office.

Dallimore tried to tell the department's communications managers the flood study was anything but politically sensitive.

"This is a blue sky science paper," he said noting: "There are no anticipated links to minerals, energy or anthropogenic climate change."

But the bureaucrats in Ottawa insisted. "We will have to get the minister's office approval before going ahead with this interview," Patti Robson, the department's media relations manager, wrote in an e-mail after a reporter from Postmedia News (then Canwest News Service) approached Dallimore.

Robson asked Dallimore to provide the reporter's questions and "the proposed responses," saying: "We will send it up to MO (minister's office) for approval." Robson said interviews about the flood study needed ministerial approval for two reasons: the inquiring reporter represented a "national news outlet" and the "subject has wide-ranging implications."

The documents show several communications managers, policy advisers, political staff and senior officials were involved drafting and vetting "media lines" on the ancient flood study.

Dallimore finally got clearance to talk to reporters from Margaux Stastny, director of communication in Paradis' office, on March 31, a week after NRC communications branch was told the study was appearing in Nature, and two days after reporters began approaching Dallimore for interviews.

By then, the reporters' deadlines had passed and they had already completed their stories about the ancient flood. Canwest News Service, CBC, ABC, Reuters and other organizations based their reports on interviews with co-authors of the study from universities outside Canada that responded to interview requests promptly.

This effectively "muzzled" Dallimore by not allowing him to do timely interviews, says Weaver, at the University of Victoria, who says the incident shows how "ridiculous" the situation has got in Ottawa.

"If you can't get access to a nice, feel-good science story about flooding at the end of last glaciation, can you imagine trying to get access to scientists with information about cadmium and mercury in the Athabasca River? Absolutely impossible," says Weaver, in reference to growing controversy over contaminants downstream from Alberta's oilsands.

Environment Canada and Health Canada now tightly control media access to researchers and orchestrate interviews that are approved.

Environment Canada has even produced "media lines" for federal scientists to stick to when discussing climate studies they have coauthored with Weaver and are based on research paid for through his university grants.

"There is no question that there is an orchestrated campaign at the federal level to make sure that their scientists can't communicate to the public about what they do," says Weaver, adding that the crackdown is seriously undermining morale in federal labs. "Science is about generating new knowledge and communicating it to others."


3 new groups join the 9/11 Truth Movement

Click this link ...... http://tinyurl.com/25g6lgc

Summary: This video advisory has been sent to the press on Sept. 9th, 2010.

Fireworks! If the Government Ran the Fairest Kingdom of Them All (A Very...

Handcuffs For Wall Street, Not Happy Talk

The Washington Post has published a very silly op-ed by Chrystia Freeland accusing President Barack Obama of unfairly “demonizing” Wall Street. Freeland wants to see Obama tone down his rhetoric and play nice with executives in pursuit of a harmonious economic recovery. The trouble is, Obama hasn’t actually deployed harsh words against Wall Street. What’s more, in order to avoid being characterized as “anti-business,” the Obama administration has refused to mete out serious punishment for outright financial fraud. Complaining about nouns and adjectives is a little ridiculous when handcuffs and prison sentences are in order.

Freeland is a long-time business editor at Reuters and the Financial Times, and the story she spins about the financial crisis comes across as very reasonable. It’s also completely inaccurate. Here’s the key line:

“Stricter regulation of financial services is necessary not because American bankers were bad, but because the rules governing them were.”

Bank regulations were lousy, of course. But Wall Street spent decades lobbying hard for those rules, and screamed bloody murder when Obama had the audacity to tweak them. More importantly, the financial crisis was not only the result of bad rules. It was the result of bad rules and rampant, straightforward fraud, something a seasoned business editor like Freeland ought to know. Seeking economic harmony with criminals seems like a pretty poor foundation for an economic recovery.

The FBI was warning about an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud as early as 2004. Mortgage fraud is typically perpetrated by lenders, not borrowers—80 percent of the time, according to the FBI. Banks made a lot of quick bucks over the past decade by illegally conning borrowers. Then bankers who knew these loans were fraudulent still packaged them into securities and sold them to investors without disclosing that fraud. They lied to their own shareholders about how many bad loans were on their books, and lied to them about the bonuses that were derived from the entire scheme. When you do these things, you are stealing lots of money from innocent people, and you are, in fact, behaving badly (to put it mildly).

The fraud allegations that have emerged over the past year are not restricted to a few bad apples at shady companies– they involve some of the largest players in global finance. Washington Mutual executives knew their company was issuing fraudulent loans, and securitized them anyway without stopping the influx of fraud in the lending pipeline. Wachovia is settling charges that it illegally laundered $380 billion in drug money in order to maintain access to liquidity. Barclays is accused of illegally laundering money from Iran, Sudan and other nations, jumping through elaborate technical hoops to conceal the source of their funds. Goldman Sachs set up its own clients to fail and bragged about their “shitty deals.” Citibank executives deceived their shareholders about the extent of their subprime mortgage holdings. Bank of America executives concealed heavy losses from the Merrill Lynch merger, and then lied to their shareholders about the massive bonuses they were paying out. IndyMac Bank and at least five other banks cooked their books by backdating capital injections.

For the past decade, fraud has been a mainstream business on Wall Street. That’s to be expected—massive financial crashes simply do not occur without widespread fraud. After the savings and loan crisis, more than 1,000 bankers went to jail for fraud, and the S&L bust was a much smaller debacle than the frenzy that took down Wall Street in 2008.

This is not to suggest that everyone on Wall Street is a criminal—many of these frauds were committed against reasonable financial professionals. But the only reason we haven’t we seen throngs of financiers in handcuffs over the past two years is precisely because Obama has been listening to people like Freeland, trying to avoid “demonizing” bankers who broke the law. Obama critics like hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb have been calling him “anti-business” precisely because some fraud charges have surfaced in the past two years– even though his agencies have gone easy on the fraudsters themselves.

The regulators Obama kept on board at the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) have not recommended any fraud prosecutions to the Justice Department—and we know that the OTS itself was involved in the illegal backdating scheme at IndyMac and other banks. The SEC has not pursued civil fraud cases against some of the executives it believes were involved in Citibank’s subprime scam, nor is the agency seeking serious accountability for Barclays. Nothing has happened to Lehman Brothers or Bank of America for their Enron-style derivatives scams that hid debt from investors, or to Merrill Lynch for its self-dealing of subprime derivatives. The Justice Department is letting Wachovia off the hook for laundering drug money. Let me repeat that: the Obama administration has been so eager to please Wall Street that it is letting bankers get away with laundering drug money.

Applying the law equally to all citizens isn’t demonization and it isn’t socialism– it’s a basic proponent of justice. When you steal a lot of money, you go to jail. When your theft crashes the global economy and throws 8 million people out of work, you go to jail for a long time. Obama doesn’t just need tough talk for Wall Street, he needs to prosecute the frauds that were committed, and explain them to the American people. Nothing about this should be threatening to the millions of fair and reasonable American financial professionals who have done nothing wrong.

If you examine Freeland’s two examples of so-called “demonization,” her story simply becomes absurd. When hedge funds who owned Chrysler bonds complained about losing money in the Chrysler bankruptcy, Obama called them “speculators” who needed to take losses. That’s perfectly reasonable. They were speculators, and they speculated on a company that went bankrupt. When you invest in a bad company, you lose money. That’s how capitalism works.

Freeland also claims that Obama was “out of line in permitting the denunciation of Goldman Sachs.” Goldman deserved to be denounced– their ABACUS scam was abhorrent, and it wasn’t the only egregious act the company engaged in (see: “shitty deal“). But Obama has had plenty of nice things to say about Goldman. He defended the massive bonus that Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein paid himself, and praised Blankfein as a “savvy” fellow.

You cannot reason with someone who claims he is being demonized when you call him “savvy,” nor should you. Any president who neglects basic principles of justice and standards for economic security in order to pamper princely executives isn’t doing his job. Ethical financiers and reasonable business editors should have nothing to fear from a president who criticizes and prosecutes illegal finance.

Zach Carter is AlterNet's economics editor. He is a fellow at Campaign for America's Future, and a frequent contributor to The Nation magazine.

The Money That Is Sold Abroad Is You!

Obama, as seen in China (13 images)

A Chinese shopkeeper shows the latest t-shirt featuring U.S. President Barack Obama in Beijing
A Chinese shopkeeper shows the latest t-shirt featuring U.S. President Barack Obama in Beijing

Over 280,000 Federal Workers Owe $3.3 Billion in Back Taxes

Over 280,000 federal workers and retirees owed more than $3.3 billion in back income taxes in 2009 (up from $3.0 billion in 2008 and $2.7 billion in 2007).

The cabinet departments with the largest percentages of employee/retiree tax deadbeats are:

  1. Housing & Urban Development: 4.40%
  2. Veterans Affairs: 4.04%
  3. Education: 3.86%
  4. Army: 3.69%
  5. Health & Human Services: 3.58%
  6. Defense: 3.20%
  7. Commerce: 3.15%
  8. Air Force: 3.14%
  9. State: 3.10%
  10. Navy: 2.95%

The agencies and commissions with the largest percentages of employee/retiree tax deadbeats are:

  1. Committee for Purchase from People Who Are Blind or Severely Disabled: 14.29%
  2. Federal Mine Safety & Health Review Commission: 11.11%
  3. U.S. Access Board: 7.32%
  4. Government Printing Office: 6.83%
  5. National Capital Planning Commission: 6.67%
  6. Small Business Administration: 6.34%
  7. Federal Labor Relations Authority: 5.79%
  8. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: 5.77%
  9. Armed Forces Retirement Home: 5.28%
  10. U.S. Office of Special Counsel: 5.26%

Other departments and agencies:

  • Federal Reserve Board: 4.32%
  • U.S. House of Representatives: 3.93%
  • U.S. Senate: 3.04%
  • SEC: 2.44%
  • U.S. Tax Court: 1.75%
  • Treasury Department: 0.99% (the lowest delinquency rate among cabinet departments)

Press and blogosphere coverage:

"Another A Major Terrorist Attack & We Could See Internment Camps For Muslims"

Summary: September 11, 2010 News Corp
http://MOXNews.com

Concern grows over foreign involvement in spy's death

Concern is growing within the intelligence community that the MI6 spy found dead in his London flat may have been the victim of a professional hit by a foreign power.

Source/Links...


Sources have told this newspaper that Britain's intelligence services – MI6, MI5 and GCHQ – are liaising closely to establish whether Gareth Williams was targeted by a foreign power.

The 31-year-old was seconded from GCHQ to work on top-secret systems to defend British banks and transport infrastructure from cyber attack and to eavesdrop on terrorist communications.

As a result he may have come to the attention of foreign intelligence agencies.

Security service sources suggest that the most likely explanation for Mr Williams's death is still to be found in his private life, but they admit they are not yet certain and are considering a range of explanations.

Some officials are starting to believe the way the killing was carried out – leaving few, if any, immediate clues as to the cause of death – could point to a professionally-carried-out assassination.

Scotland Yard, which is leading the investigation into his death, said: "We're not at the stage where we can pinpoint how Mr Williams died and all avenues in this investigation remain open. We are keeping an open mind."

It is feared that by the time of his death last month Mr Williams's presence in London had become known to foreign spies, despite the fact he was living in a MI6 safe house with an alarm system linking him to nearby MI6 headquarters.

"It would have been part of their brief", said a British intelligence officer.

The 31-year-old maths and computer expert would have been regarded as a valuable asset for his knowledge of the inner-workings of GCHQ, the government's listening post in Cheltenham, and for his work on preventing cyber attacks on the banking and transport infrastructure.

It is understood Mr Williams's job at the time of his death was creating computer defences in the City of London. Williams would have had access to information which other countries would want to obtain.

The intelligence source said: "His job was to defend the banking system on which Britain's banking, commerce and all our public services depend. It was the kind of work that would have made him prime target for recruitment.

"He was also in a position to know about huge money transfers out of the Middle East which were linked to terror groups. It would be priceless data."

One theory being examined is that Mr Williams may have had an approach from a rival agency, and either rebuffed it without informing his superiors or initially agreed to co-operate then got cold feet.

If such an approach had been exposed there would have been severe political and diplomatic repercussions, making it expedient for Mr Williams to be killed.

It can be revealed that Williams had also played an important role in creating signal intelligence equipment, known as sigint, to listen to Taliban communications in Afghanistan.

He had helped in fitting out three Brittan-Norman Islander aircraft with this equipment to be used as airborne-listening stations.

Based at RAF Northolt in West London since 2007 they have flown over selected British cities searching for communications between suspected terrorists.

A key part of the equipment is the wide-band recorders that Mr Williams helped to develop. Each has the capacity to vacuum up continuous mobile phone traffic in a city the size of Bradford.

The "product" is then downloaded to GCHQ where state-of-the-art computers analyse the voices using voice-recognition software.

Mr Williams's knowledge of US intelligence agencies would have also been valuable. He spent several months at Menwith Hill, the secret listening station in Yorkshire used by the United States to intercept coded messages, and Fort Meade in Maryland, the home of the US's National Security Agency.

The death of Mr Williams has puzzled detectives since August 23, when his body was found inside a sports holdall, padlocked from the outside and left in the bath of the safe house where he was staying while on secondment to the service from his employer GCHQ, the government listening post.

There was no evidence of a struggle or a break in at the Pimlico flat and nothing had been stolen.

Although nothing has been discounted the evidence gathered so far suggests it is increasingly unlikely that Mr Williams was the victim of a random attack or a sex game that went wrong.

Pathologists have carried out two post-mortems, but both failed to establish how Mr Williams died, though the examination was complicated by the fact that the body was said to be in an "advanced state of decay".

What is known, however, is that Williams, a cycling enthusiast, had not been shot or stabbed and did not appear to have been strangled.

Scotland Yard say detectives are now awaiting the result of toxicology tests.

These would establish whether Mr Williams was poisoned using a deadly toxin such as strychnine, cyanide or thallium, administered in such a way as to leave no mark visible to the naked eye.

Sources state that Home Office pathologists are also looking for evidence that Mr Williams was smothered to death, a method that can leave no trace and is extremely hard to detect.

Concern about the possible involvement of a foreign agency has increased further following a public appeal issued last week [Monday, September 7] by Scotland Yard detectives, who are taking the lead in the investigation.

Detectives said they were trying to trace a couple Mediterranean appearance, aged between 20 and 30, who visited the house in Pimlico late one night in the weeks before Mr Williams died.

The Yard revealed the couple were the only people who had been seen around the time of his death at the property in Alderney Street not to be accounted for.

Neighbours told police the pair were let in through the communal front door late one evening, in either June or July. It is believed they were visiting Mr Williams and detectives want them to come forward so they can be eliminated from their inquiries.

Police have visited Mr Williams's landlady in Cheltenham, where he lived for 10 years before being seconded to MI6. They asked Jennifer Elliot about his working hours and lifestyle and about any friends or acquaintances who may have visited his lodgings.

Scotland Yard repeated its appeal for the 'Mediterranean couple' on Friday. A spokesman said: "We are still very keen to speak to the pair. They may have useful information."

Mr Williams's family are reportedly unhappy at the lack of progress in the investigation and are said to have demanded the return of his body. Reports say they would like to commission an independent own post-mortem examination into his death.

A source close to the family was reported as saying: "It is becoming very frustrating to get to the bottom of whatever has happened.

"There are just so many things we still don't know. We have made it clear to the police that we want the body back as soon as possible."

However, Dr Paul Knapman, the coroner in charge of the inquest, is reluctant to release the body until pathologists have completed their tests and established the cause of death.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/7996520/Concern-grows-over-foreign-involvement-in-spys-death.html

Tests reveal high levels of arsenic in Valley company’s drinking water

A Valley water company is under the microscope after tests revealed high levels of arsenic found in their drinking water. 3 On Your Side’s Carey Peña has the story.

US MEDIA ‘giving rise to Islamophobia’

Speeches by certain public speakers covered by US media have been giving rise to Islamophobia in the United States, a senior member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations says.

Speaking in an interview with Press TV, legislative director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Corey Saylor hit out at US media for making Muslims feel increasingly alienated and insecure in the society.

“What’s been really truly trouble is that some of those significant public speakers such as some of those folks that you see on FOX NEWS, have been extremely dangerous at their speech,” Saylor said.

“What that’s leading to is that this fear has turned into anger,” he added.

The remarks come as other experts have also expressed concern about the state policies, saying the government is responsible for fostering and maintaining misconceptions and hatred toward the Muslim world.

In recent weeks, the objection to the construction of an Islamic community center near ground zero revealed the extent of anti-Muslim sentiments in America.

US President Barack Obama endorsed the plan initially, citing every Americans’ right to religious freedom. However, he later backtracked on his stance, saying he believed in the legality of the project but was not necessarily endorsing it.

In a separate anti-Muslim campaign, an evangelical Church announced plans to burn the Quran on the ninth anniversary of 9/11 to commemorate the victims and take a stand against Islam.

Meanwhile, Saylor went on to say that considerable efforts have been made “to educate people as to what Islam is,” but he acknowledged that “it’s going to be a very long process.”

Source: Press TV

AIPAC and the never-ending case

When a federal judge deploys an exclamation point in an opinion, you know something unusual is going on.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon tried to dispense of a case entitled Akins v. Federal Election Commission. The excruciatingly long-running case really involves, though, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AKA AIPAC. A number of former ambassadors, congressmen and government officials critical of the pro-Israel lobbying group sued the Federal Election Commission after the FEC declined to regulate AIPAC as a political commitee.

The date of that original lawsuit? 1992.

In the meantime, three of the original plaintiffs have died and the case has had a tortured path up and down the appellate path. On Wednesday, for reasons that may or may not be worth exploring, Judge Leon dismissed the case with these heart-felt words:

"This never ending legal saga has spanned almost twenty years, multiple administrative complaints, and the careers of numerous Judges and Justices. To say the least, the time to complete the judicial review of these FEC decisions is long overdue. While time will tell what role, if any, this Opinion will have played in this interminable legal drama, I certainly trust that I will be the last District Judge that has to wrestle with this seemingly inexhaustible Hydra."

Oh, and the exclamation comes when Judge Leon exclaims, "Unfortunately, this appellate odyssey had only just begun!"

'Evidence proves 9/11 story is a lie'

World Trade Center building 7, the third building the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth believe collapsed about eight hours after the main World Trade Center towers fell.
Important evidence has emerged showing the official story the American public has been fed about the 9/11 attacks is a 'lie,' a group of architects and engineers say.

A day before the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth say evidence regarding the destruction of the World Trade Center towers has emerged that show pre-set explosives were used in the demolition of the buildings.

Gregg Roberts, who is a member of the non-profit organization disputing the results of official investigations into the September 11 attacks, says the “official story is a lie, it is a fraud.”

According to experts, the Twin Towers suffered total destruction within 10-14 seconds in near free fall accelerations which can only occur as a result of pre-set demolition explosives.

“There had to be explosives, there is no other way for the building to come symmetrically straight down... like a tree if you cut into the tree it falls to the side, that you cut,” said Steven Dusterwald, another member of the truth seeking organization.
The group also asserts that molten metal was found after the 9/11 inquiry.

“Jet fuel and office fires cannot melt iron or steel. They don't even get half as hot as that and so something else was there, very energetic material that had to be placed throughout the buildings,” Roberts said.

“Once we take the blinders off, we can see. There are very few people in America who have taken the blinders off. So we are assisting people by showing them the evidence,” said founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth Richard Gage.

“The 600 architects I represent are most concerned about the freefall collapse of [World Trade Center] Building 7, the third skyscraper [that was] not hit by an airplane to fall on the afternoon of 9/11...the whole building is destroyed in 6.5 seconds,” the American Free Press quoted Gage as saying.

World Trade Center 7 reportedly collapsed about eight hours after the main World Trade Center towers fell.

The new evidence makes void the official story line that 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners and crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.

The Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth group is calling on US Attorney General Eric Holder to request a federal grand jury investigation into this alleged cover-up, which Gage calls the “largest crime of the century.”

“If there is a responsible party,” former US Senator Mike Gravel told Press TV, “it ends with [former US President George W.] Bush and it comes down to [Former Vice President Dick] Cheney and then it comes down to the military and the various bureaucracies. No question that this kind of activity goes to the very top.”

RBK/HGH/MMN

More families are deciding that school’s out – forever

It may sound flaky, but the ‘unschooling’ movement's ideas are going mainstream as parents are increasingly opting to keep their kids out of class

It has been Saturday in the Laricchia household for nearly a decade.

The family's three teenagers, Michael, Lissy and Joseph, have known nothing of alarm clocks, races for the school bus, arguments over homework or report-card angst since their parents started “unschooling” them in 2002.

The small but growing movement the Laricchias have joined is known by many other names, including deschooling, life learning and edu-punk. At base, unschooling is home-schooling returned to its postwar progressive roots, far from the Bible-thumping mould that has come to dominate the modern image of home-schoolers.

An unschooling family mostly just looks like a family living life … hanging out on the weekend. But there is lots of learning going on. — Pam Laricchia, mother

Unschooling takes children out of schools, but, unlike a lot of home-school approaches, it doesn't import the classroom into the home. It does away altogether with educational clutter such as curricula and grades.

Unschoolers maintain that a child's learning should be curiosity-driven rather than dictated by teachers and textbooks, and that forcing kids to adhere to curricula quashes their natural inclination to explore and ask questions.

To an outsider, unschooling may sound like pedagogical tofu: a shapeless, idealistic substitute for an education. But there's a growing consensus that unschoolers might be on to something. Their ideals have been quietly infiltrating public education.

“An unschooling family mostly just looks like a family living life … hanging out on the weekend,” says mother Pam Laricchia, a former nuclear engineer who lives in Orangeville, Ont. “But there is lots of learning going on when you take the time to look at it from the kids' point of view.”

Anita Roy and her husband Mehdi Naimi decided to 'deschool' their sons Kian, left, and Zaman Naimi-Roy.

Home-schoolers – and unschoolers in particular – are by nature difficult to count. But observers say that, thanks in part to social networking and the blossoming of Internet resources, their movement is growing.

One sign is that dozens of unschooling families will converge near Ms. Laricchia's home this weekend for the fifth annual Toronto Unschooling Conference. Another is that since 2002, unschoolers have had their own publication, Life Learning Magazine. (More recently, it has metamorphosized into

LifeLearningMagazine.com.)

Meanwhile, school boards and education ministries are embracing experiential learning.

There was a time when students were drilled and heavily tested on rote memory, such as the names and dates of British sovereigns. But research suggests that this is a temporary, limited form of learning: Kids gain more when they can ask questions and learning is tied to emotion.

The change in thinking has been slow, but it surfaces in the expansion of high-school co-op programs, or the emphasis on play in the new full-day kindergarten curriculum Ontario launched this week.

Some children thrive in the classroom and others don't and, despite the best of intentions, the system sorts them into winners and losers.

Recent initiatives by education ministries and school boards to shrink dropout rates, promote alternative schools and improve kindergarten are all fundamentally an effort to reduce the sorting. Unschooling's underlying idea is that all kids are winners.

Gretchen Theakston-Larabee, seated on the couch, watches over the studies ofher shildren, from left to right, Sarina, 12, Silas, 7, and Samantha Theakston, 14, at home in Toronto.

A LIBERATION MOVEMENT FOR THE LOVE OF LEARNING

The foundational tome of the unschooler is How Children Fail, the first book by an American teacher named John Holt published in 1964. The writer suggested that smart children struggle “because they are afraid, bored, and confused.

“They are afraid, above all else, of failing, of disappointing or displeasing the many anxious adults around them, whose limitless hopes and expectations for them hang over their heads like a cloud.”

Mr. Holt supports his thesis with observations from a sort of classroom diary he kept throughout the 1950s and 60s. He concludes that “a child who is learning naturally, following his curiosity where it leads him, adding to his mental model of reality whatever he needs and can find a place for, and rejecting without fear or guilt what he does not need, is growing – in knowledge, in the love of learning, and in the ability to learn.”

The idea puts a lot of faith in children, their innate interest in learning and in their intelligence. It also restores faith in parents, returning some control over their children's growth that they handed to educators and politicians more than a century ago.

This was the philosophy behind home-schooling when it emerged in the 1960s and 70s as a way for children to learn from the world around them. Then, in the past few decades, home-schooling was embraced by the Christian right, which saw it as a way that kids could be shielded from the secular world.

Then the Internet galvanized unschoolers. It provided a support network for parents seeking alternatives, and made satisfying the whims of a child's curiosity a lot easier. Why is the sky blue? Google it. How do you make a baking-soda volcano? Ask YouTube.

This type of experiential learning suits boys and concrete learners in particular, who “are set up to fail in the regular school system,” according to Ron Hansen, a professor at the University of Western Ontario.

He says the school system favours abstract learners, the half of the population who find it easy to think in symbols and signs, for whom written work comes naturally. Concrete learners “need action, they need projects, they need to be tactile as well as using their eyes and their ears.”

Although Mr. Hansen believes that unschooling might not work in every home, he thinks its emphasis on experiential learning is laudable and has a thing or two to teach public education.

There is an obvious objection, and one familiar to home-schoolers of any stripe: Does any kid who hangs out all day with his parents and who lives by the whims of his own curiosity have any hope at being anything less than a dork?

Though unschooled children tend to have highly developed critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, some find it difficult to socialize with large groups of children, according to Paige Fisher, an instructor in education at Vancouver Island University who has observed unschooled children.

Another concern more specific to unschooling is if children's education is formed by their own interests, or solely by those of their parents, there are likely to be gaps.

“Individual children might be happy, but it's not clear that this makes for an autonomous or well-rounded adult, or for a better community,” Christopher Lubienski, an associate professor at the University of Illinois, writes by e-mail.

Structured learning, with external direction, “can force people to experience things that they wouldn't otherwise, and quite often find new interests. ... Ones that may also have some wider social value.”

OFF THE BUS, BUT NOT ENTIRELY OFF THE GRID

This week, as most children kissed their parents goodbye and boarded yellow school buses, a group of home-schooling families gathered in a park in Toronto's west end for a Welcome Back to Not-School party.

They represented a fair cross-section of the city's home-schooling community, and most would place themselves somewhere on the unschooling spectrum.

Generally white and well-educated, the unschoolers were the kind of middle-to-upper-middle-class parents who don't dream of a home in Rosedale or their kids graduating from medical school.

They didn't fit any other stereotypes, except that all were able to stay home at least part-time. And they knew their kids' daily lives in a detail that made the average helicopter parent seem negligent.

They stood in clusters, discussing current events and their children, who buzzed about from swings to picnic tables in swarms of mixed-age groups. The sight was a bit jarring to eyes accustomed to traditional school playgrounds, where kids tend to stick with their classmates.

Carlo Ricci, an associate professor at Nippissing University, was pushing his younger, unschooled daughter, Karina, 5, on a swing. His older daughter, Annabel, 7, attends Grade 2. He had gradually figured out the differences that made one girl prefer unschooling while the other was drawn to the classroom.

“[Annabel] is like a movie star when she goes to school. She gets a lot of praise," he said. Karina is more shy.

John Day's 10-year-old daughter, Brenda, has never seen the inside of a classroom. Still, he specified, “I'd say we're part-unschoolers.”

Mr. Day, an engineer who holds graduate degrees from Oxford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford, lets his daughter's interests drive most of her learning. That may mean writing Artemis Fowl fan fiction, watching the pop science program Mythbusters or a trip to the Ontario Science Centre.

“It's awesome,” said Brenda, a spindly pre-teen with sun-bleached hair. “I spend more time outside and I see my friends every day.”

However, Mr. Day added: “I think potentially one of the problems with the unschooled kids is they haven't been prepared with the basics.” So on top of her self-directed learning, Brenda follows a math curriculum and solves problems in graded workbooks.

THE MANY SCHOOLS OF UNSCHOOLING

There are other factions within the movement, from the radical unschoolers, who extend the philosophy beyond education to parenting, to those who reject the term unschooling altogether.

Some unschoolers will refer to the occasional exercise book for math lessons. Others will never consider a number outside a speedometer or a grocery receipt. Some are vegans, while the unschoolers who let their children eat more liberally quietly refer to them as the Granola Gestapo.

“There's everything from very earthy grassroots people to very educated professional people,” says Judy Arnall, a Calgary-based author on parenting who has unschooled her five children. She is on the phone from Newfoundland, where she is dropping her 18-year-old son off at Memorial University.

“I think the one thing everyone agrees on is that we want our kids to foster a love of learning that's intrinsic.”

“Unschooling is an acknowledgment that schools and education are in many ways contradictory, that there's an implicit tension between them,” says Jason Price, an assistant professor at the University of Victoria.

“Education is about the production of more democracy, production of peace, production of happiness whereas schooling is often the production of global economic competitiveness.”

In Orangeville this weekend, over campfires and potluck dinners, unschoolers will discuss ways of supporting their children's learning at Ms. Laricchia's Toronto Unschooling Conference.

Throughout the day, guest speakers will address quandaries such as the ways kids learn math without a textbook and how to transition your children out of the regular school system – a sort of psychological-detox process known as deschooling.

When the conference is over, Ms. Laricchia will return to collaborating on building an online business with her son, Michael, 13. Her daughter, Lissy, 16, is a photographer who was recently invited to participate in a show in New York. The oldest child, Joseph, has turned 18 and is no longer being actively unschooled. His mom happily admits that the change has had almost no effect on his day-to-day life.

Kate Hammer is The Globe and Mail's Education Reporter.

Can You Handle The Heat?

Awesome news for people wearing sweatpants while posting lists of their favorite Smurfs (present company included): the Associated Press informed its members this week that they can cite blogs as a news source. Just yesterday another part of the AP’s backend leaked as well (cut down on the Olestra chips, guys). Libby Reinish at savethenews.org published a paraphrased list of AP Minnesota’s suggestions to local newspapers on what they should write about. Turns out the AP loves crashes and fires where people die, but not the ones with happy endings. So, in a shameless attempt to ingratiate ourselves to the AP, here are a bunch of stories involving fire. You like fire, right, AP? Ain’t we sweet to you, baby?

Several fires — about 85 in total — broke out in Detroit last Tuesday (and every Tuesday, probably). What makes these fires unique is that a family in the neighborhood had called the power company several times beforehand to report dangerous power surges and other problems. After several refusals to check the problems, they told the power company, “I hope you’re taping this conversation, because if my house burns down, you’re going to have to pay for it.” Shortly afterward, an electrical fire caused major damage in the second floor of the home.

Did you know Jennifer Lopez is the leading cause of go kart fires, second only to every other cause in the universe? It’s true! A woman in Florida started arguing with her husband because he was watching a Jennifer Lopez movie. Not because the movie sucked, but because she didn’t want him looking at her. Later that night, he asked her to move over in bed and she quite rationally screamed, “So you’re saying I’ve got a fat ass?” before leaving the house. The next day she returned and set fire to his boat and go kart. This mother of three obviously lucky children also threatened to have their dogs put to sleep, then fled the crime scene. Burning a perfectly useful go kart and threatening violence against kids’ pets? No taco-flavored keeses for ju.

Obama Touts Inefficient Program to Defend Stimulus: $1.4m per Green Job Created

Surely everyone would love to see cleaner energy programs in the U.S., especially given the environmental catastrophe looming in the Gulf. And certainly, the American economy desperately needs jobs. But leave it to our broken government to spend the stimulus money as inefficiently as the TARP funds which did very little to create jobs. In a recent Associated Press release the Obama administration defended criticism of the stimulus "economic recovery program" by touting the jobs created under the $2.4 billion "advanced battery" program:

Battery maker A123 Systems Inc. planned to open a new lithium ion battery plant Monday in Livonia, Mich. About 300 workers, many formerly laid-off auto workers, were to join Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Michigan lawmakers to promote their production of battery cells and components. The Watertown, Mass.-based company received $249 million under the stimulus program and plans to open a second facility next year in Romulus, Mich.
Automotive supplier Johnson Controls Inc. last week started shipping batteries that were made at a Holland, Mich., facility built with the help of $299 million in federal grants. The factory expects to employ 90 workers by late next year and could produce 75,000 to 150,000 batteries a year, depending on the mix of hybrid and electric vehicles it supplies.
So according to this release, only 390 jobs were created from the $548 million taxpayer investment, or about $1.4 million per job. At this rate, the full $2.4 billion allocated for the federal advanced battery program would create a whopping 1714 jobs. This is a far cry from the estimates cited in the article by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, D-Mich, who said, "the federal battery program, along with state incentives, are projected to create 63,000 jobs in Michigan."

Of course any job creation is a good thing, but it is laughable for the administration to use this particular program to debunk criticism of the stimulus spending. The $787B stimulus represents about $2625 for every man, woman, and child in America, and about $7500 for every taxpayer. It seems that the money would be better spent if returned directly to the citizens who can then go buy solar panels, or fuel efficient vehicles if they choose.

Get Off-The-Grid With A Solar Power Generator

The Truth is an Unwelcome Guest.

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McAfee: New “Here You Have” Worm Delivers Unwanted Gift

A new Internet worm dubbed “Here You Have” is streaming into worldwide inboxes, offering a dangerous payload, according to McAfee Labs. The worm, which travels via spam email with the subject line of “Here you have,” or “Just for you,” masquerades as a business email with a link to a PDF file. However, the email actually contains a link to a malicious program that can disable security software and send itself to all the contacts in the recipient’s address book.

Corporations around the world were particularly affected by the worm on Thursday as it clogged up their email systems. Consumers could soon be affected as they go home and log onto their machines. For this reason, McAfee Labs has labeled the worm as a “medium” risk, and warns all computer users to delete any email with the “Here you have” subject line.

Although the dangerous link has been taken down, neutralizing the threat, it can still spread through remote machines, mapped drives and removable media, Labs warns.

- The Hook: You receive a spam email with the subject line “Here you have” and a link that looks like it leads to a PDF file. It may appear that the email comes from someone you know.

- The Methods: The email invites you to click on the link, and once you do it prompts you to download a file. This file is actually malware that disables the security software on your machine and sends itself to everyone listed as a contact in your address book.

- The Dangers: Once you are infected, your computer has diminished security protection. Your machine is also being used to spam your friends and contacts. If you are on a corporate network, the network could be clogged as the worm works its way through address books.

- Bottom Line: Do not click on the link in any email with the subject header “Here you have,” even if it appears to be from someone you know.

Tips to Avoid Becoming a Victim:

1) Never click on a link in a spam email or IM from someone you don’t know, and be suspicious of strange emails from people you do know. Their account could have been compromised.

2) Use comprehensive security software, like McAfee Total Protection™ software, to protect you from viruses, spam, and other Internet threats, and keep the software up-to-date.

3) Set your operating system and browser to automatically apply updates.

Tips on What to Do If You Have Become a Victim:

You think your computer is already infected, now what?

To check if you have malware installed on your PC, scan your computer for free using the McAfee Stinger tool, go to: www.mcafee.com/stinger-tool

Israeli Army Sexually Abusing Children

Israeli soldiers have been accused of sexually and physically abusing Palestinian children detained by the military, a report says.

Five Palestinian children detained over minor offences, including hurling stones, and held in detention illegally, were sexually abused by Israeli soldiers, Ynet wrote citing a CNN report broadcast on Thursday.

The report also charges that the Israeli soldiers have tortured some of the boys in detention. Palestinian children are being abused in Israeli detention centers, it said.

The investigative report also featured a Palestinian boy claiming that Israeli forces attempted to molest him using an object upon his arrest.

The youngster, whose identity was not disclosed, said a dozen officers were standing around and laughing while he was being interrogated, stopping only when their commander stepped into the room.

The army said, “Any claim regarding improper conduct by soldiers or police officers will be thoroughly examined by the relevant officials.”

Meanwhile, member of the Knesset (Israeli parliament) Afu Agbaria, has condemned as “unethical and inhumane” the methods used by Israeli soldiers to investigate Palestinians, particularly children, China Daily reported.

“Israel’s own statistics confirm that 14% of detained Palestinian children were subjected to sexual abuse threats by Israeli soldiers,” Agbaria said.

He was referring to a report by the Palestinian Prisoners’ Ministry which revealed that 65% of detainees, most of them children, face brutal torture and ill-treatment during their detention and interrogation.

Agbaria also noted that 100 complaints have been presented by human rights organizations to Defense for Children International (DCI) against the ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees, especially children.

The organizations demanded that detainees aged 16 and 17 should be dealt with as minors, in accordance with Israeli law, and an end to prison sentences for those under 14 years old, he said.


Dead MI6 worker 'may have climbed into bag by himself'

An MI6 worker found dead inside a sports bag may have suffocated after climbing into the holdall by himself, it has been suggested.


The body of Gareth Williams was discovered in his flat in London last month, sparking a major police investigation and a flurry of rumours about how he died.

Gareth Williams' death remains a mystery (PA) Gareth Williams' death remains a mystery (PA)

It is thought police are working on the theory he may have been the victim of a random murder, but the difficulty in collecting evidence means they are also considering other possibilities.

According to the Mail on Sunday, officers are now looking at the idea that the 31-year-old died after a sex game went wrong.

They believe he may have climbed into the sports bag himself as part of an erotic asphyxiation ritual and then been unable to get out.


Although the bag, which was found in Mr Williams' bath, was locked, the key for the padlock was discovered inside the holdall.

A female member of the police team investigating his death has apparently managed to recreate the scenario, by climbing into an identical bag, zipping it up and then padlocking it from the inside.

The claim is the latest in a series of bizarre reports about the codebreaker's death and private life. Some of the lurid rumours even prompted his family to suggest that Mr Williams may be the victim of a smear campaign.

His family are so unhappy with the lack of progress in the investigation and the failure of two post-mortems to identify a cause of death, that they are reported to have requested the release of his body so they can commission their own tests.

‘Record increase’ in number of Americans in poverty

The number of people in the US who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama's watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.

Census figures for 2009 — the recession-ravaged first year of the Democrat's presidency — are to be released in the coming week, and demographers expect grim findings.

It's unfortunate timing for Obama and his party just seven weeks before important elections when control of Congress is at stake. The anticipated poverty rate increase — from 13.2 percent to about 15 percent — would be another blow to Democrats struggling to persuade voters to keep them in power.

"The most important anti-poverty effort is growing the economy and making sure there are enough jobs out there," Obama said Friday at a White House news conference. He stressed his commitment to helping the poor achieve middle-class status and said, "If we can grow the economy faster and create more jobs, then everybody is swept up into that virtuous cycle."

Record gains for US poverty with elections looming

Weeks before midterm elections, US poverty on track for record gain in 2009 on Obama's watch

HOPE YEN and LIZ SIDOTI
AP News

Sep 11, 2010 20:40 EDT

The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama's watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.

Census figures for 2009 — the recession-ravaged first year of the Democrat's presidency — are to be released in the coming week, and demographers expect grim findings.

It's unfortunate timing for Obama and his party just seven weeks before important elections when control of Congress is at stake. The anticipated poverty rate increase — from 13.2 percent to about 15 percent — would be another blow to Democrats struggling to persuade voters to keep them in power.

"The most important anti-poverty effort is growing the economy and making sure there are enough jobs out there," Obama said Friday at a White House news conference. He stressed his commitment to helping the poor achieve middle-class status and said, "If we can grow the economy faster and create more jobs, then everybody is swept up into that virtuous cycle."

Interviews with six demographers who closely track poverty trends found wide consensus that 2009 figures are likely to show a significant rate increase to the range of 14.7 percent to 15 percent.

Should those estimates hold true, some 45 million people in this country, or more than 1 in 7, were poor last year. It would be the highest single-year increase since the government began calculating poverty figures in 1959. The previous high was in 1980 when the rate jumped 1.3 percentage points to 13 percent during the energy crisis.

Among the 18-64 working-age population, the demographers expect a rise beyond 12.4 percent, up from 11.7 percent. That would make it the highest since at least 1965, when another Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson, launched the war on poverty that expanded the federal government's role in social welfare programs from education to health care.

Demographers also are confident the report will show:

_Child poverty increased from 19 percent to more than 20 percent.

_Blacks and Latinos were disproportionately hit, based on their higher rates of unemployment.

_Metropolitan areas that posted the largest gains in poverty included Modesto, Calif.; Detroit; Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla.; Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

"My guess is that politically these figures will be greeted with alarm and dismay but they won't constitute a clarion call to action," said William Galston, a domestic policy aide for President Bill Clinton. "I hope the parties don't blame each other for the desperate circumstances of desperate people. That would be wrong in my opinion. But that's not to say it won't happen."

Lawrence M. Mead, a New York University political science professor who is a conservative and wrote "The New Politics of Poverty: The Nonworking Poor in America," argued that the figures will have a minimal impact in November.

"Poverty is not as big an issue right now as middle-class unemployment. That's a lot more salient politically right now," he said.

But if Thursday's report is as troubling as expected, Republicans in the midst of an increasingly strong drive to win control of the House, if not the Senate, would get one more argument to make against Democrats in the campaign homestretch.

The GOP says voters should fire Democrats because Obama's economic fixes are hindering the sluggish economic recovery. Rightly or wrongly, Republicans could cite a higher poverty rate as evidence.

Democrats almost certainly will argue that they shouldn't be blamed. They're likely to counter that the economic woes — and the poverty increase — began under President George W. Bush with the near-collapse of the financial industry in late 2008.

Although that's true, it's far from certain that the Democratic explanation will sway voters who already are trending heavily toward the GOP in polls as worrisome economic news piles up.

Hispanics and blacks — traditionally solid Democratic constituencies — could be inclined to stay home in November if, as expected, the Census Bureau reports that many more of them were poor last year.

Beyond this fall, the findings could put pressure on Obama to expand government safety net programs ahead of his likely 2012 re-election bid even as Republicans criticize him about federal spending and annual deficits. Those are areas of concern for independent voters whose support is critical in elections.

Experts say a jump in the poverty rate could mean that the liberal viewpoint — social constraints prevent the poor from working — will gain steam over the conservative position that the poor have opportunities to work but choose not to because they get too much help.

"The Great Recession will surely push the poverty rate for working-age people to a nearly 50-year peak," said Elise Gould, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute. She said that means "it's time for a renewed attack on poverty."

To Douglas Besharov, a University of Maryland public policy professor, the big question is whether there's anything more to do to help these families.

The 2009 forecasts are largely based on historical data and the unemployment rate, which climbed to 10.1 percent last October to post a record one-year gain.

The projections partly rely on a methodology by Rebecca Blank, a former poverty expert who now oversees the census. She estimated last year that poverty would hit about 14.8 percent if unemployment reached 10 percent. "As long as unemployment is higher, poverty will be higher," she said in an interview then.

A formula by Richard Bavier, a former analyst with the White House Office of Management and Budget who has had high rates of accuracy over the last decade, predicts poverty will reach 15 percent.

That would put the rate at the highest level since 1993. The all-time high was 22.4 percent in 1959, the first year the government began tracking poverty. It dropped to a low of 11.1 percent in 1973 after Johnson's war on poverty but has since fluctuated in the 12-14 percent range.

In 2008, the poverty level stood at $22,025 for a family of four, based on an official government calculation that includes only cash income before tax deductions. It excludes capital gains or accumulated wealth. It does not factor in noncash government aid such as tax credits or food stamps, which have surged to record levels in recent years under the federal stimulus program.

Beginning next year, the government plans to publish new, supplemental poverty figures that are expected to show even higher numbers of people in poverty than previously known. The figures will take into account rising costs of medical care, transportation and child care, a change analysts believe will add to the ranks of both seniors and working-age people in poverty.

___

Is Tom DeWeese misleading us on purpose?

I keep getting forwards that link to Tom DeWeese's last article on Senator Dodd's proposed Livable Communities Act (S.1619). http://americanpolicy.org/sledgehammer-action-alerts/%E2%80%9Clivable-communities%E2%80%9D-is-a-socialist-trap.html

DeWeese calls it a "socialist trap." He closes with a call for all Republicans to call and write their representatives to protest the bill because, I suppose, this will stop it, and in his expert opinion, registered Democrats (read socialists) have no reason to oppose it.

DeWeese claims he has been leading the fight against LA21 for over a decade. He tells us:
"S.1619 is the first federal Sustainable Development law to enforce the UN’s Agenda 21. It must be stopped now – or every single community in America will be forced to comply with UN policy."
Does the above quote give you the impression that calling and writing your Congress will STOP LA21 in the USA? Does it imply that as yet no place has been forced to comply with UN policy?

The truth is, there have been many federal laws and programs that have already implemented Sustainable Development from one end of the country to another. Clinton's President's Council on Sustainable Development was created in 1993. The National Town Meetings began in the 1990s too. The Communitarian Network and Presidential Adviser Amitai Etzioni worked side by side with the Clinton Administration to be the "moral" backbone for reinventing our nation under SD principles. Rebuilding Community and SD go hand in hand.

The federal department of Agriculture changed its mission statement to promote SD in 1993. The USDA is completely devoted to SD and everything they do promotes it. Sustainable Communities is the goal of every government program already ongoing in the country. Our best universities have been teaching SD for over a decade already.

There have been numerous state laws and programs since 1992 that have implemented Sustainable Development in every state in the union. There are numerous treaties that have already put the U.S. under U.N. communitarian law. SD standards are already mandatory.

So why would Tom DeWeese, a self proclaimed "leader" in fighting SD for over a decade, tell his readers that THIS new law proposed by Dodd is the key to stopping SD?

How is it possible that this "leader" of the U.S. opposition to SD has written only one article in all his years of "fighting" SD that mentions the philosophy behind SD? Why won't DeWeese tell you about the massive communitarian legal system and bureaucracy that already "legalized" SD in the USA? Why doesn't he explain communitarian law is supreme law under the revised U.N., or that every country in the world is facing the same changes to the structure of their governments? (Global government is NOT just an American problem!)

I asked Kevin Eggers if he could explain why average people like himself and the Santa Rosa Democrats Against LA21 can so readily understand communitarianism when people like DeWeese, who claim to be experts, can continue to completely ignore it. His response:
"Communitarianism makes sense. Senator William Borah described in his book "Bedrock" (1936) how the corporations were controlling things through their monopolies in a free market system and also how the corporations controlled things in the legislation or "planned industrialism" that was supposed to be for the people's benefit. Without calling it the Hegelian Dialectic, Borah explained the Hegelian dialectic of capitalism versus socialism with the large corporations winning no matter what. Today, the left can only see the expoitation of corporate controlled capitalism and the right can only see the exploitation of corporate influenced big government socialism. Our corporate controlled education and media maintains these left right divisions so they can get away with nearly anything."
Who else besides the corporate controlled media maintains the left right divisions?

Where can average people be the most effective in the war against the SD gangsters? At HOME, on their home fronts, where the SD programs claim to have the support of the whole community. Any time spent writing federal representatives about SD is a waste of time. They've already embraced the communitarian ideology. But if Americans go to their local meetings and take over their local councils... they can direct SD in any direction they choose (including straight into the garbage can where it belongs).

The bottom line is these innovative strategies to reinvent American government do not gain their validity only via national laws. Communitarian powers come from the communitarian claims that the "community" supports communitarian changes. If the residents in the community don't know anything about communitarianism, the planners have no clear opposition.

If we don't know what communitarianism is, then we can't identify the people who embrace it. If we don't know what legal theory supports SD, we can't challenge it using our legitimate local law.